This is my Pageflakes! There are many like it, but this one is mine!
For anyone wondering what in the hell a “pageflake” is, you are not alone. I, too have no clue. (This isn’t entirely true, as I have a bit more of a clue than you, but not much.)
From what I understand Pageflakes.com is a website devoted to bringing you your favorite blogs in an up-to-the-minute ticker fashion. That is to say that by registering at Pageflakes you can be informed whenever websites of your choosing post new material.
Speaking of addictions, linking to USmag allowed me to see Britney Spears’ new video. The headline reads:
TOP NEWS! Britney Spears: Animated In New Music Video! “This was a creative and fun way to do her next video,” a source tells Us.
No, this was a creative a fun way for someone else to do her next video. FYI: Us wasn’t even streaming the video, so I went to Youtube where it also wasn’t. Nor VH1.com. Way to blue ball me Us. Why don’t you give me news I can do something with? Update: The video is now up and while it looks cool, I think the only words I could understand in the song were “Ooh, that kinda feels good”. Thanks for the compliment.
Allow, if you will, for me to take you on an adventure. Into my Pageflakes. Click here.
Welcome. The first thing you will likely notice is the killer green header. Below are the tabs where I organize my updates of updates or, RSS feeds. As I don’t have time, nor energy, nor will power or desire, to read 10 blogs chockful of nerdy film criticism I’ve tried to include a more dynamic arrangement for inspiration.
My RSS Feeds
Film- These are those nerdy film ones I was mentioning. Two I have already commented on (see: Burbanked and Blood, Sweat, and Tedium. Be sure to check out the comments on those, specifically Tedium. Alan wrote a really interesting response which resulted in a couple of emails about filmmaking/life in general. My roommate thinks it’s a blog war, but it’s not). The newest additions to the cynical cycle of cinematic criticism is a rad blog called Antagony & Ecstasy and the nifty photo filled I Watch Stuff (which is hosting pics of the brilliant Alan Moore graphic novel turned Zak Snyder (300) directed film The Watchmen characters in costume.)
VideoArt- Tab over and you will find where I keep my video post updates as well as any other “art” type subjects.
The first page I keep up with is the New York Times Arts section, which is usually stuffed with interesting articles. To the left one column is a site called FabChannel which is a place where concert videos come to stream. The music is all pretty good (see: Josh Ritter) and it’s a useful resource to check out what artists are using video in their live shows and in what capacity. Also in the video realm is the flake for LeechVideo a video hosting site that has a fair selection of DVDJ video posts (I’ll explore DVDJing in a later post, for now check out DVDJUnique’s YouTube Channel to get a taste of what it’s all about).
My Active Searches
Embedded in that totem of information are two features that actively search, or “web scrape” (and according to Wikipedia “sometimes called harvesting” HARVESTING!) It harvests the internet for any appearance of keyword or tag. I have “screenwriting” as my keyword in both the Blog and News searches (which live in the film and news tabs respectively). I expect that any publication that has the gall to include the lowly screenwriter in an article is something work peeking over.
Together, my RSS feeds give me a well rounded view of what’s going on all over the intangible realm of the arts so that I might continue to be inspired (or annoyed) and will keep writing. A little bit of all the ingredients for a tasty cinematic casserole. Or for a filmy flambe. Or a movied manicotti.
My Diigo bookmarks
The bookmarks I keep are a schmorgizboard of ideas. Some are specific artists or films that I will be putting up on the blog and others are unread articles of interest. One such film that I’ll promote here is a futuristic, western, space opera titled MK12’s History of America. Check the trailer here I saw it through Xbox live and it was worth the 160 “Microsoft Points” or whatever those things are called to make stoners and little kids feel like they’re getting a deal by using fake Microsoft money, which of course is their parents’ credit card. I also house a bookmark to UK graffiti artist Banksy’s homepage to nurture my little anarchist. My other bookmarks are pretty lame, such as my work schedule and the website I steal music from (this I recognize is surely one of those Venial Sins).
My Social Bookmarking Soulmate
I wrote a stream of consciousness blog which started on the topic E-dating, traipsed through social networking, and never failed to elude neurosis. You can check it here. From now on I think I’ll stick to a less free form style.
