Author Archives: Andrew Hales

by | January 17, 2014 · 7:52 am

Oscar Picks: A Conversation

The list of nominations for the 2014 Academy Awards was released yesterday, so Andrew and I decided to make it into a game.  We originally thought about gambling for pennies, but have now come up with a ridiculously complex system of points by which one of us will be named the winner (ok, it isn’t that complex).  Below is a transcript of our Oscar conversation, slightly edited for content and brevity. -t

Best Actor Leading Role

A. Christian Bale, because of his epic beer gut that is on display in several scenes.  It’s disturbing but Oscar worthy

T. Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years a Slave.  Oscars eat that stuff up.  (I’m also really excited to see an actor from Serenity nominated for anything at all!)

His beer belly has a personality all its own.

Actor in Supporting Role

A. Jonah Hill.  The Wolf of Wall Street as a whole is sooo crazy.  The potential for him to walk with the Oscar is high

T. Jared Leto because he’s a rock star!

Actress in a Leading Role

A. Sandra Bullock because of the torture she put herself through for that movie.

T. Meryl Streep.  The line about Julia Roberts looking like a lesbian was hilarious to me.  Apparently, she also has the record for most Academy Award Nominations.

Actress in a Supporting Role

A. Jennifer Lawrence.  She doesn’t deserve it, but she will get it.

T. Jennifer Lawrence.  For the same reason, but I’m mad that Andrew said it first.

But she IS smoking hot.

Animated Feature Films

A. Despicable Me 2.  It wasn’t amazing, but of the choices, it was the funniest.  Minions:  that’s all that needs to be said.

T. The Wind Rises.  Miyazaki said that this will be his last film and I think the Oscars will want this brilliant creator to go out with a bang.

Cinematography

A. Gravity.  As crazy as that movie was, it has to be Gravity.

T. Gravity.  It was beautiful and there was little action to take away from the gorgeous shots of space.

Costume Design

A. American Hustle—not for the lack of bras, but because of the god-awful vintage clothes and decor that made me think, “Oh no!  Oh god, this WAS the seventies.”

T. The Great Gatsby.  The costumes were absolutely stunning, over-the-top, and larger than life (sorry for the redundancy).  I absolutely loved the clothing.

Directing

A. 12 Years a Slave.  If this guy wins, he’ll be the first African American to win best director, and with Scorsese being out of the picture (no pun intended) on Oscar principle, I think this is an opportunity too good for the Awards to pass up.

T. I’m going to go with American Hustle for this.  I think that the Oscars want to give this movie a top honor, but I think other movies will beat it out in other categories.

Steve McQueen (far right) would be the first African American director to win an Academy Award.

Documentary Feature

A. 20 Feet From Stardom, because I want to know what the hell “nominees to be determined” means.  Do we not know who made the movie?  Did we not watch the movie, but we’re voting on it?  Were there only five documentaries this year and all five were nominated?

T. The Act of Killing.  I don’t know why, but I’m drawn to that name.

Documentary Shorts

A. Prison Terminal, because the magic eight ball said so

T. Facing Fear, because the Oscars love anything by a Cohen

Film Editing

A. Gravity

T.  I’m going with Gravity also.  Andrew, stop stealing my picks.

Foreign Language Film

A. The Missing Picture, because I was unaware that Cambodia was making movies.  I’m glad to see they’ve moved beyond killing, but this is still a disturbing development.

T.  I don’t see any French movies.  How am I supposed to pick if there isn’t a French movie?  I guess I’ll go with Italy.  Which movie was made in Italy?  Oh, The Great Beauty.  Of course.

No punchline necessary.

**We considered for a while, and decided not to recognize or NOT recognize Palestine as a country.  Therefore I Geek will take a stance on many things, but the Middle East peace process is not one of them.

Makeup and Hair-Styling

A. Really?  Only three in this category?  Fine.  Since they half-assed it, so will I.  I’m going with Jackass.

T. The Lone Ranger, because it required more makeup on Johnny Depp alone than in the other two nominees combined.

Music (original score)

A. John Williams for The Book Thief.  It’s always classical music from him.  No way to go wrong with that.

T. Thomas Newman, Saving Mr. Banks.  I even commented on the score after I got out of the movie.  It was perfectly matched to the mood onscreen.

Music (original song)

A. “Happy” from Despicable Me 2 because I’ve seen the movie.  I don’t actually remember the song, though.

T. I haven’t seen Despicable Me 2, but I did hear the song “Happy” and I really like it.  So I’m going with that one.

Best Picture

A. I refuse to vote for Nebraska, because when it came out every other interview on NPR was about the movie, and I was tired of it before it even hit theaters.  I’m going with 12 Years a Slave.  It’s been making a lot of waves

T. How in the world is Megan Ellison nominated as a producer twice?  She produced American Hustle AND Her.  She basically has twice the likelihood of winning.  Just for that, I’m going with 12 Years a Slave.

Production Design

A. Great Gatsby.  They nailed that art deco.

T. Great Gatsby.  I saw the work they had to do behind the scenes… Everything was on green screen; it was phenomenal.

The top is the final scene; the bottom is the same scene before CGI.

