just a taste. . .

these are in random order. i have 200, i've been trying to upload them to the facespace but thats being an idiot (as blogger was for a while). figured out the blogger, didn't figure out the facebook yet.

but it'll be a lot better there, because it will be all 200 posted in chronological order of how they happened/were shot. i tried experimenting with slightly wrong exposures and stuff trying to get the sky and the sun to look real tasty. so, thereya go.

Public enemies is not Michael Mann, its johnny depp

Sherlock Holmes will not be Guy Ritchie, it will be RDJ

Defiance is not Ed Zwick, its Daniel Craig

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is not Terry Gilliam, it is Heath Ledger. 

Blade II is not Guillermo Del Toro, its Wesley Snipes

Burn After Reading was not Coen Brothers, it was clooney and pitt. 

thats the way everyone in the universe sees it. its always like, to me whenever i hear that, "*facepalm*, thats not why i wanna see imaginarium" 

with the exception of people like Stephen Segal, sometimes Charles Bronson, and et-goddamn-cetera, that is never the case. i don't understand how that would ever be the case. people looking at things like that allowed Righteous Kill to make more than a dollar. Righteous kill does not deserve more than a dollar. 

But Tim Burton is different. i'm not talking about the way i look at, i mean every single person in the universe says alice in wonderla-TIM BURTON Before they say Johnny Depp.

Tim Burton is basically the only person in history for that to be the case. for every person in the universe to say his name Before they say the actor. 

cinema

its a language. thats what i've decided. it has its grammar, obviously. it also has its dialects. every sentence has an alternate phrasing. well, a million alternate phrasings. some people think they're hot stuff because they use big words, but its almost always far less interesting than people who do big interesting things with the smaller more common words. 

theres common phrases. phrases like "is it hot in here or is it just me?" or "so it goes" or "... right up your alley" and etc. etc. etc. 

it can be poetry, it can be dry prose. but even the dryest of dry prose has a slight resemblance to poetry, and a few poetic elements. its damn near impossible to strip it down to zero percent poetry, but thats arguable i suppose. 

its the only language everyone can read. think about that. 

most people take it for granted. the majority doesn't read to well. some of its heavy reading- you need a mega attention span, a high reading level, and dedication to achiechieving an understandment. others is light- yaknow. 

but its very different. you'd have to stretch the meaning of the word "communicate" to apply it to film, but i'm sure there are those that would say so. its basically impossible to have a conversation in that language (but i would love to watch one happen). 

some people don't see it as a language. some movies you oughtta say "hey, why isn't it a novel? why not a play?"

 if a story's crafting is magnificient- the script was a work of beautiful genius literature, yet in the execution it had no sense of cinematicals, besides a room-stage with cameras. would that be a "good movie?"

 if an averagely literary but still no less concise and well-crafted script was made into a movie by a guy who was fluent in the language and played into its every nuance and was an honest work of cinema in every sense of the word, which would be "better"? 

hollywood's history is full of writers who wanted to be directors but never got that far.. maybe the ones who didn't make it were the ones who could craft a story better than they could tell it. or could tell it in the written word just not the screen. maybe its for the best they never directed. thats why John Milius, Paul Schrader, Quentin Tarantino pulled it off and did well for themselves. 

well, to be continued, i guess. . . ... . .. . . . .

i was sitting in my kitchen on the verge of inspirado, that appeared to be just barely out of reach, but at the same time maybe it was just a mirage. i was eating mozzarella cheese and it was 2:40some am. there was a spider on the roof n chandelier. . this is not a poem. this is not art. this is not an inspirational quote. it just happened. 

i should get back into bloggin again. . . . 

Photo Shop Kicks Booty

OverProduced

Pretty Sweet:

Raw

Woah, Dude, Mr. Turtle Is My Father...

i just watched finding nemo, and no, i haven't been counting how many times that is now.

Crush is a great great character. i think so not cuz of the obvious reasons that the two of us talk similar, well that too, dude, but i think he's The singlemost major integral single contribution to Marlin's arc. (arguable, i know, challenge me if you wish.)

but mostly the way he is animated, facially, is why i think he's great. all his kinds of neck and eye movements just carry so much... wisdom. as they should, being a 150 yearold surf guru who makes the singlemost integral single contribution to Marlin's arc. Is there an element of wisdom in the way non-animated turtles look? probably. i 

don't know, all non-animated turtles are a waste of my time...

but his facial expression and dialogue, not just dialect but all other kinds 

of wordchoice, makes me think that he knows he's being soo damn wise and integral-​to-​character-​arc.​ but, naturally, the first few billion times through watching it you might not say that. just that he was being himself,

stating his own mind, and it happened to come across as a kind of pseudo-wisdom to marlin at the time, for whatever reason. but this past time through, the few-​billion-​and-​one'​th time through, it may have been my imagination, but i saw it in that dude's

 eyes, man. he knows just exactly how wise and integral he is being to the Jellyman. when you've been cruisin the E.A.C. for 150 years, you reach a level of wisdom n junk soooo far beyond what you could possibly comprehend now, probably. i'll bet, that kind of surf-turtle-guru level of magic is Exactly how much magic it takes for me to see, or even think i saw, something like Wisdom in animated eyes

This is the worst possible photo of him they could have ever picked -to be the number one major promotional recognizable face-of-the-film google image result. it carries nothing of what this post is about. Obviously the doing of Pixar's rich booksmart soulless stepmother...

