or each time they are on, or whatever...
(in no particular order)
Heroes
Prison Break ( by far my favorite )
Jericho
Amazing Race
Survivor
Las Vegas
NCIS
The Unit
Deal or No Deal ( usually conflicts with one of the above, so only during commericials )
Meerkat Manor ( not really, just wanted to sound trendy )
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
What does Mad Max have in common with penguins?
I saw Happy Feet yesterday.. was stunned.. instead of me stumbling thru a half ass attempt at a review... let me share this article I found at The Hollywood Reporter:
By Anne Thompson
Nov 3, 2006
Seven years ago, "Happy Feet" was just a gleam in the eye of Australian filmmaker George Miller, who produced both "Babe" films and directed 1998's "Babe: Pig in the City."Miller, whose other claim to fame was the "Mad Max" series, is a genial, sweet-tempered soul with wild curly hair and owlish black-rimmed glasses. (He started his career as a doctor.) Miller's foot-tapping, CG-animated musical "Happy Feet," about singing and dancing Emperor penguins, finally reaches theaters Nov. 17. The seemingly simple and satisfying hero's journey was actually devilishly tough to create and expensive to produce, at a cost of nearly $100 million.Miller studied the structure and interplay of camera, character and music in classic film musicals as well as such darkly moral Disney classics as "Pinocchio" and "Dumbo" as he crafted a story that combines family dysfunction, romance, dazzling vistas, dangerous action, musical numbers and global environmental politics."It's a film with a lot of singing and dancing rather than a classic musical," Miller says. "You're trying to layer, weave and shape the story so that it looks self-evident, clear and simple, but that belies a complex architecture. It's a Rubik's cube. All stories worth their weight, that have impact and endure, must have more to them than meets the eye."
Back in 2001, Miller was meeting with Alan Horn, Warner Bros. president and chief operating officer, when his producer, Doug Mitchell, impulsively whipped out the "Happy Feet" screenplay and asked Horn to read it while the filmmakers flew back to Sydney. Miller didn't want Horn to read such an early draft. But by the time they landed, Warners wanted to fund their little Antarctica movie about an outsider Emperor penguin who couldn't sing like the rest of his tribe but was compelled to dance.
But first, Miller had to shoot the fourth "Mad Max" film, "Fury Road," in Africa with Mel Gibson. He was two months away from principal photography in 2003 when the war in Iraq began and the value of the American dollar against the Australian dollar plunged. Suddenly, Miller couldn't ship his equipment to Africa. "Fury Road" was scuttled. Horn promptly ordered Miller to get moving on his Emperor penguins movie. The director was fascinated by the amazing landscape of Antarctica and the way of life of the penguin community, massing in the thousands to endure the frigid Antarctic winters and keep their eggs warm. It was the same drama that turned Luc Jacquet's documentary "March of the Penguins" into a 2005 sleeper hit.
When Warner Independent Pictures acquired "March" early last year, Horn called Miller to make sure he was OK with it. Miller figures it only served to prove that his subject was inherently commercial. Unlike most tentpoles, his movie isn't a sequel to anything. It's original."If they'd been singing and dancing," he says, "I'd be upset.""Happy Feet," which Miller wrote with old collaborators and co-directors Judy Morris and Warren Coleman and new scribe John Collee, didn't start out as a musical at all. "When I realized that penguins were all attracted by each individual song," Miller says, "it became a musical."Miller originally conceived the project as a blend of live-action and animation a la the "Babe" movies.
But after his frequent cinematographer Andrew Lesnie tipped him off to what Peter Jackson was doing over in New Zealand at Weta Digital with motion-capture technology and the first "The Lord of the Rings" film, Miller visited Weta, saw Gollum and realized his problems were solved."You can't train penguins to dance or sing, unlike pigs, which are domesticated animals," he says. "The moment I saw motion capture I said, 'I can get my dancing penguins.' "It was up to Miller's 27-year-old company, Kennedy Miller Prods., to create an animation studio from scratch. In 2001, computer animation was nowhere near what it is today. It took years of sweat, tears and R&D to form such complex operations as Pixar or Chris Wedge's Blue Sky ("Ice Age," "Robots").
It took Kennedy Miller more than two years to build the infrastructure, hardware, software, pipeline and data-processing capacity. And with the glut of animated movies going into production, competition was fierce for top-tier animation talent. Miller and Mitchell, working closely with CEO Zareh Nalbandian, painstakingly built the FX house Animal Logic into an CG animation studio."The first two years were hard," Miller says. "We didn't evolve through making shorts. We had a standing start. We had no campus. We were figuring out how to do it. Inventing the culture."But slowly, the technology improved as they went. At first the movie was simpler and more stylized; Miller kept to wide shots because he wasn't sure that a character like his fuzzy lead penguin, Mumble, with 6 million feathers, could stand up to the detail of an extreme close-up.
