What I'm Watching

 I loved PACIFIC RIM...I was totally excited to see it and not only did I go opening weekend, my co-worker and I went to the DBox seats with 3D. DBox are chairs that move during the movie...which made us laugh very very hard as they tend to move during suspense sections of ta movie. I won't seek out the chairs agin...bt they were alot of fun for this movie. I loved everything about this film...especially the way the director played with scale and size. The director Guillermo del Toro also directed PAN'S LABYRINTH and HELLBOY. 10/10

I've wondered why the crazy in 3D pictures. I get the challenge to a film maker for sure...and I enjoy them but they don't draw me to the theatre. VANITY FAIR HAD THE ANSWER recently in an article about Brad Pitt's Zombie movie.

Paramount originally agreed to green-light the film with a budget of about $150 million, said studio executives, an eye-popping sum for a horror film and even more so for the zombie genre. Because the story took Pitt around the world, the movie would be easy to market internationally, executives reasoned. And Paramount planned to convert the movie into 3-D, a big draw for Russian, Brazilian, and Chinese audiences, which meant the studio could earn a substantially higher price over regular tickets. Indeed, China, which limits the number of foreign movies imported yearly, is so important that, Paramount said, the filmmakers deleted a reference to intercepted e-mails from China, where, in Brooks’s book, the zombie scourge originates. Rob Moore, vice-chairman of Paramount Pictures, said the film has not yet been screened by Chinese censors. But, he said, “China has become the second-biggest market, and we evaluate how things play there.”

Aha...if you wonder why something is happening in culture...follow the money!

 Stagg and I watched this movie last night. Wow...what a great movie! It is paced like a 70's movie...building suspense and using characters and politics and emotions for suspense and yet...it moves along really well. The cast was incredible and the story of 60's radicals coming out of hiding was really cool. I like these two examples of posters, one for Europe one for United States. This movie is a good example of a film that can hold up against all the fantastic tv programming with intense complicated plots, sorties and deep character study. This movie is a good exaple of how now...tv is like a novel...and movies are like short stories.

 I love Richard Jenkins and Redford and Jenkins in an art gallery was one of my favourite scenes. Anna Kendrick, Shia Laboef, Susan Sarandon and Julie Christie bring out their best. And the chemistry beteen some of these actors was what also added to the movie. 9/10.

Talking with my friend John Vanderheide ...we always stay up and talk and talk and talk...usually about the nature of reality...lol and so of course Cormac McCarthy and Breaking Bad enter the conversation...

 So, like, Jesse has to die…right? Breaking Bad is a marriage of BLOOD MERIDIAN and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN… So someone has to die and if Walt is the Judge …Jesse is surely the Kid. For many of us fans in seasons past we wondered if Walt was gonna get cancer again. But…duh….Walt is cancer. Manifest Destiny for Walt is the ultimate freedom to empire build killing anything in his path, unless he allows it to live. If Walt is like the Judge or Anton Chighur, then Hank is like sheriff Bell; unable to act or do anything to stop the cycle of greed and violence Walt embraces to fulfill his dreams and desires for power and control. Only a few more episodes of Breaking Bad left and I think Jesse will have to assimilated…

 BREAKING BAD has such a strong Manichean character structure we can compare it to all kinds of literature that uses that format or philosophy. 

 Oh Dexter,,,how do I love thee? And his sister Debra. DEXTER series coming to a close has been overshadowed by the media and following of BREAKING BAD...but I find it every bit as good as each other. I am loving how this final series is playing around even more with justice...and who has the moral highground of deciding how to deal with bad people.

 We saw THE ICEMAN and it was really a terrific movie this summer. Again, great to see Winona Ryder in a  movie. The cast was crazy good. Just a great movie and scary portrait. True story of a hitman.

INTO THE DARKNESS is probably the best 3D movie I've seen...it really used the 3D to perfect effect...at one point I thought a space craft had hovered over the movie audience. It had classic Star Trek humour among the characters and really played with the history of the show and movies. Long live Star Trek!

Yellowstone

 When we drove up to the entrance of Yellowstone Park...there was a little nest on the top of the sign...so much nature!

 Hundreds and hundreds of buffalo

Beartooth Highway

 I travelled this highway in 1997 with our friend Eugene...and it was such a spectacular route I looked forward to driving it again someday. We spent the first half of one day driving from Red Lodge to Cooke city before heading into Yellowstone Park. Most of the route we drove about 35-40 miles an hour partly because the Sturgis Motorcycle Festival was also doing a tour of the same highways we were driving. I want to go back again and stay for a couple days in Red Lodge and in Cooke City. A truly stunning part of the world, and the towns are really cute and hospitable.

The Sky

Nebraska And Beyond

 I love U.S. Rest Areas.

 "Safety rest areas (SRAs) were constructed as part of the Interstate Highway System, modeled after roadside parks, they were to provide minimal comfort amenities for the traveling public; generally consisting of toilet facilities, drinking water, picnic grounds and information dispersal.  However, early in their developmental history, design aesthetics moved in the tradition of roadside architecture that dominated American highways in previous decades, and safety rest area sites emerged as unique and colorful expressions of regional flavor and modern architectural design.  Safety rest areas functioned to create a context of place within the Interstate System; achieved through the implementation of unique and whimsical design elements and the use of regionally signifying characteristics.  By the mid 1960s SRA sites lined Interstate Highways, beckoning to travelers and offering respite from the hectic and potentially monotonous nature of high-speed Interstate travel. 

The limited access nature of Interstate Highways meant that a stop within these sites was often the only contact travelers had with regions they were passing through.  Before the development of interchange business there were few options for stopping available to drivers on newly constructed stretches of Interstate Highway.           
           
SRAs took the place of both the roadside park and the roadside store, while the sites did not allow for commercial business; they did provide a place where travelers could stop, rest, eat a picnic lunch, appreciate local landscapes and enjoy the use of comfort facilities. 

The functionality of these sites made feasible the less tangible directive of connecting people with the regions they passed through; replacing the local flavor that would have once been readily accessible from the roadway. 
           
Architecture was an essential element in developing the context of a site.  Safety rest areas were designed around a central architectural theme which was established in the toilet building and then reflected in the other structures, most commonly picnic and information shelters.  SRA structures and the sites on whole were to be both functionally and aesthetically satisfying, creating environments that were at once relaxing and engaging.     
           
While the standard was to develop sites that reflected a cohesive design aesthetic, developers often took liberty matching modern with regional.  The scale of early toilet buildings was modest, frequently exhibiting a modernist aesthetic, while picnic shelters became a means of creative articulation.  Exaggerated expressions of regional flavor, approaching the monumental, manifested in picnic shelters that often became as sculptural as they were functional. " From here...

 We had to pull over and take a picture of this sexy sculpture outside Casper, Wyoming. WOW!

Ultimate Play-Offs

 One of the highlights of my summer was a big visit from my family and friends to Chicago. A bunch of us got together to watch a friends son in the Ultimate Playoffs.

 We had agreat weather...below my very good friends Dave and Martina, the prous parents of Isaiah who plays for Toronto RUSH ultimate team...getting off the family bus.

 And RUSH won!!! Yay!!!!

 Iasaih...I used to babysit him when he was a baby...

Martina and I walking along clark ran into Ronny Woo Woo