As we all know, official support for Flash will finally end on 12.31.20, with interactive HTML5 content replacing it. HTML5 is lightweight, fast and takes less time to render web pages whereas Flash is CPU intensive and not as lightweight as compared to HTML5.
I writing to ask you or a PicMonkey colleague to please explain IN DUMB PERSON LANGUAGE what will be be specifically different in terms of capturing and refining images on PicMonkey after Flash is discontinued and HTML5 kicks in.
I know how everything works now as I’ve been using PicMonkey for several years. I capture an image, save it to my desktop and then use PicMonkey to crop and enhance or what-have-you. But I want to know how things will be different (if at all) after 12.31.20.
Kindly don’t answer with confusing techno-jargon. Just talk to me like I’M A CHILD….like I’M AN IDIOT…like I’m a GOLDEN RETRIEVER…what exactly will be different in terms of commands, basic capturings, refinings and whatnot.
And please promise me you won’t dump classic or, as you describe it, “old” PicMonkey in favor of your reprehensible new version[s], which are apparently aimed at the tens of millions of vapid, ADD-afflicted, selfie-taking, Tik Tok-frequenters out there.
I understand the idea that it’s not a desirable thing if too many people are laughing and chatting and kicking back during principal photography (Brian De Palma used to frown at same). But if you’ve even hung out on a set you know it’s all about waiting for the director and the dp to create the right lighting and figure out the camera movement, and that this always takes hours and hours. So denying people the option of sitting down (even in jest) is, like, “what?”
It has been revealed that famed Director, Christopher Nolan, does not allow chairs on sets pic.twitter.com/OFu0QdNKut
So it’s been semi-confirmed that the slightly more risque version of Psycho (half-glimpse of Janet Leigh side boob, extra stabbings of Martin Balsam) will be included in Universal Home Video’s forthcoming 4K UHD Alfred Hitchcock box set. Terrific, but it’s not enough. As I explained a couple of weeks ago, the only thing that will deliver serious tumescence will be the boxy (1.37:1) version of Psycho — a version that was shown on TV and pay cable tens of thousands of times during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. It was only in the mid aughts, or when the influence of Bob Furmanek and the 1.85 fascist cabal began to hold sway, that the idea of only showing a cleavered version of Hitchcock’s 1960 classic became the default go-to. HE believes that aspect ratio crimes should be prosecuted in the Hague, and that Furmanek, no offense, should be defendant #1 in the dock.
Initially posted on 10.5.11: I saw the first half of Martin Scorsese‘s 208-minute George Harrison doc during the [2011] Telluride Film Festival, and was only somewhat impressed. It covered the first 23 or 24 years of Harrison’s life, or ’43 to ’69…and I felt I knew all that going in. But the second half, which I finally saw at a New York Film Festival screening, is highly nourishing and affecting and well worth anyone’s time.
Yes, even for guys like LexG who are sick to death of boomer-age filmmakers and film executives endlessly making movies about their youth. It’s reasonable to feel this way because boomers have been commercially fetishizing their ’60s and ’70s glory days for a long time. But George Harrison: Living In The Material World is nonetheless a very good film. Particularly Part Two.
Because it’s about a journey that anyone who’s done any living at all can relate to, and about a guy who lived a genuinely vibrant spiritual life, and who never self-polluted or self-destructed in the usual rock-star ways.
Well, that’s not true, is it? At age 58 Harrison died of lung cancer, which he attributed to being a heavy smoker from the mid ’50s to late ’80s. And he wasn’t exactly the perfect boyfriend or husband. (There were a few infidelities during his marriage to Olivia Harrison.) And he wasn’t the perfect spiritual man either, despite all the songs and talk about chanting and clarity and oneness with Krishna. He had his bacchanalian periods. And he did so with the wonderful luxury of having many, many millions in the bank. It’s not like Harrison was struggling through awful moments of doubt and pain in the Garden of Gethsemane.
But this journey is something to take and share.
Part Two, as you might presume, is about Harrison’s solo career. It starts with the Beatles breakup, the making of All Things Must Pass, the 1971 Concert for Bangla Desh, etc. And then settles into the mid to late ’70s and ’80s, “So Sad”, “Crackerbox Palace,” Handmade Films, “Dark Horse,” the Travelling Willburys, the stabbing incident and so on.
The film is entirely worth seeing for a single sequence, in fact. One that’ll make you laugh out loud and break your heart a little. It’s a story that Ringo Starr tells about a chat he had with Harrison in Switzerland two or three months before his death in November ’01. I won’t explain any more than this.
Scorsese’s doc has no title cards, no narration, no through-line interview as Bob Dylan: No Direction Home had. As noted, I found Part One a little slipshod and patchworky at times. The editor is David Tedeschi, who also cut No Direction Home as well as Scorsese’s Public Speaking, the Fran Lebowitz doc, and Shine a Light, the 2008 Rolling Stones’ concert doc.
“Beatle lore-wise, Harrison was regarded early on as the solemn one, the deep spiritual cat (i.e., the last one to leave Maharishi Mahesh Yogi‘s ashram in Indian in late ’67) and to some extent the political commentator and satirist (the lyrics of “Piggies” and “Savoy Truffle“, ‘the Pope owns 51% of General Motors,’ etc.).
The AMPAS board of governors has voted to give agents the right to vote for Oscars. I for one believe that managers should also be allowed to vote. Agents and managers are as heavily invested in the industry as anyone else. Agents in particular are as sharp and eagle-eyed as members of the other branches, and are arguably more attuned to the shifting directions of the cultural winds. Come to think of it, shouldn’t this privilege also be afforded to elite industry journos? The Gold Derby gang, I mean. Talk about investment in the process and keeping a sharp eye…c’mon.
