We All Like To Have Friends...

Hmm... there’s always a rub somewhere.

On the one hand, I want to promote Tohubohu’s MySpace site as much as possible. On the other, I kind of think it’s something akin to cheating to accept the continual stream of thinly disguised porn sites that keep making friend requests. Sure, they’d get our numbers up, but I’m not that obsessed with shameless self-promotion.

So for now, I think I’m going to have to amend my earlier post. Yeah, we’re acccepting just about anyone who wants to join. But there is a human being looking at the actual profiles of our requestors; if all I’m seeing is a bunch of provocative poses and links to your webcam, then sorry, but I’m going to have to say no.

(And for my personal MySpace page, I’m probably going to have to actually have some idea who you are.)

Technorati tags: MySpace, Tohubohu

Future Noir Now

It’s about damn time: Blade Runner is finally going to be restored.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this film’s checkered history (something I last talked about more than three years ago now), I’ll give you a quick rundown (for the full story, check out the amazing book Future Noir).

Before the film was released theatrically, the powers-that-be basically took it out of Ridley Scott’s hands and did some cutting; partly for violence (to ensure an “R” rating), but also to change what they felt was a “confusing” film. They cut out a dream sequence, added a hastily-recorded voiceover, and tacked on some extra footage (left over from the opening of The Shining) to manufacture a happy ending. Later on, a couple of additional versions (American and Eurpoean) were made for home video, mostly adding in some of the violence that had been trimmed before, but still keeping the voiceover and the happy ending. Then at last, the studio commissioned a definitive “Director’s Cut” that would finally present the movie the way it was originally intended. But before work could get beyond the planning stages, they discovered that one of their own film archivists was already doing some work on the film, restoring it to something reminiscent of Scott’s original intent — but without any input from Scott himself.

Rather than pay for the re-editing twice, Warner’s pulled the plug on Ridley’s version and went with the archivist’s — based solely on the fact that he was further along in the process. Tired after a decade of fighting over it, Scott allowed them to release it (both theatrically and on the new DVD format) under the heading “The Director’s Cut,” even though it was nothing of the sort. All he insisted on was that the voiceover and happy ending were gone, and that the dream sequence (a now-infamous unicorn, something that radically altered the film’s ending) was restored.

For years, there were rumors of a true “Director’s Cut” being released, but legal wrangling scuttled the project altogether.

But now, it looks like it’s finally coming to pass. First, there’ll be a DVD rerelease of the so-called “Director’s Cut” (worthwhile in and of itself, in that the original release is a pretty primitive transfer by modern standards), and then — finally — a theatrical run of the definitive Ridley Scott version of Blade Runner (followed in turn by a multi-version DVD set).

And I doubt we’ll see any Lucasian reimagining here — Scott’s made it pretty clear that he’s not interested in retroactively applying an old man’s sensibilities to a young man’s work (as evidenced in the recent Alien re-edit).

Some pretty good news going into the long weekend. Now I’m off to go play poker.

Technorati tags: Film, Blade Runner, DVD, Director’s Cut

Staying (Somewhat) Current

In our continuing effort to keep up with what the kids are doing nowadays, Tohubohu Productions has gone ahead and set up a MySpace account. We may end up cross-posting blog entries there, uploading videos, and what have you, but for starters, we’d definitely like to see if we can get a few “friends.”

So if you’ve got a MySpace account (and if not, it’s easy to sign up), you can go to Tohubohu’s profile and send us a friend request. We’re not picky, so unless there’s something freakishly abhorrent about you, we’ll accept your request; we like to be as inclusive as possible.

(And on a personal note, I’ve also got my own profile page up, and I’m also desperate for the personal validation that only a whoppingly huge list of friends can bring. I’m also fairly lenient in my friend-accepting practices — though probably just a bit more discriminating. But probably not much, come to think of it.)

We’ll keep you posted on further developments!

