two documentaries (or is one a mockumentary?) for my list when (if) they come to singapore: ballet 422, the story of the commissioning and choreography of the 422nd ballet for the nycb, and american interiors (“an investigative concert tour”) brought to my attention by an evocative essay introduction on roads and kingdoms (moreover, one is reminded of rithy pahn’s the missing picture)

on the subject of roads and kingdoms it grieves my heart that sooner or later all promising web magazines eventually stride down the primrose path towards fancy visual aesthetics while the textual elements, the writing, go all tottery. you know this as soon as the copyediting goes, that no one is truly paying attention to the text. this has happened not only to the medium but now, apparently, to roads and kingdoms. i wouldn’t be surprised if they had received more financial backing as a result of winning some journalism awards, and expanded operations have meant overall decline. it is certainly my impression that they are carrying more articles and that the articles are coming out faster, but the essays are shorter, of variant quality, and generally less insightful. but for the photojournalism alone it is still exceedingly worthwhile, and it is not, afterall, anthropologists who endorse it, but readers of travel essays. they are no robert byrons, however.