pink roses

'ruby tuesday is available for purchase on itunes.
i purchased it.
i think i've listened to it four times already.
and i smile.
i smile because the song makes me smile.

and that's pretty cool.

great expectations

remember back in the day, when 'sheep go to heaven' was like 'homestarrunner' was back in the day? when there were updates on a regular basis. lately, 'sheep go to heaven' has been like 'homestarrunner' has been lately, new material coming forth at irregular intervals.
i miss those good old days.

a handful of weeks ago, my roommate mark commented about 'the office'. he observed that michael [steve carell] is so often disappointed, frustrated, or upset because his expectations are too high. i think i was making a sandwich at the time and, while i momentarily gave more thought to the insight than to my peanut butter, i soon returned to my lunch as we began another episode.

this idea of over-developed expectations has stayed with me and has proved to quite profound.
consider how many moments in our own lives we become discouraged, angry, or depressed because things didn't turn out how we wanted them to. we wanted our family to go to the park and to laugh and play in the daisies beneath the sun; we wanted to come to college and have memorable roommates and stories of zany adventures; we wanted to be the most amazing employee our company has ever experienced.

what encouraging is that i have had fun memories with my family; i have had some fun experiences with many roommates who have also become very close friends. but it didn't happen the way i imagined it would, and it certainly didn't happen immediately.

the advertising world is based largely on the idea of extraordinary expectations. when i go out with my visa card, i expect i can buy things. but the new credit card commercials now tell me that if i go out shopping, i won't just get the sweet pair of pumas, i will get all of my worries and sadnesses whisked away; that this credit card will give me precisely what i'm missing in my persuit of happyness.
yes, it is fun to buy new things. my 'best of david bowie' cd turned out to be very good choice in the midst of a weekend full of changes. i'm glad i bought it [even after i found out there was an even better 2-disc set]. but what has felt even better is what the commercials don't tell you to expect at all: paying off my credit card debt. that felt good.

socially, it is very easy follow over-inflated expectations. we look at others and see them laughing with people and presume any number of things; that they must all be very close and dear friends, that they have more fun, that they call each other and go upscale shopping or hangliding everyday, or whatever it may be. then, we who have several good friends, suppose that we do not have good friends, or that we do not have enough or do enough, pushing our perspective of what is desired of us higher and further from us.

i've been reading a biography of thomas jefferson, and even that alone has been enlightening. when i visited the jefferson memorial last fall, i was struck with historical stars of awe at the work he did. thinking about what jefferson and the other great founding fathers achieved, i soon found myself thinking of them as being perfect, saying all the right things at all the right times. reading this book has shown that jefferson preferred to be quiet and ponderous, that he faults and shortcomings, but worked to elminate them and accomplished many great things in spite of them.
on a more specific point, the 'gentlemanly' class of the era [those who had acchieved a level of financial fortitude such that they did not have to work] were excessively concerned with appearing carefreely wealthy, purchasing luxury to show that they could, as they slid further under debt.

is this leading to a philosophy of 'can't win, don't try'? heck no. i very much agree with the idea to 'commit yourself to excellence', even as i struggle to live it. but there is a significant difference between expecting something to be good, and wanting it to be the most amazing thing you and/or your friends/complete strangers have ever experienced. hoping for your date to be endlessly romantic will most likely leave you lying on the couch at home afterward, wondering what went wrong. looking forward to a fun evening will probably bring you home with a good attitude, and maybe even a spring in your step.

true it is also, that we will most often not exceed our goals, so that the high we set our goals, the more we will accomplish, even if we do not meet our goals, but that's not what this is about.

...half the time, i imagine my these blog postings to someday be read alongside thoreau. or at least published and sold at barnes & noble...

neverland

i had the opportunity to go home for a week, celebrating my sister's wedding reception, brother's college graduation, and spending mother's day at home. i've written before about the wonderment of going home, of how much more i appreciate the land that seemed so mundane when i grew up there, and that hasn't faded. being in my parent's home is equally fun. living in my own little townhouse, i appreciate all that my mom has accomplished in ways of keeping her home organized and beautiful.
returning home feels like a treasure hunt. i love looking through the boxes of toys and junk are now piled in the room that used to be my brother's and used to be mine [and used to be my sister's, if you want to go back that far]; i leafed through my old role-playing books, read a comic book, and, of course, went through 'the legend of zelda' yet again [i was surprised at how much even my sister remembered about the game].
but the problem with going home is that it can so easily become little more than frosting [especially with all the cakes we had for the festivities]. the freelance workstyle makes it very easy to leave it all in utah, so that when i go home, i have no real responsibilities. and while that can sound good and is nice for a while, responsibility is like vegetables; we can get by with skipping for a short while, but that's what actually makes us healthy and wise. getting up at 10 [or, shamefully later], watching the cats over a bowl of cereal, playing nintendo with my brother, and not doing much more because there isn't much inherently required of me; you're not really going anywhere. blah.

however, i did play a couple of good games of frisbee golf [little did i know, moorhead has a really good course, one that is surprisingly popular], spent a nervous day taking a mysteriously sick cat to the vet, went running, got some work done on my scrapbook, and, of course, played mah-jong.

the paradigm has shifted

on friday, may 4th, 2007, my sister got married to a very nice boy.

the next day, one of my best friends got married to his best friend [and who would have thought it would snow that day?].

with all this happening around me, i did the best i could and bought a david bowie cd.

