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18 Nov 2013
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John Hurt As The Doctor

Three Doctor Whos standing together

To say that I am excited to see John Hurt play a version of The Doctor for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special is an understatement that is as small as the TARDIS is big on the inside.

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16 Nov 2013
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Speeding, Asynchronously

Professor Zoom and the Flash running at each other

Previously, I wrote about my periodic obsession with improving the page speed loading times of my other website, the Underground Film Journal.

First, I’m very happy to report that the obsession has paid off! The site, knock on wood, is the zippiest it has ever been, which has had the effect of improving the Journal’s search engine traffic, but also more importantly, visitors click on more pages once they land on the site.

So, yay!

Second, though, I want to write about another process that I have focused on recently that has greatly improved the Journal’s page speed: Asynchronous Javascript Loading.

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14 Nov 2013
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Movie Review: Dallas Buyers Club

An emaciated Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof

Matthew McConaughey’s emaciated frame haunts and informs just about every frame of Dallas Buyers Club, the “based on a true story” of Ron Woodroof, whose suffering from AIDS led him to become one of the biggest advocates for proper treatment of the disease.

As far as actors’ physical transformations for their roles go, what McConaughey has gone through to portray Woodroof is for the record books. The transformation is even more astounding keeping in mind that the role McConaughey performed just previous to this one was as a perfect male specimen on display in Magic Mike. Comparing these two wildly different performances is a great reminder of just how McConaughey is dedicated to his craft, which can get lost with movies like Fool’s Gold and Ghosts of Christmas Craft on his resume.

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03 Nov 2013
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Movie Review: In A World…

Lake Bell speaks into a microphone

There always have been and forever shall be movies made about making movies.

For In a World, though, Lake Bell has set her directing debut within a previously unexplored milieu, the highly competitive world of voice-over performers, within the “film industry” genre. And as director, writer, producer and star, it’s a milieu she clearly has a lot of affection for as she softly pokes fun at it.

Her end result is an amiable, innocuous form of entertainment. The script is another iteration of the naif lost in the woods with the wolves storyline that goes back to the time of The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928) by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapitch.

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01 Nov 2013
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On Being Resourceful

Dollar bills and change lying in a pile

I recently stumbled onto and observed an interesting online discussion about whether or not being asked to writer for free is “slavery” or not. This topic greatly appeals to me because I’m very much against writing for free. While equating free work with slavery is provocative on an absurd level, well, sometimes a writer — or at least the headline writer in this case — has to be that kind of provocative to get a discussion going.

Tim Krieder, whose article sparked the discussion, does make some good points about the valuing of “art” in the marketplace of the Internet. Where he goes wrong though is with this:

the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again.

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27 Oct 2013
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Self-Portrait #2

Self-portrait taken in a public distorting bathroom mirror

This is part of my Self-Portrait series in which I take cell phone photos of myself in public reflective services. You can see all of them here.

This photo was taken at a TJ Maxx in Sherman Oaks, California. Like the first Self-Portrait I posted up, this one took some doing to properly line up the distorted image of my face in the mirror on the phone camera. But, I really love how it turned out.


26 Oct 2013
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OFCS Membership Card

image

The Online Film Critics Society, an organization I’ve proudly been a member of the past few years, recently mailed out membership cards, which I got today.

Love it!


26 Oct 2013
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Go, Go Speed Website!

Animated cast and logo for Speed Racer anime

Every now and again I get super concerned about and involved with the webpage loading speed of my other website, the Underground Film Journal, which runs on WordPress, just like this site. Fast page speed is important for two reasons:

One, slow loading times turn off site visitors, who are more apt to click away before a page finishes loading if that loading is taking too long.

Two, search engines factor in page loading speed when ranking a website. The faster the loading time, the better the page rank.

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24 Oct 2013
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Movie Review: Gravity

Movie poster of woman in space for Gravity

There are several astonishing things about Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, but the most shocking one is that it’s only about 90 minutes long.

Ok, that may not seem so astonishing, but it totally runs counter to major movie trends these days. Most Hollywood blockbusters now are overstuffed and bloated with excessive plot and characters — most likely tied to the current superhero craze — in an effort to make audiences feel like they’re getting their money’s worth at the theater, because, you know, it ain’t cheap to go to the movies anymore.

Cuarón, who co-wrote the Gravity script with his brother Jonás, starts his story right in on the action. Career astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and reluctant scientist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are on a space walk fixing the Hubble Telescope when debris from a nearby shattered satellite sends Stone careening far into space. The rest of the movie then deals with Stone and Kowalski’s efforts to somehow get their way back to Earth.

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22 Oct 2013
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Self-Portrait #1

Self-portrait taken in a shoe store floor mirror

A few months ago, I started taking pictures of myself in public reflective surfaces as a commentary on how often we run into images of ourselves while going about our business throughout the day.

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