User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-26 12:31 Subject: Spit-Take Time Security: Public

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg.

And yes, it _did_ pull a spit-take out of me.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-25 12:51 Subject: Childhood Movies Security: Public

A few days ago, I ordered the Blu-Ray of _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_, and in an odd coincidence, I found a making-of book down at Last Word Books. The making-of book was surprisingly good. It didn't lay on the hagiographic stuff about how great and important and moving and profound the movie was-- which you get, a lot, with fan-written histories. And it had a lot of decent information about the special effects. And the Blu-Ray arrived yesterday, so I wallowed in a thirty-two year old film for a bit.

Click below if you've got a half hour to kill.
( Read more... )

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-23 20:55 Subject: Turn Foxes into Puppies! Security: Public

http://www.overpill.com/2009/12/21/soviet-scientist-turns-foxes-into-puppies/

"In the 1950’s, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. The foxes included in his breeding experiment were determined by their temperament. To select candidates to breed, Belyaev would stick out his hand in front of foxes, and rank them based on how they reacted. The foxes that snapped or bit at his hand would be disqualified from the experiment, and the foxes that cowered or exhibited curiosity without attacking his hand would be mated together. The best behaved of the selected foxes offspring would be mated again, etc.

The scientists expected a long and tedious experiment with little immediate effects. Much to the their shock, however, noticeable changes in the foxes behavior emerged after just about 10 generations. Not only were the new foxes better behaved, they were also playful, smaller in size, and even had white patches of fur on on large swaths of their bodies. Many wagged their tails like dogs, and some even had blue eyes.

Shocked with the results, Belyaev and his team began to investigate. Testing a hypothesis, they discovered that the new ‘Silver’ foxes, had a significantly lower level of adrenaline than their original counterparts. Adrenaline directly affected the behavior of the foxes, the size the foxes grew, and somehow, the color of the foxes. Through some more testing, the scientists discovered that the level of melanin (a chemical responsible for pigmentation) in the foxes was lower as well, explaining how the foxes emerged with colors never before heard of from their breed.

Scientists theorize that the domestication of wolves to dogs probably began the same way. Generally thought to have developed their affectionate temperament over hundreds or thousands of generations, wolves could have become the dogs we know today quicker than anyone could have imagined."

User: news (posted by theljstaff) Date: 2009-12-23 11:37 Subject: LiveJournal Major Notes: Get your holiday fix! Security: Public Tags: holiday coupons, lj_photophile, ljlimericks, my guests, red ribbon vgift

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-23 11:57 Subject: Need a tech recommendation Security: Public

I'm giving serious thought to a Europe trip this Spring. And I'd rather not drag a laptop, camera, and notebook about the place, and I could probably use a cell phone, and... well, I'm looking for recommendations. How would an iPhone work out like this? Are there good alternatives? Anything open-source? What's the story on Google's alleged phone?

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-22 23:53 Subject: Alma. Security: Public

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-22 15:42 Subject: Special Effects and old commercials Security: Public

Earlier today, I came across a nice article in the academic press about special effects legends. You may not be able to download the full text, but browse to http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a910778511&db=all and find the abstract for "Before Industrial Light and Magic: the independent Hollywood special effects business, 1968-75" by Julie Turnock. In a nut, the paper offers a corrective to the "triumphalist" story of the rise of IL&M; Turnock explains that, in the nine year period between the bombshells of _2001_ and _Star Wars_, a lot of people were gaining valuable experience-- and developing terrific techniques-- at smaller effects houses known for commercial work.

If this sounds a little contentious, I'm sympathetic. I was an effects buff before _Star Wars_ came along. I knew the history of things like model animation, the Schufftan Process, blue-screen travelling mattes, and how miniatures were made to look full-scale. I knew names like Linwood Dunn, John P. Fulton, L.B. Abbott, and Les Bowie. I got this from pretty much the only books on the subject at the time: a reference on special effects written for cinematographers, and John Brosnan's terrific history _Movie Magic_. But, ever since _Star Wars_, info on effects has been published in a flood... and for along time, it's been written as though we have George Lucas and Dennis Muren to thank for special effects.

Anyway, Turnock's article mentions the work of Robert Abel and Associates, which was a pretty innovative shop in the 1970s. Have a look at this gem, the famous "Bubbles" commercial for 7-up from 1974.


