Archive for June, 2005
Destiny’s Child Breaks Up
At the height of a resurge thanks to a brand new album, Destiny’s Child has announced their formal breakup.
The trio took a break in 2002 to pursue solo interests, which included solo albums for all three of the singers. Kelly Rowland had a hit with Nelly called “Dilemma”, but Beyonce Knowles came out the most successful with five Grammys for her “Crazy in Love” album produced by Jay-Z.
Formed in 1997, the group had a rotating cast of members during the first year and a half. But with some of the members having toured together since they were around the ages of 10, it was time for them to fully go after their own interests.
My own opinion, we won’t ever hear from Michelle Williams again since we didn’t hear anything from her solo albums, and Kelly Rowland will have one more good solo album and either become part of another group or fade into the distance. The lone performer that will last will be Beyonce, and at 23 years old, she will probably be one of the most successful female R&B artists of all time.
Bandits (2001)
Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thorton, and Cate Blanchett this is the story of the “Over night Bandits”, or in other words, Willis and Thorton found the best way to rob a bank, is to kidnap the owner the night before and walk in before the bank opens and their are other people to account for.
Willis and Thorton escape from jail together in the beginning of the movie, an unusual pairing with Willis being a tough guy, and Thorton a obsessive compulsive. I have determined I either don’t like Thorton in anything since Slingblade, or I don’t like Obsessive’s other than Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it gets”. These two guys are bouncing all over the US, without an end in sight, a perfect plan that can’t be stopped until they accidentally kidnap Blanchett and both men fall in love with her. Things start to unravel, and they pull off one last heist to put them in the black for good.
What I liked about this movie was Blanchett, I haven’t seen in her a movie where she wasn’t a weirdo, instead she was desirable in this movie as a feisty, intelligent redhead. I also loved the ending of this movie, I did not expect it at all, especially after how most of the movie was told in one big flash back. The movie starts out pretty slow, but builds to a good ending and drama between the three characters.
An ok movie, if you like any of the cast, you might try this one. Not too vulgar or violent, this is a comedic movie, just don’t expect to be blown away.
The Interpreter (2005)
This movie was a great surprise. Starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, this movie shows how sometimes, in the end, no matter how good a person can become, their past can haunt them, or vice versa.
Nicole Kidman was smart and believable as The Interpreter, with an upbringing in southern Africa she is able to speak a tribal dialect that only a few others on the earth can speak as well as English. While returning back to the UN building to get some of her things, she overhears an assassination plot spoken in this language and fears for her life. She has people all around watching and tracking her, most of them wanting her dead.
Sean Penn does a good job as usual, always with emotion right at the surface. Penn is an FBI agent that wants to help, but tries not to get too close, as he investigates the accusations she is making. As he digs deeper into Kidman, he finds a painful and sorted past that includes half of her family killed in the war in Africa and photos of her at rebellion rallies to overthrow the country.
Everyone should see this. You never know how it will turn out, whether she is really evil and hiding it, or if the FBI will find the killer among so many people that happen to be in one city, all at once. Kidman and Penn do excellent jobs, without too much foul language or too much gory violence.
I Heart Huckabees (2004)
Oh Boy, where to start. I think it is Jason Schwartzmann. Maybe it is Dustin Hoffman, he has been in a ton of weird roles lately, or maybe it is Naomi Watts, who is in a bunch of oft kilter movies herself. But this movie is philosophical and weird, and will make you laugh if you step back and think about what you just saw. From Lilly Tomlin and Hoffmann running around with their spy equipment looking through garbage cans, or Mark Wahlburg and Jason riding bikes around in a fireman’s suit and suit respectively. About finding deeper meaning to things in life, Schwartzmann hires an agency to help investigate a coincidence he has had, running into a Nigerian man on three separate occasions. The movie kind of takes off into strangeville from there with commentary on capitalism, beauty, and development.
If you like movies Schwartzmann has been in, you will like this. Otherwise, stay away from this unless you are drunk and feel like thinking way too hard about things. This isn’t one of those enjoyable weird movies. Like his breakout role in Rushmore from 98, you wonder why there was any acclaim for this movie, I just was a sucker for a cool graphical marketing campaign.
Hostage (2005)
Wow! This was one heck of a movie. Hostage, as you would get from the previews, has a dual meaning. Bruce Willis is a retired negotiator whose family is taken hostage so that he may negotiate the proper setting in a hostage situation with a family to help out your corrupt bad men.
