A brief review of The Fountain

We saw the enthralling The Fountain the other day. I'm not sure why some critics adamantly dislike this film. The visuals are amazing; the acting, superb. The structure is inventive and daring. No, I do not recommend it to the mainstream public, who might be looking for a cookie-cutter plot or some neatly packaged ending. This is an all out art film, but one that is surprisingly easy to watch and absorb despite its complexities, its serious tone, and some heart-wrenching scenes. Seeing it in the theater was so much more satisfying of an experience than my previous one in the theater--watching the funny, yet somewhat boring Borat movie. In fact, days later, I can't stop thinking about it. That is what makes a film a good one.

Viva la Montreal

The above photo was taken by my ultra-talented wife during our vacation in Montreal, Quebec. It is undeniably the most astonishing photo from our trip.

So about our trip... we left Wilmington last Saturday and drove north, spending the first night in upstate New York and the next three in Montreal. After that we made our way to rural Vermont where we spent the holiday with some relatives of R’s. We returned home on Saturday night, giving us enough time to prepare for the upcoming work week.

Montreal was cool—figuratively and literally. We spent our days exploring the city, drinking coffee, touring the bio-dome and Olympic park, finding excellent places to eat, and eating a lot. R was able to practice her French when we interacted with the locals and I was able to embarrass myself a bunch by knowing very little French at all. We spent our nights drinking wine and warming up by the fire and in the jacuzzi tub at a great little bed & breakfast located in the city's downtown. Overall, it was worth the drive and a wonderful escape.

Thanksgiving was everything it should be: eating ‘til you drop, rowdy family (three kids between ages 3 and 9, as well as three dogs), and relaxing. R’s uncle is a professional chef, and he cooked a good meal. I’m still partial to my mom’s cooking, but it’s difficult to not enjoy a grand turkey dinner. On Friday we worked off some of our caloric intake by hiking up Mount Elmore and enjoyed a wonderful view atop the firetower located there.

Tomorrow it’s back to work. December has the makings of a busy month. There’s so much to do at work and at home before we head back to Minnesota for our Christmas vacation. Yikes!

Drunken Laundry

Stationary camera? Yup. Starring Jeff Finc and nobody else? Check. A Wilford Brimley impression? You got it. It could only be one thing -- another movie made by me. This one I actually shot a few years ago and recently re-edited for the web. I cut it a little bit shorter and changed the music from a Modest Mouse song to one by EmptyGym. I hope you enjoy it.

How to disappear completely

One night last week I met with a group of four guys from Out-and-About magazine who, I believe, are in key roles to shape Wilmington's image or at least the image of its night life. I've been in contact with one of them for a while now and even created "PC vs. Me" with his purpose of getting people out of the house in mind. Well, I think we may have finally decided where I fit in with the publication of their magazine. I agreed to shoot and edit a 60-second segment each month that will be posted on their website and do the following: (1) show people in local bars having a good time and (2) advertise for Bud Light. We're going to do things like cover the Best Bartender Contest at Kahunaville or tape people giving the camera their favorite pickup line and then whittle the footage down to a minute for each segment. There are more details, but I don't want to share them yet. The first video is due by the start of the new year, so you shouldn't have to wait long to see what I'm talking about.

On Saturday I had another opportunity to pursue my hobby. I traveled down to Maryland to help a friend, who I met on Jack of Clubs, shoot a faux commercial for a video production class he is taking. The project is about at the level of "PC vs. Me," which you know is not too high, but I enjoy working on small projects like that. My friend had some expensive equipment at his disposal, courtesy of his school, so that increased our production value right there. I'm not going to be involved with the post-production process for this one, so I'll be curious to see what the finished product looks like, especially since I did have some input into it. I contributed to the concept for the commercial by suggesting the use of a very simple--yet impressive looking--technique I once applied in a short video that I included on my Cottage Cheese DVD. If you have half a minute, take a look at the experiment I'm referring to. It is titled "Disappearing Act."

Prestigious movies

We saw The Prestige over the weekend, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. When you see a movie about two rival magicians that was directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento), you have to expect some twists and surprises. This movie delivered. After being terribly disappointed by the latest Shyamalan film, I was relieved to find out it is still possible for a filmmaker to pull the wool over an audience's eyes. It's not all about the twist either. The movie was well acted, well shot, and engrossing throughout. And tell me, how cool was it that this period piece had a Thom Yorke song playing over the closing credits? I'll answer--very cool.

While we are on the topic of movies, let me tell you that R, C, and I are two-thirds of the way through Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy. These art films, from the early nineties, are surprisingly fresh, slightly inaccessible, and very rewarding. Hollywood doesn't make films like these, at least not anymore. Films like these need to be absorbed rather than simply viewed. Blue was painful, yet poignant. White was less serious but more entertaining. Red is up next. We will watch it as soon as our guest, C, returns from New York. My preceding thought is that it will be the best of the three.

Has anybody else out there seen any good movies lately? I hear The Departed is worth checking out. Any others?

