Looking
Working on the streams
(344 Words. January 26, 2012, 02:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This appears to be the subscription site for the Pacific League. According to this post at Yakyubaka.com, the approximate cost for an all pass in 2010 was $80 for the season. While the TOS noted the service was restricted to residents of Japan, commenters noted that the streams were not region-restricted. No info on online DVR-like functionality. I would really…
Noted
(163 Words. January 25, 2012, 11:59 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A couple years old, but here is a rundown on computer-oriented Japanese TV remote access options. Update from October 2011 regarding iOS viability. Looks like a subset of Japanese broadcasters publish rtsp:// streams.The site is emphatically not about baseball though, so I am somewhat dubious if the various yakyu providers expose their programming in such a manner. It would be…
Starstruck update
(90 Words. January 21, 2012, 10:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Update to my posts of a week or two ago. In the interim of buying a new set of the original Epic run on eBay and the new copies arriving, I, of course, found the missing box of comics that contained the original copies. It turns out I had not picked up one of the original issues when I was…
More on Starstruck
(3 Words. January 08, 2012, 06:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
some critical analysis…
Starstruck Deluxe Edition: missing material
(23 Words. January 08, 2012, 05:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Aargh, I was right, sez the CJ: You won’t find the material from issues #2-6 of the Epic series in this book……
Oh yes
(10 Words. January 07, 2012, 11:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A gallery of WW2 painted flight jackets. Via MetaFilter….
Maps
(795 Words. December 26, 2011, 12:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A random link trawl originating with Maillardet’s Automaton wound up at this blog post which amounts to a biography and bibliography of William Bunge, a cartographer and political radical of whom I had never heard.The automaton interest was prompted by the film Hugo, which was the second film we attended yesterday. We also watched Tintin, which was much better than…
Location location etc
(53 Words. December 24, 2011, 10:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Here is a pretty decent list of locations used in “The Artist,” including a house that Mary Pickford once lived in. That last bit of trivia had been puzzling me since I had thought (correctly) that Pickfair was torn down some time ago. Obviously, not shot at Pickfair, but instead at another house….
A few thoughts on The Artist
(184 Words. December 24, 2011, 11:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Natasha Simons, at the new-to-me Mary Sue (“A Guide to Girl Geek Culture”), sheds some light on the context of the end of the silent era. She seems to see the character of George Valentin as most closely based on William Powell, on the evidence of Jack Russell terriers, which seems off base to me. Valentin is collaged from…
reflections on this image making excercise
(389 Words. November 08, 2011, 12:36 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Just over a week ago I started expecting myself to execute and post a digital drawing or painting every day, using the iPad or my more-capable graphics tablet, a 12-inch Wacom Cintiq. Both offer a direct-display drawing experience. The Cintiq is a more capable tool because it offers gradations of pressure sensitivity and the stylus also delivers information about velocity,…
Wine glass
(18 Words. November 08, 2011, 12:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Incredibly hurried sketch of a glass on our Halloween tablecloth, literally after finishing cookery and just before serving….
Sawyer's View-Master, Portland ORE
(213 Words. November 07, 2011, 11:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Super quick sketch of an old View-Master. Not entorely successful. I was trying to get after the surface textures of the dark, reflective surface of the device, but the digital emulation of wet oil color mixing led to a loss of control of hue, value, and draftsmanship. Some limitations of ArtRage’s UI are beginning to crop up for me….
THE KIRKS
(173 Words. November 07, 2011, 11:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday and Sunday November 5th and 6th I tried a new experiment in my digital drawing and painting exercises. Starting from a photo reference, I created a ‘pencil’ drawing, executed a conte and wash treatment, and reworked the drawings into a painting. It was important to me that the series take as its’ starting point a very recognizable…
The end of Google
(335 Words. October 27, 2011, 09:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Andy Baio writes about the rolling changes in Google’s online services with special attention to the discontinuation of the plus operator. As these changes have rolled out I have noticed that many of my basic intact ions with Google have become broken, in one way or another. The UI changes, for example, inevitably increase latency between click and input-acceptance and…
Zero History
(291 Words. April 29, 2011, 10:34 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally started Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been putting off for months. I’m happy to report it is entertaining me very much. The book is about industrial espionage in the global clothing industry. A major supporting character is introduced wearing a ridiculous suit in International Klein Blue, and the hardback’s boards are this color. This little joke make…
I Dream of Maakies
(510 Words. April 24, 2011, 11:49 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I awoke on April 23 from a dream, which I felt immediately compelled to share with the artist concerned (Tony Millionaire, of Maakies and more): I had a detailed dream of a huge, twenty-five-pound signed-and-numbered limited edition Maakies book, 24 x 12 or thereabouts and and two inches thick, indigo dyed upper edging and deckle pages on the opening…
Floaty
(72 Words. August 24, 2010, 05:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Airship Ventures Zeppelin NT is in town or thereabouts until September 8 or 9. I booked us in on a morning flight, September 5. Longtime blog readers will understand my insane levels of excitement. I drove up to Paine Field and back this afternoon on a scouting expedition. You can’t see it in this picture, but the cabin…
Wild
(226 Words. January 16, 2010, 08:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Months later, Viv and I finally got around to seeing the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” It certainly reduced the expedition of six or seven six or seven year old girls seated a row ahead of us to sodden, weeping mourners at the grave of childhood. This seems possibly to not be a desirable outcome for…
Clock of the Heavens
(240 Words. July 11, 2009, 10:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Around midnight last night I was informed of an astronomical conjunction, that of Jupiter and the Moon. To my surprise, with a decent set of binoculars, I was able to make out fur of Saturn’s moons. Properly motivated, I spent a chunk of today finding and fetching an honest-to-goodness telescope, though not a proper reflector. Finding it frustrating to…
Cruciform and royally robed
(16 Words. April 27, 2009, 08:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
d40_20090426_047.JPG Originally uploaded by mwhybark The overwintered purple broccoli is looking great, verging on the psychedelic….
All along the Watchmentower
(222 Words. March 06, 2009, 04:41 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been amusedly following the reviews for Zak Snyder’s “Watchmen.” The news, it seems, is not so good. Most of the negative reviews have been by relatively thoughtless reviewers, a few have been reviews that contained worthwhile critiques, and a vanishingly small number have been by folks who understand the brilliance of the original comic and have consequently approached…
City and the Night
(200 Words. March 01, 2009, 12:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Watched “Night and the City” (Widmark, Tierney, more) on Friday, giggling. Widmark is a semi-sympathetic American hustler in ’40s London, the the film is largely shot on location. Widmark’s films around this time are usually eye-popping, and this was no exception. I think the last time I saw it was about a decade ago, circumstances long forgot. This vieweing,…
Enchirito!
(122 Words. February 14, 2009, 09:11 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Years ago, Viv and I saw, once only, a bizarre ad for Taco Bell’s ‘enchirito,’ featuring the word sung by four guys singing in a circular group as the camera panned around their faces. We both stopped what we were doing or talking about and yelled ‘what was that?“ but the hilarious strangeness of the ad was never to…
Zarek Hatch
(192 Words. February 11, 2009, 09:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Richard Hatch on his just concluded time as Tom Zarek on BSG. Awesome, so great to see one of the BSG folks using the internet to think out loud about what they have been doing. I can’t wait until we hear from the others, too. It’s seemed clear to me for some time that Hatch was playing his character…
Mom's homemade sushi
(35 Words. January 31, 2009, 10:53 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
How to Make Sushi at Home. Investigated as a potential means toward a transatlantic teleconferencing meal with a self-proclaimed information pope, an autonomous autarch of data organization, an existential code evangelist and good egg….
Once again
(8 Words. November 15, 2008, 10:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
S. Clay Wilson down, recovery uncertain. Fuck….
Jesse wept.
(56 Words. November 04, 2008, 09:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On this moving night, one which challenges my deep-seated cynicism and negativity, the psychological moment of the evening that most engages me is encapsulated in the tears of Jesse Jackson in Grant Park. I wanted nothing more than to grasp him and hold him in sympathy, in recognition of the transparency and complexity of his emotion….
Right
(6 Words. October 06, 2008, 07:47 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Now, this is more like it….
love
(15 Words. September 01, 2008, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I love this. It’s already dated! Oh! Prfoper credits and purchasing oppt’y here….
Vested
(287 Words. August 18, 2008, 08:39 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally getting around to watching the third and final season of Deadwood, loving it as much as the initial two runs. I was startled to note that the vest worn by Hearst in the scenes where he is placed under arrest by Sheriff Bullock is a near match to one of my antiques. Pausing the show and rushing down…
le blog
(20 Words. July 31, 2008, 05:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
le blog d’evelyne blondeau. via things. With pleasure, I realize I can still read French, more or less….
Affiches
(7 Words. July 05, 2008, 08:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cuban Posters. via old pal Everlasting Blort….
BLIZZARD
(18 Words. April 18, 2008, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
OK, in the past ten minutes, half-an-inch of snow has accumulated, and if anything, it’s snowing harder. ….
Cathy
(106 Words. April 13, 2008, 05:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cathy’s Book - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For whatever reason, this 2-year-old ARG popped up in some Google ads for me today. Here’s a nonlinked version of the ad: Cathy’s Book If found call (650) 266-8233 — And change the default access code! www.cathysbook.com I’m interested, but what’s even more interesting is this: When I saw the ad, I immediately…
Omie
(491 Words. April 13, 2008, 10:41 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This is the gravestone of Naomi Wise. She was murdered in 1808, and her body was thrown into the Deep River. After her killer was found and escaped punishment, the killing became famous, and a ballad (or two or three) was written about the murder, Omie Wise. Omie Wise, it seems, is the wellspring of a particular tradition in American…
PS X
(16 Words. March 27, 2008, 09:08 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Adobe: Adobe Photoshop Express - Made You Look. Free image hosting and editing, 2gb storage. Interesting….
Hey
(6 Words. March 23, 2008, 10:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Heyokay, per Tom. Fuck yeah….
off the cuff
(510 Words. March 23, 2008, 06:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So my friend Andrea messaged me on Facebook wanting my thoughts on a building project in Louisville I hadn’t ever heard of. I ended up kinda going on at length and I thought that my quickie analysis might be amusing. She mentioned Stonehenge as a descriptor in her initial take on the design. — http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=127240 - bunch of renderings, better…
Lawrence the Third
(747 Words. March 18, 2008, 06:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Sunday, the League convened for an all-too-rare - although much more frequent in Seattle than most other burgs - screening of the wide-screen amazement device entitled Lawrence of Arabia. I’ve seen this film three times now in 70mm at the Cinerama, and each time, my head spins for days afterward, usually on new topics. For example, since the last…
Plants and stones
(727 Words. March 16, 2008, 11:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We spent Saturday out and about, getting starter plants and seeds for the garden after starting our day at SAM’s twin traveling exhibits, The Gates of Paradise (hurry, it closes April 6) and Roman Art from the Louvre, through May 11. It was wonderful to see the Ghiberti panels so intimately. Unfortunately, as the Louvre show is a certified blockbuster,…
League of Arabia
(207 Words. March 05, 2008, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Reposting a Leaguemail to ensure dissemination) Fellow fezzes: Spencer (note Cha-Cha League headshot), myself, and the lately-befezzed (on the Lake Union jaunt) Agent Cooper are planning to take in one of the 70mm Sunday matinees of Lawrence of Arabia at the Cinerama. Danelope has noted his availability as well. March 16 or March 23 are the Sunday showings, at noon….
Yub yub
(102 Words. March 04, 2008, 11:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Spencer screened the oddball 1929 silent/sound hybrid The Mysterious Island at NWFF tonight, and according to his presentation notes, the film was budgeted at over $4m - the equivalent, according to this, of from $40m to $400m today. You could, as they say, see the money on the screen, in huge and elaborate sets and miniatures and in a peculiar…
Noir
(105 Words. March 01, 2008, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight I foisted 1948’s Act of Violence on Viv over dinner, which largely drove her to bed. I was quite taken with the location shots in Glendale and one presumes Pasadena, the wartime fallout plot, and the lady leads, a very young but no less striking Janet Leigh and a ripe - even naturalistic - Mary Astor. According to that…
Country
(583 Words. February 22, 2008, 09:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s time to get my mind around No Country for Old Men, which of these three films remains for me the slipperiest. I’m a long-time admirer of the Coens’ work, Raising Arizona excepted (note adoption subtheme! interesting!). No Country feels materially different from all their preceding films, a result of the filmmakers’ easing off their previously aggressively mannered style. Despite…
Juneau
(640 Words. February 21, 2008, 06:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As noted recently, I clubbed Viv across the head and dragged her by her hair to attend a suite of Oscar nominated films this past weekend. I’ve already treated of There Will Be Blood, my pick for best of the three. I will ho’d off on No Country For Old Men as the film provoked the most complex, postmodern reactions…
Crumb
(200 Words. February 12, 2008, 09:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Went to the Crumb show at the Frye, which I must say is really worth hitting, especialy considering it is FREE. They have some real grails of Crumbology on display, such as the famous bathtub orgy late-60’s Fritz the Cat sequence and two or three original, unpublished childhood Arcades. The real revelation, though, and I don’t think I’m alone in…
Sparky
(22 Words. October 29, 2007, 09:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight’s American Masters looks to have been inspired by the new biography, and so far I am enjoying it, good grief….
Sir Ian
(45 Words. September 03, 2007, 10:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I just watched the 1995 Ian McKellen production of Richard III, something I have been wanting to watch since its’ US theatrical release, and it really blew me away, even considering occasional deviations of tone in editing or performer’s choice. Brain food….
Lit
(742 Words. July 28, 2007, 04:42 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Unexpectedly free on a Friday night, I rang Spence and we saw Sunshine (IMDB) at the Neptune last night. Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), the film’s narrative concerns a second and final attempt to reignite the dying hearth of Sol via nuclear injection. I think the film is actually most concerned with three non-narrative filmic objectives. I’ll…
For the love of God
(291 Words. June 04, 2007, 07:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Damien Hirst’s Skull - a photoset on Flickr. It may surprise some, or perhaps it will not, that I think this is clearly Hirst’s greatest work and possibly the greatest work of art of all time. I suppose if I had the opportunity to closely interact with the piece, the first thing I would do is take the jaw off…
La Musique
(76 Words. May 02, 2007, 10:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
How pleasant to hear NPR’s coverage of the Ponderosa Stomp as I pulled in to the carport this evening and to end the night with Ahmet Ertegun’s valediction on the PBS. Astonishing to be reminded that the Stax men, Booker’s band, were Otis Redding’s sidemen. How amazing to have been introduced to the persons playing the instruments via that…
Seraph Asterix
(82 Words. April 24, 2007, 06:21 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Serafini’s Codex: “The Codex Seraphinianus was written and illustrated by Italian graphic designer and architect, Luigi Serafini during the late 1970’s. The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and…
Josh Bell rocks (?) the DC Metro
(450 Words. April 07, 2007, 08:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
WaPo recasts Josh as busker. He’s game. DC commuters? um. Point: JOSH! I really, really liked this. I sent this note to the WaPo team responsible for the piece. Thank you all for making my day. I knew Josh, distantly, as a kid when we were growing up in Bloomington. I haven’t seen him except to be aware of…
Deadwood
(609 Words. March 10, 2007, 08:52 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I have been thinking about westerns on and off this year - I’m working my way through Deadwood and a trip to The Searchers and The Man who Shot Liberty Valance seems in order. I might want to review the Leone / Eastwood Man with No Name stuff too but that material is much more familiar to me than…
Casting
(156 Words. March 03, 2007, 07:21 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We held casting auditions for the film today at the Shoreline Historical Society, and thanks to the hard work of Greg and Joey, saw the impressive talents of about forty actors. We had a wealth of talented and attractive performers for the female lead, but much fewer for the male roles. Happily, two of the guys that gave it…
RIP, noisily
(42 Words. February 25, 2007, 10:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Per Bart: Funeral for a Friend. Helen Hill gets laid to rest in NOLA. Alternafreaks lay claim to the foundations of American culture and win a stake to the title by blood right. Get the fuck out of the way, dammit….
Flood
(118 Words. February 25, 2007, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Thanks to Mugu Brainpan, I wonder if the triumph that is the They Might Be Giants LP Flood moughtn’t relate to the ‘hermetic artist’ Robert Fludd. In a previous online life, copious speculation on a graphic-design email list I belonged to led to the enunciation of a postulated theory of hermetic design, as modernist design principles are closely founded…
Islamic geometry
(80 Words. February 24, 2007, 10:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Here’s the Beeb on that story about the advanced geometry of Islamic art I was flappin’ my gums about at Greg and Stacey’s t’other day. The coverage doesn’t capture the “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK” sense I had as I listened to the coverage, but the last time I really had the same sense of the obvious was listening to Colin…
Vampire's Kiss redeems Skull Cyclist
(105 Words. February 23, 2007, 08:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
E. Steven chez SIFFBlog stands the fuck up for Nick. The New Yorker review (I think, can’t recall exactly) celebrated the performance as well. Citing other reviewers’ appreciation of my own fave Cage vehicle, the gotta-see-it-to-beleive-it-Vampire’s-Kiss (best if watched as the lead-in on a double bill with Repulsion), he builds to this inescapable, irrefutable truth: Lastly, and most importantly,…
TERRIBLE SEMANTIC CONFUSION IMPERILS MILLIONS
(451 Words. February 18, 2007, 11:22 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
It seems that the International Atomic Energy Agency has determined that it must needs stand up for terrible design and design by committee with the release of the eye-poppingly fucked-up ‘improvement’ to the extant rediation symbol. Seriously, how stupid can an international bureaucracy be? The long-held symbol, the well-known three-wedge-on-yellow design, effectively combined the four dark areas of a…
Apple Torrrent
(131 Words. February 16, 2007, 07:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cringely pulls some amusing speculation outta his piehole on why a) iTV has a hard drive and b) iTV, Mini, and the new-model Airport all are designed as stackable components. Where others would boldy solve the conundrum with cries of ‘design obsessives!’, der Cringler connects the dots via Unca Stevie’s recently declared jihad on DRM and foresees Apple edging…
Accommodations
(5 Words. February 14, 2007, 06:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
…but you can never leave….
Wake
(137 Words. February 08, 2007, 05:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As I waited to turn north on 4th on my way home, an odd-looking plane, banking in to Boeing Field, caught my eye. Never having seen one on approach to a dirt landing, the steeply-raked engines atop the wing fooled me into unknowing. The plane, a flying boat in U. S. Navy dress blue-and-gold, was almost certainly a restored…
Buzzkill
(111 Words. January 28, 2007, 10:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Buzzcocks soundtrack for AARP ad. When viewed in the context of a particularly grim Battlestar Galactica, it’s enough to give me the willies. Torture! Suicide! 30-year-old music written by teenagers used to sell retirement planning to 60-year olds! Divorce! Adultery! Heart-numbing use of the drink! I suppose, given the episodes’ topics of faith, loyalty, love and betrayal, a better…
Pull my finger
(332 Words. January 13, 2007, 06:16 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I went to see Cuaron’s Children of Men last night, and I fervently insist most of you, save those in New Orleans, rush forth to see it. I don’t have anything detailed to add to the positive critical opinion already made copiously available, save noting that I very much enjoyed the subtle use of editing and slapstick…
YouTube and the niche and the cinema.
(24 Words. November 10, 2006, 06:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
THE GREAT WAR IN THE AIR: ACES OF THE WESTERN FRONT Some plane geek holds forth, knowledgeably, for about THREE HOURS. I love it….
Flyboys
(757 Words. September 24, 2006, 12:33 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Well, Viv and I made the arduous trek to far Lynnwood to see Flyboys last night. Presumably due to the unorthodox funding model employed by the film (the producers made the film with their own money), the film has terrible distribution in the Seattle area, playing only far-edge suburban screens. That said, the film is a very old-fashioned war…
Cringely on Apple iTV
(122 Words. September 24, 2006, 11:59 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cringley has some interesting things to say about Apple’s announced iTV strategy. He makes a big deal out of using iTV to bring video-based iChat to the living room TV set and talks some trash in Redmond’s direction. What’s funny about this to me is that I have my Mini set up with my old Firewire iSight for just…
Wet and Regret
(21 Words. September 20, 2006, 06:04 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Old Joy - Review - Movies - New York Times. Why is this flick opening in Manhattan? Sounds lovely!…
Federation Propaganda
(11 Words. September 18, 2006, 10:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
DS9 and Galactica hooncho Ron Moore on Trek in the NYT….
Nieuport
(24 Words. September 13, 2006, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Extensive, interesting article on the production of the upcoming Flyboys, which, you’ll be unsurprised to note, has me in a tizzy of anticipation….
nearly wrapped
(237 Words. August 13, 2006, 05:47 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
About 2 hours ago, we struck for the night. We have two pickups to bang out in the morning - I’m guessing around 11 am - and the shoot will be over and we pack it up and head home to Seattle. I am very happy with the results - the shots look great, we got good sound, and…
200 Distilfinks
(50 Words. July 23, 2006, 10:40 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
NYT: For the Pennsylvania Dutch, a Long Tradition Fades. 200 of 800 Pennsylvania Dutch barn ‘hex signs’ remain. Odd, I recall seeing these a great deal in the early seventies as our family drove around the lower northeast. Seems like there must have been more than 800 at one time….
