DIGITAL MEDIA FROM THE INSIDE OUT: My focus is digital content -- production, distribution, collaboration, innovation, creativity. Some posts have appeared across the web (HuffPo, Tribeca's Future of Film, The Wrap, MIPblog, etc.). To receive these posts regularly via email, sign up for my newsletter here.
Monday, January 7, 2013 at 2:11 PM by Nick DeMartino No two ways about it, I’m a story freak: I love movies, books, and television, mostly because of the stories.
Each year I summarize and rank my greatest moments of storytelling pleasure in blog posts. In case you missed them, here they are:
Monday, January 7, 2013 at 1:43 PM by Nick DeMartino Simon Staffans is a Helsinki-based television and transmedia producer with a passion for sharing what he learns on his blog, simonstaffans.com,
Last year Simon aggregated the best of his 2011 posts, along with a slew of interviews from thought leaders in the transmedia space, including yours truly.
Well, he’s at it again, with an updated set of thought-provoking posts, together with interviews with some very sharp minds from different areas of the multiplatform storytelling field, including Brian Clark, Christy Dena, Jeff Gomez, Ian Ginn, Andrea Phillips, Robert Pratten, Inga Von Staden, Nuno Bernardo, Michael Monello, Chantal Rickards, Steve Stokes, Yomi Ayeni, Scott Walker, Lance Weiler, and Liz Rosenthal.
You can read the entire thing as a free PDF version online here, and shortly as an eBook version for $2.99. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Here is the interview with me, starting with his questions:
Last year you said the transmedia field reminds you of the indie filmmaking community of the early 90s. Is that still the case? For good or for bad?
You were not convinced that transmedia should be considered a new art form 12 months ago; has anything happened to change your mind?
Are there any particular trends you have been able to pick up on during the past year, that reflects on the evolvement of the multiplatform / transmedia world?
How about the distant future? You mentioned earlier that ” zeitgeist seems almost entirely dominated by rapid turnover of functions and fads.” Have you seen any signs that would contradict this?
Finally; have you, during 2012, experienced something in the transmedia field that has touched you in the way a good book or a film could do? A year ago, that was missing from the experience.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 1:33 PM by Nick DeMartino Now is the time when critics opine about the “best” films of the year. Leaving aside the insanity of ranking aesthetic experiences (as I am about to do just that), the problem for serious amateur film nuts like myself is that we rarely have access to many of the best films, especially foreign titles, for months after their world debuts, usually at some distant festival or in a domestic market. My goal each year is to try to see the major films by Oscar time (except the truly egregious crap that shows up down ballot: why else did God invent HBO, after all), an effort which is great aided by Netflix, where I’ve queued hundreds of obscure titles culled from quirky critics’ lists and the flotsam of the web). Even after leaving the AFI, I’ve managed to catch the marquee titles, thanks to screening series and a posse of movie-obsessed friends.
Operating within all of these provisos, I offer a collection of 2012 movies that brought me pleasure, it’s as simple as that – no empyrean claims of “best” or that other works are not equally deserving of attention. Simply an arbitrary way of sharing why I love the movies, and why I thought 2012 was a pretty good year for movie geeks. (Ranked by intensity of pleasure, as it were.)
Beasts of the Southern Wild – I stumbled from the theatre dazed and amazed by a cinematic experience unlike any I’d ever seen: not just dreamlike, which it was; not just astonishly empathetic, which it certainly was; no, here we have the most original and singular use of the filmic art in years, with which the director manages to convey intensity of feeling and personal events related to Hurricane Katrina from the perspective of a child adrift in a sea of yearning and hope, loved by damaged people living in a world left behind by God and nature. Truffaut meets Maya Deren.
Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell steps into the pantheon of directors with this masterful drama with comic edges and heart-breaking performances. When it ended, I wanted to watch it all over again, and believe me, that doesn’t happen often. I loved these crazy fucked-up people, and I’m not sure why, except that Russell places us inside their world with his always moving camera, his wall-to-wall music, his balls-to-the-wall emotional intensity. I gasped and laughed and loved the whole messy thing. And the experience made me feel that I was in the hands of a master: at first I thought Billy Wilder, but maybe more Preston Sturges. A romantic comedy for those of us in the loony bin of life.
Monday, December 31, 2012 at 10:52 AM by Nick DeMartino I fear that in listing best television shows of 2012, I will, like those who bestow Emmys, duplicate last year’s list, which included Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, The Killing, Justified, The Hour, Downton Abbey, Treme, Modern Family, 30 Rock, Louie, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
I’m still watching every single one of these superb series. Some were better than ever this season (Breaking Bad, Louie), others less great (Downton & Treme) or downright bad (The Killing). But overall, the shows on this list illustrate why so many of us believe that we are, indeed, living through the real Golden Age of television, which continues to generate an amazing number of superior viewing experiences that are mapping out an incredible new artform, somewhere between the movie and the novel.
I have little to add to the tonnage of online buzz about the aforementioned greatest shows, except to second the nomination by a number of film critics who chose to include Breaking Bad on their list of best films of the year. This show is dark, powerful, emotionally gripping, and utterly terrifying, and not just because its subject matter is the violent world of the meth business. No, it’s because of Walter White, whose soul has been bared in a relentless transformation from victim to villain. What can possibly happen next?
Here are some thoughts on additional moments of television greatness from 2012.
Homeland – I had sliced Showtime from my cable menu a few years back, not only to save a few bucks, but because I had maxed out on Weeds, Nurse Jackie and Dexter. So I missed the initial hubbub over Homeland, that is until the TV Academy sent me the Emmy screener with the first four episodes, which I devoured in awe and anxiety in a single binge night, leaving me Jonesing for more. I finished off Season One from the DVD via Netflix. I think it will stand as a perfect series, embodied by superb actors and propelled by a superior narrative engine. Of course, I resubscribed to SHO in time to start Season Two, which, while not nearly as perfect, certainly had its moments, especially the episode in which Carrie interrogates Brodie in the CIA safe house.
By odd happenstance, I was chatting with a guy at a conference in mid-season two who had himself worked for the NSA. He hated Homeland, citing all sorts of ridiculous anomalies and factual flaws. I suspected all along that theirs was fake verisimilitude, but then, nobody ever claimed that this is based upon facts, unlike the creators of the Zero Dark Thirty movie, which covers some of the same material. The point for the audience is that Homeland delivers uncomfortable truth in fictional form. And drives you back each week to find out what happens next.
Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 1:09 PM by Nick DeMartino I consumed more than 50 books in 2012. Only about half were read on paper – those things we used to call books. The remainder was split between audio books (mostly in the car) and e-books (the Kindle or iBook apps on my iPad and my iPhone). I’m in the habit of reviewing them all, at least briefly, on Goodreads, which triggers posts on Facebook and Twitter.
And so, somewhat surprisingly, I’ve learned that some folks are more interested in what I read than what I do. They come up to me at conferences to discuss books, thank me for my reviews, my passions, my discoveries.
I don’t know why I should be surprised: the point of social media is to share in the passions of our friends... and our “friends,” a phenom called “ambient intimacy.”
The point of sharing such intimacies is to convey pleasure, and so, herein, I summarize a few of the pleasures I have derived this year from book-length stories. Please share yours in comments below.