Happy belated Halloween!

It is our Halloween tradition to take a photo of ourselves trying to capture the essence of what we carved into our pumpkin. See last year's photo for another example. I think we reached a new level of interpretive genius this year.... Uh, as you can see, Halloween itself went by without much of a bang for us. 15 kids rang our bell and left us with a truck load of extra candy. We didn't even get to watch a scary movie because I got stuck working the whole night. That's okay though--we celebrated on Saturday night instead. Wilmington has this epic "Halloween Loop" each year where 20,000 people get dressed up and ride a bus to 14 or so bars. I went with my wife, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law and had a great time. Our costumes were thrown together in the last minute with props we had around the house (I went as Bread Man, in case you can't tell from the photo below), and we spent most of our time in the tamer bars, specifically the Crimson Moon, the Iron Hill Brewery, and Dead Presidents, which suited our style pretty well. But, man, this was the party of the year. There were a bunch of wild people out there and, based on their costumes, a bunch of creative people too. My favorite costume was Bernie, as in Weekend At Bernie's. The guy looked the part, and he had his friends propping him up and hauling him around the whole night. They even formed a smile on his face for him when we took this picture. Other highlights were the family Double-Dare team, the men's Olympic figure skating team, Wayne, Waldo, Fred Flintstone, male bunny bartenders, and bunch of others I can't remember right now. It was a fun night out and a good weekend all around spent with the family we had in town.

Biz-Z

Hello faithful readers. This is just a quick note to let you know I'm swamped with work this week and probably won't be writing a formal blog entry for a few more days. I haven't forgotten about you; I just really need to concentrate on making some deadlines right now. We had a fun weekend that I can't wait to tell you about. I've got some photos to post and the whole works. Stay tuned.

Reflective

Guess where we found ourselves again over the weekend--in Minnesota, of course, celebrating at our final wedding of the year. This time it was one of R's friends from college getting married. We spent both nights at a hotel in downtown St. Paul, a few blocks from where I used to work. Fall is a few steps ahead out there; the city seemed notably quiet and gray. We didn't see any family over the weekend. Ironically, R's sister was waiting for us here on the east coast, and her mother is flying out tomorrow to visit for a few days. Anyway, I had a lot of fun at the wedding reception. We ate a lot, drank a lot, and danced up a storm. My stomach didn't even give me problems until the skyway walk back. You can bet it felt good to plop down on the Sleep Number bed that night. Yeah, I said Sleep Number. I couldn't decide how firm I wanted it, so I set my side of the mattress to 50. That's pretty typical of my middle-of-the-road personality.

My employer bought a popcorn machine--one of those big, carnival-style popcorn machines--and they set it up in our break room. I don't think they thought it all the way through, however. There's been a huge mess of popcorn crumbs on the floor every day since.

Speaking of work, I've been about as busy as the poor janitor who needs to sweep up all of those crumbs. I think I'm developing some good habits on this job, like how to focus, for example. There's always a commotion going on around me (remember how the low cube walls are supposed to facilitate communication?), but I'm getting better at tuning it out. With having so many things to do and time always against me, I don't have a choice but to concentrate on the task at hand. The days speed by, which I guess is good and bad.

I was thinking the other day about how the older you get, the tougher life gets and the more you appreciate the little things, like a cup of coffee at your desk or a walk in the woods or relaxing with your spouse on the couch. When you're young, you don't believe those things will ever be enough. And maybe I'm not old enough yet to not fully appreciate them either, but I see this starting to take form. Maybe some of the excitement of living drops out and the little things stand out more in their new relativity. Maybe the excitement of new experiences is eventually passed on to the next generation and the familiar is welcomed by weary parents. No, I'm not done living yet. I'm just appreciating free time and thinking about what it might be like to one day be a father. Don't read to far into that statement. I'm not hinting at anything. Seriously.

Trailer time

Wow. Talk about an exciting week on Jeblog. I have another video to share with you. This time it's the trailer for the movie on which I worked over the summer. It can be seen here:

http://www.jackofclubsmovie.com

Yes, the card-playing metaphors in the narration are a bit cheesy, but doesn't the crispness of the lighting look nice? This should be a bright, colorful kids film. It was a lot of fun to make, and it might be a lot of fun to watch, hopefully for adults as well as kids, although I give you no guarantees.

R and I were at the director and his fiancée’s condo last night for a dinner party. That guy really knows how to tell a story. He's an exciting guy to listen to, and he has this way of generating buzz for this projects. According to him, there are a total of five premieres planned for the movie in April 2007. One of them will be a formal event with a lot of Wilmington's movers and shakers in attendance because of an appearance by one of Delaware's senators in the movie. I'm sure they'll all be driven to tears by my masterful performance as a customer in a tuxedo shop.

That's all I have time for right now, folks. We need to run up to the airport to pick up my sister-in-law who will be staying with us for a while. She will be our first guest since moving to Wilmington. It could be fun to have somebody here who we can show around a bit.