This Close to Fame

Neat little stopmotion film.

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Speedpaint - Puffin (learning Artrage) from Klim Levene on Vimeo.

First of all, I’m no Star Trek fan. Nor am I a fan of the Star Wars films. That said I am a sci-fi fan and I enjoyed this movie very much to the point I thought it should have been longer!

The trailers didn’t do much for me and I think it was more the curiosity of seeing Sylar (Zachary Quinto) in space that pushed me to see it. I was pleasantly surprised to find a tightly written script with a talented cast. The movie did not feel like a typical sci-fi joke, even thought I found myself wishing it had some of Star Wars’ more lighter less dark feel.

Now my disklikes. Personally, the idea of a mining ship captain with a grudge and 25yrs to kill felt a little anti-climactic. That would be my only real problem with it (that and the many unnecessary stupid focus shots on people being sucked into space or having rocks fall squarely on). On a minor note, I was not impressed with the green alien girl. Does green automatically make you an alien? Please, try a little bit harder with the make up.

I also felt this movie could have used some help from John Williams. Where was the theme music? I can’t remember any. A movie of this scale deserves a signature score.

This would probably be the first time I would say a 2hr movie was too short. The crew grew so much on me that I felt that there was not enough time spent with them. I would have loved to have Spocks and Kirk’s rivalry leading to friendship drawn out in more detail.

So why is it the Dark Knight of galactic sci-fi? Because just as The Dark Knight (2008) proved that a comic book movie did not have to be ridiculous, so did Star Trek. With the one exception of Galaxy Quest, it put everything before it to shame. Lucas can learn a lot from these writers.

I am looking forward to their next voyage!

Happy 40th Nalts! Enjoy!

Created in response to the illustrious Neil Gaiman on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23teapix). Bent the rules a little.
Was inspired some by Ray Bradbury’s short story The Sound of Thunder.

Decided to enter two designs into a header contest held on 99design. All in good fun.

Seed + plant indicating ’starting growth’. Arrows pointing up accenting the theme of ’startups’.

Just recently discovered this fantastic independent animated film by Nina Paley and I think it deserves as much promotion as it can get. Despite a few gory moments (that I think it  could have done without), this film is flawless in design, style, and music.

The website describes the synopsis briefly as:

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."

My favorite parts would have to be the song and dance numbers (I love musicals). These however appear to be the ding in it’s armor as far as promotion goes as it uses copyrighted songs and therefore cant be distributed everywhere (Nina apparently owes a hefty sum in royalty-fees). I have to wonder though that since it this film took five years to make, why Nina didn’t simply commission someone to write similar knock-offs to this style of music. In my opinion it would have been cheaper and saved some pain.

It’s good to see the way Nina is treating the whole copyright issue by allowing the film to be so freely distributed and releasing it under creative commons. You can watch it on youtube among other places, or download it in a wide variety of formats. I would recommend you take the time to download a high quality version. Art is something that needs to be released, not locked up. In time people will learn to appreciate this and understand the need to support such artists through donations and merch sales.

Bottom-line is I recommend everyone to watch and pass on this wonderful piece of art. Don’t forget that the artist has also set up donations on her site and there is always the option of buying the DVD (soon to be released) to support her work.

Beautiful and profound.

CNN reports that the Pontiac brand might be a thing of the past. Personally, all I’ve got to say is that I hope not. I own a 2000 Pontiac Montana and it’s a tough little beast. Despite the latest design for the Montana which is sadly lacking, I think they have some of the best designed cars on the market.

Currently, a CNN hosted poll shows a 40/60 ratio for Pontiac owners vs non-owners.