Mouse Down I’m still on it, despite, you know, all the things that happen in life. Spent all weekend in Poser (and various other apps to make up for everything that either Poser or I can’t handle), which, as I have told you, is much less comfortable than advertised, which in turn surprises no one ever. Now, on Monday afternoon, I have five seconds that are actually usable. Even pretty. I’m saving it all for the final fiasco/climax, since I’m a bastard, but here’s a little screen grab with altered colors. I feel like writing, so here are, in no pretention of cohesion, a couple of points. I must be some sort of old hipster, since I find it interesting to use terrible software that everyone else has abandoned. The Mac App Store suffers, besides a general candybaritude, from a lack of attractive, well presented, convincing Silly Video Effects apps. I am eager to learn Anime Studio Pro, but if anything I create even by chance looks like Family Guy, I am going to kill myself. Smudging can save crappily rendered animation. I’ve been trying out a few tricks based upon exporting my clips as image sequences and damaging each frame with a bit of color, noise, filter filth and recompiling them, and boy does that look better. I will never be a proficient nerd (I can act like it, but don’t ask me to decipher Python, or whatever), but god dammit batch processing can save my ass. In the spirit of sharing, here’s a workflow that eats up your images and poops out a movie.  It doesn’t always work for me (I seem to need another Automator action that can remove file extensions*, and I haven’t found it yet), but every time it does I scream with joy. Am I doing the right thing, devoting this much time to a project that has every potential to suck immensely? Guess I will never truly know. * Follow-up: Turns out, what I needed was Name Mangler. Exemplary utility.
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Mouse Down

I’m still on it, despite, you know, all the things that happen in life. Spent all weekend in Poser (and various other apps to make up for everything that either Poser or I can’t handle), which, as I have told you, is much less comfortable than advertised, which in turn surprises no one ever.

Now, on Monday afternoon, I have five seconds that are actually usable. Even pretty. I’m saving it all for the final fiasco/climax, since I’m a bastard, but here’s a little screen grab with altered colors.

I feel like writing, so here are, in no pretention of cohesion, a couple of points.

  • I must be some sort of old hipster, since I find it interesting to use terrible software that everyone else has abandoned.
  • The Mac App Store suffers, besides a general candybaritude, from a lack of attractive, well presented, convincing Silly Video Effects apps.
  • I am eager to learn Anime Studio Pro, but if anything I create even by chance looks like Family Guy, I am going to kill myself.
  • Smudging can save crappily rendered animation. I’ve been trying out a few tricks based upon exporting my clips as image sequences and damaging each frame with a bit of color, noise, filter filth and recompiling them, and boy does that look better. I will never be a proficient nerd (I can act like it, but don’t ask me to decipher Python, or whatever), but god dammit batch processing can save my ass.
  • In the spirit of sharing, here’s a workflow that eats up your images and poops out a movie.  It doesn’t always work for me (I seem to need another Automator action that can remove file extensions*, and I haven’t found it yet), but every time it does I scream with joy.
  • Am I doing the right thing, devoting this much time to a project that has every potential to suck immensely? Guess I will never truly know.

* Follow-up: Turns out, what I needed was Name Mangler. Exemplary utility.

Edward Brazzleton Delroy Lindo in The Core, 2003. That particular contraption isn’t in the movie either. This leads me to believe that the character of Braz at some point had more screen time than what he ended up with. Which pains me terribly. The Core belongs in the stupid section, but I don’t care. So does Road Warrior. These are movies that usually aren’t very good, but they’re completely awesome if you have any understanding of the word. The Core is not awesome, but it’s got Delroy Lindo, who’ll teach you how to be a decent man any time of the day.
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Edward Brazzleton

Delroy Lindo in The Core, 2003. That particular contraption isn’t in the movie either. This leads me to believe that the character of Braz at some point had more screen time than what he ended up with. Which pains me terribly.

The Core belongs in the stupid section, but I don’t care. So does Road Warrior. These are movies that usually aren’t very good, but they’re completely awesome if you have any understanding of the word. The Core is not awesome, but it’s got Delroy Lindo, who’ll teach you how to be a decent man any time of the day.

Just a few screenshots from Ninja Assassin (2009), wherein South Korean heartthrob Rain (birth name Jeong Ji-Hoon, dancer/singer, collects shoes, suffers from a complete lack of subcutaneous fat) fights his former ninja clan and befriends young Michaela Jackson. Directed by James McTeigue, who is Australian, assistant director of almost every blockbuster movie and large-nosed. Things go swoosh throughout the movie, martial arts seem totally unrealistic and everything is finely photographed.

