Jingle all the Wii

What ever the !#@% happened to taking pre-orders???

Anyway, hope y'all had a good holiday.

Still looking...

In the day

My brain feels like mush these days. While I try to redevelop the focus to write coherently about something, let's enjoy this nostalgic little video clip somebody forwarded around the other day:



I didn't see Tron in the theater, actually. My little elementary school in El Cerrito screened movies after school from time to time, and somehow got this for us. In hindsight, this must have been a real coup since it can't have been any later than 1983 when they screened it.

23 years later, there I was watching it one evening while waiting for a render to finish on a project related to something else that was a huge part of my childhood. Sometimes you just gotta be a sentimental schmuck and appreciate the poetry of these kinds of things.

Fun for the whole family

Fake or Foto quiz

What's a photo, what's fake? Only got 9/10 on the first try, tricky bastards.

Keep the change!

Is it me, or do the NPR correspondents sound a little giddy tonight?

I swear they change the voting technology in CA every other election. They had some paper system today where I had to fill out an arrow next to my vote, and then feed it into a giant reader machine. For the past two we had the Diebold machines. Frankly, I kinda like Electronic voting. It's just unbelievable how many problems there are with it.

Midterm Cramming

It seems like 2k4 pretty much tapped every single drop of energy and enthusiasm I had for blogging about politics, which I frankly have come to view as a good thing. I tuned out completely from the topic for months after -- I even stopped watching the Daily Show for a while! Then the local public radio affiliate plugged that asshat of a show 'Open Source' into just that part of the day when I'm often tuned in at home, and I realized just how obnoxious uncredentialed political blogging can be.

There have definitely been some cases where blogs had a huge influence by picking up on topics the media neglected, but let's be honest. Outside of a few truly dedicated and hard-working folks who do serious research and actually hold their work to certain standards, most of what counts for political blogging are guys like me spouting high-falutin' rants to the like-minded.

As with many things, I think it's not so much the deed itself as the hype around it that bothers me. That anybody actually cares enough about politics to write a few hundred words about it regularly should have any civic-minded individual doing cartwheels. It just bothers me when it's viewed as anything more than some random guy venting some thoughts about what he heard in the news.

As I'm about to do.

Election eve, and I find myself once again kind of cramming so that I can fulfill my civic obligations with at least some competency. Thoughts:

- In spite of my bitching and moaning in '03, I do believe I'll be voting for Arnold this year. Let it be recorded that Nov. 7 will be the day Kai voted Republican for the first and probably the only time ever. You have to understand how uncompelling the alternative is. There's just no way around it. If he gets in, it will absolutely be politics as usual in this state. Arnie's really done some interesting things with politics, and having been tamed from the special election, did some pretty good things with the legislature. I also just saw the most ridiculously desperate ad against Arnie that kept cutting shots of him at a 2k4 presidential rally for shrub with figures from the war and the national economy or what have you, and absolutely nothing about California or his actual record.

- Kerry needs to shut the hell up. I brought it up earlier elsewhere, but Ira Glass's piece(1) on Kerry precisely reflects my frustrations with him and my deep desire that he go work quietly for a long time on good causes to build up the karma he'll need to re-enter public life.

- Do Rove and shrub's confidence about the outcomes on Tuesday really creep anybody else out? The press is challenging that by pressing them on poll figures, but the question in my mind is just what the hell are they planning??? I don't think much doubt remains that they stole Florida in 2k, and I count myself among the reasonable people who really think Ohio was more than a little suspicious in 2k4. Add in e-voting and I think it's seriously time to talk about UN monitoring.

- It will be a sad, sad thing if 87 doesn't pass. The cynicism reflected in the no campaign is profound. And I love how their attack ad points out the "12,000 legally-binding words!". Oh no! Words! Whatever will we do? Wherever shall we go?


That is all. Vote, dammit!


(1) The Cat Came Back -- This American Life (cue 24 min)

On second thought

I think I'll drive down to LA tomorrow. Back Saturday, so no RT party for me.

Some stuff I wanna check out, and hopefully I'll get to meet up with some friends. As much as anything I'm going for the drive. I think I'll swing by Yosemite along the way.

Coming up to the end of my vacation, and no real regrets about staying arount town. If anything I was a little aggravated about some stuff I couldn't get my mind off of, but I remember feeling the same thing when I was in Rio last year. Gives truth to that hippie bumper sticker, 'Wherever you go, there you are'.

Consider the Reader

Just finished reading "Infinite Jest", just in time for me to have nothing quite as fun to read during my two-week vacation.

It's a bizarre book. Lacking the background to draw good comparisons to other literature, I'm stuck comparing it to movies, which isn't such a bad idea, actually. A lot of the movies it reminds me of actually came out after IJ, so I can't help but wonder if it had some influence.

Imagine if Wes Anderson directed a film of a Chuck Palahniuk novel like Fight Club that incorporated the sort of multi-faceted geo-political intrigue of a film like Syriana or Traffic. Then imagine the story being broken up and told out of order like Tarantino often does. Then toss in some Pythonesque absurdity for good measure and even some elements that you might recall from Max Headroom. Then stop the novel just as everything seems to kind of be coming together, leaving readers to piece together what really happened from indistinct flashbacks and vaguely clairvoyant dreams or hallucinations laced throughout the novel.

The over-achieving and highly dysfunctional Incandenza family that the main thread follows recalls/portends the family in Anderson's Royal Tenenbaums, right down to the crash-n-burn tennis career of one of its characters. The family itself lives on an elite tennis academy James Incandenza (the father) founded after becoming successful with some kind of cold fusion and optical technology. The halfway house setting for the other thread recalls/portends the group therapy sessions and brutality of Fight club, packed with sardonic-yet-revelatory descriptions of AA meetings and recollections of past physical and sexual traumas expressed vividly through a deft use of slang and turns of phrase instead of explicit details.

This is all set in an absurdist near future where the US, Canada, and Mexico have been coercively united under the Organization of North American Nations (forming an unfortunate acronym in the process, one of many in the book). Instead of numbered Julian-calendar years, ONAN accepts corporate sponsorships to determine the name for each year, leading to calendar dates such as "May 19, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment". Interdependence Day is celebrated in commemoration of the union of the three nations instead of Independence Day. Years before sponsored time are referred to as Before-Subsidization time, or BS time. The Internet has given way to the Interlace, whose data are transmitted to tele-puters, or TPs.

A massive cold-fusion accident and toxic-dumping in the US's northeast has lead to the forcible ceding (as in we force the 'nucks to take it) of a massive chunk of the US northeast to Canada, now referred to as the great concavity. Dumping privileges are retained, though, accomplished through garbage catapults located throughout the northeast that launch garbage payloads into the concavity with a funny 'Shoop!' noise.

Getting the picture? And I'm seriously just glossing over everything.

International intrigue comes into play as an extremist cell of Quebecois separatists, already frustrated from union with Canada and now inconsolable from allegiance to ONAN, hatch a plot for a terror campaign to finally gain independence. Infinite Jest, a film made by James Incandenza shortly before he went mad and microwaved his own head, had apparently achieved such a level of entertainment that it was lethally addictive to anyone who viewed it. Viewers surrender completely to it and die after losing control of all bodily functions. The terror cell, many of which are legless and wheelchair bound from a bizarre initiation ritual, hopes to find the one hidden master copy of Infinite Jest and threaten to distribute copies throughout a US they view as helpless to resist the allure of such entertainment.

As the terror plot progresses, the story hops around various points in the characters' lives to develop the connections between them and the various members of the Incandenza family and ultimately to the senior Incandenza himself and IJ. All of this is necessary because nobody can directly view IJ without succumbing to it. Pro- and anti-ONAN bodies are in pursuit of information on it either to use it or to develop an antidote for it.

