'Tis the Season

Today may be my first Thanksgiving Dinner outdoors. That's right -- it's so warm here today in Los Angeles that my illustrious hosts are setting the dinner table on the patio out back. It's currently sunny and 75 degrees Fahrehnheit, with a little seabreeze from the west.

My family back in Colorado always pities me here in California since we lack the traditional seasons like most other places. Although I do miss the leaves turning in fall, and the nip in the air before the first snow, I must point out that we do have seasons here in Southern California: fire season, mudslide season, summer, and awards season.

So there!

Summer in November

Jesus, it's hot today!! 87 degrees currently in Hollywood and very bright sunshine. The past few days have been unseasonably warm here in southern California: more of those infamous Santa Ana winds that provoke all the wildfires.

I hope things cool down for Thanksgiving. I don't want to be wearing shorts and sandals, and sweating in the heat, while eating a festive holiday dinner. Just doesn't seem right!

Stars in their Cars

One of the advantages of living in Los Angeles is the propensity for spotting celebrities in the flesh, so to speak. I've seen dozens in the eight years since I've lived here. Most of the time they are shopping, or ordering at Starbucks, or walking the dog with their kids; you know, normal human stuff. I also see them driving in their cars and this week I saw two celebrities in their cars.



A few days ago while driving through Beverly Hills on my way to UCLA, comedian-actor Paul Reiser passed by me in his pretty little black Lexus. It was about 8:30 in the morning and Reiser was wearing mirrored sunglasses and chomping open-mouthed on a big hunk of chewing gum.



Just tonight I saw Owen Wilson in his new little Toyota Prius. I was sitting in my parked car outside my Laundromat when Wilson pulled in beside me. I looked over and recognized his stringy blonde hair, which he promptly covered with a baseball cap after making eye contact with me for several seconds. He then hopped out of the car and made his way across the street into a trendy little bistro.



I was impressed that a big shot movie star like Owen Wilson would drive a tiny economy car, but I guess he's an environmentalist at heart. I'm always too shy to say anything to these people when I see them, but I bet Wilson's a cool guy.



Ah, life in La-La-Land...you never know who may turn up!

Cinerama

I had the rare pleasure recently of watching the classic film How The West Was Won in its original 3-strip Cinerama format at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, one of only three theaters in the world equipped for this format. The film itself is a well-known western epic with a huge cast of many great film stars from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, including Jimmy Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and on and on. What most impressed me, however, was the Cinerama film technique.

Cinerama debuted in 1953 as the first "wide screen" format. The process used a large camera with three small lenses, one in the middle facing straight ahead and two side lenses angled diagonally toward the center. The images captured by these lenses were exposed on three separate reels of film. To view the finished movie, the theater had to be equipped with three separate projectors, each precisely aimed at one third of the curved screen.



Because of the wide field of vision captured on film (146 degrees), plus the curved screen, the image has a mild 3-D effect. Objects on both extremes of the frame seem closer than objects in the center. The projection reveals frame lines from each strip of film which blend together on the movie screen. This was somewhat distracting at times, but the viewer gets used to it and accepts the three images as one large picture. It's all part of the novelty of the format.



Another challenge of working with this format was the fact that actors in a scene together couldn't always look at each other directly. In order to keep a realistic perspective for the viewer, actors often had to cheat their sight lines toward the camera.

It's amazing how much information was captured by the three-lensed camera, much like a human being's peripheral vision. Incidentally, this caused problems for legendary director John Ford (one of three directors on this film) who ruined more than one take by accidentally stepping into frame even though he was to the side of the camera.

Cinerama also incorporated true surround sound. The following detailed description is from the original Cinerama premiere book, which I found reprinted online here:

"When the shooting crew is out in the field, five microphones are placed to cover all the action that the camera's eyes will see. One to three others are placed well off to one side or behind the camera, to pick up the sound of people's voices, roaring engines, or whatever may be approaching or leaving the scene. Each mike makes an individual magnetic recording on a special six-track sound film. In the theater, five speakers--one for each of the mikes on the set--are arranged behind the screen. When the sound film is run off with the picture, each speaker reproduces the sounds picked up by the mike that was in a similar position on the set. Three other speakers, one on each side wall, and another in the rear of the theater reproduce the offstage noises that the extra mikes picked up. Hence, as a motor boat, for instance, roars across the set, the noise of its engine will be picked up by each of the mikes successively. And that's the way sound comes out in the theater--moving sound that travels across the screen and roars away in the actual direction it's traveling."

(Click image above for full size.)

The sound at the Cinerama Dome was indeed spectacular and the dramatic film score by Alfred Newman, incorporating many American folk tunes, was highlighted with the inclusion of the complete Overture, Intermission, and Exit Music.

Cinerama was used primarily for shooting travelogues. Typical scenes included riding in a gondola in the canals of Venice and flying through the Grand Canyon in a B-25 bomber. Only two feature films were completed using the Cinerama process and How The West Was Won was the second and last, and the only Cinerama film to be restored. It was an enormous blockbuster costing over $15 million to make, with three production crews shooting dramatic action sequences simultaneously in various parts of the country.

