I've uploaded the third Bad Metaphor podcast by John and myself today. It's about publicity this time and John and I talk about being famous as well as famous people we've met (or not). It's fun to do a podcast and I'm trying to figure out ways to do it more quickly, but I find I always need time to edit and craft these things. A little secret about the podcast for loyal readers: up to this point we've put up only about half of the podcasts. Some other topics haven't worked out, so we decided not to use them. I think that's a good thing since it's more important to have quality than quantity. I'm following the advice from the Frogbody blog (by Carson McComas) which has a superb list of 20 Ideas for a Great Podcast.
tags: badmetaphor, podcast, publicity
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I've had my new 30 GB iPod with video for about a month and a half now and I'm a bit surprised at how different it is from the iPod Shuffle that I used previously. The obvious difference comes from having a screen and being able to play video. But what I wasn't expecting was that I'd listen to a lot more music. With the Shuffle I occasionally would use autofill, but most of the time I would have a few albums and favourite tracks and have most of it filled with podcasts. I'd carefully choose the podcasts and would regularly rotate them.
Now I don't have to choose a limited selection with all of my music on the iPod and my podcast subscriptions have grown dramatically. In the early days of podcasting when I didn't have an iPod I would carefully choose 80 minutes of podcasts or music and burn a CD for the drive to Halifax each day. With the Shuffle I'd always have something to listen to, but now with the bigger iPod I have much more than enough to listen to. The increased choice is both good and bad. Sometimes it takes me longer to choose what to listen to, but overall I love have a queue that is always full of something to enjoy.
I'm listening to a lot more music and watching a bit more video, but most of the time with the white earbuds is spent on music. I'm buying more music now (from both iTunes and Bleep), but I'm also listening to a great deal more Creative Commons music as well. My current favourite podcasts now are Vu d'Ici / Seen From Here (music), CC365 - Creative Commons 2006 Calendar (which provides a new CC licensed song every day!), The Revolution (CC licensed music and interviews), Big Shed (audio documentary), KCRW's The Treatment and The Business (two shows about the film and tv industry), 43 Folders (productivity tips), The Ricky Gervais Podcast (comedy) and my newest discovery, Inside the Net (interviews and discussion of new Web trends). On the video side there are only two vidcasts (vodcasts?) that I never miss and they are the daily Rocketboom and the weekly Command-N (that I've helped tape a few segments for) and they both feature tech news. An odd thing is that I prefer watching them on the iPod's small screen better than on the computer screen. Maybe it's because it's more personal and connected to me. The context that media is consumed within is very important and it seems that tiny video on a tiny screen isn't as bad as tiny video on a larger screen.
tags: podcasts, ipod, vlog, vidcasts
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I'm very happy to announce the launch of the Bad Metaphor podcast. I've been playing with all of the parts of it for a while and it's time to release it into the world. The process was slow, but there was a lot of learning along the way which was very fun. The podcast means that I have yet another domain, which is at the logically named badmetaphor.com and I'm running that site with the wonderful and powerful blogging system known as Typo on Textpattern's servers. It's cool to be on the cutting edge with things that are changing quickly.
The podcast itself has slowly evolved over the last few months and now it's a collaboration between me and my son, John, who is 9. The final push came during a podcaster meetup in Halifax when I was able to meet and talk with podcasters from the area. Tod Maffin was intrigued by the possibilities of a 9 year old asking questions. That made it click for me so, John and I recorded the podcast and now it's launched.
The earlier inspiration for the podcast came from m-c Turgeon who does the Vu d'Ici / Seen From Here podcast. It made me realize that what's important isn't creating an elaborate production, but to have fun and share your voice. It's taken me back a bit to my earlier days when I was able to host a few radio shows on a college radio station. But now it's a lot more exciting because it's getting easier and easier to share what you create and that's going to change the world. So check out Beginnings and subscribe to follow us on the journey.
