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Martinis August 30, 2009

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Martinis last night.

Why martinis? Could it be Mad Men fever? Actually, it was because of Julie and Julia. They were drinking Martinis in just about every scene. So after the movie, Julie and I (the real Julie) went to CostPlus to obtain the paraphrenelia. Then we went to Safeway to obtain the hooch. Then we came home. I looked up the recipe for Martinis. It’s not too hard, as it turns out. Couple cubes of ice, a bunch of dry gin, a splish of dry vermouth, and shake. I was unable to achieve the full on sexy shake, but nevertheless. Soon we were drinking home-shaken, dry Martinis.

They were OK. I prefer beer.

The only other time I ever drank a Martini? Saudi Arabia, 1989. Things were just peachy in the Gulf before the Gulf War, let me tell you. I was teaching English to Saudi naval cadets. Saudi is as dry a country as they come, hoochwise, as everybody knows. But at the Dharan airbase the U.S. military maintains a tiny bit of sovereignty, sort of a diplomatic briefcase but bigger. And inside that briefcase, you can drink. If you can get in. We got in. To the Officer’s club. So we’re in this semi-swanky space, drinking real drinks (not the homemade beer we drank back in our teacher’s quarters). Everyone was having Martinis, so what the heck, sure, I’d have a Martini. So guess who else was there having Martinis? Norm Schwartzkopf. The US had recently invaded Panama, so my buddy James, who was bold about this sort of thing, talking to generals about classified military operations and such, engaged Mr. Schwartzkopf about it. Norm, I’ll call him Norm from now on since it’s easier to spell, Norm’s a pretty intense character. Especially armed with a Martini. Norm and James went at it a bit, not arguing, but Norm obviously proud and conscious of his power to impress, inhibited by the classified aspects of the story, James trying to get him to spill. Since none of you know James, unless you do, go ahead and picture James Woods, circa Salvador. All politics aside, if you’re going to have a Gulf War, I guess Norm was the guy you’d want to be your general. And if you want someone to needle him about it, James was your man.

Anyhoo, that’s my Martini story. I hope not to have very many more like it.

Film Peeve March 14, 2009

Posted by admin in : Film, TV , 1 comment so far

Here’s a new one:

Character is in a situation that triggers a memory. Now we go with that character into the memory for a while, a minute, two 30 seconds, whatever, but it’s long enough to shift context and follow a sub-narrative. Then we return to the original context, the present, with character’s face absorbed in the memory. Another character then has to jog the first character’s attention. “Joe? Joe” Where were you?” And the first character then has to come back, pretend it’s nothing and resume the first nbarrative thread.

That whole jogging of the first character’s attention is completely unnecessary. It’s stupid to pretend that just because we in the audience experienced a time shift with the second thread that the characters in the first context also experienced it. The whole thing could have taken place in a split second for them. I don’t mind the actual context shift itself, I just hate the way they transition back. It’s so rote, total cliche, and they do it in the finest of dramas and films. Just skip it completely.

Video Editing October 24, 2008

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Been playing around with Adobe Premier Elements 7 to make some homemade DVDs. Had to make one for my parent’s 50th anniversary, for example, and made a couple with Yosemite trip videos. It’s not a pro app, more of a hobbyist or non-professional user, but still it’s a nice way to edit simple home videos. I have never been much of a graphical artists — I never got into creating Flash for example, or creating other graphics or image editing beyond the minimum to make something look halfway decent on a web page. Technically I’ve always been stronger in server side application coding or high level application design, but weak on graphical design. I can recognize good UI design, and I know what client code can and should do, but it’s something I’d rather other people actually did.

Creatively I’ve been comfortable with words, lyrics, songwriting, and even painting a little bit, but not so much with computer graphics. I used to be able to take decent photographs using my old Pentax K-1000, but I still don’t have a digital SLR and my dig cam pix have always come out looking like snapshots and not art. I have a video camera but a shaky hand and not much skill in generating video footage.

But I have discovered a pleasure and a little bit of an ability to edit video. More of an interest than a skill right now, but I’m a little surprised that it’s something I can do.

