Sooo I saw the Swell Season in concert the other day at Radio City Music Hall. They were amazing. For the unenlightened, the Swell Season is a band-group-thingy made up of Glen Hansard (of the Frames) and Marketa Irglova, and whoever else they happen to be playing with at any given time. For the semi-enlightened they were the guy and girl in the amazing film Once. So, since Once they’ve been touring together as the Swell Season, and put out a new album called “Strict Joy” in addition to Once’s soundtrack and the album “The Swell Season” which they made before it.

So, what kind of music is this that it is so imperative to hear it live? Well, Glen Hansard has this really gruff voice but then he just goes all out with it and sings all about heartbreak and sadness with all his might. Then, Marketa Irglova has a beautiful voice and counteracts all that gruffness. They are an incredible musical duo, and it’s because of that that Once was so good. Oh, they also dated for a little while after Once came out, but that’s over now. But they’re still musical partners!

SO ANYWAY. The concert. Well, no. Back up. Before the concert, they were playing outside on the street, like street performers. They were just standing outside of Radio City Music Hall, an hour before the concert they would perform right inside, just singing on the street with a large crowd of people around them. They then walked towards the back entrance, still singing and being followed by everybody and literally went into the doors still playing music. Look at the picture I got on my cell phone!!! You can sortaофис столове tell that it’s them.

So. Oh, yeah, the actual concert. Even in the fairly large Radio City Music Hall the intimate music really got across. They sang a lot of their songs (since they really don’t have that many, only 2-3 album’s worth) plus some stuff from the Frames and unrecorded tracks. But the best part was the stories that Glen Hansard told between the songs, for 5, 10 minutes at a time they’d all take a break from singing and he’d just tell a story about what the song was about, and really good, involving stories too.

One of the things about the Swell Season’s music is that it almost always, starts out very mellow and pathetic-sounding. But over the course of the song, it completely builds up, slowly but surely, into what seems like an entirely different song. One of the coolest examples of this during the concert was a very intense rendition of “The Moon”, which builds up pretty nicely in the real song but it still kind of retains a mellow tone. But during the concert, they went completely crazy, going one more verse (is that the right word?), then another, and just when you think they’ve hit the last verse, and they couldn’t possibly go any farther, they couldn’t possibly reach a higher peak of emotion, they go again, bringing in an electric guitar and then revving up the bass to supersonic levels up to a point where you think your soul is going to explode from too much emotion. And then, the song just dies down and you feel almost relieved, but in a really good way.

Here’s the original song.

And here’s a different live version, doesn’t go quite as far as what I saw in concert, but you can get the idea:

Another great performance was “Say It to Me Now”, with no mic on the voice. Just Glen Hansard singing out at the top of his voice to the entire hall. So, if you’ve never heard of them you should start out by seeing the film Once. It’s a perfect introduction to them and shows how beautifully music and film can merge sometimes.

And if you do know them then you should check their concert listings on their website to see them live because they are exceptional in concert.

HA! I went the whole review without saying “awesome” once! I am proud of myself.

BUT the point is that today I turned 17 and that is the age that you are allowed to buy tickets to see R-rated movies. Which is cool. And I think in NYC you can get a slightly-better learner’s permit than you could when you were 16. (Not that I have one.) But what did I do today? Well, it was weird. Since I’m older and so much more MaTUrE now, I feel not as super-excited and giddy as usual.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited it’s my birthday and everything, but it was all rainy today so for most of the day I just sat around and watched TV. In the evening I had a party with my family and tomorrow I’m seeing WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE with friends, and I got some awesome presents today. But aside from that it’s just a normal Saturday.

I guess it’s also helped by the fact that this is the first year in a while that my birthday has been on a weekend. On weekdays there’s school to distract you all day and people to talk to that wish you a happy birthday. I’m not sad… I just feel… grown up. :-/

• Visited Binghamton University – city not much, campus pretty nice, dorms nice, classes eeh
• Visited Ithaca College – Very nice film school, beautiful campus, tricky admissions system for me
• Wrote a first draft of my college essay
• Signed up for the Common App
• Saw Fight Club for the first time – awesome movie
• Bought The Office Season 5 on DVD – got excited for The Office Season 6
• Decided to post on his blog after a month
• Is sorry

Now, it’s perfectly okay to not understand how something works and admit it. You can’t expect everyone in the world to know about everything in the world. But when so-called journalists “admit” that they don’t know how a particular part of Twitter works, I get a little agitated. I’m not insisting that everybody gets a Twitter to understand it, but if someone is writing an article where one of the main topics is Twitter, they should at least take a look at Wikipedia and find out what “trending topics” are.