Technorati tags: Tohubohu, MySpace

Good Judgment

Looks like a federal judge has told AT&T to go take a flying leap in its cover-up-the-crime efforts to quash evidence that demonstrated exactly how they illegally colluded with the NSA to spy on American citizens.

Of course, the documents in question (or at least some of them) were published for the world to see on Wednesday, making the idea of keeping them secret kind of a lost cause anyway. Not that Wired News knew then that the judge would demonstrate that he actually was concerned with upholding the law (as opposed to being blinded by irrational loyalty to a tinpot dictator exercising unchecked imperial authority). They just knew that there was a vital public interest in exposing this type of criminal activity to the light of day.

Bravo. Nice to see the media (even if it is alternative media) doing their job for once.

Oh, and remember all the batshit-crazy wingnuts sounding off about how a Post/ABC News poll showed that a majority apparently supported the NSA’s illegal wiretaps? Going on and on about how those nutty liberals, with their crazy “educations” and their fancy “brains” and their wacky “respect for the Constitution,” just didn’t understand real Americans?

Sure, as someone with all three of those aforementioned characteristics, I was incredulous at those results. People are stupid, but they can’t be that stupid, can they?

Well, guess what? Turns out they’re not. They just didn’t have all the information yet — the story had just broken a day beforehand. Give them a few days to learn exactly what the NSA was doing — or at least all we know about so far — and the story appropriately changes, as demonstrated in the more recent (and statistically more accurate) USA Today/Gallup poll on the same subject.

And, quite rightfully, public perception of the neoimperialist party is going right into the toilet (along with that of chancellor Strauch). That’s not to say that people particularly think positively about the Democratic party — hell, I don’t always think so highly of them — but hell, anybody’s got to be better than that bunch of crooks.

So — surprise, surprise — what do the seniormost scumbags of the GOP decide to trot out again? You got it: The old standby, the We’re Afraid We Might Secretly Be Gay Amendment. Gotta keep distracting that pesky public, keep them from thinking about actual issues. Make sure they keep blaming those gays for all of society’s ills while we crush them under our collective boot heels.

Technorati tags: News, Privacy, NSA, Spying, Media, Republicans, Bush, AT&T, EFF, Homosexuality, Civil Rights, Constitution

On Location

Somehow I thought driving around Detroit in RoboCop’s car (a Ford Taurus) — with Murphy* — would be a lot cooler.

I guess simply going from the airport to Livonia and back doesn’t quite cut it.

* “Murphy” being the name of my Titanium PowerBook G4.

Technorati tags: Video, Detroit, RoboCop

Terrorism

Mark your calendars, folks: I’m agreeing with Charles Krauthammer.

Not entirely, perhaps. I think that he’s dead on in terms of thinking of Moussaoui as not worth the effort of executing — a nobody, a minor player.

But insofar as he was a part of the 9/11 plot — insignificant though it may have been — I’m all in favor of letting him rot in prison for a long, long time. If he’s killed — in addition to fulfilling his own desire to become a martyr — his suffering ends too quickly. Besides, just on the off chance he does know more than he’s said (a slim possibility, but there nonetheless), if we kill him, there’s no chance we’ll ever be able to get that information.

For another point of view, you can always check out the Daily News editorial on the subject. But I’m going to throw out a warning here — the first two paragraphs that editorial are treading dangerously close to lunatic territory.

I can easily chalk it up to high-running emotions — I’m not a New Yorker, and won’t pretend to understand what it’s like to have gone through those attacks there — but at least part of their argument seems to be something along the lines of, “Just wait until he gets to Hell, and realizes that his religion was wrong, and ours was right!” The conclusion apparently being that we should just send him to his death quickly, so “God” can take care of things.

Like I said, as an emotional reaction (or cathartic metaphor), it’s perfectly understandable. (And after all, this is the Daily News we’re talking about here, not exactly a bastion of high journalism.) But that kind of thinking is exactly the kind of insanity that the hijackers used to justify their actions. Our God is right, theirs is wrong, and all will be taken care of in the afterlife, to which we must hasten our enemies.

