September 2004 Archives

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow will quickly take a place of choice in the Museum of Digital Special Effects, next to Jurassic Park, Twister and The Mask.

I tried to stay away from reading anything about that movie to not spoil my first impression when I finally watched it.

Of course the story is flat, the characters dull and the dialogs contrived. That was to be expected from the very premise of the movie. You could not get an hommage to 1940 movies to work if it had not been that way. People who complain about this are missing the point - this movie is not about storytelling, it is about sitting on a visual ride.

I had a great time just sit through it and enjoy the trip while trying to spot the many nods and references to classical sources.

The visual effects are simply stunning. Except for a couple of scenes, like when Cap�s plane is emerging to the surface of the water in the tropical island, it is difficult to remember that the sets are completely computer generated.

The soft blur applied to the images throughout the whole movie was a little intense at times (or maybe I am getting older and I am starting to lose my vision). It surely helped to blend in characters and sets, but it could have been more discrete at times.

It is actually refreshing for a while to sit through a story that is so openly discarding any consideration of gravity, acceleration, pressure, and other laws of physics. Unlike movies like Armageddon or Independance Day, which were misleadingly advertised as serious dramas, this one is fun to watch.... But then again, I loved �Mars Attacks�...

Molecular Expressions: The Galleria is a collection of galleries and interactive experiments around microscopic and molecular visualization. It features the Power of 10 dive from a galaxy view to the molecules of a cell.

I had that site in my bookmarks for a while but the recent sighting of a supernova by Space Telescope Hubble is a good occasion to highlight this link.

The Gallery from HubbleSite is not only a clear and well designed website, but it is packed with a selection of amazing pictures from the Space Telescope.

This website is almost a year old. After a year of playing with the idea of a blog, I have to recognize I do not have the rythm or the mindset to keep up with a day to day account of what I feel, think or dislike. That kind of blog just won't be happening.

What I can do however, is to focus on a subject that does interest (images, photos, graphism) me and keep updating this log as I come across anything interesting.

This is the reason behind the change of colors and the change of name for this log - Pictosynthesis. All of the idea for a name I could think of where already used by a website somewhere, somehow, except this one.

I know it is not really a word, but it does reflect my main interest and the subject of this site - pictures, the way they are created, their effect on who is looking at them.