The Eternal Baby

Human children exert an uncontrollable charm upon other human beings, especially their parents and other vulnerable adults.

It's been said that it's a good thing that kids are so cute, because otherwise we'd all want to strangle them in their less than charming attempts to learn about the world.

Kids, however, grow up. In the process, they lose that special baby beauty.

Nature, however, has connived to keep replacing toddlers with other younger and upcoming toddlers.

It's a kind of replaceable part with planned obsolescence.

Baby born.
Baby cute
Baby grows up
Baby no longer cute.
New baby born.
New baby cute..

and on and on until our species wears itself out.

The new replacements are eternally beautiful. They're nameless as they are wheeled past in a perambulator, carried by in some sort of baby sling, and just wobble along the sidewalk in search of novelty.

It's that child with no label that we all love. Just the mystery of where they come from, where they go, and why they are so incredibly appealing and beautiful.

Transformers 2

Any eleven year old boy who loves explosions should already have pitched a tent in the closest theater showing Transformers 2.

In the first two hours of this pyrotechnic epic, more things are blown up than have been immolated in the past century of motion picture history. It is almost inconceivable that this much dynamite could possibly exist to begin with.

And just when you think that no building or military vehicle or villain is still standing and operational, the filmmakers find dozens more things to blow up!

Creativity like this must be acknowledged. Our hat is (blown) off to them! Alfred Nobel would be proud, and, indeed, perhaps it is time for the Nobel Committee to recognize quantity of explosions as a new category of world accomplishment.

Summer Stuff: The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"

Summer Stuff: The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"Publish Post

Womb Graduates

One morning I woke up and actually remembered something I had dreamt.

It was the phrase "womb graduate."

Seems like a useful concept to me (unlike most dumb things I remember when I wake up).

Most people view "birth" as "the beginning." But it 'taint so.

After all, we spend about 9 months in a womb, swimming and churning and listening to inner body sounds. It is like a little in vitro nursery school. So, when we get born, it's like graduating from Pre-School to Kindergarten.

Womb is stage one. Getting born is stage two.

So, too, there are "egg graduates" including chickens and eagles. Baby amoeboe are 'fission' graduates, aren't they?

We ought to get diplomas for "womb graduation" instead of a slap on the ass.

Why do MacIntosh Owners Feel Obligated to Convert You

MacIntosh Computers are just fine.

I don' t own one, but I've used them and -- except for the fact that most of them still have a one-button mouse which is kind of like riding on a unicycle instead of a two-wheeler -- they work just the way they are supposed to, and I can get stuff done.

What I want to know is why people who own them are endlessly and incessently telling everyone who doesn't own one how wonderful they are? Or posit Mac vs (whatever other kind of computer)?

It's kind of like Episcopalians telling Presbyterians what's wrong with them.  Or trying to figure out if Hulk can beat Superman (or Spiderman take Batman) (Or Wonder Woman whup Red Sonja).

Which afternoon was it that owning a particular computer became an article of faith, a mode of getting into heaven or acheiving salvation and not a tool for getting letters written or drawing pictures?

I don't get this kind of conversation about Nokia cellphones: only about Iphones.  I've had IPhone users shove them in my face and show how cool the little video games it plays are. Well, they're right: they are cool.

But.

They don't help me to make phone calls. They don't make the other person's voice clearer. They don't do the things that I expect a telephone to do. They're not cute and cuddly like puppies or kittens either.

Now kittens. They purr! Puppies chase balls and wag their tails when they see you.

I haven't seen a MacIntosh Computer do that yet.

Oh crud. Now someone will invent a purring Mac and tell me what I'm missing out on by not buying one.

It will remind me with a cute voice or a text message every five minutes: "Vibrations sent by I-Purr."

Maybe I shouldn't have written this.

Just ignore the man behind the curtain.

No Snowmen

It's been snowing off and on for weeks in Western New York State.

I've been walking and driving all over the area and so far, I haven't seen a single snowman!

Given that there don't seem to be kids outdoors anymore, this is not completely surprising.

But it's something like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.  

Life is vanishing outdoors.

The less people venture out into the winter, the colder the cold seems to be. It's like the reverse of air conditioning: The more refrigerated you are in July, the hotter and more unbearable the sun seems to be.

There are no snow forts either. Or snow balls.

Something is seriously missing. The world is a colder place.

Snow but no Kids

It has been snowing this winter. More than usual. But I noticed something missing. Kids.

There were no kids outside playing. None.

I'm pretty sure that all the children in this neighborhood didn't go away on vacation for three weeks over Christmas. No, I think they were home.  And indoors. Watching TV. Playing video games.

