Category Archives: Film & Movies

Film & Movies

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Film & Movies, Games, Libraries, Science & Health, Television, Web & Technology

Is there a scientific case for literature? A neuroscientist novelist argues yes | Salon.com

Illogical as it might seem, there may be an evolutionary reason that humans love consuming fiction

By Erik Hoel, April 18, 2021 11:30PM (UTC)
A parent and child tell each other stories inside a cosy tent lit up in a dark room of their home (Getty Images)

You do something strange every day. You consume fictions. It’s such an omnipresent habit, shared by all, that we rarely consider the oddity of it.

I’m a fiction writer myself, but I’m also a neuroscientist, so this activity fascinates me. What’s the cognitive utility of learning things that aren’t true? We’re evolved biological beings who need to understand the world to survive, and yet all facts we learn about Hogwarts are literally false. How can any of this information be useful?

Still, fictions surround us. I grew up in my mother’s independent bookstore and I’ve been a writer since I can remember. A significant change in my lifetime is that media, like TV channels, books, magazines, and films, have been condensed into a single one-stop shop: the screen. I call this the supersensorium. Screens are now supermarkets for entertaining experiences. Such easy access to fictions means we often binge watch, we stuff our faces.

The average American adult spends about half their day consuming screen media.

–from article

Source: Is there a scientific case for literature? A neuroscientist novelist argues yes | Salon.com

Arts & Humanities, Film & Movies, Memories & History, Politics

“Exterminate All the Brutes,” Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy | The New Yorker

Raoul Peck’s four-hour documentary on HBO Max reveals the racist underpinnings of American national mythology and European society.

Drawing on archival material and the work of historians, the film distills the legacies of colonialism and racism.Photograph courtesy HBO

By Richard Brody, April 9, 2021

The new four-part series by Raoul Peck, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” that’s streaming on HBO Max belongs to an exceptional genre: it is, in effect, an illustrated lecture, or a cinematic podcast.

Which is to say that it’s an essay-film, a film of ideas, that are for the most part expressed by Peck himself, in his own voice-over, which nearly fills the movie’s soundtrack from start to finish.

The four-hour film is in the vein of Peck’s previous essay-film, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which focuses on James Baldwin’s work. “Exterminate All the Brutes” is similarly an intellectual effort.

And, like “I Am Not Your Negro,” it introduces and distills, from Peck’s own perspective, extant writings, this time by three historians who study colonialism and racism. Unlike the earlier film, though, the new one doesn’t offer much in the way of film clips from the writers themselves, and doesn’t (at least, doesn’t claim to) quote directly from their work. It is literally a film in Peck’s voice, and that strength, and that audacity, also gives rise to its artistic peculiarities.

Source: “Exterminate All the Brutes,” Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy | The New Yorker

Books & Reading, Film & Movies

Director Neil Burger’s ‘Voyagers’ launches a colony ship to the stars | Space

The long-haul spaceship of director Neil Burger’s “Voyagers.” (Image credit: Lionsgate)

By Jeff Spry, 3 days ago

Writer-director Neil Burger is well known for his provocative cinematic projects, most notably 2006’s period-set magician movie “The Illusionist,” 2011’s psychological thriller “Limitless,” and a trio of “Divergent” films adapted from author Veronica Roth’s young adult sci-fi novels.

Now Burger has his eyes fixed on the stars with his new science fiction adventure flick, “Voyagers,” which revolves around the perils inside a generation spaceship carrying 30 home-grown candidates on a one-way mission to settle an exoplanet 86 years from Earth.

Source: Director Neil Burger’s ‘Voyagers’ launches a colony ship to the stars | Space

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Film & Movies, Libraries, Memories & History, Television

Hemingway Exhibition – PBS Books

Editor’s Note: Books and images from Hemingway’s life and works are shown in the PBS Exhibition. It’s done in conjunction with the new Burns’ documentary, “Hemingway.”

Corporate funding for HEMINGWAY was provided by Bank of America. Major funding was provided by the Annenberg Foundation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and by ‘The Better Angels Society,’ and its members John & Leslie McQuown, the Elizabeth Ruth Wallace Living Trust, John & Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Trust, the Kissick Family Foundation, Gail M. Elden, Gilchrist & Amy Berg, Robert & Beverly Grappone, Mauree Jane & Mark Perry; and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS.

https://www.pbsbooks.org/hemingway-exhibition/?fbclid=IwAR2XJ5n7St049c3dsl1tVvsAp0JaWnq8TnU6_gGDLKY49a_I2IriWRWT_4s

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Libraries, Memories & History

National Library Week: Librarianship as an Occupation and Profession | Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

April 8, 2021 by Natalie Burclaff

This post was written by Lynn Weinstein a Business Reference Librarian in the Science, Technology, and Business Division.

Jewish children listening to A Legend of the Northern Lights (N. American Indian) / Beals, N.Y. 1910. Photo: Jessie Tarbox Beals, photographer. Warren Coville Collection of Iconic Photojournalism Images. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Portrait of America. No. 106. Vassar – A famous American college for women. 7 – The Easy-To-Use Library. ca. 1944. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
Charles Benjamin Norton, publisher and bookseller; Seth Hastings Grant, librarian at the New York Mercantile Library; and Daniel Coit Gilman, assistant librarian at Yale at the first annual meeting of American librarians, September 1853 in New York City. September 1853. Photo: Mathew B. Brady, photographer. Daguerreotype collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I have been teleworking since last March, due to the pandemic, and as I reflect on librarianship as a profession during National Library Week (April 4 – 10, 2021), I consider how we as librarians have tried to serve our greater community and how this has challenged and enhanced our outreach initiatives and skills.

The field of library and information science is filled with professionals passionate about making a positive impact, and dedicating themselves to continuous learning.

As the amount of information available to end users has soared and new technologies have become available, the position of the librarian has changed. Today, there are many paths that individuals can take to explore a passion for library and information science.

Source: National Library Week: Librarianship as an Occupation and Profession | Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Film & Movies, Food & Drink, Love & Relationships, Memories & History

Hemingway: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick interview on how #MeToo changed their PBS docuseries.

The co-directors explain how the literary icon embodied both toxic masculinity and gender fluidity.

Ernest Hemingway. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo courtesy of Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. 

By Abigail Covington, April 07, 202110:00 PM

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick started working on their new docuseries about Ernest Hemingway almost seven years ago, when conversations about toxic masculinity and cancel culture were still at least a presidency away. But you’d be forgiven for thinking the series was a pandemic project, because Hemingway, and the conversations that take place within it, feel utterly of the moment.

From gender fluidity and mental illness to sexual misconduct and racism, today’s most charged topics are discussed at length in the series because they were part and parcel of the iconic, mercurial writer, whose own ex-wife Hadley Richardson once described as having so many sides to him that he defied geometry. Throughout the three-part, six-hour series, Hemingway is portrayed as both violent and tender, self-aware and self-aggrandizing, with an equal, outsize capacity for both joy and depthless depression.

It’s no wonder then why the writer Michael Katakis says at the start of the series that Hemingway the man is so much more interesting than the whiskey-doused, hypermasculine myth that obscures him. In separate interviews, Burns and Novick walked us through how making the film transformed the way they understand Hemingway—the man, the myth, and his literary legacy. Below, we’ve spliced together the two conversations, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.  Mike Smith/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Source: Hemingway: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick interview on how #MeToo changed their PBS docuseries.