"Everywhere I looked reminded me of her..."
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Two Books for the Work of One-and-a-Quarter
He guys. So, Dan called me yesterday to ask some questions about that email I sent about Robot Crickets. I haven't really put any data up on any of the blogs yet, but this could be the first little preview.
Don't worry dad, this isn't the novel I've been working on; rest assured you'll be receiving portions of that for look-taking when they're ready to go. Robot Crickets is a collection of polished blog posts about my broken leg, along with a tiny piece that I call "a morphine vision masked as short fiction".
I actually drew the cricket and hammer on the cover. The idea for me was to pick out the main background color as one that will stand out--hence Vitamin C orange. I'm thinking of having those serious stickers made with the cricket and hammer "logo". That image is something I wanted that people will instantly associate with the book. It's all really an experiment in critical mass and underground exclusionary marketing. The fact that each book is part of a cause is the kicker.
Here's a look at the entire cover:
The thing is, really, this is a small book. It's only, like, 92 pages, and being pocketbook makes it all a little thin. Trying to have folks want to be a part of the bigger thing I guess is the critical mass experiment.
So far, the way it's working is: I've ordered a proof copy to approve or revise as necessary. Then once the material is either approved or revised-and-approved, I okay it, and it goes live for sale.
The second book of the "Two Books..." from this post's title is a picture book I put together on Shutterfly. So far I've printed two copies; originally one was for myself to either show off or maybe convince a picture-book-making company to maybe take a flyer on and see it the idea's marketable. The other copy I've mailed to the White House.
Obama, during high school and early college, went by Barry. It wasn't until later that he decided regularly go by his original first name, Barack. After he was elected I noticed pictures of him all over my Brooklyn neighborhood, in storefront windows and the like. The pictures were from newspapers and magazines. I thought it would be cool to go around and take pictures of all the faces. In my head, and on my computer's filing system, I called the project "Barry in the 'Hood".
Eventually I put together the pictures with a few words (recommissioned blog posts and captions) and made the book on Shutterfly. You can see from the back, themselves all shots from Bed-Stuy (except maybe the picture from under the tracks--that's from the Bushwick side of Broadway, and across the street is Bed-Stuy), aren't from the winter and aren't of Obama pictures:
I had a limited number of pictures to use, so you can imagine how the total project worked out. Well, not too bad, anyway. I'm trying to figure out how to make it available for folks who may be interested in adding it to their home library. (Which really means I'm having troubles with my Shutterfly account.)
So, really, between these two books, there was only the work of editing, polishing, and placement. I'll be keeping people updated on when Robot Crickets goes live.
Don't worry dad, this isn't the novel I've been working on; rest assured you'll be receiving portions of that for look-taking when they're ready to go. Robot Crickets is a collection of polished blog posts about my broken leg, along with a tiny piece that I call "a morphine vision masked as short fiction".
I actually drew the cricket and hammer on the cover. The idea for me was to pick out the main background color as one that will stand out--hence Vitamin C orange. I'm thinking of having those serious stickers made with the cricket and hammer "logo". That image is something I wanted that people will instantly associate with the book. It's all really an experiment in critical mass and underground exclusionary marketing. The fact that each book is part of a cause is the kicker.
Here's a look at the entire cover:
The thing is, really, this is a small book. It's only, like, 92 pages, and being pocketbook makes it all a little thin. Trying to have folks want to be a part of the bigger thing I guess is the critical mass experiment.
So far, the way it's working is: I've ordered a proof copy to approve or revise as necessary. Then once the material is either approved or revised-and-approved, I okay it, and it goes live for sale.
The second book of the "Two Books..." from this post's title is a picture book I put together on Shutterfly. So far I've printed two copies; originally one was for myself to either show off or maybe convince a picture-book-making company to maybe take a flyer on and see it the idea's marketable. The other copy I've mailed to the White House.
Obama, during high school and early college, went by Barry. It wasn't until later that he decided regularly go by his original first name, Barack. After he was elected I noticed pictures of him all over my Brooklyn neighborhood, in storefront windows and the like. The pictures were from newspapers and magazines. I thought it would be cool to go around and take pictures of all the faces. In my head, and on my computer's filing system, I called the project "Barry in the 'Hood".
Eventually I put together the pictures with a few words (recommissioned blog posts and captions) and made the book on Shutterfly. You can see from the back, themselves all shots from Bed-Stuy (except maybe the picture from under the tracks--that's from the Bushwick side of Broadway, and across the street is Bed-Stuy), aren't from the winter and aren't of Obama pictures:
I had a limited number of pictures to use, so you can imagine how the total project worked out. Well, not too bad, anyway. I'm trying to figure out how to make it available for folks who may be interested in adding it to their home library. (Which really means I'm having troubles with my Shutterfly account.)
So, really, between these two books, there was only the work of editing, polishing, and placement. I'll be keeping people updated on when Robot Crickets goes live.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Something for the Both of You
I'd never seen this before: Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchaku (and then some other stuff).
Friday, November 16, 2012
"Gould's Book of Fish" Impressions
First thing: I really enjoyed this book.
After that, I'm not really sure where to start. The brutality, barbarism and oppression that you mention, dad, was probably less shocking and more muted for me, as the book I'd read previously was Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads. That book has a more realistically rendered fantasy world of dehumanizing brutality, with the added "benefit" that the brutality was both more often and more vivid. Here, though, they seemed more a symptom, that feeling that when facing the great unknown, the only way Englishmen know how to react is with some good ol' brutality. Those settings for me just represent the archetype of violent, oppressive control, the need for it...its just the way the West reacts initially to vast tracts of wilderness: it brings out the worst fears, and therefore, the worst reactions...that, and we're talking about Australians here (but of course in 1830 they'd still be mostly Englishmen).
I dunno. Sometimes I get the feeling that vast wilderness and unknown being met by early colonists of from the West are met with fear, which translates into "those stupid trees and natives will know we're the boss" style brutality. They just go together for me.
Australians, like Americans, have a nice colorful history to look back upon.
The speed with which readers are thrust into something mesmerizing in that opening chapter is crazy. We're introduced to a narrator, a petty swindler and criminal, in and out of the system, and he and his probation officer and some friends make a nice buck selling false antiques to tourists on Tasmania. The narrator makes the distinction that it's the story that they're selling more than the junk. From there he finds an old book while out shopping for other things he and his pals can distress and sell.
I was explaining to Corrie the setup in slightly more detail than here, and she stopped me and asked How far have you read? and I honestly answered Just the first chapter. It goes from making you smirk to making you wonder to being weird to gripping you all before it spends the next 300+ pages in some of the most outlandish settings put to paper. The years: the late 1820s. The place: Van Diemen's Land, later renamed Tasmania, and specifically, the very real and horrific prison colony on Sarah Island, a square mile of rock in Macquarie Harbor. Many bits of Australian lore are woven in as well, like Matt Brady, an infamous bushranger.
A book is being scribbled in secret using fish bone quills and whatever coloring can be mustered (urchin; blood; feces) by a man in a cell that floods with the tides everyday. At some point everyday this prisoner is floating at the top of his room. That's how the old timey part starts.
We get all sorts of shenanigans from our new narrator, the forger and fake painter calling himself Gould. In the real world there was a prisoner named William Buelow Gould, and he was really commissioned to paint fish during his time at a prison colony, and, in reality, the book of fish he painted does exist in the same museum where our first narrator visits in the first chapter. This novel is like an imagined story of this man Gould's imagined life. Pardon the redundancy.
Each chapter is named for a fish, and that fish represents one of the characters prominent in that chapter's shenanigans. Each edition of Flanagan's novel uses actual Gould paintings, on the cover and throughout.
Dad, did you know the character Capois Death is based on a real person (mostly)? I had to look it up.
Norm, if you get to this post, there is definitely a strain of Pynchon running through, but it's flavored differently, and not just a Tasmanian styled Pynchon. Recognizable as from the same spectrum of Out There Lit. You know who you are... But it is written in a similar fashion to Mason & Dixon in that it uses contemporary 1820s phrasing, slang, and punctuation. Of course it's not as densely constructed as M&D.
Gould's Book of Fish will be with me for a very long time. It pulls together many threads dealing with reality, history and connections, the power of animals, and the power of words. That, and the scenarios and scenes are so engaging and bizarre that someone like me, an aspiring writer who's working on a long piece of fiction, can only be inspired that my own bizarre scenarios and scenes might actually work, and maybe even be well received.
I really enjoyed this book.
Gould's Book of Fish will be with me for a very long time. It pulls together many threads dealing with reality, history and connections, the power of animals, and the power of words. That, and the scenarios and scenes are so engaging and bizarre that someone like me, an aspiring writer who's working on a long piece of fiction, can only be inspired that my own bizarre scenarios and scenes might actually work, and maybe even be well received.
I really enjoyed this book.
Monday, November 12, 2012
As Threatened: 2012 Election Musings
First, this election is in fact, a case of the Republicans' getting their asses handed to them (silver platter optional. From my graphic, so apparently are Alaska and Hawaii). Here's how I see it: as a party, the GOP has a basic conflict. They raise funds like crazy by sucking up to ultra-conservative moneyed interests, who see the world a certain way. To quote an observation in yesterday's Denver Post, "Republicans have shrunk to becoming a regional party of older, Southern white male evangelicals, neither reflective nor representative of the nation as a whole." The conflict arises when they try to translate all this money into votes. The tactics that work to build war chests do not help them get votes. They marginalize themselves in the process.
