Schtroumpfissime: Thinking out loud

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Jun 14
   Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2008...

Amazing 3D web photo browsing with PicLens

Well, I got sidetracked. Again. In the middle of posting pictures of the recent Victoria whale watching expedition with Marie, I drifted and have just upgraded the South Africa galleries [1] and [2] with the coolest eye-candy, a 3D photo browser called PicLens, by Cooliris. Now this is going to require a small effort on your part (so small, really) if you want to enjoy the full experience, but I guarantee that if you bare with me, it will blow your mind!

So what are we talking about here? Well, until now, I’ve used (and still do on the blog because implementation here isn’t yet an option) the awesome Lightbox 2 Ajax script to display my photos in a slideshow fashion. However, web-based applications are evolving fast and more than ever, it’s about user experience and 3D interfaces. That’s where PicLens comes in: you install a plugin to your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser and voila (voila, but as always, the plugin installation is much faster and easier on Firefox than IE. No sweat for you sorry Internet Explorer users though, it’ll just take a few additional clicks and maybe a browser restart); the plugin transforms each photo gallery into a super-slick 3D photo-browsing interface, completely immersive and fluid.

Now, for those of you who are really lazy and don’t want to install the plugin, you will still get a PicLens mock-up, but without the 3D effect which, I think, is the most amazing part of the trick. So be bold, install the little plugin, it’s a matter of seconds, you can always uninstall later if it doesn’t live up to your expectations. Convinced? Cool. (No, I’m not getting a commission. I just love the gadget!) Click on one of the browser links above to get the plugin and see you soon in the South Africa galleries...

I’ve placed an entry link at the top of each gallery (gallery links above) but once on the gallery page, the mouse hovered over the lower left corner of each thumbnail will also reveal a blue arrow allowing you to start PicLens on that image.

Once in PicLens, have fun! Drag the 3D wall with your mouse to navigate along it, roll your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the wall, click on pictures to enlarge them, navigate in all four directions with your cursor arrows, double-click on an image to get the slideshow in full screen, it’s all very intuitive and mesmerizing.

And of course, if you install the plugin and have Picasa Web Albums, a Flickr account, or even Myspace or Facebook, or Youtube, it’ll work there too! And if you don’t have accounts, you can still do generic searches on those sites and get the effect! Or try a Google Images search.

In case I haven’t convinced you yet, you can watch a video of the 3D effect here. Yeah, I know, I’m biased.

You gotta love Web 2.0. :-)

Update (01-12-08):

I have since overhauled the web site completely and removed the PicLens functionality. The South Africa Gallery can now be found here.

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2008-06-14 14:58 • Posted in Bits and pieces: & Reviews: & Web winks: 6 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
We now go back to current chronological entries:
Jun 26

10 best ways to download the 5 most useful free social networking tutorials from 7 startup sites in less than 20 minutes via a new faster photoshop plugin

Of course, the title doesn’t mean anything! It never tried to.

This just illustrates what I think of the direction blogging is taking nowadays: a tangent to nowhere via this visceral need and pathetic attempt at magnetizing traffic by using catchy and keyword-savvy titles, and the corresponding topics. So what do I think? It’s SHIT. And yet I’ll bet anything that this very title will get me more traffic than a post about Stanley Park’s incredible beauty and the pictures that might go along...

It would seem that less and less bloggers are writing for the fun of it, for the pleasure of rambling, for the lust of a few puns, for poetic license, to say nothing, to say too much, to put foot in mouth and dots on i’s, to be unique. Instead, most are beginning to write for traffic and to please the masses, to attract numbers and distract them long enough to gain a numbed interest - click here and make me your fav, addict yourself to my keywords, chain your returns into my lack of creativity, me, me, me.

The hell with social networking and all those bright new ideas and startups turned giants, if all they can generate is stereotyped bulshit, the disapearance of individuality and the end of a properly punctuated sentence.

We didn’t need 15 years to evolve from IRC to messaging, to intelligent blogging and comments, back down to Facebook and finally as low as Twitter. We could have stayed there. IRC was geekier and funnier, and it was already invented.

If you want an antidote to all this crap, go check out some amazing mammatus. Really!