More Trek Fan Film Coverage
(248 Words. July 22, 2006, 08:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NPR ran a five-minute end-of-the-hour feature on the New Voyages Star Trek fan film crew this morning. As is becoming par for these stories, passing acknowledgment was made that this crew is not the only one making these fan-produced episodes, but the entirety of he reporting was focused on Cawley’s project. This is likely as much a reflection os…
Pie Rrrrate
(264 Words. July 07, 2006, 10:25 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Some anarchist (I take it) examination of Pirate Utopias. The film was pretty good, but not as great as the first, which has stood up well indeed. Viv and I just watched it yesterday evening and even as familiar as it it is now, there are repeated moments in which I shook my head in wondering appreciation of the…
Butchart Gardens
(117 Words. June 17, 2006, 12:02 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These fountains are animated and wave around and so forth. This is the floor of a quarry that was landscaped to form the heart of Butchart Gardens from the turn of the century to the forties, if I understood correctly. It’s hard to overemphasize how dramatic this fountain is - it’s a complex visual pun on the mind’s visual…
ChatFX
(85 Words. June 04, 2006, 10:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
ChatFX adds a miscellany of video effects to iChat. I actually pitched a similar concept to a video-oriented software producer about two years ago but nothing came of it. The specific possibility I see for software such as this is not so much the predictable, silly uses of it. I see the possibility of adding an additional layer of…
Developing
(145 Words. May 26, 2006, 05:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Paul of A Crank’s Progress ruminates on the death of film, informatively and (despite his self-perception that the post is long) with admirable efficiency. While I certainly understand the potential threat to our visible heritage in the disappearance of photographic prints from our patrimony, I myself celebrate it as one less burden to drag toward the grave. As someone…
Kewpie Savior Angst
(11 Words. May 21, 2006, 03:52 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Rejoice, for the Kewpie has been born unto the commercial artist….
Eye popper
(5 Words. May 21, 2006, 03:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Madonna and kewpie, circa 1930s….
Three
(1 Words. May 20, 2006, 12:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Feets!…
Wet Lens
(10 Words. May 13, 2006, 12:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Old camera? A dunk might make it new again….
That's the ticket
(78 Words. May 02, 2006, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Today I received word that all my active writers over at SIFFBlog will be granted press passes for the festival. I’m kind of in shock. I do not have time to use a pass, so I did not apply - I suppose now it’s incumbent upon me to figure out what events I am to attend. I need to…
Finding Lost
(103 Words. April 08, 2006, 01:03 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
cityofsound: Why Lost is genuinely new media [via thingsmagazine.net] Far out. The author notes that there is a book for sale on Amazon seen on the show as a manuscript being read by Hurley, and cites the author bio from the online bookseller’s listing: “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary…
Buck-Ninety-nine
(192 Words. April 06, 2006, 10:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
FREE*PASS: All the copyright rubbish you can take for $99 a year, or $1.99 per flick. Despite my distinct perception that this is cinematic shovelware, I have not taken the time to see if all the UK Hitchcock they have is actually from archive.org or if it’s sublicensed from commercial distribution. I will note that they have a ton…
D70 on stage
(49 Words. April 04, 2006, 12:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
D70 on stage Hopefully, this will implement the new posting template, although yesterday’s post had some sort of line break bug that this implementation may not redress. I suppose the next thing is to find the equivalent of post-by-mail with Flickr for audio and movies off this device, eh?…
V
(22 Words. March 23, 2006, 08:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Greatest Bus Driver in the World has a heartfelt rant inspired by the Alan Moore disowned V is for Vendetta….
Yow!
(23 Words. March 22, 2006, 06:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This can’t last, but: LOTSA GOODIES. Silents, TV shows, copyright violation galore. The stuff I want is outta (c) anyhoo, but, dig….
Apres le Deluge
(12 Words. March 17, 2006, 02:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor B announces that ROX #93 is up and available for perusal….
Money will get you through.. no, wait...
(12 Words. February 09, 2006, 06:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
via FLOG: there’s a stop-motion Freak Brothers movie in production. Dear God….
Pelted
(387 Words. January 27, 2006, 11:19 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I also saw Narnia tonight, finally. Viv liked it considerably more than I did. She did not notice the three-hour running time; I did, and I also noticed some scenes which appeared to refer to cut scenes presumably excised to sweeten the DVD, something which irks me a bit. The excisions should be seamless; apparently, though, Viv…
Mars
(88 Words. January 25, 2006, 07:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The NYT previews an IMAX film, in 3D, about the odds-beating Mars Rover program. Space and 3D: two great tastes that would go great together, if there was any way to actually experience depth perception beyond 100 yards in a vaccuum. Spencer and Viv and I had the pleasure of viewing the Ron Howard / Tom Hanks jernt aboot…
DVD 2 iPod
(17 Words. December 25, 2005, 10:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software. QUERY: do I have to help?…
D'ohmage
(74 Words. November 25, 2005, 10:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The night before Thanksgiving, while out carousing with a subset of the usual reprobates, I appear to have lost the Minolta D’image that i so valued for its’ image quality and movies. Front runner for replacement is a current-gen Elph, but the proprietary rechargeable battery gives me pause. This also means I have to bust out the feared Kodak…
bust
(43 Words. November 19, 2005, 10:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
sorry, folks, something’s awry between iPhoto and flickrexport this evening, so no photo updates on flickr for a while. It’s too bad, really. We found some stamps in the house, one of which appears to be a russian 20-kopek stamp dating to 1889….
La laa, la la laaa
(487 Words. November 14, 2005, 09:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
What do you call a workday that begins at 6 am and ends at 8 pm? In other news, we bought the floor for the house’s large family room over the weekend, about $1.5k, in a thicker-plank red oak than the existing oak that was under the carpets. On the whole, the remodel is on track to go over…
If Dan could see this
(23 Words. November 01, 2005, 08:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Danelope may be interested to learn that Werner Herzog will be in town attending four screenings of his films at the NWFF….
Some statements.
(165 Words. October 15, 2005, 03:22 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The video iPod is not yet in Apple stores. There is an Apple-hosted page on converting or creating video content for your iPod here. In essence, downsize it to spec using Quicktime 7 tools. There is a page here which covers working with Tivo To Go content, importing and exporting it to and from the DRM the content comes wrapped…
Bulk to Flickr
(139 Words. October 09, 2005, 12:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a part of my multivalent photo-storage disaster, I am finally exporting from iPhoto to Flickr. The flickrexport iPhoto plugin works OK, but I need to export about 150 albums to Flickr as sets with the same names as the albums. Flickrexport allows one to export more than one album at a time, but it does not automatically create…
It's in the cuts
(18 Words. October 06, 2005, 07:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor b has released a ‘rough cut’ of his evacuation from New Orleans just over a month ago….
Eat the Document preview at Siffblog
(152 Words. October 03, 2005, 05:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Over on Siffblog, E. Steven Fried notes that the EMP will be showing D. A. Pennebaker’s Eat the Document shortly. I saw the post title and subject and mistakenly took it for a review of No Direction Home; I had been mulling a review of the film myself but think I said I what I had to say, more…
Reinvention
(57 Words. September 25, 2005, 09:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’m gonna be busy Monday and Tuesday night, looks like. This is old damn news, but dylanchords is not just a useful resource for finding chords to songs that Dylan has performed; looking though the site, I found chords for many traditional songs that I have long been familiar with but not seen in this familiar format….
Found
(31 Words. September 21, 2005, 08:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, watching Lost tonight after watching a plane land on bum gear at LAX this evening has affected my experience of the show. I’m not sure in what way, exactly….
ESF on RM
(37 Words. September 21, 2005, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is E. Steven Fried’s epic review of a Russ Meyer bio. Word on the street is that Mr. Fried will be making the scene at the too-happenin’ NWFF 10th anniversary party tonight….
Glub glub
(16 Words. September 20, 2005, 05:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
League brother Manuel posts some underwater movies of his recent snorkeling adventures in unlikely Seattle locales….
I see
(43 Words. September 12, 2005, 10:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
TidBITS takes a look at ShowMacster, an add-on for iChat that allows you to add inline video and photos to the outbound video stream, so your conversation partner can see slides or clips directly in the cintext of the iChat videoconference window….
Takeover
(14 Words. September 10, 2005, 11:42 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
He jgumped upt onntp the kpbbrd and sat dwn befpre helping with this entry….
Chopper
(73 Words. September 10, 2005, 02:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On September 2, Rocketboom posted 10 minutes of semi-raw footage from a helicopter flying over the deeply-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans. The footage includes radio chatter, and the longest segment captures a military Huey picking up a group of survivors from a rooftop. The pilots of the various helicopters struggle to establish radio contact and when people on the…
Plywood
(29 Words. September 09, 2005, 09:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
…one more Katrina thing: a French Quarter resident had the presence of mind to shot his entire Katrina experience, and the resulting photoset is very much worth your while….
Not Dead Yet
(281 Words. September 05, 2005, 06:30 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A few folks have corresponded with me via email about this, but I feel like I should address it here as well. This was originally posted to Siffblog; I try to crosspost here as well. Tablet has announced that the current issue, #103, will be the final edition of the magazine. While Siffblog has been affiliated with Tablet, I…
Dune
(19 Words. September 02, 2005, 11:46 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Alejandro Jodorowsky on his unmade 1970’s adaptation of Dune. [Big ups to Dr. Alice Dee for this ‘un!]…
Seward Park
(14 Words. August 14, 2005, 12:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We spent a happy afternoon with Chris and Sabrina in Seward Park this evening….
Kaspar's Kouch
(27 Words. August 12, 2005, 10:31 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New-minted Siffblogger E. Steven Fried shines a light into the dark recesses of Kaspar’s Kouch Film Festival. Now that is my kinda festival, lemme tell you….
Ballard
(8 Words. July 30, 2005, 10:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
A couple weeks ago in Ballard, on dumpsters:…
Hardware is Software
(14 Words. July 28, 2005, 09:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I saw this recently, and thought of you, and you, and you, and me….
The Nyback illusion
(259 Words. July 26, 2005, 07:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Devoted filmist and friend of SIFFblog Alice Dee passes on a line to note an event of interest to us all: For two weeks film archivist and historian DENNIS NYBACK will be residing at THE GRAND ILLUSION CINEMA showing 27 programs in 14 days consisting of over 100 films! Week one features some of his rarest and most entertaining…
Empire
(117 Words. July 22, 2005, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Jon Konrath passes along a link to the Google Maps satellite view of the Breaking Away quarry and the nearby complex of quarries. The linked review is a must-read, by the way. I thought it was interesting that he located it by searching for “Empire Mill Road,” as it was a staple of Bloomington folklore that Bloomington limestone is…
Ken
(20 Words. July 21, 2005, 10:03 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Hard at work. Holding forth on the subject of mattress copy. Pointing out a possible error in historical attribution….
Lack of local color
(28 Words. July 19, 2005, 09:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I was amused on zooming way out in the satellite view of Google Maps to note a possible reason for my having left Indiana as a young man….
Golden Ticket
(28 Words. July 15, 2005, 09:05 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I think you’ll agree that the only sensible response to today’s Burton/Depp Charlie is to rent the 1972 original. No one comes in, and no one goes out….
Cringley joins the fray
(132 Words. July 08, 2005, 05:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Venerable statesman of the networked and nerdly Robert X. Cringely announces his entree (or is that re-entry) to the media-blog-o-sphere, introducing a new version of the always-entertaining and often influential I, Cringley that will somehow tie into his PBS-slash-online TV show, NerdTV. What’s interesting about this is: a) he terms the new show “videoblogging,” which seems a stretch, but…
Galactica
(115 Words. July 06, 2005, 10:30 PM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
SciFi’s running a marathon of Ron Moore’s Galactica and I’m finally able to take the time to watch. It is, as has been widely reported, pretty darn good. I have noted with amusement some clearly deliberate nods to Bungie’s beloved Marathon - as a small flight of ships drops out of jumpspace into a swarm of Cylon ships, a…
Paintnins
(29 Words. June 13, 2005, 09:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This AskMe thread begins with a plaintive cry into the dark void of space concerning a series of late seventies sci-fi coffeetable books, and uncovers a secret universe….
Pole
(210 Words. June 12, 2005, 03:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s intermission at the kabuki show. We just saw ‘Tied to a Pole,’ in which two rascally servants contrive ingenious ways to drink the master’s sake while tied to a pole or with their hands behind their back. The use of bondage as a theme in a play which the program notes decribed both as stemming from an older…
Practice
(58 Words. June 09, 2005, 08:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For over a year, I have played music with Greg and Karel on Thursday nights. Karel has had a raft of scheduling conflicts, and so we have rescheduled. Tonight, that meant that I had the pleasure of watching the Friends spinoff Joey for the first time. It’s truly no wonder that Thursday nights were originally selected for practice….
Whiteface
(187 Words. June 08, 2005, 11:32 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Alright, one more thing before I crack the snoozer book. We’re going to one of the kabuki shows this weekend at the Paramount, and I can’t wait. I think I may have attended a kabuki performance around 1978 in Japan, but I do not have a clear recollection of it, and it may simply be a false memory. So…
Siffy
(37 Words. June 08, 2005, 11:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, I’ve mentioned this before, so forgive me. The SIFFbloggers are really going to town over there - four, five posts a day, comments, building traffic, the whole schmeer. It makes me so proud. Sniff….
SIFF blog
(12 Words. June 01, 2005, 09:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’m happy to say the Siffblog has had its’ first hundred-visitor day!…
Episode III: Capital!
(389 Words. May 30, 2005, 11:09 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Viv and I saw Star Wars Ep. III tonight after a wander about the Pike Place Market Festival. In short, my opinion is on the median - much better than the other two recent films, not the greatest SF film I have ever seen, a few scenes that were quite successful on any terms. I’m sure everyone in the…
RIP Jason Sprinkle
(124 Words. May 25, 2005, 10:13 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The PI’s Buzzworthy notes the death of Jason Sprinkle, who instigated a bookended pair of guerilla art projects here in Seattle. I read the obit in the paper today, and I felt quite sad as I read the news. Sprinkle’s first art prank, a ball-and-chain attached to the foot of SAM’s Hammering Man downtown (to my surprise, over a…
CC WiFi
(43 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:41 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The P-I’s Buzzworthy notes the launch sites for a City of Seattle municipal WiFi pilot project: Columbia City and the U. I suppose this may well make Chris, Sabrina, and Dan’s lives easier. Say, when was that Minutemen movie again?…
And Curtain
(144 Words. May 17, 2005, 04:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, you’ve probably heard that this time out the NYT’s A. O. Scott rejects, I’m sorry to say, a curb-stomping for Star Wars, Episode III (sorry for the link, but the blogerator appears to be down.) Apparently eager to make up for it, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane unleashes a review of overreaching vituperation which fails to amuse in…
Boules
(21 Words. May 15, 2005, 06:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Movies from the MetaFilter bowling meetup last weekend. This one has the infamous fatllama victory dance. My overdue pix here….
War Room
(144 Words. May 14, 2005, 05:16 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I walked into The War Room, a new club on Capitol Hill, recently. I had noticed that the deck was open, but when we walked in, the interior space was completely empty. All of the hung art - and possibly the club logo - is by Stewart Fairey of “Obey Giant” fame. The club adertises free wifi….
Isdle
(0 Words. May 14, 2005, 05:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The whale
(98 Words. May 12, 2005, 11:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I saw Hitchhiker’s Guide this evening, expecting nothing, and came away reasonably happy. Like many old-skool geeks, I had a particular relationship with the radio and book incarnations of this series and subsequent to last year’s disastrous rental of the eye-scorchingly terrible BBC-TV series. The elegiac tone - and subsurface, if you will, presence of departed creator…
The League
(8 Words. May 01, 2005, 08:20 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dan notes Tom’s Are We Not Men? flickrset….
Sphinx
(3 Words. April 28, 2005, 08:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cat with wings:…
mg tc
(57 Words. April 27, 2005, 07:48 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As I stepped out of the house into a cool, misty morning, a British racing-green MG TC wheeled round the corner, top down in the dew. The driver sported a leather aviator’s helmet with flight goggles and was also wearing a worn leather driving coat, collar secured against the tempest. I smiled to see such a sight….
Teevee
(343 Words. April 19, 2005, 05:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Well over a month ago, we inadvertently became a semi no-TV household. Our satellite provider mailed us a replacement ‘smart card’ for our satellite box, a five-year-old WebTV-integrated PVR which we have never used as a PVR or as a WebTV device but only as a receiver. The smart card managed to disable the device, and so the only…
Goodwill
(758 Words. April 02, 2005, 11:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Well, having some unexpected free time, we went back to Goodwill and found some glasses. They weren’t the ones we’d come up with initially, but they’ll do. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy picking through the glassware at Goodwill - it’s like a giant, transparent, three-dimensional puzzle, and your challenge is to find the items that match….
Zombi Look
(654 Words. February 19, 2005, 10:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Lessee now. What got done today? Not that much. I did pick up a cheap amplifier, but declined to wrestle the octopus of my A/V stack tonight. I discovered a friend had recently Switched, and left him a message of congrats. I also found that another old friend (an old friend from Seattle, mind you) is a MeFite. Here’s hoping…
Sunrise
(309 Words. February 08, 2005, 07:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last night, Spence, Viv, and I attended the first of four Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount this month. The film was F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. The film’s plot tells of a married village couple. The husband is tempted into an affair by a seductress from The City, and she encourages him to murder his wife. He sets out to…
Dy-no-mite
(107 Words. February 05, 2005, 09:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I watched Napoleon Dynamite tonight. It inspires four comments: It seems likely that I went to high school with the person who scored the movie. Speaking of scores, the music that plays immediately following Napoleon’s big dance triumph is Music for a Found Harmonium, which is a tune that has been a part of my (and Greg’s and…
Spence on Melies, an update
(1041 Words. February 05, 2005, 04:37 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dear friend Spencer Sundell, who of late has taken to squirrelling away tins of obscure 8mm film rarities, dropped by an earlier entry to update us on the works of Georges Méliès. I myself remain locked in my tower of Google research on a couple of posts, and so this much juicy gum-flappin’ begs to be promoted from comment to…
Struts
(501 Words. January 29, 2005, 05:48 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
We saw The Aviator with Spence last night. It was… OK. The subject, Howard Hughes’ life as aviation-industry obsessive, is of intrinsic interest to me, and there’s a link filled post in gestation, prompted by many questions I had as I watched the film. But after sleeping on it, despite DiCaprio’s worthwhile performance, there’s no way that this should be…
The real retail jet
(29 Words. December 18, 2004, 02:41 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A 747 took a leisurely tour of Amsterdam yestereen. Courtesy Viewropa. The framing on some of the shots is delish. Keey an eye peeled for the minicar….
A Very Long Engagement
(1071 Words. December 18, 2004, 06:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Crossposted from Tablet’s Siffblog, soon to become Tablet’s Filmblog.) In late November, Viv and I were happy to attend a Cinema Seattle preview screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s newest film, A Very Long Engagement. The film stars Audrey Tatou, who also had the lead in Amèlie. The film concerns a young woman’s search for her fiancé, missing in the trenches…
Superpolymesh
(226 Words. December 05, 2004, 01:06 AM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Viv and I just got back from seeing The Incredibles (finally), and I won’t bore you with predictable rantings about its’ excellence. I will say, however, that word on a certain Randian subtext is clearly correct. Part of the film’s triumph is the remarkable fact that this did not provoke sneering on my part. I certainly cannot wait for…
Neko
(306 Words. November 28, 2004, 02:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Last night we went to see Neko Case at Neumo’s. Click the pic for more blurry pix. I shot a fair amount of video, too. I’ll link to the clips here; they are all in quicktime format. The show opened with the out-of-place on the bill Dexter Romweber, a true southern madman, who was in fine form. Despite this,…
Jeunet
(247 Words. November 23, 2004, 07:22 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
On Sunday, Viv and I went to a Cinema Seattle screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s upcoming film, A Very Long Engagement, which stars Audrey Tatou as a young woman whose fiancé fails to return from the trenches of the First World War, and sets about finding him. I saw the film for review, so I’ll skip the windbaggery here until…
Craig Thompson Awards Sweep
(327 Words. November 21, 2004, 04:37 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In my inbox today is a press release from Portland-based Top Shelf Comix, properly tooting their own horn on a first time eent in the history of comics. Portland-based comics author Craig Thompson swept the comics industry awards this year, winning every award he was nominated for in recognition of the stunning accomplishment of his second graphic novel, the…
New Voyage
(414 Words. November 20, 2004, 10:11 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Apparently I haven’t been paying close enough attention, as in October the Star Trek: New Voyages project released their second episode, In Harm’s Way. Regrettably, it seems they also have not been paying attention, as it’s impossible to ID the content from the URL or storage structure they have implemented at the moment. Presumably, someday, a more effectively designed…
1919
(127 Words. November 16, 2004, 09:45 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Yesterday morning on my way to work, I glanced through the cold morning rain to see a cardboard box in the alley near a bus stop. A tattered piece of cardboard caught my eye, turn-of-the-century display type peeking out from the pile of debris. I investigated and found a stash of theatrical posters from St. Louis, dated between 1919…
Monkey Tee, Monkey Do
(21 Words. November 06, 2004, 01:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Monkeyfilter is considering teeshirts. Here’s my rather obvious suggestion. I think I’m still working on it. See you at the Elysian!…
him name animal
(83 Words. November 05, 2004, 10:18 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s a put on, but I chuckled all the same. Of course, as I took the picture, a couple of the zombies that currently infest our neighborhood leered into my personal space. The tall scabrous-faced one began asking half-informed questions about the camera, which I dodged. Hm, I thought. Should I discuss my small, eminently stealable technology toy with…
Simple
(16 Words. November 03, 2004, 07:21 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
God damn, Blood Simple is on IFC and I tells ya, that movie makes me laugh!…
Less like a rocketship
(29 Words. October 31, 2004, 10:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Comedy Central is playing episodes of That’s My Bush. Election-season tomfoolery, or do I just never stay up this late? I thought they yanked it, totally, after 9/11….
