Gridlock

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Google Maps finally added real-time traffic info for many U.S. cities to its online site (this feature was previously available only on their mobile version). Living in LA, I have to check traffic maps almost every time I leave the apartment.


Google is no longer the child that can do no wrong. Looking at the LA traffic map, for example, you realize that their traffic overlay obscures the actual highway numbers. That's a severe interface bug. It's not noticeably superior to sigalert, the most commonly referenced LA traffic site. The one thing Google has going for it is that the traffic data is combined with its map site so you can everything in one place. Trafficpredict.com is also useful in LA as it allows you to look up historical time slices.


Some useful mobile implementation of traffic with a GPS device is what we ultimately need here in LA. There may be such a device already, but I haven't come across it. The problem is that traffic data doesn't exist down the the local street level here in LA, and residents here all hop off of the freeways when things get ugly. I don't know how many times I've been trying to drive with an LA Thomas Guide in my lap, trying to find any possible shortcut through the endless stretch of gridlocked metallic coffins we call cars. The LA Thomas guide for LA and Orange County is the size of most world atlases, but it only covers part of LA.


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ASC Cinematography Award

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Children of Men was the most overlooked movie at the Oscars, not picking up a single trophy among its three nominations. That it wasn't nominated for Best Picture is troubling, but only, I suppose, if you regard the Oscars as the most important arbiter of cinematic taste. But cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki can take solace in having won the ASC Cinematography Award. Winning the Oscar gives you greater name recognition to the world, but winning an award from your peers must be satisfying in its own way.


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RIP AllofMP3

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In all the buzz over Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Music," it was easy to forget that there was already a successful online music download site selling DRM-free music: AllofMP3. But that site seems to be dead in the water this month as they've been shut down by Visa and Mastercard, who themselves were greeted at the door by a couple of goons in sunglasses sent over by the RIAA. So AllofMP#.com remains, but the only way to get money into your account there is by owning a JCB-issued credit card (issued by a Japanese bank).


Too bad. AllofMP3 was the site with the largest DRM-free catalog on the web.


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The Rape of the Sabine Women

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Ah, to be in NYC right now. Today is the last day of a special premiere of Eve Sussman's video-musical "The Rape of the Sabine Women" at the IFC Center. Sussman's "89 Seconds at Alcazar" is one of my favorite pieces of video art, a high def short video that depicts the activities in the royal household leading up to the single moment immortalize in Velasquez's painting "Las Meninas." The Village Voice isn't high on Sussman's latest, but the NYTimes seems to admire what it calls an "overindulged, seductive, feline opulence."


The problem with video art is that it isn't very accessible to the public. You can watch it live or not at all. You can't find Bill Viola material on high-def DVD, even if you would like to have it on loop on the plasma in the foyer of your house. Video art also tends to be housed in galleries without a lot of seating, and watching a long piece while wedged between two other people and sitting on a floor can be uncomfortable. With the advent of HD, I'd love to see more of this type of work make it onto distributable media.


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A few movie links

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"The Oscar" is one of the latest Magnum in Motion photo essays, featuring famous movie stills and pictures from the Academy Awards.


David Bordwell traces the history of the "walk and talk" shot. Hint: it wasn't invented by Tommy Schlamme on The West Wing.


Not new, but certainly not stale: a Hollywood Reporter roundtable with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Guillermo del Toro, David Lynch, Emilio Estevez, and Nancy Meyers on directing.


I finally saw The Host on DVD, and I was disappointed. Perhaps it was the fault of heightened expectations from the early critical buzz. Then again, most of the movies that have set box office records in Korea have been underwhelming. It's the more eclectic fare from Korean cinema that's impressive. It may just be that their movie scene has reached such a state of maturity that it simply mimics the quality vs box office relationship of the Hollywood scene.


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DFW's top ten

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From The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, one of the more interesting top ten lists is that of David Foster Wallace:


  1. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

  2. The Stand by Stephen King

  3. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

  4. Thin Red Line by James Jones

  5. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

  6. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

  7. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

  8. Fuzz by Ed McBain

  9. Alligator by Shelley Katz

  10. The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy


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The sound of one hand shooting

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Seeing highlights of Gilbert Arenas shooting 3-pointers one-handed in the 3-point competition reminded me that he recently won $20,000 from teammate Deshawn Stevenson in practice doing something similar. Arenas shot 100 one-handed college 3-pointers, and Stevenson shot 100 NBA 3-pointers using both hands. Arenas made 73 out of 100, Stevenson made 68 with 5 balls left, then missed and left the court, $20K lighter. What's fun is watching Arenas trying to distract Stevenson while he shoots, then watching Arenas roll around in joy after Stevenson's last miss.




Shooting college 3-pointers with one hand is pretty impressive. Shooting NBA 3-pointers one-handed is sick. Arenas also has two sweet nicknames, Agent Zero and The Hibachi.


