Tynan's Anger: You Got Yr Link Bomb: Holocaust Movies, Dangerous Theater, and Media Saturation

Image via WikipediaYou Got Yr Link Bomb is meant as a cross between the Will Cordero Memorial Linkpunch and the Week in Review post of the Gawker Media blog of your choice. Hence: links featuring commentary with heavily regulated snark. These links did not get the full Tynan's Anger treatment, through no fault of their own.

Cinematical points out a ridiculous, and in my mind, pretty tasteless comment by Entertainment Weekly on The Boy in the Striped Pajamas:
"Earning some of the harshest reviews of the year, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is officially the first Holocaust movie that won't have a shot at winning an Oscar."
I agree that Holocaust movies are generally guilt-baiting and exploitative, but in addition to being flat out wrong (both in terms of Oscar history and in terms of the film's overall reviews), EW is making a rather offensive assertion. It basically views the Holocaust as nothing more than a Hollywood vehicle, and while that side of the Holocaust may exist, you'd hope that EW would have the sense to look outside the entertainment world for just two seconds and think of the larger picture. This is particularly troubling considering how the great Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters broke the traditional Holocaust movie mold.
At The Guardian, Andy Field talks about the need for more dangerous theater. He's not referring to controversial, intellectual dangerous theater (see: Kane, Sarah), but actually physically dangerous theater, where the outcome of an event on stage is unpredictable and risky. Field is reffering in particular to an Edinburgh show about daredevils where an actor actually rode a bike off a ramp into a wall. One crucial point I think Field forgot to mention was the organic quality of theater. The very definition of theater means that it is live and unpredictable. This is technically possible at all levels of theater, but most plays are too scripted to let this happen as much as it should. I guess not everyone can be the Neo-Futurists.
In the era of branding, it should be of no surprise that a rise in board game movies is occurring (to be fair, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Clue movie). What is less expected, however, is that Ridley Scott may be doing an avant-garde, Blade Runner-esque version of Monopoly. I always imagined the movie version of Monopoly to have more of an Ocean's Eleven kind of appeal. I doubt the Monopoly movie will be as experimental as Gawker made it out to be, but I have been saddened to see Scott fail to make a movie that had long-lasting relevance basically since Blade Runner (unless you count Gladiator). Something tells me the Monopoly movie won't change that.
Jason Gross dicusses the problems of media saturation in a manner similar to what Tom Stoppard discussed at BAM this week. Jason makes the point about "digital amnesia" how we forget about what albums we own and what books we can read if they're all stored digitally as opposed to on our shelves. This is something that's plagued me, as I've downloaded more music in my day than I could possibly listen to. I may have heard less than I would have if I bought CDs. Of course, I don't know if that's iTunes' fault or my pure laziness. It would be nice, though, if iTunes had a tool to nudge us to listen to the music we've added but not heard yet. Genius is a step in the right direction, I suppose.
Finally, I'll leave you with the best video I've seen all week, which gives you pretty much all you need to know about the rhetorical stylings of Keith Olbermann:

Tynan's Anger

Sunday, November 16, 2008

You Got Yr Link Bomb: Holocaust Movies, Dangerous Theater, and Media Saturation

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