Spooooky
(10 Words. October 31, 2004, 12:06 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Here are some Halloween images I’ve come across this month….
the shocker, i think
(4 Words. October 30, 2004, 06:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
My upstairs neighbor’s punkin….
All this and an eclipse too
(15 Words. October 27, 2004, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
See? This is sunset at MSH, happening as I post! I mean look at it!…
Moonlight and dawn
(62 Words. October 25, 2004, 08:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Moonlight on the new snow reveals the mountain and the plume of steam around eleven last night. Seven a.m. Eight a.m. Man, the images are so beautiful sometimes. I wish the camera had a higher resolution or a crisper CCD - the visual appeal of these thumbs is sometimes not met by the full-size imagery, owing to artifacts in…
The Glow
(19 Words. October 20, 2004, 07:05 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally! A break in the cloud cover reveals it is as we have suspected! MSH is now Mt. Doom….
Simon
(14 Words. October 16, 2004, 11:18 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
And of course, a cat picture, to keep things in tune. (It’s a yawn.)…
mountain, four trees
(225 Words. October 15, 2004, 07:43 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Yeah, yeah, more than four trees, and I’m standing on the mountain, OK? Having Mt. St. Helens up in the upper right corner of this page is proving interesting in ways I did not expect. For example, two days ago, I was up before dawn and happened to see dawn break over the mountain. A tiny bright spot in…
Storefront
(10 Words. October 14, 2004, 07:15 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In the Greenwood area. One of my favorite Seattle-area facades….
Snap
(96 Words. October 11, 2004, 07:37 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Arguments for and against Armageddon, one of an infinite series. Heated political discussion on the shores of Green Lake. Evidence in favor of a healthy democracy. Argument against! Topic of the argument: war in the Middle East involving Americans, Israelis, and Arabs. Argument for! Verdict: A draw. An in-store display of orange, green, and purple pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat lootbags. Argument…
How to steal a Zeppelin
(1166 Words. October 02, 2004, 07:28 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
This is the final installment of Blimp Week II, folks, and I’m playing a couple of requests. Soon-to-be parasite on society Paul Frankenstein (he’s famous, you know) IMs, suggesting the title above. Ergo: 1. Go to Google Image search. 2. Enter the word “zeppelin” and hit the submit button. 3. Steal as many zeppelins as you’d like. Thank you!…
How to look at a Zeppelin
(784 Words. October 01, 2004, 07:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Man, am I beat. Thus, some brevity, in theory. Let’s set things up for a ruminantive journey by peeking in on FROM BABYKILLER TO ART DECO ICON: images of the airship, authored in 2002 and concluding with a paragraph that looks ahead to the coming hypercapitalist celebration of the airship. Having digested that (and franked the letters as apprpriate)…
Sky Captain and the Blimp Week of Tomorrow
(1679 Words. September 25, 2004, 10:57 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I caught Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (link advisory: flash, loud SFX) this afternoon. Following the film we ate at the lovely Le Pichet, a tiny French bistro on First, next to the Virginia Inn. The meal was quite pricey but the food was very good. Sky Captain, as you must know by now, is interesting…
Let's hope so
(129 Words. September 17, 2004, 12:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’: Fending Off Alien Robots, but Still Time to Flirt [NYT] - One of the most positive reviews of an SF film I’ve ever read at the Times, by Stephen Holden. He complains only of the murk (“at times the film is hard to see”), and that perhaps you darn kids won’t get what’s…
Video
(798 Words. August 29, 2004, 07:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent much of today pushing and pulling at the random video sniplets being generated by our two video-capable digital cameras. I’ve blogged before about shortfalls in Apple’s iTools regarding the use-practice of toting these things (essentially, it’s impossible to just dump the video onto an archival DVD mastered via iDVD). Poking about in semi-familiar software is a fine and…
Iphigenia at Aulis
(233 Words. August 27, 2004, 07:27 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Having managed to view fragments amounting to one half of the final episode of the decidedly average The Spartans, I variously learned or was reminded that: Upon the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, about 7,000 Athenian invaders were imprisoned for a fair period of time in a quarry at Syracuse, exposed to the elements and fading fast. According to the transcript…
The City Rises
(8 Words. August 20, 2004, 07:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Construction crane near Madison, dusk, early August 2004)…
Red Noses
(368 Words. August 17, 2004, 12:18 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This weekend, Viv and I went to a free production of the play Red Noses in a nearby park. It’s running through the end of the month at the Miller Community Center on 19th, just over the hill from Safeway on 15th. The play garnered a lukewarm review in the P-I recently, and I have to concur in the judgement…
in a lonely place
(244 Words. August 16, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Saturday night, I caught two Bogart films on TMC, 1951’s uneven The Enforcer, a fictionalization of the discovery and prosecution of the notorious Murder, Inc., and a great film I’d unaccountably missed in my peerings at and mumblings on the era’s work. That film is In a Lonely Place (1950), based on the recently-republished Dorothy Hughes title of the same…
ividly
(594 Words. August 15, 2004, 11:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month). As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry…
Hitting the books
(432 Words. August 11, 2004, 05:53 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Well, yesterday’s filmic experiment was a dud, apparently due to my ignorant choice of media to export the file to. Once, I swear, I had all this stuff down, but it’s been a few years since I needed to whack off a movie clip for download and browser display. I guess I expected iMovie to just take care of that…
Microfilm
(488 Words. August 10, 2004, 08:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(1 minute. 6 mb 1.8 mb, 320 x 240 mpeg, no audio. Control-click to download, looks like I have Apache set to not stream mpegs or something.) As I mentioned, Viv and I (and Spencer) were out of town this weekend. We were on the Olympic peninsula, in an ill-advised attempt to visit the Hoh river valley on the…
February, 2003
(5 Words. August 08, 2004, 09:08 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Second Avenue, Seattle. 11:00 pm….
Annabel Lee; The Banjo - grotesque fantasie; and so forth
(221 Words. August 04, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The eagle eyed Manuel linkied me via email with ye olde Duke U. repository of American sheet music cover pages, covering the years between 1850 and 1920. Each decade is presented in its’ own browsable gallery, although it takes a few clicks to get to the good stuff. But the good stuff, well, it’s good. A typographical horror representing the…
Super
(8 Words. August 03, 2004, 07:06 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The market can be a happy, happy place….
Vici Video et Vino
(235 Words. July 25, 2004, 06:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My parents are back from a global jaunt, and so we’ve returned too near-daily IM and video chat. I’m very happy about this, as for a spate of years I had simply come to accept infrequent contact with them as the natural state of affairs. Thanks to iChat and AIM, I can see and talk to them every day that…
Cam, gear, shaft
(252 Words. July 19, 2004, 07:16 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I bought Viv a Minolta DiMage X20 as an anniversary present. My primary criteria were size, cost, and standard batteries (I hate manufacturer-proprietary rechargeables). It’s currently available at Amazon for $170, a somewhat different price than I paid. I was very surprised at the camera’s bounty of features, which includes (as do many cameras these days) low-res digital video clips…
The Pepper Tree
(233 Words. July 15, 2004, 07:03 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In the earlier post referencing a photo-log of my commute, I expressed grumpiness that the captions of the images failed to properly appear in Gallery. One reason is that the interesting tree seen here was not annotated. It’s a Brazilian pepper tree, a problem plant in Florida. The tree is just behind the Canal Boiler Works but probably not on…
... And the Dame, Too.
(245 Words. July 14, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A wave of film noir is due on DVD shortly, hurrah! From the Wikipedia link above: Film noir tends to feature characters trapped in a situation (often a situation not of their making) and making choices out of desperation. Frequent themes are murder, betrayal, and infidelity. Films noirs tend to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast (a technique called low-key…
Hi ho
(53 Words. July 13, 2004, 06:36 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Although there is a bus ride in the middle, here are the things I see every day on my way to work. Yesterday morning, though, there was an added attraction: the burned-out remnants of Hillcrest Market. A walk to work. (Grumble. The captions didn’t come over from iPhoto and I’m out of steam.)…
¡Hasta La Victoria!
(181 Words. July 11, 2004, 11:16 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Today was an insanely busy day. Errand after errand. Luckily, we were able to meet up with Spence for dinner and finally catch F 9/11, which stood up. It was like hearing an impassioned argument. It’s worth seeing, and on the way home, Viv was saying how she wished she could get her Cuban-emigré parents to see it. She heated…
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand
(977 Words. July 03, 2004, 10:36 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I caught Spiderman 2 this afternoon, after a few errands. We ran into Tom and Rachel on their way to see F911, outside their building. There were so many movies opening this weekend or last that I wish to see, I was uncertain what we would watch, leaving it up to semi-random chance. Predictably enough, the film with…
Vegan Roadkill
(47 Words. July 01, 2004, 07:29 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The roadkill cooked slowly, only gradually charring enough to allow one to easily slough the charred skin. Once that material patched off, an unsightly orange tone was observed in the yet-underdone flesh of the item. Later, we were set upon by a night nibbler….
Oh too
(66 Words. June 30, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I was without oxygen, and equally without beer. It was only a matter of time until it was all over. No doubt they would find me, sprawled amidst the rock and snow, feed cap semaphoring over the miles, flickering yellow and off, yellow and off. If not for the backwash of the snowboarders’ leavings, I would be dead toady,…
54 Buick P-40 Special
(122 Words. June 29, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
As we drove south on Chuckanut Drive, overlooking the waters that hold the San Juans, we came across this lovely militarian art car, lableled in stencil on the trunk “54 Buick Special P-40.” The car also featured what I’d have to describe as ‘tail art,’ and a front-facing fifty-caliber machine gun in the back seat, not clearly visible in…
I said, "Holy s***, look at that!"
(216 Words. June 28, 2004, 07:15 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The New York Times > Movies > The Political ‘Fahrenheit’ Sets Record at Box Office, notes the NYT. The film is set to take first place in grosses this weekend, an amazing feat when one notes that the number of theaters involved, and consequently the number of possible screenings, is about a third of a large-scale Hollywood opening weekend. As…
SIFF '04 RIP
(579 Words. June 20, 2004, 06:36 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I pointed this out a few times early in the festival run, but I want to prompt Seattle-area readers or ex-locals to stroll through the amusing doings the various Tableteers got up to over at the Siffblog. I still need to fix an IE display bug which centers everything, but on the whole I think the experiment worked out well….
Library
(11 Words. June 08, 2004, 06:12 PM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Last week’s library visit involved a couple-few pix. Here ya go….
Pete Gibbons, meet David Brent
(149 Words. June 05, 2004, 11:38 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The World of Ricky Gervais’ The Office: Series 1 Trivia helps to tie some things together. By some odd coincidence, my long-reserved copy of The Office came in on Friday, and Saturday was when we had time to watch it. What should be on Bravo in the ealry evening, just prior to our planned DVDathon? Office Space. Viv and I…
Skeleton Island
(143 Words. May 20, 2004, 03:34 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Click the closeup to see the whole map. Scanning this, I noticed some killer engraved illustrations in the book. But I really must move on today. UPDATE: Hmm, I had noticed this as I was working on the prior entry, but there’s an odd chiming between this new look of mine and the recent redesig over at Josh’s Communications…
News From Nowhere
(300 Words. May 20, 2004, 02:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a part of my ill-advised development of a virtual book look for this site, I dug out some of the older books I have here and there about the house. The pages that made it into the final product came from an 1894 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island published by Charles Scribner’s Sons as pat of…
Hallucinatory Pummeling
(497 Words. May 20, 2004, 11:52 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
[crosspost from the Siffblog] This is the first year that I had the opportunity to take as full an advantage of my SIFF press pass as I have wanted to, and for the first two weeks of screenings, I was very diligent about seeing every film shown, about three a day for two weeks. I had been warned by others…
Overload
(108 Words. May 12, 2004, 08:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last week, and this week, I am numbing my butt at nearly every single press screening for the Seattle International Film Festival out of some masochistic curiosity. I have learned that there are clearly more bad and so-so films made than good or great ones, so far. I have also learned that watching three movies in a day in a…
Some Battle
(215 Words. May 08, 2004, 07:03 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I found this striking image as the front cover of a circular for the History Book Club, I believe in a magazine. It appears to show an epic but forgotten battle. On the desert plains of Egypt, the Civil War-era forces of Texas and the Ohio Volunteers are facing off. The ten-gallon boys look to be in for a…
Research
(21 Words. May 06, 2004, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Girl + Boy - Chris Doyle Chris Doyle, LA Times Chris Doyle Yahoo! Movies bio Chris Doyle on shooting Hero….
Same as the Old Boss
(431 Words. May 02, 2004, 01:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So I guess IFC was having a Who-athon or something; I remarked to Viv as we flipped by that the band had been very lucky cinematically, with the three films they were involved with that I know of. It was the closing scenes of Tommy we were looking at. Tommy is a completely ridiculous movie; but at the same time,…
The Black Ships
(294 Words. April 25, 2004, 01:01 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
I saw an ad on the tube yesterday, which prominently featured the black ships, beached on the shore before Troy, and all the hair on my neck stood on end. I didn’t realize that I’m really excited for this film, but: I am. I think Viv is too. The Fagles translation is hard to find even excerpts from, but there…
Anhalt's interiors
(752 Words. April 23, 2004, 02:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
On Tuesday, I promised a discussion of the interior architecture of the Seattle area apartments constructed in the 1920’s by Frederick Anhalt. After a couple of days of distraction I’m ready to deliver. As noted earlier, Anhalt was not an architect himself. He worked with others who were, selecting architectural and decorative elements from a pattern book (or books). These…
Anhalt substitute
(96 Words. April 21, 2004, 03:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
OK, OK, here’s a little sumpin’ sumpin. The Anhalt next to the Capitol Hill Library has a vacancy. Looks like there were three, but the giant 2-bedroom and the studio are gone, at $1495 and $795, respectively. A 1-bedroom remains at $1095 $1195 (sorry. my mistake). It’s at 417 Harvard East. The 1-bedroom is described as ‘large’ and has a…
Hot Bug
(65 Words. April 12, 2004, 05:48 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I had a much longer entry here but Safari ate it when I tried to post the cool drawing I found today. The drawing is signed ‘2004 - clare.’ The longer entry gave thumbs up to the new falafel joint across from the Market on Broadway, along with sundry other things that fell in my eye today as I hurried…
Birdwatching
(17 Words. April 10, 2004, 09:52 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
nerd? Sars Chicken is not being subservient. Does he have a distinctive legbanding pattern? [via bufoonery.org]…
Photos: Test
(80 Words. March 31, 2004, 11:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and Anne in the Museum of Science and Industry. A test post using iPhoto to Movable Type. Unfortunately it’s beta.2 software, and it shows. I’ll be playing with it more tomorrow, I expect. My first test was an optimistic batch posting of 22 pix that took over an hour to process (!) and which, when posted did not…
White suits
(38 Words. March 20, 2004, 12:14 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
QT trailer for CASSHERN at Apple Japan (via the Cartoonist, again!). Beautiful CGI visualized alternative-world thingy. Giant Robots! Grungy cities! Guys in body armor jumping around waving swords. It looks like live-action anime. I’d love to know more….
A few useful links
(84 Words. February 29, 2004, 05:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A Pith Productions’ Oscar Pool 2004, virtually representing the opinion of the blogosphere. Except, alas, it seems to be gone from my DNS at least, for pity’s sake. No pings, ‘unknown host.’ Hopefully you’ll have better luck than I. Anybody got an IP address for it? (Here’s a web-based toolset, if you care.) Andy Inahtko runs his picks and promises…
Who's next?
(210 Words. February 27, 2004, 11:33 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Everybody is either stunned or entertained by Quiznos’ adoption of the spongmonkeys, it seems. The truly amazing thing to me is just what a well-kept secret Joel Veitch’s work apparently has remained these past couple years. Those of us fortunate enough to be exposed to the beloved earworm in its’ primary incarnation are unsurprised by the hubbub, though. I’ll remind…
A Reminder
(14 Words. February 24, 2004, 09:08 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Your local public library carries a wide selection of videos, DVDs, and audio CDs….
Lawrence of Arabia Widescreen
(68 Words. February 23, 2004, 09:52 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Seattle Cinerama: MARCH 4-11, 2004. THE SECOND ANNUAL “REEL” CINERAMA FILM FESTIVAL. Thursday, 3/4 11:00 p.m. - 2001 Friday, 3/5 7:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia Monday, 3/8 3:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia Wednesday, 3/10 3:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia There are other films playing, of course, including some 3-strip Cinerama flicks but mostly I must say: LAWRENCEOF…
Taken by surprise
(94 Words. February 20, 2004, 08:38 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’m doing some backfill homework tonight, watching the 1997 documentary Trekkies, which for whatever reason I missed the first time out. I’m laying ground work for my long-mused-about look at fanfic flicks. At fifteen minutes in there’s a five-second or less clip of two costumed fans I can name, Jimm and Josh Johnson, who will, I expect, appear in the…
I think I did.
(132 Words. February 15, 2004, 08:55 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Also, I’m pretty sure we saw Al Roker (warning, silly plane SFX, turn audio down) at Blue Canal on Broadway, with a full entourage of about twenty folks. A photo was snapped in front of the (Thai?) bas-relief in the waiting area, but not of or by me. Maybe Al will update his journal. If I had to guess, I’d…
the Frye, David Horsey, and a KG lookalike
(920 Words. February 15, 2004, 06:43 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Today we went to the Frye Art Museum, which devotes itself to figurative art, by and large. It has an interesting collection of non-modernist works up roughly through the turn of the nineteenth century. Viv and I go fairly frequently; I’d say about once every six months. The rotating exhibitions there often feature cartoonists, as with the one up currently…
Crazy bug
(17 Words. February 12, 2004, 08:18 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
That’s a new one. The file itself is not screwy. Who knows why it displayed like this?…
Ah, oops
(402 Words. February 07, 2004, 09:49 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Matthew at defective yeti reviewed The Triplets of Belleville recently, and mentioned that a review he’d read likened the film to Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, a resemblance that he did not see. I did, and in a review, so I assumed that he was among the five people who read my film stuff in Tablet. Tonight Viv and…
Army of Darkness: Jackson Source?
(297 Words. February 03, 2004, 12:00 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Happened across Sam Raimi’s ‘93 classic Army of Darkness last night and chuckled my way through it. In the sequence where the Deadites attack Arthur’s castle, I was struck by the similarities between it and Jackson’s Helms Deep sequence from The Two Towers. Not in scale of course; but both are night sequences, certain shots from the Raimi film appear…
More Am Trek
(867 Words. January 31, 2004, 07:14 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Star Trek: New Voyages is an amateur Star Trek series not dissimilar from Starship Exeter. New Voyages’ primary refinement is that the shows are set on board the Enterprise of the original series as opposed to a contemporary ship of the same class, as is the case with Exeter. New Voyages also employs the same characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and…
Return of the Big Fish
(169 Words. January 24, 2004, 11:59 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I spent to day wandering around and seeing movies. We hit RoTK again, and then after munching we saw Big Fish. Despite Mr. Goldstein’s transparent slanders, I concur with his judgement of the film as one of the best of 2003. My pop’s getting a phone call tomorrow for no reason at all, between lawyer time. Confidential to…
to sorrow born and endless night
(24 Words. January 14, 2004, 11:22 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
it ain’t the quote but it’s what I heard. And I so love this film. It feels like my mind. Do you have tobacco?…
Dead Man - Dead Amp
(59 Words. January 14, 2004, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
O fer krissakes. AMC is running Jarmusch’s masterwork this secont, Dead Man, and OF COURSE I’m gonna stay up and watch it. For which I owe thanks, as I learned that my %^&*#$!@ stereo amp has a channel out, godammit. God-dammit. Ixaybichay: I am Nobody. (That’s Gary Farmer, and he’s in the very excellent Smoke Signals, too.)…
Tom Paine's Ghost
(73 Words. January 14, 2004, 09:58 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Mr. Paine’s spirit is apparently distributing handbills on the streets of Seattle. As a designer who has gleefully cribbed from the type design of other eras, I applaud this somewhat unrefined effort to employ eighteenth-century modes of type design. The lovely marbling is nothing more than street mud, which I believe truly finshes the piece. front reverse handbill found at…
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
(1284 Words. December 19, 2003, 07:00 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
This is the review I submitted to Tablet for publication in this week’s issue, street date of December 18. I had to cut it to 800 words for them, so I thought I’d run the whole thing here. Issue content there is usually updated online by the end of the following weekend, so compare and contrast come Monday! One of…
Reviewing in review
(158 Words. December 12, 2003, 11:14 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I attended a screening of a film last night for review, and I’ll be cranking out the piece this afternoon. When I watch a film for review I take notes the whole time, and in general I prefer to see the film in complete ignorance of everything about it. This film is a special case, and I hadn’t anticipated how…
Suspicions rise
(350 Words. November 08, 2003, 12:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dan links to an AICN item in which Peter Jackson notes that the final humiliation of Sauruman and Grima Wormtongue was shot but will not be included in the theatrical release of The Return of the King; Dan correctly highlights the more troubling news that the Scouring of the Shire was cut entirely won’t appear in any release of the…
ATTN: Weyland Yutani Crewperson:
(525 Words. October 26, 2003, 11:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
2003-10-26 11:20:58 (UPDT 10-28 15:40) Weyland Yutani Inner System Dispatch Office Dear Crewperson: Congratulations! You have been assigned to a berth on the CTV USCSS NOSTROMO (registration number 180286), freighting a petrochemical ore refinery via waypoint Thedus, waypoint LV-426 in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system, and waypoint L-5 in Earth orbit, under command of Captain A. Dallas. This voyage…
It's TV! It's the Internet! It's a Bathtub!
