The Perfect American is a new opera from Philip Glass about the life of Walt Disney. Sign me up. Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew has the details on how to watch it online starting this week:

Don’t fret if you’re unable to make it to Madrid. You can see the opera from the comfort of your own home and make your own judgements about how successfully it portrays Disney’s life and worldview. The opera will be broadcast live on Medici.tv on February 6. It appears to be free, though the site requires registration. The opera will remain viewable for 90 days after its online debut.

The show, based on Peter Stephan Jungk’s book¹ of the same name, sounds a bit nutty:

The Perfect American is a fictionalized biography of Walt Disney’s final months. We discover Walt’s delusions of immortality via cryogenic preservation, his tirades alongside his Abraham Lincoln talking robot, his utopian visions and his backyard labyrinth of toy trains.

Because why wouldn’t Walt Disney have an Abraham Lincoln robot?

Marco Arment:

I don’t think Nintendo has a bright future. I see them staying in the shrinking hardware business until the bitter end, and then becoming roughly like Sega today: a shell of the former company, probably acquired for relatively little by someone big, endlessly whoring out their old franchises in mostly mediocre games that will leave their old fans longing for the good old days.

Personally I’m not yet convinced that Nintendo’s future is so bleak.

But I’m a little weird when it comes to consoles. I think the value-adds other companies tout (it’s also a Blu-ray player! it’s also a media streamer!) are the fad; making great games and the consoles to play them on is the long con Nintendo is committed to.

Nintendo is going to weather some rough years ahead, but I don’t think Sony, Microsoft, Valve or Apple have cornered the market on delightful gaming experiences yet.

Yet…

I had never heard of Joe Sexton before today, but he’d been behind some of the biggest New York Times stories in recent memory, including the epic “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” digital spread. And now he’s leaving the grey lady.

Joe Hagan at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer got a few great quotes out of him in a just-published profile. On “Snow Fall”:

“The ways to have impact are to produce exclusive news, write memorable stories, and evince a sense of daring and fun,” says Sexton. “And if that formula fails, then we’re all in fucking trouble.”

On leaving the Times:

“If you are not asking yourself every couple of years how to once more scare yourself to death, then you are living something of the coward’s life,” he says. “Ain’t no room for cowards in journalism at this moment in time.”

He’s moving on to work at ProPublica.

Bob Lord, Twitter’s Director of Information Security, on the company’s blog earlier today:

This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users. […]

Though only a very small percentage of our users were potentially affected by this attack, we encourage all users to take this opportunity to ensure that they are following good password hygiene, on Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet.

Well, shit.

I have been using 1Password for years. My passwords are randomly generated and saved on all of my devices, and it’s simple to change a new one every few months if needed. Breaches like this one are a great example of why apps like 1Password are necessary and useful.

AgileBits, makers of 1Password, are not sponsors of the candler blog; they just make an app I love and that protects me as I traverse the Web.

Right now all versions of 1Password are on sale. Go get one. And stay safe.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is one of the more thoughtful critics working today, but his latest piece for MUBI’s Notebook, “What is the 21st Century?: Revising the Dictionary,” throws me for a loop. In it he attempts to introduce “workflow” in the critical lexicon, suggesting that if critics and cinephiles knew more about the filmmaking process they would be better equipped to pass judgement on movies.

I agree with this assertion to a point, but Vishnevetsky goes much further:

One of the biggest problems facing film criticism and film culture is that that there is often very little relationship between how movies are written about and how they’re actually made. Film is a medium that is inextricably linked to technology, but the language we use to talk about and evaluate films is by-and-large the language of antique or dying technologies or of environments (such as the old studio system, with its clear divisions of filmmaking labor) that no longer exist. While much of the old critical / cinephilic vocabulary—mise en scène, montage, etc.—still works, it’s often not enough.

This is one of the biggest problems facing film culture? I don’t see it, least of all because I don’t think it’s an actual deficiency.

