July 2005 Archives (25 posts)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
I took Daniel to see Tim Burton’s latest film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). It was actually really good. The sets in this film are incredible and I immediately remembered Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which creates an incredibly detailed fantasy land. It must be a phase that I’m going through but I kept thinking of how much work and money went into making such elaborate sets.
Johnny Depp is a great Willy Wonka. I think Ebert hits it on the head when he describes Depp’s character as a cross between Michael Jackson and Carol Burnett. I can’t think of another actor who is constantly reinventing themselves and taking chances like Depp has over the last 15 years—Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Sparrow.
Near the beginning of the film, my six-year-old son asked me if Willy Wonka was a boy or a girl. You have to see the film to appreciate this comment.
I thought the Oompa Loompa characters were funny after their first musical number but by the fourth I was a little tired of them. It reminded me of the Lemurs in Madagascar (2005). Been there. Seen that. The movie drags a little at some points (easy to notice when you’re six-year-old gets really restless).
There are a lot of funny moments in this film that are just weird, twisted and more adult than the kids will know.
Posted in Movie Reviews at 10:51 AM | Comments (2)
TIFF
I’ve been wanting to attend the Toronto International Film Festival for years. This year I’m finally going. Between September 8-17, I’ll be seeing at least 10 films, unless of course Lissa sees a film that she would like to see. I’m looking forward to it.
With any luck I’ll be able to see Terry Gilliam’s new film, Tideland (2005).
Posted in Movies at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Wow! The art direction in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) is just incredible! Sometimes it’s mind-boggling to see how much work goes into a Hollywood film. ILM did some amazing special effects on this film but the art direction is what really blew me away.
The sets are fantastic. The motion graphics for the titles at the end of the film is a short film that makes me feel hopelessy inadequate when it comes to animation.
Jim Carrey is a lot of fun to watch as he plays Count Olaf. His performance reminded me a little bit of his character in the Mask. Luis Guzman and Jennifer Coolidge (forever known now as Stifler’s mom) are wasted in their tiny roles. Blink and you’ll miss them. Timothy Spall (Secrets and Lies) is great in his role as Mr. Poe.
Recommended. And this is one your 6-year-old can watch safely.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 11:24 PM | Comments (1)
The Aviator (2004)
I saw The Aviator (2004) recently and thought it was a great bio pic. Little Leo does a great job at depicting Howard Hughes. I still find it difficult, not to view him as a punk with supermodel girlfriends. That’s slowly changing, especially with his performance here.
I thought The Aviator was much better than Gangs of New York (2002) but still no Raging Bull. It feels grand, like a Hollywood picture from 50 years ago. The sets, costumes and actors are all top-notch—an enjoyable film to watch. I felt entertained but I didn’t really care much about Hugh’s in the end, unlike Ray (2004) where I wanted to know more and listen to his music.
Like Hoop Dreams, The Aviator is 170 minutes in length but a worthwhile rental.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
Hoop Dreams (1994)
I watched Hoop Dreams (1994) for the first time on DVD (new release from the Criterion Collection). It runs almost three hours and you’ll feel like you’re watching the final seconds of an NBA championship at times—an amazing documentary.
Over a five year period, the filmmakers followed two kids who dreamed of making it to the NBA. This is only part of the story. You get an amazing glimpse into the family life of these two kids in some pretty rough Chicago neighbourhoods.
Siskel and Ebert declared Hoop Dreams as the best film of 1994 and lobbied for it to win best picture or at least best documentary. Incredibly, it wasn’t even nominated for best documentary (supposedly the Academy knew it would win because of its popularity).
It made most top ten lists that year and was loved by critics. At the time, it was also one of the best documentaries at the box office. It’s a ground-breaking film and deserves at least a viewing if you’ve never watched it.
The nice thing about the Criterion Collection release is the booklet that comes with the disc. There is an update on the two boys in the film and their families. Amazing stuff.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 10:12 PM | Comments (1)
Closer (2004)
Last week I watched Closer (2004) on DVD. Great cast, great film, great dialogue.
Actually, there are a few scenes with some major shoe leather in terms of the dialogue. Think Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich (2000) but worse and you get the idea.
The film is based on a play by Patrick Marber who also wrote the screenplay which is why the dialogue is so good. Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star are a pair of hopeless couples that struggle with relationships. Did I mention that this is a great cast?
The opening scene uses a song called “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice which works perfectly. It’s also used again at the end of the film providing a sense of closure to the story. I found myself going to iTunes the next day and downloading copy of “The Blower’s Daughter”.