For more material that's more impressive than what was actually seen NBA All-Star weekend, here's footage of Dwight Howard prepping for the Slam Dunk contest. If he'd made round 2, he would have performed a kiss the rim dunk. Instead we got to see Nate Robinson miss five hundred dunks in a row for two minutes again.




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Early line on '08 election, Oscars

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The NYTimes recently profiled Intrade, a site that acts as a prediction market by allowing trading on political, financial, entertainment, and other events. The Iowa Electronic Markets didn't do so hot in the '04 election, as I recall, but I still have a fair level of confidence in the accuracy of prediction markets.


Intrade's most traded contracts are those for the '08 election, and as of today, the odds look like this:


Chance of being the Democratic Presidential Nominee:

51.5% Hillary Clinton

22.0% Barack Obama

11.7% John Edwards

7.0% Al Gore

0.7% Mark Warner

0.3% John Kerry



Chance of being the Republican Presidential Nominee

34.0% John McCain

26.8% Rudy Giuliani

18.6% Mitt Romney

1.1% Condoleeza Rice


As for the Oscars, according to Intrade it doesn't appear there will be much suspense on Oscar Night in any major categy except Best Picture, perhaps. The other categories seem locked up already (best actress and actor having been decided so long ago that to cut down on the runtime of the show they should probably just have Helen Mirren and Forrest Whitaker on stage to present themselves with the trophies):

Best Director - Scorsese is trading at 79.1%

Best Actor - Whitaker at 82.0%

Best Actress - Mirren at 91.5%

Best Supporting Actor - Eddie Murphy at 60.5%

Best Supporting Actress - Jennifer Hudson is around 77 or 78% in light trading


An Inconvenient Truth should have no problems in the Best Documentary category, either. The volume of trading on the Oscars is so light, however, that I'd take the absolute %'s with a grain of salt.


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Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books

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The overall top ten list, based on combined results across all writers who offered their top ten favorite books for The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books:

01. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

02. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

03. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

04. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

05. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

06. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

07. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

08. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

09. The stories of Anton Chekhov

10. Middlemarch by George Eliot


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My most memorable moments from the movies in 2006

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I meant to post this list earlier, but better late than never. Here are some of the things I'll remember from the year in movies. Some of these come from movies I didn't love in their entirety, but all are images, scenes, sounds, or ideas that will stick with me. I've left the titles of the movies out, but you can click through on the links to discover the movie referenced if it isn't obvious. Some of those are Amazon.com links, and any purchases will send some affiliate fees my way, something that's always appreciated!


"The name's Bond. James Bond." (DVD)


The lullaby, and The Pale Man, its eyeballs in its palms, playing a morbid game of peek-a-boo, and the wondrous puppet that is Pan. (Official website, Soundtrack)


Wind whipping through their hair, Colin Farrell and Gong Li glancing at each other as they race across the ocean in a "go fast" boat for a first date in Cuba while Moby's "One of These Mornings" plays on the soundtrack. By the way, let me add my confirmation to the hypothesis that a sure way to score with a girl is to take her to Cuba (in your speedboat) for mojitos and dancing. (DVD)


Lois Lane kicks off her shoes and steps up on Superman's boots. (DVD)


First appearance of the crawlers, seen via nightvision on a handheld camcorder. (DVD)


Forest Whitaker's one lazy eye and one bug eye have never had greater metaphoric power, one for each side of the charismatic psychopath that was Idi Amin. (Official website)


Abigail Breslin walks down a dirt hill to put her arm around her brother. (DVD)


Best movie trailer this year. Kate Winslet walking towards Jackie Earle Haley as he sits on a children's swing, his back to us. (Official website)


The quiet of early morning routines as an airport and a world wake up to the last day before that day. (DVD)


A young girl shakes her head when the Queen offers to help the girl place a bouquet of flowers amidst a sea of tributes to Princess Di. The Queen is hurt, then touched when the little girl corrects her, "These are for you." (Official website)


Chieko experiencing a night club with a unique clarity despite sensory deprivation...she is deaf, and between flashes of strobing dance floor lights, all is darkness and vibration. (DVD)


The dreamy rhythm of first chapter of the three, set to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." When Chang Chen finally tracks down Shu Qi, she can't help breaking out in a smile, and then a laugh. (DVD)


That long, unbroken take in the car. That second long, unbroken take, the one in which grime spatters onto the camera lens but the shot keeps going through war-torn streets, up stairs, bullets flying. (Official site)


The elevator doors open, and BANG. There were many differences between the original and this "remake," but Scorsese hadn't seen the original before making his version, and this moment in the elevator played out the same way, with the same timing, in both. (DVD)


Showdown in Chinatown. Okay, not in Chinatown, but in a restaurant, one that's left a little worse for the wear. (DVD)


In the face of a firing squad, everybody runs. Simone Signoret's face. Probably my favorite movie of the year. (Official website. When will this come out on freaking DVD?!)