I’ve whitewater-rafted twice, once gratis and the second time for a not-too-painful fee. The freebie (thanks to the largesse of Universal Pictures) happened in Whitefish, Montana during a 1994 press junket for Curtis Hanson‘s The River Wild. The second occasion was a four-hour trek down the Schwarze Lütschine during a 2012 Switzerland vacation with Jett and Dylan. $150 each x 3 = $450 plus a tip for the raft commander.
I was thinking this morning about repeating the experience, perhaps on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon later this summer. Easier imagined than done. For two people counting to-and-fro expenses plus air fare, hotel, meals and gas you’re looking at roughly between two and three grand. Three- to four-day camping treks are naturally a lot more. Almost every kind of adventure costs an arm and a leg these days. Even a three-day hiking visit to Yosemite and surrounded areas can do a fair amount of damage, especially if your wife or girlfriend is a luxury queen who doesn’t like roughing it at second-tier motels or campsites.
The bottom line is that Deliverance-type adventures cost more than you might think, and certainly enough to give pause to working stiffs trying to live within a reasonable budget. What did Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds pay those hillbillies to drive their cats to Aintree? $40 plus gas?
I thought “partner” was more or less a gay couple term, and that straight people refer to their significant others as a boyfriend/husband or girlfriend/wife. Right? Or has the use of partner by straights become a solidarity-with-LGBTQ thing?
Life is a fountain, and each of us is a drop of water. The fountain shoots us out and we rise (sometimes ecstatically) into the air, and then we fall back into the pool and splash around and then get sucked down into the pump mechanism. And then we shoot out again. An endless cycle.
Okay, some water drop arcs aren’t as glorious as others, but it’s nonetheless a divine, infinite process.
When the kids were young and asking these kinds of questions I would say that when we die we become a baby again, except we never remember our previous life (or lives).
I for one find the fact that Donald Trump will one day be dead very comforting.
For what it’s worth there were thousands frolicking at the Malibu beaches yesterday. Which is permissible, I suppose, if you’re careful and have your mask at the ready. But as we drove back to town I noticed a whole lot of people sitting on various restaurant patios without masks. Do we not have a spiking-infection problem in this state? This “whatever” attitude is why the U.S. is still struggling while European and Asian infection levels have plummeted.
Breaking 1 pm Pacific: “Citing the rapid pace of coronavirus spread in some parts of the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday ordered seven counties including Los Angeles immediately to close any bars and nightspots that are open and recommended eight other counties take action on their own to close those businesses.”
Posted on 2.16.05: There are at least three ways to have a depressing time at the movies, and one is worth the grief.
One, you can sit through something shoddy, inept and sub-standard, and do everything you can to flush it out of your system when it’s over. Two, you can sit through a smooth, studio-funded, well-made enterprise that everyone’s loving and is making money hand over fist, but which you happen to despise with every fibre of your being. Or three, you can watch a heartfelt, quality-level downer and come out saying “huh, that was sad but edifying.”
Movies that relay or reflect basic truths will never be depressing, but those that tell lies of omission by way of fanciful bullshit always poison the air.
Sadness in good movies is not depressing — it’s just a way of re-experiencing honest hurt. Ordinary People is sad, but if you think it’s depressing as in “lemme outta here” there’s probably something wrong with you.
I’ll give you depressing: living a rich full life (children, compassion, wealth, adventure) and then dying at a ripe old age, and then coming back (i.e., reincarnated) as a chicken at a Colonel Sanders chicken ranch.
My beef is with movies that impart a distinct feeling of insanity by way of delirium or delusion, or a bizarre obsession. Frank Darabont‘s The Green Mile (turn on the current! smell that burning flesh! cuddle that cute mouse!) and The Majestic (rancid small-town “folksiness”) are two such films. Ditto Steven Spielberg‘s Always .
Martin Scorsese‘s Kundun isn’t exactly a downer. It’s worse than that — it’s paralyzing. And yet Scorsese made one of the greatest spiritual-high movies ever with The Last Temptation of Christ.
On the other hand, Marty sent thousands upon thousands of moviegoers into states of numbing depression when Sharon Stone gave Joe Pesci a blowjob in Casino.
Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis‘ film about a lush who’s decides to drink himself to death and doesn’t quit until he succeeds, has never been and never will be depressing. (If you’re engaged to someone who thinks it is, tell him or her it’s over — you’ll be divorcing them eventually so you might as well get it over with.)
And yet the watching of John Huston‘s Under the Volcano, about a somewhat older guy (Albert Finney) doing more or less the same thing, is akin to accidentally overdosing on generic cold medication and having to tough it out until the effects wear off.
In her review of Peter Brooks‘ King Lear (’71), a profoundly dreary black-and-white thing with Paul Scofield in the title role, Pauline Kael wrote, “I didn’t dislike this film — I hated it.” I was so intrigued by this review that I eventually saw Brooks’ film, and I knew Kael wasn’t talking about what Brooks had done as much as the way his film made her feel deep down.
The Godfather, Part II is a fairly gloomy film but it doesn’t lie. It basically says that the ties that used to bind families and community together in the old days (the `40s and `50s) have been unraveling for some time. As Al Pacino‘s Michael Corleone says to his mother in the second act, “Things are changing.”
The Matrix Revolutions is a profoundly depressing film, especially when all those hundreds of thousands of sentinels start swarming into Zion like wasps. Absolutely relentless and thundering empty-coke-bottle bullshit.
Sitting through Ron Howard‘s Backdraft is like injecting an experimental psychotic drug concocted by Dr. Noah Praetorious (the frizzy-haired scientist in The Bride of Frankenstein) straight into your veins.