Three boys on what seems like a joyride end up at a mountain side home of a rich man, and two of them decide to steal his car. But as it always happens, this escalated very quickly into something much more. Soon they were in the house, taking a family hostage, and then a cop checking on the house is killed and an alarming situation is taking place.
Bruce Willis, haunted by his past, haunted by the people he believes he has let die, is a sheriff in a small town. He gladly turns over jurisdiction on the hostage situation to state authorities. But then some corrupt men who need information out of the house take his family hostage and he is forced to take hold of the situation, and make sure that the area is secure until more evil men can arrive.
This movie is extremely violent. On the edge of your seat, nervous, I was never sure what was going to happen. One of the boys inside turns out to have some sociopath ic qualities and quickly becomes more than anyone can handle. Bloodthirsty and beyond creepy, Ben Foster really steps it up to make this character unbelievable, after his first couple of movie roles where he played wimpy characters.
Bruce Willis gives such an emotional performance, as does the whole cast, the whole thing seems a little to believable. An awesome movie, that is hardly a warm and fuzzy but more of a jaw dropper, if you can take the violence, this is a really sweet movie with an original story.
Trip to Sacremento / San Francisco CA
We were looking forward to this trip for a year. I admit I was nervous about the whole thing, and then before we knew it, like it always happens, we were wondering where it went. This is a pretty large amount of photos, and a good deal of work doing some simple Shadow/Hightlight correction on them cause my camera sucks.
We left late after work on a Thursday and spent something like 4 hours in the air flying to Texas and then north of Sacremento. We found our hotel, bought a room for Thursday, with reservations for Friday and Saturday, and crashed.
We slept in on Friday, but did eventually head downtown Sacremento. There are some photos of that. We rented bikes for a day and rode up and down the river the runs to the west of Sacremento and we also walked around a good deal in Old Sacremento. Old Sacremento is a bunch of country saloon type shops selling all sorts of knick knacks and souvenirs, basically everything I was not interested in. However, there were candy shops with barrels and barrels of salt water taffies, my favorite. The kicker, Free Samples! So that meant, you could eat as many as you wanted, in the store, as long as you didn’t feel guilty. My limit over two candy stores was probably somewhere around 50 pieces. Ha ha, suckers. Sarah didn’t participate as much, but she enjoyed it too. We rode past the stores a couple of times and each time I would ask her, “You wanna go get more free candy?” “Sure”, she’s thinking, “That is the last thing you need ride now you hyper-bean.”
Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at none other than Bucca Di Beppo up in Roseville where Chip and April live. That was a good time, and the first time I had seen a lot of people since our Wedding a couple of years ago. Plus I got to meet Traci, who is great friends with Jerry, Avi, and Michelle. After dinner we got to catch up more and then continued our free alcolhol frenzied binge by going back to April and Chip’s place until like 1-2 in the morning. Some things never change, and drinking is one of them.
Sacremento is a really pretty place, all of the trees and brush, and their apartment really reflected that in the earthy colors and whatnot. At the party I talked with John, Chip’s old roomate. He’s awesome and he has done some really interesting things since college, including getting engaged the prior week in CA to Shannon, who I worked with in the cafeteria at U of M. So long and short of it, lots of reminiscing and good ol fun.
Saturday Sarah and I had to take the bikes back. Then we walked about three miles back across the city to our hotel. We got to see the downtown more and more of the amazing trees and other growth that makes the whole place seem very tropical. Like Indy, few tall buildings, but the city seemed to be spread out over a large suburban area. The main attraction was a 5-6 block open air mall that ran right into Old Sacremento. Suprisingly, I guess I don’t really have too many photos of Old Sacremento.
I took a quick dip in the pool in late afternoon and then we headed to the wedding. Really romantic, it was a small setting in a vineyard. But holy hell was it windy. The place settings were blowing over and the glasses were breaking, and it didn’t really let up all night. Set right by a river, it got colder as the night went on, it made for quite a memorable experience. But nice little, very short, ceremony. We couldn’t barely hear them, the DJ was set up in a way that the microphone was giving them major problems. Great food, cool party favors, and of course, a ton of dancing and more free alcolhol. It has been so long that I have drank four days in a row, and it was a blast.
We got out and on the road Sunday morning at checkout. We made a quick stop to visit a local comic book store and then went out on 80 to San Francisco. The highways are so barren on the sides, but in the middle mediam, they have these gorgeous bushes with blooming flowers, really pretty.
