Birds and the Bees (and Fish, too)

A few months ago I had a chance to see Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds on the big screen at a theater in Santa Monica.  Watching it in that setting definitely amped up the creepiness of the story during which the birds turn on humans and start killing people.  It is a little scary if you think about it... birds are usually just background noise or a nice thing to look at sometimes or annoying when they crap on your car.  Can you imagine if they all of a sudden teamed up and started attacking us?

That's a snapshot from my favorite scene in the movie - the main character, Melanie Daniels, sits outside a school full of children to take a smoking break from the chaos.  Hitchcock cuts away from her a few seconds at a time, and whenever the camera returns to Melanie the number of birds on the jungle gym behind her grows and grows to the point where its covered in them.  They didn't call this guy the Master of Suspense for nothing.

[SPOILER ALERT... Don't read the following green text if you don't want the ending of the movie ruined!]

Another aspect of the movie that I loved - that I'm sure many more hated - was the fact that they never explain the reasoning for the birds' sudden change in temperment.  The final scene is a longshot of the heroes escaping amidst a sea of birds, all just watching them slowly drive away.

[OKAY, NO MORE SPOILERS HERE ON OUT!]

Regardless of how you feel about that mysterious ending, there is a real-life reason all of this came to mind and it is just as mysterious...  This past New Year's Eve in the small town of Beebe, Arkansas, over 3,000 red-winged blackbirds inexplicably fell to their death - some residents even cited the film as they recalled the birds raining from the sky.  Scientists speculate that a loud boom, maybe from fireworks, scared the birds to death but they're not 100% sure.  Maybe we should change the phrase to "scared-y birds", eh?  ...Too soon?

As if that wasn't weird enough, how about THIS: yesterday 360 miles away from Beebe near Labarre, Louisiana, 500 more blackbirds fell to their death.  What?!  Oh, and let's not forget about the poor fish that checked out early in Arkansas, Maryland, Brazil and New Zealand.  Beyond weird.

I'm no scientist so I really have no idea what could have happened that would cause birds and fish to mysteriously die in mass amounts - all within a few days (which is the really creepy part to me) - but it does remind me of a story I heard a while back...

Honeybees are dying off and scientists don't know why yet.  This 2012 stuff is starting to sound pretty legit.

For four years in a row now the bee population has been steadily decreasing, and I remember years ago when I first heard that bees were kicking the bucket I ignorantly said, "Who cares?  I could live without honey and beestings."  Well, apparently that's not the only thing we'd be living without.  Bees pollinate flowers and trees which in turn produce crops that humans eat.  And those same crops feed animals that humans eventually eat.

Who knew our ecosystem was such a fragile house of cards?  Remove the bees and you lose the pollinated plants which takes away a food source for our food sources.  Damn.  And as if that wasn't enough, the methods farmers have to use to compensate for the lack of pollination are pricey which means we'll be paying more at the register.  That's an insult to injury if I've ever heard one.

So I take back all the mean things I ever said about you, birds, fish and bees.  Stick around for a while so we can stop being spooked out and then eat like we used to (and pay the prices we used to).

But squirrels can go.  No one would miss them.  Or would we?  I better take that back - with my luck, the squirrels will all drop dead and all of a sudden the price of beer will go up.

Pushing Art

Sometimes things seem so clear and obvious that it's amazing to me that they never existed.

A while back I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel that featured people with extraordinary abilities, almost superpowers.  One of these individuals was an artist named Esref Armagan.  Check out some of his works:

You may look at these and say, "They're okay," because that's probably what I would say if I didn't know that Esref was born blind.  In fact, he was born without eyes.  Check out more of his work at his website: armagan.com/paintings.asp, or check out the actual part of the television show I caught here: youtube.com/watch?v=L3AgO6H0H98.

The reason I chose these two paintings was because of Esref's use of perspective.  Perspective is such a simple idea: real life is 3D, so why not try as hard as we can to draw it in 3D, right?  Quick: think of every Egyptian painting you've ever seen.  Not so 3D, huh.

While I learned about Esref's amazing ability, I also learned that the use of linear perspective in art wasn't truly 'discovered' until 1425 when an artist named Brunelleschi used geometry (chalk another one up for math) to develop this new way of drawing real objects to appear in 3 dimensions.

