Tour de France leader caught smuggling plums

Pull the Strings: or, has anybody seen my theremin?

Fantastic clip with composer Howard Shore talking about the theremin and Tim Burton's Ed Wood. which, incidentally, features some fantastic graveyard scenes. Can't wait for October. expect many special horror editions of Secret Movie Night.

So, the funny thing about snowball fights....

In the middle of July that is. how many chances do you get to say that, in the middle of the night, on a hot summer evening, you struck up a random snowball fight with about twenty of your friends?
Yea, that's what i thought. not terribly likely. and yet there we were, sitting in front of secret location along the bike path, a few miles north of waterfront park. I think we just stopped to regroup. and then i had one of my more brilliant ideas: "snowball fight!"
So we did. no one was seriously injured. and for good measure, we saved a few snowballs for random dudes in the parking lot.

but now i have to ask you? think back. did you ever play "ghosts in the graveyard"? but wait, let me back up.....
Somehow, we ended up in a cemetery.

SR Wild, cue the spooky sound effects.

RADAR[theory] vs. SR Wild: the crossblog begins

After an evening of bike movies, beer, random bike riding, snowball throwing and lots more, SR Wild and i decided the best way to chronicle the events of the evening would be to join forces and start a crossblog, utilizing the latest in blogging technology and as much of our hazy memory as we can manage to access.
So let's begin, shall we?

p.s. in yellow, i'd look something like this:


I took a few liberties and made myself a cowboy. makes sense, right?

BIKE MOVIE NIGHT is Tuesday, July 24

Spread the word. Tuesday, July 24 will be our first Secret (Bike) Movie Night. an entire evening of bicycle-related movies and other wacky goodness.
Followed by the Secret Bike Ride. Ride your bike to movie night and be prepared for post movie bicycle action.

Strangers In The Night at SMN

Described as "the misadventures of three thirty-something couples as they do a little too much drinking and thinking," Strangers In The Night is the first feature film of Burlington director Tom Connelly. Influenced by the likes of Cassavetes, Antonioni and lots of coffee and shot mostly in Chittenden County, Connelly produced this digital feature on a shoestring budget in sixteen days. View the trailer here or here.

Screening is tomorrow night (July 17) at 8pm.
Studio STK. 12 North St Burlington VT

Michael Bay vs. the Optimus Prime Directive

or.....why Transformers really isn't a huge waste of time.

While I still maintain that the most noteworthy things about Michael Bay is the way in which he is ridiculed in Team America (Fuck Yea!), I can at least now claim to have genuinely enjoyed one of his films. Although described as an "American Pie meets Generic Things Blowing Up movie" by one blog poster, the good news about Mr. Bay's latest summer blockbuster offering is that it doesn't suck. Not even remotely. And that's quite an amazing feat for the director of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. Sure, most of the jokes were rather forced and there were plenty of cliched moments ( like the hot young female computer expert and the nerdy black introverted hacker genius teaming up to break the seemingly impossible alien code and save all humanity. or something like that).

With more than a nod to current events, the worst case scenario presented is not the annihilation at the hands of giant alient robots, but the possibility of all-out-war with nations like North Korea and Iran. And then there's the brief shot of a bumbling president character with a distinct Texas twang.

And while Michael Bay (as he often does) gives more than a passing nod to the defense-industrial complex and American military enthusiasm, It's less of a glorification and more of a reflection upon current events and a not-so-subtle critique of Bush regime militaristic strategy.

But that's not really the point of the film or this review. What is most important is that the robots are absolutely fantastic and kick much ass. If anything, I'd like to have seen less humans getting screen time and more robots transforming and fighting. Hopefully the next film (and there almost certainly will be a sequel) will focus more on characters like Starscream ( a pivotal character in the original series). And Mr. Bay, in case you're listening, please please please turn Soundwave into a boombox again.

So yes, the film could have been better. But it served its purpose. I was entertained for well over two hours, I'll watch it again on DVD and, well, it has robots. Lots and lots of robots.
And best of all, Ben Affleck is nowhere to be seen. That, in itself, is step one towards creating a successful film.

Yes, It's True

We have confirmation. Just as i always suspected.

Analog Departure

Besides film, i'm also keenly interested in analog pursuits such as mixed media collage, sketching, bookmaking, mail art. So in my latest venture I've managed to combine most of those together. While I've tried my own mail art journal projects in the past, I've never had much success. somewhere along the way, the books go missing. This time around I got my hands on a Book Magazine Book from Australia.
I added a page of my own and redesigned the cover.

Experimental Animation and the world of art

"Kinetic Art is the first new category of art since prehistory. It took until this century to discover the art that moves. Had we taken the aesthetic qualities of sound as much for granted as we have taken those of motion, we would not now have music. But now, in kinetic art and animation, we have begun to compose motion. We've all been conditioned to viewing film as an adjunct to drama and literature, as a medium for story-telling. These virtues are absolutely secondary to the kinetic fine-art end of motion composition." -- Len Lye, animator, kinetic sculptor, Figures of Motion, 1964

I'm particularly excited this week about the return of guest curator Cecile Starr. She'll be screening a series of movies featuring various animator. The focus will be on the relationship between animation and the greater art world (graphic arts, sculpture, music, illustration, painting, dance). Through the films we'll see how these artists have found their way into the practice of experimental animation from their respective crafts.

Featured artists will include Lotte Reiniger (know for her amazingly detailed silhouette cutouts); Hans Richter (painter and Dada pioneer); Alexandre Alexeieff; Mary Ellen Bute; Len Lye; Kathy Rose.

Between Before and After

Anyone that knows me well is quite aware of my acute interest in the subject of implied or figurative time travel. That is to say, the exploration of space and time via imaginary journeys, carefully constructed cartographies of the mind and tales of mythical places (suggested reading: Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities). In the case of Darren Almond's immensely large and engaging video works now being screened at the Musee D'Art Contemporain, he explores “in-between” zones, spaces with no determined sense of place, neither past nor present, departure nor arrival. They simply exist in a temporal flux, leaving the viewer to decipher the proper direction and destination, if in fact they exist at all.
In the featured work, "In The Between", Almond's camera follows the new railway line between Xining, China, and Lhasa, Tibet, crossing the Kunlun Shan mountain range, the natural boundary along the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau.
The subject matter is both controversial and mesmerizing. And while you can't help but imagine where the journey may take you, It's the journey itself that makes this work so fulfilling.

Art-To-Go tonight at Studio STK

It's First Friday, which means it's time for the Art-to-Go Show & Sell at Studio STK.
Friday, July 6 | 5-8pm | 12 North St Burlington Vt.
And if i can manage to get organized, I may even try to sell a few of my handmade books there. Either way, I'll be dropping by the check out the goods.
and you should too