…in the blink of an eye.
A husband and his wife decided to start taking a picture of themselves and then infant child starting in 1991 with the same photographer, lighting, and background. They took a photograph of themselves from that year all the way through the present, amounting to 22 years worth of photography and (gulp) aging.
Fascinating stuff. Check it out if you’re curious:
http://mom.me/toddler/10736-one-family-one-pose-22-years/item/1991/
Fascinating article by Eric Stern for Salon.com relating to a question I had when Colorado eased up on their marijuana laws: What happens to all those who are in jail and/or are being prosecuted by incidents involving marijuana yet happened before this new eased regulations were instituted?
In many ways I’m a real “square”. Throughout my life I’ve hardly ever had alcohol (I have never been drunk and I don’t drink because I don’t like the taste of most alcoholic beverages), I don’t smoke (tried it for at most two days in high school before giving up), and have never taken any illegal drugs (though like many I certainly had the opportunities to do so, again in high school as well as college). That last bit obviously includes the use of marijuana, which I haven’t so much as had single puff of. In fact, during the years when I was exposed to its use via friends, I was very much against it though I don’t recall ever pontificating against its use (I could be wrong but throughout my life I was never much of a “strident” type).
Over the years I’ve come to the opinion that drug laws in this country are both too harsh and ineffective. It is also my opinion our society is repeating the mistakes of Prohibition. Drug laws, like the Prohibition laws of the 1920’s, have spawned a vast criminal underclass devoted to selling these illegal items, some of which are clearly more damaging than others. The bottom line remains the same as it was during the Prohibition years: If people want to use an illegal substance, they WILL find a way. Many may get caught while many others won’t, but the use will continue.
So now that marijuana, an illegal drug many consider no stronger and less damaging than alcohol, is essentially “allowed” in Colorado (there are fine lines in the new law, which are addressed in the article) while “medicinal marijuana” is looked upon more and more favorably in other states, a very legitimate question is raised: What happens with the people of Colorado who are in prison specifically for the use and/or distribution of marijuana?
Should they be immediately freed? Should their records be wiped clean? And what if this legalization seeps into other states? What happened to all the others in prison for similar offenses?
Culturally, we’re in interesting times and the above article offers some food for thought.
Whenever I look over movies, TV shows, books, or music, I try to give the people who created the work the benefit of the doubt.
This is a relatively new thing for me as I used to have very stringent standards for what I perceived as “good” works vs. those that were “bad”. Perhaps its a sign of mellowing with age. Perhaps its the realization that all works were created by people like me who certainly had no intention of making something “bad”.
In the books I write, the only deadline I have is my own. I will not release any of my works until I’m satisfied they are about as good as I can get them. And even then I know the works aren’t perfect. A typo or two might have escaped me. A passage might have worked better had I written it this way versus that way.
While I have the luxury of time and budget (as a novel writer, there is no budget!), others aren’t so lucky. A project can be greenlighted and the people before and behind the scenes may have a very limited time and an equally limited budget to create their work as best as they can. Long, loooong hours may be invested to make sure the project gets to the screen at a given time and sometimes compromises are made. A work that looks like it “can’t miss” therefore comes out looking sloppy and not at all well thought out.
Which brings us to the SyFi network’s Helix.
Just before the show aired its pilot and first episode back to back last Friday, there were posts on the blogs that I frequent talking about how good the show was and how it would be a “must watch” in the future. The show involved a group of Center for Disease Control (CDC) officers sent to a remote arctic base where a mysterious virus has been released. The CDC officers are trying to find and contain the virus while dealing with the fact that the people behind the base are keeping secrets…and one of their own members may be in cahoots with the base’s brass.
Now, this description sounded OK to me. Not great, I would admit right off the bat, but not all that bad.
But then I watched the two episodes.
Ouch.
While the show features decent actors and a decent “look”, the story presented veered from the dull to the absolutely preposterous. The head of the CDC, Dr. Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell) is sent into this situation along with his estranged wife (Kyra Zagorsky) and have to deal with a survivor of this mysterious virus, his brother (Neil Napier) who happened to have slept with his wife!
Are these the people you want to send into a potentially Earth threatening hot zone? Do we need this potential drama between professionals who should be focused on their jobs?!