Or this one:


Or, take this reel of Abel-created logos-- many of which show the influence of Doug Trumbull's slit-scan effects for _2001_:


And this famous Levi's commercial:


Pretty neat, eh? By the way, in the credits, the name "Con Pederson" may ring a bell: he was one of the Gang of Four who did _2001_. Abel and his team worked on _Tron_, of course, but they kind of bit more than they could chew when they'd contracted to do the effects for the first _Star Trek_ film: they couldn't complete their work in time, so they hired Doug Trumbull to come in and bat cleanup.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-22 11:39 Subject: Yes, this does involve a cat. Security: Public

http://i.imgur.com/nO6aQ.gif

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-21 23:35 Subject: More on the Health Bill Security: Public

Via Marc Cooper, I give you links to two analyses of how the health care bill will benefit us.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/20-questions-20-responses.html
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/health-reform-will-save-families-money.php

They come to fairly similar conclusions: families of four will save a LOT of money after this round of health care reform. It won't pay for all of it, and there's still a lot of out-of-pocket expenses, but it's severely reduced by this bill.

Okay, what about the sweeteners that the Republicans are complaining about? Oh, yeah-- the things in the bill that are there so Senators will _vote for it_. The kind of stuff that is _the way bills get passed_, because _that's the way the fucking system works_. Like the $300 million for Medicaid to get Louisiana on board-- think they might be able to use that money? $100 million to get Ben Nelson's vote?

How about TEN BILLION DOLLARS in funding for health centers for low-income people? That's what secured Bernie Sanders' vote-- and no, those centers aren't limited to his home state of Vermont. (Where will they go? Probably inner cities, Detriot, rust belt towns, Native American reservations...) Vermont does get about $250 million in Medicare payments, thanks to Sanders and Patrick Leahy, and there are provisions for states to develop their own single-payer systems. Pennsylvania, New York and Florida won protection for their Medicare Advantage programs when it's being cut in other states. Thanks, Arlen!

Okay, I know what you're probably thinking, Sure, it's nice, but isn't it just going togo back to the insurance companies? (Maybe, maybe not.)

Or, maybe you're going to whinge about the "pork" and the "buying of votes." Really. What goat did _you_ ride in on? You mean this isn't the way things have been done for the past _two hundred years_ in this republic? That things like the PATRIOT act weren't passed without buying off a lot of votes via the distribution of Homeland Security dollars? And isn't it amazing that a lot of these buy-offs and "Louisiana Purchases" are for programs that benefit _citizens_, especially low-income and elderly citizens, rather than defense contractors or "terrorism expert" charlatans.

I'm going to be very happy when this bill passes. But if you're _not_ happy about it-- if you think it's a capitulation to the insurance companies, an ineffective bandaid that will allow the country's continued slide into ruin, or some sinister achievement of the vanguard of the Socialist Worker's Party, do me a favor. Go read Robert Caro's third volume about Lyndon Johnson, _Master of the Senate_. Teach yourself about the horsetrading needed to get anything done in the Senate-- even the largely ineffective 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose only accomplishment was to secure people the right to sue for the right to vote... and, oh, yeah, provided the crack needed to get the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes.

Until then... do NOT even THINK of suggesting that we ditch this bill and demand something better,. This is what we get for now.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-21 14:57 Subject: My Hands Smell like a Superfund Site: Here's Why Security: Public

I get very dry skin in the wintertime. Part of it's the weather, and the heating systems, but it's also due to my wearing govs that wick away a lot of skin moisture. So the skin cracks, there's some splitting and infection, and... well, you get the idea.

I picked up some skin lotion at the CVS, their own brand of 'dry skin therapy,' and slapped it on. The stuff's supposed to be odorless, and it generally is, but the smell I did notice went straight to my memory centers and dredged up something kind of neat.



Many years ago, when my family would drive to my grandmom's house, we'd come across the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philly. And if you know the area around that bridge, you know it's very heavy industrial use. Prominent, in those days, alongside the bridge, was a massive brick building with a massive electric sign that read OLD HICKORY BOURBON. It was one of those huge electric signs where the lights would go on and off in sequence.

And when you passed it, on the bridge, you got a _massive_ whiff of a bourbon distillery.

No, the smell doesn't linger very much. And since I have a kind of pleasant memory attached ti ti, it doesn't bother me.

