I'm Actually Showing My Photography in Public

Sorry about the late notice on this one but this Friday, (4/30/10) I'm going to be participating in the UrbanCincy Visual Showcase as part of the Final Friday gallery walk. It goes from 6pm-10pm at 1220 Vine Street, where the A Lucky Step furniture store used to be. It's right across the street from Lavomatic, and two storefronts north of Senate.

Basically after all of the photography I've been doing over the years, I decided I really needed to start showing it to people outside my list of Facebook friends. Randy Simes, editor of UrbanCincy.com put me in contact with Jake Mecklenborg and Jeremy Mosher who are also going to be showcasing their video work and photography.

My work is primarily shots from around the uptown and downtown areas of Cincinnati, all shot in a variety of photography styles, most of them on film. (Yes, film!) The framed prints are for sale at $65 each, but I'll gladly take orders for reprints.

Also, I'd like to offer a special thanks to Mickey DeSilvia at Koji Studios for helping me out with the printing.

So, come on down, enjoy some wine and check out the neighborhood.

Remaking Death at a Funeral

Too Soon?

I had originally meant to do an article about Frank Oz's 2007 comedy Death at a Funeral on my Overlooked Movies blog. It was a nice simple British farce that had the potential to be the sleeper hit of it's year, but never got the promotional push it needed. Simple premise. The patriarch of a slightly dysfunctional British family passes away. A funeral is held. Antics ensue.

Then I found out they had remade it. Let me restate that. The movie only came out in 2007, and there's a remake.

As much crap as people give studios over remakes, there are admittedly valid reasons for doing it: the movie is old, obscure, foreign or a director wants to re-interpret the original. It takes the right combination of these factors for a remake to work, but a movie being old is usually an important one. Audiences don't mind revisiting the same stories, just as long as the original isn't still fresh in their minds.

Foreign films get a bit more leeway. Sometimes the premise of a movie could be good, but it's so filled with local cultural references that American audiences wouldn't understand them. Or, since foreign movies tend to have a stigma as being "art house" movies, it's sometimes better to remake the movie and market it to a wider audience if a movie's premise is too mainstream to be considered "arty".

It's why there probably would probably be an uproar if a movie like Amelie were to be remade today. It may be almost a decade old, but it still resonates with the art house crowd. At the same time probably nobody raised a fuss when the Spanish horror film [Rec] was remade as Quarantine less than a year after the original's release, because it's the sort of lowbrow horror movie that doesn't work as well mired in subtitles.

While Death at a Funeral is technically a foreign movie, it was still in English. Not only that, but it was made to cater to as wild an audience as possible. Despite being a British movie, none of the actors' accents are too hard to understand for Americans, and there aren't any references that you have to be a BBC America aficionado to get. Hell they even cast American actor Alan Tudyk in a role.

Everybody loves Alan Tudyk.

It's not like the British version was an amateur production either. There might be a weak argument for remaking it so soon if the original was in some way unpolished, but Death at a Funeral was every bit a professional production as any Hollywood movie.

If anything, doing a remake so quickly after the original is like telling the cast and crew, "Good job, but we're going to hire some more famous people to do it better than you did." Actually, there's one exception. They did cast the Peter Dinklage in both films as the father's secret midget lover. So either the producers of the American version really liked his performance in the original or there's only one short person in Hollywood.

There is no reason for remaking an English language movie this soon. It took them 12 years to turn the comedy The Dinner Game into the upcoming film Dinner for Schmucks, and the original was in French. They could have just translated the dialogue directly and pushed it out a year after the original's release, but it got the intermediary time it deserved.

I really hope that the instant remake doesn't catch on as a new trend in Hollywood. The Onion once joked that a bigger budget remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith was in the works just a year after it's release. Now I can't help but wonder if producers have their eyes on remaking American indie films. Does it really seem that far fetched anymore that some producer might be thinking about making Whip It again, except this time with Miley Cyrus in the lead role?

Some movies need more time to find their audiences than others; a fact that studios seem to overlook in their apparent rush to get two good weeks out of a movie in theaters before it's forgotten until it resurfaces on home video. If this formula was used in the past we probably wouldn't have heard of movies like Shawshank Redemption, a movie that famously didn't become the classic it is today until well after its DVD release. Instead of remaking movies, maybe Hollywood should work on fostering audience the movies that have already been made after they've been released on DVD.

Yes, I now own a Snuggie

There are occasional moments in your life when you step back and ask yourself, "What the hell am I doing?" Sometimes it's over a major thing, and other times over something minor. Last night I asked myself this question over a minor thing when I found myself sitting in front of my laptop wearing a Snuggie.