What happened to sleds and skis and cross-country skis and snow boards and snowballs and snowmen and snowforts and snowcones and skating and... ?

I guess it's warmer to ski using your WIIIIIII.

Just this evening, I noticed that Harbin China holds an ice festival. Apparently they've been doing it for 25 years. It's cold there. I mean C O L D. 19 below zero? (Don't know if that's C or F, but either way, it's cold.) 

There, they build huge ice scultures that are all lit up. And they have fireworks displays (in the cold), and there are LOTS of kids and other people running all over the place oooohing and aaaahing at the amazing ice sculptures. In fact, there are more than 800,000 of them enjoying themselves in the freezing weather. Not sure if anyone dies there of exposure, but given the warm snow suits that kids were wearing, I don't think so.

Have American Mommies given up on putting their kids into snow suits? Putting on the mittens and wrapping scarves so tightly around their kid's head that she can't breathe? I guess it's easier to park them in front of a Nintendo.

The good part was that when I took a walk in the snow, there was no one else around. There were no footprints, no tire tracks, just several blocks of nice white, clean smooth snow with my breath frosting in the air.

But I miss the kids screaming and laughing.

Maybe they'll come back next time it snows. Or maybe I'll have to go to Harbin, China to see children outside in cold weather.

To Octopus. A new verb

There are hugs and there are Hugs.

There are the namby pamby air-hugs that ladies give each other insincerely to avoid intimacy and smudging their make up.

Then there are friendlier hugs of greeting, football player crushing hugs of congratulations after they win the game, and other shades of grey in between.

But there are those totally entwined hugs (both erotic and not) in which the participants so thoroughly intertwine their limbs (arms and legs, necks and torsos) that the place where the hugger and huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

I think this deserves a better description than "hugging."

So, I've "verbized" yet another noun from "octopus" into "to octopus" meaning for two (or perhaps more) people to so totally entwine their limbs that the place where the hugger and the huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

Examples: They octopussed and then fell asleep.

The two kittens were octopussed as they took a nap.

The teenagers were so octopussed, it was hard to tell how they could stand up. In fact, they toppled over onto the bed, still octopussed.

You're free to use the new verb provided you credit me. You can send money, too. I won't refuse.

And have fun octopussing.

Benjamin Button, F. Scott and Me

This is another one of those fish that got away stories, or more definitely a story of a story that got away. If you don't like those kind of stories, skip this.

F. Scott Fitzgerald penned a lovely, edgy, witty little ditty called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button during 1921 or so in which our protagonist (like Merlin the Magician) is born an old man who as he gets older becomes younger until finally his befuddled family must hide a pewling infant as, we imagine, he devolves into a sperm and ovum and then vanishes. It seemed a truly delicious way to dissect a lifetime and a milieu and a culture and humanity and how we relate to one another, by turning it all upsidedown.

Benjamin Button always seemed to me the perfect candidate for a movie adapation, but there were problems.

The main ones were that doing the special effects twenty-five years ago was no picnic. Getting a fellow to age backwards involved make-up and casting. You can age someone from, oh, their twenties to their nineties without much trouble. A few latex appliances, wigs and some grease paint, and there he is,  an old man! It's the youth part that is diffcult. You must find a succession of teenagers, children and tots who bear a spitting resemblance to the starring actor as young guy. I recall the agonies of the casting director for Superman I hunting for someone to play Christopher Reeve as a teenager, child and infant. They had hundreds of casting photos all over the office and kept putting them up on the wall until they had a succession of boys who looked like they were the same person growing up. Then they had to be available, negotiated for, and quickly filmed before they grew yet more adolescent or less infantile.

The other problem was that no one in Hollywood liked the idea. Or, more accurately, they thought I was nuts. This never stops me: the list of films that I've wanted to make that no one liked but that got made anyway is awfully long now (Benjamin Button being the latest among projects that go all the way to Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddhartha which my agents all shook their heads at), so I've persisted all these years muttering and pleading until, at last, I realized that David Fincher, whom I've never met, was going to fulfill my dream.

David's got it easy. He has a track record for offbeat, if not downright weird movies, and he has the magic of CG special effects to back him up. It's simply a breeze in 2008 to make someone get younger and old: you just use the computer to map the face of the actor onto someone elses, tickele a few pixels and Voila! the aged or infantilized Benjamin Button. I envy him in the most respectful way. It's not that it's being handed to him on a silver platter, it's just that he was the right guy in the right place at the right time. And you can do a period drama with period locations without spending millions on building a 1922 city. I haven't checked to see if it is being done as a period drama of if he's updated it to the 21st Century. I'd have done it as a Jazz Age piece. There's something so appealing and appalling about that. Some of you, by now, already know what it is or if you're reading this after the release date, absolutely know, but I'm still curious and wondering.