That is pretty much the tour. You got VIP access to all things behind the curtain of Hollywoodent. You saw where the magic happens and it’s pretty much on other people’s websites, I’m just harvesting.
I think I was tricked into entering the world of online dating. Again.
Before I defend myself, watch the video below. (It’s 50 seconds long, I’ll understand if you can’t spare the time, here is one 26 seconds, less convincing, though)
It was a dark night.
Ok, let me break this down for a minute (keep in mind every speaking role in this clip is male):
“The key to eHarmony is that you don’t have to do any heavy lifting”. Has me from hello. I’m in.
“I don’t have to feel the pressure to go out and search for people” Well at this point, I’d rather not put my pants back on, so. Still in.
“Dating sites give you a picture and a paragraph, at eHarmony we do the matching for you, based on who you are at the deepest levels” This is like, so easy.
Insert: diagonally swirling text. 29 Dimensions
Now listen up! this is who you are. (If you’d really like to know the full you, visit each of the wiki sites attached to these words. They’re long. We are, after all, allegedly complex creatures)
Well it isn’t 29 but that’s all I can see. Seems fair enough, Though I thought I was bypassing sociability by using this site. I also apparently don’t have the industry, or the ambition to link you to all of those. But if you really care, you’ll set aside the afternoon and brush up on you.
“Somewhere in all those questions, they’ve deciphered that she’s the right girl for me”
This dude isn’t even looking at his ‘girlfriend’. “She loves me for who I am”. You=kind of googly eyed.
“You don’t have to sacrifice anything.” Not even considering looking at his ‘girlfriend’.
” And it does work, I’m not sure I care how it works, it just does.”
I always was under the impression that these types of sites were for people who simply lacked the social skills required to court someone but were quite skilled at the whole typing thing. I was right.
by visiting this site used for “social bookmarking”
when I visited eharmony I had no matches. This is much easier. Though I saw a commercial saying that millions of others get rejected from that site as well. I am not alone. Well I might be, but so are millions of others. That site really doesn’t allow someone to feel good about themselves. Unless it works, which apparently it does. What more is there to dating and identity than likes and dislikes? Obviously a questionaire has the foresight to include such habits as “sometimes accidentally burps the stinkiest burps imaginable very quietly in public”.
All that nonsense aside, it appears that my perfect match is the username wadh0007. Unlike digg, delicious doesn’t allow users to post photos of themselves, which is lucky, as I would hate for this person that I could certainly enjoy a substantially long dinner, well balanced, healthy, I’m guessing there would be meat it in.
I must warn you that this is about to get a little creepy. The place where I go ahead and imagine what this person looks like. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. I wont. I should, in fact, delete this.
I have no idea if this is a man or a woman.
I don’t know if any of you will care about this stuff as it refers very little to this blog about entertainment, or rather at this point, claims to refer to entertainment but is thus far full of commentary on blogger stuff. But if you agreed with me on any of those things it’s possible that you’ll agree about some generally interesting stuff. Am I supposed to be writing this blog like people are reading it? I don’t have any readers yet, who the hell am I talking to?
Punk Musician, Ex-Alcoholic, Parent, Yogic,
Lisa Ling, it’s very likely a man with good taste. Cutest one on The View. By far. Also has been on Channel One when I was in 6th grade. I guess I’ll have to settle for a best friend.
In fact I’m going to paint her. Oh God, is this one of those things where the image I have of this girl is going to adhere to some conventions trained into me by girls like Kelly Kapowski and Buffy Summers. oh, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. And Alicia Silverstone.
This is all of course if you equate common interests to compatibility. Or maybe this is like is two people love oreos and one likes the cookie part and one like the cream. but the one who likes the cookie also likes a little bit of spit on one side. or only one of the halves. whatever.
Wadh has 102 tags. 2 about a 9/11 conspiracy. Health was the most tagged at 12.
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/chadvce.htm is a good resource for my readers, who are just my class at this point.
Political for sure.
