doych

See it first

HBO Originals. I can't live without them. Although I can do without the horrible Lisa Kudrow series and the cost of digital cable. But with The Wire, I'm hooked, and loving recent episodes more than all.

What's interesting with this season is not just the expected great writing, but HBO chose to offer each new episode a full week ahead of its scheduled air date. I know I'm late in mentioning this - I've been wondering about it for 6 weeks now, but I can't seem to let myself watch it before it's "air time" on Sunday evenings.

There's something about Sundays nights, ending a long work week - or an end of a loud football Sunday, when the tenants are finally silenced from the case of beer needed to accompany an improperly named sport - that gives me comfort in the regularly scheduled HBO Original.

Is HBO measuring who views it early? Will it increase sales of digital cable service? I doubt it.

Of course I need my On Demand for the occasional missed Sunday show, and a nice glass of wine to let me sit back, relax, and watch an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling.

Do these pixels come in petite?

After recently catching Opie and Anthony's new and honest TV commercial, I think that maybe HP can save some money on slimming effect filters and headache on the negative outcries they're getting by doing one simple step - load that O & A commercial onto every camera. Let the masters of verbal assault tell it like it is to those in need of some pixel pressing.

Howdy partner, looking to nail something?

Thanks to "Carpenter Dan" who is currently installing a tile floor into my first floor entrance, I've seen some liquid cheesiness on the packaging of the popular contractor's staple, Liquid Nails®.

Meet Liquid Cowgirl®. She is so purty I just had to add this to The Random Logo Project. She is darn happy, almost over-smiley as she sports her caulk gun - cocked and loaded. Love the matching toolbelt and hat.

Blue collar boys: be careful. She's a hot one, but a bit clingy.

Little girl, that painting hurt my feelings

Last week a 14 year old aspiring activist artist was interrogated by two U.S. Secret Service agents.

At age 13, young Julia Wilson made a painting of George Bush. It had a photograph of him, a red circle over his face, a few scattered bullet holes drawn, a bloody knife in Bush's hand, and the words "Kill Bush."  Julia  posted the image on MySpace.

Uh oh.

The government somehow had time to find it. Secret Service agents felt the painting was extremely threatening to the life of the President of the United States. Agents interrupted Julia, now 14, at school after visiting her confused mother at home, telling her that since the art included the words, "Kill Bush," and since it was accessible to anyone on the Internet, there was a very strong likelihood that someone-possibly a terrorist from a foreign country-might see the image and be inspired to act upon it.

I'm sure the school visit and interrogation helped scare the Elmer's glue, crayons and 1st Amendment rights out of the school children's fingertips, but Julia is now more determined than ever to organize a student anti-war group, and she is convinced that George W. Bush is the worst president ever.

Note to agents: I didn't say that... really... I'm just quoting the full article.

Mom always said to use Dawn® on the penguin

Dawn is tough on the grease - but mild on fur, feathers and skin.

While sleepily channel surfing last night, I realized I had stopped at an odd visual: A pair of hands were washing - oh so gently and yet thoroughly -  a helpless little penguin.

The voice kept saying "Dawn dishwashing liquid." Ok. Now I was awake, looking closer at what I thought was a penguin in a kitchen sink in an ad selling dish soap. It was! But it wasn't a kitchen... it was an animal rescue team, cleaning the penguin of oil and waste that almost killed it, then sending it back to its natural home where it cuddles up with a fuzzy penguin baby.

Yes the end is a bit Hollywood but it made me go "Awww." The voiceover got my attention: "Dawn® dishwashing liquid has been helping to save wildlife for over 25 years." Hmm, it must be true -  they made a web site about it.

Commercial ends its identity as Dawnsaveswildlife.com. Being an animal enthusiast, I had to visit. Check it out. They have a page dedicated to ways you can help save the environment and make a promise to do so. It's a great way to promise. They don't ask for an email or name, or to even pass it on. It just encourages you to read the page. And promise.

The new potty mouth of advertising

Children -  Stop reading.
The word "ass" is safe to say on network TV. BUT (pun intended), there's a sh*tload of new TV ads that are now using the word shit - cleverly or not. It's beeped, it's thrown to a logo, it's muted. But maybe like the word "google" entering the dictionary, that bad word "shit" will soon enter teenagers' vocabulary as acceptable language. Of course only Webster and GE can determine that one.

Some of the latest sh*t out there:

Safe Shit: VW has it. At the end of the Jetta "safe" campaigns - car crashes, cut to person saying "Holy Sh.. [cut to logo]"

Fast Shit: Comcast has it. Man washes dishes in "high speed" mode, cut to woman who says "Holy Sh.." as if she's afraid her grandmother is on set.

Cell Shit: Amp'd mobile has it. Strapping young man explains all the features of his calling plan, then explains how his package comes "with all that sh..t" or maybe he says "that's a lot of sh.." or who cares since the actor is built like a sh*t brick house.