But it gets worse. There is a military officer liason and another CDC Doctor who break from the others and explore the facility essentially on their own. They do not report back to their superior for what appeared to be two days or so despite quickly finding evidence that the head of the research facility was withholding information/lying to them about the research center. I mean, come on, shouldn’t you tell the others that the head of the base might in fact be a bad guy? Are you going to let your teammates stumble around a couple of days not knowing the man they’re dealing with may be about to make them victims? Then again, the head of the research center was only missing a thin twirly mustache and the name “Dr. Evil” to fully cement his persona. If the others didn’t realize he was holding back, perhaps it was their own damn fault.
No, I did not like the show at all.
One wonders how some of the talent involved in The X-Files, Lost, and the excellent Battlestar: Galactica reworking could also have had a hand in this show.
The answer is we’ll never really know…unless we were there. Perhaps the writers were rushed. Perhaps the directors and actors and crew didn’t have the time necessary to fully flesh out the characters and scripts before filming began. It’s far better to think that than to think these two first episodes are exactly what their makers were hoping to create.
Needless to say, a pass.
Following the surprise success of the 2009 Neill Blomkamp directed, Sharlto Copley starring District 9, fans were eager for a follow up.
When it was announced this film would be Elysium and it would star Hollywood A-listers Matt Damon and Jodie Foster along with the returning Mr. Copley and feature a sci-fi premise, anticipation was sky-high.
Was it too high?
To some, the answer would prove to be a resounding “Yes”. Many fans of Mr. Blomkamp’s District 9 found his follow up lacking, bemoaning problems with the story and, in the case of Jodie Foster, her choice of line delivery. There was even one critic who listed Elysium among his “worst of the year” films.
As many others, I was curious to see the film. I liked District 9, though perhaps without the feverish love others had for it. The commercials for Elysium certainly looked intriguing, with Matt Damon hardwired with an exoskeleton and looking like he could kick some serious ass…
Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.
As has become depressingly usual for me, I simply didn’t have the time to catch the film in theaters and had to wait for the home video release to give it a look. I have. Did the film deliver or was it the disappointment others felt it was?
The answer to both questions, curiously enough, is “yes”. The film delivered some really good scenes but I have to agree with others that it was, in the end, a bit of a disappointment…though not quite worthy of being included on any “worst of the year” type lists.
The story goes like this: Worker drone Max (Matt Damon) lives on the squalid Earth while orbiting the planet is the Elysium satellite, the place the rich folks live. Right away, we’re back in Mr. Blomkamp’s (who also is credited with the screenplay) District 9-like world of the haves and the have-nots.
Max bumps into a childhood friend of his, Frey (Alice Braga), before an accident at his plant irradiates him and leaves him with only five days to live. Max realizes his only hope for survival lies in somehow getting off Earth and to Elysium, where they have medical beds capable of curing him of his illness.
But getting to Elysium is not an easy task. A local smuggler agrees to get him on a ship to Elysium provided he steals the memories of a high level industrialist, who coincidentally is Max’s boss at his factory and coldly witnessed Max’s grim medical analysis following his radiation poisoning. It turns out the industrialist, however, is in cahoots with Delacourt (Jodie Foster) the Secretary of Defense of Elysium, in trying to overthrow the power structure of the satellite. In his head was a program designed to do just that.
Thus when Max uploads the industrialist’s data into his head, he is suddenly on the run from a fearsome assassin Kruger (Sharlto Copley) while trying to get to Elysium. He must also deal with the fact that his childhood friend Frey has a young daughter who is dying of leukemia. Will Max ultimately help Frey’s daughter or will he selfishly try to save himself?
I suspect you already know the answer to this.
Plain and simply, Elysium is a terrific looking movie that features a script that needed some more work. The cast, for the most part, is certainly game (even Ms. Foster…I’ll get into her performance in a second) and as a director Mr. Blomkamp delivers some very exciting action sequences. But unlike District 9’s more subtle treatment of the haves vs. the have nots dynamic, Elysium gives it to us with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. The haves are uncaring in their heaven in the sky while the poor folks live in the dirt and dream of escaping their uncaring hell.