some kind of creative drought

remember in grade school art class, when you'd get the clay and try to sculp that good idea that you had? and when it didn't turn out as you imagined, you reworked it again and again and while it did get better, it never really got 'good'? clay, drawings, blog postings, it doesn't really matter--sometimes art is hard.

that's where i've been at lately.
editing our group's fhe video has been like sculpting a pile of dirt. after several hours, it was much better, but still not really good. we didn't win 'best picture' tonight, but we didn't deserve to.

work today was the same--big scenes that just didn't look right no matter where i put the camera or how i placed the lights.... mountainview high school has very odd architecture and horrendous available lighting. there, i said it.

if you want to find me, i'll be out in the sandbox, building castles in the sun.

confessions of a green d.p.

tonight feels like a 'summer night'. and it's started acting like one, too. some good techno is the ideal counterpart to such times.

a few weeks ago, i was working as the loader on a little horror movie we were shooting up at the rocky point haunted house [which, i come to find out, is one of the best haunted houses in the contry]. one day, as i was hanging out in dr. frankenstein's laboratory, i got a call--the kind of call you never actually get:
'hi jeff, this is brian. i'm directing a movie in a few weeks and i'm wondering if you'd like to shoot it.'

* * * * * * *

i thought had to work and sweat and network and then you get the chance to shoot a movie. i didn't think people just called you out of the blue. and yet, as i look back as i write this, i realize that maybe i was actually working and sweating and networking, all without realizing it.
and while inside of me i was jumping up and down and couldn't stop thinking 'ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy', i mustered up a yes-i-think-i-can-if-can-fit-it-into-my-schedule reply of 'i'd be happy to'.
i then spent the rest of the day balancing the bafflement of 'dang, i'm dp-ing a feature' with illusions of granduer, feeling that i was now the next big thing to blossom in the film world, that the american society of cinematographers could prepare a seat for me at their next convention, and that i would have to make time in my schedule for the parade in my honor. then i realized that i'm shooting a small low-budget movie and that many of my friends have done much bigger projects and still do not own their own tigers....

...all the same, i was ecstatic on the way home, singing loudly to the radio [which seemed to take my requests] and shared my joy [many thanks, lj]. equally fun was finally being able to call up my friends from school and offer them real, paid work on a real live movie.

on friday we picked up the equipment. we have a tiny little truck with a handful of equipment, barely more than an oversized student project, and i felt like a kid in a candy store. having a truck, packed with equipment that i personally selected, was almost intoxicating. talking with some other people there, i met a guy who, upon hearing that i was the 'director of photography' on a feature, began pitching himself to me as camera operator. i was very kind and gracious, gave him my information, and can't help but wonder what he'll think when he looks me up on imdb and sees several credits of 'loader' to my name....

yesterday was our first day.
i hadn't been nervous all weekend, but pulling up to our first location, the weight of leadership began to rest upon me. one of the hardest things was the initial awkwardness of working with the other crew. our gaffer was a good friend of my from school, someone whom i'd worked with on many projects, and it was nice seeing him. what was weird was that our key grip, despite being a good friend, was a good 15-20 years older than me and i've only worked with him when i was a 2 a.c. i did a commercial a few months ago when i ended up taking a camera and shooting some 'b roll' inserts; asking him to set up a light or stand even then felt a little strange: 'um, do you think you could maybe move that light over here if you have some time?' being the d.p. with him as my grip took some getting used to--his quiet and humble nature almost made it harder. even my camera assistant was a friend who, just last week, i was working under.
and so i spent several moments throughout the day thinking about leadership; about finding a balance between giving people their space and autonomy, yet also realizing that part of leadership is leading, going forward and walking ahead, directing the way to go. and often there is no one 'right' way, but the mantle of leadership entitles one to simple choice--where you choose is where we go.

in addition to pondering over and dealing with the 'director' part, the 'of photography' aspect occupied the rest of my mind space. there's the inherent pensiveness of 'what if this doesn't look' very good? with momentary exceptions, i haven't really done this since i was at the byu, over two years ago. sometimes a scene just seems to light itself beautifully. other times, it feels like a bad cowlick--no matter what you do, it just doesn't look right.
while i haven't been shooting since school, i have been watching and learning, and it's paying off. [having a broader arsenal of 'brushes' since college helps, too]. there were times when i would look at a scene and be quite happy, and other times when i would be at the limit of what i could try with the time and resources available and think, 'well, it looks like a 'jeff' scene'. for the director's last movie, his cameraman wasn't someone who was a 'cinematographer' so much as he was a 'moviemaker', and so i think the attention paid to the camerawork is higher, but, for better or worse, i never really feel comfortable until the director and crew are exclaiming how freakin' amazing the shots look.

when i wasn't musing about the philosophy of leadership, i was musing about the philosophy of lighting. like so many other things, the skill and difference is in the details. an average person with a camera shooting a landscape would get an image 90% identical to a professional cinematographer. but that 10% makes all the difference. being able to see where 'good enough' and can become 'even better'; where a shadow could be lessened, where a little gold light could be bounced, that is where the subtle but significant changes are. looking back on my own work, the shots i am most proud of are those where i saw space for a detail--a little light placed down the cliff, acting as the glow from the city lights below, the light hidden in the hummer's sun visor; and on monday, we were at the peaks ice arena, where the light is prett even and flat and generally usuable. put i had our grip just 'float' a small, soft light off camera, so that the light on their faces was a little brighter on one side. they didn't 'need' it, but once it was there, they looked better.

