I really wasn’t a fan of the new one. While I found it fascinating to watch, I think Lee made some decisions that robbed the original of its charms, without adding anything new to the table. Threw together this video blog to show my appreciation for the original film.
From Dave Gonzales comes a distressing post about the fate of his movie podcast, Operation Kino:
I proposed a counter-offer: “Give us control over the RSS feed and we’ll keep posting the podcast episodes on CinemaBlend, nothing will change.” Even though I’d just been slapped in the face by another man’s penis, I thought this was the best-case scenario. Josh doesn’t lose whatever audience we did or did not have and we could quietly migrate to our own server space, owning all the files and connections. No one would be losing anything. This offer was rejected, with the added “fuck you” of “You guys had a good run.” Basically, we didn’t get to record a last episode of Operation Kino because we had dared to suggest we owned the thing we made for almost three years.
I completely sympathize with Dave. As someone who’s spent a significant part of the last five years creating podcast content, it would horrify me to see someone make a power grab and claim credit for something I’d been integral in building. That being said, I don’t think Josh Tyler (a person who I’ve never interacted with) is completely unreasonable in some of his expectations, although, based solely on this post, he may have gone about some things the wrong way.
Here’s the thing, though: a popular website is a viable platform from which to launch a podcast. It is reasonable to expect something in return for providing such a platform. It is incredibly difficult to get podcast listeners. Incredibly difficult. Listening to a lengthy audio program requires a lot of commitment, and the more specific your field, the smaller your potential pool of fans gets. For movie podcasts, that pool is very small. Allowing someone to launch a podcast on your website takes an act of faith and it is unwise to discount the value of this.
Ideally, the relationship will be symbiotic: both the site and the podcast will benefit from each other’s presence. More importantly, parties on both sides of the relationship need to perceive each side’s contributions similarly. An imbalance can result in an unfortunate situation.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work under Peter Sciretta from /Film. Peter not only was savvy enough to create the sizable /Film empire from pretty much nothing, he’s also one of the nicest, most supportive people I know. He has given me a huge amount of creative freedom and a significant amount of ownership in all my online activities for his website. But here’s a lesson I’ve learned during my travels: Most people are not as nice as Peter Sciretta. You’re best off assuming this is the case and taking precautions accordingly.
1) Take away his smartphone
2) Force him to watch a 70-minute live broadcast of the red carpet premiere event immediately before the movie, complete with readings of tweets from rabid fans, commentary on Jennifer Lawrence’s dress, and endless discussion of Jennifer Lawrence’s haircut
3) Have said event be hosted by Ben Lyons
That red carpet event actually brought into stark relief the parallels between Jennifer Lawrence and Katniss Everdeen, both innocent lovely women trotted out for the predatory consumption of the masses on a regular basis in an increasingly troubling fashion. It may have set the tone for the film, but probably not in the way that the event organizers were intending.
As for the movie itself, I am personally baffled by how people continue to find these films remotely acceptable from a storytelling perspective, but I’m also willing to accept that different people like different things.
I recently traveled to Portland bringing only my aging Fuji X100 to shoot with. I’d kind of fallen out of love with this camera awhile ago, even though I never lost respect for the quality of images it’s capable of. It wasn’t that the pictures were bad. The problem is that a significant amount of the time (I’d peg it at 20-30%), getting the image you want is really kind of a crapshoot. The focusing on the X100 is still really lacking and the menu system is a pain to navigate.
Since I now own a Canon 5D Mark III with its easy-to-access dials and controls and monstrously good autofocus system, it just didn’t make sense to rely on the X100 when I could achieve a much higher consistency in my images. Combine that with the fact that Fuji recently released the X100’s successor, the X100S, which has been insanely well-reviewed, and I was thinking I should retire my X100 and save up for its more attractive, expensive younger sister.
But an impromptu trip to Portland was coming up and it was only going to be a few days, so I didn’t really need a heavy-duty camera. Plus, Fuji recently released a significant firmware update to the X100, improving startup time and autofocus. So I thought, why not? Let’s bring this camera to Portland and see if I can fall in love with this thing again. And while I still don’t think I’m going to be using this camera in my regular rotation, here are a few things I did really appreciate about it.
Caveat: Due to the recent firmware update, I discovered after the fact that all my settings had been reset and that the following images were all taken in JPEG mode. D’oh!
Traveling is one use-case scenario where I do think the Fuji X100 still shines. I think that this will definitely still be my go-to travel camera in the future. The Fuji X100 is super light, nearly silent, and very inconspicuous compared to a DSLR. Plus, the retro design looks beautiful – many strangers comment on it when I take it around. I have a compact camera bag that I put this into and I can easily throw it in my backpack on the way out the door. Oftentimes I will literally leave this thing hanging around my neck all day and it feels totally fine, even though it definitely marks me as a tourist.
There’s a certain comfort to knowing that I can still achieve professional-quality images with the camera I’m carrying, even in low-light scenarios. This camera provides that comfort for me.
Here’s a reason why this camera is awesome for portrait photography: people behave differently around you when you’re holding a Fuji X100 than when you have a DSLR. I often ask people to let me take their picture, and if I have a DSLR, they’ll tense up or even refuse. Not so with the Fuji X100. The Fuji X100 is not intimidating. It looks like a rangefinder film camera. And it’s so silent, people often won’t even know that you’ve taken their picture (you have to tell them and thank them). This allows for a quality of candid shots that you just can’t achieve with DSLRs.