I, for one, think we should keep our legal system — and our debates about it — firmly grounded in this world, without relying on strictly religious arguments.

There’s also been a lot of talk lately about how exactly we should define “terrorism,” with some people claiming (or at least putting forth the hypothesis) that our forefathers were, in effect, engaging in terrorism by revolting against the lawful government of their nation, without the imprimatur of a state sponsor. You can debate the morality of the Revolutionary War one way or another, but I think there’s a simpler “terrorism” definition that effectively makes the distinction (and this is hardly written in stone — just my gut reaction; even that is heavily informed by things I’ve read from other writers across the past several years).

Terrorism can be distinguished from warfare (legitimate or otherwise) in that warfare targets military or governmental objectives (or at least objectives of definite military significance), while terrorism targets explicitly nonmilitary targets for the overriding purpose of creating a climate of fear in the target population.

So bombing a military airfield is warfare. Bombing a pub or restaurant is terrorism. Shooting at enemy soldiers — whether or not you happen to be wearing a uniform — is warfare. Shooting into a crowd wating for the bus is terrorism. A so-called “terrorist” can (and often does) engage in warfare, just as the military of an established state can (and often does) engage in terrorism. It’s not a comfortable definition — we can no longer just say that we conduct wars while they engage in terrorist acts, leaving it simply at that. The specifics of the actions must always be taken into account.

And that definition becomes pretty damned uncomfortable when you apply it to the events of 9/11. I argue that they were terrorist acts on the whole — the use of civilian airliners (explicitly nonmilitary targets) makes them terrorist acts regardless. But had the attacks not been carried out with airliners, it becomes a little murkier. I’m certainly not going to say they wouldn’t have still been terrorist acts, but there can be an argument made to that effect. The Pentagon, for example, is a definitively military target. The Capitol or White House are not military targets, but are governmental targets. Would we call the bombing of one of Saddam’s nonmilitary strongholds a terrorist act? Probably not — so unless we’re going to devolve into the we versus they argument I mentioned, that’s a tougher call.

The twin towers? On the whole, I’d say yes, those would still have been terrorist acts. The targets themselves may have some “military” significance — since the so-called “enemy” of bin Laden and his cronies is not just the government of America, but its entire socioecomonic system — but on balance, the objective seems to have clearly been to target civilians for the purposes of creating a climate of fear, rather than truly causing economic disruption. Any such disruption (and I’ll grant that it did happen) was certainly outweighed by the social disruption caused by the civilian loss.

None of this is meant to end the debate, by any means. It just strikes me as a reasonable definition, and one that takes it beyond the asinine (to me, anyway) “terrorism is whatever we say it is” arena.

Technorati tags: Terrorism, Moussaoui

Who Knew? Well, Somebody Did

Turns out that the required character for D.C.’s 48 Hour Film Project is a real person: Tim Tate, Gay Glass Sculptor Extraordinaire.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. And here we were criticizing that selection as being an unrealistic caricature rather than a credible character.

To our credit, we did change it to Tina Tate (as permitted by the contest), and I don’t think we were harmed by our lack of knowledge in the creative process.

To our detriment (or, rather, to the credit of our competitors, which amounts to the same thing), it looks like 2004 contest winner Jon Gann (“Signs”) actually knows the guy. They’re next-door neighbors. Can’t help thinking that might have given them a bit of a head start (nice when you can use a piece of the artist’s actual work — which you happen to have at home).

In all seriousness, I’m not griping — more power to ’em. This contest isn’t meant to start from a “level playing field” for anyone. Our team may not have had actual glass scluptures, but we did have an unfairly creative and dedicated bunch of contributors.

So there.

Technorati tags: Film, Tohubohu, 48 Hour Film Project

Tonight’s the Big Night

Remember, tonight’s the big theatrical premiere of “Close Quarters.” As of this writing, tickets are still available.

