By this point, the new J. J. Abrams-produced monster movie Cloverfield has been out for well over a month and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I describe the (practically nonexistent) plot as follows:

An unexplained monster devastates Manhattan, and a group of rather stupid young adults halfheartedly attempts to escape, but not before wasting a lot of time trying to rescue a girl that should have died by the time they reach her. 

The film is presented in a cinéma vérité style that was well-established with the release of The Blair Witch Project–that is, the entire film is supposed to exist on a single tape “recovered” from a camcorder (though how that happens is a mystery to me; the camera in question ends up buried under tons of rubble in the middle of Central Park). Basically, we, the viewing audience, are supposed to take this entire film as a single video artifact–as something that is “real,” even though it is clearly fiction.That said, there are a number of extremely large obstacles that cause the film to fail in becoming an accurate, believable simulacrum of reality (monster-oriented devastation aside, of course–the elements that cause the film to falter are far more basic than that). Continue Reading »

My regularly scheduled Four for Friday posts will resume next week; in the meantime, here’s something that I’ve been thinking about regarding the stickiness of what I like to call “throwaway” mediums.

Anyone who’s ever placed an order for anything even slightly more complex than a plain cup of coffee at Starbucks knows what an ordeal it can be to spit out a mouthful of incongruous words, especially if the person at the register doesn’t hear what you say. Woe unto the person whose regular order is a grande extra-hot half-caf nonfat sugar-free hazelnut latte. That’s a lot of words to get wrong, especially with one person repeating it to another, so it serves as nothing but a barrier to prevent someone from ordering a healthy beverage that isn’t laden with sugar and fat.

Starbucks has done something brilliant to remedy this problem by labeling sugar-free, nonfat beverages as “skinny.” This is a great idea, but the ways in which they are raising awareness of it are less than successful. Continue Reading »

In this month’s issue of Communication Arts, columnist Natalia Ilyin discusses the process of creating stories–mythologies, as Roland Barthes would call them–as part of the design process. It’s a wonderful article, yet simultaneously alarming. I’ve excerpted part of it here:

A designer wants to “Make Things Better.” And this ideal hints at a different plane of consciousness, a place of perfection, just like the construction of a story hints at a world where things can make sense. Designers tell everyday people that there is a beautiful world out there, just out of reach. We design bits and pieces and sometimes whole scenaria of a beautiful world that they can be a part of, if they buy the artifacts of our story.

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Here’s an interesting question: What do Star Trek and the Country Music Awards have in common? The answer is literally right under your nose.

Give up?

It would seem that whoever was responsible for the design of the 41st Annual CMA Awards on ABC decided to “borrow” the iconic Starfleet arrowhead emblem–I noticed it myself while leafing through this week’s edition of Entertainment Weekly. I was so taken aback by the color scheme (a charcoal-colored brushed metal, or a stone/smoke color, as seen below) and the presence of the emblem (embossed) that for a moment I thought I was looking at an ad for a boxed set of Star Trek DVDs.

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For those of you that aren’t familiar with the New York City metropolitan area, there’s a small but well-known chain of deep discount department stores called Century 21 (warning–Flash site with obnoxious music). You can oftentimes find great deals there, and that’s the major appeal; they carry so much stock that turns over so quickly that every time you go in there’s something new.

I stopped by the store earlier today to pick up a new shower curtain liner and noticed a new slogan printed on the receipt:

While on its face this seems like a cutesy slogan that doesn’t mean anything, it’s actually problematic, as it highlights one of the nastier qualities of the store.

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