From what I can tell, these aren’t sounds as our ears might pick them up, but their different waves emitted from space that have been converted into audio waves for us humans to hear. Who knew space had so much to say?
Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law on their way to the prom.
I just got back from a 9:15am showing of The Adventures of Tintin in 3D. The last time I was at a theater this early was to wait in line. I don’t understand why they make these new 3D movies. It was cool and all, but the images seem dark and a little muddy through the glasses. And while the picture seemed to have a some nice depth, I was never moving my head to dodge things and any kind of frenetic movement seemed a little distorted. How about handing out a pair of glasses that help me see the plot a little better?
I also recently saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Now, I don’t have a masters degree in literature but I think I have the capacity to follow a story pretty well and these last two movies seemed kind of hard to get a firm grip on what exactly was going on. Is that the deal with modern action movies? Why do so many plot points have to be introduced? If I understand the end of Tintin correctly I don’t understand what happened during the preceding 2 hours or so.
Speaking of wild goose chases the whole way Tintin and Haddock trash North African homes, small businesses, and infrastructure during a well orchestrated 3D chase can’t help but remind me of the U.S.’s recent foreign policy debacles. There’s even a bit where Haddock attempts to blow away an enemy with a bazooka but fires it backwards and blows up a damn. Isn’t that what happens when we send our armed forces traipsing onto foreign soil? Do stories like this reinforce that its OK to go to far away places in a personal pursuit and make a mess as long as we find the coordinates to some buried treasure? Don’t get me wrong, it was a great scene, it just made me think how the stories we tell illustrate who we are.
Which is probably why I liked Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Despite not really getting all that was going on, having Sherlock Holmes fight a war profiteer was pretty cool. And the connections to today’s security state, War on Whoever, and military industrial conspiracies seemed to agree with my own anti-war crackpottery. Does a movie have to have a taste of my politics in order for me to enjoy it? It seems having an action film with a dash of something to think about does make it more engaging.
Or did I enjoy following Holmes across Europe more than Tintin flopping about the Atlantic because I had low expectations for Sherlie and heard great things about Belgium’s Best Boy Reporter, excuse me Britain’s Best Boy Reporter (Is he still Belgian in the movie? I couldn’t tell. And isn’t the dog supposed to talk?). Or maybe I just felt awkward sitting alone in a theater at 9:15am watching a cartoon. I saw this at an Arclight theater, where a person comes into the theater and welcomes you. In this case the woman welcomed just me, a 34 year old unshowered man. To a cartoon. She asked me if I had any questions. I wanted to ask if she was judging me. Soon after a man with a son and daughter came in. I felt even more alone and kind of like Lee Harvey Oswald.
And I think I counted one female character in the whole two hours. Whoops, make that two.
I don’t mean to pick on Tintin, the movie looks beautiful. The motion capture and computer animation are successful at creating a new world (albeit one that would also be easy to create with carpentry, costumes, and paid extras) and daring stunts (I don’t think these could be made without computers). I think one of the reasons most of today’s action movies fall flat is the blending of live action and CGI manufactured stunts (for example Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls and Captain America). I think Tintin comes out on top compared to previous efforts. And the voice actors and animators work well together. The movement of the characters is impressive. But at the end of the movie which cues the audience to anticipate the sequel, I felt like I didn’t gain anything. And with good movies I usually leave with something, whether its simple appreciation, a new nugget of thought in my head, or a sigh of relief that our heroes have made it out alive. My first thought when Tintin was over was whether or not I could keep the glasses. I had to return them.
But I liked Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I’ve heard a lot of criticism that the portrayal of Holmes is a modern take on the character. I’m no Holmes expert, but I recently read a couple of his short adventures and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Holmes seems pretty well done. The character in the stories seems a little more playful than the cold calculating detective I expected, and Downey seems capture this aspect of Holmes really well. It’s Watson, played by Jude Law, that seems to be a little skewed. He comes across as a bit of a grouch in the movie compared to the enthusiastic cheerleader/jovial skeptic in the stories. I think I just can’t stop picturing Watson as Martin Freeman, who does an entertaining job in the British series Sherlock. Without rubbing it in the audience’s face, A Game of Shadows plays with the idea of a repressed homosexual relationship between our heroes, which is played sweetly and unrequited by Holmes. But after reading a couple stories I might have directed Watson to be a little more smitten, in literature he’s the one always saying how great Sherlock is and writing about him in his diary. One glaring deviation from the books is the way the film dances around Holme’s fondness of a 7% solution of cocaine taken intravenously. Early in the film, Holmes is mentioned to have been eating some coca leaves. That’s a modern, yet slightly backward, revision of the character. I guess a hero in a mainstream action movie who shot up coke would be less concerned with Professor Moriarty and more concerned with parent groups. But overall the swashbuckling and fast talking Holmes charmed me over.