Fittingly, The Director of the film himself, Andrew Stanton, provided the voice acting. he also did wall-e, and some other stuff, but i'm not 1000% on top of the which-directors-did-what thing. once inside pixar, i consider them all one singular (x)-part director, cuz they always seem to be workin with some kinda co-director or several writers, and always small church of animators. they just strike me as a team force much more than a classroom.

well, most of them screenshots, even the good ones, did not do the whole thing justice what i was goin for. it must be in the movement of the drawings, but, well, keep it in mind the next time you watch it, i guess.

SUMMARY

Life Lessons i Learned from Crush: the wisest of turtles are satisfied, and sometimes even prefer, being under-appreciated as not the wisest of turtles; merely the raddest. 

I dare you to try and Tell me that that face doesn't realize how integral he is to The Jellyman's Character Arc. just try it.

mrs. potatohead mrs. potatohead mrs. po- WOW! i gotta shave!

after years of half of a halfway thought out list that was filled with mistakes and hypocricies and intercontradictions, i've finally decided my one-thousand percent complete Pixar List.

well, not really... they're all ties in sets of 2's... you think this is disorganized you should of seen it before

1/2: Toy Story/Finding Nemo

3/4: Incredibles/Cars

5/6: Wall-E/Toy Story 2

7/8 Monsters Inc./Ratatoillie

9: Bugs Life.

i'm really really psyched for UP. 

but i'm much much more psyched for the Toy Story 1&2 double feature two-fer-one Converted to 3D in theaters in october

lovecraft, guillermo, and i

Guillermo Del Toro is shooting H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness sometime mid-late twentyteens. 

If you don't know the Cthulhu Mythos, it all involves creatures of literally unimaginable everything. They are made of a 5th form of matter, and they look like colors from an unknown spectrum. Also, they're city, R'leyh, is constructed with Non-Euclidean Geometry.. ..

Guillermo has said on some internet i've read that he's already got artists and i'd imagine geometrists working on the creatures and the city. 

its gonna be the greatest lovecraft adaption in the history of lovecraft

probably the greatest horror film, scifi film, fantasy film, and any combination of the 3 in the history of film.

you should read lovecraft. 

Anyway, i was thinkin. . . just musin, in general. . 

I think my dream job would be to score that emmeffer. 

think about it, Guillermo, as usual, knows exactly how to get the art department to be cash money and perfect every time. In weird fiction films, The Art Department is the most underrated department, and when the directors don't realize this it shows, but thats why Guillermo, in spirit with his ilk of yesteryear most particularly romero and carpenter, is the effin man. 

I just hope he's that way with scoring.

if basil poleduris (guy who scored conan the barbarian, red dawn, robocop, starship troopers) was a huge lovecraft fan and didn't die in 2005, he would be the man.

if The Cthulhu Mythos are based on light and colors of an unknown spectrum and non-euclidean architecture and a 5th form of matter, wouldn't the sound have to be of an unknown spectrum? non-euclidean music? a sound the dictionary definitions of neither 'music' nor 'dissonance' can do justice? 

on Avatar, another film that isn't out yet that i believe i've referenced in an older post, James horner (he scored titanic and aliens and a bunch of others) is declining all other offers for a long time. AN ENTIRE YEAR working on nothing but this film. he is literally calling in ethnomusicologists, experts on music/culture and culture/music, to develop an entire musicculture/culturemusic for this alien species. 

THAT is the bare minimum amount of time dedication hardwork and inspirado for someone to score Guillermo Del Toro's At The Mountains of Madness.

if i were guillermo del toro, i'd say to my scorer "alright, give me sound from an unknown spectrum. give me non-euclidean music. give me tones that the known world have not yet discovered because they traveled through space so long ago and so far that they practically classified as 'dimensional travel', but most schools of though say it was just space travel. give me a sound neither "musical" or "dissonant". use instruments that don't exist, tones that literally no one has heard before. play an H#+˚ in a phrygian dominant major." 

and the scorer will look at him and say "uh, alright, yeah" but in his mind/under his breath go 'you freakin weirdo' and give 'im some by-the-book junk, interpreting/oversimplifying all these principles of the cthulhu mythos as 'well, i'll just go with the diminished scale' because he can't, or won't bother, think outside the box. (The diminished scale is a widely exploited alternative to thinking outside the box. in my experiences with thrash music and riff-mongrels)

They'll probably call in elfman or zimmer or somebody and they will most likely tear it up, but they will be doing just another project, just another gig. . . 