A very logical, not to say absolutely essential, question arises in the wake of the thrashing. What will the GOP take away from 2012? A couple of Republican politicians, former members of the Colorado state Legislature, weighed in with a reaction of their own. Here is a pertinent quote (to save you the trouble of following the link:
It's time to bury the hatchet and forge bipartisan agreement on immigration reform. It's also time to approach cultural issues like gay marriage and abortion with humility, humanity, and common sense.So it's apparent that there are Reeps out there who can form a thought and express it. Does the GOP have the guts to risk changing its approach on basic issues that (they think) its rank and file feel strongly about?
Well, ol' Dubya screwed that pooch, maybe forever. His hands-off policy toward investment banking and mortgage-based securities trading plunged this country into a fuckin' mess that could have been completely avoided. Bush's botching of the economy - a once-in-a-lifetime fuckup for a President - actually bought Obama a lot of time and indulgence.
It'll be interesting to watch. I'll wait and I'll watch. It'll be a major miracle if the Republican Party can move from its stance on abortion, immigration, and gay rights. But that's what it'll have to do if it wants any chance at the White House.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Couple Things...
Hey guys...I had a few random things I wanted to share
Dad, I finished Gould's Book of Fish, and I'll add a write up here in a day or two. Also, I discovered a Chandler Brossard novel, The Bold Saboteurs, and have a little write up about it here.
Dan, I grabbed a pair of pictures that'll make you go, eh, ahem (or yikes):
Less cartoony, except for the voice:
And, for both of you guys, a comparison that brings back memories of helmet catches and perfect season ruination:
Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah...
Hey dad: let me represent all the erstwhile and current heads in thanking you wonderful Coloradans for the just passed decrim law, Colorado Amendment 64. That kind of thing warms the heart (you too, Washington State).
Dad, I finished Gould's Book of Fish, and I'll add a write up here in a day or two. Also, I discovered a Chandler Brossard novel, The Bold Saboteurs, and have a little write up about it here.
Dan, I grabbed a pair of pictures that'll make you go, eh, ahem (or yikes):
Less cartoony, except for the voice:
And, for both of you guys, a comparison that brings back memories of helmet catches and perfect season ruination:
Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah...
Hey dad: let me represent all the erstwhile and current heads in thanking you wonderful Coloradans for the just passed decrim law, Colorado Amendment 64. That kind of thing warms the heart (you too, Washington State).
Friday, November 2, 2012
A Belated Hollow Weenie Treat from Tod Browning
Its main attraction is that all the freaks in the movie are real freaks. There is a very famous sequence where a guy with no arms and no legs in lying under a cart or wagon, and he gets a cigarette out and lights it and begins to smoke. It's about a traveling sideshow with, you guessed it, freaks. There are some women in it with severely limited cranial development, and they look like they were the models for Homer Simpson's head. They're called "pinheads."
I learned about it from your Uncle Tom, who admired and recommended it. I looked it up a few minutes ago, and saw that the complete movie is available on Youtube, but I don't think I'd watch it that way. It's on our Netflix streaming queue and I've built it up a little bit with Cin, who's afraid of what it might be like.
In fact, it isn't a horror movie, or really very scary. The owner/manager of the touring show is good to his freaks, because, after all, they make him money. What could be wrong with that?
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Halloween Triplet
Okay Dan, you inspired me. I have my own set of three quotes with movie snapshots for your and dad's guessing pleasures. The only thing is, I think they're easier. Too easy maybe, but that's for you to decide.
Name that movie!
Number One:
"Baby steps to four o'clock...baby steps to four o'clock..."
Number Two:
"No, a barbaric YAWP."
Number Three:
"It's just an interesting psychological phenomena..."
And, just because it's Halloween, here's one of my favorite cells from a show that Dan will certainly recognize, and that out of context is just as funny as in context:
"Nah, man...Aku: he sees you!"
Name that movie!
Number One:
"Baby steps to four o'clock...baby steps to four o'clock..."
Number Two:
"No, a barbaric YAWP."
"It's just an interesting psychological phenomena..."
And, just because it's Halloween, here's one of my favorite cells from a show that Dan will certainly recognize, and that out of context is just as funny as in context:
"Nah, man...Aku: he sees you!"
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Park It Yourself, Metallica Breath
I was watching a sweet movie when this line came on. Who remembers what it was? Maybe an image would help...
Monday, October 22, 2012
New Lead Post
I'm tired of that "Yankees Crap the Bed" lead post up when I look at this site.
I know what you mean, dad, about the Yanks not feeling like a team of destiny this season, or whatever you want to call it. I felt like no matter how well Rafael Soriano did this year, and I figured he'd do quite well, with Mo hurt early and out for the year, I didn't really see them as winning it all this season back then. The most spectacular postseason relief pitcher of any generation out for the season shagging fly balls? That doesn't happen to Yankee championship teams.
And Dan...mom told me she was there at the house when you watched Friday the 13 Part VI: Jason Takes Manhattan, or whatever the exact title is...I think we might have a pretty classic list of shitty, shitty movies:
I know what you mean, dad, about the Yanks not feeling like a team of destiny this season, or whatever you want to call it. I felt like no matter how well Rafael Soriano did this year, and I figured he'd do quite well, with Mo hurt early and out for the year, I didn't really see them as winning it all this season back then. The most spectacular postseason relief pitcher of any generation out for the season shagging fly balls? That doesn't happen to Yankee championship teams.
And Dan...mom told me she was there at the house when you watched Friday the 13 Part VI: Jason Takes Manhattan, or whatever the exact title is...I think we might have a pretty classic list of shitty, shitty movies:
- Batman and Robin
- Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie
- Jason Takes Manhattan
- Grease 2
Even if it does have Michelle Pfieiffer...good call, dad. I mean, hell, even Leprechaun has Jennifer Aniston.
Dad, I ordered Gould's Book of Fish from Amazon for a penny plus shipping, which I considered a good deal. Whenever it gets here, I'll probably start it after I finish current Nobel laureate Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads, which is what I expect snuff films would be like in book form. Here's a jump link to a write-up I did for that book earlier today.
I've got The Wind Up Bird Chronicles just waiting, as well as Sanctuary getting left behind for a second time. I'll finish it eventually.
I've got The Wind Up Bird Chronicles just waiting, as well as Sanctuary getting left behind for a second time. I'll finish it eventually.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Ugh...Yankees Crap the Bed
On a day like yesterday, with the Yankees finishing one of the ugliest series in any postseason, I sometimes think about a five game stretch in 2006. Because of a makeup and a shared off day, the Yankees and Red Sox played a five-game series in Boston. Five games in five days, and they were tied when the series started.
When it ended, it was a heady time to be a New York baseball fan. The series was dubbed The Boston Massacre in New York, and each game was tense---even the blowouts were tense. The Yanks swept the BoSox, and all was right in the Bronx. They were tied with the Mets for the best record in baseball.
One similarity with the 2006 edition of the Yankees has with this season's is getting booted from the playoffs by the Tigers.
(Sigh) So...the second- or third-best offense in baseball forgot how to hit? A question like "What happened?" is mostly meaningless. Is Jeter that necessary?
Dan, if haven't been paying attention, Jeter broke his ankle in Game 1, and is out until February or March. Also in Game 1 was the 9th inning against Jose Valverde, the Detroit closer. The Yanks scored four runs off Valverde in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game. Sounds cool, right? Well, they lost in the 12th, but there's a more startling thing I'm getting at.
If you take away that four-run eruption against that one pitcher in that one inning, then the Yankees scored 2 (fucking two!) runs in all the other innings combined. Games 1-4, minus the Valverde inning, reads like some kind of bad dream: 2 runs on 19 hits, 36 strikeouts, 3 errors.
It's not a whole lot better with the Valverde inning back in: 6 runs on 22 hits, 36 K, 3 E. That's for four games. Besides the number of strikeouts six runs on twenty-two hits isn't impossible for a single game line (gotta have lots of double plays, or everybody gets multiple hits, but it's possible).
Cano hit under .100! A-Rod benched! For two straight games!! Swisher and Granderson and Russel Martin (and A-Rod and Cano) combined to hit under .200. Five starters of a murderers row type lineup looking overmatched time after time after time. It was just awful to watch.
Yankee fans want World Series victories, but those are rare and difficult, and as fans we're spoiled. Yankee fans can comprehend and get over losses, and watching the team try and fill holes accordingly can be cathartic. But embarrassment is not something that sits well with the Yankee faithful. The Mets have taught their fans to be ready for the occasional embarrassing moments, but us ol' pinstripers suffer that kind of garbage rarely.
Now fans and sportswriters in New York want A-Rod out, but "want", while accurate in a sense, may not be the right word. It's more of an expectation. They are sure he's gone, off to the Dodgers or the Marlins, or, as Lupica put it, "some other dumb team willing to overspend on his aging circus".
Maybe next year he can have an MVP caliber season in the Bronx. Or has the A-Rod endgame finally materialized?
When it ended, it was a heady time to be a New York baseball fan. The series was dubbed The Boston Massacre in New York, and each game was tense---even the blowouts were tense. The Yanks swept the BoSox, and all was right in the Bronx. They were tied with the Mets for the best record in baseball.
One similarity with the 2006 edition of the Yankees has with this season's is getting booted from the playoffs by the Tigers.
(Sigh) So...the second- or third-best offense in baseball forgot how to hit? A question like "What happened?" is mostly meaningless. Is Jeter that necessary?
Dan, if haven't been paying attention, Jeter broke his ankle in Game 1, and is out until February or March. Also in Game 1 was the 9th inning against Jose Valverde, the Detroit closer. The Yanks scored four runs off Valverde in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game. Sounds cool, right? Well, they lost in the 12th, but there's a more startling thing I'm getting at.
