Mike P. Lewis, Author at Loo.me

Distinct Voices in Film

Posted on September 9, 2008

My last post about Vicky Christina Barcelona created some conversation about writer/directors who have distinct voices in film. My friend Sari came up with the Sorkin analogy to Woody Allen and it got me thinking about who else there is. Here’s what i came up with:

Robert Altman. Talk about a distinct tone. Overlapping conversation everywhere. Sometimes it’s awesome (Mash, The Player, Gosford Park), sometimes it just sucks (Dr. T and the Women) and sometimes it doesn’t one way or another and it just is (Nashville).
Kevin Smith. His movies all have the fast talking, pop culture, sexual references. Mallrats and Clerks could have been the same movie. It’s fitting that his last movie was just a continuation of his first (Clerks and Clerks 2) because they are all basically the same. That said, Chasing Amy wasn’t fairly normal.
Quentin Tarantino. He’s the most like Woody Allen to me because he likes to have people talk like him in his movies. He also likes to have people talk like a total badass (Samuel in Pulp Fiction and Uma in Kill Bill) which i completely appreciate. I do love how he uses dialogue instead of action in his movies. I mean Kill Bill’s final scene – a samarui movie – was not a long sword fight but rather a convesation between Uma and Bill. Only Quentin could pull that off. Very cool
Who am i missing?

Now whether it’s a good thing to be able to identify a writer by watching a film is another whole post. Sometimes i love it (Tarantino) but sometimes i wish they would just write a story without needing to feed their ego.

Vicky Christina Barcelona Thoughts

Posted on September 8, 2008

Saw Vicky Christina Barcelona this week and thought it was great. There are certain things i love about Woody Allen movies (and certain things i hate). In general, the movie was a lot like one big dream sequence. The main character (Javier B.) walks and talks the way you only wish people would speak. What occurs is what you’d always want movies to happen and what you see is what you’d want to see. The movie was just pleasing on every level. It’s both surprising and satisfying. In short, a fun summer flick. Some more thoughts….

I love the way the characters talk. Many of the conversations are real conversations. Each character has tendencies that are real and recognizable. Scarlett J’s character has nervous little responses that sometime don’t make any sense and Vicky’s responses are always extremly honest.
I love the scenery. The background of the city makes the foreground even better. The characters are ridiculously attractive (especially Penelope Cruz – smoking!) and the Barca lifestyle of walking around in a gorgeous city, drinking wine and listening to Spanish music makes it even better.
Penelope Cruz is f’ing amazing. She was a godess in Vanilla Sky and she’s even better here. Sultry, destructive, passionate. Her precense brought the film to another level
(Spoiler Alert) There’s not a happy ending. I’ve said before that my favorite genre is film Noir and that’s because i like it when things don’t work out. I like it when all plans are ruined and the hero doesn’t get what he wants. Maybe because i think that’s just life. Maybe it’s becuase there are too many movies tha that have happy endings and i like the surprise. Or maybe i’m a machocist. Who knows. But there was not happiness at the end here. At the end of the movie the characters are older, wiser and have had a great summer but this is not a rom-com and i was very appreciative.
One thing i don’t like is when characters in the film starts complaining they sound like Woody Allen. i’m happy he’s not in the movie but when character neurosis come out, the language is his. They talk like him. It’s the same with Sorkin shows but still, i notice and i don’t like it.

Am I the only one…

Posted on September 4, 2008

who thinks that if McCain is elected that he’ll pass away and Palin will become President? I know everyone knows that it’s a possibility but i’m SURE it will happen. It’s almost destiny. Here’s someone who was in city council until 1996 and then mayor from 1996 – 2002 of Wasilla, a town of 5500 people. This is the size of my high school.

Only in America can someone go from being a mayor of a town of 5000 to leader of the free world in 4 years. Very interesting times….

Google's Shot Across the Bow

Posted on September 2, 2008

It’s been a while since there’s been a major power play by someone in Silicon Valley. A big “take over the world” type of action. I think Google’s latest Chrome is that – reminiscent of the old days of Netscape, Sun and others who were all trying to take over the world.

Fred Wilson does a good job of describing how their 3 latest projects: Chrome, Android, and Cloud/Gears are positioning them to be the OS of the future. Saying:

They are building a modern browser, Chrome, that resembles an operating system as much as a browser. It’s not that Google wants to build a better version of Internet Explorer or Firefox. They want to build a better environment for running web apps.

They are building a mobile operating system, Android, that is also designed for running web apps in a mobile environment. I think in time, Google’s Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was to the Mac. The iPhone laid out many of the killer mobile device innovations, but its a closed device, a closed carrier relationship, and even a closed application store. Android will take all of those good ideas and put them on every device, with every carrier, and in partnership with every app developer.

Google is all about the cloud. They have developed all of their apps in what goes for the cloud these days. They’ve build a great cloud computing platform in App Engine.

These three things ensure that Google will be a major player. With other launches of OpenSocial and such don’t display the raw power of Google but here it is. I love it and believe they will be the biggest and most powerful company standing – over facebook, Microsoft and others – when the dust settles.

Welcome to the Jungle….

