Tag: media studies

  • Short Films About Robots

    Short Films About Robots

    Here’s a small, specially curated set of wonderful, unforgivably ignored short films about robots. Robots are as old as – well, clock mechanisms and religious statues that move on their own (I know, robots are that old! Research tells me things like nativity statues and monks that kiss crosses that you find in really old…

  • That’ll Learn Ya: Best Free Documentaries on the Internet

    Above all things, the internet is as close as humans get to creating the infinite. It is glorious. It is hideous. And it is the perfect mirror for our own imperfect minds: vast, largely unknown, its usage restricted by habits, sometimes by physical defects – and increasingly by a clampdown on civil liberty… …Yes. The internet…

  • Activism and new UK Film: How The Underground Recreated The Hero

    Activism and new UK Film: How The Underground Recreated The Hero

    [as written for Filmmaker Magazine NYC and Shooting People] In Emily James’ Just Do It, we watch news packages from major news outlets interlaced with POV footage from protestors scaling the giant cooler chimneys at the Ratcliffe Power Station. For a UK audience, a film like Just Do It is particularly subversive – even controversial.…

  • The Unspoken Rules of Facebook

    The Unspoken Rules of Facebook

    In the beginning there was Cambridge, MA. 2004. The code for Facebook version 1.0 had its last tweaks clack-clack-clacked from a tiny room within the graduand folds of Harvard, before being released into the world. Today, it’s worth 4.27 BILLION dollars and calls Palo Alto, CA, home. Facebook is the social networking service that’s irreversibly…

  • ADAM CURTIS: The BBC Q + A session – at Sheff Doc Fest

    ADAM CURTIS: The BBC Q + A session – at Sheff Doc Fest

    IN THE BELLY OF the spectacular Lyceum Theatre, just a few paces away from Sheffield train station, Adam Curtis and Janice Hadlow began a conversation – and a thoroughly challenging debate for both parties (which is how it should be: when you feel that little bit of awkwardness and wonder if they are genuinely arguing)…

  • ART INTERVIEW: Ben Tallon

    ART INTERVIEW: Ben Tallon

    Originally from M+ Magazine. Photo by Danni Skerritt. Ben Tallon is the award winning, internationally acclaimed illustrator who has swept his quills and spray paints all over e4’s Skins campaign, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Design Week and various indie and design publications. M+ meets the man behind the spilt ink & sketches. ART INTERVIEW:…

  • 50 CENT URGED TO SAVE RHINO, ALSO SHOT NINE TIMES

    50 CENT URGED TO SAVE RHINO, ALSO SHOT NINE TIMES

    INFAMOUS RAPPER 50 CENT who was shot nine times, sustained all bullets and then survived is now being urged by ‘eblockwatch’, a community group in South Africa, to help a rhino who also took nine shots. 50 CENT URGED TO SAVE RHINO, ALSO SHOT NINE TIMES Phila the Black Rhino was shot by automatic weapons during two…

  • Kings of Leon outsell Lady Gaga by a fraction

    Kings of Leon outsell Lady Gaga by a fraction

    STADIUM ALBUM AND FOURTH effort by Kings of Leon ‘Only By The Night’ has just outsold Lady Gaga’s ‘The Fame ‘in the UK. According to figures by the Official Charts Company and the BPI, the fashionista darlings (yes, fashionistas: they launched their own clothing range with Parisian boutique label Surface to Air, Vogue link here)…