Or enjoy this from Bash.org, to make us smile after such a bleakly negativational post:

<reo4k> just type /quit whoever, and it’ll quit them from irc
* luckyb1tch has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* r3devl has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* sasopi has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* phhhfft has quit IRC (r`heaven)
* blackersnake has quit IRC (r`heaven)
<ibaN`reo4k[ex]> that’s gotta hurt
<r`heaven> :(

Note from Vince:
Ok, this was for IRC geeks only - one must understand how the /quit command works otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
/me says too bad for you.
: - )

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2009-06-26 21:43 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jun 17

Neuroplasticity: I think, therefore I change

I’ve always believed that what we put in our brain directly influences who we become. That’s one of the reasons why I refuse to watch violent and horror movies, and will always favour comedies and adventure stories. I’ve long been a firm believer of visualization as a training tool for physical activities and even after 20 years away from Aikido, I still catch myself mentally rehearsing tsuki kote gaeshi and shomen uchi irimi nage.

I recently found a fascinating CBC documentary via Stumble Upon; it’s called « The brain that changes itself » and it talks about the emerging concept of neuroplasticity, which is the ability for our brain to change and rewire itself upon learning or receiving new input. That’s a drastic departure from traditional brain science that had it all figured out: our brain was a fixed machine. It would start aging and decaying and the process would never stop until the end. Trauma was irreversible and no new neurons could ever be created.

With the new concept of neuroplasticity, this all changed. Scientists are beginning to realize that our brain, like most of our body, has the ability to adapt and regenerate. But what’s even more fascinating, it would seem it is able to reprogram, or rewire itself to use various areas to perform a given function - in other words no single region of the brain can be exclusively associated with specific tasks and activities.

What’s more, studies are showing that our thought process has a direct impact on brain development and hence, on our personality. At some point in the documentary, neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone is explaining a study he conducted where subjects were instructed to rehearse a five finger piano sequence for five days, after which their brain was examined via transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS). A specific growth was registered in the motor cortex region associated with playing the piano.

However he decided to push the experiment one step further and repeated the process with new subjects, this time instructing them to only mentally rehearse the sequence without actually touching the piano or even moving their fingers. Stunningly, he found out that the same growth was registering in the brain of these passive subjects, without any actual physical practice!

At that point of the interview, he goes on to say: « What that ultimately means is that one needs to be careful what one thinks... »

It gives me chills.

 

2009-06-17 11:59 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: & Science: 7 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jun 15

Beauty, the greatest art scam ever

To my everlasting shame, I think I just spent a moment looking at my latest English Bay pictures and might even have let out a sigh of satisfaction. Then of course I froze, having been given a taste of what Marcel Pagnol called « flagrant délit d’humanité » - I caught myself in the act of being human, hence weak. There’s nothing wrong with being happy with my own work now and then, I reasoned. But there might be something wrong if I fail to realize the futility of it.

So after a thoughtful episode, I have bad news for some of us, especially those who own pieces of art worth millions of dollars. For reference, Andreas Gursky, the German photographer I was writing about recently, is famous for holding the world record for the highest price paid at auction for a single photographic image; a few years ago, somebody, somewhere, decided to pay 3.3 million US dollars for one of his large prints!

Because you see, it would seem that beauty is a scam, and art along with it. A great, masterful illusion conceived and perfected by the human mind in order to make our earthly existence more bearable. The very fact that we observe our universe defines it, quantum physics has shown that. However, we must be lucid enough to understand that none of our very subjective beauty criteria truly exist out there. The fact is there are no such things as colors. Nor is there anything like shape, or texture. No sounds. No smells. And hence, no beauty.

The above qualities only exist in our intellect as a translation by our senses of the universe, adjusted through our imagination and tweaked for cultural standards. Think about it, a dog must see something when looking at a Picasso, but it certainly wouldn’t call it beautiful. (Well, I wouldn’t, either.) Every creature on earth sees or perceives a completely different universe. None is more real than the other. In fact, none are real, period.

In the end, the only beauty is in the way our brain is able to decode essential physical data and output a rendering of it that creates a tangible and comforting reality and accepts subjective criteria such as size, time, quality and beauty.

