Wearing a Filipino-print shirt he purchased at his favorite craft shop in Los Angeles, and socks covered with cows sporting sunglasses, Gilliam showed up the night after his award ceremony to the Palais des Congrès to teach a Master Class to an audience full of Moroccan film students. When asked why he films, Gilliam responded with a long pause and then said into the microphone, “I suppose it’s the best job out there.” For Gilliam, film is the one medium that combines every art form he loves. I caught up with Gilliam for a short chat before his master class. Here, in his words from both our talk and the class, are the combined lessons, or anti-lessons, he has to offer from his long and rich career in the world’s greatest profession.
via Ten Lessons on Filmmaking From Terry Gilliam | Filmmaker Magazine.
A Better Way to Introduce Your Friends at Parties
What if instead of introducing your friend as Jennifer the nurse, you started introducing her as Jennifer, one of most thoughtful people you know, or Jennifer the friend who helped you move in when you didn’t know a soul in this city.
Introducing your friends for who they are rather than focusing on what they do will remind them they are loved before and beyond their titles. It’s an easy way to remind them that you see them for their hearts instead of their accomplishments.
via A Better Way to Introduce Your Friends at Parties.
'Dota 2': the 1,000-hour review | The Verge
Without the internet, there is no Dota, 1 or 2. This game is built on a legacy of organic participation and collective creativity that’s inspiring and affirming of the best aspects of the web. Its continued existence and the funding of professional competitions are also directly dependent on the engagement of its players. While I’d prefer to see more decorum and maturity among said players, there’s still a chance for these online encounters to bring disparate people closer together. Dota 2 allows me, a Bulgarian living in London, to watch an Australian in Berlin commentating on a match taking place in China between teams from Malaysia and the Ukraine. Calling this game’s headline tournament The International is as fitting a title as any in gaming.
The humbling experience of having your face repeatedly slammed in the mud is what builds the incredible loyalty and commitment that Dota 2 enjoys today. NBA player Jeremy Lin describes it as a lifestyle rather than a game, and my experience this year has confirmed that in every way possible. I have a relationship with this game. It’s built on the trust of knowing that every screw-up and every triumph is my own. At a time when gaming is growing more cinematic and prescribed, Dota is pure, unadulterated, interactive fun. No training wheels, no assistant popups, no pausing to gather your thoughts. Thank you, internet, for being this awesome.
via ‘Dota 2’: the 1,000-hour review | The Verge.
Occupy Central civil disobedience movement
I support voting rights or the HK people.
Follow their stuggle here:
https://www.reddit.com/live/tnc30xhiiqom/
UPDATE: a link from cnn still via Mel:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/27/world/asia/hong-kong-five-things/index.html
Hat tip to Ms Mel Cardenas for the link from her facebook stream.
Twch::JavaScript for OS X Automation by Example -Telerik Developer Network
Big Deal for javascript!!!!
JavaScript for OS X Automation by Example
By Michael Crump
September 22, 2014
Apple is very close to releasing a new operating system called Yosemite. Everyone has been talking about iOS 8, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and watches, but one important feature was JavaScript for OS X Automation. While it may have been overlooked by journalists, it was not overlooked by Telerik. Burke Holland created an excellent post that described how JavaScript is now a first-class citizen. In this post, I am going to show you how you can use JavaScript for OS X Automation, since there is hardly any information on it besides the preliminary documentation on Apple’s site.
Note: I am
via JavaScript for OS X Automation by Example -Telerik Developer Network.
Pointless initiative | Inquirer Opinion
Why media people should stop interviewing Neri Colmenares.
It pains me to write this because I have great respect for many figures who stood up to lead the antipork movements, but I have severe reservations regarding others. As I fear that the proposed law was not well thought out, I instantly face-palmed when I saw Rep. Neri Colmenares quoted in many reports. He had previously consistently come unprepared and made vague claims before the high court. He was quoted saying, “I am not very familiar with the Internet” in the cybercrime case and, “I am not very familiar with Epira (Electric Power Industry Reform Act)” when he sued the Manila Electric Co. Similarly, it is difficult not to have reservations about the CBCP, given how they seem to be more of a political actor than a moral compass these days. So what are the real agenda?
via Pointless initiative | Inquirer Opinion.
Why 'BoJack Horseman' Makes Netflix Matter in the Online | Indiewire
Out of the handful of original series and show continuations Netflix has offered prior to “BoJack,” only the fourth season of “Arrested Development” has made the streaming service’s binge-watching platform vital to experiencing the show as a whole. When Mitchell Hurwitz resurrected the beloved FOX comedy on Netflix, fans and critics were vastly divided on the results, mainly because what they got was an entirely different show with a structure tailored for the Netflix platform. The first half of season four is a laborious experience at times given the slow moving setup and the many visual gags and callbacks being thrown up in the air, but its structural importance becomes intelligently clear once the later episodes reach up and twist every storyline into each other. Season 4 is essentially a meticulously constructed single episode split into 15 parts, one that must be binged to achieve its maximum comedic effect.
