'whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, the new film by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation... is, as the title promises, algorithmic. The film has no beginning, middle, or end. At each screening, a computer program live-edits a movie out of more than three thousand film clips, eighty voice-overs, and 150 pieces of music. Each of these movable parts is marked with loosely content-related tags (“horizon,” “anxiety,” “white”), and the computer fits the pieces together according to an algorithm that matches tags.'

On the art world's most recent hit, The Clock, and its creator. Lots of interesting tidbits here, such as his willingness to turn a blind eye to other's copyright to create his art while insisting that its display be under his control. I still want to see it, mind you.

Andrew Hetherington at Focus on Imaging: "So the problem now is this: I have about 100 rolls of slide film in my freezer. By the time they are gone I need to have figured out how to afford a camera that costs more than most cars. If any of you can swing me a few jobs for Chanel or Prada I promise you now that I will lend you the camera when I get it."

On Alejandro Jodorowsky's ill-fated attempt to film Dune, including a look back at his career both before and afterwards. Full of moments of utter insanity, such as: "Dalí then insisted that he be paid $100,000 an hour to sit on [the throne]. He also deemed it essential that we see the Emperor defecating and micturating in the film — but a body double would have to do that for him." They don't make them like that any more. (Well, they didn't then either, to be fair...)

"In the game of folly versus lolly David Lynch's version of the Frank Herbert science fiction novel Dune played and lost. Now revived as part of a BFI Southbank retrospective on the director, it is often regarded as a patchy, incomprehensible failure. Andrew Stimpson challenges this consensus." Well worth a read (but then I've always had a soft spot for the film).

Interesting, but the best bit is right at the end: ‘“People are watching TV,” he said. “Kids don’t go to theaters. They’re streaming it, downloading it. They don’t see any difference between television and movies. So if you want to get people to go out to the movies, to pay a premium price for some kind of premium experience, it better be damned premium. It better be extraordinary.”’

"While Kodak suffers, its long-time rival Fujifilm is doing rather well. The two firms have much in common." "Both firms saw their traditional business rendered obsolete. But whereas Kodak has so far failed to adapt adequately, Fujifilm has transformed itself into a solidly profitable business, with a market capitalisation, even after a rough year, of some $12.6 billion to Kodak’s $220m. Why did these two firms fare so differently?" Interesting stuff on the death of film (and why seeing the end coming can't always save you from it).

"The idea that people actually wear themselves on their faces seems to me to be less real than what life actually is, which is a series of concealments and containments. These surfaces and veils exist. We take off one for one person, and several for another. But there is always a difference between what you show to others and what you show to yourself in the mirror."

"In old analog cameras, many such filter “effects” were a chemical byproduct of the film, so photographers became expert at understanding the unique powers of each. Fujifilm’s Velvia film, with its high saturation and strong contrast, attracts photographers looking to capture the vibrancy of nature, Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom notes. But casual photographers rarely developed this type of eye, because they just wanted to point and shoot. What Instagram is doing—along with the myriad other photo apps that have recently emerged—is giving newbies a way to develop deeper visual literacy." The argument for filters.

Raina Lipsitz: [[ "This movie would never get made today," sighed one of the panelists, and the audience members murmured their assent. It's shocking enough that it was distributed in 1991, but at least back then American women were experiencing something like momentum ]]

"Like the passing of distinguished individuals, the passing of great corporations should prompt us to ponder the transience of earthly glory. So let's pay our respects to Eastman Kodak, which at this writing appears to be a shutter-click from extinction."

Mark Kermode on fine form in the Observer, arguing that since blockbusters make money anyway, you might as well try and do something at least a little clever, like Christopher Nolan, not just dumb, like Michael Bay. Well worth the read.

Andrew O'Hehir:' "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is too much in every direction -- too much action, too much plot, too much noise, too much destruction -- which is exactly what makes it the Wagnerian fulfillment of the American summer-movie tradition. ' This is good. I think.

"For a man who has been making political films all his life, Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán appears at first to be an aberration: an examination of the strangely beautiful work of astronomers using the mammoth telescopes in the remote highlands of Chile’s Atacama Desert." "But there is another side of the Atacama. Here is where the Pinochet dictatorship quietly established its biggest concentration camp." Sounds fascinating, but sadly I can't make it to either showing.

As Lee says, '"Red Dawn" remake swapped Russian invaders for China.  Then, after filming, digitally changed them to North Korea.  Try to avoid offending your new economic masters, America.'

A good piece by Ian Jack in the Guardian from January on the King's Speech (including a corrective side-note about Churchill).

"Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste cre- ated by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock – a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous." While I'm collecting links to documentaries, this one is also on the too-see list.