If you take away that four-run eruption against that one pitcher in that one inning, then the Yankees scored 2 (fucking two!) runs in all the other innings combined. Games 1-4, minus the Valverde inning, reads like some kind of bad dream: 2 runs on 19 hits, 36 strikeouts, 3 errors.
It's not a whole lot better with the Valverde inning back in: 6 runs on 22 hits, 36 K, 3 E. That's for four games. Besides the number of strikeouts six runs on twenty-two hits isn't impossible for a single game line (gotta have lots of double plays, or everybody gets multiple hits, but it's possible).
Cano hit under .100! A-Rod benched! For two straight games!! Swisher and Granderson and Russel Martin (and A-Rod and Cano) combined to hit under .200. Five starters of a murderers row type lineup looking overmatched time after time after time. It was just awful to watch.
Yankee fans want World Series victories, but those are rare and difficult, and as fans we're spoiled. Yankee fans can comprehend and get over losses, and watching the team try and fill holes accordingly can be cathartic. But embarrassment is not something that sits well with the Yankee faithful. The Mets have taught their fans to be ready for the occasional embarrassing moments, but us ol' pinstripers suffer that kind of garbage rarely.
Now fans and sportswriters in New York want A-Rod out, but "want", while accurate in a sense, may not be the right word. It's more of an expectation. They are sure he's gone, off to the Dodgers or the Marlins, or, as Lupica put it, "some other dumb team willing to overspend on his aging circus".
Maybe next year he can have an MVP caliber season in the Bronx. Or has the A-Rod endgame finally materialized?
Monday, October 15, 2012
Name a Worse Movie
So...
This site was designed to be a place where we could talk about books and movies and travels and the like. But I seemed to be writing about movies mostly.
And when I was going to rant about books (I just found a copy of Garlic Ballads by recent Nobel Laureate Mo Yan at a used bookstore), I ended up subjecting myself to a film that was so bad, I decided to ask you guys if you could name a worse movie.
I'm not talking about Charlie's Angels (the only movie I walked out of) or Troll 2, which is less awful than you might think. Well, it is pretty bad, but maybe not as bad as everyone says.
Oh yeah, that's right baby: Garbage Pale Kids: The Movie.
I guess a stock answer could be Batman and Robin, to which I have no real retort. If anything's worse than that POS, it might be GPK.
Aren't those masks creepy as hell?
This site was designed to be a place where we could talk about books and movies and travels and the like. But I seemed to be writing about movies mostly.
And when I was going to rant about books (I just found a copy of Garlic Ballads by recent Nobel Laureate Mo Yan at a used bookstore), I ended up subjecting myself to a film that was so bad, I decided to ask you guys if you could name a worse movie.
I'm not talking about Charlie's Angels (the only movie I walked out of) or Troll 2, which is less awful than you might think. Well, it is pretty bad, but maybe not as bad as everyone says.
Oh yeah, that's right baby: Garbage Pale Kids: The Movie.
I guess a stock answer could be Batman and Robin, to which I have no real retort. If anything's worse than that POS, it might be GPK.
Aren't those masks creepy as hell?
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Seven Directors: The Post's Sequel
I decided to get a silly here. This post itself is a sequel, a sequel to the post I wrote about Seven Directors and Superhero Influence. This, though, itself isn't about sequels.
One of the criteria for the directors I chose for that post were that they had to have directed multiple superhero movies, and the chain of influence from Richard Donner and 1978's Superman had to be mostly noticeable.
For this post, I went with the same directors in the same order, but here I choose to look at some of their other films and how they affected movies, or myself, or both.
Starting with Richard Donner again, I've got the poster for Lethal Weapon:
Richard Donner brought the buddy-flick back from the metaphorical scrap-heap. Not really as far as I'm concerned. Buddy films--movies featuring two main stars--really were born with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Paul Newman and Robert Redford. A buddy flick is only as good as the chemistry of the stars, and the fact that Danny Glover and Mel Gibson (pre-batshit crazy-in-public Mel) get along pretty well has seemed to given credit to Richard Donner for resurrecting the genre. Uhh...okay, good for him?
I saw Lethal Weapon 2 at the drive-in with mom in your brand-new at the time Ford Probe, dad. The opening for Lethal Weapon 4 was filmed about three blocks from our place in Long Beach. They built an entire fake gas station just to blow it up.
The next director moving down the chain was Tim Burton, and here I've highlighted Beetlejuice:
Nobody makes movies like this anymore, not even Tim Burton. Maybe, if anyone makes personal stories that have other things to say about the surrounding world and that turn out to be original, the case could be made for Christopher Nolan, with Memento and Inception, two widely original stories.
But I digress. Tim Burton making the immediate afterlife a huge bureaucracy, spoofing the effects of creepy New York artsy types on New England towns, and making the titular character a "bio-exorcist" who makes his first appearance in the second act are all strokes of oddball genius that would never get funded today. Maybe it's uneven, but I still like it a lot.
I was having a birthday party that was headed to the movies. I really wanted us to go see Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. It seemed like the perfect birthday party movie. I was ramped up to see it when mom came back and told us we were seeing this other movie, some fucking thing I'd never heard of. Dammit, I remember thinking, because in my memory I got angry at that kind of thing--being forced to see movies that later turn out to be fantastic (see: The Princess Bride).
Of course our crew went to see Beetlejuice, and all of our lives are far better off because of it. Thanks mom. You know, Dan, mom and dad exposed us to some good stuff. Like Beetlejuice and Princess Bride, and I don't think I'd heard too much about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure before dad took me to see it.
Off the tracks there, I guess.
Next director up was Bryan Singer, and this is his breakthrough film, the one, fortunately or not, against which all of his other films will be judged, The Usual Suspects:
I'd heard about this movie, a lot, before finally seeing it. It's good. I like it. I seem to remember being, well, disappointed isn't the right word, but it's a case of high expectations being mostly met, only because they were unrealistically high. It's a good crime thriller, and showcases Kevin Spacey's awesomeness. Also, try and listen to Benicio del Toro's dialogue throughout the movie. He was doing a bit, or a character voice, and barely anyone on set could understand anything he was saying.
Before Sam Raimi was teaming up with Tobey over stories about everybody's favorite web-slinger, he was teamed up with his longtime friend Bruce Campbell for a few movies, one of which is the capper of a trilogy (or maybe "trilogy" is more accurate), Army of Darkness:
I've heard Evil Dead II is better, and I believe it, but I've never seen it. Is that blasphemous? I've seen the first, Evil Dead, and it's obviously a well done college project movie made over the years and edited together. It's well done, knowing what it really it is. Evil Dead II starts with a remake of the first, but only spends the first few minutes of the movie doing that (I hear). Then we get all the cool hand-fighting-self scenes, culminating in the chainsawing off of one's own hand, only to be replaced by said chainsaw. At the end of the movie, Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets thrown back in time.
That's how the third movie starts, Ash being sent back in time. The third movie got a name change to appeal to a wider audience, mostly unsuccessfully. Well, as far as a "hit" is concerned, it wasn't so much, but a core audience loves it. I saw it for the first time, I'm pretty sure, while living in Brooklyn, having borrowed it from a co-worker and watching it one night.
The "English countryside" they filmed is obviously something like the Carrizo Plain, a blur of varying shades of beige and sand and rock between I-5 and Hwy 101. The snappy one-liners cracked me up (mostly).
Bruce Campbell, for me, for better or for worse, will always be Briscoe County, Jr instead of Ash. So there's that.
Something about my methodology I'd like to say at this point: I chose only to use movies I'd seen from the directors. I have a feeling, from anecdotal history that Evil Dead II is better than Army of Darkness, but I haven't seen the former. Also, it has been many years since I've seen Darkman, which would have fit pretty well into this Sam Raimi spot in my list.
Is that arbitrary enough?
Next is Christopher Nolan, and I went back and forth between discussing Memento and Inception, but eventually went with the latter:
I went with Inception because...is the short-term memory loss experienced by Guy Pearce at the heart of that film just a gimmick? No, right? But just in case...
Something dad said to me when I was ranting one time on the phone about The Matrix eleven years before Inception came out was that it (the story behind The Matrix) was a pretty cool idea for an action movie. I remember thinking that The Matrix obviously didn't have the same effect on him that it had on me (I think I've written about this exact topic on my other blog back in 2010). I also remember thinking, in 2010, that the idea behind Inception was a pretty cool idea for an action movie, and that it probably effected some of the young stoners seeing it in a way that mirrored what The Matrix had done to guys like me and Norm.
I really liked it. It was original, for one, and that goes a long way for me. You know, I think a post about Burton and Nolan and Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice and Memento and Inception and originality as a reflection of the era should be coming soon.
So...I feel like I'm done with Inception for the time being.
Next we had the slowly expanding Jon Favreau, and one of his earlier directorial entries, the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf:
I had a friend and coworker that was tall and had a mildly doofy personality thing happening, and he resembled Will Ferrell a bit, and once during the holiday season in San Luis he dressed up just like Buster the Elf, and we all got drunk and mobbed downtown and had some laughs.
This was one of the few Ferrell vehicles that works well for me. First time I saw a thing called "Will Ferrell" was on late night television, on Conan O'Brien, wearing a full body Lycra suit with only his face showing. He proceeded to do an impression of a cat that was the funniest single bit I've ever seen on a talk show. I liked him in Old School, but Ricky Bobby, The Anchorman, Blades of Glory and Step Brothers have their moments, but Ferrell seems to be doing a bit, like he's doing an impression of himself in a funny movie.
I hear Stranger than Fiction is good, and Everything Must Go is one of the saddest things ever filmed, but not really bad in any sense.
So, how did Favreau do? I don't know...it's a serviceable Will Ferrell vehicle, maybe one of the best editions, so, eh, pretty good?
