KeinerMachtsBesser.de
The Kekulé Problem by Cormac McCarthy @ Nautilus
Digital Garden: Introduction
During Corona, I stumbled upon the concept of “digital gardening”. Maggie Appleton describes it better – and more beautifully, I might add – than I ever could, but it’s basically a personal space to gather and publish (i.e. plant) “personal knowledge on the web”. In one interpretation – more akin to a blog – said knowledge is in flux, will be tended to (i.e. edited or rewritten) and might even grow into a full-grown blogpost or essay. In another interpretation – resembling a wiki – you have curated patches of knowledge and return to those every now and then to amend them.
I will use the latter and instead of a garden the image of a collection of butterflies spiked with tiny needles trapped behind glass inside a large wooden frame comes to mind. Or one of those library catalogs with indices and cards in tiny drawers. Also, instead of personal notes and thoughts my garden will mainly consist of links. Boy do I love links.
One might argue that this blog is already nothing more than a curated collection of links. Which is by design. I don’t feel I have much to add to the global think space, but I like pointing at things. The main difference is time. The usual blog entries are more or less important now. Entries in my digital garden are important forever.
Cinephilia & Beyond
“Croatians love Film” is a bold statement. Too absolute to be true, with evidence as flimsy as one of the dames in a Raymond Chandler novel. Here is my evidence:
On one hand, there is Croatian.film, a collection of short films, documentaries, and feature films you can watch online for free. It is related to the Zagreb Film Festival, which would be another indicator for my initial claim, if not for the fact that every capital in the EU has a film festival (probably part of the conditions to become a member).
On the other hand, Cinephilia & Beyond. What has started as a blog of five Croatian cinephiles (see their Tumblr-blog archive) became a treasure trove of deep dives into the ocean that is filmmaking.
The navigation for the site is a bit shite (as the Brits like to exclaim). They use the categories (“Interviews”, “Screenwriting”, etc) to teaser what content will be found in the linked articles but they hardly help with navigating the large archive the writers have already amassed. This won’t matter much, because once you have subscribed to their RSS-feed you will count the days until the next entry pops up.
I searched for “Batman”, found two relevant examples (you have the choice between Tim Burton’s version or Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”) and will use those to convince you to do just that (subscribing to their feed that is).
Every article starts with an introductory essay about the movie written by one of the aforementioned quintet or from their cast of guest authors. This is followed by an assortment of excerpts from interviews (text and video), books, and articles from the filmcrew. If you have time on your hands, you can read one version of the full script (often more), embedded as a PDF. Finally, the large, high-def behind-the-scenes shots that are scattered throughout the page are collected in a gallery at the bottom of the page. And when all is read and viewed there are links, so many links to most if not all of their sources.
All this is done for most of the movies they review. The archive includes smaller items, but they stay true to the formular described above for the recent (i.e. the last four to five years) entries.
A final note on the films reviewed. I’m not sure if “classics” would be a good descriptor, but all the usual suspects (excluding “The Usual Suspects”) of US-centric cinema are there. You’ve got your Scorcese, Mann, Coens, Lynch, Kubrick, Spielberg, et al. The occasional outliers in Neil Marshall’s works “Descent” and “Dog Soldiers” and some interesting omissions like Tarantino. Interspersed are real classics like “Metropolis” or Hitchcock. And these names were just plucked from the first few pages of their archive!
“Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now?” [A dive into Metamodernism] by Thomas Flight via Metafilter
Commence by Drawing the Ears: Louis Wain’s Cats @ Who’s Out There
Arts & Letters Daily
We start with a classic in our Blogroll Review category, Arts & Letters Daily.
It earns its “classic”-status in two ways: First it was founded in 1998 by the late philosopher Denis Dutton. Second, the design has not changed much since then and is as clean and calm as a newspaper that came just out of the printing press.
To stay with the numbers, the concept for the website is as easy as 1, 2, 3: Five to six times a week three aggregated links to online publications, accompanied by a short teaser, are posted. One “Article of Note”, a second with a review of “New Books”, and a third highlighting “Essays & Opinions”. An occasional, time-sensitive link is posted in their “Nota Bene”.
Topics range from philosophy to literature and all the other variants of art and science. In the spirit of Dutton, who is described as a web entrepreneur and media activist, technology – the current Nota Bene features items on AI, Buzzfeed, and even more AI – is a recurring theme.
In the end, it is the perfect source for a feuilleton-fanatic like me, when they crave something with a bit more meat on the bone!