(445 Words. October 19, 2003, 01:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A survey, compiled as a reference work for yours truly to familiarize myself with what’s out there. MIS-ONE.COM was the source of the hilarious video cited by dan in late August, and has an ever-growing repository of slacker video to peruse via the link above. Doin’ OK is a UK based house apparently oriented to music video. I’m looking less…
Foreword film fest
(27 Words. October 18, 2003, 01:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
foreword.com | FOREWORD.COM INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL: Dan’s provided a selection of media clips for our edification. I thought it made a nice segue from Rox….
J and B etc.
(686 Words. October 17, 2003, 09:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
ROX - The World’s Most Independent Television Series: Bart’s done it. He’s got the whole show online (well, not the whole thing, but it sure likes like he means to). And a comprehensive database of familiar faces, this time, many, maybe most, of whom I DO know. It’s like a video wiki, almost! Please note that both Bart and Scooter…
Intolerable Cruelty
(266 Words. October 11, 2003, 10:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So… Coen Bros., but you knew that already. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mr. Clooney, you knew that too. Story cowrite to Matthew Stone, you may NOT have known that. Here’s IMDB on it. My take? Clooney’s as goofily fun as he was in O Brother, but the sense of inevitability - the structure of tragedy in the service of comedy -…
fanimatrix
(259 Words. September 29, 2003, 12:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Fanimatrix: just what you think it might be. Posted sight unseen, via BoingBoing, as a followup to my thinking out loud the other day, and becasue t has come to my attention that if there can be Star Trek bands, there can be Star Wars compilation CDs. That’s nearly the kind of licensing challenge that makes me think I need…
Sushi and Mr. Murray
(51 Words. September 28, 2003, 06:14 PM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
And tonight, it’s off to Ha Na for raw fish with a chaser of Lost in Translation. I am a bit concerned about seeing the film; it’s been so well received by blog-neighbors it’s kind of like going to see that film that all your favorite critics have warmly praised….
Are you talkin' to me?
(235 Words. September 13, 2003, 05:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
In entirely unrelated news (despite the importance to the plot of a Presidential campaign), Taxi Driver appeared on one of our movie channels last night as I was preparing for bed and cast its’ voodoo spell, as ever, leading to a much later bedtime than planned. The print was pristine - I presume what aired derives from a version prepared…
the First LOTR post of fall
(198 Words. September 04, 2003, 01:36 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I are watching The Two Towers on DVD (we actually started yesterday) and there’s an hour to go. POINT ONE: Gollum, as I’ve said before, is looking to me like an ambitious miscalculation. Less than a year after the release of the film, each time I see it, the more flaws and shortcomings in the character’s CGI I…
Overdue
(79 Words. September 02, 2003, 06:47 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Meant to link to the other pieces in the most recent Tablet, two movie reviews. One was for the widely celebrated “American Splendor” and for the less-universally adored “…And Now Ladies and Gentlemen.” I enjoyed both. Sadly, I typo’ed American Splendor director Shari SPRINGER Berman’s name. It had been typoed when the review originally ran on the web, and I…
POTC again
(737 Words. August 25, 2003, 08:46 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On friday night Viv and I and our friend David went to see Pirates of the Caribbean again, just before it ends its’ run at the Cinerama. I spotted a few little continuity errors and plot holes this time - minor stuff, really - but in the whole, the film held up very well. I went googling for obsessive fan…
Sundell-o-vision Cinema Soiree
(60 Words. August 17, 2003, 08:24 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Spencer held his annual cinema party - including his latest addition to the liberry, a 3-D short. Here’s the teeming mob prepped for viewing: Other treats included the amazing expressionist film The Fall of the House of Usher (in a short version) which after viewing I realized I’d often heard of but never seen; the usual selection of Méliès films….
Space Food
(8 Words. July 26, 2003, 08:57 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Found at Museum of Flight, late July, 2003….
Pirates of the Caribbean
(332 Words. July 12, 2003, 02:03 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me We just got back from seeing the fine piratical vehicle, Pirates of the Caribbean at the big-ol screened Cinerama, and lemme tells ya, arrr! The number of minor flaws are three, IMHO: 1. Those are not Aztec carvings on the stone treasure chest, but rather Inca. 2. No Brit Commodore wilted…
Off to see the wizard
(99 Words. July 11, 2003, 07:16 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dark Fairytales opens tonight at Roq la Rue and I’ll be reviewing the show for Tablet. It’s funny - my degree is in art history, and I know I can write about art. But I do it so seldom, I’m a bit fluttery about this. My plan is to tote the recorder and a camera, try to talk to a…
Keaton in the American West
(147 Words. July 08, 2003, 08:10 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
How’s that for a highfalutin’ title? Go West and the Paleface were on the silver screen Monday night at the Paramount. It would seem that local hero Bill Frisell had the foresight and good taste to compose and release his own soundtrack for Go West. While this was not the score that organist Dennis James played, I realy love Frisell’s…
Good, Bad, Ugly: Good!
(348 Words. July 06, 2003, 12:53 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Vivian and I ran a bunch of errands today, dropping off stuff at Goodwill, eating in the University District at Flowers, and ending the evening with the restored, extended version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in town on a one-week run at the Varsity on the Ave. We stopped by my old friend Mike’s new store, Pitaya,…
Yeesh! SIFF wrap, etc.
(301 Words. June 15, 2003, 06:45 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Wah! Well, I’m all scattered! I have TOO MUCH TO DO! Suffice to note that I have some sort of new job, doing marketing copy and other things for once and future employer M-2K again - that starts Monday. Also, this past week, I did my first driving-in-traffic since I was 16 or so and it went well. I also…
SIFF Review: Milwaukee, Minnesota
(422 Words. June 11, 2003, 10:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Milwaukee, Minnesota US, 2002. Dir. Allan Mindel 6/14 9:30p Pacific Place 6/15 1:45p Egyptian Winter’s white blankets Wisconsin. A twenty-something idiot-savant (Troy Garrity) lives at home with his brow-beating mother, earning large sums as an ice-fishing champion. A grifter thinks she has him on the line, but first one, then another man claims to be the boy’s father in the…
SIFF Review: King Of The Ants
(535 Words. June 11, 2003, 10:16 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
King Of The Ants US, 2003. Dir. Stuart Gordon (WORLD PREMIERE) 6/13 9:30p Egyptian 6/15 11:30a Cinerama Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) is a likeable, callow fool drawn into a murder-for-hire scheme. When he attempts to collect his blood money, he’s held captive and tortured in a graphic second act, into which hallucinations and fantasies are intercut. Escaping, he seeks out…
SIFF Review: Westender
(443 Words. June 11, 2003, 09:52 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Westender US, 2003, Dir. Brock Morse 6/13 - 9:30p Broadway 6/15 - 6:30p Broadway Asbrey of Westender (Blake Stadel) is a medieval swordsman, trailing a crew of brigands in an attempt to reclaim his dead wife’s ring. Shot in verdant Oregon forests, the film’s first half is fairly pedestrian fantasy fare, dimwitted sidekick, flashing swords, rope-bound slave girls, and all….
How's that again?
(33 Words. June 07, 2003, 08:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
An argument for increased sensitivity in the proofing and decision-making process among dental advertisers in The Seattle Weekly. From mid-May, this was going to run here when my disk crash went down….
The Animatrix (Tablet SIFF Review)
(526 Words. May 30, 2003, 07:43 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
The Animatrix 5/31, the Egyptian, 9:30 pm, limited availabliity 7/10 Segment, Director (notes) 1. The Second Renaissance Part 1*, Mahiro Maeda (both segments, limited previous US release credits) 2. The Second Renaissance Part 2* 3. Program, Yoshiaki Kawajiri (a Vampire Hunter D film, Bloodlust) 4. Beyond, Kouji Morimoto (animator on Kiki’s Delivery Service) 5. World Record, Takeshi Koike 6. Kid’s…
American Splendor (Tablet SIFF Review)
(442 Words. May 30, 2003, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
American Splendor Dir: Shri Sprinter Berman & Robert Pulcini USA, 2003 : 100 minutes Wed. 6/04 @ 7:00 pm Egyptian Theatre & Mon 6/9 @9:30 Pacific Place Cinemas RATING: 9/10 Paul Giamatti’s spectacular portrayal of comic book author Harvey Pekar amazes. When Giamatti’s Pekar leaves the green room for Letterman’s stage the mid-80’s, the filmmakers pan to a monitor showing…
testing trickle
(14 Words. May 23, 2003, 06:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
[‘hem] one-two, one-two Off to Hokum Hall for some silent movie bliss this afternoon….
SIFF Picks!
(2981 Words. May 10, 2003, 07:29 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This list has been extracted from a database I’m using to manage the SIFF workload I’ll be taking a crack at; the title of each film should link to a search-results page hosted at SIFF’s website, rather than directly to the SIFF information page for the film itself. I gotta say, over 200 films is a huge amount of film…
SIFF: press launch
(1086 Words. May 08, 2003, 04:36 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I went to the press launch for the Seattle International Fim Festival (SIFF) on May 7, and it was interesting. The festival will be larger than ever, and I believe I heard it described as the largest international film festival in North America this year. There will be 220 features and 75 shorts. Of these, 55 will be U.S. or…
"Wings" at the Paramount, March 31, 2003
(2494 Words. April 02, 2003, 07:14 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
A ways back I mentioned that on March 31, at the Paramount Theatre, the long-requested feature Wings would be screened, accompanied by organist Dennis James, for the outstanding bargain price of seventy-five cents. We attended last night, and both the film and the experience are worth writing about. To cut to the chase, I characterized the film as “disappointing” in…
Box Score
(268 Words. March 23, 2003, 11:09 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Let’s open the envelope, shall we? Category Mike said Oscar said Status Best Picture Chicago Chicago A hit! Best Director Rob Marshall (Chicago) or Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York) Roman Polanski (The Pianist) A miss. Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York) Adrien Brody (The Pianist) A miss. Best Actress Reneé Zellweger (Chicago) Nicole Kidman (The Hours) A…
WILLARD part II
(461 Words. March 16, 2003, 11:17 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Viv and I went to see the new Willard, as one might expect from my chortling appressssiashion of the video the other day. Alas, ALAS, the film does not adopt the oddball, Lynchian Weimar cabaret setting of the video - dang it, that’s STILL a film I’d love to see. BUT I really enjoyed it. Reviewrs to date have been…
Oh scars
(1189 Words. February 19, 2003, 07:59 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Oscar Pool 2003: A Pith Production proffers the possibility that you might pick the Oscars! As I have a longish Oscars piece all ready to go, let’s GET READY TO RUMBLE! We saw Chicago on Saturday, too. I lack the musical theater gene, so I felt that it was… OK. I sure don’t think it’s 13 Oscar nominations worth of…
In today's unexpected development
(43 Words. January 31, 2003, 05:47 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I interviewed Doug Naylor, co-creator and head honcho of Red Dwarf this morning. The website has quite a stack of interviews conducted by Mr. Flibble. By quite a stack, I mean, um, over fifty? I didn’t count, but the damn bird gets around….
A long delayed viewing
(105 Words. January 29, 2003, 06:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I finally made it out to see Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, and my experience was on par with the opening reviews - flawed being the key word used at the time. I think I’d add “overworked” to that evaluation, but not in any jarring manner. i found it interesting, and again echoing the earlier reviews, emotionally flat. I must…
Fritz Lang's Der Frau Im Mond
(620 Words. January 28, 2003, 07:25 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Der Frau im Mond, (directed by Fritz Lang) was the silent at the Paramount on Monday, a 2 hour and 40 minute film that left me gaping and Viv snoozing. The film was released in 1929 but is not well known because it was suppressed by the Nazis (the scientifically correct depiction of lunar rocketry offended Der Fuhrer himself, apparently–…
DER GOLEM and CALIGARI at Silent Movie Mondays last night
(813 Words. January 21, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Fantastic double feature at the Paramount’s Silent Movie Mondays (unfortunately for them, they make it impossible to link directly to the schedule, so no link for you! Get out!) last night which featured really clean prints of both Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Both prints were tinted, as originally distributed, and the The Cabinet of Dr….
The Two Towers
(1492 Words. January 13, 2003, 07:54 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A reader whom I’ve never met wrote an e-mail the other day requesting that I review The Two Towers. Unaccountably, this had never occurred to me. When the note arrived, I was just about to go see the film for the second time. I endeavored to keep the idea in mind as I watched the film, more or less unsuccessfully….
NEMESIS
(431 Words. December 27, 2002, 07:52 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Hustled to catch Star Trek: Nemesis before it leaves theaters, probably the middle of next week. For some reason, Paramount pretty much negelected to promote the film energetically until about three days before the mid-December opening date, and the result was that it opened with the lowest first-weekend revenues of all the Next Gen flicks, and the next weekend after…
Happy together
(525 Words. December 22, 2002, 07:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I want to take a moment after all that Tolkien-ing to point out another film that you should by all means rush out and see. It’s Donald and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, a screwy, ambitious post-modern comedy based loosely on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. The film is directed by Spike Jonze and stars Nicolas Cage as twin scriptwriters Donald and…
I can feel it in the water
(1379 Words. December 21, 2002, 07:07 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Wednesday, The Two Towers opened internationally. By the end of that day, the film had grossed about $42 million in and out of North America. By the end of the weekend, the North American grosses were reported to be about $101 million. At a party that Vivian and I went to Saturday night, at which the majority of the…
zoooom
(46 Words. October 10, 2002, 09:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Shuttle external view liftoff video. On um, Monday (?) they added a new feature to the Shuttle liftoff - real time video on the shuttle itself, looking down. The link is to an archive of space and rocketry vis, inlcuding the listoff vid. Via BoingBoing sideblog….
Street Posters I
(33 Words. September 29, 2002, 07:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These were hung right next to each other. The one on the left is an ad for a design competition. One hopes that the designer of the yard sale flyer will enter it….
Lawrence of Arabia
(1008 Words. September 28, 2002, 12:42 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(from Lawrence of Arabia, at widescreen museum; film frames from the 2002 restoration.) So I just spent the last four hours watching this movie. I gather I am the only person in the English-speaking world that hadn’t ever seen it before, even on TV. The film I saw was a restoration shown in 70 mm at full length, with…
I obviously need to read the trades more often
(386 Words. September 09, 2002, 07:46 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
A&E’s Lathe of Heaven came as a total surprise. I had no idea that an adaptation was in the works; I was surprised that it was on A&E and not scifi; and I was surprised to see respected B-list faves leading the cast. We clicked into it about halfway through, and I immediately wanted to take the costume designer to…
Harold Lloyd
(409 Words. August 27, 2002, 07:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight’s silent feature at the Paramount was the hilarious Girl Shy, starring bespectacled schmoe Harold Lloyd. Harold plays a naive small-town tailor who writes a book about the ladies and how to woo them; naturally, his ideas are, hurm, fanciful. Well, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and there’s an epic car (well, um, car, trolley, horse, foot, and motorcycle)…
OBOY!
(290 Words. July 11, 2002, 02:46 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Any time a high-falutin film critic identifies a film as distanced or mannered, and then in support of the claim, complains concerning the lack of attention to realism within the film, I’M SOLD. In this week’s New Yorker, David Denby’s review (warning: not a permalink) of nearly released Tom Hanks flick Road to Perdition manages to not only do this…
ST: TNG "Nemesis" trailer out
(102 Words. June 27, 2002, 03:05 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
At Apple. I’ve read no advance on the flick, except remarks from Braga and Berman concerning story development and casting made in January; it appears that Data’s brother Lore is back, possibly in a supporting role, and that the Nosferatu people menace the Federation. Something about the bad guys makes me wonder if they tie in to the Temporal Cold…
eBAY: the bridge chair
(56 Words. June 20, 2002, 06:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1834314676 Yes, that chair. Set to go for over $100k. Hloy cow, look at the whole collection! The Geek King needs new shoes! Spock’s Ears! Captain Picard’s first season uniform! My god, this collection shouldn’t be sold off in bits and pieces, it belongs in an academic library! Look at the production notes!…
Frontline and Nova
(275 Words. June 14, 2002, 07:40 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Anybody else noticed the astonishing material on Nova and Frontline this past year? Last night’s Frontline was about the siege in Bethlehem, which ended, um, on May 22! The most compelling show to date in this season of Nova, was, naturally, “Why The Towers Fell”, which was a truly fascinating look at the physics of the 9/11 disaster. The conclusions…
Spidey
(510 Words. May 14, 2002, 07:41 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I, along with all the rest of the country, dropped into our friendly neighborhood multiplex this weekend to see “Spider-Man”. My viewing experience bears out the reviews I’d noted; Toby Maguire is perfectly cast, the story was deftly and wittily handled, Dafoe’s usually better than this, the digital FX were somehow not as good as they should have…
Episode II Early Returns: Lucas Trails Binks at Polls
(220 Words. May 10, 2002, 07:43 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New York Times political reporter A. O. Scott calls in from the polling station: “Like weary Brezhnev-era Muscovites, the American moviegoing public will line up out of habit and compulsion, ruefully hoping that this episode will at least be a little better than the last one, and perhaps inwardly suspecting that the whole elephantine system is rotten.” Don’t hold back,…
ENTERPRISE double header
(731 Words. May 09, 2002, 07:33 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Some of you may know that I’ve been writing occasional comics reviews for Cinescape. I’ve also had the good fortune to be asked to write about the new Star Trek series for them from time to time. I reviewed the inaugural episode but they took a pass, so I imagine it will wind up here sooner or later. I have…
The Daily Show (with, um, that little guy from MTV)
(543 Words. April 25, 2002, 10:14 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
By now, the entire world is aware that Comedy Central’s Daily Show provided the only decent coverage of the 2000 election debacle. They called the outcome of the race a full 9 months before the election. They were the only media outfit which bothered to give any air time at all to the Greens. They nailed Arizona Senator John McCain…
Akira Kurosawa, part two
(771 Words. March 28, 2002, 12:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Once I had a disasatrous conversation with an aged Japanese colleague of my father’s. He had shown us great kindness and hospitality in Japan when we were there in 1978. He was retiring and traveling around the world to say good bye to colleagues. He expressed that the world had changed and that the old culture of Japan was dead,…
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL...
(233 Words. March 27, 2002, 10:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
… and he shall appear. In tonight’s episode of ENTERPRISE, a comedy number featuring the NX-01 being boarded by Ferengi pyrates aided by (help me, Batman!) knockout gas, one of the crafty interstellar, er, “traders” was played by… None other than Clint Howard, ladies and gentlemen, mentioned just ONE DAY AGO on this broadcast! At that time, I was referring…
Akira Kurosawa, part one
(212 Words. March 27, 2002, 01:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
PBS’ Great Performances recently ran a 2-hour documentary biopic on the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. It was pretty interesting - and included some truly horrifying newsreel shots of the carnage and most especially corpses left after the great Tokyo quake and fire of the mid-1920s, in which as many died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thought to have pershed….
ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL
(293 Words. March 26, 2002, 12:56 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
In a wonderful serendipity, since I just got off the phone with Classmates.com, I caught the last half-hour to forty-five minutes of the classic teen rocker flick, “Rock and Roll High School”, which features the Ramones, Warhol scenester Mary Woronov, and the inevitable Clint “Balok” Howard (hmm… The Howard family and Star Trek… haven’t I been here before?), Ron Howard’s…
THE MAYBERRY CONNECTION
(239 Words. March 25, 2002, 09:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My eagle-eyed wife spotted a link from the previously cited as somewhat scary The Andy Griffith Show Watcher’s Club. The link further demonstrates the debauched interconnectedness of TV land. Mayberry was used as a set in the original Star Trek series episdoes “Miri” and “The City on the Edge of Forever”. A devoted member of TAGSWC has assembled a website…
I DREAM OF SITCOMS
(449 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:50 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I woke up one morning thinking I’d had dinner with my pals Greg and Stacy. They just got back from three weeks in France and we were to see them shortly. Greg was kind of showing off, ordering in (very fluent) French, in the dream. Then somehow we all started discussing the recently broadcast 2-hour “NewsRadio” reunion special. Such a show has not ever existed, to my knowledge. It turns out that Maura Tierney, so excellent as Lisa on the actual show, was unavailable for the reunion production, and so instead, a role which in this conversation was characterized as “Dave’s girlfriend” was played by an actress who had previously portrayed Austin Powers’ girlfriend, and yet was neither Heather Graham or Elizabeth Hurley. I assume that this actress must be the actress portraying the International Man of Mystery’s paramour in the upcoming Austin Powers movie…
SITCOMMUNIST CONSPIRACY?