Brad Pitt, of course, didn't exist when I wanted to do this. Heaven knows whom we would have cast way back when if someone in The Black Tower at Universal had said "Yes," but it wouldn't have been Brad. I'm sure he'll do a fine job, and surely bring in the audience or "an audience" of some sort, more than an unknown would to a film with an edgy, science fictiony premise like this one.

I look forward to it. Of course, I'll be sitting in the theater muttering under my breath and cursing fate once again. One of these days, I'll get to do the movies of the books that I've dreamt of for decades. Or not.

Are you guys with big bucks out there listening? I've got a BIG LIST of great projects and so far, I'm batting a thousand on which ones get financed, just not on when.

Kitties and Movies

Cats have virtually no interest in being the first in the neighborhood to see the new hit movie.

The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"

For the past two weeks I've been kicking myself for never having published an essay about my plans for using IMAX as a vehicle for action feature-films over 20 years ago.

I had seen North of Superior, a 1971 IMAX film, in the original curved-screen theater on Ontario Place in Toronto. In that amazing moment when the tiny first image in the film expanded to the full six or seven story height of the screen, and it felt like the building was about to tip over, my vision of the future of the cinema was born.

I wanted to make a James Bond film in IMAX. All of the exposition scenes would have been in horizontal strips across the center of the big, square frame or, perhaps, in smaller, multi-screen sequences ala Charly or the Johnson's Wax film, To Be Alive, of the 1964 World's Fair. But when Bond took to the air, or launched a car chase, the huge screen would be filled with swooping action shots, all sixty or eighty vertigo inducing feet high.

Of course, it occurs to me now, I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want them to steal this incredible idea, so -- until this summer -- you've never really seen a motion picture before in quite this way.

But, somehow, Chris Nolan used some diabolic mind-reading device (this is the science fiction age, isn't it?) to suck this idea out of my brain when I was sleeping or drinking coffee in Zabars or at some other moment when my guard was down, and incorporated it into The Dark Knight: The Imax Experience (as the execs at IMAX like to call it). The entire opening bank-robbery sequence, the climax, and interspersed aerial shots of Hong Kong and other cities were shot in full-sized IMAX, but all those endless exposition scenes were left in normal widescreen format in the center of the frame.

Well, it is small comfort now to say that I was right and it works just great, exactly as I imagined it. But in the long-past interests of secrecy, I never published the notion, and my film producing career never deposited me in the catbird seat long enough to realize the dream, so it's victory served up cold. The Batman team did a great job, but, of course, I would have done it better -- and sooner -- if only someone had listened to me and handed me the money.

There were, come to think of it, real discussions with George Lucas and Gary Kurtz about doing The Empire Strikes Back in IMAX during 1977 Not only did I try to twist their arms to do it, but, Gary told me years later, IMAX had secretly approached them and begged them to do it. What stopped it from happening were the limitations of photomechanical special effects: they would have looked terrible blown up on a screen that big. There were so many photographic generations, that the grain levels would would have looked like dancing basketballs enlarged on the giant screen.

Well, enough sour grapes and regrets.

Here's my new prediction.

Having tried for nearly 8 years now to put together my two new top-secret IMAX films, the steepness of the slope toward that goal is painfully apparent. So, I won't reveal the secret films, but I will tell you what I see in my Movie Crystal Ball.

It's summed up in the sobriquet: "Oh Grandpa! I don't want to see those dumb flat movies!"

When I started putting together an IMAX-3D feature film nearly a decade ago, I envisioned the arrival of a new cinema, a stereoscopic, dimensional one.

The invention of holograms seemed to promise 3D movies with no glasses that could float in the air in front of an astonished audience, but despite Joseph Losey's announcements to the contrary in the mid-1970s, no technology to produce that has materialized beyond some tiny, optical-laboratory experiments that never panned out.

Let's be clear for a moment. The term "3D" has been co-opted by graphic artists. The term has come to be used to refer to graphics that have a "round," rendered look. This is the "look" of WALL-E or The Incredibles or any of dozens of PIXAR animated films or the CG (computer graphic) rendered special effects in live-action films produced by Industrial Light and Magic.

