The Art Neuro Weblog

Sorry folks
I have been a little distracted lately. It happens when your life turns upside down and you start scrambling to save the deckchairs on your own private Titanic disaster. In between that, and the MLB season rolling along and the renewed conflict in Iraq and the film I'm in pre-production for; a bout of the strange 'flu that gave me joint aches; and preparing a script for a competition; it tends to distract me from the more cosmic issues such as Space.

The other thing that's stopped me from doing much writing here is that the news has been coming in slow, and most of it has been 'more of the same'. In that sense, the important comments to be made have been made about space exploration. It still frustrates me that Australia has NO space policy to speak of beyond licensing of communication satellites, it's not a situation that is going to get rectified in a hurry.

The joys of modern media
The Iraq conflict with its hostage taking has been interesting. Today, Japanese papers are reporting that the three Japanese hostages who were recently released told the Japanese authorities that they were given 'stage directions' for the video; that they ought to look very scared when the knives were flashed and to feign abject fear. This 'admission' has gone down very badly in the Japanese public whose majority sentiment seems to be these people were nothing but trouble-makers for traveling to a war-torn country trying to make a difference for the suffering. What I find amusing is that when ever your turn on a motion-picture camera, it invites into being, THE DIRECTOR. The need for an artifice, demands the entrance of the artificer who promptly sets about stamping his artistic vision on the project in order to best communicate the point. In this instance, the direction was simple and succinct: "Act scared when the guys behind you put a knife to your neck". I admire this, in as much as most directors probably can't come at direction this simplistic, but that's just my 'professional' take on this. The camera angle and the move sucked, the sound was abominable, the acting tough with the masked riflemen schtick was old.... All in all it was a pretty crappy piece of video making, but hey, it made social impact. What more can you expect from an 'act of art'?

More smoke in the shape of white balls with red seams and wooden phallic symbols.
The Yankees have opened the season in a mediocre manner, splitting a 4 game series with Tampa Bay and going down to the Red Sox 1-3 in their first of 19 season stoushes. The pitching is a worry, the hitting is in a team-wide slump, the defense is suspect, but this team is still projected to win over 100games this season. Judging from the early performance, it seems to me very optimistic.

- Art Neuro