(374 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Consider this: the Dick Van Dyke show and the Andy Griffith show were shot at about the same time and shared, I believe, a producer in the person of Danny Thomas. The Griffith show featured child actor Ron Howard, of course. The van Dyke show, in addition to the well-known castmembers, featured a child character, the son of the Petries, named Richie. Additionally, the writers for the show based much of the mise-en-scene of the show on their experiences working as writers on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”. Among the writers and performers was Carl Reiner (Alan Brady). Carl’s son Rob would later go on to fame as “Meatball” on “All in the Family” and as a skillful director of films about late childhood, adolescence, and of course, Spinal Tap…
Working on the streams
(344 Words. January 26, 2012, 02:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This appears to be the subscription site for the Pacific League. According to this post at Yakyubaka.com, the approximate cost for an all pass in 2010 was $80 for the season. While the TOS noted the service was restricted to residents of Japan, commenters noted that the streams were not region-restricted. No info on online DVR-like functionality. I would really…
Noted
(163 Words. January 25, 2012, 11:59 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A couple years old, but here is a rundown on computer-oriented Japanese TV remote access options. Update from October 2011 regarding iOS viability. Looks like a subset of Japanese broadcasters publish rtsp:// streams.The site is emphatically not about baseball though, so I am somewhat dubious if the various yakyu providers expose their programming in such a manner. It would be…
Starstruck update
(90 Words. January 21, 2012, 10:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Update to my posts of a week or two ago. In the interim of buying a new set of the original Epic run on eBay and the new copies arriving, I, of course, found the missing box of comics that contained the original copies. It turns out I had not picked up one of the original issues when I was…
More on Starstruck
(3 Words. January 08, 2012, 06:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
some critical analysis…
Starstruck Deluxe Edition: missing material
(23 Words. January 08, 2012, 05:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Aargh, I was right, sez the CJ: You won’t find the material from issues #2-6 of the Epic series in this book……
Oh yes
(10 Words. January 07, 2012, 11:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A gallery of WW2 painted flight jackets. Via MetaFilter….
Maps
(795 Words. December 26, 2011, 12:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A random link trawl originating with Maillardet’s Automaton wound up at this blog post which amounts to a biography and bibliography of William Bunge, a cartographer and political radical of whom I had never heard.The automaton interest was prompted by the film Hugo, which was the second film we attended yesterday. We also watched Tintin, which was much better than…
Location location etc
(53 Words. December 24, 2011, 10:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Here is a pretty decent list of locations used in “The Artist,” including a house that Mary Pickford once lived in. That last bit of trivia had been puzzling me since I had thought (correctly) that Pickfair was torn down some time ago. Obviously, not shot at Pickfair, but instead at another house….
A few thoughts on The Artist
(184 Words. December 24, 2011, 11:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Natasha Simons, at the new-to-me Mary Sue (“A Guide to Girl Geek Culture”), sheds some light on the context of the end of the silent era. She seems to see the character of George Valentin as most closely based on William Powell, on the evidence of Jack Russell terriers, which seems off base to me. Valentin is collaged from…
reflections on this image making excercise
(389 Words. November 08, 2011, 12:36 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Just over a week ago I started expecting myself to execute and post a digital drawing or painting every day, using the iPad or my more-capable graphics tablet, a 12-inch Wacom Cintiq. Both offer a direct-display drawing experience. The Cintiq is a more capable tool because it offers gradations of pressure sensitivity and the stylus also delivers information about velocity,…
Wine glass
(18 Words. November 08, 2011, 12:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Incredibly hurried sketch of a glass on our Halloween tablecloth, literally after finishing cookery and just before serving….
Sawyer's View-Master, Portland ORE
(213 Words. November 07, 2011, 11:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Super quick sketch of an old View-Master. Not entorely successful. I was trying to get after the surface textures of the dark, reflective surface of the device, but the digital emulation of wet oil color mixing led to a loss of control of hue, value, and draftsmanship. Some limitations of ArtRage’s UI are beginning to crop up for me….
THE KIRKS
(173 Words. November 07, 2011, 11:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday and Sunday November 5th and 6th I tried a new experiment in my digital drawing and painting exercises. Starting from a photo reference, I created a ‘pencil’ drawing, executed a conte and wash treatment, and reworked the drawings into a painting. It was important to me that the series take as its’ starting point a very recognizable…
The end of Google
(335 Words. October 27, 2011, 09:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Andy Baio writes about the rolling changes in Google’s online services with special attention to the discontinuation of the plus operator. As these changes have rolled out I have noticed that many of my basic intact ions with Google have become broken, in one way or another. The UI changes, for example, inevitably increase latency between click and input-acceptance and…
Zero History
(291 Words. April 29, 2011, 10:34 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally started Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been putting off for months. I’m happy to report it is entertaining me very much. The book is about industrial espionage in the global clothing industry. A major supporting character is introduced wearing a ridiculous suit in International Klein Blue, and the hardback’s boards are this color. This little joke make…
I Dream of Maakies
(510 Words. April 24, 2011, 11:49 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I awoke on April 23 from a dream, which I felt immediately compelled to share with the artist concerned (Tony Millionaire, of Maakies and more): I had a detailed dream of a huge, twenty-five-pound signed-and-numbered limited edition Maakies book, 24 x 12 or thereabouts and and two inches thick, indigo dyed upper edging and deckle pages on the opening…
Floaty
(72 Words. August 24, 2010, 05:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The Airship Ventures Zeppelin NT is in town or thereabouts until September 8 or 9. I booked us in on a morning flight, September 5. Longtime blog readers will understand my insane levels of excitement. I drove up to Paine Field and back this afternoon on a scouting expedition. You can’t see it in this picture, but the cabin…
Wild
(226 Words. January 16, 2010, 08:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Months later, Viv and I finally got around to seeing the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” It certainly reduced the expedition of six or seven six or seven year old girls seated a row ahead of us to sodden, weeping mourners at the grave of childhood. This seems possibly to not be a desirable outcome for…
Clock of the Heavens
(240 Words. July 11, 2009, 10:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Around midnight last night I was informed of an astronomical conjunction, that of Jupiter and the Moon. To my surprise, with a decent set of binoculars, I was able to make out fur of Saturn’s moons. Properly motivated, I spent a chunk of today finding and fetching an honest-to-goodness telescope, though not a proper reflector. Finding it frustrating to…
Cruciform and royally robed
(16 Words. April 27, 2009, 08:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
d40_20090426_047.JPG Originally uploaded by mwhybark The overwintered purple broccoli is looking great, verging on the psychedelic….
All along the Watchmentower
(222 Words. March 06, 2009, 04:41 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’ve been amusedly following the reviews for Zak Snyder’s “Watchmen.” The news, it seems, is not so good. Most of the negative reviews have been by relatively thoughtless reviewers, a few have been reviews that contained worthwhile critiques, and a vanishingly small number have been by folks who understand the brilliance of the original comic and have consequently approached…
City and the Night
(200 Words. March 01, 2009, 12:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Watched “Night and the City” (Widmark, Tierney, more) on Friday, giggling. Widmark is a semi-sympathetic American hustler in ’40s London, the the film is largely shot on location. Widmark’s films around this time are usually eye-popping, and this was no exception. I think the last time I saw it was about a decade ago, circumstances long forgot. This vieweing,…
Enchirito!
(122 Words. February 14, 2009, 09:11 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Years ago, Viv and I saw, once only, a bizarre ad for Taco Bell’s ‘enchirito,’ featuring the word sung by four guys singing in a circular group as the camera panned around their faces. We both stopped what we were doing or talking about and yelled ‘what was that?“ but the hilarious strangeness of the ad was never to…
Zarek Hatch
(192 Words. February 11, 2009, 09:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Richard Hatch on his just concluded time as Tom Zarek on BSG. Awesome, so great to see one of the BSG folks using the internet to think out loud about what they have been doing. I can’t wait until we hear from the others, too. It’s seemed clear to me for some time that Hatch was playing his character…
Mom's homemade sushi
(35 Words. January 31, 2009, 10:53 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
How to Make Sushi at Home. Investigated as a potential means toward a transatlantic teleconferencing meal with a self-proclaimed information pope, an autonomous autarch of data organization, an existential code evangelist and good egg….
Once again
(8 Words. November 15, 2008, 10:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
S. Clay Wilson down, recovery uncertain. Fuck….
Jesse wept.
(56 Words. November 04, 2008, 09:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On this moving night, one which challenges my deep-seated cynicism and negativity, the psychological moment of the evening that most engages me is encapsulated in the tears of Jesse Jackson in Grant Park. I wanted nothing more than to grasp him and hold him in sympathy, in recognition of the transparency and complexity of his emotion….
Right
(6 Words. October 06, 2008, 07:47 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Now, this is more like it….
love
(15 Words. September 01, 2008, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I love this. It’s already dated! Oh! Prfoper credits and purchasing oppt’y here….
Vested
(287 Words. August 18, 2008, 08:39 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally getting around to watching the third and final season of Deadwood, loving it as much as the initial two runs. I was startled to note that the vest worn by Hearst in the scenes where he is placed under arrest by Sheriff Bullock is a near match to one of my antiques. Pausing the show and rushing down…
le blog
(20 Words. July 31, 2008, 05:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
le blog d’evelyne blondeau. via things. With pleasure, I realize I can still read French, more or less….
Affiches
(7 Words. July 05, 2008, 08:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cuban Posters. via old pal Everlasting Blort….
BLIZZARD
(18 Words. April 18, 2008, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
OK, in the past ten minutes, half-an-inch of snow has accumulated, and if anything, it’s snowing harder. ….
Cathy
(106 Words. April 13, 2008, 05:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cathy’s Book - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For whatever reason, this 2-year-old ARG popped up in some Google ads for me today. Here’s a nonlinked version of the ad: Cathy’s Book If found call (650) 266-8233 — And change the default access code! www.cathysbook.com I’m interested, but what’s even more interesting is this: When I saw the ad, I immediately…
Omie
(491 Words. April 13, 2008, 10:41 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This is the gravestone of Naomi Wise. She was murdered in 1808, and her body was thrown into the Deep River. After her killer was found and escaped punishment, the killing became famous, and a ballad (or two or three) was written about the murder, Omie Wise. Omie Wise, it seems, is the wellspring of a particular tradition in American…
PS X
(16 Words. March 27, 2008, 09:08 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Adobe: Adobe Photoshop Express - Made You Look. Free image hosting and editing, 2gb storage. Interesting….
Hey
(6 Words. March 23, 2008, 10:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Heyokay, per Tom. Fuck yeah….
off the cuff
(510 Words. March 23, 2008, 06:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So my friend Andrea messaged me on Facebook wanting my thoughts on a building project in Louisville I hadn’t ever heard of. I ended up kinda going on at length and I thought that my quickie analysis might be amusing. She mentioned Stonehenge as a descriptor in her initial take on the design. — http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=127240 - bunch of renderings, better…
Lawrence the Third
(747 Words. March 18, 2008, 06:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Sunday, the League convened for an all-too-rare - although much more frequent in Seattle than most other burgs - screening of the wide-screen amazement device entitled Lawrence of Arabia. I’ve seen this film three times now in 70mm at the Cinerama, and each time, my head spins for days afterward, usually on new topics. For example, since the last…
Plants and stones
(727 Words. March 16, 2008, 11:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We spent Saturday out and about, getting starter plants and seeds for the garden after starting our day at SAM’s twin traveling exhibits, The Gates of Paradise (hurry, it closes April 6) and Roman Art from the Louvre, through May 11. It was wonderful to see the Ghiberti panels so intimately. Unfortunately, as the Louvre show is a certified blockbuster,…
League of Arabia
(207 Words. March 05, 2008, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Reposting a Leaguemail to ensure dissemination) Fellow fezzes: Spencer (note Cha-Cha League headshot), myself, and the lately-befezzed (on the Lake Union jaunt) Agent Cooper are planning to take in one of the 70mm Sunday matinees of Lawrence of Arabia at the Cinerama. Danelope has noted his availability as well. March 16 or March 23 are the Sunday showings, at noon….
Yub yub
(102 Words. March 04, 2008, 11:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Spencer screened the oddball 1929 silent/sound hybrid The Mysterious Island at NWFF tonight, and according to his presentation notes, the film was budgeted at over $4m - the equivalent, according to this, of from $40m to $400m today. You could, as they say, see the money on the screen, in huge and elaborate sets and miniatures and in a peculiar…
Noir
(105 Words. March 01, 2008, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight I foisted 1948’s Act of Violence on Viv over dinner, which largely drove her to bed. I was quite taken with the location shots in Glendale and one presumes Pasadena, the wartime fallout plot, and the lady leads, a very young but no less striking Janet Leigh and a ripe - even naturalistic - Mary Astor. According to that…
Country
(583 Words. February 22, 2008, 09:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s time to get my mind around No Country for Old Men, which of these three films remains for me the slipperiest. I’m a long-time admirer of the Coens’ work, Raising Arizona excepted (note adoption subtheme! interesting!). No Country feels materially different from all their preceding films, a result of the filmmakers’ easing off their previously aggressively mannered style. Despite…
Juneau
(640 Words. February 21, 2008, 06:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As noted recently, I clubbed Viv across the head and dragged her by her hair to attend a suite of Oscar nominated films this past weekend. I’ve already treated of There Will Be Blood, my pick for best of the three. I will ho’d off on No Country For Old Men as the film provoked the most complex, postmodern reactions…
Crumb
(200 Words. February 12, 2008, 09:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Went to the Crumb show at the Frye, which I must say is really worth hitting, especialy considering it is FREE. They have some real grails of Crumbology on display, such as the famous bathtub orgy late-60’s Fritz the Cat sequence and two or three original, unpublished childhood Arcades. The real revelation, though, and I don’t think I’m alone in…
Sparky
(22 Words. October 29, 2007, 09:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight’s American Masters looks to have been inspired by the new biography, and so far I am enjoying it, good grief….
Sir Ian
(45 Words. September 03, 2007, 10:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I just watched the 1995 Ian McKellen production of Richard III, something I have been wanting to watch since its’ US theatrical release, and it really blew me away, even considering occasional deviations of tone in editing or performer’s choice. Brain food….
Lit
(742 Words. July 28, 2007, 04:42 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Unexpectedly free on a Friday night, I rang Spence and we saw Sunshine (IMDB) at the Neptune last night. Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), the film’s narrative concerns a second and final attempt to reignite the dying hearth of Sol via nuclear injection. I think the film is actually most concerned with three non-narrative filmic objectives. I’ll…
For the love of God
(291 Words. June 04, 2007, 07:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Damien Hirst’s Skull - a photoset on Flickr. It may surprise some, or perhaps it will not, that I think this is clearly Hirst’s greatest work and possibly the greatest work of art of all time. I suppose if I had the opportunity to closely interact with the piece, the first thing I would do is take the jaw off…
La Musique
(76 Words. May 02, 2007, 10:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
How pleasant to hear NPR’s coverage of the Ponderosa Stomp as I pulled in to the carport this evening and to end the night with Ahmet Ertegun’s valediction on the PBS. Astonishing to be reminded that the Stax men, Booker’s band, were Otis Redding’s sidemen. How amazing to have been introduced to the persons playing the instruments via that…
Seraph Asterix
(82 Words. April 24, 2007, 06:21 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Serafini’s Codex: “The Codex Seraphinianus was written and illustrated by Italian graphic designer and architect, Luigi Serafini during the late 1970’s. The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and…
Josh Bell rocks (?) the DC Metro
(450 Words. April 07, 2007, 08:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
WaPo recasts Josh as busker. He’s game. DC commuters? um. Point: JOSH! I really, really liked this. I sent this note to the WaPo team responsible for the piece. Thank you all for making my day. I knew Josh, distantly, as a kid when we were growing up in Bloomington. I haven’t seen him except to be aware of…
Deadwood
(609 Words. March 10, 2007, 08:52 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I have been thinking about westerns on and off this year - I’m working my way through Deadwood and a trip to The Searchers and The Man who Shot Liberty Valance seems in order. I might want to review the Leone / Eastwood Man with No Name stuff too but that material is much more familiar to me than…
Casting
(156 Words. March 03, 2007, 07:21 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We held casting auditions for the film today at the Shoreline Historical Society, and thanks to the hard work of Greg and Joey, saw the impressive talents of about forty actors. We had a wealth of talented and attractive performers for the female lead, but much fewer for the male roles. Happily, two of the guys that gave it…
RIP, noisily
(42 Words. February 25, 2007, 10:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Per Bart: Funeral for a Friend. Helen Hill gets laid to rest in NOLA. Alternafreaks lay claim to the foundations of American culture and win a stake to the title by blood right. Get the fuck out of the way, dammit….
Flood
(118 Words. February 25, 2007, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Thanks to Mugu Brainpan, I wonder if the triumph that is the They Might Be Giants LP Flood moughtn’t relate to the ‘hermetic artist’ Robert Fludd. In a previous online life, copious speculation on a graphic-design email list I belonged to led to the enunciation of a postulated theory of hermetic design, as modernist design principles are closely founded…
Islamic geometry
(80 Words. February 24, 2007, 10:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Here’s the Beeb on that story about the advanced geometry of Islamic art I was flappin’ my gums about at Greg and Stacey’s t’other day. The coverage doesn’t capture the “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK” sense I had as I listened to the coverage, but the last time I really had the same sense of the obvious was listening to Colin…
Vampire's Kiss redeems Skull Cyclist
(105 Words. February 23, 2007, 08:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
E. Steven chez SIFFBlog stands the fuck up for Nick. The New Yorker review (I think, can’t recall exactly) celebrated the performance as well. Citing other reviewers’ appreciation of my own fave Cage vehicle, the gotta-see-it-to-beleive-it-Vampire’s-Kiss (best if watched as the lead-in on a double bill with Repulsion), he builds to this inescapable, irrefutable truth: Lastly, and most importantly,…
TERRIBLE SEMANTIC CONFUSION IMPERILS MILLIONS
(451 Words. February 18, 2007, 11:22 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
It seems that the International Atomic Energy Agency has determined that it must needs stand up for terrible design and design by committee with the release of the eye-poppingly fucked-up ‘improvement’ to the extant rediation symbol. Seriously, how stupid can an international bureaucracy be? The long-held symbol, the well-known three-wedge-on-yellow design, effectively combined the four dark areas of a…
Apple Torrrent
(131 Words. February 16, 2007, 07:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cringely pulls some amusing speculation outta his piehole on why a) iTV has a hard drive and b) iTV, Mini, and the new-model Airport all are designed as stackable components. Where others would boldy solve the conundrum with cries of ‘design obsessives!’, der Cringler connects the dots via Unca Stevie’s recently declared jihad on DRM and foresees Apple edging…
Accommodations
(5 Words. February 14, 2007, 06:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
…but you can never leave….
Wake
(137 Words. February 08, 2007, 05:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As I waited to turn north on 4th on my way home, an odd-looking plane, banking in to Boeing Field, caught my eye. Never having seen one on approach to a dirt landing, the steeply-raked engines atop the wing fooled me into unknowing. The plane, a flying boat in U. S. Navy dress blue-and-gold, was almost certainly a restored…
Buzzkill
(111 Words. January 28, 2007, 10:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Buzzcocks soundtrack for AARP ad. When viewed in the context of a particularly grim Battlestar Galactica, it’s enough to give me the willies. Torture! Suicide! 30-year-old music written by teenagers used to sell retirement planning to 60-year olds! Divorce! Adultery! Heart-numbing use of the drink! I suppose, given the episodes’ topics of faith, loyalty, love and betrayal, a better…
Pull my finger
(332 Words. January 13, 2007, 06:16 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I went to see Cuaron’s Children of Men last night, and I fervently insist most of you, save those in New Orleans, rush forth to see it. I don’t have anything detailed to add to the positive critical opinion already made copiously available, save noting that I very much enjoyed the subtle use of editing and slapstick…
YouTube and the niche and the cinema.
(24 Words. November 10, 2006, 06:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
THE GREAT WAR IN THE AIR: ACES OF THE WESTERN FRONT Some plane geek holds forth, knowledgeably, for about THREE HOURS. I love it….
Flyboys
(757 Words. September 24, 2006, 12:33 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Well, Viv and I made the arduous trek to far Lynnwood to see Flyboys last night. Presumably due to the unorthodox funding model employed by the film (the producers made the film with their own money), the film has terrible distribution in the Seattle area, playing only far-edge suburban screens. That said, the film is a very old-fashioned war…
Cringely on Apple iTV
(122 Words. September 24, 2006, 11:59 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cringley has some interesting things to say about Apple’s announced iTV strategy. He makes a big deal out of using iTV to bring video-based iChat to the living room TV set and talks some trash in Redmond’s direction. What’s funny about this to me is that I have my Mini set up with my old Firewire iSight for just…
Wet and Regret
(21 Words. September 20, 2006, 06:04 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Old Joy - Review - Movies - New York Times. Why is this flick opening in Manhattan? Sounds lovely!…
Federation Propaganda
(11 Words. September 18, 2006, 10:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
DS9 and Galactica hooncho Ron Moore on Trek in the NYT….
Nieuport
(24 Words. September 13, 2006, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Extensive, interesting article on the production of the upcoming Flyboys, which, you’ll be unsurprised to note, has me in a tizzy of anticipation….
nearly wrapped
(237 Words. August 13, 2006, 05:47 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
About 2 hours ago, we struck for the night. We have two pickups to bang out in the morning - I’m guessing around 11 am - and the shoot will be over and we pack it up and head home to Seattle. I am very happy with the results - the shots look great, we got good sound, and…
200 Distilfinks
(50 Words. July 23, 2006, 10:40 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
NYT: For the Pennsylvania Dutch, a Long Tradition Fades. 200 of 800 Pennsylvania Dutch barn ‘hex signs’ remain. Odd, I recall seeing these a great deal in the early seventies as our family drove around the lower northeast. Seems like there must have been more than 800 at one time….
