Two days ago, Apple Computer announced that they would be moving away from the PowerPC chip in favor of chips from Intel. This transition would start about a year from now and finish one year later.
Yearly Archives: 2005
Review: Deadbeat at Dawn (1988), directed by Jim Van Bebber
Last night I was privy to one of those harrowing cinematic experiences my film professor, Gary Adelstein, always hoped his students would have during a screening of Berks Filmmakers Inc., at Albright College. That is, witnessing a film that left them confused, uncertain and completely unsure just how they felt about life.
For me, the first of these aforementioned film experiences actually occurred at Berks, watching Pier Paolo Pasolini’s, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1976). If I watched Salò today, I’m not sure how much it would shock me. This isn’t to say that its depictions of burning penises and women sitting in vats of poop isn’t horrific. Rather, it is that I now have more of a context to couch the film within and realize that Salò was aimed, in part, to shock with its portrayal of fascist Italy. As such, today, the films that leave me unsettled now are of an entirely different breed like Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb (1994), a documentary about the life and times of comic artist Robert Crumb (Grue will back me up on this one). And then there was last night’s film, Jim Van Bebber’s Deadbeat at Dawn (1988).
Continue reading Review: Deadbeat at Dawn (1988), directed by Jim Van Bebber
Review: Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip
Review by Dragon and Loki
Though its name resontates with all the trappings of schlock horror, Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip, is far from it. And this is perhaps where the charm of the film lies, in its constant ability to surprise and confound viewers’ expectations. With its not-stop genre shifting-gears, the roller-coaster 90 minutes that is Bio Zombie, not only tears through its namesake – the zombie film – but takes on the buddy film, spins round the romantic comedy, double loops back over the action film and ends in a hair-raising finale, bleak, dark and hopeless.
Starting in a mall somewhere in Cantonese-speaking Asia, the film begins by exploring the exploits of two video shop clerks, Woody and Bee. Fast-thinking and handsome, Woody finds the perfect foil in the mop-headed Bee, who is contrastingly clueless to the point that his sole ambition extends to watching a movie with a nice girl on his birthday and rather ludicrously getting the opportunity to finally use his boot knife. “Working”, in the loosest sense of the word, Woody and Bee’s day-to-day in the video shop boils down to playing video games, swindling VCDs and trying to earn a fast buck. Quickly however, the daily diversions are thrown for a turn when Woody and Bee meet their female equals, Rolls and Jelly, two beauty shop technicians who work in the same mall. While Rolls, the skinny and clingy-dressed matches Woody’s savvy and quick wits, Jelly, the somewhat less-fleshed out and arbitrarily labeled not-so-pretty one, is poised as Bee’s love interest.
Continue reading Review: Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip
Ladies and Gentlemen…
Writing Wrongs
They will always correct my direction even though I know there are no wrong writes, just the one's left.
*For Megan*
Review: Kaiser Chiefs. “Employment”
“We do have things in there that are meant to say ‘we like this band'”. And so the echoes of British pop music begin and to be fair you don’t have to look very far. Stephen Street, the producer of Blur for many years is drafted in and the clues continue with the lyrics and the subjects and ultimately the pose that The Kaiser Chiefs adopt.
The Suspension of Invention
This is the other main character from the untitled project, Jonathan Winthrop. After Winthrop’s invention shop, “The Suspension of Invention”, is burned to the ground by mysterious forces, Winthrop sets out to investigate those same unknown forces with one of his patrons, Cecily the Fairyskate. However, Winthrop doesn’t believe in the unknown forces.
The Suspension of Invention
It's called the suspension of invention because there is no such thing as the invented! Yes, I fear it is a comprehension of total misapprehension; a belief from an invisible incongruous dimension, because I ask, how can it be made, if it fails to exist? Inventions are the invented intentions of extremely demented head-ghouls who work by ghostly-dark. And head-ghouls are notoriously uncemented and mixed-up! No, no, no, trust me, they all are... That's why they hang in graveyards digging other people's thoughts. Yes, I know what I'm talking about! Flights of fancy simply can't exist, they never-ever will! That's ipso facto final! So what are we doing here you ask? Why we're inventing truth! You're not even listening... Now why on Earth did you just give me a kiss?
“Dire-er and dire-er,” thought Alice.
Yesterday I was killing time on RPG.net and stumbled across this thread.
The premise, for those of you not well schooled in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, is that in recent editions D&D has been putting some unlikely looking things among it’s weapon choices for player characters. These include things like:
The Orc Double Axe – Think of two axes joined butt to butt.
The Dire Flail – two spiked ball and chains joined butt to butt.
The Dwarven Urgrosh – an axe with a spear point comming out of the butt.
The author starts out posting a few examples of progressively less likely weapons that he’s made up, like these. And then people take the ball (and chain) and run with it.
So, being the ardent embelisher of trends that I am, I tried my own hand at a couple.
The Untitled Project: Making Movies & The Illusion of Flight
Having giving up the life of door-to-door message sales, I’m once again hanging with the Employment Mouse. I.E., rather than planning a triumphant return to the world of work any time soon, my job is now solely focusing on making movies. This is Cecily the Fairyskate, one of the main characters from the ever evolving and yet untitled project I’ve been working on. In addition to being obsessed with bicycle modification and repair, Cecily can’t fly even though she has wings.
The Illusion of Flight
You just don't know what you're talking about... Saying I can't fly... Saying I might as well give up dreams of wide Big Sky... Should I curl up and metaphorically die? ... Ho-Hum. ... Well first off, Big Sky is a place (IN YOUR FACE!). And for your information, it's a town down in Montana! And if a sky can be place, Then I'll elude your illusion with my spoked wheels flying in a bicycle race!
Corporate Art – Part II (A Promising Career in Art Sales)
Initially the Corporate Art topic was intended to cover art works I’d actually done using found materials and stuff at work generally to spruce up the place. But procrastination beckoned, and now I’m getting back to it, but of course the digression must come first.
So today a little tangential story for yall. This falls more under the idea of “corporate art” I think loki probably suspected I was going to deal with when I mentioned the idea of these entries months ago.
From my experience, a more fitting title for this piece might have been:
The Road to Hell is Paved with Framed Classic Prints
And the Skulls of Salesmen Who Sell Them
And the Skulls of Salesmen Who Sell Them
But that seems a little on the long side so the original will have to suffice.
Continue reading Corporate Art – Part II (A Promising Career in Art Sales)