I have to agree with the critics that Jodie Foster delivered an almost bizarre performance/line reading. It was a curious choice, to be sure. However, like the other actors in the movie, Ms. Foster didn’t seem to be “slumming” (no pun intended) it. Her choice of line delivery might not have worked, but she certainly appeared game. Also, her role was no more than an extended cameo, amounting to not much more than five to ten minutes of total screen time. Blaming her for the film’s problems is therefore at best misplaced.
Once again I return to the script and its flaws. In Elysium we have a broad story involving our Earth and an incredibly large satellite for the rich…of which we know almost nothing other than the fact that it is as beautiful as the Earth is grim. We have a massive satellite that has rivers, mountains, seas and beautiful buildings and a large population…yet somehow does not have any sort of defensive system?
Really?
Why exactly do they have a Secretary of Defense if the satellite has no apparent defensive capability…at least until the “illegals” actual land there? Add to the fact the too-coincidental meeting between Max and Frey and the daughter that should be called “Plot Point/Hero’s Angst”, the Industrialist who happens to be working on “rebooting” Elysium just as his mind is stolen, Max’s convenient radiation poisoning (which makes him barely able to walk yet when he gets the exo-skeleton he no longer appears to be affected by it much at all) and you begin to feel the film is just a little too manipulative and/or not as well thought out as it should be.
Nonetheless, Elysium is far from a bust. It is one of those films that are at best “decent” yet could -indeed should– have been far better than it was. Perhaps that is why it proved to be so frustrating to people. Had Elysium been made with a no-name cast and featured a no-name director not coming off a smash success, fans might have been a little more tolerant of the finished product.
Regardless and as it stands, Elysium is at best a mild-recommendation for me. Others might want to skip it.
The following article, from Newsweek, is about Airbnb, an upstart (small) Hotel company that is going after the “big boys”. Although this may sound like something only those in the Hotel business may find interesting, the article touches upon something that has intrigued me for several years now: the evolution of businesses in the age of the internet.
Read the article and you’ll see what I mean:
http://www.newsweek.com/end-mass-production-225700
If you’re not interested in reading the whole thing and/or too lazy to click the link, let me offer you this quote which neatly summarizes what the article has to say about the current business world:
Information technology is eroding the power of large-scale mass production. We’re instead moving toward a world of massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff – and of consumers who reject mass-produced stuff. The Internet, software, 3D printing, social networks, cloud computing and other technologies are making this economically feasible – in fact, desirable.
Let me repeat one small part of this great paragraph: Massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff.
I see this today in Amazon whenever I check out my books, for am I not very much a part of this very game? I’m one small independent writer out there offering my wares (books) to everyone out there. At this point there is no major publishing company distributing my works.
Back when I first got into the publishing business in the 1990’s, being an “independent” publisher involved considerable investment and therefore potentially big loss. Why? Because the only way to publish works was to actually publish them at certain minimal quantity levels and on actual paper. If you were publishing “Book X”, you could list it in the trades and pay good money for a full page add. Eventually you’d get your order and you hoped it would be a sufficient quantity to pay for the publishing costs and still make you a little bit of money.
If the orders were too low, however, you could do one of two things: a) cut your losses (both in terms of money and time) and cancel the book or b) go ahead and publish it at a loss and hope that over time you can recoup your publishing costs and sell whatever material you were forced to over-produce.
This changed radically with the advent of the various tablets. Now, you can “publish” works that can be read on your computer and tablet via Kindle or Nook or any other e-reader. There are now “print to demand” companies that do just that, print your book in the numbers you need them printed without any minimal orders.
But even more importantly, the internet has given regular folks the ability to review the works of others. Moving away from books for the moment, we as consumers can comfortably go to a McDonalds restaurant in all corners of the United Stated to get a meal and we know what we’re going to get. Yet we may avoid the small, independent (and mythical) Billy’s Burger Joint right next door to a McDonalds for the opposite reason: We don’t know what we’re going to get. The food may well be far fresher and tastier than that found at McDonalds yet as consumers we may shy away from this place because we simply don’t know if that will be the case.
In the book world, you may avoid a book authored by one E. R. Torre because you haven’t the foggiest idea of whether this fellow has any talent whatsoever (if you should even stumble upon him!) and time is money and you have neither available in healthy enough quantities to devote to this “newbie”. Yet you buy novels by, say, Big Author X because s/he has a track record of sales and past successes which make you as a consumer more likely to try his/her latest novel out.