The only mention of movies is a link to a site of videos taken in Iraq by soldiers and reporters alike.
del.icio.us had the most tags that appear that they are going to help me with my blog. Tags like art, technology, music, video, movies and culture are all things that I am exploring at Hollywoodent. My first trip to the homepage gave me a link to an e-book centered on my favorite album The Beatles Revolver. The book is published under a creative commons license which allows users to read for free and to use pieces of the material for their own purposes. A quick search of New Media garnered many helpful results as much of the selection incorporated info on cultural studies and entertainment. I also found some ideas of tags that I should incorporate into my blog, or ideas which I should blog on as the process continues.
I want to read about movies, but I hate industry gossip. I’d enjoy interesting updates about the cinematic sphere, but I’m not willing to be a “mailing list consumer”.
I found a place.
Burbanked .com sounds like the brain child of a wears-a-suit to work (bank?) kinda guy, smart enough to get his day’s work done by lunchtime and spend the next 5 hours working on his blog.
Let’s see. Top toolbar. From the left. Home. About.
“Burbanked is my blog. I’m Alan Lopuszynski, a copywriter, former Hollywood D-guy and corporate drone based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
Heh.
Burbanked (Bb) centers on making the fool of Hollywood and Lopuszynski (Alan) certainly pulls no punches. The graphic heading the site is a sign
Ironic, since Burbank is just next door (19 miles or about 21 minutes) to the Hollywood Sign and our writer lives in Pittsburgh. Perhaps Pittsburg has a ‘burb called Burbanked?
It doesn’t.
It does however have a little blurb of description about Bb on Pittsburgh bloggers, a site functioning as a directory for local bloggers.
“Burbanked is your home away from Hollywood hype. Show business is brimming with hype, spin and even hoopla. Burbanked is a frank, regular-guy look at movies, celebrities, TV – and the culture that inspires them. A view of Hollywood without the view. “
A less snarky, more accurate, description of this blog. Alan doesn’t present himself as any sort of pretentious critic. In fact he doesn’t give film reviews at all. Rather he is just an Average Joe who knows better than the people calling the shots and whose only power to change things lies his production of this site. The weapon he wields is common sense, something the “other team” is missing, and although he is a smarty-pants, Alan takes care never to patronize or pander (that’s the job of 20th Century Fox. see: Meet the Spartans)
Alan speaks in a direct tone, careful not to insult his audience’s intelligence. In this “about” section he is Alan the professional. Alan the suit-wearing banker (he claims he’s a copywriter, but I doubt it). He is cordial and accommodating, offering to email help to any browsers who “get lost” (undoubtedly these people have difficultly with their email, too).
But it’s the actual blog posts are where Alan trades in his abacus for something less mathy and starts to rag (maybe he trades his abacus for a rag) on Hollywood and the people who like it. Strait as an arrow he calls out H.Wood on all its B.S., something he is certainly qualified to assess having spent nearly a decade as a development lackey. He addresses multi-million dollar mistakes (see: Death Proof> ) as if the tragedy of their creation were common knowledge, which to his readers it is. Simple and sarcastic. He refrains from using fragments or colloquialisms, sticking with the correct version of the English language. Obviously knowledgeable of film language, smatterings of biz speech can be found throughout, but he mashes together his own cleverer than that phrases to keep the sincerity low. There are no asides or interjections as all of the blogs incorporate his character as the commenter. In the aforementioned post he knocks peace supporting grease ball Quentin Tarantino
not because he made a film that he didn’t care for, but because he made a film that simply doesn’t make sense assuming you trust a director to have any artistic consistency within a single work. The critique is mildly scathing but assuredly truthful. This is a conversation I imagine Mr. Burbanked would love to have face to face with that face
or that one.
He wouldn’t be intimidated, there’s no reason. He’s right.
Continuing through the tabs. Left to right. Assumable order of importance.
Methinks some basics are in order. So we’ll skip all that middle stuff and head to Burbanked Basics where he breaks down the site and all its quirks.
