Week+II


 * Week 2:**
 * Films:**


 * //Playtime//, 1967 J. Tati**

Although there was no specific plot of the film the intricate details were thought out impeccably. This witty portrayal of tourists visiting a European city was played out in a stylish manor. The location is said to be Paris, France due to the name of the airport and all the numerous signs and arrows on the highway and streets, but we never get a chance to see the beautiful city. However, the setting gives the impression of being more like a modern American city with many skyscrapers and newly paved infrastructures and freeway systems. Only when close attention is paid the Eiffel tower and Santa Croce pop up from time to time in either a door’s reflection or in a mirror. Besides all of the people running around each scene the two characters that caught my attention were the main focus of the film. Mr. Hublot and Barbara appear to be in about every scene either as the main person or just around in the background. As we see in the first sequence of scenes Mr. Hublot is a clumsy man who tries to get something done in an old fashioned manor but never seems to do so. He is always caught by another person and dragged from place to place. I was a little nervous watching him glide around on the shiny marble floors so much that he never got anything accomplished. Barbara was the exact opposite of Mr. Hublot. She was the type of person who got so caught up in the moment she almost was about to hold up her group if it was not for the two woman who kept her on track of where they were going next. It was refreshing to see the attention to detail was greatly taken advantage of. Little thoughts of consideration can change any films’ point of view. However, the background sound seemed more overpowering and more focused on than the character’s dialogs throughout the whole film but I am sure that was not an oversight but intentionally prepared in that means. It was if the director came up with a totally out of the blue idea, yet the idea merely was only the opposite as any other film pitch. I indeed enjoyed all the chaos and prancing around more like a well rehearsed ballet than a two hour film. I am guessing that this production might have taken much longer than a normal film to be put together and directed.

This film is a bit disturbing and grotesque. I was not aware what category this film fell under but after watching it, it is seems to be science fiction, horror, with a little bit of fantasy. James Wood plays a character, Max Renn, who comes encounter with a new program known as “Videodrome” that seems to be like a reality show focusing on torture and distress but what he discovers is much more than just a TV show. The video makes Max’s fantasies come to life, which the viewer finds out towards the middle of the film. When I was renting it the cashier at the counter was shocked that I had never seen this movie and said it was a masterpiece but to my disappointment I did not have the same opinion as him. Maybe I simply did not understand the value of this film all though I did recognize how the leap between reality and fantasy can be combined. The director surely wanted to see how far any one would go to be stimulated and to feel the ultimate rush and ecstasy. In bringing to life this form of stimulation it is difficult to identify where reality ends and where Max’s mind takes control.
 * //Videodrome//, David Cronenburg**


 * //Alphaville//, 1965**

The first scene of the film made it clear that Lemmy Caution was a suspicious character portraying a secret agent. The car he was driving makes it obvious to the viewer that he is an outsider in a dreadfully suppressed world. Alpha 66 is the principal in charge; he makes sure the world runs smoothly by controlling how the citizens behave and how they think. Throughout the film it becomes evident that no one asks questions let alone knows what the word why means. Other words that have been erased from all of the dictionaries are more on the line of feelings such as Love. It seemed odd to use execution the way this world did. A person who did not obey the rule would be shot off the diving board into a filled swimming pool and women in bathing suits would swim after the criminals and make sure they were killed. This is surely an odd way to show that a world having no feeling would murder those who acted against the law. Why in a swimming pool? Why not in the middle of an empty field? Ultimately the detective rescues the woman with no feelings and takes her to his homeland where as in any other fairytale they are destined to live in peace.


 * //Texts://**
 * Steven Johnson, //“Introduction,” “Street Level,” “Pattern Match” and “See What Happens//” 2001**

In the beginning of this article I thought it was on the subject of insects and small organisms but after reading the first couple of pages I noticed that I was mistaken. Steven Johnson comes across a way to put emergence side by side with coordinated group behavior by giving specific examples in an interesting approach. He writes about amoebalike organisms and connects them to humans and software to show that they all experience the same interaction between artificial intelligent. I liked the comparison of the real world to the virtual world otherwise known as “Sim City”. However, for one who is fascinated by numbers there was no specific mathematical equation that showed any form of numbers that the probability expressed. Steven Johnson also proves his point by saying “we all start life as a single-celled organism” than in the matter of days, weeks or months “we are composed of two hundred variations all intricately connected to one another.” Simple steps can be built up to so much; everything seems to develop and work out due to coordinated group behavior.


 * Sanford** **Kwinter, //“Soft Systems,”// in Culture Lab, ed. Brian Boigon, Princeton, 1993**

Two events controlled for the accepted imagination. Those two “Copernican” events, as Kwinter calls them, were plate tectonics and the space shuttle Apollo. It is easy for the spectator to perceive such effects. The writer also talks about “softness” which he interprets as a capability to progress, to take in, to alter, and to give and take information from its environment. He later states that they develop and advance by “internal regulating mechanisms” that is “always in collaboration with forces and effects arriving from an outside source.” Also, a discussion about linear and nonlinear starts to emerge when he describes how it is “the single most important conceptual development in recent sciences.” Linear organizations have a tendency to comply with the “superposition principle” and nonlinear ones are harder to understand by only looking at what they are made up of. They are said to be able to change their behavior through time in which they are capable to transform and adjust.