**disclaimer: danny elfman and hans zimmer are bad to the bone. i aint trashin on them. just clarifying.**

HEY GUILLERMO, if they get internet in new zealand, and you stumble upon this, i really really hope you've already thought through all of this and you're reading stuff you already know.  but dude, call me up, i'll drop everything and work from now till the film actually gets made, and then work some more and do this. i picked up your call of cthulhu reference in hellboy (well, who didn't) and i want you to know that i picked up your mountains of madness reference in hellboy II. comeon man, i'll do it! :)  . . .

i guess.. .

. . . Geekin' up a storm, as usual.

Well, i was over on IMDB's Avatar board, Geekin' up a storm as usual. Avatar is a film by James Francis Cameron, the guy who created the earth in 7 days. It comes out on 12/18/09 and when you see it your soul will immediately leave your body, having been raised to a new level of beauty and high-divinity. . . its a very technology-heavy film, 2.5 years and counting of post-production, and The Geeks, like me, have been following it and drooling over every bit of behind-the-scenes leaks and etc. for about as long as i can remember. 

Anyway, all this led to someone asking if the Magic of experiencing and enjoying the film would be less magical because we all know the behind-the-scenes mumbo jumbo before we watch it. 

Well, i had a response. a real good one. I decided that it was Quite Blogalicious, or Blogtastic, if you will, so like, i copied/pasted it here.

-------------------------------------
Read Watchmen. at the end of one of the chapters, the little quips on un-comic text, Character Dan Dreiberg writes an essay, musing about wether or not understanding all the aeronautics anatomy mumbojumbo destroys the poetry/the beauty of watching a beautiful bird in flight. 

Basically, the point of it is that Understanding the Science and technical junk that goes into something, be it Art or Mother Nature, in fact Augments the poetry it carries, and the dry science and the True beauty augment each other rather than diminish. 


I used to watch movies like just a movie i'd be watching at the time. (i really loved 'em so i decided to watch more, naturally). at some point, as i grew (this was a gradual thing), i began to understand certain techniques. be it storytelling, script structuring, editing, camera junk, cinematography, etc. etc. etc. . and now, as any likeminded or similar experienced person will agree, my enjoyment of a movie is ssoooooo muuucccch more now that i fully appreciate, or am much closer to fully appreciating, all the techniques, expertise, beauty, etc. etc. etc. behind it. 

I believe this is more true in Film than in anything else, because i've seen artistically ignorant folk enjoy themselves at a painting exhibit, and not just 'we go to a painting exhibit because thats what those of our social class do' but actually absorbing what their looking at. i've seen the musically ignorant really enjoy themselves absorbing Mozart or Clementi, both of these the people may not know entirely why they dig something as the recreationally absorb it, but the can. . Anyway, for film, i don't think it works quite the same way. Does anyone whom does not take their interest in film seriously ever sit down and watch Akira Kurusawa? or Peckinpah's non-action work? or Paul W.S. Anderson:)? i'd be surprised if i met one who even heard of Kurusawa. The point is, a good deal of the beauty and poetry in cinema can only be met by those who have the insight/understanding of the Technical mumbojumbo behind it. 

Even in the Genre-est of Genrefilms, someone just passing through to sit down and watch a flick may enjoy themselves and may even be able to hold up in a discussion about it, but only those who have had an interest strong-and/or-long enough to appreciate the work done in the 3D art department, or sound, or photography, Or in Avatar's case 3D technology, CGI, Motion Capture, etc. will entirely realize and fall in love with the piece of cinema. 


I found the same to be true in Music. Alan Moore (posing as Dan Dreiberg, in this case) understands that about Birds & Flight. 

and were i more well-read, or well-versed in any other kind of artform, and i'd imagine this to be true in science/math as well, i'd be hella likely to feel the same way about whatever. 

_____________________________

The intro and Conclusion were both directly related to the film and the rest of the post, and would make zero sense out of context, so i left'em out. . . .. 

but like, yeah. . . 

i learned a lot about exponential functions today

exponential functions is a big thing to learn, a lot of time it takes to learn it.

a lot of time that i wasn't watching movies. a lot of time that i wasn't playing g'tar. a lot of time that i wasn't shooting the abstraction assignment. a lot of time that i wasn't writing the jazz piece for mr. townsend. a lot of time that i wasn't reading books. a lot of time that i wasn't writing, writing rock poems, writing flicks, writing my one-act play, writing blogs, writing blogs about not being able to write (well, that last one had a plot-hole in it, but i'm not worried about it.) So much time that i wasn't kicking ass.

in fact, i even have 2 really great quotes about it, if i may say so myself, and i may, one of which i thought of last midterm season, the other-of-which i thought up of just today. i bolded them.

i spent so much time on schoolwork, i didn't get anything done.

all these academics is gettin in the way of my education.

