Bigfoot goes to the movies – Inception

July 23, 2010

3 stomps out of 5

Inception, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, and Cillian Murphy.

Go see it. It’s fine escapist story-telling. Oh, and if you don’t quite understand some bit of the plot or the logic while you’re watching the movie, don’t worry, there will be another bit that you don’t understand coming up in just a few seconds.

It is said that this movie would have been made solely because of director Nolan’s work on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. What this movie lacks is the powerful story arc (did I ever think I would be saying that about a comic book story?) that the Batman series possesses. So what you have is the directorial skills of a young master being worked out on an inferior, far less tragic hero.

Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t aging well. If he continues in this direction he will be able to play those Edgar G. Robinson gangster tough-guy roles and to look the part. So he’s a little hard to focus on as the hero, he looks too worn, insufficiently resilient. Hardly by accident, to make Leonardo look young Nolan has once again used Michael Caine as the father-figure, this time as DiCaprio’s movie father-in-law rather than the surrogate father he played as Alfred.

DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, an architect. His father-in-law is an architect who teaches architecture in Paris but who also, at another point in the movie, welcomes his son-in-law home to the United States. Never mind. Dom visits father-in-law in hopes of finding – what else – an architect. Father says he has a student even better than Dom was. This giant of a talent comes packaged in the petite 23-year old body of Ellen Page who, despite her gargantuan abilities (Ooo, look, she just folded the Septieme Arrondissement on top of itself) has the ego and presence of a fruit fly. I’ve lived around a few architects and I find that concept totally unbelievable.

Incidentally, the only extramarital smooch that takes place in the movie involves Page as Ariadne. Watch for it…it’s the high point of the sexual content of the film. Afterwards, the actors involved display self-conscious ”I can’t believe we just did that” looks that look too genuine to be coached.

This French connection apparently once played a bigger role in the screenplay, as the house that Dom’s wife (Marion Cotillard, yes, really a Parisienne by birth) is – on the outside – a structure that is pure grimy French. Her childhood dollhouse, presumably inside that house, however, seems curiously American Victorian in influence. It hides a fairly industrial-looking safe, so I doubt she really played with it much as a young girl. Anyhow, the French portion of the story is virtually excised. None of these people-based-in-Paris has even a smidgen of a French accent, not even Michael Caine.

There’s lots of things blowing up and startlingly appearing (not the least of which is Ken Watanabe doing a turn as an aged turtle), and a bunch of other people running around trying either to get information or to plant it. All you need to know is that we can inhabit other peoples’ dreams and extract information from them, and if we have to we can inhabit peoples’ dreams of dreams, and at least one person has been able to inject a belief into a person via a dream in a dream in a dream.

Wikipedia explains it all, and it might be a good idea to pop over there now and read the synopsis. That way you’ll be able to help your companion through the labyrinth.

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The Goodby, Silverstein Corvette commercial…(Auto Rants (4))

July 15, 2010

My son wrote:

Hey Pops -

I’m totally loving this Corvette commercial… and I don’t like Chevy (sorry, Chevrolet) cars, nor have I ever been too fond of the Corvette. (If I’m going to buy an expensive sportscar, Chevy isn’t the first car company that comes to mind).

http://www.nitrobahn.com/news/2011-chevrolet-corvette-features-in-a-short-commercial/

To which I responded:

Well, it’s done by Goodby, Silverstein (think Got Milk?), so it’s well-crafted and hits on a good core idea. Unfortunately for them, their attempt at a Hal Riney voiceover doesn’t have the resonance of the real thing (the Reagan re-election campaign), so it’s not going to wear as well.

Also, they are counting on the fact that no one remembers that the original Corvette wasn’t conceived as “a rocket,” but rather a personal sports car (the Thunderbird was Ford’s entry). So the voiceover confounds the origins of the space program with the visuals of building today’s Corvette engine…eventually, I think, resulting in a sort of hollow, ho-hum feeling. But at low levels of repetition it will probably do well and they really aren’t interested in selling more Corvettes. It’s part of a larger GM – Chevrolet image campaign in preparation for their public stock offering tentatively planned for this fall.

