Notable film and media links--January 10, 2010

---The fine art of Google Street View

---What is the effect of the internet on the way we think? Madeleine Bunting questions the increasingly commercialized "telemediation" of our attention. Also, Jaron Lanier is skeptical of the internet "hive mind."

---At least YouTube can assist skeptics

---George Lucas and Blockbusting

---Tamper: one possible future of film editing

---How not to write about Africa

---Mark Zuckerberg rationalizes why Facebook took away its users' privacy

---Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard converse about Crash

---For Wired, Alan Moore celebrates the underground aesthetic of Dodgem Logic:

"Moore: I would like to think that in our present time, not just in comics but in almost every form of the arts, I think that creative expression is within the reach of more people that it ever has been. Now, that is not to say that there are more people with something to say than there ever have been before. But I would like to see a situation where people finally got fed up with celebrity culture. Where people started this great democratic process in the arts where more and more people were just producing individually according to their own wants or needs.

It is possible in this day and age to make very low-budget films, using technology that the pioneers of cinema would have killed for that is relatively cheaply available down at your local electronics store. The means of making music or art are more in the hands of the people than they ever have been before. I think it would be great to see an end to the big entertainment companies in whatever industry, whether it be music, cinema or comic books.

I’d like to see people actually get angry about the quality of the material that they are having shoved down their throats. It can’t be good for us. And I would like to see people responding to that by basically following the old maxim that if you want a job done right you do it yourself.

And this could not apply only to the arts but also politics. In the 21st century, if you see some situation you are not happy with, it’s probably not the best idea to vote for somebody who tells you that they are going to do something about that situation if elected, because frankly they’re not. Historically, they never do. If there is something that genuinely upsets you, don’t vote for somebody who tells you that they are going to fix it. Try and fix it yourself; that’s the only way it is going to get fixed.

And it doesn’t matter if it’s on the other side of the world. This, I think, is the face of politics in the 21st century. And the face of art, and probably of spirituality and everything: It is down to the individual. If individuals do not like the world that we happen to be living in — and who could blame them? — then I suggest it is up to them to change it."

---Datamoshing?

---Patricia Highsmith's thoughts on art. I also recommend The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar.

---the bibliography for our digital decade

---3-D's quest to move beyond gimmicks

---Movieman0283's massive tribute to last year's film blogging

---Lastly, the dangers of a high school Peter Pan production.