uh yeah...again

After what proved to be a very productive day I did watch my movie. It was a dissappointment.

A. Sarcasim is funny in moderation, but it shouldn't be the foundation of any film!

B. Don't put ALL the good lines in the trailer.

C. It's called an ending people, learn it, love it, USE IT!!!!

D. The whole thing felt too ADD for me, complete your thoughts.

E. NPR types probably loved this movie...

So afterward i watched Garden State. One of the best movies I've seen and one of the few I can watch on a semi-regular basis.
Why do I like this movie?
It's very much "What you see is what you get".
It had a good ending, and heaven forbid, it's a happy one.
Of course the sound track.
I love the story, it's simple but very layerd.
Quiet visual gags.
Distinct characters, they don't all run together.
Embraces the oddities of life.

It's just too bad it's been knocked off as much as it has.
I have a few ideas for the next move.. keep ya posted.

I was going to write a rant on techno but....

It's wednesday!!! And one of the movies I have really ben looking forward to is out on DVD this week. I wanted to see it in the theatre but I don't think any Milwaukee area screens had it.
It's a little ditty called, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. It seems to have a good plot, low key sense of humor, and recomendations from the critics that matter.

Oh yeah, and techno is cool just because...

Rolling Tape Break

random rant

I now have a half an hour to sit and jabber on about stuff. My computer is doing all the work right now. Anyway, the subject for this break is country music. I have long had a love/hate relationship with the stuff. For years I refused to listen to to it, because oddly enough I found that I liked it alot. After all, aside from hip-hop it's probably the most hated styles out there. I have no idea why. It's good music, and it's intelligent songwriting. It's proud to show it's heritage, all the way back to it's immegrant roots. It's fun to listen it touches on a very wide range of emotions, and is always willing to laugh at itself. It's always being innovated. And of course it just oozes with the American (see Red State) attitude.
I still don't know who's who, or anything like that. But I can tell you it's great work music.

end random rant

show's almost over... see ya round

So uh yeah...

You know when you get one of those projects that are pretty cool, but you still don't want to do? Okay so maybe you don't. I get that way whenever I'm asked to develop an new workflow. One that will disrupt things no matter what. Kinda like when we adopted Closed Capioning :) It's always alot of fun to learn a new technology. I just know that not everyone shares my enthusiam for such things. Especailly when it involves a little more effort on their part. Despite the fact it's a vast improvement on what we got.
I have no personal projects right now. . . it's nice. . . for now.

I'd like to start over....

Last week was a little wierd... in fact... I still feel a little wierd. I think it's going to stay this way for a while. In the mean time, I'll try to keep this place as light hearted as possible. That may mean fewer public posts...

Another Movie Chinese Food :0

Given that wednesday night was taken up by a very enjoyable Gealic Storm concert with good peoples. I still felt like a movie night. Anyway during that concert one of the people I was with quoted a film line I had forgotten about. In fact, I never really thought of it as that quotable. It was from a film called The Gods Must Be Crazy.

First thing that struck me was how crude the filmmaking was. But shortly after getting into it this became more charming than anythng. I could see how this could be an offensive movie to some because of the depiction of the bush people. In fact, I was waiting for the "curtain to be pulled back" to see the real people, but to my surpise this never happened. Another riminder that this film was made in another time. Before it was society's job to jade children by the time they turn 10.

Another surprising moment was the funny depiction of African power stuggles. Especialy when I think about the recent situation on Somalia. I admit I did chuckle a bit during the attempted coup scene. And the good old, old school slapstick. Always good to see in moderation.

All in all i liked the film, it isn't one for the collection, but does deserve it's place among the frequent rentals.

One more thing... I'm not much of a special features person. I don't really care what combination of technology a filmmaker used to do this or that, or what one actor is thinking at any given moment. I watch a movie to hear a good story or learn something (or best of all both). Not to be blown away by special effects (but if it adds to the story, fire away). The Gods Must Be Crazy was an exeption to this rule... At the end of the film I was curious about how the flim was made... it had to have an interesting story behind it... and I'm happy to say the DVD delivers.

Next week.... don't know

The next week FINALLY "Finding Humor in the Muslim World" comes out on DVD!

take it easy ya'll

Whoa! Nice surprise here.