:)

Rockémundo

if its not challenging. . .

this is a direct quote from a good deal of people i've met (whom i hate) and its mostly in reference to music, but i'm sure it could be counted in reference to anything.

"if its not challenging, it sucks"

the only music i ever listen to is things that i find challenging for my own self to play. this is a perfectly reasonable way to go about listening to things, am i right? better make sure i'm not some immature flying-V player who listens to ac/dc, because if you listen to ac/dc, you simply must be a low-caliber musician if you listen to music the same way i do (which you must. its the only way to listen to music, isn't it?)

Emmanuel Radnitzky

Where to begin, eh?

i'll get started somewhere its not particularly logical to start at. There is a lot more to Man Ray other than Photography. painter, more notably, but what i'm really interested in is his work of Cinema. 

less people know this about him, and that is do to one thing and one thing only- time. didn't quite age well, and was only particularly relevant to a world where the technology was as young as it was back in the day.

his works, of film and other things he's associated with, i consider to be quite strange, and most of the internet uses the phrase "avant-garde". avant-garde is kinda a word that can be put on a helluva lot more than what could make sense, and i don't really like that genre-name. maybe i should study it more or something, i dunno. it seems a 'definition' for avantgarde is to just be really really weird, or throw away the rules, or something. in all fairness, when you've been taught rules and laws as opposed to techniques and theories your whole life, like a good deal of high-brow artistés seem to be,  the concept of throwing 'rules' into the street may seem like a genius, sophisticated, and intellectual thing to do, but to the rest of us, its something thats no big deal and has been happening our whole artish careers. I bolded that part, maybe someday i'll wrap a more better-wrapped sentence around it er something, only then could it be, yaknow, worth it. . . 

anyways, this is bad because it really has nothing to say for a real level of, yaknow, describing it, and 2 things literally on the other side of the universe and have no relation or common fans could be described under the same genre. (?)(punk is in the same vein. in a way, everything relating to art could be described like that, i think)(a silly thing, isn't it, dictionaries and art inhabiting on the same plane) anyways, most likely from my marginally informed notes, Avant-Garde a widely-wrong used genre describer. 

Anyways, this 'avant garde' i've heard be more-er-less a synonym for 'surrealism', which is kinda the same thing i think . . . in any event, both words of genre came up on the internet about Man Ray, particularly his films.

Surrealism i understand a little bit better than avant-garde, still not too  much.

lots of things, i've noticed, can very rightly be described 'surreal' or makes you feel that way, yet in the long run are not generally considered 'Surrealist'. Clockwork Orange comes to mind, and the last 25 minutes of 2001 a space odyssey. have you ever described the ending of 2001 without in a way using the word surreal? nope. can't be done, not outside of chemistry (that is probably illegal) and whatnot, but that'd be boring and generic descriptions from rebels who think they're awesome. most people who try to use that junk in a taken seriously context should probably be shot. or something i dunno. . . 

before i watched Man Ray's films, there was a good many films i saw and said "i feel surreally" 

but only one of them i went on the internet and confirmed that it was considered "Surrealism" as a genre. That film is Chan-wook Park's OldBoy. it is FANTASTIC, you really need to watch it. Korean. good. 

Man Ray's films are world-regarded to be among-if-not-the FIRST avant garde and/or surrealist films. and, like i said, the impression, purpose, etc. that they leave on is mostly contained in it's own time, where/when i imagine they would be the absolute meaning of 'groundbreaking'

EDIT/UPDATE/FINISHING- 2 weeks later.

ok. the actual assignment now. . . 

This Photograph by Emmanuel Radnitzky a.k.a. Man Ray.

in this photograph is a woman, quite naked, with her back to us. she's wrapped in a blanket of sorts over her legs and wearing a turban like thing, or something, with a side of her face shown to us. quite obviously, her curves is shaped like a big Cello or Standup Bass. Man clearly noticed this and added in 2 F-holes on either side of her hips to augment and point out and make obvious this fact. 

As for the possible deeper meanings and junk, i think he's drawing a comparison between the beauty of a female body and the beauty of music, or each represents an all encompassing generalization of companionship and a generalization of art, in general, respectively. it may seem an obvious option to choose this photo, and may look like i didn't actually search deep and went with the first 

Google Image result for 'man ray', but it was the only one that was really worth grabbing and analyzing and junk like this, or was-so more-so

lessons and morals and storytelling and whatever this subject should be . . .

yesterday, between 4pm and 1ish am, I read Animal Farm.

the book (fantastic, naturally) is irrelevent to most of this post, but the first 30 pages, is.

it got me runnin over in my head a certain sort of book, because for the first 30 pages it seemed like it WAS this sort of book. lets see if anyone is on the same page as me.

