Three Films and Passive Attention Spans.

I have not been watching many films at all this year.  Here's what I've seen, up to this weekend:

Watchmen
Star Trek
The SIGGRAPH Evening Theater
Mary Poppins
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Black Hole

It's now September.

The first question is why so few?  I have a very low passive attention span this year.  I'm liking passive things in small doses.  In contrast, I saw many tv episodes early in the year, although that has fallen completely away in the last few months.  Why the low passive attention span?

My active attention span is way up.  I'm writing a lot and coding a lot to finish a certain degree by next spring.  I'm also working on a number of personal projects (such as that in the last post).  So I have a very high active attention span right now.  Every time I approach something passively, I start to get ideas for my own projects and just want to break out and go work on my own things.  Even Mary Poppins was watched over the course of three days.

The next question is where's all the new great stuff that I really want to see?  Up (which I have been rightfully chastised for missing on a number of occasions)?  Slumdog Millionaire?  No Country for Old Men?  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?  Etc.  The first reason they're missing is the theater.  It takes a long time, is socially isolationist, and costs a lot.  I like to watch things from midnight to 2 in the morning on days when I have absolutely nothing else to do.  The second reason is the fluff factor.  I've also read about 2 novels a week for the last few months.  And they're all fluff novels.  Some were good, some were atrocious, but they were all light reading.  A break from the mental intensity of making things.  Good films don't always have that fluff factor.  Great films really make you think.  Something tells me I'm going to be doing a lot of catching up when I have time to think about a year from now, after this degree thing is (hopefully) done.

This weekend I was rather sick.  I watched three films:
Sicko
Knowing
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

All were great fun.  Only the first had a real emotional arc to it, which caught me by surprise (I was not a big fan of Fahrenheit 911 as a film, which has nothing to do with its political message, but that's another story).  But the last 45 minutes really take you for a ride and tell a story that you want to see through to the end.  Knowing is scifi fluff.  I like scifi fluff when I don't feel like thinking.  See the list above.  It's fun to watch.  Knowing had some amazingly well put-together disaster sequences.  And I cared about most of the characters, except for one glaring exception.  But a better ending would have removed the last two sequences.  They're pretty, but weaken the emotion of the ending.  Harry Potter has the problem the previous Harry Potter had, but no so dramatically--it feels like spliced together episodes.  Some great acting and production design, and some really bad acting that was quite fun.  But pieces and parts don't fit together.  And they never even name one of the major villains.  Definitely a piece of something rather than a thing in itself.  I still like the third film the most (Alfonso Cuarón) for it's quirkiness and self-contained-ness.

Popcorn for Trolls

"Three billygoats want to cross the bridge to join their billygoat friends, who are having a popcorn party. But first, they have to get past the ugly trolls, who guard the bridge. Everybody knows that. But what people don’t know is that trolls have feelings. Why can’t they have popcorn too?"

Every summer, Chris L's partner, Jody T, runs a drama workshop for kids where they make art, put on plays, and as I understand it, do lots of creative things for a couple weeks. Another friend, Mark H, helps her run the workshop, and last year he started a trend of making a video based on what the kids do. Chris and I help by making animation, mostly using the kids drawings, because, well, it's a lot of fun. We just finished this year's video, which is both a short film and music video set to a cover of the Gershon Kingsley song "Popcorn." Chris did the troll-under-the-bridge scenes, and I made all the popcorn and balloon effects and did some music remixing.

don't

kevin quain suggests sorting your itunes playlist by title and filtering by the word "don't" to find out everything that itunes doesn't want you to do. here's what it told me:

don't blow your top.

don't come around here no more

don't download this song

don't download this song

don't give up

don't look back

don't lose my number

don't push.

i must have downloaded the third song a couple times.

the last post is an outlier. i have thought often about deleting it and have avoiding writing anything here as i've contemplated whether or not to do so. i don't think i will.

it's a time of deep work, making a number of things.

out, brief spot.

Patrick's ex-girlfriend confronted him again tonight, after the police have REPEATEDLY told her not to contact him. He really, REALLY hates to bring his personal life up on his blog, but he feels the the social pressure that will result is worth it. DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN.

solar hot water

My landlord woke me so his contractor could inspect the blocked up fireplace on my floor. He's having a solar hot water system put in.

What amuses me is that the contractor was doing his best to convince me that it was good for the environment, without having asked what I thought.

This has me wondering how many people believe that solar heat is not good for the environment.

why am i here?

Blogs and Facebook and Twitter. They're interesting. I put a lot of one-way stuff on them. People reply to facebook the most, twitter next, and here rarely. Accessibility? Or having it put in front of you more for the other two places than for here, where you most likely explicitly check. It affects how you use them. This, and another work-centric blog, have become more self reflective, but in a deliberately filtered way. They are thoughts that might be interesting to someone else, but are more relevant to me. The act of publishing them coerces me into being more organized than I would be in my journal. Half the reason to write is to deliberately reflect; the other half is the act of writing. It keeps your chops up, as they say, whoever they are. Facebook and Twitter writings are more specifically for the entertainment of others. Perhaps it's good not many have found their way here, as it would change the nature of the text.

In all cases, you're hearing from a deliberately managed character, of course.

why are you here?

Uncommunication is a wonderful thing. So much can be said while so much is not being said. And so much can be said by not saying what is unsaid while something else is being said.

Daybreak

Battlestar Galactica ended the way I always wanted to see a show end. But we rarely shows end this way. It took it's time. It had all the action and excitement. But then the writers gave a resolution to all the characters that still needed one. We find out where they are going, if not knowing their later stories.

The shot of Ron Moore reading National Geographic was self-referentially priceless.

candleholder cake

just a quick note of thanks to folks by the names of mark, chris, and maya for the discovery of candleholder cakes!