Author: Chris Barrus

Metatext shoutout – you heard it here first!

Before we go any further here let’s just agree that complaining about Michael Bay is like trying to punch out the wind. Even if he’s the noisier little brother of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, his movies almost always come in on time, within budget, and make a profit. Not too many people doing that in 21st century Hollywood.

A month or so back Kristin and I were confronted with the trailer to Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen a month or so back and our feeling was that it was the first completely metatext movie trailer. Ignore everything you know about narrative because the trailer isn’t a convention preview, it’s a list of ingredients: explosions, Egypt, explosions, military hardware, explosions, robots, shouting, explosions, Megan Fox’s butt, explosions, conspiracy mysticism b.s., more explosions.

Anyway, I posted this in an ILX thread and on Twitter and apparently I was right. One long two and a half hour blipvert. I’ll hold off for the eventual RiffTrax version of this. The RiffTrax version of Transformers was actually pretty good.

Right in front of you and not at all

I’ve seen Double Indemnity probably a dozen or more times over the years and until now I had no idea that was Raymond Chandler sitting there in the hallway while Fred MacMurray walks intently past him. I wonder what he’s reading?

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He certainly seems to be annoyed at the interruption. Though taking into account Chandler’s memo to the studio, he’s probably just annoyed in general.

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I ran into a similar effect with recent viewings of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater (thanks dad!) and I can confidently say that I’ve seen it thirty to forty times over the years. However it wasn’t until a couple months ago at a recent Arclight viewing that I noticed that the monolith and the moon formed a pyramid.

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More fodder for the “what does it all mean?” pile I suppose, but interesting nonetheless. I suspect a crash course in Zoroastrianism is in my future.

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Speaking of hidden items in 2001… Did anyone back in 1968 seriously expect Aeroflot to still be around in the real 2001? Or to put it another way:

It’s 1968. Which brand will be the only one remaining in 2001?

  1. Pan Am
  2. Bell System
  3. Aeroflot

The Church at The Roxy

I was killing time out in front of the club, watching people be interviewed for a documentary on the band’s tour when the interviewer said to me “you look like someone who would be a fan, care to say a few words?” Turns out he was someone I knew from the Seance list so I agreed. The question was “what is it you like about The Church?” and my answer went something like:

“Complete obstinacy. I can’t think of any other band who’s been around as long as they have who are stubborn enough to not break down and retrace their path back to those two songs that got them here in the first place. Every new album sounds just enough like themselves to be familiar but each has an implicit statement of ‘this is what we’re doing Right Now.’ Never would have figured on a group of fifty year olds, thirty years into a career, going full D.I.Y. into some of the best moody psychedelic Floyd-esque around.”

I took some photos, but since it’s me, they’re mostly of amplifiers and effect pedals so here’s some video from Solana Beach the night before:

and the full session from KCRW:

And yes it was me who sent in the proposal for a 33 1/3 book on Priest=Aura.

Separated At Birth, Part IX

The new logo for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment

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Icons for every currently shipping app from Adobe

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Couldn’t someone in the design department come up with a better corporate logo than that? Did anyone really try or were the negotiations were so frought that this was the only design everyone could agree on? The subscriped “E2” grates on me. Since it’s standing for “EE” shouldn’t it be superscripted to E2? As it is it looks like a chemical formula.

It’s regrettable that some element of WMA’s old logo couldn’t have been adopted. It’s a great design. At least I still have it on my old WMA coffee mug.

STS-125

I’ve had the STS-125 video feed going on in the background most of the week, but if I had to pick one video out of all that’s been happening it’s this clip of HST’s release. No Houston, no announcers, just a peek over the shoulder as everyone is working.