Farenheit 451: i have yet to read it in its entirety. i was reading it in 8th grade. i was at about page 14oish-somethinerother when an English teacher and some girl in my class who was oddly mature(brain and body) for her age noticed i was reading it.

"thats a good book" the english teacher said.

"i'm fairly pretentious in my intellect, for my age" the girl said.

"how are you liking it?" the English teacher quipped. i'm not sure if 'quipped' is the right word here, and she probably phrased more oldlier, but i'm not worried about either of those.

So, Naturally, I reply, "oh, its alright, i guess, doesn't seem like there's much to it, the point is, stupid."

and the way that english teacher looked at me, and by 'me' i mean 'away from me and at her papers and teacherly junk' was priceless, i tellya.

"oh," she said, her opinion of me dwindling, "obviously your not understanding the message."

"i was somewhere on the english teachers side but no one knows or cares the specificities of my involvement. . ."

the rest of it was only implied in the sentence, but more-than-fairly likely it was in both of their thoroughly intellectual (and/or intelligent) well-read brains. it was the notion that Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 is a classic, and anyone whom cannot appreciate it, or disagrees with it, is clearly immature intellectually, and they need to grow up.

Hmm, i thought to myself, thats just stupid.

and i put the book down and haven't picked it up since.

At the time, whilst reading it, i started to ask myself, the points you ask yourself when absorbing any work of fiction. the points and their results for Ray Bradury's Faranheit 451 are as follows. my memory should be pretty good of these points,

STORY- fairly boring, almost lame. not halfwaypoint yet, though.

CHARACTERS- nothin special. not yet anyway. boring.

WORLD- future-society. ok, the man outlawed reading, its frowned upon by society.

MESSAGE- (in this case, extends from 'world') reading is a wonderful thing, and rebellion against this societical bullhooey is a good thing. reading is good. societies that say 'no reading' are bad. would you like a cookie?

thanks, Ray, for a second i thought that maybe the world really would be a better place if a whole class of blue-collar warriors' sole purpose was finding and torching every piece of read ever written. if it wasn't for you, Ray, in your infinite literary wit enlightening me/us, there would be no way for us to know that this society is in fact BAD.

understand, THIS is why my opinions stood where they did at the time.

clarification, i fully realize i did not (yet) finish the book and it might be a very different thing when i do. also, you can see why i brushed off the english teacher and the abnormally mature girl in my class and didn't take them seriously, maybe some would say i should have. but the way it stood at the time, any reaction other than my own would have been kinda naive.

For the record, i dig Ray Bradbury a great deal. his short stories are A+ and i got a lot of diggin for something wicked this way comes.

Johnathan Livingston Seagull: this one much much less people heard of. in fact, i'd be surprised if anyone in the history of the universe other than myself and the other 2 in this narrative have even heard of it.

it must of been about the 5th grade er so. i was a total bookworm at the time, before i started becomin a rockstar, you see, and one particular summer (i think it was summer) afternoon or something i was bookless.

"Dad, what book should i read"

"how about this one forya. its called Johnathan Livingston Seagull"

and he handed me this paperback. It said "Jonathan Livinston Seagull" on it. it was the kind of paperback that had seen more than anyone whose lived a thousand lifetimes had seen. the kind that you look at the price tag and they say '$1.70' and you say 'damn, they used to sell paperbacks like that' and apparantley they did. when your reading them, theres something inherently cool about opening up something and releasing molecules back into the atmosphere that had been shut up in a book since the last time it was opened, which was over several thousand years ago. The kind of paperback that is falling apart if its good, and almost falling apart if its not as good. The kind of paperback that makes you realize that scotch tape from a generation past was more high quality and efficient than that of your own generation, because the Scotch Tape of the previous generation can repair it more solidly with less tape. The Kind of Paperback whose pages are a shade of yellow you have never seen before in all your lifely explorations of the spectrum.

I really really hope you know this kind of paperback, because they truly are the only things worth reading.