This in spite of the fact that you may not have enjoyed any of this author’s books in many years.
The wonderful thing is that the internet is in the process of changing all this.
Now, if you see Billy’s Burger Joint and are not in the mood for a Big Mac, you pull up your smart phone or any other internet device and see what others say about Billy’s Burger Joint. If the reviews are good, you feel more comfortable in giving the place a try.
The same may well benefit someone like me.. I’ve been blessed with mostly good reviews for my books and I suspect that makes it easier for others who are not familiar with the works of E. R. Torre to give them a try. While sales of my books certainly are not on the level of, say, a Stephen King I can’t help but feel each positive reviews has to encourage potential buyers. And the reviews have the bonus effect of encouraging me to keep writing and releasing new works!
Perhaps the end of “mass production” is the future of not just the food, lodging, and writing industries but of all fields.
We will certainly see!
Seems The Wolf of Wall Street, the latest Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio film has become know less for how good/bad it is/may be and more for the extreme amount of profanity uttered throughout.
How much profanity, exactly?
Glad you asked. Take a look:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/wolf-of-wall-street-counting-all-the-curse-words.html
If you’re too lazy to click a link, here’s perhaps the most comprehensive chart found within the above article:
Yikes!
You mean “fucksville” only got used four times? And that’s like my favorite expression!
Seriously, though, check out the website. They present plenty of other humorous charts noting the *ahem* flowery dialogue to be found in this film.
One of my favorite current TV shows is Justified. Entering its fifth season this week and based on a short story by the late Elmore Leonard, the show stars Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Justified often delivers a healthy dose violence -and death- along with an equally healthy dose of hilarity, a mix that when it works, it works incredibly well. The writing on the show is often razor sharp and a great cast surrounds the taciturn Marshal, who at times walks through the scenery as if he’s a mellow Grim Reaper.
Having said that, this generally negative review by Willa Paskin of the fifth season’s first two episodes had me worried:
A while back I noted a link to a story involving TV shows that had gone on “too long”. I ended the blog entry with examples of TV shows that I felt ended “right on time”, where you could see that the cast/crew/writers/directors/etc. were perhaps starting to lose interest and were beginning to release substandard episodes just before the shows were cancelled (you can read all that here).
One thing I realized belatedly when I wrote that entry was that many of the shows I felt went on “too long” -and those that ended “right on time”- seemed to fall apart around their fourth or fifth season. There seems to be something make or break -more often break– about a show reaching that magical time. As much as I adored The Simpsons, I grew bored of it around its fifth season and never bothered to watch it again. Two of the shows I listed as having ended “right on time” were the original Star Trek series (cancelled after three seasons) and The Wild Wild West (cancelled after four seasons). Thinking about it some more, Torchwood was another series that flopped toward the end, when it reached what was effectively its fifth (or would it be considered fourth?) season long story episodes.
That’s not to say that there are exceptions to this rule (Doctor Who) and, I would hastily note I’m speaking for myself here, but it is curious how I tend to reach my fill with series after a while.
So after reading the review I sat down and, with great trepidation, watched the fifth season premiere of Justified.
Was the negative review…justified?
I can only give a very ambivalent answer here: Yes and no.
The episode was certainly watchable, but the body count in that first hour (I have yet to see the second episode which the reviewer has) was beyond ridiculous. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of ten people killed within that one hour of time (I actually lost track!) and I couldn’t help but think the writers simply wanted to shock us with all that violence.
However, for a kickstarter for a season, the story itself was surprisingly…small. Not a whole lot happened here from a story standpoint, certainly not enough to clue you in on where this season will go. Other seasons have grabbed you by the throat and not let go until the end. This episode felt almost like filler/backstory despite the incredibly high body count.
In the end, I have to agree with Ms. Paskin’s review. While still quite watchable, I hope this episode isn’t a sign of things to come but an anomaly, a “let’s catch the viewers up” type of deal meant for newbies more than those who have been around the previous four seasons.
I still have a great deal of interest in Justified and sincerely hope it once again reaches the levels it has in the past. But this opening episode didn’t do all that much for me.
