Archive for January, 2012
The Slice of Americana Barbershop is Not Dead
-Take a ride with Sid Kali! “>The Slice of Americana barbershop is not dead. Through the course of my life I have had one main barber since my grandfather took me into the place when I was kid. It only has two chairs and the regulars are grandfathers, fathers, and sons that know who you are related to going back to the 40’s. The Slice of Americana barbershop is not dead in the era of fast and faster. Both barbers are over 65 years young and take their time to shoot the breeze, tell stories hollister , and talk about life in general. It is not a rush cut. This week I was in the chair over an hour taking in life and getting a simple clipper cut.
This place always reminds to slow down and take time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life like good conversation and a haircut. Nobody is talking on the phone, texting, or checking emails when they come in the door and sit down. It is an unwritten rule that when your there for a haircut you leave that outside. Life slows down, which I like. Viewers that have watched the gangster film “In with Thieves” know the scene I wrote about talking on a phone when shopping. I get many great emails from people that love that scene because it has happened to them. A scene like that won’t ever happen in this barbershop.
As I am getting a neat trim (clipper #3 blended) a regular nicknamed Loco Lolo goes into a story about the night he got drunk on hobo juice, jumped a freight train from Texas to Los Angeles, and ended up getting shot by a zip gun over a woman. His real life snapshot was a true “Slice of Americana” from a man that has lived a hard life. Loco Lolo has a wicked sense of humor. After showing the scar from the belly shot he made a joke that the woman was not even fine, so he didn’t get why a man would be jealous enough to shoot over here. He only went back to her place because he had no money for a motel.
The events and people around inspire most of my writing and movies. I like to draw from real life energy and experiences that touch my life. Every script I write I strive to make it honest and accurate in depicting the subject matter. The language and images are not always politically correct, but it is based on the closest realism I can share with audiences. The people that have lived life on the fringe and have experienced harsh realities get a lot of the lines and scenes in my movies. Those viewers understand the differences between a studio budget film on urban life and a more organic approach.
Like any filmmaker I get my fair share of negative emails and posts on my movies over the content. I do appreciate constructive comments from viewers and make note of how I can improve a movie for the next time. Where I won’t change is censoring the language, even words that people find offensive. The street has its own language and rhythm that should be respected and shown with realism. I will always deliver that to movie audiences.
Financing for independent film projects has slowed down. While I wait for it to pick back up I have finally committed to writing a series of fiction books based on screenplays I have written. It is cool because usually scripts and movies are adapted from books. I am taking a different approach. The New Year will see Crazy Love Story, Stash Spot, and Elbow published. This is indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing FADE OUT
The Slice of Americana Films approach to making movies has been covered in MovieMaker and Indie Slate magazines -Take a ride with Sid Kali!
Do You Realize That Jim Dale’s Performance Of The Harry Potter Audiobooks Included…
Many people know about the degree of detail that was put into the making of the Harry Potter books and motion pictures, but rather few people know what went into Dale’s reading of the Harry Potter audio books.
Are you aware that when Jim Dale performed the books, he…
1. Didn’t read the whole book before he began. Jim would generally receive a manuscript for a book just 2 or 3 days before being scheduled to begin the recording. That means that when he started recording a new Harry Potter audio book, he wouldn’t know how it was going to end. In fact, Jim says that he’d generally only read ~100 pages ahead of where he’s recording. That’s pretty cool because it means that when you’re listening to the audio books, you can be sure that Jim isn’t subconsciously leading you in a certain plot direction with the intonation of his voice.
2. Created more than 200 voices for all the different characters across the 7 book series. He even holds a Guinness World Record for the most voices in an audio book – 146 different voices in the series ending Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
3. Uses his knowledge of dozens of accents across the British Kingdom. Certain characters voices are even based on specific friends or relatives of Jim’s (e.g., an old Aunt-in law is the inspiration for Professor McGonagall’s voice and a giant uncle of his who owned a small farm in Devonshire is the inspiration for Hagrid).
