"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part seven

Movie quotes

Who has favorite movie qoutes?

Pascal offered up, from Batman:
"Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?"

Two of mine are both from the android Roy in Bladerunner:

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes"

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."

That film has to be one of the most lyrical ever made, both linguistically and visually. A triumph.

UPDATE:
"A year ago exactly on this same night we were assembled here in this very room, I your pastor, and you my beloved flock. With hopefulness in my heart I told you then that with Lucifer's aid we might look forward to a more succulent occasion. Cast back your minds. There we were, gathered together, gloomy and despondent, around a single meager woodcutter."
- The Fearless Vampire Killers: (Roman Polanski, 1967) Ferdy Mayne (as Count von Krolock)

..."The Fearless Vampire Killers" is another favorite of mine. Wonderful, strange film, very abstract, but everything in it works together like clockwork. Ferdy Mayne, who seems to have worked only very little in movies, is magnificent as the Count, his Transilvanian accent is the best ever. Don't miss this film.

Vincent in the rain

I am reading Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother: Dear Theo.
It is not as easy a read as Stone's van Gog biography Lust For Life, but for fans, it's a deep book.

Vincent tells of how he went into the fields to paint, and then a rain storm came. He sought meager shelter behind a big tree while it lasted, and then resumed. And because he had started with a low vantage point, he now had to stand on his knees in the mud! He seems to merely mention this to point out why he considers common workman's clothes to be the artist's best friend...

He also tells how he went out to paint the sea, in a storm so strong he could barely stay on his feet. One painting got so full of sand from the beach that he went to a nearby inn and retouched it... and then went back out into the storm to finish it with fresh impressions!

Today, most of us: "Go out with the camera today? Nah, it's a bit nippy, and I just got the Sopranos on DVD..."

Irving Stone edited Dear Theo, and while he may have done a good job generally, I think it was a disservice to the material to not indicate where he cut it. It is just one long text, no dates and no indication where each quote starts or ends.

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part six

Deep Forest and "Walk Like An Egyptian"

Sharing another rare gem, this unusual and cool edition of Walk Like An Egyptian is by the excellent alternative/world-music band Deep Forest. I recorded it from the DVD of Mission Cleopatra (see earlier post).

Jeffery videos New Zealand

Laurie Jeffery's travel videos, with his family in New Zealand, doing the big nature nudism thing. Verra nice stuff.

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part five

Cropping and aspect ratios of photos

A nice article by Michael Reichman about cropping and aspect ratios of photos.

CGI and Over the Hedge

I've just watched the computer-animated (CGI) film Over the Hedge.
1: The story and writing is... good. Not awesome, but entertaining and often very funny.
2: The voice acting is fantastic.
3: The action sequences are awesome and funny.
4: The visuals... are out of this world. Or maybe that should be "into this world", for the amazing thing, apart from the sheer amount of detail, is how photographic they are. You might not notice because the story is engrossing, but if you watch it a second time (the commentary track is good), take note of the light. They have very deliberately made the light look like the real world, including making sun-drenched details in the background be almost washed out (as in the picture above), and big blocks of things in the shade, etc. The light coming through semi-translucent objects like the turtle's shell is gorgeous.
The way they use "tele lenses" and "wide angle lenses" (of course it is all data in a computer, but they can program everything to simulate the real world, including camera positions and what lenses to use...) is amazing. The space is so convincing.

Of course this is a comedy aimed at the family market. (Read: basically for children, but we hope the adults will enjoy it too.) But the amazing progress of talent, skill, and technology displayed here make me very optimistic about future CGI films for adults, like SF and fantasy. It is getting very hard to imagine what can't be done any more, given a good budget. (And the budget necessary shrinks every years as hardware and software progresses.)

Actually I think that the main reason almost all the CGI films so far have been family films is that the big problem is making really convincing humans. The humans are getting very good, but they still look a bit like dolls. Not the best thing for a serious film. But it'll get there.
But then they can always mix live-action with CGI. And it is often being done very well. But we need imagination. One thing we almost never see, not even in written science fiction, is weird alien creatures... but intelligent and benevolent, not monsters. One of the few writers who do it is Iain M. Banks. I would love to see one of his books as a big budget SF movie.

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part four

You should this picture in a large print, or a very large monitor like my 30-incher. It is a different experience, all the fine textures aren't seen in moderate sizes.

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part three

Red and Yellow lights

It is a strange phenomenon of the light that in the picture I posted below, it looks like the topmost light is yellow. On the other picture you can see that it is actually red, and the middle one is yellow. It must be due to the overload that happens in a photograph. The eye has a much bigger dynamic range, so clear colors retain their clarity as they become brighter, whereas in a photo you can't add more light to them, so you have to add white, and they loose their cleanness of color.

