MarkKawakami.com

Office Wars: Escape From North Brand

A couple of years ago, my friends Noka and Jason set out to do a very ambitious thing: A Star Wars fan film. Lots of people make fan films, but to be totally honest most of them blow. Now, even though they're my friends, and I worked on it (got Director of Photography credit!), there's no reason to presume that I'm biased when I say this one doesn't blow. Just the opposite in fact. Actually, the opposite of "blow" is "suck", so, not the opposite. At least not the denotative opposite. Connotative opposite, that's what I mean.

An insatiable desire for precision frequently paints me into linguistic corners.

Anyways, After three hard weekends of filming (and if you've ever done any film work, you know that even simple things — that don't involve special effects, stunts, acting and sound — are considerably harder than they appear) and an incredibly long time in the editing/special effects bays, the movie is finally done.

Actually, it was done quite a while ago, but now it's up on IFILM, and thus available for you to see. But you can watch it right here! Don't worry if you don't get the in-jokes, this started as a semi-work related project. Plus, in-jokes, like monkeys, are always funny.

So fire up some popcorn and sit back for some lightsaber-y goodness. If you feel so inclined, feel free to notice the surprisingly good choreography, the excellent direction, and the very detailed effects work.

Enjoy!

Incidentally, please let me know if you have any problems viewing this clip. I'm trying a different method of embedding and I want to see how it performs under various browsers, platforms, etc. If you do have trouble, you can see it on IFILM here.

Blog Guilt: Post worthy things that deserve (but won't get) elaboration.

The new job is going well, but it doesn't leave me as much free time as I used to have. Which means posting has fallen wayyyyy off. So I've got a bunch of posts running around my head. So rather than actually do the full-drawn-out super verbose post thing, I thought I'd just summarize. Though, don't get used to this brevity thing, it's really not my style (as evidenced by an overly-long introductory paragraph that really doesn't need to be there in the first place (and an even more unnecessary parenthetical (and so on))). Verbosity will resume next time.

A webpage I worked on was on TV! Specifically, this one. It's a promo for VH1 and IFILM's "Show Us Your Junk" contest for their Webjunk 20 show. It was only on screen for about half a second, and I didn't technically design the page. Or write the copy. I did however choose yellow for the heading colors. I mean, the shade of yellow was already chosen, but you know... we could have used white. OK, technically I didn't do that much for the page besides making sure it exists but hey, how many of your web pages have been on TV, huh? Huh? That's what I thought!

Stuff I've re-read: I recently re-read "Set This House in Order" by Matt Ruff. It's about a guy with Multiple Personality Disorder (technically, Dissociative Identity Disorder) who meets another person with the same condition. It's an astonishingly good book, one of my favorites and I recommend it to pretty much anyone who asks for a recommendation. I decided to re-read it after reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time, which is about a kid with Autism, and one good brain thingy deserves another.

Surprisingly, I'm not ashamed to admit also re-reading Jaws: The Revenge, the novelization of the movie by Hank Searls. It's not surprising that it's better than the movie, you'd have to have some sort of active hostility to qualities like character, plot, believability and not sucking to be worse. But it is surprising that it's actually pretty good. I mean, it ain't Walter Mosley, it ain't James Ellroy, but it's definitely much better than it has any right to be.

Deadwood, Entourage, etc. HBO is now airing the third seasons of both "Deadwood" and "Entourage" and they're really good. Season two of Deadwood wasn't as good as the first and season two of Entourage kicked season one's ass. But that's almost totally irrelevant: Both shows are at the top of their game right now.

In other HBO show critiques: "Lucky Louie" can be funny, but way too much schlong. "Tourgasm" sucks, comedians not on stage are boring as hell.

ABC rips off Telemundo: OK, everyone, my favorite reality show is not "Survivor". It ain't "The Amazing Race". It ain't... uh... those are the only two I actively watch anymore; It's a show I don't even understand. In 2001, flipping past Telemundo, I discovered the greatest show ever: "Protagonistas de Novela". It was like a cross between "Big Brother" and "American Idol", only "American Idol" didn't exist yet. Basically, they had a bunch of contestants in a house, a la "Big Brother", but they were competing for a spot on one of Telemundo's telenovelas, which for those of you not versed in Spanish-language television, are the night-time soap operas that are surprisingly watchable even if you don't speak Spanish, which I don't. Now, that should make watching Spanish-language reality television difficult, but Protgagonistas did two things that helped tremendously in that regard: First off, the contestants frequently wore t-shirts with their names written on them. Wow, that makes things easier! Every reality show should do that. The second thing was that the show was also really well edited, a fact you can only appreciate when you don't speak the language. It was far better edited that Univision's rip-off "La Academia" (or whatever it was called). And the show was extremely entertaining because of the HUGE arguments the contestants would get in, as well as the elimination process which involved the (patent pending) "Cara a Cara", literally "Face to Face", where the contestants would call each other out and say to their faces why they were voting for the other person. Doesn't matter that I couldn't understand a word, pissed off is pissed off in any language.