But it was originally coined to designate movies or images that had true, stereoscopic, in-depth, pop-out-of-the-screen images viewed, usually, with either Polaroid or anaglyph (red/green) glasses. I've been calling this sort of three-dimensional movie S-3D or 3D-S to differentiate it from the diluted 3D term in common use for video-games. It's just possible, however, that over a period of several years -- if stereoscopic 3D becomes pervasive -- that kids will simply substitute 3D for the "new" stereoscopic version without missing a beat. But I'm guessing that a newer term will take root.

There have been several previous historic eras of stereoscopic photography. One lasted from the late 19th Century into the early 20th Century and was composed of "stereopticon slides" seen in a special hand-held viewer. There were some experimental 3D movies as early as 1894, but they were few an far between. In the 1930's there was minor upsurge in anaglyph 3D short-subjects shown as novelties using red/green glasses. In the 1950's, however, there was a serious "second-wave" of 3D pioneered by Arch Oboloer's Bwana Devil, a twin-projector, polaroid glasses feature-film thriller that sold out theaters and kicked off a two year frenzy of 3D movies that fizzled out just as Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant Dial M for Murder hit the screens. Let's call thsi the "First Golden Age of 3D Movies."

The "Second Golden Age" dribbles into existance from Arch Oboler's The Bubble (1966), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973) and really takes root through the late 70-s and early 80s with a seemingly endless series of Grade-Z horror and western films all of which used what is call "over and under" single-projector 3D projection. This wave ended rather more abruptly than it started.

Around the same time and in parallel, the original IMAX corporation developed a15x70mm two-camera 3D process which was and still is the most stunning presentation of moving stereoscopic images that we have today. However, these films were almost exclusively travelogues and science-related films, not dramas or deliberate forms of escapist entertainment.

The late 1990s saw the development of a new variation on 3D projection that utilizes a digital projector and an LCD screen to project alternating left eye / right eye images that are viewed through special circularly polarized glasses (that make it possible to tilt your head without losing the 3D effect). Walt Disney Pictures has embraced this technology and has released several films (Chicken Little, Hannah Montana, Meet The Robinsons, and others) using a version similar to the Real-D system.

Not to be left out, Dolby has developed a reliable, non-polaroid method that utilizes incremental differences in the frequency of color light which is much brighter and clearer than the Polaroid methods.

So here is my prediction and, hopefully, you've read it here first.

We are on the eve of the Third Golden Age of Stereoscopic Movies. This one, I believe, will be nearly permanent, and I've even gone so far as to predict that 30% of all new movies in the next few years will be produced in stereoscopic 3D. And eventually, ALL movies (and television) will be in 3D as well.

The crucial factor is the roll out of the infra-structure. There must be enough theaters capable of showing stereoscopic 3D for the studios to make money from it. The final obstacles to digital projection in commercial theaters are crumbling and it's likely that the majority of non-museum movie theaters will be converted to digital by 2015.

What's required here is the "3D Blockbuster." This must be the equivalent of The Jazz Singer in 1927-28. It was the first successful sound film (not the first sound film). It was the one that brought audiences to the theater and established synchronized sound as THE way to show movies. (Grandpa, I don't want to see those "silent" movies.) By the early 1950s color film had established itself, and black and white had largely vanished as a motion picture (or television form) by the 1980s. (Oh Grandpa! I hate those black and white movies!). In the 1970s, the desire to see Star Wars with stereophonic sound forced theaters to install Dolby Stereo systems by the thousands and established Dolby as the sine-qua-non of motion picture sound.

The result must be a critical mass of theaters capable of showing digital, stereoscopic 3D with stereophonic sound. How many theaters is this? There are an estimated 40,000 movie theaters in the United States. Perhaps there are triple that number in the whole world. I can only guess that it must be 1500 or more. That bears some resemblance to the early installed base of Dolby Sound capable theaters in the 1970s.

So where are we in 2008? Well, almost every multi-plex movie theater has at least one digital projector, and hundreds of them have the LCD panel necessary to show 3D, and more of those theaters are going online everyday. Various conversion projects are announced that promise thousands of 3D equipped theaters by Spring of 2009.

Now we need the "Blockbuster." There are two main candidates. Avatar and Star Wars.

Star Wars? Yes. As I type away here, Real-D is slaving mightily converting all six Star Wars movies to stereoscopic 3D. There is a computerized process that automates this, and the results (visible in the converted 3D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas released two years go) are stunning. Knowing the Lucasfilm perfectionism, this will the the ultimate in 3D conversions. Make no mistake, this is high-quality: Much better than mere cutting edge "colorization" of black and white movies.

When the first of the 3D Star Wars hit screens in, purportedly, Spring of 2009, every theater in the world will want to participate in this license to print money. There is no doubt that the promise of this goldrush will push reluctant venues to convert to digital so that they don't miss out. There was talk of having the 3D Star Wars released in 2008, but, clearly, this has been moved back because not enough venues were on board.

