For some reason Apple launched a whole lot of products today, and is doing so fairly quietly as far as Apple goes. Of note is their new mouse, the Magic Mouse. It’s a mouse that supports multi-touch input. It looks pretty slick, but I’ve been burned by Apple and their shockingly shitty mice before. Apple also released new iMacs, a new unibody plastic Macbook with a rubber bottom, and new Mac Minis. (The Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server seems particularly cool.) I sort of want the giant iMac, but it doesn’t seem like something I can justify buying. Also, they are still selling them with a glossy screen, which I can’t stand.
I’ve been using (playing?) Foursquare for a few days now. It’s a simple enough idea, and it’s well executed: users can use the site (or mobile application) to let their friends know where they are, and what they are up to. The idea is that your friends could discover you’re nearby and come meet up. Similarly, you could learn your friends are out and join them. You don’t need to publish all your check-ins, so you can use the site privately. You can also push your check-ins out on to twitter, so people who aren’t using Foursquare can still see where you are.
There are other applications and services that do this. (BrightKite is the first that comes to mind, and you can certainly put this information out there using Twitter.) What makes Foursquare interesting is that to encourage people to use the service by setting itself up like a game. You get points for: telling your friends where you are; going to multiple places in a night; going to new places; going to the same place several times; etc. You are also awarded boyscout-like badges for completing various tasks. Finally, if you go to the same place enough times, you will be declared the mayor of that place. These points and titles are more or less meaningless, but if you’ve spent any amount of time online you’ll know that people still love to collect meaningless things. (Karma on Reddit and Slashdot is the first thing that comes to mind.) Some people have labelled this sort of thing prescriptive social software. Foursquare is encouraging a certain sort of behaviour from its users.
The rest of the class was spent taking portraits. The class was split in two, with each group working independently. We each took turns modelling for the other members in our group. One person was supposed to be in charge lighting and direction, with this role alternating as we cycled through models. In practice I felt we were all cool with deciding what to do together. This was the first time I had taken photos so formally, using tungsten lights and other junk to light a subject. I regret not trying this stuff out sooner. You have so much control over the image when you can control all the lighting. I was shooting with my Rebel, and with my Leica. You can see some photos from the night on Flickr.
In the next class we are supposed to review each others work, and then begin a look at nude photography. The following week we photograph nudes.
I was interviewed yesterday about this blog and Blansdowne by Redmond Entwistle for a video installation project he is doing for Gallery TPW. It was a strange experience being interviewed about the area, since I don’t think my website or my opinion are particularly important. I also haven’t lived here that long. I suppose the total dearth of people blogging about the area is what elevates this blog to a position of authority it probably doesn’t deserve. The video he was working on sounds like it’ll be interesting, so if you’re in the city you should go check it out. The opening is this Saturday.
Today was my first class of Advanced Figurative Photography. The AGO offers studio courses, and this one sounded interesting. I like photographing people.
Today’s class was a light introduction to things. We looked at work from past students. We looked at some of the teachers own work. We looked at a slide show on how the human body has been portrayed in the past: how we might classify different sorts of images. Finally we ended the class with a brief discussion on lighting.
The take away from all this, which I didn’t really pick up on when I read the course description, is that a big part of Figurative Photography is taking pictures of naked people. The course description made it sound like this was one aspect of the course, but it’s clear from the first class that this is probably the primary focus of the course, and this topic in general. I suppose I should have known that. We looked at a lot of really great nudes during the class. (And the work our teacher showed were his own nude self portraits.)
I think this course will be an interesting experience. I quite enjoyed the first class.
Nuit Blanche was a bit of a bust this year. In previous years my friends and I have usually checked out the area around Yorkville, U of T and the AGO. There is usually a pretty big concentration of exhibits to see. The problem is that those areas are usually jammed full of people. This year we decided to check out Queen West, which is the 3rd zone for art. It’s a bit out of the way, so I thought it would be less packed. This was foolish on my part. Queen West was also shockingly boring. There really wasn’t much happening. We saw them put the ants back on the Cameron House. We saw some nude life drawing class thing at Coupe Bizarre. There was a lite brite installation in Trinity Bellwoods. We saw the hydrophone, again. I had a drink with Matt and my brother at the Gladstone, which was nice. Though the areas closer to the core are more packed, that’s really where you want to go for Nuit Blanche. I think the only way to enjoy the festival now that it’s clearly popular is to start your night at 2:00AM. You should also go through the listings and figure out what you want to see. I think had I seen how little there really was to do on Queen West, I might have suggested a different route for the night. It’s a shame there wasn’t more happening in my neighbourhood this year. Funktion Gallery was open, and across the street was some sort of pole dancing photobooth thing, which was kind of sexy-cool. Now, if only the Run for the Cure wasn’t the next day.
