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Adam Curtis – It Felt Like A Kiss

waleed — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:46:40 +0000

This post is for those of you who are fans of Adam Curtis’ blog on the BBC website, but happen not to live in areas the BBC allows its online content to be aired.

A while ago, Marissa brought up an interesting idea regarding the obsolescence of storage and reproductive media, and the increasingly accelerated pace of that obsolescence. Lithography, for instance, was replaced by photography within decades at the turn of the 20th century; likewise, now, there is a generation of young people whose exposure to the cassette tape has become a source of parody – a generation unfamiliar and unequipped to mine the oceans of cultural ephemera captured on photographic undigitized film.

This leads to a corollary of Marissa’s thoughts; accelerating obsolescence seems to be directly proportional to accelerating storage capacity. Ownership of that storage has interesting implications regarding the narratives that can be created, ideas addressed by David Joselit in an essay titled Citizen Cursor, citing Bill Gates’ consolidation of stock film footage in his home and the relations between ownership and a “fantasy of possession” and the enslavement of the image.

Anyway, Adam Curtis, being intimately connected to BBC’s, does not own, but has seemingly unfettered access to tell really engaging mind-bending historical tales with supporting filmic evidence – his contextualization of Kabul being one of the most incredible examples of that.
That the BBC should restrict access to his work presents that dichotomy of “fantasy of possession” and the democratization of storage content in the commons.
So I thought I’d go ahead and make his “It Felt Like a Kiss”, which is one of the most enchanting experimental films I’ve ever watched, available here. Enjoy:

re: jimmy fallon

waleed — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:26:09 +0000

MOOOOOOOOVE!
thank you doug for pointing out that i totally forgot about nick burns:

saturday night live

waleed — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 07:04:12 +0000

i can’t remember how long it’s been since i sat down and watched a full episode of saturday night live. closer to my heart a show never there was. but it’s become an hour and a half of dumbass skits with zero comic timing that have no idea how they should end … it’s the era of jimmy fallon-esque comedy, and if jimmy fallon were ever good at anything on that show it was making other people seem funnier by virtue of his inability to not laugh while they tore shit up on screen. the blue oyster cult parody being the greatest example of that. carrot top is funnier than jimmy fallon.
conclusion: the cast lacks good superstars.

what about hosting?
that’s gone to shit too. the current crop of hollywood performers have no idea how to carry a show the way the legendary hosts could. take alec baldwin: a guy with a movie career so prolific that i can’t even name a single fucking movie he’s been in, yet i can name at least 3 legendary skits he’s done as a host on snl (schweddy balls, canteen boy and bill brasky immediately come to mind).
conclusion: today’s episode was funny because of the host.

what about the music?
christina aguilera, though her voice was great and her performance equally so, looks fucking hideous; as if a HIStory era michael jackson, dee snyder hair-do and jack nicholson playing joker from batman 1 all got together and made a dwarf baby with big breasts.
tony bennett was on there too, doing his best not to look like rizzo the rat. he was funny when he wasn’t singing.
conclusion: christina aguilera is loud and tony bennett looks like rizzo the rat.

to wrap things up, those 4 pictures acting as the preface to this entry are totally unecessary.