Overthinkers who live in and around New York City should make a point of riding the Q train from Brooklyn into Manhattan the next time they want to see something amazingly cool. (No, I’m not talking about the waterfalls. Those were lame, and are gone now anyway as far as I know. This is way better.)
If you look to the right as the train sails through the abandoned Myrtle Avenue subway station, you will see a Yakov Smirnoff joke about Cinema:
It’s brief abstract film animated by the motion of the train itself. It works on the same principle as the 19th century zoetrope, except instead of spinning a drum you just sit back and let the train do the work. (Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what a zoetrope is — if google hadn’t come through for me, I had planned to write “one of those old timey spin-the-wheel-and-look-through-the-slot dealies.”)
What I like about the Masstransiscope is that you’re suddenly confronted with a piece of art while you’re inhabiting the least artistic space imaginable. It also helps that it’s a film. Usually when we see public art, it’s a statue. A statue isn’t something that commands urgent attention. You look at it for a while, you get bored, you stop looking, you wonder what you’ll have for lunch, you look again… as a result, there’s nothing particularly odd about ignoring the statues and murals that decorate so many of our public spaces. Even if you went to a museum for the specific purpose of seeing statues, you’re going to spend a more time ignoring any given individual piece of art than you will spend paying attention to it. But we are NOT used to ignoring moving pictures. (At least not yet, although in the post-Tivo era that may be changing.) When we go to a movie, we keep our eyes glued to the screen for the whole duration. If we look down even for a second, that second of film will be gone, and we won’t get it back.
Add to this the fact that we spend most of our time on the subway zoning out and not paying attention to anything. So when you pass the Masstransiscope, you’re suddenly shocked out of this listless commuter-state into an incredibly active perception of this miniscule blip of beauty… and then it’s gone. Like Keyser Soze. Or, you know, a psychadelic jellyfish.
Anyway, it’s really worth seeing it for yourself if you can. You might want to do this sooner rather than later. There’s no plan to take it down, but it spent most of the last 20 years under an impenetrable coat of graffiti, and it probably won’t be long before it gets tagged back out of existence.
More on the project and it’s creator, Bill Brand, can be found here.
The plot of The Dark Knight, like that of Batman Begins, is honestly kind of shapeless and waffle-y. And yet, as Memento proves, Nolan is capable of writing narratives that are drum-taught and mongoose-agile. Why is he churning out these behemoths? Why, despite the wafflage, are they so dang good?
To answer this, I’d like to take a minute to consider Batman as a piece of storytelling, to consider the properties of the tale as it’s told. You’re probably taking it as given that there are spoilers for The Dark Knight ahead. But I should warn you that there are also spoilers for Batman Begins, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, the Superman comic books, and The Hunt For Red October. Be warned.
In his famous - for a certain value of “fame” - book S/Z, Roland Barthes strip-mines Balzac’s Sarrasine, wringing every scrap of meaning out of the text and classifying his findings into five narrative codes: Hermeneutic, Semic, Proairetic, Symbolic, and Cultural. The wikipedia definitions of these codes are pretty solid as of this writing (I mean, they could be “Taco! Taco! Taco!” by tomorrow), but they’re easier to understand when you see them in action. Like after the jump! Convenience!
Loyal readers will remember Mlawski’s post from a few months back about the brouhaha surrounding Disney’s upcoming Princess and the Frog. Well, there’s a teaser trailer now.
So far I’m not seeing anything offensive to African Americans, although I guess the firefly character might end up being pretty DEEPLY offensive to Cajun people. Anyway, it’ll be fun to see how it pans out. Stay tuned for further developments.
I find the animation style more interesting than any of the political correctness issues. This is, after all, the first traditionally animated Disney movie since they claimed to have gotten out of the game following 2004’s Home on the Range. It seems to me like they’ve made a conscious effort to play up the kind of thing that 2D animation does better than CGI. I’m thinking particularly of the close-up shot of the frog where its lips distort into an enormous pucker. That would look weird as heck in CGI, am I right? (The Incredibles’ Elastigirl was very much a special effect). But in 2D animation, it blends right in.
