These pictures come from the following folder: Backup/Old My Pictures/Family/2004 McHose
I think these pictures are fairly self explanatory.
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
Next week’s folder will be: Backup/Old My Pictures/Family/Teresa & Ernie
These pictures come from: backup/Old My Pictures/Family/2004 B&W
One of the things I take from these pictures is that I have progressed in my knowledge of lighting quite a bit.
Plus I owned a pretty terrible scanner.
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
IMAGE LOST
Next week’s folder: backup/Old My Pictures/Family/2004-McHose
Movie – Exit Through the Gift Shop
Director: Banksy
Starring: Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Thierry Guetta, Space Invader and Rhys Ifans
Theater – Bennett’s Union Street Theater – Boone, Iowa
Companion – Flying Solo
Food – I had dinner with Nader at Mongolian Buffet.
Intellectual Honesty & Baggage
Sometimes I feel that I’m the only person I know that LOVES documentaries. One of my all-time favorite movies is Born into Brothels and I can barely get anybody else to touch the DVD case, let alone actually watch it. Usually when I try to suggest watching a documentary to somebody else, they act like I asked them to sit through 90 minutes of riding the lightning.
For the most part I’ve given up on trying to get anybody else to watch a documentary with me. I say “for the most part” because I’m not a quitter. I just don’t get why most people hate documentaries. The world is just an extremely fascinating place, I don’t know why people don’t want to learn more about it.
I know most documentaries tend to make people angry or sad, (besides the sickest bastards in the world, who wants to watch the Japanese chop up a bunch of dolphins) but they are also so enlightening. If they are done properly.
True the most famous documentaries are usually thinly veiled propaganda, but even the works of Michael Moore are educational if you are intelligent enough to be able to sift the gold from the muck.
Synopsis from IMDB
The story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world’s most infamous graffiti artists at work.
Review
I admittedly live in very small town Iowa. My exposure to street art is very limited, but even I am familiar with and appreciate the work of Banksy. I am familiar with Shepard Fairey because he created the single most iconic image of the last at least 20 years: The Obama Hope Poster. But I knew nothing of any of the other street artists in the movie.
However, the movie does a very good job of introducing the viewer to the world of street art, before it really starts to focus on its subject Thierry Guetta.
Guetta follows around many of the most preeminent street artists in the world filming them under the pretense that he is making a documentary, but it seems that he doesn’t really have any intention of making a movie. He just films everything that he does.
Eventually he ends up in Banksy’s fold. Eventually Banksy pushes him to make his movie, but when Banksy see the finished project he realizes it is a complete disaster. He sends Guetta home to work on his art and remakes the movie himself.
What Guetta does when he gets home is a little mindblowing, but not in a good way.
I’ll give you this much of a clue. A long time ago Jill loaned me the movie Factory Girl. Factory Girl follows the story of Edie Segwick, a socialite that falls into Andy Warhol’s flock. Edie’s father is a complete piece of garbage that sexually molested Edie when she was young and dumped her into a mental institution when she walked in on him having an affair with their neighbor.
However, during one scene in the movie he is having dinner with Edie and Warhol and says the most spot on thing to Warhol:
“You’re really more of a print-maker than an artist, aren’t you?”
That is what I would say to Guetta if I ever met him.
This is a very well crafted movie and follows some very fascinating people. The end of the movie is actually a brilliant statement on our culture’s ability to buy into hype over talent. Although I’m sure there are some that would call me an elitist for thinking that way.
If I could get somebody else to watch a documentary out there, I would highly recommend this flick. It is on Netflix and is available on DVD.
Rating
4.0/5.0 Caramels
Buy on DVD
Probably not. I have it on Netflix, so I can watch it any time I want.
2010 Ranking
Number 10. It knocks True Grit out of the Top Ten.
Bonus Information
Since both Ames and Des Moines have decided to not bring any new movies worth seeing to their collective theaters, I just had dinner with Nader on Tuesday night and went home and decided to start getting caught up on my Oscar nominated Documentaries.
Movie – Restrepo
Directors: Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger
Theater – Bennett’s Union Street Theater – Boone, Iowa
Companion – Flying Solo
Food – I had supper at my Mom’s with Alexis, Johnathan and Jason before I watched this movie. She made Salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes and gravy. It was awesome!
Intellectual Honesty
I am a fan of Sebastian Junger’s writings. I was very legitimately excited about seeing this movie as soon as I heard about it.
Baggage
I’m not a big military guy. I understand the reason for the military’s existence, but I don’t get all excited when talking about the military like many of the men I know do.
Synopsis from IMDB
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan’s most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban.