I need to explain why I now own a Snuggie. I really do. At no point did I ever watch the infomercial and exclaim aloud, "A blanket with sleeves? By golly I could sure use that!" No, like every sane person in America, I simply wondered to myself, how does this differ from a robe exactly?

Then a few weekends back, the bars at Mt. Adams held it's second annual Snuggie Bar Crawl. I'd seen photos of the year's previous bar crawl, and thought that any opportunity to run around town dressed like a crazy person in a group was not something to be passed up. A friend of mine who'd received a Snuggie as a gag gift a while back was also down for it.

So, I had to buy a Snuggie. I opted for one with a UC Bearcats print all over it, because I figured if I'm going to look crazy, i might as well sport some school pride while I'm at it.

Unfortunately, for various reasons we ended up not doing the bar crawl, so now I had a sleeved blanket on my hands. My initial reaction was to return it, but it struck me as just being one of those things. You know, something that's all the rage for a few years, then twenty years later your kids look at you and ask, "No really, you need to explain why people would buy a Pet Rock, and did you ever own one?"

I decided that someday I will look at my future children and say, "Yes, I too bought a Snuggie, and someday it will be yours."

Okay, actually I thought it'd just be a fun thing to leave around the house. A conversation piece. If a guest came over and complained it was too cold, before turning up the heat, I could throw them the Snuggie. (This might have actually come in handy the year I threw a Superbowl party and realized that no matter how high I turned the main thermostat up, my basement still needed a space heater.)

Once the decision had been made that I would keep the Snuggie, the next logical thing was to try it on. I stood in front of the mirror and decided that yes, I looked like a crazy person. A crazy person who was a Bearcats fan. After that it made sense to see if there was anything about wearing it that felt more comfortable than say, layering up or wearing a robe. So, I sat in front of my computer wearing the thing, meaning to leave it on for a few minutes only.

Then twenty minutes later, I realized I was still wearing it.

Awkward.

It felt like I had somehow legitimized the existence of a perfectly useless product.

Well, twenty minutes wasn't going to be any worse than a half hour more. I decided to use as advertised: on the couch, remote in hand, a snack by my side.

One thing they fail to mention in the ads is that the Snuggie is not meant for walking around in, unless you're Kareem Abdul Jabbar. The fact that it covers your feet may be convenient when you're on the couch, but if you need to walk about, you have no choice but to hike that thing up and trot about like a geisha wearing a backless hospital gown.

I would love to have seen how intoxicated people bar hopping in Mt. Adams managed while wearing them.

Once on the couch it turned out it was comfortable and practical; more comfortable and practical than I should really admit. Then again, I haven't yet subjected it to a true test. A chilly basement in the spring is nothing compared to one in winter.

I guess I'll have to wait another nine months to find out if a thin layer of synthetic fleece around the arms is that much more convenient than reaching over the top of a blanket.

Thoughts on Best Picture

Seeing how movie-centric my blog has become, I figure I might as well weigh in on this year's entries for Best Picture. So, in my opinion, this year's best picture should be...

Up.

You thought I was going to say Avatar, didn't you. I'll admit, considering how glowing my earlier review was, it seems like it would have been my logical choice. While it was good, I think I was still riding some kind of buzz caused by the 3D IMAX when I wrote that. If it were another year, Avatar probably would have emerged as the clear winner, but this year was such a good year for movies.

Even with the Academy boosting the nominees from five to ten, it still feels like some movies got left out, like The Brothers Bloom or (500) Days of Summer, which is apparently a fictionalized account of why I'm in love with Zooey Deschanel and why she would probably break my heart if I went out with her.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. So why Up and not a record breaking blockbuster like Avatar or a critically acclaimed sleeper hit like The Hurt Locker? Though the special effects of Avatar may have been breakthrough, the premise did feel like old territory. And I'm not saying The Hurt Locker wasn't a fantastic movie either, but the lack of a central storyline did leave my mind disengaged on occasion.

But with Up, that was definitely an original piece of cinema from start to finish. We're talking about a movie about an old man and a little boy dragging a house across South America. I can't even think of what movie you could compare that to.

The film has such a wide range of characters, all of whom are so well developed. Just look at Carl's wife. Her entire life story is told from childhood to death over a five minute montage, and yet she feels as integral a character to the story as everybody else onscreen.

As for the characters that are onscreen for the bulk of the film, you have to give credit to filmmakers that can throw an little boy, an old man, an older villain, a pack of talking dogs and a giant bird together in the same movie and not have it feel like it's geared only towards children.

