Test Two

Test One

Just seeing if anything pops up on my RapidWeaver blog.

New GM

I just saw the new General Motors (GM) commercial that’s been airing since they filed for bankruptcy a few days ago. It makes it clear that there have indeed been wrong moves, and bloat, to put it diplomatically; but with this bankruptcy GM is not gone, but is instead remaking itself in preparation for a future where a smaller, more nimble automaker will be better placed to take on foreign competition and respond to the needs of the consumers the world over.

Let’s hope that this is not just spin because if America is to ever return to the times when “Made in America” meant quality wherever you went, we have to be more than a ‘service economy.’

America has to produce things again.

And we can’t do that without a competitive General Motors.

Growing Backward

I think that I have a genetic propensity toward collecting things–which makes as much sense as everything else that people like to claim happen entirely because of genetics. All my life I have collected ‘stuff,’ be it models and toys, comic books (which runs hot and cold) and currently busts.

Bowen Designs makes some of the best as far as I am concerned, though there are a few other makers out there as well. Collecting them combines two of my favorite passions: My on-again, off-again love affair with comics, and staturary. My latest bust (to be part of a Moving Picture Show slideshow soon) is of Whirlwind (He of the green helmet above. Speaking of which, I have no idea why he wears it. I always assumed that it was because the centrifugal forces generated by his vortex would deprive him of oxygen without some way of protecting himself).

He’s a villain, and one of my earliest exposures to superheroes. He is literally a living whirlwind, his lower half a roiling funnel of air, propelling him forward at terrific speeds.

Perhaps the idea of a man that controls tornadoes is silly, but when you’re nine or ten years old reading about such beings, it makes perfect sense.

And strangely enough, despite growing up, it still makes sense.

Someone said that when you get older, you have to discard childish things. As far as I am concerned, to give up what make the child in you happy is to not get older, but to get old.

Give me Peter Pan any day.

By The Way

Here are the comics I was reading when I as almost hit by a car last week (May 27th, The Crossing). Reading is good for you, not so much when a moving vehicle is the punch line (unless is one of those Smart cars, in which case I might do more damage to it than it to me).

And in case anyone is curious, ‘schadenfreude’ means, essentially, that one digs another’s misfortune. The dictionary didn’t say, but as far as I am concerned, ‘prick’ defines such a person much more succinctly.

I should also mention that I stand corrected on the crash-worthiness of Smart cars. Here’s a video of a crash test of a Smart Twofor. It does pretty well.

Could Someone Explain To Me

Why is it that Matthieu Kassovitz has not directed a James Bond film, particularly since the newer Bond films seem more ‘grounded’ than most of those that proceeded them. You could tell that the man is capable of such a task from seeing his first film, La Haine (Hate), though you really can see what he is capable of from watching The Crimson Rivers.

The story of the film, while at first fascinating, grows more and more fantastic as the film progress, much to it’s detriment; though that is not really what I am writing about. Mr. Kassovitz has a keen eye and teams with a really good cinematographer, Thierry Abrogast (whose style reminds me somewhat of Dean Cundey) to produce a sharp, crisp image on screen that–while the gore reminds this viewer of David Fincher’s Seven–differs in that Seven was very dreary and deliberately understated while Crimson Rivers is just the opposite, despite having a relatively restrained color palate.

In The Crimson Rivers Mr. Kassovitz displays a sense of place, of topography, that’s remarkable in that it makes some of the surrounding areas of France become virtually characters in the film. This is what I mean. He handles scale very well, and unlike Michael Bay, doesn’t seem to let the spectacle of a particular situation overwhelm human stories.

Which reminds me, I need to add Babylon AD to my Netflix queue, partially because Mr. Kassovitz directed it, partially because the film is supposed to be a virtual tutorial about what happens when a studio doesn’t let a director do what he was hired to do, namely direct.



The picture of Matthieu Kassovitz above came from Abelhudos.wordpress.com

Remarkable

Is there nothing the Brits will not bet on?