Thanks to Videogum.com I now want to move to Japan.
Game show? Performance Art? Tribute to America? Does it even matter...?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Pre-golden Age Sci-fi
Check out this article featured on BoingBoing.net today concerning Pre-golden age (1904-33) sci-fi book cover art!
It's found on io9.com, an online sci-fi magazine that features eleven sci-fi books from the early twentieth century that have exceptionally good cover art, as well as a synopsis of their plots and a slight historical contextualization of the work. This one concerns "A shy and retiring Chicago scientist manages to communicate with an advanced alien civilization, whose scientific secrets he refuses to share with Earth's flawed political powers; and he accidentally "broadcasts" a gorgeous naked blonde alien with whom he falls in love."
And there are NINE more where that came from!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Tru Blood
Sadly behind the times, I just saw the trailer for Alan Ball's latest HBO series, Tru Blood. The premise comes from a sci-fi angle with the invention of a new synthetic blood drink that allows Vampires to live out in the open in society along side humans, much to the dismay and fear of many (I smell a sociological metaphor). The main character is a psyche southern waitress, set in the vampire laden state of Louisiana.
(is it just me, or were there a few "Buffy" moments near the end of the trailer??? I wonder if Alan Ball is a Whedon fan?)
I really enjoyed Six Feet Under and American Beauty, so I'm stoked to find out if this series is just as good. Of course with SFU, I had the good fortunate of being waaaay behind the times and could watch the whole series on DVD with the course of a month or so. Now, being HBOless and unable to speed up time for tv watching purposes, I'm forced to see as much as I can on youtube, and wait around until they come out at the video store. Boo. I guess I could read the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris that the show is based on, but won't that ruin the fun??
Has anyone seen the series? Is it good, bad, just okay?
(is it just me, or were there a few "Buffy" moments near the end of the trailer??? I wonder if Alan Ball is a Whedon fan?)
I really enjoyed Six Feet Under and American Beauty, so I'm stoked to find out if this series is just as good. Of course with SFU, I had the good fortunate of being waaaay behind the times and could watch the whole series on DVD with the course of a month or so. Now, being HBOless and unable to speed up time for tv watching purposes, I'm forced to see as much as I can on youtube, and wait around until they come out at the video store. Boo. I guess I could read the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris that the show is based on, but won't that ruin the fun??
Has anyone seen the series? Is it good, bad, just okay?
Hilarity
Check out this funny remix of "The Shining" turning it into a feel good movie of the year (thanks to Madeline of XPlane for pointing this out)!
I love the cheesy music they always use for trailers like this!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Check out the latest internet craze! It's "tilt shift" photography made easy!
This photo was made all miniature like from the website www.tiltshiftmaker.com. You can upload your pictures up to their filter and get some interesting effects by selecting the specific area you want to blur. It's similar to using a "len's baby" on an SLR, which distorts in much the same manner. The site works best on landscape photos that have a great amount of depth of field to be exploited. This is a photo I took in 2005 from the big hilly park in Prague with the fake Eiffel Tower. The tower was not photographed.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Intergalactic Stellar Space Circus!
Lookie Lookie,
I scanned and posted about half of my illustrations for the children's book I've been working on for the past few years up to my flickr account. "The Intergalactic Stellar Space Circus".
It's about a crazy space circus that lands on in the most boring town on earth and proceeds to freak everybody out! I'm hoping to get this beast done by the end of this quarter, let's shoot for that. If you'd like to test the story out on any kids, I can email you the manuscript, it's a pretty fun rhyming story that has a happy ending after all.
I scanned and posted about half of my illustrations for the children's book I've been working on for the past few years up to my flickr account. "The Intergalactic Stellar Space Circus".
It's about a crazy space circus that lands on in the most boring town on earth and proceeds to freak everybody out! I'm hoping to get this beast done by the end of this quarter, let's shoot for that. If you'd like to test the story out on any kids, I can email you the manuscript, it's a pretty fun rhyming story that has a happy ending after all.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Fleischer Brothers give chase to rain
From the weather outside my window, I believe we can all agree (at least in Portland) it's a cartoon kind a day. Here are two rarely seen Fleischer Brothers' films from the thirties
The first is about a hick couple at the World's fair from 1938
and the second is entitled "Dancing on the Moon" 1935, which features lots of. you guessed it, dancing on lunar surfaces:
One cool thing to take note of here is Fleischer's innovated use of the "stereoptic effects" used to achieve the highly realistic looking backgrounds. The studio would build models of the background and photograph them moving along with the actions of the cell animated critters. Pretty amazing effects, especially considering it was all done in the 1930's!
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