Media

Our friend and neighbor Jane Kurson has launched a website focused on her work as a Painter. Jane has spent most of her career as a film and television editor on movies like Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice" and most recently director Patty Jenkins's "Monster", the film about Aileen Wuornos that features Charlize Theron's Oscar winning performance.

The last few years she's focused much of her time and attention on a new artistic pursuit, and it’s been great fun to see Jane’s portfolio grow, and witness the development of a distinctive style and artistic sensibility that reminds me of Impressionists like Gauguin. With two showings of her work already, Jane seems well on her way to establishing herself as a serious artist. Now if we can just get her to do a painting for our house!

You can view her Gallery at http://www.janekurson.com/

In my days at Broderbund software and Cendant software, I witnessed first hand the demise of the edutainment software industry due to market pressures and consolidation. What remains is the vestiges of those companies, and the titles they created years ago, while the developers are gone. As someone at Broderbund said to me one day, "the days of interesting educational tiles like 'Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego' are long gone." It simply costs too much to develope educational titles in a world where consumers expect to pay $10 or less.

Ted Henning's latest project is http://www.Brainmeld.org, a site devoted to promoting the use of computer games and simulations in education. I think we can all agree that computer games are a part of life for most kids growing up in the US and Europe, and Ted's Master's thesis and the work of people in the educational research field which inspired him indicates that this isn't the disasterous turn of events many have predicted it to would be. Brainmeld.org supports the premise that some games are actually "educational" in a way both children (and adults for that matter) find entertaining.

Continue reading "Ted Henning's Brainmeld" »

My latest hobby is a website called Movie-Gurus.com. I've been adding to the site, rewriting quite a bit of the php code, and have contributed a few reviews. The site was started by a teenager and has grown to include 600+ films in the review database, and has a staff of around 14 total reviewers, developers and admins.

In 1989 Japanese novelist Kôji Suzuki published Ringu, an epic ghost story due to hit American shores for the first time this month. Nine years later, screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakate adapted the book into a film with the modest budget of 1.2 million dollars. The resulting film Ringu, created a sensation with asian language film-goers, becoming one of Japan's top grossing films ever, and doing similar blockbuster business in Korea and Hong Kong, and gaining cult classic status in Europe. The plot of The Ring concerns a reporter on the trail of a story about a videotape, which kills anyone within 7 days of watching it. Dreamworks secured the rights from producer Roy Lee, who managed to grab up licensing for a number of successful Japanese and Korean films, all virtually unreleased and unknown here in the states. Lee has at least eleven films in developement, including Chaos (Kaosu) Nakate's 1999 suspense thriller about a kidnapping gone wrong, due in 2004 from english director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) starring Benicio Del Torro.

But perhaps none of these deals would ever come to fruition were it not for Dreamworks' 45 million dollar version of The Ring directed by Gore Verbinski (Mouse Hunt, The Mexican, Pirates of the Carribean) and starring white hot Australian actress Naomi Watts, fresh from her eye popping performance in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

Released in January 2002, The Ring, made over 128 million at the US box office, and the march release of the DVD sold over 2 million units on it's first day. Dreamworks has also released the Tanake version on DVD.

There's a number of websites devoted to the Ring, including Ringworld, and a more general site devoted to the dynamic japanese horror/thriller market Snowblood Apple. Snowblood Apple covers a number of Japanese directors who are doing interesting work, some of which may very well end up as Hollywood remakes, if Roy Lee has his way. If you're fortunate enough to have IFC or Sundance, you can often catch originals like Ghost Actress or Cure in subtitled form. Hollywood is always chasing trends, and with the success of the Ring, I expect we'll see a rash of Japanese sourced material hitting the US markets in the coming years, which isn't a bad thing, considering the risk averse formulaic drivel that predominates Hollywood's output. However, one can only wonder at Hollywood's ignorance of the talent and creativeness of directors like Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, while at the same time falling all over themselves to remake their films.

For fun, I made a the small Flash teaser for The Ring as an exercise, which should hopefully if nothing else, give you an idea of the haunting visual tone and production design (influenced by the artwork of Andrew Wyeth purportedly) which sets the film apart. If you didn't catch it in the theaters, by all means catch it on DVD. Along with The Sixth Sense, It's easily one of the creepiest and most intriguing Horror films in the last ten years. And if you're even more adventurous, check out the influential Ringu on DVD.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well someone said that anyways.Ok, well they aren't exactly the same layout, but I knew immediately that the recent Ocean's 11 Layout reminded me of this great Album from 1990 which i once owned on cassette. Maybe it's just synchronicity, or maybe the designer was a Smithereens' fan.

I became immersed in the music of the Beatles as a teenager, listening to their albums and songs for hours on end. I'm old enough to remember when all the members were still alive.

Following the tragic death of Linda McCartney to cancer comes word that George Harrison finally succumbed to his long battle with the disease on Thursday November 29th, as so many of his fans feared would happen.

As a songwriter with the Beatles, his compositions could be caustic and precise (Taxman), expansive, spiritual and psychedelic (Within you, without you) and optimistic (Here comes the sun, and the standard "Something") Credited with teaching John Lennon the basics of guitar playing, his blues and rockabilly influences matured and adapted to the composing explorations of Lennon and McCartney, along the way contributing seminal riffs to the Beatles catalog like the Daytripper riff, a veritable rite of passage for any guitarist.

His rythmn and acoustic technique, use of 12 strings, and other stringed instruments like the Sitar continues to influence new guitarists in the same way the music of the band casts a shadow over the entirety of popular western music.

George was a man of taste, sophistication, intelligence and a quest for understanding of the human condition and the essence of the human spirit. The youngest Beatle and most solitary and private, he survived tabloid scrutiny of his personal life (particularly his marriage to wife Patti Boyd who later left him to marry his good friend Eric Clapton who wrote Layla about her). I doubt anything could be more telling in regards to Harrison's character and loving nature than his attendance at the couple's wedding. Harrison's post-Beatle's career was varied and successful in numerous artistic and social endeavors. He produced a number of well received solo albums, incuding the triple album "All things must pass" and as an Independent film producer he backed numerous films including "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "The Life of Brian", Neil Jordan's breakout "Mona Lisa", and the cult favorites "Five Corners" and "How to Get Ahead in Advertising." He virtually created the genre of World music with his use of the Sitar on Norwegian Wood, and his efforts to bring Ravi Shankar to the world stage.

His concert for Bangladesh pioneered territory which paved the way for Live Aid and the benefit concert as a way of generating income for charity while raising awareness about issues that confront humanity throughout the world.

At only fifty eight years of age, having battled llness for the last few years, he passed from this earth far too soon.