Watch “Arrested Development” Season 4 week-to-week and most viewers will check out within the first month as the show seemingly goes nowhere. But binge a couple episodes at time and the cyclone of inside jokes and interconnected plots spin faster and faster until nearly every story, every character and every gag has a howling comic payoff. What Hurtwitz’s Season 4 master plan gives way to is a comedy constructed specifically for the Netflix digital age. The laughs are inherently built into the binge-watching process, and the binge-watching process gives way to a storm of uproarious laughs.
via Why ‘BoJack Horseman’ Makes Netflix Matter in the Online | Indiewire.
A one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh. – Extension 765
Raiders
SEP 22, 2014
(Note: This posting is for educational purposes only.)
I’m assuming the phrase “staging” came out of the theatre world, but it’s equally at home (and useful) in the movie world, since the term (roughly defined) refers to how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated. In movies the role of editing adds something unique: the opportunity to extend and/or expand a visual (or narrative) idea to the limits of one’s imagination—a crazy idea that works today is tomorrow’s normal.
I value the ability to stage something well because when it’s done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don’t do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master (it’s frightening how many opportunities there are to do something wrong in a sequence or a group of scenes. Minefields EVERYWHERE. Fincher said it: there’s potentially a hundred different ways to shoot something but at the end of the day there’s really only two, and one of them is wrong). Of course understanding story, character, and performance are crucial to directing well, but I operate under the theory a movie should work with the sound off, and under that theory, staging becomes paramount (the adjective, not the studio. although their logo DOES appear on the front of this…).
So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging, and this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are—that’s high level visual math shit).
At some point you will say to yourself or someone THIS LOOKS AMAZING IN BLACK AND WHITE and it’s because Douglas Slocombe shot THE LAVENDAR HILL MOB and the THE SERVANT and his stark, high-contrast lighting style was eye-popping regardless of medium.
via A one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh. – Extension 765.
rePost:Wasting Your Life: One Peso at a Time, One Minute at a Time | Filipino Freethinkers
I moved to makati because I felt this way. I was wasting my life by commuting. I haven’t regretted my decision save for a weakening of some bonds due to my lack of initiative to now go to places far from my boarding house.
In the paper entitled, “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox,” economists Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer found that for an extra hour of commuting, a worker has to be compensated with a 40% increase in salary, just to make it worthwhile.
In other words, don’t work for a far location if the salary difference is minimal. If you’re working at an office 15 minutes away for P14,000, the same work SHOULD pay you P19,600 if it’s 1 hour and 15 minutes away. If it’s 2 hours away, the same work SHOULD pay you P27,440. Anything less and you’re incurring a loss.
The time we spend commuting takes a major toll on our lives. We experience neck and back pain,spend less time with friends and family, experience loneliness, spend more, get fat, exercise less, sleep less, worry more, and get stressed.
80% of Filipinos are commuters. 80% of Filipinos will have their happiness and their health compromised. Every minute we spend in the MRT line or on a bus along EDSA is a minute of work that we did for free. It is a minute with a loved one that was taken from us. It is a minute we could have invested in our own physical or intellectual development. It is a minute we could have spent preparing a healthy meal. It is a minute we could have spent with our children. It is a minute of our lives that was wasted.
Apparently, it’s not just our money, our taxes, that corrupt and inefficient government officials can squander. They’re wasting our lives: one minute at a time, one peso at a time.
via Wasting Your Life: One Peso at a Time, One Minute at a Time | Filipino Freethinkers.
rePost::Michel Gondry Interview | The Talks
Director of one of my all time faves : Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
How do you get your head free from work when you’re finished?
Just hanging out with my son is incredible, so when I have some time off I try to catch up on my duties as a father. He lives with me and I love spending my time with him. Once a week or so we go to see a movie together. When I do things with my son I realize that I am actually not working.
Nevertheless you go and see movies with him. Can you step back from being a director and simply enjoy a movie?
Yes I can enjoy it. But it’s true it is a very complex problem. It is different because my son has a less critical approach to movies than me. He enjoys going to see a movie as part of the audience. Sometimes I know I won’t like the movie we are going to see, but he gets upset with me and tells me to just enjoy going to the movies. So sometimes I don’t tell him my opinion, but on the other hand sometimes we have the same taste. It’s funny, when he wants to piss me off he tells me I am a bad director and that Quentin Tarantino is much better than me. I hate it when he says that!
Because of your ego or because you don’t like Tarantino?
He forced me to go see Kill Bill Vol. 2 and I walked out of it, just like every time I go and see a movie by Quentin, besides Pulp Fiction – I finished that one. But all the others are too mean for me. I mean, he is a brilliant director, much more skilled than me. You see great performances, great images. Everything is great, only the message is dangerous. It’s all revenge and vengeance, about being mean and cynical. I would almost say that these movies are not made for my son, but it is exa
via Michel Gondry Interview | The Talks.