My pictures might look good to me one day, and bad another. They might always look bad to you. Or someone might buy one of my prints for millions of dollars (wishful thinking.) But in the end, they are just a paradox: a material representation of something that is immaterial. Atoms representing other atoms.

English Bay didn’t exist more that night than it does right now. The universal substance it is made of was there all right, a fluid quantum soup as some call it, but nowhere in its atoms and particles does it mention a bay and calm water and boats and a park. They are just particles, energy as potential and probability.

The rest is our creation, our rendition. So instead of judging the beauty around us, maybe we should look inwards and assess the beauty within. Because that’s where it all starts, and where it all ends.

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2009-06-15 14:04 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 7 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jun 6

The truth that makes us tick

For as long as mankind has been called such, it has been blessed with many evolving gifts like curiosity, imagination, creativity and the ability to love. But more importantly, it has been plagued with two major evils, the thirst for power and a deeply rooted system of beliefs. While most people would probably argue that the former is responsible for most of the suffering we as a species have endured and still do, I propose the latter as the actual culprit. This post will be a brief adventure into the realm of human beliefs as opposed to the absolute Truth.

Yes, you read me right. I pretend to hold the answer to the universe, life and everything. No, it’s not 42. You see, mine is the only truth. I will live my life according to it and if needed, fight for it. There’s only one problem. No, in fact, there are two: first, my absolute truth changes over time; second, yours is different than mine, and they sometimes clash so strongly that sparks fly and thunder erupts. And yet you are as convinced as I am to hold the only truth there is.

So we have an issue. If our truths are subdued and open-minded in nature, we’ll tolerate each other the best we can and go about our business, feeling sorry for others who have obviously lost their way and hence greatly need to be shown the path. If our truths are more radical, though, we might end up spilling blood for them, ours and that of our opponents. And while we’re at it, unavoidably, we’ll spill the blood of innocent bystanders. No one is really innocent after all, they should know better and rally our cause.

This last paragraph contains the essence of human history; a never-ending series of wars, conquests and exterminations waged in the name of some ideal, an irresistible belief in a truth we hold as unique and almighty.

But how can so many people each have their own beliefs and each be convinced they only, have found the truth?

This question applies to an individual level but for our discussion’s sake, let’s restrict it to larger bodies like religions and political parties, for instance. You most likely belong to one of each. Everyone does, one way or another. And you most likely are willing to bet your way of life that yours are the right choices and that the other teams are completely blind and mislead. You believe this with every parcel of intelligence that glows in you. Your life is based upon the certitude that while there are so many wrong theories about the universe out there, you managed to find the only true one and are sticking to it. I know I do.

However, if we stop for a second and force ourselves into a detached and analytical state of mind, it becomes evident that this picture is hilariously flawed. Even though my core beliefs and emotions tell me that the way I think is the most logical one, it would take a gigantic ego to blind me to the fact that every person on earth feels the same about their own beliefs, thus creating an incredibly chaotic web of contradictions, incompatibilities and anger.

How can we integrate all these seemingly conflicting values, these impossibly opposite stances that have been forcing us to defend our beliefs so fiercely that the world has never know true peace? I can see only one way: by accepting once and for all that nothing is true, and nothing is real, that there are as many different universes as there are minds perceiving them; by admitting that our world is created around us by the simple fact that we observe it; by embracing the somehow scary thought that every single definition of the Truth is as valid as ours, and that none are real - not even ours.

Imagine a world where people would exchange business cards on which, below name and contact, would appear a belief. Why not? When I receive a business card from Joe Blow, I don’t feel compelled to assault him verbally because is name is not Vincent. His reality is different. He passes on some information about him to me, for reference. He is neither trying to impose his name on me nor to steal mine. The same should hold true for beliefs.

Whether one believes in Buddha, in Christ, in Brigitte Bardot, in quantum physics, in the Church of Scientology, in little green men, in the flying spaghetti monster, in the Democratic Party, in the United Nations, in eco-terrorism or in nothing at all, one is right. And one is wrong. What we believe in, we manifest and hence make it real. Every atom in our body becomes impregnated by that reality. And that’s a lot of atoms. Yet we are wrong to think of our belief as « better than ». There just cannot be only one truth.

