Michael Jackson: dignity in death

I wonder if it's possible to have not yet heard about the passing of Michael Jackson. Seems as if we have all been shocked by his death. Early reports were spread like a wildfire of rumors on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites, with people holding out and refusing to believe it was true until further confirmation. News and networking sites were overwhelmed by sudden traffic of people looking for more information and many, many of them shut down.

And the outpouring came; everyone around the globe began to share their sadness and feeling of tremendous loss at this news. And I don't mean those hard-core crazy fans that are still pictured crying at the site of him, I mean 90% of the people I know on Facebook; ordinary people, not obsessive crazies.

Did I miss something?

Isn't this the same guy that has been vilified, ridiculed, and shunned since the 90s? Since when did he become a hero again? And why, now that he's dead, is it suddenly ok to admit you're a fan? Sure, there are a couple of people out there reminding us not to celebrate him because of the alleged attrocities of which he was never convicted, but they are in the extreme minority.

It's nice to see I suppose. Nice for his kids. I became quite sad when I heard that the new concerts he was preparing for were for his kids, so they could see him perform. But perhaps, if one can find a silver lining in death, this is showing them something he never could have shown them in life. He had become a freak show in the last 15 years of his life, to a point where it was getting harder and harder to remember how amazing, influential, and inspirational he was. But in death he regained a kind of dignity he probably never could have in life. And his kids are able to see him now as one of the most beloved and respected figures in all of history. Wait? Am I still speaking about MJ? The guy often called Wacko Jacko?

But the reaction is undeniable. Yesterday, congress had a moment of silence for him, Obama and Mandela were among the myriad influencial people and pop culture icons who released statements about this loss. MTV surprised us all by playing music videos again, his videos of course.

And his music is it again. Yesterday the top 15 albums sold on Amazon.com were ALL Michael Jackson albums. Of the top 100 songs sold on iTunes, 40 or 50 of them were MJ songs! Memorabilia prices went way up on eBay and a side industry of memorial t-shirts has sprouted up.

This is unprecedented!

As far as my reaction, I'm still figuring it out. For those of you who don't know me well, or didn't know me until my 20s and 30s, I should tell you that if this had happened 15+ years ago I would have been receiving phone calls of condolences from friends and family. So deep was my obsession for Jackson. I did absolutely idolize him. And looking back now, his influence on my life is maybe a little extreme, even disconcerting.

My admiration for his dancing is what steared me towards my "profession" as a dance instructor. It's what also made me want to be with a dancer. Not that I ever desired Jackson, but that I was in love with dance and it made me feel such passion that only another dancer could understand and share that. Now I may have come to this passion for dance without Jackson. My idol before him, after all, was Fred Astaire (I was a strange kid), but I didn't come to it without him, and it was while watching him that I began to try my own little spins and body movements.

The Wiz was the last movie that scared me. My parents explained it wasn't real and I completely got it. Yet they continued to question my ability to watch scary things even as I got older.

It's undoubtedly because of Jackson that I began my love of horror and the macabre. I saw Thriller on German TV when it first came out, my sister let me watch it, much to my parents' chagrin. I was a bit too young to say the least.

It's because of MJ that I studied film. No joke. I remember seeing Thriller, but it was the Making of Thriller that really rocked my world. Wow! Someone pulled back the curtain of the magician and showed me how magic was made! At first I wanted to do horror make up, and that plan stuck with me through most of high school. Then I decided I wanted more and I set my sights on directing.

I may have chosen these paths anyway, it's impossible to know. It's impossible to know what our lives would have been without him. My friends, my husband, my pastimes, my education, my profession may all have been different. At the very least my music library would be very different, and darn near empty in pubescence.