The next year, they had the possibly more interesting "Protagonistas de la Musica", which was even more like "American Idol", in that the contestants were competing for a recording contract. This is, as far as I can tell, going to be what ABC will be ripping off with "The One", their mix of "Big Brother" and "American Idol". It can't possibly be as entertaining: First of all, Network reality show contestants appear to be much more skittish about having sex with each other (oh, did I mention that? Plenty of bumping on "Protagonistas"), plus they won't have the impossibly hot Rebecca Montoya (or for the ladies, Facundo). And the impossibly hot Rebecca Montoya was reason enough to watch.

Veronica Mars: Col. Mustard in the Ballroom with the Wrench?

Categories: Television

OK, I don't know how many of you watch Veronica Mars, not too many, if ratings mean anything. Anyhow, VM employs the "Buffy Model" of television, where there is a season-long storyline that is resolved by the season finale. Basically, each season has a central mystery that drives the plot, along with the mystery of the week of each individual episode.

The cool thing is that means viewers get a very complex, twisty and involving mystery to sink their teeth into. Tomorrow night is the season finale where we're going to learn who finally caused the bus crash that killed eight students way back in September.

My friend Jason and I have been watching this all season and in case either (actually both, our theories are extremely close together) of us have gotten it right, I wanted to post it tonight, so that I can say "Ha ha! Figured it out!".

Of course, if I'm wrong, well... public humiliation and proof that it's good I didn't become a private investigator.

Anyhow, I'd summarize the season, but it's way too complicated. Jason's insanely detailed notes run 22 pages long. But here's a super-brief thumbnail: At the beginning of the season, a bus returning from a high school field trip ran off a cliff into the ocean. Forensics showed that the crash was caused by an explosive onboard that killed the bus driver right before a bend in the road, sending the bus over a cliff. Most of the rich kids that would have been on board were taking a limo home because of a foul smell that had been on the bus, which appears to be caused by a dead rat someone hid on the bus (presumably intentionally).

There's several other plot threads, including a mayoral race, freaky-ass parents, a pregnancy or two, kidnapping, a failed bid to incorporate the upscale portions of the town, a big bald guy named Curly who washed up on shore with Veronica's name written on his palm (and has a connection with last season's killer), a gold-digging grifter, a pro baseball player with a gambling problem, "the outing of all outings", rival biker gangs mysteriously cooperating and an unexpected case of the clap. Hence the 22 pages of notes.

Anyhow, in the interest of not putting spoilers on the front page of the website, I'll have my and Jason's predictions after the jump. If you haven't been watching the show, there's really no point in reading on, none of this will make any sense whatsoever.

Predictions here, but DON'T READ THEM UNLESS YOU'VE BEEN WATCHING!!!

Moving forward

Categories: General, Technical, Web Standards

Well, I've got some big news. After six years as a Web Developer at Workbook, Inc., I have just accepted a new position as UI Developer at iFilm.com. I'll be starting on May 17th, which is almost exactly six years since I started at the Workbook on May 15th, 2000.

I'm really sorry to be leaving the Workbook, where I've made many great friends and learned a ton about being a good programmer, which is arguably ironic, given that it's why I'm able to leave now. On the other hand, that's how work works, right? Regardless, I'm really excited about the iFilm job. I'll be primarily focused on client-side development which means HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, web standards, semantic markup... basically all the stuff that gets me all riled up. And, in addition to that, iFilm is (obviously) film-related, so it means that going to Film School for most of the nineties will actually have some relevance to my professional life. It's actually a bit deeper than just a tangential relationship in a roundabout way, because film students from my generation really dig iFilm as pioneers in the online media world.

There's one aspect that won't be such a big change, and that's location. As fate would have it, the Workbook and iFilm are pretty close to each other.

Karl Rove ain't goin' nowhere

Categories: Political

Oh yeah, that's some huge change going on over at the White House (rolls eyes). Flop-sweating White House spokesman Scott McClellan has been getting the beat down from the press for a while now, it's no surprise he got his walking papers.

