Over the weekend I saw Coraline in 3D. I thought it might have been my first chance to see the digital projector at The Tulsa by Cinemark but I ended up going to AMC Southroads. I have seen a few movies there but this was the first 3D movie I have seen there. It was really amazing and uses a different system from the IMAX where I see most of my 3D movies. Because this was the first digital 3D movie I have seen it also was the first Real D movie I have seen and it really was just about right.
Coraline is based on a book by an author I have always liked, Neil Gaiman. He writes mostly adult science fiction but occasionally will write a children’s book that is always well received. He is also kind of a creepy guy as you can see form his video on Koumpounophobia. What could be creepier than just dumping buttons on the ground?
I knew going into the movie that it would be creepy and maybe scary. I was really surprised that there were so many children there. It was almost all parents with their children. Children in the 5-9 range were probably most of the audience. This move is really amazing. The animation is incredible and so is the 3D but that doesn’t really matter because the story was so fantastic. It is wonderful looking and the world feels wonderful but then it gets really creepy and then it freaks out hard, too hard for little kids. I am not sure who would think that giant spiders stealing children’s eyes would be alright to watch but I guess it worked out. There wasn’t any crying so I guess it all worked out just fine. They theater did get completely silent when the ghost children showed up.
With this newer 3D technology it makes me really look forward to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and really really look forward to James Cameron’s Avatar along with TR2N coming next year. Avatar will be the first of the big 3D movies in December but 2010 will really be the year filled with ultra budget 3D movies. Aliens vs Monsters and the Toy Story rereleases will have to help me get by until then.
Update: I forgot. There is a great song by They Might Be Giants that plays a key role in Coraline’s alternate world with her Other family. It is really nice treat and if John Hodgman did sing well he would probably sound like They Might Be Giants.
Over the last few years I have tried coding my own blog, then WordPress, then Textpattern, then Drupal, then Movable Type. Coding my own was hard. I used WordPress for the longest amount of time but never really thought it was that special. Textpattern was clean and simple but I wanted something full of features. When I moved to Drupal I thought I had really found something amazing. It can do so much, pretty much anything. I loved the theme song and that it had a theme song. I started customizing the install and adding all sorts of modules to make it do everything that I wanted it to do and it was so awesome. The problem I had when I moved from WordPress originally to cleaner or more powerful solutions was that I didn’t feel like posting as much stuff. It might have been harder because it was so powerful or maybe it felt a little bit more grown up so I wasn’t as interested in posting simple stuff. I tried to fix that by moving to Movable Type.
Movable Type is very clean and super fast loading which is nice but I had the same problem that I was less interested in posting stuff. I have looked at the menus and I am not sure what is different but it still feels like posting stuff is just enough out of the way that I wasn’t interested in getting stuff up.
6 years ago from last Tuesday, in the comments for this post WordPress was created and since that is what I had the most success with I thought I would try going back. For all the reasons I switched from WordPress (nothing special, not powerful enough, too slow) those have kind of gone away. It is still a little ordindary, still not the most poweful and still kind of slow but it is and has been improving steadily for the last few yeas. If there is something in another blog publishing tool or CMS that is good enough to switch for, it will end up being in WordPress soon enough anyway. At least that is what I am starting to learn.
As I sit here at Dan’s house working on his laptop and getting his camera ready to go for Santa Fe I just wanted to get back online to my account and finish this post because it is easier and more engaging than the software I had used before. Because this tool (WordPress) is built for blogging that is what it tries to do best. I set up my mobile posting through Flickr like it used to be. I haven’t even thought about just putting one picture up in a long time. It was probably because I got hit in the head so hard.
I was at a sushi party/lesson a couple days ago and here is a video of me eating a vegan roll. It sure was something special. Cucumer, jalapeño, radish sprouts, avocado, rice and nori all rolled up and dipped in some soy sauce with a little wasabi.
I love my iPhone and most of the Apple advertisements. They all have a unified look and theme song. On the latest commercial featuring an application called Shazzam starts off like any normal commercial for the iPhone but then it does something I love. As part of the commercial it ties in the theme music that is on all the commercials. So this music you have always heard was there to sell some apps. It separates a commercial from something that you are watching to something that is happening right now in your living room.
One of my favorite shows on TV right now is called Fringe. It has a really quick title sequence with some graphics flashing around and a simple theme. In an episode called The Equation a boy was kidnapped. A huge amount of things happened but the short story is that the boy was forced to finish a song he started writing when he was in a car accident with his mother, she died. The song he had to finish ended up being a variation on the TV show’s theme so it brought this extra level of experience to the show because when he finally got the song I recognized it immediately. It is some fun stuff.
Francis and the Lights has a music video called The Top from their short album A Modern Promise and it looks like he might be amazing. This was shot on film with live audio. All the vocals and bulb smashes are real. Not only that but at A Modern Promise’s website you can download a 1080p version of the video at a very high quality in one of Apple’s mastering codecs. It took about 4 hours to download and it is incredible quality. The first thing I did was make a Blu-ray disc so I could watch it in the living room in full 120″ 1080p quality. Fantastic. Francis and the Lights is really doing everything right.
Both of these videos are available at higher quality on each of their sites but The Top is available at several quality levels at the A Modern Promise site or at my house it is the best.
Update: I spoke a little too soon. That high quality file is great but the blacks are blacker than black and the whites are way over the top. I took it into Color to lift the blacks a bit, roll off the whites and take out the blue shift in the blacks to warm it up a bit and make his suit look a little more natural. Now it looks the best ever and I bought the album and it is really something.
While doing some sound research I was reading about the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and looking at some pictures of their old equipment and watching videos of very nerdy Englishmen banging on old tea pots. This led me to
Delia Derbyshire who worked at the Radiophonic Workshop during the 60′s and 70′s. She has some amazing videos spread through the internet of her just making sounds, primarily for electronic music.
One my favorite themes is the Doctor Who theme song. A guy named Ron Grainer is listed as the composer but Delia was the one who took his song and put together the electronic arrangement that I love so much. Some more samples of Delia’s music is on her site. I recommend Moogies Bloogies. It is pretty weird.
The BBC has digitized some of her old tapes found in an attic after she had died in 2001. They are pretty interesting for their time but not up to Doctor Who theme standards. I think that is what I was really hoping for. If she only had a podcast; I could subscribe.
Original Doctor Who theme
A BBC news piece about the recreation of the theme a few seasons later
While watching The Totally Rad Show my Xbox 360 froze. I then tried a few times to restart it. Each time the system would freeze during the opening logo. After those few times it would not restart and I got the expected ring of death. I have a pretty early Xbox 360 so I expected it to happen. It looks like July is for Movies.
Update: I got this back after about two weeks of being without. It took a few days for me to send off my old Xbox but it was only at the repair center for a couple days before they decided to send me a new Xbox 360. It is quite a bit quieter which is nice because the first couple of Xbox 360 generations were super loud, mainly from the disc drive.
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