Posted on by mwhybark

Superpolymesh

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 the DVD to begin savoring both the delicious production detail and the depth of interesting referents (such as Syndrome’s clear precursor, Heat Miser). The Parrs’ living room made me miss relatives and older friends who lived their lives in such mid-century modern homes.

I have only heard one brief comment that compared the film to Watchmen, but it seems clear that the relationship of the two stories should be closely examined. At a minimum, I would speculate that The Incredibles has made it that much harder to get a good version of Watchmen made as a film, if anyone is even trying anymore.

Oh, and apparently, I have a thing for lady superhero pilots. Hearing her issuing callsign update after callsign update somehow involved me in the jeopardy of that scene like no other aviation scene I’ve ever watched. And brother, I have watched some aviaton movies, let me tell you. The hell with Top Gun’s testosterone-addled nincompoops, I’ll take The Incredibles any day.

Posted on by mwhybark

Neko

Last night we went to see Neko Case at Neumo’s.

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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, his appearance befuddled the crowd, who were not expecting a guitar assault of such intensity. Romweber’s best known project is the Flat Duo Jets, and here is an interview with him about his career.

Here’s a 25-second clip (2.3mb).

The second band (and Neko’s backing band) was Canada’s alt-country brother act, The Sadies. They are technically polished, but the difference in aesthetic between Romweber and their approach was too great, for me, and in Romweber’s favor. The cool precision of the brothers’ vocal harmonies and dual-lead sound is deeply rooted in rock acts of the early seventies.

Here is 47 seconds of a Sadies song (4.4mb).

I shot a lot more video of Neko than of the other bands. We were right up front for the whole show, and it was lovely. I should note that the polish of the Sadies is an appropriate setting for Neko’s towering, transcendant voice.

Here are the clips:

A false start (4.6mb, 48 seconds).

The opening song (22.2mb, 3m54).

Third clip (12.3mb, 2m10).

Fourth clip (.6mb, 7 sec).

Fifth clip (3mb, 32 sec).

First encore (21.5mb, 3m46 ).

Second encore (12.8mb, 2m15).

I haven’t taken the time to track these down by song title, sorry. It took long enough to rotate them and color correct them in Final Cut Express. If one of you lovely interauts wants to, I’ll happily edit the post to add the info.

Say, I should probably look into BlogTorrent for this stuff, eh?

Posted on by mwhybark

Jeunet

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 the review runs. I can tease you, though: I liked it.

I experimentally used a Moleskine to take notes in the dark on the film; this is clearly not a cost-effective strategy, as in the dark one tends to write larger and less legibly. Next time it’s back to steno pads.

Jeunet was present at the screening and I was able to ask him a couple of decent questions.

I do have one gripe about the film which is utter airplane nerd trivia and therefore won’t rate in the review. It’s also a bit of a spoiler, so I won’t go into it in detail here yet. In essence, an airplane that appears in the film is explicitly identified as one of a series of well-known German models. The plane used in the film proper is clearly not the distinctive model it’s identified as. In fact, it appears to be a plane from the period between the wars. Only aeronerds will care, but it bugged the hell out of me.

I didn’t take the time to address this issue with the director, and I regret it.

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Craig Thompson Awards Sweep

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 brick-like, 500-page opus Blankets.

Here’s what the press release has to say:

Top Shelf would like to congratulate Craig Thompson for doing something that’s never been done in the history of comics: Sweep the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards in a single category — and he did it twice! BLANKETS not only swept the awards in the “Best Original Graphic Novel” category, but Craig took home all three “Best Cartoonist/Outstanding Artist” awards as well. This is a rare feat indeed! If you haven’t read BLANKETS yet, you really need to see what all the fuss is about. You’re in for a real treat.

I couldn’t agree more. I loved Blankets when I read it last fall, and of all the interviews with comics people I did last year, interviewing Craig about this work was easily my favorite interviewing experience. It’s rare to have the opportunity to discuss a work of genius with the creator just before the work begins to develop a reputation. It was a chance to talk with a young man who was aware of having accomplished something special but who had not yet begun to incorporate others’ appreciation for the art into his expectations and understandings of how the world looks at him. He struck me as having a solid head screwed on his shoulders and I hope to see further amazing things from his pen.

I ran the whole long Craig Thompson interview here at the end of last year and also a brief conversation I had with him about Portland compared to Seattle as a comics-creator community.

Congratulations, Craig! Do it again!

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New Voyage

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 storage mechanism than a bunch of numbered zip files in a directory named FILES will be a technology within the Federation’s grasp.

Snarking aside, I look forward to seeing this.

UPDATE: OK, now I’ve seen it. Hoo boy, what an incoherent plot. I mean, I was able to follow it; but that’s because I’m a big ol’ Star Trek geek. The overall look of the thing pretty darn slick, I have to admit, enough so that the uneven acting quality is a bit obtrusive. That and the possibly accidental reliance on esoteric Trek lore knowledge to tie the plot together may have the effect of limiting the appeal of the piece.

It looks to me as though they ended up with about 90 minutes of plot and simply cut the exposition, leaving certain events in place without clear explanation. All that and a time-travel based plot, too. I will show this to a non-Trek fan to get a baseline, though.

The other thing that bothers me after first viewing is the weird interaction between hyper-consciousness of detail (seen in the obsessive attention to the look of the sets, for example) and complete rookie lapses of attention to detail. The examples that come to mind are a) the unfortunate use of vertically-scaled fonts and poor linespacing for the titles, and b) in the sequence when the Farragut dives toward the surface of the Gateway planet, suddenly, we view a reverse-angle of the ship with the surface of the planet in the background. There are others, but those two made me cringe.

In a less-polished production, the lapses might look humorous or intentional; here, they distract from the ambitions of the series creators, I think, by jarringly underlining the amateur status of the project. It’s a hard row to hoe. But the only way to meet the high aspirations these folks have set for themselves is for them to be absolutely merciless in critiquing the production. Nothing would please me more greatly than to no longer find nits to pick.

Nonetheless, kudos to the New Voyages cast and crew. Keep it up! I’ll be here waiting!

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1919

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.

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I investigated and found a stash of theatrical posters from St. Louis, dated between 1919 and 1928.

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On the backs of the posters, years of penciled figures, possibly bookkeeping.

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There were about twelve posters. All were lightly soaked from the rain and fragile as hell. I stuffed them frantically into a paper bag which had evidently been intended to hold them but which was unfortunately a bit too small to hold the now-slightly swollen posters.

Most survived, and I even caught my bus.

Posted on by mwhybark

him name animal

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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 a substance-dependent person who appears, by the way he is practically touching my face with his lips, to be drunk?

I think not.