Oh, and Karl Rove no longer in charge of "Policy Development"? Please! Was he ever really in charge of policy? Of course not! That would first require the Bush administration to actually have something approaching public policy and they don't. All they have is politics and that's because Rove has been running the show since Bush was Governor of Texas. What passes for policy at the White House is just a bunch of favor-trading and flip-flopping on any vaguely defined plan that fits their political agenda. Policy involves things like experts and studies and facts and some coherent philosophy of government's role in our society and the world at large. When you craft bills and plans using language taken directly from lobbyist propaganda that helps major campaign donors evade things like responsibility and accountability, you really can't seriously claim to actually have "Policy" in any traditional governing sense.

But for some reason, Rove has said time and time again that he's not all about the politics, he's really a policy guy at heart. Bullshit! This guy plays politics like Louis Armstrong played trumpet. If he genuinely believes he's some sort of true policy wonk, then that belief comes from either gross overestimation of the breadth of his talents or a fundamental misunderstanding of the term. The man uses White House policy as a bludgeon for political gain, not the other way around.

So he's still Deputy Chief of Staff just theoretically without involvement in policy so he can focus on the midterm elections where current polling sugggests the GOP is likely to get their asses handed to them. The press has somehow managed to swallow the theory that this represents a demotion of some sort, some sort of heavy-handed reigning in by the new Chief of Staff, Michael Bolton, the pop singer of questionable talent.

Oh, actually it's Josh Bolten. Josh Bolten, apparently, is actually a friend of Rove's and apparently Andy Card, the previous Chief of Staff who resigned a month ago, was not. So, this big demotion really means more power for Rove, not less. And why not? With Rove at the helm, the country twice (well, once) elected an inexperienced and not particularly well-educated former Professional Loser who can barely talk and believes that there is such a thing as "the internets" but not such a thing as "evolution" or "global warming" to the Presidency of the United States.

Before you start admiring Rove's chutzpah, remember he won those elections by smearing decorated Vietnam veterans. And if that's not enough, he won an Alabama judicial election by spreading rumors that the incumbent was a pedophile.

Oh then there's that whole blowing-the-cover-of-a-covert-CIA-operative thing, which is usually considered treason, but in W's White House, treason is graded on a curve.

Like pretty much anything done in this administration, especially where Rove is concerned, this move is purely for show. You don't demote the Sith Lord of politics.

Youtube.com and validation

Categories: Technical, Web Standards

In my previous post, I've got a Youtube.com Flash movie, which is very cool. Youtube.com is a video-sharing website, essentially a video version of what Flickr is to photos.

The only problem is, the code they supply isn't valid. It uses the <embed> tag for compatibility with Internet Explorer. I think it's possible to get it working with Internet Explorer in a valid way (I've gotten other Flash movies to play successfully while remaining standards compliant), but I'll have to dig back into some code to figure out how I did it, and then do a little experimentation. Given that I'm at home and don't have access to a Windows machine to test with right at the moment, I have to let it stand.

Anyhow, this is a bit of a disappointment for me, because, frankly, this will be the first time I've consciously allowed an invalid entry on this site. Every now and again I'll forget to encode an ampersand or omit an alt tag, which breaks validation, but I generally catch and correct it pretty quickly (though the last one apparently remained for about three months, yikes!). I've certainly never knowingly posted an entry that didn't validate until now, and I take great pride in that. So it breaks my heart that I have to do it now.

Plus, it kinda undercuts my smug nagging of Google about their own validation problems, and I really hate having my smugosity defied.

Super Karate Monkey Death Car: The Funniest Two Minutes of Television

Categories: Funny, Television

Newsradio, as I've mentioned before, is one of my favorite shows. I apparently have an affinity for comedies that get screwed over by their networks. Anyhow, the excellent third season came out on DVD a couple of months ago, which is awesome. I figured I probably had another year or so before the even more excellent fourth season would appear, but today it was announced (by whomever announces this sort of thing) that season 4 is coming out in June.

The fourth season is genius, and it includes what is, to me, the funniest two minutes of television I've ever seen. OK, maybe that's overstating it, but it's really funny. It's from the episode "Super Karate Monkey Death Car", and believe it or not, that's actually the second time that unlikely combination of words was said on "Newsradio". If you know the first, then gazizza, my dilsnoofus, you're a Newsradio fan.

Anyhow, thanks to Youtube.com* (which kick's Google Video's ass up and down the street), you don't have to wait until June to see this particular two minutes. Quick setup: Eccentric billionaire Jimmy James, played by Stephen Root, is going to read from his autobiography, which, for various reasons, was translated to Japanese then back to English. Enjoy!

Also worth noting here is just how brilliantly Stephen Root can deliver comedy. Watch it over if you're a fan of great comedic delivery, there's a lot to savor.