tags: podcast, badmetaphor
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If you write about films, you have to make lists and this is the time of year that you make those lists. 2005 was a pretty good year for films and with my joining of Zip.ca I was able to see many more films than I ever have before and the Atlantic Film Festival allowed me to immerse myself in film, so I have a larger body to choose from. That being said, it was easier to pick out ten films that loved. Here's the list in roughly ascending order:
Ain't nobody that can sing like meOne of my favourite singer / songwriters is Billy Bragg who is not afraid to combine music and politics together. He's able to mix the personal and the political in an entertaining way that also enables change. I'd heard a few of his recordings of some Woody Guthrie songs, but I didn't know the story until I saw the documentary about the recording of Mermaid Avenue, Man in the Sand. The film follows Billy Bragg as he works with Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora, who gave Bragg access to the huge library of unrecorded Guthrie songs to record some for the first time. Bragg brought the band Wilco to the project to collaborate with and the film about the project hints at some tension between them, but the music transcends that. The documentary is narrated by Nora Guthrie and she tells the story of her father as we see Bragg collaborating with the members of Wilco as well as Natalie Merchant in adding music to the lyrics that Woody wrote. It's fascinating to watch the process and to see Bragg with Nora as they talk about the man and his music. It's a great documentary that combines music, history and people together.
Way over yonder in the minor key
What matters is the journey.Cillian Murphy is wonderful as Patrick "Kitten" Braden in Neil Jordan's latest film, Breakfast on Pluto. It's based on a novel by Patrick McCabe (who cowrote the screenplay with Jordan) and there is a wonderful novelistic tone to the film which is divided up with handwritten chapter titles. The story is told from Kitten's point of view which gives the events a relentlessly positive tone, no matter how horrible things become. Set in Ireland and London in the 70s as Kitten the transvestite looks for his mother against a landscape of political conflict and violence. Gorgeously shot by Declan Quinn, it manages to mirror the spirit of the main character with perfectly composed and lit frames.
The music mockumentary is a difficult form due to some outstanding films that established the genre. It's All Gone Pete Tong starts off as an over-the-top mockumentary about a DJ that has many funny bits in the opening act, but they start to seem a bit routine. But then the film begins to shift tone as our hero, Frankie Wilde, begins to lose his hearing. The performance by Paul Kaye is amazing and he manages to go from slapstick to serious as the film progresses. His manager, played by Mike Wilmot as a sleazy self-absorbed show business-type perpetually on the verge of a heart attack serves as Frankie's connection to the world. Things start to fall apart for Frankie and his manager can't make any more excuses as the world goes silent for the DJ.
Up to this point I was a bit confused by the shift in tone, but one scene with the appearance of Beatriz Batarda as a lip-reading teacher, completely won me over. The film is visually and sonically gorgeous and the critical scene where Frankie learns to lip read is an amazing use of sound and visuals. The lighter tone of the earlier scenes didn't prepare me for that scene and it hit me just right and all my doubts about the film were erased. For the first time I have more of an appreciation and understanding of how it is possible to read lips. With the shift in tone in that scene the film pretty much becomes a drama that worked very well for me.
Shot and mixed in a bold and aggressive style, it's sophisticated and polished and I was even more surprised when I found out it was shot on HD. Structurally and in technique I loved the film. It begins as a mockumentary, then some of the over-the-top elements begin to drop out as it looks and feels more like verité, and finally it moves into more traditional drama. It's an unconventional structure and that's what threw me off, but I'm very glad that I stuck with it.
tags: film, review, itsallgonepetetong
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It's odd, but I realize now that I haven't written very much about podcasting here. It's been over a year since I started regularly listening to podcasts and now is a very good time to contextualize it all.
While I'm pretty good at staying near the leading edge of trends, I'm not as quick in creating things that are part of those trends. While I followed blogging for a long while, my domain and online presence didn't include a blog until I launched bitdepth in May of 2002. Soon I'll be launching a podcast along with a new site (but I'll save that for another time), so let me lay the groundwork here.
