Posts (page 2)

I cannot possibly express how utterly rotten a movie "Sideways" is. I mean really. Just completely and wholly awful.

"Their friendship endures because together they add up to a relatively complete person," Ebert says of the two leads in his review of the film; and that's more or less true, but the person to whom they add up is a horrible monster. Paralyzed with infuriating self-regard, and also impulsive to the point of cruelty. What kind of sick sad individual could possibly enjoy spending time with this person?

I cannot possibly spoil the end of the movie because it is without one; middle and beginning are similarly slim. Nothing ... happens. Nobody ... does ... ANYTHING. It's a useless, snoozy two hours, when at best it's only got material enough for five to ten minutes. A few punctuations of fun are obscured by lingering conversations about drudgery, or worse: soul-crushingly heavy metaphors such as when the timid guy explains his love of "thin-skinned" grapes. How can he possibly not realize that he's describing himself? And more to the point, if we were already irritated by his thin-skinnedness, how can we possibly enjoy his company when he's shown himself to be so obtuse?

I had to watch the movie for work (it's research for a project about voice acting) and it may be the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my job. I'd put it on my resume if I wasn't so embarrassed by the association.

I was talking about Mail.app today, and someone said, "oh, are you talking about Leopard Vista?"

I said "yes" and changed the subject because it was the answer that would involve the least amount of misery for everyone.

A Stanford blog interviewed Ed Catmull about how he is able to run Pixar as a business without stifling creativity. Major points: don't talk down to kids, make everyone peers, let the artists do their jobs.

Here's the interview, and here's my notes on it:

Interview with Ed Catmull @ Pixar

Hoe do you balance creativity and business?
- It's not a balance -- you have to do both. The creative people recognize that it's a business, and we all want the movie to be successful. It's not a tug of war.

When you're considering a new movie, do you spend a lot of time thinking about conforming to Pixar's proven recipe?
- There is no proven recipe.
- Animated films right now are all very similar -- but Pixar's are very different. They can't copy us because we don't copy ourselves.
- We're director-driven; we want the vision of each director on each film.

Is it intentional that films are appealing to a broad range of people, or is it accidental?
- It's important not to make films for children. Kids live in an adult world, and they're interested in hearing things that they don't understand.
- Physical humor helps, too.
- Putting in grown-up stuff + physical comedy = broad appeal.

How do you maintain a culture of innovation?
- You need a group that trusts each other. The tech people and the art people are peers.
- A lot of self-assesment. Daily. And also very deep post-mortems.
- A communication structure that's built-in to the building, thanks to Steve's design. Having everyone working close together gives the building a feeling of energy.

Do you and John enjoy the same things about the company today that you did 5 years ago?
- It's more enjoyable, but different.
- We never forget that the basis of everything we do is to make a good movie.
- Having 2 companies and 2 cultures making movies, each in their own way, is a great challenge.
- We don't merge them, but also don't shoehorn them into only keeping to their partitioned style.

How do you attract talent, and institutionalize it?
- Recruit the best people.
- Trust the artists -- don't micromanage. Executives don't go to story meetings. Let the artists do their job; they'll have to show that they've earned that trust.
- Being led creatively spreads out to the entire culture, and everyone will trust that decisions are being made in the best interest of the film.

Does leadership drive that culture?
- Yes. It's hard.

In case you were wondering whatever happened to my for-real blog at iknowwhatimdoing.com, here's an update.

I'll be starting the switch over to Dreamhost in March, next time I get paid. And I'll be starting from scratch. Since my MovableType SQL database was completely drained, I don't have those old entries anymore -- so the only format they exist in is as the HTML files on the server. It's outside my means (or my interest) to convert them back to MT-format, so they'll just have to live on as a sort of Pompeiiish frozen monument to my dreadful past.

In the months since my blogging activity stopped, the only ones to make much use of the blog have been spammers. I was deleting about 5 spam comments a day, so finally I just added the letter "A" to MT-Blacklist, and that put a stop to things. That "A" keeps about 1600 spams at bay every week. So I think I'll be instituting a CAPTCHA once I start building the new blog.

So there you have it. Transfer of registration will start March 9, and then it'll take some time to get things up and running. Everything will probably be back to norbal in about a month's time. That's only half a year it's taken me to get around to fixing the blog.

I was going through some of my old files rom the mid-90s, and found the following note that I remember scrawling after a vivid dream:

Kinga can't breath...she  doesn't mind...likes using boyf's breath...goes to doctor, gets prescribed "tuesday" brand medecine (taken on tuesday)...it makes her breather harder and harder, she gets stronger and stronger...people around her get short of breath...they bring in trees to make more oxygen but they start blooming ugly...finally saves dog from attacking tree, knocks over tuesday, air comes back

she plays digeridoo
doctor uses lots of oxygen
tuesday gets progressively heavier
day gets longer

Last night I dreamed that James was Charles Manson, and I had to barricade myself inside a house or else he was going to hack me up with a knife.

Making this process even more unpleasant was the fact that the house was infested with spiders.

Discuss.

Bonus discovery: waking up next to a man who was trying to dismember you through a broken window moments earlier is an extremely disconcerting experience.

Some made-up internet awards website was collecting nominations for "most humorous blog" and, oops, that knee-slapper The Daily Darfur made it onto the list. The person who writes TDD commented, aghast, "Daily Darfur is a daily round-up of news stories about the Darfur genocide. It's not intended to be funny."

Well, lots of things aren't intended to be funny.

Sometimes, people ask me what it is that I do for a living.
This is more or less the answer:

My job

Last night I dreamed that I was riding the bus, and Gavin Newsom got on. He was wearing a tight black tank top and was incredibly buff, with huge shoulders and arms. He made eye contact me and I nodded and said, "mayor." Then I had to get off the bus and lie down because I was swooning and about to faint.