What we really should do is seek a way to incorporate our beliefs into the global consciousness, to fit them into something bigger. Something intangible, beyond our understanding or perception, and that joins everything once and for all.

Just as quantum physics has shown some particles to exist indefinitely only in a state of probability until we actually chose to observe them, at which point they decide to become one thing or another and will remain that way as long as we are involved, so does our presence in the world define reality and our beliefs shape our own truth. We must just understand that everyone shapes up their world in different ways because they look at it through different eyes.

Now we need to accept that your god, my god and her particle accelerator are all as real, all as powerful, and all as deceiving. But only through our human experience can we ever know that. Consciousness might very well be the last frontier. Beyond it lies a sea of simplicity.

 

2009-06-06 12:57 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 7 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Apr 14

Fed up with Google

For the first time since I willingly got in bed with Google, signed up for multiple services and opted to surf the wave along with most of the world, I am really fed up with them and their stupid SERP relevance algorithms. After months of struggle to recover from a devastating spamming attack and a domain name change, I still haven’t managed to even get back to a modest level where I would rank first (or even just high) for keywords that are basically my own content.

Come on, we’re talking exclusive content here, not highly challenged keywords. So when I search for my own blog’s name or specifically published content and Google decides that other sites mentioning it are more relevant than my original site, I want to puke. It’s like Google saying « Never mind the source and the facts, here are links to people and places we think are cool because they are linked to by so many other cool people and places, and who talk about or link to the content you searched for. »

How the bloody hell can another web site including a blog’s name or quoting it be more relevant to a visitor than the quoted blog itself? Easy. Google has gotten lost in its quest for truth and become blinded by traffic and links. Its ugly headless crawling machine now thinks that if a site’s traffic and reciprocal linking are high, the content matters.

So a blog post that I have written myself and is my own intellectual property becomes more relevant when quoted, mentioned or linked to out of context by an external web site with better ranking. How fucked up is that?

I’m not asking for the moon. But the name of the blog you are reading right now exists nowhere else in the universe. It is unique - and probably also boring as hell. But still, I’d expect a Google search for it to rightfully point here first before sending the unsuspecting visitor to some crappy aggregator site blindly listing blogs in an obvious quest for traffic. Google, if you’re listening, at this stage you suck!

 

2009-04-14 15:36 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 3 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Apr 7

BC's new Enhanced Driver's Licence: welcome to the future and kiss your privacy goodbye

It had been done in countless movies and it was just a matter of time before reality caught up with fiction. Uncle Sam wants to know where you are, at all times. Period. It’s much easier to control the masses that way, and under a convenient cover of fighting against crime and terror, our individual rights and privacy bubble* grow thinner every day.

In comes British Columbia’s new EDL, or Enhanced Driver’s Licence. Having just been approved for public use, it represents a breakthrough in all the Dark Arts above. The EDL is - for the time being - a voluntary replacement to the standard driver’s license, upgraded with technology that will supposedly help prevent identity theft and most importantly, allow entry to the US like a normal passport would. Uh?

Now picture this: the new gem features a Radio Frequency Identification Chip (RFIC) which allows special chip readers to remotely access « limited » personal information data stored in a secure Canadian-soil database. As far as I can tell, US Customs is ironically the only one thus far to make use of this capability on OUR new EDL. So, what, we’ve created our new driver’s license to suit the paranoid security needs of our southern neighbor?

The process is pretty high tech, I’ll give you that much. You take your card out of its protective sleeve (designed to prevent unauthorized reading from Evil sources - great, so they admit it can be done, right in the intro) and flip it at the reader while in the (too long) line-up at the border crossing. It gets zapped and read, and the data retrieved. When you arrive at the booth, you hand the card over and your file is already up on the guy’s computer. So why the RFIC then? We just saved about 5 seconds. Big deal. All the agent had to do was swipe your card when you arrived. This hardly justifies implementing the chip, with the huge expenses involved, especially for a feature mainly used by US Border posts. Well, a pretext was needed for the upgrade and that’s what came up. No surprise here. Canada has always been in bed with the United States. Except that if you ask the US, they will deny. Great. A little more prostitution our part.

