begin rant

Okay, I've mentioned these guys before. It seems that since last we spoke, both Fanboys Productions and RvD have unleashed a sequel to their earlier projects upon the web. Both sequels would have been impossible without the community of support that they have developed since releasing their products out into the wild. The creative endeavors of these guys survive entirely upon the generosity of their fans.

Six in the Morning continues to emphasize both aspects of responsibility as well as unadulterated geekery as their tale stretches on. While not entirely sophisticated drama, it is a thoughtful analysis of what it means to have power - and to be legally liable for the use of that power. It also delights in toying around with whirling and glowing sticks. RvD2 does not bother with the pretense of story. This is solely a display of fight choreography distilled to its purest. Both pictures are strong at what they do best, and while both remain far less polished, they are also inarguably better and far less disappointing than any of the last three Star Wars films.

Kudos to the independent filmmaker.

I wish them well, wherever their respective futures carry them.

Posted by Derksen at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Other Boleyn Girl is disappointing in spite of an excellent cast. Instead of stressing or straining the actors' abilities, it seems to rely upon costume and lighting to define their characters. Mr. Bana storms about as a bombastic and smouldering Young Harry - and resembles nothing more than a budget Russel Crowe. Ms. Johansson glimmers in her soft lighting, and bright colors - as precisely beatific or maternal as her role seems to require. Ms. Portman is all sharp lines and hard lighting, and is then forced to run through some very stilted expositional dialogue. Perhaps the producers chose to rely upon color and symbol to demonstrate the emotion of a moment, because the novel upon which the film is based is a far more complex analysis of human emotion and how people can grow and change in reaction to one another. It also comes from a particularly dramatic period of history where the desires of a few individuals' hearts really did shape the path of nations in a far-reaching fashion.

Perhaps the producers felt that this was too sophisticated a realm for most viewers to abstract the broader consequences of a few wandering hearts, and the film relies shamefully and heavily upon straightforward, dull, and repetitive exposition to tell its tale. This ascends to ludicrous peaks from time to time, with scenes being introduced through a character's pronouncement that, "I am going to seduce the king now, but I won't give it up to him so that he is driven mad by lust and desire, and a side-effect will be to change the entire church of England, freeing us from the influence of Spain and the rest of Europe to develop our own destinies". This is then followed by a series of scenes where the characters do just this - but accompanied by their careful insistence that they are completing each phase of their plan. It feels almost like sportscasters announcing calls from a classical playbook, and if it were not so disappointing, it would be almost amusing in parody:

AB: "I am seducing you now!"
H8: "I am wracked by lust and desire! I crush letters and maps in my hands! I must have you!"
AB: "You can not have me without first divorcing your wife, the most powerful woman in the world!"
CA: "I am the Queen, and the most powerful woman in the world, but I cannot control my husband!"
H8: "You cannot control me! I am the King! Yet, I am controlled by my lusts, and you hold the reins!"
AB: "I would laugh about how I control you, but it is a bit like riding a bull in a China shop! I am surprised and frightened to learn that I do not control you!"
H8: "No one controls me! I am the King! Off with her head!"

Unfortunately the movie really does flow like this. Good ideas, excellent premise - but with all of these finely machined parts, the whole affair fails to come together and falls short of greatness.

In other news, I had not realized how overexposed and grainy the lighting in England was during the 1500's. This film was shot in digital, and there has been considerable post-production work placed on modifying lighting or enhancing the hard or soft lines of a subject. These modifications are not always successful, but it is interesting to see more and more film shot in digital. I have a number of interesting opinions about film-preservation and posterity when it comes to working in and with digital when compared to traditional celluloid, but we'll leave those complaints about bit-rot for another day.

My overall recommendation is that you save this for rental on a boring day, or maybe for a drinking game: take a sip every time you see soft lighting or a blurry filter! take a shot every time Russel Crowe (I mean Eric Bana!) smoulders in frustrated manly rage! In the meantime, I must instead suggest that you set your NetFlix account to watching the first season of Showtime's the Tudors, or even the BBC's recent documentary which covers the same period of history with far more grace and excitement.

