http://www.arthurworldservice.com/

24/7 on-demand streaming higher-res films of all kinds, curated by Arthur Magazine

more posted whenever we feel like it

On “Lee Abrams: Radio Down, Newspapers To Go” by Joe Carducci

Lee Abrams — who introduced himself last week to the Tribune Company’s employees as their new “innovation chief” with an all-caps headline: NEWS & INFORMATION IS THE NEW ROCK N ROLL — poses as coming from vital, innovative ROCK N ROLL!, when actually he was one of the handful of people who made their fortune destroying rock and roll radio and all but extinguishing vitality and innovation. MORE

http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/friday_early.html

3/28 @ 7:30pm / $10 / SERIES: local flavor

Les Blank Program Four

Running Around Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off
This student film is an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, the film that inspired Blank to become a filmmaker.
Dir. Les Blank, 1960, 4 min

Chicken Real
This surreal, sidesplitting industrial documentary made for an automated chicken-growing operation is a must-see in the Blank canon: its plethora of chicken songs alone elicits the sort of heady disorientation that would make Kafka jealous.
Dir. Les Blank, 1970, 23 min

All This in Tea
Blank’s latest film follows world-renowned tea expert and adventurer David Lee Hoffman as he journeys to remote regions of China in search of the best handmade teas in the world. The quest becomes a fascinating document of one man’s obsessive and admirable struggle to transform our experience of commerce, by recognizing quality, rarity, and craftsmanship, and by dissolving the barriers between the (underpaid, invisible) artisan and the consumer. Along the way, Blank treats us to a condensed, sensual history of tea, and countless unconventional moments that perfectly echo the sense of peculiar pleasure he’s honed over a remarkable 47-year career.
Dir. Les Blank, 2007, 70 min

From FAMILY:

“We’re proud to introduce ‘Hope Gallery’ in Echo Park, jointly run by us and the record label ‘Teenage Teardrops’!

The first show is ‘TABLEAU YA MIND’ Artwork by Sumi Ink Club

Join us for the opening party!

Thursday, March 27, 7:30pm – April 27 1547 Echo Park Ave 90026

Sumi Ink Club is a Los Angeles-based drawing collective founded in 2005 by Sarah Anderson and Luke Fischbeck (Lucky Dragons, Glaciers of Nice). The duo execute topsy-turvy, detailed, collaborative drawings, using group drawing as a means to open and fortify social interactions that bleed into everyday life.

‘Tableau Ya Mind’ includes a round table for making round drawings, a zoetrope-bucket for people to stick their heads in, and floor to ceiling ‘obelisk drawings’. Fishbeck and Anderson will perform on opening night as Lucky Dragons – the communal music experiment that links sound to video, dance, and interactive technology.”

myspace.com/hopegallery

Diplomats Told to Take Cover in Baghdad
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 27, 2008

Filed at 3:34 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.

In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets and other protective gear if they must venture outside even in the heavily fortified Green Zone and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.

”Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times,” it says. ”Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons.”

”Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration,” the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment ”is mandatory for all outside movements.”

”We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers,” it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy’s temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.

The memo was sent after a second American citizen was killed by a rocket attack in the Green Zone on Thursday. A U.S. citizen military contractor died of his wounds on Monday after being severely injured with four others in an attack.

One explosion from a rocket launched by suspected Shiite militiamen on Thursday ignited a fire in the central area of the zone that sent a massive column of thick, black smoke drifting over the Tigris River.

Military and diplomatic officials would not say what had been hit inside the Green Zone. A U.S. military statement said one civilian was killed and 14 wounded ”in the vicinity” of the protected district.

The first wave of rockets this week came on Easter Sunday. The Green Zone — and areas nearby — have barely had a breather since.

On Sunday, at least 12 Iraqis were killed that day outside the Green Zone, apparently by salvos that went astray.

“The book was initiated by the artists group Superflex, but it is not about them. It is about the many approaches to the creation, dissemination and maintenance of alternative models for social and economic organisation, and the practical and theoretical implications, consequences and possibilities of these self-organised structures. The counter-economic strategies presented here are alternatives to classical capitalist economic organisation that exploit, or have been produced by, the existing global economic system.

“Essays by ten writers cover a wide cross-section of activity, from new approaches to intellectual property and the implications of the free/open source software movement to political activism and the de facto self-organisation embodied in informal architecture and the so-called black economy.

“Self-organisation/Counter-economic strategies is not a comprehensive overview or an attempt to unify these diverse interpretations. It is intended as a toolbox of ideas, situations and approaches, and includes many practical examples.

“Commissioned texts include Will Bradley on Guarana power, Anupam Chander & Madhavi Sunder on fan fiction and intellectual property, Bruno Comparato on the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil, Mika Hannula on self-organisation and civil society, Alfonso Hernandez on the barrio of Tepito in Mexico City, Susan Kelly on What is to be done?, Lawrence Lessig on problems with copyright law, Marjetica Potra on parallelism and fragmentation in the Western Balkans and the EU, and Tere Vaden on the future of information societies, plus interviews with Craig Baldwin (A.T.A. Gallery, Other Cinema), Brett Bloom (Temporary Services, Mess Hall), Sasha Constanza-Chock (Indymedia), Adrienne Lauby (Free Speech Radio News), and Nigel Parry (Electronic Intifada).”

[Rasmus Nielsen of Superflex was interviewed at length in Arthur No. 14.]

Music by Justice, visuals by So-Me, Yorgo Tloupas and Machine Molle.

Photo by Chris Goss