4/29/09

You know everything's going to be fine when your iTunes shuffle starts with Hoppipolla.

Movie Quote of the Week

"P-51! Cadillac of the sky!"

Previous Answer:

A Fistful of Dollars>

No guesses.

Camera Porn

RED Scarlet, new render
April 20, 2009

Movie Quote of the Week

"My mistake.  Four coffins."

Previous Answer:

The Proposition>

No guesses.

Annie Leibowitz: Directors and Their Stars; via Quixotando

Annie Leibowitz does a series of images with directors some of 2008's biggest movies and their stars.

via Quixotando>

April 14, 1912: Coming Full-Circle

Ninety-seven years ago, First Officer Murdoch shouted "Hard a-starboard!" over the Atlantic.

Read full post>

The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant>

Probably the last great animated feature before Pixar took over mainstream animations.

Movie Quote of the Week

"I will civilize this land."

Previous answer:

The Long Good Friday>

Danila was the first (and only) to guess it right.

Went to quarry, found leg.

Came across this deer leg in the quarry on one of the burned out cars.  The leg was on the roof of the car; I'm still trying not to think of how it got up there.

Violence and Video Games

"Me, I'd rather be in the world where I know all violent crime is not OK, so I do it online where it doesn't count."

-Owen Good, in an article on Kotaku about the new Judge Mathis game.

P.S. Can anyone tell me why Blogger doesn't like Copy and Paste?

Gleaning potential controversy from Konami's 'Six Days in Fallujah'

Making a game about the Iraq war?  While it's still going on?  Not to mention one of the most controversial and violent battles of the war?  Probably not the most intelligent or sensitive decision.

Besides being the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War, the battle is controversial mostly for the Americans' use of White Phosphorus as an offensive weapon.  While not considered a chemical weapon by the Chemical Weapons Commission, many other groups consider it to be so.  At first, the Department of Defense denied the use of the chemical as a weapon, then later admitted to using it during the battle.

The point of a video game is to tell a specific story through the audience interacting with the world itself; they are, in effect, living a specific fantasy designed by the developer of the game.  The publisher of the game (Konami) state in the article that they want to make a "piece of entertainment", and that's how it's going to read: The on-going war as entertainment.

Tilt/Shift Movie Stills

My friend Victoria and I did a project where we took stills from films and applied the Tilt/Shift effect to them to make them look like dioramas or models.

Our aim was to point out the fallacy and fantasy of film.  It is important to note, however, it is not a criticism of film, but merely addressing a basic nature of the medium.

Here are a few of them:

Amadeus (1984)

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

Office Space (1999)

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Gladiator (2000)

Robert Ballard

Robert Ballard: Exploring the ocean’s hidden worlds

This is a condensed version of the talk I saw him give a few weeks ago (see post).  He leaves out a few things here, most notably the life on Mars segment and an extension of the Black Sea segment.

The life on Mars segment is an extension of the part about chemosynthesis (photosynthesis in the dark).  He says that the bacteria that utilizes chemosynthesis is the most probable origin of life on this planet; he also says that if there’s water, this bacteria will be there.  NASA has already discovered traces of water on Mars.  Ballard believes that if they just drill down, they will find life—in the form of this bacteria—on Mars.

In the extension of the Black Sea segment, he adds that if the wood of a sunken ship and honey seals are perfectly preserved, so will human bodies. Imagine finding a perfectly preserved corpse—from the time of Caesar, or even before.

Movie Quote of the Week

"What I'm looking for is someone who can contribute to what England has given to the world: culture, sophistication, genius.  A little bit more than an 'ot dog, know what I mean?"

Guess it.

(next Monday I'll post a new quote with the answer to this one)

Ferdinand Under the Cork Tree

I made an animated version of one of the illustrations from Ferdinand the Bull in Flash.

Here>

Cathedral Scan

New post on Tumblr.

Cathedral Scan by Blake Carrington>

What Else is There?

whoa.

Found this on Vimeo today.  Visuals and art direction are incredible.

On Tumblr>

Three Disney Films

New post on Tumblr.

The Great Mouse Detective, The Rescuers, and The Jungle Book

Why they're great>