Vu d'ici - Seen from here: So you wanna be a rockstar?: Les blogueurs du Cirque - Cirque du Soleil bloggers

m-c and Julien are Cirque du Soleil bloggers, which should be great to read and see as they blog, Flickr and podcast the latest show from the magical circus. It should be great.
tags: cirquedusoleil, m-c, vudici, blogging

Great Political Thriller

The Constant Gardner

by Fernando Meirelles

John LeCarre is a great writer who manages to create well-drawn characters and sets them within intricate plots. The combination of LeCarre’s novel with Fernando Meirelles of City of God works surprisingly well. Visually the film is amazing with the look of the film shifting dramatically depending on the time and emotional state of the characters. While a film that mixes pop and politics can tend to be a bit preachy, I didn’t mind it at all as the film constantly keeps you a bit off-balance with the characters and the audience trying to understand how their lives intersect with the events that are larger than themselves. Ralph Fiennes perfectly pitches his character as does Rachel Weisz. They are in love, but it’s a complicated relationship that isn’t all perfect and wonderful, which is the spirit all through the film and it is that element of realism that makes the whole thing work so well.

See more about The Constant Gardner

tags: allconsuming, review, film, theconstantgardener

Dark Classic Film Noir

The Big Combo

by Joseph H. Lewis

The Big Combo is probably the most visually distinctive of the collection of films known as noir. Shadows and light are so intense as to make it appear almost as if the film was drawn. This story features a driven detective who breaks the rules and the sadistic mob boss who has a hold over the woman the cop loves. It’s classic film noir from the 50s with rapid fire dialogue and some great stylish touches.

See more about The Big Combo

tags: allconsuming, review, film, dvd, thebigcombo

A Subtle, Surprising French Gangster

Touchez Pas au Grisbi - Criterion Collection

by Jacques Becker

I love French cinema, but I hadn’t seen any films directed by Jacques Becker, and I wish I’d been able to watch them sooner. In Touchez Pas au Grisbi we see a gangster at the end of his career, who has done one last job and is ready to wrap things up. But things aren’t that simple for Max. I was constantly surprised by this film in the understated way that the story unfolds. It’s a different type of gangster film very strongly built around the characters. It’s cheeky and funny and didn’t work within the restrictive censorship that the American gangster films and films noir skirted around. This film constantly kept me off guard as violence was always lurking under the surface, but it was never exploitative or gratuitous. A wonderful film with great characters.

See more about Touchez Pas au Grisbi - Criterion Collection

tags: allconsuming, film, review, dvd, french, touchezpasaugrisbi

Food For the Ears

Plat du Jour

by Matthew Herbert

A fascinating project that constructs music out of sounds related to (and caused by) food and all of the things that are associated with it. Plat du Jour is Matthew Herbert’s project and while on the surface it is musical it is also political and he creates tracks that examine our relationship with the food chain. The web site catalogues the extensive recordings and process behind the project and it is a singular achievement. I love listening to it and it’s great to find out more about the food that we take for granted.

See more about Plat du Jour

tags: allconsuming, music, review, platdujour

Bad Metaphor Podcast

The podcast is done, uploaded and the site is all ready as well. It’s taken a while to get it started, but I’m glad that it’s going. It’s called Bad Metaphor and it features me and my 9 year-old son talking about things that we find interesting. The format so far is that we pick a theme and then talk about that. The first episode is called Beginnings and we talk about our first computers and a few other beginnings.
While the podcast was ready a while ago, I had to play around with the site and was trying to understand the best way to keep it all together. We’re getting the second episode ready now and I think that I’ve got it stable enough to launch, so take a listen and enjoy if you are interested in this sort of thing.

