On Projects

In the long dark of the winter months, you've got a lot of time to sit and drink--er, soul-search.  You review accomplishments, obsess over failures, come up with grandiose plans for the future.  My plans often take the shape of various projects.

These include a wide range of disciplines, from cooking to home improvement to the arts to film to high-tech.  I've been accused of taking things too seriously and possibly that's an accusation that sticks, but I'll tell you something: when I look backwards through my life, it's the things I didn't take seriously enough that haunt me.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against being a dabbler.  Life should be about experiencing and experimenting with a lot of different things and I don't think anyone has a duty to be an expert in all of them.

When I undertake a winter project, though, I try to take it seriously enough to approach it in an organized way.  Generally, this is in self-interest, because I want to have something to write about later.  So, if I can get myself out of my own winter doldrums, I'll start reporting on my projects here.

Next: The Daily Newspaper Project

The Annual Ritual

So... Time for the annual ritual of commercial-watching amidst a "sporting" event. This year, it's even more evident than ever that commercials are the real reason the "super" bowl exists. The unveiling of commercials for particular products is getting as much advance hype as the game. Let's face facts: it's early February, the football season is long over, and were in the long march through winter. Between now and spring training, you won't be watching a lot of football, but you will be drinking a lot of beer, hence all the commercials.

The game itself is usually a bore. If it all has worked right, the two best teams will be evenly matched, which results in a defensive heyday, with low scores, and little cause for fan celebration. Like watching a pitcher's duel in baseball.

As always, I'll be having the makeyourown hoagie party, drinking beer and watching to see what those sexy Doritos women do this year.

The Number Eleven

This week's new cocktail recipe, called The Number Eleven. A bourbon-based sazerac variant using Art In The Age's Sage botanical spirit.

2 parts bourbon
1/2 Part Sage
1/2 part simple syrup
1/2 t Royal Rose Cardamom Syrup
Dash Peychaud's Bitters

Shake over ice, then strain over ice in a low glass. Garnish with a cherry.

My Country 'Tis

It's time to face facts. We are a violent, shallow people, whose government is hostage to a small, but very vocal faction of extreme ideologues who are beholden to lobbyists, large corporations, and the impossibly wealthy. We do not, in fact, care about our fellow man or our national identity. We care about our right to bear arms and to refuse to pay taxes while expecting the government to do only what we, as individuals, want it to do. We do not want to extend a helping hand to those in our country who are less fortunate, we want to cut aid, so the wealthy can keep tax cuts.

Lost in the wash of press about deadlocked political negotiations and the NRA posturing is the fact that congress authorized over six hundreds billion dollars of spending on defenses for the coming year.

Six. Hundred. Billion.

Social spending is a small proportion of that figure, but social spending is what's going to get cut.

We are a violent and small people. We are a nation of bullies, operating at a third-grade mental level and demeaning those who aim any higher. What would the founding fathers think of us?

A lot of thought...

Cinematographers, process junkies, gadget-coveters, film-lovers, geeks: this one's for you.

Film vs. Digital.

I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, and doing a fair amount of reading, too.  This morning, I reached the tipping point when the BFI tweeted a quote attributed to Martin Scorcese.  “No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of the beginning."  My simple rebuttal to this is: why?

I suspect it has more to do with tradition, stagnation, and fear than it does with anything else.  I don't mean Scorcese personally in this case (although even the notion that there is one coherent "cinema" is ridiculous), but the whole cadre of tradition-bound folks who seem determined to choke off the forward  progress of movies.

The "beginning" of cinema is a time of great unevenness, much of it lost, and the great bulk of what remains is really, really boring to today's general audiences.  I agree with the idea you can learn from great films, but I dispute the notion that anything achieves greatness and deserves reverence simply because of its place in the timeline.  With that mentality, we'd buy bottles of leeches instead of Advil for the collective headache we've gotten over these traditionalist arguments.

Which brings me to film vs. digital as a method of originating a cinematic story.  "Originating" because the use of film in theaters -- except in specialty theaters -- is essentially over.  The business decision has been made and the film corpse is leaving the theater.  So, how do artists originate their stories?  What is the best way?  What is the true way?  What is the way they did it in "the beginning"? (Just kidding with that last one.)

The real answer is: you'll always have choice and it should be your artistic decision.  Like vinyl in the aftermath of cds, film isn't going away, but it's going to be more of a specialty, more of a particular artistic niche.  For the layman, without a color scope, and watching a film on their home flat-screen (on which they haven't bothered to change the factory picture-settings), there's simply no difference in the end result.

The real answer is: when you evoke the "beginning" of cinema, you imply that all the collective learning of the past 130 years isn't encapsulated in today's forms, which is backward thinking.  Future generations of filmmakers are going to take "cinema" in directions the early progenitors never thought of and you can either go along or become increasingly an historian rather than artist.

The real answer is: Skyfall.  Shot digitally, projected digitally.  It's simply beautiful.  The visuals run a complete dynamic range and serve the story in a synchronization that contributes to the audience's pleasure in the film.  As a filmmaker, what more would you really want?

The real answer is: digital.

Now, let's all move forward, shall we?