* Actually, experimenting with posting Youtube.com content is half the reason for this post.

Welcome to the fold

Categories: Friends

My friend Noka just started his own blog, Things to Laugh and Point At, a collection of little absurd and/or humorous sites captured (I presume) on his camera phone.

The irony is, I used to frequently harangue him for not reading my blog. Now he has one of his own. Anyhow, here's hoping you post more frequently than I do!

[Update: As Noka reminds me in the comments, the site is actually "Things to Point and Laugh At". Point and then laugh... because laughing before pointing is for heathens with Tourette's.]

It's three and a half hours, just admit it.

Categories: Movies

We missed the tail end of the Oscars because Tivo fell for ABC's claim that this show would run three hours, when in fact it was closer to three and a half hours.

Gee, who'd have thought that? Who ever would have thought that this show would manage to run three and a half hours? I mean, just because it has ever since I've been alive is no reason to believe that this year would be the same. Except that it is. Great, so we have another un-Tivo-able show. Anyhow, I don't understand why they don't just schedule it for three and a half hours. This show didn't run long, it ran the exact same length it always does.

Now, we should ask, why does it continue to run this length? I mean, they've cut out the retarded and poorly rehearsed dance numbers that used to eat up a whole lot of time (though, perhaps for "Tributes to..." are a bit much). People keep blaming the length of the speeches, but that's bullshit. There are 24 categories, and typically a speech that runs long runs long usually by a maximum of 30 seconds. So if half of the speeches runs long, and they run an average of 30 seconds too long, that's six minutes of extra content. The other 24 minutes are already there. And the truth is, those six minutes are scheduled in as well, since they know it's going to happen. The truth is, they've cut a ton out of these broadcasts compared to ten or fifteen years ago, but the length remains the same. Why? Because for every cut they make, they add in a commercial.

So, quit kidding around. Oscar people, ABC, the-powers-that-be... I know you're not going to turn down advertising money so asking you to cut commercials is ridiculous. But just admit that you know full well that this event is going to run three and a half hours so that it's possible to Tivo this thing.

Incidentally, I'm not completely excited about the surprise Best Picture win for "Crash". I liked "Crash" a lot, but in all honesty, I don't love it. It's a bit of a sledgehammer for a subject that requires a scalpel. I haven't seen "Brokeback" (or even most of the other BP nominees) so I can't comment on whether they were better except by observing the reactions of critics and friends. But I did see "Munich", and I liked that more than "Crash", and if the other three are better than that then one of those should have won in my opinion. But then again, all this is pretty subjective. I'm surprised by the win, though, because I really didn't think Lion's Gate (the US distributors) had the marketing muscle, though Focus Features, the distributors of "Brokeback" aren't exactly Oscar players the way Miramax used to be and Dreamworks is. That's not a criticism, Focus is really the only true remaining indie distributor anymore and they're delivering some exceptional movies to a market that has withered substantially from the heights independent cinema enjoyed in the mid-90's. But the point is, the momentum generally goes to the fim with the most nominations, especially in above-the-line categories like writing, directing and acting. Overcoming that usually takes savvy Oscar marketing and only a couple of companies really have the skills to pull it off.

Anyhow, regardless of who won, this year's Oscars hopefully represent a resurgence in independent cinema. Of the BP nominations this year, only "Munich" had traditional studio funding. That being said, this is "independent" in only the most technical of terms, but they're still (relatively) big budget, star-driven movies and bear a lot more in common with traditional studio pics than, for instance, "Pulp Fiction", "Fargo" and "The Crying Game" did when they were nominated, and next to nothing in common with so-indie-they're-unnominatable movies like "Do the Right Thing", "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Trainspotting" (OK, yeah, "Do the Right Thing" was distributed by Universal, but it's much more independent than, for instance, "The English Patient"). Independent cinema isn't what it was, and that's a real shame and frankly, a bit of a surprise. Digital video and Hi-Def were supposed to liberate a whole new generation of filmmakers, allowing the principle barrier to producing good movies — the costs associated with film — to be circumvented. But I watched that movement largely fade out as independent was co-opted by the marketing divisions of the major studios. Don't get me wrong, I think the Hollywood studio system is capable of turning out great movies and they do, year after year, mixed in with Lindsay Lohan vehicles, 70s TV remakes and so forth, they manage to get some genuinely good movies out, and that's great. But they all have their "independent" branches which are increasingly funding indie movies and as a result, true indie pics aren't being picked up and distributed the way they used to be.

Though, that's not all bad. Looking for a silver lining to this cloud, at least that means I haven't had to watch a Henry Jaglom movie in years.