See more progress on: do a regular podcast

tags: podcast, badmetaphor, 43things

A review of "Apologies to the Queen Mary"

Apologies to the Queen Mary

by Wolf Parade

My favourite musical discovery of last year has to be Wolf Parade. The driving rhythms of the drums and guitars combine with odd stories to create something that I alway love hearing. On Apologies to the Queen Mary each of the songs work well and the more I listen to it, the more I hear and the more I like it. My favourite tracks are the driving opening song, “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son” which starts with great drums and has a wonderful musical progression, the poppy “Shine a Light” and “I’ll Believe in Anything” which has the memorable chorus of

Nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn.

The vocals are distinctive and it’s a great mix of drums, guitar and synthesizer to have a fun sound that is also a bit more intellectual if you listen to the lyrics. I enjoy the little musical journeys that each song take me on.

See more about Apologies to the Queen Mary

tags:allconsuming, music, review

A review of "Yes"

Yes

by Sally Potter

Sally Potter’s Yes is a stunningly beautiful film that left me breathless. The dialogue is all written and spoken in iambic pentameter which works remarkably well in the story of She who falls in love with He. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a wonderful combination of cinematic and linguistic poetry. So much is combined together, so many opposites and complementary elements it’s dizzying. Sexual politics and geopolitics, men and women, east and west, science and religion. A singular and bold film that I’m running out of superlatives to describe.

See more about Yes

tags: film, review, dvd, yes, sallypotter

A story about "Music for Film, Television and Radio, Vol. 1"

Music for Film, Television and Radio, Vol. 1

by Harmonic 33

Music for Film, Television and Radio Vol 1 is a very cool album from Harmonic 33 that is composed of soundtrack music from nonexistent tv shows and films, probably from the 60s or 70s. It sounds vaguely familiar and there are elements similar to spaghetti westerns, sci-fi shows, and other things that lurk in my subconscious. I discovered it on the Warp Records download site, Bleep , which is my favourite place to buy and download music. Lots of fun.

tags:
bleep, allconsuming, music

Slight Moleskine Obsession

I can safely cross this off my list now. I’m taking all of my notes in my Moleskine(s) and my collection has grown. While I first only had one pocket Moleskine and was slowly figuring it out, now I have more. Now I have one personal one for more individualized notes (the original Moleskine that I bought) and I take it with me just about all of the the time. Then I bought a pocket Reporter to keep with my camera for notes on photos I take with my Holga camera. Then I bought another pocket Moleskine for keeping all of my work related notes, which I did all last term and will continue to do through this term. Just before Christmas I picked up a pocket Storyboard Moleskine, but I haven’t really used that yet. For Christmas I received a Weekly Diary, which I’ve started using already. I love my Moleskines.

See more progress on: Use my Moleskine to take notes

tags: 43things, moleskine

Crappy New Year

Sorry for the slightly snarky title, but the new year hasn't been off to a great start for me online. For some reason just about everything I've been trying to do online hasn't been working. I finished my first podcast with my son John and tried to upload it before the stroke of midnight, but it didn't work with Odeo or Ourmedia. Then Quicksilver stopped working and my productivity dropped a lot. Then I went to download a free sampler that my favourite online music retailer Bleep had for me, but that wouldn't work either. I couldn't even submit songs to last.fm that I'd been listening to with iScrobbler! It's almost like the y2k things that were supposed to happen, but didn't. Oh well, I suppose that people were out celebrating and are probably resting now. Maybe it's another message about spending less time online.
It makes me realize also that I rely a lot more on apps online for sharing and working with things. I'm going to write more about that on Bitdepth.

Technorati Tags:
odeo, quicksilver, ourmedia, bleep, last.fm

Posting Pictures to Flickr

I think that I’ve really accomplished this goal. I just finished uploading my 4000th picture to Flickr, which is quite a number of photos to have uploaded. In 2005 I posted 2576 photos and in 2004, when I first joined, I posted 1424, so I’m up over 1000 photos for 2005. I’m not sure if I will keep up the record for 2006, but I will keep posting regularly.
I also was able to upload at least one picture a day from March to close to the end of December, which was a challenge at times, but I did it. One thing that it also made me realize is that I have connected to Flickr at least once every day for the past year. Maybe I should post fewer pictures next year and go online a bit less…

