John Menick's Blog » Books http://www.johnmenick.com Art, film, prose, and politics Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:11:30 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Reading, Libraries, and the Kindle http://www.johnmenick.com/2009/06/the-kindle http://www.johnmenick.com/2009/06/the-kindle#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:24:11 +0000 John Menick http://www.johnmenick.com/?p=260 http://www.johnmenick.com/2009/06/the-kindle/feed 1 Who made this artwork? http://www.johnmenick.com/2008/11/who-did-this-artwork http://www.johnmenick.com/2008/11/who-did-this-artwork#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:59:34 +0000 John Menick http://www.johnmenick.com/?p=210 http://www.johnmenick.com/2008/11/who-did-this-artwork/feed 0 Just Published: POETICS OF CINEMA 2 by Raul RUIZ http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/just-published-poetics-of-cinema-2-by-raul-ruiz http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/just-published-poetics-of-cinema-2-by-raul-ruiz#comments Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:37:13 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2007/02/23/just-published-poetics-of-cinema-2-by-raul-ruiz Following his research in Poetics of Cinema, 1 on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Raul Ruiz makes with Poetics of cinema 2 an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing and conceiving the image. “Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my Poetics of Cinema. Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. Poetics of Cinema, 1 had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today Poetics of cinema 2 is rather more of a consolatio philosophica. However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism. ‘Light, more light,’were Goethe’s last words as he died. ‘Less light, less light,’ Orson Welles cried repeatedly on a set—the one and only time I saw him. In today’s cinema (and in today’s world) there is too much light. It is time to return to the shadows. So, about turn! And back to the caverns!”. R.R Available from Amazon.]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/just-published-poetics-of-cinema-2-by-raul-ruiz/feed 0 When the going gets weird, the weird get Ballardian… http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/when-the-going-gets-weird-the-weird-get-ballardian http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/when-the-going-gets-weird-the-weird-get-ballardian#comments Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:54:10 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2007/02/15/when-the-going-gets-weird-the-weird-get-ballardian Simon Sellars' Ballardian is an odd enterprise: not just a Web site devoted to the works of JG Ballard, but a blog devoted to events that are in some way Ballardian. Amazingly, it works. For example, see the recent entries on the UK parking bombings, and astronaut Lisa Nowak. "The suburbs dream of violence"... (For your added reading pleasure, also see Sellars fascinating Guide to Micronations.)]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/02/when-the-going-gets-weird-the-weird-get-ballardian/feed 0 Stanislaw Lem on Psychogeography http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/01/stanislaw-lem-on-psychogeography http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/01/stanislaw-lem-on-psychogeography#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:59:17 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2007/01/09/stanislaw-lem-on-psychogeography Lem's sci-fi detective novel, The Investigation:
The little game has always fascinated Gregory when he was nineteen. He used to stand in the middle of a crowd without knowing until the last minute whether or not he'd board an approaching train, waiting for some kind of internal sign or act of the will to tell him what to do. "No matter what I won't move from this spot," he would sometimes swear to himself, then would jump on just as the doors were shutting. Other times he would tell himself severely, "I'll take the next train," and instead would find himself entering the one standing right before him. The very concept of chance had fascinated Gregory when he was younger, and through self-analysis and research he had tried to study it s workings in his own personality, though without any results, to be sure.
]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2007/01/stanislaw-lem-on-psychogeography/feed 0 Another bunch of random links and quotes http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/12/another-bunch-of-random-links-and-quotes http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/12/another-bunch-of-random-links-and-quotes#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:04:03 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2006/12/19/another-bunch-of-random-links-and-quotes he wrote in his popular, long-running Village Voice column, "and we may yet have a rebirth of American cinema." * "The original plan for the film was that every shot would be digitally placed over archival footage. So that literally, the film would be "shot" in 1945 Berlin; the actors would be green-screened over archival. There was a scene in a butcher shop, for example, and I had to find every camera angle we needed in a butcher shop in 1945 Berlin. If there was a scene outdoors, a destroyed park or a zoo, I had to find those camera angles. There was interplay between the writing, directing, and archival research: what I could find that was in Paul Attanasio's script, and whatever else I found in my research that might work or that piqued Paul's interest, or Steven Soderbergh's... A colleague of mine in the art department, Joanna Bush, created an amazing database of all the footage I'd collected. It was organized based on the geography of Berlin. So that on Steven's computer, he could click on a map of Berlin and it would find all the archival footage that I had gotten on a particular plaza or a particular street or a particular location, and pull up all that archival footage and all the stills. Steven could know where he was situated in Berlin, and the art department could recreate a particular strasse. We'd know the ruins and we'd know how much that area was bombed out and all that." More... * "My first exposure to the subject came in a book by another medical anthropologist, Margaret Lock, whose Twice Dead (2002) is a brilliant comparative anthropology of Japanese and North American attitudes to brain-death as the criterion of death. Hence the title: a person is ‘once dead’ when technical criteria establish that the brain has stopped, while the body is still ticking over quietly on a ventilator; ‘twice dead’ when the heart is stopped and the organs harvested." * "What, he wondered, did we want to do? Did we want to eat, to drink, to fuck? Uh, dinner sounds cool." * And last, but not least, the Athanasius Kircher Society 2006]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/12/another-bunch-of-random-links-and-quotes/feed 0 “Who Cares” Book Launch at the NY Art Book Fair http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/11/who-cares-book-launch-at-the-ny-art-book-fair http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/11/who-cares-book-launch-at-the-ny-art-book-fair#comments Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:56:01 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2006/11/13/who-cares-book-launch-at-the-ny-art-book-fair Who Cares book launches this Friday at 5pm at the NY Art Book Fair. The whole fair looks interesting with Walid Raad, John Lurie, Silvia Kolbowski and others presenting new publications.]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/11/who-cares-book-launch-at-the-ny-art-book-fair/feed 0 Creative Time’s “Who Cares” http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/creative-times-who-cares http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/creative-times-who-cares#comments Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:09:22 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2006/09/25/creative-times-who-cares are about to be published. Four related projects by artists are also due to open soon.]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/creative-times-who-cares/feed 0 Ballard on Fascism and Consumerism http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/ballard-on-fascism-and-consumerism http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/ballard-on-fascism-and-consumerism#comments Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:32:13 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2006/09/15/ballard-on-fascism-and-consumerism interviewed about his new novel Kingdom Come:]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/ballard-on-fascism-and-consumerism/feed 0 David Friend’s “Watching the World Change” http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/david-friend%e2%80%99s-watching-the-world-change http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/david-friend%e2%80%99s-watching-the-world-change#comments Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:17:40 +0000 John Menick http://localhost/johnmenick/blog/2006/09/04/david-friend%e2%80%99s-watching-the-world-change Times has a favorable review of David Friend’s recent study of the photography of September 11th, Watching the World Change. Besides being a well-written and impressively researched study of the images surrounding the event, I was happy to see that Friend foregrounds Wolfgang Staehle’s work, which I wrote about several years ago for Parachute magazine. Friend’s book is probably the first important study of 9/11 photography, and is a must for anyone interested in a critical and historical look at that day. (I haven't gotten a chance to listen to the audio interview posted with the review.)]]> http://www.johnmenick.com/2006/09/david-friend%e2%80%99s-watching-the-world-change/feed 0