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 I went to see Cloverfield tonight. With high expectations, I am sorry to say I cannot recommend this move to those that may be susceptible to motion sickness as myself.
First I generally love JJ Abrams work. I cant wait until December for the new Star Trek. However, Cloverfield left a bad taste in my mouth. And that is not a metaphor.I went to my local multiplex, the AMC PAlace 16 in a suburb or New Orleans, to see Cloverfield. I had very high hopes. Quite frankly, I am fed up with todays current crop of "action" flix. Are the directos today spending so much money on special and digital effects that they can't afford a frickin' Steadicam?!
What in the hell is up with the shakycam!? It seams every movie these days spend an inordinate amount of screen time using this zoom in, zoom out hand-held "shakycam" technique. I am sick of it. Literally. Cloverfield is the 2nd movie that I had to leave because of motion sickness. Prior to that was The Kingdom. I did not last until a little after the Brooklyn Bridge destruction.
Now, I have to admit, the sequences up until then were quite impressive.
I saw the previews. I sort of new that there was going to be a significant amount of shakycam, but the entire movie!? There was even a sign at the ticket booth warning movie goers of the technique causing a sensation that not unlike a roller-coaster. I should have paid attention. But I figured, how bad could it be. They certainly wouldn't shoot the whole flic in shakycam. Hopefully cutting between character pov to locked off cams for the money/hero shots. But no.
So here I sit with a cold towel on my neck, sucking on ice cubes, trying to keep the images of some dillweed running down the Brooklyn Bridge with a home DV camera (even the cheapest, crappiest digital-8 handicam has built-in steadyshot image stabilization).
I think from now on I will do a little more research and avoid these type of movies.
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This post is a little late regarding the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But I have decided to publish a fraction of thephotos that I have either taken myself, friends of mine had taken, or were emailed to me. So, below are some links to my Picasa Albums (Google Photo Manager) here on That DAM Blog.
As I speak to people around the country and around the world thru my job, I have learned that many either are forgetting what really took place here or they never really new in the first place.
A vast majority of these photos were taken by the fire department in Paris, Maine. I have several thousand photos. Some the firemen asked my not to show publicly. Some that contain "floaters", that is the bodies that were floating in the midst of the neighborhoods.
No comments. No editorial. I will just let the photos speak for themselves.
Here are a few additional photos that were either emailed or given to me.
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[UPDATE] Well, as some of you may know. I may have to revise this blog. Because I am in a relationship now and I may have to change my tune. LOL!
You know, when I was in my twenties, I could call up ANY of my friends and say something like, "Hey wanna go check out that new movie?" One of maybe 5 would say yes. Usually I could get a quorum of at least 3. Most of my friends were women about the same age as myself.
Time moves on. I got saved. Started going to church. Found several good friends. Same scenario. I could call any number of them up and go do something. It could be a movie, going out to eat, going to somebody’s house to watch a movie. Now, the crowd was more mixed. I was in my late thirties.
Fast forward to today. I am in my early forties. I call up a friend. A friend that had no problems, just a few years ago, jumping in his or her car and meeting someplace, but nooo. Today, I hear things thru the phone like, "Honey, can I go over to Bro Mark's?" or "Honey, do you mind if I go to the show with Bro Mark?" or "Bro Mark wants to go get something to eat, do you wanna go? . . . Can I go?" What?!
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What were you doing in September of 1986. I was in Tampa Florida working for Time Customer Service (a division of what is now Time-Warner). But for fun, I ran a Fidonet mail relay and BBS. BBSes. What is a BBS you may ask. Well, you must be younger than 25-30 if you have to ask. BBSes were the forerunner to the internet. FidoNet was the infrastructure and backbone for email. I'll spare you the long description and point you to the wiki.
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 Steve Jobs is a loose cannon. At least in the eyes of
his peers. They don't really like him. They can't seem to run
their company like good ole Steve does or at least the way that
they want to run it.
You see, Steve has a track record. A record of success. Let's
take a look over the past few years:
- G4 "Snowball" iMac
- G4 Titanium PowerBook Notebook
- G4 Aluminum PowerBook Notebook
- G4 Mac Mini
- G5 iMac
- G5 PowerMac Tower
- G5 Quad Core PowerMac Tower
- Intel Mac Mini
- Intel MacBook Pro Notebook
- Intel MacPro Tower Woodcrest Dual Core 64bit XEON
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Observations 