This one, surprisingly enough, was well past the 'almost' stages and was 'falling apart', as if it were any good.

so, being 'That kind of paperback' which meant it would be an enjoyable read no matter what it was reading, recomended, lack of any other book, and most importantly, really short, I Read It.

i think it was 2, maybe 3 sittings. It was about a Seagull. the Seagull's name was Johnathan Livinston. he lived in a tribe of Seagulls. in this tribe, all the other Seagulls were boring and by the book and only flew in the same patterns. but Johnathan Livinston, he was so painfully cool. he was an artist. He longed to think outside of the box, he longed to fly in new, different patterns.

basically, The novella had zero going for it in the zeroiest sense of the word, except for a statement/lesson/commentary on -not rebellion, but- 'pseudo-rebellion', thinking outside the box, and possibly/probably interpreted/intended to be about 'art' (but what is art other than 'pseudo-rebellion' and thinking outside the box smashed in to a little bit of old-fashioned home-grown balls-to-the-wall bohemianism, eh?)

in any event, it wasted my time.

"so, son, what did you think of that book"

"well, to be honest withya, dad, i thought it was kinda boring. and pointless. and a waste of my time." The way it was phrased is quite very approximate, i don't really remember my dialogical stylings back then, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't as well-said, since part of the point of the post is that at the time i could wrap my brain around the idea, but i couldn't quite wrap a sentence around it.

Anyway, the disapointment in his face was heartbreaking. he thought i was ready. he thought i was ready to appreciate such a beautiful statement about pseudo-rebellion and outsidetheboxicism. apparantly he was wrong. ":("

Later, a similar conversation with my aunt became a similar response, though with her it was phrased much more like the English teacher.

anyone on the same page as me?

whats a story where the story is secondary to a primary lesson when said primary lesson is something that goes without saying?

that part was bolded.

i've seen or read stories that the lesson/purpose/moral took 8000 times more importance than the story, characters, etc., but the ones that do it right are lessons that don't go without saying i.e. ones that actually need to be bothered to be taught. also, in these cases, it much more shortwinded about it, 90% of the ones that come to mind are short stories.

and now i bring up WALL-E.

Wall-e is a good good movie. many many levels. but man, if it was only good on the most surfacey of these levels, no one would have cared a bit. thats because most people when appreciating works of fiction have trouble citing 'quality' when there is no 'depth' n such. Those people are stupid. i hate them. its a quite similar vein to the way my english teacher wrote off my not digging faranheit to me being young and not good at reading.

in the case of Sandman vs. Watchmen, Sandman is in my opinion, Better, whilst Watchmen is considered by most/everyone in the history of reading to be the deepest of the bunch. in most circles that i've seen, they consider Watchmen to be better than Sandman (though of course Watchmen is much more widely known.) this leads me to believe that a good deal of people think depth and quality is a direct relationship. i thouroughly disagree. immense quality CAN exist without any depth, and i'm sure somewhere out there, there is a layered piece of garbage.

the first group, one particular example comes to mind, the films of paul verhoeven, but the latter kind i can't seem to think of one, but i promise you, its gotta be out there somewhere.

anyway so Wall-e. lets givit that breakdown from earlier, shallwe.

STORY- golden. a healthy dose of originality, which in sci-fi may be tougher than it seems.

CHARACTERS- fantastic. beautiful, relatable, (i'm quite close to using the phrase 'adorable', but not quite there.), felt really, and a well-crafted/well-written relationship. all this despite being robots. of the future.

VISUALS- fantastic. golden. A+. worth 90% of the price of admission alone. (needless to say the other 10% is more than accounted for.)

PLOT- well paced, developed good, felt believable actually, despite being, yaknow. . . also, apply the phrase 'breathes well' to everyone one of those.

That right there is everything i need. you give me those 4 points, and i will buy it on bluray and watch it a thousand times. hellyeah to you, Wall-e, and the rest of pixar (naturally).

my problem is, a great deal of the more-than-kids-animated-movie recognition it got, would not be the case without all the-

DEEPS and MORALS- really high-brow stuff, here. i sincerely write that, difficult maybe for you to believe, but i mean it. too much to go into explainin here, but i don't think its really necassary. also, directly relating to my problem with Farenheit, the quote-unquote "Moral" was like, the quintessential of all quintessential goes without sayingsness.

and so. it got more recognition and critical mumbo-jumbo than virtually any animated film in the history of drawing-stuff-and-making-it-move. but i guarantee you it wouldn't have been half if not for that 5th category i posted.

Cint Eastwood's last Western picture: Unforgiven. 1992ersomething. quite very deep, quite very good, and the last 15 minutes has some of the baddest 'bad motherfarmerisms' i've ever seen.
"you wouldn't shoot me, i'm unarmed"
"anyone who'd decorate his establishment with my friend should know better to arm himelf"

"you just shot 5 unarmed men!"
" . . .(swig of whiskey) yeah."