That’s not as much an insult to the linked interview as much as an expression of frustration that even though Twitter is the coolest new thing (at least for the rest of the world), nobody actually seems to understand how it all works or even why it’s important. Twitter came up in class at school recently, and someone said this: “If you have the time to post on Twitter, you obviously have no life to post about.” Yet that same person has a Facebook, a service far more advanced and time-consuming than Twitter.

People are saying that 140-characters is too small an amount to say much of anything. But which is it? Is Twitter limiting and pointless or time-consuming and important? Nobody who’s “anybody” really seems to know. Twitter is not the new and ultimate way to communicate. It can be used that way, but it’s not the main purpose. It’s an interesting gimmick on CNN, but at it’s core Twitter is used for vaguely keeping track of people you know and celebrities.

Some of my friends who have gotten Twitter accounts just to try it out are confused because they don’t see the point of it. That’s because they know probably two other people on Twitter. Britney Spears and me. If your type of people aren’t on Twitter, then maybe you shouldn’t join.

And despite what everyone thinks, a regular tweet isn’t “I pooped! Now back to work.” People post little tidbits of information about their lives or about whatever they’re doing that is – wait for it – interesting for the people who – wait for it – willingly decided to follow them in the first place. It’s a fun way to keep track of minor celebrities (the ones who actually tweet themselves, like Rainn Wilson) and your friends. But beyond that it’s nothing more.

What I’m trying to say is that people have to stop making a big deal about how great or stupid Twitter is. Or, at least – if you’re going to say it’s one or the other – know what you’re talking about.

But, a quick Google search tells me otherwise. There are 42 million instances of “yay” on Google, but only 544 thousand instances of “yeay.” Another quick (mathematical) search on Google tells me that this means “yay” is mentioned over 77 times more often than “yeay.” I think that this matter has now been resolved. The majority of the population uses “yay.”

Yay.

This means I can smile without looking like I’m 10 years old! I can also chew gum, eat popcorn without being afraid of breaking my braces, and eat gummy bears without any fear! Well, in a month at least.

It was also incredibly funny, because the situations which the characters found themselves in are just like those of “muggle” teenagers, yet it exists in this magical fantasy world. That’s exactly what made the books work, and that’s why most everyone my age became so immersed in the Harry Potter universe.

The movies, this one specifically, has gotten that aspect across incredibly well. It’s about more than the good vs. evil story – that you can find in any run-of-the-mill movie. It’s that it’s taking place in different way, but with the exact same relationships and dynamics as our world.

I counted one instance of the original John Williams Harry Potter theme. Despicable. And it wasn’t even during the main title. I realize that the original theme is almost 10 years old and that the music needs to evolve – but they can’t spare to use a bit of old (but great) music for the main title anymore? Hopefully if John Williams returns for the final two movies (as he is rumored to) there will be proper musical accompaniment. The scores for the last few movies by other composers have been mediocre

Still, aside from that the movie was a great adaptation of the book, and it didn’t feel nearly as rushed as the last one. There are only 2 more movies to go, and for the most part they look like they’re going to be really good based on this one.

A note about the advertising campaign for the movie: I love the way that the logo is slanted and cropped out of the frame for all of the movie posters. Being the sixth time around, it’s an acknowledgment that this has all happened before, and we don’t even need to see the whole logo to know that it’s Harry Potter.

I think that Pixar’s movies – Up being their best so far – are the pinnacle of filmmaking. The computer animation medium offers complete creative control over everything – they can create anything on screen short of a perfectly realistic human. The environment set up at Pixar enocourages and continues to produce truly original and creative ideas. And best of all, all of their movies are G or PG. They can be enjoyed by anybody – a 3 year old, or a 50 year old – no matter who, Pixar tells great stories.

I can’t tell you exactly why “Up” is so good. The movie just comes together collectively to be an amazing experience. It doesn’t make  you want to change the world, and it doesn’t try to. These movies are entertainment, but they are the most entertaining things being created in the film industry today.

Some people I know like to call a film like Up a “cartoon.” Sure, it is. But reducing it to that word is derogatory. A caroon is something that children watch and that is made for them, something simple and not very sophisticated. Up is enjoyed by children, but it is not just a kids movie. It is a universal film and it is AMAZING. So go and see it now. If you can, see it in 3D. But even if not, it’s the movie that’s important and you won’t regret it.

You can’t argue with 98% on RT. Even Psycho didn’t get that high. That’s right, it’s better than Hitchcock. (Yes, I am fully aware that I just said something really crazy. I will only say that they are two completely different films, and comparing them to each other is unfair to both. But Up really is that amazing.)

Go see Up! Trailer! Tickets!