And then there is Avatar. James Cameron of Terminator and Titanic fame has, apparently, like me, dreamt of doing a 3D movie for much of his life, and Avatar is it. At 300 million plus dollars, it will be not only the most expensive 3D movie ever made, but also the most expensive movie of any kind.

According to the IMDB, Avatar is "the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival" Hmmm.... could be kewl. Given how expensive it is, it had better be very kewl. We'll find out in December of 2009, all things being equal.

It goes without saying that eventually Steven Spielberg will want to make a 3D movie. The animated TinTin (now in production) is touted as being that, but Steve will want to do a live-action film, his own Creature from the Black Lagoon or It Came From Outer Space.

Everyone in Hollywood, eventually, from Peter Jackson to George Lucas will want to get in on the action. And that, I'm suggesting, will form the basis of the "Third Golden Age of 3D.

Only this time, I think it will stay with us.

There are already patents filed for 3D television sets. I did my own developmental work on a lenticular system, but others have already built prototypes of similar systems that are operating on the streets of Germany right this minute. I've seen them demonstrated, and they are, though crude, very impressive. Spielberg himself has invested in a 3D-TV system of unknown design.

There's the sequence, then:
- Critical mass of 3D capable theaters
- The 3D Blockbuster
- Follow-up and copy-cat movies
- A home-television based aftermarket.

All of these elements are in the works and, barring unforeseen events, will come to pass on a discernable schedule.

"Awww Grandpa! Do we have to see that flat movie? I hate flatties."

"No Dear. You don't. Grandpa is just finishing up converting Citizen Kane to 3D for you. And we're doing Gone With the Wind and Casablanca next month."

And, let me tell you, the tools for Grandpa to do that already exist. I predict that the 3D handwriting is on the wall, and I guess I just wanted the satisfaction of -- at least once -- having a prediction like this in print before it happens. Then I can say, with impunity, "I told you so."

It's not as good as being able to do it myself, but then, if Cameron's movie does well, someone who reads this will come to me and give me my big chance.

I'm here and waiting!

And, of course, when the Hologram revolution finally arrives in 10 or 20 years, when some physicist finally works out a way to mould and bend light waves without benefit of a screen, the next Golden Age will begin. Maybe some of us will be there to witness it all as this pattern repeats itself once again.

WALL-E. Some film-making reflections.

By now you've either seen WALL-E or read something about the film (or WALL-E himself). Much has been made of the story-telling style of this unexpectedly remarkable film, so it might be worth swinging the flashlight around and attempting to illuminate another part of the picture.

It's facile to say that WALL-E is an homage to, say, Charlie Chaplin since no characters say much of anything until 40 minutes or so into the 98 minute movie. It's a bit more than a Chaplin homage, I'd venture: Motion Pictures as a form had no synchronous dialogue to speak of from the inception of movies in 1894 until 1928 or so. Deprived of "spoken" dialogue, thousands and thousands of films found a way to tell stories through body language, motion, facial expressions, editing, intertitles and the Stanton and Reardon screenplay is absolutely in the classic tradition of the so-called silent era. You have to watch the movie to tell what's happening. This is not illustrated radio (in the way that most modern television shows are which enable you to know what's happening even if you're in the other room cooking dinner and can't see the TV set). This is true "visual" story-telling.

What's stunning about this simple and quietly touching little fable (if one can stretch the definition of "fable" to include robots along with anthropomorphic animals) is the economy and richness of the script. There's hardly any wasted motion here, no fat in the meat, as it were. A second viewing reveals how wonderfully a detail pays off at the end. For example, each and every one of the "mad" robots released by the blast from EVE's disconnected arm plays a specific (and comic) part in the final chase scene. Rich in forwshadowing, the storyline shades in character, emotion, motivation all through tiny details: WALL-E's collection of his favorite garbage, the spare parts library, a tilt of his eyepods or twist of a mechanical wrist, and ultimately the precious videotape of Hello Dolly.

WALL-E himself is something of a simpleton, as one might expect from a robot intended to compress garbage, yet it's that incremental step up from "mechanical device" to "lonely being" that slides unnoticed past our critical inclinations that makes this whole thing work. The "acting" of what is literally a box-shaped garbage scoop on tank treads is amazing. Reduced to minimal cues to emotion, the animators have been forced to express character through the simplest forms of mime. Marcel Marceau would have been proud of them.

