Month: March 2008

Much like John Carpenter, Richard Kelly has a massive lust to tell us about his vision of the end of the world.  John does it with Ghosts and Demons and eventually got to politics.  Richard has gotten to it on his second attempt.  Bravo Richard Kelly.

Additionally, bravo to Mr. Kelly for including a musical sequence (or two) in your film.  This was a brave choice.

I can't say that I disliked "Southland Tales" any more than I can say that I disliked any John Carpenter film, as I have loved every John Carpenter film I have watched and own.  So what can I say about "Southland Tales" that approximates a critique?

I could comment that the plot was transparent, but the same is true for Mr. Carpenters films.

I could say that the acting in places was … poor.  However, I have seen "Escape from New York" and it is hardly the magnum opus.

One might actually point to Dwayne Johnson (the eponymous 'Rock') and look at his affectations in the movie and question whether this was a bad movie at all.  To get the kind of believable soul-depth panic that appears in Mr. Johnson at points in this movie, one would have to be a great director indeed.  MR. Johnson is known for being a movie tough guy who raises and eyebrow for emphasis, when he twiddles his fingers in desperation I saw a scared little man who was lost in a scarily bad plot of his own creation.

That is of course the crux of it, the bad dialog. the insane plot, the wild references to greek mythology.  It is all the plot of a movie created by a Porn Star and Action Star.  No wonder the lines are terrible, they are supposed to be terrible.  When "the hero" finally confronts the Furies he is told that he has cheated fate, he is a man who escaped his own death and now lives outside of it.  This is incredibly deep for a movie that has the line "I am a Pimp, and pimps don't commit suicide" delivered with a serious face in the ensconced hideout of a political rebellion.

Then there is the Hummer Sex.  Jen tells me that my face looked strange during that scene, like it was more entertaining than it should have been.  I simply could not believe that someone paid money to make such a thing appear on screen.

One more thing, this is an end of the world movie; why the Repo Man moment at the end? 

So did I like "Southland Tales" Yes.  I loved it like I love "Prince of Darkness".  Am I going to watch it again. hell yes.  I have to, I'm not sure I got under the skin of it.  I'm sure there is more there. 

What if there is no "there" there?

Um, here is a squirrel.

Originally posted on nitemayr.vox.com

I really should have shot this against a dark background… Oh Well!

NiteCat, NiteGirl and I hit the theater yesterday and watched “Ghost Rider”.  There was a line outside, leading us to worry that we would be late for the film and that we had greatly underestimated the drawing power of “Ghost Rider”

We were wrong on two counts.

1) We got in to the actual theater in time to see the end of the Spider man 3 trailer.
2) We greatly underestimated the drawing power of “Wild Hogs”.

I could not believe the stream of Nascar driven humanity that was waiting to see “Wild Hogs”, and openly celebrating it.

Wow.

Anyway, Ghost Rider was great.  It meshed the Dan Ketch and Johnny Blaze Ghost Riders into one.  It was a good movie, lots of action and good special effects.  NiteCat LOVED it.

Nick Cage was great as Johnny Cage (giving him a chance to be Elvis on a Motorbike without singing)

The ONLY thing I hated was that Donal Logue was killed.  No love for the redhead scotsman?

Crossposted from: http://blog.nitemayr.com/2008/03/04/ghost-ride-it/

First please check out this lifehacker post on the subject… I'll wait.  Did you read it or right/middle-click on it to read it later on a tab?

If you did the latter, good for you.  If not, welcome back.

I've been using Picasa to manage my photos for a couple years now (well over a year and a half at least) and have gotten used to it's foiables (lack of flickr support) and it's strengths (opening pictures in a new app or even in explorer)

(Yes, I use it in my awesome XP install.  I may love Linux for my servers, but I game in XP. 

Here is my typical work flow:

1. Look at my pictures in the Library, using the keyboard to scroll through them and looking for something interesting.  I something from my dump looks good I either take it into an external app and edit it or just perk it up in Picasa's built in tools.
2. Once the picture looks how I want it, I save a new copy and undo any changes I have made to the original.  This preserves the image as it was shot for later use.  The new file name is usually descriptive of the image itself. 

   (if I used an external app, I sometimes strip the EXIF data from the images)

3. Picasa now has both the original and the new copy in the Library, which means I can select the new image(s) from the library and choose "show in explorer" or use CTRL+K to set some keywords… whatever.  I usually hit "show in explorer".
4. In explorer I highlight the new images, right-click and choose "Upload to Flickr" which loads the images in the Flickr uploader.
5. I select the appropriate sets and set the keywords for the images.  If needs be I rotate one (because the upload button isn't there until I do) then upload the images.
6. I return to Picasa and repeat as needed.

Now you've learned two things:

1.  How I use Picassa.
2.  I actually choose what images to upload and not just random images from my camera. 

Now we should do the Salmon Dance

Hmmm, I've left off another option.

On my 'rents PC and the Laptop. I use Windows Live Gallery instead of Picasa, it's better.  No Joke.  I've just gotten used to Picasa on my own PC.

Originally posted on nitemayr.vox.com

Originally posted on nitemayr.vox.com