Tire Pressure Makes All the Difference

by on January 16, 2015 at 8:40 am
Posted In: Test

I finally got around to buying my own bicycle pump after putting it off for way too long. Usually waiting until the wheel’s noticeably soft and then making due with a nearby air pump at the gas station.

I’d come to realizing that I would need one of my own for numerous reasons, the biggest one being ever since I started doing my morning bike workouts where I’m constantly trying to cut down seconds I’ve become acutely aware just how much difference a full tire makes and just how fast it looses air… In other words, it’s a good idea to fill it up a little bit more than once a month. The other reason is I may or may not have blown out a tire at least twice on the gas station air pumps and that is rather an expensive habit to get into.

While I’d been slowly comparison shopping for a while the last straw was last afternoon when I was doing some basic maintenance noticed that my back tire was about as soft as I’d allow it to get while still riding it. So I went to my favorite hardware store and found a cheap one for twelve dollars.

Needless to say this morning’s routine proved exactly the difference in the speed of a good tire, I’d been having a crappy week with my workouts most likely due to the soft tire along with a few other things. Today felt like I had added another gear to my bike. What I thought was going to be a mediocre ride (I’d forgot to turn on my alarm so had  a late start) had me passing my usual markers by so much I was wondering if my runtime app was working properly, finishing with my second best time of thirty-four  minutes and thirty-five seconds!

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Wednesday Double Feature

by on January 14, 2015 at 8:51 am
Posted In: Test

I’ve always enjoyed the art of theater and I can bore my friends to tears on things like different director’s approach to the same play, watching the same production in different seats, subtitles in an actor’s performance choices and set design.

There are certain things that I enjoy when a lot of these things are translated into film and it is some of these things that led me to my selection for this week’s double feature.

deathtrapThe first film in my selection was Deathtrap starring Christopher Reeve, Michael Caine, and Dyan Cannon. It’s an adaptation of the  Ira Levin play of the same name. This is a very good example of a play adaptation. I’ve complained in the past of play adaptation and “filmed play“. TO be honest I’m not completely sure I’ve thought out the distinction enough to my satisfaction but I think when I say “filmed play” What I mean is when the director is merely recording the actor’s performance and pretty much ignores the possibilities that film provides. I’ve seen a lot of otherwise good films suffer from this.

I’ve noticed there’s a lot of adaptations of smaller productions that avoid a lot of these problems most likely since a movie audience would quickly get bored by the “drawing room” performances that technically have two scenes and one set. Because of this directors are forced to give these films their own personal spin to keep things interesting.

Anyway, Deathtrap is a good example of this making full use of the renovated windmill house to it’s full potential with a few extra scenes in the beginning and end to flesh things out. The whole thing is wonderfully meta with the Caine and Reeve playing two playwrights who are constantly talking about the anatomy of a thriller while pulling off a mostly perfect crime, and then writing about it. The two have very good chemistry and Reeve is amazing playing against type as a beautiful sociopath. (I also think it would serve as a fantastic double feature with Sleuth)

Dogville_posterThe next film on my list was a wonderful example of films that are fully theatrical. That toss suspension of disbelief and reality out the window and embrace the fakery of a deliberately theatrical set. I can pretty much count the examples of this on two hands (not counting filmed theatrical productions) and I’m always on the lookout for more examples of this.

Dogville, with Nicole Kidman leading a brilliant cast, sets the bar even higher. it tells a bleak Brechtian story of a town and the girl who enters into this community. It’s completely uncompromising in it’s pessimism and I don’t think I’ve felt less sympathetic for the ultimate fate of a cast of characters since I read Tobacco Road in college.

But if you can survive the story Dogville is fascinating to watch. It’s all filmed in a nearly empty soundstage with a bare minimum of sets (the ultimate example being a caged dog being represented by a picture of a dog drawn on the set’s floor) The director, Lars von Trier say that this is to force the viewer to focus on the actors’ performance and it certainly works. Personally It kept me imagining a much darker version of Our Town.

 

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A Moment of Silence For Charlie Hebdo

by on January 7, 2015 at 1:08 pm
Posted In: Test

I’m embarrassed to say I only heard about this just now. And as a cartoonist I can not ignore it. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know much about the magazine Charlie Hebdo beyond the headlines, and frankly any opinion I would have about them right now is irrelevant. At the moment I don’t care whether they were brilliant topical satirists who made us think or just trolls that were getting off on the shock value. This was murder and this was evil.

Anyone who wants to shout persecution when criticized should look at what the real thing looks like.

So let’s give them a moment of silence and please as we think about this assault on the freedom of the press and these dead cartoonists also remember this was an office of 12 people who were murdered by monsters.

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Wednesday Double Feature

by on January 7, 2015 at 8:57 am
Posted In: Test

For this week’s selection I decided to look back at two films from the eighties that, while I certainly enjoyed at the time, never felt I liked them as much as their cult status suggested that I should. I figured that since I was in my mid teens at the time, that would explain this. So I decided I’d check and see what my older more informed eyes would make of them.

215px-Adventures_of_buckaroo_banzaiThe first on my list, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!, was about the same as I remembered in a mostly good way, that is to say it was, what I heard one person say, “a modern day Doc Savage on acid.” A really fun blend of deliberately stupid technobabble, Rock and Roll and an invasion by aliens from the 8th dimension named John. All of this with a cast of names who would become household names in just a couple of years.220px-Big_Trouble_in_Little_China_Film_Poster-2

The second was sort of Buckeroo’s spiritual successor in that I hear they recycled a lot of the script for a planned sequel , John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in little China. It was much better than when I first watched it. At the time I completely missed the point that Keith Russell’s Jack Burton was a complete parody of the eighties action hero. I pretty much saw what the poster showed me, a macho white guy waving a machine gun. I completely missed how he has to be told to turn off the safety, nearly drops it from the recoil and then can’t hit the broadside of a barn. It’s funny watching him desperately fumble around for the entire movie while Dennis Dun saves the day.

This was pretty much what I look for in an urban fantasy with a wonderful centuries world hidden beneath the streets of San Francisco. And frankly I think that Victor Wong owned this movie.

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