Review
One of the reasons I was excited to see this movie is that it is supposed to be a very neutral portrayal of the war in Afghanistan. I had read an interview by the filmmakers about how both sides of the political spectrum had attacked this movie for being too pro-war or too anti-war.
If both sides were attacking the movie, I figured it must be fair and balanced. I mean legitimately fair and balanced, not like how FoxNews is fair and balanced, using the words like some kind of extremely ironic tagline that they themselves are privately surprised that they have the balls to use in public.
I come from more of the war is “old-men-talking-and-young-men-dying” frame of mind rather than the “war!-what-is-it-good-for?-absolutely-nothing-except-ending-slavery-and-stopping-Hitler” frame of mind.
Because of that, when I watched this movie, I saw more of the anti-war side of the story. Even though, this isn’t what the movie is trying to do. It just covers one platoon for one year and shows the facts. But in my mind, it is rather clear that the facts are that war sucks!
When I turned the movie off, I could only feel bad for these young men that they had to be put through this because of our glaring foreign relation mistakes since… probably since the end of WWII.
It is an interesting movie and it is graphic in its depiction of war, so there are definitely scenes that aren’t for the faint of heart. But I would highly recommend it because it is a view of the war you won’t see on any news network.
It doesn’t preach one side or the other. Which is very refreshing.
I would probably rate it higher, but there are moments where the movie drags on a little bit.
Rating
3.5/5.0 Caramels
Buy on DVD
No need, I can watch it on Netflix anytime I want. Although I might buy the corresponding book.
2010 Ranking
I would put it just outside of my Top Ten.
Bonus Information
Looks like Ames is bringing in only a steaming pile of poo for movies again this week: Just Go With It, Just Beiber: Never Say Never and Gnomeo and Juliet, I would have to be paid and paid well to endure any of those movies. Looks like I’ll be watching more documentaries next Tuesday as well.
These pictures are from: backup/Old My Pictures/2005 Calendar
I’m pretty sure these are the files from the 2nd year of the calendar, although it is possible that it was the 3rd or 1st year of the calendar. My records on such things are spotty at best.
In the early days of the calendar I made “individualized” calendars, but I only made 3 calendars back then, so it was somewhat easy to do. That is why there are more than 12 images in this folder.
These pictures would have been taken in 2004.
This is the first digital picture I ever took.
This picture was taken in Tulum near Cozumel. It was also fairly popular in its day.
This picture was taken between Upper Cullen Lake and Middle Cullen Lake in Minnesota.
This was the 1st (kind of feels like the last) picture I had accepted to the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon. Apparently I’ve regressed as a photographer since this photo, the peak of my photography “career”.
I once had this terrible idea called the Beaver Machete Project. I’ll probably have to explain this later, but I’m going to buy myself a week or so to think of a good excuse for why I thought this was a good idea.
Next week’s look at the archives will be: backup/Old My Pictures/Animals
A cursory glance of this folder reveals very few pictures of animals.
Small bookkeeping note, with this Journal Entry, Teresa becomes the 6th Person to be featured, mentioned, or alluded to in 100 entries. I’m sure she’ll put that on her resume.
If you have always wanted to own your very own copy of Hearts Beat High with Joy, here is your chance!
I have donated an 11×14 copy of this picture to the Sacred Heart School Carnival. This picture is matted and framed.
You can purchase it by winning its silent auction.
The Sacred Heart School Carnival is this Friday. From 6-8. It is at the Sacred Heart School in the Ryan Gym.
All the money goes to a good cause, so show up and bid, silently!
I’ve finally distributed almost every last 2011 Photography 139 Calendar. Allow me to explain what images were used and I will include the briefest of notes on the pictures.
This year, the calendar was a little bit more of an adventure than usual. The printer from the last two years baled on me. I couldn’t find the kind of paper that I have used the last couple of years. The paper I used was too thick to duplex. In the end though, it all came together and a perfectly acceptable calendar has been produced.
Here are the pictures:
This picture was taken at the Iowa State Fair. I like to photograph one of the flower gardens at the Iowa State Fair every year. I have to confess to being a little disappointed with the garden this year, but I have no doubt it will be back to its full glory in 2011.
This picture was taken in my backyard. It is actually connected to the August picture. I purchased a bouquet of flowers for the August photo. Then I waited for the flowers to die and photographed them for the January picture.
I found this frog in my favorite frog finding spot – Lost Lake in Ledges. He was surprisingly brave for coming from a race of creatures that are notorious cowards.
Sara was with me when I took this picture down in the Papajohn Sculpture Garden. This is the only picture in the calendar that was taken with the aid of a photo assistant.
