Birch bark canoes, Kuralt, wood

I was looking for a filmatization of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which I've just started reading. But oddly, there doesn't seem to be any! (A bit strange, revered as it is.) Instead I found an old and clearly beloved TV show, On The Road with Charles Kuralt. Here is a couple of kool segments.

I don't understand how you can build a canoe, much less a really good one, from birch bark and without glue or nails.  [Ah, sowing and pitch. Here's a vid, and bit more here.] It's amazing what some people can do with wood. It's a particularly difficult material because unless you "cheat" and glaze it, it will expand and contract with humidity, and all the joints has to be carefully constructed to take care of that! (I was educated a little by a friend who built me an amazing tilting drawing table with inlaid wood in the nineties.)

Google's terms of service

Wow, I guess it's true what they say: you don't know how many Gmail addresses you have until Google changes their terms of service!

I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan, new book, an "autobiography" by fictional character Alan Partridge, who actor Steve Coogan let loose on the years ago in the TV show Knowing Me, Knowing You, and later two series of I'm Alan Partridge.
Steve Coogan reads the book in the style of Alan Partridge, but it was apparently written by three-four people.

Alan Partridge is an interesting character. It's hard to say if he's a genuine a-hole, or if he's just really a mediocre blowhard, really self-centered, and extremely oblivious to the way he is coming across and the way he is treating other people. But in any case, if you're in a certain mood, it's really funny, both the shows and the book. The character has lots of zealous fans and it's one that Steve Coogan clearly has been struggling to step beyond.

The End of the Beginning

[Thanks to Ian]

The new crane/helicopter

Thanks to Tommy for finding this awesome video. This camera copter with built-in stabilizer will replace a lot of crane and helicopter shots in cinema. Not to mention it can go a lot of places where you can't put helicopters or cranes.

 
CineStar 3 Axis Gimbal from tabb firchau.
(It looks good in full-screen.)

Zorse

Male zebra + female horse = zorse. Huh!

I saw one in the film I'm Reed Fish, and I had to check 'em out. I'd looked up the movie being a Bledel fan, I am not entirely sure how well I like it yet.

Wikipedia says: A zorse is the offspring of a male zebra and a female horse. This cross is also called a zebrula, zebrule, zebra mule or golden zebra. The rarer reverse pairing is sometimes called a horbra, hebra, zebrinny or zebret. Like most other animal hybrids, the zorse is sterile.

Dear Photograph

Dear Photograph, photo blog.
Interesting play with time and personal history.

The last time, a couple of years ago, that I visited the street I grew up on, I was struck by how alien it was. It was like everything had changed, and I honestly might not have recognized it if I hadn't known where I was. I'm not even sure how much was physical changes in the street, and how much was me. But it was weird. It was like the place where most of my developing thoughts had happened, was just gone. Maybe that's one of the reasons they say "you can't go back".

A said:
with the same idea Amit Sha'al won a World Press Photo award. 

... it may even be working better with B/W photos.

"See You In My Dreams"

[Thanks to Phil]

Music by Lonely Boy.
Khan used the Canon 5D2 for the video to take advantage of the short depth of field (blurred backgrounds) this camera can give, unlike most affordable dedicated video cameras.


"See You In My Dreams" from Basharat Khan.

Caffeinated owl time

Art by Nikolay Popov.

When you need to function at ungodly hours: coffee!

Limit search to one site

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Pixar, Brave

They say the next Pixar movie, June 22, 2012, is Brave.

The story and look is a bit more traditional Disney than it is Pixar. Which immediately is not the greatest impression I could get. But some details seem promising, for example lookit the screenshot. I like that the her hair looks more hand-drawn than it looks rendered. It adds a bit of the abstraction I'm missing in the trailer otherwise.
Ah yes, lack of abstraction, that's what felt weak to me. And of course, I'm not crazy about pre-industrial stories or fantasy in general, paradoxically most of it seems to lack the very imagination which the genre by definition allows so much of.

And there's rumors that the next-next Pixar movie will be quite abstract, taking place in a girl's mind with personified emotions, sounds interesting.

I have read that when Pixar was little and unproven, they had to resist a lot of pressure from Disney to make Toy Story a musical. For one, I'm happy they did!

Not that I dislike Disney, I usually enjoy their films. For example Hercules and The Emperor's New Grove are very funny (and lovably abstract, especially the latter), good, and seminal.

Update:
Alex mentioned ParaNorman. That looks like fun. And the light in it is beautiful, see for example the short clips neat the beginning of the trailer, of the sunrise-lit street and the hero seen through a window. It seems to be a stop-motion movie, I wonder how they make such beautiful lighting.

90210?

I just noticed there's a 90210 show on TV. I could'na believe it, my sister was a fan of that show over 20 years ago!
But apparently it is the forth series in the "franchise".

Now like then, the actors seem too old to be in high school. And now, man, how thin are some of those girls!? (One of them shown on the right.) Damn, they're barely even attractive. It seems like the bigger the obesity percentage grows, the more people over-compensate in the fashion- and now the entertainment-business.
While I'm being gratuitously critical, none of the actors are exactly overflowing with personality either. But maybe it goes with the bubble-gum tween-twit TV show genre. The characters they portray are the rich and popular kids, and if one of them were to be burdened by a personality, he would be out in the cold faster than you can say "fake tan".

I have seen one show in the genre which I liked though, I wish I could remember the title, but it had ironic distance and was funny, because it was a parody of the culture and intrigue which goes on behind the scenes of a TV show like it.
Update: it was Grosse Point.