Sherlock Holmes vs. Tintin: Sherlock wins!
Whoever it is, I bet it's not a woman!
It’s that time of the year again, New Year’s Resolution time, where I take a look at all the things I lack, all the bad decisions I’ve made, and everything that is wrong with me and try to fix it all with a hastily written to do list. It’s time to question my happiness, health, and good fortune, and make promises that will only extend to the end of this blog post. Hey, I’m just being patriotic, the U.S. economy depends on my wanting to be better than myself so I can buy things to improve the self esteem. Fulfilling New Year’s resolutions means self contentment. Self contentment means less impulse purchases. And less impulse buys means less jobs. Of course it would be funny to list a bunch of hilarious resolutions like “Resolution 1: Win the lotto! Resolution 2: Write Better Resolutions!” like I always do, but that would be breaking…
- Resolution 1: Be honest. I am tired of my fake laugh. I do it to be polite. I do it to disarm. I do it all the time. So does everyone else. But its hurting my face and throat. And I think giving me wrinkles and migraines. It’s not even a laugh, it’s like rapid shallow breathing. Who are we fooling? There has to be another way of responding to your boss’s “Happy Friday” than a soft “Ha ha ha, finally.” Why do honesty and politeness have to be mutually exclusive?
- Resolution 2: Exercise, take a vitamin, just one lousy vitamin, and go outside. Seriously, my medical history is littered with things like cancer and glaucoma. Why do I sit on my duff all day and forsake vitamins just so I can catch another thirty seconds of my Facebook newsfeed?
- Resolution 3: Like, only check Facebook once a day. Seriously, what is wrong with me? I don’t have friends anymore, I have Facebook–crude text representations of various people in my life. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers where those I care about have been replaced by tagged photos. The amount of times I have thought of doing something just so I can post it on Facebook has finally exceeded the limit. Facebook won’t launch my comedy career, Facebook won’t cause others to adopt my political causes, and Facebook won’t relaunch friendships. I can’t think of the last person I friended on Facebook that I had an improved friendship with. Friendships dissolve for a reason, to strengthen the relationships we cherish and keep Facebook in business. Besides I figured out how to update all my statuses with Twitter.
- Resolution 4: Drive my car. I haven’t driven my car since November 2011. I live in Los Angeles. Something is not right here. I love that car, yet I neglect it. I should take a picture of my driving it and post it on Facebook. Sure, gas should be preserved. Sure, public transportation saves money, the environment, and needless hours in commuter traffic. But I should hit the road and go to the beach or something.
- Resolution 5: Call my friends on the phone. If I had more friends in L.A., I’d resolve to hang out more, but since most of my friends are still on the East Coast, I think I should pick up the phone at least once a month. Writing two sentence emails to check-in has done nothing more than give me whiplash at work from checking to see if my boss has caught me on Gmail.
- Resolution 6: Only eat sugar late at night. This is only a problem while working in an office where treats are pushed harder than liquor on highway billboards. Starting off the day with sweet breads, chocolate, and corn syrup dipped danishes has never once not made me nervous and depressed for the rest of the day. STOP IT. Drink water, have a banana, and if you have sugar make it close to bedtime so the blood sugar drops when your consciousness does. Seriously why the office treats?
- Resolution 7: Watch more episodes of Barney Miller. I love that show.
- Resolution 8: Spend more than 30 seconds each day playing with my cat. The poor guy is lonely. And I have not patience to teach him Facebook.
- Resolution 9: Read a book before buying a new one. Los Angeles already has a library, I don’t need to maintain an auxiliary one in my apartment. Anyone want to borrow a Tolkien book or The Idiot’s Guide to Past Life Regression?
- Resolution 10: Write in the morning for 10 minutes or more. Short stories, grocery lists, Magneto Jokes, anything. There’s something to putting down some scattered thoughts on paper first thing in the day. It clears the head, puts goals in perspective, and
- Resolution 11: Stop thinking you have to list everything in threes.