These (2 in particular, but there were many more) bad motherfarmerisms are just a part of some very sophisticated, very intelligent-and/or-intellecual, very deep, very social-commentarial, etc. depthities and layerings about the expression of violence in american entertainment, and all that mumbo jumbo. i certainly have this appreciation, it absolutely necassary that we take a step back and deeply show for commentarial purposes a perspective of violence that questions its very entertainment-and/or-surface value, what with all the balls-to-the-wall/no-consequences perspective on it we get in the films of our species. the last sentence was long and kinda boring, but i had to put it in there to show that "i'm not just saying that" er whatever, i could go more, but i made the point er whatever. . .

anyway, why shouldn't we allow ourselves to step back, ignore the deeper junk, and appreciate those bad-motherfarmerisms for their surface value if we so choose? sometimes i feel like i am supposed to not do this, for artful pretensious high-brow film appreciation purposes. eff-yall.



yeah, so, the point of this? oh, i dunno, i'm just sayin i guess . .. people annoy me when they take the lessons and layers to be worth more than the rest of everything else about the work of storytelling-or-whatever. people get so hyped up worrying about the abyssmal value of a lesson or something like that they tend to forget the surface value. .. ..
i don't like it. people are stupid. luckily, for me, i don't really care that this makes people think that i don't know how to appreciate deeper junk at times, cuz if i did (care about other peoples opinions of me) i'd be in quite a pickle.

Honey I Shrunk Myself (To Fit Inside of A Cell)

this is a short story i did for Mr. Heme's biology class a while back. it was just a first draft I copied/pasted from the moodle entry. i got a 33/40.

________________________________________________

HONEY I SHRUNK MYSELF TO FIT IN A CELL!

A short story by: Quinn Dougherty

Inspired by Mr. Heme’s Biology class

"...and all you care about is your stupid science projects!"
"yeah honey"
"don't yeah honey me, you usually listen better"
"yeah honey"
she was right, i've never been the type to put work this far in front of family, but i'm on fire at the moment.
"on our anniversary, no less!"
"yeah honey
"do you even know the date"
"yeah honey"
"what is it, then, hm?"
"yeah honey"
"july 18th, 1992"
i actually do know that date, and i really do feel bad, but i'm on fire right now, i have to hang in my little groove. like i said, i'm on fire. oh and, now i'm literally on fire.
"honey, i'm on fire"
"good, why don't you ignore me and make progress while you just hang in there in your little groove, i don't have needs."
"no i mean i'm on fire" but she was already gone. i put out the fire and take off the remaining half of my labcoat. put on my all my gear. that includes my ultrapurple-radiation protection vest, scuba gear, and various cutting and specimin-collecting-stuff. also i brought an electric screw driver with a hole drilling bit in it and an electric jigsaw. the setting of my shrinkinator-ultrapuple-megaray porototype #2 says 'one trillionth' next to a symbol of an average heighted man about 1/4th the size of a standard human cell. i take a review of my lab journal just before i hit the big red button.

June 23, 1989. 1324 hours.
shrinkinator-ultrapurple-megaray prototype #1 finished.. set to "one billionth" symbol; a picture of a standard human cell standing next to a picture of an average heighted man, both the same height. double checked remote control is in my pocket so i can come back to full size once i've collected my specimens. lab door is locked. protection and survival gear on. if all goes as planned anything i am wearing will get shrunk with me. after i finish this journal entry i will immediately press the big red button. so if i don't return, let this be my time to tell my wife and kids i love them very much.

june 24, 1989. 336 hours
trip went perfectly. i collected the sample with ease in the first 7 hours. 'with ease' refers to crossing a desert with a blazing horrible sun(forgot to turn the light dimmer) and climbing up the side of a flat smooth plastic petri dish(forgot to plant a ladder). it was actually, not with very much ease at all, and i'm kinda tired... anyway i then decided to explore some more while i was down there. mice are NOT cute.
when i came back up, battered, bruised, tired, and sore i immediately set a thousand mouse traps along the walls and in the corners of my lab. after that i carefully removed the specimen, a living human cell from a petri dish that i planted before i left from my own fingernail clippings. as big as i am, we will now be able to learn everything we could ever want to know about cells! this is an ultimate breakthrough in so many ways. this i thought, at the time, but i was wrong. the outer membrane was kinda gooey and pliable, yet tough to cut. i had to sneak downstairs to the kitchen, not wake up my wife because she is sleeping, and get a really sharp knife. when i tried this, painstakingly, it didn't work, still would not cut. i then sneaked out to my garage, careful to not wake up my wife, and got my chainsaw. i was really tired and really excited so i wasn't thinking straight. the chainsaw cut the membrane with ease. and boy did it cut that membrane. 'with ease' refers to getting inside so fast i didn't have time to turn it off and it sliced the Cell into a hundred bazillion pieces, no, 2 hundred bazillion pieces. the 2 hundred bazillion pieces of dead cell matter flew all over myself and my lab. in addition, the sound of the chainsaw woke up my wife and she stormed upstairs wondering where i've been and i said 'right here' but she didn't like that answer or the mess everywhere.
not only that, but at least 50 bazillion of the 2 hundred bazillion pieces of dead cell matter got inside the workings of the shrinkinator-ultrapurple-megaray prototype (i was too anxious about the expedition to finish the protective plating) and it was destroyed. it will take me 3 years to fix.
overall, project failure.