Posted by Derksen at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So... I remembered a few things about myself this weekend. I have been housesitting for one of the folks related to the research station, and it reminded me of what I liked about living and working around a real home.

The first is that I really like stereo sound, and I have missed it terribly. I plugged my host's speakers to my laptop, and the improvement in my movie-watching capability was dramatic. Headphones are okay, but nothing beats the freedom a pair of cheap speakers and a small subwoofer can provide. I can only imagine how much better my surround sound system will appear to me when I finally return to civilization and a television that provides more than monaural output.

The second thing I have rediscovered is that I focus better with less white noise. I am okay with music blazing clear, or random nature rustling in the background, but the steady whine of machinery like the incubator beside my desk can be incredibly distracting. It gets inside my head and it grinds against my brain - and it drives me crazy. It makes me want to plug my ears up and go to sleep.

So I just need to find good clear sound for my brain to function right.

Muses, are you listening?

Posted by Derksen at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(but only for now...)

Posted by Derksen at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So lately my roommate and I have been taking advantage of Netflix's "watch it now" feature. It is a great idea, and works surprisingly well for what it is. The movie is streamed directly to your Windows-compatible computer, and usually starts after only a minute or two of buffering. The video and sound quality aren't bad, and the picture looks much better on my roommate's monitor than it does on the awful and ancient VHS-compatible television that came with the trailer. You can add subtitles (for those frequently depressing foreign films that appear to be the staple diet of outlandishly classy graduate students living in squalor), and fast-forwarding really isn't much more than selecting a section slightly farther ahead in the stream and waiting for the buffer to reload. I'm not sure if the system will handle six-channel surround sound, or an HD-signal, but the future is coming.

Given the convenience of this model, I am fairly certain that this will eventually supplant traditional hard-media as a form of temporary distribution. Discs and the like will remain in one format or another for more permanent storage of media... but the ease and quality by which film could be distributed over legitimate channels may eventually grow to compete with those currently offered by the free pirate networks. Any media company not working on a method to distribute their content through such a mechanism is taking the slow road to extinction.

Which is not to say that there are not hiccups or problems with the extant system. My roommate and I are kind of borrowing our network signal from a neighbor, and streaming video does seem to take up a chunk of the bandwidth. That, and if your access is interrupted by any of a number of third-world power and cable failures that seem to plague Miami and Homestead with frightening regularity, you may lose your place in the film and spend your Netflix minutes reloading the same film twice.

Apple provokes further personal irritation. Apparently they consider Netflix a competitor to the digital distribution of film that their iTunes network could provide, and as such have not made it any easier for Netflix programmers to design a platform-independent video-player. Time will tell if this competitive strategy works or not, but in the meantime it means that I have to use my roommate's computer or boot mine up with Boot Camp.

Posted by Derksen at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"A scientist, like a warrior, must cherish no view; for a view is the outcome of intellectual processes - whereas creativity, like swordsmanship, requires not neutrality or indifference: but to be of no mind whatever."
- Buckaroo Banzai, as chronicled by Earl Mac Rauch

Posted by Derksen at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, I had a good day.

It began entirely too early - just slightly past six. I am not now a morning person, and I will never be. Still, I managed to pull myself onto the road an hour later after only a single cup of coffee. Sometimes there are reasons to get up in the morning, and sometimes I will find the proper motivating force to drive me forward through the hazy cloud of sleep. Today, I will meet my advisor in the flesh for the first time, and today will truly mark the beginning of my graduate career.

I drive East out of Palmetto, heading towards Interstate 75, which I will follow South to Naples. In Naples, I-75 will turn Eastwards again, and suddenly become "Alligator Alley", a turnpike cutting through the very heart of the Everglades. Endless miles of hungry swamp ensue, with only a thin chain-link fence holding back the horde of hungry alligators - as well as the occasional invasive burmese python. Of course, the truth is actually rather disappointing: the fence is there to protect the alligators and panthers (and pythons, oh my!) from us, and not vice-versa. The "untouched purity" of the wilderness that some would like to romanticize no longer exists. Our greatest natural heritage and our best national parks must be managed, lest their structured ecology slowly phase into the cultured environment of 'civilization'. It leaves them as artificial an environment as any zoo, if not more grandiose.