I'll admit, it's not the greatest animated movie of all time, and some would argue that only a movie that's achieved that status should be the one to be the first cartoon to win best picture. That status probably goes to something like Ratatouille, The Iron Giant or Wall-E, just to name a few recent ones. But best of the year doesn't have to mean best of all time, and I just think it would be nice of the Academy didn't define "Best Picture" as the most intensely dramatic movie with lots of crying and shouting and shooting of guns, but rather as the movie people will still be watching in large numbers a decade down the road.

I should also admit that I haven't seen all of the nominees. I have yet to see The Blind Side, An Education, Precious or Up in the Air. Maybe if I get around to those, one of them will blow me away as being an unmistakably original piece of cinema that should be watched in large numbers ten years down the road.

But for now, my money is on Up.

Ten Random Movies to watch during a Snowpocalypse

So the weatherman says you're not going anywhere for the next few days. Lo and behold, it turned out he was right. Why not take this opportunity to call up a few friends within walking distance and pop in a movie? To help you figure out what to watch, here's a list of ten movies that have nothing to do with each other aside from the fact that they're easy to enjoy (and may or may not have some snow related elements to them).

Odds are you have a few of them in your collection too. If not, hopefully you're within walking distance of a Blockbuster.

10. Die Hard 2

Yeah. The first one is without question the best, but if you're going to be trapped at home in a snowstorm, why not watch a movie about fighting terrorists in a snowstorm? Just try to look past the fact that it involves a terrorist plot that probably involved months of planning, yet seems entirely reliant upon the fact that there is a blizzard on the day they try to pull it off.

9. Ratatouille

Every time I watch this movie I get a strange compulsion to cook a big fancy meal and knock back a bottle of wine. Maybe you're the same way, maybe not. But if you're not going anywhere for the night, it's a good dinner/movie combo. It would have made an even better dinner/movie/wine combo had Costco decided to go through with it's plans to sell Ratatouille inspired wine.

8. The Saint

A good heist movie is always fun, but this one is a personal favorite of mine. Maybe it's because this one strive to be slightly more epic than the usual heist movie. Instead of just being about a thief pulling off a big job, it's a big job that ultimately involves taking on the Russian mafia. The score for this movie is pretty kick-ass too (if you're into electronica). And if anything, this movie should put your little snowstorm in perspective, reminding you that at least you're not in Russia.

7. The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

This is one of those movies I think everybody saw and everybody loved. It's just a great revenge story that builds up slowly but keeps a good momentum going all the way through with all it's little twists and turns. Jim Caviezel as the Count is a guy you genuinely want to root for, and Guy Pearce is genuinely despicable as the villain. And dude... there's sword fighting!

6. The Wonder Boys

There was a running gag when this movie was released that it was the best reviewed movie of the year that nobody was seeing. I suppose it's because it's also a really hard movie to make a trailer for. The film follows an english professor, played by Michael Douglas, over the course of a weekend as his school hosts a writer's festival. All the problems in his life mash together all at once from his novel he can't seem to finish to the affair he's having with his boss's wife. I'd explain more, but that would just take away from a lot of fun of discovering the film's best moments for yourself.

5. Stardust

Yep. More sword fighting. I suppose I could have just as easily put The Princess Bride in this spot, but you've probably seen that movie to death by now, whereas Stardust is still building it's audience. Also, it's got one thing that The Princess Bride doesn't: a fight scene set to "The Can-Can" featuring Robert DeNiro in drag.

4. Gladiator

I don't know about you, but these days I'm usually too busy to watch any movie that pushes over two hours. I suppose that's what weekends are for, but it does sound a bit anti-social to say you're not going to meet up with friends because you want to watch a two and a half our epic. Hopefully when Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team up again for Robin Hood it will be at least half as good as this.

3. Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Sure, you can write it off as a chick-flick, but there's a reason why people are still making movies based on a book that's almost 200 years old. It's a story romance story which actually convinces you that the main characters are falling in love, as opposed to just being a few well paid Hollywood actors stuck in some gimmicky plot. This version also manages to be a costume drama without being a "stuffy" costume drama.

If you're only familiar with this story through the mash-up novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, maybe you can try watching this back to back with Shaun of the Dead to put you in familiar territory.

2. Superbad

'Nuff Said.

1. Your Favorite Disney Movie

I think we all have some movie that we thought kicked ass when we were kids then when we watched it years down the road realized it was so bad you almost wanted to apologize to your parents for making them take you to see it. (Personally, I'm still trying to figure out what was going through my mind when I dragged my parents to see Super Mario Bros. on the same weekend that Jurassic Park opened.)

