| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It’s never been so easy to find interesting and inspiring media
information from the experts in mind, body, and spirit and the frontiers of
science and culture. With our monthly Paraview Media Guide, you'll be
notified of intriguing books, magazines, websites, and other media that will
capture your attention, expand your mind and transform the world. Subscribe now!
The media guide is sent via E-mail in HTML format. If your E-mail reader does
not support HTML, you can always view the "Current Newsletter" on this page,
posted on the first week of each month. |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
--------------- CURRENT PARAVIEW MEDIA
GUIDE
NEWSLETTER ---------------
|
|
July 2005
Paraview Media Guide is a monthly guide to books, magazines,
websites, and other media that capture your attention, expand your mind, and
transform the world. Leading experts in mind, body, and spirit and the frontiers
of science and culture present their media picks. This free newsletter is
distributed by subscription only. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or obtain
sponsorship information, please see instructions at the end of this newsletter.
|
PARAVIEW GUEST PRESENTER: MARYANN JOHANSON |
|
|
|
|
 |
MaryAnn Johanson is one of the most popular and most respected film critics
working online. According to Time Magazine, her website,
FlickFilosopher.com,
has featured "snarky, well-informed commentary in a breezy style," since 1997.
The Hollywood industry newspaper Variety calls Johanson "one of Online’s
finest" film critics. She is the only major film critic who is a member of
The International Academy of
Digital Arts and Sciences, an invitation-only, 500-member body of
leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries, and creative
celebrities best known for bestowing the Webby Awards. Her new blog,
Geek Philosophy,
examines pop culture from a geeky, Generation X outlook.
|
|
|
|
|
MARYANN’S TRANSFORMING MEDIA PICKS |
|
|
|
|
Movies are our modern mythology, the contemporary
equivalent of the stories we once told sitting around the campfire on the
savannah, and I frequently approach films from a critical perspective with that
in mind. One of the books that has deeply influenced my understanding of where
storytelling and mythology meet is Joseph Campbell's
The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In fact, I just wrote an essay for
The
Internet Review of Science Fiction about how the latest
Star Wars movie fits into Campbell's archetypal "monomyth" that left
the margins of my copy of the book covered in scribbled notes. Looks like I'll
need a new copy!
There's a new mythology being created in Steven Spielberg's new film adaptation
of H.G. Wells',
The War of the Worlds… or at least new mythic imagery connected to
global terrorism. It's a worth rereading Wells' novel for an appreciation of the
differences -- and the similarities -- between what was primally horrifying in
the late 19th-century, and what scares us profoundly here in the early 21st. |
|
|
|
 |
Actors Christian Bale and Hayden Christensen are both currently portraying the
archetypically tormented men of Campbell's
The Hero's Journey -- the former in
Batman Begins and the latter in
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith -- but they played even more
intriguing characters recently in far smaller films that didn't draw huge
audiences, but deserved to.
In 2003's based-on-fact
Shattered Glass, Christensen portrays New Republic journalist Stephen
Glass, who invented wild fictions and passed them off as factual reporting.
In last year's
The Machinist, Bale's emaciated metalworker is teetering on the edge of
insanity. Both men are anxious, insecure, almost mythically anguished, and the
prosaicness of their tragedies only serve to make them all the more affecting. |
|
|
|
 |
Two of my favorite musical artists take traditional forms and do madly
unexpected things with them. New York-based singer/songwriter Voltaire mixes
European medieval and folk tunes with rock riffs, performs them on Gypsy violins
and electric guitars, and combines them with haunting, and frequently hilarious,
lyrics about pain, romantic suffering, and other Goth-y themes. Most of his
albums -- like my favorite,
Boo Hoo -- are as parodical as they are profound, but his new release,
Then and Again, is all simple, lovely songs of love and honor and
courage.
Straight out of Texas come The Austin Lounge Lizards, some of the greatest
bluegrass musicians you'll ever lay ears on... and some of the wittiest
satirists at work today in any medium. Their humor ranges from the lefty
political -- their new album,
Strange Noises in the Dark, features a ditty called "Why Couldn't We Blow
Up Saddam?" From the achingly heartbreaking to the stunningly literary: their
"1984 Blues," off my favorite Lizards CD,
Paint Me on Velvet, pays whimsical homage to George Orwell. |
|
|
|
|
 |
For keeping up with what's happening in movies, media, and how the Net covers
pop culture, I do a daily round of surfing to Jim Romenesko's
Poynter Online,
the online watercooler for journalists; David Poland's
The Hot Button,
where film is covered from a business perspective; and
Movie City News,
which gathers in one place the daily news on the movie industry.
And for a sense of what surfers are all hot and bothered about online, there's
nothing better than
Google
Zeitgeist, which offers a behind-the-scenes glance at what people are
looking for on the Web. |
|
|
|
|
Featured Books |
 |
|
Evidence of Alien Abduction Hair of the Alien:
DNA and Other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abduction
Read all about the very first
forensic DNA analysis of alien abduction evidence. |
 |
|
Body Snatchers in the Desert:
The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell
Story
Nick Redfern’s groundbreaking and completely new look at the Roswell mystery |
 |
|
War of the Worlds
Rediscover this classic tale of alien invasion by H. G. Wells, and see how
startlingly relevant it still is today, and not just because of the movie…. |
 |
|
The Power of Purpose Awards 2004
An inspiring collection of the winning essays on the subject of Purpose from a
worldwide competition sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. |
|
|
|
|
What's New |
|
|
***If you find this
newsletter valuable, then please help us to continue
providing it to you. This ezine is supported by our subscribers.
Please pass it on to any family or friends who may benefit from
this information. Thank you!
Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Please do e-mail us
at
email us
Subscription
Instructions:
To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to:
join-paraviewmediaguide@nova.sparklist.com
To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail from your subscribed e-mail
address to:
leave-paraviewmediaguide@nova.sparklist.com
Copyright 2001-2005 Paraview - All rights
reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
