What Time Is It?
Hilarious and wonderful site for checking the time. The Human Clock cycles through, well, just go look for yourself. I can easily imagine folk getting obsessed about ensuring a proper amount of "options" for any given minute. Not to mention "found art."
Oscar Watch: Best Actress
So Charlize Theron turned herself into a white trash woman for Monster. The press makes it sound like an amazing transformation, but it is just the reality of living for a lot of people. I'm not quite sure why I should be impressed that a pretty girl stopped trying to be pretty for a role. Yes, she's unrecognizable but, frankly, that should be part of the job of being a performer in a film. You should vanish into the role. If that means covering yourself with dirt and going on a steady diet of potato chips for several weeks, so be it. It's kind of part of the job. Know what I mean?
I saw an article in the New York Times a few weeks ago which, instead of being a review of Something's Gotta Give, was a lengthy piece extolling Diane Keaton's work in that film. The writer gushed on about Ms. Keaton's emotional fortitude and courage to do such a role and I realized that, if nominated for an Oscar (which was pretty much a certainty at that point), she would probably win. Hollywood enjoys rewarding its old guard royalty (which would explain Jack Nicolson's win for As Good As It Gets a few years ago).
That's my cynicism bleeding through. I really want Keisha Castle-Hughes to win for Whale Rider. We've been plowing through videos around here the last few weeks since the 70,000 channels available on cable serve up not much more than warm manure at any given hour of the day and night. Whale Rider was one of the films I got for Melissa to watch and found myself completely sucked in to as it unspooled. Keisha does an amazing job as Paikea, and the scene where she sings at the school performance is devastating.
Oscar Watch: Best Actor
Melissa and I have a little competition each year at Oscar time and I do up faux ballots for us. The first couple of years she demonstrated a keen shrewdness to the proceedings that belied the fact that she hadn't seen as many of the films as I which has led me to consider more what the Academy members might be thinking than who and what I think might actually win. You know, being the competitive monkey that I am.
The nominees for this year's awards have been announced. I've been giving them some thought and, before I get swept up in our little contest, I want to reflect on the awards from a personal standpoint: what movies and roles left an impression upon me? Nobody at AMPAS cares what I think, but as a guy voting with his movie-going dollar, I've got some thoughts about the nominees. I had thought that this would spin out quickly in a short entry, but it seems that the rumination is taking its own space and time, so I'm just going to touch on the category of "Actor in a Leading Role" this time around.
I love the fact that Johnny Depp was nominated for Pirates of the Caribbean. After the shit he got initially for being cast and for taking the role in the direction that he did, it is a wonderful vindication to have his work recognized for what it is: completely mesmerizing. He turned a fairly unremarkable film into high entertainment -- no mean feat -- and deserves the recognition. Of course, over the last year, I've come to realize that Depp brings this level of devotion and energy to most of his roles. No one is really talking about Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but he steals that film as well for the same reasons. Giving Depp the award wouldn't be a tragedy, but I think Depp has had all the validation he needs about his decisions on the role of Captain Jack Sparrow already. Besides, he's pretty close to a sure bet for my money right now anyway.
I have some biases about Mystic River. As a novel, Dennis Lehane's book didn't move me as much as his other work (and while his series featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro was starting to show its age, Darkness, Take My Hand is still one of my favorite PI novels of the last decade, and Shutter Island -- his latest book -- is a crackling good read), but the combination of the actors involved, Clint Eastwood as director and Brian Helgeland doing the adaptation (he won an Oscar for his adaptation of James Ellroy's L. A. Confidential -- which, frankly, was an amazing piece of work, distilling that massive tome down to a watchable film) meant that, short of some on-set catastrophe, Mystic River would be a solid out of the park hit. And with Eastwood's track record for delivering films, catastrophe wasn't a word on anyone's lips.
However, I just can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for the film. The book just left me in an "eh" frame of mind. Don't get me wrong, if I was Lehane, having Eastwood, Helgeland, Penn, Robbins, Bacon, Fishburne, Harden, Linney and the rest making a film out of my book would be a sheer delight, and I hope his feet still do a happy dance every time he thinks about it. But, yeah, no interest in the film.
The House of Sand and Fog -- for which Ben Kingsley was nominated -- should be retitled to "The House of Emotional Trauma and Misery." While I think there is a place for emotionally devastating dramas, they aren't necessarily the reason I watch film and it is the rare one which can break through my reservations about their construct. Same for Cold Mountain. The interminable hype surrounding this film doesn't help it transcend the cookie-cutter "EPIC LOVE STORY" construction which seems to be its major selling point.
Now, Bill Murray. I haven't seen Lost in Translation yet. It's out on video next week and I'll be there on Tuesday to rent a copy, so this is a bit of speculation here, and I'm basing this on the wonderful work that Murray has been doing as a dramatic actor over the last few years. Yeah, I know, Lost in Translation won a Golden Globe in the comedy category, but I'm guessing it isn't the same sort of comedy that Caddyshack was. Murray's got a wounded vulnerability that he seems to have discovered for The Razor's Edge and his dramatic roles since then have been haunted by a sense that he's a man who is just trying to do his best in a world which may have moved on past him. Murray's my front runner for Best Actor.
