As everyone on planet Earth has heard. Singing sensation Michael Jackson as died of a cardiac arrest.
I was not a fan of his singing, though a few songs did work for me. I didn’t hate it either it was something that made me reach for the skip button on my iPod when one of his songs popped up on my 80’s play lists.
For his fans you have my condolences.
The number of submission I have at the same time hsa been rising lately and I need a good way to keep track of all of them.
A friend once suggested a database where I could track submission, sale status, payout and when and even re-sales and payouts there.
Being as clueless as an Eskimo with a Camel I need assistance and trying to find a database suitable for my needs.
I run all my stuff on an Apple running OS 10.5 and it should be a really simple prgram as I can not afford to pay pro-rate for DB design.
Any suggestions?
Aside from the usual board and card games on Friday night, this weekend was the once a month meeting of a local club, San Diego Vintage SF. We get together and watch genre movies from before 1966. Last night we watched Earth Vs The Flying saucers Last night’s version was even colorized. Now normally I would consider it in bad form to watch a B&W film that has been colorized. There is a lot of artistic decision in making a film and you make different ones when you work in B&W vs when you work in color, but this film is different. The film was pretty much shot by Ray Harryhausen the stop-motion effects wizard and he over saw the colorization of the print so I was fine with it.
While the film does have a bit of cheese to it it is still a fine and fun film to watch. A number of the people present had never seen the film and they seemed to enjoy themselves. (Though these club meeting are as much about hanging out with friends as they are movie watching.) Before the film we even watch short features. We had a serial episode (Batman – with the pudgiest Batman ever.) and a couple of cartoons.
Well, yesterday I was home sick with a head cold, today I went back to work but still feeling crappy, just less so. This has thrown off my plans for getting started on my next short story. I haven’t the mental energy to work on anything at home currently. My evening tonight was The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and the pilot to The Wild Wild West
I did have an amusing thought yesterday. I was watching Errand Of Mercy a first season episode of Star Trek. Near the end Kirk is talking to the Enterprise and Kor the Klingon Commander also has his communicator out but is saying nothing. Kirk learns that the Organians have neutralized the Federation Task force turns to Kor, who still has not uttered a word into his communicator and Kor informs Kirk that the Klingon fleet is also disabled. I watched and thought — Dang, the Kilngons are texting!
Sorry for being a day late on my Sunday Night Movie review but I’ve got a bit of a head cold and that has got be down and unproductive.
Anyway so Sunday night I watch King Kong (1933) this is a film that has been directly remade twice, first in 1976 and then again in 2005. In my opinion despite the advance in special effect technology neither of the re-makes touch the original film.
The story of King Kong is deceptively simple. A movie maker, known for making exciting nature films in order to capitalize on the public’s love of romance decides to make his next nature film with a lovely actress on a remote island when legends tell of a fantastic beast. The film is throughly a product of it’s time in respect to how the characters relate to each other, sexism is simply a product of their assigned roles in society, but the film transcends this and is a fantastic adventure.
King Kong truly was the Jurassic Park of its time. The methods used to creature the stunning effects were kept closely secret from the public with false information disseminated to ensure the secrecy. This film was made no long after sound became standard in movie making and there are many innovations at work in the film that forever changed movie making, The close beat-for-beat of the music with the action is something fairly new in King Kong. Watching the film on DVD I was amazed at how well most of the special effect stood up for a film made 76 years ago. The artistry is truly staggering. Willis O’Brien is the father of stop motion effects, a technique that has now been abandoned for digital effects, but made so many truly great films possible.
Peter Jackson remade the movie in 2005 and his was more faithful complete with a period setting to the original film than the disastrous remake from 1976, still there are many element to the 2005 Kong that I disliked. First he changed the nature of the character of Carl Denham, played wonderfully in the original by Robert Armstrong and in 2005 played quite well by Jack Black. In the 1933 film Denham is a film-maker/adventurer. A good man who is stand-up honest and faithful to his friends and people. In the 2005 version Denham has been transformed into a shyster, a con-man who is not to be trusted. There was no need for this change and I missed the original character. Secondly in Jackson’s Kong too much time is spend detailing the secondary characters of the film. Kong 2005 runs over three hours and is a decent movie, but a truly good two hours movie is hiding in it.
Frankly see the original. It’s a treat worth watching.
So all weekend long I’ve been watching the boiling kettle that is Iran. After the official results of the election there have been mass protests and a crackdown by the official forces. I’m please to see that what has got the people of Persia enraged is the idea of a stolen election. (I have never felt the people of Iran were our enemies only it’s rulers.) At this moment we can’t know where this is heading. It could fizzle out, the population could be brought to heel with more violent repression or this could a be a revolution. I hope the later and would love the irony of the religious rulers being over thrown by the Iranian College students.
A common insult hurled at Republicans is one of racism and it is one that is generally undeserved. Sometimes though the writers and thinker on the right say such stupid things and make such unsubstantiated charges you have to wonder if they really read before they write.
Heather MacDonald at National Review’s Corner
Fifty-three percent of all Latinas under the age of 20 have been pregnant at least once, virtually always outside of wedlock. An official with the Pew Hispanic Center recently recounted to me the gang violence and ubiquitous teen pregnancy in his former high school on the east side of Los Angeles. Such social facts do not help California’s budget situation.
No attribution or source for the statistics. Statistics which feed into the stereotype of of massive number of hispanics just breeding away . For heaven’s sake woman you don’t even tell us which population of latinas this supposed statistic applies to. Just US? Just Souther west? All of them through the tip of South America? This is the kind of drivel that is driving the population away from the Republican party.
The demographic wave is threatening to drown the Republicans and this sort of writing will just drive more and more young people awa.
I did more overtime hours at my day job today but I am not going to do this tomorrow. I’m earning bonus money and brownie points with the management, but I need to spend time with my sweetie-wife and let my fingers rest.
I will not be writing this week, but next week I will start my untitled werewolf story.
Work was fast and furious today and to add to that because we were backlogged in out processing I stayed for two hours of overtime. While the money will be nice, my arthritic fingers were less than pleased with me.
No post on Sunday Night Movies because I only watched half the film before becoming so tired I had to sleep, but I will post when I finish the movie.
