Driving in Movies

One of my pet peeves when watching a movie is when the driver doesn't pay attention to the road. This usually occurs when the driver is talking to the passenger and feels the need to look at the person he's talking to. Pay attention, numnuts, your passenger isn't going to want to talk to you after you send the both of you into a fiery death, because this is a movie and when a car crashes it explodes in a blaze of glory. I consider myself a decent driver, but if I take my eyes off the road for more than like a second, I get the feeling something horrible is going to happen.

Somewhat related, but not really -- what also bugs me is when an actress who I know is pregnant in real life, but is drinking alcohol on a TV show. For example, Alyson Hannigan is pregnant in real life, but her character Lily in HIMYM is not. Although they try to hide her pregnancy, it's getting pretty noticeable, enough so that when I see her character drinking on screen I want to shout, "Put that bottle down, woman!"

Get Motivated

Yesterday I went to the Get Motivated seminar. Before you roll your eyes, let me just say I got the tickets for free (actually probably everybody got the tickets for free), and I scoffed at the idea, until I saw who would be speaking. Those attending included Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes, Michael Phelps, and Colin Powell.

The event was okay, I didn't really pay attention to the speakers I didn't recognize. There was one guy who was your more stereotypical evangelist/motivational speaker. He was funny, but I also wanted to punch him. Yes, I'm sure your sons who dedicate their lives to the unfortunate in Africa are also making hundreds of thousands of dollars on smart investments due to your tutelage.


Anyway, my main motivation (har har) for going was to see Phelps. Since I guess he's not an orator by trade, his segment was done Q&A style. He talked about how he trains seven days a week and has been planning for Beijing pretty much all of his career. And then he talked about the virtues of smoking pot. Kidding. That was an obligatory lame joke. Then Colin Powell talked about how he occupies his time since he was Secretary of State. I would suggest to everyone to develop a solid hobby before you retire.

For lunch we walked over to Pizza Chicago. It was a good day.

Ang Lee and James Schamus

Last night I went to a talk with Ang Lee and James Schamus. As a refresher, Ang Lee directed Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain, among others. James Schamus has collaborated as a writer/producer with Ang Lee on eleven films. The talk was a conversational format, with Professor Jeffrey Knapp discussing their movies with them.

Unfortunately, the discussion focused heavily on The Ice Storm, which I have not seen. Apparently it was the first movie Ang Lee intentionally tried to make artistic. I did enjoy listening to the insights and connections Knapp made about the movie, and then Ang Lee describing how he approached certain elements. Ang Lee really enjoys figuring out how to make something that's seemingly unfilmable into a movie and delving into the psychology of the characters - to elevate melodrama.

In regards to Lee and Schamus's frequent collaborations, Knapp tried to make some connection to the titles of the movies, to which Ang Lee replied that only a scholar would make such a connection. The scripts that Schamus writes are often pretty bare. A lot is left in the margins of the pages for the director to interpret. This is why Ang Lee enjoys working with him. He receives a lot of scripts, but oftentimes he feels that a script is so carefully planned out, plotted for success (in whatever genre), that any director could do a reasonable job by following the script, and that there would be nothing extra that he could bring to the table. This is especially the case in the TV industry. The writers run the show and the directors aren't important. With Schamus's scripts, the director has more room to work.

We were also shown a few minutes from their next movie, Taking Woodstock, starring Demetri Martin. I think it's about the inception of Woodstock. After making a string of depressing movies, they wanted to do something a bit more upbeat. In fact, they even mentioned that they had one point thought about making a musical, and are still open to the idea. Regarding Taking Woodstock, I'm not that interested in the subject matter, so unless it gets amazing reviews, I probably won't watch it.

In the Q&A portion (questions submitted by audience members), Ang Lee responded to a question about the advice he'd give to Asian-Americans trying to make it in the movie industry. His advice was to write your own material and to be willing to expand beyond your own personal experience. You have to be relevant to many people and oftentimes Asian-American films are too narrowly focused on a slice of Asian culture (at least I think that's what he was getting at).

Ang Lee was pretty low key, but he had some funny remarks. On the subject of Sense and Sensibility, he said whenever someone tells him that they love that movie, he wants to punch them in the face. I think he's tired of hearing about that movie. When asked what he would do if he wasn't directing, he said he'd probably be a loser.

So after the talk, which lasted only 90 minutes, my brother wanted to wait around the stage exit to see if we could catch Ang Lee leaving. We were quickly able to meet James Schamus for a brief moment. However, there apparently was also some private reception going on. Not sure where Ang Lee would be leaving from, my brother actually made his way to the parking lot and found Ang Lee and got an autograph and picture with him. I didn't :-/. I guess Ang Lee is a pretty private person, and we're a bunch of bothersome gnats. Oh well!