So there is a brand spanking new portishead track floating around out there on iTunes. Apparently it's on some tribute album. Anyway this go me to checking out thier website...there is a new album in the works. WOOT!!!! So that, a new BT album, and a new Celdweller album are the ones I'm waiting for right now.

Another Geek Post....and cats

Here are the parent's cats. Riot and Kuzco

Okay, so I'm looking at what it would take to upgrade Yagi recently...uh people. Why did I buy a Socket 754 motherboard? I can get a an AMD X2 3800 for $150, or even a Athlon64 3700 for under $100. However I'd need to get a 939 mobo and new RAM as well that's about $300-400 total.

Anyone wanna buy a 754 motherboard with a Athlon 64 3000+ and 1GB on RAM?

There are so many different things I want to upgrade on the system too.

well, editor's block knocked down...

This is another photo from the playground @ Summit Elementary where I attended fourth grade

I've been able to get a good head start on the three big video projects for the week. And I'm very satesfied with the progress on all of them. It's some really cool stuff. Now i just need to keep everything on track. Not much to that, just try to keep everything going at a quick steady pace.

On to the next bit o' fun for the week: Gaelic Storm part 2.

Deer in the headlight moment...

I love this shirtFor all those without 20/20 vision the lower line says. "Without angst there is no art".


Ah it's a calssic. When you look at all you have to do in the week ahead and have no idea how to do it. There's no schedule that you can make for it, no timelines, no processes. Just a list of things that need to be done by the 18th. Creative work can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. Especailly when one is running low on ideas. I need a creative jumpstart...

Oh yeah interesting song to listen to on the wierd electronica front..

The Audience by Herbert.

very catchy

Day 2

I love it when I can get a really deep sky blue in a photograph.
Day 2

This was a pretty good one, Lots of photo taking, a little sunburn, and ending with one of my favorite movies... doesn't get much better than that!

The photo hunt took me all over the area to places I haven't been to in years. I've got plenty of interesting shots to post for a while now. Very cool... however all this running around led to a little sunburn, but I don't mind. I like to think a litte burn shouws that your doing something :)

Finally Chocolat, one of the best films ever made... Good message, Good Filmmaking, Good story, Graet choices in actors. For those who haven't seen it...SEE IT!!!!!! I would even like to see it possibly become a FourTwelve film. Hey P. Mike used it more than once :)

Day 1

Well, It's been a good morning so far Picked up the ticket for tonight :) :) :)
I'll also be helping with some kitchen demolition this afternoon. Taking down the ceiling in the basement...I know it souds wierd but it does make sense.

Til later.

later that day

Gaelic Storm had a wonderful show, good on-stage schick, and crazy good perfomance solos! I can't wait to see them again.

The basement/kitchen demo went great... I'll be posting some photos, but I think they'll only matter to Becca and Curits.

Tomorrow (or later today) I will be working on special photo project. Kind of a retrospective of the key places of my childhood. If all goes well it'll end up being a digital collage of some kind.

take it easy ya'll.

travelday!!!!!

Work can't get over fast enough!!!! I think I'm going to try to get there as early as possible, with out being insane of course. Maybe like 7:30 or something like that. that way I'm out @ 4:00 ish. I'm so excited about this trip! I may even try for getting out @ 3:30...

Oh yeah... I'll also try to be back in time for FourTwelve.
And I will be posting some photoblogs over the weekend.

Ben

walk the line...

Quality film... Coming into it, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was another really great, well told story. I liked it, it was a little more imperfect, a little rougher around the edges than I expected and all the better for it. A very quiet film. Walk the Line deserves a place in my small collection.

I'm going to buy this one.

...

Another good morning all! It's wednesday, the week is almost over and I couldn't be happier. Just two more days till Gaelic Storm show #1! And it's also a movie night. Tonight I'm still deciding between 3 Walk the Line, Nemesis (shout out to Jo), and a new one on reccomendation from the parents, Cassanova. Right now I'm leaning toward Nemesis simply because I admit my aversion to it to this point has been unfounded. Just that I didn't think the Star Trek movies could ever recover from Insurrection.
So yeah to work again.
I'm getting way too much spam on .mac. I guess it's time to update the rules... *_* yay...

A few minutes to nutsness....

