I stayed up late to see the lunar eclipse. I video-taped the event, and will hopefully be able to post a time lapse by the end of the weekend. Below is a vid-cap from the footage I shot.



I also received a completely unexpected bonus view. Looking around the completely clear sky, I decided to point my camera at what I thought was likely Jupiter. I turned on the digital zoom, set it for maximum exposure, and zoomed in. As I was zooming in, one by one four dim points of light appeared, in line, two on either side of the gas giant. I was dumbfounded. With the aid of my video camera, I was viewing the Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (which is which I have no clue). I soon confirmed that it was indeed Jupiter with the help of this really cool website.



Despite getting about two hours of sleep before work, it was a great night.

The masses are asses.

Just yesterday Jaquandor was complaining about pre-movie ads. I couldn't agree more, but it seems we are in the minority. I don't mind an ad that is well done, in fact every year, we attend a screening of the British Television Advertising Awards. A well done ad is much like a short film. The problem is that most, if not all, of the advertising I have seen before movies, is mediocre at best. I haven't seen any of the 20 minute behind the scenes productions that are mentioned in the article, but it seems these occur before the movie start time, so I don't think these would bother me as much. Unfortunately, this survey seems to indicate that we can look forward to more pre-movie advertising.

OK, OK... Jack Horkheimer I'm not. I screwed up. The Eclipse is THURSDAY night into Friday morning. In my defense, working my schedule really can screw up my sense of what day it is. The links in my previous post still apply though.

Oh, remember to keep looking up.

Lunacy!

I may just try and sleep most of this afternoon, so I can stay up late (very late for me) and catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse. Here in Minneapolis I should be able to see all of it that is visible to the naked eye, providing it stops raining by then. Here is a page that will tell you just about all you need to know about tonight's eclipse.

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am amazed this kind of thing still goes on...

One down, eight to go...

I will be making changes to the template, adding more links and so on, but this will do for now.

First day, and I already have something to say. I was recently lamenting the death of the independent film. Lo and behold, it's not just me. It seems recently that apart from foreign films, there there have been scant few "small" films. This niche has been taken over by divisions of the big studios. I have not seen the recent batch of big-studio "art-house" films ("Adaptation," "The Pianist," "About Schmidt," etc.) so I can't comment on these directly, but other such films have lately seemed to fall short. This seems to come from too much studio involvement. There are notable exceptions of course, films from the Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, Christopher Guest and a few others. But these are almost a gimmie. I miss the unexpected, unknown gems. Where are the "Walking and Talkings," "Trees Lounges" and "Stranger than Paradises?" I'm sure they are out there, but why don't I hear about them?

Many people say that the independent films started to die with "Pulp Fiction." I disagree. There have been a great number since then. When it really started, I think, was with "American Beauty." This also marked the end of great Kevin Spacey roles. If anyone has some recommendations, let me know.

Ok, here it is. Under much pressure, from a person we will simply call Jaquandor, to get a blog of my own, I have. What will I be posting? Beats me. I promise nothing. Not regular posts, not proper spelling, not timely thought provoking insights, or that any of it will be in the least bit interesting. Let the experiment begin.