Although the format was enormously successful (HTWWW had its American premiere in February 1963 at the Warner Cinerama Theater in Hollywood and ran for 97 weeks at that theater!!), Cinerama's days were numbered due to the high costs of production and exhibition (5 projectionists and a stage hand were required for every performance) and eventually the industry switched to single-lens 70mm production.

At its peak in 1962, there were over 100 Cinerama theaters worldwide and I'm extremely proud to report that the very first theater built specifically for Cinerama was The Cooper theater in my hometown of Denver, Colorado! I saw many films there as a kid, including Return of the Jedi, Pink Floyd The Wall, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sadly the theater closed a number of years ago and was torn down and replaced with a strip mall.


(Click image for more info about The Cooper.)

So much for aethetics. If you ever get a chance to see a film in the Cinerama format, don't hesitate! It's a novelty now, but it's also a lot of fun.

Celebrity Student

Every once in a while we get a student at UCLA who is a celebrity in their own country. We've had actresses from Mexico, singers from Korea, and directors from Japan. But the arrival today of Takeshi Kaneshiro sent our entire student body into a tizzy.



Apparently he is a huge star in Asia, but relatively unknown here. None of the teachers knew who he was, but our students from Japan and Korea and Taiwan certainly recognized him and they wouldn't stop crowding the hallways trying to sneak a peak into his classroom or to snap a quick photo to email their friends back home.

We've had to have extra facilities staff on hand to keep the hallways clear of loitering students and to escort Mr. Kaneshiro quickly to and from the emergency exit before and after class. In fact, I gave up my classroom to his class because that room is closer to the emergency exit and to the administrative offices.

Although he is known for playing quirky roles in off-beat films, most American audiences will know him from Chunking Express or House of Flying Daggers. He's also quite a heartthrob for the young ladies, and being of mixed race (Taiwanese-Japanese) he is fluent in several languages.


With Ziyi Zhang in House of Flying Daggers

Luckily he's not my student so I don't have to deal with the chaos around him, but so far the teachers and students who have met him said he's actually a really nice guy who is here to study English and stay out of the limelight for a while. Yeah, good luck!

UPDATE: Takeshi lasted two days before the attention was too much for him and he left the English program. There were rumors of press and paparazzi on their way from Asia to hound him here. The students wouldn't leave him alone either. Someone apparently followed him into the restroom to take a picture.

Guess it sucks to be beautiful!

Jeff Daniels

Saw Jeff Daniels tonight at a SAG screening in Hollywood of his new film The Squid and the Whale. Set in 1986 Brooklyn, the movie was hilarious and touching. It deals with serious emotional family issues in a humorous but sincere way. Very surprising and fresh.

Jeff Daniels appeared after the film for an interview and Q & A session with the audience. He's always been a favorite of mine, consistently good in every role whether third-billed or starring. With a career spanning 29 years, as he pointed out twice in his comments, he has played in films as diverse as Dumb and Dumber, Gettysburg, Pleasantville, Terms of Endearment, and his first starring role, The Purple Rose of Cairo.

He's worked with some of the biggest in the biz: Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and...Keanu Reeves (in Speed). His performance in The Squid and the Whale is a fine addition to his already broad palette of roles, and the spin is already headed toward an Oscar nomination, if you follow the early hype.

It is his capability for playing extremely diverse characters which has been the key to his success, said Daniels. Portraying a deranged cop in the drama 2 Days in the Valley and following with 101 Dalmations (which has yet to make enough money to pay any residuals, he griped) demonstrates a wider stretch than the average working actor, in terms of richness of character and budget.

Maintaining a normal family life with his wife and three kids in his home state of Michigan has been the trade-off in place of the typical Hollywood rewards of fame and wealth. Mr. Daniels has made a decent enough living dividing his time between blockbusters and independent features to finance his own dream theater company in Michigan which produces only original works by Midwestern American playwrights.

In person, Jeff Daniels definitely has star quality, but tonight he seemed more like "the star next door", wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and a brown corduroy blazer with too-long sleeves. And he has surprisingly boyish good looks for a man 50 years old. He has also retained his thick blonde hair, which he kept fussing with during the interview.

Grounded in his success, he encouraged the striving actors in the 300-strong SAG audience to "be ready when your two minutes comes." Everyone who perseveres will have the opportunity someday to shine in a standard two-minute audition, but they must be prepared and in the right frame of mind to make success out of it.

Like the Boy Scouts say, "always be prepared."

Michael Jackson moves to Bahrain

As if this guy's life couldn't get any weirder, Michael Jackson has reportedly moved to the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain, according to the LA Times.

Jackson apparently moved there with his children shortly after his acquittal earlier this year on child molestation charges.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really very familiar with Bahrain. However, I just did some quick Internet research and it sounds like an interesting place.

Bahrain is a tiny island monarchy (665 sq miles) located east of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. The small population (less than 700,000 people) are mostly Arab Muslims, about a third of which are non-nationals.

