A lot of very good writing on an artist I don't really like: Burial. Although you know which of his releases I do like? The Rival Dealer EP, which is somewhere along that spectrum of monumental albums and fragmentary smaller releases. Anyhow, it's always a treat to see Simon Reynolds go to work, and I love that he mentioned that masculine/feminine dichotomy in the UK Continuum, which is something I'd also noticed and internalized independently.
And of course I had to follow Reynolds' link to the Mark Fisher post on Burial. It's even better still, yet I sincerely wish I could feel the things as do these two guys I highly respect. They make Burial sound like exactly my ruminative sort of thing...maybe another listen is in order after all. Despite all the last ones not working out.
As Malaysia continues its search for Jho Low, an unexpected new wrinkle emerges. I'm reminded of the bizarre trails capital blazed in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, i.e. Benihana, Steve Madden, and wow (I legitimately forgot) Red Granite Pictures itself, who produced the film. To 'follow the money' in fraud cases is like tracing the original thread of a massive spider's web.
W.E.B. DuBois on Robert E. Lee.
Don't know what to make of this article's framing. It seems very presumptuous to claim this is how leisure time works now, especially from an Unequal Childhoods perspective. There are still plenty of children don't see their hobbies as unpaid internships (thankfully). I don't mean to be too critical, but the rhetorical choice struck me as odd. Maybe I'm also just trying to process my own unevenly-developed childhood, divided as it was between hated extracurriculars and beloved pastimes.
A good overview of Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods' reporting on the heinously corrupt Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore, book soon forthcoming. It's such crucial work, even for outsiders.
Much-needed clarity from Professor Laurence Brown as always, though the article only glances over his comments. I live not far away from this site, so its shadow will be looming over me unpleasantly.
Fairly detailed peek at the economic imbalances between China and Russia which, in the face of US obstinacy, may not be such a stumbling block after all. To me this is just more evidence of a slow shift away from unipolarity and toward a coalition guided by the above two nations.
CAPERNAUM -- as universally-loathed a film as any I can think of -- finds a home in China's unique movie marketplace, where arthouse/indie movies stand a better chance than in the West. The most interesting examples of this are surely yet to come.
We live in a YouTube world.
What's next after self-optimization fails? Perhaps it's self-management, a rather more cool-headed ethos that emphasizes long odds and steady persistence. I think I've noticed this change in myself a little too: now that I've aged out of the higher-flying ambitions of my young adulthood, I feel that I spend more time looking after myself to avoid burning out, giving up, etc.
Excellent interview, but I just wanted to highlight this portion in particular, which praises Venezuela for its generosity toward marginalized people residing in the US amidst the 2008 financial crisis:
Useful thoughts from Melinda Cooper on how privatizing social burdens onto the family unit is a form of social control. Harris really likes this book, so I'd like to check it out when I get a chance.
Brexit techno (counterposed against "lo-fi hip-hop beats to relax/study to").
The Fortnite bubble may pop just as fast as it inflated.
Advertising as prefigurative desire is just about the most bone-chilling concept I can imagine. Thanks, as always, to Rob Horning for the profound psychic disturbance.
Tankie favorite Parenti vs. mainstream leftist Chomsky. This is a long post with a lot of provocative points, and while I haven't delved into the many Parenti plugs, I think the clearest picture that emerges is one of Chomsky as a wishy-washy public intellectual. His tendency toward vagueness and reflexive anti-Communism gets a very thorough documentation here in a way that I find pretty disqualifying for serious inquiry. The points on conspiracy theory as useful political heuristic are well-noted, though that still feels like a slippery tautological slope that could be dangerous to approach. I'll have to revisit this at some point and follow some of its many sources.
Soham Gadre notes that it's been 25 years since an Indian film was selected In Competition at Cannes (SWAHAM, by Shaji Karun), in an unforgivable act of Eurocentrism against the world's largest cinema. This is a huge problem and one I'm also working to rectify, having only begun to engage with Indian films a few years ago myself. Living off Sight and Sound Lists, American web magazines, and Cannes-centric international coverage as a younger person distorted my view of what kinds of cinema mattered and what didn't, and unsurprisingly there's a racial line drawn right between those two adjoining territories. I plan to make amends by continually addressing that oversight as an adult.
More on Cannes' dark side.
Absolutely magisterial work by Hito Steyerl on "extrastatecraft," financialization, and the traumas they've inflicted upon people and places alike. Makes me want to read everything Steyerl's ever said or written.
The US problem of young people's diminishing free time and subsumption into constant workflow is a problem in Hong Kong as well. And I'd imagine this is true across much of the overdeveloped world, everyone scrambling for jobs and stability that hang precariously just out of reach. As the older population passes on, I wonder what a world shaped by such financial -- and mental -- insecurity will look like. I can't recall when or where I saw it, but recently I saw the suggestion that there are dominant affects in world history. During industrialization, the primary affect was misery; during post-war economic growth, boredom; now, anxiety.
To all appearances, China does appear to be taking its anti-corruption campaign seriously.
Nice history on Filipinos in Alaska, a.k.a. Alaskeros.
Mike Thorn interviews Sophy Romvari, whose work I always enjoy catching up with at the Maryland Film Festival.
And Baltimore's Eric Allen Hatch on the future of cinema, at least as a discrete experience.
