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I “discovered” The Silent City while reminiscing through Vengaboys videoclips on Vuze. In retrospect that was, perhaps, an unfortunate association. But at least now I can say I have something to thank Vengaboys for. Other than the “Up & Down” clip, that is.

The Silent City is a 2006, 7-minute short by Ruairi Robinson, who was nominated for a short-feature Oscar in 2002. I was never really into short films. Yes yes, I’m a hypocrite, there’ll always be GTV, etc., but I always felt shortchanged with short films. Silent City really made me appreciate what’s good about a short: the demands on a filmmaker are far greater. Efficiency is a greater constraint over effectiveness. This makes highly-effective shorts incredibly rare. I can only think of one other short which elicited the same sort of awe for film making that Silent City did, Mark Osborne’s More.

Robinson’s short starts with 3 soldiers in the outskirts of post-apocalyptic city. Because it’s well, short, I’d rather not tell you more than that. I have to say that the combination of scene composition, incredible and deftly-purposed CGI and a short, impacting story make The Silent City one of those movies you want to show to film students and tell them: “See? There is no causation between length of film and degree of impact. You don’t need to agonize hours over plot development to make an impact. You can have your cake and eat it too, but it’s not easy: pulling that off is what makes you a master pastry chef.”

I also have to expand on the CGI in the movie. Watching a shot and then seeing how it was composed was incredible. Some films, like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, have done this as well, but the difference is striking: Sky Captain and other “digital lot” features use 100% CGI. The result is an almost Pixar-like stylization, where you know that every single thing in the shot other than the actors is CGI. The Silent City is far more refined in its use of CGI–far better than other digital lot attempts, and surprisingly manages to leap the “soundstage uncanny valley“.

This is a great piece of film-making and I’m glad I found it. And did I mention Cillian Murphy is one of the three soldiers?

As an added bonus to anyone who’s got a nice laptop or beefy desktop, this short is available in HD. You can download the whopping 146MB file from the director’s site or using BitTorrent though the link at the bottom.

The Silent City

(via Vuze)

Tracey Thorn! You may not be a looker, but my eyes flutter in nirvana nonetheless every time I hear that voice.

It was 7th grade, late night watching “TVZ” on Multishow that I first saw this video. Being 13 and watching such “liberalism” was striking, to say the least. Unfortunately it didn’t prevent me from running up to a girl I liked, freeze up and proceed to punch her in the arm and run away.

Oh well, at least I was a year away from becoming an IW.

During the Pan-American games in Rio, in the middle of a game:

Ah, reminds me of when Shack rented one of these screens for Big 4. After the nameless technician spent the entire day trying to get it to work and gave up, we finally got it working after we “hacked it” at 3AM. We sat in front of it watching some Janet Jackson DVD.

Wasn’t really the reward I was expecting but hey, it could’ve been Michael.

(via Flickr)

I just caught a glimpse of Martin Landau while channel surfing and I just had to give him a couple minutes of my time. Turns out it was the X-Files movie. This exchange just made me crack up. Martin Landau, playing a conspiracy theorist, in talking to Mulder about the alien, err, conspiracy:

Are you familiar with what the Federal Emergency Management agency’s real power is? FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon the declaration of a national emergency. An agency with such broad, sweeping powers: (…)FEMA, the secret government!

Don’t you just love when conspiracy theories are put to the test and fail miserably? Government incompetency proving conspiracy theories wrong: priceless! Unless, of course, you’re a meta-conspiracy theorist and you think Hurricane Katrina was just a conspiracy to discredit the original FEMA conspiracy….

Then again, if you’re at that point, you probably think the Hurricane itself was created by Sir August De Wynter from the The Avengers movie. I can’t blame you, though–Sean Connery can be very persuasive…

The Reno Air Races, the “grand prix” of competitive aviation, is going on in Reno, Nevada, right now. I caught this today on AvWeb/NY Times

Airplane races have been an exciting spectator event almost since the dawn of aviation a century ago, and the combination of skill, daring, speed and danger can still draw big crowds at events like the annual Reno Air Races, which were underway this week. (…) all competition was suspended this morning after a midair collision during a Formula One light-plane race left one pilot, a champion racer, dead at the scene and another grievously injured. It was the third fatal crash at the competition in four days.