But the movie got more and more sophisticated and realistic as the technology advanced, and eventually close-ups were doable. "Our ambition expanded," Miller says.Miller worked with his global hodgepodge of animators, whose average age was 26, as though they were his actors, responding to what they gave him. At first they had a tendency to do low-rent imitations of DreamWorks or Pixar films, but "we had to push it technically," he says. "This was like Olympics diving: the highest degree of difficulty. Once we got it going, it was wonderful." By the time they got to the film's frenetic final months, "they were doing magnificent stuff at an amazing rate," he says.It helped that Miller landed such a fine voice cast, led by fellow Aussies Nicole Kidman -- who had acted in several Kennedy Miller productions, including "Dead Calm" -- Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving, plus Americans Elijah Wood, Robin Williams and Brittany Murphy. Miller flew to New York and Los Angeles to grab taping sessions, putting as many actors together in a room as he could. Williams riffed and effortlessly played two parts in the same scene.
Sadly, popular Australian naturalist Steve Irwin completed the taping of his role as an elephant seal just a month before his untimely death in September. Miller dedicates the film to Irwin and the late Australian playwright Nick Enright, who wrote "Lorenzo's Oil."For the elaborate dance sequences, Animal Logic and choreographers Savion Glover and Kelley Abbey turned into mathematicians as they devised a huge repeating grid of individually dancing penguins. Every time they showed Miller what they could do, he'd tell them to add a few more thousand. "I can't sing or dance," Miller says, "but luckily enough we had a lot of people who could."Ace percussionist Glover, covered with white dots, tap-danced on a wooden soundstage, surrounded by infra-red motion capture cameras. Microphones under the floor recorded his flurries of taps. Technology turned those sounds into taps on slushy snow or hard ice. And computers enabled Miller to watch Glover and as many as 15 other dancers' moves on a monitor, instantly transformed into their animated penguin characters dancing in Antarctica, complete with shadows. The animators and the choreographers could watch what they were doing and make adjustments.
Amazingly, Miller was able to land all the iconic music he wanted, from Queen's "Someone to Love" to Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." The exhilarating underwater penguin ballet is accompanied by the Beach Boys. Prince not only gave the project "Kiss," but after he saw the film, offered a new song for the closing credits."The music had to be disparate and ethnically eclectic, with rhythms and dramatic structure that fitted the contours of the story I was trying to tell," Miller says. "The songs and dance must tell the story and push the narrative."
By Anne Thompson
Nov 3, 2006
Seven years ago, "Happy Feet" was just a gleam in the eye of Australian filmmaker George Miller, who produced both "Babe" films and directed 1998's "Babe: Pig in the City."Miller, whose other claim to fame was the "Mad Max" series, is a genial, sweet-tempered soul with wild curly hair and owlish black-rimmed glasses. (He started his career as a doctor.) Miller's foot-tapping, CG-animated musical "Happy Feet," about singing and dancing Emperor penguins, finally reaches theaters Nov. 17. The seemingly simple and satisfying hero's journey was actually devilishly tough to create and expensive to produce, at a cost of nearly $100 million.Miller studied the structure and interplay of camera, character and music in classic film musicals as well as such darkly moral Disney classics as "Pinocchio" and "Dumbo" as he crafted a story that combines family dysfunction, romance, dazzling vistas, dangerous action, musical numbers and global environmental politics."It's a film with a lot of singing and dancing rather than a classic musical," Miller says. "You're trying to layer, weave and shape the story so that it looks self-evident, clear and simple, but that belies a complex architecture. It's a Rubik's cube. All stories worth their weight, that have impact and endure, must have more to them than meets the eye."
Back in 2001, Miller was meeting with Alan Horn, Warner Bros. president and chief operating officer, when his producer, Doug Mitchell, impulsively whipped out the "Happy Feet" screenplay and asked Horn to read it while the filmmakers flew back to Sydney. Miller didn't want Horn to read such an early draft. But by the time they landed, Warners wanted to fund their little Antarctica movie about an outsider Emperor penguin who couldn't sing like the rest of his tribe but was compelled to dance.
But first, Miller had to shoot the fourth "Mad Max" film, "Fury Road," in Africa with Mel Gibson. He was two months away from principal photography in 2003 when the war in Iraq began and the value of the American dollar against the Australian dollar plunged. Suddenly, Miller couldn't ship his equipment to Africa. "Fury Road" was scuttled. Horn promptly ordered Miller to get moving on his Emperor penguins movie. The director was fascinated by the amazing landscape of Antarctica and the way of life of the penguin community, massing in the thousands to endure the frigid Antarctic winters and keep their eggs warm. It was the same drama that turned Luc Jacquet's documentary "March of the Penguins" into a 2005 sleeper hit.