But I went haring off onto the Web in search of a photo of the old Hickory sign. Surprisingly, I could NOT find any such photograph. But, I did find an excellent page devoted to the distillery, which explains in detail how badly the place was run, the people who ran it, and why it became a Superfund site that cost a _lot_ of money to clean up.

http://www.ellenjaye.com/pub_publicker.htm#newsclip

User: lj_spotlight (posted by ljspotlight) Date: 2009-12-21 09:38 Subject: 12/21/09 Homepage Spotlight Security: Public Tags: i_hope_that, support, wishes

i_hope_that
For many of us, the holidays can be kind of rough. If you're searching for a network of understanding friends, this ultra-nurturing community encourages you to express your heartfelt wishes and offer other members encouragement and acceptance. Not for the terminally snarky or emotionally-challenged, this is a good-spirited place to lend comfort and support.

User: lj_spotlight (posted by ljspotlight) Date: 2009-12-21 09:37 Subject: 12/21/09 Homepage Spotlight Security: Public Tags: crafts, diygifts, do it yourself

diygifts
Feeling crafty? If you've got a few last folks on your holiday gift list, this is a great place to seed your creativity and generosity. You'll also discover wonderful DIY tips to decorate your home and entertain guests. Offering a no-frills-no-skills attitude that welcomes the cash-challenged and arts-phobic, you're sure to get ideas and make friends in the process.

User: lj_spotlight (posted by ljspotlight) Date: 2009-12-21 09:36 Subject: 12/21/09 Homepage Spotlight Security: Public Tags: cooking_club

cooking_club
A fun and friendly community dedicated to those who love to cook, whether you're a meat-and-potatoes type, an aspiring gourmand, and/or a vegan. In search of a brilliant dish to use up those weekly leftovers? Post your ingredients and you'll be whipping up a feast by dinner. You can also share favorite recipes. For Type A chefs, you can spice up your culinary repertoire with exciting cooking challenges.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-21 12:15 Subject: Much Needed Perspective on the Health Plan Security: Public

From Marc Cooper:
http://marccooper.com/weak-pulse-detected/

From Paul Krugman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman

From E.J. Dionne:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002129.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

And now, to add my own commentary. I'm not going to polish this thoroughly, so it'll be rough:

The past thirty years have been a period when the right-wing's been advancing its various agendae. They've been whittling down government program they hate, expanding the military, deregulating corporations, slicing away at women's rights... well, let's assume we all know the history here.

Now, at no point were any of their victories _wholly complete_. Abortion is still a right, but a difficult one to exercise. Corporations have fewer restraints, but the SEC and the EPA still exist, even in weakened form. Welfare still exists. Gay Rights have _expanded_.

And every time they made some advance, two things happened. They trumpeted their victory-- even though their rank-and-file probably hated the fact that they didn't get Christian dominion immediately, instantly, and completely.

The rest of us-- the otherwise intelligent people-- complained about what a _disaster_ it was. How it signalled the victory of the thugs. How it was only the beginning of the decline into neo-feudalism and fanatic barbarism. And this was said with good reason: we know exactly what kind of nation the maniacs want.

But here's the funny thing. Why is it that, when the right-wing gets a half-victory, or advances one small step, it's the End of the World... but when an achievement of _ours_ is compromised, it's _equally awful_? So bad that many of us are willing to _scrap the health care bill entirely_ because it _didn't_ achieve fully socialized health care?

What is wrong with us? Are we so addicted to feeling beseiged and persecuted and generally _losing_ that we have to cripple ourselves? Funniest of all is the idea that passing this compromised bill with hurt the Democrats-- how? The _left_ won't vote for them? How is it that the left is powerful enough to damage Democratic candidates, yet so weak that we can never achieve something great?

I know the bill won't achieve miracles. But it's a huge advance over what we had, and its benefits will become evident later... enabling us to advance _our_ agendae ever further.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-20 23:57 Subject: Jeffrey Combs and Edgar Allan Poe Security: Public

Fans of either should check out Harlan Ellison's commentary over at http://harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.htm. You may have to scroll down a bit.

And Combs is bringing his Poe show to Baltimore next month.

"Jeffrey Combs in NEVERMORE: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe.

It was a measly twenty buck to see Jeffrey Combs, the IMPERIAL Jeff Combs, unleash the life and tragedy of the first great American fantasist of worldwide stature. Jeffrey Combs WAS Edgar Allan Poe. The Steve Allen Theater on Sunset Boulevard was mesmerized. This was not some "ego evening" as most of these cobbled-up attention-grabs turn out to be, where the "name" is the franchise, squeezed out of tubes of dramatic or comedic lard for some inane tv whelp to batten on. THIS was a night only a Poe could have described."