Evening light

Again a handheld picture, 1600 ISO, F4.0, 1/25second, image-stabilized lens, Canon 5D.

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part two

M.I.T. for free

Yet another indication that we are "not in Kansas anymore": The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is putting their course materials on the web for free!

"Industrial Town Ekstetic" part one

This is my new "Industrial Town Ekstetic" part one.

The spelling is stolen from Ansel Adams. He took a commercial commision to shoot some photos for a calendar. The CEO from the customer told Adams: "Now don't make them too ekstetic." Gotta love that.

What's Luck Got To Do With It?

Following up on "luck"...
I am sure you know people who are always unlucky. Or seem to be.
I had a colleague once who had a reputation for always winning. And sure enough, she did. At one company party there were four prizes to be won by lottery amongst 400 employees. She won two of them!

I think being unlucky is the condition of your higher mind telling you something.
And being lucky is being in alignment with your higher mind.

I think we each have a human body/mind/beingness which is a tiny tiny part of a huge Higher Mind which goes beyond time and space.
Beyond that is a higher mind for all living things.
And beyond that is God or infinity.

And I think our goal in life is to harmonize all those.

The main barrier to this is that our Human Mind is jealous and proud, and hates to share control and credit with the higher minds. We need to learn to let go of that.

More Jana/Uriel

I have a Slovak/Danish friend named Miro who actually tours with Jana/Uriel (See post from a couple of days ago), and I asked him for news about her.
It seems she is as busy as ever, touring with both her bands, and has been in a movie coming up in spring, a big American/Swiss production.

This is a fun-loving person and group... at some concerts they make a "warm-up band" called Goats of Bohemia (Bohemia is the old word for the Czech Republic). This consists of Jana herself, a dancer, and my friend Miro, all dressed up in jogging suits and goats masks, and making fully improvised music on kitchen utensils! This has been received with enthusiasm by all audiences so far.
I believe it is a mark of genius combined with great skill to be able to just get up and do something improvised and have it be really good.

Miro sent me some pictures, some of which he took himself. There is Jana with a Third Eye which Miro painted. And Jana with a big owl, by the famous Tocnik Castle. And Goats of Bohemia in concert.

Lucky

In Danish we have an expression which could loosely be translated as: "that's more luck than it's intelligence". I think this is it.
(As usual, click for larger view. Author unknown.)

Gasolin'

The Danish band Gasolin' is not well known outside Scandinavia, but there they were huge in seventies until the broke up. Many have tried to convince them to reform, but nobody has succeeded. Their old recordings keep finding new audiences amongst new generations.

Here is their Good Time Charlie.

Employee or employer?

Thanks to TTL for putting up a couple of interesting links. For instance, Steve Pavlina writes about why you should never ever have a job. Basically he says that being employed makes you a slave or a pet, while being self-imployed or a business owner makes you free. Perhaps I am an odd person to argue against that, for am doing very well on my own and I love it. But I am lucky. I know many business owners who work longer hours and earn less than the people they employ. And they have more ulcers as well.
Especially if you work for a small company where the boss is somebody you can talk to, there is something to be said for being employed. Maybe your real interest is rock collecting, and who can earn money on that? Maybe you enjoy your job and your colleagues, and go do your stuff on your own time. I certainly don't regret a minute of the time I spent as an employee, I had fun and I learned a lot.

Basically freedom has very little to do with your physical circumstances. Freedom is in the mind. A millionaire can be a free man or be trapped by his mind, and the same is true for a bum.

There is more I agree with in Steve's articles about a new business, and 10 lessons for entrepreneurs.

Update: He is right, though, about security: I had three jobs which I loved, and all three ended when the employer could no longer afford to keep me.
And now I've been self-employed for ten years (in March), and there has not been one lean month. (Obviously this is a bit exceptional, I'm just presenting the opposite side to the coin here.)

Black Cat

Another of those semi-abstract pictures I love. Copyright by Pankaj Sharma. I got it here.

Jana Pope, a.k.a. Uriel

One of the most seminal and powerful artists you are like to hear about, or more likely not, is Jana Pope, a.k.a. Uriel, a.k.a. JANA KRATOCHVÍLOVÁ. She really should be big world wide, but she is best known in her home land the Czech Republic, where friends helped me dig out new material from her after I started a search for this artist who I became a big fan of back in the eighties, and who is still the only musician I've sent a fan letter to. (Small fib there, I sent one to Iggy Pop too, but he invited it on one of his records.)

Here is one of her most melodious songs: Santa Maria.

And here is one of her most brilliant hard rock songs: Time 4 Revolution. This is from her separate band, the ultra hard-core Illuminati. If you like industrial hard rock, this is the uncut stuff.

Earlier I posted two interviews with Uriel, here and here.