If you haven’t, out of curiosity, clicked any of the above links to his site and noticed how chock-full of stuff the home page is, do so now. You’ll be confused, for every which way you look numerous widgets with continuously changing content bludgeon your peripherals with quippy info. A quick breakdown:
Featured Article (self explanatory)
Action Figure Mood Indicatory (star quotes from action figure versions of stars)
Flickers (Newsiest news)
Randomly Burbanked (haphazard links to his former posts)
From the Brains of other Bloggers (links to other blogs of similar subject matter)
Terrible Twos (indicative of a tantrum)
Each time I visit the site I have to brush up on the basics because all those little boxes have a tendency to overwhelm. IMO the box of highest function is From the Brains of Other Bloggers. Not only are there links to company he keeps such as the insightful Antagony & Ecstasy or the blatant contradiction that is What Would Tyler Durden Do? (it’s all gossip about celebs. I prefer to think he’d set them on fire) Mr. Burbanked actually takes the time to post his responses to some of his favorite posts. This solidifies him a genuine blogger who understands the nature of the conversation being had.
He’s a smart guy who longs for a more peaceful age, where things didn’t suck as much.
The outer limits anarchist who knows his ideas are innovative and humorous and rests quietly on those laurels.
“News, insight and snark from a former Hollywood insider” he says.
Bitter? Perhaps. But never regretful of getting the hell out.
The full title is: Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer. So this is to be a blog about a hard working, crying, boring, juicer.
Got it?
Michael Taylor’s blog doesn’t have much in the way of juice, figurative nor literal, in fact he makes it abundantly clear (and by abundantly I mean 2 sentences at the end of a 1,800 word “Hello World!” post ) that he is not here to dish any juicy Hollywood details that readers have come to love (or loathe). Rather he chooses to focus on the dirty side of an ugly industry in a nasty city: scenic lighting. He’s a Hollywood insider in the purest form. He’s been working professionally in the biz for 30 plus years now and has hung lights in nearly every situation imaginable (as noted in his LA fire/Lesbian soap opera post)
The blog’s niche audience appears built in as many of the comments are from friends who are fellow technicians, strangers who are technicians, or film students studying to be technicians. It’s a pretty informal blog consisting mostly of personal on-set anecdotes, all of which are polished and well written, but none of which are distinguishable from the prior or previous posts save the name of the gig or the craft services available.
I view this as the anthesis of the blog I wish to create. Much of Taylor’s not-as-geeky prose recounts his personal journey to LA along with descriptions of the multitudes of reasons people flock to this horrendous city. He speaks at length of “surviving” in the industry and, while never openly admitting to liking LA, he is seemingly content that it has “seeped into his system”.
::cough::smog::cough::
I can’t help but be a little put off by many of Taylor’s talks about idealism and compromise, the latter which played a big role in his career. At this point I am unable to stomach making any concessions for a town draped in 5 million dollar tinsel without a penny in its moral piggy bank.
Living in Los Angeles it is impossible to avoid the city’s symbiotic relationship with Hollywood. Having moved here from a town where confederate flags still fly from the back of lifted pick-up trucks combined with studying in the country’s most illustrious film program has led me to develop a serious distaste for the hyperpackaged crap-fests that Hollywood has grown content with serving up. They are “ignorizing” the masses and rather than commit myself to that world I plan to investigate possibilities for creative minds wishing to work in film or video outside of the typical industry path.
With the digital revolution in full swing, filmmakers are no longer required to be slaves to the whims of a studio producer. Sites like Youtube and Revver provide excellent forums for the up and comings with nothing save dreams and webcams. And what with internet piracy at an all time high, people from all walks of life can steal their favorite animation program and produce works of art instantaneously downloadable anywhere across the world. Systems of copyright are undergoing serious reformation as the lines between content consumer and content provider grow thinner and thinner.
Filmmaker and theorist Julio Garcia Espinosa called this shift of power mass cinema, or imperfect cinema. A movement where access to basic equipment is common to society and every inspiration can be followed through. Eventually this will lead to a general understanding of the film making process and the manipulation inherent to cinema will be exposed. On-the-rise generations will be filtering art in a whole new way, and it is important to understand these fundamental changes that are occurring.
Gallery works, concert animations, nomadic film making are just a few examples of the ideas I will explore and there’s no doubt that looking into these worlds will lead me to additional stories, interesting and unique, which I will gladly share with you. Expect artist profiles (or if I get really brave: interviews) from time to time. I can’t promise it will all be cinematic, as I’ve got some other ideas, so here’s hoping that I’m a person with interesting things to say and that you may want to take the time to read them.
