Stately, plump Penguin Books is off on an experiment that is likely to fail in delightful, unpredictable ways…for which my hat is off to them. They’ve started a wiki and given us—any and all of us—six weeks to write a novel. The wiki has a blog (but does the blog have a wiki?), and the Penguin blog talks about the experiment as well. (But does the Penguin wiki blog about the wiki’s blog? No? That’s so Web 1.27! :)

Anyway, a novel seems like an unlikely venture for a wiki. Too many dependencies. Change “Carlo” to “Conchita” in Chapter 1, and who’s going to make the updates throughout all the chapters? Add a penguin who invents pockets in Chapter 2 and now Freida in Chapter 9 actually does have a place to put the souvenir shot glass from Las Vegas. Not to mention that Wikipedia has reality to hold a page together (or at least a settled criterion for resolving disputes), while a novel has nothing but the sensibilities of a million penguins at keyboards. (Penguin Books has sicced some MA students on the wiki to seed it. )

So, I’ll be surprised (and delighted) if a novel emerges from this. But two caveats: 1. If you’d asked me four years ago if Wikipedia would work, I would have guessed wrong. 2. A novel is not the only worthwhile result that could emerge from this experiment.

I’m impressed Penguin Books is doing it. I look forward to seeing if the writing gets better or worse, if the discussion page is more interesting than the novel, what the sexy parts of the crowd are like, if good triumphs or gets into an edit war with irony…

[Tags: wiki fiction novels collaborative_writing penguin_books publishing books everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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[NOTE: There are no plot spoilers in what follows, although I do talk about the general balance of the elements of the movie. I also assume you know the movie’s basic premise, as explained in any capsule review of it.]

Pan’s Labyrinth wasn’t simply not as good as I’d expected. I actually think it’s not good. Put differently: It’s a bad movie. In my opinion.

From the reviews and promotional interviews, I expected it to have two threads that reflect on one another: a story about the Spanish Civil War and a girl’s escape into a fairy tale world. In fact, this is a war story with a few occasional and relatively brief fantasy interludes. Neither story is worth watching.

The war story is hideously violent. Disgustingly even sadistically violent. But so is war, so this might be appropriate, except that the war story is also hideously cliched and shallow. The bad guy is one-dimensional. The brave freedom fighters manage to be even less than that. They are The Brave Hero, The Feisty Heroine, The Guy Who Stutters, The Rest of the Guys. The ending is very movie-ish. If the war story were shown without the fantasy elements, it’d be laughed out of town (except for the parts where audience is gagging).

The fantasy segments are, frankly, not all that original or interesting either. The characters are stock, which I’m sure is the point since they come from the imagination of an eleven-year-old. (There is one baddy who does something cool with eyeballs, although it will be familiar to kids who watched Nickelodeon’s Real Monsters cartoons.) But that doesn’t make it any better for the audience. If the fantasy segments were shown without the war story, they’d make a not all that arresting short subject. (The girl, Ivana Baquero, is a fabulous actor, though.)

Ah, but these two stories are intertwined, you say. They reflect on one another. The girl’s escape into fantasy is oh-so-poignant because of the violence of the world around her. The violence breaks through our softening of it via stories. That’s the theory, anyway. But it didn’t work for me. The fantasy didn’t intensify, illuminate or condition the war story. The war story was so cartoon-y already that the fantasy couldn’t touch it.

My wife and son both really liked it. It got an almost unprecedented 96% positives at RottenTomatoes . So, I’m probably wrong. But, heck, that’s what we have blogs for: To be wrong in public. [Tags: pan’s_labyrinth movies reviews]

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I gave Midomi a quick whirl this morning. It searches for songs based on melodies you hum to it. Fun idea, but it took me six tries before it got one right. It thought my rendition of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth was the 59th St. Bridge song by Simon and Garfunkel, and it thought my rendition of the 59th St. Bridge Song was Oh Daddy by Fleetwood Mac. Midomi offers to play the matched portion of the song (recorded by users, which is rather charming), and in no cases were the match and the matchee recognizably the same, except presumably in some computer algorithmic sense. It did get, “Doe, a Deer” right. Unfortunately, that’s the one song whose name is embedded in its melody.