That's the basic setup, but one can't help but feel as if the plot is somewhat besides the point of this whole 1,079-page tome. There's a story, and you definitely are driven to find out what happens to its characters, but there's so much hopping around that reading it feels more like reading a collection of short stories, monologues, and dialogs. Some parts are in a quasi-screenplay format. One is intended to look like an insurance report that was forwarded around over e-mail by office mates. Wallace is constantly switching the voice in his writings as he switches between settings and characters so that while much of the book is in the third person, it feels first person because the language changes so drastically to reflect the subject of the current passage.

I can't seriously claim any solid understanding of what the real point of it all is -- there have been more than a few scholarly papers on it, and you hear 'great American novel' bandied about a lot by some critics. Most of the characters in the book suffer from some kind of addiction or compulsion, so that's an obvious theme, but the book also touches on other topics ranging from incest to commercialism to American foreign policy.

'Too much' is the overarching theme I get from it. Throughout the book you see things taken literally to ridiculous extremes. ONAN is the formalization of how the US just imposes itself on the rest of the continent. As if air pollution wasn't enough, garbage is now actively lobbed into Canada. James Incandenza is an experimental filmmaker that critics often refer to as audience-hostile with his bizarre style, in one case making a film where a character looks into the camera the last third of the film spouting apologies. Regarded as mediocre, he finally makes a film that is so entertaining it's lethal. The children and teens attending the tennis academy are so totally immersed in their drive to achieve super-stardom in tennis they know little else. Characters are constantly going on drug binges or overdosing.

And ultimately, of course, the book itself. You can't help but look at the massive volume of this thing and its 388 end notes and not wonder if there's a statement to be made in the delivery as well.

Spoils

Finally on my vacation. I've had my fill of umpteen-hour flights to the various corners of the globe/nation, so I've decided to go for the exact opposite of 'getting the most' out of my vacation time this time around, and will be spending my time visiting the fabulous San Francisco Bay Area. I'm planning on doing a few Wushu workouts, doing a few jogs up to Lake Temescal, taking a long drive around to places that will help clear out my head, and spend time in coffee shops on my new MacBook stealing some poor sap's Wi-Fi to make pithy blog entries, such as I am now. That is, I'm planning on doing absolutely fucking nothing.

The difficulty of this is not to be underestimated. The preoccupations of the last month or so has left unquenched my blood thirst for affordable East Bay real-estate. A flawed-yet-highly-desirable target has wandered into my sights and I'm trying to make some casual moves on it, which I'm finding is about as easy as running a 'casual' space shuttle launch. I never expected home-buying to be an easy process, but I'm still surprised with just how many variables there are. I've lived a long, happy life without pondering WTF a sewer lateral is, but now it's one thing I absolutely can't stop thinking about w/r/t this property, and the grave, archaic injustice of having to share one with two other residents. It's all likely moot anyway, for my shot at this particular property is slim at best.

Time is a rare ally here, though, and I need to learn to work with it. Though my sanity suffers, I can live at home slightly longer to wait for ideal targets and to better condition myself to go in for the kill when the time comes by straightening my finances out even more.

I need to talk about other things or else I'll be a total wreck. Which I will. Talk about other things, that is. I finally saw a respectable movie that I really enjoyed. I've finished reading Infinite Jest. The A's choked in the league playoffs. I'm fostering a dog through Milo. I'll talk about all that. Next time.

Labor Month

FINAL-ly!

First real weekend I've had all month -- there must be something ironic about having worked every single day since Labor Day in September. Appropriately enough, though, most of the crew has been enjoying a real windfall in wages precisely because of our embattled labor union contract, rendering material the otherwise intangible physical and psychological tolls of miscalculated production schedules. I more than doubled my income for the month by working 70+ hour weeks, at least one of which was 80+. We even entered into what the wags refer to as 'golden time', where every single hour counted as overtime because we had crossed beyond the normal, sane limits of continuous work days.

It's sort of like this month has been that hell-of-ironic-punishments. So you like your job, eh? Just HOW much do you like it??? You like your co-workers, eh? Just HOW much you like 'em? You want to make more money, eh? Just HOW much do you want to make it? It all became a huge blur.

Anyway, insane as it was, I think we turned out some really great work. Do check it out if you live around the 200 or so theaters nationwide that will be capable of screening it.

Don't ask how. Just watch.

Next Mission:

Roll out! ... after my vacation

Needless to say, this is a highly coveted assignment, and I consider getting crewed onto it as some kind of payback, be it administrative or karmic. It'll be a real relief, too, since it'll be more of a standard show (i.e. not stereoscopic), that I'll be supporting along with another more experienced ATD I hope to learn a lot from.

It won't always be like this

It's 5am, and I'm at work.

From the day before.

Now they pay me for it

No excuses -- my life has been pretty dull of late. So when the announcement went out that we were cranking up to 60+ hour weeks for these last weeks on the show, I generally saw it as getting a huge pay bonus for not having a life. Long days + full Saturdays have been the rule for me the last three weeks, with about three more before we finish.

Including this one. Besides the huge bummer of losing the R&R of a 3-day weekend (we'll be in Saturday AND Monday), there's the added element for me of the Bay Bridge closure this weekend. I'd BART over, but I really don't want to rely on Muni over a holiday weekend when I get into SF. It's bad enough during weekdays. So I'll be doing the Bay/Golden Gate/RSR circuit at least twice this weekend. At least I'll have the opportunity to swing by the old Brew Co. and pick up some of that Blueberry stuff.

I haven't done this kind of schedule since the DR/RT days, and even then I don't think I ever did 60+ for longer than a week or two. And I don't think the stress I dealt with then even begins to approach what I'm dealing with these days.

It's pretty taxing, but I gotta say there's this urgency to it all that gives you a real sense of purpose. Military metaphors have long gotten trite in the work place, but we're happy to excuse them in such situations. You really do feel like you're on this mission, in it together with the show's crew trying to get it all done. Together. When it's like this it's remarkable how easy it is to push any judgments and opinions you develop about somebody far, far into the background so long as they can get the work done. And when they actually do get the work done, which happens the majority of the time, it's equally remarkable how insignificant and petty those judgments and opinions suddenly become.

The work really is looking spectacular. There's a sense that we might have gone a bit too conservative on the stereoscopy on our last project, so we're pushing it much more this time. I think you'll really like what you see.

Be vewwy vewwy quiet...

... I'm huntin' houses.

What season is it anyway?

My recent emancipation from credit card debt has emboldened me to take some tentative steps into that lion's den of real estate, the Bay Area housing market. Without really meaning to, I'd find myself cruising around choice neighborhoods Sundays, 2-4pm looking for that cheery-yet-elegant 'Open House' sign and then making the (often abrupt) maneuvers to intercept.

It's house huntin' season!

By choice neighborhoods, I mean the edges of what I *think* I can afford. If trends hold up, that should be expanding in the next few months. Before my eyes, prices have dropped $10-20k on locations I've been looking at the last two weeks alone. I'm actually fighting a strong impulse I have right now to move on this condo by Berkeley's dog park. Besides the overall cool-down in the market, there's the seasonal winter cool-down a-comin' that I'm hoping will give me a fighting chance at something better when autumn rolls around.

Berkeley's at the top of the list. The town and I have history, and I'd like to build on that. I'd be perfectly snug as a bug in parts of Oak-town or E'ville, though, if circumstances dictate. The Watergate condos that so many of my cohorts have bought up, for example, are well within the price range. I find them a bit bleak (I like to call them 'people storage'), but I'd hardly be suffering there.

BART proximity's also a huge factor. Living in the East Bay means commuting, and so help me I will not be able to maintain sanity if I have to endure the Bay Bridge 5x a week.

Money-wise, all the on-line calculators and trackers have given me a pretty good idea of what I can afford. All these cheats like Interest-only and TIC just aren't options, as far as I'm concerned. I really wanna go for the real deal or bust. Some people swear by TIC, but even in the best case it sounds like a hell of a long-term gamble.