"your so negative, 3yearsyoungerself" i think outloud to myself. "it wasn't that bad."
"easy for you to say, its just a vague memory and a journal entry, for me it just happened!" i replied.
"oh 3yearsyoungerself, always the theatrics!"
i double check that i have everything i need. i hope it works out better this time. right before hit the big read button i jot down the date and time, for record keeping purposes, "July 17, 1992. 1706 hours." also i plant a really really tiny ladder next to the petri dish with a fingernail clipping in it and then turn the lights fairly dim. finally, i hit the big red button.

July 18, 1992. 530 hours.
trip a success! in every sense of the word! my mistakes from last time were definately improved. i reached the gigantic fingernail clipping easily, but that was a lot of rungs on the ladder (i stopped counting at 7462) i took the electric jig saw and cut out one squirming cell of millions from the mass of tissue and it fell to the ground and slumped, changing its general shape like a ball of silly putty or possibly a slug. i then got out my handy dandy electric powerdrill and drilled a really deep in the outer membrane. when i pulled my bit out it gelatinously closed up almost immediately. i then fit a wider bit in the drill and applied my scuba gear. i pointed the drill at the membrane again, looked exactly the same from when i came in, and made a deeper wider hole. i moved around the drill bit inside before i pulled it out and set it on the ground near me. i then widened the hole to fit 2 of my fingers in, then 3, 4, soon my hole hand. i got my forearm in then started at my other hand. soon i'm up to my biceps in cell. widening around and constantly moving(the membrane constantly trys to repair itself around me). i think i'm up to my wrists in inner membrane, but i could be wrong. hard to feel in all these gloves. the feeling of the membrane on my fingers reminds me of sticking my fingers in the jello my wife makes me on saturday afternoons after i'm done playing with my kids, Amy and Nick. i widen the hole some more, and stick my face. right in the cell. my scuba gear holding up well, i then worm more of myself in there. at this point my entire torso inside and from the waist down i'm dangling outside a cell. it probably looks hilarious to any pedestrians. its difficult to make progress just squirming now that i can't use my feet on the bottom of the petri dish. at some point, just after my knees, i feel i broke through in my fingers. using my hands now on the other side i can pull myself the rest of the way through that way. i get through the rest fairly easily now. i gather myself up and begin to tread water. i mean cell goo. i check for my gear. scuba, check. cutting and sample gathering materials, check. boots, wait a minute, i only have one. quickly, before it closes up on me, i reach back in a grab a boot, floating mid-membrane. i strap on the boot and look around.

WOAH

the inside of cells are awesome. mostly just shades of purple and blue, theres various bolbous things floating about with what looks like connector wires of sorts here and there. probably protiens, making deliveries and messages all throughout town. in the center, a quite large, reddish, pulsing brainlike thing floats triumphantly. this must be the nucleus. everything somewhat seems to revolve around this, obviously, it is captain of the ship afterall. i note other bulbouslike floating items, noting things on the mitochondria, the golgi apparatus, lysosomes, vacuoles, and more! this is very exciting. like a kid at christmas i walk around inside the cell and note at everything. i just realized i forgot a camera. maybe in the sequel. after about 2 hours of this(time flies when your in a cell) my watch beeps at me. time to go, my wife is expecting me to wake up soon. i take out the remote control and hit RE-ENLARGINATE. i figured the cell would be so small that the 2 hundred bazillion pieces of dead cell tissue would be so small that nothing bad would happen. this was a decision based on laziness, not wanting to cut my way out again, and the fact that i was so tired and excited i could only think it half of the way through. when i hit the button, i found myself in my lab, myself, the walls, and my equipment all covered in 2 hundred bazillion pieces of dead cell tissue, but this time each piece was 4 times bigger. of course, the shrinkinator ultrapurple megaray prototype #2 works on everything i am wearing and i was so enveloped in the cell it brought that back up one trillion times! it would be the size of that toddler in 'honey i blew up the baby' were it not exploded. fantastic
i said 'woah' and sat down to write. and i've been sitting there from then till right this very instant. writing...

"toldyaso" said 3yearsyoungerself
"well" i replied. then paused. "i'm back"

blahblahblahblah

GOOD:  Rocknroll, movies, Jack Black, kicking booty, sam peckinpah, gi'tar, movies.

ART: create 

PHOTO: stills, composition, fun, learning, aperture, film, blogger

ME & DARKROOM CLASS FIRST SEMESTER: kicked booty, bryce keeps the room to dark