Wow. I figure the entire aviation world was in shock, I mean this was a really bad year for air shows. I went to the Reno Air Race website and saw this:

In memory of fallen friends, and to review procedures and systems, the racing classes will stand down today (…) However, our air show performers will provide a full afternoon of exciting aviation. We expect to resume racing Saturday and Sunday(…)

Say what you will about racing a jet aircraft at 250 mph at 40 ft with nothing but hard ground below you, but losing three guys in four days and stopping the events for just the time it takes to clear debris is an amazing display of sangfroid. Reminded me of Alan Shepard’s quote of what he was thinking about when he was about to launch into space for the first time on a Redstone rocket:

The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.

Just wait for the landing

They don’t make ‘em like they used to…

A series of pictures from the Brazilian Independence Day parade in Brasília. Thanks go to the Agência Brasil for releasing all of their pictures under the Creative Commons. All pictures by Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/ABr .

I don’t know why I think this picture is so funny.

Yes, that’s the guy from American Chopper.

Wow! Someone’s been watching Miami Vice. But seriously, what’s up with the boat-on-a-trailer thing?

According to Folha, Brazil’s president Lula did the “catholic cross” sign before going out in an open car during the military parade today, Brazilian Independence Day.

O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva fez o sinal da cruz antes de desfilar em carro aberto pela Esplanada dos Ministérios, em Brasília, para o público que acompanha as comemorações pelo Dia da Independência na manhã desta sexta-feira.

Folha mentioned Lula had been consistently booed and jeered by the public at recent events, implying that he was asking for “divine protection” in advance of yet another public event.

Personally, if I were Lula and had to ride down a long avenue in an open car in front of a jeering public next to a fully-armed military contingent whose basic pay is about $300 a month, I’d be terrified. I’d not only do the cross sign, but I’d probably put on a kevlar kippah, and put the thickest Koran I could find in my shirt pocket. Nobody wants to be known as “The Brazilian Anwar Sadat.”

But hey, that’s just me.

(via Folha Online)

That’s a screenshot from Dave Matthews’ new single, “Eh Hee”. It’s available for free from iTunes. It’s too soon to comment on the single, but I will say this about the video:

Take the background of Sledgehammer,

Add the facepaint of Shock the Monkey:

Throw in the stage floor from Digging in the Dirt:

And Presto! We have a Peter Gabriel video by Dave Matthews!

Just be glad he didn’t throw in the cabbage lady from Solsbury Hill:

And just to preempt what I know is coming: Yes, Rafael, I know Solsbury Hill is written in 7/4 time signature. And yes, I know how ballsy that is and I think it’s cool too.

A lot of people get into defining moments in history as moments where you clearly remember where you were when they happened, and all other moments. Like, where were you when man landed on the moon, when 9/11 happened, etc.

Today I had a small realization: There are perhaps two moments where I clearly remember where I was when I received the news. 9/11 is one of them, which in retrospect I both chide and admire myself for the insensitivity and rationality, respectively, with which I met that event.

The other was a moment which I think all Brazilians remember. It was like a flash of PTSD when all senses go back to that moment. I remembered it when I read this:

The greatest testament to Ayrton Senna’s character was most evident at the moment of his death. As track officials examined the wreckage of his racing car they found a furled, bloodsoaked Austrian flag. A victory flag that he was going to raise in honour of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger, who had died on that track the day before.

I was sitting in the middle of the back seat of a friend’s Volkswagen Quantum, heading down Avenida Paulista for lunch, on the corner of Pamplona, stuck in a red light, listening to Jovem Pan AM 620 KHz when I heard Senna had died from injuries sustained a few hours earlier.

A few days later, during recess (I was in third-grade after all), I looked up at the sky and saw a big S-shaped cloud in the sky being drawn by the Esquadrilha da Fumaça. Little did I know that over a million people were lining the streets already, waiting for the funeral procession.