The first podcast that I listened to was Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, which is still one of the highest-profile podcasts out there. I used the beta of iPodderX to download the files and listen to them on my computer (since I didn't have an iPod) or to burn them on to CD to listen in the car during my 1 hour plus commute twice a day. Some time around December of last year I found Marie-Chantale Turgeon's Vu d'Ici / Seen From Here podcast and I really liked it. The combination of her unpretentious voice and great music exemplified all of the promise and magic of podcasting and she's still an inspiration to me. Another early inspiration was Tod Maffin who has been covering technology and the web for the CBC for quite a while. When I saw that he was going on a podcasting meetup tour across Canada and was stopping in Halifax, I knew that I had to go. Tod's site is filled with great resources and information about audio and he's a driving force within the CBC and will hopefully transform the corporation into a more relevant public broadcaster in the podcasting sphere.
The meetup was a lot of fun (with 10 people) and it was very cool to meet people who I had listened to and watched for a while in person. I also was embarrassed to admit that I hadn't listened to some of th epodcasts from the province, but now I think I'm up to speed with the local activity.
I arrived a bit early and realized that maybe it wasn't a good idea to meet at the Economy Shoe Shop unless you identified an area earlier to meet. It's a great bar, but it's made up of many smaller rooms. I knew that I'd recognize two of the people since I've seen Tod on tv and in photos as well as Jeff MacArthur from commandN (a great vidcast). As I wandered around the bar, someone guessed that I was looking for the meeting and I met Howard Harawitz (who I later realized that he wrote the first HTML editor that I used!). In talking with Howard I found out that he worked for the College and that we knew a lot of the same people. It's a very small world.
The new discoveries that I made were of the Spine.cx podcast with Steve Dinn along with Jeannine McNeil (who did a live version of the podcast) and Bruce Murray of the Zedcast, who recorded part of the evening. While I brought my minidisc recorder, I didn't record much, but decided to ask Tod for an ID at the end of the night outside. It became more complicated as a fairly intoxicated woman showed up with her friend and started talking with us. Of course, I kept rolling (and I may be able to work it into something later), and eventually got the IDs from Tod (who rescued me by moving away, which gave me a way to get out of the situation).
As I drove home late at night I was determined to get my podcast going, so it will show up very soon. I was tired the next morning, but I found that m-c had a new Vu d'Ici up. Driving in to Halifax while listening to m-c's voice, the warm blanket of the internet surrounded me as I remembered again that podcasting allows people to connect and share their stories, which is the most wonderful thing of all.
tags: podcasting, halifax, todmaffin, commandn, vudici, zedcast, spinecx
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What is the purpose of life?Niceland is a quirkly little film that takes us on a search for meaning. It's a simple story constructed out of complex characters. Set in a vaguely Scandanavian city and with an international cast with a range of accents but pretty much all in English (with English subtitles). All this results in a film that is set in a place that seems to be a strange hybrid that allows broader points to be made about consumer society. The good thing is that director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson wisely chooses to focus on the personal stories rather than the social commentary. The main characters are mentally challenged, but it's never explored or explained in any detail... it's about the people and how they relate to each other. I loved the characters and the answer to their problems is quite obvious from the beginning, but we watch as everyone tries to make things much more complicated than they are. It may not be for everyone, but I found it sweet and refreshing. tags: film, review, niceland, aff2005
Take the million, write something else.I don't know what it is, but it seems that if Patricia Clarkson is in a film, there is a strong possibility that I'll like it. She's one of the main actors in The Dying Gaul and she delivers another layered and nuanced performance. The Dying Gaul is based on a play by Craig Lucas and the film is also his film directing debut. It's an impressive debut and while the film has the focused characterization and simple locations of a play, it's very cinematic and I think that I'd like the film more than the play. The film is gorgeous with wonderful performances all around. It's a complicated, noirish story that doesn't lapse into formula. I'm glad that I knew very little about the film as it moved around in interesting and surprising ways.
I haven't been here for a long time. My plan was to write a lot during the Atlantic Film Festival, but I didn't. I wrote more in my Moleskine than online, and I'm thinking that in the long run it will be better, since I'll have more thoughtful writing here than rushing to put something up quickly.