ice. yes, my first day as a professional d.p. we shot a hockey game scene--maybe i was inspired to take the hockey class my last semester at school.... out there on the ice [on skates] with the camera was interesting, and we shot several small moments with blocked scenes; actors scoring, checking, getting revenge, etc. but we also needed some general shots of the game. so the director called both teams together and had them do a full on scrimmage, first warning them to watch out for me.
i'm confortable enough on the ice, but when i'm trying to also shoot a movie and dodge hockey players [whose minds are on the puck, not the camera guy], i begin to wish i could use more than 10% of my brain. i got some good shots of the game, and had a few close calls with some focused players. as i was coming around and following the puck rather well, even getting a little ambitious, a player crashed in front of me and i couldn't do anything about it.

falling over him, i was glad that my cinematographer instincts were still sharp: 'i heal; the camera doesn't'. my arms were out, because that's what we do when we fall--we want to brace ourselves. unfortunately, in my hand was the camera. instict overrode instict, and i tucked the camera in toward me, meaning i landed on my bent wrist.
when the flash of action was over, i was lying on the ice and wondering what condition the camera was in and what the was that i saw go spinning across the ice when i landed.

the spinning object was the battery, and the camera seemed to be fine. yes, i was proud of myself. my wrist still hurts [just a nasty bruise], but the cheers that came from the section full of extras as i stood up did wonders.

my mom makes 'to do' lists each day, and crosses things off as she does them. she once told me that if you do something that wasn't on your list, put it on the list so that you can cross it off, too. i am putting 'shoot a movie on ice skates' on my list of life goals and am crossing it off.

[for those of you wondering, yes, i still wear my 'ninja cinematographer' headband]

can't buy me love

i bought a small 'moleskin' on monday night. i like it. it helps me feel 'cultured'. i liked the selection at barnes&noble, and considered getting the 'journalists' flip-style booklet, since that's easier to write in with a left hand, the un-lined pages seemed to invite more freeform writings, and i smiled at the book that also had parisian maps in it--even though i'm not a paris-phile, there's something charmingly bohemian about it; but i went with the standard, and i regret nothing. i like carrying it around and jot down things when i want to. i hope to someday have little drawings in there, or perhaps a poem [i wonder if i should write poems], and maybe even a grail map.
an excerpt from today, writing about little good things:
*we've been on the same battery all day
*i've eaten a good amount of fruits and veggie. probably five servings
*i've been talking and laughing with people on set
*i haven't had to rush at all [that one came crashing down on me but a few minutes later...]
*the day has gone by pretty fast--only 80 minutes left
*i sat on the standards [tripod] without spreaders and fell but didn't get hurt

$20

i stopped by the tiny wellsfargo branch down by centennial, where i used to live, to deposit a couple of checks and got a little cash back. stuffing a small handful of bills into my wallet, i was reminded of my former roommates from the aforementioned area once laughing at my slighly oversized wallet.
back at home, i joined mark in a dvd episode of the simpsons and enjoyed a bottle of cream soda. partway into the second episode, i got a call from the teller at the bank, asking if i had left received my money. i said that i had, clearly remembering the slight struggle to get it in. he said there had been some money left on his counter and wondered if it could be mine. i pulled out the cash and counted it, and, sure enough, i was missing a twenty.

when i got to the bank, he said that he had stepped away for a moment after i left, and when he came back the next customer questioned about the mystery money lying on the conter. the teller checked his books and found that he was balanced, and so deduced that the dude whose haircut with malinna the amazing paul mitchell student had just been rescheduled probably left it there. he somehow tracked down my phone number and gave me the call.

it's nice to be reminded that there are still intengrious people in the world. = )

other happy things:
*e.l. fudge cookies are on sale for $1 at macy's
*my 'babel' poster came today. brand new and $2 on ebay
*it's conference weekend. oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

all these things that i've seen, part 3

elizabeth [1998] -long, slow, and as difficult to keep the inter-character politics straight as 'braveheart', but without the great battle sequences and blue facepaint. while no aspect of the production showed a lack of quality, i really didn't care much.
as is the case with most movies, however, the last 15-20 was somewhat interesting and brought together the story through a montage that was most certainly homage to one of the greats. in a sequence paralleling the 'baptism/execution' scene of 'the godfather', we see that elizabeth is eliminating her enemies to consolidate her power as well. further referencing coppola's masterpiece, the film ends with elizabeth ceremonially assuming her throne, establishing in no uncertain terms that she rules, and that you should never takes sides against the country. after the fade to black, the film informs us that the queen ruled for another 40 years, creating england's golden age and making it the most powerful country in the world.
interesting how information like that can make the film that much more enjoyable.
--less than i expected--

four weddings and a funeral [1994] -the pacing moves along briskly, leaving no time to get bored; keeping track of the eponymous number of weddings and funerals helps, too. edited for tv, it's interesting how the british profanity was left in; it means nothing to me, but would have burned the ears of some of my friends. the movie gets in just as things get interesting and gets out before anything becomes dull; the story brings a joyful array of characters, including a deaf brother, whose signing ability becomes more than just another flavor to the story.
i am a hugh grant fan--he's just too darn charming. 'about a boy', 'sense and sensibility', 'the englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain', and this; you just can't beat the bloke. i think this was his introduction to u.s. audiences, and over ten years later, his sheepishly pathetic charm shows no signs of fading.
it was interesting to see the film's philosophizing on the institution of marriage, this being an early predecessor to our current climate of nervous bafflement toward matrimony. the movie looks at marriage with a mixture of yearning and apprehension. a mentality that has only grown amidst the late 20's early 30's crowd in the new millennium, notably dealt with in both of zach braff's directed features, viewing marriage can be a scary thing. the reservation toward entering into the commitment shows that there is still some respect for the sacred covenant, evidenced by the fear of breaching such. yet even the careless hugh grant character [and his surrounding enterouge] felt a yearning for something more than just a night in bed; the desire to be one with someone is within each of us.
not until the final act of the story did i find myself really caring about the characters, but during the closing sequence, i was smiling because i was happy for them.
--better than i expected--

