visual arts

Time Of Your Life (timotheories April 2017)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

April is one of my favourite months of the year, for a few reasons.

It’s the month I was born, which every other year is the same time as the Easter holidays, and it reminds me of my family. You see, dear readers, when I was growing up, every Easter, my family of six would all cart ourselves from one province to another to visit the grandparents. We called our grandparents Papa and Nana, of course. Because of the Ukrainian ancestry.

Which is why this month I decided to focus a lot of my posts on things that matter to me personally. Music, film, the arts, and how to be successful as an artist.

Just kidding, I do that every month. A little late for an April Fools joke, but you can’t say I didn’t try. Terribly.

Also, I mentioned this in my HMV post, but technically I won’t have a problem with reliable forecasting on film and music choices, now that I’ve converted to Amazon Prime, but for the sake of humility, I’ll keep this disclaimer up… just in case.

*Disclaimer* As always, every week I purchase an album and movie one week ahead of the actual review release and while I have the best intentions, I don’t always get what I want… so if you follow me on instagram (@timotheories) you can actually see what’s coming.

timotheories summarized – April

Stimulating Sundays – (04/02) …, (04/09) Cross Talk Ep. 21, (04/16) Cross Talk Ep. 22, (04/23) Cross Talk Ep. 23, (04/30) Alex Racine interview
Melodic Mondays – (04/03) Sampha, (04/10) The Mavericks, (04/17) Arca, (04/24) Father John Misty
Theatrical Tuesdays – (04/04) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, (04/11) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, (04/18) A Monster Calls (04/25) The Founder
Wisdom Wednesdays – (04/05) Li Kunwu, (04/12) Life Satisfaction, (04/19) David Deida, (04/26) Facebook Success Stories
Timely Thursday – (04/06) timotheories April, (04/13) Easter, (04/20) Fate of the Furious, (04/27) Birthdays

So I missed the mark on the first Sunday of this month – it’s been a bit of a challenge to stay focused with all of the personal changes going on, and my day job, and a new(ish) relationship. Not making excuses, just letting you see that I too am mortal and fully capable of failing.

But let’s focus instead on the fact that I’ve got three Cross Talk episodes coming your way, one of them about Easter Eggs in film (super fun topic), plus the beginning of a series further exploring how certain themes exist in film, but defy genres.

And no, I didn’t forget about Amanda Wall creative cuties. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to make her interview happen. She is a freelancer and full-time mom after all, and scheduling has proven more challenging than originally anticipated. That said, I do have something in the works with a local game designer by the name of Alex Racine – I promise that’ll be fun.

The rest of the topics are gonna be amazing too, from films set in the Star Wars universe, Harry Potter lore, and an adaptation of the beginnings of McDonalds, plus some Mavericks from my past, I have a ton of theories to share on books I’ve read and social media too. Also, did I mention it’s my birthday month? And that the eighth instalment of my favourite film franchise opens in less then a week?

So many theories, so little April to shower you with ideas. But I’ll do my darnedest!

Tim!

Netflix and Take A Pill (timotheories presents: Watch Culture)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Internet culture is cool right? Reshoots and disputes and set leaks galore.

Oh wait, nope, that’s not cool at all.

It’s all just a hype machine and it sucks. Because legitimacy of so many of the films coming out right now aside (read: Justice League, Baywatch, Pirates of the Caribbean), we don’t need to spend hours upon hours of our time reading click-bait themed single paragraph articles from buzz sites, tweeting from similar newsfeeds that should be reporting on politics, and binging on YouTube video theories and opinions. I mention this because we’re talking about things which haven’t even come out yet.

It’s weird though, because culture has shifted.

You probably didn’t notice it, did you?

Yeah, funnily enough, the notion of hyping movies has been around for a while. You see dear readers, there used to be a time when we would get on a hype machine ahead of a release date, but we didn’t have a place to vomit all of our millions of ideas about it. And people didn’t capitalize on all of the theory, using their particular geek skills to funnel people Then the internet came along. And we lived a happy place between hype and geek culture for a few years.

So what happened and where’s the shift?

Culture Conundrum

Well, I think at some point publishers of ideas, and cultural icons realized that the volume of new content being created reached far beyond their own individual capacities to give opinions on it, so they instead choose to focus only on the new and glamorous, adding in their two cents as it were. Luckily for the vast majority of us, technology has shifted too and our attention spans for the new and novel are increasing, so we don’t have time to look at everything. We instead spend five minutes on one thing we care about, to then move onto another five minutes segment about the thing we care about.

Content creators benefit from this in a big way, and everyone is happy. Because we can all share in that hype machine, never really contributing anything in the way of constructive feedback and driving our subscribers to purpose.

Which is why I decided to introduce a new series of video posts called WatchCulture into the mix. In this series, I will be sharing brief recommendations on movies which have been around for more than a year, and which I think you should watch for your own cultural edification. These are going to be short videos on film, music, art, etc., which fit into the cultural norm, but the difference is that instead of saying netflix and chill, I’m going to ask you to take the red pill.

theories Summarized

You can thank André Lindo, the producer of my Cross Talk series, for this idea, and a greater insight into my own thoughts and feelings on what culture we should be consuming at any given time. Expect to see Watch Culture episodes cropping up every week, very soon.

But for now, I’ve no more theories to share. Only well wishes and a hope for a new tomorrow.

Tim!