Cold, cold sadness

It was some time ago that I took a stab at my unexplainable and unnecessary takes on movies. Mostly because I can’t say why I do it. But being an artist, not knowing why is the best reasons to continue.

And, you know, when you consume as much moving pictures as we do in our age, not often – but once in a while – something sticks.

I watched The Ides of March and I suppose it was meant to be a sad and cynic affair. I wouldn’t really recommend it (what with Clooney’s superficial critique of the system that feeds him, or what have you); not when you’d surely enjoy rewatching The Contender or All The President’s Men or Wag The Dog so much more – yet, some stills beg to be harvested, some glimpses have a meaning that can be brought out of its context and used for other fruitful purposes.

Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) reminds me of someone I’m not sure if I have ever met or only made up, but in this scene, they’re almost twin sisters. And furthermore, that shot of her in the diner was so intriguing, because the light outside, the buildings in the background – it looks so much like Northern Europe. Like my world. Grand, efficiently manufactured American movie stories are supposed to take place somewhere wild and far away (i.e. California, Arizona, New York City and possibly parts of Florida). So this scene is a case of, well, reversed leakage. In the words of Clifford Worley, I find that shit fascinating.

[cont.] On another note, judging strictly by typography, Robocop runs MS-DOS while the biomechanized Cain is on a pirate Mac OS of sorts. When Cain dies, after Robocop ripped his brain out, his digitized face explodes in distorted Amiga graphics (oh, and isn’t that a flatscreen?).

I still don’t know why I return to these old movies in this way. I’ll keep going ‘til I do.

Things I can’t understand: 1) Hob, this movie’s Annoying Kid. What stops the grownups surrounding him from simply sitting on him until he’s flat? And what’s with the iron-wave-of-grease hairdo? 2) Mayor Kuzak. Is he supposed to act out an African-American stereotype, or just talk funny? 3) Why Frank Miller cared so much for this story, he had to turn his original script into a comic book.

This movie aged fast. It’s rather flatly lit, and blurry in the way that digital high resolution can be especially unkind to. It made me feel like I was watching a much older film. The compositions, the teleshots, the cutting, it all firmly anchors the movie in decent but surpriseless mid-20th century moviemaking. Kershner relied on stop-motion animation for the robot fights. Just like the old dinosaur movies. And then, the next year, in 1991, you know, came Judgment Day and rushed in the CG era and all of 80s sci-fi cinema was shot to shit.

It could be, of course, that what I’m seeing is the distance to my own childhood, that much less smart world of the last century. I miss all those dilapidated factories that I never got to visit. And stop-motion robot fights are actually very pretty.

[cont.] These storm chasers are obsessed (as you go) with extreme weather (and relentless camaraderie) to make up for their overeating… Just kidding.

I got to remember to ask Anna Kristensen about tumbling houses sometime.

The question is, what is it that draws us out, to be near the storm, to want reach out and pet the suck-the-face-off-my-skull wind?

Is it about how we want to be friends with the monster, to prove that if you are unafraid you won’t get hurt? Is it a longing to surrender, now that here’s a force that can be seen and felt (and get crushed by)? Is it the tiny taste of danger? Or is it a dim sensation – a hesitant joy – of being so very small against the raging sky?

A few screenshots from Twister, a movie about weather with Helen Hunt, Private Hudson and Jack’s Cornflower Blue Boss. It strikes me as a very Nineties movie. There’s the clumsy but earnest storytelling, the predisposition for color filters – but still, top notch cinematography, and the charming early CGI. Wikipedia goes into detail about the disorganized production. There’s also a museum committed to the movie in Wakita, Oklahoma.

You know, I’m particular about meteorology, and I try to figure out why, so a movie like this has a measure of priority. For instance, look at the situations regarding food (Philip Seymour Hoffman yells “We crave sustenance!”). The roadside diner early in the movie is warm, sleeping kitten cozy. Centered in the image when NSSL discovers the coming supertornado, is a ham sandwich.

God I’m starving for a cheese burger.

It’s coffee and eggs and hot dogs and steaks and mashed potatoes: truck driver food. This works, because the coziness of eating together is the emotional opposite of hailstorming, farm-tearing, destruction-hungry Bad Weather. [cont.]

More Resident Evil: Degeneration stills, from where they clean up by throwing the entire basement into a giant bottomless hole that somebody providently dug out underneath, in case everything went to hell.

Oh, and Tumblr turning pics into a Flash slideshow still sucks, and I still haven’t found how to turn it off. [Update: Hey, I think I did. Much better now, thanks.]