The big variable for me is the job. It's a volatile industry and I really need to factor that in somehow with my decision. What if I have to move in a few months? Who knows, I may find myself making lattes or something for a bit. Or I may find myself... living in a shotgun shack. Or I may find myself... in another part of the world. Or I may find myself... behind the wheel of a large automobile... Anyway, if any of this happens, I need to figure out stuff about moving and renting it out or potentially selling it before the 2-year minimum.

I suppose it's also possible that home ownership may simply not be in the cards for me right now. I haven't seriously talked to a professional just yet, and there's only so much all these web tools can consider.

Model citizen

I was pretty excited to learn that they were starting up sculpting lessons here at the new digs with Richard, the lead maquette builder for our (now former & lovin' it) model shop. Many others shared the excitement as well, apparently, and I couldn't get into a session until the start of June. Just finished up last Monday and I had a terrific time and got a lot out of the class. Rich is a terrific teacher too, not afraid to poke fun at your work if you're doing something really off, and had lots of great little tricks and little pearls of wisdom to offer on the subject. It's great how people here are down to earth about things that are easy to become such an insufferable snob about.

We did two subjects with a four 3-hour sessions each. That's plenty for an experienced sculptor with the basic poses like the ones we used, but it's still fairly challenging. Most other workshops I've been to do at least six sessions. Lacking formal instruction, these have always been a real battle for me, and I finally started getting it together with my co-worker's class last year, but it was his first time teaching and we ran out of time to cover everything.

So getting a real class with an experienced instructor for free was a real godsend. We'd have a catered dinner too on top of it all, which was awesome. I kept forgetting to bring tupperware -- the food was good and there was always tons of leftovers that'd just sit there overnight and get tossed in the AM.


I guess generally I've got a good grasp of proportion, facial expressions, and attitude. I notice I tend to stick to heroic or athletic body types, though, regardless of what's in front of me (though the models were both very athletic -- not always the case). This is fine, but can get a tad monotonous. I liked how some of the more experienced people layered on flesh to to give muscles and fat a sense of sag. The flesh on my models tends to look taut and a bit tensed up.


Faces were one area I really developed a lot this time around, even throwing in this pissed off expression on the guy with the staff. Because there was a very Wushu-like feel to the pose, I embellished a bit by taking the stance wider and lower and giving it a bit of a lean. I guess this sort of gives us something that looks kind of like southern staff.

Given the level I see my colleagues are at, I know I've got a long way to go, but at least I feel like I'm progressing. I'm in a maquette class due to start in two weeks, where we're supposed to make up something to build. What, o what to build...

Feature film numbed the radio star

What variety!

As much of a big NPR nerd that I am, it'll be a while before I understand what possessed them to make a movie of PHC. There are probably certain particular ways in which this film might have worked, but what we're given is this sort of bizarre melancholy mish-mash that would probably be a confusing downer to anybody that doesn't know the show, and kind of frustrating to folks like me who generally like the show.

I really like the voice actors on the radio show, but the movie pretty much sidelines them in bit roles and calls in mainstream talent to do their characters. Keillor, who literally makes the show what it is, is stuck playing himself in the film while Kline gets to have the fun as Guy Noir, and Dusty and Lefty are played by Harrelson and Reilly.

All the radio show's characters aren't real characters either, but performers or staff on the show. That is to say, Dusty and Lefty aren't out on the range, they're basically country music stars. Guy Noir isn't a detective, he's an ex-detective working as the show's manager. Gone are the creative little radio ads they do for the Ketchup Advisory Board, Rhubarb Pie, etc. No news from lake Wobegon.

The polished, name-brand cast also kind of muddles the radio show's folksy mid-western vibe as well. Instead of quirky stories about simple prairie folk getting themselves into unusual jams, we're watching divas and showbiz types hamming it up in a loose and meandering plot surrounding the last broadcast of a fictional version of the show. Tommy Lee Jones is some radio tycoon who's shutting the show down. Virginia Madsen shows up as some kind of angel. Lindsay Lohan is a gloomy teen whose mother and aunt are performing on the show. Some old performer guy passes away in his dressing room backstage.

How this is supposed to seem coherent to the uninitiated is beyond me. It isn't exactly a bad film, just sort of confused. If it's inaccessible for somebody who doesn't know the show, then who is it for? And if it is for the PHC-initiated, why play so fast an loose with canon?

I can't help but wonder now if NPR will be the next vein Hollywood will tap for movie ideas. Car Talk kind of got a cameo in Cars. What's next? Flora's indicated some interest in Wait! Wait!. This American Life, maybe? We can watch the mishaps that occur as Sarah Vowell visit historical sites while David Sedaris works through issues with his family. Ira Glass just sort of sits agape at the whole thing.

... and all that other stuff

When the traditional summer pastime fails to captivate and inspire, a viable alternative for me has become the summer box office race. Thanks to sites like BOM and RT, watching the millions pile up (or not) weekend after weekend for various feature films takes on the drama of any sporting contest. There are statistics galore, records to smash, and punditry at all levels. I can't for the life of me see the real significance of p2 breaking the 10th day BO record relative to a just plain overall week 2 record, but the numbers are there, and I can't help but find myself impressed nonetheless.

For the rooting interest, there's definitely a skew towards affiliated projects, but generally I just go for the movie I like. Luckily that typicaly jibes well with the affiliations, particularly this year with p2. Catching screenings becomes something like cacthing ballgames. Besides plain old personal enjoyment, there are conversations to be had about how well the thing will perform down the line. There's even smack talking, or at least awkward concessions when your film underperforms somewhat.

I talked about p2 at length, but I've been watching other stuff that I've been meaning to write about.

Box scores from the summer BO Race...

Superman Returns: Classic beats New

"I'm back."

It seems that the popular consensus on the return of the Superman has settled down firmly somewhere around 'disappointment'. My expectations weren't very high for it anyway, but I was hoping that the six years of development hell the project wallowed in would've resulted in a minimally compelling re-imagining of the man o' steel to make him relevant today. It's quite a challenge, but I didn't see much point otherwise.

Their approach? Make some truly radical changes... to Lois Lane! Everything else in the movie, from the titles to the soundtrack to Lex and Super himself, stayed pretty much the same as the original movies. But Lois is now a jilted single career mom, which might have worked if she wasn't cast as somebody who looked like a fifteen-year-old. All this, and she still goes into rooms and locales alone (or with offspring in tow!) that b-grade horror movie bimbos from our parents' generation would've known to avoid. It's a competently-made film otherwise, but stuff just seemed to become less and less important and coherent as the movie went on.

Also have to remark on the 3D -- It's pretty crummy. It seems that they skimped on some features of stereoscopy and tried to compensate by overdoing it in other areas. The result was that everybody looked like they were on flat cards moving in and out of the screen at ludicrous speeds while lacking the motion blur to make that motion seem organic. There are lots of different ways to tackle stereoscopic 3D, so don't let this film chase you off from other 3D films.

The Devil Wears Prada: Style ties Substance

Miranda Priestly and the Fashion Factory

I'm still not entirely sure what a sleeper hit is, but I think this is it. While all eyes were on the MoS over the July 4 weekend, this became kind of a curiosity as it held its own amazingly well and has kept apace with Superman in the weeks since then. I wouldn't be surprised to see Super drop below it in the daily BO (obviously never the overall BO) in coming weeks. (looks like it did over this weekend)

I caught one of our screenings for this and did indeed find myself enjoying it way more than I'd care to admit and actually saw it a second time with the Moms because I knew she'd like it. It's your basic Cinderella story with Streep as some twisted merge of the fairy godmother and the wicked stepmother. Hathaway's cute enough as the protagonist. It isn't any more redeeming than, say, Johny Depp cavorting about on a sailboat, but in some ways it's as if the fashion industry was making some attempt to explain itself in this movie in a way that non-fashion types like myself can appreciate.

Okay, this entry's already pretty long. I'll hit some of the other stuff later this week.

The devil wears seafood

Many a lobster dinner was expensed as 'reference' for this film.