Holiday Greetings!
You know the holidays are among my favorite times of the year: the country hillside covered with fresh snow, crisp sunsets reaching their amber arms over the tree tops, and office workers pushing free sweets to the point of harassment. It makes life seem like a storybook filled with the greatest of pictures.
What could possibly make the season any better you may ask? Holiday Party Games. Here are some of my favorites:
Emotional Charades: One person tries to display an emotion that the rest have to guess. Whoever successfully guesses the emotion wins. If no one guesses the correct emotion the person must continue to act that emotion for the rest of the holiday. Prizes include catharitic release and therapy. If the spouse of the person displaying the emotion fails to identify it, the couple must sit down and discuss their future as well as whether or not their past together has been a waste of time.
Family Name Concentration: Try to remember everyone’s name and two interesting things about them. The winner recieves a prize of a pleasant holiday. The loser must live with shame.
Connect Poor Mouthing: Discuss your finances aloud and to no one in particular. Also suggest what the Holiday would have been like if you hadn’t had such a rough year. Bonus points for remarking how expensive every one else’s gifts are.
Sorry! Whoever apologizes the most wins. No subject is taboo, the only rule is that it must have occurred within your lifespan. Beginners usually apologize for the basics such as forgetting to send thank you notes, not making it to weddings, and that “it’s been so long.” Advanced players will apologize for allowing certain couples to be wed, certain children to be born, and certain allergy inducing foods to be abundantly present in the holiday casserole.
Big Whoop: Everyone partners up. Whenever your partner says something pleasant or optimisitic you must reply “Big Whoop.”
My latest piece of desktop cinema is I, VISITOR. Please do not tell your friends the ending.
Just the other day I was remarking how silly it is that I insist on pooping into clean water. What a luxury! If there’s a finite amount of clean water in the world why do I reserve a special amount in my toilet just to poop in? Why can’t we recycle waste dishwater or something to fill our toilets? I guess part of the answer is no one wants a little splash of dirty water in case something goes awry. But this got me thinking about how people use the world’s resources and how difficult it seems to shift away from our crappy status quo (pun intended). The way I buy and use things from electronics to plastic spoons seems like I ignore the fact that world only has a certain amount of stuff to to make all the stuff that I buy, use, then throw away. It’s like pooping in clean water: It’s something I do every day but I when I think about it doesn’t make sense.
While searching for new conspiracies, I came across this interesting documentary which ties in nicely with my concerns (yet doesn’t once mention poop): The Light Bulb Conspiracy.
This 52 minute program deals with planned obsolescence, the business strategy that dictates more money is made by products that stop working and need replacement than strong, durable products that last a lifetime. It begins with light bulbs and goes if into a few other directions touching on electronics, waste, consumerism, and more!
Some things that I found interesting:
- There was an actual light bulb cartel. And it fined companies that made light bulbs that lasted too long.
- Labor as well as big business favors planned obsolescence because if products break, new ones need to be made, and this means jobs. This makes me wonder how we can break away from the idea that having jobs for jobs’ sake will make everything better. Just making up more jobs just seems like a band aid on our bigger problem of depleting resources. Can we have more jobs and have less needless consumerism? Is there any appeal for the capitalist to make things that don’t require frequent replacements and new purchases?
- The documentary shows a dump in Ghana where electronic waste from all over the world is shipped. It’s illegal to ship electronic waste to third world countries but shipping companies dodge this rule by labeling everything as second hand goods. The hills of old electronics is gross and illustrates the growing scarcity of places to dump our shit (pun intended). But the documentary also talks about how young boys go to the dump and collect scrap metal to be salvaged by burning junk so all the plastic bits are burned away from the metal. Not the most healthy thing to do, but some money is being made. What would happen if that was taken away from the local economy? I don’t know if its a large chunk of money but if there wasn’t the waste would poor people lose money? I think the amount of money made from such enterprises isn’t worth the environmental degradaton/health hazards/psychological effects of being the planet’s dump but still I wonder how a change would effect poverty.
The Light Bulb Conspiracy!
