WTF happened to Smashing Telly?
July 14th, 2010 18 comments or # link to posted by david
Two things: it was taking up too much of my time for something which I felt was half-assed since the niche for picking the good full length stuff out of google seemed to disappear after Hulu, Netflix on Demand and my ability to watch things like the BBC via a proxy; secondly I could never seem to build it into a community site with people contributing.
Here’s what I plan to do. I’m currently obsessed with lists and in order to try and take the most banal form of content that happens to work on the Internet and make it into something seemingly superficial but actually thorough, I’ve put most of my extra-curricular effort into Oobject which is a kind of online Wunderkammer comprising visual lists of man-made objects. A mainstream version of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Typologies, if you like. Oobject may look like yet another, crappy, weird things site, but delve into it, I’ve put an unhealthy amount of effort into it.
In the spirit of the global takeover of content by the headline and listicle I also plan to do one last post on Smashing Telly with a big list of my favorite factual TV programs and clips (since Smashing Telly focused on these).
Stay Tuned.
David
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Every Tarkovsky Movie Online for Free
July 14th, 2010 12 comments or # link to posted by david
Kottke writes: “If Smashing Telly were still going, this would be perfect for it: every feature-length Andrei Tarkovsky film is available for viewing online for free.”
Voice of mysterons: “In…deed”. See them all here.
For the record, Mirror is my favorite.
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What Darwin didn’t Know
September 28th, 2009 11 comments or # link to posted by david
The BBC iPlayer link is here.
[Note this is not the creationist nonsense of the same name]
What Darwin didn’t know was exactly how right about natural selection he was.
This is a great documentary, not so much in terms of production, but solid content. It looks at the evolution of the concept of natural selection, from Darwin to evolutionary developmental biology, where the correspondence between the fossil and DNA records are exactly what prove the theory beyond all doubt.
The history of natural selection is the opposite of its popular perception, it is a story of slow acceptance in the scientific community culminating in total validation and proof rather than an antique concept which has raised recent doubts. Vapid but noisy objections emanating from the current rise of religious extremism are an irrelevance in terms of the time-line of evolution by natural selection as an idea and reasonable debate about it.
Who knew that without knowledge of genetics, Darwin’s humility in absence of absolute proof of his ideas, would allow him to insert in his last edition of the Origin of Species a nod to the possibility of Lamarckian evolution; that de Vries’ (false) idea of the origin of species as coming out of nowhere through single mutations almost replaced Darwin’s gradual selection after he died; or that for the 50th anniversary of his death, the Natural History Museum in London put on a show of Darwinian evolution that ignored the very idea of natural selection that makes it Darwinian in the first place?
Exotically named and unplaceable accented Dutch-Kiwi-Canadian-South-African biologist, Armand Marie Leroi, leads us through this history with the eventual triumph of natural selection. This culminates in the Neo Darwinian synthesis of evolution and genetics and the ‘evo-devo’ combination of evolutionary and developmental biology, which create an accurate view of the tree of life and realize the full grandeur of the mechanism that describes its growth – natural selection.
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Tarkovsky’s Cinema
August 3rd, 2009 8 comments or # link to posted by david
I have low tolerance for self indulgent artsyness and Tarkovsky films look superficially like they might be in this category, which is a shame because, as Tony the Tiger might say, they’re great. Nothing comes as close to a moving painting as a Tarkovsky film.
Here is a documentary where the director recounts his life and work.
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Hallmarks In British Ingenuity Presents: The Mellotron
July 28th, 2009 9 comments or # link to posted by huntergatherer
The Mellotron M400 in lucite. Gorgeous….
With the possible exception of a Gibson Les Paul or SG running riot through an overdriven Leslie speaker, there is no more glorious sound than that of a Mellotron being put through it’s paces.
The invention that dates back to the late 40’s was perhaps the first “sampler” that utilized a keyboard and tape loops with pre-recorded tones. Although the intent was to mimic a string section, the result was a lush, uniquely ethereal, unmistakable tone. The design also allowed practically any tone to be recorded and installed for application. Eventually, it became a vestige of 60’s and 70’s rock.
In case you can’t quite place what a Mellotron sounds like, let’s have a look at the wide spectrum of applications that Harry Chamberlain’s invention brought us, shall we?
But when the Mellotron was in the hands of a true master, say Mr. John Paul Jones, the result was pure magic. The Mellotron and Mr. Jones make an appearance at the 1:45 mark, of this live rendition of ‘The Rain Song’ performed at Earl’s Court, London in 1975.
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