It’s at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, at 9:30 p.m. The theater’s at 8633 Colesville Road (at the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue), and there’s parking available for only $3.00 behind the Lee Building (pretty much at that same intersection).

We’ll try to get the movie up online at some point on our website, but it’ll be a while — we’ve got some technical hurdles to overcome with the 24fps shooting speed versus the 30fps speed of the video. For those of you more technically inclined, we shot in widescreen 24p (23.98fps) with a basic 3:2 pulldown (rather than the advanced 2:3:3:2 pulldown), and (in the interests of speed) edited in 30i (29.97fps); for the archival copy we’ll want to do a reverse telecine to restore the 24p footage, and reedit at that frame rate (and in 16:9 widescreen).

I think I can safely assume that that explanation meant absolutely nothing to 98 percent of you, so just trust me when I say that tonight’s premiere is the single best way to see this movie for the foreseeable future.

See you there!

Technorati tags: Film, Tohubohu, 48 Hour Film Project

Come On, Everybody’s Doing It

Turns out AT&T isn’t the only telecommunications company subverting the Constitution (not to mention FCC regulations) by illegally turning over your personal phone records directly to the NSA.

All of them — with the notable exception of Qwest — are doing it. Don’t get me wrong — I can see the knee-jerk instinct to do whatever we can to protect our nation from another terrorist attack. But if we’ve seen anything, it’s that there is absolutely no possible way for this type of blanket information gathering to do anything toward that goal. Not a thing. There’s just too much information and not enough ability to focus efforts.

What this type of data mining does do — in fact, the only thing it can do — is provide the NSA (and, by extension, every other government agency they might choose to share it with) with enough information to target American citizens at will. So no, they can’t look at the wealth of information and pick out any reasonable proportion of terrorist activity, but they can pick out a sampling of people they just want to go after. Say, everyone who called the ACLU. Or everyone who called a particular (liberal) candidate’s campaign headquarters.

And there is absolutely nothing to stop them. No checks whatsoever. We’re just supposed to believe that — out of their deep and abiding sense of ethics — they’ll just choose to avoid that type of activity.

Horseshit. They’re spies. That’s what they do. They don’t have ethics.

And I’m not necessarily saying they’re supposed to — they’re not elected officials. We’d be idiots to think that they won’t do absolutely everything they can get away with. It’s our responsibility to force them to behave ethically. Which is frankly why I’m as pissed off (or nearly so) at a Congress that may have known about this and failed to stop it as I am at the dictatorial administration that initiated it.

Unfortunately, as Qwest only operates in the Northwest, I don’t have the option of abandoning my current telecommunications services. But I am damn well going to be sure I follow the progress of the EFF’s class-action lawsuit, and not rest until every one of these treasonous corporations (and that’s exactly what they are — betraying the bedrock of this country to satisfy the power-mad whims of a petty dictator) is forced to pay the full amount of possible fines for this explicitly illegal violation. Not to mention that criminal charges are filed against those executives who — unlike the unrelentingly patriotic Qwest heads Joe Nacchio and later Richard Notebaert — turned their backs on their country and authorized it: C. Michael Armstrong, F. Duane Ackerman, Ed Whitacre, and Ivan Seidenberg.

Those fines, incidentally, come out to $130,000 per day per violation. That’s capped at $1.325 million per violation — but with billions of violations at hand, we might be talking about some real money here.

In related news, Americans are fucking morons. Not surprising, in that these are the same idiots who elected Duh-bya, but still disappointing. Particularly when this revelation comes on the heels of an indication that — with Chancellor Strauch’s approval ratings rapidly approaching Nixonian levels (29 percent, as compared with Nixon’s end-of-term 24 percent) — they’re starting to grow something resembling a brain.

