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journalism / movies / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
21
May 13

I watched a video and saw a movie

Journalists: Remember your humanity. Remember that, when someone’s life has absolutely been turned upside down, one piece of normalcy makes a difference.

And put the microphone down and help the lady.This is remarkable in that random way that you find lot of the things that happen during and after a cataclysmic event. What a story. And the reporter is … very poor. “Are you able to comprehend yet what happened here?”

The woman is looking over the wreckage of her life. Yes, she has a good grasp on things. Based on the reporter’s speechlessness and poor questions I’m guessing she was either in shock herself or well out of her depth. Even still.

I do like that you can clearly hear that lady say to the journalist “Help me.” We all need to hear that now and again.

Sometimes we should reconsider what being a part of the story is. (Stations write promos about this sort of thing after all, “Our community” and all that.) I don’t have a problem with the position of remove, but not every circumstance warrants it. The dog seemed to be fine in the longer video, for example.

But what if that was her grandchild’s arm reaching out?

It is a tricky thing.

Saw Star Trek: Into Benedict Cumberbatch’s World today:

He’s way too good for this film, and the film is pretty good.

It was a nice summer blockbuster type movie. I’m not convinced these are really Trek films — but that is OK, too. I don’t think you could really make a successful movie — or traditional Trek TV — these days.

My biggest things might be more about me than the movies, but the Kirk swagger now seems more of an impetuous teenager than the devil-may-care, I’m-out-on-the-frontier-making-this-up-as-I-go mentality of the old days. Maybe it is just that I watched the old stuff as a child and saw the Wild West Roddenberry was going after whereas now you see all these layers of bureaucracy because that’s what the world is. Also, the 21st century modern conceits sneaking in as futuristic things I’d rather forego for the bygone 1960s bravado. “You were in a firefight? You need a checkup!” Can you imagine Deforest Kelly saying that to William Shatner? But that’s also what the world is, and it will become, no doubt, more so over time.

Karl Urban is terrific, though. And Simon Pegg has his moments. Zachary Quinto would take over Spock if they’d leave Leonard Nimoy out of it — falling back to him thing is just annoying. Every now and then it seems like Chris Pine is getting the Kirk thing, but I think that he’s just going to kind of stay as he is. Which is fine, these movies are movies for movie fans, not just Trek fans. That’s great. Why would you want to try to reproduce Shatner, anyway?

You know what is most interesting about the entire thing is that comic book fans will accept relaunch after relaunch after relaunch, but Trek fans find this to be a non-starter, hence the alt-universe thing. But, if you think about, if you read comics you’re probably watching Trek. So why will people accept some reboots and not in other universes? Isn’t that interesting?

I think it is because that has happened in the comics for forever, but these characters on screens are more real and perhaps more beloved, at least in a parasocial interaction sense. So you can’t just flip this and start over. Not in Trek. Perhaps in Trek the least of anything. What a weird and wonderful thing.

Biggest problem in the movie? They still aren’t making the ship a character. That’s what is missing. They almost did, but not quite, not really.

I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / journalism / links / movies / photo / Thursday / video / winded-intellectual property — Comments Off
9
May 13

Green, light green and brown

So I downloaded Vine. I haven’t done anything with it yet. I’m waiting to see something amazing and use it one time, and then walk away. (At some point you have plenty of ways to capture atmosphere, after all.)

But, if you’re interested in Vine, here are some tips from Poynter: How journalists ‘can get serious content’ from Vine:

Like other newsrooms, KSDK uses Vine to show the personalities and the processes behind the curtain, but Anselm says the tool is also useful for finding stories.

She suggests searching local hashtags, like #STL in her area, and #breaking. “A lot of people think it’s a really lighthearted, fun thing, but you can get serious content from it,” Anselm says.

There is a video, which is useful. Just like Vine, it is 9:13 long.

The next video is more entertaining. Someone mentioned the Golden Trailer Awards earlier this semester. Those are the awards given for best movie trailers. The Golden Trailers began in 1999. That’s because in 1989 they saw the best trailer ever, recovered for a decade and then started judging every other inferior product.

This being the best one ever:

This movie, Captain Phillips, is coming out in October:

You might remember the circumstance behind it in 2009.

