Day: August 4, 2009

Tuesday various

  • Is the future of Twitter in code? Orangeman? [via]
  • Though I don’t like it, I’m not diametrically opposed to five-day-only mail delivery. But I’d be screwed if the post office shut down all services on Saturday. That’s the only chance I get to check my post office box, and usually my only chance to mail anything like issues of Kaleidotrope. (Act now if you want a copy then?!) [via]
  • Ah literary ice creams… If only.
  • Homeless Offered Free Airfare To Leave NYC. I’m not really sure what to think about this. On the one hand, it’s an effort to reunite the homeless — many of whom I’m sure are teenage runaways — with family members, who may be better equiped to care for them. On the other hand, it’s shipping the homeless problem out of state to save some money and make them somebody else’s problem.
  • But on a somewhat happier note… It’s not often you read the phrase “aerospace engineer turned composer,” but I enjoyed reading about these failed London musicals [via]:

    A common complaint in the reviews for Too Close to the Sun is that the show doesn’t even fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category – that rarefied realm which made Gone With the Wind and Imagine This instant classics of a sort. Crucial to such flops is a sense of failed grand ambitions, which is why the burning of Atlanta in the first was as hilariously inept as the evocation of life in the Warsaw ghetto in the second. To enter the annals of true awfulness, you need to stake a greater claim on the imagination than was ever going to be proffered by a chamber musical about the waning hours of an American novelist. It would have still been a hard sell on the West End if Elton John had written it. (That, by the way, is not a suggestion.)

Shots in the dark

If nothing else, director Peter Hyams’ commentary track on End of Days seems to be proof that you can have a personally held and deeply thought-out philosophy of film-making, approach your film with intelligence and care, and still make a crappy film. What you still need is some skill, luck, and a philosophy that isn’t entirely…well, wrong:

Hyams splits his time between enthusiastically praising his cast and explaining why he shot his Satanic thriller by candlelight and suggestion: “All the light used in this film is light that is warmed, so that there is an amber and oak tone in every sequence of the movie.” But he isn’t just concerned with tone. “I’m someone who believes that if actors are using flashlights in a movie, they’re using flashlights for the same reason we use flashlights,” he says, “because they can’t see except what their flashlight is illuminating. So this scene was basically lit with flashlights…” Hyams has been criticized for this choice in the past. His response: “I don’t think a movie that’s mysterious can be too dark. I love shadows.”

….His biggest flaw is the forgivable mistake of confusing intention with effect. “When people are standing near a light, I think they should be lit,” he explains. “When people are not standing near a light, I think they should be dark, or darker.” The result is a dull visual sheen that, some striking images aside, renders each murky set instantly forgettable.

I’ve never actually seen the film — nor have any desire to — but Hyams seems pretty typical: confusing an enthusiasm for film-making (and maybe a pinch of technical skill) with an ability to make films.