Every time I hear this song I’ll have a clear picture of Jude Law and Natalie Portman slowly approaching each other on a crowded London street.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 4:55 PM | Comments (0)
ecto
How do you create your blog entries?
I’ve been entering mine directly into Movable Type using Safari on Mac OS X. The only problem is when I have to add some simple html such as bold text or hyperlinks. A lot of the time I’ll forget a bracket or a quote and break the layout of my page.
For longer entries I’ve been using BBEdit which allows me to check my syntax and spelling but BBedit is better suited to coding than writing.
Lately I’ve been using the trial version of ecto for my blog entries. This is a great piece of software that integrates well with Movable Type. It downloads all of your entries making it easy to browse/edit previous entries. There are the usual text formatting and html tools and you can assign categories to entries inside of ecto.
A simple but smart feature is that it remembers any links that are in the clipboard. After you find your link in Safari you just copy the address field, go into ecto, select the word you want to hyperlink and ecto will create the code for you. Clean and simple.
Another bonus is that the software is well-supported. Movable Type 3.2 just went into beta and ecto already supports it. Impressive.
Posted in OS X Software at 4:14 PM | Comments (0)
MotivatedMinds
JAK MEDIA launched a new website today for MotivatedMinds Inc.
This was another redesign project. The new site is XHTML/CSS with a little bit of PHP thrown in. As usual, Microsoft Internet Explorer caused me a great deal of grief in rendering bugs.
It seems that IE6 has a hard time right-justifying italic text. The layout of the site would randomly break depending how the right-justified text flowed. Solution? Change the style sheet to normal text and left-justify the text.
Posted in JAK MEDIA at 4:02 PM | Comments (1)
The Big Smoke
This was the view of the Toronto skyline around 2 PM today. It is so hot and humid that I actually found it difficult to breathe. I love Toronto but I can’t stand this heat wave.
Posted in Observations at 6:59 PM | Comments (2)
Stockstock Film Festival Press Release
The Stockstock Film Festival posted a press release on their website that mentions my involvement with the festival last year. Stockstock approached me a few weeks ago when they were putting a press release together and asked me to make a few comments on what it was like to enter and become a finalist. Below is the beginning of the press release.
(Seattle, WA - July 11, 2004) — Jay Kerr, a 36-year-old graphic designer based in Toronto, Canada, dreams of making documentary films. This summer he’s going to have a chance to produce his own film, thanks to Stockstock, a one-of-a-kind stock film festival held in Seattle, WA. Today, Stockstock announces its open registration for film submissions. Entrants may register to enter work in the festival through August 8, 2005, with final work due on August 22, 2005, at 11:59 p.m.
“Last year, I entered the first film I ever made called ‘I Hung My Head’ and it was selected as one of the finalists,” said Kerr. “It brought me one step closer to my goal of making films. I plan to enter another film in the festival again this year because last year was such a great experience. It is a challenge to be creative and develop an interesting story using the footage supplied.”
You can read the entire press release on their website. It’s interesting that the press release mentions a winner when there were in fact, only finalists.
I haven’t seen any of the other films that were entered until today when I came across Ethan Anderson’s film, Aperture. I love what he did with the footage. It looks like there is a lot of After Effects work which makes his film a lot of fun to watch. Nice work. Take a look at his other videos. I have to find more time to do some work like this.
Posted in Motion Graphics at 12:27 PM | Comments (2)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
I finally watched Hotel Rwanda (2004) on DVD last night. Powerful film. If you haven’t seen this film then rent a copy soon.
Don Cheadle does a superb job at playing hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina. His performance was quite believable and worthy of an Oscar nomination. I’m glad that other stars in this film, Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolte didn’t get in the way of the story. I was surprised at how little screen time they had but this is a good thing.
You can’t help but feel angry after watching this film. It’s hard to believe that a million Tutsis were completely wiped out. Imagine a group of Canadian extremists wiping out the entire city of Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa or Hamilton. Then imagine the US or the UK sitting back and doing nothing while a million Canadians are slaughtered like animals.
Of course, this would never happen in Canada. We’re worth too much to the US and other countries because of our natural resources, trade, money. Western countries only invade other countries when there is money and power at stake. Do you really think the US invaded Iraq because they care that much about the Iraqi people?
If the US, UK and Canada cared at all that people are getting slaughtered around the world then the genocide in Rwanda would never have happened. Rwanda had nothing to give the west so we turned a blind eye. I think that westerners do care about people other than themselves, or they wouldn’t have given so generously to the Tsunami victims earlier this year.