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-20 00:51 Subject: Snow Security: Public

Spent the day shovelling, walking, visiting friends. Went to a party. Stopped by Clark Park at midnight-- sad occasion, one of the local former Boy Scouts died suddenly, and his friends were having a midnight-sledding in his honor. I didn't know them, but a friend was going so, I tagged along.

Walked home in glorious nighttime snow, singing "Here Comes the Sun" to myself.

Wow.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-19 13:39 Subject: Out in the snow Security: Public

Over at Clark Park, the Farmer's Market people set up a fire in a steel brazier. And one of the farmers was selling chestnuts.

I love my neighborhood. Especially in the snow.

(Okay, I'm at home now, eating warm food and watching _Dark Star_ in memoriam of Dan O'Bannon.)

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-18 15:08 Subject: Avatar thoughts Security: Public

Just some disconnected things to mention here.

First of all, the film's budget. This isn't as expensive as you may think. High-end effects filmmaking has usually carried a lot of research-and-development costs; one of the reasons _True Lies_ was so expensive was because Cameron was using the money to build Digital Domain as an effects house. _Avatar_'s main costs have been in the development of the 3D technology, Cameron's "volume" system for virtual filmmaking, and the expenses in computer rendering.

The prospects for success are a lot better than you'd think as well. There's a LOT of ways this movie's going to make its money back that aren't connected with the box office or home video grosses. There's the licensing of the technology-- there's going to be fallout in scientific research and architectural design from this stuff. There's the merchandising. The toys. The computer games (which will probably spawn several sequels, add-ons, and mods, all of which are mini-industries of their own). Anyway, who cares if the film is that much of a success? The crew got paid, Cameron's built an industry or two, the people who paid to see it saw it.

The one James Cameron film that I thoroughly enjoyed was _Aliens_. Beyond that, I've _liked_ his films a lot, but I find that I'm more interested in _how_ they're made than anything else. Cameron's an extremely intelligent man, and while his stories are pretty meat-and-potatoes epics, he clearly thinks about his films in a way that action hacks like Michael Bay and Simon West and Stephen Sommers do not. _The Abyss_ gives us a really good test-case, as it came out against two or three other undersea-aliens-monsters movies. For all its faults, _The Abyss_ felt more real, and more interesting, and was clearly made by someone who'd tried to understand how an undersea drilling rig might actually work; the others were made by people whose only understanding of the world was other movies, and who leave the details up to the hired help.

I admire Cameron in a lot of ways. He has a rep for exploding budgets, but every account of his productions shows me that he throws the money at the screen; he doesn't blow the cash on cocaine and extravagant trailers. He's been known to use old-school effects techniques, like forced-perspective miniatures and the Schufftan process, and use them well. I was very impressed with an interview I'd read where he discussed, in extensive technical detail, his use of the Super-35 format. In another interview, he talked about a film he'd been working on about a man with multiple personality disorder, and spoke about trying to find a cinematic way of expressing that experience, which was an approach I usually saw in less commercial filmmakers. I've also read accounts of his being extremely helpful and collegial to other filmmakers, doing uncredited effects work on _Apollo 13_ and bankrolling steven Soderberg's remake of _Solaris_. And yeah, I admire that he got his ass in gear, went to Hollywood, and worked hard to achieve success.

Now, the downside on Cameron. Science fiction and fantasy readers love franchises, and there are a lot of writers who can create installments for the sagas of Jim Kirk or Neo or Apollo and Starbuck or Sheridan and D'lenn, or story-arcs for Peter Parker and the crew up at Dr. Xavier's. They'll be engaging stories, with vivid characters, and the stories will be well-structured and satisfying... and very comfortable and familiar and exactly what the fans want. This isn't a bad thing-- I wish I could do it. And it's bread-and-butter for most writers who are making a living with their words. But sometimes, you want the creator to surprise you with more than a plot twist, and to imagine places and events that aren't like the things you've seen and read in other SF and fantasy stories.

