Blu Ray

It may come as a surprise to some of you (primarily those from the Boston days), but I finally succumbed and bought a Blu Ray player. It was the amalgamation of needing a new DVD player, having an Amazon.com gift card, and one of Consumer Reports recommended buys being substantially on sale from Amazon that led me in that direction. I intended to purchase an up-converting player, but who's going to shake their head at a $50 dollar Blu Ray player? Not this guy. Not no how.

So the first thing I did for myself was make some rules and a list of movies that I'd like on Blu Ray. The rules mostly entailed only purchasing movies that really benefit from the HD experience (great sound design, great cinematography, stuff that goes "Boom!", that sort of thing) and, with a few exceptions, not buying films I already owned. There are a few exceptions to this latter rule, however. Substandard edition of the standard definition? Upgrade. One of my all-time favorites? Upgrade. Really great deal? We'll see.

One thing I rarely do when purchasing DVDs is spend more than $10. I have Netflix and more than enough movies to hold me over until the price inevitably drops. However, with Blu Ray, prices are a bit higher (though they have dropped a good deal). I made my list (using this website to assist the decision making) and chose four films for my maiden Blu Ray voyage: Sunshine and The Thing (both of which I already owned) and The Road Warrior and Up (the latter of which was as cheap as I paid for any other Pixar film).

Now comes my problem. After a few years of professing that the Blu Ray image isn't much of an improvement over and up-converting player, at least not on a TV less than 50", I'm starting to think to myself, "Wow, this looks pretty great." It probably helps that I've been watching a lot of Netflix Instant View where the image quality lacks, but I'm a bit impressed anyway.

It all came to a head when Hollywood Video was having its liquidation sale and instead of trolling the aisles for golden nuggets of standard def DVDs, I only focused on the cheap Blu Ray and came out with four films that I really didn't need to own in the format: Away We Go, The Brothers Bloom, Ghost Town, and Semi-Pro (I'm sure many would argue that I didn't need to own Semi-Pro at all). I totally tossed one of my two rules out the window! At least they were all $5 each, so it was still cheaper than those editions would have been new, but they had them in standard def, too.

Clearly the problem is I've reluctantly (or not so reluctantly) been lured into the wonders of Blu Ray. I bought more films for over $10 and am having trouble stopping at this point (Cloverfield? Hell yes! District 9? Sign me up! Drag Me to Hell? It's remarkable I didn't have this already! The Wild Bunch? Hey! This one is under $10!). Needless to say, I think my days of buying standard def are over. At the rate my rules are falling, I'll have doubles of everything I own. Speaking of which, I have an extra copy of The Wild Bunch (standard def) should anyone want it!

The Square

Below be Spoilers!

Recently, the Hollywood Theatre (yes, it's spelled that way) was showing an Australian film called The Square, and Australian thriller directed by stuntman Nash Edgerton. Here is the trailer:


The Square has been almost universally lauded stateside and audiences at the Hollywood were enthralled by it during its entire run, citing the fact that "you never knew what was going to happen next!" I saw it almost two years ago at the Sydney International Film Festival and, along several of my festival going friends, despised the film. I am completely mystified that anyone could watch The Square and not realize how absurd the entire film is (I had a similar experience with Happy-Go-Lucky, shown at the same festival).

I understand that all films (and novels and plays and whatever else tells a story) hinge on coincidence, but The Square's use of coincidence is taken to almost an artfully ridiculous level. It's not enough to toe the line ("Oh no! He forgot his cell phone!" or "Oh no! His house caught fire!"), but they treat the line like the launching point for the long jump ("Wait... he didn't just forget his cell phone. He forgot BOTH of his cell phones!" and "His house isn't just on fire. His house is on fire and HIS MOTHER IS ASLEEP IN THE LIVING ROOM!"). The worst offense is a character going out to "the Square" on a hot. summer day (in Australia!), tooling around, getting caught and winding up in a crazy car chase out of a construction site only to have it revealed that there's a baby in the back seat of his car! Oh, the tension! Forget that he left the child alone in the car with the windows up for at least ten minutes or the maniacal driving with total disregard for the child's well-being.

Anyway, I didn't mean to rant like that. The point is, theater goers love to ask the ticket sellers if the movie is any good. In most cases I can deflect the question saying, "I haven't seen it, but audiences really like it" or "it's been our most popular movie for weeks." But I've seen The Square and I'm not one to lie. So what am I supposed to tell people who are about to put their money down to see the film? I don't want to lower their expectations. Plus, why ask me in the first place? They don't know me. They have no idea what my tastes are.

So, I just tell them, "the critics and audiences love it..." The ellipses usually lead to them asking, "but not you?" and I explain to them that they should pay no head to my opinion based on the above reasoning while silently judging them because, after all, I know they are going to like this abhorrent film.

