NY Artist Gives Time Lapse Photography A New Twist

There was a story on the CBS's Sunday Morning news magazine about a local photographer Steven Wilkes. He has an unusual approach to photography which creates stunning photos like the one above. Wilkes rents a Condor crane and sits atop it for 16 hours, taking hundreds of photographers of a New York City scene both during the day and night. Then he composites all these pictures into one super-sized photo in which day transitions into night, from left to right. Though it takes one day to take the pictures, it takes months to paste them together and recreate a "time-lapse" photo of, as is the case above, a day in the park. Gorgeous.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Is Back With BLOOD AND CHROME

Over the weekend, I watched the first two episodes of the new BSG show, BLOOD AND CHROME. It is currently on YouTube as a web series with ten episodes going online in the next four weeks. Then, early next year, the entire feature length version of BLOOD AND CHROME will be seen on SyFy. Finally, an unrated version will be available for DVD and download. Got all that? Distribution in the modern age...

Anyway, I was a huge fan of the SyFy's BSG reboot a few years back.  This show, which is a prequel following a young Adama in the First Cylon War, is very well made using amazing effects and is certainly fun to watch. However, it doesn't have the same smarts and nuance as its predecessor. That series, which was something of an analogy to post-9/11 America and the "War on Terror", worked on many different levels while this web series seems more analogous to WWII-era America. BLOOD AND CRHOME has the same rat-a-tat dialogue and fighting spirit of a Warner Bros. flyboy movie from the mid-1940s. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have much beyond that...so far at least. But I will be watching as I'm hooked on Cylons and the Capricans who battle them. And I am always up for a good CGI dogfight too---and on that front, this series delivers.

SATURDAY SPECIAL: Tom Goss's Sexy New Music Video

Tom Goss is an DC-based out artist and performer with a new video that is both sexy and incredibly beautiful too. It reminded me of Peter Gabriel's SLEDGEHAMMER, though on a much smaller more intimate (literally!) scale. In the video, Tom lies nearly naked as artists and animators paint a fairy tale landscape and story around him over the course of an hour and a half. You can read the details about the shoot here and learn more about this talented young guy at his website, http://tomgossmusic.net/wordpress/.

From LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE to STAR WARS, The Writer For Episode VII

When Disney made the surprise announcement last week that they were acquiring Lucasfilm, the bigger news was that they were planning on reviving the STAR WARS franchise with a sequel to the original trilogy. Episode VII would pick up decades later with an aged Luke Skywalker, as well as elder Han Solo and cougar Princess Leia.  While the actors who played these iconic roles have yet to sign on to the project, the studio does has a screenwriter; Michael Arndt.

New York Magazine's Vulture column reports that Arndt (who wrote indie darling LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) has been working on a lengthy treatment of the film for months. Apparently, he got the nod earlier this year due to his extensive knowledge of the STAR WARS universe and his detailed lectures on the film series at screenwriting conferences around the country. I think he's a great choice for the franchise for one reason--he clearly has a sense of humor.  Besides the incredible effects and the action, the truly great thing about the first STAR WARS was the real sense of fun the film had, a quality lacking in the dour, self-serious prequels. Hopefully that will return in the new version, which should arrive in theaters in 2015.

Diane Sawyer Steals Spotlight On Election Night

If you happened to watch any of ABC's election night coverage, you got to see the odd sight of Diane Sawyer seeming a bit drunk as she slurred her words, made weird hand gestures, and said very odd things for a network news anchor co-hosting live coverage of a Presidential election.  Things like "OK--I wanna--can we have our music because this is another big one here? Minnesota. We're ready to project Minnestoa rrrright now. Well, tonight we know that President Barack has won Minnesota." Party on Diane!

With behavior like this, she quickly became a trending topic on Twitter  and even inspired a couple insta-feeds too. Oddly, ABC's election studio lost power for about 20 minutes, at which point they went to crowds in Time Square. After that, apparently Sawyer's performance seemed a little less embarrassing and more sober. But it turns out that this is not the first time she's had incident like this. During Obama's inauguration she was also seemed a bit tipsy as seen above (maybe she just loves celebrating the Obama's victories?). And, in another crazy YouTube video below from the 1990's, she is seen drinking wine and popping pills on the set of her old show Prime Time Live.

ABC said she was exhausted and Sawyer, on her Twitter feed, seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. She was back on the air, as normal, on World News last night sounding more like a network anchor.