For example, how much ink was spilled, how many bits were deployed discussing Tom Hooper’s decision to record the actors’ singing live on set in his adaptation of Les Misérables? How many reviews mentioned this little nugget of production workflow detail? The entire conversation surrounding the film, I would argue, was predicated on this creative decision.

Or Peter Jackson’s use of 48 frames-per-second in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at. The critical responses that ignore that technological conceit are few and far between. So I would first argue that Vishnevetsky’s thesis is flawed; he’s saying that critics don’t do something they clearly already do.

Still, the workflows he mentions, those of David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh, do often go overlooked in reviews:

Modern film styles are the products of workflows. David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for instance, was widely noted in the film tech sector for its innovative workflow. Footage was shot in 5K with a 2.1 aspect ratio but finished in 4k with a 2.4 aspect ratio. Only 70% of each shot frame was used in the finished film; this meant that Fincher could revise every shot—reframing, altering the speed of camera movements, adding zooms—during editing without any loss of image quality.

Professionally I am intrigued by these sorts of workflows. By day I work in post-production, and my curiosity is always piqued by any sort of advancement. I am smack in the middle of the film tech sector and I wish more directors would improve their workflows to Fincher/Soderbergh levels. It would make my job easier. (Or, as Vishnevetsky also points out, redundant.)

But I take that hat off when I go to watch or review a movie. Why? Because it’s utterly boring. All that’s described above is that Fincher did repositions on his footage, a decades-old technique that predates digital technology. Even the Academy Standard aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is achieved by lopping off the top and bottom of the picture. Kubrick, famously, shot a number of his films utilizing the entire 35mm frame, allowing for multiple projected aspect ratios.

So yes, Fincher took advantage of modern tools, but I don’t see how that should affect how I watch a film. Vishnevetsky:

What does this mean for critics, cinephiles, and other people who want to talk about movies? It’s still possible to note The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s mise en scène or [Steven Soderbergh’s] Side Effects’ narrative structure—that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the notion of environment and intent.

Has it, though? Vishnevetsky echoes this again in his conclusion:

Workflow-related processes like HDRx¹ upset old orders; what happens to the idea of the shot when the shot no longer has integrity—that is, when an image doesn’t represent a record of something but is instead a seamless composite of two sets of digital data? The only way to build a critical framework for workflow, it seems, is to exercise doubt while also assuming that everything has the potential for authorship and intent.

What is the difference between new HDRx technologies and matte paintings of old which accomplish nearly the same effect? In a world where characters are created on a CPU, and have been for two decades, what difference does a workflow make, or rather how can it actually influence the way you watch a film? I do not understand Vishnevetsky’s call to “exercise doubt.” Doubt what? To what end?

The final bit though, “assuming that everything has the potential for authorship and intent,” is dead right and crucial to modern criticism. In fact, I’d counter that a lack of understanding of the concept of intentionality is “one of the biggest problems facing film criticism and film culture.”

It is my strong belief that critics must assume that what they are seeing on screen is the intended work of the author. Anything less, any doubt cast on the simple truth of intentionality, sells film culture short.

A quick story.

After the premiere of his film, Girl Walks Into A Bar, at SXSW 2011, director Sebastián Gutiérrez took the stage for the usual post-screening Q & A. First, though, he had something to tell the audience. He extolled the Alamo Drafthouse as one of his favorite movie theater chains and then complained that the picture we had just seen was a bit too dark. It looked better while he was editing it and he wished we could have seen it that way.

Here’s the thing: the film we saw, as we saw it, was the truth. The images he saw at his editing bay were the fantasy. Why? Because as viewers we can assume nothing less than intentionality when images flicker on screen. If the filmmaker weren’t in the house, would anyone have known the images were “wrong” according to his vision?

Moreover, putting my post hat back on, one color corrects images differently for the Web than one does for theatrical projection. Gutiérrez said the film had “leaked” on YouTube that night. It was never his intention for this to be the canonical screening of the film. Too bad for him.