Of course if you read ICBC’s web site, you’ll find a few paragraphs on privacy and how the new card respects our rights, blah-blah-blah. The data can only be accessed by US and Canadian official agencies and for lawful purposes. Really? No kidding! No personal information is contained on the chip, only a number that links you to a file in the database. So that’s a bit like saying « we’re not spying on you live, we use cameras to do so. » The result is exactly the same.

The bottom line is simple. Give this another 5, 10 or 15 years and there will be a chip reader at every street corner, and by then everyone will have one of those EDL’s which will double as a credit card and portable medical record. Your movements will be recorded - not tracked, of course, because of privacy laws. Just recorded. But then when you read the fine prints, just as with Google and many others today, you’ll realize that the « recording » can still be accessed by the authorities for lawful purposes...

A few more years and police cars no longer will have to stop you to check you out. Another 10 years and the chip reader will be installed in every newly built home. You’ll be processed as you leave your house in the morning and tracked all day. Just watch Minority Report or Enemy of the State for very creative variants.

Do I care about what will happen in 10 or 20 year? Not really. Do I think we can stop all this from happening? Not really. It’s as unavoidable as the decay of bananas turning brown on my kitchen counter. However this is now and while the wheels are set in motion, the prospect appears quite scary. I don’t personally care that much about privacy and generally try to live a life that requires none - in other words, have nothing to hide and you’ll sleep better at night.

Still. I find the way we are introducing our very latest and most advanced Canadian piece of ID as a « US-trackable » upgrade, disturbing, to say the least.

*The privacy bubble is a concept of mine that represents the extent and strength of our own personal space from a privacy perspective. It used to be an impenetrable shield that could only be breached by close contact (we’re talking prehistoric times, here.) When written languages appeared, one’s privacy bubble shrunk a bit because of the possibility to leave - and find - records of one’s acts. Invention of the telephone shrunk the bubble even further by allowing long-distance - and hence uncontrolled - intrusions into one’s private life. But these were still passive attacks against the bubble. Nowadays, we are talking about very active threats: internet, government records, credit history, private and public surveillance cameras, border crossing control, tax records and all kinds of high-level and top-secret breaches of the system into one’s life. The EDL is just another step into the direction of a wide-open, no-privacy society. The bubble is shrinking. Will it pop? Should it?

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2009-04-07 13:04 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: & Vancouver: 3 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Mar 27

Earth Hour 2009 – Really?

2009 Update: Here we are again. In support of the right thing to do, Mother Earth, saving the planet, our economy, CO2 is evil and many other popular green trends, a few people and businesses are about to turn their lights off for an hour tomorrow night at 8:30 pm local time. Woo-hoo. Yee-pee. One hour. Maybe.

I am reposting this entry from last year mostly unchanged, since the issues haven’t either. My feelings have sunk, however. I saw how few lights went off last year and have lost my enthusiasm. And I hate movements into which the greater public might take part just because they have been told to, or because the neighbour will do it too. Awareness comes from deeper understanding, not blind participation.

Furthermore, I still inspect any media-originated headline with great suspicion, whether it is about politics or global warming. Of course, the fight against global warming is a good cause and activists are hence the good guys. BUT. I just don’t know any more. What if half of the activist and scientific ranks were as corrupt and misdirected as at least half of the leading ranks are?

Any way, here’s last year’s post. Let’s just do it for the right reasons.

...

In a coordinated effort for raising awareness while delivering a strong message to the powers that be, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is once again behind the Earth Hour campaign encouraging individuals, organizations and businesses in nearly 200 cities worldwide to turn off their lights between 8:00 and 9:00 pm local time tonight, Saturday March 29th. (March 28th in 2009)

Goal of the exercise: making a statement about Global Warming*, diminishing our energy footprint and having fun. Candles are cool. Darkness can be revealing. And that it will be, at the Vancouver Lookout, where people will enjoy a better view of the city than ever before, weather(!) permitting. As a matter of fact, Canada is said to have the highest anticipated participation rate. In Vancouver, major lights will be turned off on the Olympic flag, City Hall, the Lion’s Gate, Burrard and Cambie bridges, Science World and of course, Harbour Centre.