P.S. Yeah, I know this post meandered.

Apple's "fun new" products

Categories: Technical

Last week, Apple sent out invitations to various media and tech types to see some "fun new products" they were unveiling. The event was scheduled for yesterday, and expectations were riding pretty high on the internets about what Steve Jobs might be unveiling.

It was largely taken for granted that Apple would be including an iPod-compatible HiFi Boombox and an Intel-powered Mac Mini, but everyone knew there was gonna be something else, something bigger. Maybe the Mac Mini also gets DVR capabilities and HD output, turning it into the complete home entertainment machine it really wants to be? Maybe iTunes starts selling feature films? New touch sensitive "all screen" video iPod? Intel iBooks? You get the picture.

So, what he unveiled was an Intel Mac Mini and an iPod HiFi system and... yeah, that's pretty much it.

So, big-ol letdown on the sort of websites I tend to cruise. But hey, that new video iPod isn't gonna happen for at least six months or so. The iTunes selling feature films is probably going to wait until then too. And the Tivo-Killer Mac Mini? Actually, that was decently likely, and Apple really should take a swipe at this. Microsoft's Media Center is hogging all the glory, and the Mini really would fit well in the living room. And they did improve things a bit if you want to use it like that, because it now can output in HD resolutions, but it doesn't have component or HDMI out, so it's not quite there connection wise. Overall, it's a pretty nice machine, though they raised the price, which takes away from a large part of the tiny thing's appeal.

The HiFi, on the other hand, I'm not so excited about. Basically, it's a set of big, extremely good speakers with an iPod dock on top. It can run off batteries (6 "D" cells), so it's portable, but not particularly easily portable. It's really meant to be used indoors, and at first glance, would seem to be a very nice set of speakers for your living room (or whatever room you keep your main TV in). Not only can it play music from the iPod, but it's got a combined optical/analog audio in, so you can listen to other sources as well. But really, it's not for hooking up to a TV, and I think just a couple of minor changes would have made it much more useful.

The first problem is that it doesn't have video out. Normally you wouldn't expect speakers to have video-out, so why is this a complaint? Well, because it's meant to work with the iPod, and specifically the video iPods. So that means if you want to watch videos or photo slideshows stored on your iPod you can either use a separate docking station, which means you won't be getting the big-ass speaker sound, or you have to plug an AV-cable into the headphone jack on top, which is frankly really ugly (and let's be honest here, with Apple, you're paying for pretty). Either way, it's not the ideal experience. Plus, even though it includes a remote, you still have to physically go to the iPod to change playlists or albums owing to the small size of the screen. If they could output a menu to a TV, like the upcoming DLO HomeDock Deluxe or Griffin Tunecenter do, navigating your music becomes a lot easier.

But the bigger problem is that there is only one optical-in port. That means you can only hook up one device, like your cable box or CD player. You can get around this by getting a device that has multiple optical-in ports and lets you switch between them, but ordinarily that's the job of an amplifier in a living-room type setup, and if you've got an amp, you really don't need this. Basically, I can't think of any situation involving an entertainment center that wouldn't be better served with a regular dock and a conventional audio system.

So, it would make a good system for a bedroom or office, but at $350, it's pretty pricey for that purpose, and the size requires a fair amount of space. Basically, I think it's only reasonable if you've got money and you take your music very seriously and you've got a shelf just begging for some sexy audio equipment. However, a lot of these problems go away if you remove the iPod from the equation and use it in conjunction with the new Mac Mini. The Mini has audio in and out, Front Row allows you to easily select the movies, photos or music you want to view or listen to, and assuming you have DVI-in or a DVI-to-HDMI converter (which aren't that expensive), it hooks up to your TV. So really, it makes the most sense as an accessory for the Mac Mini, with the additional ability to work as iPod speakers as well.

That being said, in the end, my reaction to the new iPod HiFi is that it costs too much and does too little. It's funny, I seem to remember thinking the same thing about an earlier Apple product release. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking Steve Jobs was nuts if he thought this product was going to make anything more than a minor impact in an already crowded market. Hell, even the name of the thing was stupid. In fact, I really wondered whether he'd lost his finely honed gizmo-lust instincts when he proudly stood up on stage and unveiled this new "iPod" thingamajig. Well, given that I'm currently on my second iPod, and that it was Amazon.com's best selling consumer electronics product for two Christmases in a row and is largely responsible for Apple's share price increasing by about 800% over the last few years, I've got to own up to not being able to predict these sort of things with perfect accuracy.

Yeah, I was pretty much 100% completely wrong about the iPod. But, hey, I wasn't the only one.