Film scholar David Bordwell writes that "intensified continuity" is the visual style of contemporary American films. In his essay for Film Quarterly, he identifies and illustrates four aspects of change in how today's movies are shot and edited: more rapid editing, bipolar extremes of lens lengths, more close framings in dialogue scenes, and a free-roaming camera. The article goes on to discuss the subtle shift in aesthetics brought on by these elements of the new style.

ic had a blast at cirque du soleil's quidam extravaganza. here we are after a truly amazing experience.

These days, nearly all new DVDs come loaded with special extras, from deleted footage to director commentary. Topping them all is the new animated hit from director Hayao Miyazaki, who previously made Princess Mononoke. The special limited edition of his latest film Spirited Away comes with its own DVD player.

Salon has an excellent article on bootleg culture. Its main topic is the rising popularity of bootlegs or mash-ups - songs created by splicing and overlaying two or more existing songs on top of each other, resulting in a remixed track that sounds new and fresh. (Sample MP3s by DJ SPEC.) The writer also discusses creative bootlegging in film and video. A good take on one type of shareable media and co-construction.

ic group outing to cirque du soleil tomorrow. woho!

This is my most recent attempt to capture what IC is all about. I hope it invites some dialog

Interactive Cinema
Making cinema is an activity of intelligent guessing, an expressive exploration of constructed meaning. Photo-realistic imagery, sound and other sensation recorders serve as hand-maiden to represent aspects of our uncertain, curious observations of the world. In editing, we extrapolate shareable story from the noise. As cinema frees itself from the constraints of the inherently linear celluloid base, a new meta-cinema explodes the myth of the heroic by projecting itself into our everyday environments. The creation and sharing of cinema can happen anywhere, any time. As an improvisational learning partner, meta-cinema invites us to articulate new hypotheses, to sensorially augment our dialogs, to share multi-point of view stories, and to engage in sociable interchange between all people.