Videos cited in the Light Bulb Conspiracy:
- The movie The Man in the White Suit about a chemist who discovers a thread that will last a lifetime is available on Netflix Instant Watch: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_Man_in_the_White_Suit/60029976?trkid=2361637
- iPod’s Dirty Secret
I made these two short films at my temp job. I work in a windowless room by myself and decided to turn the isolation into cinema.
MARSLAB
Marslab is a return to hard sci-fi. Where 2001, Moon, and The Andromeda Strain leave off, Marslab continues, taking the viewer to the edge of scientific mystery.
SALVO
A cold war thriller set on the eve of a nuclear standoff.
In Hollywood, on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Wilcox Avenue (I think) there’s this mural featuring all your favorite characters from the movies:
I noticed that Superman’s even there. Check him out. He looks pissed.
He looks so pissed. I think he’s angry that he got seated in the same row as Frankenstein, R2-D2, and the Bigfoot looking dude. Look he keeps a seat in between them, trying to disassociate himself from such freakish folly. “I may be fantastical, but at least I look normal. Not like these three eye sores. Why can’t I sit next to Han Solo or Nancy Reagan over there? This sucks.”
Look at him! Wow, he’s really upset. We judge you for who you are Superman, and maybe Frankenstein and the Bigfoot Man have something to offer the world. It’s not like Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster were better writers than Mary Shelley.
I’m starting this story in what I hope to be close to the end, but it might also be the middle, or much to my chagrin, nearing the finale of the first chapter.
One day, I checked out kickstarter.com after I kept hearing people talk about how it was a great way to fund projects. There were all the fun things people were raising money to produce. I wanted to make something too! There were a lot of short films, movies, Fringe Festival shows, and novels. I wanted to do something different. I had been doing open mics for around a year or more. I had been doing improv and sketch for quite a bit more than that. I had a bunch of audio equipment that I had been gathering for some sort of unproduced podcast. I thought, I’ve always enjoyed listening to comedy albums, why not make one of my own? I could use some of my stand-up, sketches, and kooky characters.
A year has passed. My Kickstarter campaign* was a success, thanks to a generous conglomerate of friends, parents, and college professors. I have produced two live stand-up shows which were recorded on a multi-track recorder (thanks Bro), capturing both the stage mic and two mics on the audience which creates a cool stereo effect. I’ve also recorded a bunch of sketches, which is basically me talking to myself in a couple of make-shift home studios: one in a mattress fort on Staten Island and the other in a blanket lined closet (it dampens the echo-y sound–or reverb–of the close space) located in sunny Los Angeles. I’ve scoured the internet for low cost sound effects (thanks soundsnap.com) to dress up my sketches in some sort of cinematic soundscape. I’m getting close to completing this thing.
All that remains is the editing. And mixing.
I hate it so.
I’ve been editing and mixing (messing up) the tracks for a while. Maybe since June. In between, recording sketches, and getting adjusted to Los Angeles. I am just now starting over after I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and doing more harm than comedy. It’s not that bad, just time consuming and tedious. Basically, I was overdoing things. Adding too much compression, playing with too many plugins. I noticed this hum in one of the tracks and all my playing around had made things worse. I had meant to go back to my ”source file” which was just an edited version of the tracks before anything was “made amazing” by my self teaching a skill others take years to master. But I realized I had played with the source file I cut the clips out of before I edited them. Furthermore, my “source file” had been corrupted and huge chunks were missing (thanks, Audacity).
So now, its back to the original recordings of the two shows (and maybe the sketches–that is going to be a pain) and re-editing. It’s all part of the learning curve, but its frustrating learning the less you do and more subtly you do it, the better the result. I do think this “second pass” will make the album better. I’m noticing smoother ways to edit things than I did the first time as well as couple “hilarious gems” that I excluded. And I could always take it to a mastering house or some dude, but its fun putting it all together myself.
The big thing I am learning is that you can look at all the settings and set them according to things you read but the main tools you should use when working on audio are your ears. Which seems obvious but when you’re working with a computer screen the whole time you kind of forget which sense should remain in charge. Stay tuned!
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*If you have questions on how to run a Kickstarter Campaign, feel free to ask. I’ll give this advice: A lot of people send mass e-mails. I realized that I don’t really read these when people send them to me. So, my strategy was to write up a mass e-mail blurb but I personalized each email with a note. Each email was sent individually with the program Email Merge X which I had hoped made my “campaign” seem less impersonal as 99.5% of my emails seem these days.