platoon [1986] -best picture 1986, on the afi top 100, i was curious to see it. sadly, it did not hold up to great vietnam movies like 'the deer hunter' or 'apocalypse now'. what happened? well, universal truths come from specific experiences. 'deer hunter' and 'apocalypse now' are the journey's and experiences of defined characters--martin sheen or robert deniro [and/or christopher walken] are all unique characters, following paths that we have not specifically seen before. charlie sheen in 'platoon', however, could have easily been one of thousands of grunts in the surreal jungle world. there is no clear objective or plot with the movie; its thesis statement is simply, 'war is hell', and spend the next two hours eloquently stating such. i disliked oliver stone's very anti-war 'born on the fourth of july', and was happy that 'platoon' was not so nauseatingly manipulative. still, the movie gave us little to hold on to. there were a dozen tertiary characters, including johnny depp [whom i did not recognize until his credit shot at the end] and john c. mcginley ['scrubs's dr. cox], all of whom i suspect most vietnam vets could recognize as being from their company.
my knowledge of old war movies is about as shallow as my experience with westerns, but john wayne, gary cooper, and the heroes of yesteryear made war look glorious and heroic, with clearly defined boundaries between right and wrong, the good and the bad. and, to a degree, it seems that things were moreso back then. even the modern wwII epic, 'saving private ryan', doesn't invoke the same nightmare as the contemporary vietnam stories. 'platoon' showed the horrors of war without leaving room for dispute while avoiding repulsion. in the end, we are left feeling like that of our everyman protagonist, not knowing what went on out there, but it was crazy.
--less than i expected--

patton [1970]-patton could have easilly be a movie about a stubborn and headstrong general who lived for war, believing in reincarnation and who won one of the most impressive victories in not only world war II, but in the history of the united states. and it would have been a fine movie that way. there are two aspects of it that make it become so much more. the foremost is an seemingly small incident that ripples through the entire movie. grandpa simpson put it best when he said, 'you can push them out of a plane, you can march them off a cliff, you can send them off to die on some forsaken rock. but for some reason, you can't slap 'em.' the general's slapping of a soldier who had lost his nerve created a stir throughout the military and government bureacracy as well as a spike of outrage among the u.s. civilians. soon patton was released from his command, even after making a formal apology for his actions, and was stationed around as little more than a decoy. when the germans read from the american newspapers that the great and formidable general, one of their biggest concerns [and rightfully so], had been demoted for slapping a grunt, they blow it off, unable to believe that the americans would dismiss their greatest leader for something so trivial.
the question is never explicitly addressed and barely stated, yet it is one of the movie's ponderings that makes it deeper than 'just a good war movie'. is there logic in removing a great strength in the army or any organization because of a relatively small indiscretion? is the loss of leadership worth the example made about the importance of rules above all else? in our current culture, we are much quicker to praise heroes who break the rules to achieve their noble goal, following that the ends do indeed justify the means. but in a movie made thirty years ago about people thirty years before that, it was much more of a question [making a wwII during the vietnam war is intriguing in inself, but won't be discussed here].
the 'always on the offensive' personality of general patton seems possibly impeccable early in the movie, that perhaps making people hate you at the moment but getting the job done is the way things work, not caring whether or not they like you afterward. the other strength of 'patton' is that it does not glorify it's emponymous character, but tells the story of an eccentric man. the antithesis is karl malden's character, omar bradley, whose book provided much of the source material for the screenplay [written, by the way, by a pre-godfather francis ford coppola]. general bradley is a good friend of patton's, and they work together throughout the war, but with very different attitudes. while we do not see much of his leadership, we can infer that bradley leads with respect, not blazing determination. when patton is given command over the 3rd army, he is under bradley, but he has also learned humility. he no longer reaps results through shouting and fear, he has learned that people respond even more effectively to support and affirmation, best shown in the wonderful scene where he hops out of his jeep and cheerfully directs intersecting patrols of tanks himself.
i've been wary of 'patton' for a while, not only because it seemed like a boring old movie that my dad likes to watch, but also because i wondered if i could ever take george c. scott seriously after his amazing role in 'dr strangelove, or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb'. neither was a problem; the dialogue carried with it just enough fun and levity to keep it from being a dry and dull military movie and from the opening monologue to the final scene with him and willy [not william] the pit bull, i never doubted he was patton. the title is correct; it is not about world war II, nor anything or anyone else but george s. patton. there is no bias, no glorifying nor demonizing, but a movie that tells the story of a person.
--better than i expected--