…still dreaming…
I know other parts of the country experience a deep freeze. Around these parts, it seems the rain just won’t go away.
Love this website. Interesting mix of both Informative AND hilarious articles. A few I’ve checked out recently:
First up is a list of 5 Movies That Shamelessly Ripped Off Obscure Ones:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19852_5-famous-movies-that-shamelessly-ripped-off-obscure-ones.html
Fascinating list, particularly the #4 movie displayed, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The “look” and some aspects of that very famous film sure are similar to the far more obscure Charlton Heston 1954 film Secret of the Incas.
Another movie, the classic 1979 horror/sci-fi hybrid Alien, clearly owed plenty to the atmospheric 1965 film Planet of the Vampires, as well as the other movie presented (I’ll leave that for you to discover!). When I first saw Planet of the Vampires, I already knew that it had been an “influence” on Alien. Seeing it proved a revelation. While Planet of the Vampires is very low budget (and it shows at times), it features several sequences that seem to have been taken almost whole in Alien, including the crashed alien craft complete with a dead alien pilot!
Interesting stuff!
Next, 20 Most Amazing People You’ve Never Heard Of:
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_753_the-20-most-amazing-people-youve-never-heard-of_p20/#20
Really fascinating list, including the person who created the first video game/video game system, the first jet airplane, the first porn film (!), the actual First President of the United States, and the man who influenced both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
An eclectic and fascinating list, though you may find some examples far more interesting than others.
Finally, here’s a podcast exploring the question of why some music and movies go “bad” over time:
The topic to me is fascinating because I’ve certainly experienced film/music that in my younger years really enjoyed but as I grew older didn’t. Meanwhile, there are other examples of film/music that you enjoyed as a youth that you still enjoy tremendously.
What makes one still work while the other no longer does?
Again, interesting stuff. Enjoy!
This seems to be the day of finding oddball stories. In this case, a pair of Physics Professors scoured the internet for any evidence of…time travelers. SPOILER ALERT: Sadly, they found no evidence of any:
As a fan of science fiction, one of my favorite concepts to explore both in my writings (my own personally written favorite time travel story can be found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. The story is titled Dreams Do Come True) and in the works of others is time travel. There are plenty of really good stories out there featuring this idea and plenty of others that somehow screw the concept up.
The reality -and allure- of time travel as a concept is that it is so very cool yet also so very messy. The “grandfather” paradox, which if applied broadly explores the concept of changing your future via traveling to the past, is perhaps the biggest issue regarding any time travel story. The original concept is that you go back in time and accidentally or on purpose kill your grandfather…before your father was born. That being the case, how can you (the time traveler) in your present even exist if in the past your grandfather was dead before your father was conceived?
The concept of killing a figure in the past can thus be expanded to others, the most noted one being Adolph Hitler. So the story goes that you’re in the future and have a time machine. You go back in time and target and kill Adolph Hitler well before he comes to power in Nazi Germany (perhaps you murder him as a child, perhaps you make sure his parents never meet, etc).
Yet by doing so, you’ve made your “present” Adolph Hitler free. That being the case, why would you want to go back in time and eliminate this man? Your present would thus be a whole different one, perhaps one where another figure took over the vacuum left behind by Hitler’s death (there were other geo-political events in motion during that time and it is possible if Hitler didn’t come to power someone else might well have in his place…perhaps someone much smarter, bolder, and crueler -if such a thing is possible). Or perhaps your future would be so radically altered that there was no time travel…or perhaps no “you”!
Which begs the question: If time travel is possible, can you alter history? Can you eliminate yourself if you do so? If not, could time travel actually be some kind of alternate dimensional trip, where instead of going “back” in time you’re actually traveling to an alternate universe that is currently experiencing a different year than yours? And this brings up another, even more deeply philosophical issue: Is our future thus pre-determined? While we affect history in the present, does the idea of not being able to “change the past” essentially mean the future is also unchangeable? If we can’t go back and kill an Adolph Hitler and make a more peace-loving alternate 1930’s era Germany, then could whatever happens from this day forward is also written in stone on some God/alien/Supreme Being’s mountain? Is our fate pre-determined?
Anyway, getting back to the original article: No evidence of time travelers.
Bummer. 😉