Friday, January 1, 2016

2016

Well, I've made a habit of posting on this blog. Once a year. On January 1st. It's a strange time-capsule of sorts.

We've had a very eventful year and I recapped some of the highlights in a card/newsletter that I am going to let do the bulk of my lifting this time around. Check it out:


I don't do nearly as much blogging as I used to. Cineflect.com is still up and updated, as of tonight in fact! I just posted "The 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2015," check out the written post and the corresponding video. I've been putting more time into the Cineflect YouTube Channel. As far as documenting my life goes a few of my videos from this year provide some insight into our journeyings. Check out Slow East and Seattle Symphony No. 1 for example.

Did you know Nancy has a blog? She does a good job at covering some of the bigger moments of our year and fills it with big, beautiful hi-res photos that she graphed.

2016, I hardly know you, but I hope you stay a while.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

2015

Every January 1st I come back to this site to blow the dust off, knock down the cobwebs and say what's up.

I'm not going to list my New Year's resolutions for 2015. I've done that on my own and will hold myself strictly accountable. Instead, I'll share some of the resolutions I lived in 2014:

Write everyday. This was actually something I started after seeing The Great Beauty in theaters in 2013. The film struck a chord in me and it vibrated to my core. I vowed right then and there that I was going to write everyday. Stop talking, start writing. Don't ever waste your time or anyone else's by telling them you "want to write." Take that time and put pen to paper. Even if it's a simple idea. Even if it's a sentence. Write. Every. Day. I did that in 2014 and will continue to do that as long as I'm on this rock.

Daily journal. This is separate from writing every day, but I did this too. I've been watching a lot of The Good Wife and served on jury duty last year. I also listened to Serial like everyone else. What's that got to do with this? Well, I want to be able to to tell someone where I was and what I did on any given day. Keeping a journal and a daily planner are both aides for an alibi. Oh yeah, it's also important to keep a record of your existence for posterity. Even if nobody ever reads my journal entries (which I'd kind of be okay with). It's a cathartic way to review each day and give it closure. Give it a try if you don't already.

Take a picture everyday. Since I was little I've looked at things from a certain point of view and wanted to have a snapshot of that. When I got my first point and click camera I went hog wild with snapping pictures from every perspective imagineable. Now we live in a day and age when we all have cameras in our pockets at any given time. Where are you at today? Take a picture and remember it.


These are just three of the daily goals I set for myself and kept in 2014. They're among the daily, monthly and other S.M.A.R.T. goals I've set for myself in 2015. Maybe I'll see you again in a year's time. Maybe I see you before that. In any case, Happy New Year!

 

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

2014

You know it's the New Year when I blow the dust off this ole blog... I started The Tome of J.S. Lewis back in 2011 and made sure to post to it each New Year's Day since (see 2012 and 2013). So here's 2014. 

Yesterday I Tweeted this:



It's a joke but it's truth. It seems like I have the tendency to write about this collective idea of New Year's Resolutions instead of actually sharing any of my own in these posts. It certainly ain't through a lack of having any. Last year Nancy and I did a joint post over her blog, The Perfect Blog (which she has since all but abandoned for another domain), wherein we each shared five. The problem with that is now we have a (admittedly small) public accounting of those. The fact that all of mine could be copied and pasted here to aim for in 2014 is discouraging but challenging (in a good way). I'd rather not get into details, but as far as the daily exercise goes... does walking count?

I had another goal, not documented here, to watch 365 movies last year. I came, I SAW, I conquered. I've done another year in review post over on my main street, The Film Tome, entitled "My 2013 In Film." There you can read about achieving that goal, my ode to theaters, meeting my hero (a highlight of the year entire) and thoughts going into 2014. As movies are pretty much my life, that's as detail-filled and personal post as any.

As I discussed over there, I want to spend my time "blogging" about things that are unique to me. Covering the film news, while something I'm extremely interested in, is something a thousand other places are doing a far better job at. Focusing more on my experiences with films and other specific posts are where my priorities ought lie. This is applicable to the documenting of my own life in general, it's something nobody else is really going to do (though my mother has done a pretty remarkable job at it in my first 25 years in life in her religious scrapbooking).

I stumbled upon these "New Year's Resolutions for Filmmakers" and found plenty to work on myself in 2014. The fact that this was published in 2011 around this time proves that every year we go into this mind set, it's datedness matters nothing to someone seeing it for the first time now. I will share with you some of my Resolutions generally, the specifics of which I'm keeping tabs on and will track, adjust and re-resolute as needed. My Tweet from before still applies.

In 2014 I resolute to (in no particular order)

read more
watch, give or take, the same amount of film/TV (a film a day keeps the cinephile okay)
finish more of my current endeavors than starting new ones (but still start a few new ones!)
patronize museums more often
try new restaurants
continue my morning rituals, add some sweating to the mix
rekindle fading relationships
study Chinese daily
document what I watch, read and play
document what I do and see
make random acts of kindness to strangers a daily occurrence instead of an occasional bother
swear less when driving
take less pictures (don't photograph the same thing twice)
take more pictures (photograph something else instead)
don't take up golf
don't eat any McDonald's
write more
all of the above with Nancy

Happy New Year!