When Warner Independent Pictures acquired "March" early last year, Horn called Miller to make sure he was OK with it. Miller figures it only served to prove that his subject was inherently commercial. Unlike most tentpoles, his movie isn't a sequel to anything. It's original."If they'd been singing and dancing," he says, "I'd be upset.""Happy Feet," which Miller wrote with old collaborators and co-directors Judy Morris and Warren Coleman and new scribe John Collee, didn't start out as a musical at all. "When I realized that penguins were all attracted by each individual song," Miller says, "it became a musical."Miller originally conceived the project as a blend of live-action and animation a la the "Babe" movies.
But after his frequent cinematographer Andrew Lesnie tipped him off to what Peter Jackson was doing over in New Zealand at Weta Digital with motion-capture technology and the first "The Lord of the Rings" film, Miller visited Weta, saw Gollum and realized his problems were solved."You can't train penguins to dance or sing, unlike pigs, which are domesticated animals," he says. "The moment I saw motion capture I said, 'I can get my dancing penguins.' "It was up to Miller's 27-year-old company, Kennedy Miller Prods., to create an animation studio from scratch. In 2001, computer animation was nowhere near what it is today. It took years of sweat, tears and R&D to form such complex operations as Pixar or Chris Wedge's Blue Sky ("Ice Age," "Robots").
It took Kennedy Miller more than two years to build the infrastructure, hardware, software, pipeline and data-processing capacity. And with the glut of animated movies going into production, competition was fierce for top-tier animation talent. Miller and Mitchell, working closely with CEO Zareh Nalbandian, painstakingly built the FX house Animal Logic into an CG animation studio."The first two years were hard," Miller says. "We didn't evolve through making shorts. We had a standing start. We had no campus. We were figuring out how to do it. Inventing the culture."But slowly, the technology improved as they went. At first the movie was simpler and more stylized; Miller kept to wide shots because he wasn't sure that a character like his fuzzy lead penguin, Mumble, with 6 million feathers, could stand up to the detail of an extreme close-up.
But the movie got more and more sophisticated and realistic as the technology advanced, and eventually close-ups were doable. "Our ambition expanded," Miller says.Miller worked with his global hodgepodge of animators, whose average age was 26, as though they were his actors, responding to what they gave him. At first they had a tendency to do low-rent imitations of DreamWorks or Pixar films, but "we had to push it technically," he says. "This was like Olympics diving: the highest degree of difficulty. Once we got it going, it was wonderful." By the time they got to the film's frenetic final months, "they were doing magnificent stuff at an amazing rate," he says.It helped that Miller landed such a fine voice cast, led by fellow Aussies Nicole Kidman -- who had acted in several Kennedy Miller productions, including "Dead Calm" -- Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving, plus Americans Elijah Wood, Robin Williams and Brittany Murphy. Miller flew to New York and Los Angeles to grab taping sessions, putting as many actors together in a room as he could. Williams riffed and effortlessly played two parts in the same scene.
Sadly, popular Australian naturalist Steve Irwin completed the taping of his role as an elephant seal just a month before his untimely death in September. Miller dedicates the film to Irwin and the late Australian playwright Nick Enright, who wrote "Lorenzo's Oil."For the elaborate dance sequences, Animal Logic and choreographers Savion Glover and Kelley Abbey turned into mathematicians as they devised a huge repeating grid of individually dancing penguins. Every time they showed Miller what they could do, he'd tell them to add a few more thousand. "I can't sing or dance," Miller says, "but luckily enough we had a lot of people who could."Ace percussionist Glover, covered with white dots, tap-danced on a wooden soundstage, surrounded by infra-red motion capture cameras. Microphones under the floor recorded his flurries of taps. Technology turned those sounds into taps on slushy snow or hard ice. And computers enabled Miller to watch Glover and as many as 15 other dancers' moves on a monitor, instantly transformed into their animated penguin characters dancing in Antarctica, complete with shadows. The animators and the choreographers could watch what they were doing and make adjustments.
Amazingly, Miller was able to land all the iconic music he wanted, from Queen's "Someone to Love" to Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." The exhilarating underwater penguin ballet is accompanied by the Beach Boys. Prince not only gave the project "Kiss," but after he saw the film, offered a new song for the closing credits."The music had to be disparate and ethnically eclectic, with rhythms and dramatic structure that fitted the contours of the story I was trying to tell," Miller says. "The songs and dance must tell the story and push the narrative."
Friday, October 13, 2006
I met my Grandson the day he died
Well, as you can see, it has been awhile since my last post... just haven't been much in the mood.. shortly after hearing about my nephew, who is fine now.. my daughter called with horrible news about my grandson... I flew to Iowa as quick as I could, to be with her, my son, and their mother.. it was a very sad time... difficult for all of us.. and the mourning, for me, lasted awhile..
