Fantastic Short Films

The weather intends to taunt me all weekend. This morning Katherine and I went to meet a friend of hers who was showing her visiting mom, aunt, and uncle around DC. As we walked to meet them by the Washington Monument, looking at the pretty cherry blossoms as we went, the temperature constantly shifted between being barely too warm for my jacket and just cold enough to need it. And the rain started and stopped at intervals such that about 45 seconds after I’d put down the umbrella it would start again, then stop, then start again. Tomorrow it may snow. What’s up with that?

After meeting Katherine’s friend Catherine’s family for lunch, we went to Visions in Dupont Circle where they are showing this year’s Oscar shorts. (Thanks go to Dre for that one!) As expected, they were all astounding and had a wide range of emotions, themes, and countries of origin.

They showed ten shorts, five of which were live action and five of which were animation. Of those, only one was hand-drawn-looking. One was claymation (and really cool!), and the other three were pure CG. I began to think about the difference seeing a story in CG versus done with traditional artwork makes on the mood of the piece. The quality of motion and images that a good studio can put out with enough computers is I feel very quickly reaching its asymptotic limit. Each year we’ll see more good computer generated films, but I don’t think they’ll keep getting closer and closer to reality at the pace they have when looking at the difference between 1995’s Toy Story and 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It’ll get to the point where making scenes look more like real life will require spending months designing the trillions of imperfections every surface has. But I think that near-but-not-perfect look works for the animated medium. And I think fantasy is where it’ll really shine. Shreck and Monsters, Inc. worked so well because they looked real enough, but were still cartoons. CG has a wonderful power to be immersive and breathtaking while still delightfully escapist. Or, it can just be cute, as was this year’s Oscar winner, “The Chubbchubbs.”

Tomorrow I hope to go see Spirited Away.

Pop Culture Television

So I’m loving being home all day right now. It sucked when it was all I did, but after working for a month, I’m happy to have time off. This morning I watched Live with Regis and Kelly, but Kelly Ripa was off, with Daryl Hammond taking her place for the day. But even better is MTV’s changing daily schedule. TRL’s great, and in the morning they actually play music, but then at some point in the afternoon they’ll show a marathon of one of their shows. Already this week I’ve been treated to Fraternity Life and Sorority Life II (both fantastic), and now I’m watching PUNK’D. I’m not a big fan of pranks, which sucks because I agree that if they’re well crafted they’re really damn funny. I just don’t like being mean to people and making fun of people at their expense. Plus they’re screwing with the lovely Eliza Dushku. But wow was it funny when they pretended to reposess all of Justin Timberlake’s stuff, or when they put a kid on the red carpet of the VH1 awards and he asked Tori Amos what it was like to be on 90210 or Denise Richards what it was like to play someone smart.

The Future Is Nigh

I just saw a post on Slashdot linking to an article on new Motorala protoype WDAs - Wearable Digital Assistants. The concept as a whole doesn’t seem at all viable, but I think some of the devices could be great. I do predict that most digital devices we use now will be merged into one machine. I’m not sold on the camera, but certainly music players, cell phones, and PDAs should all be one device. I like the idea of having a Bluetooth headset with a built-in mic that lets you listen to music or talk on the phone. I don’t see many people actually using the sunglasses w/ heads up displays, but they would rock my face (quite literally if I can listen to music with them, too). I’d especially like to see a map overlay of where I’m walking and little cursors and blinking boxes that surround and track moving objects as they enter my field of vision. Oh, and my hit points and maybe my currently selected inventory item as well.