So I guess video editing is a thing unto itself, it’s a niche — not photography, not cinematography, not direction, but editing. I guess I used to fantasize about making movies, being a director. I don’t think I would be good at that — a director is like an orchestra conductor — it’s about managing this complicated campaign of people, sets, actors, crew, etc. I’m sure I am incapable of that sort of thing. I am neither obstinate or mean enough to dominate a crew with my artistic vision like a Hitchcock, nor smooth and diplomatic enough to deal with all these personalities.

But video editing, that’s not that different from what I do now, socially speaking anyway, which is working alone in front of a computer all day.  I’d like to experiment a little bit with it now that I have a little taste. Try to pull in some sort of footage from other sources, and mixing it up to learn what possible effects I can create that way. I should probably do that with better tools like After Effects and Premier Pro and other tools once I get the hang of it.

I’m probably years away from having anything to show , but it’s a new part of the brain to exercise.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009 film) June 2, 2008

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The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009 film) – Wikipedia

I would think a remake of this awesome movie would be a lot more fun if they would actually still set it in the 70’s. But I have a feeling it will be updated in a predictable boring way. I hope I’m wrong.

Der Golem April 26, 2008

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Last night I saw the great film The Golem: How He Came Into the World at the Castro Theater in SF. It was scored by Black Francis which made it all the more amazing. The film is incredible — the set designs, the costumes, every visual aspect was just memerizing. Frank Black’s original songs and live performance were awesome. The emcee felt obliged/permitted to make what he must have thought were clever witticisms throughout the film. Really lame, un-comic material like “this scene is on youtube — heh heh.” Really stupid and annoying. That created this goofy atmosphere of incessant chuckling. This being the San Francisco International Film Festival, I would have expected a more reverent tone. We’re here to celebrate cinema, not make fun of things which are unfamiliar to us. OK, maybe the Castro is not where you go to be reverent, but still laughing at an outmoded style of acting, treating everything as camp is so missing the point of that specific movie. It’s an intelligent, thoughtful, beautiful film, not some silly relic from Grandma’s memento chest.

But all in all it was a really cool venue and great film and a fun way to see it. This makes the fourth time I’ve seen Mr. Black perform, I’m slightly embarassed to say.

Cinema Annoyances April 25, 2008

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Two for the “Cinema” category of “Pet Peeves”:

1) you know the thing where they show you a thing for a second, then fade to back real fast, then show you a thing, then fade to black real soon, over and over? Often times its a really interesting visual — you really want to see it, but they fade to black almost as soon as they show it to you. You know that effect? I hate that effect. Please make them stop doing that. If they think it makes you more curious, it doesn’t. It mainly makes me pissed off. It suggests to me that far from having anything interesting to show, they have nothing interesting to show, so they make uninteresting things seem important by taking them away from you. Sort of creating a scarcity of image, creating a demand by leaving you wanting more. I see it as cliched, uninspired, a trick to deceive you into believing there’s more where that came from, a tease. The more they do it, the more pissed off I become.

2) Really, really dark scenes. Perhaps it’s night time. Perhaps we’re in a dark room. Perhaps its some sort of dreamland or outerspace, but the filmmaker decides what’s really required is a really dimly lit scene. Newsflash: a dimly lit scene does not evoke darkness. It does not create or sustain an illusion of darkness. It diminishes any illusion at all — what I see in a dimly lit scene is my own living room, which is very far from being ominous or suspenseful. I see my own shape on the sofa, my own bowl of potato chips. I see a reminder to do some situps. I don’t care if you are David Lynch or Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman or the Coen brothers: dimly lit, dark scenes absolutely do not achieve the apparently desired effect.

Straw Dogs April 7, 2008

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Just watched the movie Straw Dogs (1971) with Dustin Hoffman. An amazing, intense and strange movie. Hoffman plays an American mathmetician married to a young British woman who relocate to her tiny village so he can work on a book. It’s a gothic sort of thing with these ominous menacing local characters in the town and working on repairing the couple’s garage roof.