This thing is perfect for food photography, if you’re into/not incredibly annoyed by that kind of thing. With its F/2.0 max aperture, its spectacular low light performance, and its adequate “macro mode,” you can get some pretty appetizing results.
One last random thing: I used VSCO filters for a lot of these images and I find they work really well with Fuji X100 images for some reason. Not sure what it is but I think it’s the quality of the image combined with the focal length (35mm equivalent) that just creates a feeling that’s really vintage-looking and attractive. Here’s the full set of images I took.
So overall, this camera is still great. True, there were several shots I missed, and several that I had to try multiple times to capture. But I’m really happy with the ones I did get. The firmware update did improve things but I didn’t find that difference to be night and day- it was more of a subtle, evolutionary improvement.
Given the improvements and given that I only use the X100 occasionally, I’m probably not going to upgrade to the X100S quite yet. But once the latter drops in price, I’m all over that thing.
This is Part 3 of my series chronicling my adventures in Portland last weekend. You can also read Part 1 and Part 2.
The hipster culture in Portland can be a bit overbearing, but one of the best parts is the feeling of discovery you can get while walking down any random street. We had the opportunity to do this a few times, and a wide variety of reactions filled my head, including: “I didn’t know you could sell a 30-year old vintage, stained smelly chair for $80!” and “Apparently, creepy doll heads combined with Christmas lights can exist as part of a thriving doll art market.”
I took this photograph of a woman who was manning the cash register at a “pipe shop.” Her true passion was making her own perfume. The shelf behind her is loaded with her different scents, and the ingredients she uses to make them. Some of the scents were okay; others were underwhelming. But at the heart of it all was the dream to make something valuable, something beautiful, no matter how niche. And that’s an impulse I can totally relate to and admire.
This is Part 2 of my series chronicling my adventures in Portland last weekend.
Here are a few random observations on the food scene in Portland. The photo is of some Danish pancakes we enjoyed from broder, a Swedish restaurant.
– We spent about 48 hours in Portland about 6 of those hours were spent waiting for food. Clearly, we were doing it wrong. That being said, it is ridiculous that a) several of the hottest restaurants did not accept reservations of any kind, leading to wait times of up to 3 hours, and b) even when we showed up right at opening time (5 PM) on a Sunday evening (after learning our lesson from the massive wait the night before), we were still forced to wait 90 minutes to get seated because a ton of people had gotten there at 4:30 to start putting their names down on the wait list. Basically, it’s best not to try to go to the hottest restaurants at all unless you can figure out a way to occupy yourself for an extended period of time.
– The food is very good and slightly cheaper than it is here in Seattle. But does it blow Seattle out of the water? Is it mind-blowingly good? Is it the best food I’ve ever had, bar none? The answer to these questions is no. And it’s certainly not worth the amount of time we spent waiting, especially when you compare it to the relatively tame 60-90 minute waits that will greet you in Capitol Hill.
– List of places we ate at: Pok Pok, Ox, Toro Bravo, broder, Tasty n Alder, Voodoo Doughnut.
– While we waited in lines and restaurants for food, we actually struck up random conversations with two separate groups of gregarious strangers. We learned a lot about their lives, their professions, their city. One guy was a urologist who told us about this one time a schizophrenic tried to cut his own penis off (he was only partially successful). This is 2x more conversations that I’ve had with random gregarious strangers in restaurants in all of the 18 months I’ve been living in Seattle. I guess the Seattle Freeze is a real thing.
This is Part 1 of my series chronicling my adventures in Portland last weekend.
In Portland, there’s this place called Voodoo Doughnut. If it was possible for a doughnut shop to be a brick-and-mortar embodiment of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” this would be it. This place sells doughnuts that are mediocre-at-best, but people in Portland seem to believe they are AMAZING AND OMG HAVE YOU HAD VOODOO DOUGHNUTS BEFORE THEY ARE SO GREAT!!!
We got in a line with 50 other people and waited 45 minutes to purchase the doughnuts. The doughnuts are wacky and creative, to be sure. There are some that have stale breakfast cereal on them, some that have M&Ms on top, one that actually had a piece of bubble game baked into the frosting (complete with inedible plastic wrapping and everything). These Voodoo people sure are wild and crazy! The problem is that the doughnuts these toppings are positioned on top of are dry, overly doughy, and bland. At least the doughnuts themselves are pretty cheap.
We finished our purchased and got outside to eat a few of them, only to become immediately, wildly disappointed with our purchase and the time we had just wasted. Near our picnic table next to the restaurant, several drifters started panhandling. I did not offer them any money, but I did offer them some doughnuts. Their eyes immediately lit up. “Really?” one of them asked, in disbelief that I would dare part ways with a Voodoo doughnut, that most valued of food items.
“Tell you what,” I said. “You can have two of them!”
They were so, so grateful. In exchange, they let me take this photo of them.
It’s a weird thing to possess something that’s useless to you but of great value to those around you. In these situations, I would recommend you count it as a blessing, and I’d encourage as much generosity as possible. Especially in the case of Voodoo doughnuts.