Posted on August 28, 2008

As Axl Rose purportedly makes final preparations to put out Chinese Democracy any minute now (we hope!), Stephen Davis, the rock biographer behind 1985’s classic Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, is releasing his long-awaited Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses. In it, Davis traces GN’R’s illustrious history all the way back to Rose’s origins as a disaffected Indiana kid named Bill Bailey. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction:

Some think the legend of Guns N’ Roses began in the nighttime Los Angeles of 1985, a distant echo of West Hollywood’s neon-lit Sunset Strip. Others think it should begin ten years earlier, at the confluence of two Indiana rivers, the Wabash and the Tippecanoe, in the 1970s. But in this telling, the GN’R saga begins in gritty New York, in upper Manhattan, on a sweltering, run-down street in the late afternoon of a summer day in 1980

Continue reading “Welcome to the Jungle….” →

World Peace? We're Closer than we think

Posted on August 27, 2008

During my trip to Maui, i brought along the book “The Post-American World” by Fareed Zakaria. It’s a good read (not done yet). One part i really liked at the begging was when he was talking about how war and organized violence have declined substantially over the past 60 years – and dramatically over the last two decades. This was news to me. He writes:

The general magnitude of global warfare has decreased by over 60% [since the mid-1980’s], falling by the end of 2004 to its lowest level since the late 1950’s. Violence increased steadily throughout the Cold War – increasing sixfold between the 1950’s and early 1990’s – but the trend peaked just before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the extent of warfare among and within states lessened by nearly half in the first decade after the Cold War.

To that Harvard’s professor Steven Pinker argues, “That today we are probably living int he most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”

This seems so contrary to what i feel everyday due to the constant news of terrorism, bombings, airline accidents, etc. Zakaria addresses this saying:

One reason for the mismatch between reality and our sense of it might be that, over these same decades, we have experienced a revolution in information technology that now brings us news from around the world instantly, vividly, and continuiously…. Every weather disturbance is “the story of the century”. Every bomb that explodes is BREAKING NEWS. It is difficult to put this all in context because the information revolution is so new. We didn’t get daily footage on the ~2 million who died in the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1970’s or the million who perished in teh sands of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1908’s

But now the deaths of ten, because they are seen up close, make the world seem more and more dangerous. When, in fact, the opposite is true.

Swimming Destiny

Posted on August 16, 2008

The relay was incredible and it happened again – another nail-biting, miraculous finish. This time by Phelps. This race i just watched of the 100 was incredible (here). It almost seems as if it’s just Phelps’ destiny to win every gold. Everything is bouncing his way right now.

I do wonder how he would a view a silver medal – he’d probably be so upset.

Check out this finish:

With zero room to spare Phelps manages to touch first

The Isolation of Marriage?

Posted on August 13, 2008

I read a good article in the NY Time this week called Too Close for Comfort, and got to thinking more about how society treats marriage these days.

The article begins with stats from latest census bureau surveys which show that married-couple households are now a minority. The typical reaction to this was: What is happening to our relationships? This is a bad thing! But the article goes in the other direction, asking instead “is this really such a bad trend?” ….

It has only been in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

There are some interesting facts pulled out of the study:

From 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters
People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends (only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage)
The number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.

What is going on with the world? Apparently marriage is the only place where people can have close relationships. What a screw for the rest of us non-married folks. When discussing this with Toby, he raised a good point in that this is due to the lack of community. We no longer are in constant contact with others so it’s no wonder we don’t have strong connections with them. Without building these connections between brothers, sisters, parents and friends people are lost without good friends and confidants.

There’s one good place where we have strong community, where we are constantly surrounded by friends and live with them day to day. It’s called College and it’s no wonder that people look back on it as the best times of their lives.

Top 20 Albums of All Time

Posted on August 12, 2008

No, i’m not expressing my opinion but rather i want to post a clever algorithm done by Robert The Radish on Y! blog. Robert comes up with a mathematical way to determine the top albums of all time. The list is based on the American market and “Greatest Hits” albums and live albums were not eligible. Here’s how he did it:

“Album Staying Power Value + Sales Value + Critical Rating Value + Grammy Award Value”

Sales Value = Sales Multiplier * Staying Power Value
Staying Power Value (SPV) is: used CD sales data: In the secondary market you can expect to pay around $9.50 for a copy of Rumours (19 mm sold) by Fleetwood Mac, but you would only pay $1.38 for a copy of Cracked Rear View by Hootie (16 mm sold)
Critical acclaim: multiple reviews for each album from a diverse cross section of music magazines, newspapers and music review websites to come up with the average review number. Ratings Value = Sales Value * Rating Multiplier
Grammy Award Value and it simply looks at how many Grammy Awards each album has won. This is the least important of the components in our formula

So here’s the list of top 20 albums:

#20. Faith – George Michael
Year: 1987 Units Sold: 10 Million
SPV: $9.19 Rating (Stars): 4 Grammys Won: 1
Calculated value per unit based on the formula: $9.79

#19. Appetite For Destruction – Guns N’ Roses
Year: 1987 Units Sold: 15 Million
SPV: $8.81 Rating (Stars): 4 Grammys Won: 0
Calculated value per unit based on the formula: $9.81
Continue reading “Top 20 Albums of All Time” →

Men's Relay – Watch It

Posted on August 11, 2008

The best Olympic event i’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, click here or below to check it out

Some Quotes

From Lezac:

“I don’t know how I was able to take it back that fast because I’ve never been able to come anywhere near that for the last 50,” he said. “I can’t even explain it. It was unreal.

From German Coach:

“The whole thing was remarkable,” said Orjan Madsen, the German head coach. “It was one of those moments where you just sit back and say, ‘Jesus Christ.’ If I wouldn’t have seen [Lezak overtaking Bernard] with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

American Coach:

“There’s never been [an anchor swim like that] in my memory,” American head coach Eddie Reese said. “Not running down somebody who holds the world record, who’s on their game. That was incredible. … It has to be in the unbelievable category. That’s the biggest word I know.”