In a media interview (free registration required) recently, Wolfensohn, the departing president of World Bank, has warned that unless the imbalance in wealth in the world is addressed now, the future will only have instability and great suffering for all of us. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2005
What is shocking?
Recently I have watched a few movies that contain non-simulated sex scenes. One was Romance . I also watched a few others including Ken Park and 9 Songs. I am by no means a movie buff, but I recently felt compelled to watch these movies as they seem to represent a new trend in movies that are appearing in film festivals around the world and are not likely to be released in Australia (except for Romance) which I have seen available on DVD.
For quite a while I was pondering the reason why these directors decided to make these movies and what was so significant about having a sex scene that is not simulated. I thought it could be a sign of a new interesting radical trend in film-making, but after watching them I am not so sure if that is the case.
What was interesting about these movies is that there seems to be a really strong emphasis on the sex scenes. The directors seem to be obsessed with making the sex scenes as “real” as possible but they are happy to leave other parts of the movie in the traditional realm of “simulation for the screen”. The question, then, is why? Why are these sex scenes so important to these directors? Is it to gain notoriety or is it an attempt to create something that cannot be emulated by the Holywood studios (an attempt at differentiation)? Well, in the case of the latter they have certainly emulated the San Fernando Valley crowd.
Another question that must be asked is why they tried to create real sex scenes when the medium of cinema itself is just a simulation of reality. Does this mean that we are not allowed to use our imagination anymore or are we supposed to believe that a real sex scene is more erotic than a simulated one?
In the case of 9 Songs, the sex scenes in the movie certainly appears to be gratuitous and superficial. There seems to be no passion in the actors even though they are having real sex and if Michael Winterbottom asked why real sex could not be in a movie then I guess we are very lucky that Larry Clark still believes in simulating the murder scene in Ken Park.
Retiform.net’s launched!
Retiform.net is the website of Jackson Ellis, a close friend of mine. In the past few years, it has been a site where artists could post their works free of charge, now it has become his personal website showing his photographs.
Titled Daily Observations From Korea, the site contains Ellis’ own observations of Korean society in words and photographs. Why Korea? Ellis, originally from Ireland and a some time resident of Australia, has been living in Seoul for the past few years.
I would like to wish him good luck and congratulation for a site that is uncluttered and regularly updated.
Still Frames new images in May
Fresh new images collected by still frames photographer.
Downtime on Sunday
On Sunday 1 May, around midday local time, the server at agit8.org was having a hardware problem and had to be shut down. It seemed that there was excess heat generated inside the case and this was caused by a worn out and malfunctioning fan which has since been replaced. Apologies to those who could not access the agit8.org website and the still frames website.