Anyway but...

Just watched UP, thank you Chris and Lindsey. I was genuinely surprised and pleased. It is nice to see Pixar going through it's growing stages.

Toy Story 3 though... why people!? Why!?

Potter Picture

In the appendices of his autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography Kurosawa Akira wrote concerning film lighting, "I think for example that the current method of lighting for color film is wrong. In order to bring out the colors, the entire frame is flooded with light. I always say the lighting should be treated as it is for black-and-white film, whether the colors are strong or not, so that the shadows come out right." I agree with him.

Cinematography goes through trends like any other artistic medium. We went through a terrible "blue phase" and a "slow motion action phase" (To be fair I do not believe that Picasso ever had a SMA phase in his work, oh well, art history's loss I suppose) And we are now only just struggling to free ourselves of the horrible "well they did it in LOTR so can we phase".

We seem to be finally coming to terms with SFx and CGI. And it seems that the most successful application of CGI is not by making the Fx more lifelike but making the film more picturelike.

I just finished watching the latest Harry Potter film. Now, say what you like about Harry Potter and the Harry Potter films (I myself only like the franchise passingly, sleep with a man who finds the concept of the films offensive and live with a woman who refuses even to read the fifth book) but one must admit that, while the scripts become briefer and briefer, and the characters less and less developed the cinematography for the last few films has been expetional.

Mr. Yates and his crew seem to take the black and white approach to lighting. Unlike many films that attempt to film a reality this film seemed to ackowledge that the difference between film and real life is that in film you can see the world however you like. You can change the colour and the mood with lighting, it is a medium to create a picture and a mood, not a documentary. And one of the things you can do is, by framing, lighting and choice of colour or lack there of create a piece of art that is beautiful in itself.

The SFx phase we're going through means that more and more film is being shot with half sets or on green screen. This craft has never really been perfected but it seems now that instead of attempting to hid it filmmakers are ackowledging it's presence in their picture by effecting the film just a little to make it seem more contiguous. This was ushered in by LOTR I believe.

This is not a negative thing, so long as the filmmaker is aware of it and makes sure the effect is consistant throughout the film even when the Fx shots are not there.

The result of proper application and an artistic eye is almost davinciesque (not a bunch of effeminate men with disturbingly curly hair) in its use of chiaroscuro. It's artisticly refreshing.

Unrolling

Evolution, from the Latin for the unrolling of a book.

How wonderfully elegant!

As you grow up there are fewer and fewer instances of that wonderful little expansive feeling when you realized the etymology of a word.

The more you know the bigger the world is!

It nice to know that feeling doesn't go away.

Potato

Human being do not like pointlessness. We hate it. There must be a certain amount of satisfaction in working as a farmer. Every year your work, mindless, and grueling though it may be, produces. You have a potato, and that potato can feed somebody, or become another potato.

I see art like this. I may not produce food but I produce something new, something that wasn't there before. I produce ideas and concepts, I am a vessel for the dissemination of culture. Culture is a potato. Likewise as an academic I learn, not only because I want to, but simply to know because someone should know! Knowledge is a potato. A potato that can feed someone or become another potato (metaphorically of course). One idea inspires many others! That's what academic discussion is for.

Even on the very edge of "worth it", the fringe of commercialism, working for a salary produces potatoes. I work and I am given potatoes to eat, or place holders which represent potatoes that I can exchange for real potatoes. And the work itself, if it is productive, creates a sort of potato. When I make a latte, even though that latte is simply a luxury, nothing important, I have created a latte. It was nothing but component parts before I made it, perhaps the person who ordered it could not make one for themselves. I have given them a potato.

This is worth it.

When I am confronted with the abstract I become disheartened. We live in a world that is frequently devoid of potatoes. If I write a paper that I learn from, even if it is a bad paper I have gained a potato. If I write a paper that I do not learn from but teaches another person I have given them a potato. If, however, I have to write a paper that does not educate me or anyone else there are no potatoes, only a piece of paper, and you can not "eat" paper. An entire subset of our world runs on this paper. An entire population starved and potatoless, simply passing around pieces of paper, taxes, reports, burocracy. Things that are necessary only because we have created a completely artificial environment for them to mater in.