The centerpiece of the film is a horrifying rape scene in which two of the workers rape the wife while the husband is away on a hunting expedition. The rape involves one man who believes that he loves her, and that they share an intimate history. As he rapes her, she fights back and resists, but clearly expresses contradictory responses. She responds with apparent pleasure in between fits of struggling and unequivocal resistance. This is obviously a source of controversy. The second worker intrudes upon the scene, and after the first one finishes, the second one rapes her. This rape appears to shock even the first rapist, and the woman this time screams and resists with no ambiguity of response.

So you have a really shocking sequence — a “good” rapist and a “bad” rapist. The “good” one sort of deluded himself into thinking he had a right to her body, that the experience was sexual and not violent, that he cared about her and she cared about him. That “bad” rapist was more of a classic violent act.

Dramatizations of rape in film are obviously fraught with complications. What’s the right way to do it, if at all?  I thought it was incredible that Peckinpah was willing to dramatize it this way. A gang rape is not one crime, it’s multiple crimes. And each crime has its own kind of violence. Morally we wish to make no such distinctions. To draw out such distinctions is rare and daring and frankly dangerous.

The Thrill Of It All March 22, 2008

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I’m enjoying the heck out of the Roxy Music DVD “Thrill of It All: A Visual History 1972-1982″

I read about it in The New Yorker and don’t have a whole lot to add to that. But it’s just beautiful. I love Eno’s various machines, hairstyles and blouses. I also enjoy how incongruous the low-tech video production quality is juxtaposed with these energetic, brilliant, outrageous musical compositions and performances. The songs all rock. Plus I think Bryan Ferry is flirting with me.

Love Story February 23, 2008

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Last night I watched that corny old film Love Story (1970). I love watching films from the 70’s, I guess because I grew up then, and I enjoy relearning all the cultural information coded into the texture of the film, beyond just what the story wants me to know. The fashion, the modes of speech, the clothes, cars, hairstyles, attitudes. This is true of films from any period, but extra true of a period one has lived through.

Anyway, it was a cornball fest with somewhat interesting cultural revelations. Things such as — the characters represent these supposedly modern young people and liberated woman who don’t believe in God and shockingly choose a civil ceremony for their wedding in which they shckingly write their own vows. Yet in spite of the modern new world they live in, when she is diagnosed with the un-named fatal disease, the doctor lies to her and says everything is OK but reveals to the husband that she’s dying, and encourages him to conceal it from her, which he does.

Jesus! So in 1970 it was considered perfectly ethical to lie to patients about their diagnosis and deny them a chance to seek a second opinion? When did the AMA get together and rethink that? I believe that nowadays the doctor tells the patient the diagnosis, even if it’s a woman. Sometime between 1970 and 2008 they got that straight, but I don’t remember it happening.

The other weird bit of cultural information was the use of profanity.  They say “goddamn” and “dammit” and “bullshit” a whole lot, in strangely inoccuous ways. Cheerfully, with a smile on their faces, while politely holding the door open for the other or passing the sugar. In one scene she’s leading a children’s choir in a church preparing for a Christmas play, and she says to one of the children, “Don’t bullshit me.” I’m not a prude or much of a Christian, but I believe that a person talking this way to children in a church would be considered a little bit harsh and disrepectful today. Yet we’re supposedly charmed and in love with this carefree young woman.

I’d be interested to learn about how the use of profanity has changed in time. To me all those words, which I use daily, have an edge to them and indicate some degree of harshness, anger or something. To use them in this soft and cuddly way strikes me as very false, but I remember this sort of thing from movies from this time. It’s as though either real people or just film writers were suddenly free to use them, so they overused them, diluting the meaning. And now that we’re over that, they have settled back to their original harsh meanings and usage. Or something.

Anyway, it was a dumb movie, but was still fun to watch with your goddamn girlfriend.

Children of Men January 8, 2008

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I watched this film on cable the other day. It was enjoyable. I always enjoy the bleak, near future sci-fi stories. But the main thing that thrilled me was a long sequence featuring King Crimson’s “In The Court Of The Crimson King” for no obvious reason other than it sounded cool.