turkey juice

i've worked with people from both sides of the united states, and have done a car commercial with some fancy dutch director, but turkey was a new one. we did a two-day commercial at the u of u huntsman center--kind of like the marriott center but covered in red and it leaves you feeling.... uncomfortable. the concept was to have memot okur, the turkish guy on the utah jazz, playing basketball against himself. he then proceeds to thoroughly school himself, and after knocking himself to the ground during shot, pulls him up and into himself again. he drinks 'dimes' fruit juice and feels happy. that meant a body double and a lot of place-marking, dots on the double's face [for motion-tracking and digital replacement], and even a green screen at the end.
getting the crew list was fun, because it was once again the usual group of guys i work with, and having a crew you know really makes a lot of the difference. the director and other ad guys were from turkey, which is really an interesting language, and i found myself looking up the country on wikipedia on my day off; interesting place. the dp was from new york but spoke turkish, as well as french, russian, and japanese, and thought it was neat that i did too [just japanese]. that was nice, because it gave me some brownie points, and eased the pressure off me when things got busy. the turkish guys were friendly and cool, and even though they spoke english, m&m's are also a universal language.

all during the shoot, i was curious to try some of this turkish fruit juice [apple, grape, peach, and pommegranate], but despite there being several cartons sitting on the craft services table, they were for the commercial and so were off limits. when we wrapped, however, they let us take some. i was thrilled and grabbed four. on one side everything is written in turkish, and on the other side is the english translation. alongside being toted with 'no sugar added', another spot on the carton says 'with cell'. i don't even know what that's trying to say. but the juice is good.

this is not one of my better posts. i need to write when i'm feeling it, not when it's convenient.

if i had a million dollars....

alexander nevsky (1938)
ashes and diamonds (1958)
l'avventura (1960)
ballad of a soldier (1959)
beauty and the beast (1946)
black orpheus (1959)
brief encounter (1945)
the fallen idol (1948)
fires on the plain (1959)
fists in the pocket (1965)
floating weeds (1959)
forbidden games (1952)
the 400 blows (1959)
grand illusion (1937)
haxan (1922)
ikiru (1952)
the importance of being earnest (1952)
ivan the terrible, part II (1958)
le jour se leve (1939)
jules and jim (1962)
kind hearts and coronets (1949)
knife in the water (1962)
the lady vanishes (1938)
the life and death of colonel blimp (1943)
loves of a blonde (1965)
m (1931)
m. hulot's holiday (1953)
miss julie (1951)
pandora's box (1929)
pepe le moko (1937)
il posto (1961)
pygmalion (1938)
rashomon (1950)
richard III (1955)
the rules of the game (1939)
seven samurai (1954)
the seventh seal (1957)
the spirit of the beehive (1973)
la strada (1954)
summertime (1955)
the third man (1949)
the 39 steps (1935)
ugetsu (1953)
umberto d. (1952)
the virgin spring (1960)
viridiana (1961)
the wages of fear (1953)
the white sheik (1952)
wild strawberries (1957)

late last year, janus films [parent of the criterion collection] put out an 'essential art house' set of 50 great films. i watched 'alexander nevsky' yesterday and really enjoyed it, and have since been eying this set again and again. i don't need it. that's a lot of stuffy, artsy, black and white foreign movies. and it screams 'culture.'
suggested retail price: $850. direct from criterionco.com: $650.
all the same, i put it on my amazon wishlist; it worked for my buster keaton collection.

a bag of chocolate chips

i had a dinner appointment this afternoon and was a little late leaving for it. coming out my front door, i saw my neighbor coming back to her door [roughly six inches from mine]. she said hi and asked if i happened to have any chocolate chips. there have been a few times in the past when they have come by, inquiring to borrow an egg or an onion or some other food that single guys don't have much. but this time, well, we might have chocolate chips. i rummaged through the 'cooking ingredient cupboard' and found a partial bag of swirled chocolate chips and a brand new bag of western family chocolate chips.
may i say, i was thoroughly happy about this.
i proudly offered her the choices, and as she took the bag, she recommended that the 'macy's' brand chips were better [and usually cheaper] than the western family variety.
i was quite glad that i had dawdled around, walking out my door at that exact moment.

and yes, i thought that 'western family' was the macy's brand--i'll have to look into this.

wallet-floaties on a friday night.

my roommate comes home from work yesterday and says that a friend of a guy he works with [or something like that] is going flying tonight and invited him to come along and that if i wanted to come, he would give him a call and see if it was alright. as much as i wanted to hang around the house and tweak pictures in iphoto, this sounded like a much better way to go. so we grabbed our cameras and headed down to the spanish fork airport [no, i didn't know there was one either].

