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Monday, January 17, 2005
Paris is blogging 
| | Loïc tells me Les Coulisses du blog 2: blogs et entreprise has more than 300 people coming tomorrow. "Coulisses" means "backstage of the blogs", Loïc tells me. As I so often said when I worked in Paris, Je vous prie de m'excuser mais je ne parle pas français. (Credit where due: Loïc corrected my first draft of that sentence. Love this cross-blog editing business.) |
Great minds register alike
| | Bullforge.com has come up for renewal. I don't see myself using it soon. Or ever. Anybody else interested? If not, I think I'll just let it lapse. |
Role of a life— er, term
| | Whereas most "cross over" Hollywood figures identify themselves as politicians who happen to be actors, Arnold turns it around; he's the actor who just happens to be a Governor. It's audacious how he does this. He takes every opportunity he can to invoke his Hollywood persona, including reusing lines he's spoken and reprising characters he's played. |
| | Good, thoughtful, insightful analysis. He concludes, |
| | I think playing with character is profoundly risky. The danger is, if you can't keep your audience entertained, they can always conclude you were never real in the first place. You know how movies can create the impression that an actor is in a moving car? I believe it's called a "process shot," in which an actor is filmed in front of a screen on which a background scene is projected. Thinking about the way Schwarzenegger insists on playing it, I had a strange impression. For a second, I imagined that the window Arnold was sitting next to was not a window, and that he was only sitting in a piece of a helicopter. |
| | The shot may not have been totally staged. But it's about as random as a place setting. The mudslide is framed perfectly in the background. The governor is to the side of the window, even though realistically you'd expect him to be looking through it. The light in the background is perfectly exposed with fill-flash of the governor and the inside of the helicopter. The photographer (Robert Galbraith) also troubled to make sure the flash didn't reflect off the window glass. So, the shot might have been candid, but it wouldn't be unusual if it wasn't. |
| | That said, I have to disagree a bit with Michael's conclusions. All politicians play with character. The most charismatic also know exactly how to keep their audience (the media, primarily) entertained. They know a good story, and work it expertly. They use language the way Gary Kasparov uses gambits. And to the same effect: they win with it. With The Governator, his act has the advantage of being overt, rather than covert. And so far, it's working. |
You're it
| | His big question: how would you tag yourself? |
Same games, more players, bigger playgrounds
| | The blogola scandal, as it's being called, also offers a preview, also long overdue, in how what's now known as the "blogosphere" is about to fracture. It's going to split between stand alone journalists — and folks who are coming to the web and creating sites with specific agendas: Promoting Howard Dean or Simon Rosenberg, for instance. There's going to be a division between folks writing online with lots of editorial experience and tested news judgment and those who are coming to this with an agenda or a set of very specific goals. Sooner or later — it's already happening, really — the activists will break away from the editorial folks. |
| | There's much more. Read the whole thing. |
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