We stopped to take a tour of the Jelly Belly factory and learned all sorts of neat things about how huge taffy is made into small little christmas tree rolls, and how much president Reagan liked Bellys. We checked out the Budweiser factory, but they weren’t giving tours on Sunday. I took a photo, but looks like it got messed up cause I don’t have it now.
We got into San Francisco around 3:30, and that was a small adventure. Jen Beyer was staying with her roommate from college, who lives there now. I got directions from them at the hotel, and was desperately trying to find my way around. I really only got turned around once before I made a call from a payphone. Dirty area that I made it, I just pulled over with my flashers in downtown, cursing that I didn’t have a cell.
We did find their place, and they happened to be up in those apartments you always see on the steep streets, close to the top of the city. It made driving fun, and not fun. We got to see so much from their place, and actually driving over the Bay Bridge, like Golden Gate and Alcatraz, but really the hills are scary to drive on.
We relaxed for awhile at their place and then we headed out for some dinner, Jen, Regan, and Geniveve (roomates). We hit up a mexican restaurant that I thought was ok down in a really dirty part of town. But it really gave us a true experience of the area with all of the interesting bums coming up to you, probably addicts, and all of the colorfully dressed folks. We-hoo, I am from Indiana, Folks huh?
Funny story, we took a cab to the other side of town to get the restaurant. I had given the Avi – Jerry crew a call to see what they were doing, and then all of sudden they go walking by the window. I dashed out and got their attention and we hooked up ten minutes later when we were all done eating. We found a bar down the street that was a small little hole in the wall, but we took over a small little room with a large bay room window like seat in the back. It was loud and fun, we had some video games there that we played, and we had some drinks. At one point I found I was shouting so loud that I looked over and a group of 6-7 locals were staring at me. Fun stuff.
Monday Sarah and I got up at a decent time and took a loop around the city. We went to the top to a cathedral, and then took a trolley down to the docks. By the time we were heading back, we were hungry, tired, and hot. We were desperately trying find slices of pepperoni pizza, but had no luck. The whole city is artistic I guess, all of their pizzas were filled with chickens and greens and junk. We just stopped and got something at their supermarket, Trader Joes, which is like a health food store too, and headed back to Regan’s place.
Regan works for Gap, and works directly with the seasonal lines of clothes, and her place is gorgeous. Wood finishes, big, great view, nicely redone kitchen with a stainless steel fridge, I was jealous. We ate some pre-lunch and then got ready to head out. Chip’s old buddy from back home Philadelphia, who also lives there now, reserved a spot at Golden Gate Park. This park was huge, it spanned for miles and miles. I was surprised we found them as easily as we did, and I was surprised how easily I remembered how to parrell park this whole trip, even on steep inclines.
We hung out there, the whole group that was at the wedding minues John and Shannon. Easily 25-30 people there, it was a ton of fun. I got to meet a couple of new people too, Tim, Tony and Tom, no joke. Tom was Bruno’s roomate in DC, Tony was Tom’s good friend, and Tim was a childhood friend of Chip’s from Philly. The whole group did some frisbee and played a great game of football for awhile. I tried to take it easy, as I was in the last couple of suggested days of rest for my arm, but I didn’t do that so well.
It was bittersweet to say goodbye, I guess we just have to wait for someone else to get married now to have everyone in the same spot again on the planet. I took a car of people including Chip back to Regan’s to get everybody’s stuff. That was tough being the escort for the day. I didn’t mind, it was just stressful driving around San Fran, especially getting used to the lights not hanging above the streets. I just about blew through a red and got smashed.
We dropped people off downtown that were going to the bar again, and we headed out for our flight back in Sacremento. If I didn’t say it before, it was so good to see you guys, Jen, Avi, Jerry, Michelle, Traci, Regan, April, Chip, and all of the other cast from college.
It was a long night for us. We flew late into Texas again, and early out of there, not really sleeping all night until we got back to Indy, where Chris picked us up. Sarah came home and zonked for the day, I showered and went into work. But when I came home I passed out for a couple hours. I was tired, but I was happy. I was worried about the trip, but it was a ton of fun and a great memory.
Vectorizing “The Glob” Characters from sideart
I got some 6 hi-res photographs of The Glob sideart last night from Richard. It is pretty simple, so for fun I went ahead and did one of the characters this morning. I traced the Frog in just under an hour.
I will probably work on The Glob himself next.
