BIG CONCEPTS, SPLITTING TIME, SHOWING GREEN

A CONGRESS OF DANCERS

Yucca plants thrive in desert zones and give the terrain a populated feeling.

 They add color and texture to the brown and sand scape tones. They remind me of clusters of gesticulating dancers.

LOOKING FOR GREEN

    Following three years of drought Californians are beginning to see tinges of winter green. Two small rain showers in the last couple of weeks have charged the grazing slopes with something on which to graze.

  There is precious little green but even that softens the concrete gray and brown of the dry slopes. 

AN EPIC RIDE

    Everything about INTERSTELLAR is big. Big name cast, director, story, themes, concept and running time. 
     Christopher Nolan is an accomplished director and movie maker. He uses his full skill range in writing a storyline and then turning it into a film that is adventure, heartwarming, thrilling, mind bending, and stunning.  But it is long.
     Mathew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jane Chastain, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, John Lithgow and Michael Caine  live up to their reputations.  Josh Stewart and Bill Irwin as TARS and CASE, on board computers, were terrific. In fact I'd love to have one of those around here.
      Planet degradation, government cut backs in science, family dynamics, parental love, black holes, and time space continuums are all treated as part of the story line.  Unexpected but nicely handled was the scene where a teacher upbraids McConaughey and his daughter for using a text book that teaches about the Apollo flights to the moon. The teacher insists that was all propaganda by the US to force the Soviet Union to spend more than they had on space research. 
      There is a lot to this big and epic film and you'll need to enjoy sic-fi, science, space, action and mental riddles to love it. Lana enjoyed it less than I did. A buddy with whom we saw the film said it was a bit long.  However there is an act, series of scenes, where time, a moment in time, is portrayed across a spectrum of realities, dimensions and time itself. It was stunning to see as it played and I've found that I continue to roam back over the concept and the visualization of it. If theoretical physics could have been taught in such a way, I might have been seduced by that sense of "reality."  It will stretch your head a bit.  Or not! At any rate I'd like to put TARS or CASE on my Christmas gift wish list.

    See you down the trail.

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWS

   Sunrise was too pretty to ignore. My admiration of it woke up that corner of the brain where vexing thoughts are caged, waiting to leap into a blank space. 

   One of the troubles with the news business is the derogatory but not inaccurate sobriquet for a style of news "If it bleeds it leads." To be clear that means if it is crime or disaster, tragedy, plane crash, wreck, fire, explosion, or etc. it's the first story of a newscast. Fortunately not all television news rooms operate by that ethos, but too many do. The more competitive the market, the more likely there's a station that follows that path.

   NIGHTCRAWLER starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a stringer (freelance) photographer is a well done examination of the pathology of that kind of news, as played out in Los Angeles.

    One of the brilliant elements of this film is the extraordinary visual treatment of Los Angeles at night. Oscar winning Cinematographer Robert Elswit offers a rich and stunning essay. Seeing his work, especially the open sequence, is worth the price of admission. 
    Director Dan Gilroy plumbs the exploitative, crass world of sensationalism that passes as a kind of tabloid television.  Rene Russo, who coincidentally is married to Gilroy, is marvelous as a desperate news director, once a beautiful young reporter now trying to hang on to a job at a low ranking station by spiking the ratings with overnight gore gathered by Gyllenhaal.  

     Gyllenhaal's character is a solitary whacko. I think of him as a slick cousin or even brother to Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Gyllenhaal's performance is incredible. As Jon Stewart joked he only blinked twice in 2 hours. Indeed Gyllenhaal's eyes and manic delivery are so riveting it'll give you the creeps.  It is a great character by which Gilroy can explore the senselessness of exploitative content and the tyranny of ratings.

     I know of situations where station reputations and staff integrity have been destroyed by this cheap and trashy management and style. Still, there are enough viewers who thrive on tabloid journalism that it exists.

PROFESSIONAL and/or Citizen Journalists

  How deeply should newsrooms go in utilizing or pandering to social media? The debate continues and the first episode of NEWSROOM, the excellent Aaron Sorkin HBO drama mines the issue set against the Boston Marathon bombing.  

   NEWSROOM is to journalism what WEST WING was to politics, only much better because it is more realistic, drawn from real critical judgements and experience. Plus the acting, writing and directing are all worthy of the multiple Emmys.  

BEEN THERE-DONE THAT

   As a television news director I guided an evolution of a traditional and historic news organization into digital news gathering, processing and dissemination.  We changed the technology on which we wrote, edited and the cameras we used to capture the pictures.  Our remote trucks changed from microwave to satellite. We changed our work flow from television only to television and Internet. We moved from thinking only about the big screen to feeding computers, pads, and phones. We changed our graphics, our presentation style and our pace. In changing how we worked, we also advanced the output and our approach to thinking about what is news and how we cover it.  

    I've been retired a few years now, but even back then we were starting to wrestle with blogging, the ethics and legality of using material from personal phones or on line chatter. Now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other micro blogging and social networking realities impinge on how a news shop operates. I'm not sure they've got it figured out, or properly.  But as my old friend and former broadcast journalist the Catalyst AKA Bruce Taylor cajoles me, don't worry about it. You can't do anything about anyway.  It's another generation's problem. Yea, probably so. But it makes great fodder for film, television or having a drink and bullshitting, or posting about.

     It may still wake me, but Bruce is right. It's someone else's job now.

DIVERSIONS

Late Afternoon

 Evening

Post Sunset

Neighbors
could have been the national bird

Heavy Weather on the way

Turning on the night lights

THROWBACK TO A GOOD DAY

    My late brother Jim, at the wheel and yours truly enjoying a day of golf in the late 70's or early 80's.  Dad was an extraordinary golfer, Jim and I not so much.  But we had fun.