More Trek Fan Film Coverage
(248 Words. July 22, 2006, 08:20 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NPR ran a five-minute end-of-the-hour feature on the New Voyages Star Trek fan film crew this morning. As is becoming par for these stories, passing acknowledgment was made that this crew is not the only one making these fan-produced episodes, but the entirety of he reporting was focused on Cawley’s project. This is likely as much a reflection os…
Pie Rrrrate
(264 Words. July 07, 2006, 10:25 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Some anarchist (I take it) examination of Pirate Utopias. The film was pretty good, but not as great as the first, which has stood up well indeed. Viv and I just watched it yesterday evening and even as familiar as it it is now, there are repeated moments in which I shook my head in wondering appreciation of the…
Butchart Gardens
(117 Words. June 17, 2006, 12:02 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These fountains are animated and wave around and so forth. This is the floor of a quarry that was landscaped to form the heart of Butchart Gardens from the turn of the century to the forties, if I understood correctly. It’s hard to overemphasize how dramatic this fountain is - it’s a complex visual pun on the mind’s visual…
ChatFX
(85 Words. June 04, 2006, 10:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
ChatFX adds a miscellany of video effects to iChat. I actually pitched a similar concept to a video-oriented software producer about two years ago but nothing came of it. The specific possibility I see for software such as this is not so much the predictable, silly uses of it. I see the possibility of adding an additional layer of…
Developing
(145 Words. May 26, 2006, 05:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Paul of A Crank’s Progress ruminates on the death of film, informatively and (despite his self-perception that the post is long) with admirable efficiency. While I certainly understand the potential threat to our visible heritage in the disappearance of photographic prints from our patrimony, I myself celebrate it as one less burden to drag toward the grave. As someone…
Kewpie Savior Angst
(11 Words. May 21, 2006, 03:52 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Rejoice, for the Kewpie has been born unto the commercial artist….
Eye popper
(5 Words. May 21, 2006, 03:46 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Madonna and kewpie, circa 1930s….
Three
(1 Words. May 20, 2006, 12:52 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Feets!…
Wet Lens
(10 Words. May 13, 2006, 12:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Old camera? A dunk might make it new again….
That's the ticket
(78 Words. May 02, 2006, 06:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Today I received word that all my active writers over at SIFFBlog will be granted press passes for the festival. I’m kind of in shock. I do not have time to use a pass, so I did not apply - I suppose now it’s incumbent upon me to figure out what events I am to attend. I need to…
Finding Lost
(103 Words. April 08, 2006, 01:03 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
cityofsound: Why Lost is genuinely new media [via thingsmagazine.net] Far out. The author notes that there is a book for sale on Amazon seen on the show as a manuscript being read by Hurley, and cites the author bio from the online bookseller’s listing: “About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary…
Buck-Ninety-nine
(192 Words. April 06, 2006, 10:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
FREE*PASS: All the copyright rubbish you can take for $99 a year, or $1.99 per flick. Despite my distinct perception that this is cinematic shovelware, I have not taken the time to see if all the UK Hitchcock they have is actually from archive.org or if it’s sublicensed from commercial distribution. I will note that they have a ton…
D70 on stage
(49 Words. April 04, 2006, 12:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
D70 on stage Hopefully, this will implement the new posting template, although yesterday’s post had some sort of line break bug that this implementation may not redress. I suppose the next thing is to find the equivalent of post-by-mail with Flickr for audio and movies off this device, eh?…
V
(22 Words. March 23, 2006, 08:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The Greatest Bus Driver in the World has a heartfelt rant inspired by the Alan Moore disowned V is for Vendetta….
Yow!
(23 Words. March 22, 2006, 06:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This can’t last, but: LOTSA GOODIES. Silents, TV shows, copyright violation galore. The stuff I want is outta (c) anyhoo, but, dig….
Apres le Deluge
(12 Words. March 17, 2006, 02:11 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor B announces that ROX #93 is up and available for perusal….
Money will get you through.. no, wait...
(12 Words. February 09, 2006, 06:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
via FLOG: there’s a stop-motion Freak Brothers movie in production. Dear God….
Pelted
(387 Words. January 27, 2006, 11:19 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I also saw Narnia tonight, finally. Viv liked it considerably more than I did. She did not notice the three-hour running time; I did, and I also noticed some scenes which appeared to refer to cut scenes presumably excised to sweeten the DVD, something which irks me a bit. The excisions should be seamless; apparently, though, Viv…
Mars
(88 Words. January 25, 2006, 07:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The NYT previews an IMAX film, in 3D, about the odds-beating Mars Rover program. Space and 3D: two great tastes that would go great together, if there was any way to actually experience depth perception beyond 100 yards in a vaccuum. Spencer and Viv and I had the pleasure of viewing the Ron Howard / Tom Hanks jernt aboot…
DVD 2 iPod
(17 Words. December 25, 2005, 10:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software. QUERY: do I have to help?…
D'ohmage
(74 Words. November 25, 2005, 10:05 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The night before Thanksgiving, while out carousing with a subset of the usual reprobates, I appear to have lost the Minolta D’image that i so valued for its’ image quality and movies. Front runner for replacement is a current-gen Elph, but the proprietary rechargeable battery gives me pause. This also means I have to bust out the feared Kodak…
bust
(43 Words. November 19, 2005, 10:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
sorry, folks, something’s awry between iPhoto and flickrexport this evening, so no photo updates on flickr for a while. It’s too bad, really. We found some stamps in the house, one of which appears to be a russian 20-kopek stamp dating to 1889….
La laa, la la laaa
(487 Words. November 14, 2005, 09:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
What do you call a workday that begins at 6 am and ends at 8 pm? In other news, we bought the floor for the house’s large family room over the weekend, about $1.5k, in a thicker-plank red oak than the existing oak that was under the carpets. On the whole, the remodel is on track to go over…
If Dan could see this
(23 Words. November 01, 2005, 08:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Danelope may be interested to learn that Werner Herzog will be in town attending four screenings of his films at the NWFF….
Some statements.
(165 Words. October 15, 2005, 03:22 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The video iPod is not yet in Apple stores. There is an Apple-hosted page on converting or creating video content for your iPod here. In essence, downsize it to spec using Quicktime 7 tools. There is a page here which covers working with Tivo To Go content, importing and exporting it to and from the DRM the content comes wrapped…
Bulk to Flickr
(139 Words. October 09, 2005, 12:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a part of my multivalent photo-storage disaster, I am finally exporting from iPhoto to Flickr. The flickrexport iPhoto plugin works OK, but I need to export about 150 albums to Flickr as sets with the same names as the albums. Flickrexport allows one to export more than one album at a time, but it does not automatically create…
It's in the cuts
(18 Words. October 06, 2005, 07:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Editor b has released a ‘rough cut’ of his evacuation from New Orleans just over a month ago….
Eat the Document preview at Siffblog
(152 Words. October 03, 2005, 05:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Over on Siffblog, E. Steven Fried notes that the EMP will be showing D. A. Pennebaker’s Eat the Document shortly. I saw the post title and subject and mistakenly took it for a review of No Direction Home; I had been mulling a review of the film myself but think I said I what I had to say, more…
Reinvention
(57 Words. September 25, 2005, 09:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’m gonna be busy Monday and Tuesday night, looks like. This is old damn news, but dylanchords is not just a useful resource for finding chords to songs that Dylan has performed; looking though the site, I found chords for many traditional songs that I have long been familiar with but not seen in this familiar format….
Found
(31 Words. September 21, 2005, 08:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, watching Lost tonight after watching a plane land on bum gear at LAX this evening has affected my experience of the show. I’m not sure in what way, exactly….
ESF on RM
(37 Words. September 21, 2005, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is E. Steven Fried’s epic review of a Russ Meyer bio. Word on the street is that Mr. Fried will be making the scene at the too-happenin’ NWFF 10th anniversary party tonight….
Glub glub
(16 Words. September 20, 2005, 05:44 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
League brother Manuel posts some underwater movies of his recent snorkeling adventures in unlikely Seattle locales….
I see
(43 Words. September 12, 2005, 10:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
TidBITS takes a look at ShowMacster, an add-on for iChat that allows you to add inline video and photos to the outbound video stream, so your conversation partner can see slides or clips directly in the cintext of the iChat videoconference window….
Takeover
(14 Words. September 10, 2005, 11:42 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
He jgumped upt onntp the kpbbrd and sat dwn befpre helping with this entry….
Chopper
(73 Words. September 10, 2005, 02:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On September 2, Rocketboom posted 10 minutes of semi-raw footage from a helicopter flying over the deeply-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans. The footage includes radio chatter, and the longest segment captures a military Huey picking up a group of survivors from a rooftop. The pilots of the various helicopters struggle to establish radio contact and when people on the…
Plywood
(29 Words. September 09, 2005, 09:27 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
…one more Katrina thing: a French Quarter resident had the presence of mind to shot his entire Katrina experience, and the resulting photoset is very much worth your while….
Not Dead Yet
(281 Words. September 05, 2005, 06:30 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A few folks have corresponded with me via email about this, but I feel like I should address it here as well. This was originally posted to Siffblog; I try to crosspost here as well. Tablet has announced that the current issue, #103, will be the final edition of the magazine. While Siffblog has been affiliated with Tablet, I…
Dune
(19 Words. September 02, 2005, 11:46 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Alejandro Jodorowsky on his unmade 1970’s adaptation of Dune. [Big ups to Dr. Alice Dee for this ‘un!]…
Seward Park
(14 Words. August 14, 2005, 12:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
We spent a happy afternoon with Chris and Sabrina in Seward Park this evening….
Kaspar's Kouch
(27 Words. August 12, 2005, 10:31 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New-minted Siffblogger E. Steven Fried shines a light into the dark recesses of Kaspar’s Kouch Film Festival. Now that is my kinda festival, lemme tell you….
Ballard
(8 Words. July 30, 2005, 10:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
A couple weeks ago in Ballard, on dumpsters:…
Hardware is Software
(14 Words. July 28, 2005, 09:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I saw this recently, and thought of you, and you, and you, and me….
The Nyback illusion
(259 Words. July 26, 2005, 07:19 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Devoted filmist and friend of SIFFblog Alice Dee passes on a line to note an event of interest to us all: For two weeks film archivist and historian DENNIS NYBACK will be residing at THE GRAND ILLUSION CINEMA showing 27 programs in 14 days consisting of over 100 films! Week one features some of his rarest and most entertaining…
Empire
(117 Words. July 22, 2005, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Jon Konrath passes along a link to the Google Maps satellite view of the Breaking Away quarry and the nearby complex of quarries. The linked review is a must-read, by the way. I thought it was interesting that he located it by searching for “Empire Mill Road,” as it was a staple of Bloomington folklore that Bloomington limestone is…
Ken
(20 Words. July 21, 2005, 10:03 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Hard at work. Holding forth on the subject of mattress copy. Pointing out a possible error in historical attribution….
Lack of local color
(28 Words. July 19, 2005, 09:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I was amused on zooming way out in the satellite view of Google Maps to note a possible reason for my having left Indiana as a young man….
Golden Ticket
(28 Words. July 15, 2005, 09:05 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I think you’ll agree that the only sensible response to today’s Burton/Depp Charlie is to rent the 1972 original. No one comes in, and no one goes out….
Cringley joins the fray
(132 Words. July 08, 2005, 05:31 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Venerable statesman of the networked and nerdly Robert X. Cringely announces his entree (or is that re-entry) to the media-blog-o-sphere, introducing a new version of the always-entertaining and often influential I, Cringley that will somehow tie into his PBS-slash-online TV show, NerdTV. What’s interesting about this is: a) he terms the new show “videoblogging,” which seems a stretch, but…
Galactica
(115 Words. July 06, 2005, 10:30 PM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
SciFi’s running a marathon of Ron Moore’s Galactica and I’m finally able to take the time to watch. It is, as has been widely reported, pretty darn good. I have noted with amusement some clearly deliberate nods to Bungie’s beloved Marathon - as a small flight of ships drops out of jumpspace into a swarm of Cylon ships, a…
Paintnins
(29 Words. June 13, 2005, 09:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This AskMe thread begins with a plaintive cry into the dark void of space concerning a series of late seventies sci-fi coffeetable books, and uncovers a secret universe….
Pole
(210 Words. June 12, 2005, 03:01 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s intermission at the kabuki show. We just saw ‘Tied to a Pole,’ in which two rascally servants contrive ingenious ways to drink the master’s sake while tied to a pole or with their hands behind their back. The use of bondage as a theme in a play which the program notes decribed both as stemming from an older…
Practice
(58 Words. June 09, 2005, 08:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For over a year, I have played music with Greg and Karel on Thursday nights. Karel has had a raft of scheduling conflicts, and so we have rescheduled. Tonight, that meant that I had the pleasure of watching the Friends spinoff Joey for the first time. It’s truly no wonder that Thursday nights were originally selected for practice….
Whiteface
(187 Words. June 08, 2005, 11:32 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Alright, one more thing before I crack the snoozer book. We’re going to one of the kabuki shows this weekend at the Paramount, and I can’t wait. I think I may have attended a kabuki performance around 1978 in Japan, but I do not have a clear recollection of it, and it may simply be a false memory. So…
Siffy
(37 Words. June 08, 2005, 11:20 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, I’ve mentioned this before, so forgive me. The SIFFbloggers are really going to town over there - four, five posts a day, comments, building traffic, the whole schmeer. It makes me so proud. Sniff….
SIFF blog
(12 Words. June 01, 2005, 09:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I’m happy to say the Siffblog has had its’ first hundred-visitor day!…
Episode III: Capital!
(389 Words. May 30, 2005, 11:09 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Viv and I saw Star Wars Ep. III tonight after a wander about the Pike Place Market Festival. In short, my opinion is on the median - much better than the other two recent films, not the greatest SF film I have ever seen, a few scenes that were quite successful on any terms. I’m sure everyone in the…
RIP Jason Sprinkle
(124 Words. May 25, 2005, 10:13 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The PI’s Buzzworthy notes the death of Jason Sprinkle, who instigated a bookended pair of guerilla art projects here in Seattle. I read the obit in the paper today, and I felt quite sad as I read the news. Sprinkle’s first art prank, a ball-and-chain attached to the foot of SAM’s Hammering Man downtown (to my surprise, over a…
CC WiFi
(43 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:41 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The P-I’s Buzzworthy notes the launch sites for a City of Seattle municipal WiFi pilot project: Columbia City and the U. I suppose this may well make Chris, Sabrina, and Dan’s lives easier. Say, when was that Minutemen movie again?…
And Curtain
(144 Words. May 17, 2005, 04:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, you’ve probably heard that this time out the NYT’s A. O. Scott rejects, I’m sorry to say, a curb-stomping for Star Wars, Episode III (sorry for the link, but the blogerator appears to be down.) Apparently eager to make up for it, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane unleashes a review of overreaching vituperation which fails to amuse in…
Boules
(21 Words. May 15, 2005, 06:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Movies from the MetaFilter bowling meetup last weekend. This one has the infamous fatllama victory dance. My overdue pix here….
War Room
(144 Words. May 14, 2005, 05:16 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I walked into The War Room, a new club on Capitol Hill, recently. I had noticed that the deck was open, but when we walked in, the interior space was completely empty. All of the hung art - and possibly the club logo - is by Stewart Fairey of “Obey Giant” fame. The club adertises free wifi….
Isdle
(0 Words. May 14, 2005, 05:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The whale
(98 Words. May 12, 2005, 11:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I saw Hitchhiker’s Guide this evening, expecting nothing, and came away reasonably happy. Like many old-skool geeks, I had a particular relationship with the radio and book incarnations of this series and subsequent to last year’s disastrous rental of the eye-scorchingly terrible BBC-TV series. The elegiac tone - and subsurface, if you will, presence of departed creator…
The League
(8 Words. May 01, 2005, 08:20 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dan notes Tom’s Are We Not Men? flickrset….
Sphinx
(3 Words. April 28, 2005, 08:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Cat with wings:…
mg tc
(57 Words. April 27, 2005, 07:48 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As I stepped out of the house into a cool, misty morning, a British racing-green MG TC wheeled round the corner, top down in the dew. The driver sported a leather aviator’s helmet with flight goggles and was also wearing a worn leather driving coat, collar secured against the tempest. I smiled to see such a sight….
Teevee
(343 Words. April 19, 2005, 05:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Well over a month ago, we inadvertently became a semi no-TV household. Our satellite provider mailed us a replacement ‘smart card’ for our satellite box, a five-year-old WebTV-integrated PVR which we have never used as a PVR or as a WebTV device but only as a receiver. The smart card managed to disable the device, and so the only…
Goodwill
(758 Words. April 02, 2005, 11:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Well, having some unexpected free time, we went back to Goodwill and found some glasses. They weren’t the ones we’d come up with initially, but they’ll do. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy picking through the glassware at Goodwill - it’s like a giant, transparent, three-dimensional puzzle, and your challenge is to find the items that match….
Zombi Look
(654 Words. February 19, 2005, 10:48 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Lessee now. What got done today? Not that much. I did pick up a cheap amplifier, but declined to wrestle the octopus of my A/V stack tonight. I discovered a friend had recently Switched, and left him a message of congrats. I also found that another old friend (an old friend from Seattle, mind you) is a MeFite. Here’s hoping…
Sunrise
(309 Words. February 08, 2005, 07:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last night, Spence, Viv, and I attended the first of four Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount this month. The film was F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. The film’s plot tells of a married village couple. The husband is tempted into an affair by a seductress from The City, and she encourages him to murder his wife. He sets out to…
Dy-no-mite
(107 Words. February 05, 2005, 09:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I watched Napoleon Dynamite tonight. It inspires four comments: It seems likely that I went to high school with the person who scored the movie. Speaking of scores, the music that plays immediately following Napoleon’s big dance triumph is Music for a Found Harmonium, which is a tune that has been a part of my (and Greg’s and…
Spence on Melies, an update
(1041 Words. February 05, 2005, 04:37 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dear friend Spencer Sundell, who of late has taken to squirrelling away tins of obscure 8mm film rarities, dropped by an earlier entry to update us on the works of Georges Méliès. I myself remain locked in my tower of Google research on a couple of posts, and so this much juicy gum-flappin’ begs to be promoted from comment to…
Struts
(501 Words. January 29, 2005, 05:48 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
We saw The Aviator with Spence last night. It was… OK. The subject, Howard Hughes’ life as aviation-industry obsessive, is of intrinsic interest to me, and there’s a link filled post in gestation, prompted by many questions I had as I watched the film. But after sleeping on it, despite DiCaprio’s worthwhile performance, there’s no way that this should be…
The real retail jet
(29 Words. December 18, 2004, 02:41 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A 747 took a leisurely tour of Amsterdam yestereen. Courtesy Viewropa. The framing on some of the shots is delish. Keey an eye peeled for the minicar….
A Very Long Engagement
(1071 Words. December 18, 2004, 06:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Crossposted from Tablet’s Siffblog, soon to become Tablet’s Filmblog.) In late November, Viv and I were happy to attend a Cinema Seattle preview screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s newest film, A Very Long Engagement. The film stars Audrey Tatou, who also had the lead in Amèlie. The film concerns a young woman’s search for her fiancé, missing in the trenches…
Superpolymesh
(226 Words. December 05, 2004, 01:06 AM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Viv and I just got back from seeing The Incredibles (finally), and I won’t bore you with predictable rantings about its’ excellence. I will say, however, that word on a certain Randian subtext is clearly correct. Part of the film’s triumph is the remarkable fact that this did not provoke sneering on my part. I certainly cannot wait for…
Neko
(306 Words. November 28, 2004, 02:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Last night we went to see Neko Case at Neumo’s. Click the pic for more blurry pix. I shot a fair amount of video, too. I’ll link to the clips here; they are all in quicktime format. The show opened with the out-of-place on the bill Dexter Romweber, a true southern madman, who was in fine form. Despite this,…
Jeunet
(247 Words. November 23, 2004, 07:22 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
On Sunday, Viv and I went to a Cinema Seattle screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s upcoming film, A Very Long Engagement, which stars Audrey Tatou as a young woman whose fiancé fails to return from the trenches of the First World War, and sets about finding him. I saw the film for review, so I’ll skip the windbaggery here until…
Craig Thompson Awards Sweep
(327 Words. November 21, 2004, 04:37 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In my inbox today is a press release from Portland-based Top Shelf Comix, properly tooting their own horn on a first time eent in the history of comics. Portland-based comics author Craig Thompson swept the comics industry awards this year, winning every award he was nominated for in recognition of the stunning accomplishment of his second graphic novel, the…
New Voyage
(414 Words. November 20, 2004, 10:11 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Apparently I haven’t been paying close enough attention, as in October the Star Trek: New Voyages project released their second episode, In Harm’s Way. Regrettably, it seems they also have not been paying attention, as it’s impossible to ID the content from the URL or storage structure they have implemented at the moment. Presumably, someday, a more effectively designed…
1919
(127 Words. November 16, 2004, 09:45 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Yesterday morning on my way to work, I glanced through the cold morning rain to see a cardboard box in the alley near a bus stop. A tattered piece of cardboard caught my eye, turn-of-the-century display type peeking out from the pile of debris. I investigated and found a stash of theatrical posters from St. Louis, dated between 1919…
Monkey Tee, Monkey Do
(21 Words. November 06, 2004, 01:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Monkeyfilter is considering teeshirts. Here’s my rather obvious suggestion. I think I’m still working on it. See you at the Elysian!…
him name animal
(83 Words. November 05, 2004, 10:18 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
It’s a put on, but I chuckled all the same. Of course, as I took the picture, a couple of the zombies that currently infest our neighborhood leered into my personal space. The tall scabrous-faced one began asking half-informed questions about the camera, which I dodged. Hm, I thought. Should I discuss my small, eminently stealable technology toy with…
Simple
(16 Words. November 03, 2004, 07:21 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
God damn, Blood Simple is on IFC and I tells ya, that movie makes me laugh!…
Less like a rocketship
(29 Words. October 31, 2004, 10:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Comedy Central is playing episodes of That’s My Bush. Election-season tomfoolery, or do I just never stay up this late? I thought they yanked it, totally, after 9/11….