Full of Shit: Well, make that "Full of Sit." Burger King has its new Dr. Angus character claim its new Angus burger will make you sit down while exclaiming "Buns up. Buns down. I’m full of sit, you’re full of sit, we’re all full of sit.”

No matter how hard these advertisers try, there will never be anyone who says this word as well as Isiah Whitlock, Jr.  His role as Senator Clay Davis on HBO's The Wire brings us many memorable conversations in which he adds his "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet."
It's music. I think he held one for a good 3 seconds in episode 4.

Now that's some funny shit.

Disappointment.

I have to set this up.

There’s a musician I absolutely love. Grammy-winning, critic’s darling, all that. Moment I heard her first CD, I thought it redefined the folk genre. Second release? No sophomore slump here. On the third, although darker lyrically, it hit on all cylinders. But on her fourth, she hit the wall in my mind. Songs didn’t have the same edge, and it didn’t do well commercially or critically. Gave it a pass though. Figured, she’s earned enough cred with the previous three.

Until the other day, when I checked out her latest and fifth, and well, I didn’t get it. It was the antithesis of everything she did musically on her first. It was, for lack of a better word, safe. Gone was the dark edge, the moody exploration of relationships past, not to mention the intriguing harmonies and chord progressions I’d not heard before in folk. I’d read she’d gone through some life changes recently, and rationalized to myself that maybe this was the reason. But then I had a thought that I’ve never had before about an actor, artist, musician or athlete:

It’s my fault.

Doesn’t matter if I like it, the performer does what they do for themselves first. They have to. Otherwise, they end up changing their style to fit the audience and compromising the work. I’d been in a groove for those first three CDs and expected more of the same. After all, don’t people naturally prefer what’s comfortable to them? Don’t change things too much. Give them their drink, their TV and their favorite chair.

Which is how I get with music and movies. I make a connection to the work someone does, and like a drug, need more and more of what it is they do in the style they do it. Wise? Probably not. Because after being disappointed over this latest release, I realized that while people hate change, there’s something more important at work here for the artist:

They need change.

If they don’t, forget compromising the work – they die as artists. Like the shark that has to keep swimming or it dies, the artist has to change or they die. The best we can hope for is that we’re in tune with their work for as long as possible, but eventually, they may go in a different direction from where we expect them to go. And there’s not a thing we can do about it.

Nor should we.

Sell a painting, buy a newspaper

$143.5 million.

Concerning fine art, that number doesn't phase me. Although it's a good thing David Geffen held out for that extra .5 mill, since there's speculation he's raising cash to buy The Los Angeles Times - so every little million counts.

Geffen sold Jasper Johns’s “False Start,” for $80 million (thankfully it wasn't a target for that much money), and Willem de Kooning’s “Police Gazette,” an abstract 1955 landscape, for $63.5 million. The buyers are both hedge fund billionaires. I guess you'd have to be.

The works of Gustav Klimt have been a hot item on the market lately. In fact, if any of you hedge fund billionaires or music moguls reading this feel like buying me a nice early Christmas present, there's 4 Klimt paintings up for auction on November 8 at Christie's. I'll take any, I'm not picky. And I'll thank you with a nice little blog post.

Jan Švankmajer's Otesánek

Say that 5 times fast.

I watched 2 films by Luis Buñuel last week - Un Chien Andalou and Las Hurdes (Land without bread). Some would consider Buñuel the father of cinematic Surrealism, so with his films on my mind while surfing the independent channels on digital cable, I stumbled across a Czech surrealist film, Otesánek (Little Otik), by Jan Švankmajer.

Ok, here's where I admit I'm studying Surrealism for my MFA class this semester, so it's not always the norm for me to catch 1 silent and 2 subtitled movies with 48 hours... but I have to admit, I love this shit. And it keeps my roommates off the first floor. If they can't hear Joe Buck or John Madden, they stay away.   

Milos Forman once said "Disney + Buñuel = Švankmajer." That's pretty dead-on. Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through his stop-motion technique.

Surrealism. Stop-motion with live action. Czech artist. An infertile couple in a poor apartment building who decide to raise a tree stump in the shape of a baby. Tree stump comes to life and eats people.

Who wouldn't give that at least a 5 minute chance?

Of course I was hooked. It's believable and yet totally outrageous. It's delightful. It's disturbing. 

Two stumps way up for this fairytale come true.

Not just another film.

Sean Penn said once that film was too important a medium to waste. And if you were going to just use it to have fun, then why not get a hooker and an eight ball and find a hotel room. Now, while I don’t share Sean’s proclivity for the latter, I do agree with his statement to the former. It’s really hard to believe in film when you see so much of what passes for it these days.

Until now.

Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert reinforces his point. If you’re an art director, an artist, musician, actor, filmmaker, poet, whoever you are, whatever you do, this film is not to be missed.

Stunning photography and composition, sparse soundtrack with a compelling narrative by Laurence Fishburne make this worth seeking out. (Fishburne’s read of the narrative is so good, I’d pay to hear him read the phone book.)

