I’ve always found it strange how one develops a liking for something specific. The feel of towels right out of the dryer, or paper after some wax has melted on it. Even the smell of crayons. All of which have strange little stories attached to how my affinity grew for them but I have to attribute my thing for girls with short hair to Watts from Some Kind of Wonderful.

So for that and the many a memory of the mechanics VHS tapes thanks Mr. Hughes.

I decided to take a classic photography class this September. I’m now faced with a dilemma. I need a manual film camera. Being the person that I am, I began researching cameras. I’m really interested in a Zorki 4, which is this Russian Leica knock off. It has an interesting history but I’m a little leery of buying one from ebay since they all seem to come from the Ukraine.

I’ll post photos to flickr throughout the term.

I’m getting into the Kevin Pollak Chat Show as it begins to evolve. It’s very much a Charlie Rose, inside the actor’s studio kind of show but less drivel and more nonsense. I’m endeared by the nonsense, little things that no one would get to in an interview in normal TV space. I also enjoy the comfort level of the actors on the show. There have been some interesting actors that have come to the show, not necessarily the same actors that would be on the Tonight Show but a good set of interviews none-the-less. There are also interviews with web stars, which is a nice change. To get a more in depth interview with someone like Felicia Day for example is a nice touch. There is definitely an audience for this show, if it doesn’t drown or run out of funds. Check it out if you get a moment, it’s major draw back and greatest asset is that it is a long form video. An hour plus per interview.

p.s. Will someone over at Mahalo learn how to use Motion. I’m tired of the same standard templates for all their title cards and lower thirds.

So in a moment of nostalgic weakness we decided to watch all the Alien(s) movies this weekend. Not having a single one in my collection, I turned to the legal online services I enjoy. I began with Netflix and they had the first three movies. So without much hassle and thanks to the new silverlight player we were watching the first three movies, no problems. Then came the 4th movie in the installment. Now I know it’s not that good a movie but it was a marathon, it can’t be stopped. Netflix however failed me. They didn’t have it on play it now. No biggie, I can’t expect them to have all of them. I turn to hulu in hopes that they might have it. Nope, just a few clips to entice. So I broke down and rented it from iTunes. Now the pc I have hooked up to my TV isn’t the greatest so the rental ended up crashing iTunes every time I tried playing it. I copied it over to my intel iMac and was about to watch it there when I get a prompt saying that the movie was authorized on a different computer. This is one of my 5 authorized computers for music but apparently the rental movies are locked to one machine. I ended up letting iTunes support know about the problem. I think after all that including paying the 2.99 rental fee from iTunes I’m entitled to watch the movie. So I torrent the flick and within about 40 minutes we were watching the movie. We used the break to make snacks and the like. BTW 20th Century Fox I deleted the movie after viewing. I just wanted to watch it, not sell or distribute it. Hell I don’t even want it as part of my collection.

If only apple would release new Mac mini’s, so I can make a new media server. *sigh*

It has been snowing for the past three days and rather than despair over the snowfall, I decided to make a snowman. You can tell he’s my creation, he’s a little over dramatic.

So after a weekend hanging with friends in Texas I had a bunch of random footage. All taken with the movie mode of my little cybershot camera. So I took all that footage and tried my best to make a cohesive thing out of it. Anyway this is the result, nicely filled with cliches. It’s a small film for my friends.

I’ve just returned from seeing Synecdoche, the latest Charlie Kaufman movie, and I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, some parts are truely hilarious. However I doubt many will. As a matter of fact several comments from neighboring patrons included “I’m glad it’s over” and “What the hell was that all about?” Two people behind us decided to leave near the end, oddly about 15 minutes till the end. Why not stay till the punctuation mark?

Anyway, why they left: The movie is a classic example of postmodernism, throwing the sequence of time out the window as well as being rather self referential. Someone not accustomed to the genre or Kaufman films in general would find the movie hard to follow. Ironically I enjoyed the film for the very reasons that some left. I found it interesting and well layered but about the beginning of the second act I noticed a surprising similarity to Six Characters in Search of an Author. Which gave me a basis for understanding the movie without much explanation. So I spent the movie admiring the details as I no longer had to pay attention to the road signs. I think that is the key to Kaufman movies.

