"
Playboy: Where do you see computers and software going in the near future?
Jobs: Thus far, we’re pretty much using our computers as good servants. We ask them to do something, we ask them to do some operation like a spread sheet, we ask them to take our key strokes and make a letter out of them, and they do that pretty well. And you’ll see more and more perfection of that—computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as guide or agent. And what that means is that it’s going to do more in terms of anticipating what we want and doing it for us, noticing connections and patterns in what we do, asking us if this is some sort of generic thing we’d like to do regularly, so that we’re going to have, as an example, the concept of triggers. We’re going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.
"
—
Replace “guide or agent” with “assistant,” and you’ve got the potential in this. Mind you, this was February 1985.
Read the whole thing, Apple-fan or not, technology-fan or not. Jobs was a true visionary, extraordinarily so, and it’s thrilling and inspiring to behold one person’s belief that the world can be changed for the better.
And, he did just that.
(Source: scribd.com)
"
Q: How does that translate into filmmaking techniques?
A: It’s incredibly difficult. We joke that we are like fishermen. We are trying to get little bits from a river that is constantly flowing. Sometimes you catch one or two, and sometimes you don’t. It’s very nerve-wracking. Sometimes it seems like he is almost trying to create a mistake, to take the actors and the camera to a place where they are going to crash. And it’s those little accidents and moments which are in the film and look naturalistic. Those are the truly visually expressive moments.
"
— KODAK: InCamera Web Exclusives. A brief interview with Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer of Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”
"I collect all the interesting details I find in life, jokes, funny things I see on TV, on the street, and I put them all in a database. That’s my toolbox. So when I make a new film, I first come up with the idea, and then I start digging in the toolbox to see what I can fill the film with. This is all recycled gear which we give new life…"
—
Jean-Pierre Jeunet in an interview with PLANET°.
"That pain, the way my aspirations were dashed, that’s going to find its way in there. So I’m not doing a James L. Brooks—I loved how personal Spanglish was, but I thought that where Sofia Coppola got praised for being personal, he got criticized for being personal in the exact same aching way. But that doesn’t interest me, at least not now, to do my little story about my little situation. The more I hide it, the more revealing I can be."
— Quentin Tarantino: The Inglourious Basterds Interview - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice - Tarantino, about how he works within genre to express himself more earnestly than he could by working outside of it. Solid interview.
"I asked Kaminsky if it were possible for him to talk about how he hears his own poems and others’. In his head? His answer could have been given only by a real poet: “Not in the head so much as in the shoulders, legs, hands, chest, brows, ears, hair. You know. Exactly the same way you feel when you read poems that make you go nuts."
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San Diego Reader | Tie This Guy Up, Make Sure He Stays at SDSU - Thomas Lux, under whose wing I am privileged to have studied, interviews Ilya Kaminsky, a poet from Odessa. My girlfriend recently had the pleasure of attending Kaminsky’s class at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and like Lux, she raved about him.
I love his answer to how poetry affects the reader.
"In the realm of industrial design, Dieter Rams is Yoda."
— THE Q&A: DIETER RAMS, INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER | More Intelligent Life - This interview with Dieter Rams deserves a link for two reasons. One, it’s Dieter Rams. And two, that quote is the first sentence of the article.
"I wouldn’t emphasize the mental illness so strongly. Sure, in My Son, My Son there is an element of mental illness, but there is also something else, something other, something inexplicably scary about the story. If it’s all explained by mental illness I wouldn’t care very much for a story like that. I met the real man who committed the murder, who will spend 8 1/2 years in a maximum-security mental institution for the criminally insane. I met him and he was really…you could tell he was not right in his head. There were things like he wanted to be crucified on national television live, and he was upset that it wouldn’t happen. There was real madness there, and I don’t harp on it. I do not want to play with it too strongly, then all explanations come down to “it was insanity, period,” which is not the case."
— A Documentary is Just a Feature Film In Disguise: An Interview with Werner Herzog : This is quintessential Herzog. He went and met the madman that was the central character in his film. You’ve got to respect a man that so frequently deals with insanity. Of course, he would characterize it more as “ecstasy,” but the line between insanity and ecstasy is so fine as to be indiscernible.
"It was a time when I was trying to find my place within the business. I was figuring out who I was and where that person intersected with the world of commerce. It was like I was sitting there with a ventriloquist’s dummy on my knee. And the dummy is made out of wood. And after a while you start to hate each other."
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Tom Waits gives the devil his due | Film | The Guardian : This is one of the best and funniest articles I’ve read in a while (thanks to the author’s faithfulness to Waits’, uh, “way”). Who else but Tom Waits could say, “I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.” !
Long story short, Tom Waits is playing the devil in Terry Gilliam’s new film, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, a role Gilliam said he was born to play. I can’t imagine a better fit for him either.
(My compliments to The Criterion Collection’s Current for this gem)