I am on Google Wave. As they were with GMail, Google is being fairly tight with how they are rolling out the service. Twitter is full of “can I get an invite” messages. (My invite came from my friend Ryan, who works at Google now. By coincidence, he’s the same guy who invited me to GMail way back in the day.) Unlike GMail, invites aren’t sent out immediately. You nominate someone for an account and at some point they’ll be sent an invite. For a service like Google Wave this is a stupid way to get things going. GMail was actually usable even if you didn’t know anyone else using GMail — it’s just an email client. Wave is something new and fancy. As such, I can only “wave” to one other person with the service, my friend who invited me. Awesome? He hasn’t replied to my first wave yet. Maybe it’ll be more exciting by the end of the week, but I have my doubts.
I managed to catch a cold. I think I get them whenever the weather starts to shift. So i’m sitting at home, alternating between sleeping and thinking about eating.
Over the last couple days, during lunch, my coworkers and I watched Never Back Down. Imagine The Karate Kid, but with people doing mixed-martial-arts. Jake Tyler plays the troubled kid who gets into fights and needs some guidance. (The dude looks like Tom Cruise, but younger; it’s kind of crazy.) The always awesome Djimon Hounsou plays the Mr. Miyagi character, a fellow from Senegal who grew up in Brazill and teaches Jujitsu in a gym he lives in. There is a bunch of fighting, chicks in bikinis since the film is set in Orlando, and more fighting. It’s more than a bit cliche, but it’s definitely better than I had thought it would be. It’s definitely no Flash Point.
Yesterday I decided to grab the McSweeney’s iPhone application. The quarterly they put out is held in very high regard, and the content they put online is hilarious, more often than not. (For example: Iran or Star Wars.) The application is $6, and is subscription based. Buying the application signs you up for 6 months of content from what they are calling the Small Chair. This content is pulled from sources that aren’t available online, and is updated weekly. You can subscribe for another 180 days of content for an additional $5. This is done using the newly added in-app purchase features introduced with iPhone OS 3.0. They also pull free content from their Internet Tendencies website, though I suppose this isn’t what you’re paying for.
This seems like a pretty smart idea to me. It’s an easily digestible version of a magazine, which seems well suited for an on-the-go device like the iPhone. The application lets you bookmark spots in the story/article you are reading, and has a fairly nice interface. I’ll be curious to see if anyone else copies the approach McSweeney’s is taking with this application. I could see Harper’s doing something like this since they already have so much content online, but behind a subscription wall.
The first ‘issue’ of the Small Chair is a story by Wells Tower. It’s good so far.
The final film I watched at the film festival was Between Two Worlds, a Sri Lankan film. I had watched the directors previous film, The Forsaken Land, a few years back at TIFF as well. I knew the film would be overly symbolic and art-house. I had underestimated just how art-house this movie would be. While The Forsaken Land was challenging to watch, and incredibly slow and meandering, it was well ultimately an interesting and compelling movie. Between Two Worlds was too obtuse. A man falls from the sky, wanders the Sri Lankan country side, and ultimately makes his way back home. His journey is probably some sort of allegory for the war in Sri Lanka, but I think you’d need to be watching the film with the director to figure out what’s what. The film is shot incredibly well. Sadly, that isn’t enough to make for a good film.
Mez and I watched the Ape on Wednesday evening. It’s a story of unease and panic. There is really only one character of note in the film, and basically every shot in the movie features him in the frame. Most of the film is shot following him, giving the audience the sense we are chasing after him. There is almost no dialogue in the movie. For the first 3rd of the film you aren’t really sure what’s wrong, though you know something definitely is. (If you’re reasonably astute, you can probably guess much earlier what has happened.) The film was interesting, but I don’t think it was good. It’s filmed well, and I think it was well put together. The acting is great. The problem is the story just isn’t that compelling.