Various worldwide events and places will also go dark at 8:00 pm local time, such as a crab dinner in New York (that was last year...) and the Google Home Page.

It is such a small step, a few percent of our energy consumption shaved off from one single hour out of almost 9000 in a year. But that’s how we are going to make it. There are no miracle solutions to the problems we are faced with. If mankind is going to win the escalating battle against itself in time to save the planet that supports it, it will be by taking small steps at first, unrelentingly, no matter how small. If each one of us takes a small step simultaneously, we are going forward. If we keep doing it all the time, we will be leaping.

It’s all about awareness. About changing bad habits today. About waking up. And about gathering momentum. More than ever, we have amazing communication tools that can actually let us witness in real time that we are not alone taking small steps. The internet can act as a global live reporter and as such, it has a tremendous role to play in the battle.

*BUT:

We must always be sure to act for the right reasons, not because it is trendy. I support energy saving theories and practices because they make sense. A wasteful lifestyle is definitely a sin, even if only from the point of view of equality: while we waste energy watching crap on TV, others across the world do not even have a hundredth of that energy available to take a shower or cook. Same deal with recycling, limiting pollution and the systematic rape of our natural resources.

However there are those who challenge mainstream ideas about Global Warming and are pointing out a disturbing lack of scientific consensus on CO2 as a planet-heating pollutant. For the sake of our planet and in order to keep an open mind and not to fall into yet another planet-wide manipulation of the masses, we owe it to ourselves to verify our sources and ask questions, and make sure others do, too. Here are two very interesting examples to illustrate this possibility. They are not meant as a call to anarchy or an attempt at trashing the efforts of environmentalists worldwide. They are simply the work of people who like understanding the reasons behind any fashionable trend like the current Global Warming debate, and who have become concerned that, once again, the lust for money and power might find its way all the way up to the top of the news and take control of even the best intentions behind what we have come to accept as our only hope: environmental activism.

The first is an AIM article titled Will Media Expose Global Warming Con Job? which I found recently and that echoed to my own doubts and concerns with surprising volume. My problem isn’t with Global Warming itself, but rather with the fact that I just had to capitalize it. I am extremely worried because just like wars, catastrophes and the sex lives of movie stars, Global Warming sells. It’s worth a fortune to the media world and also potentially to the smartest of international powers. The article above refers to the following New York Times piece, In 2008, a Hundred Percent Chance of Alarm. I quote: « Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. »

Even author Michael Crichton had a go at this angle of things in his recent State of Fear novel; he actually took heat for it - that’s what you get for going against the flow and botching up your research on the topic. But whether he is right or wrong isn’t really my priority. I just like being reminded that not everything always is black and white, and that the media will at times act as a major disinformation tool and become the toy of shadow puppeteers, the ones that really control the world. When a politician wins awards for a documentary on climate change, my alarm signals go off. Those same politicians are waging wars all over the globe and fighting to control the world’s fuel supplies. Why on Earth would they give a damn about the consequences of Global Warming, unless it means that it will, one way or another, yield a substantial influx of green little bills in their hidden pocket.

The bottom line is, let’s do what we feel is right for the environment, and let’s do it now. And tomorrow. And the next day. Let’s fight for it and force a change. But let’s do it for the right reasons. Not because the media tells us that we are in deep shit. Not because Al Gore found a new path to glory by becoming a movie star. Not because we go with the trendy flow and if all the sheep will go green, so will we even though we don’t really understand it. Not because God’s wrath is upon us and doom unavoidable. Not because others say so.

Let’s just do it because in our hearts, it feels like the right thing to do. Let’s be curious about the mechanics of it, let’s look behind the scenes and let us question established facts if they are not supported by evidence. Let’s empower ourselves as the engine of change, rather than just its fuel.