4. Would be sent a list of every new word or character’s name and its exact pronunciation. Apparently the producers maintained a very strict interpretation of the text and Jim would often have to record new words (which had been accidentally left off this list) in every intonation imaginable.
5. Would spend 2-3 weeks narrating each book. He’d usually work from about 10am to 5pm over the course of this period, totaling about 100 hours of recording time per audio book.
Pretty wild stuff huh? Hope you enjoyed the facts on Jim Dale’s recording of the Harry Potter audio books hollister !
Scouting Film Locations from Your Santa Barbara Vacation Rental
Santa Barbara vacation rental guests are often curious about film locations, and with good reason. There are a lot of iconic Santa Barbara locations that crop up in movies and TV shows. Read on to find out why Santa Barbara is the setting of choice for so many popular productions and how you can recognize and visit famous filming locations in and around the Santa Barbara area.
A lot of visitors in Santa Barbara vacation rentals feel a strong sense of familiarity or belonging the first time they explore Santa Barbara. We’re not going to discount anyone’s claims of psychic powers or a past life lived on America’s Riviera, but chances are more like that they’ve seen one of the over 200 different movies and TV shows filmed in whole or in part in Santa Barbara over the last 100 years.
Don’t leave your Santa Barbara vacation rental in search of locations made famous on the silver screen until you read this full list. You’ve probably seen at least one or more of these popular productions:
2009 It’s Complicated
2006 Pirates of the Caribbean III
2006 There Will Be Blood
2006 Psych
2006 The Bachelor
2006 Top Chef 2, Bravo
2005 Monk
2005 Oprah Winfrey Show
2004 Flight of the Phoenix
2004 Monster-in-Law
2004 Sideways
2003 Hidalgo
2003 Seabiscuit
2003 Sorority Life
2001 The X-files
2000 Bedazzled
1999 Double Jeopardy
1998 Star Trek: Insurrection
1996 The Long Kiss Goodnight
1996 G.I. Jane
1996 Face/Off
1995 Nixon
1994 A Walk in the Clouds
1994 Congo
1994 Young Indy/Hollywood Follies
1993 Pelican Brief
1990 Rocketeer
1984 Scarface
1980 The Postman Always Rings Twice
1978 The Frisco Kid
1967 The Graduate
1964 Batman pilot
1923 The Ten Commandments
1914 The Perils of Pauline
It’s ComplicatedThe most recent high-profile film to come out of Santa Barbara was last year’s Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin romantic comedy It’s Complicated. The film’s director Nancy Meyers chose Santa Barbara for a definite reason that any Santa Barbara vacation rental film enthusiast will be able to relate to. In an interview with Santa Barbara Magazine, Meyers said that “Santa Barbara felt right for so many reasons – the natural beauty everywhere you look, the state of mind I feel when I’m there, the calm…It feels as close to the good life as you can get.”
It’s Complicated is a beautiful film that seems to show off our fair city to its finest advantage.
The operative word here is seems. Most of it was shot on a sound stage in Brooklyn in the middle of winter. Only three brief scenes were actually shot in Santa Barbara. There’s a scene where Jane is jogging through her Montecito neighborhood and her architect friend Adam pulls up in his car. This was actually filmed in her little burg, as you can tell from the unique wooden street signs. If you want to walk in Jane’s Montecito shoes stop by The Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore, which may have been the inspiration for the hotel where Jane and her ex-husband had their aborted rendezvous. When Jane lies in wait for her therapist at the fictional Santa Barbara Medical Center, she is actually lurking at the Anacapa Street back entrance of El Paseo, an outdoor Spanish-style shopping arcade. While Santa Barbara is home to a dizzying array of Farmers Markets, the one Jane shops at was actually set designed for her outside the 1920s Spanish-Moorish style Santa Barbara County Courthouse on Anapamu Street.Sadly, there is no such place as Jane’s luscious and comfy-looking business Village Bakery. The set was built inside Picnic House in Brooklyn. But folks staying in a Santa Barbara vacation rental will be able to find close facsimiles at Jeannine’s or Xanadu (temporarily closed until April, 2011 due to a fire) in Montecito or Renaud’s in downtown Santa Barbara.
Sideways
The wine-tasting buddy picture Sideways was a sensation when it was released in 2004. Filmed primarily in the Santa Barbara-adjacent Santa Ynez Valley, it spawned a whole new appreciation for wines (just not Merlot!) from the area, and a cottage industry grew up around people who wanted to retrace the footsteps of the film’s questionable protagonists.
Santa Barbara vacation rental guest who are fans of this movie often search for “the Sideways Map” which will lead you on a car tour through the movie’s highlights.. Many of the destinations even have a sign bearing the Sideways logo. If you want to travel by bike, the Sideways bike map will help you find the sites.
Different locations in Santa Barbara Proper
Santa Barbara vacation rental guests are often curious about film locations, and with good reason. There are a lot of Santa Barbara locations that crop up in movies that aren’t even set in the area. This is because of the profusion of beautiful features in the area that blend so seamlessly into other locales. Stearns Wharf is a 19th century landmark, located at the bottom of State Street. It is the oldest operating wharf on the west coast, and the second longest pier on the Pacific coast at just a hair under 2,000 feet. In the 1940s, actor James Cagney and his brothers were part owners of Stearns Wharf. It has appeared in A Date with Judy and My Favorite Martian and the 1966 version of Batman. “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”State Street features many familiar landmarks. It has appeared in the movies Cutter’s Way and Steal Big, Steal Little, among countless others.The Old Town Clock at State and Haley streets was featured in The Pelican Brief. Santa Barbara County Courthouse on Anacapa Street was also in Steal Big, Steal Little. Mission Santa Barbara was in Sunset Boulevard and Cruel Intentions 3. Different locations in the Greater Santa Barbara Area Guests at our Santa Barbara vacation rental homes know that Santa Barbara is so much more than just the pretty red roofs of downtown. One of the reasons the region is so popular with filmmakers is its almost infinite variety. Cold Spring Arch Bridge – Steal Big, Steal Little. Lake Cachuma – The Postman Always Rings Twice Gainey Vineyard – Seabiscuit and Of Mice & Men. Downtown Los Olivos – Return to Mayberry. Paradise Road – Seabiscuit and Star Trek Insurrection. Gaviota Coast – Spartan. Gaviota Trestle – Of Mice & Men. Gaviota Tunnel – The Graduate. Guadalupe Dunes – The Ten Commandments, Hidalgo, GI Jane, Pirates of the Caribbean III. Santa Maria Airport – The Rocketeer and The Best Years of Our Lives. La Purisima Mission – Seabiscuit. Jalama Road – A Walk in the Clouds. Surrounding Ranchland – Of Mice & Men.
Faking Santa Barbara
Sometimes a production may be set in Santa Barbara, but for whatever reason they can’t film there. In that case they may use a few stock footage-establishing shots, like the pier and tower seen in the TV series Psych.
In the movie I Love You, Man a wedding scene was supposed to have taken place at the fictional El Encanto Spa & Resort of Montecito. It was actually filmed at a private residence on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Sorry, a Santa Barbara vacation rental concierge won’t be able to make you a reservation at El Encanto, but they’ll be able to find you a nice alternative!
Sometimes, scenes are shot with certain geographical liberties taken. In The Graduate, the scene of Benjamin driving south to Santa Barbara shows his car heading north through the Gaviota Tunnel, in the wrong direction. Even the Santa Barbara church he banged on during the wedding was nowhere nearby. It is actually located in La Verne, east of Los Angeles.
Television Loves Santa Barbara
Moviemakers aren’t the only people infatuated with the area. Its glamour beckons on the little screen, too. Countless TV shows have been set in, had special episodes located in or just mentioned Santa Barbara. There was even a nighttime drama in the ‘80s called Santa Barbara.
More recently, our fair city has been featured or mentioned in episodes of Gossip Girl, Entourage, Victorious, Beverly Hills 90210, The L Word, Baywatch, Melrose Place, Privileged, L.A. Law, Zorro and Oceans Away.
Kind of Santa Barbara, but Not Really
Then there are the productions that are located in places that sound and look suspiciously like Santa Barbara, but are never overtly established as such. The television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic example.
Buffy’s hometown “Sunnydale” is described as being a coastal town, two hours north of Beverly Hills – check. Sunnydale and Santa Barbara are both homes to branch campuses of the University of California. The architecture of Sunnydale looks like Santa Barbara. Both towns abut the Pacific Ocean abercrombie and fitch , and suffered devastating earthquakes between the two world wars. Sunnydale was also described as being the home of the Chumash tribe who were indigenous to Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and many of the show’s establishing shots were of Santa Barbara.
Most convincing of all is the fact that on several occasions throughout its seven-year run, characters used maps of Sunnydale that were in fact of…Santa Barbara. Now, we want to assure anyone staying in a Santa Barbara vacation rental that there is no such thing as a hellmouth lurking under our utopian city. But you might want to bring a garlic necklace if you plan to wander around a lot after sunset.
Santa Barbara’s 100-Year History in the Movies
2010 marks the 100-year anniversary of a lively and thriving film presence in Santa Barbara. Starting in 1910 the Essanay Film Company made regular visits to Santa Barbara from Chicago in search of better weather and appropriate locations to shoot their wildly popular western genre short films. They were followed in July, 1912 by a permanent western branch of Flying “A” Studios, which was also looking for better weather and relief from the stranglehold of the Edison Trust in the east. They chose Santa Barbara because they could find both urban and rural locations so close at hand.
Flying “A” took a big hit due to the combined effects of World War I, the flu pandemic and the beginning of the Great Depression. But Santa Barbara was already well established as a choice filming location. In 1923, Cecil B. DeMille shot The Ten Commandments on the sandscapes of Guadalupe (also used in Pirates of the Caribbean III), once again launching Santa Barbara back into the movie vanguard.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Coming up Next from Santa Barbara
The entertainment industry is alive and well in Santa Barbara. Last June, the cast and crew of a new film called No Strings Attached set up shop at All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church and The Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore. Billed as a romantic comedy, the film stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher and is scheduled for release on January 21, 2011.
There are a lot of famous filming locations to visit. If you want to go out exploring on your own, SantaBarbara.com offers three different itineraries that will lead you through the area, scoping out locations from some favorite high-profile films. And when you’re done for the day, you’ll have a Santa Barbara vacation rental to return home to, living a life the movie stars envy.
The SonicProducer Will Grow With You
If music is your interest, beats would be your craze. Music fans now have a fantastic way to create beats with the help of beat making softwares. They indeed are an revolutionary solution for musicians to work over their beats right through their laptops or desktop computers. The beat maker software fully eliminate the need of carrying all those massive and bulky equipments that have been so far used to make beats for music pieces.
That brand-new program comprises 1100 a variety of beats abercrombie uk , melodies, chords and tracks from various musical instruments and sounds. You can make your own music when you go through “dragging and dropping” instruments and sounds into the song creator window. Record Producer comes equipped with an “Instrument editor” and “Effects machine” so you can personalize your sounds even further. Hip Hop Record Producer also enables for microphone import so your track is made and created by you, and your voice can be heard as well!!This software is easy to use and you’ll be creating music in minutes. As your ability grows, the Hip Hop Record Producer will grow with you!
For easy and speedy use, the beat maker software should be of user friendly interface. The software should not jingle around needless things while the musician is working on the beats. Also, the beat maker software must hold a helpful training stuff that makes an artist obviously know about the technicalities concerned while producing those music beats and the mechanics of the software – keeping an equilibrium between both of them.
You can appreciate your beat making more when you will choose the best beat making software. So, pick out any of the beat maker software and make thousands of wonderful beats.
