The steel mill: ultimate finale location or just overused?

I was watching one of my favorite films today and had a startling revelation. The film, Black Rain, stars Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, as NY cops tracking a crime boss back to Japan. Black Rain is a great film that manages to infuse the typically stale anti-hero cop drama with explorations of cultural identity and racism directed at gaijin or foreigners.

The revelation: the steel mill is the most overused location in action films.

There I was watching Black Rain, a movie I have seen at least 10 times. And just as the climactic third act is getting underway our hero finds himself tracking the bad guy to a steel mill. And that is when it struck me. I could immediately think of three or four action movies with a steel mill as a featured location. In fact a steel millwas the finale location in: Terminator 2, Star Wars Episode III, One of the Highlander movies and probably twenty more that I cant think of right now.

What drives our love of steel mills in movies? If you visit a real steel mill are there bad guys conducting clandestine deals or duking it out with their nemeses around every corner? I'm just wondering why the steel mill is the ultimate finale location in most action director's minds. Is it the machismo associated with the steel worker? Or just all those cool ligthing effects your get from the molten steel?

Florida Aquarium Part 2

Florida Aquarium - pt 1

Some short vids of the Florida Aquarium I took on a recent visit. The quality is not the greatest as I took them with my camera phone.

Connecting the Social Graph: Member Overlap at OpenSocial

Interesting article on the overlap of the user population of various social networking sites and how Google is trying to bridge the gaps with their Open Social project.

read more | digg story

Doug Liman still waiting for Web equivalent of 'Swingers'

LAS VEGAS--Director Doug Liman (Swinger's, The Bourne Identity) believes the quality of content on the Internet does not live up to expectations, and I have to agree with him. There have been some interesting experiments with the format, like the "lonelygirl" series. But as I have never tuned in to that particular program I can't talk about its strengths or weaknesses.

What we have not seen is the application of great storytelling to the web released film or serial. Sure all the major networks stream their content via the Internet, but what about the independent filmaker really utilizing the power of this free (or at least relatively inexpensive) distribution channel called the web? Why am I writing this, I've got the web film of the century to work on...peace.

Click here to read more of Liman's comments on the state of online video content. digg story

- originally reported on news.com -

Funny Ninja Baby

Another funny video courtesy of Aika. I think this baby is in Ninja training or something.

Grand Central Station Photocollage

I did this photocollage of a bunch of pictures I took in the main atrium of Grand Central Station NYC. I took about 20 exposures during a 3 minute period from roughly the same vantage point (except for the american flag shot).

I then brought the pics into Photoshop, where I layered them and adjusted the transparency, erasing sections of photos until I achieved a feeling of the hustle and bustle of this classic american crossroad. The photo editing took about an hour and a half over two separate sessions. Let me know what you think. I especially like the guy in the lower right hand corner, representing the viewer, or the tourist, watching all these busy people dart from one destination to the next.