This part better be in the story. They downplay it here, but this an impressive series of shots by the SEALs:

But here’s the movie you’ll really want to see this year, Yuck: A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary About School Lunch:

Zachary is a fourth grader at a large New York City public elementary school. Each day he reads the Department of Education lunch menu online to see what is being served. The menu describes delicious and nutritious cuisine that reads as if it came from the finest restaurants. However, when Zachary gets to school, he finds a very different reality. Armed with a concealed video camera and a healthy dose of rebellious courage, Zachary embarks on a six month covert mission to collect video footage of his lunch and expose the truth about the City’s school food service program.

Here’s the trailer:

The guy is hysterical. Here’s another clip, which is the direct inspiration for this post.

Of course the New York City school system doesn’t believe him:

A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Marge Feinberg, said in an e-mail that vegetables and fruit were served daily and she suggested that Zachary must have chosen not to take the vegetables served in his cafeteria.

“It would not be the first time a youngster would find a way to get out of eating vegetables,” she wrote. Zachary responded that he always took every item he was offered.

And then:

On Monday, Zachary thought he was in trouble again when he was sent to the principal’s office and found two men in black suits waiting for him.

They turned out to be representatives from the Education Department’s Office of School Food, he said, who complimented him on his movie, asked for feedback on some new menu choices, and took him on a tour of the cafeteria kitchen.

[…]

Then he sat down for lunch with the officials. The adults ate the cafeteria lunch of chicken nuggets, carrots and salad.

Zachary had pork and vegetable dumplings – brought from home.

Went running tonight. We realized that the trail near our home is measured out perfectly, so I can say that, this evening, I shuffled along a 5K, here:

It is blurry because, when my feet are pounding and I have no breath and the blood is flowing everything sort of looks that way. But at least there was honeysuckle:

So there we were this evening beside the green leaves, the light green weeds, over the brown runoff dirt and through the honeysuckle, running and walking and shuffling five kilometers. I do not know what is happening.

(This phrase is now protected as winded-intellectual property. It will probably be used quite often.)

(So is the expression “winded-intellectual property.”)

cycling / food / Monday / movies / music / Samford / Tumblr / Twitter / video — Comments Off
25
Mar 13

Ode to flashmobs

We have half the grapes that we started the day with. And one less navel orange. Also, the leftover spaghetti from last night disappeared. And then I was full for about an hour. But white grapes only last so long and I had to talk myself out of an extra lunch. Miles on the bike speed up the metabolism, or so I tell myself, and I want to eat everything.

Strange since my energy was all over the place yesterday. I chased The Yankee around town, counting my second, third and fourth wind. These things should be more predictable, but yesterday I was left amazed at how I couldn’t find my legs to get over this hill, but soft-pedaled over the next one, with my legs feeling bored with it all. The body is an amazing thing, and a body on a bicycle is a curious miracle, all balance and whirring and swaying and moving forward. I’m not a good cyclist. Usually I do well just to stay upright. Balance and whirring and all that. At my best moments I’m either trying to make nice little circles with my feet or, if I’ve given up on that, I just try to make it all look casual. That’s also impossible.

But, 30 more miles yesterday, and I really need to start putting more miles back in. We got home just as the wind picked up. She’d forecast the afternoon perfectly. Meteorologists call her for input, or they should.

And now back to work today, the cold week of spring break is over, replaced by a cold regular week.

In class today we talked about films, which means a lot of clips of special effects. One of the students found a five minute EXPLOSIONGANZA of CGI that just melted everyone’s brains. Oh, for a few scenes of expository. Or even a Stallone quote.

When they talk about film they also talk about awards, which everyone loves except me, apparently. I’m fine with it. I did enjoy the Oscars poster someone showed off. It had the statue in the foreground surrounded by floating lines from memorable award winners. I saw this famous line and thought about adding in some running commentary — we’d recently talked about civil rights, the 50th anniversary of various events in Birmingham and across the south, how critical a time that was and how there is such a great museum just over the mountain — so bringing up In the Heat of the Night would have been perfect.

I decided against it. I’m not sure kids born in the 1990s would understand 1960s Mississippi and why all of this was so important. Even the television show was off the air by the time my oldest student was born. Sidney Poitier, though, he just gives you more every time you watch that quiet moment.

Everyone always remembers this, perhaps a cinematic first:

They filmed most of In the Heat of the Night in Illinois because of conditions in Mississippi. The country’s come a long way in those two generations.