Nothing more than "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again" in schematic construction, the plot is woven intricately with the sort of science fiction detail that has -- until now -- been nearly impossible to create on the motion picture screen. I found myself thinking that the late Robert Sheckley, a seminal writer of speculative fiction in the 1940s and 50s would have loved this film. His stories were, twice, made into films (Freejack and The 10th Victim), but without the richness of modern CG graphics. One evening, about a year ago, I found myself watching an aerial shot of dozens of sailing ships gliding an 18th Century Harbor in Pirates of the Caribbean and realizing in that moment that virtually anything we can think of can now be shown on the huge motion picture screen in dazzling detail (soon to be followed by the same thing in stunning stereoscopic 3D). Now, here's WALL-E, the quintessential 1940's science fiction story fully realized in awesome reality 30 or 40 feet high in full color. [It breaks my heart that Ray Bradbury and I will never have the chance to bring The Martian Chronicles to the screen (as it should have been long ago) using this technology to re-create the retro-science fiction vision of the book. But that's a topic for another time.]

Few modern films have the simple, direct originality of WALL-E's screenplay. It has become de-rigeur to overload films with sizzle and flash and to leave the meat in the refrigerator. Young directors and editors, intoxicated with AVID and other non-linear editing systems, overdose with two-frame jump cuts simply because it's so easy to do so, and ignore the needs of telling a good story clearly. Not so here. This film plays out with effortless clarity. This has inexpicably become a nearly lost art. Somehow Hollywood has allowed its current product to become synonymous with "expensive computer graphics." Even the wonderful Star Wars series has gotten a bit too cozy with the aesthetics of computer games instead of the stories of DeMaupassant and perhaps this has led American filmmaking closer and closer to the slippery slope of entertainment based solely upon spectacle.

This, like the movie, is an essay theme worth re-visiting. Fine pieces of jewelry invite the owner to pick them up, turn them in the light, and discover new beauty over and over again.

In the end, WALL-E transcends its own technique and its very origins in digital bits and fractal equations. It's a softly whispered tale of loneliness, dreams, and loss. But most of all, it is a story of hope. Hope for the future, hope for mankind, hope for friendship and companionship, hope for the warm loving touch of a hard, cold mechanical hand.

And in the stunning climactic moment when the technological equivalent of fingers intertwine with passion and life, no words can express the fullness of the relationship between a square, clanking robot and a shining, white, flying egg with arms, and the promise that we, too, will survive our own pollution, technology and human follies with hearts -- filled like theirs -- with love.

Cultural Patriotism

Cultural Patriotism is the patriotic support of your country through culture and art.

What better route to international progress?

KinDzaDza You-Tubed

KinDzaDza has been YouTubed.

This is not the ideal way to see this film. But it may be the only way at the moment.

KinDzaDza Part One

WALL-E

Do you suppose that WALL-E is really named after Walter Elias Disney?

Window Kitties

Window kitties come and go. They are a big city phenomenon, mostly, but they probably exist in the burbs as well. Discovering suburban window kitties, however, is more problematical: it would involve cruising in a car or walking endless miles and peeking into windows as an unwelcome stranger. Cities allow us to peek into windows with impunity, and cats to peer out at us without censure.

One day these special cats are resting on a second floor window sill and following your progress down the street, the next they are somewhere else taking care of business: lunch, litterbox, or nap.

We usually don't know who they belong to, these window kitties. The owners are seldom seen with their paws on the sill next to their furry friends. They are behind the scenes, out working to support the litterbox, luncheon and nap.

There's something comforting about a window kitty looking out at you. It's through a window in winter and sometimes through a screen in the summer. It is someone who notices you walking down a New York side street when there is no one else around. Of course, they can't call for help if there's a problem, but window kitties have been known to meow a less-than-tentative hello toward faces they find familiar.

Not everyone likes them there, those window kitties, those finding them aloof and mysterious and impenetrable and their eyes piercing through to things that are too private. Many dogs have a goofy, friendly, street-level way of saying hello that's more immediate to a certain temperament.

Window Kitty One lived on a ground floor and vacillated between two bamboo decorated windows on West End Avenue. One could easily be at eye level with her when her eyes were open (usually not for long). But one day, the bamboo shutters covered with rice paper, were closed and Window Kitty One become invisible.

Window Kitty Two lived between Broadway and Amsterdam and you had to look up to her. Sometimes she'd mew hello through the screen because she was only by the window in the summertime. In the winter she probably had a warm spot somewhere inside.

Now Window Kitty Two is gone with her owner to some other place. Some other apartment. Some other city.

If It's Not in Google, Does It Really Exist?

Woe be unto those who were born before Google took over the world.

Alas! I learned to read books and newspapers and magazines. And -- gasp! -- I talk to people!