I’m no Mariah Carey, but I’m within the bell curve of normalcy for singing on key. Even so, I played the opening notes of the 59th Street song on my keyboard, with my mic laid on top of it. That apparently is Only a Dream in Rio by James Taylor. And Beethoven’s Fifth on the keyboard Midomi thinks is the melody to How Deep Is Your Love.

If I’m missing the point, I’m sure you’ll set me straight. [Tags: midomi everything_is_miscellaneous music search]

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On Feb. 24, The Berkman Center, MIT Comparative Media Studies and the Information society Project at Yale Law are holding a one-day conference called Beyond Broadcast: From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy. The keynote will be by the estimable Henry Jenkins. Registration is $50, which includes lunch and an evening “reception” (which usually means the beer is free). There’s a $50 discount for students… [Tags: broadcast media conferences berkman]

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The WGBH Lab lets anyone download and mash video clips from their archive. And they’ll air and post some of the results. The clips whose rights have been cleared (now licensed via Creative Commons) are here. Click on the categories and you’ll find some pretty cool videos, including of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, scientifical animations, and ants eating a caterpillar.

[Tags: wgbh mashups everything_is_miscellaneous web2.0 creative_commons ]

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Good lord I’m tired of David Mamet.

Last night, we rented Edmond because I’d read that it was a taut, twisty, noir-ish thriller that didn’t suffer from the flaws of later Mamet. Or at least that’s what dripped into my brain pan from some reviews I read.

Wrong.

As usual, his characters speak in an unnatural rhythm, repeating endlessly. They are all little people struggling with the author’s big ideas, but the author thinks his characters are too little to be having ideas as big as his, so invents a form of speech uttered by no actual people ever. As the anti-hero, William H. Macy, moves through his existential (= inexplicable) crisis, we learn that nothing motivates him except the scriptwriter’s desire to be deep. As for the acting, it was hard to tell if it sucked because of the direction or because the script is impossible to speak convincingly. It was painful to watch good actors (and Denise Richards) stuck with those words to say.

Glengarry Glen Ross was the one good movie for which Mamet was the sole script writer, and, while there’s more to like in it than in the rest of his catalog—the plot has a surprise, sort of—it too has a condescending view of Ordinary Folks that thinks they need to be elevated into capital letters by speaking in an unnatural patois. Glengarry Glen Ross has one great role in it (the boss, played by Alec Baldwin in the movie) and a whole bunch of great actors struggling to escape the didactic machine.

Not that Mamet does mechanisms well. House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner are both complex, box-within-a-box, hoax-and-fraud movies that get your head spinning until you think there is no possible way Mamet is going to be able to resolve all the pieces, and then everyone gets run over by a truck. Feh.

The movie scripts that he’s done that are not Mamety are surprisingly conventional and not very interesting: The Postman Always Rings Twice, We’re No Angels, The Untouchables, The Verdict, Hoffa, Ronin, Hannibal. Vanya on 42nd Street I actually liked, but was cowritten with Andre Gregory. But now it’s time for me to learn my lesson: If David Mamet is the only writer and it is reviewed as a David Mamet film, I’m not going. Unless I hear it’s really good. Because I am a fool.

By the way, as William H. Macy entered the screen in Edmond, I said out loud that I’ve seen Macy’s butt in more movies than I’ve seen the butt of any other actor or actress. “Please,” I said, “let this movie be free of Macy-butt.” But even that prayer went unanswered.

(Note: It is possible that your opinion is different than mine.) [Tags: david_mamet movies reviews edmond]

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I’m listening to Love, the Beatles mashup by George Martin and his son.

