Tune in to Antenna

[Film Studies For Free will be sorry to say goodbye to Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker/Spider-Man...]

Film Studies For Free wanted to let its readers know about Antenna, a very stimulating blog from graduate students and faculty in the Media and Cultural Studies area of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Here's what this relatively new site says about itself:

Antenna is a collectively authored media and cultural studies blog committed to timely yet careful analysis of texts, news, and events from across the popular culture spectrum. The site regularly responds to new works and developments in television, film, music, gaming, digital video, the Internet, print, and the media industries.

Antenna is intended to address a broad public inside and outside the university walls. Within those walls, though, it further intends to bridge the gap between scholarly journals, which remain the paradigm for scholarly discourse but too often lack the ability to reply to issues and events in media with any immediacy, and single-author media scholar blogs, which support swift commentary but are limited in their reliance upon the effort and perspectives of individuals. Coordinated by a group of writers who draw on a variety of approaches and methodologies, Antenna, therefore, exists as a means to analyze media news and texts, both as they happen and from multiple perspectives.

Antenna is currently operated and edited by graduate students and faculty in the Media and Cultural Studies area of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Although, while in its current stage, the content published on the site is written largely by members of that program, Antenna is currently in the process of expanding our author team, and we hope eventually to include contributions and comments from a diverse collection of writers.

Antenna’s goal is to create a forum in which readers and contributors participate in active, open, and thoughtful debate about media and culture.

Antenna is designed to respond quickly to events, and thus rather than be published on a set, periodic schedule, Antenna updates its content continually. Because Antenna is interested in timely responses, we encourage short entries. Extensive presentation of evidence is not required, though supplementary links are encouraged.

With its extremely lively house style, and wide-ranging topics, FSFF thinks Antenna has a great future ahead of it. For examples of some good film-related posts, it recommends you check out the following to start with:  

• 'Smells Like an Ethnically Divided Teen Star System' by Mary Beltrán  

• 'THWIP!+CTRL+DEL (on the rebooting of the Spider-Man franchise)' by Derek Johnson    

• 'Egregious Product Placement: The Invention of Lying' By Erin Copple Smith

You can also follow Antenna's updates on Twitter.

The award season begins...

Image from La niña santa/The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel, 2004)

Peter Nellhaus of the great Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee film blog has awarded Film Studies For Free's author one of the seven "Kreativ Blogger" awards in his gift. Er, thank you kindly, Peter!

 
 Here are the rules one must follow upon receipt of the Kreativ Blogger award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they've been nominated.

Seven possibly interesting, if not very revelatory, things about Film Studies For Free's author: 

1. She doesn't usually cooperate with chain letter activities, but...
2. ...Flattery by other film bloggers is one of her two Achilles' heels.
3. She is pretty much "self-taught" in Film Studies, her PhD being on Latin American literature; hence, perhaps, the particular appeal for her of easily accessible, online, scholarly materials on the former subject. Her own, formative/favourite, link-aggregator sites were Sarah Zupco and Daniel Chandler's legendary media studies and cultural theory websites.
   
4. She continues to be very attached to the kinds of Spanish-language cinema she started out by teaching. Her favourite writer-directors are Pedro Almodóvar and Lucrecia Martel. They like each other, too; the former has produced the last two films of the latter (blog posts coming up on these two soon..).
5. For ten great years, she was lucky enough to teach some of the best Film Studies students, and to work alongside some of the best Film Studies academics, in the whole, wide world
6. Then, around two years ago, she was equally lucky in being able to choose to leave the groves of Academe for a life of (film studies for) freedom and adventure at her own desk.
7. The fully-formed idea for Film Studies For Free came to her in a flash nearly two years ago, following a very fruitful conversation with an encouraging Cambridge University academic about the directions being taken by online film studies (merci!).

7 (mostly newish) 'Kreativ' Blog(ger)s  - none of whom are in any way obliged to respond to my recommendation:

1. Just starting out (brilliantly): James MacDowell at The Lesser Feat.
2. Ditto: James Zborowski's Between Sympathy and Detachment
3. A promising new bloggish website: The Film Notebook. 
4. Another good newish blog by Austin Fisher.
5. Liminal Vision is a new blog authored by (the great) Tara Judah (see also her midnighteye tweeting) and Alex Rossiter: "Liminal Vision looks at contemporary art, cinema, cities, and other random things"
6. Andy Wallis's Frame by Frame blog, a wonderful example of how blogs are being used in high school/secondary school film education.
7. And, last but definitely not least - no longer a new blog, but one of my longstanding favourite film blogs, a truly great resource: Jim Barratt's Bigger Picture Research.