Sunday, April 07, 2002
I managed to spend a good chunk of the afternoon writing the revised color section for the new book. Spent most of my time in research, trying to get a handle on the new color stuff covered in the forthcoming CSS3 specification, particularly the rendering-intent property. After reading the material thy referenced, I came away with the strong impression that the person doing the write-up of that part of the specification had no idea about how to write it -- or more likely, left the details for later -- since the reference material on it is useful only to a programmer. Then I found an excellent article on the subject by Bruce Fraser, which explains things from the perspective of a graphic artist. I ought to send him a note thanking him for his excellent article on the subject.
I am impressed with the way CSS3 is dealing with issues like opacity and making color values more intuitive. The RGBA method of defining opacity along with color makes a lot of sense. Their idea of incorporating HSL color values is also a good move -- it makes a lot more sense to specify different shades of say, red, by first selecting the hue, then selecting its saturation (read: shading) and then its brightness than trying to fiddle with various colors of red green and blue in order to get what you are looking for. This will all get extensive coverage in the new chapter I’m writing specifically on color.
I also spent some time laboriously converting all of the standard color name and equivalent RGB color values into HSL for a future reference chart. In the process, I was surprised to find that there are no color names for the majority of the colors on the "color safe" palette: I couldn't find a valid name for such commonly used hex values like #ffcc33 or #cccccc or even something as straightforward as #ffff00 for example. This is due primarily to the fact that the standard color names in use go back to those used in Unix, prior to the advent of the Web and the "safe color" palette. This might be worth sending a note off to the rep at the W3C about, just for the heck of it...
Related to this, I got an interesting note from my publisher Monday afternoon, introducing me to a new rep who'll be in charge of making the process of turning my text into a book a more efficient one. Halleluiah to that I say -- it's amazing how many hoops writers have to go through once their book is written: formatting issues, technical reviews, revamps and support issues. If this new person can help manage this process for me, more power to her. We've tentatively scheduled a teleconference for latter in the week in order to 'meet'. Based on my revised time-scale, Prentice Hall has a Fall launch for the book in mind, and they apparently intend to make it a premier title -- they've obviously done well by the first edition.
What a glorious train-wreck of a movie this is…
After putting the kids to bed, this movie turned up on MuchMoreMusic. I had never seen the original when it came out in 1980, and all I knew was that it was a classic turkey -- I even vaguely remember this being said about the film at the time it was released.
From the start I was gripped by its amazing badness. Erika came back from playing with her new mixer at Owen's soon after the film started and we both watched the film in dumb amazement that anything like it could possibly exist.
There's really no plot to speak of, its really just an excuse for a number of poorly executed song and dance numbers, many of which are an uneasy mix of 40s and early 80s musical styles. Most of the critiques of the movie center around its absence of sense or plot or acting, but on top of this we can add that several of the dance numbers are sloppy – if you look closely you’ll see that several of the dancers are off the beat, especially during the big 40s/80s dance scene. Also the film is poorly framed in a lot of the shots – especially the big dance numbers. Apparently in a Gene Kelly’s biography he mentions that the director and producer had no idea what they were doing, and I can believe it. Was also briefly mesmerized by the off-kilter animation sequence, which I correctly identified as a Don Bluth production. Why was it there? No really good discernable reason, really... I also have to wonder: did people really paint large canvas versions of album covers for record stores? The only ones I ever saw were photographic enlargements – so in my mind one of the flimsy underpinnings for the movie is in doubt, which admittedly fits right in with everything else about the movie.
I do have to confess to a guilty pleasure in the music for the film – I’ve always liked ELO, and somewhere I still have a vinyl single or two from this movie I bought as an impressionable kid. Not my taste in music now, but it was fun to listen to again.
This is a film crying out for an MST3K treatment.
Afterwards I went online to try to find out a bit more about the film. Found an interesting site dedicated to what’s left of the shooting locations, plus the many commentaries found by “fans” in the Internet Movie Database, and several sites devoted primarily to smart quips about bad movies. I have to agree with the opinion that Xanadu represents the nadir of the American movie musical (which admittedly may not be saying much. ;-)
An amazingly, enjoyably bad film. If I need to get an “evil” film gift for somebody in the future, this will top my list. ;-)
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