Sunday, September 1, 2013

FOOD AS ART: BROCCOLI, BODIES AND THE WORK OF CARL WARNER

When I was but a Yankee lad I used to pretend I was a colossus of some sort whenever my mother made me eat broccoli. I would pull the "trees" from the ground, roots and all, and bring them up to my giant, gaping mouth. That was among my first bouts of creativity with food.

Photo courtesy of Google Images (/broccoli_tree)*
Years later I would stage and record the Food Wars, brought to life through the excruciating medium and format of stop-motion animation. I did not take photos like many do to create such an illusion. No, I kept the camera running for each extended sequence and in post I cut any frames with my hand out and left only a couple frames worth of each positioning that I wanted. It made shooting breezy (relatively speaking for stop-motion filmmaking) but it made editing a splicing nightmare. Well, here's the result of that endeavor (I actually ended up using it for my final project in my History of Creativity class at BYU, citing references to The Three Musketeers and what not... I got an A): 



The bastards that be have muted this and Episode IV. Must be for the John Williams' Star Wars theme I put at the beginning. Might re-upload sometime and cite fair use for educational purposes. The rest of the music was original tinkerings assembled from the tracks on GarageBand. For whatever reason it appears to have become my most viewed YouTube video, which is pathetically low at some 1,400. There must be another type of "food war" that's dragging mine in tow for online searches.

The broccoli and Food Wars came to my mind this morning after I first saw the work of Carl Warner, particularly his Foodscape series. The London-based artist worked as an advertisement photographer before wanting to attempt something different. When shopping at the supermarket one day "he found some wonderful Portabello mushrooms which he thought looked like some kind of tree from an alien world. So he took them back to his studio with a few other ingredients such as rice seeds and beans with a view to try and create a miniature scene on a table top." (Source) And with that, Mushroom Savanna became his first of many Foodscapes:


Mushroom Savanna

Peruse the Foodscape portfolio for yourself to see more of Carl's astonishing work. Here are some that especially stood out to me:

Cheesescape

Meat Factory

Stilton Cottage

Volcano Valley

Cowboy Valley

Chinese Junk

The Great Wall of Pineapple

2001 a Breadscape


Lettuce Sea

Cabbage Seascape


I could very easily post them all, rather, I encourage you to look at them all. Using only foods provides a vast color palette that is manufactured by nature herself. In all of the above (sans Volcano Valley) you have civilization, small or large, living on the land. But their structures, even the Meat Factory, do not feel to encroach or otherwise pollute. It's an ideal and fantastical situation, perfect for a photograph - otherwise all plucked would spoil. Warner has taken the age-old tradition of Gingerbread houses and widened his scope of possibilities almost infinitely.

Candy Cottage

A few peaks behind the scenes:



Warner's first book, Food Landscapes, is currently on sale over at Amazon.


It all reminds me of another book we've had on our wish-list for some time, Microworlds.


Pick the other areas of Carl Warner's peanutty brain (gosh, I love his website design too), he actually has a series of Otherscapes:

Iron Temples

Shoulder Hills

Warner's Bodyscapes series was my first exposure to his work. It instantly reminded me of a picture by Liu Wei, a Chinese photographer:

Landscape
Landscape by Liu Wei (2004)*
Does a cannibal look at this the way we look at Warner's Foodscapes?

You never know what will inspire you, Portabello mushrooms or broccoli, some other food or body part, or otherwise.

Broccoli Forest

Here's Warner working on the set for Lettuce Seascape:


Until next time, keep putting a frame around all you see.

*All other photos courtesy of CarlWarner.com, Amazon.com and BoredPanda.com.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

PONDERING THE ACT OF WRITING TODAY


There's simply not enough time at night to do all you wanted to do during the day.

In our Internet era it's impossible to go through a day without using a written language, but writers must find offline ways to write.

The evolution of keyboards has always been downsizing. From typewriters to half an iOS screen. They may one day shrink into non-existence.

What does the future hold? Diction, at least until telepathic technology. Most of all I fear the absence of actual text. Helps to see words.

Until that time I'm just going to keep writing/typing. More for the future to burn through. What will it be at the last stand?

A battle for whatever side is faster: The destroyers and the creators. That's what it has always been. Earth & Time have always won.

Perhaps the greatest foe is fatigue? Fogs the mind, kills desire, tempts us to put down pens and walk away from computers. Promises freedom.

The greatest warriors are those that create during destruction. Those that push when pulled and jump up when realizing what they have.

Write. Type. Drink water. Pencil things in. Pen things down. Checking off is key (for body and mind). Plan. And then push.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

PIC & TALE #7: BREAKFAST WITH HANNIBAL



The tongues sizzled soon enough. We were all unable to speak. Breakfast with Hannibal.


* * *

Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #6: POOL OF DEW



We stood around the pool of Dew. Each then drank their due. Who would be the first to spew? Eww.

* * *

Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!