It was enjoyable and interesting, my only wish was that it didn’t hand it to you on a silver platter at the end. He decided to simply beat you over the head with the message at the end like so many art films I wanted to enjoy. Children of Men is a good example of this. Small spoiler: I wanted the movie to end when Hoffman gets the role of Ellen near the end, just after he enters the door.

Watch the trailer and if you are into a slightly tougher read, then give it a go.

I stumbled across this short film on the internets and I liked its premise. This idea of finding a common ground between intellectual and social classes.

I’ve been having small conversations about how the labor worker is endangered in this country for a while now. Moreover thanks to technology and necessity there will be a need for more and more knowledge workers. Which we are currently at a deficit, I believe. Mainly because we’ve made it terribly difficult to become a creative knowledge worker. First, its expensive and second, we tend to pinhole a specific discipline and beat them over the head with it. So much so that it begins to dominate their lives. Architects that believe everything is Architecture, because of the very nature of the metaphor. We build relationships and design the very boundaries of our existence, etc… In every discipline as the focus becomes narrower I think a persons entire scope also becomes narrow and they believe that all life subsists of their discipline. Which is an easy correlation to make but we make it at the sacrifice of the myriad of possibilities from every other discipline. Artists love to believe that what they do and what a mathematician does is hugely different. When we know for a fact that both are interrelated. The golden ratio is a prime example as it relates to aesthetics. More over plenty of mathematicians can submit to the idea that a proof can be elegant or even beautiful. Using terms of aesthetics to describe mathematics. Sometimes science becomes more about creativity, rather than logic. Take string theory for example which states that all possibilities exists and are collapsed to a reality by an observer. Granted that being a rather simplistic statement of a particular part of string theory, nonetheless it almost sounds like philosophy rather than physics. These field experts are knowledge workers but they work at a deficit of interdisciplinary knowledge. Which is why collaboration is so important. But what if we were able to collaborate in our own heads as well as with other people. What if an Artist could put down the paint brush and discuss metallurgy or the kazimir effect. Or a chemist having a conversation on color theory or Calvino’s Lightness. What if we found a common ground in our own heads, would it be easier to talk to each other? Would the conversation be good?

With the most ironic move of the year, Netflix brings watch on demand to the Mac thanks to Microsoft’s Silverlight. I must say this implementation of their player is fantastic. The quality is excellent, sometimes resembling 720p HD. Not quite getting there but close, close enough for streaming. The player has had no problems playing a few movies. I had more problems on the windows side even a few weeks ago. Having to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11 and getting the Netflix player plugin and lets not even talk about the auto licensing issues that can occur. Also if you have the wrong monitor the movies won’t play properly some times because of the DRM solution. Lets just say it takes some trouble shooting to get the windows version of the player working properly in some cases. I actually hope they adopt the Silverlight player on the windows side as well as it was completely painless.

Link: Netflix Mac Beta

I caught Zack and Miri this weekend and I must say it was a lot funnier than I thought it would be. Oddly the movie doesn’t look like a Kevin Smith film and aside from the gratuitous addition of Jennifer Schwalbach as the class reunion organizer and of course Jason Mewes, you may not even know it was a Smith film. Seth and Banks work really well together in this film and every minor role is played amazingly well. Justin Long is nothing short of brilliant, The rest of the cast holds up really well including Tisha Campbell’s 5 minutes, which are fantastic. It wasn’t ground breaking nor does it even nudge the envelope, other than having the word porno in the title and some nudity, it is actually kind of a tame movie.

Smith is notorious for having the worst musical soundtracks, the guy really should leave those editorial decisions to someone else but in this film, other than the Primus choice in the opening, he doesn’t fall flat on his face. Which doesn’t say much but for those of us who think music is important it’s huge.