Technorati tags: News, Privacy, NSA, Spying, Bush, AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Qwest

Look, Up In The Sky

Okay, of all the big summer blockbusters coming out this year, the one I was probably least excited about was Superman Returns. Oh, it’s not that I thought it was going to be bad — I’m a huge fan of Bryan Singer’s — but I just had trouble getting behind this long-delayed project. I don’t really know why I was so lackluster. After all, Singer had made it clear that he was continuing the continuity established in Richard Donner’s now-classic version — which, incidentally, still holds up to repeated viewings, unlike its first sequel (the other two were garbage best forgotten entirely). And as much as I love Kevin Smith, I’m not one of those fanboys who insist that his abandoned version of the script was the be-all and end-all of Superman movies. Maybe it’s just that I thought Superman’s time was past. That in the new crop of superhero movies, there wasn’t really a place for someone as invincible; sure, the character has “flaws,” but they seem naive and pedestrian in today’s filmmaking environment.

But whatever the reason, I just wasn’t clambering to go out and see it in the theater.

And then yesterday, I saw the new trailer. And one thing got me excited once again.

Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Not only does it feel like he’s channeling just a bit of Gene Hackman, but his trademark style just seems to fit perfectly with this megalomaniacal villain. I remember when Spacey hosted Saturday Night Live, and his opening monologue was just him singing while subtitles ran, saying something to the effect of, “Kevin Spacey made us do this. The reason he plays psychopaths so well on screen is that he really is one.”

I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but thanks to just what I’ve seen of him in the trailer (and you’ll know which scene I’m talking about), I definitely want to go see this film. I may still gripe about some things (I still don’t like the darker colors of Superman’s costume), but I’ll be there watching it.

Technorati tags: Film, Superman

Tohubohu’s Latest: “Close Quarters”

I have to say, we’ve learned a lot every time we’ve done this, and this weekend probably resulted in our smoothest work yet. Not that it wasn’t without some significant bumps. We drew “Drama” — a tough category for a group whose talents certainly fall more into the comedic vein (though you can feel free to debate our success in that arena). Still, as Drama was a new category this year, it was somewhat rewarding to be one of the “inaugural groups” to give it a go.

On the flip side, we’d lost our writer mere days before. So I, our producer (and my wife) Pam, and a few of our actors all hammered out our script, finally winding up around 4:00 a.m.

A quick catnap (not to mention a much-needed shower) later and we were up and shooting bright and early Saturday morning. We hadn’t had time to work out a detailed production schedule the night before (and several of our actors — being in other shows or rehearsals — had time restrictions), so Pam ordered shots on the fly. A last-minute discovery was that a construction crew was working a few doors down from our location, but at that point it was too late to move — we just scheduled our outdoor shots for the lunch break and hoped the noise wouldn’t carry inside.

Our editor was working on-site, grabbing tapes (and the very detailed notes from our script supervisor) and putting together rough cuts of scenes right there. We finally wrapped around 8:00 p.m. — the earliest we’ve ever finished one of these shoots — and I took over shot-logging and capture so our editor could grab a quick rest. But by about midnight, we had all of our footage captured and a rough cut of everything but two complicated scenes put together.

Unfortunately, we also discovered that we had some story problems. We ran the rough cut past a couple of test audiences (okay, past some coworkers I was able to shanghai to watch it), and there was a lot about the character relationships that wasn’t coming through. So we (i.e., Pam) hammered out a quick prologue scene and sent her, our D.P., and a couple of actors out to shoot it while the editor and I kept at the cutting. Our “second unit” finished shooting by 2:00, and we folded the new scene in, color-corrected and scored the film, rendered a letterboxed version (an agonizingly slow process), and dumped it out to tape.

At 7:28 p.m. — just two minutes before the final deadline — I ran through the doors of the Warehouse Theater, two copies of Tohubohu’s official entry, “Close Quarters,” in hand. Which will screen this Friday night, May 12, at the AFI Silver Theatre, at 9:30 p.m. (tickets are available via their website, hint, hint).