I still feel like I'm short-changing Depp though. Winning for Pirates of the Caribbean would clearly send the message to the suits that they should get the fuck out of the way when it comes to the creative direction of a film. I would like to see Depp win because it would tickle me to no end, but I'm leaning towards Murray.
Sustainable Development
There's a movement afoot to create a Nobel Prize for Sustainable Development. From their press release: "Climate change, global warming, desertification, the lack of clean water and the depletion of our natural resources, call for sustainable leadership. The future of the modern world is depending on it. We, people from many different nations and with different backgrounds, are calling for installing a Prize for Sustainable Development in Memory of Alfred Nobel."
We have friends who are building their dream house, and one of their dreams was to create a house that was completely off the grid and built in a way that its construction made no demands on the environment. We get updates every once in a while and it continually astounds me that they've found everything they need to construct this building from companies and individuals who are dedicated to materials that are either recycled or environementally friendly.
I signed the document. It's not the same as installing solar panels to drive my electrical needs, I know, but it is a start. I figure if I start thinking about it more, thinking will lead to action. Isn't that how the Buddhist Eightfold Path goes?
"PALACE (BEDROOM)"
In an homage to both Shakespeare and early Infocom games, Robin Johnson has written a text adventure version of Hamlet. It's a toss-up whether it is easier to remember what sort of verb commands are useful versus the events of the play.
Image Rotation
Dan Benjamin's Image Rotator is a nice bit of code that easily slips in and makes for rotating images. I've been thinking about how to accomplish this (and you can see it in action on the header graphic on the front feed page) and I caught Dan's dicussion of this code on A List Apart. So, snip snip, tuck tuck, and we've got randomized images for the header banner. Now I just need to cull the digital photo archive at this end to make a good set of pictures for you all to enjoy.
Yumemi Kobo
Japanese toymaker Takara has announced a dream machine. Called Yumemi Kobo ("dream workshop"), the device has a voice recorder, light array, fragrance dispenser, timer, speakers, and a stored library of background music. Before bed, you sit down with the 35-inch device and show it a picture of your desired dream state and then record several key phrases into the unit. Then, head down, sleep time until your REM states kick in when the machine whirs on, emits some of a specified fragrance (apparently the researchers have figured out a number of scents which are conducive to the dreaming environment as well as the ambient background music) and, over a soft lullaby of the background music, intones your key phrases.
The device currently doesn't support biofeedback states (which make it difficult for the machine to determine if you are actually in REM state before it starts doing its magical mystery tour), so you had better hope that your cycle is the same as the cycle which the designers envision. Since the units aren't scheduled to be available until 2005, Takara has some time yet to get that individualized kink worked out.
I'd pay good money for one today. My dreams -- what fragments there are -- are strange beasts which hold me down. We come out of sleep states at such odd intervals that sometimes I feel like I am drowning in some semi-lucid state which I can't quite physically get out of. And I can never remember them seconds later. Dream 'gators, I'm telling you. Strong jawed beasts which vanish beneath the waters as soon as you manage to break the surface.
Secret Sounds
I'm listening to ALP's Out and About with Alp again. It's the first disc in the cartridge in the stereo upstairs and sort of the default CD to spin when I turn on the stereo. Soleilmoon's press release says, "It's a continuation of his [Roger Horberry] single-minded obsession with the tiny sounds of everyday life in Amsterdam...This release documents and reinterprets the secret sounds of the streets, canals and parks of Amsterdam city centre...He calls it 'the secret sounds of Amsterdam, a neglected data stream revealing another side of the city.'" But, since I'm competing with street noise and a low volume level (not to mention fairly crap speakers), I'm not hearing much of the finer detail. It's just aural wallpaper.
I miss the headphone experience and now that I've gotten my Triports back from Bose (yeah, silly design flaw = two months of waiting for them to decide to replace my previous pair), I can settle down with some of these records and lose myself in these "secret sounds."
I'm reading the January 2004 issue of The Wire as well. There's a one-page article about Matt Rogalsky and his efforts with silence. His S project in 2001 was to record the silences in a BBC broadcast over the course of a single day and edit them into sound art. Since one of the basic tenets of broadcasting is the avoidance of dead air, the BBC (who considered legal action against the sample-based work) was caught by the Catch-22 of the empty spaces. Rogalsky also edited President Bush's voice out of the March 14th, 2003, ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. An MP3 of this edited version of the speech can be found here. It's not so much silence as two minutes and fifty seconds of secret sounds.
In this case, the secret sound is a leaky water faucet that someone left on somewhere in the White House and a breath of a back-masked vocal echo.
Opening of Doors
How to open a door anime-style. 700k animated gif in link.
Ring In The New
Welcome back. There have been some changes around here, the most profound of which is the arrival of Solomon. He's eleven days old today and I think he is already smarter than I am. At least that is the way my brain feels this morning.
As you can see, I've made some changes. There were some limitations to the old design which were bothering me. The new front page now feeds from all of the blogs and does away with the excerpt style. Yeah, it annoyed me as well. The only blog which isn't fed here is Solomon's because, well, I wasn't quite sure everyone wanted endless amounts of baby pictures.
The colored bars on the right will take you to individual sections/blogs, including the one which has the endless array of baby pictures. The top bar will give you the RSS feed if you're reading things that way. The rabbit picture at the upper right corner of all the individual logs will return you to the front summation page. I hope the new format makes it easier for everyone to find a reading style that suits them.