But it’s fine for you to like it. Since you and I own GM, we should be pleased.

Pops

And then he went:

Now… obviously I understand that the Corvette was not a “rocket” in any way, shape or form as originally conceived (nor is it now), but those cars brought people closer to feeling the power of an engine – thus “rocket” – than ever before (if you didn’t have the money or means to ever own or see a classic European sports car), no?

At least it seems to me they’re successfully rewriting history :P

Bubba

p.s. We own GM what?!?

So I said:

When GM accepted the bail-out and went through bankruptcy, the US govt (hence, you and I) got controlling ownership of the company. Now the 55-year-old Charlie Wilson quote (“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” he said) is really true.

If you go back and examine the word “rocket” with respect to GM, you’ll find that as part of the post-World War II design of the GM family of brands (Harley Earl’s brainchild), it was Oldsmobile that was promoted as “the Rocket,” with models like the Rocket 88 and the Rocket 98. The Oldsmobile overhead-cam V8 engine was nicknamed the “Rocket.”

The original Corvette first shown in 1953 was powered by a “souped-up” six-cylinder engine, but it wasn’t the engine that got the hype, it was the fact that it was the first US production automobile with a fiberglass body. So…no, the Corvette didn’t start out to be “a rocket.”

Pops

(See my earlier auto rants)

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A neckstrap by another name

June 27, 2010

I wanted to let my brother (also a recent purchaser of a Nikon) know about a piece of equipment I had acquired. From the email:

As you can guess, your brother chafed under the Nikon yoke. Or, said otherwise, never having been a “natural” fan of Nikons (just as I am not a “natural” fan of Porsches), I really didn’t like wearing the stock black neckstrap with the bright yellow “NIKON” on each shoulder. Besides, it’s kind of a clunky neckstrap.

Enter the Industry Disgrace!

Yes, the Industry Disgrace. By Crumpler. $30 worth of escape from Nikon-logo neckstraps.

A nice neckstrap. The straps lie flat on the chest. The camera pitches forward very little, even with the 55-200 mm zoom on it. The behind-the-neck “feel” is comfy. Lots of length adjustment.

And I can walk around with out feeling “cringe-y” because my neckstrap has exhibitionist tendencies (except, of course, for those of us who recognize the obscure Crumpler logo for what it is – everyone else is wondering what Punchy, the Hawaiian Punch mascot, is doing on your shoulder).

So…swap your snooty Nikon neckstrap for a snootier Industry Disgrace. I did. I’m now the hottest snot in town. Just ask me.

To which my brother replied:

Agree on all points. Will investigate strap.

I go one step farther. Black electrical tape cut to fit over “NIKON” on flash housing. Ditto over “D90″ emblem. It helps when shooting groups of people in candid settings because they don’t read “NIKON” and react. Cartier-Bresson used to paint his Leicas black. to keep from distracting people.

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Katrina post

June 25, 2010

I booted up an old Fujitsu tablet computer today that hadn’t been used for over three years and on the desktop was the text of an email that I sent to family and friends in September of 2005 following my first trip back to New Orleans after we evacuated for Katrina. The photos referred to in the text are posted to my Flickr account in a set called First post-Katrina visit.

