Tag Archives: film

Roger Ebert’s Computer Voice Will Break Down Barriers

I was very pleased too hear Roger Ebert speak via voice synthesizer yesterday on NPR. I listen to the same kind of machine voice day in, day out. That’s how I read, how I write and edit the words you’re reading now. It isn’t weird or the stuff of science fiction, like 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s no big deal. Like disability itself, it’s an everyday fact of life. Ebert’s comfort level with his surrogate voice will help a lot of people to get used to that kind of accommodation, too. Continue reading






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William Hurt Listens To Stanislavski: “Breathe The Ethic Into The Play”

I paid attention to a Fresh Air interview this morning when I heard William Hurt talk about an ethical approach to the craft of acting. He described the process he followed to prepare for a single scene in the film A History of Violence, which he resists calling a cameo, for which he received an Oscar nomination in 2005. In the interview he quoted Russian director Constantin Stanislavski on the core ethos of method acting.






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Serbia Swoons For Canadian Actor Who Played Nick Savage. Nick Who?

In 1991 he portrayed the buff detective in a cheesy TV show called “Sweating Bullets” (aka “Tropical Heat”). Today he lives with his parents in Brampton, Ontario. Maybe his star faded in Tinsel Town, but he’s feted like a rock star in Belgrade, where his reruns earned rebellious cultural capital even after Canada helped NATO to bomb Serbia in 1999. Rob Stewart learned about his own legend from a Facebook fan page. So what’s an underemployed actor to do? Fly to Belgrade to heal Canadian-Serbian relations, of course, and make a documentary film about it.






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Shed A Tear For The Subversion of Images… and Hackneyed Colonialism

I admit it. When I compared Man Ray’s “Emak-Bakia” to Avatar the other day, I was listening to the crasser angels of search engine optimization. You know, the ones that tell you to forget everything you ever learned about writing clever magazine headlines. Just pack every Google ad word you can into the blog title. So I threw in Avatar and nothing happened.






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Was Man Ray’s “Emak-Bakia” the “Avatar” of the 1920s?

When Man Ray’s short film “Emak-Bakia” debuted in Paris in 1926, critical opinion was mixed. One angry viewer shouted that it gave him a headache and hurt his eyes, to which another retorted, “Shut up!” A brawl ensued, which spread through the audience and spilled into the street. Then the police arrived to quell the riot.






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