This lonely farm scene can be found between Boone and Ames on US30. There is a secret to how this picture was produced, but Photoshop isn’t that secret.
Even though I drove to Pella in a rainstorm to photograph their tulips, I found my best tulip picture in my Grandma’s front yard.
On a road trip with Mom and Teresa to State Center, I must have taken at least 300 pictures of roses, but it was this picture of a rose leaf that stood out as the most memorable image of the day.
I visited a couple different wild daisy patches, but the daisy image that made the calendar was found in my Mom’s yard. It was my belief that after “The Solace of Ordinary Humanity”, I couldn’t possibly take a better daisy picture, but I took camera in hand to photograph daisies to figure out a birthday present for Jill.
This is the only image from the Random Weekly Photo Experiment to make the calendar. This picture was taken in the middle of the Winter with a daisy bouquet. This image is hanging in Kelly’s salon – Salon 908.
This picture is meant to be parody. Nobody else in the world will understand that, but believe me, it is meant to be parody. This is also the only picture in the calendar that is manipulated by Photoshop in a meaningful way. This hibiscus grows in my Mom’s yard.
In retrospect, I’m not sure this picture belongs in October, but it is too late now. This picture was taken near the sewage treatment center in Boone. I hope that doesn’t take some of the romance away from it.
I photographed this lily in my Grandma’s flower garden. She planted so many lilies that she wasn’t sure what colors were even going to come up.
This is a picture of my Grandma Bennett’s Bible.
I have only 1 stated goal for the 2012 calendar. There will be a picture of an iris in it. Jen’s favorite flower is the iris and it is the one flower that I can’t figure out how to photograph. I will meet my adversary head on this year and 1 of us will fall.
It is my habit to not comment on the pictures I post in this project, but I’m going to make a small exception here.
In the first couple of pictures, Carla is sitting on the old abandoned well in the basement of our old house on 415 Greene Street.
I was never allowed to even go near this well because my Mom feared that I would fall in it and be lost to the ages.
The fact that Carla was allowed to sit on this means 1 of 2 things to me:
1. She was the favorite child.
2. She was the expendable child.
I’m not sure what is the correct answer, but I’m fairly certain that my Mom never saw these pictures.
A couple of more observations.
Usually there is always a ton of Alexis in Carla’s childhood pictures, but I’m struck in these pictures how much Johnathan there is.
Don’t be surprised when I steal some of these mirror ideas in the future.
1 word or short phrase answers for the rest of the questions.
Your favorite virtue?
Humanitas
Your favorite qualities in a man?
Logic
Your favorite qualities in a woman
Empathy
What you appreciate the most in your friends?
Follow through
Your main fault?
Disinterest in money
Your favorite occupation?
Mixer
Your idea of misery?
Paperweight
If not yourself, who should you be?
My better self
Where would you like to live?
In the country.
Your favorite prose authors?
http://www.jennyblovesyou.com/
Your favorite poets?
http://impassionedversifier.blogspot.com/
Your favorite heroes in fiction?
Dexter
Your favorite heroines in fiction?
1 of my own creation.
Your favorite painters and composers?
Painter: Klemmer
Composer: http://www.guggenheimgrotto.com/
Your heroes in real life?
My friends
Your heroines in real life?
Mom
Your heroines in World history?
Any woman that lives under sharia law.
Your favorite food and drink?
Oklahoma Joe’s and Pepsi
Your favorite names?
Evie
What I hate the most?
Doubt
World history characters I hate the most?
Any tyrant
The reform I admire the most?
Health Care
The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with?
I’d be satisfied with being as good at basketball as I used to be.
How I wish to die?
Fearless
Your favorite motto?
Matthew 6:21
That concludes my look back at 2010. We may have to do this again next December.
Movie – Love and Other Drugs
Director: Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, Glory)
Writer: Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale, The Interpreter), Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac) and Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada, Bride Wars, Brokeback Mountain)
Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa
Companion – Nader Parsaei
Food – Probably, but can’t remember.
Intellectual Honesty
I love Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Particularly Anne Hathaway. I probably even like the Princess Diary movies more than I should.
Baggage
With the obvious exception of Glory, I don’t think that Edward Zwick can make a superior movie. I think he can make good movies, but they fall just short of great because he has tendency to allow the movie to break down into its weakest elements in the third act. Blood Diamond is a prime example. It starts out so intelligent and then turns into a run-of-the-mill action movie in the third act. You don’t leave the theater angry, but slightly disappointed by the wasted potential.
Synopsis from IMDB
Maggie (Hathaway) is an alluring free spirit who won’t let anyone – or anything – tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie (Gyllenhaal), whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie’s evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.