Sorry Dennis, I wasn't able to have Ang Lee corroborate your claim that he held you when you were a baby.

Tickets

Student tickets for the Dalai Lama talk went on sale yesterday. I made a feeble attempt to get a ticket, but alas, I was too late. Apparently people had started waiting in line 11pm the night before. Why don't they just sell tickets online? Think about all the sleep, studying time, LEARNING time, the students are losing by camping out by waiting in line for HOURS. Is this a technological issue? Is the demand so high that the servers wouldn't be able to handle the load of kids frantically clicking for Dalai Lama tickets?

Maybe they just want to ensure that the most dedicated, Dalai Lama loving students will get admission. While buying tickets online depends on luck, people who wait in line are making a commitment. First come, first serve. I would certainly like to hear the Dalai Lama speak, but is it a big deal if I miss it? Probably not.

In any case, waiting in line is an experience. Afterward, you have a story to tell. Not the most interesting story, but still a story about passion, and pain, and how you overcame boredom, and coldness, and boredom. Want to hear about how I spent 24 hours at a Barnes & Noble so that I could get Bill Clinton's autograph? Yeah? Ok, it went like this: I went to Barnes & Noble, waited nearly 24 hours, and I got a book signed by Bill Clinton!

I'll probably try to get a ticket when the general admission sales go online.

Watchmen

Short Review:
I liked it a lot. I thought Zack Synder did a good job compressing the graphic novel into a 2.5 hour movie. It was a visual feast. Rorschach was awesome.


Long Review (Filled with SPOILERS!!!!!):
This is just a copy of a comment I made on a TV blog I read.

I enjoyed the movie a lot. I'm a comic geek, but never went gaga for Watchmen. Let the flaming commence.

I understand why it's so highly regarded. I understand its impact. But that was twenty years ago by the time I read it. I was like one year old when it originally came out. I found it... to put it bluntly... boring. I guess that highlights that I'm not a literary man.

As a single narrative it's hard to stay engaged. The emphasis is on all the back stories of the characters. The murder of the Comedian sets up the story, but is lost in all the history. The Black Freighter intercuts the narrative, making it difficult to move forward. A story that could have been told in six issues was expanded to twelve. There's a lot of stuff in there. It's certainly dense. If you have the patience you'll probably be rewarded. I don't have that patience.

This is why I liked the movie. I remembered enough about the story to have no problem following along. It hits all the major themes - sure maybe not as fleshed out as it could have been, but it was enough to give you something to think about.

I tried rereading Watchmen afterward. I ended up skipping all the same things (the prose, Black Freighter) and ended up thinking Snyder did a good job compressing the interesting parts of Watchmen into a 2.5 hour movie. I see the point that this maybe isn't a movie that should have been made, but I'm glad it was.

I'm just going to make random comments in response to previous comments:

I agree that Laurie's revelation came very sudden in the movie. I was not impressed by the actress.

I would've liked to see more of the psychiatrist, although that would be too much of a detour for the movie.

The sex scene might've been cheesy, but it's in the book, including the fire climax, which I found amusing. I'm juvenile.

The movie is R for a reason - blame the parents.

I like the slo-mo, speeding up, and zooms. I think it's an interesting experience. Like when reading a comic book, when you move through panels, the artist may zoom to different parts of the scene or you can take your time to admire a certain sequence.

By speeding up time, I think Snyder can get away with a lot more violence without it being too uncomfortable. A lot of discomfort is the anticipation or the act of violence, not necessarily the final result. He speeds up time to the point where he's almost just cutting to the bone finally breaking or the cleaver having entered the skull, and so he can illustrate what has happened without putting you through the act of it happening. He presents you with the shocking image and relieves you of it quickly.

I still think the original squid ending, a truly external threat, makes more sense in uniting the world.

Rorschach was awesome.

Art Update

I've been taking a sculpting class for a few weeks now and I am loving it. It's nice to actually work on something with your hands - in THREE dimensions. I'll probably talk more extensively about sculpting, but for now I'll just post a few in progress stuff. The following two pieces were done during a live model session. The first one I had ten minutes to capture the pose in clay and then I spent a lot more time afterward refining it - working solely from my own knowledge of anatomy. Ugh, I hope it looks better in person than in these low contrast crappy camera phone photos. Looks very Gumby-ish here.

This next sculpture started from a 20 minute pose. I focused on the head and bust to give me a little more time to try to capture detail. It's really hard to see from these photos though.


My force drawing course ended last week. I have to admit, I feel completely enlightened. Let's go Buddha, fire me up to Nirvana. I feel like now I have a good grasp on what to look for in the human figure and how to capture it quickly. Look for force then shape, force then shape. I don't think I'll ever feel the emotional connection to the act of drawing that the instructor wants us to feel (he claims he's gotten students to cry from the experience), but I definitely find it more fun than frustrating now. One thing to keep in mind is to enjoy and invest in the process and not worry so much about the end product.