Maybe this movie stunned me because of the steady diet of Hollywood and so-called “independent’ films I’ve been on for so long. That by default, I couldn’t help but be amazed because this film elevates the genre to a new level when compared to the Pulp Cinema phase we seem to be in now.

Or perhaps, it just shakes off the many layers of crap the industry has built-up over the years and gets back to what filmmakers wanted film to be, but lost sight.

Film is a director’s medium. You can’t help but notice how much Colbert’s photographic experience informs this film and his decisions as a director, to the point the photography is the performance. This film feels so intimate, yet looks so epic.

Epic.

A word I hardly use anymore. How can I? I see no films designed to be that these days. Maybe some great shots are thrown in here and there, but for the most part, the genre seems lost. Hero may be the closest film I can remember of recent times that you’d have to have in the same discussion. Even still, seems like membership in the David Lean fan club is nil.

Still, no description does this work justice. Because it is epic, even on a small scale. Snow was filmed in slow-motion and finished entirely in cepia tones. It is a portrait of humans living alongside the animal kingdom. Director Gregory Colbert based this film on the international exhibitions of his large-scale prints of animals he documented over the years, told through fictionalized letters from a man on a journey.

Is it a documentary? Commentary? Work of fiction? Yes. No. Maybe. It could be all of these things, yet, it doesn’t really matter. From a cinematic POV, the opening scene rivals anything I’ve ever seen on film and lets you know that it could be all of that.

A world-class photographer, Colbert took a decade off to travel around the world to shoot. (You can also read more on his and the film’s background here.) Even the design of the main menu screen is gorgeous. Problem is, like anything this great, it’s also hard to find.

Ironic the film is about a journey, because that’s what will be required to seek it out anywhere. Hollywood Video or Blockbuster don’t list it online, not that I’d expect they would, so the only option appears to be to buy it via the film’s website here.

Just be cautioned, it’s expensive. Although it may also be the only film I’d pay $50 to own, and is certainly at home in any film collection. A nice design touch is that the DVD is also wrapped in a handmade bound cover made from a unique Nepalese paper finished with Beeswax. Once you open that, you know you’re about to experience something special.

Indeed.

"She gets it from her father"

That's my mom's favorite phrase when people ask where my creative side stems from. That's actually a funny question when you think about it. And we've all heard this one that she follows it up with: "I can't even draw a stick figure!"

Today my dad would have turned 71. And in January it will be 19 years since he died. Since he may not be able to appreciate my birthday wishes, here's a post for the creative dads out there who may have young kids, adult kids, awkward kids, athletic kids, obnoxious kids or scarily, maybe, like my friend Bill, artistically talented kids. Creative dads: teach them, and better yet, keep doing it yourselves. They'll remember the little things.

Perfection in my craft. Straight lines without rulers. Drafting, woodworking, pencil drawing, light metering and even composting - I learned all by observing the master himself. He was a man of few words. So here's a few for him...

Happy Birthday.

ps. props to the mom - she taught me to use more than a few words.

When the need to destroy precedes the need to create

On his 80th birthday, photographic artist Brett Weston fed sixty years worth of his negatives into the large fireplace in his home in Hawaii. Some of the negatives  didn't burn immediately. So Weston doused them with kerosene.

Surrealist author Franz Kafka requested his writings be destroyed upon his death. Were it not for Kafka's close friend and editor Max Brod, no one would know anything about Kafka's writings, which have come to symbolize modern man's anxiety-ridden and grotesque alienation in an unintelligible, hostile, or indifferent world. That would be a shame to have missed. I digress.

These artists are among the many whose self accomplishment is attained through the act of creating... producing... building... filming. Weston proved his strong belief that photographic prints should only be made by the hands of the person who created the negative. He was disgusted at his brother's greed in regards to his famous father's negative collection, as his brother would reprint works of the late Edward Weston and sell them for thousands of dollars each.

So when does the need to create get superseded by the need to destroy? There's many situations, one which I sadly witnessed last week in North Caldwell, NJ. The greed to build. My creative working space includes a large 40 inch window that, at times, shows imagery better than anything available on television. It's a view to 300 acres of woodland open space. Well, as of last week, there's now maybe 280. The other morning I wondered what 2 men with medium sized chain saws could possibly do to my view. Four hours later I knew they could completely alter it. Trees were killed. Rabbits ran scared. Fox and groundhog holes got sealed by trucks with four foot wheels. Birds nests came crashing down. Cicadas flew off in fear. The deer do not understand where their grazing land went. The elegant, long-winged hawk no longer glides above it all.

But I'll soon get to gaze out upon 27 luxury estates. And within a few years, beyond that I can  walk my dog up to a group of 140 age restricted town homes. I won't have to worry about deer ticks. I'll just have a few more cars at each new stoplight to help all the new traffic, which may help slow down the cars which kill the deer crossing the roads looking for a new home.

In his mind, the builder will have created an awesome masterpiece. And he'll keep going as long as he finds more hawks soaring in slow motion.

Bye bye fireflies...