Short Film (animated)

**We considered taking a break at this point and watching all the short films, but after realizing that they probably aren’t that short and also that it might take us a couple of days to find them, we changed our minds.

A. I’m voting for Get a Horse! because it is an imperative sentence.

T. Room on the Broom, because you know exactly what it is about from the title.  The whole plot is spelled out in that phrase.

**We lost our place at this point and completely skipped the next category… but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway since neither of us have seen any of the nominated films.  Obviously, we came back to it later.

Short Film (live action)

A.  I vote for the completely unpronounceable one because I want to see them try to pronounce it; especially if it’s a particularly stupid presenter.

T.  While I applaud Andrew’s solid method of choosing a candidate, I’m going to pick Helium, because in my head it is about a very annoying young child whose mother gives him too many balloons at a fair and he floats away, never to be seen again.

Sound Editing

A. I want to know what the difference is between sound editing and sound mixing…  I’m just gonna say The Hobbit because I don’t care anymore.

T.  I think that I will pick The Hobbit for one of these sound ones and Lone Survivor for the other one.  Heads for The Hobbit, tails for Lone Survivor. (Andrew flips)  He says it’s heads, so The Hobbit.

Sound Mixing

A. I’m still going with The Hobbit.

T.  Well, The Hobbit was my pick for sound editing, so I’m going with Lone Survivor.

Visual Effects

A. I’m going with Iron Man 3.  Three words, “House Party Protocol.”

T. I think at this point I’ve forgotten to pick things that I think will win and am now picking movies that I hope will win.  I hope Iron Man 3 gets SOMETHING from the Oscars, so let’s go with that one.

House Party Protocol.

House Party Protocol.

Writing (adapted screenplay)

A. Before Midnight.  I didn’t see it, but Richard Linklater did a fantastic job with A Scanner Darkly.

T.  The Wolf of Wall Street, because I think this is the only award they can give that movie without any fear that Martin Scorsese might appear to have been awarded in any way whatsoever.

Writing (original screenplay)

A.  American Hustle.

T.  I considered Blue Jasmine because of Woody Allen, but the Awards love to encourage indie films in this category and the closest thing to indie that has been nominated is Her.

**The Academy Awards will air on March 2, so stay tuned and see who wins our little Oscar pool (and the comentary that will ensue).

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by | January 16, 2014 · 5:31 pm

Around the Web January 16, 2014

On more than one occasion we’ve talked about how great digital comics are and apparently we are not the only ones who think so. Comixology is the (non-game) iPad app with the highest profit for 2013. In the last seven years Comixology has sold 6 billion pages worth of comics, 4 billion of those were sold just in the last year. Assuming an average paper thickness of .1mm, if last year’s sales were physical comics, they would be a stack of paper that reaches from New York City to Washington DC. Thankfully for the trees, these were digital sales.

20131108-comixology_logo

It is also interesting to note that many people who bought their first comic online have also started buying print comics as well.

Comics Alliance has a great piece about a new series called Nova Phase.  After reading this article, I went ahead and picked up the first two issues on Comixology (both released 1/15) and they were fantastic. It’s a familiar mix of science fiction and westerns much like Firefly, but of course it has little, wonderful touches that makes it feel unique. The art is fun and reminiscent of 8-bit style–though with more than eight colors–and it takes me to a happy place.  As someone who was raised on NES and SNES games, I think this is a well designed bit of retro that doesn’t allow itself to be handicapped by its limitations.

I want one!

I want one!

There is a great varient cover that I’d love to get my hands on, so if anyone knows where I might be able to find it, I’d be a very happy man.

It is no secret that Nintendo has been having issues with its Wii U console. One of the biggest reasons for this is the startling lack of third party game support. As it turns out a lot of this lack of support is Nintendo’s own fault.  A senior designer for one of the third party developers discussed many of the problems they encountered which included an underpowered prototype CPU, language barriers and Nintendo’s impressive lack of knowledge and experience with online game play. Designers were forced to jury rig computers to mimic the Wii U’s lackluster processor.  It takes a week or more to find solutions to issues that arise, and these are still more often confusing than helpful.

Not winning any awards as a developer's best friend.

Not winning any awards as a developer’s best friend.

While I do own a Wii U, I only use it for vintage games and I am unimpressed with the system as a whole. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I couldn’t even get it to play a DVD.

Finally, A Tolkienist’s Perspective gives us an insightful look at some of Tolkien’s lesser known works. I think we’re all familiar with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit but many people don’t know about his shorter stories. Personally, I only knew of one of these works (Farmer Giles of Ham), but now I’m going to be adding the others to my reading list. A Tolkienist’s Perspective provides context for these stories without giving away all of the delightful details that are Tolkien’s trademark.

tales-from-the-perilous-realm-cover

I’m just glad that The Adventures of Tom Bombadil only contains two poems about Tom Bombadil. I really don’t like Tom.

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by | January 15, 2014 · 8:16 pm

Confessions of a Geek: Cinematic Influences, Part 2

obi_boga

Seeing moments like this on the big screen for the first time was amazing!