Not so, apparently, those who grew up with the Internet fully in place.

For the past two years, I have been trying to have the IMDB list a film I made in 1969. It's a real film, trust me. It's called Solstice, and it was shown at film festivals. Some of the people who made it became "famous." I even have a 16mm print of it, and, if you still don't trust me, I'll arrange to meet at a mutually convenient dark street corner and let you hold it in your hand, and I might even project it so that you can see that the images printed on the celluloid add up to a real living breathing "movie."

The faceless gatekeepers at IMDB (the Internet Movie Database to the rest of you) don't believe me.

"We can't find it in Google," they tell me.

"Well, that's because Google didn't exist in 1969," I tell them.

"Yes, but we can find most anything important in Google," they retort. "How about the distributor?"

The distributor was the New York University Film Library. But. They don't exist anymore. And they don't have a website. Maybe they never had a website.

I tell the faceless drone at IMDB this.

"But we can find anything important on Google," they repeat. "If it's not in Google, we can't add it to the database."

So what's the problem? Do they think I'm lying? Do they think the reel of film I'm holding in my hand is some sort of hallucination? Do they want a bribe? Probably not the latter, because they are too cowardly to tell me who they really are let alone supply an address to mail them a bribe. I'll have an easier time meeting you on a dark street corner to show you the actual film than to find out who or where these folks are.

This problem exists in spades on Wikipedia.

One of the main criteria for deleting facts on Wikipedia is how many entries about the "fact" the so-called "editor" can find when they Google the fact.

We have started an important new not-for-profit called the "Digital Nitrate Prize." Suffice it to say that this is a major service to film preservation: it will encourage the full preservation of the original beauty of real motion picture film in the inevitable transition to digital preservation and projection.

However, the "editors" at Wikipedia won't allow us to have an entry about the Digital Nitrate Prize. In fact, we're now threatened with being banned if we try to add it to the online encyclopedia!

There is, of course, the issue of who these "editors" are. Well, the answer is that I have no idea! Nor, I believe, does anyone else have any idea who they are. They are, one supposes, over weight nerds with some vaguely positive form of autism who can sit in front of their computors 24/7 and try to reject facts from being posted in Wikipedia.

To their credit, let me surmise that there must be the internet equivalent of the unwashed masses who would like to see their Great Aunt Minnie listed in Wikipedia who need to be deterred. I'll give them that. There are too many Aunt Minnies in the world for us to read about all of them in Wikipedia. The logistics of telling one Aunt Minnie from another Aunt Minnie makes my brain spin.

But benevolent not-for-profit cash prizes that will save the world's film heritage? How does that parse out?

These guys go by names like "NightRider" or "SlashAndBurn" or "UpUrFactz" and other cute names. I'm supposing most of them are guys because girls don't usually call themselves "DemonKnight," they prefer the internet equivalent of "FlowerDemon" or "DestroyerInPink."

I discovered yesterday that they get "points" for editing. If they make 100 edits, they get to display a little cute graphic on their page.

So "DemonKnight" wants to have this little graphic on his page and is vaguely incapable of doing real research. (We can safely assume that "DemonKnight" has never read a newspaper and plays X-Box simulaneously with editing WikiPedia. Perhaps there's a Nintendo version of Wikipedia that allows you to censor articles using a game controller). How does he do this? Well, you get points for deleting articles. Delete one article, one point! Delete 90 articles, 90 points! Delete 500 articles and you get an even bigger, gaudier graphic. Wow!

And what research does "DemonKnight" do? You guessed. He puts Digital Nitrate Prize into Google and counts how many times Google finds it. There must be a magic number, but we don't know what it is.

But apparently, if it's under 10 or so hits, or God Forbid, no hits at all, it doesn't exist. The fact of there being a board of internationally famous film archivists involved and discussion in the field about it doesn't seem to matter. It's not in Google, and it doesn't exist.

"Google ergo sum!" "I Google, therefore I am!" Take that Rene Descartes!




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LINKS
[Links for The Digital Nitrate Prize: http://www.answers.com/topic/digital-nitrate-prize ]

"Tuh" The New Word In Town

Unfortunately, I've done this myself, so rest easy.

The English word "to," a common and much beloved preposition, has been transmogrified into "tuh" when it is spoken outloud in sentences by an increasing number of Americans (and perhaps those in other countries as well, but I'm not sure because my sample is too small).

It's still spelled "to" (as if it were to be pronounced that way, too), but it is mostly pronounced tuh.

"I went to the store" comes out as "I went tuh the store."

