Electroshock is Green Tea for the Soul

As a connoisseur of journalism, I spend much of my time reading nonsense. With that in mind, you should probably check out what is my new most favoritest news story ever. It is such a good story, my superlatives got away from me there.

I think I enjoy this story so much because of certain phrases I refer to as flags. Flags are words that help you skim through news stories because you already know what the words mean, and they are words that you don't see often enough to cause you to ignore them.

Today's flags are:

• truth-serum injection
• Satan worshippers
• brainwashed
• Arkansas

Now that I review that list, I am starting to get a little bit worried. I'm almost certain that this exact thing occurred in my rejected screenplay for the next Jason Bourne movie.

DirtyCricket ep01 Week of 11/19/2007

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The first episode of The DirtyCricket Show with Justin Howard.

Who are we?

Happy Thanksgiving

The WGA strike

Douche fuck of the week

What to look forward to! 

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Josh Staman is our man with the movie news...or something. Now he's out in L.A. rolling with the big folks, or not with the WGA thing going on. But anyway here's a movie he watched.

Josh Staman
Los Angeles Nov 16th 2007
Calling Sidney Lumet’s BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD the most overrated movie of the year isn’t entirely apropos, and those words linger on my tongue, bitter like horseradish. It’s not because it isn’t, but because in all honesty – IT AIN’T A MOVIE! It’s a screenwriting exercise that a sophomore collegiate won’t shut up about: because it wrote itself; because it’s so hardcore; because Quentin might jump back and forth in time, but this one’s about real people with real problems, man! It was written by a “Kelly Masterson” and although the script is certainly competent in its…(how shall I put this?)…getting-a-very-good-grade-in-Screenwriting II-ness, I would bet money that Kelly is a dude. This is conjecture and unnecessary in reviewing the film, but BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD reeks of either coked-up “hardcore”-fanboy or mouth-breathing cinephiliac collegiate who just can’t let that one script go.

Well, good for Kelly! Not only have “his” dreams been realized and “his” script is off the ground, but with Sidney Lumet attached! And Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris, and Michael Shannon no less! And – again, if that wasn’t enough for Kelly “Bomber!” Masterson (we all used to call “him” Bomber. It’s a story.) – the critics cannot get enough of this put-on. Well, the party ends now; I can honestly say were BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD not an inexplicably overrated crime saga to begin with, I doubt I would’ve seen more than the faintest of recommendatory virtues in the finished product had I gone in fresh.

To start with the good: Philip Seymour Hoffman is quite good in a limited role that plays like a miasma of pseudo-Mametian indulgences that the man knows exactly what to do with. Potentially even better is Ethan Hawke with a sparse role that comes very close to barely existing (witness his final moments in the film, or, rather, don’t) and turns it into a winning turn of amiable loserdom. And while I wouldn’t call anything Sidney Lumet does in this film revelatory, the man knows how to bring out the best in his performers, especially in Albert Finney, who isn’t so much good as a living actor (he’s not) but AMAZING for a dead one; and let it be said, the man can cover a scene well and compensate for textural shortcomings so much that the film almost appears to be about something. Let it be said that although shot on the Genesis, the camera used for SUPERMAN RETURNS and the best-looking digital features around, the movie looks like ass.

And then there’s Marisa Tomei…

…’s boobies. We’ve been waiting quite some time for this…how shall I put this?...boobies, and it’s a tribute to her acting talent (and boobies!) that she comes across as a completely organic, interesting character despite being given nothing to do by Bomber, as she simultaneously and inexplicably beds brothers Hoffman and Hawke, of which I have nothing on that genetic discrepancy. The very first shot in the film is a graphic and mundane view of sex and humanity, and Hoffman takes her from behind and we watch the ordeal play out as Hoffman watches himself, and then they recoil in post-coital bliss…and the damn thing, while repugnant, almost works. She gives off a glow in this film and a pinch of arsenic and vinegar in even the pithiest off-glances and one-liners.

And yet she, and really everyone, is let down by the drab, detached script that is so needlessly convoluted, derived from contrivance, and pedestrian in span that those involved requested – nay! – DEMANDED the use of “Flutter Editing” to piece the damn thing together. Flutter Editing: last refuge of the tripped-out, that you may recall from EASY RIDER, and NOWHERE EVER AGAIN UNTIL RIGHT FUCKING NOW! If Flutter Editing is what is needed to piece your movie together, it’s time to start free associative writing on a napkin outside a Coffee Bean with your double-shot. Who knows? You might end up with something that is heartfelt, true, and honest…unlike BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD.

And then there's this guy....

While noodling around for videos for my last post (I won't link to it, it's literally just below this one(okay fine)), I found this video:



I think this man makes a very compelling argument, a compelling argument for euthanasia and eugenics.

Don't be Afraid of Dinosaurs! AKA Let the WGA have their way!