All in all, an extraordinary weekend, a thrilling experience, and something I’m likely to keep doing for as long as I possibly can. It’s just great to have a chance to do this — and most importantly, to have a finished product to show for it.

(My wife’s got her own take on the production, which she’s put up on her own site; give it a read for another perspective on the weekend’s events.)

Thanks all for participating, and congratulations to everyone who gave this a go!

Technorati tags: Film, Tohubohu, 48 Hour Film Project

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It...

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been here a whole lot lately. A lot of that’s due to one hell of a lot of work at the office — and Prometheus Unleashed is hardly the only thing that’s suffered.

I’m also desperately trying to prepare for this weekend’s 48 Hour Film Project.

This’ll be the third year that Tohubohu Productions will be entering the competition, and I think we’ve really got it down to a science now. Oh, we’re far from ready to roll (especially since I’ve got to fly out to Monterey for a video shoot on Thursday), but things are starting to gel.

This time around, my wife Pam, of MotherReader fame, will be stepping in to produce as I take the directorial reins for the first time since last year’s The Big Lie (That Solves Everything). We’ve got a strong roster of support folks (both cast and crew), and I am really excited about what we’re going to be able to do. I had hoped to have another podcast episode (available now in regular or iTunes varieties) ready before the big event, but as I mentioned, I’m going to have to fly out to Monterey for a video shoot on the day before the event. On the other side of the friggin’ country. I’ll be shooting all day Thursday, then hopping on a redeye that night to make it back in time to do all of our last-minute prep for Friday’s big kick-off.

My thinking is that if I can just sleep on the plane (I figure three Scotches ought to do it), then my circadian rhythms will be all messed up and actually be completely in sync with the production schedule.

Our official premiere screening will be at the AFI Silver Theater on Friday, May 12, at 9:15 p.m. And sure enough, I may be stuck at a video shoot in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but I’m still doing everything in my power to get back in time (or make somebody else go on the shoot).

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the contest... I’ll direct you over to the official site for the specifics; I don’t have time to explain it all (again) here. But as for this weekend’s schedule from our perspective, here’s the (basic) rundown.

The kickoff event is Friday evening, from 6:00 until 7:00. A representative or two from each team heads over to the Warehouse Theater, finalizes registration, and draws a film genre out of a hat (literally). Then the event producers draw a character, a prop and a line of dialogue for the entire group (they’ve got 100 teams in the competition this year). Then, at 7:00, we’re off.

Friday night is reserved for the writing and scheduling groups. The first time we did this, we thought that’d be a great excuse to have the whole team get together, but boy was that a mistake. Efficient scriptwriting dictates that we keep that group as small as possible. We write until the wee hours, then email everyone with the script (or at least a synopsis thereof) and Saturday’s call times (we plan to start the first-shot crew call at around 8:00 or so, with an eye towards shooting by 9:00... or, to be completely honest, closer to 10:00).

Saturday is our big shooting day. And it’s a loooong day. We’ll be based in the city, but depending on our shooting needs, we may be venturing out into suburbia. It’s basically a whole lot of sitting around and doing nothing punctuated by brief moments of frenetic activity.

Sunday may see a couple of pickup or second-unit shots, but for the most part, this day will be dedicated to editing, cleanup, and output. If we were... fortunate enough to draw the dreaded “musical,” then we'll likely be working up until the last possible minute recording music and cutting it into the picture. And then we dump the whole thing out to tape and race like mad across town back to the Warehouse Theater for the official dropoff. They usually have a little happy hour (attended by a bunch of people who look like the Red Bull-enhanced zombies that they are), and then it’s off to bed.

Sound simple? On paper, maybe.

We’re still looking for a sound mixer and an editing assistant, so on the off chance that anyone reading this knows a good candidate, let me know. Otherwise, let the countdown begin...

Technorati tags: Film, Tohubohu, 48 Hour Film Project