Twitter Tomfoolery Regarding Food and Film

So some joker created a hashtag today that jumped to the top of twitter trends and caught my attention: #filmfoodeating. The game seems to just be to incorporate food into movie titles. Well, of course I latched on and haven’t let go. Here is a compendium of my contributions. And please, do a search over at twitter to get in on the fun.

• @repressd Whoops! Good job! Too many to read, great minds think alike.. Chew on this: Bedtime for Garbonzo #filmfoodeating NOW I’M DONE!
• My final #filmfoodeating Spider-Flan, Grouperman, Cat on a Pot Pie Roof, Beauty and the Feast, Cracker, Gumbo, Free Chili, Meat Streets
• Oklahomefries! #filmfoodeating that one’s for you @deadcenter
• Canard Boiled #filmfoodeating addendum to John Woo Edition
• Lard Target, A Feta Tomorrow, Face Froth #filmfoodeating John Woo Edition
• Purple Chrain #filmfoodeating @kashrutnews @Jewishtweets I know you’ll get this.
• Spinal Frappe, Henry Portrait of a Cereal Killer, Boureka (baraka), Black Nar-tzimis, Gentlemen’s A-quiche-ment #filmfoodeating
• Passion of the Slice, Greatest Story Jello Mold #filmfoodeating Jesus Edition
• Fiddler on the Stew, The Cholent (the chosen), Lentil #filmfoodeating Jewish Edition
• Husbands and Chives, Shadows and Nog, Brine and Misdemeanors, Bananas #filmfoodeating Woody Allen Edition
• Wages of Pear, Á Bout de Soufflé, Elevator to the Shallots, The Seventh Veal #filmfoodeating @CRITERION Edition
• Last Bite at McCool’s, Lawrence of Arrabiata, Cakes on a Plane, The Graviator, Meringues of New York, I Am Ham #filmfoodeating
• While You Were Eating, Juarassic Tarte #filmfoodeating contributed by my twitterless girlfriend
• Leaving Lox Vegas #filmfoodeating this one is sort of a repeat, but I couldn’t resist.
• Guacstoppers, Blue Chips , Leaving Manchego, Vicky Tortilla Barcelona #filmfoodeating
• You’ve Got Kale #filmfoodeating
• Detroit Guac City #filmfoodeating that ones for you @NachosNY
• Bakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo #filmfoodeating
• Gourd of the Rings #filmfoodeating
• I don’t know why this is trending, but I love it #filmfoodeating Schindler’s Grits

Testing The Emergency Blogcasting System

This is only a test. Do not adjust your, uhhh, computer monitor. If you are reading this, it means that I can now blog from my iPhone. While no great feat for master blogheads, it took a little work for me to figure this out. It’s great. I love to blog and I love my iPhone. Now nothing can stop me from telling you cool stuff. Read on...

Red Vapor in Your Eyes? Let Me Give You Visine

Back in 2005 when Jim Jannard took off his brightly colored and presumably shiny Oakley CEO hat and set out to start a revolution in digital cinema, most of us scoffed, writing off his intentions of building a 4K tapeless camera at an “affordable” price point as the ludicrous ravings of a millionaire seeking his extra 15 minutes. We ate our words a year ago, at NAB 2007, as the first Red Camera footage was put on display in a short film by mega-director Peter Jackson. As the year went by, and the fledgling company started to ship the camera in small doses, again, we started to feel the rumblings of a revolution as Stephen Soderbergh proclaimed his love for the new format.

But now it’s NAB 2008. So you’d think maybe this Red thing would pick up and start getting adopted.

Nah. Read on...

What is Animation, Zemeckis?

Outside, the writers’ strike rages on. Going into its second day, it has now become clear that the battle between the WGA and the AMPTP is unquestionably an uphill one. And I cannot write about film without mentioning it. But now that I’ve done that, let’s put our thinking caps on.

As many of you may know, Robert Zemeckis has been on a mission for most of his film career. A student of Spielberg’s (read P.T. Barnum’s) school of larger-than-life-cinema thought, Mr. Zemeckis has made a point of utilizing cutting edge technology in nearly all of his films. In this sense, among others, he has left a prolific footprint in the annals of film history.