I did make a trip to New Orleans this week, leaving Providence Wednesday morning and returning Thursday evening. When I turned the corner to pull into our driveway, our Fireman’s Fund insurance adjuster was leaning on the back of his rental car waiting for me. The pictures I referred you to come from the visit and provide a kind of random documentary of stuff.
The west end of the metropolitan area – the airport is in the west – is living a pretty normal life. Some wind damage to what you could conceive of as misbegotten structures (e.g., a six-story, windowless tower clad in aluminum used by the Coca-Cola bottling plant lost its entire western wall; an oversized roof-like canopy used to shield VIP parking in one of the commercial parking lots across from the airport simply collapsed onto the parking lot) but otherwise, the area is functioning. Gas stations open, accepting credit card payment at the pump, etc. People living fairly ordinary lives. A resident of that area remarked to me, “I guess I don’t have to worry about finding work any time soon,” referring to the fact that from the minute you get off the plane you see “help wanted” and “now accepting applications” signs everywhere.
As you move towards the east – we live about 10 miles east of the airport – conditions deteriorate. The major reason for this is that the 17th street canal flooding was contained at the parish line. Jefferson Parish, on the west, remained dry as Orleans Parish filled up with water. {Although I got no further east than our neighborhood, the story would continue…the lower Ninth Ward, with the Industrial Canal flooding, is another 6 or 7 miles to the east of us and is now a waste land. Another 30 miles and you reach Waveland, Pass Christian, Biloxi, etc, where the storm surge obliterated the coast line.}
So our neighborhood was without power, the water is questionable, and no businesses are open. In the pictures, the Calhoun Superette is our neighborhood grocery store, and you can see the five-foot high waterline. On Wednesday, only about 25 percent of the homes in our immediate neighborhood showed any signs of having been visited…ruined stuff moved out into the street and – in one case – a generator with dehumidifiers and air circulation equipment already at work…but people were on the way back in. One of my immediate neighbors had returned the day before, the other pulled up a couple of hours after I did.
Tree limbs were everywhere. Part from the storm, part from the overly zealous tree-trimming companies hired by our electric utility to clear the wires for re-stringing. Normally, they are fairly surgical about creating space around the wires, say about three feet. Post-Katrina the instructions were to cut anything within 20 feet of the wires…so you see some trees that look like they’ve been beheaded (I think there was a photo of one such tree at the back of our house). A 50-foot tall cypress standing next to our house had been snapped off at the 20-foot level; surprising in that I thought cypress were the monarchs of the swamps, not surprising given that of the 10 cypress surrounding the entry to Audubon Park, seven are now gone. So much for being a monarch of the swamp.
The pictures accidentally document the cleanup of the limbs and trash that’s going on. There are two pictures of the Audubon Boulevard sign taken four hours apart, with the difference being that the trash pickup vehicles moved through the area: Two 20-foot shipping containers with a small crane mounted between them pulled by a semi-tractor. The driver parks, jumps down, operates the crane from between the containers picking up trash and trees and then moves on.
The house was hot. The attic was hotter. Probably in the 110 degree range. The adjuster and I tramped through the house. His two primary tools are the laser measuring device and a humidity gauge. As you have seen the contents of the house appear to be in good shape. The water never made it above the door sills, so there was no standing water in the house. There is, however, the stench that pervades New Orleans, and I brought out some clothes to see if the smell can be gotten out by washing. (The answer to that question was no, the smell didn’t come out. There are still things in boxes – and even in one of the closets – that make our eyes water from the residual smell.)
On the other hand, if you looked at the pictures of the floors inside the house, you could see what appears to be dusty lines along the seams of the floorboards. Mildew. The water had reached the bottom of the floors and the water got drawn up. The floorboards are slightly cupped from warping where there is no covering; there is more evidence of warping where the water got trapped underneath vinyl flooring. As you could see, a carpet on the floor looks okay at a distance, but close up you can see the mold that formed when the seepage came up through the floor and dampened the carpet.
On the outside, the heating/air conditioning unit was clearly drowned, and the supply and return ductwork for the downstairs was completely submerged. So that has to be replaced.
