Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Steady Hands

With steady hands and balanced mind, you too can take pleasure in another Dr. Toy award winner, this one from the “10 Best Toys of 2006”: Kapla Blocks.

It is not possible to describe Kapla Blocks in any particularly exciting way: they are blocks. Wooden blocks. They do not light-up; they do not erupt with loud noises. They are just blocks. Wooden blocks... More precisely, they are wooden planks (made of “pine from renewable French forests”) measuring 1” by 4 ½” by ¼”. Each exactly alike, though you can choose from seven different colors.

They act as blocks because what you do with them is… stack them. It is how you stack them that counts, as you can use the plans included with the kit, or use your imagination to create countless oddities.

Think of them as a creative-form of Jenga.

At top is a picture of my first creation, made from the basic barrel-set of 200 planks. Though they did not have a systematic plan for it, there was a picture of a completed one, which I used as a guide. I am not sure how many I used for it, as there were quite a few left over. What I am sure about is that I need to get more of these things.

Monday, September 24, 2007

What Are You Looking At?

When you squeeze and squint your eyes to focus, is it something in your mind trying to make your eyes smaller? Is it because when you had tiny eyes, when you were a child, you could see much more?

Try to see again as a child, walking to work – all the details: grass, hedges, fences, but then try harder, forcing your sight into more of a focused lens closer to blades of grass, leaves and branches of hedges, painted wooden-pickets of fences.

Then tighten more your gaze that you might see:

Black busy bugs travel over, under, and around each towering green and brown-rusted blade bending beneath the weight of their eternal unknown mission. Twisted hedge trunks turn in synch with its community of leaves -- each uniquely shaped from the other but all working together to embrace the changing sunlight. Dimpled white daubed spackling of rough-cut wood smile back at you with what an untroubled mind now recognizes as a sea of happy faces.

Slow down and try to see the details again, become less goal oriented, and try to take in what wonders there may be before you. Do not cloud your mind with what you expect awaits at the end of the trail. Forget about the pending deadlines, the scheduled appointments, and what-might-go-wrong. Let yourself go to the unexpected pleasures of the moment.


Playing the Nintendo WII game “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” in co-op mode, with younger people:

The game allows you to play as a character from the Marvel Comics’ “universe” – you can be Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine, or one of the Fantastic Four, and your mission is to battle an army of monsters and villains through the levels of cityscapes and underworlds and places-that-have-never-been.

Because it’s co-op mode, everyone must move together. If one person lingers on one side of the screen, the other players are unable to move further down whatever path lies ahead. This can be frustrating if you are the adult in the group. Your mind automatically steers toward the future, to the goal needed to continue the game.

Generally when playing with the younger set, however, you often find yourself stuck, unable to move on because one of the children remains on his side of the screen. “Could there be some secret treasure or insight I missed where he lags?” I wonder. Looking to where his character remains on the screen to discover what my group member has found, I see nothing but joy. “Look at me, I’m Spider-Man!” he shouts gleefully, pressing buttons and moving the controls – exhilarated by his ability to skillfully manipulate the hero into shooting webs and bouncing off walls.

He does not care where he's going -- what he's able to do now is what's most important.

Trying to see as a child can help you appreciate more the work of certain artists, as well. Look past the uncomfortable sights and sounds of David Lynch films, for example – forget about goals and fulfilling resolutions before “The End.”

Lynch’s eyes also see as a child. He marvels at not only what his story-telling technology can do with lights, movement, and sounds, but also how they can change the original meaning and mood into something even more marvelous.

His most recent work, “Inland Empire”, is now on DVD, and the extra features reveal no more of the film’s meaning than the film itself – their revelations instead light up the eyes of Lynch, telling us how we should view not only the movie, but perhaps the world itself.

In the extra feature, called “Quinoa” Lynch prepares one of his favorite meals for us: a grain and broccoli delight that cannot possibly taste as good as Lynch’s pleasure in preparing it. Every detail and step is slow and precise.

Patiently observe the director tapping out a small amount of vegetable bouillon cubes. “I’m gonna set this right here – prepare it for later. I’m going to open that drawer, right here, and get a little knife. Then I’m gonna just bust this up, like so, into little pieces. Then I’m gonna let it wait there. It’ll be happy waiting right here.”