There are two new things on Tumblr today. One is here. This is the other one.

I call that Tumblr page “Extra stuff in an extra place.” That is, perhaps, the most apt thing I’ve ever written.

And, finally, I’ve watched this twice now. It will be the best five minutes of your day on the web.

If you’ve never read the Wikipedia entry on Ode to Joy, you should.

Back to work for me, have a lovely evening you. See you tomorrow, when there will be more on Tumblr, more here, always more on Twitter, another Glomerata and who knows what else we can find.

iPhone / movies / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
28
Feb 13

Day four of sick watch

I’ll eat this orange, I thought to myself, and maybe that will help.

So, champion orange peeler that I am, I struggled with that for a few minutes at the end of my day in the office. Vitamin C! I feel better just smelling it! This was a great idea! I exclaimed in my head.

(There are exclamation points in there.)

By the time I got home I had a mild fever.

Thanks, orange.

So more sinus medication, now some Nyquil and a Costco-sized handful of cough drops are the order of the day.

I saw a terrible accident on the freeway. One killed and four hurt. Backed up traffic for four miles the other direction. Everything was in the median and it looked gnarly, perhaps one of the more violent rear-end accidents you might see:

I found the coolest story on al.com today, a high schooler is building prosthetics out of old bikes, for about $25. Here’s a little rewrite I did. I just love that he was feeling lazy and bored one Saturday and dreamed this up. Of course this kid has had more than a dozen physics classes, so his idea of bored might be relative.

And, finally, the existential dilemma of our time: Rocky and Rocky II are playing opposite one another. Now what? Do I fear Apollo Creed or having a grudging respect? Then Rocky V came on, too. What are the movie channels trying to do to me?

How the franchise could have ended:

cycling / movies / Thursday / video — Comments Off
3
Jan 13

Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!

Saw The Hobbit:

Those are two different trailers. I just saved you the better part of three hours.

People say nothing happened in this movie. I don’t see how they can say that. There was a song. We met particularly stupid trolls. The dwarves were chased by orcs, just like our LOTR heroes. They met a particularly conversational goblin king. And then they were chased by hordes of goblins, just like in LOTR.

There was a curiously coincidental bad weather on a LOTR mountain pass scene. Gollum in a cave seemed familiar. A hobbit had pity on a bipolar monster.

See? Stuff happened. Very familiar stuff.

I found myself thinking “If Bilbo hadn’t listened so intently to Gandalf’s advice about the courage of sparing a life then Frodo wouldn’t lose his finger 60 years later.”

Come to think of it, Gandalf had a few lines that were only barely recycled, too.

I get that it was aimed at a different audience. I didn’t mind that. I get that it was a physical comedy. I like that, and it seems the dwarves have to be that way. Shame there weren’t more women in it, though, but at least there was Cate Blanchett.

It is an incredibly bloodthirsty movie, but without a lot of blood. It had very familar and, thus, simple themes. Let us all admit that prequels (and for our purposes this is a prequel) will never be what you want them to be, but there’s plenty to work with for the movie’s needs. It also has Martin Freeman, who is wonderful, and Benedict Cumberbatch will do voice work in the next movie.

It also addressed, in part, the biggest thematic problem from the LOTR trilogy. Those hawks could be far more helpful if they really wanted to be. You could make the movie a half-hour shorter with less walking, but you want to see all those landscapes. And you hope they are real places and not just CGI. It is all visually appealing.

Those hawks, though, they could be more useful. Or they could eat you. They are predators, and the only thing they’d need to be is bigger. The middle earth version is certainly capable.

Dropped off my bike at the LBS. There is a derailleur problem and they can fix it. Things are slow, said the guy we want to like, but there’s something about his smile, and I can probably have it back in 24 to 48 hours.

Maybe it is that he says things like “24 to 48 hours.” He has been incredibly helpful, but you also get the sense that yours is a dumb question, or that you might be taking him away from some important bike shop task. That’s unfair, of course. He does a lot of good work on a lot of people’s expensive equipment, and occasionally some fine work on my much cheaper bike.

I’d hoped the owner would be there. He’ll stop everything to teach you something about your chain or silicone. And I have a lot to learn. Clearly, this one little thing yesterday and today stumped me. Maybe, in 24 to 48 hours when I can pick up my bike, he’ll be there so I can ask him questions.

And then, we ride.