Yes, I must do my homework because I will get a grade. But that grade is paper. If I do not learn anything I have not gained anything really. There is no potato.

I don't know about you but I like potatoes.

. . .

The last week of school, two MAJOR projects due that I have hardly even started in on, (I haven't started one at all) and I have an inexplicable desire to watch The Seven Samurai.

. . . The Hell!?

Maru!

BEST CAT VIDEO E-V-E-R!

You have to watch it all the way through.

O_o

Creeeeeeepy!

Spreckels...

Spreckels is possible one of the most amusing street names on my commute. Along with Monkey Wrench Ln.

No... No I'm not making these up.

"Maria's Bed"

Human beings don't see the world, we experience it. Memory is not a recording device. It is a cask where memories sit and ferment infusing themselves with the colours and flavours from other memories and from imagination.

This is why people who are in love do not see the same things as people who aren't.

"In love" is a term with so much stigma attached to it I do not know if it is possible to use it without evoking certain connotations. I use it here in it's purest form. I am in love with the colour yellow. I am in love with the cello. I am in love with certain dancers when I see them perform.

The confusion of this feeling with the other feeling of "in love" is, I think, why so many people fall in love with actresses, or why artists have a hard time with marriage. I am a definately straight woman and I have fallen in love with dozens of actresses. I am still in love with some of them. When you are in love in such a pure way it doesn't matter because what you are in love with is an idea anyway.

I do not understand why anyone would ever need to "get buzzed" why anyone would ever need to go chemical thrill seeking if they could unlock their fermenting memories. If they knew they were there in the first place. Who needs a joint when there are phonixes plunging into the ocean at sunset down on Ala Moana beach? Or fairy turns in tandem flight in the banyan trees? Little bird shapes cut right out of the canvas of vision to the pure white underneath. Or the idealized concept of woman? Or music!?

Music and movement combined to counterpoint and compliment each other on the aural and visual planes similtaniously. I am in love with a dancer. I can not describe her, who she is doesn' t matter I love her on stage. And I do not love her all the time. I do not love her when she is dancing ballet. I do not love her when I see her back stage. I love her when she fills the stage completely with raw power and emotion that make me want to wrench something inside of me open and cry out.

Art! Should! Be! THIS!

I am a huge fan or Cowboy Bebop. The character of Julia is, I think, within the medium a perfect example of this sort of perception. I have heard people comment that they don't particularly like her, she's too bland, and someone spent too much time working on rendering her. She's too artisticly shiney.

To me that is the point. Because she is not real. She is just a woman. She is nothing special. Except Spike is in love with her, and there is no way to show that if she is just a woman. We don't ever see Julia. We see what Spike sees and that is something that does not belong on the canvass of vision, it's been cut out of the air. Because it is not being seen it is being perceived in memory even in the present.

I watched "The Lost Prince" and fell in love. And at the end when the two boys are running in the field I saw a screen filled with yellow, a sea of yellow with two small boys in the middle of it. I watched it again. And it is not that yellow. There is only a smattering of flowers among the grass, dusting it with yellow.

But that doesn't matter because I will always have an image that is completely yellow.

And I will always have my dancer who I love so painful I think I could dissolve, who is really just a woman.

Something for Nothing

Yes. Denny's gave away free breakfasts yesterday.

. . .

w00t!

. . .

"There... THERE... on the other side... in the middle of the other side... away from everything else on the other side..."

The local Wal Mart has, like many a Wal Mart, a covered garage. A covered garage much like many covered garages. Grotty, with odd little corners and ramps leading from one level to the next with awkward little corners and dark places.

By the entrance to the store where it is relatively bright and clean are soda machines next to the bucking bronco ride and trash cans, as usual.

However...

In a corner of the grotty parking lot... under the ramp to the second level... faaaar away from the other machines... Unlit and just sitting there all on it's own is anoter soda machine... next to the dumpsters... tucked under the ramp... in the grotty parking lot...

"Pst!... PST!... Hey kid! You wanna Coke?"

CREEP!

