Film: Oscars -- What Goes Into Good Editing?

Slate.com has a great feature on the Oscar nominated films in the editing category. Mark Helfrich, Academy member and film editor and director explains what makes each clip interesting from an editing standpoint. He does make the inference that Sean Penn's Into The Wild is something of an "editor's movie", but he steers clear of a favorite. Here's the clip:

The Interwebs: Raging Bullstone-- Fred and Barney Have it Out

I was catching up with Slate.com's great commentary on this season of The Wire. In post 12 Jeffrey Goldberg snuck in a link to a Flintstone's/ Raging Bull parody that I hadn't seen before. Total milk shooting out of the nose moment -- check it out:

Music: Watchoo Talkin' 'Bout Sasha Frere-Jones?!

This weeks indie-rock controversy continues to snowball (see my original post here) -- Yes it's Sasha Frere-Jones' Molotov cocktail of a New Yorker article (and blog posting and podcast -- can a video game be far behind?) suggesting that indie rock has eradicated all traces of "black" musical forms. Now comes Carl "not the Beach Boys one" Wilson's response in Slate which turns out to be actually pretty good. While taking Frere-Jones to task for all of his article's obvious shortcomings Wilson posits class as a bigger differentiator in indie rock, and makes a decent case for it. Of course any kind of reductive argument like this gets hung up on the exceptions but this is worth thinking about. He also puts some of the racial trends in music in a broader social and historical context -- both sorely lacking in Frere-Jones' original piece. The folks at I Love Music's board are already all over this one -- may the controversy continue!

Design: Form Versus Function in Architecture

Gehry's busy Stata Center at MIT gets knocked down by Silber...

Slate has an interesting slideshow on architecture here. Writer Witold Rybczynski explores Boston University President John Silber's contention that too many starchitects focus on flashy forms over functional space in designing public buildings. Silber's book, Architecture of The Absurd comes out next month.


...While the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth by Tadao Ando is praised for its serenity...

Music: Portland -- Indie Haven

Anthony Kiedis: Soon to be borrowing sugar from the likes of Stephen Malkmus and Colin Meloy

Check out this Slate article by Taylor Clark about Portland Oregon's indie invasion. Seems half the Matador and Merge rosters call Portland home and things are getting so bad that past-their prime wanna-be hipsters like Anthony Kiedis are sniffing around for real estate. Does this mean Brooklyn will be affordable again?