many years ago for a scout activity, we got to go flying in some little cessna, which was roughly the same size as my honda civic, and that's what i was expecting for the friday night flight.
no. this thing wasn't a tiny airplane; it was a teeny tiny airplane. imagine two chairs at the marriott center [or any arena seats] inside of a lightweight metal peapod with wings. like that. and a cool little windshield dome that encloses over you like a star wars fighter.
after several safety tests and checks and a briefing on how to exit the plane should we have a 'problem', mark hopped in while i snapped a bunch of pictures for him, playing with shutter speeds and the rotation of the propellor [roughly 1/250 is best; 1/4000 makes it look like it's not even moving].
i hung out on the ground, texting on my phone and calling friends while they flew up around timpanogos and around american fork canyon.
after what seemed about half an hour [i later learned that it was closer to a full hour], they landed and it was my turn to hop in. i put on the headphones [for talking in a noisy cockpit] and gave some goofy smiles to mark's camera as we taxied out to the runway. in a little 'mork from ork' podplane, you hop off the ground pretty quickly, and before long we were flying off into a beautiful sunset toward mt nebo. at times as we flew toward the snow-covered mountains in the setting sun, it looked very much like the opening shots of 'the two towers'.
we had been out for a little bit when he said, 'it's your plane; you're the pilot.'
wha?
i tenderly took the stick and moved it a little--yes, i was controlling this plane.
lest there be any question, this was nothing like playing 'top gun' on my old nintendo. yes, i knew that the play wasn't really sitting on anything, but had this weird feeling that if i turned too far to the left or right that we would fall over... pull back, and the plane noses up. i push forward, and the plane dives; i assure you, i barely pushed--propelling us toward the ground was not something i was ready to try yet. all death-potential aside, this was really quite cool.
we looped around nebo, where some gusts of turbulant wind bobbed us around enough to make me grab the window [i don't much like turbulance even in big planes], and as we were flying over the land at magic hour, i had to try something. i reached back and pulled out my [light, thin] wallet and set it on the dashboard in front of us and asked if we could do something i had heard about; i knew the physics of it, but physics is best seen in practicality, not theory. i asked if we could climb and then do a nose dive, and he agreed.
the plane went up and we got pressed back into our cushy seats, and then we turned and faced the ground. i felt myself float out of my seat [by the way, i was grateful for my seatbelt], and my wallet did an excellent impression of the 'blue danube waltz' scene from '2001'.
yes, it was awesome.
yes, we did it three times.
yes, i was happy there was a safety net behind the seats; otherwise, the tools would have ended up in our laps.

grinning from ear to ear, we headed back to the airport, very much enjoying the tranquil night scene of lights below us.
before heading home, mark and i stopped at his house and helped him move a piano--certainly a fair price for a good game of wallet-floaties.

yes, em, i am alive

i started work on 'high school musical 2' a few weeks ago, put in an 80 hour week [plus 45 minutes of travel each way for six days], overlapped that with my brother coming to visit for spring break, where upon we went snowboarding, got sunburned, learned to jump my board, watched akira kurosawa's 'ikiru', spent a night in vegas, ate sushi and creme brule, only saw the bellagio fountain show once, joined tim in awe as he went through 'tekken tag' in the arcade all on one credit, learned the the excalibur hotel does actually have some rather nice rooms [in tower 2, not tower 1], got some severe blisters on my feet and no longer like my steve maddens, beat both of them at a very competitive battle in 'super mario kart' at the mgm grand arcade [go team toad!], made two new fans of 'in and out burger'--animal style is the best, played mah-jong as my friends amusedly watched at how similar my brother and i are, and made it to the airport in record time this morning.

em, i also got you card, and am, as always, appreciative and amazed.

closing walls and ticking clocks

it's 12:45 and i'm leaving the studio, walking across the street to the parking lot with the grain silos in it and generally feeling pretty good. i got here at 9:15 this morning, but i don't really mind the 15 hour day. perhaps part of it is because we've got a good crew and stage work is pretty easy. but i really don't mind having a 45 minute drive home and a call at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. working on 'beyond' last year was much harder--granted, doing 'splits' until 1 a.m. in temperatures reaching the teens didn't help, that's for sure [the series never did air, and it was supposed to be one of fox's big five]. but i think it's got a lot more to do with attitude and expectation. and maybe acceptance.
a few weeks ago, my cool roommate mark made an insightful observation as we were watching 'the office'. he pointed out that unreal expectations lead to disappointment. as i've thought about that since then, i am surprised at the depth of that. in the show, michael has such high expectations that they are never met and so he is continually disappointed, upset, and frustrated. now, there is also a fault in setting one's expectations too low, but that's not for here.
at the end of last year, i hadn't worked as often as i would have liked, and so told myself that this year i would take everything i could; that i would go for it, regardless of the cost [within reason, of course]. and so i don't mind that tonight i had to miss a reportedly very fun fhe and the weekly '24'. tomorrow i am going to miss hosting our weekly 'classic movie' night, and i will probably miss institute on thursday. but these are the sacrifices i accepted to taking when i took this job, and therefore they are manageable.

on a separate but related issue, there is a position open for a nice girl to welcome me home with a tender and appreciative embrace at the end of the day; applications are now being accepted.

always look on the bright side of life

i came home from work, feeling tired but fine, and within minutes the toilet was overflowing.
as i stood balancing on my toes and the counter, i wondered a) why did this have to happen now, and b) how did we clean these kinds of messes when i was a lad?

but now the bathroom floor is cleaner than it's been in a while [and dry], and it really needed it. i've got a cold one in the fridge and a load of damp old towels in the wash.

my choices

late last night i made my oscar picks for cnn's 'inside the envelope' game, hoping that this year i might win that home theater system. mostly, though, i just like making my choices. i like list--they're something to discuss and debate.
so here's what i think:

best film editing- 'babel'- i loved the movie, and its ability to interweave four stories was just as impressive as the way the four were cut within themselves. if not 'babel', my second choice would be scorsese's perennial editor, thelma schoonmaker. 'the departed' was also expertly done as it carried so many layers and told them clearly.

best cinematography- 'the prestige'- five great dp's were up but wall pfister's work was the only one i'd seen and it looked good. i would have voted for 'babel', had it been nominated.

best adapted screenplay- 'the departed'- great story adapted from hong kong's 'internal affairs'. a plot with sub-plots, fake good guys and fake bad guys [and then some], it's a good movie. also, can 'borat' really be considered a script?

best original screenplay- 'little miss sunshine'- i don't think this will get best picture but people love it enough that they want to honor it somehow, and the 'little sundance that could' [and did] did so because of it's script. this is where it will be recognized.

