Archive: Posts from April, 2005
April 29th, 2005, 3 Comments »
Clive Thompson has written an interesting piece for Slate about the emerging genre of fan films. Well, I suppose it’s not that emergent, but technology has delivered cinema-quality special effects and a distribution system to the masses:
Fan art works best when it feeds off of dweeby universes that are jam-packed with characters. It would be easy to create amateur, offshoot films based on Lord of the Rings or The Twilight Zone, and possibly even a show with a revolving-door cast like Law & Order. Shows or movies that rely on a single, charismatic actor–like Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer–aren’t as easy to replicate.
In particular, Clive mentions Star Wars Revelations. He watched the whole 40-minute movie (which is available for free), while I just caught the trailer. The trailer was enough for me.
Regardless of the special effects, story or costuming, there’s a key factor that every fan film I’ve ever seen is missing: quality acting. Now, I’m not saying that Lucas’s Star Wars films are a rich with Oliviers, but the worst actor on the big screen is far superior to the best in a fan film. Why? Because the former went to acting school, which will never make a good actor a great one, but it can make a mediocre actor watchable. You can see the fan film’s actors’ lack of acting experience in every frame–in how they move, speak and (most importantly) listen to each other.
On a related note, film actors have to be beautiful, or ugly in a fascinating way. They can rarely look ordinary. If they do, they generally compensate by being great actors (Wallace Shawn comes to mind, but even he’s a strange-looking little bald man with a distinctive voice).
The solution lies in finding actors who love the material–there ought to be plenty of those out there. Fan films are never going to be more than dweeby homages until they resolve this issue. If that’s all fan films aspire to be, then great. However, I’m not going to sit through one, regardless of the veracity of the zooming spaceships, until I see some folks who can act.
3 Comments »
April 28th, 2005, 4 Comments »
One of the few podcasts I listen to is Quirks and Quarks, a recording of Bob McDonald’s excellent weekly science show on the CBC. The lead story of the April 2nd show is remarkable:
Imagine being blind for 25 years, and suddenly being able to see again – using your ears. It sounds impossible, but that’s exactly what happened to Pat Fletcher. For the past few years, she’s been experimenting with a revolutionary new technology that allows her to see through sound. Using a simple computer program that she downloaded from the Internet, called “The vOICe”, which translates visual images into soundscapes, Pat’s brain is able to translate those sounds back into images.
It must be heard to believed. The vOICe software (meh, somebody needs a branding workshop) looks like a pretty remarkable achievement, and Pat’s story makes for excellent radio. The moment when she describes ‘seeing’ the mountains in the desert and a jet’s contrail made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
4 Comments »
April 28th, 2005, 3 Comments »
En route from Paris, I read a great column in Esquire magazine. It’s not available online, but in essence it encouraged readers to wait a week before seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
Let’s be honest: the first two movies sucked. The stories were poor and repetitive, the special effects were soulless and the acting was slipshod. However, like every other former kid who loved the first three movies, I’m definitely going to see the third one. And it’ll probably suck too. The columnist and I aren’t asking you to not see the film–just wait at least a week.
Why? Because the opening weekend means everything (like, really, everything) to the movie industry. It’s extremely predictive, and therefore determines all sorts of follow-on distribution and merchandising deals. A low opening weekend would send a message to George Lucas and the rest of the Hollywood food chain. A message that trading on a much-loved trilogy with this dreck is evil, and that they should do better.
Unfortunately, even Esquire won’t make a dent in the opening weekend. Still, I think it’d be great if we all stayed away and freaked out a bunch of Hollywood moguls.
I was very pleased to see my former classmate Charles Ross got a side-bar interview about his excellent One Man Star Wars in the same issue. On another related note, here are Kevin Smith’s (of Clerks and Chasing Amy fame) spoiler-ridden thoughts upon reviewing Revenge of the Sith.
3 Comments »
April 28th, 2005, 1 Comment »
Travis posts this amusing story about spotting his neighbours making the beast with two backs:
Obviously, there’s a stage at which watching your neighbours play Two-Person Naked Twister becomes wrong, but I’m curious to hear what you think it is. Especially given that I’m clearly not the only person in downtown Vancouver who can see these lovebirds.
Travis wonders how much of a sex fiend he is. I’ve turned the question into a poll:
1 Comment »
April 28th, 2005, 3 Comments »
Alanis Morissette, a mere 31 years old, is going on the equivalent of a reunion tour:
The six-week outing will promote the June 13 re-release of her breakthrough 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill, which is being reissued with a newly recorded acoustic version.
The 27-date tour is slated to kick off on June 7 in Toronto and wrap up on July 17 in Costa Mesa, California. The new version of Jagged Little Pill will be sold only at Starbucks for the first six weeks.
You go, riot grrl. That’s pitifully mercantile, isn’t it? I mean, I’m sure Ms. Morissette thinks she hasn’t sung “would she go down on you in a theatre” enough times in the past decade. I always feel a little sorry for musicians who have to trot out the old favourites night after night. Nothing screams “I’m irrelevant” more than a ten-year anniversary tour.
What’s even more sad is that this is kind of the second time this has happened to Alanis. Will she come back in her late thirties as a jazz singer?
3 Comments »
April 27th, 2005, 22 Comments »
My friend Rob can’t use his U2 tickets. If you want to buy them, leave a comment. First come, first served (though I can’t guarantee that he hasn’t sold them through other means). Here are the details:
2 U2 tickets, great seats
Friday, April 29
Section 110 (there’s a seating chart here)
Row 22, seats 109 and 110
$400 for the pair
22 Comments »
April 26th, 2005, 6 Comments »
The Tyee is a left-wing, upstart online news journal here in BC. Though I’ve found the quality of their reportage and writing uneven, I’ve been generally impressed and have mentioned them on several occasions.
I just received an email from them, asking me to promote their Election Central, a bloggy sub-site for all things related to the BC election. From a public relations perspective, I give them 7/10 on the email: [more]
Read more…
6 Comments »
April 26th, 2005, 7 Comments »
Today was my one business-free day in Paris. I went to bed very late after the Les Blogs party, and slept in very late (this will, at least, help with jetlag coming home). Having seen most of the big sites in Paris on previous trips, I gave over the afternoon to wandering around Paris. I took lots of photos. Most of the links in this entry point to them, or you can see them all here.
After an excellent lunch of coucous, I headed north through the Latin Quarter to one of the many campuses of the University of Paris. Frankly, it was bleak. It felt like an aging seventies super-project, with a vast warren of buildings (or maybe one super-building). I did find this great sign, though. I wonder, was there an “Install Party, Windows” somewhere on campus as well?
After I located an exit from the university (feeling a bit like I should be calling Tank), I wandered around Ile St. Louis, the less popular of the two islands in the Seine (that is what we are). I happened upon the small, charming Eglise St-Louis-en-I’Ile. I love that about France–you’re constantly finding empty, beautiful stone churches.
From there it was up into the Marais, which was my favourite neighbourhood. I did some shopping, stopped for une chocolate chaud, and then headed east to the Place de la Nation. From there, it was getting tres serieux about raining, so I hopped a couple of metros (where I spotted this chamber orchestra and took this blurry shot) and headed back to my hotel.
As a note to myself for future reference, I stayed at the Hotel Clos Medicis (scary Flashness ahead). It has a fantastic location, seemed to be (on the Paris scale) decent value and offers wifi (at an exorbitant price, which is apparently common here).
7 Comments »