So did you see it? Given the BO(1), chances are good you did. And given the exit polling, (92% of a very diverse audience rating it as very good or better) you pretty much liked it.

Besides haughty self-righteous indignation, one of the things I felt staring at that 52% on RT last week was a warm fuzzy recollection of days of yore, when I could rely on critics to slam summer movies I had terrific fun at. They're hard to find now, but I do remember reading some pretty nasty reviews for 'junk' movies turned classics like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future back in the day.

For a while there it seemed like the critics kind of got it and were right there with us in seeing silly summer fun for what it was, such as when they loved the original back in '03. So this time they saw that it was silly, saw that it was fun, and yet they slammed it seemingly with relish. Go figure.

Anyway, if you had talked to me after the preview we got about two weeks ago, I would have dropped some good money on an RT rating somewhere in the high 70s/low 80s. I guess it's good I didn't, but I really would've out of some passive-aggressive spite even if I knew then what I know now. In fact, dare I say it, I actually liked this one much more than the original, and many folks at the screening were equally surprised to find that they agreed.

I was actually pretty luke-warm about the original, kind of for many of the reasons the critics are slamming it now. It kind of moved slow for me. The plot seemed a bit obfuscated and somewhat inconsistent. I didn't quite connect with the characters.

So lynch me, I think Keira looks kinda hot like this.

This time I did. The sequel built nicely off a familiarity with the old characters and put them in interesting new situations with what I found to be campy-but-fun banter in the finest tradition of certain space epics from our collective youth. I really enjoyed the new characters, from Harris's crazy witch doctor to the evil trading company guy to Nighy's Davy Jones(2). Especially Davy Jones, actually.

The plot, frankly, made a lot more sense to me than the original, where I never quite could resolve everything about the cursed gold, who was cursed, and who needed to do what to fix it. It actually cleared up some of the questions and inconsistencies raised by the original in a very satisfying way.

Pace-wise, I really didn't feel the 150 minutes. Seriously. I had a smile on my face the whole time and always found something on screen to keep me interested. It ends on a terrific note and I am primed for part trois, particularly what creative things they find to do with one Mr. Chow Yun-Fat.

Those hills look familliar...

FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, it could be said I have connections to this film. Apparently several scenic photos from my Brasil visit last winter came in handy for a few BGs we slapped together. So take this all with that grain of salt, but most of you who know me will know that I'm brutally honest about our projects.

FULL DISCLOSURE 2/CONFESSION: Yes, I did see the movie which the title of this entry spoofs, and will probably lose hetero points for saying I really liked that one as well. To be fair, I was taking my Mom for her birthday... After seeing a company screening for it at which I figured it'd be something she'd like, which she did. So yes, I've seen that film twice and pirates deux once.

(1) Box Office. What do you think it stands for?

(2) I have to stress that his face is NOT prosthetic, but totally CG, right down to the eyes. We (in the collective sense) did the mix of mo-cap and animation that you might recall for certain characters from certain other epics involving bad jewelry.

Lost me there

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

This guy was about the only reason I was rooting for France. After that I just sort of didn't care who won, and just wanted the damned thing over with.

That said, I sort of feel for the guy right now. Surely we've all screwed up before, and the consequences of just how stupid this move was is going to be drilled into him for the next few days (months/years/life), if it isn't already. The man's got a lot of talking to do.

Think of the children!

Looks like there's a good chance the final could turn out to be that vision of soccer hell I was talking about earlier. A primer:


Euro 2004 Ad for the Guardian UK

The SF Chron had a nice piece lamenting the problems some teams have had staying erect, and how it may be influencing our next generation of players:

A thrilling World Cup is still one big flop -- CW Nevius, SF Chronicle

The 'I' is silent

Ai meu deus!

After an 11 game run from the law of averages, the Brazilian National Soccer Team turned themselves in peacefully Saturday to French authorities in Germany. A few of many stories:

Brazilians come to terms with 'national shame' -- Calgary Sun

Brazil fans destroy Ronaldinho statue -- Radio New Zealand

Three Men Protest Brazil's Game Against Ghana In The Nude -- All Headline News

A rough google search

Yes, soccer is a team sport, but individuals can have a defining influence. On Saturday, France had Zidane. After watching this man and Henry work for about the first 20 minutes there wasn't much doubt in my mind who deserved the win.

Brasil naturally has a whole bunch of I's on their team, but in a more formal sense Parreira seemed to pin the team's fortunes on Ronaldo. Apparently a lot of the folks still really love the guy, and to a degree I do too, but I was perpetually aggravated by the missed passes and stumbling throughout the tournament. It's like the whole team kept trying to feed him the ball, but he was too often a step too far behind it or sluggish and lumbering on the movement afterwards. Can't take anything away from the goals he did score, but it felt like too much of the offensive focus was on him when it really didn't need to be.

One thing I began to notice was the sort of denial the ESPN sportscasters had about the whole thing. Going by their commentary, you would've seriously thought Brasil was dangerous throughout the match. But even with their frantic efforts in the last minutes, Brasil never seemed like it had much control of the game, and never looked like a real threat. (ONE -- count 'em -- ONE official shot on goal through the whole game.)

Anyway, Brasil's out, their national morale and stock exchanges will be in the toilet for a few days, but on the bright side I can let the World Cup fall slightly lower on my list of concerns. Apparently Ronaldinho can prioritize other interests as well.

In terms of rooting interest, I really did like what I saw from the French Saturday. This isn't some issue of pride -- I just really want to see Zidane and Henry play some more. You always hear about the legendary players like Beckam, Ronaldo, and Ronaldinho, but the one guy that really brought it this time appears to be Zidane.

This is also by the process of elimination. I positively hate the Italian team's flop-focused style of play. Portugal falls into kind of the same style, but actually nastier. Germany's style I can respect a little more, but they do seem a little thuggish as well. I'd prefer a Germany-France final for the game, and I'd watch the Italy-Portugal 3rd place match as a kind of window onto football hell, where two whiny, floppy, bullying teams make life miserable for each other, fans, and refs.

No comment

From a Guardian Unlimited review:

After flirting with Looney Tunes comedy, Hollywood pastiche, Peter Jackson-style grandiosity, and seafront pantomime, it eventually becomes clear what course the Pirates franchise has really plotted: a packed universe of characters; epic action; strange lands; freakish monsters; a curiously sexless central couple. This isn't an updated swashbuckler, it's a backdated Star Wars! The comparisons are too plentiful to put down to coincidence. Not only does the narrative arc parallel that of the Empire Strikes Back, but virtually every character here has a Star Wars equivalent. Mackenzie Crook and Lee Arenberg are the substitutes for R2D2 and C3PO, commenting from the sidelines, while Naomie Harris's swamp-dwelling prophetess is a Yoda surrogate. One wonders what George Lucas's reaction will be when he watches the movie.

Unfortunately, the Star Wars connection applies to Orlando Bloom, too. He's a Mark Hamill in the making. He's simply too boyish to conjure any sort of heroic authority. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if Keira Knightley turned out to be his sister, and there are hints that Depp's Jack Sparrow has the potential to do a Han Solo.

Don't look at me man, I just work here. Saw it last week and think it's worth knocking out a review for. I'll try that over this (hot damn!) 4 day weekend.

Well, do you?

Discrediting Americana has become something of a favorite theme in reality TV, or at least the supposedly highbrow ones like Antiques Roadshow. I haven't watched it much, but I understand the chief attraction is watching some middle-aged housewife get her cherished beliefs about the history of some well-guarded trinket dashed to pieces.

It's not that I don't enjoy this kind of thing (though I found I really didn't in that case), but that this kind of crap sat its fat ass on the timeslots once occupied by awesome specials where people flew helicopters over erupting volcanoes or showed all kinds of funky stuff through micro- or tele- scopes. In the end they're just different flavors of infotainment, but I really doubt the Roadshow has inspired many kids to become scientists and engineers.Those 'making of' specials about certain space fantasy epics were the very first place I learned about the very company I'm working for now. If appraisals of porcelain trinkets is the alternative to Yu-Gi-Oh these days, it's no wonder kids are getting less and less interested in educational entertainment or any of the things it inspires.