As most of you know I'll be going back to La Crosse this weekend. Can you tell I'm excited! It's funny that I have a really hard time calling it home. Cuz home really has become 'tosa. Yes in a matter of a few months I think I'm finally in a position to put down some roots. Something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but never saw the opportunity. Well on to another crazy day in this 4 day work week!

Another new site you must check out!!!!!
www.wefeelfine.org
Takes a little explaining so check out this podcast from Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

Having a "day". Trying to get ahead of the list of crap to do, then I get stuck. Becuase somthing goes wrong with something I have no control over. So yeah, running around in circles here. I have a doodle I may post later today.

It's that time of year again...

Yes, it's that time when mac fans come together and listen to what t3h Jobs has to say. Yes it is the day of Jobs' Keynote during the Apple WWDC. I have no idea what to expect here, I know what I want to see, but the best part about these things the secrecey surrounding them. Is an iPodAV on the horizon? Or maybe a new MacPro based on the Core 2 Duo (or a couple of them). Are we going to see Adobe dive into Universal Binary? Is MacOS X Leopard going to show it's self? All I want to hear is 4 little words..."and one more thing"

on second thought...
Zzzzzzzzz...

It's been 6 years and I still love what I do!

It's been 6 years since I started exploring this crazy video thing. Working on this project for some good firends I realize I still absolutely love it.

Sure some of the office drama may get a little tiring. Then there's the fact that technology is changing so fast. But still, there is nothing like sitting in front of a video editing system with a bunch of blank files and a bunch of ideas to fill them and all the tools I'll ever need. Even what I'm doing right now, something as mundane as resizeing 300+ photographs is kinda cool, cuz I know what it's going to be in the end. I don't deserve my life, I don't deserve any of this. I think that's the point though.

It's funny, I remember this sculpture in High School. It was the only thing that I made those years that I liked. It was one of those plaster hand sculptures. It was two hands, one was on a computer mouse the the cable of the mouse went into a computer monitor, and on the other end of the mouse cable was another hand holding a paint brush facing out from the monitor. I never thought how true it would be.

Back to work

Another reason US Cellular rocks.

Last night was kinda wierd. I was talking to someone on my cell phone. When it sudddenly cut out. And wouln't turn on again. Took it to the tech @ US Cellular (Bonus points for excellent service, again!!) Found out there was a short in the charging system in the phone and he fixed it on the spot for free. I love this company! It's nice to have the thing working again.

V for Vendetta

KICK!!!
Really good film period. Kind of an 1984, meets X-Files, meets a bit of The Matrix (for obvious reasons) and a whole lot of doing it's own thing. The "maskless" Hugo Weaving at the end was a nice touch too. I love the style behind it all. Solid charaters, knives beat guns, and shocker...a really good story. (oh yeah and cool explosions too)

It could have done without some of the cheap shots reguarding current events, but it's hollywood and for them to leave those out would have been a real disapointment. Unfortuantely they do date the film as well, which really is too bad.

But all that aside, V for Vendetta gets my thumbs up and bonus points for style as well as a few more extra points for including Stephen Fry in the cast. AND it gets the Ultimate Super Point for actually ENDING (and ending well at that), no obvious attempt to lead into a sequel!!!

one more thing... even when you can't see his face Hugo Weaving is still an amazing actor!

and another thing... It's great to see Natalie Portman moving out of her Star Wars image. Now let's just hope some Star Wars fanboy doesn't have a bald fetish :) I know I'm probably the millionth to say that.

This film deserves a place in my list of faves in the neighborhood Kill Bill and Underworld.

Chinese and a movie.

This week has been so crazy! I feel like I've done a week of work in the first 3 days alone. @ least I get to enjoy what is becoming a great mid-week ritual. The chinese food and a movie night. Up for tonight is V for Vendetta. I missed in the theatre, so release week is the best I can do. I just hope it isn't like The Matrix where I was kicking myself for not seeing in the theatre. Well, lunch is over and it's back to the insanity!

On a more gooder note!!!!

New Gaelic Storm album today, just what I needed.

I love Johnny Tarr! (the story does continue in the album)
Plus the instrumentals are just INSANE!!! love it, just love it.

Ah crap not again!!!!

EDIT:
That was too depressing... see above post... how can I be in a bad mood!