At the end of the first Seven Directors post I tossed in a quick blurb about Joel Schumacher, director of the famously bad Batman and Robin. I caught a few minutes of the opening scene from that movie the other day on commercial television, where Batman and Robin storm an icy lair of Mr. Freeze(inator), and Robin is playing hockey with a huge diamond, and Bat-nipples and awful one-liners abound with a nauseating frequency.
I was tempted to throw in a quick discussion of Joel's early '80s classic DC Cab, starring Mr. T and Gary Busey and with a main star being the guy that played Jayne in "Firefly"; it wasn't as bad as you might think. It's also probably not as good as you may think.
In an odd turn of events, Joel Schumacher directed two Batman movies, and two John Grisham southern-lawyer movies, with The Client and A Time to Kill, the latter of which I've highlighted:
I think I liked both The Client and A Time to Kill when I saw them originally, but then again I also like The Firm the first time I saw it. I probably prefer The Client, but only because I like Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones verbal battles. Now, I'm not so sure...I guess Twin Peak's Jacques playing Romey helps...
I picked A Time to Kill because of the major controversy that it sparked. Major controversy, you might say? Yup, only in Europe.
To be admitted to the European Union, a country must have abolished the death penalty. In America, killing a couple of guys who've raped and murdered your daughter is almost morally expected, which shows some of the fundamental differences between the development of whatever you may consider a uniquely American characteristic and the original European state of being.
This movie, to Europeans, seemed to be making a case that capital punishment is necessary to retributive properties, and that the slowness or relative unjust-ness of the system may make it acceptable to mete out that capital punishment on your own, outside of that slow system.
Look at the name of the movie itself, A Time to Kill. It itself makes the case that murder could be acceptable. That itself is an Americanism, relative to Europe (mainly France?) anyway. Other cultures are all about retribution killings as well, but those cases are generally from cultures less respectful of women's rights, which makes comparisons beyond revenge killings harder.
As much as I consider myself an outlier in American society, some parts of me are inseparable from that darker Americanism side.
It's kinda weird how urges can be pointed to as fundamental characteristics, right? I didn't really envision this as the final thought of this post when I went looking for movie posters...
Monday, October 1, 2012
Patriarch's Birthday
Today is the birthday of the "Sherwood" in this blog's title "Sherwood and Sons". It's a big one, and we're not so sure we want to divulge the number, but it's pretty cool.
I didn't mean to preempt my brother's post about Shitty Sequels, but this is the first birthday of one of the three of us, so I had to recognize.
Happy Birthday, dad!
I didn't mean to preempt my brother's post about Shitty Sequels, but this is the first birthday of one of the three of us, so I had to recognize.
Happy Birthday, dad!
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The Shitty Sequel
Who knew that the second born child would have posted the 'blog' about the shitty sequel dilemma. Are we talking about 'Return of the Jedi' of 'Godfather 3'? No... not at all. Those are golden, untouchables compared to the movies I am mentioning.
First and foremost I need you, the reader, to trust me on this journey of bad movies.
The first franchise I would like to venture to is the Police Academy movies. How can we explain the awesomeness other than: Lets stay in Metro City for hella years and work our way to giving a blow job to the 'dean' of the academy, stop a motorbykle gang, recruit the leader of the gang to be a cop, travel to Miami and stop the mob's jewel thieves, then make it back home in less then seven movies? Well, after all that... lets go to Russia! Number seven take place in Moscow.
Enough said. They didn't even give it a number... Shame, Shame...
So since Moscow is a short jump... especially in the early 90's, I will take you on a few short journeys closer to home. First is to the jungle (very close to everywhere in California...). I love the hell out of some Predator. Arnold, alien, weird Chinese languages... all there. Then, as sequels go... Danny Glover shows up. Sure, sounds good, right? I would love to kick some ass with Danny Glover... Only problem is that, with all action movies in the 90's they need to start a war on DRUGS. If you have had the pleasure of this movie... then you remember the addition of the Colombian druggies. Fucking really? Below picture has nothing to do with Predator 2... only as a joke against Arnold the the movie...
Enough of making fun of Arnold. How about Sly? If you were to sit down and really, really watch the first Rambo movie, you'd probably enjoy it. A nice romp of man vs. asshole sheriff. In all actuality this is a pretty good movie of Vietnam vet vs. assholes. Assholes being Brian Dennehey and that cop that can't keep his glasses on in CSI Miami.
But no... that first one was, of course, awesome. But the sequels got fucking shitty. Almost like a time warp, back in time, as the story goes to Sly fighting Asian captors, and all sorts of bad guys. By the way... a bow that shoots grenade tipped arrows? Badass. Like something out of a child's mind.
Just like GI Joe fights.
First and foremost I need you, the reader, to trust me on this journey of bad movies.
The first franchise I would like to venture to is the Police Academy movies. How can we explain the awesomeness other than: Lets stay in Metro City for hella years and work our way to giving a blow job to the 'dean' of the academy, stop a motorbykle gang, recruit the leader of the gang to be a cop, travel to Miami and stop the mob's jewel thieves, then make it back home in less then seven movies? Well, after all that... lets go to Russia! Number seven take place in Moscow.
Enough said. They didn't even give it a number... Shame, Shame...
So since Moscow is a short jump... especially in the early 90's, I will take you on a few short journeys closer to home. First is to the jungle (very close to everywhere in California...). I love the hell out of some Predator. Arnold, alien, weird Chinese languages... all there. Then, as sequels go... Danny Glover shows up. Sure, sounds good, right? I would love to kick some ass with Danny Glover... Only problem is that, with all action movies in the 90's they need to start a war on DRUGS. If you have had the pleasure of this movie... then you remember the addition of the Colombian druggies. Fucking really? Below picture has nothing to do with Predator 2... only as a joke against Arnold the the movie...
For the drugs!!!!
Enough of making fun of Arnold. How about Sly? If you were to sit down and really, really watch the first Rambo movie, you'd probably enjoy it. A nice romp of man vs. asshole sheriff. In all actuality this is a pretty good movie of Vietnam vet vs. assholes. Assholes being Brian Dennehey and that cop that can't keep his glasses on in CSI Miami.
My glasses just fall off...
But no... that first one was, of course, awesome. But the sequels got fucking shitty. Almost like a time warp, back in time, as the story goes to Sly fighting Asian captors, and all sorts of bad guys. By the way... a bow that shoots grenade tipped arrows? Badass. Like something out of a child's mind.
Just like GI Joe fights.
Army of... YOUR MIND.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Ramses!
I interrupt my regularly programmed long post to exalt the New York Football Giants' wide receiver Ramses Barden.
In his first start of his career, a career in its fourth season, Ramses used his 6'6" frame and helped destroy the Carolina Panthers, catching nine passes for 138 yards. I've been talking about this kid ever since he got drafted. He was finally given the chance to shine, and took hold.
Why should I care this much? He's a Mustang, a Cal Poly kid. Go Ramses!
And, sorry guys for maybe monopolizing this blog. I don't really try to, it just kinda happens.
In his first start of his career, a career in its fourth season, Ramses used his 6'6" frame and helped destroy the Carolina Panthers, catching nine passes for 138 yards. I've been talking about this kid ever since he got drafted. He was finally given the chance to shine, and took hold.
Why should I care this much? He's a Mustang, a Cal Poly kid. Go Ramses!
And, sorry guys for maybe monopolizing this blog. I don't really try to, it just kinda happens.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Question: Aren't Rick Blaine and Han Solo the Same Guy?
Short answer: pretty much.
So, I finally got around to watching Casablanca the other day. For a while, when I was younger, after 1994 and seeing Pulp Fiction, I got on a kick to seek out the old "classics" and give them a look. It makes sense to me that it was Tarantino's non-linear Travolta vehicle that got me interested in the history of the form, and five years later, in 1999, a different movie got me interested in a different subject (The Matrix and philosophy).
In between '94 and '97, I watched On the Waterfront, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, both Godfathers, Citizen Kane and Bullit, and those are ones I can remember. I've watched them all since, and they remain as good as my memory told me they were back then. In fact, Kane, ...Waterfront, and Chinatown are on my Top 5 All-Time Favorite list (good luck guessing the other two). Norm and I even went to Tower Theater in '96 and saw Taxi Driver for the twentieth anniversary showing.
Later I discovered Kurosawa and Melville, Cool Hand Luke and Bonnie and Clyde and The Long Goodbye.
For some reason neither Casablanca, nor Gone with the Wind were ever on my must-see list. I mean, I went out of my way to find the Peter Lorre German-language M (by Fritz Lang), as well as the older Fritz Lang classic, Metropolis, and have even watched Sherlock Jr, a classic early surrealistic/sci-fi film shot around Culver City (thanks Dan for making that possible, with the Buster Keaton DVD set).
But I was reading something about Casablanca after having a talk with Uncle Dan about it and older films versus newer films, about the demands that older films put on their audience. I went and found a DVD copy on Amazon for less than the shipping cost, and snatched it up.
During that period of the Hollywood system the studios were making 50 movies a year, basically a movie a week. A freaking movie a week. Some day job, right? Casablanca was just supposed to be one of the others, one of the fifty. Based on an unproduced play, the actors were coming in everyday to the studio and getting that day's pages of the script. On top of it, the female lead, Ingrid Bergman, a young and beautiful Swede, didn't know which of the two leading men she was supposed to be in love with, and was more interested in her next role, phoning everyday after the filming to get updates on the negotiations for that role's contract.
Casablanca has probably the most international cast of any film, and the chaos and tension on the set (Paul Henreid, the other male lead (not Bogey) thought Bogey was a hack, and the script left him very little with which to shine) led to the palatable tension and sense of chaos that permeates the movie. Many of the actors are actual refugees from Nazi occupied territory. This movie was filmed and released in 1942. It was set, though, in 1941, before the Pearl Harbor attack, to keep Bogart's Rick mostly believable.