 

2009-03-27 11:25 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 5 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Mar 18

Once Upon a Time, Ennio Morricone

I spent last night doing some digging through my audio collection for Marie. We had been talking about eating beans the way Terrence Hill does it in My Name is Nobody - with obvious delight, big mouthfuls off a wooden spoon straight from the pan, chewing mouth open and eyes shiny. The conversation led to the movie’s brilliant musical score and logically drifted towards Ennio Morricone’s genius. I promised to make her a compilation.

So I opened iTunes and began browsing. I was there for an hour. His music grips me. It is closely associated in my heart to all kinds of memories, not only specific images and moods from the movies but also bits and pieces of my own colorful childhood.

In those days my parents had very eccentric musical tastes, especially my dad. I didn’t grow up listening to the hit parade or even to much so-called popular music. Instead the house was filled with the sounds of Spaghetti Western and other movie soundtracks, national anthems, Russian Army Choirs, Tahitian folklore, Mexican mariachis and the like. No wonder why I got such an early taste for travels. Later, my very first record purchases, back in the days of vinyls, were Jean Michel Jarre’s Equinoxe and Oxygen. Then I discovered Kraftwerk and Radioactivity. But I digress.

I can still vividly remember pretending to play my imaginary harmonica in the searing heat of New Mexico, my back against the bleached wall of a train station (played by my bedroom sliding door in Antibes), hat lowered onto my forehead to hide ever-watchful eyes, revolvers in their holsters adorned with Marlboro stickers (I didn’t really know about the evilness of smoking then, and they had a cool cowboy as a logo), a sheriff’s star pinned on my sleeveless leather jacket right next to the gaping (and dutifully painted in red) whole of an old bullet wound. The music of Morricone gave it all such intensity that like most kids playing roles, I just believed it was all real.

I think that composing the soundtrack of a movie is a sacred art. While excellent movies have sometimes survived without any music worth remembering, a great soundtrack almost invariably accompanies the ones I have liked most, the Ah!Movies as Anna would’ve called them in Fynn’s book. Think of The Big Blue, Dune, Star Wars, Empire of the Sun, all of Sergio Leone’s westerns, Frantic, Rain Man, Little Miss Sunshine, La Chèvre, Les rivières pourpres, they all have such powerful scores. Then sometimes a good soundtrack manages to lift an otherwise ordinary movie out of the ditch, as in The 13th Warrior, Immortel (Ad Vitam), Ghostbusters, Saturday Night Fever...

A musical score is the ultimate mood setting tool. It doesn’t say much by itself but can reinforce camera work and acting with either incredible punch or exquisite subtlety. It gives a movie its soul, a story its background and the audience, an anchor upon which to base memories. And I think very few composers have ever been as good and prolific at it as Morricone is. He has something like 400 scores to his credit and is still going. 

The award-winning Italian composer scored milestone movies such as all of Sergio Leone’s westerns, The Mission, The Untouchables, Sacco & Vanzetti, Frantic, the three French La cage aux folles, episodes of the cult British sci-fi TV series Cosmos 1999, as well as an incredible number of Italian movies. He even had an asteroid named after himself (jealous tone.)

Of course, as always, this is all art and as such, subject to the requirements of personal tastes. My Ennio Morricone compilation might just turn out to be a flop. With movie music as with everything else, you like it or you just don’t.

My dear Marie has very diverse cinema tastes and simply adores old movies. She is able to find in them and extract the very essence of film making, the raw matter of acting and actors - as in the way they were before technology took over the industry and replaced talent with special effects and ideology with budget. I, on the other end, am a child of the 21st century and tick to the impact of an overall experience - technique, editing, creativity, decors, effects, image quality, photography, music, sound clarity and stereo or surround level, adventure content, escapism, dream value, virtual reality achieved, and yes, acting, too. I need my movies to transpose me, literally, into another world, another person’s shoes, and as such, they must engage all 24 of my senses. To me, old is usually less interesting because the technical flaws prevent me from completely immersing myself.

But yeah, French cinema had its giants, too, and I do enjoy a good dinosaur-movie now and then. Jean Gabin, Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Lino Ventura, et les comiques aussi, Tati, Fernandel, Bourvil, de Funes, they all deserve to stand proudly among the ranks of an army of Audrey Hepburns, Humphrey Boggarts and Charlie Chaplins...

