you can call it ‘cinema’ again

Alrighty. I’m beginning to understand where this 100 gigs of bandwidth is coming from. It’s not that crazy after all. If I get somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500 page loads a week (it’s usually less but we’re keeping the math easy) and I’ve got 50k in images on this page (I think it’s more but hey, the math thing) that’s 25 gigs a week. Bang. Just like that. (edit- scratch that. scratch all of that. back to the drawing board, yes davin? in fact, check out the official definitions of binary multiples for data processing and transmission if you really need a headache)

So I’m going to upload pics at 25% quality from now on (you probably can’t see the difference anyway) rather than 60%. And I’ll stamp them (which should cut down quite a bit on hijacking).

I should also avoid Google-bait image names like daffodil. Not to mention linking them and compounding the problem. ahem.

So the snow is grudgingly giving way to Standard Victoria Winter, although the days have been disturbingly glorious and shiny. I hear that out in The Sticks they have something approaching a real winter but us kids downtown only get to stare morosely at the Sledding Hill That Would Not Be.

I grew up in Prince George at a period of meteorological history when we talked about snow in feet, not inches. It wasn’t a snowman if it wasn’t taller than you and at least ten feet around. We did somersaults and flips off the second-storey roof into the drifts. Halloween always meant snow was only a couple weeks away if it wasn’t already there. And every kid took his time walking home from school, knowing he’d have to clear the driveway when he got there.

I swear Jen’s fish Charlie just yawned at me.

I didn’t really jump on tonight with anything in particular to rant about. Does it show? =)

Zach Braff has a blog, albeit infrequently updated. He’s the lad we can thank for Garden State, a movie about a guy who feels like a spectator in his own life. It’s a sentiment with which I have been known to empathize. Zach Braff’s blog actually looks more like the official web site for the movie than a personal blog, but it does look like he’s doing the actual writing.

Have you noticed the difference between mainstream movies from the 80s & 90s and the movies we’re seeing on the marquees today? Hello renaissance of style. After a long draught of anything not geared to do anything but sell tickets we have a flux, a rush, a deluge of movies that gorge the mind in artistic license. We can thank DVDs for this, I suspect. Not in whole but in large part. Distributors are more willing to take on riskier, more style-driven projects knowing that secondary market sales are almost a sure thing. We want to see this stylistic achievement again and again. Hell, it’s the huge budget movies that are the risk these days. That’s something I like to see very much. Granted we’re still pretty much slaves to star power, excepting sleepers like Napoleon Dynamite). I just saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which had considerable star power, but I didn’t mind because it gave Carey a chance to prove he can act. Yes, he can. He manages to pull off a very convincing introvert. A regular guy, and less.

The movie was dripping with style. I don’t imagine many people would draw comparisons between Kill Bill and Eternal Sunshine, but in both cases you have a film where the style of presentation is as key an element as the story itself. You just didn’t get much of that fifteen years ago. You had some nice visuals and a predictable storyline. In the 80s, the birth of the metrosexual era, that’s all we really wanted. Don’t bore us with details and for the love of gawd don’t make us think. But make us think we’re clever while you’re at it, will you?

Yup, I’m glad I’m at the right age to be appreciating movies these days. I’m glad that people will turn out in numbers that make movies like Garden State a marketable enterprise. I’m glad I’m part of a generation that, if not quite what anyone would call collectively “wise”, is at least continuing to push common intellect in that direction.

At least I hope we are. It would be nice to think that when I refer to “us” I’m referring to most of my generation, and not just the usual minority selection of misfits with microphones like each generation preceding us.

Well, minority or not we’re a loud bunch this time ’round. We’re making movies that wouldn’t have seen the light of day fifteen years ago. We’re faster at finding the angles in business and more of us are doing it. At the moment we control the Web, and that’s no small thing. I guess I’m glad to be a part of it, this revolution from within.

I’m not glad it’s 2:50am and I’m still up though. Shnykees. This is what I get for going to the gym so late.