Yes, it’s part stunt. The Beatles left such a rich selection of song styles and pieces that you can create a version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” without a dominant guitar. But the CD is also an act of love that makes that song—which I always found slightly embarrassingly George-ish—more lovely than the original. The Martins often reveal an essence of melody, harmony, voice, meaning or mood. (Keep in mind that I am a sentimental Beatles fool. They were our music in a way that my children have yet to find for themselves.)

The first track is a version of “Because” rendered less sentimental by highlighting the beautiful vocal work. The second track, “Get Back,” is fun. But the third track, “Glass Onion” overwhelmed me. It pulls together many pieces, most recognizable if not actually familiar. Each of the parts is so resonant that it sank me into the feelings those songs had engendered. No, not feelings. Meanings. What the songs meant to me.

This is the part of what I’ve been calling the “miscellaneous” that that word doesn’t capture. Categorization puts like next to like. The miscellaneous category consists of that which does not share likenesses beyond their shared domain—the kitchen’s miscellaneous drawer contains implements that have nothing in common beyond the fact that they all belong in a kitchen. But the digital miscellany we’re building for ourselves is an over-abundance of likenesses, across every domain. The likenesses are drawn by every link we create, each made of intention and meaning. In some ways, it is the opposite of the miscellany. It is the surfeit of connection, a potential unlike anything we’ve had before short of language itself. [Tags: beatles taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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I’m sure I’ll get past the level I’m on in Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter (PC). If I put in enough time, I will not only rescue the VIP, but I’ll hold off those bad, bad terrorists or whatever they are until the chopper comes to pick up me and my brave boys. But, you know what? I’m tired of replaying this same segment of the level. Run across the square. Position my squad. Shoot the two baddies who approach from the side. Then pick off the ones on the right. Wait for the armored vehicle. Wait for the tank and the radio instruction that I can call in an air strike. Carry the VIP to the chopper. Wait for the next wave. Shoot the guys behind the monument. Wait to be suddenly felled by a bullet or shell from somewhere. Reload from the previous save point. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Let me try explaining this to the game designers. You see, fellas (and I’m guessing you’re mainly guys), I know you think this particular segment is fun. You probably used phrases like “It kicks ass” and “This is so fricking cool!” But some of us are 56 years old and happen not to enjoy getting 90% through the segment only to have to start again. Oh, sure, if I play it another ten times, I’ll figure out where the fatal shot is coming from. But now I dread playing your game because I know I’ll have to go through the same fricking cool segment again. Your game has become a chore.

But you’re convinced I’m having a good time, because not only are we all as good at the game as you are, we all enjoy it for exactly the same reasons.

Stop being dicks. Let us save the game wherever we want, and let us know the codes so we can get past the parts of your game we’re not enjoying.
Thank you. [Tags: games cheats ghost_recon]

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Thomas Vander Wal at the UNC social software symposium I’m at just pointed to the way people at Amazon have tagged Kevin Federline. Pretty funny.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy thomas_vander_wal kevin_federline k-fed amazon]

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Edgar Bronfman, head of the fourth largest music company, acknowledged in an interview that his kids have downloaded music without paying. He declined to say how he dealt with them. As a commenter (iburl) puts it:

So the concequences for 14 year old Susie Q. Public downloading some stupid song that she could have legally taped off of the radio are that her parents and her a put through a protracted form of legal extortion, resulting in the depletion of their family’s life savings and plunged into debt, perhaps permanently effecting the child’s future education. The concequences for this guy… he has to give a stern lecture. Now we know why everyone loves record company weasels!

Here’s a basic moral test: If you think a punishment is unfair if applied to you or your kids, then it’s unfair if applied to someone else under the same circumstances. That goes for Bronfman, for drug-addicted right-wing radio hosts, and for certain sitting presidents who favor locking up coke users for ungodly lengths of time. [Tags: music justice bronfman bush hypocrites smug_bastards]

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