Archive for July, 2004

Sign of Life.

Sunday, July 25th, 2004

Sorry for the long silence, and sorry for the coming continuation of same. Tomorrow I will leave with the rest of the Graduiertenkolleg for Manigot, France, where we will be workshopping the next week. After my return I will tell you more about the last week, about Spiderman 2 (which was ok but not better than the first one), and the German comedy (T)Raumschiff Surprise: Periode 1 (which was, as expected, really bad).
To explain my absence from the blogosphere: I had visitors, end of the semester action, and am coordinating Kerstin’s departure to Oslo, all of which did not leave much time for blogging…

Charlie Kaufman – you shouldn’t forget this name.

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

Sometimes you get lucky. Watching two very good movies in a row is not a very frequent occurrence. You may have noticed that I rarely write harsh reviews as I am usually content with being entertained by watching movies; in addition, my taste is pretty varied and I can live with most genres even when it’s current example not exactly superbly executed. But then there are the movies that make you go to the theaters even when you encounter a cinematic blunder from time to time. Gegen die Wand has been such a case and it has been followed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Vergißmeinnicht) this week.
Charlie Kaufman wrote the script for this movie, if you want to have an idea of what this might mean, you should know that he also wrote the ingenious scripts for Being John Malkovich and for Adaptation. The plot is full of unexpected but plausible surprises, almost all characters that are at least somewhat involved have multi-dimensional, interesting characters, the dialogues are brilliant, and the ideas behind the story are both intriguing and presented in a very casual way. There is no attitude of grandeur about this movie, and there doesn’t need to be.
Still not convinced? Well, the main actors are Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. I don’t like either of them. I have been bored and annoyed both by Jim Carrey’s hyper-active comedy acting and by Kate Winslet’s sighs and eyelashes. But in this movie both of them have jumped up several leagues in my appreciation. Both have moments in which they are actually attractive and interesting – who would have thought that?

I could continue and elaborate this hymn even further, but I don’t want to waste your time which is better spent organizing a visit to a movie theater with a few friends.
One more thing, though… this is not only a movie of interesting ideas, but it also is a very beautiful and powerful love story.
IMBd entry | Trailer

Creating a commons.

Wednesday, July 7th, 2004

Today, I finished updating all my pages so that their use is regulated by the Creative Commons License. Again, I encourage you to inform yourself about this project, for example by checking out this small explanatory comic.
In addition, I also reworked some of the code that I’ve been using on my pages. Now it is, of course, even more up-to-date, more accessible (Triple-A conformity almost everywhere) and less cluttered. I especially enhanced the CSS code, because I finally got myself acquainted with the properties of nested CSS.

Soziologischer Versuch im Multimedialand.

Thursday, July 1st, 2004

Heute habe ich eine neue Seite ins Netz gestellt. Unter dem Titel Automatische Irritationen – Versuch zum DB Fahrkartenautomaten kann eine kurze Vorstudie zu Interaktionen am und mit dem Fahrkartenautomaten der Deutschen Bahn AG gelesen werden. Zum Text gehören auch zwei kurze Videoclips, die ich am Darmstädter Hauptbahnhof aufgenommen habe. Über Rückmeldung würde ich mich natürlich freuen…
Die Vorstudie habe ich für meine Vorstellung beim Graduiertenkolleg (im Wintersemester 2003/2004) und für einen Verlängerungseintrag meiner Drehgenehmigung bei der Bahn angefertigt.
Die Seite ist unter der Creative Commons License ins Netz gestellt – ich werde wahrscheinlich in der nächsten Zeit alle meine Arbeiten im Netz unter diese Art des offenen Rechteverwaltung stellen. Ich schließe damit kommerzielle Nutzung ohne mein Einverständnis aus, ermögliche aber die Wiederverwertung und Veränderung meiner Arbeit unter der Bedingung, dass die Weiternutzung den gleichen Richtlinien folgt (es gibt einen erklärenden Comic zu den Rechtsmodellen des CCL Projekts – allerdings auf Englisch).