Still sounds pretty okay. However, the humidity gauge indicates that the water got pulled up into the sheetrock. In the one place where we pulled baseboard away from the wall, there was a line of mold growing. Upstairs, there was some water infiltration into the walls from a broken window in Jed’s room, and also – according to the adjuster – from the open vents under the eaves in the attic. So the humidity gauge goes off for the upstairs sheetrock as well. The adjuster says that the sheetrock should be stripped to the studs, the studs and weatherboards allowed to dry completely, and then new sheetrock applied. Upstairs and down. (The carriage house behind the house is on a slab at ground level, and as you saw had over three feet of water in it. The adjuster says that that needs to be gutted and the studs encapsulated before starting over.)
The bottom line, according to the adjuster, is that in normal times it would take six months to get the job done. His estimate for the job now that there will be so much demand for contracting services is a year. So the good news is that a lot of our treasures are safe. The bad news is that the house will be unserviceable for quite a while.
Exactly where we come out on this won’t be determinable until we find out what the Fireman’s Fund adjuster settles on as their idea of a settlement and, even more uncertain, what the flood insurance adjuster will pick up. As you probably have heard, the two sources of insurance meet at the waterline, flood below and household above; but the meeting point is really just the beginning of debate. I return to the house on October 12th to meet the flood insurance adjuster. That will begin to answer the question of what their concept of fairness is.
Meantime, we are here in Bristol by the bay. Laurie has completed her first two back-to-back 12-hour shifts at the Miriam Hospital in Providence and actually navigated back to our house without getting lost at the end of the second shift. I am teaching my class at Roger Williams University and trying to keep up with the developments at Tulane, where announcements of a January opening seem optimistic although the University was filled with the sound of giant generators and a corps of contract workers is struggling to get the physical plant ready. We will visit Jed at Northwestern this coming weekend, staying with Bob and Gael Strong, and then return to Bristol where Addie will have part of Sunday and Columbus Day with us.
Thanks for all of your thoughts and good wishes. We have been truly fortunate. Our sympathy goes out to the great many people who have been less fortunate in the wake of Katrina and Rita than we were.
The most memorable thing about this visit was the night that I spent in Uptown New Orleans. As the afternoon faded, an exodus took place. The small army of workers on the Tulane campus were bussed back to Jefferson Parish for the night, and independent contractors/workers drove out of the city. The National Guard patrolled in their HumVees, loosely enforcing a curfew. I had no idea how strict or lax they might be, so before sunset I made my way to our friends’ house on the east side of Audubon Park. They had offered it because the flood waters hadn’t reached it but their refrigerator had had to be removed. They wanted to replace it but they didn’t know its model number and my visit was timed perfectly to read the required information from the refrigerator – still on the curb outside the house – and phone it to them so they could order the proper equipment.
The silence of the park was eerie. Many people who spent evenings in the city during this period reported the silence as a startling feature of the post-Katrina landscape. The silence was complete, animal and insect noises were gone. I stood on the jogging track and walked a bit on the familiar surface that was made entirely strange by the absence of people. It was the beginning of an evening and night when the hairs on the back of my neck were always raised. It wasn’t hard to imagine oneself as the last person in the city. (Of course, that was an illusion. There were a lot of people including the National Guard. But relatively speaking, and particularly as night fell and the absence of electricity became evident with the encroaching dark, the city felt empty.
I hadn’t been too good in my planning. I had a camera and a video camera to record the damage to our house, and I’d picked up water and snacks on the way in from the airport. But I hadn’t thought too much about night or a meal. My hosts for the evening, in addition to telling me where the key to the house was hidden, had told me which drawers to rifle through for flashlights and batteries, so I had a bit of light in the unfamiliar house. I was told I was welcome to use one of the children’s bedrooms upstairs but after looking over the layout  I opted for the couch in the den.
Supper was a cello bag of cashews and a packet of cookies. The house was hot. Cooler on the ground floor, but too warm for comfort.
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Auto rants (3)