Some Lights In The Darkness Of Downtown

There are a couple beautiful photo essays about life downtown during Sandy.  Today's TIMES has a photo essay of night time pictures during the 5 day blackout. They nicely captures the odd feel of bars lit by candlelight and shopping in delis via flashlight.

It was a surreal life for a few days here but one that had its charms too...especially on Halloween evening when I took a stroll through the east village lit only by a full moon. The HuffPost has a similar story, focusing mainly on Halloween in the east village with some photos too (like the one above taken on Essex and Houston that evening).

Coney Island Takes A Hit From Sandy

One of my favorite places in New York took a hit from Superstorm Sandy last week. Coney Island suffered a lot of damage from the wind and the waves that pummeled the shore Monday into Tuesday. The first thing one sees when getting off the subway at Stillwell Ave is the Shore hotel sign and, as you can see, it was torn apart. There are some other pictures and details of the damage over on this Coney Island blog.

Apparently, the sturdy Cyclone roller coaster survived intact, faring much better than the ride down in Seaside Heights in New Jersey which is now in the ocean.  But one attraction which took a major hit was the Sideshow by the Seashore and the Coney Island USA building  housing the museum. Fortunately, the museum was on the second floor so nothing there was lost. But the Sideshow Theatre was a mess, as was the lobby bar (below). You can see some more photos here on HuffPost as well as a story about how some of the owners of these businesses rode out the storm. To help Coney Island USA in their time of need, you can donate or volunteer.

Photos of Life After Sandy In The Dark Zone aka SoPo

SoPo (that's South of Power!) is the new name for the fashionable but somewhat desolate neighborhood in Manhattan, south of 26th street where the power grid has been offline since around 8:30pm on Monday when Sandy blew into town. I was at home when the lights went off and stayed in the Village for the next three days, living off my supplies and having some festive candlelit dinner parties with local friends.  Here's my photo album of what life was like down in The Dark Zone.

This was a piece of a scaffolding that was torn apart at Hudson and Morton. Warning is right!

This tree fell at the intersection of Christopher and Washington, totally blocking the sidewalk

 The Stonewall Inn said they were open but by Tuesday afternoon, that was not really true anymore.

 People using payphones! How novel but necessary. It was like the 20th century had returned.

This was the scariest thing I saw...a huge village, artist loft skylight picked up and smashed on 8th St.

This was a section of a large tree on the west side of Washington Square. 

Here's a look down the main east/west path of Washington Square. It was closed to public.

Here's the now infamous Chelsea dollhouse which lost it's facade during the early hours of the storm.

My friend Kevin Donaldson hosted a delicious candlelit dinner on Tuesday night.

This was a bus going down the Bowery on Halloween. Scary!

Walking around a dark east village on Halloween, we found this one sign of the holiday.

THE MIAMI CONNECTION Is So Bad It's Good

In the late 1980s, a film was made in Miami that has lately taken on that legendary mantle of a film that's "so bad it's good."  Joining the ranks of SHOWGIRLS, THE APPLE and THE ROOM, THE MIAMI CONNECTION is on it's way to theatres' courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse Films.  You can read more about the bizarre cinema concoction of drugs, ninjas, motorcyles and 80s' synth pop on WIRED. Or you can watch the utterly terrible trailer below.

Witness To Lincoln's Assassination Appeared On 1950s TV

This is one of those things that makes you realize that the past is often not as far away as it seems. Over at the Atlantic, earlier this week they posted a YouTube clip from the TV show I'VE GOT A SECRET showing a 96 year old man from Maryland who was a 5 year old boy in Ford's Theatre the night Abraham Lincoln was shot. He vividly remembers John Wilkes Booth jumping to the stage from the Presidential box and was more worried about Booth's condition from the fall than the President, as it was all a bit confusing what was going on. It's amazing that his lifetime spanned the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the civil rights movement.

In a personal vein, I remember a neighbor of ours, an older woman who sometimes babysat me as a kid, who had a painting of a Civil War drummer boy above her fire place. It was actually a painting of her grandfather who was on the field at Gettysburg. Incredible, right? And let's not forget the well-documented stories of the last 3 Civil War widows who were alive until the mid-2000s (one was even collecting a pension from the Department of Veterans Affairs).

Though it's easy to think of the Civil War as ancient history, it was a mere 150 years ago that the conflict raged and nearly tore apart the country. Coming next month--Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN, which will look at the president's struggle to end slavery as the war, and his own life, came to an end. Here's the trailer below, with a script by Tony Kushner.