After learning of the Vignette Camera app for Android on Neil Gaiman's blog, I downloaded the demo. An hour later I bought the full version and haven't looked back. I gave it its first real run around the track yesterday when I took Jack to a small park that's exclusively for 2-to-5 year olds.
A couple more samples after the break.
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The majority of the morning was spent sitting at my desk thinking of a title for a new blog (don't worry just yet - I'm not sure this means Geek Monkey is going away, or that the 5 of you who follow this will have to immediately change your URL links), and Here Is No Why was the first thing that came into my head. The fact that it wasn't available was probably for the best since it is, after all, the title to a Smashing Pumpkins song I can't for the life of me recall, and - nothing against Billy Corgan - the last thing I want is for people to come looking for news about their favorite 90s alternative glam/rock band and find themselves looking at one more weblog that will in all probability be abandoned in a few months.
So what do I do instead? I settle on another name that most people will read and immediately connect to yet another 90s rock sensation. Granted, one that has a lot more credibility (if that even matters) but, in the end, amounts to about the same thing.
But before talking about Stranded Below Nirvana, let's talk a little more about Here Is No Why, specifically why I thought it was a pretty cool title for a blog.
After two or three aborted attempts to watch CONTEMPT (a film I plan to revisit sooner rather that later) I decided to continue both the Binder Challenge and my Jean-Luc Godard education with MASCULIN, FÉMININ, his 1966 portrait of the youth culture in Paris in the months leading up to the 1965 presidential election. Working from his own screenplay, a loose interpretation on two short stories from Guy de Mauspassant, MASCULIN, FÉMININ is a flurry of different visual and aural ideas cut together and framed in a off-kilter documentary style whose purpose isn't anything like a straight narrative, but rather an empathetic if distanced view of the lives of the young men and women Godard found himself surrounded by in Paris. As my third Godard film, after the wonderful BREATHLESS and BAND OF OUTSIDERS (reviewed here and here), MASCULIN, FÉMININ feels like a change of gears - although many of the same pieces are in place from those earlier films, the intent here is more observation than to participation.
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"You see, it's a lot scarier when there's no motive, Sid."
Horror was having a bad time of it in the 90s. The grisly slashers of the late 70s and early 80s were gone, and unless your last name was King or Barker, chances are most American horror up until 1996 was relegated to home video. Despite sticking to genre in 1995's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and 1996's CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, John Carpenter wasn't having any success at the box office. Wes Craven was faring even worse. After trying to mix genres in THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) and his return to Elm Street with WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994) he hit a personal low point with the Eddie Murphy vehicle VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. Things clearly needed to change.
Enter SCREAM.
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