No, they're not Italian. And note the absence of red and green overalls.

Sci-Fi Channel's "100% Real"(1) Ghost Hunters series fits into all of this in that it mixes that crackpot-humiliation element with IR and false-color thermography footage of crap like I've absolutely never seen. blee turned me onto the show over a dinner conversation in which at least one pair of eyeballs rolled, but I sat rapt.

The reality show follows a pair of plumbers who, after (or often, instead of) fulfilling the obligations of work and family, run The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), a paranormal investigations group. Taking calls from homeowners, innkeepers, and civil service officers in states ranging from bemused to concerned (rarely panicked), the pair spends one to two weekend nights free of charge at the site of said hauntings with some fairly sophisticated equipment and a team of wide-eyed cohorts.

At this point the show totally splits off from all of those ridiculous Halloween-time specials in which ambiguity is not so much considered as it is tapped and forcibly siphoned out of grainy footage and photography that would in all other cases prompt the reasonable person to consider better equipment rather than the influence of the supernatural. The pair, Jason and Grant, ask the things anybody should when they see some of this stuff and to their credit, in most of the shows they really do find zilch, or have to disappoint that wide-eyed cohort that got really excited over some lens flare or odd dust hit that they just found after sifting through several hours of footage.

The reveal of this utter lack of evidence to the homeowner or innkeeper very invested, sometimes financially, in their site's hauntings makes for that roadshow component. Particularly irritating are those old ladies that insist they or some family member has some sixth sense and throughout the investigation tries to spook people out by saying they feel like they're being watched or exclaiming "it's here!" or "what's that???" while gesturing off camera. Also the leaders of fraternal chapters to TAPS that by all appearances have taken time out from their busy action-figure collection circuits to freak out over some dust glint whose irregular shape they are convinced is the face and headdress of some Victorian-era bride tragically murdered on that site.

But, oh, that 20%. Provided they are indeed true to their word that they aren't and hate dicking around with evidence, you will quite likely be keeping a few more lights on around the house the evening after you watch an episode. True to their transparency, much of this footage they keep on their website and invite skepticism as Jason and Grant are themselves doggedly skeptical to the last in the majority of the cases.

Apparently they've built up enough of a following or encounter clients sufficiently invested in their would-be haunting that forgery comes up on occasion, and they do indeed catch it, as you'd discover in one of their deleted scenes. In one case a 'black shadow' literally looks like some guy zipping by in a dark cape, though there was enough skepticism of the skepticism that they felt it was worth presenting.

Ghosts and extreme, sudden changes in velocity are the two major fears of childhood I now crave. With ghosts I'm skeptical, but I like the idea of a universe with these kinds of things, even if in the distant future they turn out to be some quirk of quantum physics or what have you. Whatever it is, having some ambiguity and mystery in the universe keeps it interesting, and any show that deals with it without totally insulting my intelligence will sustain my attention. Finally having a non-seasonal show on the subject without some throaty voiceover intoning "... or is it???" at the end of each episode is very refreshing.


(1) The DVD packaging says as much.

RE: Brasil Futbol

Feeling a little better, but still a little queasy.

It's the law

This is my favorite ad ever for the World Cup. It's from 1998, when Brasil lost so badly in the final that conspiracy theories abound about some fix on the part of the team or Ronaldo or what have you.

That aside, though, I've been sort of lucky in that since the World Cup popped onto my radar in 1994(1) (as it did for much of the US, I imagine, since we hosted it), Brasil's been dominant, with the championship in '94, a second place in '98, and another championship in '02.

They've always been a threat, of course, but it's not like they win every single year, and I'm beginning to wonder if the law of averages has finally caught up to them this year. Brasil's first game last week was possibly the most horrifying thing I've ever seen from them. Maybe nostalgia has tainted my memory, but I'm not used to seeing them making that many bad passes and getting the ball stolen from them quite that much. Ronaldo's received a lot of grief about his weight gain, and given his performance Wednesday, it seems to be deserved. You really would've forgotten he was on the pitch.

One thing I learned this past visit to Brasil was that many folks there don't pay much attention to it until at least the qualifiers. So I don't feel like such a ridiculous poseur for not following club football there or here in the meantime. Some things I've learned:

1. It is indeed legitimately called 'soccer' in the English-speaking world. In England, where the modern version of the game was created complete with a common rule set conferred and drafted in 1848, 'soccer' is a contraction of 'assoc' football, itself a contraction of the full name, association football. They didn't just call it 'football' because there were two kinds -- association football and rugby football. Rugby football evolved into that thing we have a big annual bowl game for. I like to call soccer 'football' myself, but there's nothing wrong with calling it 'soccer' simply for clarity's sake.



2. The offside rule is the most frustrating thing about watching these games, sort of like the holding call in the NFL. It just seems to come up out of nowhere to negate spectacular plays and goals. Apparently the motivation for it back in the day was that people would just post guys back by the opponent's goal and do huge clearing kicks to them to knock into the goal. As to why that's a bad thing, I'd figure it's because the fun of soccer is watching folks move the ball up the field through a defense, not just punting the ball back and forth across the field.
   
   It does kill scoring, though. Also, some teams have exploited it by sort of scooting away from their own goal at crucial moments (often corner kicks) to draw the offside call on their opponent. FIFA revamped the rules back in 2003 into something somewhat more obtuse in some attempt to deal with this. Basically as it is now, simply being offside isn't necessarily an offense. It's based on the ref's opinion on if the player is interfering with a defender or using it to gain some kind of advantage in play. Given the officiating we saw in today's USA-Italy game, that's really, really scary.

Anyway, that's all that comes to mind for now. Waking up in the AM for the Brasil-Australia game. Hopefully we'll see some improvement.

1) 1994 might seem like a ridiculously late date for a native to take interest in World Cup, but frankly the family wasn't that into it as I grew up here, so I never knew. It's just one more of those things about my country of origin that I didn't really explore until late in my teenage years.

Vent!

I'm about a month into the new position. It's been a lot of fun, but I gotta admit it's really pushing me in some areas. I talked a bit before about the payroll and common titles(1): junior @rtist and assistant technic@l director, respectively. It's odd how the bureaucratese/payroll title sounds so much more organic. The common title is more in line with what was advertised and what I was expecting. Damned technocratic, though.

But I guess things never work out quite as expected, and I'm working a lot more these days in the 'junior @rtist' sense of my position, which is to say I'm working on shots. That's awesome, but the pressures remain for the technical stuff, and I feel like I'm dropping the ball on that end because the shot production stuff has been taking precedence, and frankly is a lot more fun.

I'm finding the tech stuff is remarkably like working at a supermarket. I generally know how stuff works, but I don't know where some obscure library or software update or patch is. They've got a nice system for all this, but in the end you still have to know what it's called, what version to get, who can answer questions on it, etc.. Software/command/library names perfectly sensible in some contexts can be impossible to intuit in slightly different ones. We've got a terrific alias for fellow @TDs, but I feel if I send more than about 10 messages to it per day I've begun to overstay my welcome, friendly and helpful as the other teammates continue to be.

An unexpected source of stress lately, though, has been people. Everyone else has been incredibly cool, but I feel like I might have been a little short with folks lately. Part of it is how people calling me or dropping by my desk totally interrupt my already clumsy juggling of different roles and duties. In my old position where stuff had gotten a little too easy, I'd welcome the interruption, but it's been a little aggravating in my current state where I'm still trying to get my bearings. I also think there's some inevitable arrogance that seeps in after any kind of promotion that I really, really should know better than to indulge. A rare luxury about the place I work is that I really do work with some sharp people, but I wonder if some of the things I've said these last weeks might give people the impression that I think otherwise.

Titanic on a boat!