So the big news I guess going around the circles I choose to pay attention to is the Writer's Guild of America's strike against the studios. The forecast is all doom and gloom (No more Heroes! Whatever, I stopped watching that show last season, I'm way too good for it now.).

But really, the effects can already be seen. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have both stopped airing new episodes, as well as Late night television such as Conan O'Brian. This I will say for most of my demograph, is truly devastating. Here's a quick summary of the issues:




Basically writer's want to be paid for the work they do. Hard to disagree with that. Of course I don't know the studio's side of it, but my preconceived leanings tell me that they are just trying to squeeze and pinch every dollar they can out of their products, because they're a, you know, business. But then again, this is why unions exist. So I lend my full ideological support to the WGA and its members, which means beyond blogging about it I'll probably tell some people at a party that I support the WGA whilst reciting the above video to make me look cool and maybe get laid.

But the part that really interest me about this whole thing is the very thing which the debate centers around, the prominence of online media. The writers are sensing a shift in the distribution of content much like writers did when the television was new and are trying to align themselves in a position of not getting screwed over again. But at the same time its not just the medium that is changing, its the very nature of ownership that is changing.

While I support the writers (have I said that enough to be cool?), I think what they are doing is just bracing for a fall. They represent big media, with lots of money and production value put into their content. But if you saw Transformers, or any other Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer/whomever movie you know that money plus a talent for making things look pretty, is not equal to good content.

YouTube and other such sites have told us that you can make something entertaining to watch (and something that can generate revenue) with hardly any money and it doesn't have to look pretty, sans unions and sans studios.

Creative Commons licensing has also shook up the idea of what can be done with media. Now under a CCL someone can share another's work and post it online with the same CCL and there wouldn't be any way of paying the creator for that. So in a CC environment a writer would get paid for the original incarnation of the work and any subsequent varieties produced by the source of the work and that would be all. But if that work is downloaded and spread virally, mashed up with other videos or simply shown to a large group of people (subject to the CCL terms of course) then the writer won't be making any money off it. There would be no one to regulate that, and that doesn't even matter. Content is generating revenue without regulation or restriction. The natural flow of ideas is supporting that very same stream of creativity. Seems like it would make sense right?

And you can tell that the WGA members a bursting at the seems with creativity and suffering under the lack of a medium to express it in currently by the small crop of independent videos they are making.

"Not the Daily Show"
From the writers of the Daily Show



Videologblog from the writers of the Colbert Report



I think there will always be a place for big media content, after all we all like to see well produced shows that have the money to attract talented writers/actors/directors/producers/the whole lot to create some of the best content out there. But if the studios won't pay the writers someone will! And the Internet is the haps baby that's not going to change save apocalyptic meltdown of society. And there's money to be made, as the above Daily Show video shows. In reality the studios need to be begging the writers to come back with open arms full of cash money. They are brining themselves closer to death with this old world attempt to control.

I often think of the quote from Jurassic Park by Malcolm where he says something about life finding a way and then he's right and the dinosaurs switch sexes and star breeding. Well creativity is like the dinosaurs, and studios and regulations are like the scientist trying to regulate. Life will find a way.

Darfur!

How Can We Raise Awareness In Darfur Of How Much We're Doing For Them?

what a great way to raise awareness...and the ending is priceless

Working out the kinks on a Sunny Afternoon

I'm trying a new thing here...up top you'll see a showplayer for DirtyCricket.tv which is basically just a collection of my work that you can watch from the page. The blog will stay and so will most things, but I'm moving towards something here. Speaking of Kinks...

Flying Cars!

Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars

I just knew they where trying to stop it!

Hrm...

According the the Blog Readability Test, it takes a High School education to understand this blog.

wicked right?

Irving Renquist - Ghost Hunter

The age of internet entertainment is obviously upon us. I've been looking and waiting for someone to take a hold of this new medium and actually use it for its full potential. Why should TV be the only place where episodic fictional shows are? Granted there have been few already, but they lack compelling stories, or quality production, all the things that make TV shows so good.

Well now there is Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter. A show put together by what appears to be some people from a Chicago suburb (hometown proud!). They have had two episodes so far, and I've watched both with excitement and anticipation. What they are doing is making what I have seen as the first attempt at a genuine show with investable characters. And that I commend, if only for the effort.

However I don't feel that Renquist represents where iTainment can go. This show still suffers under the burden of being a low budget production. The acting and the writing seem to take second place to their graphic and music department. Not enough time is invested in the development of the stories and the actual production of the show. This is of course why TV shows look better because they can afford to pay the best people out there to make their shows look good. And that has always been the problem with low budget productions. Not only does your project suffer from an inability to acquire very talented people but it also suffers under the concept of having a writer/director/producer who has to split his/her time between too many task.