"These young idealists were once united around a vision of using science and art to create a city of equal citizens. Their architecture fused William Morris with urban high-rise; ancient parkland with concrete. Utopia London examines the, social and political agendas of the time in which the city was rebuilt. The story goes on to explore how the meaning of these transformative buildings has been radically manipulated over subsequent decades. Inspired by the optimism of the past it poses the question; where do we go from here and now?" I didn't bookmark this before; this rectifies that.

"At the film’s historical center is an analysis of the massive impact of the national urban renewal program of the 1950s and 1960s, which prompted the process of mass suburbanization and emptied American cities of their residents, businesses, and industries. Those left behind in the city faced a destitute, rapidly de-industrializing St. Louis , parceled out to downtown interests and increasingly segregated by class and race. The residents of Pruitt-Igoe were among the hardest hit." A companion piece to Utopian London, of sorts.

"I was thrilled to get an email this week from Akiko Stehrenberger, the designer of my favorite movie poster of the last decade. She had been told by friends about her chart-topping appearance and agreed to do an interview for this column." There's some good bits in here about fighting back against "more is less" thinking in poster design.

A series of posts containing photographs comparing the London Wall skyscrapers and highwalks as featured in various 1960s movies and TV shows, along with their appearance in 2009 (although it's still largely unchanged). I now need to see Crossplot.

"In the comic books, it took Stark 40 years to make this move. For Superman or Spiderman or Batman or virtually any other superhero from the prior century (save some like the X-Men) their secret identities were their most sacred possessions, the keys to their undoings, and they fought as hard to protect them as to save humanity itself. But in the 21st century, Tony Stark’s approach to privacy reflects how Millennials now think of the concept."

He's right: if you're in San Francisco, this weekend or next go and see Three Screen Ray at SFMOMA. (I'm intending to post a still to Flickr at some point; hopefully it won't get served with the takedown notice that hit the videos.)

"From Spidey to Batman to Iron Man, comic-book movies are Hollywood's most bankrupt genre. And I say that as a fan. By Matt Zoller Seitz." "If the Hollywood studio assembly line is high school in a John Hughes movie, superhero films are the jocks -- benighted beneficiaries of grade inflation and reflexive fan boosterism."

The Londonist post announcing the London Transport Museum online film archive. No doubt this'll prove distracting.

Phil Gyford follows up on my automated copying of machine tags from digital photo EXIF by suggesting some versions for photographs for film.

"the main argument of Postproduction fits Moon very well. It is a post-sampling film; it exists, in some way, as a remix of past futures." Toby Litt on science fiction. (Seems like this is of New Statesman is quite heavy on this sort of commentary; there's also a Bonnie Greer review of the new Atwood book, as well as the Banks interview.)

An interview with the sound designer for Tron (amongst many other things).

"I am proud to host the first images of the forthcoming feature film "Moon" Directed by Duncan Z.H. Jones and starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey. On this project, I was contracted to complete a large amount of art support spanning many different disciplines. My primary roles are that of Chief Production Concept Artist and Visual Effects Supervisor.

"Roger's documentary The London Perambulator, a thoughtful and at times deeply moving piece about Nick Papadimitriou, a former arsonist who spent time in Wormwood Scrubs (where notorious serial killer Dennis Nielsen wrote a poem about him) before becoming an auto-didactic wanderer of London's lesser known thoroughfares and postcodes." One too keep an eye out for.

It's nice to know that other people shared the same disdain for Terminator 2's philosophical core as I did. Don't skip the footnotes, wherein Cameron's other masterpiece (that would be The Terminator (ha, I notice now the titular definite article- take that, pointless sequels), not T2) is discussed.

Advice from the London Film Users group. (I actually have 620, so I need to see if I can get the spindles returned.)

"Both [“The Boat That Rocked” and “The Damned United”] are tales of rebellious underdogs and male friendship. But they are otherwise very different. Taken together, the films, and the critical response to them, encapsulate the ways in which Britain imagines its past, and hint at the country’s current mood." An interesting read from Bagehot.

"An unmissable chance to see rare archive documentaries that tell the story of the Barbican ... Introduced by David Heathcote, design and architectural historian and author of Penthouse Over the City: The Barbican and Modern Living"

"we don't experience games like films at all. Designers may rely on the tricks and tropes of cinema to convey the worlds they create, but when we step into the shoes of that avatar, be it 1st-person, 3rd-person or otherwise, we exit the darkened movie theater paradigm and enter an intricate, performative, exploratory lab of untested ideas and speculation. We enter a playful space that feels and responds much more like a live theater rehearsal" I thought I was a bit dumb for only just realising this. Here's a long post explaining why games aren't like movies.

"The best motion picture released last year was WALL-E". Preach it, brother. I've been meaning to write something like that since the Wired blog post about the Dark Knight at the tail end of last year, but John Gruber has done it better than I could (while using some of hte terms I'd have picked). Wall-E is a classic, and it's been snubbed.