See more progress on: post more pictures to flickr

tags: 43things, flickr

Lowering My Flags

I use NetNewsWire and del.icio.us a lot to find and keep track of things and one of my favourite features of NetNewsWire Pro is the ability to flag entries. I use the feature to keep track of things that I want to write about or bookmark via del.icio.us. I've been busy over the last few months, so my list of flagged items has grown larger and larger. Now that I have a little bit of free time before the end of the year I want to heavily reduce my flagged items by moving them into my del.icio.us bookmarks. Whew... there's a lot of good linking there.
tags: del.icio.us, netnewswire, bookmarks

Why I recommend "Blade Runner (The Director's Cut)"

Blade Runner (The Director's Cut)

by Ridley Scott

Blade Runner is a classic adaptation of a sf novel and a brilliant reworking of the material of the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The brilliant touch that Ridley Scott brings to the material is to rework a novel that is heavily based on personal reality into the cinematic framework of film noir. The elements of “what is reality” are downplayed as the detective elements are emphasized. It takes a very internalized novel and externalizes through a detective story. The look, pacing and score still hold up and unlike some past favourites that don’t seem to age well, Blade Runner still is a remarkable film.

See more about Blade Runner (The Director's Cut)

tags: allconsuming, review, dvd, bladerunner

A Beautiful, Empty City

Sin City

by Frank Miller (II)

Visually stunning, but the style is so much more than the substance. It looks like a moving comic in the world of film noir, but somehow the translation from film noir to graphic novel and back leaves something out. It’s definitely worth seeing, but it ultimately becomes more of an exercise than a film that grabs you.

See more about Sin City

tags: allconsuming, sincity, review

A review about "Donnie Darko"

Donnie Darko is an interesting film in how it subverts expectations and how it is constructed. I think that it’s a bit overrated and other films have done similar things, but I enjoyed the structure quite a bit. Since the film is built around a secret, I won’t reveal it, but it’s definitely worth seeing.

See more about Donnie Darko

Technorati Tags: allconsuming, review, donniedarko

A review about "5X2"

A fascinating story of a couple told through five scenes, beginning with their divorce and progressing backwards to their first meeting. It starts off in a fairly disturbing way, but as the film progresses backwards in time you realize that you know less and less about the characters are more is revealed. The film is very carefully structured with a script that cleverly reveals (or hides) information that shapes your perception of the characters and the story. Not as enjoyable as Ozon’s 8 Women, which I loved, but still worth seeing.

See more about 5X2

tags: allconsuming, review, 5x2, dvd

A review about "Heavenly Creatures"

Heavenly Creatures is a harrowing story that was the first film I saw by Peter Jackson and also was Kate Winslet’s cinematic debut. Visually it’s inventive and the editing is great as well. It becomes increasingly tense as it moves to the end and the circular structure lets you know that something terrible is about to happen. Great filmmaking with a fascinating combination of music and special effects that somehow fit into the story.

See more about Heavenly Creatures

tags: allconsuming, review, heavenlycreatures, dvd

Halifax Podcaster Meetup is a Hit

I had a great time last night and stayed up far too late talking about podcasting and technology with the great people from around Halifax who podcast as well as Tod Maffin, who is travelling across the country to meet with the grassroots of the podcasting movement in Canada. You can see pictures from Tod and at some point you may be able to hear audio recorded in one of the pictures. I find it amazing how many talented people there are around here. Stay tuned for my own podcast and accompanying site which will launch soon.
tags: podcasting, halifax, people, audio

Halifax Podcaster Meetup

I'm still here!
I realize now that I've been fairly absent from this with energy going in to teaching and photographing and sharing things with my 43 Things, Places and All Consuming... but tonight I'm going to the Halifax Podcasters Meetup to meet some of the podcasting people around here as Tod Maffin heads across the country. My podcast isn't ready yet, but you'll be hearing from me soon.
tags: podcasting, canada, halifax