A film about escape, and love, and sacrifice, it hits home still. It may be dated, but it's timeless in its sense of honesty.
The dueling anthem scene? One of the most powerful things put to film (and then to video disc).
I thought it was good, and filmed well, with the smoke and shadows and kinetic camera movements--not quite Kane with the camera, but compared to any other '40s era movie, it's quite dynamic. The only real complaint I would make is that it's overscored. The score is nice, classic even, but it never goes away.
Afterwards, I was thinking about the reluctant hero archetype, and the two most famous reluctant heroes in American cinema are Bogart's Rick Blaine from Casablanca, and Han Solo.
They're both wise-cracking, self-interested rogues, dashing men who are in control--mostly--of their own fates, or at least believe they're in some sort of control, and in the end, do the right thing.
So, long answer, both Blaine and Solo are the same archetype.
Pretty good movie. Probably has earned the reputation, and shouldn't disappoint.
So, I finally got around to watching Casablanca the other day. For a while, when I was younger, after 1994 and seeing Pulp Fiction, I got on a kick to seek out the old "classics" and give them a look. It makes sense to me that it was Tarantino's non-linear Travolta vehicle that got me interested in the history of the form, and five years later, in 1999, a different movie got me interested in a different subject (The Matrix and philosophy).
In between '94 and '97, I watched On the Waterfront, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, both Godfathers, Citizen Kane and Bullit, and those are ones I can remember. I've watched them all since, and they remain as good as my memory told me they were back then. In fact, Kane, ...Waterfront, and Chinatown are on my Top 5 All-Time Favorite list (good luck guessing the other two). Norm and I even went to Tower Theater in '96 and saw Taxi Driver for the twentieth anniversary showing.
Later I discovered Kurosawa and Melville, Cool Hand Luke and Bonnie and Clyde and The Long Goodbye.
For some reason neither Casablanca, nor Gone with the Wind were ever on my must-see list. I mean, I went out of my way to find the Peter Lorre German-language M (by Fritz Lang), as well as the older Fritz Lang classic, Metropolis, and have even watched Sherlock Jr, a classic early surrealistic/sci-fi film shot around Culver City (thanks Dan for making that possible, with the Buster Keaton DVD set).
But I was reading something about Casablanca after having a talk with Uncle Dan about it and older films versus newer films, about the demands that older films put on their audience. I went and found a DVD copy on Amazon for less than the shipping cost, and snatched it up.
During that period of the Hollywood system the studios were making 50 movies a year, basically a movie a week. A freaking movie a week. Some day job, right? Casablanca was just supposed to be one of the others, one of the fifty. Based on an unproduced play, the actors were coming in everyday to the studio and getting that day's pages of the script. On top of it, the female lead, Ingrid Bergman, a young and beautiful Swede, didn't know which of the two leading men she was supposed to be in love with, and was more interested in her next role, phoning everyday after the filming to get updates on the negotiations for that role's contract.
Casablanca has probably the most international cast of any film, and the chaos and tension on the set (Paul Henreid, the other male lead (not Bogey) thought Bogey was a hack, and the script left him very little with which to shine) led to the palatable tension and sense of chaos that permeates the movie. Many of the actors are actual refugees from Nazi occupied territory. This movie was filmed and released in 1942. It was set, though, in 1941, before the Pearl Harbor attack, to keep Bogart's Rick mostly believable.
A film about escape, and love, and sacrifice, it hits home still. It may be dated, but it's timeless in its sense of honesty.
The dueling anthem scene? One of the most powerful things put to film (and then to video disc).
I thought it was good, and filmed well, with the smoke and shadows and kinetic camera movements--not quite Kane with the camera, but compared to any other '40s era movie, it's quite dynamic. The only real complaint I would make is that it's overscored. The score is nice, classic even, but it never goes away.
Afterwards, I was thinking about the reluctant hero archetype, and the two most famous reluctant heroes in American cinema are Bogart's Rick Blaine from Casablanca, and Han Solo.
They're both wise-cracking, self-interested rogues, dashing men who are in control--mostly--of their own fates, or at least believe they're in some sort of control, and in the end, do the right thing.
So, long answer, both Blaine and Solo are the same archetype.
Pretty good movie. Probably has earned the reputation, and shouldn't disappoint.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Reflections on Murakami's "1Q84"
I wrote a little piece over on a different blog about the feelings I was having about Haruki Murakami's newest novel, 1Q84. I finished it yesterday, but if the third section had maintained the momentum of the first two, I would have finished it already.
I'm happy to report that the last hundred pages were pretty damn good, and got close enough to the frenzied urgency to make the whole thing pleasant and recommendable.
So who really cares that 150 pages, give or take, of a 900 page book are some of the must sedentary, slow-mo mud crawl pages put to paper. It's those other 750 pages that make it one of his most accomplished works. That was a quote from a critic: "His most accomplished work."
To me, what Murakami does that's significantly different is in his ending. He has the courage here to let certain loose ends remain that way. The ending is satisfying enough that he needn't explain every last thing. Not that he does that anyway, but, those long blocks of fill-in exposition are gone. Maybe it wasn't right of me to go from A Wild Sheep Chase--written in the 70s and the first of his works to be published in the States--to 1Q84--his newest and possibly most advanced story, and storytelling yet.
The difference in skill level is apparent even as they are obviously the same voice.
I would certainly recommend it.
I'm happy to report that the last hundred pages were pretty damn good, and got close enough to the frenzied urgency to make the whole thing pleasant and recommendable.
So who really cares that 150 pages, give or take, of a 900 page book are some of the must sedentary, slow-mo mud crawl pages put to paper. It's those other 750 pages that make it one of his most accomplished works. That was a quote from a critic: "His most accomplished work."
To me, what Murakami does that's significantly different is in his ending. He has the courage here to let certain loose ends remain that way. The ending is satisfying enough that he needn't explain every last thing. Not that he does that anyway, but, those long blocks of fill-in exposition are gone. Maybe it wasn't right of me to go from A Wild Sheep Chase--written in the 70s and the first of his works to be published in the States--to 1Q84--his newest and possibly most advanced story, and storytelling yet.
The difference in skill level is apparent even as they are obviously the same voice.
I would certainly recommend it.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Seven Directors and Super Hero Influence
Originally I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this post. I thought about looking at the directors of super-hero movies, and then only discussing their other work. Then I thought as a way of keeping my head wrapped around so much data to limit it to directors who only directed multiple movies in the same franchise.
Doing that was kinda cool, guys, as that list has plenty to work with, with both super-hero genre and regular films. It started with one guy in 1978, and his influence is still being teased out in different directions.
The super-hero genre seems today to have taken the place of yesterday's western, or WWII movie; they are America's most popular form of mass entertainment: it has easy to recognize and clearly defined roles of good and evil; it has spectacle; and in the end, good triumphs and reassures the audience.
There is justice and fairness in the world.
So, back to 1978, and Richard Donner's release of Superman changed the way America looked at super-hero films. His serious look at the genre--what a world with bumbling Clark Kent could look like, how the suave Superman would fool people into not recognizing Kent, how a large city might react to a flying man in a cape. The camp has been removed, that silly, pun-filled Bat-tastic world from the '60s television show of Batman has been wiped clean. Could the movie work?
It did. Box office receipts say as much, anyway. Another thing Richard Donner did was to film the first two movies together. Now I know that Superman II was hijacked by the studio, and it was only recently that there was a release of "Richard Donner's Superman II", the cut I guess he wanted to make, but at least there was a continuity of tone between the two films.
I love Richard Pryor, but that's all I can say about the third and fourth films in the series.
The influence of Richard Donner on the Superman movies alone is seen with Superman Returns, the most recent Superman movie, which uses the same John Williams score and contorts itself to be mostly a sequel to Superman II (right?).
The next super hero film franchise that executed the material well enough to be called a success would be Tim Burton's Batman.
Dan, you should remember this, but we were at the Cabin when mom and dad went to go see Batman at the theater without us, just to make sure it wasn't going to be too intense for us. Summer of '89. Is that right, dad?
In any case, the realism that Donner brought was splashed in black paint and darkened up darker than even Christopher Nolan can handle. Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton turned in performances where at least they'd bought into the characters and story, and the franchise was set.
Batman Returns was an event as well. Batman eventually went into some strange territory, and came back, and we'll take a look later.
As the super-hero genre was trying to recover (Thanks Joel), 2000 saw Bryan Singer's "X-Men". Joel Schumacher's expanding the dark realism that Tim Burton materialized into shiny gadgetry for his two Batman movies seemed like a dangerous meld between realism and camp. In any case, the colorful world of his Batman films at least hearken back to Donner, so the influence chain wasn't broken.
Bryan Singer added onto that world successfully.
Here, an America with rhetoric on both sides about civil rights and mutants is Singer's realistic look at how the country would react to randomly powered individuals. The film did well because it was well made and it had that deeper tone that Marvel comics always had and DC didn't--substance of story.
This movie and the next, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), both show the inherent differences between the Big Pictures in Marvel and DC. I was always a DC guy, oddly enough considering my affinity for story and literature...
Superman: alien comes to Earth, somehow finds earthlings not-contemptible assholes, decides to protect them. Batman: parents gunned down, becomes ninja and fights crime in costume. What are those super hero stories about? Mostly fighting crime, right?
The X-Men has always been about prejudice and segregation, about being an outsider, a weirdo, somebody who just doesn't fit in, alienation. Spider-Man was about the day-to-day struggle, getting bills paid, trying to get the girl, trying to keep a job while also trying to save lives wearing a costume.
