Notable film and media links--September 3, 2009

---Our legislators hard at work.

---I don't know what this New Liberal Arts pdf thing is, but it looks intriguing:

"In this age we are surrounded by stimuli, messages in our environment clamoring for a little piece of our awareness. Advertisements are designed and sold with the simple premise of stealing one small mote of your attention. Your technological devices, designed to assist you in your life and work, beep incessantly with updates, alerts, and alarms. Cars become more and more like the cockpits of fighter planes with their heads-up displays and data readouts. Even our relationships take more maintenance; lovers separated by such a small obstacle as a day at the office stay in constant contact through email, instant messaging, and social networks. In our new digital world we’ve finally started to run out of one of our most precious resources: Our own attention.

In the distant past, educated people worked for decades to train their brains to retain information. Greek bards had to be able to recall the story and rhythm of, if not the exact words of, either of Homer’s epics at the drop of an Athenian dime. Monastery-confined monks would construct vast “memory palaces” in their minds to store and recall data in photographic detail. Starting with paper and pen, technological advances began to make that sort of rigorous mental dexterity obsolete. But in our rush to modernity, have we gone too far? Have we given over too much of our brain power to the devices built to boost our productivity? Are our brains now just tasty mush for our zombie progency?"

---David Bordwell expl0res one forking path future of Archie comics.

---A. O. Scott contemplates the heart of The Big Lebowski.

---To be honest, I'm getting a bit burned out on Basterds as it threatens to become the Dark Knight of the season, but still Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy's Conversations are always illuminating, and I liked Scarecrow's compilation of cinematic allusions and Cozzalio's compression of the entire film down to one Steig cartoon.

---My favorite Tweeter. My second favorite (not genuine, sadly). Otherwise, the Twitter revolution continues with God tweeting, classes being taught about Twitter, and Heather Armstrong wielding her Twitter power.

---In Facebook news, some decide that the social media site is more repressive than North Korea, others use Facebook to brag about themselves, and others never develop the ability to talk face to face thanks to social media.

---Anne Thompson looks at "The Age of Dystopian Cinema."

---Lorrie Moore and the essential rudeness of artists.

---The Atlantic views the excellent videos of Outkast.

---idsgn traces the evolution of film titles.

---Who better to sell movies than filmmakers?

---Lastly, do you suppose that viewers will recognize that Gamer is a "warning" about "amoral trash culture"?