Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

Recent Media Consumption

30December2007 [directLink] [weekly]

The holidays have meant I’ve a little more time than usual to be consuming various media; highlights of the below were In The Mood For Love and I’m Not There; first up, what I’ve been watching:

• re-watched Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2; they really should be watched as a whole, but I prefer the first to the second; gets occasionally annoying when Tarantino gets too obvious — his arrogant-movie-nerd-thing gets horribly annoying in interviews, and it slipped through in times during the movies; I couldn’t avoid the impressions that he really wants to be Bill, and that he has mummy issues; so flawed, but entertaining, and does have some gorgeous scenes — I love the Pai Mei stuff, so long as he’s not talking (the stereotype is painful), and adored the fight with Lucy Liu in the snow
• re-watched Night Watch, in preparation for Day Watch (just hoping they hurry up and release it on DVD); have subsequently bought the book, the first in a trilogy, though don’t expect to be actually reading it for a while (my “to-read” pile is ridiculously large)
• watched In The Mood For Love, which bears a striking amount in common with Wong Kar-Wai’s later 2046, which I had previously enjoyed; an absolutely gorgeous film — the first act is really tightly cut, with barely a breath between scenes, and then it drops in these beautifully languid waltzes, complete with slow motion and music in 3/4; one of those foreign films that is so good it makes me despair at the state of English-speaking film
• watched I’m Not There, which restored my faith in said film; it took me half the film to really get into it — about when Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn (as Bob Dylan) rocks up it gets really good — but loved the whole thing, and have decided I’m a fan of Todd Haynes; I now want to find the music they played in the film, but I’d prefer a “soundtrack” type thing (ie, in the mood of the film) to a Dylan best-of — it may be telling that the film didn’t play Blowing In The Wind at all
• watched The Darjeeling Limited; it was preceded by the short film Hotel Chevalier, which I loved, and which showed Paris so had me emotionally before the film proper had begun; enjoyed Darjeeling but found the whole exotic-India thing a little discomforting, and am not sure the film actually did anything
• watched Dr Who, Season 1 (ie, the Christopher Eccleston season); having previously only seen parts of the very first and very last episodes — because they coincided with trips to England back in ‘05 — it was good to see the season as a whole; there are lots of interesting little story elements that take the whole season to play out, which I love as a storytelling method; there was a curious Manifest Destiny thing going on in there (the human race being disproportionately important to the rest of the universe); all told was entertaining, but couldn’t get into it any more than as a diversion
• watched El Mariachi and Desperado; the first was awful — cheap, poorly acted, but I watched it in prelude to the next, which ended up something of a waste as Desperado‘s mariachi only bore similarities with El Mariachi; the second was entertaining, and at least had some better acting and didn’t look like it was shot on weekends on a cheap video camera; both were annoyingly contrived when it came to good guys shooting straight while bad guys shot everything but their target, but that’s the genre, so wasn’t unexpected
• re-watched House of Flying Daggers; still a gorgeous film

I’ve also been reading, a lot, but haven’t actually finished any books in a while; on that score, I’m:

• two-thirds through Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi; this one sat in my to-read pile for a year before I picked it up, but have been pleasantly surprised; serious literature is something I really need to be in the mood for, so it’s a little slow going, but it’s a good read
• a third of the way through Hal Duncan’s Ink; loving it, though my memory tells me I preferred Vellum at this point; not far enough in to really understand what’s going on though, which is something else I need to be in the mood for
• half-way through Kim Stanley Robinson’s Forty Days of Rain; got boring a few weeks ago so I moved on to other books
• less than a quarter through China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station; I love the mood of it, but it’s heavy going, and when I read it I get the sense that Miéville sees the City as monstrous, which is really jarring; also put this down weeks ago
• just started Philip K Dick’s The Divine Invasion, which isn’t coming across as good as Valis, but is in the same league so I’ll be hurrying through it soon
• (the last book I did finish was Lian Hearn’s Heaven’s Net Is Wide, which was mildly entertaining — I’ve read the other four “Otori” books, so it was an easy pick — and more importantly, was terribly easy to read)

And for those times when I can’t actively consume media, the soundtrack to my life has recently been extended with:

• listening to Alicia Keys’ As I Am, which I’m loving; more beautiful beats on the opening track and an eclectic mix of soul, motown and funk; the only track I don’t really like is Teenage Love Affair because it’s so plain, but the rest of the album I’ll loop over and over

Soominch Fashion Shoot

30December2007 [directLink] [photography]
This item was changed on 21May2008

Have finally been able to put together an album (The Soominch Collection, November 2007) from a couple of fashion shoots back in late November. Liz completed her fashion degree at UTS this year; the entire final year is focussed around a collection and a show the uni hosts. Along with the show, they hold an exhibition of other final year design works, and they include a slideshow of photos of each of the fashion students’ collections. So we had a couple of shoots to get together photos for that; Liz had a friend model the clothes for both shoots.

First up we did a relatively simple shoot on Martin Place on the evening of 21November — simple in that we only had a single outfit, but it was complicated by the fact that we were shooting in available light, and it took us a while to find enough of that to get decent images. Eventually we set up next to Martin Place Bar, which entertained the patrons.

The following weekend, on 25November, we did a 4+ hour shoot at Liz’s restaurant in Eastwood (during the day, while it was closed, so we could move everything around). This one involved five/six outfits (the last one is a different top, but the skirt is repeated from the fifth). It was available light again, and the restaurant was pretty dimly lit, but being indoors and by day we were able to get some good lighting after a little experimentation. (For most of this shoot I had the exposure cranked up.)

Had to get the photos to Liz pretty quickly for the show, so didn’t have time to do any processing on them — just converted the RAWs to JPGs and gave her a dump of the (around 500!) images. Since then I’ve been able to properly process the set. I first culled it down to a set of a couple hundred workable photos and messed with those. For a lot of them, I’d just pull the white balance down and they looked amazing — going from warm indoor light to a cool blue that really brings out little highlights — especially the skin tones and the makeup. For others I pulled lots of colour out, or did the opposite and really oversaturated some of the colours.

But I still had a couple hundred really good looking photos; I’ve only just been able to cull that down to the 32 in the album here. I tried to get a good range in there too — so all the outfits are on show. And there’s a bias towards the final one because we did a couple of interesting thematic things. There are three in the album that are shot through Venetians, which worked really well — I especially love that she looks oblivious to the fact that she’s being watched, and the couple where her eyes are covered do interesting things with the “male gaze”. And I love the look of the final four, shot up against the wall with daylight streaming in from the left.