tom moody
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Reviews of the film One Hour Photo (no longer in theatres but due out on DVD soon) concentrated on its stalker theme and its critique-of-suburbia theme but pretty much left its art theme the hell alone. (Caution: this discussion reveals plot points.) Charles Taylor, in an incredibly obtuse write-up in Salon.com, called the movie “art house horror” but only used the word “art” as a tossed-off insult in the course of demolishing it on more typical (dramatic, cinematographic) grounds. He never considered whether the filmmakers might be interested not just in the “art house,” but art itself, and overlooked another fair reading of the movie: that it’s a parable of creative regeneration told under the guise of a psycho-slasher film (a parable only half-interesting, but more on that below).
Thoughts on the Hydrogen Economy. In his new book Jeremy Rifkin makes the case for hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels, imagining a World Wide Energy Web where nations, municipalities, and individuals have the ability to upload and download electricity (from fuel cells, solar, wind, biomass) whenever and wherever needed. His proposals make absolute sense as a set of goals. It'd be good to get some more opinions about whether they're all technically feasible--that is, based on technology we have now, as opposed to something we hope to discover--and of course they're almost impossible to sell politically, what with all the vested interests at stake. Still, this is a real, optimistic vision for the future, as opposed to the Dick Cheney "let's just steal it and burn it" approach to energy.