Cross Country Timelapse, a YouTube video by Michael Bartolomeo that compresses a drive across the United States into four minutes, has attracted some attention since it was posted on September 3rd.
For instance, Andrew Sullivan featured it on the Daily Dish as the Mental Health Break for September 8th, 2009.
Bartolomeo channels structuralist filmmakers James Benning and Bette Gordon, whose 1975 film The United States of America compresses a similar cross-country drive, shot from the same backseat point of view, into 27 minutes.
Whereas Benning and Gordon use short clips, each one shot in real time, Bartolomeo uses individual frames, shot one every ten seconds. (Benning uses timelapse in other films, such as his 1976 Chicago Loop.)
Bartolomeo's film also announces its kinship with Peter Greenaway's (often structuralist) work, through its Michael Nyman soundtrack. Benning and Gordon, on the other hand, use the car radio, which firmly anchors their film in time and place.
A bit more on Benning:
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Steven Erlanger and Maïa de la Baume write yesterday's Vélib' news
The New York Times carried a story today (30 October 2009), under the bylines of Steven Erlanger and Maïa de la Baume, about the vandalism to the Vélib' bicycles in Paris. But in typical NY Times fashion, it's yesterday's news. There's not much here that The Times (of London) correspondent Charles Bremner didn't already blog about three and a half months ago (16 July 2009). Including trotting out the same sociologist to explain the phenomenon.
What's particularly egregious about this story, however, is that it comes precisely at the time when the Vélib' vandalism trend has dramatically reversed! I state this purely from my own anecdotal experience, but I would be immensely surprised if the statistics didn't back me up. Until just a few weeks ago, almost every Vélib' station that I visited had plenty of bikes with flat tires, missing chains, loose parts, etc. In the past couple of weeks, however, almost every bike is in good working order.
This goes for bikes across town: in the 10th, in the 16th, in the 5th and 4th, in the 8th and the 9th, down in the 13th, up in the 19th. My experience is far from comprehensive, but the change in all these places is too consistent to be coincidence.
Is it the cool weather that's made the difference? Or the boredom of the vandals, who've moved on to other things? Has the city's campaign had an effect? (They've put the anti-vandalism posters out for a second go-round now.) Or have the repair efforts been redoubled? My guess is a combination of weather and boredom. Regrettably, Erlanger and de la Baume missed the chance to report on the real story, and enlighten us on what's just happened.
What's particularly egregious about this story, however, is that it comes precisely at the time when the Vélib' vandalism trend has dramatically reversed! I state this purely from my own anecdotal experience, but I would be immensely surprised if the statistics didn't back me up. Until just a few weeks ago, almost every Vélib' station that I visited had plenty of bikes with flat tires, missing chains, loose parts, etc. In the past couple of weeks, however, almost every bike is in good working order.
This goes for bikes across town: in the 10th, in the 16th, in the 5th and 4th, in the 8th and the 9th, down in the 13th, up in the 19th. My experience is far from comprehensive, but the change in all these places is too consistent to be coincidence.
Is it the cool weather that's made the difference? Or the boredom of the vandals, who've moved on to other things? Has the city's campaign had an effect? (They've put the anti-vandalism posters out for a second go-round now.) Or have the repair efforts been redoubled? My guess is a combination of weather and boredom. Regrettably, Erlanger and de la Baume missed the chance to report on the real story, and enlighten us on what's just happened.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Open Yoghourts
Much fun has been made of French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner inadvertently calling the Uighurs the "Yoghourts" several times during a France Info radio interview.
But no attention has been paid to a troubling aspect of one of those phrases. Here is what he said (my translation, showing the words that he stressed):
But no attention has been paid to a troubling aspect of one of those phrases. Here is what he said (my translation, showing the words that he stressed):
They're Muslims, the Yoghourts, and who are rather open Muslims, not at all sectarian.So the French foreign minister feels that when he labels a people Muslim he needs to immediately differentiate them as being open and and non-sectarian? As if being closed and sectarian are somehow norms for Islam?
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