Happy Birthday

to Robert Louis Stevenson, born today, 1850, or so says Garrison Keillor. I picked up Treasure Island a couple of years ago figuring to do some Duty, check a box, etc., but, oh, it’s fun. If you haven’t ever tried it, put it on your list. It’s the best heist movie you’ll ever read.

Back to the bath

Bathtub V from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

I've been remiss. There's a new Keith Loutit video that's been up for nigh on three weeks now, and I just noticed it. It may not reach the all time high that he scored with Bathtub IV, in my humble opinion, but Bathtub IV was so amazing that that's no insult. This is still pretty great.

As always with K. Loutit, remember to go for the full screen option.

Rescue Me

THE MOST AMAZING KEITH LOUTIT VIDEO YET. (See earlier post about Loutit here.) Music! Thrills! Poetry! Flying Machines! (Note that by clicking on the four arrows in the lower right hand corner of the Vimeo window you'll get the full screen experience, which this video in particular wants. Maybe that's obvious to you but it too me a while to spot it.)


Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

I dream of Ray Harryhausen

A quick break from the mouse drawings here for some amazing films that I recently found online (via this blog). They’re the work of Mr. Keith Loutit of Sydney, Australia. Loutit uses tilt/shift photography — which plays with depth of field to create the illusion that you’re looking at a miniature or scale model — in combination with time/lapse photography; the result gives the impression that you’re watching the most insanely detailed stop/motion animation ever created. There are six films up on his Vimeo site, where you'll get a better view of these films than you can here. I can't resist posting a few of them here anyway, though. I chose the more vehicle-centric ones so that this would seem a little less wildly off-topic. More on-topic posts to come. Meanwhile, enjoy!



Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.


The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.


Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Reality Distortion Field

A quick follow-up here to the last post, just to show that I do read the articles that I recommend, and heed their lessons, too.

Lightship out of water

Earlier this summer I was riding in a car in New England when in my peripheral vision, lo, there appeared a big red truck that had on its door a familiar silhouette and this word:

LIGHTSHIP

Also a R.I. phone number and something about marine services and repairs and so on. The main point, though, was: Red Truck + Lightship. Out came the camera I had closest to hand. The truck was moving, the car was moving, so I never got the shot framed as I would have liked. (As you can see, I barely got it framed at all.) But I did learn two things. First, that truck drivers look at you suspiciously when you point an iPhone at them. (Maybe he was thinking I should upgrade to the 3G?) Second, that the camera on the iPhone, under certain circumstances, produces distortions which, in this case, at least, reminded me of the distortion in that great Henri Lartigue photograph of a racecar. Turns out that illustrator Brian Biggs has written an article that provides very cool information on the how and why of this, and incentive to go out and take a lot of pictures, too.

Also if you’ve never watched Biggs’ movie Stop Metric Madness, with music by One Ring Zero, then, ah, I’d say watch it now. It will make you like the Internet again.

Gray Lady, Gray Melon

This (unretouched) image from today’s paper is the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in The New York Times.

(Copyeditors: The New York Times? The New York Times? The New York Times? Eh?)

You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?

Here’s a quick note wishing No Country For Old Men good luck at the Oscars tonight, if only because it is, to my knowledge, the only Best Picture nominee ever to mention my hometown. I don’t remember seeing the fellow behind the counter around while I was growing up but he seems a man of his word so I’ll assume we just missed each other.

A longer post would extrapolate on the funhouse mirror parallels between the character of Anton Chigurh and Leonard Smalls, a.k.a. the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, from an earlier Coen Brothers favorite, Raising Arizona. But that’s for later. I’m on deadline now.