Economically speaking, Bahrain is very well off due to its petroleum resources and the growing industry of refining imported crude, but the cost of living is considerably cheaper than, say, New York or London.

In 2004, Bahrain became the first Gulf state to sign a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The country gained its independence from Britain in 1971.

Maybe Michael's not so crazy after all. Nah.

Sources:
http://www.bahraintourism.com/subpage1.htm
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ba.html
http://www.bahrain.gov.bh/english/index.asp

Craig, Daniel Craig is the new 007

It's official: 37-year-old English actor Daniel Craig will the newest actor to play James Bond in next year's Casino Royale.

Full story here.

Who will be the next Bond?

We should know for sure by this time tomorrow...

Read CNN's story

The World's Shortest Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?" The girl said,
"NO!" And the guy lived happily ever after and went fishing, hunting and
played golf a lot and drank beer and farted whenever he wanted.

Eye of the Storm

Amazing blog by a couple journalists stationed in the destruction zone of Hurricane Katrina. They give harrowing first-person accounts of surviving the hurricane and suffering through the aftermath.

Astounding photos as well.

Eye of the Storm

Fill Up Fast!

Gas prices are on the rise again and they may reach record levels by the upcoming Labor Day weekend. So save a few pennies and fill up early if you can.

With the summer driving season coming to an end, we should see some stabilization in the rate of demand, but in the long run gasoline will continue to grow more and more expensive.

Shapes of Things to Come

I'm glad I got to visit New Orleans when I did. The city will never be the same. In fact, it may eventually be abandoned all together as uninhabitable.

Unfortunately the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans and other Gulf cities is merely the beginning of the end for low-lying areas around the world. Not everyone agrees, but many scientists speculate that as global warming continues, more cities will be consumed by the oceans and those areas in the hurricane zone will be the first to go since the rate (and power) of hurricanes and other weather-related disasters is expected to increase dramatically in the coming decades.

Perhaps New Orleans, already below sea level, will become like the mythical city of Atlantis, which was allegedly consumed by the sea.

Help the Victims of Katrina

Please join me in helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina by donating anything you can to the American Red Cross 2005 Hurricane disaster relief fund.

If you don't have any extra cash to send now, consider donating all those spare pennies you have lying around! And as if the cause itself wasn't enough, remember your donations are tax-deductible.

It's a sharp reality check to see the massive destruction in New Orleans, Biloxi and the other affected Gulf cities. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything. In some cases their entire city has ceased to exist.

Makes my complaints about having to choose between 2% and whole milk for my coffee seem pretty trivial.

Motivational Posters

We've all seen those tacky motivational posters in offices. Don't you just hate them?

Well here's a web company that offers Demotivational Posters and they are frickin' hilarious! Here's an example:



Check out Demotivators for more...

Boys Keep Swinging

Boys Keep Swinging

These guys rock!

End of the Network All-Stars

With the death of Peter Jennings, all three major networks, NBC, CBS, and now ABC, have lost their network news anchor within the last year. It truly is the end of an era.

Peter Jennings dies at 67

ABC News anchor Peter Jennings dies at 67 - TV NEWS AND INFORMATION - MSNBC.com

I'm crushed.

Which Bowie Are You?

Which David Bowie are you?

An Evening At The Bowl

Had a nice treat Friday night when my tour boss Philip invited me to join his party at the Hollywood Bowl. We had wine and cheese and meats, and a delicious Key Lime pie for dessert. Philip's friends are all show people and artists, so there was much laughter and revelry.

The program was Great American Women, one of the Bowl's "Great American Concerts" series, and conductor John Mauceri was celebrating his 300th performance at the Bowl.

It was a lovely evening -- amazing how cool Los Angeles evenings can be even in the summer time -- and the show featured the Hollywood Bowl orchestra, three great divas, and fireworks!

The divas were opera star Debra Voigt, jazz maven Dianne Reeves (just off the plane from hometown Denver!), and Broadway legend Barbara Cook. Each woman held the audience captive with their unique interpretations of standard classics, both classical and popular.

Most endearing perhaps was 78-year-old Barbara Cook who forgot her words several times, but shrugged it off like a pro, at one point stopping the orchestra to start over. "This song is too good to mess up. Let's try it again, Johnny M," she said.

My favorite piece of the evening was the very first one played by the orchestra, Fanfare From "King's Row" by film composer Erich Korngold. This was obviously a huge inspiration for the music of John Williams and in fact one part of the theme sounded remarkably similar to the opening notes of "Star Wars".

Another highlight was a specially commissioned orchestral suite of Adam Guettel's The Light In The Piazza, which won a Tony this year for Best Original Score. Guettel premiered this suite at the Hollywood Bowl several years before the Broadway production and his glorious score brings back a romantic style of theater music not heard since the days of his grandfather, Richard Rodgers.

[I became familiar with The Light In The Piazza on my recent trip to San Francisco. After our Sideways tour through wine country, Betty played the cast album for me in the car.]

John Mauceri had everyone in stitches with his witty 15th annual "State of the Orchestra" address. What a charming and articulate man he is -- exactly the sort of person you would want sitting next to you at a dinner party.