And what a costume, right? Spider-Man's costume may be the greatest costume in comics. And seeing him fly through the air on webbing, like Tarzan in the urban jungle, is so much fun that we don't care that there is realistically only ten square blocks he could ever really get around like that in all of New York City. He's just another alienated dork who gets powers and decides to do well with them.
For me X-Men and X-Men 2 did what the Schumacher Batmen tried: made technology a semless part of their world, and the Raimi Spidermen brought the color and life to a small story, and edged on the side of camp, while playing it straight.
Christopher Nolan never sniffed camp, let alone edging near it. Batman Begins, from 2005, was a reboot of the Batman franchise that, as far as Bat-fans were concerned, absolutely needed it. Here, the realism is in every aspect of the trilogy, even within the existential framework of "is the existence of the Batman a good thing" argument. An argument, by the way, that is a one of the Nolan trilogy's thematic pillars.
What Bryan Singer brought to his two X-men movies, Jon Favreau brought to the 2008 Iron Man movie and it's sequels.
X3 didn't really have it together, and Spider-Man 3 was widely rejected (although I'd like to see it), but Favreau brought audiences some excitement and humor, and something genuinely fun to watch. It was a return to colorful and shiny realism.
Donner, Burton, Singer, Raimi, Nolan, and Favreau.
I think between those six guys we can find six awesome non-super hero movies. Maybe even with this guy, but you never know:
This is just a wasted post, isn't it? I didn't even do anything here...
Doing that was kinda cool, guys, as that list has plenty to work with, with both super-hero genre and regular films. It started with one guy in 1978, and his influence is still being teased out in different directions.
The super-hero genre seems today to have taken the place of yesterday's western, or WWII movie; they are America's most popular form of mass entertainment: it has easy to recognize and clearly defined roles of good and evil; it has spectacle; and in the end, good triumphs and reassures the audience.
There is justice and fairness in the world.
So, back to 1978, and Richard Donner's release of Superman changed the way America looked at super-hero films. His serious look at the genre--what a world with bumbling Clark Kent could look like, how the suave Superman would fool people into not recognizing Kent, how a large city might react to a flying man in a cape. The camp has been removed, that silly, pun-filled Bat-tastic world from the '60s television show of Batman has been wiped clean. Could the movie work?
It did. Box office receipts say as much, anyway. Another thing Richard Donner did was to film the first two movies together. Now I know that Superman II was hijacked by the studio, and it was only recently that there was a release of "Richard Donner's Superman II", the cut I guess he wanted to make, but at least there was a continuity of tone between the two films.
I love Richard Pryor, but that's all I can say about the third and fourth films in the series.
The influence of Richard Donner on the Superman movies alone is seen with Superman Returns, the most recent Superman movie, which uses the same John Williams score and contorts itself to be mostly a sequel to Superman II (right?).
The next super hero film franchise that executed the material well enough to be called a success would be Tim Burton's Batman.
Dan, you should remember this, but we were at the Cabin when mom and dad went to go see Batman at the theater without us, just to make sure it wasn't going to be too intense for us. Summer of '89. Is that right, dad?
In any case, the realism that Donner brought was splashed in black paint and darkened up darker than even Christopher Nolan can handle. Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton turned in performances where at least they'd bought into the characters and story, and the franchise was set.
Batman Returns was an event as well. Batman eventually went into some strange territory, and came back, and we'll take a look later.
As the super-hero genre was trying to recover (Thanks Joel), 2000 saw Bryan Singer's "X-Men". Joel Schumacher's expanding the dark realism that Tim Burton materialized into shiny gadgetry for his two Batman movies seemed like a dangerous meld between realism and camp. In any case, the colorful world of his Batman films at least hearken back to Donner, so the influence chain wasn't broken.
Bryan Singer added onto that world successfully.
Here, an America with rhetoric on both sides about civil rights and mutants is Singer's realistic look at how the country would react to randomly powered individuals. The film did well because it was well made and it had that deeper tone that Marvel comics always had and DC didn't--substance of story.
This movie and the next, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), both show the inherent differences between the Big Pictures in Marvel and DC. I was always a DC guy, oddly enough considering my affinity for story and literature...
Superman: alien comes to Earth, somehow finds earthlings not-contemptible assholes, decides to protect them. Batman: parents gunned down, becomes ninja and fights crime in costume. What are those super hero stories about? Mostly fighting crime, right?
The X-Men has always been about prejudice and segregation, about being an outsider, a weirdo, somebody who just doesn't fit in, alienation. Spider-Man was about the day-to-day struggle, getting bills paid, trying to get the girl, trying to keep a job while also trying to save lives wearing a costume.
And what a costume, right? Spider-Man's costume may be the greatest costume in comics. And seeing him fly through the air on webbing, like Tarzan in the urban jungle, is so much fun that we don't care that there is realistically only ten square blocks he could ever really get around like that in all of New York City. He's just another alienated dork who gets powers and decides to do well with them.
For me X-Men and X-Men 2 did what the Schumacher Batmen tried: made technology a semless part of their world, and the Raimi Spidermen brought the color and life to a small story, and edged on the side of camp, while playing it straight.
Christopher Nolan never sniffed camp, let alone edging near it. Batman Begins, from 2005, was a reboot of the Batman franchise that, as far as Bat-fans were concerned, absolutely needed it. Here, the realism is in every aspect of the trilogy, even within the existential framework of "is the existence of the Batman a good thing" argument. An argument, by the way, that is a one of the Nolan trilogy's thematic pillars.
What Bryan Singer brought to his two X-men movies, Jon Favreau brought to the 2008 Iron Man movie and it's sequels.
X3 didn't really have it together, and Spider-Man 3 was widely rejected (although I'd like to see it), but Favreau brought audiences some excitement and humor, and something genuinely fun to watch. It was a return to colorful and shiny realism.
Donner, Burton, Singer, Raimi, Nolan, and Favreau.
I think between those six guys we can find six awesome non-super hero movies. Maybe even with this guy, but you never know:
This is just a wasted post, isn't it? I didn't even do anything here...
The "Sherwood Number" in Baseball
I'm sure, dad, we can come up with a better number than I've got. I'm calling this thing the Sherwood Number because I couldn't think of anything else, but it may just be too...it may not be important enough to learn anything from studying it.
It's barely even a calculation: (Runs Created) + (Total Bases).
[For the record, I'm using: (Runs Created) = RBI + Runs - HR.]
I started looking at that combination because to me, that afternoon I was thinking about it, it seemed like a good measure of how much a player was on the bases and/or involved in scoring runs, how much they were contributing to the games in a variety of ways. I then divided out their total number of games to get a sense of a sherwood number per game score.
I first waned to make sure it made sense with the top players, since it seems to heavily favor guys with high slugging percentages (duh, lotsa total bases). The only player with over 10k was Hank Aaron, and then the only players over 9k were:
Hank Aaron: 10572
Ty Cobb: 9921
Stan Musial: 9559
Babe Ruth: 9466
Barry Bonds: 9436
Willie Mays: 9371
Pete Rose: 9071
Not a bad list. I do think it's exhaustive of the 9k+ s-number players in baseball. I say that because my list of 8k+ players is pretty long, likely not exhaustive, and has most other players you'd think could be on the 9k+ list:
Alex Rodriguez: 8572
Cap Anson: 8569
Lou Gehrig: 8450
Eddie Murray: 8437
Frank Robinson: 8438
Rafael Palmeiro: 8317
Dave Winfield: 8258
Honus Wagner: 8241
Ken Griffey Jr: 8139
Jimmie Foxx: 8095
Cal Ripken Jr: 8079
Ted Williams: 8000
Those two lists have some of the greatest players who graced the diamond, but what about averages. How does Raffy compare to Cap Anson, or Rickey Henderson, or Joe DiMaggio?
Well, Rickey Henderson, an obvious Hall of Famer and one of the best players ever, scored 7701 on the s-number score, for a 2.500 per game career score.
The highest three values all spent time in the Bronx:
Lou Gehrig: 3.905
Babe Ruth: 3.782
Joe DiMaggio: 3.752
I don't even know what this signifies: combined runs and bases per game averaged over an entire career, apparently.
Rounding out the top ten that I have calculated so far:
Albert Pujols: 3.533
Jimmie Foxx: 3.494
Ted Wiliams: 3.490
Alex Rodriguez: 3.425
Cap Anson: 3.395
Ty Cobb: 3.270
Hank Aaron: 3.206
After that, everyone is under 3.2. This list may not be exhaustive. I may have missed people. I do have more notes on the subject, like Mike Schmidt (6959, 2.895), possibly the greatest third basemen ever (I have a soft spot for Schmitty ever since I was a Phillie in Little League).
Whether or not this actually can help understand the game better is up for debate. And, like I said earlier, we should be able to come up with a better calc to be called the sherwood-number, shouldn't we?
I mean, doing that isn't just a weekend excursion, coming up with a stat all our own. We shouldn't take it for granted...sometimes I just get wrapped up in numbers for a hour or two, and build lists...mostly meaningless, unless you're a baseball fan.
It's barely even a calculation: (Runs Created) + (Total Bases).
[For the record, I'm using: (Runs Created) = RBI + Runs - HR.]
I started looking at that combination because to me, that afternoon I was thinking about it, it seemed like a good measure of how much a player was on the bases and/or involved in scoring runs, how much they were contributing to the games in a variety of ways. I then divided out their total number of games to get a sense of a sherwood number per game score.