Dan Dunne and drug dealer Frank have a chat by the street. The best movie I saw at Sundance in January, 2006. (DVD)


Footrace set to "We Belong" by Pat Benatar. Cal Naughton Jr. pulls open an invisible door and walks through as The Magic Man. (DVD)


Madonna's "Vogue" kicks in, and suddenly our heroine is racing through the streets rocking one hot outfit after another. (DVD)


Naked wrestling. (DVD)


Rob Lowe holds court in his office while wearing a kimono. (DVD)


Lucy Liu pops back in through the door to double check to see if Josh Hartnett has dropped his towel again. (DVD)


Ellen Ripstein twirls her baton in Central Park. (DVD)


"Who are you? What's you're name? Do you have a wife? A girlfriend? Because if you do, I'm gonna find her. I'm gonna hurt her. I'm gonna make her bleed and cry and call out your name. And then I'm gonna find you and kill you right in front of her. " Oh, those beady eyes. (DVD)


First glimpse of the creature, hanging off of a highway bridge running across the river. (DVD)


Robert Angier, walking through the snow through the forest, stumbles upon a pile of hats, all of them the same. David Bowie's face as Nikola Tesla. (DVD)


After a night of revels, Marie and others from her court wander out through the gardens in the earliest of morning light (DVD)


The year the Panavision Genesis HD camera broke out, being used to film Superman Returns, Flyboys, Apocalypto, and Click. Miami Vice was shot digitally also, Dio Beebe using the Sony Cine Alta F900s.


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And exhale

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Finally, a moment to come up for air. Film production is all-consuming and takes over your life like few other things. But this is just a brief respite, as I have my five classmates' shoots occupying my next five long weekends.


120 Hz TVs, the next step in TV quality after 1080p.


Scientific American investigates the hype around online dating.


NBA experimenting with 3D high-definition imaging. The cameras are the same ones James Cameron has used for some of his 3D IMAX pics. Maybe we're not too far off from the day when we can be like Jeremy Piven in that commercial for the All-Star game, where he freezes Vince Carter mid-air as he prepares to dunk and steps into the picture. You, too, can see Vince Carter's crotch as it soars over your head, all in breathtaking 3-D.


Speaking of high def, most people are down on high definition DVDs because of the HD DVD and Blu-ray format war. Unlike Betamax or VHS, though, I think this one is solvable, either through dual-format players like the LG or through dual-format discs. And now that I've seen a couple Blu-ray DVDs, I've got to admit, the pictures from those are superior to the pictures from regular DVDs, and it's clearly visible to the naked eye.


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A dirty, poorly lit place

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I'm in a dark dark place that I'll just refer to as pre-production. What I wouldn't give to have a line producer or two working for me. It's going to be a long, sleepless week and a half.


So while I'm in this dark dark place, I'll probably go dark here as well. Looks as if the New Yorker has a few interesting articles. Here are some of those and well as a handful of others for you to read while I try to fight my way to freedom.


It takes guts to speak out against Vladimir Putin.


"Good People" is a new short story by David Foster Wallace.


From the archives: David Remnick interviews Barack Obama.


Revisiting Obama at Harvard Law School: a preview of how he'd be as a candidate? (NYTimes)


Bruce Schneier speaks of the value of security theater. (Wired)


Free Font Manifesto.


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grab bag

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Fun surrealist photography by chema madoz.


Another cautionary report on global warming. It doesn't seem like the argument is about whether or not global warming is occurring anymore, but instead about how severe and sudden the consequences will be.


Photos of tin tabernacles.


Some mischievous pop art paintings, e.g. a Brokeback-esque Batman and Robin.


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22 years later, back to the big dance

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My first wish on my birthday yesterday was to turn one year younger rather than older. That didn't happen.


The second was for ESPN's NFL expert panel to prove to be an exception to the idea of the wisdom of crowds, at least in reference to the NFC Championship Game:




Kudos to Accuscore, whoever you are (and to John Clayton, who picked the Bears but didn't make hte cut for this ESPN graphic). Late in the game against the Saints, when the snow started falling, I couldn't help but flash back to the 85 NFC Championship Game against the Rams. Late in that game, as the Bears finished off their second consecutive playoff shutout, the snow started falling at Soldier Field, and every Chicago fan just knew that there was no way they'd lose again that season.


I still remember the 85 Superbowl in vivid detail. I watched it over at my friend Derek's house with a whole crew of Bears fans. Everyone thought with that defense that the Bears would be back for at least one more Superbowl, but QB issues left the Bears choosing among Doug Flutie, Mike Tomczak, and Steve Fuller to start the playoff game against the Redskins. There wasn't a winning card in that hand.


So you appreciate Super Bowls when you make it into them because it might be decades before the next one comes along for your team. The 85 Bears were favored in every game they played, while this season's Bears seem to be lightly regarded by most everyone. They will be heavy underdogs in the Super Bowl. I couldn't care less.


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