The first Blog of July 2010
Welcome to another week at Bogworld.com. Last week a family tragedy kept me away from the drawing board. Literally. I was out of town or playing catch up at work. There simply was not time to do the things I wish I could have done here. Thank you for being patient. My mind is never too far away from my creative endeavors though. I have been thinking about how to make Bogworld better. I am always trying to figure out ways to do that. But this time I think I have actually come up with something; A change in artistic style. Its not going to be overwhelming. Just a step up in detail and color. I'm a better artist than what I have been showing lately. I can and will do better.
Independence Day
Last week when I was driving home from Duluth I saw a billboard. Its part of a series of billboards a local Republican group has been anonymously buying around the Twin Cities recognizing that this is a mostly Democratic state. The Billboard was a photoshopped image of President Obama tearing up the constitution. The caption above it said, "Had enough Hope and Change?"
A few miles down the road there was another one. This one featured a happy image of George W. Bush and the caption above it said "Miss me yet?"
I thought this whole thing to be rather insulting to the intelligence of... well everyone. Democrats and Republicans.
First off it seems to imply that there is something wrong with wishing for hope and change after enduring the worst leadership we have ever had in American history. Hell even Republicans are pretty good about acknowledging George W, Bush was a really bad President. That was a pretty embarrassing period for the Republican party. They drove the country into a financial bottomless pit. They indebted us to China. They cut regulations in banking and energy that quite nearly caused economic collapses and environmental consequences were dealing with today.
Real Republicans do not miss the Bush/Cheney era. They miss Reagan. George W. Bush was no Ronald Reagan.
They might not like it, but its a historical fact that George W. Bush came into office while America was enjoying its best economy and longest stretch of peace in its history. We had the largest economic surplus ever. President Obama entered office in the Dubba-U aftermath. In eight years we were in the worst economic shape in our history and in a two front war. All you have to do is look in a history book and a calendar and you'll find all the problems we are struggling with today, began in the Bush Jr. years.
This week NBC captured a statement by Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steel who was addressing other party leaders developing strategy for the upcoming election season.
Steele suggested that Republican candidates adopt a messages this campaign season. The message is that Afghanistan is Obama's war of choice. That the Bush administration never wanted to get involved in Afghanistan.
Again if you look at the calendar as to when this war started and who sanctioned permanent military installations in Afghanistan, its clear this all started during the Bush administration. To imply it was a choice Obama made is ... well... more than a little retarded. Do they think we are so forgetful that we might not be able to reach back into our own recent memories and recall Bush's pledge on the rubble of the World Trade Center to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and bring him in dead or alive. And all the efforts to overthrow the Taliban and take out terrorist camps after 9-11. But now since the job was not completed during the Bush years they want to pin it on Obama as some kind of an unpopular choice.
Hey I am not saying Clinton and Obama have been perfect leaders either. They haven’t. But like them or hate them, you still have to deal with the facts of history. You cannot magically put Obama in the white house in 2001 to decide whether or not we should hunt down Bin Ladin and put down the Taliban, when Obama was not even elected until late 2008. The weird thing is, most people support the war in Afghanistan. Unlike Iraq, there is good hard proof that the 9/11 attacks were funded, planned and staged from terrorist organizations seeking refuge in that country. So its more than a little bizarre that Steele is offering this as a Republican tactic.
One thing I would like to be independent of this Independence Day is divisive politics. You might not agree with me. I might not agree with you. But thats what makes us Americans. We live in a place where we have the freedom to disagree with our fellow citizens and enjoy a political system that lets us choose who represents us. Our country is cheapened by the people who think Conservatives or Progressives are bad people. They are not. The bad people are the folks who manipulate and lie about those differences to gain power and wealth.
Lets agree to disagree this 4th of July and remember this is one country, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Twilight Eclipse-The Review
I am so not the right guy to review this movie. I have not read the popular novels and I have not seen the two previous movies. All that being said, I am surprised about one thing. Eclipse kind of seems to get that this movie might not be everyone's cup of tea and plays to that in a way that does not alienate the millions and millions of tween-age girls that LOVE these movies. I think we can all admit that this series is the Star Wars for teenage girls. But is this movie good on its own rights? I don't know. I mean its filled with attractive teenagers. Mostly shirtless boys It seems everyone has cheesy contact lenses. I find the number of cosmetic contact lenses in this movie to be distracting. I mean you would think the school nurse at the high school all these kids attend would have reported this as a runaway outbreak of eye infections or something. How come the other kids, the non-vampire ones, don't notice this?
I think maybe I am getting to that age where I don't understand the music "the kids" like. Although I do like most current pop music. Maybe the Twilight movies are where my adult years make me that old guy who does not get current pop culture.
Lets Talk About 3D
It seems everywhere you go people are ga-ga over 3D. All the new movies seem to be coming out in 3D and now there is an explosion in 3D HD televisions. It looks like 3D is more than a passing fad this time. Mainly because this time maybe the technology is working properly. Its working, though, in different ways on the different platforms.
If you like your 3D to be the stuff that seems to pop off the screen and nearly touch your nose, then you need to go to see IMAX 3D. The great big classic IMAX screens creates the best possible all around 3D experiences because that giant screen doesn't allow the magic to find the edge of the screen as easily as it does in a normal cinema sized screen or a television. The thing about 3D is that as soon as the object that appears to be floating off the screen touches the side of the screen, your eye detects the rouse. The jig is up and things flatten out again. But on the humungous IMAX screen there is so much more real estate to contain the effect. IMAX 3D is the best overall way to see 3D. Period.
There are all sorts of other 3D processes in regular cinema. Digital 3D, Disney 3D, Real D 3D, etc... But they all boil down to the same components. Even IMAX 3D uses this technique too. Two images are projected on the screen at the same time through a polarized filter. The images are off-set by the same degree your two eyes are separated. The funny glasses you have to wear separate the two projected movie images. One image for your right eye and one image for your left eye. The process mimics how your two eyes always see things separately only to have your mind blend them together with a sense of depth determined by the differences each eye detects. And in a nutshell, thats how 3D works.
The new digital cinemas do a really nice job maintaining picture quality and clear images even with the dual projectors overlapping one another. But again they are always going to be limited by screen size.
3D technology has an unexpected plus. By mimicking how the human eye actually takes in the real world (two eyes seeing slightly different images blended together in your brain), the image is clearer. Noticeably clearer. And more realistic. Even when things are not popping off the screen. In fact, that's the way some film makers are beginning to use 3D. Not to have things come flying off the screen, but rather to have viewers feel pulled into the image. After all, one of the Ds is Depth. Its like a hyper HD effect with the added benefit of a sense of depth.
This brings us to television. Believe it or not, the 3D being developed for television is in some ways a higher quality than whats in the cinemas. The smaller screens offer higher contrast and brightness and the frame rates of some of the higher quality systems is higher for a more smoothly blended image. The screen size of even the biggest of these home systems is still going to be a limitation. But where this technology might really excel is in upping the HD experience. Sports and nature programming is going to be amazing on these systems.
Since the only true way to present 3D is with those glasses, I cannot help but wonder if the future of 3D is not with creating bigger televisions or screens, but rather creating clear 3D images in the glasses themselves. I think that day is coming.
I really do not like the post produced 3D Hollywood attempts to add to films like Superman Returns, Clash of the Titans or the Last Airbender. Adding it as an effect after the movie was shot in 3D is mostly ineffectual. But when things are shot with dual lensed 3D cameras or rendered to be in 3D during the animation process, it can be spectacular.