I first waned to make sure it made sense with the top players, since it seems to heavily favor guys with high slugging percentages (duh, lotsa total bases). The only player with over 10k was Hank Aaron, and then the only players over 9k were:
Hank Aaron: 10572
Ty Cobb: 9921
Stan Musial: 9559
Babe Ruth: 9466
Barry Bonds: 9436
Willie Mays: 9371
Pete Rose: 9071
Not a bad list. I do think it's exhaustive of the 9k+ s-number players in baseball. I say that because my list of 8k+ players is pretty long, likely not exhaustive, and has most other players you'd think could be on the 9k+ list:
Alex Rodriguez: 8572
Cap Anson: 8569
Lou Gehrig: 8450
Eddie Murray: 8437
Frank Robinson: 8438
Rafael Palmeiro: 8317
Dave Winfield: 8258
Honus Wagner: 8241
Ken Griffey Jr: 8139
Jimmie Foxx: 8095
Cal Ripken Jr: 8079
Ted Williams: 8000
Those two lists have some of the greatest players who graced the diamond, but what about averages. How does Raffy compare to Cap Anson, or Rickey Henderson, or Joe DiMaggio?
Well, Rickey Henderson, an obvious Hall of Famer and one of the best players ever, scored 7701 on the s-number score, for a 2.500 per game career score.
The highest three values all spent time in the Bronx:
Lou Gehrig: 3.905
Babe Ruth: 3.782
Joe DiMaggio: 3.752
I don't even know what this signifies: combined runs and bases per game averaged over an entire career, apparently.
Rounding out the top ten that I have calculated so far:
Albert Pujols: 3.533
Jimmie Foxx: 3.494
Ted Wiliams: 3.490
Alex Rodriguez: 3.425
Cap Anson: 3.395
Ty Cobb: 3.270
Hank Aaron: 3.206
After that, everyone is under 3.2. This list may not be exhaustive. I may have missed people. I do have more notes on the subject, like Mike Schmidt (6959, 2.895), possibly the greatest third basemen ever (I have a soft spot for Schmitty ever since I was a Phillie in Little League).
Whether or not this actually can help understand the game better is up for debate. And, like I said earlier, we should be able to come up with a better calc to be called the sherwood-number, shouldn't we?
I mean, doing that isn't just a weekend excursion, coming up with a stat all our own. We shouldn't take it for granted...sometimes I just get wrapped up in numbers for a hour or two, and build lists...mostly meaningless, unless you're a baseball fan.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Sequel Contest Over; and in Other Notes: Yankees Fading
The Sequel contest over on Grantland's website is over, and the votes are in. In the final The Empire Strikes Back beat out The Godfather Part II for the title. That's a result I don't really agree with, but the voting was very close, not that that's much consolation.
I posted a few days back about the contest, and had a few remarks about sequels then. I've been thinking about it since: I may have low-balled Aliens and the Nolan-Batman sequels. Also since then Corrie and I watched the 1966 Batman: the Movie, the same cast and crew as the campy television show, and was designed to be a commercial for the show in Europe. For my Caps playing fellas, I snapped this picture of Batman fighting Joker:
Sploosh, baby! (That's a scoring play in a game of Caps.)
Dad, I'm glad you had a happy and successful trip to Missouri. I think the only time I was in Missouri was on the drive Corrie and I made from SLO to New York. We passed through under cover of darkness, and I remember taking a picture of the Arch in St. Louis. On the college football tip, the Missouri Tigers make a mistake and join the SEC.
Ahh...the Yankees, dammit.
The slow fade has been both hard and easy to follow. Hard in the sense that it's always hard to watch your team blow a ten game lead over three months, but easy in the sense that we're living 3000 miles away, and living through it back in Brooklyn would have been a little more agonizing. Sports in the City is so much more in your face.
One of the bad things about team collapses, especially in baseball, is that the length of time is such that hope is still there, and that hope is what'll have the ending, if things continue like this, hurting so bad.
But there're reasons hope exists in fans, always reasons. Like the Yankees this year: CC Sabbathia should be back strong, and Pettitte will be back soon, along with A-Rod and Teixeira, and the hitters won't be as shitty as they've been in the recent past. It's an old team, certainly, but they're accomplished, and we'll see.
That's that confounded hope again. With the Orioles, A's and Yankees all with the same record at this moment, these last few weeks will be interesting.
See Dan, when you care about a team, there's a lot more suffering than celebrations.
At least the Red Sox suck even worse this year, but when you suck the entire time, it's almost easier to go with it.
I'm still thinking about that big comic movie post, having just watched that Batman movie as well as the Captain America movie recently. Also, there's a new After Hours video up, one in which they discuss how all Pixar movies are one big movie about the post-apocalyptic world where the machines have taken over. An essay in the comments section is a necessary gem that accentuates the video like crazy. It's all pretty interesting.
I posted a few days back about the contest, and had a few remarks about sequels then. I've been thinking about it since: I may have low-balled Aliens and the Nolan-Batman sequels. Also since then Corrie and I watched the 1966 Batman: the Movie, the same cast and crew as the campy television show, and was designed to be a commercial for the show in Europe. For my Caps playing fellas, I snapped this picture of Batman fighting Joker:
Sploosh, baby! (That's a scoring play in a game of Caps.)
Dad, I'm glad you had a happy and successful trip to Missouri. I think the only time I was in Missouri was on the drive Corrie and I made from SLO to New York. We passed through under cover of darkness, and I remember taking a picture of the Arch in St. Louis. On the college football tip, the Missouri Tigers make a mistake and join the SEC.
Ahh...the Yankees, dammit.
The slow fade has been both hard and easy to follow. Hard in the sense that it's always hard to watch your team blow a ten game lead over three months, but easy in the sense that we're living 3000 miles away, and living through it back in Brooklyn would have been a little more agonizing. Sports in the City is so much more in your face.
One of the bad things about team collapses, especially in baseball, is that the length of time is such that hope is still there, and that hope is what'll have the ending, if things continue like this, hurting so bad.
But there're reasons hope exists in fans, always reasons. Like the Yankees this year: CC Sabbathia should be back strong, and Pettitte will be back soon, along with A-Rod and Teixeira, and the hitters won't be as shitty as they've been in the recent past. It's an old team, certainly, but they're accomplished, and we'll see.
That's that confounded hope again. With the Orioles, A's and Yankees all with the same record at this moment, these last few weeks will be interesting.
See Dan, when you care about a team, there's a lot more suffering than celebrations.
At least the Red Sox suck even worse this year, but when you suck the entire time, it's almost easier to go with it.
I'm still thinking about that big comic movie post, having just watched that Batman movie as well as the Captain America movie recently. Also, there's a new After Hours video up, one in which they discuss how all Pixar movies are one big movie about the post-apocalyptic world where the machines have taken over. An essay in the comments section is a necessary gem that accentuates the video like crazy. It's all pretty interesting.
Font Changes
I went ahead and changed the font all over the blog to Georgia. The sans serif font isn't for me (or us?), but it does look kinda funny for everything. We'll see how it looks long term.
Friday, August 31, 2012
A question about the typeface
Pat,
Separate from the Mighty Mizzou
Gentlemen,
I have the great good fortune to announce that I have left St. Joseph, Missouri. While my visit only sucked somewhat (they were really long days away from Cin, but I did meet some very cool people), it was with a bit of trepidation that I learned only this evening of a new virus discovered by a doctor in St. Joseph, called the Heartland Virus, and it's delivered to you courtesy of ticks.
Okay, enough of that.
St. Joseph is famous as a jumping-off point, first for Lewis and Clark, circa, like, 1801, and then, just as famously, as the starting point of the westward run of the Pony Express. The Pony Express, of course, ran to Sacramento at its western terminus, but for all its cherished imagery and lore, only functioned as part of the U.S. Post Office for 19 months, from April, 1860, to November, 1861.
(The image at the right is the Buchanan County courthouse.)
I was told by my guide and boss that the Holiday Inn where we were staying at was directly on the Missouri River. Well, the river was visible from my fifth-floor room, but between me and the big, important river sat a naturally very ugly and complicated-looking power transfer station, and that other big conduit for freight and commerce, the four sets of Union Pacific tracks. So, yeah, I was at a considerable remove from the river. The map geek in me (never far from the surface) thrilled with the knowledge that as I looked across the river, I gazed on Kansas. It wasn't that great in person.
I worked all week for a refiner of biodiesel, and it's one of the more progressive, trend-setting companies involved nowadays. It will be a struggle to make it pay, because petrochemical products are still quite a bit cheaper to produce.
I have the great good fortune to announce that I have left St. Joseph, Missouri. While my visit only sucked somewhat (they were really long days away from Cin, but I did meet some very cool people), it was with a bit of trepidation that I learned only this evening of a new virus discovered by a doctor in St. Joseph, called the Heartland Virus, and it's delivered to you courtesy of ticks.
Okay, enough of that.
St. Joseph is famous as a jumping-off point, first for Lewis and Clark, circa, like, 1801, and then, just as famously, as the starting point of the westward run of the Pony Express. The Pony Express, of course, ran to Sacramento at its western terminus, but for all its cherished imagery and lore, only functioned as part of the U.S. Post Office for 19 months, from April, 1860, to November, 1861.
(The image at the right is the Buchanan County courthouse.)
I worked all week for a refiner of biodiesel, and it's one of the more progressive, trend-setting companies involved nowadays. It will be a struggle to make it pay, because petrochemical products are still quite a bit cheaper to produce.
Sequel Contest on Grantland
So, Dan, it looks like it'll be just you and me for a little while, and while I haven't been posting, I've been thinking of a retrospective on superhero movies, a sort of expanded version of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher/Christopher Nolan discussion.
One of the websites I read regularly, Grantland, covers mostly sports, but they also cover, in a more limited fashion, films and other pop-culture topics. Earlier in the week, they started a contest, a sports bracket system in which they had 32 film sequels ranked and pitted off against each other.