Translations

I saw a play the other day. Quite a good play. A play that had a reason, well performed, well produced and without gimmicks. A refreshing experience.

There are a million Irish plays in the world. The Irish are prolific writers, and most of the work out there is self pitying maudlin crap to be quite fair. Crap. And no one does self pity like the Irish.

Brian Friel is, on the other hand, like George Bernard Shaw, a good writer.

Not only was "Translations" a good play, and as I say well done, it was nostalgic. Peter Wright, one of the best directors and teachers I have ever had, had a fondness for Irish plays, he himself being a dark Irish American play wright. And so at RWU we always had at least one Irish play in the season.

My first introduction to my undergrad was working on Peter's production of "The Clearing" in high school. I remember sitting upside down on the top of a ladder stapling burlap sacking from the ceiling (For some reason burlap sacking is the standard set dressing for Irish plays) and coming into the theatre to see "Translations" smelled wonderfully like that experience. (The walls being hung with burlap sacking).

Also, it was wonderfully refreshing to see an honest straightforward realistic play from my own culture. I know what happens in Ireland in the 1700s. I do not need the potato famine explained to me. I understand the subtext in reference by the author to events and concepts and the rolling tragedy of the history he describes. It is mine. Though I am not Irish, I am American, my flavor of American is flavored by that history.

Culture is interesting. We spend so much time studying other people's we often forget to look back on our own. And don't realize how sometimes they are not so dissimilar.

It's midnight now. I must to bed. More to come on this subject in future.

"January is Bustin' Out All Over!"

Spring.

The weather in Hawai'i is beautiful. I have no issue with the weather day to day. But there is no spring in the true northeastern sense that induced Richard Rogers to write the exuberant lyrics to "June is Bustin' out All Over!"

My experience of return to Hawai'i was spring. I love the winter, but what I love most about the seasons is the change. Summer weather is dull if not taken in context. The pleasure of the weather is increased by the experience of winter and the knowledge of its transience. The turning of the seasons clears the slate for the new year and gives us a true appreciation of all weathers good or bad.

Not to say that Hawaiian seasons are non existent or "wrong". They are what they are. But they are not of my native clime, and exist in contradiction to my experience of the world.

I have to remember to use '09 on my checks now!

Life is life. You spend most of your time living it. Which is to say, you spend most of your time going grocery shopping, walking to work, or school, worrying about homework or complaining about the heat/cold etc. One is absorbed by the mundane in the instant and doesn't always look back and realize what one has lived.

I am in the middle of scanning and digitalizing my photos from my stay in London and München and doing so has cast me into a retrospective.

I mean holy schnikies! (Is there really a proper spelling for that word? If there is someone tell me I want to know) London! München! Salzberg! The Orkneys! And I'm living in Hawai'i for goodness sake! (I never even wanted to live in Hawai'i! Weird? Yeah OK) And I'm only 25.

Yeah, sure life may drag or even suck every once in a while, but damn if this is where I've been I wonder where I'm going next!

Happy New Year!

On temperate adjustment

It is a cold cold winter here in New England this year.

I personally have lived in the subtropics for about three years now, though I was born in the north east, and one of the things everyone complains about when they go home to visit more temperate climes is how much their blood has thinned living in the land of the coco palm.

I don't find that to be the case. In fact, it is interesting how little my system is shocked by the drastic change in climate. Now, don't get me wrong, six degrees is cold. But six degrees has always been cold. It just doesn't seem any colder than it has always been.

Interestingly enough what has been effected is entirely external. I spent the first three days with painfully chapped lips, from which I never suffer, even in the winters. My skin, which usually has time to acclimate itself to the cold was very shocked indeed. I will be curious to see whether it will become extraordinarily greasy when I return to more balmy climes. I do recall having that sort of problem when first I moved.

We will see.

Ironicly enough, my house in the winter is 63 degrees, which is pretty cold. I wear sweat pants socks a T-shirt, sweater, and fleece in doors. My classroom back in the tropics is air conditioned to 58 degrees. Generally, I wear light cotton pants, a T-shirt or tank top, and sandals in the tropics...

Someone somewhere is crazy. And he's running building operations for the university.