*this is a year in which all four acting categories seemed to be locked. that being said, i think there is a danger in being a 'sure winner' as soon as the nominations are announced; as many of these actors have been gathering awards all year, i think the tide begins to turn as people start to rethink their choices. i only chose one of the four 'certainties.'

best supporting actress- rinko kikuchi for 'babel'- jennifer hudson is the crowd favorite from 'dreamgirls', and she may very well win. kikuchi seems to be second most talked about, and i chose her because i really liked her, though i will be a little surprised [albeit pleasantly] if the academy aslo picks her.

best supporting actor- alan arkin for 'little miss sunshine'- i initially marked eddie murphy in my entertainment weekly list, as he is the other 'sure on' favorite. but arkin has been gaining steam, and 'norbit' has not helped murphy in the eyes of the actors [or anyone else].

best actress- hellen mirren for 'the queen'- yes, she will win it. she has won everything else and there seems to be no one to stop her. and i think she deserves it. she was excellent in as elizabeth II.

best actor- peter o'toole for 'venus'- scorsese has lost five times; o'toole has lost seven. even when his quintessential movie, 'lawrence of arabia' swept the oscars in 1961, the eponymous star lost to gregory peck in 'to kill a mockingbird' [not that anyone could have beaten that]. forrest whitaker is the odds on favorite for 'the last king of scotland', but he has won every other acting award on the planet for that, and there seems to be just enough sentiment around that people would like to see o'toole win that it might actually happen. might.

best director- martin scorsese for 'the departed'- i want him to get his oscar as much as anyone does, but i want him to deserve it; he did not deserve it for 'the aviator' [i'll let you know what i think of 'gangs of new york' later this week]; he did deserve it 17 years ago for 'goodfellas' but lost it. now is his time again, and i think everyone is aware of it. the sixth time is the charm, and the gold will taste sweet.

best picture- 'babel'- i've said so much about it, you know how i feel. there are no headrunners here, though 'the departed' and 'babel' seem to be just a little more talked about. if any of the other three that i have seen win instead, i will be happy for them; they are all very different movies with different stories behind them, and it will be a noteworthy accomplishment for whichever wins. but 'babel' is the best movie of the year. it deserves to be 'best picture', too.

--i do like that itunes has the nominated shorts up for sale; i've never seen more than one or two, but they are interesting, especially considering the directors tell a story in a short amount of time.

--what is the difference between 'sound mixing' and 'sound editing' and what should i look for indetermining my choice for best work?

how to have a fun saturday night

1. get a good group of friends.
2. go sledding. getting there when the sun is up is preferable, but certainly not requisite. similarly, one need not dress warmly, though it will increase the amount of snow infiltrating warm areas and numbs the fingertips quickly.
3. enjoy hot chocolate in a warm home. photo albums, correct-tasting cocoa mixes, and wendy's dollar menues are optional.
4. watch 'the office'.
5. laugh.
6. play mah-jong.
7. repeat steps 4-6 as desired.

good pictures #3

the departed- i have seen 10 of martin scorsese's 22 directed features listed in the moviehound guide, and this is his best work since 'goodfellas' [my vote for his masterpiece]. 'the departed' is not only a very good gangster movie, it is one of the most talked about of the five nominees for this year's very wild card best picture.
scorsese does gangsters better than any other director in cinema history, and after the disappointing 'aviator', it's nice to see he's still as good as ever. dicaprio, one of the best in the new generation of actors, is up for an oscar from 'blood diamond', but his work here as the very undercover cop is strong. balance him with the evil jack nicholson [improving and having a good time of it], the corrupt matt damon, fast-talking and cynical mark wahlberg, and martin sheen as the closest thing to a moral center and you've got a heck of a cast. and a fair amount of blood.
after 'babel's global story, i felt that the best 'the departed' could be is a really good gangster movie. actually, it's a really, really good gangster movie. 'goodfellas' was fun to watch. it has a strong moral at it's core, but he told it in a very enjoyable way. 'the aviator' lacked any sort of fun. it's time to enjoy the movies again. new york italians have been replaced by boston irish, but after the 17-minute set up for the movie, the opening titles rolled as the camera floated through the running stories to and the rolling stones blared--i couldn't help but think, 'it's fun when a scorsese movie gets going.'
'goodfellas' was an insider's story of the mob, the ups and the downs. i get the feeling that some of the guys in costello's group could tell the same story. this time, though, we're not on the inside, but caught in the middle, with just enough knowledge about each side to be excited and still nervous. there's a mole in the gang, but also a mole in the police. that alone is an interesting formula, and when it's thrown around and mixed in different scenarios, you get a good story. at times it can be just confusing, remembering who's lying to who about what and who does know something, but just enough that you can still keep it straight and enjoy the challenge of a layered plot.
along with the moving camera, scorsese's auteur trademark's are integrated music and violence, and both come through here. music is constantly starting and stopping with the action and drama, ranging from classical opera to the irish punk of the dropkick murphys' 'i'm shipping up to boston', the signature song of the movie. holding more testosterone than the great lounge songs of 'goodfellas', the music can be as tough as the gangsters.
no one really does violence like martin scorsese. his shots, the staging and style, all carry the indelible mark of the artist--nothing carries scorsese's signature more clearly that the way he shows the sudden burst of rage between thugs. perhaps it's because he does not glorify it. it is intriguing to the story, but it's never a brawl or shoot out you want to be involved in. when leo attacks a pair of goons in a diner, we cringe. gun fights feel dangerous, because here the bullets actually seem to pierce and kill people, not just knock them down [and extra nod goes to the sound designers for the subtle effects, too].