Terrific combination:

1. Read the title essay in David Foster Wallace's anthology "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". (Settle in -- it's at least 60 dense, footnoted pages, if I recall correctly.)


2. Watch "Poseidon".

At the risk of spoiling it for Grumpy, I'm going to have to disclose that Fun Thing details Wallace's experiences as 'your correspondent' for Harper's on a subsidized 7 Night Luxury Cruise. Poseidon details the experiences of a group of off-the-shelf characters trying to escape the same, except in their case the boat's been capsized by a rogue wave and lies belly up on the ocean taking on water from what was its top.

One of the things I've been enjoying about Wallace's correspondent pieces is how they mix vivid description, insightful observation, and multi-layered analysis in such a way that I almost feel like I don't actually have to experience the subject event myself anymore -- it really feels like I've been there.

So when Poseidon cuts to shots of the service staff working in the galley after the terrific long, sweeping shot of Josh Lucas jogging around on the decks of an entirely CG cruise ship, I remained fully engaged. For one, I wondered if they toiled under the same service-industry oppression that turned Wallace's insistence on carrying his own duffel bag to his cabin into something of a federal case, prompting a personal visit and apology for the deck's baggage handler's incompetency from the manager. I pondered the feasibility of sneaking one's girlfriend onto a cruise like one of the galley staff's characters had done when, as Wallace found, every nook of one's cabin is mysteriously cleaned to perfection anytime one leaves it for longer than 30 minutes. When the curtain went up on the saucy Latin songstress during the ship's formal New Year's party, I wondered if her act was preceded by a passenger talent show and hypnotist/comedian much like the main act at the final night's formal on Wallace's cruise.

Taking stock...

As we meet the characters, I wonder about the statistical aberration of having an ex-NYC mayor, an ex-Navy professional gambler, and so many young, attractive, pre-retirement people on the same cruise boat. I wonder how many of the bridge officers are Greek, which would have been consistent with Wallace's findings that most cruise lines were operated out of Greece, tending to skew the composition of the officers towards the same.

Basically, whenever large volumes of rushing, flooding, pouring, bubbling, drowning water weren't on screen, I had plenty of things to keep me occupied. So that I found the 'character-driven' moments not entirely unbearable will have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Accomplishing that, the story was able to maintain at least some minimal alignment between what it wanted me to care about and what I actually did care about as I watched the passengers get abused by those spectacular torrents of water.

It's coming!

And they truly are spectacular, orgasmic in much the way Wallace describes in another piece of his, "F/X porn". I had wondered what else was to be done for CG water after Perfect Storm besides maybe tweaking a few things on the simulators and maybe doing a better job on the color. I saw that there were indeed many more interesting things to be done, particularly the colors we see as the ship's festive lighting gets smothered by cascades of whitewater and various systems short and blow out during the impact sequence. Also worth mentioning are the rather graphic scenes of humans getting incinerated in flash fires, dropping onto ballroom ceilings, or getting themselves crushed or impaled on various shipboard implements made hazardous simply by being flipped upside down.

You'll endure this all together with the characters, and by extension, Wallace. And as the characters finally poke their heads out above water in the end, you'll find an amazing synergy between them, your proverbial correspondent, and yourself as together you sigh and are just happy to have survived the experience.

I am not a Cylon!

Ever wonder why I say I grew up in this town but it seems nobody I 'knew' is around? Or that the few people who do are strangely connected either to Wushu (El 'Sickness') or military equipment (Jerry at the surplus?) Or how it seems most of my friends from college come from the same high school in, of ALL places, San Diego? Or my aesthetic affinity for machines and technology?

Stop wondering.



I had a childhood, dammit! See? I got pictures to prove it. I wasn't artificially created by machines in a plot to destroy humanity!

Just picked up a scanner, partly motivated by irrational exuberance,
partly by this mess of negatives I found while cleaning out the house a few weeks back. I don't know what happened, but most of the actual photos from my childhood have been missing pretty much since I started college. I figure it's a mix of bad organizational skills and moving two or three dozen times. Not everything is there, and some are my brother's forays into photography (not half bad, actually), but I guess at this point I'll take what I can get.

I picked up the Canon Canoscan LiDE 500F(1), mainly 'cause it could fit in one of my drawers, looked cool, and happened to get some nice reviews. Its film and negative scanning definitely is definitely intended for casual use, though -- scanning several slides takes a lot more mucking about than I'd like. I'll have to exercise much editorial license in what gets preserved and what will be lost to the ages.

That photo is unflattering, but so appropriate.

(1) I admit I mention this so precisely because I'm curious what ads would get put up for it.

Art School Space

It doesn't take very much exposure to the arts for one to develop all kinds of wild notions of just what the hell it is that goes on in art school. Surely, most of us have had our sense of aesthetics and taste violated and molested by some piece of tripe flung limply at us from straight out of left, failing to go the distance and instead of landing solidly in our grasp, drops short, splatters, makes a huge mess, takes a bad hop, and beans us squarely on the temple.

Coming to and nursing our wounds, we can only wonder. Why? WHY???

And then... HOW?

Art School Confidential (the film) doesn't answer this, and in many ways, I don't think any of us expect it to. I was hoping simply for therapy of the sort 'Office Space' offered to white collar cube-dwellers everywhere. Office Space didn't just expose the evils of corporate platitudes and politeness, it gave us *coping* strategies. All other countermeasures exhausted, we could retreat into safety by putting the vapid, blithely ignorant boss into the Lumberg slot, the infuriatingly chipper co-worker either into the 'case-of-the-Mondays' woman or that tool with all the flare from Chotchkie's(1). We'd then chuckle a bit with the co-workers that understood and found it in ourselves to slog through the rest of the day.(2)

Confidential offers no such retreat. When(3) you again find yourself stuck in an overlong, plodding 'art' film or mediocre gallery exhibition, you won't have acquired any comic archetypes to cling to while you sip on your smuggled-in flask or overpriced glass of Merlot.

From an environment rich with eccentrics and inflated egos and what I'm told is brilliant source material, Confidential takes on the style of the conventional college coming-of-age comedy complete with dopey romance, slacker cohort/guru-figure, sublimely-perfect aryan villain figure, and occasional interjections by the world-weary faculty by equal parts accomplished and mediocre.

Much like Office Space, Confidential seems to split into two films. You'll really find the parallels striking. The First half sets up the satire. The second half switches gears and becomes something of a caper flick, methodically tying up all the loose ends and adding a lot of uncharacteristic action.

Given the spectacular disconnect that can occur between artist and audience in some projects, the satire is incredibly unsatisfying. There are freaks spouting pretentious, half-baked bullshit, of course, but not enough and not to the degree that we can believe that these are the same people that have inflicted such suffering upon us in theaters and galleries across the country.

Oddly enough, I'm left admiring somewhat the abrupt switch to the caper mode in the second half. While parts seem out of character for this kind of film, there's a cynicism underlying it that rings true and deserved deeper exploration for the kind of darkly comic take that the overall movie would've benefited from.

The cast does fine, but it really would've worked better as an ensemble presentation than focusing on a few central characters. Malkovich stands out, as well he should. The rest of the cast doesn't really offend either, and overall the film seems competently made. I'm just left stumped at how a movie could make art school students boring in comparison to office workers.

(1) Even writing this down now, I'm compelled to reach out and strangle a small rodent or something when I think of the guy.
(2) Comforting, but not necessarily a healthy thing. As many have observed, the irony of the sort that office humor sources like Dilbert and, alas, Office Space mine may indeed be the kind raw resource that the proverbial /Man/ needs to help keep us all placated enough not to affect actual change. Basically, if taping up a Dilbert strip about some grave corporate injustice that mirrors your own or quoting Office Space behind your manager's back satisfies your sense of insurgency, who's really benefiting? It's not entirely a rhetorical question.
(3) Not 'if'.