"Why is a film that's seemingly so respected by fans and critics fighting for a little metallic recognition? Two factors are working against it: its own success and politics." Well, it also wasn't that good. I mean, sure, for a superhero movie, it was surprisingly intelligent, but it was overlong, and it didn't really say that much to me.

"Israeli animation Waltz With Bashir went away with the best film trophy" at the National Society of Film Critics awards. Good. I'm hoping Wall-E will be nominated for Best Film at either BAFTA or the Oscars; it'd be nice to see the walls of the animation ghetto crumble a bit.

Clive James gives a point of view: "Everyone knows that Mexicans are Mexicans but few of us can tell a Canadian from an American unless the Canadian is speaking French."

A reasonable list of art films about/in London, including the classic triumvirate of London, Finisterre and The London Nobody Knows, but also some works of fiction like The Young Americans and Naked.

Iain Duncan Smith: "Unlike past Batman films where the villains were somewhat surreal and comical figures, Heath Ledger's Joker is a brilliantly acted but very credible psychopathic killer". Meanwhile, "The BBFC said the film's 12A certificate was justified because of the film's superhero context.". Annoyingly, I'm with IDS.

I have two rolls of 620 film to process, and hopefully this thread (and others in the same group) will be useful for choosing a processor.

An interesting, critical take on The Dark Knight. "Jonathan Nolan has set the story in the everyday world of cops, the mob and lawyers, a world we all know so well from great American cop shows. Television does this sort of thing so much better: why bother? Especially since the script then ignores the realism of its setting." Seems to have attracted a lot of comments (which I haven't read yet).

If you miss the premiere at the NFT you can watch The City Speaks "films for radio" and, presumably, listen again after the broadcast at the Radio 4 site.

"a unique portrait of London for radio, cinema and television. Responding to a narrative framework by writer Peter Ackroyd ... the film portrays London through an array of images and locations"

Posted for this quote: "The artsy, instantly gratifying Polaroid images, reeking of processing chemicals, have finally been done in by endless Flickr Web pages full of digital images"

That's it for Polaroid instant film. It was always coming - they stopped manufacturing the cameras last year (Argos don't stock them any more) - but it's still a bit sad.

Continuing my obsession with the Alphabet vs the Goddess, this time commenting on Ang Lee's musings on pictorial language and montage.

As the description says, "One of a series of 3 films by director Paul Kelly about London's disappearing cafes."

"Film critic Mark Kermode [...] was a cinematic snob, convinced that the small screen had no redeeming qualities. So what happened when we asked him to watch some of the most acclaimed TV in recent years?" He liked some of it.

What next? RealSkratch, adding the sound of dust on vinyl to your MP3s? Me, I'm happy just to accept digital noise as a kind of visual artefact. That, and you can't get Noise Ninja as an iPhoto plugin.

I'm out of the country for the Q&A (boo) but I should be able to make it to one of the shows during the main run (hurrah).

"‘the BFI archive is a national treasure. It is arguably the finest film and television archive anywhere in the world" "Since 2003, the UKFC’s grant has been frozen, as has the proportion passed on to the BFI." Interesting (and saddening).

Finally, London dates (at the ICA in September). There's also an exhibition at the Design Museum in London, which curiously didn't seem to be mentioned.

Sunday afternoon. Still seem to be tickets.

Nice stuff here. I think the film was a bit grim for my tastes at the cinema but if I'd waited for the DVD I'd have raved more about it. The design stuff here is *very* good.

Unsurprisingly, no sequels.

What it says on the tin

"As a new documentary lambasts the US movie censors, Xan Brooks meets their UK counterparts, who decide when pornography becomes art" The BBFC has become more a figure of fun than of scorn: "contains mild peril" advice, for example

Half a review, half a look at the MPAA, Peter Bradshaw on the documentary about US film censorship.

In case Tom Coates thought the BBC News Magazine were the only people drawing Christ-Superman parallels ( http://del.icio.us/url/3b20e7db3428cdafdded4023cc369664 ) - they're not. Interesting points about the moral absolutes.

so I can look up what day it's on.

Shot in burst mode. Interesting idea. Can't watch it properly now but what I've seen looks worthwhile.

"Introduced by Lord Norman Foster and followed by the film’s director Mirjam von Arx in conversation with Gherkin Project Director Carla Picardi"

I didn't realise the director of If... was involved in the Wham! In China film. I do wonder why he took it on, but I'm far more interested in his version of the film than the released one

Does what it says on the tin

Complete with CPAN module, if you feel like running your own copy, or something

Includes another Saint Etienne film, a kind-of-follow-on from Finisterre, looking at London's caffs. Sadly, the Barbican showing was last week

Great headline, although should be "Curious incident of "...

Great headline, although should be "Curious incident of "...

Wasn't Jennings part of the video makers who did that Supergrass muppet video?

Following on from the Tricorn centre, more 60s stuff under threat