One more quick story.

At SXSW last year² I met a young woman waiting in line for a film. She asked what brought me to the festival and I told her I was a film critic. She bristled. “Oh, one of the bad guys.” I laughed and asked her what she meant. She went on and on to me (a stranger!) about how critics over-intellectualize movies and have no concept of how hard it is to actually make them.

This is the Kevin Smith argument, and it is legion. “You could either sit around and be entertained, or you could go out and try to be entertaining.” Film critics are the enemy because they never worked a day in their life, or some such nonsense.

It feels like Vishnevetsky’s argument that critics be more mindful of workflows stems from the same gland that causes people to dismiss critics as “bad guys.” If only critics knew the process, if only they knew how hard it is to make a movie, their responses to cinema would be more interesting, more useful.

Perhaps. Or perhaps they will start undermining intentionality by cutting filmmakers a break for the nastiest bits of their workflows.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All. Here’s what I said about it back in 2009:

For 2006’s The Boss of it All, the acclaimed director utilized a system dubbed “Automavision”. Basically, he shot the film only from wider angles, or all establishing shots, and allowed a computer randomly tilt, pan, or zoom. Watching the film, you would never know this. It feels wholly organic, intentional. In fact, for Mr. Von Trier, it seems almost tame.[…]

Giving control over to a machine, he is simultaneously removing himself as creative controller and, amazingly, further pressing his status as provocateur by drawing attention to his shrunken role.

Von Trier wanted the audience to know of Automavision’s presence, to know the methodology behind the haphazard visuals accompanying his workplace farce. It certainly colors my view of the film (I’m talking about it years later, aren’t I?) but when watching the film it was the furthest thing from my mind. I was wrapped up in the story and, yes, grappling with the oddball camera placements. But did it matter that a computer was to blame/laud? I don’t think so.

How filmmakers create their art is something that will always be of interest to me both personally and professionally, but that information does not influence how I judge the work itself. If it did, I’d love everything. I’d be less critical.

Andy Baio on the role of publishers (music labels, publishers, movie studios et. al.) in light of Macklemore becoming the first unsigned artist to top the Billboard charts since 1994:

We’re at the beginning of an indiepocalypse — a global shift in how culture is made, from a traditional publisher model to independently produced and distributed works.

Great piece. Spot on.

Nathan Kontny is working on a collaborative text editor:

Draft is a distraction free editor that auto-saves as you type. But as you go along, you can mark major versions of your work […]

When you share your document, any changes your collaborator makes are on their own copy of the document, and you get to accept or ignore each individual change they make.

Enough with “distraction free” already, but the rest of his project sounds interesting.

There are surprisingly few simple options out there for collaborative writing, so I’m always excited when someone comes along and tries to crack that nut.

Edmund Lee and Adam Satariano reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is in negotiations to start carrying Time Warner Inc. (TWX)’s HBO Go application on Apple TV by mid-2013, according to two people familiar with the plans.

When this happens I’m done with my Roku.

[Copy editing note: It’s HBO GO. Not Go. Geez, Bloomberg.]

Eric Slivka at MacRumors:

Apple today issued a notice to European distributors indicating that it will halt sales of the Mac Pro in Europe and select other countries as of March 1 due to new regulatory requirements going into effect on that date.

Cue panic that Apple hates professionals.

As Slivka points out though, the Mac Pro is getting an update this year. So be patient, Europe.

“Henry Blodget” for The Awl:

…I honestly can’t understand what is the problem is with trolling, and I don’t know why anyone won’t tell me. I guess it will always be a mystery, like why [deaf people talk funny/women suck so bad at math and science/you can’t trust a Greek guy around sheep—check what’s trending and pick one]. It just seems weird that I’m the only one who is willing to talk about it.

I know this is just The Awl trolling Blodget back, but I wouldn’t put it past the guy who wonders why everyone hates Jews to write something like this.

Cached just in case.