The guy, when introducing the whole thing they're calling Sequeltology, said that such an endeavor is kinda silly, since The Godfather II could be, in his opinion, the greatest American film ever made.
How it works is, the 32 movies that made the list get ranked, and then seeded, and then they're paired off, and readers get to vote for whichever movie they feel like voting for, with no rules about why you vote the way you do.
Here's a link to one of the relating articles. In the round of 8 we've got T2 vs The Dark Knight among others matchups.
Their endeavor, and their curious idea that the Rocky sequels would fare better (seriously, they thought Indy and the Last Crusade would fall to Rocky III)(give me a fucking break), got me thinking.
Sequels and spinoffs, the television versions, are a mixed bag for me. Nowadays they seem like they plan for a sequel in the pre-production phase, with it being a safe investment, as long as the first is good enough, or makes enough money.
It's unoriginal. That's my main complaint, but with so many book and comic adaptations being made, sequels are just part of this era of big-cinema. I liked The Dark Knight Rises, but it's as unoriginal as a sequel gets. One of the sequels on the Grantland list is probably the most original sequel ever: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. It was seeded pretty low and has since been knocked out.
But can you imagine a sequel where the heroes from the first movie are killed, con Death out of death, and then using Station to save the world through their rock music...I mean, that's like a David Lynch fever dream just ate bunch of Sweet-Tarts and cotton candy.
I guess The Godfather II was pretty original, and it should surely win this contest.
One sequel I was upset was left off of the Grantland list was Addams Family Values.
Thinking about that classic, a rare sequel I enjoy far more than the original, I started to wonder what sequel I like the most. Other peculiarities show up on their lost, like Back to the Future II but not III, clearly the superior installment. Whatever: what's the best sequel?
Besides The Godfather II, of course.
What franchises do we have? Alien (Aliens, one of the top seeds, went down to Last Crusade); The Matrix; Rocky, Superman, Batman, Rambo, Spiderman, Star Wars, Star Trek...way more than really first come to mind...
The top three sequels from those franchises are probably Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, and...The Animatrix?
Does that even count? Whatever, it's better than Reloaded and Revolutions, am I right? I don't know, I can't remember the other two so well.
I haven't yet mentioned Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings or Toy Story...
Maybe Toy Story 3 is my favorite non-Godfather II sequel...
I'm sure you've got some opinions on this, like Aliens should kick everybody's ass...and I think we had a talk about LOTR, where you said you preferred Two Towers in the sequel department, but you could have been lecturing me for talking shit about it (which I only did half as a joke, since for the longest time it was the only DVD of the trilogy that we owned, and consequently, watched).
And dad, if you're reading this, feel free to chime in...maybe it wasn't such an impact, but...2010: The Year We Make Contact is just waiting for a tease-out.
One of the websites I read regularly, Grantland, covers mostly sports, but they also cover, in a more limited fashion, films and other pop-culture topics. Earlier in the week, they started a contest, a sports bracket system in which they had 32 film sequels ranked and pitted off against each other.
The guy, when introducing the whole thing they're calling Sequeltology, said that such an endeavor is kinda silly, since The Godfather II could be, in his opinion, the greatest American film ever made.
How it works is, the 32 movies that made the list get ranked, and then seeded, and then they're paired off, and readers get to vote for whichever movie they feel like voting for, with no rules about why you vote the way you do.
Here's a link to one of the relating articles. In the round of 8 we've got T2 vs The Dark Knight among others matchups.
Their endeavor, and their curious idea that the Rocky sequels would fare better (seriously, they thought Indy and the Last Crusade would fall to Rocky III)(give me a fucking break), got me thinking.
Sequels and spinoffs, the television versions, are a mixed bag for me. Nowadays they seem like they plan for a sequel in the pre-production phase, with it being a safe investment, as long as the first is good enough, or makes enough money.
It's unoriginal. That's my main complaint, but with so many book and comic adaptations being made, sequels are just part of this era of big-cinema. I liked The Dark Knight Rises, but it's as unoriginal as a sequel gets. One of the sequels on the Grantland list is probably the most original sequel ever: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. It was seeded pretty low and has since been knocked out.
But can you imagine a sequel where the heroes from the first movie are killed, con Death out of death, and then using Station to save the world through their rock music...I mean, that's like a David Lynch fever dream just ate bunch of Sweet-Tarts and cotton candy.
I guess The Godfather II was pretty original, and it should surely win this contest.
One sequel I was upset was left off of the Grantland list was Addams Family Values.
Thinking about that classic, a rare sequel I enjoy far more than the original, I started to wonder what sequel I like the most. Other peculiarities show up on their lost, like Back to the Future II but not III, clearly the superior installment. Whatever: what's the best sequel?
Besides The Godfather II, of course.
What franchises do we have? Alien (Aliens, one of the top seeds, went down to Last Crusade); The Matrix; Rocky, Superman, Batman, Rambo, Spiderman, Star Wars, Star Trek...way more than really first come to mind...
The top three sequels from those franchises are probably Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, and...The Animatrix?
Does that even count? Whatever, it's better than Reloaded and Revolutions, am I right? I don't know, I can't remember the other two so well.
I haven't yet mentioned Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings or Toy Story...
Maybe Toy Story 3 is my favorite non-Godfather II sequel...
I'm sure you've got some opinions on this, like Aliens should kick everybody's ass...and I think we had a talk about LOTR, where you said you preferred Two Towers in the sequel department, but you could have been lecturing me for talking shit about it (which I only did half as a joke, since for the longest time it was the only DVD of the trilogy that we owned, and consequently, watched).
And dad, if you're reading this, feel free to chime in...maybe it wasn't such an impact, but...2010: The Year We Make Contact is just waiting for a tease-out.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Sidewalk Grilling
I have a few movie posts brewing, and yesterday I put together a bleeding-heart rant over on another blog I keep (yay jump links!) about the best movie characters, but first I wanted to say something about grilling.
Back in 2009 I wrote a piece on my old blog about Gonzo Grilling, or, grilling on our stoop in Brooklyn. And the this past Sunday, Dan and I talked about having just gotten new grills and about how both of us wee going to be testing them out. I don't have the backyard that you've got, Dan. All I've got is the sidewalk.
And we used it:
We set up our outdoor chairs on a spit of grass and set up our brand new little Weber on the concrete, making sure we were out of the pedestrian walkway. Instead of lighter fluid, I made a nice pile of newspaper balls and tightly wound "logs" to set beneath the coals, fired it up, and waited.
It was a pretty good wait, maybe forty minutes, but it finally took.
Here's a shot of what we had working: sausages, eggplant slices, and potatoes in foil.
The eggplant was in our farm-delivery box despite the fact that neither Corrie nor I particularly like it. We've since had it removed from future boxes. It didn't turn out super great.
I had corn on the cob working in this picture with the remaining potatoes.
In that first shot you cans see the long shadows of late afternoon, and in this last one, dusk is in an advanced state. Also visible: crutches, a big Murakami book, and cups for beer.
Sunday Sidewalk Grilling. Sweet.
Back in 2009 I wrote a piece on my old blog about Gonzo Grilling, or, grilling on our stoop in Brooklyn. And the this past Sunday, Dan and I talked about having just gotten new grills and about how both of us wee going to be testing them out. I don't have the backyard that you've got, Dan. All I've got is the sidewalk.
And we used it:
We set up our outdoor chairs on a spit of grass and set up our brand new little Weber on the concrete, making sure we were out of the pedestrian walkway. Instead of lighter fluid, I made a nice pile of newspaper balls and tightly wound "logs" to set beneath the coals, fired it up, and waited.
It was a pretty good wait, maybe forty minutes, but it finally took.
Here's a shot of what we had working: sausages, eggplant slices, and potatoes in foil.
The eggplant was in our farm-delivery box despite the fact that neither Corrie nor I particularly like it. We've since had it removed from future boxes. It didn't turn out super great.
I had corn on the cob working in this picture with the remaining potatoes.
In that first shot you cans see the long shadows of late afternoon, and in this last one, dusk is in an advanced state. Also visible: crutches, a big Murakami book, and cups for beer.
Sunday Sidewalk Grilling. Sweet.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Movie Post II: Experiments
One of the offshoots of the previous post on 2001 was remembering the experimental
nature of some of the footage. Specifically, I’m thinking of the sequence where
the astronaut, played by Keir Dullea, is flying toward the “surface” of
Jupiter, and he begins to encounter a really outré light show. A whole long
series of merging light objects move and speed and flow until we and the
character are all dizzy and disoriented. I read where Kubrick was looking for a
new effect for this sequence, and some techie guy showed him this and he was
sold.
That made me think of the first Tron, a Disney product that was long on effects and short on
script. It was praised for its use of new effects, and I have long thought that
efforts like this are bold and useful, if not completely successful as works of
art themselves. The more successful uses of the technology usually come along
later. I can’t think of any successful uses of the Tron effects, but then I don’t
have a lot of exposure to movies.
That brings me to Mars
Needs Moms. Pretty ridiculous, right? The whole thing was shot using an
experimental process, shooting actors in 3-D motion-capture suits. The mom even
looks like Joan Cusack. I don’t know where
this process is going, if anywhere, but Mars
Needs Moms shares qualities with other experimental movies: the effects are
the only reason to watch or think about them.
Okay, one last thought which on sort of the same subject. I
read where in the early days of making The
Incredibles, Brad Bird said they made the faces of the characters so
realistic that they began to look fake. Talk about irony. So they had to make
them more caricature-ish so that audiences would be more accepting. So, can we
stump for the making of the next Incredibles?
Please?
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