Cameron's scripts are of this caliber. They're good, well-honed entertainment machines, and while they do what they do really _well_, you can sense the clockwork in the plotting. And Cameron clearly knows the genre pretty well; you can _really_ sense what Cameron grew up reading and watching. _Aliens_ and _Avatar_ owe a lot to Robert Heinlein and Joe Haldeman. With _The Terminator_, Cameron owed a lot to Harlan Ellison in more ways than one. _True Lies_ was a Bond pastiche (consciously so), and outside of the Jack-and-Rose romance, _Titanic_ owed a lot to the screenwriters of _A Night to Remember_.

People have already pointed out that _Avatar_ has similarities to a Poul Anderson story. When I read the lines about how "everything on this planet is trying to kill you" in the scriptment, I immediately thought of Harry Harrison's Deathworld novels. And yeah, it's a science-fiction'd take on tales of Imperialists Reaching Eden and Going Native, from _The New World_ to _Dances with Wolves_. (Unlike, say, a story of imperialists encountering nature and dying horribly, as in _Aguirre, the Wrath of God_.)

It also has a lot that's really familiar with James Cameron: the legless-vet bit was done in _Strange Days_, the space Marines and venal corporate guys are straight out of _Aliens_, and hey, murderous machines and massive technological fuckups are Cameron's big stand-by thing.

(Funny thing is, Cameron's scripts for Kathryn Bigelow, _Point Break_ and _Strange Days_, seem more original to me. They're tight, energetic, and they seem to play with things more readily than Cameron's own superproductions.)

But, as I said, Cameron brings something to the table that a lot of other filmmakers don't. He's recognized that seeing films isn't just watching a story, but having an experience, and he's developed the 3D stuff and the details of Pandora to give his audience, well, a neat experience. I'm interested.

User: briansiano Date: 2009-12-18 10:32 Subject: "Good for you! You've decided to clean the elevator!" Security: Public

Dan O'Bannon was one of those people who toiled for years in the SF and fantasy trenches, occasionally becoming part of something amazingly popular, frequently turning out stuff that never got produced, and only when he fucking _dies_ do we realize how much of his work has shaped what we see today. (Sort of like Michael O'Donoghue.)

He wrote _Alien_, and _Blue Thunder_ and _Total Recall_, and directed _Return of the Living Dead_. But he also worked with Alejandro Jodorowsky on his aborted project _Dune_, and via that project, met the artists who later made Ridley Scott's _Alien_ so amazing. So we can thank Dan O'Bannon for bringing us H.R. Giger.

But for me, he'll always be Sgt. Pinback in the amazing movie _Dark Star_. This was a college project he did with John Carpenter, made on a student-film shoestring. Describing it as a cross between _2001_ and _Dr. Strangelove_ kind of sells it short. The spaceship _Dark Star_'s mission is to blow up unstable planets with thermostellar bombs. The ship's systems are falling apart, the crew's going psychotic from having been isolated for years (enhanced by the time-dilation effects of faster-than-light travel), the alien they've adopted as a ship's mascot is getting unruly, and the intelligent computer that runs Bomb #20 is getting anxious over not being allowed to blow up. O'Bannon co-wrote the script, built the sets, helped design the special effects. He also stars as Sgt. Pinback, who gets the funniest scenes, like the extended "feeding the alien" sequence.

_Dark Star_ is a real gem of a movie, made just before George Lucas turned the genre into mush.

ADDENDUM:
TMC offers the _entire film_ as streaming video: http://www.amctv.com/videos/b-movies/?bcpid=13332913001&bclid=14056329001&bctid=14095584001

User: west_philly (posted by crowyhead) Date: 2009-12-17 23:54 Subject: Found cat Security: Public

There is a beautiful calico cat (either a very small cat or just an adolescent kitten) hanging out on my porch (at 47th and Spruce) right now. She is gray, white, and orange, and while she's timid she also seems to have been a housecat at some point -- she let me pick her up once she got used to me, although she didn't like it too much. As near as I can tell, she has all her claws. No collar, no tags. She's not one of the familiar strays from the neighborhood, though, so I'm figuring she's either lost or recently abandoned.

Did anyone lose her? Alternately, is there anyone who would be able to take her in? It's awfully cold, and while I've given her food and a box to sleep in, I can't bring her inside due to my husband's allergies (and the strictures of my lease, but the whole wheezing and swelling up thing is something I take more seriously). Seriously, though, she's gorgeous.

Please email me at crowyhead@gmail.com if you have any knowledge of who she belongs to, or if you're interested in taking her in. I'll be going to bed soon, but since we've given her food and a relatively comfy place to sleep, it wouldn't surprise me if my porch becomes her home base for the time being.