      See you down the trail.

INSPIRATION LIVES HERE and MIND BLOWING TALENT

OLMSTED POINT

     Olmsted Point, one of America's iconic locations, offers a view of the north side of Half Dome, one of the planet's most incredible spots.

   It seems appropriate this powerful view is named for a family that exerted powerful influence over how we live with nature.

   Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. who designed New York's Central Park is considered the father of American landscape architecture.  His son Frederick Jr. followed his path. Jr designed Biltmore and worked on Acadia, the Everglades and Yosemite. They understood the importance of nature,  setting and the quality of timelessness.

  Now generations come to this high spot in Yosemite and inspire their own muse.

Photo by Lana Cochrun
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

     Millard Fillmore, a Whig, was President when the Onyx Store opened in 1851. Today the store gets high ratings for its sandwiches, though there are not many places around this Kern County establishment in the town of 475.  

     The Onyx Store opened two years after the California Gold Rush began.  As an historical footnote, it was the year Moby Dick was published, the Yacht America, from the New York Yacht Club, won the first Americas Cup race and Virginia decided that all white males had the right to vote.

      A piece of the old west survives. What stories it could to tell.

A GREAT PERFORMANCE

     Michael Keaton in Birdman is one of the all time great performances. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu weaves a quirky comedic tale powered by incredible acting all around. Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Zach Galifinakas and the rest of cast are all simply superb. But Keaton leaves us with a theatrical work of art.  In fact the film is very much like excellent theatre and coincidentally is shot at and around the St. James theatre, all of which adds texture and nuance to what we see. Seeing Keaton work is a joy.  

     There is a scene where Norton is trying for a role in the play Keaton is staging. The two do an audition rehearsal and as characters they realize there is a magic in the way they interact. Fact is, you get that same pop and awareness from your seat watching the play in the film and realize there is some talent at work, in combine.

      If you get to see this work, pay particularly close attention to Keaton's eyes. Masterful work. Hope the politics of the Academy work in such a way he gets a nomination for this performance.

      See you down the trail.

     

BOLD AND BOULDER--THROWBACK THAT TIE plus A MOON RISE

BOLD AND BOULDER
putting elections and other foibles in perspective

    Power, force and mystery collude in the mountains to impose a sense of permanence. It is here that all human designs are rendered as temporary and passing. But it is in the mountains that humankind is also inspired, even in a mystical union and state of awe.

Life on the edge

Cosmic furniture moving

Layers of Time

How many millions of moon rises have these mountains seen?

Peaceful but powerful 

God's Marbles

Between a rock and a…..

Immovable

THROWBACK THAT TIE

   A couple of observations about this 1967 radio promotion photo. This was a benefit and the queen and her court are "pinning" us. Note that all of the "pin-ees", even the chairman of the health association are looking at the camera, except yours truly who seems more taken by the princess. 

   That tie! Well, it was the age of "mods". Side burns too.

   The WERK KREW jocks, Big Joe London, Wild Bill Shirk, "Mr. Show Biz" Gil Hole and Tommy the C. Yea, it was an age for nicknames too.

ONE MORE MOON RISE

since you can never see enough

   It loomed large as it poked up over the Santa Lucia range. Color from the not yet set sun splashed over the mountains.

 Just above the horizon it looked like a special effect.

  As it continued its rise it began to get smaller.

    See you down the trail.

PRECIOUS AND COURAGEOUS

THE PRECIOUS

   Whenever in high country, as here in the Sierra Nevada,
I am forever like a kid on Christmas morning when I spot water.

   A pristine alpine lake or meadow is magical.

   Streams or babbling brooks evoke an undeniable joy.

   I tried not to intrude on the exquisite solitude of this fly fisherman working his line above 10 thousand feet on the Morgan Pass in the Muir Wilderness. But I wondered what was it about this particular spot?

   Why not in that pool to the north?  Up here you read nature in your own way.

    In a season of drought the gentle flow of a stream is a lift for the heart.

   Even the smallest trickle or eddy is a giggle and a wonder.

    These next three frames, taken on the Tioga Pass in Yosemite, display a victorious spirit of life. Notice the dome in the lower left-center just above the distant lake.

   In this zoom you can see trees, growing out of granite.

   As I continued the zoom I grew increasingly amazed at how determined and persistent life can be. Roots that penetrate rock, on a mountain dome, at high altitude in  an inhospitable environment. 

PERSISTENT COURAGE

   Our younger daughter Katherine, a second year nursing student tells us the medical community is trying to raise consciousness about precautions and care in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. Doctors, nurses, staff are better aware and more prepared since news of its jump to the US. There are posters and information packets on hazardous attire, protocol, what to look for, questions to ask and procedures. All of this in the last few weeks.

     Doesn't it seem we are always caught unprepared, for almost any eventuality?  The US was without a Navy, Army and Air Force capable of waging WWII, but responded in short order as American industry and awareness focused on the need and waged a transformation that should still be a matter of pride. Life is messier, more complicated, too political and cranky now, but some have jumped into the breach in this medical crisis and legions more now realize that on any given day, they too could be thrust into a medical outbreak with frightening potential.

     As a father I am of course hopeful my daughter is spared such a reality, though she trains for a profession that is long on courage, mercy and selflessness. We should have the utmost admiration for those doctors, nurses, technicians and logicians who are on the front line.  And a dose of encouragement and/or prayer for lab scientists and researchers who seek medicines and treatments.

     Like that tree up on the dome in the Sierra, persistence, determination and a striving for life can be powerful.

     See you down the trail.