June 10, 2010

It’s been a year, and now I am (and the rest of you out there are, too) a part-owner of General Motors. Wish there were better news for the future, but it looks like they still don’t get it. Today’s New York Times reports that for “consistency” we will now have to refrain from calling anything Chevrolet a “Chevy.” The marketing people are behind this mandate which they see as a brand-strengthening move.

Last year I made it pretty clear (in Kick as Kick Can and Auto Rants (2)) that the problem with Chevrolet as a brand isn’t that people use a diminutive and endearing term once promoted by GM (Dinah Shore sang it long before they were driven to the levee). The problem is that Chevrolet doesn’t refer to anything identifiable but rather to an incredible range of vehicles that start with a Chevrolet-branded Daewoo manufactured in Korea and proceed upward in size and power through the Corvette and a series of heavy-duty trucks.

Bob Lutz is gone from the hallways of General Motors, but this latest brain-dead solution to GM’s branding problems is a case of thinking ‘way down deep within the same old box. As Ford is in the process of recognizing with the proposed elimination of the Mercury brand, re-badging vehicles with multiple brands is counter-productive in today’s market. Ford would compete in the US market with *gasp* only two brands.

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First Tuesday in May

May 4, 2010

Two geese calling incessantly approaching from the shadows across the Mill Gut, falling silent and flying ten feet overhead and ten feet to the east, then resuming their calling as they skimmed the surface of the bay lit by the glow from the sky. A beautiful set of changing sunrise colors, a bright half moon straight up in the sky.

All kinds of songbirds, the ground under the cherry trees – which would have been in full bloom this past weekend if it hadn’t been for Thursday and Friday’s wind and rain that blew down the petals – strewn with a thick layer of pink petals. The grove of lilacs blooming behind the cherry trees is giving off a cinnamon-like smell that persists for perhaps a hundred yards.

Turning past the head of Bristol harbor, it was quiet enough to hear the whooshing sound of the beat of a heron’s wings coming up behind me, then flying on south towards Bristol Marine Services. Temperature in the upper 50′s, very hard to beat.

The final stages of lilac blooming on the stem I’ve been tracking are below: April 18th, April 25th, and May 2nd.

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…and it continues

April 14, 2010

Lilacs’ progress

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Obliged to re-shoot

April 6, 2010

One of the luxuries associated with a new camera is that it’s an excuse to return to the scene of previous shootings (if not crimes) and to try once again to get it right. And the biggest excuse of all may be springtime.

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eBooks and iPads and Blackberries, oh my!

February 18, 2010

At my present university the periodical magazine features a point-counterpoint discussion in each issue. This time the topic was whether the coming-of-age of eBooks would result in increased reading; to kill the suspense, I took the con side while a professor of performing arts took the pro side.

We made our arguments (in writing) last November as Barnes and Nobles’ Nook was in delayed shipping and well before Steve Jobs bewitched us all with the iPad. So I bring you a copy of the debate as it was printed on the same day that Amazon announces that its “Kindle for Blackberry” app is ready – and I’ve already started reading one of my Kindle books on my Blackberry, thank you. I can now read my Kindle books on two desktops, one netbook,  my Blackberry and my Kindle. Fantastic.

Click on image for easy-to-read size.

We debate whether eBook readers will increase reading over the long haul.

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Snow, Mardi Gras, and sap

February 16, 2010

I was out walking about three hours before my New Orleans running buddies reported for the Rex Run – beautiful woods in the dark with the snow making things visible. Sounded like a couple of tons of geese on the Mill Gut, squawking in the night. Snow falling in various quantities, from fitful flakes to great wet clusters; when I turned into the wind my glasses completely clogged up.

Thinking of the gang having King Cake and champagne, then the parades. A quick weather check from here suggests that it would be a great day for a record attempt at the Rex Run given the chilly temps (at 34 degrees only four degrees above the Bristol temperature) – hope it warms up enough later.

Slow start to sugaring at Coggeshall Farm

They tapped the trees at Coggeshall Farm about 10 days later this year than last year, but the sap froze overnight. The farm is doing its annual sugaring demonstration. Picture was taken on Valentine’s Day.

Happy Mardi Gras!

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