I also recently discovered that Berkeley has figure drawing sessions Friday evenings and Saturday mornings for $2 for students. Here's a few nekkid sketches I did from last Friday evening. These were from 20 minute poses, although I probably spent two to five minutes on these. After taking the force drawing course, I now find long poses to be boring, because the models have to find poses that they can hold for a long duration and tend to look static. The poses that models assume for 2 minute poses are much more dynamic and fun to draw. It also forces you to be quick. The first image is for you, Andrew.


Okay, you might find this weird, but one of the criteria I have for a good comic book artist is how well he can draw hair. Since 20 minutes is an eternity for gesture drawing, I just spent a couple minutes trying to do just that.

Hrm, whenever I look back on past work, it's never quite as good as I remembered it was as I was drawing it.

Wondercon 2009

Usually I spend a lot of time on the exhibition floor, but I wasn't looking to buy anything and there weren't any artists I wanted to meet. So this time I spent almost the entire day in the main hall where all the movie panels took place.

Watchmen
Watchmen is based on the graphic novel that is considered to be the Citizen Kane of comic books. Director Zack Snyder (300) introduced the film by showing us the first 22 minutes of the movie. Looks really cool - I'll certainly be there opening day. With a running time of 2.5 hours, I'm not sure if I can handle a midnight showing though. The opening scene is quite spectacular and appropriately brutal. There's still some of the slo-mo Snyder used in the 300 fight scenes. Rorschach looks badass. Afterward, the majority of the cast came out and did a Q&A. However, I was kinda distracted by Batman wandering around the hall. "Is that Batman in line?" asked Snyder (or maybe the moderator asked that).
Top to Bottom: Zack Snyder plus Moderator, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre II, and Dave Gibbons (original artist of Watchmen)

Alien Trespass
Caught the tail end of this panel. It's a small movie in the vein of old alien invasion movies. Stars Eric McCormack (Will from Will & Grace).

Star Trek
I was able to make my way towards the front of the room, so I could actually watch the panel without staring at the giant screens. Director JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, Mission Impossible 3) came out and showed us a new trailer for the movie. One that Paramount may choose never to release. Abrams is a funny guy. Zachary Quinto (Spock, Sylar from Heroes), Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), and Zoe Saldana (Uhura) came out for the Q&A. I could probably count the number of Star Trek episodes of scene on my fingers (and maybe toes), but I'm looking forward to the movie. Origin stories are always quite cool (Batman Begins & Casino Royale).

Top: JJ Abrams Bottom: Three on the left are Saldana, Pine, and Quinto

The 9
Based on an Academy Award nominated animated short, The 9 is about a group of ragdolls looking for their place in a post apocalyptic world. Elijah Wood, who voices the main character, and the director of animation gave a Q&A. Nice to know that Elijah is a self-proclaimed fellow geek. The trailer looks amazing, probably 'cause of the awesome soundtrack - the clips that were shown haven't sold me. This will be a movie I'll wait for the reviews for.

Up
We were treated to about 17 minutes of clips from the uncompleted movie. Funny stuff. The movie is described as an adventure movie with an 80 year old curmudgeon and a little cub scout. Director Pete Doctor (Monster's Inc) and Jonas Rivera gave a Q&A. There were a lot of good questions about the animation process and what they look for in a good animator. Later that evening they screened the first 45 minutes of the movie at the Metreon.

Terminator Salvation
Director McG brought out the cast of the upcoming Terminator movie. First he tried calling Christian Bale (although the voicemail recording was a girl's voice?), who was a no show, chastising him for not coming out to Wondercon. McG was a little crazy in his excitement. Standing on tables, calling up random audience members to join the panelists at the table (some guy who does an Arnold impression, and some guy just dressed up in ridiculous garb). We saw the new trailer coming out and a few clips with visual effects still uncompleted. I'm still not sold on the movie. Looks very Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Mad Max like.

Hopefully the movie asks some really interesting science fiction questions. I think they try to go into the question of at what point does a cyborg cease to become human and becomes a machine. For example, with hip replacements and other artificial stuff we put in ourselves, it doesn't seem too far fetched for there to be artificial heart replacements or artificial portions of our brains. What then, does it mean to be human? Also, John Conner (Christian Bale) has to trust the guy he's going to send to the past, to impregnate his mom, so that he can be born into existence. Weird, huh?

Left to Right: Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Bryce Dallas Howard, McG

Okay, no convention would be complete without getting a quick free sketch from someone. I got one from Travis Charest. I have to admit, I haven't read any of the things he's drawn for, but I've always liked what I've seen of his art. Some of it is very Drew Struzan-esque. I left it up to him to choose what to draw.

And here's a crappy image of a guy dressed up as Pikachu: