Friday
29May2009

Jean-Claude Van Damme's Existential Crisis

The film "JCVD," directed by Mabrouk El Mechri in 2008, starts like a typical Wal-Mart action special starring a skilled hardbody - guns, fights, explosions - but quickly takes on a somber, intelligent tone. Jean-Claude Van Damme, playing himself in an alternate? reality struggles with income, finding a decent production and custody issues following divorce.

He seeks solace in his hometown of Brussels, but is caught in an identity struggle between himself and the actor portrayed on screen. He ends up in the middle of a hostage situation at a local post office - the police believe he's responsible for the crime - thousands of JCVD fans crowd around the S.W.A.T. trucks and police cars, cheering him on.

The film's utterly surreal tour de force comes later in the film, when JCVD's rises up past the movie set and into the light rig above, delivering a surprisingly sober and heart wrenching 10-minute monologue deconstructing the film industry.

"JCVD" is an important film, because there's only a few B-Movie action stars as well known or influential as Jean-Claude - it is literally a cry of desperation from a man fully embedded in the Hollywood marketing machine. No other film could replicate it.

 

As a movie itself, about a hostage situation in a small town in Brussels, it's actually a very engaging movie with great cinematography, acting (especially from JCVD), editing, dialogue, and direction. I cared more about a real, fake version of Jean-Claude than about an equally infamous Mickey Rourke moping around in "The Wrestler."

Be careful about watching the trailer for the movie, as the distributor didn't know who to market this film to, so it's weird edit with action, comedy, and bad music:

 

Bonus: For a much crazier (schizophrenic) deconstruction of Hollywood that was produced, directed, written by Anthony Hopkins and stars Christian Slater among others, check out "Slipstream"

 

Friday
29May2009

Fear and Loathing in R/L

Wednesday
27May2009

Photoshop: The Importance of Soft Light

This blending mode has vast potential to enhance and finesse your imagery:

  • Duplicating a layer and applying soft light can be used to enhance color and smooth out textures

 

  • Blurring the soft light layer causes a subtle hazing/smoothing effect.  Feel free to duplicate the soft light layer and/or adjust opacity on layers to get the right effect.

 

  • If parts of your image are "muddy" or you would like to change the color temperature, you can add a blank soft light layer and paint in color on top of the image.  Adjust the opacity of your paintbrush to around 10-20% to bring color in slowly.

 

  • When building composite images in Photoshop, adding a few color fill layers of soft light (or multiply, screen, overlay, etc. [covered in later posts]) at various opacities will help to give a consistent flow to the piece.

Wednesday
27May2009

Board Game Specifics

People were asking what the activity/challenge cards say in the

Fear and Loathing Board Game, so here they are:

 

Activity Cards:

- Go to a zoo and approach one of the workers. Kindly take him aside and inquire into the price of one of his apes. Whatever he says in return, just keep staring at him with the most serious face you can compose.

- Have your sitter drive everyone around until you find a hitchhiker or transient. Offer him a ride. During the drive start saying whatever comes to mind in the loudest voice possible while faking muscle spasms.

- Go to a greasy spoon and order red snapper and lemon meringue pie. Attempt to start a conversation with the cook or waitress about the economy, politics, or chaos theory.

- Watch two movies at the same time, or play one movie with no sound and play any kind of soundtrack in place of audio.

- Wear 3D stereoscopic glasses until you decide to take them off. Pass them around after you finish.

- Speak only with a kazoo until it's your turn again.

- Attend a carnival or a fair of some kind. If you can't find one,everyone must walk backwards around the neighborhood.

- Attempt to play Pictionary. If you can't find the proper materials, play charades instead.

- Attend some kind of conference or lecture. Try to stay focused and be respectful of the presenter.

- Go to a supermarket and try to find the shiniest apple on display. Hold the apple high in the air and exclaim it's shininess to everyone in the store. Place the apple back on the display and leave.

- Find a giant horn.

- Draw a picture of your sitter and give it to him after you finish. If you don't have any drawing materials, trace it in mid-air.

- Buy coconuts, grapefruit, and tequila at a supermarket. Place one of the coconuts on the hood of the sitter's car and smash it with a hammer.

- Walk around a neighborhood and offer free cups of milk to anyone that opens their door.

- Play a game of poker or any other gambling based game.

- Yell nonsense in the direction of a driver at a stoplight until someone starts yelling back at you.

- 30 minutes of wandering anywhere within the area you are playing the game.

- Stand on your head.

- 1.5 hour Milkdrop visuals and music time.

- CHANGE PLACES! If the game was going clockwise, switch to counter-clockwise and vice versa.

- Go see any movie in theaters.

- Everyone draw a dose card!

- Play hide and go seek near the area you are playing.

- Drive to the woods or a park and go exploring.

 

 Challenge Cards:

- Wear a blindfold for 30 minutes and let others in your group lead you around.

- Go bowling and get at least one strike.

- Act sober for 20 minutes while carrying on a conversation with the sitter.  The sitter will be the judge for this.

- The sitter will perform a sobriety test on you.  For example, walk in a straight line or recite the alphabet backwards.

- Program the DVD or VCR player.

- Play chess or checkers against the sitter and win.

- Speak only in 3rd person for 20 minutes.

- Spin around in a chair 20 times, stand up and stay stable until the dizziness goes away.

- While one person flicks the light switch on and off rapidly, you try to catch 3 soft objects thrown at you.  You only have to catch two of them.

- Replace a lightbulb.

- Walk on your hands for at least 6 feet (183cm).

- Sing a famous song out loud verbatim.

Thursday
21May2009

Surreal Hong Kong Action Star Wars Mashup

    A legendary Hong Kong action director, Hark Tsui, wanted to combine the then cutting edge effects of the original "Star Wars" with his lauded style of Hong Kong cinema. With a boat load of cash at their disposal, the production pulled various special effects artists from Star Wars, Star Trek and Tron on board, and casted big name Hong Kong stars.

The film, "Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain" is a fantastic visual feast, although the story itself is a little dull and loaded. The rest of the movie is technically viable - the production and sound design are brilliant.  I would come in hungry for the swirling technicolor wanderlust that it really is.

A detailed story can be found here

 

Wednesday
20May2009

Photoshop: Sharpening with the High Pass Filter 

What if that perfect shot is far too blurry?

Just Duplicate the layer...

Go to Filter > Other > High Pass, choose a number proportional

to the size of your image, so it looks sort of like this (@ 4.7):

But you can raise (or usually lower) that number to get a more subtle effect.

Now change the high pass layer to either "Overlay"or "Soft Light"

depending if you want a harder or softer sharpness, respectively.

I did an "Overlay" and adjusted the opacity of the layer to get the exact effect I wanted.  It looked like this:

But the sharpening looked faked, so I added a layer mask and painted away the outside area of the layer to draw the eye to the sharpness of the middle:

And now it looks like this:

Of course, not all images of cats drawn on people need to be sharpened...