Review
Once again I left the theater disappointed by wasted potential. Gylenhaal and Hathaway give full effort and they certainly have chemistry, but this movie is schizophrenic. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and instead goes in a hundred different directions.
The filmmakers clearly wanted to make a modern day Love Story and so they did aspire to great things, but since part of the movie is comedy and part of it is super serious it just feels very disjointed.
An example is a great scene where Jamie goes to a meeting that is sort of a support group for people suffering from Parkinson’s. While Maggie is finding out that she isn’t alone in her struggle with Parkinson’s, Jamie is talking to the husband of a woman suffering from Parkinson’s. I wish I could find a snippet of the dialogue so I could copy and paste it.
The scene is a real eye opener and shows Jamie that being with Maggie is going to go down a very negative road as her health degenerates. It is a great scene as a stand alone, but in the movie it feels slightly out of place.
I think this movie had a lot of potential, but it tries to be too many things and ends up being not much of anything.
Great characters and great actors though.
Rating
3.0/5 Caramels
Buy on DVD
Not likely, but I would watch it again.
2010 Ranking
I don’t know that it particularly ranks anywhere. Maybe 2nd best Romantic Comedy that I’ve seen this year.
Bonus Information
Really nothing to report.
Movie – The Fighter
Director: David O. Russell (Three Kings, Spanking the Monkey, I Heart Huckabees)
Writer: Scott Silver (8 Mile), Paul Tamsay (Air Bud). and Eric Johnson
Starring: Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, The Departed, Planet of the Apes), Christian Bale (The Prestige, The Machinist, The Dark Knight), Amy Adams (Junebug, Doubt, Enchanted) and Melissa Leo (Conviction)
Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa
Companion – Mom and Nader Parsaei
Food – I don’t think so…
Intellectual Honesty
Amy Adams is by far my favorite actress. I would watch her in virtually anything. I’ll even slum and watch Talladega Nights now and again because of the small role she has in it. I don’t even hate myself in the morning. I had very high hopes for David O. Russell after Three Kings, but then he disappeared after I Heart Huckabees bombed.
Baggage
I really want to hate Christian Bale because he is such a doucher in real life, but he is always great and he makes such great movies. I’m never excited for a Mark Wahlberg movie because he is so hit and miss. He can be brilliant like in The Departed or terrible like he was in The Happening.
Synopsis from IMDB
A look at the early years of boxer “Irish” Micky Ward and his brother who helped train him before going pro in the mid 1980s.
Review
This movie is dominated by great performances. Christian Bale deserves the Oscar for his performance as Dicky Eklund, a drugged up-washed out former boxer living off the glory of once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard. He is followed around by a camera crew that he thinks is doing a documentary on his boxing comeback. In reality they are doing a documentary on “Crack in America”.
Dicky isn’t the main character in the movie. Dicky’s young brother Micky Ward is the main character. Dicky, along with the rest of Mickey’s family are hurdles that he has to hurdle to have a chance at an actual boxing career and an actual happy life.
I bring up Dicky first because he absolutely steals the movie. That isn’t to say that Mark Wahlberg is bad as Mickey Ward. He isn’t, but Micky is the simplest character in this movie and he is upstaged in nearly every scene.
Almost as great as Bale is Melissa Leo as Alice Ward, Mickey and Dicky’s mother, that uses Mickey (by “managing” his boxing career) to support the rest of her worthless family.
A particularly great scene in the movie is when Alice goes to get Dicky out of a crack house. She is crying behind the wheel of the car when Dicky starts to sing. He wins her back and damn it, no matter how much you hate him for ruining Mickey’s life, he wins you back too. Dicky makes bad choices, but he isn’t a bad person and you want to see him succeed almost as much as you want to see Mickey scrape off the barnacles in his life.
Amy Adams is wonderful (would you expect anything less) as the woman that tries to help Mickey steer his life in the write direction.
Without giving up too much of the movie, one of my absolute favorite scenes in the movie is when Dicky gets out of prison. He is cleaned up and intends to stay cleaned up. It is the scene where he tells his friends from his crack den goodbye. It is understated and brilliant.
The boxing scenes are by far the most realistic boxing scenes I’ve ever seen portrayed in a movie.
My only real complaint about the movie is that I would have liked to have seen more out of Wahlberg’s Ward.
Rating
4.0/5 Caramels
Buy on DVD
On Blu-Ray the first day it comes out.
2010 Ranking
3rd Best Movie of the Year. Behind Inception and The Social Network.
Bonus Information
There is a ton of profanity in this movie. Despite that fact, my Mom still liked the movie, even though she hates profanity.