Much like Andrew, I enjoy movies as escapist entertainment.  I had a very sheltered childhood and didn’t get to watch a lot of movies.  We did not have a TV in our house, and I was never allowed to go to movie theaters.  (This has bemused many of my friends, especially because I don’t associate popcorn, or food in general, with watching movies).  As an adult, I’ve had to catch up on a lot of pop culture references that I just didn’t understand (for instance, I was an adult before I had seen a Disney animated  movie and I still haven’t seen all of them).  I also often don’t have the nostalgic love for poorly made, cult classic movies and shows.

 I’m a little more demanding about consistency and plot than many moviegoers, which drives my movie loving friends a little crazy.  However, there ARE cinematic influences on my life.  Here are a few of them.

  • Disney’s Treasure Island –this was one of the earliest movies that my siblings and I saw.  I was probably around nine or ten.  We reenacted the movie many times in our backyard, using a large cardboard box as a ship.  Our favorite character was Ben Gunn because of a goofy line, “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese–toasted, mostly.”  We were too young (and not British enough) to know what toasted cheese was, of course.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer—if my mother only knew how many days I would ask to go down the block to spend the afternoon with my friend Alex and her dog… but we were really watching Buffy. That was the beginning of my love of Joss Whedon, although I didn’t know who he was at the time.
  • Pollyanna—this movie was influential not because of its content, but because in my house every movie was compared to it.  It was actually a very perky, overly bright movie about a little girl who was good all the time.  We kids were supposed to look up to Pollyanna as an example, but she was mostly just annoying.
  • NOT The Wizard of Oz—I put this movie in here because it was NOT actually an influence on me.  This was my mother’s favorite movie when she was a child, and she made the fatal mistake of introducing it to her children when they were teenagers.  Of course, we make snarky comments about how cheesy the movie was, which frustrated her quite a bit.
  • The Lord of the Rings—these were the first movies that I properly “geeked out” about.  The Fellowship of the Ring came out when I was fifteen years old.  By this time, even we had the internet, so I was able to follow the process and development of the movies with intense anticipation.  I will never forget sitting for over an hour waiting for our 54k dialup to load the official trailer so that we could watch it in all its glory.
  • Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith—was the first movie I ever saw in a real movie theater.  I was nineteen years old, and was living on my own.  A friend of mine found out that I had never actually been to the cinema and dragged me along.  I enjoyed the experience but thought (and still think) that it was far too loud.

Those are just a few of the movies and TV shows that have had some profound influence on my life.  Mine are more like milestones of development, but even so, they each mark a significant piece of my life.  What movies have influenced you?  Let me know in the comments! -t

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by | January 15, 2014 · 3:01 pm

Winning Science January 15, 2014

Shockingly, scientists have discovered a trench under the ice of Antartica that is nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Though not quite as wide or long as the Grand Canyon, the Ellsworth Trench is nearly two miles deep at its lowest point and dips an astonishing 6500 ft. below sea level. The trench was discovered while reviewing 3 years worth of geological survey data.

I think my ice maker may need to work a little over time for this job.

I think my ice maker may need to work a little over time for this job.

What completely blows my mind is that this whole thing is encased in ice. Try picturing the Grand Canyon completely filled with ice and then realize that this goes even deeper.

The World Health Organization is nearly ready to declare India polio free. Thanks to a massive vaccination effort it has been three years since India has had a reported case of the dibilitating virus. The WHO has been working to eradicate polio since 1988, when 200,000 cases were reported in India alone. With the help of local Rotary organizations even skeptical rural communities have been treated. One of the biggest helps in the fight as been the advocacy of popular Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan. The WHO is hoping to replicate its success in Pakistan and Nigeria using popular actors and cricket players.

world-health-organization

When we really put our minds to something, it’s impressive what we can accomplish; Polio has been almost wiped out in my life time.

For most of its existance the internet has been about connecting people to other people through things like email, forums and now more recently social media. Recently the internet has been connecting people to things. You can now control your theromostat, lights, and even door locks right from your cellphone, all thanks to the internet.  In the near future however, the internet may become more about connecting devices to other devices. Several tech companies have gotten together to begin developing an open source language for all of these devices to communicate with each other. The hope is that this will improve the ability to interconnect all of these devices and increase the security by adding transparency.

An example of the future of technology.

An example of the future of technology.

I’m good with this as long as the fridge and toaster oven don’t start conspiring against me. I don’t trust that toaster oven.

John Brockman asked a number of the world’s leading thinkers “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” and he got some very interesting answers. My favorite comes from Freeman Dyson (known for his idea of a Dyson Sphere) who wants to do away with the idea of a collapsing wave form. What made me love it was his description of what a probability really is. Dyson says “a probability is a statement of ignorance”, which is something I had never thought about, though he is absolutely right. There are wide variety of responses, some of which are even over my head (probably why these guys are the world’s leading thinkers).

John Brockman

John Brockman

I find it comforting that we can ask this question and that we aren’t afraid to discard outdated scientific models when we’ve decided they are no longer useful.

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