it's a good story, told by one of the masters at full force. scorsese described it as his 'b-movie', and perhap it is, in genre. in skill, it is an a-movie all the way. editing and cinematography do what they should do, remain invisible in telling the director's story, yet there are moment where both elements step forward like a jazz soloist, to have some fun and show us what they can do. everything works here. if you like scorsese, like gangster movies, this is about as good as it gets.
---even better than i expected---

the best picture battle here is between 'babel' and 'the departed'--they are the two strongest movies out. but a 'little miss sunshine' has a good chance, too. or maybe 'the queen'. and i haven't even seen 'letters from iwo jima'. it's going to be fun to watch the awards.
who do i want to win? and who do i think should win? 'babel', no questions.
who do i think will win? no idea.

good pictures #2

babel- of the three nominated movies that i have seen, and knowing what i do know about the two that i haven't seen ['the departed' and 'letters from iwo jima'], 'babel' is going to be the movie to beat this year. it has every attribute of not only a great movie, but a 'best picture' as well. every technical aspect is so finely tuned it is invisible, making us forget almost immediately that we are watching any sort of pre-fabricated creation. everything looks completely authentic, from the deserted wastelands of morocco to the high-rise apartment of downtown tokyo, and the floating handheld camera captures the moments so immediately that even when we break from the screen and remember that this is a movie, it's almost impossible to imagine that there could be a crew of any size standing outside the field of view; there is no one but us, peering to look because everything is so intriguing.

the movie looks as if there were no lights used anywhere. the huts seem to be lit only with the gray light coming though the windows; at night, the dessert has absolutely no light bet the bright headlights of the car--there are no 12K lights giving even a slight 'ambient moonlight'; helicopters flying over cities, the japanese metropolis, everything looks completely natural. but not in the way a 'dogma 95' movie looks, where no lights were ever used, but the way the world looks to our natural eyes. we almost never notice the lighting around us, as our eyes naturally adjust and recalculate the way we balance light and dark. the movie was shot by rodrigo prieto, one of the prominent dp's of the new generation, and his work here is some of the best i have seen in any movie. no, it is not the beautiful masterwork of a conrad hall movie, nor the impressionistic style of 'punch drunk love'; it is the most realistic and natural lighting i know of, in that he makes the camera see the world the way a human eye does.

'babel' has been compared to 'crash', last year's best picture about colliding stories of racism in los angeles. and it is, but as i was admiring the elusive naturalism of 'babel's cinematography, i compared it to 'traffic' [which is either more realistic or more stylized, depending on how you want to look at it]. the structure of the movie is also akin to soderbergh's masterpiece, in that the storylines are connecting, but not intersecting. ideed, the japanese connection is not even discovered until partway through the movie, and it is barely attached. but that is not the point. even brad pitt's story and that of his children are independant enough that the familial ties are necessary only to justify having the stories in one movie.
like 'traffic', the stories play simultaneously in the movie, intercutting from one to the other, often leaving one just as a moment of crisis or tension strikes [particularly in morocco]. while this is a great skill of editing, the cutting within the stories is particularly strong. i loved the painful craziness of the ultra-modern dance club mixed with pills, where shots jumped so erratically that i became disoriented myself. at different points as the stories progress, there are montage moments where the sound fades and music carries the scene, when words are spoken but not heard, because we don't need to hear them; the scene does not become pastoral, but ponderous, giving us a break from the aural to think about what is happening. we do not need to hear to know the universality of human experiences.

just as the technical aspects of 'babel' are flawless, the artistry of the movie is profound, showing so much without telling us anything about what we should think. there are no 'stars' in this movie; it is a true ensamble piece. brad pitt is the most prominent face of them all, but does stands out no further than the dvd title menu. the movie follows the events of three or four groups of people struggling to live their basic lives. communication barriers and misunderstandings arise all around them as the natural result of an increasingly small world wher people are paradoxically pushed closer together and isolated. brad pitt and cate blanchet battle for literal live over death, while rinko kikuchi, as a deaf tokyo teen, pounds against her personal walls, both physio- and pyschological, to live life. her character is unquestionably flawed, by her own choices and compounded with choices of those around her, yet it is impossible not to sympathize with her agony and frustration as she lowers her standards further and further in desperated attempts to have connect with another person. anyone.
what is the plot of the movie? i'm not sure. if i thought on that for a while, i could give you descriptions of what happens with each story, but that would not entice you to see the movie. nor should it. while we were on the edge of our seats for the fates of the characters, the resolutions at the end are only enough to let you leave the movie, but not its questions. it is about communication, what aspects are cultural, geographic, and specific, and how much of what we do, say and think are universal. apart from that, what it's about it what you take from it.
---much, much better than i expected---

i have not yet see 'the departed' or 'letters from iwo jima', and it seems that scorsese may be giving the biggest competition. i am a fan of scorsese, but even if 'the departed' is everything i've heard, at best it will be a really good gangster movie [brad pitt turned down a role in that to do this]. 'babel' is bigger than that; it reaches beyond boston, beyond the mexican-american border, around the world and back again.
this is the best movie of 2006.