Armchair accounting

Great. Looks like somebody was able to gain access to one of my credit cards. A charge showed up from someplace in the UK! It's easy to tell on this one because I never use it (or pretty much any card except for the mileage thing). Called my card company and they've been terrific. No charges, account's on temporary hold, etc.

It's a lucky thing I happened to be checking my account the day after the charge went through. Over the last few years checking my spending and debt has become something of a minor hobby.

I came out of college & immediate post-college with ridiculous debt, though I know now it's a common thing and that my case wasn't nearly as bad as some people's. Still, when I finally tallied it all up it was a pretty frightening figure. I finally got my ass in gear in 2002 and set up a system. It's not anything earth-shattering -- it's just an Excel spreadsheet coupled with electronic bill payment. If you're grappling with bad post-college debt, you may want to give it a shot.

On one sheet I started recording how much and *when* payments were due. You can get the general idea of how much and when a bill's due over about 2-3 months of tracking. This helped me schedule regular billing dates to make sure that, if something bad happened, I could be sure the next paycheck would more than cover the next round of bills. This is easy for me because I get paid weekly. Might be tougher on monthly or bi-weekly.

Electronic bill payment helps because it keeps you on the schedule. If you still mail stuff in, you're bound to forget or lag far behind sometime and you'll be stuck with a double-payment or a compacted payment schedule one month that can throw the system out of whack.

After a while I was able to figure out when to hold back on spending, when to relax a bit, when it was okay to splurge, etc. It also helped me start saving up a bit too. I could start setting targets for saving up, start to stow stuff away for vacations, etc.

On the other sheet, and this idea came to me later, I started tracking principal on my debts. Cars, credit cards, student loans, everything. I could see how much it had gone down month over month and do projections based on that.

It's all really motivating because it gives you a really concrete sense of your progress. It turns it all into a kind of game -- just punch in some numbers and see how stuff turns out. It also motivates you to scheme a bit on how you can do better. You can see the impacts of, say, switching insurance companies, consolidating debts, etc.

There are probably better things and nice pieces of software out there that let you do this, but this has been working out really well for me. I'd often come out of months where there's been some kind of shock to the system from some unexpected expense with *extra* cash in the coffers from the things I do to compensate.

Good sports

I guess any day you dodge all the bullets is a good day. Of course, some would point out a good day would be best described without the use of firearm metaphors.

The Berkeley Tournament did seem a bit spottier than previous years, but it finished by 10:30, which I figure is on par with the usual. I wasn't there the whole time, though, so I'm still catching up on all the details. There's always some grumbling after CMAT, but it does sound a bit more serious this time around. Heard of a little incident with some China coach that seemed to be handled well. I was there to help close things out at the end of the day judging intermediates. I felt a little rusty frankly -- a few decisions I might rethink, but I'm generally comfortable with the scores I awarded.

I didn't spend the whole day at the tournament, for a change.(1) I was pretty clear beforehand that I'd be out that afternoon catching my first ball game of the year. I was all set to go rain or shine, but in what might be considered an act of divine intervention, we got partly cloudy skies with a few good breaks of sunshine as we watched the Giants roll over the Braves 12-6. Even got a bit of a sunburn watching it all. Possibly the most satisfying game I've attended in years. ery special thanks to the Flower (aka Lumber's better half) for the freebie!

The tournament after party was hot, crowded, and not broken up by cops, which again is something we had been worried about that didn't come to pass. It ran its course like all parties should -- with the front yard smelling like puke and folks trickling out slowly into the wee hours of the morning. Remembered chatting with some neighbors who had dropped by to see what the fuss was about and pick up a beer. Gotta love Berkeley.


(1) I was there by 8 am to help out with the judging, only to find myself milling about all morning. I think I'm just going to sleep in from now on and show up for the swing shift.

It's still whoring

I was actually writing down my thoughts on Kieu at about the same time I wrote about Eve, but hadn't really sorted out what I really felt about the movie.

Oh it's crummy. Make no mistake. But to a degree I felt vaguely wrong slamming it because it felt something like criticizing the illustrative quality of a pre-schooler's finger painting. It's not so much mean as it is pointless.

As always, the movie doesn't feel so much like a narrative with an actual plot as it is a montage of establishing shots. Dialog runs not so much like an interaction between characters as they appear to be monologues of two or more characters spliced together through some daring and edgy editorial pizazz (they aren't, btw). Absolutely every shot, even those in broad daylight, look like they were shot overexposed under the fluorescent glow of a Safeway produce aisle. (Maybe this is to be praised for consistency -- critical, 'climactic' scenes feature characters picking produce and riding Muni buses.) Equipped yet again with merely two facial expressions (blank & upset) and speech lacking inflection and syncopation, the protagonists are left utterly uncharismatic. The effect is predictable -- you don't care very much about their angst and life history and wish they would go bother somebody else.

That all just had to be said. But again, pointless. Through the forces of democracy(1) and the market, Kieu as a film will likely see little circulation outside of SFIAAFF. Lacking the option to see this film, there is apparently not much point in me warning you not to.

This entry can salvage a few broader points, though:

1) As mentioned last entry I'm perpetually amazed at how Asian American film makers rail against the mainstream media's portrayals of Asians, go to film school, buy/rent expensive equipment, apply to and get some fabulous grants... and then turn around and make films that show pretty much the EXACT SAME THING. Kieu is another example of this -- if this film was made by a non-Asian, people would be horribly offended at the yet again exoticized, emasculated, emotionally-constipated portrayals of Asians.

2) If you think review whoring is an issue with major studio films, you have NO idea how bad it is on the ethno-indie film circuit. At the very least major-releases get enough exposure that dissenting opinions will emerge. (I'm reminded of the murmurs about Sideways being overrated that eventually surfaced back in 2005.) With the ethno-indies you have a cacophony of well-meaning, softballing professional reviewers, reviewers highly connected to the projects and festivals, reviewers having a political agenda, and reviewers that simply don't have the time to write about anything beyond their 'picks' for the fest. The end effect is that you'd only really hear one kind of view. For example:

Variety review
SF Chron festival picks

They mean well, but this is NOT what's going to help Asian Am cinema in the long run. People need to start making better films, not better-reviewed films.

(1) As someone who's been denied the facility to rate films at SFIAAFF twice now, I've got to wonder if disenfranchisement runs rampant at the fest. In one case we had fled the theater halfway through -- if that's not saying something that should go on record, I don't know what is. For this one we were so apprehensive that we essentially procrastinated about leaving for the film and got there too late to recieve the ballots. The snarky slacker demographic is being seriously under-counted.(*)

(*) Sorry about the footnote. Been reading some D.F. Wallace lately and I'm just pedantic enough to think this whole footnote thing might be a good idea.

Nobody does it better

My threshold on the issue is apparently a little higher than many, but I can agree that there continues to be issues with the way Asian Americans are portrayed in Hollywood. In spite of some encouraging developments, we still see Hollywood portrayals of Asian Americans as exotic, emasculated, and emotionally constipated. THANK GOODNESS, therefore, for Asian Am film making, where Asians FINALLY get the opportunity to make their own films that portray Asian Ams as exotic, emasculated, and emotionally constipated.

We stopped into the SFIAAFF last Monday for a double-feature of our own making, catching screenings of "Eve and the Fire Horse" and "Kieu" separated by about one bottle of Sake. (Sorry we didn't catch up after Eve, rancho! We didn't stick around for the Q & A.)

Given some of the things we've seen at the fest, I've become so very very appreciative of a film that elegantly and competently tells a simple story illustrating coherent themes with interesting events and likable characters. Such is Eve. It may not find itself counted among the all-time classics of motion picture, but put it up against similar kid-focused fare from Disney, or even 'serious' kid entries like "In America" and you'll find it'll hold its own and possibly a little more.

Very much like "In America", it portrays the experiences of an immigrant family as seen by two young sisters (in "In America", the family is Irish). Naturally, the immigrant sob story has been done to death, but the kid angle is fresh enough that Eve brings some new things to the table. I'll spare you the plot summary (because I hate writing them, they're boring to read, and they're laden with spoilers), but it manages to squeeze in a surprising amount of edginess in dealing with issues of race and religion while maintaining a whimsical attitude that's true to the subject.

