Feb 12 2010

Why “The Phantom Menace” Sucked in 70 Minutes

I said the movie didn’t suck, back in 1999, because I desperately wanted it not to, but deep down, I knew it was a lie. It was always a lie.

There are so many things wrong with this film, and the entire new trilogy, it’s not even funny.

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Dec 27 2009

Rodrigo Blaas’s “Alma”

Former Pixar artist, Rodrigo Blaas, short. Destined to be a Christmas classic. (Well, at least for me.)


Dec 26 2009

Amen Brother

If you’re like me, you probably never heard of the “Amen Break,” but you have heard it. It’s inescapable, as this documentary points out. While the origins and the spread of the “Amen Break” is interesting, what really sets this apart, is the turn it takes around the 13 minute mark. The narrator, Nate Harrison, examines the legal situation surrounding the “Amen Break,” since it has become quite a lucrative six seconds of audio.

The other thing struck me about this video was the simple visual of the turning record. Watching it evokes thoughts of The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” video.


Sep 24 2009

DorkbotSF 47

Last night was DorkbotSF 47 at TCHO. There were three speakers, Timothy Childs, founder of TCHO, talking about how they quantify chocolate and make small testing labs for the Peruvian jungle; Michael Ang (aka Mang) showing off some of his work like Strange Attractor, artificial flowers to attract butterflies, and Blue Flower, yet another LED flower. The highlight of the evening though was Mark Pauline of SRL revealing his plans to build an 8 foot spine robot with a spike on the end. The evening was streamed, so definitely watch Mark’s critique of other spine robots that have been built. It’s around 51:00.


Sep 20 2009

Summer in San Francisco

Ben Wiggins’s time lapse from around the bay.

via Laughing Squid


Sep 1 2009

Chemical Warfare Project, Phase 1

Eric Pakurar, took a photo every day of the same Greene St doorway in Manhattan for eight months straight, recording how the graffiti changed as part of his Chemical Warfare Project.

He is currently soliciting the identities of the individual artists, the individual pieces on Flickr.

Via Wooster Collective


Jul 30 2009

BoingBoing Interviews Cassandra C. Jones

Digeratti Xeni Jardin for BoingBoing Video and the Chron interview (albeit separately) collage artist Cassandra C. Jones.

Cassandra finds amateur photos of the same thing (e.g. the moon, lightning, a sunset, etc.) and then combines them in novel ways. Such as taking photos of lightning to make the shape of a rabbit, or animating the phases of the moon from a hundred separate snapshots.

Cassandra’s show, “Send Me a Link,” opens this Saturday (Reception 4 pm – 7 pm) and runs through September 5th, at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, 172 Minna Street, SF (11 am – 6 pm, Tues-Sat)


Mar 3 2009

9

via Almost Scientific and Design Related:

Shane Acker created an animated short a while back about tiny numbered cloth people in a post-apocalyptic world. Tim Burton is turning the short into a full movie.

Visually, it’s amazing, but I think I prefer the original short to the feature. The short doesn’t feature any dialog, and so that adds to the outerworldness of the story. I understand that most people can’t be bothered to watch something with no dialog (even Wall-E had dialog), but dialog forces extraneous notions like backstory, romantic subplots, interpersonal conflicts, that take away from experience the presented world. I’m not saying that these things can’t exist without dialog, they clearly can (well perhaps not backstory), but by using dialog they are brought to the forefront with a sledgehammer. Still, I’m hopeful for the feature.

9, comes out surprsingly enough, 09-09-09. (That’s ten years to the day of the North American Dreamcast release.)

Original short:

Trailer: