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| This weekend (The Weekend Before Valentines Day) my boyfriend and I as well as my boyfriend's fiance and himself all drove to Bear Creek Mountain Resort in Macungie, PA. We stayed overnight and skiied and snowboarded as much as we could! We had a great time. Above are pictures from the trip from the first night. They were making snow and it was like a blizzard!!!! |
111.3 million people watched Super Bowl XLVI yesterday, a new U.S. record for the most-watched television program. Which means most of you saw how NBC shamelessly seized every opportunity to plug the season premiere of “The Voice.” So you probably saw the countless commercials for the debut of “Smash,” today on the newly prestigious “Super Monday” after. Whatever that means. “Hangover Day” may have been more appropriate. Believe it or not, a fraction of those people were not annoyed by “Smash” ads being smashed into their eyes during a precious sports event. This review is for them. Forget “Glee.” FOX managed to repackage “American Idol” as a teen dramedy for a few seasons, and sap a franchise worth of movies, tours, holiday CDs, and more from it by stirring up controversy, counting down the top 40, and hosting celebrity burn-outs. (Ricky Martin, really?) But that dream is dying, especially once adults get a look at NBC’s “Smash,” where more-talented characters are passionate about a little more than sectionals. If the pilot is any indication, “Smash” is to “Glee” what NBC’s “The West Wing” is to “Saved by the Bell.” But enough about that show, lest I awaken Ryan Murphy. “Smash” centers on the creation of a Broadway musical, from inception to production, and each aspect of this “terrible business” is represented, from writing to directing to starring. First and foremost, “Smash” wants to be A Star is Born for the modern era. “Stars aren’t born, they’re made.” Says it right there on all those promotional posters. It achieves that goal, for what it’s worth, featuring one bright-eyed young singer in particular. One “made” mildly famous by somehow becoming only the runner-up on “American Idol” in 2006. Katharine McPhee, who is apparently stunning visually and vocally, for the uninitiated. Wow. She’s also a surprisingly strong actor and dancer (which I somehow missed in Shark Night 3D), and capable of playing both vulnerable and sexy as new voice Karen Cartwright. She sells the backstage jitters and a rivalry with a blonde bombshell named Ivy Lynn (Broadway actress Megan Hilty), even though they share the same dream their parents don’t believe in. Debra Messing and Christian Borle work well together as Julia and Tom, a veteran writing team that exchanges snappy banter a little like Messing’s “Will and Grace.” Julia is a stand-in for creator and Pulitzer-nominated playwright Theresa Rebeck, which explains why the series follows the drama to Julia’s home life with her frustrated husband and teen son. In the midst of a brainstorming frenzy, Julia and Tom yearn for something new. It seems Broadway faces the same rehashes and remakes as Hollywood. But, despite the yearning, the session ironically begets the bright idea to do another saintly portrayal of the beautiful, broken Marilyn Monroe. The characters, and by extension Rebeck, acknowledge there’s a Monroe movie (Oscar-nominated now), a statue, even an iPad app, but they are dually lured by the promise of “a baseball number” that, admittedly, looks impressive in rehearsal.
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The New X-Factor64-bit architecture
No longer restricted to the 4GB limit of 32-bit applications, Final Cut Pro uses all the RAM in your system to handle larger frame sizes and keep more frames in memory. You can now create more extensive projects and work with deeper, more interesting multilayered effects.
 GPU utilization
Final Cut Pro uses the high-speed GPU on the graphics card for effects previews and rendering. Because tapping the GPU core speeds up processing, you can work with richer, more complex effects that play in real time during the creative process.
 Background processing
As you edit, Final Cut Pro takes advantage of unused cycles in the background to execute a range of tasks, so you can be creative without interruption. Background processing includes rendering, transcoding, and moving media.
ColorSync-managed
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Stop-Motion Biscuit Cake from Alan Travers on Vimeo.
A cat wakes up surrounded by water and must learn to survive.
My name is Gints Zilbalodis, I’m 17 years old and this has been my passion project for the last year an a half. It started as vague ideas of a cat, ocean and overcoming fear. Then through numerous battles with the script it shaped up to something similar you can see now. After seven drafts I felt that it was ready to start storyboarding, but the film kept evolving all the way until the sound mix was done. I kept learning about filmmaking everyday, going through all of the different processes.
I chose the cat as the main character mainly to save time with exposition, because people know that generally cats are afraid of water. So I could just jump right into action. Plus cat is a fairly small creature and the ocean seems even bigger to him. And of course cats are much easier to draw than humans.
The film’s music is by my friend Bertrams Pauls Purvišķis who helped a great deal to tell the story the way it was intended. Music had a lot of to convey in very little time and it came out much better than I could’ve ever expected.
I’ve been delaying the release for quite some time, because as I learned by making it, a lot of mistakes made earlier when I didn’t have the experience had to be remade from scratch. I’m glad it’s finally done and I can show it to the world.