He continues: “Then I’m going to go over here and get these paper towels. And I’m going to get a paper towel and fold it for later ‘cause that handle gets so hot you can’t believe it!”

Later as he waits for the dish to complete its cooking, he talks more about the making of the film:

“It was a phenomenal world that appeared in this regular warehouse that became a magical world. So many magical things came out of that, and it grew and grew and no one will ever know how it grew that way ‘cause nothing was planned. It was partly planned but the final thing, you couldn’t have planned it like that. No one could have ever planned that.

“When you do something you don’t know where it will end up and how it will marry to something -- how it could marry to something in the future. So no matter what you do – some things you do and maybe they don’t feel so correct -- when you do it feels finished or kind of finished. Or something’s not quite right, it isn’t finished – for whatever reason you sort of walk away from it and later unbelievable things can come out of that."

"It’s just like the perfect thing you’ve been looking for.”

Friday, September 21, 2007

Here Today in a Still Tomorrow

ALPHAVILLE (1965):
Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina,
Akim Tamiroff and Howard Vernon
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
(100 minutes) B&W
(French w/ subtitles)

The private detective comes to town, seeking some truth. As usual, he's the outsider, but in Alphaville no one appears to pay him much mind when he starts snooping around, making inquiries, taking pictures. In Alphaville no one questions anything.

Its motto -- "Science Logic Security Prudence" -- represents their way of non-life, monitored and controlled by a central computer. The scientist who created the computer reasoned that people have become slaves of probability, so he concluded: for perfection to exist you need to weed out the factors that could cause improbables.

Regularly scheduled executions handle the weeding. Capital crimes include not only reading poetry, but showing emotion -- like shedding tears over your wife's dead body. The dictionary (in Alphaville called "The Bible") arrives in new editions every morning without certain words that were there the day before. ("So no one knows the meaning of the word' conscience' any more. Too bad...") There is no "day before" or "day after." Only the present exists. The past is a memory that can only cause sorrow and pain, while thoughts of the future -- perhaps the most unwanted improbable of all here -- might create a hope for something better than today.

That the hope is always there is the truth they and their computers cannot compute and can never delete.

All Together Now

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950):
Starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
(138 minutes) B&W

An awards ceremony opens the film with the top prize about to be announced and we are told how important the proceedings, how famous the attendees. A cultured snide voice speaks almost-rudely over the presenter's dialogue, letting us know, "It is not important that you hear what he says." The characters in the story had better heed the wisdom in that, and so too should the audience.

For the characters, it is more important to see the actions, not hear the words. For the audience, "All About Eve" is all about words – deriving momentum only by its terrific ability to sustain witticisms in powerful steady streams of dialogue, in what is essentially a backstage drama about a conniving up-and-comer stealing the thunder from the old blood of the theater.

The cast is responsible for the words retaining their power after all these years -- especially George Sanders as the cultured snide critic, and most especially Bette Davis in one of the last great roles of her career.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Thin Disguise

AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936):
Starring William Powell
and Myrna Loy

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke II

(113 minutes) B&W

The second whodunit comedy featuring Dashiell Hammet's Nick and Nora Charles, follows them home to another round of blackmail, infidelity and multiple murders. The mystery is solved with all the unusual suspects gathered, but what no one seems to suspect is how the secrets revealed uncovered not only the solution to the crimes but also the dark side of what Nick and Nora might well have been.

Nick frequently jokes, between sups from his ever-filled tumbler of alcoholic beverage, how he only married Nora for her money. Here we meet Nora's wealthy cousin Selma, married to a fortune-hunting drunk. Nick also seems to have enjoyed a past full of loose women, and so too has Selma's husband. Selma herself feels frantic, on the edge, trapped in the family mansion with the horrific Aunt Catherine, surrounded by secrets and putting up appearances. Nora escaped all that by marrying Nick.

Everyone here, except Nick and Nora, keeps secrets. Appearances are more important than truth. Nick and Nora have nothing to hide, and their open-door policy about themselves allows life constant entrance.