Sunday Media Soup

I've been meaning to do something like this for awhile and after looking at some stats I've decided to finally up and do it. The plan so far is to contribute a summary of my week's media consumption and, of course, offer reviews of said media in a rather Christgau-esq fashion - I'm pretty sure that's how he spells his name. (How he manages to live with himself after writing millions of noxious music reviews I'm completely in the dark.)

My new addiction is The Twilight Zone, the original Rod Serling 1954 -1964 black and white TV Series.

Rod Serling: Writer and Narrator of the Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone, whilst obviously dated is a refreshing easy watch on a weekend, the stories are creative,  the writing is inventive and the dialogue is crisp and makes one nostalgic for when white men had all the power and not just most of it. The acting can be a little bit hit and miss on occasion, but those occasions are very rare and in general everything is superbly crafted - even the dishes meant to look like spaceships.
A- (The minus is because of one particular episode called The Invaders where a whole episode relies on one Actress's performance: she is particularly cringe-worthy.)


The band-width strangler this week is a documentary website called Top Documentary Films. There are around 2000 documentaries on the site; all readily available to be streamed with awesome quality. The doco's are all arranged according to content or genre so finding something to watch is really very easy, which leads me to a series available on the site called, "Philosophy: Guide to Happiness."

Alain de Botton

Philosophy: Guide to Happiness, is presented by Alain de Botton who is apparently a popular British philosopher. The documentary is a six part series which skims through the ideas of Socrates, Seneca, Epicurus, Nietzsche, Montaigne and Schopenhauer, the ideas are explained eruditely by De Botton but the production of the series itself is lack-lustre, rife with awful 90s techno, filled with countless drab and contrived scenes of people attempting to put what Schopenhauer or Seneca said into practice in modern-day life. Whilst the information gained may be worth the occasional torturous contrivance, one eventually spends most of the time looking at de Botton and wondering where his hair went.
(C-)

All Watched Over By Machine Of Loving Grace, was for me a highly anticipated series because of the fact it was made by Adam Curtis. What followed however was a confused series which seemed to be unaware as to what its point actually was. The first episode is incredibly concise, clear, direct and promised to offer something special, but subsequent episodes get lost in the middle of nowhere incredibly fast. Is his point that computers and machines have made our world worse? Or is it that people have made our world worse by using technology? Watching the whole series makes one confused as to the filmmakers point and so to borrow from Waking Life, "Well, I hope you know what you're talking about. Because I've got no idea what you're talking about."
(C+)

Adam Curtis

The Living Dead, is the twenty dollar note you find in your jacket pocket after your jacket has been locked away in your wardrobe for a season - you're surprised it's there, and happy as well. This series is classic Adam Curtis, which means it's a highly subjective look at the world through technicolor perspex; the content is brilliantly coherent, the interviews incredibly informative, overall the series is compelling and cathartic - perhaps not as eye opening as previous works but, like crack, it leaves you wanting more.
(A)

So this is the first installment of what I'm hoping will be a long routine of posting on Sundays about media. Hopefully - time permitting - I'll post about politics during the week. The next post will be about Hone Harawira's by-election win, I'm itching to post about it now; however I'm a little confused about what his victory means at this point so once I've figured out what can deduced from everything then I'll wax politic.

In the mean time here's a funny clip of Fred Durst trying to play guitar.