Spooooky
(10 Words. October 31, 2004, 12:06 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Here are some Halloween images I’ve come across this month….
the shocker, i think
(4 Words. October 30, 2004, 06:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
My upstairs neighbor’s punkin….
All this and an eclipse too
(15 Words. October 27, 2004, 05:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
See? This is sunset at MSH, happening as I post! I mean look at it!…
Moonlight and dawn
(62 Words. October 25, 2004, 08:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Moonlight on the new snow reveals the mountain and the plume of steam around eleven last night. Seven a.m. Eight a.m. Man, the images are so beautiful sometimes. I wish the camera had a higher resolution or a crisper CCD - the visual appeal of these thumbs is sometimes not met by the full-size imagery, owing to artifacts in…
The Glow
(19 Words. October 20, 2004, 07:05 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Finally! A break in the cloud cover reveals it is as we have suspected! MSH is now Mt. Doom….
Simon
(14 Words. October 16, 2004, 11:18 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
And of course, a cat picture, to keep things in tune. (It’s a yawn.)…
mountain, four trees
(225 Words. October 15, 2004, 07:43 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Yeah, yeah, more than four trees, and I’m standing on the mountain, OK? Having Mt. St. Helens up in the upper right corner of this page is proving interesting in ways I did not expect. For example, two days ago, I was up before dawn and happened to see dawn break over the mountain. A tiny bright spot in…
Storefront
(10 Words. October 14, 2004, 07:15 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In the Greenwood area. One of my favorite Seattle-area facades….
Snap
(96 Words. October 11, 2004, 07:37 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Arguments for and against Armageddon, one of an infinite series. Heated political discussion on the shores of Green Lake. Evidence in favor of a healthy democracy. Argument against! Topic of the argument: war in the Middle East involving Americans, Israelis, and Arabs. Argument for! Verdict: A draw. An in-store display of orange, green, and purple pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat lootbags. Argument…
How to steal a Zeppelin
(1166 Words. October 02, 2004, 07:28 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
This is the final installment of Blimp Week II, folks, and I’m playing a couple of requests. Soon-to-be parasite on society Paul Frankenstein (he’s famous, you know) IMs, suggesting the title above. Ergo: 1. Go to Google Image search. 2. Enter the word “zeppelin” and hit the submit button. 3. Steal as many zeppelins as you’d like. Thank you!…
How to look at a Zeppelin
(784 Words. October 01, 2004, 07:24 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Man, am I beat. Thus, some brevity, in theory. Let’s set things up for a ruminantive journey by peeking in on FROM BABYKILLER TO ART DECO ICON: images of the airship, authored in 2002 and concluding with a paragraph that looks ahead to the coming hypercapitalist celebration of the airship. Having digested that (and franked the letters as apprpriate)…
Sky Captain and the Blimp Week of Tomorrow
(1679 Words. September 25, 2004, 10:57 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I caught Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (link advisory: flash, loud SFX) this afternoon. Following the film we ate at the lovely Le Pichet, a tiny French bistro on First, next to the Virginia Inn. The meal was quite pricey but the food was very good. Sky Captain, as you must know by now, is interesting…
Let's hope so
(129 Words. September 17, 2004, 12:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’: Fending Off Alien Robots, but Still Time to Flirt [NYT] - One of the most positive reviews of an SF film I’ve ever read at the Times, by Stephen Holden. He complains only of the murk (“at times the film is hard to see”), and that perhaps you darn kids won’t get what’s…
Video
(798 Words. August 29, 2004, 07:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent much of today pushing and pulling at the random video sniplets being generated by our two video-capable digital cameras. I’ve blogged before about shortfalls in Apple’s iTools regarding the use-practice of toting these things (essentially, it’s impossible to just dump the video onto an archival DVD mastered via iDVD). Poking about in semi-familiar software is a fine and…
Iphigenia at Aulis
(233 Words. August 27, 2004, 07:27 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Having managed to view fragments amounting to one half of the final episode of the decidedly average The Spartans, I variously learned or was reminded that: Upon the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, about 7,000 Athenian invaders were imprisoned for a fair period of time in a quarry at Syracuse, exposed to the elements and fading fast. According to the transcript…
The City Rises
(8 Words. August 20, 2004, 07:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Construction crane near Madison, dusk, early August 2004)…
Red Noses
(368 Words. August 17, 2004, 12:18 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This weekend, Viv and I went to a free production of the play Red Noses in a nearby park. It’s running through the end of the month at the Miller Community Center on 19th, just over the hill from Safeway on 15th. The play garnered a lukewarm review in the P-I recently, and I have to concur in the judgement…
in a lonely place
(244 Words. August 16, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Saturday night, I caught two Bogart films on TMC, 1951’s uneven The Enforcer, a fictionalization of the discovery and prosecution of the notorious Murder, Inc., and a great film I’d unaccountably missed in my peerings at and mumblings on the era’s work. That film is In a Lonely Place (1950), based on the recently-republished Dorothy Hughes title of the same…
ividly
(594 Words. August 15, 2004, 11:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month). As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry…
Hitting the books
(432 Words. August 11, 2004, 05:53 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Well, yesterday’s filmic experiment was a dud, apparently due to my ignorant choice of media to export the file to. Once, I swear, I had all this stuff down, but it’s been a few years since I needed to whack off a movie clip for download and browser display. I guess I expected iMovie to just take care of that…
Microfilm
(488 Words. August 10, 2004, 08:35 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(1 minute. 6 mb 1.8 mb, 320 x 240 mpeg, no audio. Control-click to download, looks like I have Apache set to not stream mpegs or something.) As I mentioned, Viv and I (and Spencer) were out of town this weekend. We were on the Olympic peninsula, in an ill-advised attempt to visit the Hoh river valley on the…
February, 2003
(5 Words. August 08, 2004, 09:08 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Second Avenue, Seattle. 11:00 pm….
Annabel Lee; The Banjo - grotesque fantasie; and so forth
(221 Words. August 04, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
The eagle eyed Manuel linkied me via email with ye olde Duke U. repository of American sheet music cover pages, covering the years between 1850 and 1920. Each decade is presented in its’ own browsable gallery, although it takes a few clicks to get to the good stuff. But the good stuff, well, it’s good. A typographical horror representing the…
Super
(8 Words. August 03, 2004, 07:06 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The market can be a happy, happy place….
Vici Video et Vino
(235 Words. July 25, 2004, 06:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My parents are back from a global jaunt, and so we’ve returned too near-daily IM and video chat. I’m very happy about this, as for a spate of years I had simply come to accept infrequent contact with them as the natural state of affairs. Thanks to iChat and AIM, I can see and talk to them every day that…
Cam, gear, shaft
(252 Words. July 19, 2004, 07:16 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I bought Viv a Minolta DiMage X20 as an anniversary present. My primary criteria were size, cost, and standard batteries (I hate manufacturer-proprietary rechargeables). It’s currently available at Amazon for $170, a somewhat different price than I paid. I was very surprised at the camera’s bounty of features, which includes (as do many cameras these days) low-res digital video clips…
The Pepper Tree
(233 Words. July 15, 2004, 07:03 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
In the earlier post referencing a photo-log of my commute, I expressed grumpiness that the captions of the images failed to properly appear in Gallery. One reason is that the interesting tree seen here was not annotated. It’s a Brazilian pepper tree, a problem plant in Florida. The tree is just behind the Canal Boiler Works but probably not on…
... And the Dame, Too.
(245 Words. July 14, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
A wave of film noir is due on DVD shortly, hurrah! From the Wikipedia link above: Film noir tends to feature characters trapped in a situation (often a situation not of their making) and making choices out of desperation. Frequent themes are murder, betrayal, and infidelity. Films noirs tend to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast (a technique called low-key…
Hi ho
(53 Words. July 13, 2004, 06:36 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Although there is a bus ride in the middle, here are the things I see every day on my way to work. Yesterday morning, though, there was an added attraction: the burned-out remnants of Hillcrest Market. A walk to work. (Grumble. The captions didn’t come over from iPhoto and I’m out of steam.)…
¡Hasta La Victoria!
(181 Words. July 11, 2004, 11:16 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Today was an insanely busy day. Errand after errand. Luckily, we were able to meet up with Spence for dinner and finally catch F 9/11, which stood up. It was like hearing an impassioned argument. It’s worth seeing, and on the way home, Viv was saying how she wished she could get her Cuban-emigré parents to see it. She heated…
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand
(977 Words. July 03, 2004, 10:36 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Viv and I caught Spiderman 2 this afternoon, after a few errands. We ran into Tom and Rachel on their way to see F911, outside their building. There were so many movies opening this weekend or last that I wish to see, I was uncertain what we would watch, leaving it up to semi-random chance. Predictably enough, the film with…
Vegan Roadkill
(47 Words. July 01, 2004, 07:29 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The roadkill cooked slowly, only gradually charring enough to allow one to easily slough the charred skin. Once that material patched off, an unsightly orange tone was observed in the yet-underdone flesh of the item. Later, we were set upon by a night nibbler….
Oh too
(66 Words. June 30, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I was without oxygen, and equally without beer. It was only a matter of time until it was all over. No doubt they would find me, sprawled amidst the rock and snow, feed cap semaphoring over the miles, flickering yellow and off, yellow and off. If not for the backwash of the snowboarders’ leavings, I would be dead toady,…
54 Buick P-40 Special
(122 Words. June 29, 2004, 07:00 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
As we drove south on Chuckanut Drive, overlooking the waters that hold the San Juans, we came across this lovely militarian art car, lableled in stencil on the trunk “54 Buick Special P-40.” The car also featured what I’d have to describe as ‘tail art,’ and a front-facing fifty-caliber machine gun in the back seat, not clearly visible in…
I said, "Holy s***, look at that!"
(216 Words. June 28, 2004, 07:15 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
The New York Times > Movies > The Political ‘Fahrenheit’ Sets Record at Box Office, notes the NYT. The film is set to take first place in grosses this weekend, an amazing feat when one notes that the number of theaters involved, and consequently the number of possible screenings, is about a third of a large-scale Hollywood opening weekend. As…
SIFF '04 RIP
(579 Words. June 20, 2004, 06:36 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I pointed this out a few times early in the festival run, but I want to prompt Seattle-area readers or ex-locals to stroll through the amusing doings the various Tableteers got up to over at the Siffblog. I still need to fix an IE display bug which centers everything, but on the whole I think the experiment worked out well….
Library
(11 Words. June 08, 2004, 06:12 PM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Last week’s library visit involved a couple-few pix. Here ya go….
Pete Gibbons, meet David Brent
(149 Words. June 05, 2004, 11:38 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
The World of Ricky Gervais’ The Office: Series 1 Trivia helps to tie some things together. By some odd coincidence, my long-reserved copy of The Office came in on Friday, and Saturday was when we had time to watch it. What should be on Bravo in the ealry evening, just prior to our planned DVDathon? Office Space. Viv and I…
Skeleton Island
(143 Words. May 20, 2004, 03:34 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Click the closeup to see the whole map. Scanning this, I noticed some killer engraved illustrations in the book. But I really must move on today. UPDATE: Hmm, I had noticed this as I was working on the prior entry, but there’s an odd chiming between this new look of mine and the recent redesig over at Josh’s Communications…
News From Nowhere
(300 Words. May 20, 2004, 02:58 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
As a part of my ill-advised development of a virtual book look for this site, I dug out some of the older books I have here and there about the house. The pages that made it into the final product came from an 1894 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island published by Charles Scribner’s Sons as pat of…
Hallucinatory Pummeling
(497 Words. May 20, 2004, 11:52 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
[crosspost from the Siffblog] This is the first year that I had the opportunity to take as full an advantage of my SIFF press pass as I have wanted to, and for the first two weeks of screenings, I was very diligent about seeing every film shown, about three a day for two weeks. I had been warned by others…
Overload
(108 Words. May 12, 2004, 08:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Last week, and this week, I am numbing my butt at nearly every single press screening for the Seattle International Film Festival out of some masochistic curiosity. I have learned that there are clearly more bad and so-so films made than good or great ones, so far. I have also learned that watching three movies in a day in a…
Some Battle
(215 Words. May 08, 2004, 07:03 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I found this striking image as the front cover of a circular for the History Book Club, I believe in a magazine. It appears to show an epic but forgotten battle. On the desert plains of Egypt, the Civil War-era forces of Texas and the Ohio Volunteers are facing off. The ten-gallon boys look to be in for a…
Research
(21 Words. May 06, 2004, 05:04 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Girl + Boy - Chris Doyle Chris Doyle, LA Times Chris Doyle Yahoo! Movies bio Chris Doyle on shooting Hero….
Same as the Old Boss
(431 Words. May 02, 2004, 01:22 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So I guess IFC was having a Who-athon or something; I remarked to Viv as we flipped by that the band had been very lucky cinematically, with the three films they were involved with that I know of. It was the closing scenes of Tommy we were looking at. Tommy is a completely ridiculous movie; but at the same time,…
The Black Ships
(294 Words. April 25, 2004, 01:01 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
I saw an ad on the tube yesterday, which prominently featured the black ships, beached on the shore before Troy, and all the hair on my neck stood on end. I didn’t realize that I’m really excited for this film, but: I am. I think Viv is too. The Fagles translation is hard to find even excerpts from, but there…
Anhalt's interiors
(752 Words. April 23, 2004, 02:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
On Tuesday, I promised a discussion of the interior architecture of the Seattle area apartments constructed in the 1920’s by Frederick Anhalt. After a couple of days of distraction I’m ready to deliver. As noted earlier, Anhalt was not an architect himself. He worked with others who were, selecting architectural and decorative elements from a pattern book (or books). These…
Anhalt substitute
(96 Words. April 21, 2004, 03:45 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
OK, OK, here’s a little sumpin’ sumpin. The Anhalt next to the Capitol Hill Library has a vacancy. Looks like there were three, but the giant 2-bedroom and the studio are gone, at $1495 and $795, respectively. A 1-bedroom remains at $1095 $1195 (sorry. my mistake). It’s at 417 Harvard East. The 1-bedroom is described as ‘large’ and has a…
Hot Bug
(65 Words. April 12, 2004, 05:48 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I had a much longer entry here but Safari ate it when I tried to post the cool drawing I found today. The drawing is signed ‘2004 - clare.’ The longer entry gave thumbs up to the new falafel joint across from the Market on Broadway, along with sundry other things that fell in my eye today as I hurried…
Birdwatching
(17 Words. April 10, 2004, 09:52 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
nerd? Sars Chicken is not being subservient. Does he have a distinctive legbanding pattern? [via bufoonery.org]…
Photos: Test
(80 Words. March 31, 2004, 11:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and Anne in the Museum of Science and Industry. A test post using iPhoto to Movable Type. Unfortunately it’s beta.2 software, and it shows. I’ll be playing with it more tomorrow, I expect. My first test was an optimistic batch posting of 22 pix that took over an hour to process (!) and which, when posted did not…
White suits
(38 Words. March 20, 2004, 12:14 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
QT trailer for CASSHERN at Apple Japan (via the Cartoonist, again!). Beautiful CGI visualized alternative-world thingy. Giant Robots! Grungy cities! Guys in body armor jumping around waving swords. It looks like live-action anime. I’d love to know more….
A few useful links
(84 Words. February 29, 2004, 05:09 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A Pith Productions’ Oscar Pool 2004, virtually representing the opinion of the blogosphere. Except, alas, it seems to be gone from my DNS at least, for pity’s sake. No pings, ‘unknown host.’ Hopefully you’ll have better luck than I. Anybody got an IP address for it? (Here’s a web-based toolset, if you care.) Andy Inahtko runs his picks and promises…
Who's next?
(210 Words. February 27, 2004, 11:33 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Everybody is either stunned or entertained by Quiznos’ adoption of the spongmonkeys, it seems. The truly amazing thing to me is just what a well-kept secret Joel Veitch’s work apparently has remained these past couple years. Those of us fortunate enough to be exposed to the beloved earworm in its’ primary incarnation are unsurprised by the hubbub, though. I’ll remind…
A Reminder
(14 Words. February 24, 2004, 09:08 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Your local public library carries a wide selection of videos, DVDs, and audio CDs….
Lawrence of Arabia Widescreen
(68 Words. February 23, 2004, 09:52 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Seattle Cinerama: MARCH 4-11, 2004. THE SECOND ANNUAL “REEL” CINERAMA FILM FESTIVAL. Thursday, 3/4 11:00 p.m. - 2001 Friday, 3/5 7:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia Monday, 3/8 3:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia Wednesday, 3/10 3:00 p.m. - Lawrence of Arabia There are other films playing, of course, including some 3-strip Cinerama flicks but mostly I must say: LAWRENCEOF…
Taken by surprise
(94 Words. February 20, 2004, 08:38 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’m doing some backfill homework tonight, watching the 1997 documentary Trekkies, which for whatever reason I missed the first time out. I’m laying ground work for my long-mused-about look at fanfic flicks. At fifteen minutes in there’s a five-second or less clip of two costumed fans I can name, Jimm and Josh Johnson, who will, I expect, appear in the…
I think I did.
(132 Words. February 15, 2004, 08:55 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Also, I’m pretty sure we saw Al Roker (warning, silly plane SFX, turn audio down) at Blue Canal on Broadway, with a full entourage of about twenty folks. A photo was snapped in front of the (Thai?) bas-relief in the waiting area, but not of or by me. Maybe Al will update his journal. If I had to guess, I’d…
the Frye, David Horsey, and a KG lookalike
(920 Words. February 15, 2004, 06:43 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Today we went to the Frye Art Museum, which devotes itself to figurative art, by and large. It has an interesting collection of non-modernist works up roughly through the turn of the nineteenth century. Viv and I go fairly frequently; I’d say about once every six months. The rotating exhibitions there often feature cartoonists, as with the one up currently…
Crazy bug
(17 Words. February 12, 2004, 08:18 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
That’s a new one. The file itself is not screwy. Who knows why it displayed like this?…
Ah, oops
(402 Words. February 07, 2004, 09:49 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Matthew at defective yeti reviewed The Triplets of Belleville recently, and mentioned that a review he’d read likened the film to Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, a resemblance that he did not see. I did, and in a review, so I assumed that he was among the five people who read my film stuff in Tablet. Tonight Viv and…
Army of Darkness: Jackson Source?
(297 Words. February 03, 2004, 12:00 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Happened across Sam Raimi’s ‘93 classic Army of Darkness last night and chuckled my way through it. In the sequence where the Deadites attack Arthur’s castle, I was struck by the similarities between it and Jackson’s Helms Deep sequence from The Two Towers. Not in scale of course; but both are night sequences, certain shots from the Raimi film appear…
More Am Trek
(867 Words. January 31, 2004, 07:14 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Star Trek: New Voyages is an amateur Star Trek series not dissimilar from Starship Exeter. New Voyages’ primary refinement is that the shows are set on board the Enterprise of the original series as opposed to a contemporary ship of the same class, as is the case with Exeter. New Voyages also employs the same characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and…
Return of the Big Fish
(169 Words. January 24, 2004, 11:59 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I spent to day wandering around and seeing movies. We hit RoTK again, and then after munching we saw Big Fish. Despite Mr. Goldstein’s transparent slanders, I concur with his judgement of the film as one of the best of 2003. My pop’s getting a phone call tomorrow for no reason at all, between lawyer time. Confidential to…
to sorrow born and endless night
(24 Words. January 14, 2004, 11:22 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
it ain’t the quote but it’s what I heard. And I so love this film. It feels like my mind. Do you have tobacco?…
Dead Man - Dead Amp
(59 Words. January 14, 2004, 10:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
O fer krissakes. AMC is running Jarmusch’s masterwork this secont, Dead Man, and OF COURSE I’m gonna stay up and watch it. For which I owe thanks, as I learned that my %^&*#$!@ stereo amp has a channel out, godammit. God-dammit. Ixaybichay: I am Nobody. (That’s Gary Farmer, and he’s in the very excellent Smoke Signals, too.)…
Tom Paine's Ghost
(73 Words. January 14, 2004, 09:58 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Mr. Paine’s spirit is apparently distributing handbills on the streets of Seattle. As a designer who has gleefully cribbed from the type design of other eras, I applaud this somewhat unrefined effort to employ eighteenth-century modes of type design. The lovely marbling is nothing more than street mud, which I believe truly finshes the piece. front reverse handbill found at…
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
(1284 Words. December 19, 2003, 07:00 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
This is the review I submitted to Tablet for publication in this week’s issue, street date of December 18. I had to cut it to 800 words for them, so I thought I’d run the whole thing here. Issue content there is usually updated online by the end of the following weekend, so compare and contrast come Monday! One of…
Reviewing in review
(158 Words. December 12, 2003, 11:14 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I attended a screening of a film last night for review, and I’ll be cranking out the piece this afternoon. When I watch a film for review I take notes the whole time, and in general I prefer to see the film in complete ignorance of everything about it. This film is a special case, and I hadn’t anticipated how…
Suspicions rise
(350 Words. November 08, 2003, 12:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dan links to an AICN item in which Peter Jackson notes that the final humiliation of Sauruman and Grima Wormtongue was shot but will not be included in the theatrical release of The Return of the King; Dan correctly highlights the more troubling news that the Scouring of the Shire was cut entirely won’t appear in any release of the…
ATTN: Weyland Yutani Crewperson:
(525 Words. October 26, 2003, 11:20 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
2003-10-26 11:20:58 (UPDT 10-28 15:40) Weyland Yutani Inner System Dispatch Office Dear Crewperson: Congratulations! You have been assigned to a berth on the CTV USCSS NOSTROMO (registration number 180286), freighting a petrochemical ore refinery via waypoint Thedus, waypoint LV-426 in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system, and waypoint L-5 in Earth orbit, under command of Captain A. Dallas. This voyage…
It's TV! It's the Internet! It's a Bathtub!
