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.

It’s really actually amazing. Even typing this blog post just feels faster, the letters seem to post quicker. And of course it’s the perfect browser for google services like Gmail and even just a regular google search, seeing as the browser is basically optimized to use it. I think Google Chrome is the best browser for most people who use computers – people who don’t care about having a supercomputer, and who just want to get online and do stuff. Firefox is good for any sort of add-on in the world, but I think Google Chrome is the simplest, fastest browser on both Macs and PCs, which is what I think Google is going for with Chrome OS, too.

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. :-/

But the funny thing is, this could have been a  series finale. Jim and Pam’s storyline is wrapped up, there’s a baby on the way, and Jim just got a promotion, leaving them a bright future. What if the show ended now? Of course I’m happy it’s not, but it’s nice to know that The Office is wrapping up a major storyline and not holding it out until the last season.

This season, by the way, has been great. Every episode was funny, and all regular episodes have primarily taken place within the office. Like they should. Because it’s The Office.

• 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.

The basic premise is that 20 years ago, aliens came to Earth. Not to Paris. Not Manhatten. Not the Golden Gate Bridge. Nah, their mothership stopped over Johannesburg, South Africa. And the aliens weren’t here to invade or  even to enhance interplanetary communication. They were malnourished and starving – the poorest of the supposed alien race, on a ship scavenging for resources on different planets around the galaxy. And they just happened to run out of fuel over Earth.

As the movie’s main plot starts, all of this is old news. 20 years have gone by, and almost 2 million aliens are living in District 9, right outside of Johannesburg in what over time became a slum. Then, when the awesome-effect of the aliens wore off, people got tired of them scavenging their food and wanted them out – so a private security company, MNU, is hired to move them to a new location away from everyone. Our main character then needs to enter District 9 to get them to sign eviction notices. And then some crazy stuff happens which is the rest of the movie – I’m not going to explain it here because it’s nice to not know exactly how the movie is going to play out.

What’s so interesting about District 9 is it’s real-world approach to such a traditional storyline. The movie is shot like a documentary for much of the time, inter-cutting interviews with scholarly-looking experts who act as sort of narrators on the events of the movie. There is also a lot of hand-held and security camera footage. Over the course of the movie, it shifts to a more narrative-style storyline, but the real-world grunginess of the documentary parts still shines through.

Even if District 9 isn’t a perfect movie, it is such a unique film that it’s differences from, say, Transformers and Independence Day, make it well worth the ride. At times it was bloodily funny and also incredibly sad. Because we see the alien scenario in such a different context than usual, it feels fresh, new, and exciting. It feels like the crisis is really happening in our world. Or at least the world that we see on CNN.

And as usual… 87% on Rotten Tomatoes – certainly not bad at all

After seeing Harry Potter 6 for a second time today, I got into a very interesting conversation with my friend Jesse and his father. It helps to be familiar with the majority of the major movie franchises of the last few decades.

Jesse’s argument is that Voldemort is a one-dimensional and unrealistic character because he has no true motive – specifically a political ideology. When comparing him to other bad guys – both real and fictional – he is a simplistic character who is only there to be the bad guy, and has nowhere near the depth of other villains, like Palpatine from Star Wars – who is strikingly similar to Hitler.

My argument is that Voldemort doesn’t need a political ideology, or any ideology for that matter. What drives him is a lust for power, specifically the power of magic – this includes everything evil that he strives to do, including mass killing and becoming immortal. These acts of magic are examples of ultimate power to him, and he is addicted to it in the same way that anyone who possesses the ring in Lord of the Rings ultimately becomes attracted to it’s power. That idea of power, of being able to control the universe exactly as one wants to is the ultimate idea behind evil.

But no! Jesse says, he just likes power, that’s it? To be a credible villain, he needs to represent something – an idea or ideology. Like Hitler and Palpatine – both do evil things in the context of upholding a dictatorship. Otherwise, he is just a devil figure – a simple and one-dimensional representation of “bad.”

BUT! I say, the only reason dictators want a dictatorship is because they think that they can rule the world/galaxy in the right way, and because if fulfills their initial lust for power. The power obsession is not caused by their ideologies, but vice versa. They believe in a certain ideology because if fits their lust for power. Even the Joker, even though he doesn’t appear to believe in anything, really believes in chaos. And him causing that chaos is him having power.

There are hints of Voldemort’s political ideology in the books. In the last book he basically infiltrates the wizard government and ultimately becomes it. This of course came after much of his evil-doing, because the government he set up fit his evil personality. This power lust creates evil in government.

When you think about it, that lust for power is a part of everything that is wrong with the world and the human condition. Power is the money that bank robbers steal from banks. Power is the crops a farmer grows on a piece of stolen land. Power is the driving force behind people in high levels of government. Capitalism encourages people to strive for power, and that power is what gives us huge corporations and their vile tactics. Power is behind the flaws of capitalism, the throne of a dictator, and the natural human need for the universe to run just the way they want it.

Power is ultimately being God. Perhaps this explains why so many people are devoted to religion – because religion tells us that the main power in the universe is out of our hands. Therefore, so is any form of evil. And who doesn’t want a world without evil?

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….

Again, I’m very sorry Peter and Maraika, and I hope you like it!

]]> http://www.netsua.com/blog/the-seamonster-movie/feed 1 http://www.netsua.com/blog/macheist-3-bundle http://www.netsua.com/blog/macheist-3-bundle#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:28:36 +0000 Austen http://www.netsua.com/?p=1451 Yet again, Macheist has a 12 – no wait 13, hold on a second, I mean 14 – wait, plus the extras: 17-application bundle available for mac users to download. For the Macheist 3 bundle, they’ve lowered the price from $49 to $39, and when you add up all the applications in the bundle, plus the extra ones, the combined value is over $1,000. And yes, I bought it (like last year). So, here’s some of the noteable ones and what I think of them:

Picturesque:
It does some cool design elements that Apple has made famous, but I can’t shake the feeling that everything it does it just current fad in graphic design.

World of Goo:
I’ve heard great things about this game and it is pretty fun. I still have yet to really try it but it’s nice to have a fun and innovative game concept.

PhoneView:
Luckily this works with the iPod Touch – the only use I can really get out of this is taking music from an iPod to the computer quickly and easily, with file names and ID3 tags attached.

LittleSnapper:
Seems like a nice alternative to Skitch. It definitely has a slicker interface and also a very nice way to organize all of those screenshots you take.

Acorn:
I love the idea of having all of the tools in one window to reduce the clutter that always happens in Photoshop and Pixelmator – good for simple photo edits.

Kinemac:
This is why I bought the bundle. FCE is great, but unlike Final Cut Pro, it doesn’t come with a 3D motion program like Motion. Kinemac does most of the same things as Motion, for a fraction of the price.

WireTap Studio:
This should be great for recording audio from specific applications whenever the need arises – for a quote from a movie on DVD, or for a sound effect on a website.

Espresso:
A little bit above my head in the web design area, but it should be interesting to learn to the application – it does FTP and text editing, with style.

These are only 8 of the 17 applications included in the bundle, but the ones I find the most interesting. You can view and download the whole thing at Macheist.com, but you may want to make sure you have a mac first. But be sure to get it by Tuesday, because after that the bundle won’t be available anymore.