However, I'm willing to bet two things:

• That Disney movie you loved when you were young will still be as enjoyable now as it was back then.
• You haven't watched it in years.

For me, it's Aladdin. After this movie came out I wanted my own flying carpet more than anything. (Okay, so I still do). Whatever Disney movie you get nostalgic for, the animation will still look sharp, the voice acting will still sound natural, and you'll probably still find yourself singing along to the songs.

So there's my list. Hopefully it helps. I suppose I should have put this out before this most recent storm hit so you could have ventured out to Blockbuster, or put one of these in your Netflix queue before you got locked in, but I suspect you've got at least one of these movies in your collection already.

This Might Qualify as Irony

As I mentioned earlier, I was at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, an event that was sponsored in part by AT&T. Early in the game they ran an ad on the JumboTron; it was the one where Luke Wilson tries to download a copy of himself on the Verizon network and on AT&T at the same time.

Suddenly, it struck me that now might be a good time to take a photo on my iPhone and upload it onto Facebook. I'd never really bothered doing the mobile upload thing before, but this seemed like as good occasion as any.

I took out my phone, and this is what I saw.

In case the what's going on here isn't immediately clear, let me spell it out for you:

1. I'm at an even't sponsored by AT&T.

2. My phone is exclusive to AT&T's network.

3. I have just seen an ad touting the superiority of AT&T's network over Verizon.

4. I have no service on my phone.

This wasn't a case of too many people trying to use the system at the same time and calls not getting through, which I realize tends to happen at sporting events. I flat out wasn't getting reception.

As the game went on, my phone finally picked up a signal, but still didn't have 3G service, or EDGE coverage for that matter. (EDGE is the high speed data service that AT&T uses where 3G coverage is not available.)

You'd think that an AT&T sponsored event is the one place in America that you'd be guaranteed complete service. Instead, I got the exact opposite.

My advice to AT&T: Instead of wasting your money suing Verizon, or making ads that argue Verizon's ads are only technically correct but are misleading anyways... fix your damn network.

Bearcats on Holiday

You wouldn't have known that Cincinnati was expected to lose the Sugar Bowl if you had been to New Orleans last week. Yes, we were all aware that Florida was favored to win. Even I, with my near-complete ignorance of sports rankings, understood that Florida was playing at a level that UC just wasn't at yet, Brian Kelly or no Brian Kelly.

But secretly, we all were expecting to UC to beat the odds. In fact, we were all hoping for a victory so epic that Disney would have been knocking on doors at UC the next day to buy the movie rights, and had you been there, you'd have thought the same thing too.

Cincinnati definitely represented itself down in New Orleans. So many Cincinnatians showed up that on New Year's Eve, everywhere I went, I ran into old classmates, old co-workers and people I knew just from around Clifton. Throughout New Year's Eve, all along that miracle mile known as Bourbon Street, crowds were spontaneously breaking out into UC chants. Meanwhile, Gators fans seemed to sheepishly roam about trying to find a bar where they weren't severely outnumbered.

If the idea of us winning seemed like a nice thought to entertain on New Year's Eve, we expected it to be a reality on game day. At some of the Sugar Bowl events around town, like the pre-game party at the House of Blues, it looked like a Bearcats-only event. Gators fans were becoming more visible around town, but the comment I heard most often out of them was, "No seriously, where are all of our fans?"

I think even the residents of New Orleans were rooting for us. As a hotel employee put it, "More of you showed up, which means more of you brought money into our city." Hard to argue with that rationale.

As the afternoon rolled on, the Bearcats collected at the Marriott where the team was staying. The lobby was eventually unnavigable and by the time the team was boarding the bus, we had overflowed into the street.

When everybody was seated at the Superdome, it was clear how many more Bearcats than Gators showed up to the game. Our student section was completely saturated. I think we filled up about 3/4 of the top level, while the Gators took up less than half. It really looked like we might win this thing after all, (if this was determined by crowd support).

Then kickoff happened, reality set in and I don't want to talk about it.

After the game, I thought it was going to be a bad night. I thought that either the Bearcat fans would hide out in their hotel rooms too embarrassed to go back out, or everywhere we went, Gators fans would be rubbing their victory in our faces.

Instead, there was a sort of mutual respect among fans of the rival teams. We couldn't argue that they played a better game, but they couldn't deny that we made a better showing to support our team, especially considering how much farther we had to travel to get to the game.