You’d think that at least one world leader in the west would have a enough courage or conscience to do something about Rwanda. I guess Clinton was too busy getting blow jobs in the Whitehouse while Chretien was too busy stealing Canadian tax dollars to care about children getting slaughtered in Africa. Harsh words but if you’re going to be a world leader then you have a responsibility to do the right thing.
One of the few heroes was Paul Rusesabagina who did everything he could to save 1,200 lives. If only there were more like him. If only a handful of western leaders cared this whole mess could have been avoided.
The amazing thing is that this will probably happen all over again. It will end up buried on a cable news channel or on the back page of the New York Times. Somebody will make a movie about it 10 years later when it is too late and we’ll wonder how such a terrible thing happened.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 10:32 AM | Comments (2)
Is Anybody Making Movies We’ll Actually Watch In 50 Years?
An interesting article over at Newsweek.
Posted in Movies at 9:29 PM | Comments (1)
SABADABADA
SABADABADA is a site full of Bossa Nova, Balanco and Samba music from the 1960s. Music can be downloaded in MP3 format. There is some cool stuff in here.
There is also a tonne of cover art from this period which I find inspiring when it comes to a lot of design projects. I often look at cover art and ads from the 1960s for inspiration in my design projects.
Posted in Music at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)
Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les (1964)
Every once in a while I like to watch something different—enrich my cinematic experience. I read a few things about the The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and thought I would give it a chance.
I’m not a fan of musicals (still haven’t watched Chicago (2002) and don’t intend to) but enjoyed Singin’ In The Rain (1952). My rental copy of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has been sitting downstairs for over a month so I thought it was time to expand my horizons.
The opening title sequence was interesting—great use of colour, interesting camera angles etc. Then the auto mechanics started singing and every single one of them just looked so happy. Too happy. And then they started to prance around.
I grabbed the remote and hit the DISPLAY. 10 minutes elapsed, 77 minutes to go. A few seconds later I hit the STOP button. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t finish it. I tried. I don’t have to like French musicals or watch them to appreciate French film any more than I do.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 8:41 AM | Comments (2)
Be Cool (2005)
Another stinker. The sequel to Get Shorty (1995), even with John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn and a dozen cameos by other famous actors couldn’t save this movie. I kept waiting for something to happen in the first hour and almost fell asleep.
Vince Vaughn was the funniest part of the movie for me and Cedric the Entertainer has a great Samuel L. Jackson ‘monologue’ if you can wait long enough for it. Extras? I could only handle one deleted scene with Vince Vaughn and The Rock. Don’t waste your time with this one.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)
After the Sunset (2005)
Oh man was this a bad movie. It had popcorn flick written all over it but it was stale, tasteless and just plain dumb. There were maybe a two funny moments in the entire film. The reviews were pretty mixed but this was a waste of two hours.
I watched some of the extras and the main featurette seemed to be as long as the movie! I was amazed at how much money they spent ($50 million) and how much of an idiot, director Brett Ratner really is. I’m glad he’s not directing Superman Returns (2006). Note to self, try to avoid any Brett Ratner films in the future.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 8:59 PM | Comments (7)
Bombippy Backups?
I’m using Movable Type 3.16 to power Bombippy.com. Yesterday I tried upgrading to Movable Type 3.17. Big mistake!
Panic set in after I wiped out my old installation and realized that you cannot upgrade from Movable Type 3.16 to 3.17. I didn’t have a recent backup of my template files or my Movable Type 3.16 installation. Oh crap.
The good news is that I use DreamHost for hosting my websites. It turns out that they backup your entire website every hour, every two hours, every day, every two days, every week and so on. I was amazed and relieved.
Retrieving the backup was very simple and didn’t take long at all. Within ten minutes I recovered at least a thousand files and had my site the way it was when I started my day.
Posted in Bombippy at 11:14 AM | Comments (2)
8½ (1963)
I’m embarrassed to say that this is the first Fellini film that I’ve ever watched. I purchased the two-disc Criterion Collection release of 8½ quite some time ago and finally got around to watching it. I wasn’t disappointed.
I’m continually amazed at how often today’s filmmakers borrow, copy, pay homage to the likes of Fellini, Truffault, Godard and others. Director Terry Gilliam provides an introduction to the film on the Criterion Collection DVD.
Gilliam explains how important 8½ is to him and how it has influenced his films. This is most obvious in Brazil (1985) where several scenes borrow heavily from 8½.
Quentin Tarantino is another director that borrows heavily from the great directors before him. The famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction between Uma Thurman and John Travolta is lifted out of 8½.