His Back to the Future series pushed our imaginations to a new limit, while his Who Framed Roger Rabbit? changed the possibilities of live actors mixed with animated characters. (Remember that last film, it’ll be important shortly.) Toning down the kid in him, he earned an Oscar for his American opus, Forrest Gump, the first film to take advantage of the more realistic possibilities of digital technology. When you sit and think about it, the scope of his contributions is far-reaching. Read on...

Think Iraq is FUBAR?

We have been locked in a quagmire of a battle for years now and there is practically no end in sight. The public is crying out for an end to the madness, but neither Red nor Blue representatives have come up with a logical timetable to do so. Our leaders seem to be only concerned with the amount of money to be made by prolonging the conflict, rather than finding a viable solution to bring peace and freedom to the public.

That’s right. I’m talking about the Blu-Ray HD DVD format war.

Just this week, the armed forces’ favorite filmmaker, Michael Bay, aired his frustration over Paramount’s dropping of the Blu Ray format. While the rest of us banded together to simply label him a douche, as has now become common suffix for Mr. Bay, tantamount to Esqire. But the overpaid moron’s statements seems to be a reflection of what’s going on in the media industry in general right now. See, the whole concept of digital delivery is incredibly new to us, and the growing pains are drawn out and, quite frankly, awful.

So there are 2 amazing formats out there which have been started by various companies, Sony being the big cat in the Blu-Ray camp up against Toshiba’s rabid dog over at HD DVD. The tech specs on the actual formats are extremely confusing, but it mostly boils down to the same thing. They are both incredibly secure (though hackers have already gotten through to rip them) and both offer different flavors of sweet scripting, so you can write mini programs for some sweet special features. Both have extremely high capacity and thus, here’s the one we care about, can hold full frame HD media in progressive scan.

For those aware of HD’s 20-30 year history (depending on who you ask), you know that the fight to bring HD where it is today has been an ugly uphill battle, much of it involving negotiations with the FCC and other governmental agencies. If you consider how long the format has been around, you’ll see that it’s ridiculous how long things are taking. It’s nearly 2008 and still, few providers offer more than a dozen HD channels. We already have 720p TVs crossing well below $1000 and 1080p on their way, it is in fact conceivable to get HD into every Americans’ home. The Europeans may not have as many networks as us, but they’ve already got their shit together in the HD world, offering tons of cool content and televisions that we are yet to enjoy.

But that’s a different story. We’re here to talk about optical media.

The amount of titles available in these formats is enough to get a collection started, but the issue for us end users is picking a format. You don’t want to get the wrong one and then have all these titles, then have to repurchase them later. Sony should have been the declared victor by now, but a lot of things happened to keep Blu Ray down, much of it Sony’s fault. The biggest fluke was the Nintendo Wii, which has been killing the PS3 in the market. No one saw it coming. Sony has been reciting their mantra of function over form in regards to graphics performance and HD output, and Nintendo slipped right under their radar with a superior gaming experience.

For those not keeping score at home, the PS3 was setup by Sony to be the HD DVD killer. The PS2’s popularity was so great, Sony figured for the money you’d get a top of the line gaming system and a Blu Ray player, stock up on media, and forget about the competition. But anyone who’s ever used the PS2’s DVD player knows that it sucked…a lot. Beyond that, people are much happier shelling out $200 for a Wii than $600 for a PS3. The amazing part of it all is that the Wii is beating them EVEN THOUGH they are incredibly hard to find. After the PS3 mixup kept HD DVD alive, we’ve moved to our current state, with players being overpriced on both sides, making the decision to convert even more frustrating.

In the world of post production, where I spend my days and nights, this frustration is 10-fold, because we work with HD content all the time and have to deliver to our clients either cost-prohibitive tape or a standard def DVD. We’re in the process of testing Blu-Ray software, but it almost never comes out right. The only other option is to drop $25K on one of only 2 legit Blu-Ray authoring programs. The second is $50K. Why not go HD DVD then, you say, since Apple’s DVD Studio Pro supports it? Well, burners aren’t available in the US. So the confusion drags on ever longer, much longer than the Beta/VHS war went on.

Don’t forget, this format has been around over 2 decades and just now it’s gaining legitimacy. We’ve already begun inventing 2K workflows and the first 4K plasmas will make their way to the pro market soon. By the time the dust settles on HD, which I sorely hope will be in 2008, we’ll already be on to the next thing. Let’s hope we can pick up the pieces of standardization the next time around and not screw the public.