ach, can’t get motivated for even the simplest of endeavours this month, getting out of the flat was a mission in itself today, in this permafrostian chill. okay, so it snowed, maybe once… but y’know.
for the lack of blogging, my apologies- i’m working on a project or three that, happily, don’t involve going outside so that’s keeping me busy. here’s one: Catgut Music (Owen’s website / blog) is rocking out. we’re about to add a whole new video section, so that’ll be fun. For now I want you to check out Owen’s Blog. It is a treasure.
i’ve recently setup a Wordpress Multi-User blog (on leithermagazine.com). always amazed how well the Wordpress stuff works out-of-the-box. WPMU relies on the same structure – many of the same rules / hacks and plugins – which i’ve learned through running this mess of a site over the years… so all this is nonsense is coming in handy.
also- my photography portfolio gets a good updating every now and then: check it out. what are you crazy kids up to? anyone still out there?
Cool it! The man said ‘restoring’ not ‘improving’ or ‘amending’ or any other form of buggering about which Lucas has previously used as an excuse to further indebt himself to the Star Wars fanbase. Look, you owe us one Georgie-boy.
In one helluva fascinating article over at secrethistoryofstarwars.com a fella by the name of Michael Kaminski has written a very comprehensive piece about the restoration of the original Star Wars film negative. There are some tedious facts, lots of fun for colourists and video techies but also some interesting details, or to put it kindly ‘oversights’, on the part of George Lucas are revealed. Shockingly the prequels to Star Wars were all shot natively on 1080p HD ‘film’. This is disturbing because, well, I can shoot that on my camera as a fun extra feature these days… despite not having that all-important Panavision lens-set to play with. 1080p was a brand new technology, it wasn’t the future resolution– no where near it. Dagobah to Lucas! Hello!?
… another undoable element of the prequels — filmed on 1080p HD, they have, at the most, less than half the resolution of the 35mm original trilogy… they have just under 1/5 the resolution…
Anyway, enjoy: Saving Star Wars: The Special Edition Restoration Process and its Changing Physicality.
via BinaryBonsai
when did the tide turn?
a number of climate change stories i’ve read this week have come from one helluva sceptical slant. ironically this comes as i’m writing a story about how some unconventional assumptions regarding the environment got me into trouble recently.
don’t label me as a skeptic though, the Earth is non-linear, sadly many climate-change groups have the simplest short-term views on what we ’should’ do TODAY… and that’s ridiculous. they offer these ideas with a skewed impression of their importance, with a voice of authority, with definitive ‘facts’ based on brand new scientific modelling, on non-peered reviewed ’science’, how much money some of these organisations are pulling in. huge funding grants, politics, time, people’s perceptions and the popularisation of science- who’s paying for it, what do they want to ‘prove’ in return. why it shouldn’t be an awful crime to ponder that, all coming up… in non-catastrophic language. oh, here’s a beauty of a quote:
“The world is working its way through a very difficult period….The circumstances and issues are unprecedented, very complex. People who look for easy answers and guarantees are misguided. (These problems) do not lend themselves to black-and-white views.” – -Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury, Fortune Magazine, Sept. 28, 1998
That’s a quote regarding Y2K. Language is familiar, eh?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Government-quells-panic-over-Himalayan-glacial-melt/H1-Article3-474713.aspx
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ioKN-6tqKqccbLbVgmtkNuDRgo7w
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped1110byrnenov10,0,3012538.column
well worth reading the note/comments in this ‘notes to the editor’:
http://www.eagletribune.com/puopinion/local_story_308021902.html
I’m putting together and idea that should become a short film triggered by some of my photography (compositions and portraits) from the last few years. The first shot – as it stands today – is of a plane flying high above us… arrivals and departures is a theme as is friendship and dislocation but the film will mostly be a portrait of some of my real friends and any story that ties us together I haven’t yet found but I’m excited about that.
The ’script’ exists as a number of shots and locations. There’s an architectural quality to the compositions (as there is to most of my photos – I think) and there’s no dialogue at the moment. The sound is somewhere between David Byrne & Chopin. Just thought I’d keep you up to date.
Some sketches soon…