This month in WIRED magazine, there is an article called QT: King of Thieves. It examines five scenes that Tarantino lifted from other films.
Back to 8½. I enjoyed the film and will definitely watch it again. And again. The two-disc set from Criterion is impressive. The video is presented in anamorphic widescreen and beautifully restored—looks as good as a movie that was shot in the last 5 years. An audio commentary, a couple of documentaries, some essays and more round are part of the extra features.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
Faster Java Apps
I don’t run a lot of Java applets in my web browser but when I do they can be a bit slow. Visit creativebits and find out how to update your Java and speed up your Mac. Sound technical? It really isn’t.
Posted in OS X Software at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)
Criterion Newsletter
The Criterion Newsletter, an email newsletter launched today. If you want to keep up to date with The Criterion Collection then opt-in.
Coming to DVD in September by Criterion:
Naked (1993), directed by Mike Leigh
Masculin féminin (1966), directed by Jean-Luc Godard
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), directed by Nicolas Roeg
Bad Timing (1980), directed by Nicolas Roeg
Posted in Web at 4:56 PM | Comments (0)
The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004)
I picked up the 2-disc special edition of BullitThe Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004).
If you have any interest in film editing, admire the work of Walter Murch or have any idea who Thelma Schoonmaker then this doc, narrated by Kathy Bates is tailor-made for you. The Cutting Edge is similar to Edge Codes: The Art of Motion Picture Editing which was released earelier this year. Where Edge Codes suffers from poor production value in spots, The Cutting Edge is much slicker and polished.
I also liked that The Cutting Edge showed Walter Murch in his studio editing parts of Cold Mountain using Final Cut Pro. Murch actually takes the viewer through a few edits and explains the challenges involved. Inspiring stuff!
Posted in DVD Reviews at 8:47 AM | Comments (0)
Windows Software: Ugly, Boring & Uninspired
Windows Software: Ugly, Boring & Uninspired is an article over at Computer Power User and no, it isn’t a Macintosh evangelist website. Computer Power User is a monthly magazine for Windows and Linux users.
It’s an interesting article and it covers a lot of what I’ve been saying about OS X and Windows for a long time. I think you could easily title a similar article Windows: Ugly, Boring & Uninspired.
Two pieces of OS X software that impressed me in this article were Comic Life for digital photos and PSPWare which integrates your Mac with your Sony PSP.
Posted in OS X Software at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)
Polaroid-o-nizer™
Give your digital photos that Poloroid look by using the Polaroid-o-nizer™.
Posted in Photography at 4:16 PM | Comments (0)
Crumb (1994)
If you saw Ghost World 2000 a few years back, directed by Terry Zwigoff, then you won’t want to miss his documentary Crumb (1994).
It’s a fascinating look at a controversial cartoonist/artist, Robert Crumb, his work and his bizarre family. He’s the guy that dreamed up Fritz the Cat and those Keep on Truckin’ characters that ended up on millions of mud flaps. His art is extremely creative, racist, sexist, pornographic and often just weird. It’s hard to believe that he’s a functioning human being when you look at his two brothers—both have been institutionalized, suffer from depression and just look strange. A year after the film came out. One of his brothers committed suicide.
The more I watched the film, the more I realized that Steve Buscemi’s character is based on Robert Crumb. Some of the main themes that run through Ghost World come directly from Crumb—his complaint that our world is becoming too commercialized with strip malls, big box retail stores, logos on everything from t-shirts to foreheads.
I haven’t even discussed Crumb’s wives or kids. For that you’ll have to watch the documentary. I think Zwigoff does an excellent job of giving us a glimpse into the bizarre world of Robert Crumb.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
Salesman (1969)
I’ve been on a documentary film binge lately and Salesman (1969) stands out as a favourite. The Maysles brothers directed this film and went on to do Gimme Shelter a year later—a documentary about the Rolling Stones which is another favourite of mine.
For Salesman the brothers followed a bunch of door-to-door bible salesman. It’s fascinating to see how these salesman persuade and manipulate people into purchasing these fancy bibles that they really can’t afford.
I’m convinced that some of these characters inspired David Mammet when he wrote Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Jack Lemmon’s character in this movie talks and acts like one of the salesman in the documentary. This was a little bizarre to watch. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lemmon watched this film a few times to develop his character.
If you get a chance, I recommend you give this a viewing. It provides a glimpse into the late 60s and an era of door-to-door sales that has been replaced by infomercials and banner ads.
Posted in DVD Reviews at 3:22 PM | Comments (0)
