Thing Seen in 2022

On TV

The Bear - The only real binge I pulled this year.  Its short, entertaining and made me hungry.

The Office - Finished a very slow binge that lasted more than 12 months mostly watching while riding the exercise bike.  It starts out solid, has some amazing episodes and man that last season is a chore.  Even the finale was a letdown.  Coulda been better.

Rockford Files Season 1 - Watching these 25 episodes became something of a ritual on my bus ride home.  Amazing 70s style, good writing, great characters (RIP Stuart Margolin) and James Garner.  Favorite episode was "Sleight of Hand" because angry ass-kicking Jim Rockford is the best.  Followed many episodes up with the accompanying 200 a Day podcast.  Excited to pick and choose some of the best episodes in 2023.

Movies from 2022

Nope - Great characters, good story, great filmmaking. Puerto Rican summer viewing.

Everything Everywhere, All at Once -  Feels like what we would be getting more of if the superhero craze never happened.   Really good theater experience that left me with a smile plastered on my face.

Barbarian - Overhyped but solid horror comedy.

Confess Fletch - Having read the 1976 book and seen the 1985 icon, watching this one take place in 2022 is quite a time warp.  Fun and breezy.  Would watch more.

Weird - Surprisingly clever and funny.  Its hard to judge comedy but this one gave me some good Airplane vibes and made me think people will still be watching it ten years down the line.  

Older Movies I'd Never Seen

Kiss Me Deadly - Fantastically misanthropic and apocalyptic.  I waited a long time to see this and it was worth it.  Mike Hammer is a mean mother.

The Squeeze/Road Games - Speaking of Mike Hammer, I watched several Stacey Keach flicks that had me re-evaluating his value.  The Squeeze has him playing a British (?) shit stain on the tighty whiteys of life while Road Games has him playing a truck driver in Australia hell bent on out Dueling a serial killer.  Both are entertaining.  Tried to watch more Keach in William Blatty's 9th Configuration but couldn't get through the midway.  Not Keach's fault. Maybe I'll try again in 2023.

The Tenant - Slow, weird and starring Raman Polanski.  Sad to say I found this one pretty damned good.  

McCabe and Mrs. Miller - First time through I couldn't make it past 20 minutes.  Second time through I loved it, particularly the ending.  Perhaps you got to be in the mood for the Altman effect.

California Split - Another Altman.  Prime Elliot Gould and George Segal.  Speaking of George, I gotta get the Hot Rock on my early 2023 viewing list.

The Silent Partner - Another prime Elliot Gould flick this time with a very nasty Christopher Plummer (and a very young John Candy).  There's not a lot of hidden gems left these day but this is one.  Canadian thrills!  What's that all aboot?

The Parallax View - Pretty cool, stylish thriller with some super weird/artful cinematography and editing.   

Ariel - Should be the most depressing Finish film I've ever seen but somehow stays upbeat and enjoyable through all the hardships. Easy to see the Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch) ties.

Zardoz - 007 in a diaper for 2 hours is a lot to handle but John Boorman takes big swings.  I can dig it.

Performance - A wild British take on identity and sexuality straddling the 60s and 70s that features a great (wait for it)..performance from Mick Jagger.  Me and the Devil Blues is awesome.

Dark of the Sun - Trashy, violent B movie splendor.  Its got action.

Alligator - Silly Jaw-esque creature feature written by John Sayles and starring Robert Forrester is 1000x more entertaining and watchable than it should be.  

Strangers on a Train - The good guys are all terrible but Robert Walker is a creepy villain and Hitchcock's wild Merry Go Round crash ending is nightmare fuel. 

Hail to Thee Update

 

Hail to Thee soldiers on.  With all the characters and sets done in November, December was spent working on the first 1/3 of the project set in the Office Bullpen (about 2.5 minutes).  January I hope to complete the middle portion which is all set in the Office Breakroom (likely another two minutes) and if all goes well complete things in February/March with the final third.  So despite all the crazy Daz deals which kept me sidetracked and managing to get one Xmas themed script complete (Gunderson is still underway), I seem to be on schedule.  Huzzah!  

Mr. Ambrose shares my satisfaction

Xmas Tales

 I love little low stress writing competitions.  They've got themes, deadlines and a built in audience happy to critique your work.  I mentioned a ways back I managed to write two shorts for Halloween and one turned out good enough to pursue as my latest Iclone project (its coming along. Slowly).  

Now for a Christmas themes contest I managed another short.  Its called SantAI and its based on the new chatgpt bot everybody's all atwitter over.  Its kinda cute and kinda amusing and would likely be pretty easy to pull off as its a lot of dialog and not a lot of action.  Its fine. 

But while I was finishing that one up I had a different idea that tickles my fancy a lot more.  Its essentially an old finished film noir set in the North Pole.   It's played straight, with no giggles.  I'm still trying to get the outline drafted so its not going to be my second submission.  Its also likely to be a bit longer than my normal preference, likely in the 15-20 minute range. Not sure it will be any good or if it will get made but I'm enjoying the thought process on this one a good bit.  Even created a few characters from my Daz resources in CC4 and drew up a couple of posters for your enjoyment (well, my enjoyment).

Its worth mentioning that I finally caught Kiss Me Deadly on TCM last month.  I'd been wanting to see it for a while but it wasn't streaming anywhere and never played on TV.  It was worth the wait.  Badass, super misanthropic, apocalyptic Mike Hammer tale.   Loved it.  Worth watching if you get the chance.

  

Things in Motion

Got sucked down the Rokoko AI Video Mocap rabbit hole this week.  Its a nice free service that transforms video to motion files with varying levels of success.  I found my webcam gave me distorted results but it worked quite well once I started using my iphone.  Also the iphone lets you record vertically which allows for recording in a much smaller space much closer to the camera so that's a big benefit.

I also had to use 3DExchange to get the motion converted to IMotion but I'm guessing there's other ways to do that.

My first success was this very bad dance move that went from performance to exporting this tiny clip in about two hours.  Not bad.

I tried creating something a bit more complicated where I pick up an item from a desk, interact with that item and then set it back down.  I got a decent result into Iclone and then spent a couple of hours editing the results but IClone crashed on me.  IClone's backup process is usually pretty good but this instance crashed when I tried the backup and that was that.  A couple of hours work gone.  Not sure if I would label the work before the crash a success though.  I may try again or I may go back to the non-mocap route.  

Still, the whole experience has given me more positive thoughts about buying a mocap suit.  And now Im realizing how important the gloves part of the suit would be.  

Gotta keep saving those pennies.    

For anyone interested here some interesting clips on getting and editing the results.