In the end, it’s all about magic, and for magic to be real, one must believe. I’m would guess Morricone always has.


Silent golden movies, talkies, technicolour, long ago
My younger ways stand clearer, clearer than my footprints
Stardom greats I’ve followed closely  
Closer than the nearest heartbeat
Longer that expected, they were great
Oh love, oh love, just to see them
Acting on the silver screen, oh my
Clark Gable, Fairbanks, Maureen O’Sullivan
Fantasy would fill my life and I
Love fantasy so much
Did you see in the morning light
I really talked, yes I did, to Gods early dawning light
And I was privileged to be as I am to this day
To be with you, to be with you.

Jon Anderson and Vangelis - The Friends of Mr. Cairo

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2009-03-18 19:57 • Posted in Reviews: & Schtroumpfissime: 11 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Mar 6

Vancouver Interlude - Of Staplers and Tasers

For those of you living in faraway lands, the current Vancouver media scene is dominated by an inquiry into the death of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver International Airport a while back. The man did not speak English, was in RCMP secure quarters and became agitated. According to multiple RCMP officer testimonies, he picked up a stapler. So fearing for their safety, the highly trained, very seriously armed and armor-wearing officers tasered him. Four times. To death.

Now I’m not sure whether I should be crying or laughing, because even though the outcome was tragic, the whole affair is hilarious in its absurdity. Some very funny things have been written about all this, including an article in some free magazine that mentioned the appearance of staplers in police manuals and recruits being stapled at least once for training purposes.

Any way, for those of you who are geeky enough to have seen and remembered Office Space, this suddenly ran through my head: "... and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire..."

They didn’t take his stapler, they took his life.

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2009-03-06 12:50 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: & Vancouver: 5 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Dec 5

Canada's latest and most embarrassing political farce

If this were any other time in history, I’d probably be laughing out loud. I can hear the world’s patronizing snort: « Them Canadians are throwing a fit again, eh? Who cares, they never pass 0.5 on the Richter scale anyway. It’s refreshing to be able to watch a political struggle with no consequence to us. It’s like watching a soap opera. »

But. This is now and we are in the midst of an extreme - and global - economic crisis. My sense of humor is running low. Canadian bankruptcies have increased by 20% compared to last year. Meanwhile, a touch south of the border - where all the financial trouble began, spreading across the globe like an unstoppable virus - giants steps are being taken, drastic measures considered and a new leadership has been installed.

This is a wave we, as a neighboring country, cannot afford to miss. We must ride it like crazy or sink. Later will be too late. There might be a false sense of calm while we wobble in the trough but soon the next wave will come and then we’ll drown.

But while the water level drops and the crest approaches fast, gathering momentum and building itself a white dress of foam, our own ridiculous politicians fight amongst themselves, making our country look like a beheaded chicken that manages a few steps before hitting a wall.

The complete lack of character of our leaders reminds me of puppets in the wind. And they fight like girls!* No direct hits here, no closed fists, no kicks to the head nor karate stance, no balance nor confidence. They thrash at each other feebly with open hands, achieving the mere power of weak slaps, hoping for their nails to bite a lip or destroy the opponent’s make-up, pulling hair as their rings get stuck in it, hissing and spitting, out of control and out of place.

A little back, Dion lost a very humiliating election (it was deserved as he clearly doesn’t have what it takes to run a country.) His party decided to get rid of him fast. But now he is campaigning wildly with the coalition to try and fuck us up some more. We don’t need a country divided, where losers can turn around and claim revenge just like that. When you lose, you lose. Then you stick to fair play. Not that the current puppet is any better. That’s our problem. We need new blood. Fast. Harper just seems like the lesser of two weevils.

In the meantime, our Governor General temporarily halted the frenzy. Kudos to her. The pressure must have been tremendous. Let’s hope Canadians - puppets and puppeteers - will enjoy the holidays, relax and come to their senses.

Yeah, I know, I’m the the world’s worse political analyst. And proud of it, too! ;-)

* No offense to you girls, I’m just referring to the cliché.

 

2008-12-05 10:26 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
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