And it turns out I’m not crazy! It’s called synesthesia, and tons of people have it with various degrees of extremities. I only see the colors in my head, when I imagine a number. But some people actually see the numbers and letters change color on a piece of paper as they draw them. It all has to do with some neural-this and electron-that connections in the brain that somehow gets mixed up, so some people associate certain symbols with certain colors. Wikipedia has the big-word answer if you want.

Usually the colors are different in every person. But not always. For instance, I have a friend who also has a mild form of synesthesia. About half the numbers we totally agree on (”Yeah! 7 is so firery-orange colored!”) and about half are so totally off. (”What are you talking about? 5 is the definition of blue!”) Here’s an approximation of how I personally see the first few numbers in my head:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Beyond that, any other color would just be a combination of the other few numbers. It’s not as obvious as it is on the page above in my head, it’s much more vague. But it’s there. With letters it’s much tougher. Letters like A are easy just by being pure red. E and F are two slightly different shades of green, D is a sort of light navy blue. But the colors sort of fade with most of the other letters farther along in the alphabet.

Okay, now here’s the crazy thing. It has to do with the Lost DVD set. I had always thought that the colors for the DVD cases for each season matched the seasons well for some reason, but it had never really occurred to me why. Then, recently, I realized. They matched almost exactly what I consider the colors of 1-4 to be. Season 1 was a light blue, season 2 a dark red-ish color, season 3 green, and season 4 blue!

Okay, so sure – season 2 is more of an orange color than red, but aside from that this follows my idea of what each number should be exactly. It’s most likely just a coincidence, as most people with Synesthesia don’t share the same colors with each other, but still a very interesting finding. Also, the fact that the upcoming Season 5 DVD is not yellow as it obviously should be, proves this is all probably me just getting excited about nothing. But still!

Do you have Synesethia? There must be more people out there who have this, however mildly.

P.S. Speaking of Lost – holy moly on that finale. Locke is dead. Again.

It’s amazing that the human mind can do that, understand that something isn’t true on one level, but then still let those same things have such a profound impact on us. Imagine that an alien came to our planet who couldn’t do this for whatever reason. They would see a movie and just not believe it, they would not comprehend the true characters, and they would only see actors. Most art would be irrelevant to this alien, because it could not suspend belief, even emotionally to understand anything that’s happening.

Speaking of actors – it’s even more amazing that we can see the same actors in dozens of movies and still believe them to be different characters and people every time, while still knowing that they’re still acting. This dual-minded ability, whatever you call it is so much a part of our society and how we interact within it. Graphical user interfaces on computers are also based on this idea – they try to replicate things in real life – a button in a computer program is based on a buttons in real life – but what if we couldn’t comprehend the fact that those pixels were a button, and we couldn’t get past the fact that we KNOW it’s not a real button?

Weird.

But probably the best part of it all was developing my film pitch with a Tribeca film mentor, and although I didn’t win one of the prizes, my mentor Sean McPhillips was incredibly helpful in helping me to formulate an idea for a movie that I am now starting to make. Through the program, we met twice to discuss how to craft my movie idea into something worth making – and I feel like the idea I have now is really great.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to be making the movie, currently called “Connect”, and hopefully filming this weekend! I’ll post more on it later.

This past week has been pretty awesome for me. At the beginning of last week I started the main part of the Tribeca Film Fellows program. We’ve been going on field trips and tours all over the city, learning all about the film business and filmmaking in general. Starting last Monday, and the 19 other film fellows met the Vice Presidents of Development, Marketing, and Press at Miramax. Then, on Tuesday we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, and then we got to shoot on 35mm film at Panavision.

The next day we got to see the footage we had shot, and saw it color corrected in a super-duper-expensive film development studio, and met David Koepp – the writer of Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones 4, Ghost Town (with Ricky Gervais), and tons of other movies. On Thursday, we went to the Mayor’s Office of New York and learned all about how to acquire filming permits in New York City, then met Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival with Robert DeNiro. On Saturday, we saw a sound mixer put together the sound effects and music for a TV trailer, complete with all the big bangs and booms you don’t know you know so well.

So, after all of that, I’m sure you can imagine that it was sort of a let-down yesterday when we all just had a quiet dinner and got some cool goody bags containing some NYC-related DVDs, and some books about filmmaking. Oh, and we also met some random actress named Natalie Portman and each got a personal copy of some piece-of-crap $1300 software called  Final Cut Studio. Here’s hoping that the rest of the program will be more exciting than last night was…

HOW AWESOME IS THAT????? Woww I’m so excited… this has probably been the coolest week of my life. The whole Natalie Portman thing we knew in advance but the Final Cut Studio was a complete and utterly awesome surprise. THIS IS SOOO COOL….

