Week 5: Unsupervised

Settling in nicely at DWA. had a couple meetings with directors and Jeffrey. have contributed and been well received with my suggestions so all's well on that front. even got a sequence approved. Saw Flags of Our Fathers courtesy of DWA. Very excellent film worthy of many Oscar nods. A historical war flick about Iwo Jima and the subsequent marketing campaign that the famous photograph launched. a different narrative style than Saving Private Ryan. Instead of a linear story of the rescue and redemption bookended by current times, the movie jumps between the Battles and the States. Sort of in double flashback as the veterans relate their stories to the biographer son who then relates the stories of the heroes facing demons on both sides of the Pacific. The compositing was first rate. The guns bombarding the island and the rockets and the planes and the ships and hardware were all seamless in the frame. Greg's complaint was the D.I. Everything in frame had the same color palette no matter if you were in the States or on the island. I understand the silver look for the battle scenes but would have preferred a simple sepia wash for the 1940's U.S. scenes. Maybe it was to illustrate that the soldiers never really left the battle(?) Out of the seven guys who raised the flag the second time when the picture was taken, only three returned home. One managed to make a life for himself and his family, one tried to ride the wave of fame which quickly fizzled and one couldn't handle the hypocrisy of the U.S. double standard for heroes vs. outsiders. The followup is Letters From Iwo Jima
which relates the story from the Japanese side. Maybe it will answer the question of what happened to Iggy.

In other news, the big story at home is a renters squabble. Greg and Tim have been butting heads over the issue of who gets what out of their rental agreement. Tim seems to be under the delusion that once he moved in and paid rent, he was entitled to the run of the house including objecting to Rafael sleeping in "his" living room. Apparently this means he can't watch DVD's at 2am any more even though he has a dvd player in his room provided by Greg and he has a broadband connection to his room but he'd rather commandeer Greg's computer which is in MY room than spend $40 for a modem and CAT 5 cabling. Greg and Tim had it out a couple days ago with Greg getting exasperated over Tim's disdain for his head-of-householdship and Tim being all condescending about how the law is totally on his side and he'll sue if Greg attempts to evict him before he's ready to leave. We hope Tim finds a new place soon and we wish him all the best including he doesn't get hit by a truck.

Went down Hollywood Blvd on Saturday. Peeked in a couple bookstores so Greg could gather some more information for his masterpiece website. He's documenting every non-digital special effect in movies from inception to the 1970's and maybe up to the mid 1980's. He was working on this thing back when we met at DNA on Jimmy Neutron. He plans to finish it someday and will probably keel over his keyboard the day he posts it to the Web. Also we checked out Amoeba Music which is this indie CD, DVD, Vinyl media store in which you could waste every penny of your paycheck. managed to get out of there only $38 lighter with a Jim Henson Fanatasy DVD collection containing Labyrinth, Mirrormask amd The Dark Crystal. Mmmmmm, Jennifer Connelly.

Also took in an indie flick at the NUART on Santa Monica Blvd called F*CK: The Documentary. Through animated segments by Bill Plympton, and conversations with late author Hunter S. Thompson, filmmaker Kevin Smith, critic Michael Medved, columnist Judith Martin (aka "Miss Manners"), rapper Ice-T, porn figure Ron Jeremy, newsman Sam Donaldson, comedians Billy Connolly, Janeane Garofalo, and Drew Carey, and more, director Steven Anderson considers the history of the word and its role in popular culture and throughout history. The word is used more than 800 times in the film. The pundits on the Right make valid points about the dumbing down of American culture but come off as overreacting blowhards who think people have too much free speech while the Lefties claim they are protecting free speech and our rights as American to express ourselves any way we see fit. My officemate David just used it this moment to express his displeasure at EMO no doubt. What no one wanted to discuss was while we may have the right, do we have the responsibility to use it effectively and appropriately. It seems funny to me that such a flap was raised over Bono saying it at an awards ceremony or Janet Jackson and her decorated nipple yet Cheney drops the F-bomb on the Senate floor at a colleague and is given a free pass. Plus I got to meet the director and got a T-shirt.