Filed under: Reviews | Tags: Art, Cranach, Exhibition, London, Napoleon Creative, Royal Academy
I went to see the Cranach exhibition over the weekend. Great exhibition with some fantastic images and some line drawings that looked unbelievably modern considering they were over 500 years old.
One thing that struck me was that Cranach travelled at key points in his life, at one point visiting Vienna and then to the Netherlands. This can be achieved in a matter of hours today, but then would have taken, what, weeks by coach? And while in those places he saw the creative advancements of those particular schools of art, which had been developing in relative isolation. Their ideas about how art should develop influenced his own subsequent work.
Now, Cranach would be able to see artists’ work from all over the world at the click of a button. And also, rather than a physical geographical school of artists developing a style, we live in a world where there are so many boundaryless influences. I think the difficult in the modern world is being able to sift through this material and find what’s relevant or interesting to the individual. Of course, the ability to rate clips or photos and record their popularity in terms of views brings to the surface those that are outstanding in some way. But I wonder what he would have made of this process?
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: cinema, film, Napoleon Creative, review, The Good German
I went to see the Good German at the weekend and was thoroughly gripped by it.
Steven Soderbergh shot this as thought it were actually filmed in the 1940s, shooting in black and white, with no radio mikes or fancy grip gear.
It takes a while to sink into the style, because it’s a completely different visual style than today. I also found I was missing the odd line here and there, because the dialogue wasn’t always crisp.
The story-telling style owes more to theatre than film, with the locations becoming characters in their own right, telling as much about the scars of war as the people living in them. Everyone has a part of themselves they have to sell in order to survive. Cate Blanchette, who channels Garbo/Dietrick/Bergman throughout, is simply, stoically brilliant. And the ending has “Casablanca” stamped all over it.
I’ve just come back from the States and enjoyed BA’s new AVOD system while flying.
With the Audio and Video On Demand System, the small TV screen in front of your seat is touch senstive and you press it to work your way through the available options.
Rather than a series of rolling channels, you get to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it. And most importantly, pause it when you want to sleep or stretch your legs.
I started watching Lady In The Water but this being a supernatural thriller mainly set in darkness, it was hard to really get into on a 5″ screen, so I gave up and tried Pirates of the Carribean instead. This was a much more watchable, both in terms of entertainment and suitability to the small screen.
Also available are CDs, TV programmes and BA inflight information videos.
Doubtless this AVOD system will roll out across BA’s fleet, and I’m sure there must be a saving to be made here. There will be all kinds of data captured about the kinds of things people like to watch inflight. Also, this data might be used for billing purposes; ie rather than buy a licence to screen Lady In The Water regardless of how many people actually watch it, the costs may be linked to how many times its actually requested from the AVOD system.
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: Blackberry, Mobile, Napoleon Creative, Verdict
Well, I’ve had my BlackBerry for a week now, and I’m ready to delivery my verdict. Having completed a BlackBerry training video, I knew all the promises of instant e-mail, web access and life-changing PDA functionality.
I have to say, I have been completely converted to life BlackBerry. It was a doddle to set up with my e-mail accounts, and it’s within a few days I was writing like a pro on its two-letters-per key keyboard. Synching it with Outlook’s tasks and memo was a simple as “click here.” When creating my contacts, I simply created a new folder withing contacts and put all the contacts I wanted in my phone. And since Outlook is all kept up to date with Plaxo and my BlackBerry phone is now synched with Outlook, for the first time the details on my laptop and phone are in synch and also available online.
The BlackBerry Pearl’s screen gives amazing picture quality and readability, and the pearl itself it light to the touch and easy to navigate with. My only slight reservation is that the phone’s speaker quality is not quite up to the standard of my old Nokia, but it’s still clear.
If you’re looking for a solution to e-mail on the move, I’d whole-heartedly recommend one.
We saw this over the weekend, very funny, very real life and very worth seeing.
And it has the best puppet sex scene since Team America!
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: Napoleon Creative, Pierre Huyghe, review, Tate Modern
Pierre Huyghe has an exhibition at the Tate Modern.
One of the rooms has two vast door suspended from the ceiling on a rail. They move around the room, twisting as they do. We took a quick mobile phone clip of them in action… however, any chance to show the doors in action was quickly halted by a security guard…
Now, at NC we’re very particular about copyright, and normally this wouldn’t bother us. However, the brochure clearly says both that Huyghe is concerned with “the status of copyright and intellectual property” and “he is interested in how ideas and stories originate and how they can be reused and circulated in the public domain.” Yet when someone actually wants to capture and circulate his work in the public domain, they’re told to cease and desist.
I wonder if Pierre was in the room, I wonder what he would say? By taking a video clip of his work, is this amplifying what he is trying to achieve, bringing it to a wider audience? Is youtube the ultimate space to display his art within the public domain? I’ll e-mail him a link to this and see what he has to say…