It’s Netsua, but it was backwards. Well, actually, it was a screenshot of Netsua.com flipped backwards. If you missed it (which makes sense seeing as I haven’t really posed in 3 weeks :-/), you can still see what it looked like at this link.

And here were some of the April Fools day related links I also posted on that page:

Click me (April Fools Day on Wikipedia)
and me! (Five April Fool’s Day office prank videos)
me three! (Funny April Fool’s joke on a typography blog)
and me? (The virus that was supposed to infect millions of people on April Fools Day)

April Fools Day is an awesome day, and it’s always great to see what the web does. YouTube was upside down, which was incredibly awesome. (You can still do it by adding “&flip=1″ to the end of any YouTube video URL)

Also, be sure to check out my April Fool’s jokes from last year, and the year before.

Basically it’s a 2-month long program where kids aged 15-20 are a part of the process behind the Tribeca Film Institute, filming footage for a a piece that will appear, going to screenings and tours of all sorts of movie-related places, and lots of other cool things. I’m excited!

I think this is the first snow day that NYC Public Schools have had in years. I can’t remember the last time we had one.

Isn’t that cool? President Obama. Not President-Elect Obama, not Mr. Obama. Just President Obama. Our President. It actually happened. And look at that crowd. I mean, can the people back there even see the capitol? Not that I’m complaining, it’s awesome that this is such a big even because it is, but… wow. At a certain point things just get too big.

It’s going to be really weird to have a President that we actually respect (”we” meaning me, and my liberal family and friends) and who is like, a serious person who says things that are smart and articulate. (Although the Daily Show may never be the same again.) He’s the person to represent us to the rest of the world, not that guy – you know who I mean, the one who heard the rumors on the internets – yeah him. Well, that guy is gone. Let’s just hope that Obama is as awesome as Bush was not-some, so maybe by the end of his (fingers crossed) second term we’ll be in a similar state to how we were back in 2000.

So, we watched the inauguration ceremony at my school during lunch. They had streaming video in the cafeteria, computer lab and library. It was pretty awesome, except for the audio not being in sync with the video. People cheered and everything and I got to have a nice slice of pizza and Dr. Pepper while watching, which is really all I’d ever want for something like that. But I got to miss 10 minutes of History – in order to witness history…

What’s really awesome about this whole thing, is that – not only is Bush gone, but he’s being replaced by a Democrat – not only that, but a smart, articulate Democrat – not only that, but a smart, articulate, black (ok, mixed race) Democrat – which is huge just from a historical perspective – and not only that – this guy’s name is Barack Hussein Obama – his middle name is the name of a dictator we recently took down, and his last name, save for one letter, is the name of the most evilest terrorist who is our sworn enemy – and not only that – he beat Hillary Clinton – a women running for President in the primaries, and not only that – he actually won the election. Not to mention avoiding – that – ew – you know who I mean – no, not him, the other one who looks like Tina- yeah her. Eww. I had almost forgotten about that whole thing. Well, at least we got those SNL sketches out of it.

Oh, and about the glass – look how thick that is. Obviously bullet-proof. Very smart. It offers Obama great protection while still making him look cool.

Now, all we have to do is wait and see what happens. I know everyone’s really eager for results quick, but we should give him some time, let him get settled into the white house and all before he starts fixing the world. Honestly, I don’t expect to see the economy fixed and the war ended until next week at the earliest. Call me a pessimist, but he’s only human.

And yes, there very well may be another Christmas movie when my parents and I go upstate again tomorrow. And yes, it won’t technically be Christmas, but it will be over Christmas break – so there.

And I got it for Christmas! And I am finally free from the limitations of Windows Movie Maker and then iMovie! Don’t get me wrong, they’re both pretty good ways to edit videos – that is – if you actually have not interest in editing videos and just want to put footage together. Final Cut Express is awesome, and it just gives you so much control to be creative in whatever way you want. I already know how to use it pretty well but there are still lots features that I haven’t even explored yet.  I can’t wait to find out what all of these different buttons do!

And of course A HUGE THANKS TO MY PARENTS FOR GETTING IT FOR ME! I made a movie about Christmas already and I’ll post it tomorrow once it’s uploaded to YouTube.

For his blog’s christmas decoration he inserts a subtle santa hat into his profile picture while I create a new logo and an entire weather system just for the occasion. For his birthday, he posts… nothing, while I may go a little bit overboard occasionally (but only every year).

Plus this tiny portable external hard drive to hold the GBs of files that would naturally come with it.

That little thing holds 320 GB!!!! Which is sort of incredibly amazing. It’s almost as small as a flash drive, but with 100 times the space.