I'm not knocking Irving Renquist, I like what they are doing, but I do feel it needs a bit more work before it could be considered a serious contender in the world of iTainment. Clean up the sound and the picture so it can be watched comfortability on any computer and for god's sake trim some of that annoying baggage off the story. At points I half expect Irving and his new girlfriend Dotty to start fucking on camera with all the faux sexual tension they spew, that seem stolen from a porn script. To much sex and not enough ghost hunting!

I'll keep watching though, before long I might get hooked.

Almanac of the Ordinary, 11/6/2007

hopefully this will be a regular feature on the site. Nathalie is an old friend and I like her style.

Lost-n-Found (What Dreams May Come): 3LE, while digging through so many unpacked boxes in this fresh air Rocky Mountain abode so far from Chicago now, came upon a rather large package of half-finished letters, never sent yet well-intended, knowing they would be properly finished and sent as soon as 3LE's life resembled less of an out-of-box arrangement and more like a neatly stacked, retro-finished, jig saw puzzle style of wall art filled with drawers of trinkets and knick knacks neatly organized.

Needless to say, 3LE is still wearing threadbare and tattered articles of clothing simply because, and for no other reason than that the many boxes labeled "sewing" are at the bottom of so many 6' tall stacks of unpacked miscellany. It would behoove 3LE to go to the store for the countless time in recent years and purchase a simple spool of black thread and a small package of needles (knowing begrudgingly all the while that 3LE has, in numerous boxes, similar little baggies of one or two spools of thread and appropriate needles from just such occasions in the past).

Upon opening the rather large package containing, to her surprise,unfinished, unsent letters, 3LE flipped through a small wire-bound book of entries meant for a dear friend in the year of 2005, the cover on which was scratched an animal vaguely resembling a Dave Larson comic and titled, for this reason, by 3LE, "The (moose) Sessions 2005".

Entry: Monday. February 28. 2005

"...it's snowing out...no, it's raining out...well...actually, it's snaining...it's snaining cats and dogs. Today I really, really miss trees and good earth. Today I don't want buildings or trains or garbage...I want muddy puddles down a soft gravel road...I want clean smell...I want quiet with a slight chance of noise...I want a small house with a small garden , one car, and a bigger lawn. I want a pot on the stove and someone to share the benefits with me. I want a room full of scratch drawings, some of them not mine. I want someone else's paintings on my walls, someone else's shoes by my door...my own room full of junk...milk in the fridge, coffee on the table, chocolate chips in the freezer. I want a hose winding through the grass...tree berries scattered on the wet sidewalk in the back. I want banana spiders in the evergreens during Summer...woodsmoke in the Fall. (I want to not be on a train while writing this). ...(I want the batteries in my discman not to have gone dead just now)...I want my job to be well done...actually...I want my job to be done at all...I want my right foot to fit in my shoe like my left one does...comfortably...(I want you here...for my sake)...I want my coffee to not be sticky on the outside... ... I want something funny...right now...(I want you to be here with me)...I want the next stop to be Roosevelt ("This is Washington")...I want someone to challenge me...I want this pen always (Uniball Vision Exact Fine)...I want a breath of fresh air...(I want you here with me)."

...

What have you lost? More importantly, what have you found?

...(Gally, I suspect the whole bundle will come your way soon...well, soon enough...eeeeeeeh)

(In the fabric of time: 1966: 1st entire lineup televised in color (NBC), 1962: Saudi Arabia proclaims abolishing slavery, 1962 (also): Nixon tells press he won't be available to kick around any more, 1943: Stalin says: "The issue of German fascism is lost", 1942: Nazis execute 12,000 Minsk ghetto Jews, 1941: Einsatz group kills 15,000 Jews of Rovno Ukraine, 1941 (also): Japanese fleet readies assault on Pearl Harbor, 1936: RCA displays TV for press, 1923: Col Jacob Schick patents 1st electric shaver, 1923(also): U.S.S.R. adopts experimental calendar, with 5-day "weeks", 1918: Republic of Poland proclaimed, 1917: New York state allows women to vote, 1850: 1st Hawaiian fire engine, 1676: King Carlos II of Spain becomes of age (at 15), 1572: Supernova is observed in constellation known as Cassiopeia, 355: Emperor Constantine II crowns cousin Julianus keizer of Britain)

Tomorrow: moon phase: waning gibbous

The webs are weaving...

My internet's been down at home for a few days, and I've been freelancing at this photo studio, which means actual work and not any of this sitting on a computer all day and getting paid for it. This studio does catalog photography and that means I've been packing and unpacking lots and lots of furniture all day, and then repacking it the next day. Now I'm a skinny guy, so lifting and pushing and building aren't really in my job description. But I'm not complaining, its been good for me.

What is happening though, is my web skills have been slimming. As you can see I uploaded a music video Derek and I made for his band A Toothless Life, but when you click on it, it's too big. Awesome right? Well I'm going to try and fix that. I've got some ideas for things....it will work out.

In the meantime I'm making some money and working hard, always a good thing. And trying and trying and trying to get this new project off the ground.

Here, watch this.