But I did let go of my adoration for a long time. The allegations made it too confusing, and his eccentricity and appearance made it embarassing. When someone in college (in film) asked me, why film? I answered honestly, but it felt almost shameful. So when he died, I was in disbelief, but didn't feel the strength of loss that I would have because I had distanced myself so much from that part of my life.  Then, when it started to be legitimate again to be a fan, I felt sad.  I feel especially sad for him.  Imagine how awful his life must have been.  Abuse through childhood, no real experience of childhood, isolation and worldwide ridicule as an adult, and let's just imagine that he was innocent and charges made against him were all lies.  His life and career were ruined!  Imagine how meaningful it would be to him now if he could know that people still loved him and that his death, so far, hasn't been about ripping apart his life in ridicule and reiterating his flaws and alleged actions, but about honoring the passing of a genius of tremendous influence.

I just wonder how long this will last.  When will the digging and disgracing begin?


-- Post From My iPhone

Reviving a dead blog?

I'm sad that this among all my blogs has been the one to suffer the most neglect as I became a mother with little time to spend on these things. I suppose it's natural though. I mean family blogging came first once my boy arrived, and I ended up with a lot of material for the art blog with all the pictures I've been taking. But I've really missed this blog.

I've thought many times about reviving it but it always comes down to the problem that one needs to watch movies if one is to blog about them. And although I can sometimes squeeze some writing in during my son's waking hours, I can't squeeze movies in. And we're too tired for movies once we get him to sleep, so we've only seen a handful of them since he was born more than two years ago!

Neverthless, here I am. Spurred on by technological advancements and the convenience of doing things on my iPhone, here I am to try to breathe life back into the deceased. I suppose it's mostly about my newfound love for Twitter and my excitement over the possibilites it has for this blog.

So, we'll see what kind of content I can come up with without watching many movies. Maybe I'll talk again about some old movies, maybe I'll talk about some TV shows (which it seems easier to make time for) and maybe I'll post tidbits I see online. I'm hopeful it will work out better this time.

So show me some love! Leave me some comments as I go! Send me tips! If you see something I should write about, let me know! Follow me on Twitter: @popcornandacoke!
And in the meantime I have to figure out if there is a way to post tweets directly to the blog. If anyone knows a way please let me know! I'd particularly like to do it with the iPhone.

Love to all! Here we go!



-- Post From My iPhone

Tilt-Shift Lilliputians

Is there anyone still out there?  I miss you!  Have you missed me?  I'm so bad to have let my little pride and joy here drift away into nothingness, but motherhood has been big bite to chew.  I'm aching, ACHING to get back to this blog again and start writing some good shtuff to post, but it may be some time before I can revive this thing completely.  I hope some of you will come back and read when I enetually do start up again.  In the meantime I have this silly little thing...


Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.



For those of you who haven't heard of tilt-shift photography, it's a method of manipulating focus to selectively put things out of focus.  There is a whole group of photographers out there who use it to make very large-scale real-life things seem like minitures.  I love to see it done with time lapse here.  How fun is it to see all of these little minitures scurry around?  Seems to me to be something a little more unusual that could be applicable to movies like Gulliver's Travels, Night at the Museum, or even Toy Story.

Passive Viewing and Movies That Make You Woozy

A few years ago a little movie called The Blair Witch Project busted onto the scene and changed the way we look at independent cinema. You couldn't have had a lower tech, or lower budget, recipe for a an exciting flick: Take three actors, give them a camera and a plot, and have them record and ad lib the rest. Many loved the movie; the unique and literal first-person perspective offered the viewer direct entry into the experience of the characters on screen. What could be more exciting? Add to the mix a classic, spooky, campfire-style plot and you have the perfect witches brew for a thrilling experience. But for many, the thrill-ride was a little too bumpy. All that thumpy-jumpy handheld camera work was a little more than the average viewer could take. Even many of the people I spoke with who loved the adrenaline rush the movie gave them, complained afterward of headaches, nausea, and vertigo. I had no problem viewing the movie. And I realized that my film school, hell-bent on convincing us that avant garde film is the epitome of art, had given me lots of training for this experience. All those weird little shorts I had to watch* with choppy/jolting action, swooping/swishing camera movements, and everything from moth wings to paint applied directly to the film (causing indistinguishable, flashing "images") taught me how to watch absolutely anything without any eye strain or wooziness. The secret? A little thing I like to call "Passive Viewing."