I had never met Orrin, before that day.. I estranged myself from my daughter, not on purpose.. and certainly not planned.. nonetheless, true.. I spent the last 24 years expecting the bond her and I had until she left me, with her mother, at 4 years old, would still be intact.. no matter what actions I took or did not take... and on most occasions, the latter.. how naive of me...
But, she wanted me there, to be by her side as her son passed away.. along with her mother, and her brother and sister(half). And this was not going to be one of those times where I neglected her..
Orrin was playing outside of he paternal grandparents house.. a 15 month old, prolly barely walking.. fell in a coy pond and drowned before anyone found him.. Becky was at work, as was the father.. he was in the care of the grandparents.. he was revived, and kept alive by all sorts of machines, until the family arrived, and at about 10:30 am, monday, the 9th of october, they disconnected the last of the machines, and he passed on about 8 minutes later..
Since then.. not much has mattered to be in my life.. certainly not poker.. and certainly not blogging... I pretty much immersed myself in work... coming in early, staying late, working weekends... I kept taking mental notes of stuff to blog about.. and occasionally i would fire up a SNG on Absolute.. but, it just didn't feel right...
Now, today, a little over a month after the loss.. I am remembering how 2 years ago, when I was in a similiar physcological 'perdicament'.. I starting blogging, and the daily writing of thoughts and such helped me.. and since I really don't like working extra hours.. I am going to start blogging again...
I love my children very much.. and I know they know this.. but over the last 20 years I just have not done the things a father should do, in regard to his children.. and it was due to my own selfish needs.. even tho there were mitigating circumstances.. I could have and should have overcome those obstacles.. I can only hope that I am not too late realizing how stupid I am..
So, for my loyal 2 or 3 readers, now you know why I have been absent..
This year in summary, has infact, been pretty sucky...
pnemonia in march
auto accident in july
kidney stone in september
nephew with herniated diaphragm in oct
loss of grandson in oct
I got like 40 bucks on Absolute I built up from nothing.. gonna start playing again and see if I can't make it 400.. :)
See ya in Vegas!!!
peace
Friday, October 06, 2006
News of Baby
baby went in for surgery today at about 11:30 CST they were done about 2pm... out of the three possible reasons for the hernia, baby Kayden had the least complicated one... the best of the worst, so to speak.. he is way way out of immediate danger... they were able to put his inards back in place, and watched his lung begin to accept air... inflate a bit, is how the doctor put it.. and they are going to let his heart move back into position on his own...
it went well.. they said it usually takes about 4 to 5 hours.. so, it went pretty quick.. he got a small incision ( well, some for an adult.. about 2 inches ) where they went in to work their miracles.. and then a smaller on for the scope they put in so they could see things..
Mom and Dad are very relieved as are the grandparents... me too. we were all there all day... praying and what not.. pretty scary, not being able to do much, cept worry...
So, thanks for all the kind words and all the positive thoughts....
He will still be in intensive care, for about a week, and they are hoping to take him off the ventilator later this evening...
There was a huge sigh of relief in that room..
it went well.. they said it usually takes about 4 to 5 hours.. so, it went pretty quick.. he got a small incision ( well, some for an adult.. about 2 inches ) where they went in to work their miracles.. and then a smaller on for the scope they put in so they could see things..
Mom and Dad are very relieved as are the grandparents... me too. we were all there all day... praying and what not.. pretty scary, not being able to do much, cept worry...
So, thanks for all the kind words and all the positive thoughts....
He will still be in intensive care, for about a week, and they are hoping to take him off the ventilator later this evening...
There was a huge sigh of relief in that room..
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Requesting good thoughts....
..prayers, vibes and what not..
My brother and fairly new wife had a baby yesterday.. not all is well tho.. will just quote what my dad sent me..
I'm just trying to help console the family and just be available for anything.. feel rather helpless atm....
peace
My brother and fairly new wife had a baby yesterday.. not all is well tho.. will just quote what my dad sent me..
Kayden has a hernia in the upper part of his diaphragm which has allowed an intestine to enter the left part of his chest and deflate the left lung and pushing his heart to the right side of his chest. He is getting only 58% lung function. The doctor will not know the extent of the problem until he goes in and has a look. Could be that the diaphragm didn't grow together in front (this is the less severe option and we are hoping this is the problem as it can be correct the easiest without further complications), Could be a hole or tear in the diaphragm and third there could be no diaphragm at all. Hayden is stabilized on a ventilator now and is getting oxegen and etc through various tubes. If he stays stable for a few days the doctor will do surgery in a week.
He is in the neonatal ICU at Brackenridge Children's Hospital, so we know he is in good hands.
I'm just trying to help console the family and just be available for anything.. feel rather helpless atm....
peace
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