Pixel Harbor

When was the last time you watched something on your television that made you sit up and focus all your attention on the screen, and when it was over, you and everyone else in the room broke into applause? That’s just what happened to me tonight with HBO’s new series The Newsroom. — Script by Aaron Sorkin, starring Jeff Daniels in his best role ever, theme music by Thomas Newman, with Sam Waterston and a genuinely wonderful cast that made this show something a bit beyond great.

“A must see” is far too little praise for what the show says about us, our nation and the dysfunctional way we currently learn about what’s happening in our world.

I recommend, endorse and implore you to find a way to watch the Pilot episode. It’s already had 3 episodes on the air. You MUST see the pilot to understand what is going on. But it is well worth your time.  We’ve become unwilling victims of the corporate infotainment machine. We should be demanding more.

This is not a paid endorsement – it’s a loud hurrah for something finally worth watching.

-Robert

CLICK HERE to learn more.

Rory Hoffman, Nashville studio musician, two time winner of the ICMA Musician of the Year award, and blind from birth, demos the Paul Reed Smith Modern Eagle LTD guitar! Listen to Rory demo all seven possible pickup combinations on this amazing guitar!

Now you may not want to watch the whole 12 minute demo, but you can’t watch even 5 minutes of this without being reminded that we all do far less with the talents we’ve got than we could or should.

Here is one gentleman who exceeds my wildest dreams of guitar performance.  Enjoy!

-Robert

CLICK HERE to view the video.  Turn up your sound.

Thanks to RTW for bringing Rory to our attention.

Jackie Gleason once said “What is a Critic? A Critic is someone who relaxes on the rim of the valley and watches all the effort that goes into fighting a battle below and when it is finished, the Critic rides down and kills the survivors.”

So many movies are trying to get made. Green lighted, funded, etc. If you survive the first steps, then actually making the movie has been compared to war. The Producer and Director move an army of production people through all the steps up to release of the film.

Making good movies is hard. Making good movies takes all the elements which include story first and foremost, but then all the craft work such as acting, directing, sets, music, ALL of it.

So my experiment today was this: I bought a ticket to see the movie John Carter.  After I watched it, I bought another ticket and watched Safe House. Both were roller coaster rides. Both were lavish with locations and action. Both made me care about the outcome and the lead characters.

Tin Tin and Hugo — which I admit were brilliant productions — were a feast for my eyes. I marveled at the effects and construction of the films. But I DID NOT CARE about the lead characters nearly enough to FORGET the world outside the theater.

I want to suspend time and stop the noise of everyday life and enter a theatre and be taken away for just a couple of hours. Then I want to be returned safely to my home and remember the films that suspended time for me.

Remember how you felt after seeing Avatar, and latest Star Trek remake, and The Matrix and you said silently to yourself – Wow! that was something really different. And then you remember how you felt seeing the first Star Wars and now years later, you realize that George Lucas is a master of visuals and sets and effects and has absolutely NO plot writing skill. He steals every plot element and has stilted characters deliver the lines instead of letting them “act”.  Star Wars is a money machine (and was a visual treat for every science fantasy lover out there in the 1977). Lucas’ Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark was the exception.

So what I got out of my experiment today was this: I’ve read a lot of pre-release reviews about how the Disney Movie (PG-13) John Carter is going to fail at the box office. It might. Simply because of terrible marketing.  I just read one review in the LA Times. (Don’t read it if you hate spoilers.) And so I’m here as ONE SINGLE ticket buyer to tell you this: IF you decide to take a two hour break from life this weekend, John Carter is every bit as much fun as you can have at a movie and it delivers that suspension of time in grand, magnificent style.

I recommend it to you NOT as a “must see” film but as a genuine good use of your movie dollar.

Celebrate the excellent.  A lot of people worked very hard to create this two hours and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Everyone’s a critic. Your mileage may vary.  -Robert Barnes

PS: In case you wondered…  Safe House was excellent as a Bourne Identity style action movie. But John Carter was “Fun” and exceptional and really benefits from the big screen. Don’t wait for this one on your TV.   John Carter is based on the series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs who later wrote Tarzan.

As any serious music fan knows, it’s the songs that make good films great. With the Oscar’s just past – TIME runs down the best movie sound tracks ever.

CLICK HERE to visit the TIME web site

Full List

MOVIE MUSIC THAT MATTERED

There is more to life than the Economy, the Middle East and the next election. Take a break for five and half minutes to share it. – Robert

Click the Video to play it.

Thanks to Peter B for bringing this to our attention.

Fiction
TRAILHEAD
by E. O. Wilson

The most compelling fiction about ants you will read this year. – R

Excerpt:

The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself. While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone. Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signalled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the story