Month: November 2003

Benshi, Kabuki, Clara Bow

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I seriously need some benshi movies.

Back in the days of silent movies, the soundtrack to the movie (if there was any) was performed live. In America, usually this would be in the form of pipe organ music, which had been composed specifically for that feature… sometimes the restored theaters here (the Paramount and the Stanford) in the bay area show silents with the original scores, performed live on a Wurlitzer organ, a piece of machinery so huge it was built into the walls of the theater. It’s extremely cool, and if you bring a date I can almost gaurantee you will get laid.

In Japan however, they didn’t have pipe organs- they had shamisen (a really funky 3-string guitar now usually played by old ladies) and koto. And they had benshi– commentators who would narrate the title cards (the slates with the dialog written on the screen) in the different voices of the characters. They were extremely skilled and some, like “Tokugawa Musei,” became quite well-known.
I urge you to try to see a benshi-commented movie; there are a few subtitled films out there somewhere… if you have ever seen kabuki you will see the similarities in the cartoony voice style. If you have never seen kabuki, mark your calendars for the next time a tour comes near you, or get on a plane immediately to see it in Japan! Japanese animation owes a lot of its exaggerated mannerisms from kabuki. If you haven’t seen Japanese animation… I don’t know. You may be beyond my aid. Go turn on a TV or something.

Back to slient movies: I recently read this article on “talkies”, or movies with the sound we all take for granted today. Snarkout has some great articles, and I’m assuming takes its name from a Daniel Pinkwater book, which is extra cool points right there.

I love Clara Bow. Snarkout’s author, Steve, mentions that although at one point she was the “it girl,” her career was ruined by the advent of the talkies… her voice was just too annoying for most audiences. But one thing Steve doesn’t mention is that she was the original “it” girl- the one who was first associated with that slang phrase. An “It girl” today means the girl of the moment, someone who is recently very popular, who is getting incorporated in seemingly everything… Originally, “It” was sex appeal, but the newspaper reviews could only allude to this due to the social standards of the day (the 1920s).

He also left out Valentino! That guy was great.

I seriously need some benshi movies. And I need some Clara Bow movies. And so do you!

I Am A KALX Dupe

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I think I am unwittingly providing danh with a schtick… He’s DJing this morning on KALX. The process goes soemthing like:

  1. He announces the KALX phone number
  2. I call in and make a request, usually something I know about because I heard it on KALX !!
  3. then he makes an announcement about how they don’t have it

it’s kind of comical; he should start making up bands that have supposedly been requested, with funny names

Halftone borders in Photoshop

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Xtreme!!!Neat effect huh? With the bubbles?

It’s the “Xtremely Xtreme” logo as seen in the GhostHouse movie “Xtremely Xtreme.” How did I do this?

  1. Make a new layer for your border.
  2. Make the shape that is roughly the dimensions you want the core of the “toned” border.
  3. Select the shape… I usually use the magic wand.
  4. Invert the selection (Select : Invert).
  5. Hit “Q” to switch to mask mode. Everything should turn your highlight color, for example pink.
  6. Use the halftone filter in the menu bar: Filter : Pixelate : Color Halftone.
  7. Mess with the radius and angle settings a couple of times. I find it easier to use a solid color that is a single key, like say black. That way you are only changing the offset angle of a single channel.
  8. when you get the effect you want, you should have a selection with a lot of bubbles… while on the selection tool, do a “fill.”
  9. just to be anal, invert the selection and fill with a different color.
  10. Alternately, choose one of these and just hit “delete” (backspace on the PC). This will make this a big mask, so for example if you want some complex pattern on a layer underneath to show through the bubbles, or be the background underneath the bubbles.

Since I’m using this for video, I need a thin border in a contrasting color around the halftone bubbles- I don’t have control over the background, because it will be constantly changing.

  1. Select the mask you made by using the magic wand with a large tolerance (for example 30).
  2. Grow the selection uniformly by choosing Select : Modify : Expand in the menu.
  3. Now you have a background mask for your mask! Without changing the selection:
  4. Pick a foreground color which is contrasting to the mask body.
  5. Make a new layer and make sure it is active for editing.
  6. Use “fill” on this grown selection.
  7. Make sure the layer is the immediately next one from your first “border” mask.

That’s it!

I Want A Nazi Jet For Xmas

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Looks like someone is implementing my wacky dream of building Messerschmitt 262 replicas.

The Me 262 is the experimental Nazi Fighter Jet which thank goodness was delayed in production due to the decimation of the German-controlled resources towards the end of World War II… In an era where the entire air campaign was being fought with propeller planes it would have made short work of the entire Allied fleet.

The Me 262 came in a couple of variants, including the base fighter and bomber models. Mine would be the “Me 262A-1a Nightfighter” which was intended to be used as a night-flying jet, equipped with radar… of course since radar was a new technology in 1944 it had these giant antennas on the front of the plane that look like the monstrosities suburbanites used to put on their roof in the days before cable or satellite televsion. All it’s missing is giant skull & crossbones – the perfect supervillain transport!

The Me 262 has a brutish and functional look, and fits well with all the “alternate history” stories where the war continues past 1946, like “Luftwaffe 1946” by Ted Nomura (from Antarctic Press).

“Taking Aim” at the CIA

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Taking Aim is an extremely left-wing radio show… I recently heard a piece supporting the recent “out-ing” of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in their show “Outing the
Gentlemen Killers of the CIA, Part I.” Yikes.

Their argument is, the wrong questions are being asked… the law that makes the leaking of Plame’s involvement illegal is itself regressive, since its only purpose is to mask atrocities the CIA is committing on a daily basis.

It’s an interesting take, since the Democrats are using this incident in its more traditional setting of “someone on the Bush administration broke the law and needlessly endagered the life of someone who didn’t agree with them,” which is of course valid… but it makes you re-examine the more basic questions, like “should the American taxpayers be sponsoring terrorism in the form of the CIA’s operations abroad?”

In case you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, Joseph Wilson is an ex-ambassador to Iraq (under the Bush Sr. administration) and a generally credible person, who recently debunked the current administration’s assertion that Iraq was getting uranium from Niger. At the time of the investigation, Wilson did the research, as directed by the White House… he came back with a negative report- such a thing was very unlikely. The White House used the information anyway in, among other places, the State of the Union address.

Months later, Wilson went public with this gap between what he advised and what the White House wanted to hear. Then, seemingly in retribution, administration officials then blew the cover of his wife (Valerie Plame), who was apparently a CIA agent. Incidentally, this act in itself is illegal under a law passed under the previous Bush administration… but you can read all about that in the mainstream press.