That said, it still suffers from a few minor things that irk me in these kinds of films. The kids are emotive and animated, but the adults in Eve have the emotional range of a light switch, flipping mainly between blank and upset. And as always, ample screen time is spent showing folks bowing before ancestral altars, lighting incense, doing things for good luck, lacing dialog with natural symoblism (sometimes sarcastic, thank goodness), etc. Given the strong religious themes, some of this is naturally necessary, but there's a rote feeling to these kinds of scenes in these films that I'd sooner do without. Yes, they're foreign and have different customs. WE KNOW. Just move the story along, please. The way some films show this stuff, you'd think people spent half the day doing this kind of thing.

This entry's long enough. I'll hit Kieu next time, and BOY, will I hit it.

Eugene 911!

So it's been a week since the first 'part' and a good two weeks since the original event, but let's just wrap this up...

Miscalculated after-parties are becoming something of a tradition at Collegiates. Let us not speak of Stanford 2004, where at least one other guy and I got tossed out of a club. The Davis 2005 committee rented out a terrific space on campus only to be forced to host it DRY.

And now this year.

EPD gives more than 85 drinking citations this weekend -- Oregon Daily Emerald

Of course, making the news can be considered something of an accomplishment. Such things are not without fallout, though. If you were there or simply very sympathetic, do help.



At least until then, however, I'd say things were going swimmingly. It was kind of a slow start, probably because our very hospitable and unsuspecting hostess apparently had no idea what she had agreed to. When we got there, no alcohol was to be found and the residents by all appearances were ready to settle in for a mellow Saturday night of TV and Gamecube. Within what must have been minutes, the garage was a dance floor, tubs of punch were mixed, and the occupancy of the house went up by at least two orders of magnitude.



That all came to a screeching halt at around 11:30 when Eugene's "Party Patrol" unit hit. These guys wasted absolutely no time screening folks for age and alcohol and issuing 22 underage drinking citations. For those of us from the free republic of Berkeley, this was quite a shock.

Especially in our condition, there wasn't much that we could do, so we hopped the van back to the hotel. After lounging around at our hotel lobby for a bit, I turned in. At the very least I'd get a decent night's sleep for the drive home.

Back to School

In spite of it all, I've found that it's pretty unusual for me to regret checking out a Wushu tournament. I was really wishy-washy about heading up to check out/help out with Collegiates last weekend, but even with all the brushes with icy death on the I-5, police oppression, and sleep deprivation, I came back satisfied that I'd made good use of my precious, precious weekend.

The event was tiny in comparison to previous years, which is naturally a bummer, but I must admit it's nice to run through these things without intense time pressure. I barely worked a third of the time I was there, which allowed me to contribute to posterity by taking lots and lots of pictures, applying in a really half-assed way the various things I've learned in my photography workshop.


I'm not sure if the Oregon guys fully appreciate this, but they've got a really nice looking gym. It gets plenty of natural light and I love the wood paneling and scaffolding.

In the afternoon, rays of sunlight would hit various parts of the rings which made for some interesting lighting opportunities.


This is Kunyu from the Stanford team. I got my hand at doing some ringleading this time, which helps me recall people's names. Stanford went on to win the coveted team title.


Here's Caren from the Cal team. No idea what the results are from all these, but you know where to get 'em.


Filip from the Stanford team. The shot sort of works even if the exposure is probably about a stop too dark.


The Cal 'Happy Bears' team group set stood out dramatically from the rest of the field. There was a general sense talking to folks afterward that this whole trend of including LENGTHY sparring sets in group sets has got to stop. I'm slightly looser on this in that I think some is okay if people can positively NAIL it -- i.e., if it really looks like a fight. That sort of thing takes real time and skill to pull off. If not, I'd highly recommend ditching it.

The Cal team did have a lengthy sparring section, but it was very well choreographed and very convincing. But in the end, I generally side with the view that group sets are about perfect timing and coordination. Maybe folks have forgotten, but you'd be shocked how awesome people look when they're perfectly together across a complicated series of moves.

A small tournament meant a relatively early stop (after a pretty forgettable and impromptu 'Mad Tricks' competition), which left plenty of time for...


They never seem to print out enough of these things.

To be continued...

Freedom!

Happy Friday

You will feel SO much better about pictures of yourself after this:

http://www.fluideffect.com/

Look in the portfolio, particularly the before/after sections.

Re-upped

I renewed my KQED membership some weeks back, entitling me to a whole other year of snooty, self-righteous indignation for the low, low price of $11 a month. I waited for them to do the New Yorker DVD-ROM offer, which should contain everything that magazine has ever printed since its inception. New Yorker's been a tad spotty for me, but the beauty of a searchable DVD-ROM is that if any particular writer catches my attention off-line, I can look 'em up directly on that there disc. This was in addition to my choice of the standard gift, which ended up being that emergency crank radio again. I really don't need any more umbrellas or mugs, but I do find some appeal in having one of those crank radios on every single vehicle and at every location I spend my time in.

I also take it as an opportunity to bitch about KQED programming some more. There's isn't much to gripe about, actually. They've picked up two terrific shows right when I'm paying attention, during the 11pm-2am weekday slot. "Day to Day" targets the busy 20/30-somethings with slicker production and younger hosts. "News & Notes" brings the Black perspective to current events. (Yes, their show description says 'Black', not 'African-American'. Very refreshing.) It's pointed without coming off like some SNL skit spoofing cable-access 'Black Power' shows. While the uninitiated would mark the show as colloquial after hearing a few slang terms tossed around, the more astute would realize that similar terms are thrown around by your McLaughlins and Lehrers all the time. It's just that your 20/30-something years of experience with the American media have acclimated you to the latter and not the ones that perfectly intelligent people from different backgrounds use.

And then there's the third hour.

I had once tried setting an alarm on my radio to send me to bed at 1 am. But now simply keeping it tuned to KQED until that hour has the similar effect of making it the most loud and obnoxious thing in my room. That's when the breathy voice of pompous gasbag Christopher Lydon introduces us to "Open Source", a show which as a goal attempts to reproduce the level of discourse on Internet blogs. In many ways it meets its goal. Like most blogs, the show is inflated, recklessly opinionated, biased, and tragically uninformed, squandering the resources of a valuable medium through a crippling lack of craft.

I actually remember Lydon from a long drive back up the grapevine some years ago surfing Central Valley radio stations (furiousg was there). It was memorable for me because of some bit he was doing where he had some historian/actor on pretending to be (I kid you not) the ghost of Thomas Jefferson. Besides the hubris and sheer hokeyness of the concept, I just saw absolutely no need for it. It did nothing an informed interview on Jefferson wouldn't have accomplished, and only served to muddle things by speculating on issues that Jefferson couldn't have possibly imagined. This was apparently a different show that Lydon was doing, but as I heard a few weeks ago, he's brought the bit over to Open Source as well.

If you, like me, never really had any notion of the difference between good and bad interviewing and discussion moderation, you will after Open Source. Listen as Lydon astounds you with an impressive lack of understanding of both his guests and their arguments. He'll make spurious assumptions, ask disgracefully leading questions, interrupt guests, goad them into speculation, take quotations radically out of context, and phrase queries like pompous high school essay topics. At times I really wonder if he's actually listening to his guests all. Compare and contrast this tripe with the damned near symphonic orchestration of interviews, debates, and listener call-ins by the likes of 'local' talents like Michael Krasny (or even his many understudies), to say nothing of other NPR interview/call-ins like "Talk of the Nation".

The irony, of course, is that I'm writing this all in a blog entry as somebody who does not study media as a career. Which kind of is the point -- it's great that there's this resource for expression and talk-back, but unless proven otherwise, it's really no more than listener call-in. Shows like Open Source would have you thinking otherwise if you're not careful.