My friends and I went to the Ryerson theatre Tuesday night to watch Johnie To’s latest film, Vengeance. In a nice change of pace, the film wasn’t playing at midnight, but at a much more reasonable 9:15. Colin Geddes influence looks to have extended out of the Midnight Madness program. Vengeance was an entertaining film. A French man arrives in Macau after his daughter and her family are killed by hit men. He then proceeds to find another set of hit men to help him exact his revenge. Well, there is a bit more to it than that. It’s very much a To film. There are a some really great shoot outs, interesting characters, and some moody atmosphere. During the Q&A the audience learned the original star of the film was to be Alain Delon, the lead in Le Samourai. For whatever reason this didn’t end up working out, but the producers found French rock-god Johnny Hallyday to play the role. He was pretty awesome, if only because he looks so strange. Also, he has a great jacket in the movie. The film also stars some great HK actors: Anthony Wong is as usual excellent playing one of the hit men; and you can’t make a film in HK without casting Simon Yam. The film was quite enjoyable.
Shima and I watched Cairo Time together Sunday night. The film was premiering at TIFF. Cairo Time is probably going to get a wide release, so it’s exactly the sort of film I don’t normally go see at TIFF. However, Shima is totally in love with Alexander Siddig, so I made an exception for her. I wanted to see the film as well: it had a fair amount of hype around it.
In the film, Patricia Clarkson plays a married women who arrives in Cairo to meet her husband, who works for the UN, only to find his friend, played by Alexander Siddig, waiting for her at the airport; her husband has been delayed, so she ends up exploring the city and spending time with her husband’s friend. As the film progresses the characters grow closer together. The film is technically a romance, though this title seems a is a bit disingenuous. It’s a very slow and subtle film. Both actors do an amazing job. I think Siddig’s very last scene in the film is an example of some seriously superlative acting. I liked the movie a lot.
The second film I watched at the film festival was Women Without Men. The film is set in Iran, based on a book with the same name, but is a French production. I believe it was filmed in Morocco. The movie chronicles the lives of 4 women living in Iran, circa 1953, just before the American & British backed coup. Each women encounters some sort of hardship, and ends up wandering to this mysterious orchard. The film was a little bit too surreal at times: I find with films that are for the most part realistic depictions of life, introducing fantastic elements rarely works well. I find it hard to connect to the characters, since it’s unclear what’s ‘real’. The actress who plays the prostitute does an excellent job. The scene with her in the bathhouse is really well done. It’s a very pretty film, and the story is interesting enough, but on the whole I thought the film was lacking. There is certainly a lot of buzz around the film, so I might just be an idiot.
My first film of the festival was City of Life and Death, which was absolutely stunning. Shot in black and white, the film looks gorgeous. Each shot could be a photograph. This is all in great contrast to the films subject matter, which is about the Rape of Nanking. The movie is relentless. The film opens with the Japanese army advancing on the city. There is a pretty exciting battle, which the few Chinese soldiers who remain in the city ultimately lose. And then come mass executions. And all sorts of other atrocities. We are introduced to characters, develop a rapport with them, only to have them die. There are lots of close up shots of peoples faces. These sorts of shots show up again and again in the film. People we are never introduced to, and who never show up in the film again, will be featured in this way on the screen for a few seconds. An attempt to humanize an event that has become a list of statistics? I think so. The two lead Japanese actors in the film both incredible to watch. The film ends, more or less, with a victory dance through the city. That whole sequence is one of the best things i’ve seen shot on film. I can’t praise this film enough.
Apparently there was some controversy in China over the films release: people thought the Japanese soldiers were too sympathetic. The lead in the film is a conflicted soldier. He’s the only constant through out the film. The audience is probably supposed to identify with him. Soldiers are seen playing with Chinese children and giving them candy. They sing and dance with one another. They joke around. This certainly does humanize them, but does it make them sympathetic? I don’t think so, because it doesn’t justify any of their actions. They are still raping and killing people. They are behaving like beasts, but they aren’t beasts they are people. This is actually what makes these sorts of events all the more horrific. Lu Chuan should be commended for not making the Japanese soldiers into caricatures.
Late Wednesday night Vinnie, Mezan, and I watched Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s latest film. The commercials might make the film look like its focus is on a group of Jewish-American soldiers who spend their time killing and maiming Nazis, but there is quite a bit more to it than that. The film is actually very dialog heavy — not uncommon in his films — with scenes that are drawn out just enough to build tension, and which more often than not end with some sort of violence. Brad Pitt is hilarious. Christoph Waltz who plays the lead villain is brilliant. The entire cast does an amazing job. The film is probably one of Tarantino’s more accessible films, as the story unfolds sequentially — you don’t jump back and forth in time as with his other films. The movie was great. You should watch it.