I remember that was one of those, "They had to discover that?" moments for me.  Another came when talking about another art form, one that I've been closely studying for the past 2 years: film.

The montage is an element of film that you see on a regular basis in television and movies.  If edited well a montage of images or clips can tell you exactly what's going on as well as how to feel about what's happening.  The 80s provided a few well known montage examples: Tony Montana's rise to power in Scarface and Rocky's training in Rocky IV (the latter was hilariously parodied in Team America: World Police).  Of course it's been seen in hundreds of other movies - just think, what would that stabbing scene in Psycho have been like without those quick cuts between the knife, Vera Miles' scream and the shower drain?  Or what about the baptism scene in The Godfather?

Just like the use of perspective in paintings, montage in film had to be invented.  That's where Sergei Eisenstein, the "Father of Montage", comes into play.  In his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein first tested the use of montage and produced one of the most famous scenes in film history: the Odessa Steps (just a warning: this is some old school stuff so you may find it boring, and it gets strangely violent at the end).

I'll spare you too many details about Battleship Potemkin's story, but I wanted to share this famous scene because of the amount of filmmakers who have paid homage to it over the years: Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and Terry Gilliam.  The most recognizable (and blatantly similar) homage may be from Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (fast forward to about 4:00).  An honorable mention must be made for Peter Segal's Naked Gun 33 1/3 (RIP Leslie Neilsen).

It never ceases to amaze me how art, whether it is painting or film, can be pushed further using ingenuity - and the changes that are made sometimes become so commonplace we don't even notice them.  Maybe next time you see perspective in a painting or a montage in a movie you'll think, "I guess it did have to start somewhere..."

Before signing off I wanted to share my favorite montage of images from Battleship Potemkin.  In one scene, the ship's crew has mutinied and decided to fire on the Tsarist headquarters in Odessa causing the people to rise up and join in their rebellion.  Eisenstein brilliantly uses the following three photographs in succession to show the people's reaction:

A sleeping lion... a waking lion... and finally a rising lion.  Three different statues that when pieced together give the idea of a single lion awakening, just as the Russian people awaken to stand up to their oppressors.  It's as simple as it is powerful.

2 posts in 2 days?

A personal record.

Took the flight back to LA this morning.  It only took me a few trips to figure out the secret to making this 5 hour flight fly by: deprive yourself of as much sleep as possible before getting on the plane so you can just snooze through it.  It's worked a few times for me now.  Plus I feel pretty well-rested after which is a bonus.

It's gloomy here but I was feeling pretty good when I got home and saw everything in my apartment and car in order.  Leaving your stuff for a few weeks unmanned in any city is a risky move, so I was glad nothing happened.  To be honest, I've found LA to be really safe.  There's rarely those moments of awkwardness or discomfort or whatever you want to call it when you're in a tough part of town.  I remember a few times when I made a wrong turn in Camden and was definitely stressing out - it's a shame some areas are like that.  It makes me wonder how things get to that point.

No plans tonight except relaxing and catching up on some errands in the area.  Might have to check out that new copy of Citizen Kane I got...  (I'm a movie nerd, so what?)

Hello 2011

Well 2010 is over and along with it I have to say goodbye to my family after another amazing visit home.  The past two weeks have been great between Christmas and New Year celebrations with the Cummingses (correct pluralization?), O'Rourkes, Pinneys, Mikolajewskis and a Siano.  I'm truly lucky to have such a great crew to come home to - and while I'm excited to go back to Los Angeles where I'll be finishing up school and getting back to work, it's with a lot of sadness that I leave my home state of New Jersey.

What a great looking group.  I really wish Mike and Chris could have been there, and of course we all missed our amazing Grandmom, Mom and wife.  Mom-mom was truly a special woman to all of us and she will forever represent all of the love and pride she gave as the matriarch of the O'Rourke-Cummings clan.

Only a few hours until my flight back to the west coast and along with these sad goodbyes I have to stay positive and look forward to the exciting potential of 2011.  In a few weeks I'll have a Masters in Screenwriting that has taken two years and two coasts to achieve; in a little less than two months my two awesome nephews, Chase and Cole, will turn 4 and 2 respectively; in less than five months my sister Meg will marry a great guy, Chris; and I'm sure there will be much more to celebrate in the year ahead.

Let's kick it off with an old Irish saying (that Jay-Z hijacked and changed up in his song "Young Forever"):

May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.