bloggie blog

As you may know, Los Angeles has a blight problem: too many billboards. As a counterexample, Santa Monica is a much better city today than it would be if it had LA’s lax billboard laws. Imagine Ocean Blvd done up like the Sunset Strip. Ick! But back in LA, the latest looming evil is projection billboards. Recently, an evil corporation ran tests projecting ads on the sides of large buildings at night.

Oh look, we’ve become the hellish future portrayed by Phillip K. Dick, author of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which 27 years ago was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Dick is turning over in his grave, and crazy replicants like Sean Young the actress not Sean Young’s character may as well be on the loose all over this town. Run, people, run!

This was supposedly written by an agent at CAA to all of his clients regarding the current state of the entertainment industry. It was forwarded to me today by a reputable source, but I am not certain of its true provenance. It’s worth a read, but it may be not be from a CAA agent. Or maybe this high-level agent doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘conflagration’ nor how to spell some well-known names.

Dear Clients,

I wanted to take a moment and give you a number of important updates. Before I begin, however, I wish to tell you that I am so very proud of you for your dogged determination during these most difficult times. Hollywood is being challenged on multiple fronts — labor uncertainty, paradigm shifting and the ‘great recession.’

More…

Yesterday on Science Friday, Ira Flato interviewed some high-level movie guys working in 3-D, aka stereoscopy. Said Lenny Lipton, a long-time 3-D player and the inventor of some stereoscopic technology, “I think all movies, for business reasons, will have to become stereoscopic movies … just as all movies have sound.”

There you have it. This is not a prediction for the far future, but the near future. I don’t know that actors will get left behind this time, like Norma Desmond, but it’s an interesting piece of news, and in particular the pervasive future of stereoscopy is what’s news to me.

Lipton, who also wrote the lyrics of the song Puff the Magic Dragon, might be biased. The others on the panel, director Henry Selick and executive Jim Mainard, think only half of high-profile films will become 3-D films, about 25 titles a year. By the way, Selick pushed for some sort of smell-o-vision on Coraline, but the panel agreed that’s not coming. Rather, new sound technology is the other thing on the verge of changing our movie-going experience.

For the last three years, I didn’t have a valid U.S. passport. How did that happen to the kid that spent a year of his childhood in Spain and lived a coupla years in Peru and took trips to Singapore and London? I don’t know, but happen it did.

Now that has changed — yesterday I got the new passport from the government and I’m ready to go. But I don’t know where to go. I’m no travel fiend, jonesing for a fix. World travel has been a rare thing, a wonderful highlight to contrast my daily life. I have lived a rich life in the USA that I don’t know would be immensely richer with travel abroad. Different, but not necessarily better. I have explored my local cities, instead.

But it has been a while. Let’s see … I went to Spain in 1998. Yup, it’s about time. But where oh where shall I go? Suggestions welcomed.