(445 Words. October 19, 2003, 01:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
A survey, compiled as a reference work for yours truly to familiarize myself with what’s out there. MIS-ONE.COM was the source of the hilarious video cited by dan in late August, and has an ever-growing repository of slacker video to peruse via the link above. Doin’ OK is a UK based house apparently oriented to music video. I’m looking less…
Foreword film fest
(27 Words. October 18, 2003, 01:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
foreword.com | FOREWORD.COM INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL: Dan’s provided a selection of media clips for our edification. I thought it made a nice segue from Rox….
J and B etc.
(686 Words. October 17, 2003, 09:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
ROX - The World’s Most Independent Television Series: Bart’s done it. He’s got the whole show online (well, not the whole thing, but it sure likes like he means to). And a comprehensive database of familiar faces, this time, many, maybe most, of whom I DO know. It’s like a video wiki, almost! Please note that both Bart and Scooter…
Intolerable Cruelty
(266 Words. October 11, 2003, 10:42 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So… Coen Bros., but you knew that already. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mr. Clooney, you knew that too. Story cowrite to Matthew Stone, you may NOT have known that. Here’s IMDB on it. My take? Clooney’s as goofily fun as he was in O Brother, but the sense of inevitability - the structure of tragedy in the service of comedy -…
fanimatrix
(259 Words. September 29, 2003, 12:57 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Fanimatrix: just what you think it might be. Posted sight unseen, via BoingBoing, as a followup to my thinking out loud the other day, and becasue t has come to my attention that if there can be Star Trek bands, there can be Star Wars compilation CDs. That’s nearly the kind of licensing challenge that makes me think I need…
Sushi and Mr. Murray
(51 Words. September 28, 2003, 06:14 PM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
And tonight, it’s off to Ha Na for raw fish with a chaser of Lost in Translation. I am a bit concerned about seeing the film; it’s been so well received by blog-neighbors it’s kind of like going to see that film that all your favorite critics have warmly praised….
Are you talkin' to me?
(235 Words. September 13, 2003, 05:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
In entirely unrelated news (despite the importance to the plot of a Presidential campaign), Taxi Driver appeared on one of our movie channels last night as I was preparing for bed and cast its’ voodoo spell, as ever, leading to a much later bedtime than planned. The print was pristine - I presume what aired derives from a version prepared…
the First LOTR post of fall
(198 Words. September 04, 2003, 01:36 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Viv and I are watching The Two Towers on DVD (we actually started yesterday) and there’s an hour to go. POINT ONE: Gollum, as I’ve said before, is looking to me like an ambitious miscalculation. Less than a year after the release of the film, each time I see it, the more flaws and shortcomings in the character’s CGI I…
Overdue
(79 Words. September 02, 2003, 06:47 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Meant to link to the other pieces in the most recent Tablet, two movie reviews. One was for the widely celebrated “American Splendor” and for the less-universally adored “…And Now Ladies and Gentlemen.” I enjoyed both. Sadly, I typo’ed American Splendor director Shari SPRINGER Berman’s name. It had been typoed when the review originally ran on the web, and I…
POTC again
(737 Words. August 25, 2003, 08:46 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On friday night Viv and I and our friend David went to see Pirates of the Caribbean again, just before it ends its’ run at the Cinerama. I spotted a few little continuity errors and plot holes this time - minor stuff, really - but in the whole, the film held up very well. I went googling for obsessive fan…
Sundell-o-vision Cinema Soiree
(60 Words. August 17, 2003, 08:24 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Spencer held his annual cinema party - including his latest addition to the liberry, a 3-D short. Here’s the teeming mob prepped for viewing: Other treats included the amazing expressionist film The Fall of the House of Usher (in a short version) which after viewing I realized I’d often heard of but never seen; the usual selection of Méliès films….
Space Food
(8 Words. July 26, 2003, 08:57 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
Found at Museum of Flight, late July, 2003….
Pirates of the Caribbean
(332 Words. July 12, 2003, 02:03 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me We just got back from seeing the fine piratical vehicle, Pirates of the Caribbean at the big-ol screened Cinerama, and lemme tells ya, arrr! The number of minor flaws are three, IMHO: 1. Those are not Aztec carvings on the stone treasure chest, but rather Inca. 2. No Brit Commodore wilted…
Off to see the wizard
(99 Words. July 11, 2003, 07:16 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dark Fairytales opens tonight at Roq la Rue and I’ll be reviewing the show for Tablet. It’s funny - my degree is in art history, and I know I can write about art. But I do it so seldom, I’m a bit fluttery about this. My plan is to tote the recorder and a camera, try to talk to a…
Keaton in the American West
(147 Words. July 08, 2003, 08:10 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
How’s that for a highfalutin’ title? Go West and the Paleface were on the silver screen Monday night at the Paramount. It would seem that local hero Bill Frisell had the foresight and good taste to compose and release his own soundtrack for Go West. While this was not the score that organist Dennis James played, I realy love Frisell’s…
Good, Bad, Ugly: Good!
(348 Words. July 06, 2003, 12:53 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Vivian and I ran a bunch of errands today, dropping off stuff at Goodwill, eating in the University District at Flowers, and ending the evening with the restored, extended version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in town on a one-week run at the Varsity on the Ave. We stopped by my old friend Mike’s new store, Pitaya,…
Yeesh! SIFF wrap, etc.
(301 Words. June 15, 2003, 06:45 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Wah! Well, I’m all scattered! I have TOO MUCH TO DO! Suffice to note that I have some sort of new job, doing marketing copy and other things for once and future employer M-2K again - that starts Monday. Also, this past week, I did my first driving-in-traffic since I was 16 or so and it went well. I also…
SIFF Review: Milwaukee, Minnesota
(422 Words. June 11, 2003, 10:36 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Milwaukee, Minnesota US, 2002. Dir. Allan Mindel 6/14 9:30p Pacific Place 6/15 1:45p Egyptian Winter’s white blankets Wisconsin. A twenty-something idiot-savant (Troy Garrity) lives at home with his brow-beating mother, earning large sums as an ice-fishing champion. A grifter thinks she has him on the line, but first one, then another man claims to be the boy’s father in the…
SIFF Review: King Of The Ants
(535 Words. June 11, 2003, 10:16 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
King Of The Ants US, 2003. Dir. Stuart Gordon (WORLD PREMIERE) 6/13 9:30p Egyptian 6/15 11:30a Cinerama Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) is a likeable, callow fool drawn into a murder-for-hire scheme. When he attempts to collect his blood money, he’s held captive and tortured in a graphic second act, into which hallucinations and fantasies are intercut. Escaping, he seeks out…
SIFF Review: Westender
(443 Words. June 11, 2003, 09:52 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Westender US, 2003, Dir. Brock Morse 6/13 - 9:30p Broadway 6/15 - 6:30p Broadway Asbrey of Westender (Blake Stadel) is a medieval swordsman, trailing a crew of brigands in an attempt to reclaim his dead wife’s ring. Shot in verdant Oregon forests, the film’s first half is fairly pedestrian fantasy fare, dimwitted sidekick, flashing swords, rope-bound slave girls, and all….
How's that again?
(33 Words. June 07, 2003, 08:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
An argument for increased sensitivity in the proofing and decision-making process among dental advertisers in The Seattle Weekly. From mid-May, this was going to run here when my disk crash went down….
The Animatrix (Tablet SIFF Review)
(526 Words. May 30, 2003, 07:43 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
The Animatrix 5/31, the Egyptian, 9:30 pm, limited availabliity 7/10 Segment, Director (notes) 1. The Second Renaissance Part 1*, Mahiro Maeda (both segments, limited previous US release credits) 2. The Second Renaissance Part 2* 3. Program, Yoshiaki Kawajiri (a Vampire Hunter D film, Bloodlust) 4. Beyond, Kouji Morimoto (animator on Kiki’s Delivery Service) 5. World Record, Takeshi Koike 6. Kid’s…
American Splendor (Tablet SIFF Review)
(442 Words. May 30, 2003, 06:56 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
American Splendor Dir: Shri Sprinter Berman & Robert Pulcini USA, 2003 : 100 minutes Wed. 6/04 @ 7:00 pm Egyptian Theatre & Mon 6/9 @9:30 Pacific Place Cinemas RATING: 9/10 Paul Giamatti’s spectacular portrayal of comic book author Harvey Pekar amazes. When Giamatti’s Pekar leaves the green room for Letterman’s stage the mid-80’s, the filmmakers pan to a monitor showing…
testing trickle
(14 Words. May 23, 2003, 06:52 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
[‘hem] one-two, one-two Off to Hokum Hall for some silent movie bliss this afternoon….
SIFF Picks!
(2981 Words. May 10, 2003, 07:29 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This list has been extracted from a database I’m using to manage the SIFF workload I’ll be taking a crack at; the title of each film should link to a search-results page hosted at SIFF’s website, rather than directly to the SIFF information page for the film itself. I gotta say, over 200 films is a huge amount of film…
SIFF: press launch
(1086 Words. May 08, 2003, 04:36 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I went to the press launch for the Seattle International Fim Festival (SIFF) on May 7, and it was interesting. The festival will be larger than ever, and I believe I heard it described as the largest international film festival in North America this year. There will be 220 features and 75 shorts. Of these, 55 will be U.S. or…
"Wings" at the Paramount, March 31, 2003
(2494 Words. April 02, 2003, 07:14 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
A ways back I mentioned that on March 31, at the Paramount Theatre, the long-requested feature Wings would be screened, accompanied by organist Dennis James, for the outstanding bargain price of seventy-five cents. We attended last night, and both the film and the experience are worth writing about. To cut to the chase, I characterized the film as “disappointing” in…
Box Score
(268 Words. March 23, 2003, 11:09 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Let’s open the envelope, shall we? Category Mike said Oscar said Status Best Picture Chicago Chicago A hit! Best Director Rob Marshall (Chicago) or Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York) Roman Polanski (The Pianist) A miss. Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York) Adrien Brody (The Pianist) A miss. Best Actress Reneé Zellweger (Chicago) Nicole Kidman (The Hours) A…
WILLARD part II
(461 Words. March 16, 2003, 11:17 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Viv and I went to see the new Willard, as one might expect from my chortling appressssiashion of the video the other day. Alas, ALAS, the film does not adopt the oddball, Lynchian Weimar cabaret setting of the video - dang it, that’s STILL a film I’d love to see. BUT I really enjoyed it. Reviewrs to date have been…
Oh scars
(1189 Words. February 19, 2003, 07:59 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Oscar Pool 2003: A Pith Production proffers the possibility that you might pick the Oscars! As I have a longish Oscars piece all ready to go, let’s GET READY TO RUMBLE! We saw Chicago on Saturday, too. I lack the musical theater gene, so I felt that it was… OK. I sure don’t think it’s 13 Oscar nominations worth of…
In today's unexpected development
(43 Words. January 31, 2003, 05:47 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I interviewed Doug Naylor, co-creator and head honcho of Red Dwarf this morning. The website has quite a stack of interviews conducted by Mr. Flibble. By quite a stack, I mean, um, over fifty? I didn’t count, but the damn bird gets around….
A long delayed viewing
(105 Words. January 29, 2003, 06:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I finally made it out to see Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, and my experience was on par with the opening reviews - flawed being the key word used at the time. I think I’d add “overworked” to that evaluation, but not in any jarring manner. i found it interesting, and again echoing the earlier reviews, emotionally flat. I must…
Fritz Lang's Der Frau Im Mond
(620 Words. January 28, 2003, 07:25 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Der Frau im Mond, (directed by Fritz Lang) was the silent at the Paramount on Monday, a 2 hour and 40 minute film that left me gaping and Viv snoozing. The film was released in 1929 but is not well known because it was suppressed by the Nazis (the scientifically correct depiction of lunar rocketry offended Der Fuhrer himself, apparently–…
DER GOLEM and CALIGARI at Silent Movie Mondays last night
(813 Words. January 21, 2003, 07:19 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Fantastic double feature at the Paramount’s Silent Movie Mondays (unfortunately for them, they make it impossible to link directly to the schedule, so no link for you! Get out!) last night which featured really clean prints of both Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Both prints were tinted, as originally distributed, and the The Cabinet of Dr….
The Two Towers
(1492 Words. January 13, 2003, 07:54 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A reader whom I’ve never met wrote an e-mail the other day requesting that I review The Two Towers. Unaccountably, this had never occurred to me. When the note arrived, I was just about to go see the film for the second time. I endeavored to keep the idea in mind as I watched the film, more or less unsuccessfully….
NEMESIS
(431 Words. December 27, 2002, 07:52 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Hustled to catch Star Trek: Nemesis before it leaves theaters, probably the middle of next week. For some reason, Paramount pretty much negelected to promote the film energetically until about three days before the mid-December opening date, and the result was that it opened with the lowest first-weekend revenues of all the Next Gen flicks, and the next weekend after…
Happy together
(525 Words. December 22, 2002, 07:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I want to take a moment after all that Tolkien-ing to point out another film that you should by all means rush out and see. It’s Donald and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, a screwy, ambitious post-modern comedy based loosely on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. The film is directed by Spike Jonze and stars Nicolas Cage as twin scriptwriters Donald and…
I can feel it in the water
(1379 Words. December 21, 2002, 07:07 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Wednesday, The Two Towers opened internationally. By the end of that day, the film had grossed about $42 million in and out of North America. By the end of the weekend, the North American grosses were reported to be about $101 million. At a party that Vivian and I went to Saturday night, at which the majority of the…
zoooom
(46 Words. October 10, 2002, 09:17 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Shuttle external view liftoff video. On um, Monday (?) they added a new feature to the Shuttle liftoff - real time video on the shuttle itself, looking down. The link is to an archive of space and rocketry vis, inlcuding the listoff vid. Via BoingBoing sideblog….
Street Posters I
(33 Words. September 29, 2002, 07:55 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These were hung right next to each other. The one on the left is an ad for a design competition. One hopes that the designer of the yard sale flyer will enter it….
Lawrence of Arabia
(1008 Words. September 28, 2002, 12:42 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(from Lawrence of Arabia, at widescreen museum; film frames from the 2002 restoration.) So I just spent the last four hours watching this movie. I gather I am the only person in the English-speaking world that hadn’t ever seen it before, even on TV. The film I saw was a restoration shown in 70 mm at full length, with…
I obviously need to read the trades more often
(386 Words. September 09, 2002, 07:46 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
A&E’s Lathe of Heaven came as a total surprise. I had no idea that an adaptation was in the works; I was surprised that it was on A&E and not scifi; and I was surprised to see respected B-list faves leading the cast. We clicked into it about halfway through, and I immediately wanted to take the costume designer to…
Harold Lloyd
(409 Words. August 27, 2002, 07:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight’s silent feature at the Paramount was the hilarious Girl Shy, starring bespectacled schmoe Harold Lloyd. Harold plays a naive small-town tailor who writes a book about the ladies and how to woo them; naturally, his ideas are, hurm, fanciful. Well, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and there’s an epic car (well, um, car, trolley, horse, foot, and motorcycle)…
OBOY!
(290 Words. July 11, 2002, 02:46 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Any time a high-falutin film critic identifies a film as distanced or mannered, and then in support of the claim, complains concerning the lack of attention to realism within the film, I’M SOLD. In this week’s New Yorker, David Denby’s review (warning: not a permalink) of nearly released Tom Hanks flick Road to Perdition manages to not only do this…
ST: TNG "Nemesis" trailer out
(102 Words. June 27, 2002, 03:05 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
At Apple. I’ve read no advance on the flick, except remarks from Braga and Berman concerning story development and casting made in January; it appears that Data’s brother Lore is back, possibly in a supporting role, and that the Nosferatu people menace the Federation. Something about the bad guys makes me wonder if they tie in to the Temporal Cold…
eBAY: the bridge chair
(56 Words. June 20, 2002, 06:26 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1834314676 Yes, that chair. Set to go for over $100k. Hloy cow, look at the whole collection! The Geek King needs new shoes! Spock’s Ears! Captain Picard’s first season uniform! My god, this collection shouldn’t be sold off in bits and pieces, it belongs in an academic library! Look at the production notes!…
Frontline and Nova
(275 Words. June 14, 2002, 07:40 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Anybody else noticed the astonishing material on Nova and Frontline this past year? Last night’s Frontline was about the siege in Bethlehem, which ended, um, on May 22! The most compelling show to date in this season of Nova, was, naturally, “Why The Towers Fell”, which was a truly fascinating look at the physics of the 9/11 disaster. The conclusions…
Spidey
(510 Words. May 14, 2002, 07:41 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Viv and I, along with all the rest of the country, dropped into our friendly neighborhood multiplex this weekend to see “Spider-Man”. My viewing experience bears out the reviews I’d noted; Toby Maguire is perfectly cast, the story was deftly and wittily handled, Dafoe’s usually better than this, the digital FX were somehow not as good as they should have…
Episode II Early Returns: Lucas Trails Binks at Polls
(220 Words. May 10, 2002, 07:43 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New York Times political reporter A. O. Scott calls in from the polling station: “Like weary Brezhnev-era Muscovites, the American moviegoing public will line up out of habit and compulsion, ruefully hoping that this episode will at least be a little better than the last one, and perhaps inwardly suspecting that the whole elephantine system is rotten.” Don’t hold back,…
ENTERPRISE double header
(731 Words. May 09, 2002, 07:33 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Some of you may know that I’ve been writing occasional comics reviews for Cinescape. I’ve also had the good fortune to be asked to write about the new Star Trek series for them from time to time. I reviewed the inaugural episode but they took a pass, so I imagine it will wind up here sooner or later. I have…
The Daily Show (with, um, that little guy from MTV)
(543 Words. April 25, 2002, 10:14 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
By now, the entire world is aware that Comedy Central’s Daily Show provided the only decent coverage of the 2000 election debacle. They called the outcome of the race a full 9 months before the election. They were the only media outfit which bothered to give any air time at all to the Greens. They nailed Arizona Senator John McCain…
Akira Kurosawa, part two
(771 Words. March 28, 2002, 12:00 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Once I had a disasatrous conversation with an aged Japanese colleague of my father’s. He had shown us great kindness and hospitality in Japan when we were there in 1978. He was retiring and traveling around the world to say good bye to colleagues. He expressed that the world had changed and that the old culture of Japan was dead,…
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL...
(233 Words. March 27, 2002, 10:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
… and he shall appear. In tonight’s episode of ENTERPRISE, a comedy number featuring the NX-01 being boarded by Ferengi pyrates aided by (help me, Batman!) knockout gas, one of the crafty interstellar, er, “traders” was played by… None other than Clint Howard, ladies and gentlemen, mentioned just ONE DAY AGO on this broadcast! At that time, I was referring…
Akira Kurosawa, part one
(212 Words. March 27, 2002, 01:00 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
PBS’ Great Performances recently ran a 2-hour documentary biopic on the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. It was pretty interesting - and included some truly horrifying newsreel shots of the carnage and most especially corpses left after the great Tokyo quake and fire of the mid-1920s, in which as many died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thought to have pershed….
ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL
(293 Words. March 26, 2002, 12:56 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
In a wonderful serendipity, since I just got off the phone with Classmates.com, I caught the last half-hour to forty-five minutes of the classic teen rocker flick, “Rock and Roll High School”, which features the Ramones, Warhol scenester Mary Woronov, and the inevitable Clint “Balok” Howard (hmm… The Howard family and Star Trek… haven’t I been here before?), Ron Howard’s…
THE MAYBERRY CONNECTION
(239 Words. March 25, 2002, 09:19 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My eagle-eyed wife spotted a link from the previously cited as somewhat scary The Andy Griffith Show Watcher’s Club. The link further demonstrates the debauched interconnectedness of TV land. Mayberry was used as a set in the original Star Trek series episdoes “Miri” and “The City on the Edge of Forever”. A devoted member of TAGSWC has assembled a website…
I DREAM OF SITCOMS
(449 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:50 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I woke up one morning thinking I’d had dinner with my pals Greg and Stacy. They just got back from three weeks in France and we were to see them shortly. Greg was kind of showing off, ordering in (very fluent) French, in the dream. Then somehow we all started discussing the recently broadcast 2-hour “NewsRadio” reunion special. Such a show has not ever existed, to my knowledge. It turns out that Maura Tierney, so excellent as Lisa on the actual show, was unavailable for the reunion production, and so instead, a role which in this conversation was characterized as “Dave’s girlfriend” was played by an actress who had previously portrayed Austin Powers’ girlfriend, and yet was neither Heather Graham or Elizabeth Hurley. I assume that this actress must be the actress portraying the International Man of Mystery’s paramour in the upcoming Austin Powers movie…
SITCOMMUNIST CONSPIRACY?
(374 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Consider this: the Dick Van Dyke show and the Andy Griffith show were shot at about the same time and shared, I believe, a producer in the person of Danny Thomas. The Griffith show featured child actor Ron Howard, of course. The van Dyke show, in addition to the well-known castmembers, featured a child character, the son of the Petries, named Richie. Additionally, the writers for the show based much of the mise-en-scene of the show on their experiences working as writers on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”. Among the writers and performers was Carl Reiner (Alan Brady). Carl’s son Rob would later go on to fame as “Meatball” on “All in the Family” and as a skillful director of films about late childhood, adolescence, and of course, Spinal Tap…
