Oh My Darling

I put Kid Millions to bed last night and was all set to settle down for some Iclone action when I found myself watching My Darling Clementine; John Ford's take on the Gunfight at O.K. Corral starring  Henry Fonda and Victor Mature.  Wow!  Thats an excellent movie.  Great light and shadows (a bit German Expressionist at times...I read somewhere about Ford being a fan), excellent cinematography, cool characters (Victor Mature was  something of a bad-ass - see Kiss of Death -  and Fonda is always great) and great action.  Theres a superb scene with a thespian acting out a scene from Macbeth for a bunch of ruffians that manages to really enthrall me.  Then its followed with a lightning fast explosion of violence.  


I don't often care for westerns but when I do.... 


Other things inspiring me as the days turn warm again; 


Marcel Duchamp - Is there a cooler artist than Duchamp?  A man who never took himself too seriously but had his fingers in many excellent pies.  I really like Nude descending a Staircase and the fact that he transitioned to hard core chess player makes him ever cooler.  If I were to grab a booth at Old Town for 5 or 6 rounds with a couple of characters I'd take Duchamp, Willie "the actor" Sutton and perhaps Abraham Lincoln.  That would be a drink.


Bokeh Textures - Some fine examples here and here and here

Movie Night

Spent the eve watching some flicks on TMU.  Some silly, some interesting and one big winner.  Lets review:

Grayskull: Rise of the Hordak Part 2 - Great characters and sets.  Amazing VOs.  Animation is stilted and lacking.

Crimes Worst Nightmare Part 1 - Stick with it and you get a pretty funny Police Squadish parody of all great cop/buddy movies.  HomeMadeEye is certainly unique.  By not caring much he serves up solid comedy.  Kwistufa is very, very scary in cameo.

Show me the Sun - Music video in MS.  Looks lovely but a bit too unfocused to be particularly effective

Fallen Angels - Cute characters, a solid idea.  Again the animation lacks and the writing is a bit repetitive.

Sandstorm - The Winner.  Incredibly well writtten, performed and filmed.  Best thing Ive seen in a long while.  Miss it at your own peril.

Clockwork....No really, clockwork

As a fan of pictures from yesteryear, two of my favorite websites are Shorpy and If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger...  Shorpy tends to get its hi-res pictures from the Library of Congress (as a side note the hi-res shots are really the way to go...so freaking vivid..like this one of Joe Jefferson the early film comic - note the couple in the background and dig on those clothes.  Side note number two: another wonderful part of Shorpy is the comments where there's often some bit of interesting info about the image that some anonymous poster will share), which is a very cool repository of photos and the like.  I made pretty good use of it way back on O the Ocean and its fun to just type in a subject and explore the archives.  


Today I was looking at pics of Cooper Union (Free but very exclusive College of the Arts in NYC) when I came across this one of the inner workings of the Cooper Union clock.  Somehow I always thought clockwork would be a bit more grandiose.  And who would have thought that time can kept using long doohickies that intersect with the hands of the clock at something other than a right angle.  Still I think its a pretty cool little photograph (if you are interested, the Hi-Res tiff is available at the LoC site). 

Reminds me of the old joke about Bill Clinton and the presidential clock that is in the attic of the White House.  Some other time perhaps.

Yet Another....

Slowly getting settled in to the new place.  Got the cable and internet turned on, snow in the backyard is almost melted.  You can nearly taste the Springtime. 


Heres another promo shot for the MotAA production thread.  Huzzah!

Added bonus today.  Heres a groovy film blog Ive started reading recently.  Well written and interesting for the casual film buff and perhaps the amatuer filmmaker. 


The Art and Culture of Movies

Another Promo Poster

From the Monsters of the Atomic Age production thread and my favorite of the set so far.

The Boss, Hectic Times, Some more eh....

Another promotional poster from the MotAA production thread for your perusal. 

Quickly coming up on a busy couple of weeks that will entail a move to a new pad (complete with a back yard!  Huzzah!  A rarity here and my first in 10 years.  Kid Millions will be pleased as will I as I cook burgers and drink beer in the summer sun.) followed by a a trip to Barcelona (my first time in Europe).  Perhaps there will be pictures that don't involve animated 3d characters.  A lot of fun but a bit hectic.  


Heres a flick I assume most of you have seen but I somehow missed; ThrowAxe's That's Amore.  Won the Romance category of the MS valentines competition but dont let that stop you.  Evokes all the airy goofy fun of a 50's musical.  Great animation sequences and camera work.  Pretty badass.

King Buzzo, Olympic Ideas, Explosions!

Here a quick poster I worked up for the MotAA production thread over on TMU.  Im real excited to work with King Buzzo.  I hear he's quite the professional.

Amid all the work I've been doing on that production I've ended up watching a fair amount of the winter Olympics when I had no intention of doing so.  I just happened to flip by and saw some scrawny looking russian ice skater who looked like he wanted to die because he had made a mistake that cost him his 5 minutes of fame.  And then I remembered how there was occasionally some unhyped, completely real emotion seen in the Olympics and then it was too late.  So last night was the mens ice skating competition which was just unbelievably funny.  "Blades of Glory" was but a tiny LED compared to the sunburst of garish comedy on display in this event.  


There was an Italian Luke Duke wannabe (complete with undone overall), Edward Featherhands, the Tassle (who actually looks like edward scissorhands) and Skeletor.  Too much fun.

Anyways, it got me thinking about how much fun a Olympic mashup would be where the ice skaters would have to form a team and take on the worst olympic hockey team while that hockey team would have to compete in the figure skating comp.  Cutting Edge of Glory anyone?

Sorry, enough of the sillyness.  Check out WarLords first part of The Outland; Freeport 7 for some impressive scifi effects (including things that flock together, things that break apart and a wonderful floating dead woman) and a solid start to something good.