A shaky shot from Blair Witch.

Once I realized my trick for making it through the movie without incident, I began schooling others I met who hadn't had the benefit of my education (glad to know it was good for something!) I think it may have made a difference for some, but did it matter? Blair Witch isn't the kind of movie you watch again, is it? And would there be many more movies that employ this technique? Enter Cloverfield.

Cloverfield brings first-person camera back again.

Think of Cloverfield as a loud, explosive, big-budget, Hollywood version of our quiet little flashlight-spook-tale from 1999. Everything is bigger. Take the group of friends out of the remote woods, and place them in the city of cities: New York. Take the unknown, unseen, menacing little witch and her hoard of spooky children's voices and replace them with a godzilla-esque sea/space creature and lots of deadly little Giger-inspired spawn. Take your little tree-hung stick figures and children's handprints and replace them with tumbling sky-scrapers and a headless Statue of Liberty. It's not so much scary this time as it is seat-clutchingly tense. It works though. At least, for me it does. But what about the rest of you?

Seems after nine years (wow, can't believe it's been that long!) and despite a bunch of other handheld (albeit tamer) films, TV shows, and those darn music videos that older generations like to complain about so much, audiences still haven't learned how to handle the manic camera that both Blair and Cloverfield employ. CNN offers some tips to watching Cloverfield without becoming sick:

-Take some Dramamine. (seriously!)
-Take the occasional viewing break and close your eyes.
-Watch it at home instead.

Their "experts" say that the motion-sickness is felt by only those who are "more susceptible" than the rest of us. Hogwash. It's felt by people who are trying to actively view the movie. Here's what I mean. Imagine you are watching a typical handheld shot of an on-foot police chase down alleys (I'm thinking cop shows, I'm thinking Point Break, and I'm thinking The Bourne Ultimatum). Imagine that the camera is moving so frantically that it is difficult to make out the action in the frame. So, you strain yourself; you work extra hard to focus on a character and track his motion across the screen, even as the camera bounces around. You may actually succeed in catching some interesting details along the way, but you start to suffer. Your eyes were so engaged in fighting through this chaotic motion that it hurts, and your body has no idea whether you are on stable ground or not.

Now try this instead: Watch the same scene over again (preferably not in the same session, you already feel sick for goodness sakes) but this time, sit back and try to watch the image as a whole. Try to perceive it as a unit. Look at the Gestalt. Let it wash over you and reveal it's contents to you instead of working hard to wrench it out of the screen yourself. You may miss some of the details, but your head and your stomach will thank you.

Cloverfield: Which way is up?

Even with all my experience, I still was a little disoriented at the movie's end when I saw it. My perspective was so altered that, when the lights came up, the movie theater appeared a sort of distorted fun house. It was a little like getting off a treadmill and the room still feels like it's moving. But I didn't get sick. My husband, didn't fare quite as well as I did, but he did reasonably well; I taught him passive viewing years ago.

It's funny that the CNN article also mentions that some people are more susceptible to sea-sickness. I'm not sure I fully agree. Ok maybe there really are some of you out there with inner ear issues that make it impossible to ever get the hang of the motion of the ocean. But for the majority (unless you're in the middle of a terrible sea storm) I think it's a matter of not fighting it, getting used to the movement (aka getting those sea legs), and, if necessary, checking out the horizon every once in a while.


*Don't get me wrong. I know avant garde film is weird, but I don't mean to say I don't like it. It's visual poetry and, in film school, it was my heart.

Watch 10mph For Free!

So the movie I worked on in 2005, 10mph, is not only available from Blockbuster, Netflix, and Amazon, (and me), but now you can also download it for free from iTunes if you sign up with Ourstage.com. As a bonus, filmmakers Hunter and Josh get $1 towards finishing their current project. So you're supporting us itty bitty filmmakers following the dream!