This is not just another case of saying "nuclear" as "new-cue-lar" as one of our current politicians is so fond of doing. No, it is a little hard to keep your tongue moving properly when you say "nuclear" especially if you are not too fond of reading and spelling. Those who say "new-cue-lar" tend to spell it nucular, so they have an excuse. (In case you are confused, it is pronounced "new-klee-are" or something very much like that.)

But this new "tuh" thing is some sort of creeping tongue laziness. We can all see how it's spelled, for heaven's sake. It' s a two letter word composed of "t" and "o." It's hard to mess that up.

It's supposed to be pronunced like "two." They are homonyms, right? 'Two=to' when it comes to pronunciation. That should be easy.

"I want tuh go out tuh the movies."

"Did you take the book back tuh the library or did you give it to you dog to play with." Now there's one where they are differentiated. I think.

Perhaps "to" is pronounced correctly when we want to emphasize it. "Did you give it to her or did you just leave it on the table?" I'll bet you'd say "to" as "two" in that sentence, wouldn't you?
Not that I have any way to know, but when you are reading these sentences to yourself in your head, are you saying "to" as in "two" or do you misprounounce it in your mind as well? I tend to think "to" (as in "two") when I read silently to myself and while I'm typing this.

But, as I previously confessed, I (ahem) do sometimes utter the dreaded "tuh." "So I said tuh the guy that he oughta give it back tuh her! And he told me tuh shove it."

And perhaps you will, too.

Fewer And Fewer Fewers

Fewer and fewer of us use "fewer" as a word. It has been replaced by less.

Modern folks would say "less and less of us use "fewer," but that's wrong, not that you'd know it by listening to anyone else but me and a few of my foolish (or is that "few-less"?) friends. It annoys me to hear otherwise intelligent announcers on, say, NPR, saying "fewer" less and less, if at all. Every day, in fact, there is less use of few.

The difference, for those of you who are too young to remember or just don't or didn't care, is that "less" is for "amounts" of things and "fewer" is for numbers of things or people.

Here're the examples.

• There is less water in the short glass than in the tall glass.
• There are six people in the blue car and four in the red one. The red car has fewer people in it.

No one would say "please put fewer sugar into the pie," but no one seems to have a problem saying there are less people in that line than in this one.

That, I guess, is how language changes. It seems to become less precise and much less useful. (Intuitively, one does know that you wouldn't say "fewer precise.")

Is it just laziness on the part of the average person? Or is the difference between "fewer" and "less" just too hard to learn?

I have fewer and fewer ideas about it and less and less time to try to figure it out. Or is that less and less ideas about it and fewer and fewer time to try to figure it out? Nahhh... it's the first one, don't you agree?

Subway Gum

Years and years ago, they sold gum on the subway platforms in New York City. I don't chew gum any more, but I do see the ghosts of the gum machines.

There were little, flat, square, glass-fronted machines attached to the steel beams that hold up the underground ceilngs at Times Square. You put in a penny and pushed or pulled a lever and out slid chewing gum.

One kind of gum -- Beeman's Pepsin Chewing Gum -- came wrapped in a little piece of translucent white paper. It was flat and a little powdery when you folded back the wrapping. It wasn't quite soft, but not as hard as the pink slabs of bubble gum that came wrapped in every pack of baseball cards sold up until the 1970s. YOu could tell the difference between the pink gum and the baseball card because the gum shattered when you bit it and the cards didn't.

The other kind of subway gum was Chiclets. Those came two to a little yellow box that you had to open before the pieces slid -- white, shiny and pepperminty -- onto your tongue. The cardboard had it's own particular dry, gray taste for the moments that it rested on your tongue before the gum dropped out. Chiclet shells crunched under your teeth then the same way they do now until your teeth mix the shell into the chewy part and all the sugar and mint gets used up.

Under the gum machines were little metal baskets to catch the paper wrappers and little yellow Chiclet boxes. Usually the paper actually ended up in the container.

But the chewed gum was dropped willy nilly, helter skelter all over the subway platform and trampled until it formed hard black blobs on the cement.

Someone in administration probably removed the gum machines because of the troubles scraping the dried gum off of the subway platforms. The thousands and thousands of pennies the gum earned must not have made up for the labor of cleaning.

Ironically, that's the only part of this tradition that's survived: The hard black blobs.

I'm sure they're not the black blobs of my childhood, those were cleaned up or paved over long ago. But they look the same and have the same uneven feeling under you feet when you walk over them that spoils for a moment the smoothness of the cement.

I miss those machines. That was all of the fun: You put in a penny and out came gum. Pennies don't generate that much joy these days. I do so miss those machines.