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Between Christmas and New Year's Jim Bassett went to LA and environs and kept everyone visually informed on his photolog. All the pictures were taken with one of those cell phone/camera/internet browser combos, and even better, Jim worked out a way to resize and upload them directly to the website from the camera. The picture above is super lush and proves (along with many others) that this method is completely "there" as a photographic medium. Nice work, Jim! The California trip pictures start roughly halfway down this page. Click "older posts" at the bottom of that page to view more. |
At Belvedere Castle we had an excellent vantage point for the fireworks that blew off when '03 changed to '04. The police helicopters keeping us all safe from terror had an even better view of the show. After the Castle several of us rode down the newly-completed bike path that runs along the Hudson, and watched the moon set over New Jersey. Great night. Happy New Year to all.
UPDATE: An animated .GIF with pics of the event, by Kristin Lucas, is in the comments to this post.
| I recently added an archive for my 2003 artwork, which includes some of the .gif animations I've been doing lately. The one below is enlarged from its actual 157 X 175 pixel size, and I'm happy to report it looks OK in Safari internet browsers. UPDATE: I moved the animations (including the one below) out of my Artwork 2003 archive and into a new page called Animation Log).
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John Gregory Dunne, novelist, journalist, husband of Joan Didion, died yesterday. I highly recommend his book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen. Lucidly written, incredibly dry, it describes the process by which he and Didion adapted the story of TV anchor Jessica Savitch, which eventually became the dumb movie Up Close and Personal. If you want to know exactly why Hollywood offerings, and especially those produced by Scott Rudin and/or starring Robert Redford, are bland and suck, read this book. In real life Savitch's Svengali husband (played by Redford) was a wifebeater with a sick psychological hold over Savitch; barely a glimmer of this survives in the movie. Chapter by chapter, Dunne takes you through the process whereby reality, and a script, is transformed into uplifting, conventional treacle.
During the on and off writing of the Savitch screenplay, Dunne and Didion tackle a science fiction script, for a Simpson/Bruckheimer blockbuster (never filmed) called Dharma Blue. The plot concerns UFO-related goings-on at a mysterious research facility called Rhyolite. Written into a corner, they decide they need a lesson in current physics to move the story forward. Science go-to guy Michael Crichton's suggested dialogue about string theory cracked me up:
[Doctor, novelist, filmmaker] Michael Crichton has for years been our authority about matters medical and scientific. [I called him and said] Michael, tell me about string theory. "For a piece, book, or movie?" Michael asked. "Movie," we said. "You want to know what it is," he asked, "or do you need dialogue?" "Dialogue," we said, "and we need to keep it simple." "John," he said patiently, "It's a movie." We explained the circumstances. "I'll check some people and get back to you," Michael said.Dunne and Didion also start an action movie script, and feel considerable pressure to come up with "whammies"--an industry term for "special effects that kill a lot of people, usually bad people, but occasionally, for motivational impact, a good person, the star's girlfriend, say, or that old standby, the star's partner, a detective with a week left before retirement." After they submit a story outline filled with what they think is the requisite mayhem, director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) rejects it, and describes his ideal scenario: "'First act, better whammies,' he said. 'Second act, whammies mount up. Third act, all whammies.'"A few days before our meeting with Simpson and Bruckheimer, Michael called back with the requisite information, and helped us put it in dialogue form:
A. Most people think of the universe as having four dimensions. Height, length, depth, and time. String theorists have constructed a theoretical model of the universe with 26 orthogonal dimensions.B. Orthogonal?
A. At right angles...
B. But what does it mean that they're doing string theory at Rhyolite?
A. I think it means they're not doing theory any more.
(a beat) It means that...whatever they're out there to study...may appear to exist in more than four dimensions.
(another beat) It means they could be out there to see what 26 orthogonal dimensions looks like when it hits the real world.