On the plus side, we are now showing the excellent The Good, the Bad, and the Weird! It's nice to be able to enthusiastically endorse a film for once.


PS -- It's pure coincidence that I wrote this post on Joel Edgerton's birthday (star/co-writer of The Square and Nash Edgerton's brother)

Working for the Census

Nobody said it'd be easy and after the first week of work, I didn't think it would be. Hell, I barely made it out of the three days of training (and let's be honest, it wasn't even three full days--about 20 hours total). It's not that the training was difficult. It was just painfully dull. No different than any other training I suppose. Everything getting slowed down by question after question that will be answered in five minutes in the Handbook or that will be readily apparent once one gets into the field. I'm sure I asked a few inane questions myself, but I tried my best to keep things moving by staying quiet.

Of course, I didn't realize that there were adults that still acted like Martin Prince (from The Simpsons for those of you who somehow missed out on one of the biggest cultural institutions of the past 25 years). There was one man (a substitute teacher, so no big surprise) who felt compelled to teach the training regardless as to whether he had the right information or not. I've never wanted to yell at an adult more in my life. It's quite remarkable, my restraint.

At least the training was paid and guaranteed time. And after the first week of work, I didn't think I'd have much free time to myself. My first day of real work, I put in about 14 hours straight trying to enumerate soup kitchens. The challenge with this particular task is that many of the people have already been questioned by Census employees at other locations and have little patience for reliving the experience, especially since they have to endure it for three days in a row (at least it's only 3 days every ten years). Then there are the people who don't trust the government and refuse to give their information. It's a procedure that one quickly says, "screw it!" and marks down a stack of anonymous people because the count is the important thing (though the numbers will no doubt be greatly inflated).

So, after this initial onslaught and some work the next week, I wound up with more than a week of no work. I don't know why the work dried up so quickly, but there it is. I'm not entirely unhappy about it. I do value my free time even if most of it is wasted, but it's hard to maintain a minimum of 20 hours a week when there's no work. Fortunately, people who aren't sending back their Census forms are ensuring I'll be employed for at least another month. Sadly, that means more soul-crushing training.

Who knows... maybe I'll be knocking on your door someday soon!

And check out how your region is tracking on returning the Census forms!

Loss of Inspiration

I'm sorry I haven't written in over a month. For some reason, my desire to write has left me temporarily, replaced by a desire to do nothing (well, that and watching movies). I'm trying to bust out, which this will hopefully help me do, so will see how the coming weeks work out. I still have lots of ideas and unfinished business (Top Films of My Life).

Anyway, this is going to be an update or my life, kind of. I finally got my first paid work here in Portland the last two weeks of February at the Portland International Film Festival (post on that hopefully coming). It was nice to be working and getting paid to do so, but it also took me out of my volunteer routine, so that's mildly frustrating. It's remarkably easy to fall back on doing nothing.

However, nothing will not be done for long (I'm going to assume that says what I want it to say). I get trained to be a Census worker at the end of March and will hopefully have at least a month of work (and ideally, more). I'm pretty excited about it. The only downfall is that I have to go to people's homes when there are, well, at home. This means nights and weekends. Fortunately, I'm too courteous to go much after 8 PM or annoying times on weekends, so I don't think it will be that bad. Plus, I get to essentially make my own schedule (from what I understand. I may find out different after [paid!] orientation).

I'm also trying to work my magic to teach some film classes at Portland Community College. I've had some positive correspondences, meaning I had a response to my email (sometimes, it's just nice to hear back from someone).

Best of all, I've started climbing again and it's wonderful (aside from this group of annoying guys that always seems to be there when I am. Shockingly, I'm not the only person in this city who has free time during the day).

Also, everyone needs to check out the band The Rural Alberta Advantage. They rock!


Also, DM Stith

Late and Irrelevant

While most people spent the end of December and early January catching up with movies and music and compiling their top-10 (or 20 or 634) lists, I sat around doing what I always do: sitting around. I have at least ten films from last year to catch up on and probably about twenty albums, so I am in no position to rank anything (an unfortunate side effect of not having student loan money to blow on entertainment).

However, that's not stopping me from telling you what my favorite of each medium was as of now, long after everyone stopped caring. I'll preface this saying I thought it was a pretty crappy year for both film and music. Very little grabbed a hold of me and I felt as though I had to dig especially deep to find any albums that connected.

Music: Outside Love -- The Pink Mountaintops
I was very disappointed that not even Pitchork's giant year end music list listed my favorite album in their top-50. I've returned to this album time and again and it always makes me feel great (in fact, listening to it is what inspired me to write this post). It's just insanely beautiful and haunting. The Pink Mountaintops albums are all incredibly different from each other and I'd say that this is the most accessible, or at least the most uplifting and sentimental. Then again, I'm a sucker for Stephen McBean and his Black Mountain collective (In the Future was one of my favorites of 2008). This is one of the few albums that practically demands that I stop what I'm doing to listen (throwing unexpected hurdles into this writing).


Movies: Drag Me to Hell/Up
I saw these on the same day and it's only appropriate to include them together here. One day, I'll have to choose, but until then, they shall remain linked. Drag Me to Hell was one of the best times I've ever had in the theater. I never saw any of Raimi's horror films in the theater for my first viewing and the cartoon-y glee that fills this film is infectious. I also thoroughly enjoyed how willing Raimi is to treat Alison Lohman like she is Bruce Campbell by abusing her and covering her with goo. It's also great how willing she seems to go with it. My only qualm is the cheesy computer effects, most notably with the anvil scene, but it's so much fun that it's easy to forgive. (PS -- People complain about seeing the "twist" coming, but that's not the point. Everyone knows what's going to happen, it's voyage to the inevitable that makes it fun). Skip to 28 seconds to get the trailer.

Up actually caused me a great deal of anxiety with all the high-wire antics, and I didn't even see it in 3-D. It's an adult film with the heart of a child. I loved hearing the weeping in the audience after the first 10 minutes. It's a ballsy and brilliant move by Pixar. Without a word, they tell us everything we need to know about Carl. It's what animation should be: taking us to a fantasy world where anything is possible. No limits. While it's clearly a darkhorse for the Best Picture Oscar, it's obviously the film I'm backing (since I don't have to choose between it and the regretfully ignored Drag Me to Hell).

Lack of Posts

Sorry about the utter lack of posts here. I blame my involvment with Sunday Screenings, which has seen me making silly little videos instead of writing silly little informational paragraphs. Also, I've been helping start a blog for The Hollywood Theatre (where I volunteer). I have loads of stuff I want to write about here, but my inspiration to write has been lacking (just ask my short story I haven't returned to since Thanksgiving). And let's not forget my month of Weird Al over at my Facebook page. I hope to kick myself in the butt to get myself going again. As an apology for my absense, I give you Mike Birbiglia:

Articles of Interest

My buddy Marty posted two very interesting articles on Twitter/Facebook that got my mind tubes working overtime, so I thought I'd share them with you and some of my thoughts.

The first is an article regarding the behemoth Avatar. I still haven't seen the film, and I'm sure many are tired of hearing me rationalize why, so I won't go into that here. Anyway, this article from CNN.com details the post-viewing experience of certain film-goers. For days and even weeks later, these people have been incredibly depressed that they don't live in Pandora (warning: I'm going to oversimplify the article, so you should just read it and come back...). The visual experience was so intense, and the lives of the natives so harmonic that the world around them, as one person put it, looks "gray." They even have pseudo-support groups on message boards to work through their disappointment in the real world.

My initial reaction was the meathead-ish "nerds!" But after a few moments of thought, it occurred to me that there is something much deeper going on here (I know, I'm practically Sherlock Holmes over here [the old one who thinks, not the new Action Jackson Sherlock]). The people who are going leaving Avatar feeling depressed clearly yearn for an escape from their lives. It seems to me that their experience is due to them not coping with real issues that may be to daunting to face.

People have been fighting against violence in films for a long time, stating that it causes violence. I don't agree with this and believe that anyone who is inspired by a film to commit violent crimes would have done it anyway, just with a different trigger (if you'll excuse the pun). The reaction of the people leaving Avatar depressed seems to be the same sort of situation, to me at least. You may find my argument specious, and if so, tell me in the comments.

The second article is about people in New York (and elsewhere, I suppose) who are reverting to a "paleo" diet of food items that cavemen (and women) would have access to. As far as diets go, it's kind of a neat idea, but doesn't hold water in my mind. The people practicing this diet are operating under the assumption that we are the same beings from 12,000 - 15,000 years ago. While a short period geologically speaking, that's a LONG time in human years (in case you didn't realize that), so the idea seems to be inherently fallacious. We have different dietary needs and lead different life styles, no matter how much you try to recreate the workout regiment of a caveman. Sure, they may have been a lot stronger, but aside from being physiologically different, the article also points out that they were lucky to live to thirty! Not a great trade off in my mind. And fasting for 24-36 hours AND giving blood more regularly than needed (operating under the assumption that cavemen frequently lived a pint short of blood due to day-to-day hardships) both seem like horrible ideas to me.

With modern medicine, as good and as bad as it can be, I don't think this diet will end up doing anything bad to people, but it just doesn't make sense.

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer @ Yahoo! Video