The entire Beatles catalogue has been re-released today. You can buy box sets of their catalogue remastered in stereo or in mono; well, in theory, anyway. As far as I can tell, the mono box set is sold out, and the stereo box set looks to be as well. You might be wondering why anyone would want the mono recordings. It turns out the Beatles would produce the mono mixes for their albums first. The stereo mixes were done second, and, by the sounds of things, without any real input from the Beatles themselves. Many people consider the mono mixes to be how the Beatles’ songs were meant to be heard. (This changes with the last two albums, which were mixed in stereo from the start.) Both box sets sound pretty awesome. These are apparently incredibly well done re-issues. I’m quite conflicted as to which box set to buy. I definitely want to get one.
I watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the plane trip to Edmonton. I had been told the film was bad. I wasn’t expecting much. Even then, I have to say the film didn’t really deliver at all. Well, I suppose the title credits were kind of cool. For the most part though, the film was incredibly cheesy. I was reminded of bad 80s action flicks. There is a shot of Wolverine walking away, lighting a cigar, while a helicopter blows up behind him. There are (multiple!) shots of him screaming, “Nooooo!” while the camera pulls away from above. This film should have been way better than it was. I mean, the source material is great, and it’s not like Hugh Jackman can’t act. What the bloodclot?
One day I’ll have to experiment with letting other people post to the site while I’m away. It seems strange that the site goes quiet for a week or so when I decide to take a vacation. Edmonton was fun. My mini-cousins are cute. The Rockies are pretty majestic. That about sums up my trip. It was awesome.
I decided to film our toaster making toast. It’s not particularly exciting, but if you’ve ever wondered how annoying I sound in real life, then now is your chance to find out. (In my head I sound way more awesome.)
Jörg Colberg runs the website Conscientious, a fine-art photography blog. His site is regularly referenced online when people discuss photography. How he managed to position himself as a goto authority on fine-art photography, i’m not completely sure. As far as I can tell, he’s just some dude that likes photographs.
Colberg is running a photography competition. He plans to showcase the work of the winner on his site. It’s not a pay-to-play contest, and there isn’t any money to be one. It’s all about getting exposure. I think this is a great way to showcase new talent. This seems to be one of Colberg’s goals, since he states, “[the Conscientious Portfolio Competition] is aimed at emerging photographers.”
If you don’t have a website you will not be able to enter the competition; this might strike you as unfair, but I think every serious photographer should have her/his own website, because it shows that s/he is serious about what s/he does (plus, my blog is about linking to websites – and what can I link to if there’s no website?).
I can’t say I know too many fine-art photographers, but one would assume that being able to take pictures and being able to write HTML are two independent skills. More so, if there was a group of photographers who were most likely not to have a portfolio site of their own, I suspect that group would be photographers who need to get exposure by entering online photography competitions. Colberg actually calls out Flickr in particular as being unsuitable for this competition. Certainly there is a lot of crap on Flickr. And then there is a lot of amazing photography. The derision sometimes expressed about the site seem more than a little lame, like my earlier complaints about LiveJournal.
No doubt the contest will produce some good results, but I think by limiting where he sources contributions, it will also be far less interesting than it could have been.
Shima’s previous place of employment was nice enough to give us a $250 dollar gift certificate to William Ashley as a wedding gift. If you are unaware, William Ashley is one of those shops where you can go and buy fancy place settings and china and other fancy things for your home. $250 is a lot of money, but at a place like William Ashley it actually doesn’t go that far. You can easily get one 5-piece place setting, which might work well if you lived alone and never entertained, but to get a set of four would cost upwards of $600. Because neither of us has been dying to eat off expensive-ass plates, we had made no progress spending the money on the card. And so a year passed. Yesterday we went to the store committed to spend it all. More so, we decided we would only buy things we would never think of buying with real money. These were to be the most opulent purchases we could make — well, within our gift-card budget.
Shima needed a mortar and pestle, so we left with the following:
This is probably the most expensive small-ass cast-iron mortar and pestle you can buy in Toronto. We are going to crush saffron in it. That was $50 bucks. ($50! My god.)
Our second purchase was to be a magnificent toaster. Sadly, they were out of stock. We are waiting for them to let us know when they are back in stock. Expect another blog post about that in the near future.
I watched Le Samourai last night at Cinematheque. The film is about a perfectionist hit man, hired to kill a nightclub owner. The entire movie takes place over a weekend. It’s slow and methodical, and very light on dialogue. Each scene is very neatly paced and filmed. John Woo has said the film was an important influence for his film The Killers. I was reminded of some Johnny To films. The film features a killer score. Also, Nathalie Delon is really hot. This film is definitely worth watching.