Why sports autographs will never lose value
In the United Kingdom, sports, sporting teams, and sporting achievement are valued as highly as religion. It wasn’t for kicks that numerous famous writers, philosophers, artists and musicians all delineated football as equivalent to a working class faith. It’s equally true, in 21st century terms, that the lives and actions of the people we call “celebrities” are up there with our contemporary deities. We eat, breathe and sleep fame in all its guises. The totems of that fame, the autographs of celebrities from all walks of life, be they famous sports men and women or media giants (and giantesses), are sought with enthusiasm as the chance to own and hold something that has, however briefly, been owned and held by a person whose achievements we all hold dear.
The sports autograph has a particular resonance, probably because it relates to an activity that the nation has held in high regard for so long. People who are famous for appearing on TV, for playing and singing in bands, or for acting in films, are of course held in equally regal status – but the football player, or the boxer, has been an object of public adulation for so long that the autographs he delivers have become practically cult objects. There will never be a drop in value for these items, because they speak so closely to the heart of the British citizen. There, but for the vicissitudes of circumstance, goes any one of us – and so we are fascinated by that small physical trace left on a photograph, on a match ball or boxing glove abercrombie and fitch , by the person who has climbed to the top of the sporting ladder.
A sports autograph written on a match ball or boxing glove, on something that has actually been kicked or used in some way by the player or sports person in question, holds a particularly high value – for the same reason that the first edition of a book that subsequently became famous is held in such treasured regard by the aficionados of literature. Sports autographs written on items of kit used by the sports person in question offer a real, solid connection between the owner of the artefact and the person who signed it. There’s a recognition there that this ball, or this glove, was actually used in the commission of the feats that the public has found so inspiring during the person’s sporting career. That isn’t to say, mind, that the autograph of a famous movie star or pop celebrity is less valued. It’s much harder to find physical objects used by these people that can be sold on in any meaningful way – so the non sporting celebrity signature is placed on a photograph almost by default. Celebrity autographs of this kind are just as loved, and offer just as much of a feeling of connection, as sporting kit. It’s simply that sporting kit is readily available, and that sports people have been public heroes for much longer.
Any item of sports memorabilia that has an autograph on it, then, becomes a superb investment for the buyer. Signed sporting gear will never lose its attraction or value – and that makes it the perfect way to marry enthusiasm with financial sense.
The celebrity autograph is way more than just a scrawl – it shows that our heroes are people too with there authentic autographs.
Green Screen Video Program
Being a photographer you might have loads of ideas on how you desire creating a fairy world on the Earth yet without a good green screen tool those ideas would remain ideas and not get an opportunity of becoming a reality. You could go to nice locations or try creating something that looks amazing but there are certain things that only a good Chroma key can do. It is not just about getting any program but only the right one since an incapable utility would not be able to help you realize your ideas into a virtual wonder. Green screen editing tool is capable in producing terrific realistic illusions which surely amaze people and they enjoy seeing them. There are no set boundaries to it and every aspect that seemed impossible probably becomes possible. A person could literally be shown to be flying in the space which is just a clever illusion or you could even infuse life into dry picture. You could make aliens become living beings of this planet and show humans to be living on some other planet altogether.
Many Green screen video software applications are available which can be used to edit pictures or clips. These tools are extensively used by film makers who do magic wonders to make their pictures filled in with life. Even weather forecasters make use of this editing tool. The forecaster stands in front of green concealment and the maps along with the graphical animation is played. Also for the presentation the technique is quite common. You can replace the green background of images and videos with some exciting themes. For instance even without having traveled to Paris you could insert a background of Eiffel Tower and let others keep guessing when you traveled to France abercrombie uk ! In these applications formats like wmv, avi, peg and mpg could be edited as per requirement. Some of the tools as well are embedded with samples to help you save time and so you can use them as required. These are really user-friendly utilities which even amateurs could use without facing any trouble. So you could bring on those old pictures of your family and turn the dull and boring images into something interesting and beautiful.