It's interesting that I was able to keep posting a bit on 43things and 43places, and Flickr which have lower barriers to contribute. So I haven't disappeared online completely, but just changed where I am. Maybe podcasting will make it easier or posting from a cell phone... maybe next year, but now I'm still text and image based, so I'll keep doing that. So things will start up here again soon and I'll go back to my notebook and start posting more here. There's a lot to write about and many great films to see, so thanks for reading this and see you all soon.
tags: bitdepth, blog
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A thriller often is an interesting exercise. How are things arranged and how do they play out? A thriller can be constructed out of many well-worn plots and be reasonably pleasing depending on the skill of the director, the crew and the actors. The smart way to handle a thriller is to combine an interesting plot with some interesting characters. A film should never be just about the events, but the people.
In Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres) Jacques Audiard stylishly presents two unforgettable characters.
Emmanuelle Devos is great as Carla, a woman who is almost deaf and works in an office where she is overworked and ignored. When she is given the opportunity to hire an assistant she chooses Paul (played by Vincent Cassel), who has just been released from prison. They begin a strange friendship and the film constantly keeps you intrigued in figuring out what is going on between them. Is she someone who is plain and not noticed, a femme fatale, a victim, or a seductress? She is all of those things and more.
Far more interesting than the intricacies of the plot are the ways that parts of their personalities and desires are teased out of them. I would think that I understood what was going on, but then things would change. It's a somewhat twisted, somewhat sweet story about two people whose plain surfaces hide very complex and deep individuals within.
Shot in a distinctive, sensual style with an amazing soundscape, it looks, sounds and feels completely unique, just like the characters. There is a loving attention to detail and a subjective point of view that shows what is going on with an efficiency and style that I loved.
tags: film, review, readmylips
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I don't know how to describe the film other than to say that Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a film that Jim Jarmusch in 1999. Like many of the films by Jarmusch, it's a fascinating mix of well-crafted filmmaking with a diverse range of talents combining together to create something unique. While overall there are some parts that may not completely work, it has a remarkable range from broad comedy to scenes that are surprisingly moving as well.
Ghost Dog is built around the character played by Forrest Whitaker and he holds the entire thing together. He's a hit man who lives his life according to the Samurai code. All of the characters in the film seem to be slightly out of place in varying degrees. The ice cream man who speaks no English, the mobster who loves hip-hop music, everyone who watches tv seems to watch cartoons, and the little girl who carries around books in her lunch box, and Ghost Dog himself who communicates with his contact via homing pidgeon.
The film is lovingly constructed and like a great song you can get something different out of it every time you experience it. Everything fits together and I watched it twice in one day and saw different things. What does the colour red mean? What do the quotations from Samurai code mean? How does it all fit together? Why does Ghost Dog always set the volume of music to 21? The mixture of styles, characters, tone and technique combine to create something unique that sticks with you as you roll things around in your head.
tags: film, review, ghostdog
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The 1970s were a turbulent time in the U.S. and a lot of interesting films came out of that time. Niels Mueller firmly sets The Assassination of Richard Nixon in the 70s as he shows the transformation and decline of a man who slowly becomes disconnected from reality. Shot in an evocative high-contrast style (by Emmanuel Lubezki) that carefully mirrors the state of mind of Sam Bicke played by Sean Penn. It's another controlled burn with Penn trying to make sense of his life in an unrewarding job while separated from his wife and children. The world doesn't make sense and as he watches the news he begins to connect with those who fight the system and who are opposed to Richard Nixon.
The film feels as if it was made in the 1970s (in a good way) and I couldn't help but think of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver which also follows the decline of a man who doesn't fit in. But Sam Bicke isn't Travis Bickle and while Taxi Driver has a sense of dread from the very beginning and Robert De Niro has a sense of menace, Penn's Bicke is a person we feel sympathetic as the world doesn't make sense and he tries to do the right thing. But the routine grinds him down and he only seems to connect with things he sees in the media which helps him form his plan. A dark and precise portrait of a tragic figure.
tags: film, review, theassassinationofrichardnixon
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Just because he speaks a little guilty, that don't make him innocent, you know.Touch of Evil is a fascinating film in many ways. It was the final film that Orson Welles made in Hollywood, it could be considered one of the last of the classic film noir and I even think it seems like a precursor to the French New Wave. I haven't seen the version that was released at the time, only the restored version based on a long memo that Welles wrote after seeing the rough cut once. He wasn't allowed back into the editing room and never saw a version that followed his advice.
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