Continue reading "and so it begins" »

Posted by Derksen at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I could leave an essay here on how the internet is a wonder when it comes to the phenomenon of distribution, and mention that it has made the careers of several young animators and filmmakers - but I'd be happier to just show you a couple of Star Wars fan films.

YouTube also has several smaller presentations of the films available for streaming download.

It is still interesting to note the relatively high production quality of these amatuer films put together by what amount to a bunch of bored high-school and college students. The advent of digital filmmaking and now digital distribution have made these guys virtual stars overnight. The tools of production have become much cheaper and more accessible; where once it might be unusual for a public school to have a camera for analog video, even some high-end cell phones now include a respectable digital video camera. Where before it might have been difficult to edit video or add sound and post-production SFX to a production, many computers now include this software as part of their basic installation.

Most importantly, the channels of distribution have broadened and become more accessible to any with an internet connection, lowering the obstacles to achieve your desired target audience. Ryan Wieber certainly parlayed his success into a career with LucasArts, and fans of other popular media have also launched their careers on the back of a successful intellectual property...

Posted by Derksen at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight, the infamous "Curse of Braveheart" almost struck again. For those afflicted by The Curse, screening the 1995 Mel Gibson film or listening to the James Horner soundtrack can be courting disaster. It is fortunate for me that my iPod had only offered up track eleven, "For The Love Of A Princess" when the deer leapt into my headlights as I drove home tonight on SH 242 - and not the near-fatal track twelve, "Falkirk". Had track twelve been playing, the ghost of Sir William Wallace would have risen from the grave and claimed his vengeance in the name of Scottish dead... and I never would have swerved into the other lane in time.

Posted by Derksen at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So -

Would anyone like to explain to me how "the greatest threat that Christianity has faced in over two thousand years" (a little bit of hyperbole I heard on the radio this morning - I certainly believe that the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, and the Protestant Revolution were more significant threats, and even the Protestants only represented a challenge to the orthodoxy - not the faith itself) basically amounts to a very popular Clive Cussler or Ian Fleming novel, and not a particularly good one at that...? I mean, the substance of the Conspiracy described is certainly nothing new or even original. Its inception may even originate in a difference of opinion as to the Divine nature or Messiah status of Jesus of Nazareth that probably began during his lifetime, and would flare up among the faithful every few hundred years or so - frequently to be brutally repressed by whichever hierarchy relied upon Jesus' divinity as part of the legitimacy to their scriptural and temporal authority. Most recently, this particular Conspiracy has popped up in no less than three separate fictional novels (the best of which remain "the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles"), a comic book (Alan Moore's "from Hell" on the Ripper murders mentions it as a possible justification for Freemason involvement), a videogame (the Gabriel Knight adventure, "Sins of the Father"), two television series ("ALIAS" has a thinly veiled 'Rimbaldi' pushing prophetic code and technology into this century through his ancient arts and science, and of course, there is "the X-Files"), and tangentially in at least two movies ("the Matrix" series touches upon the Gnostic heresies describing the physical aspect of the divine, and daVinci's secrets are the touchstone of the comedic "Hudson Hawk").

So why is it only now that the Gnostic 'Heresies' have lately become so popular? I mean, popular again. It isn't like anyone is getting rounded up in the streets and burned at the stake as a witch... but why is this silly little story by Dan Brown so threatening - or any more convincing than anything mainline Christianity has produced? Are most folks really that unquestioning of their own faith - or perhaps more importantly, so blind or unconcerned that they will accept any old prophet who comes along?

I am so confused by our little society.

Posted by Derksen at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to be this kid when I grew up. It is an incredible display of athleticism and 'parkour', the French title eventually given to what was once known as "freestyle running" - an odd blend of cross-country, acrobatics, and hip-hop dance moves. These guys have amazing balance and poise, and really know how to safely bleed off velocity with a roll from a fall. I do wonder how many broken bones it took for this fellow to get this good, though.

Posted by Derksen at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Back off, man - I'm a scientist!"
- Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters

Posted by Derksen at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)