WebGL on Second Thought and a Brief Note on OpenGL ES 3.0

This is a brief note to say that after all the sturm und drang expressed on this blog while learning WebGL 1.0, that it has become my favorite way to write little graphics programs.

I now realize that it is very unusual to be able to do anything dynamic in HTML/Browsers without always having to deal with the server for information. And yet I am able to write very complicated WebGL (or at least reasonably complicated) WebGL programs without using the server at all (except for saving images).

The "framework" mess in writing "dynamic web pages" for browsers is astounding, but I would not necessarily count on finding a framework that worked well with WebGL. Such a thing may in fact exist, but it is far outside the normal range of what the frameworks are intended (and tested) for.

Even Javascript has grown on me such that it has become a pleasant language to write in.

I think this is moderately funny given the amount of noise I made learning these two things (javascript development and WebGL).

On a related matter, I spent a half day or so reading the specification of OpenGL ES 3.0 and it is far different from WebGL 1.0, no matter what you hear. Although the shading language part is nearly identical, the OpenGL part is richer in capability. OpenGL 4.x, however, upon reading is vastly more complicated and a completely different beast.

So the takeaway information of this post is: WebGL is very useful if a little annoying to learn, and WebGL is remarkably different from OpenGL ES 3.0. The power of WebGL comes from its shader language, its integration into the browser and HTML, and the interactive nature of Javascript and Javascript development.

I apologize for lapsing into optimism and a positive attitude in this post.   I will no doubt resume my normal negative approach in future posts.

Alan Turing Set to Challenge Lego for Boxoffice Fame

[Update 2-11-2014  My correspondents in Berlin tell me that Harvey and Bob Weinstein are on the very top level of the Hilton .... whereas my correspondents are forced to endure on the lower levels.   More news as we have it from Berlin]

Turing.   A man whose work seems to be ripped from the pages of today's newspapers Internet news sites.   Is there a more glamourous name in all of Mathematics?   Secret counter spy, a life filled with illicit sex, known eccentric, colorful suicide, cut off before his time, whose work famously set the stage for the second half of the 20th century and beyond. 

Now Hollywood has discovered Alan Turing.

Serendipitously coming across an important Internet-based Hollywood journal,  Deadline Hollywood, it is jam-packed with important and exciting news from the glamourous and rewarding entertainment industry. I realized as I read this drivel that I was falling deeper and deeper under its spell with important news about at least two different 3D animated films I knew nothing about, not to mention the new "Dreamworks Press" which is to market in print the "Dreamworks Classics".   Classics? Already? How old does it have to be to be a classic?  Does 10 years old make something a classic?  Are there standards for such things?

But the most exciting news was the "heat" generated at the Berlin film festival, the Berlinale, by none other than Alan Turing and his film The Imitation Game (2014).  Although famously dead, his legacy lives on.   The Weinstein Company, the Deadline breathlessly tells us, bought the rights to this film for 7 million ($US) based on a 15 minute compilation reel of scenes from the film. In other words, the film itself is not finished, so the filmmakers put together a 15 minute "show reel" and used it to sell the Weinstein's for all they were worth.   Thats Hollywood. Thats the kind of crazy stuff that makes Hollywood so entertaining.  (1) 

None other than Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing.

A great picture of Cumberbach as Turing with his computer

The real Alan Turing 

To recap, Alan Turing was the mathematician famous for his work at Bletchley Park during WWII doing what the British have always done: reading other people's secret communications.   In so doing he also casually invented computer science (with a few other people) and threw challenges down to other fields which continue to this day (see "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis",  link below).  A long-distance runner, he was also famously homosexual (or bisexual) who committed suicide young rather than submit to a barbaric medical regime by court order to "cure" his homosexuality.  His chosen method of killing himself was by painting an apple with arsenic and taking a bite from it.  

Just the average life of the Cambridge mathematician.

It was an amazing tragedy and Great Britain has formally apologized for their scandalous behavior with a pardon from the Queen and a formal apology from the Prime Minister.  Better late than never, I suppose.  (A BBC article on the pardon is here)

With A Beautiful Mind (2001), Pi (1998) and now this, The Imitation Game (2014), we have three movies based on the exciting and tragic lives of mathematicians, admittedly one of them fictional. Does this bode a whole slew of films about tragic and exciting mathematicians? Are there enough tragic and exciting mathematicians around to supply this new craze?

The Competition looks worried.

"Will Alan Turing be able to compete against movies about Lego?", the Deadline site breathlessly asks.  This and other vital questions will be answered in our lifetime, it is hoped.  I am putting my money behind Turing and holding my breath.

_______________________________________________

"The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" can be found at the following URL:
http://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing.pdf

See the article here in Deadline Hollywood here: 

http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/berlin-record-deal-harvey-weinstein-pays-7-million-for-alan-turing-wwii-tale-the-imitation-game/

The Imitation Game (2014) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/

A Beautiful Mind (2001) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/

Pi (1998) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/

The Berlinale Web Site
http://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html


1. Of course 7 million dollars seems a little low in the context of a Facebook valued at over 100 billion.  

Can Glenn Greenwald be Tried for a Crime in the Snowden/NSA Affair?

I realize that not many of my readers may be very interested in the NSA/Snowden affair, or at least not very interested in what I have to say about it.

But since this blog is in part for my own education and improvement of *my* moral character, not to mention *your* moral character, I think it is my duty to soldier on and educate myself and my fellow Americans about some of the background and law involved.

The question of the day is whether or not on paper Glenn Greenwald has violated American law. Which is different from whether or not he will be tried for this alleged crimes or, if convicted, those convictions will stand.

To recap, when Ed Snowden violated his oath and released information with the clear result of damaging the United States national security, he did so with the help of various accomplices around the world. A few of those accomplices are publicly so, and most of them are not public.(1)  

Foremost among the public conspirators is Glenn Greenwald, an independent journalist, and author of several best-selling books. He has been instrumental in transmitting and publishing this information and very public about it.

So here are the questions we want to answer. 1. Is there a law prohibiting what Greenwald did? 2. Is there a special exemption in this law for 1st amendment purposes? and 3. If there is a law and no special exemption, why has the government not issued warrants of arrest for Greenwald?

The answer to question 1 is simple: yes. It is Title 18, part I, Chapter 37.798, Disclosure of Classified Information, and I have quoted the relevant text below.

The answer to question 2 is not at all clear. The only way to find out if a law is constitutional is for someone to be judged, found guilty, and to appeal. If the law is struck down by an appeals court, it may still not be clear. The ultimate judgment comes from the Supreme Court, as imperfect as it may be. Thus all those people who go around saying "this is unconstitutional" quite probably do not have a clue what they are talking about. Yes, the 1st Amendment is pretty clear about "free speech". But it does not say you can sell stolen goods, nor does it say anywhere that you can conspire to kill Americans (in an indirect or a direct fashion, with the differences between those two being very germane to this and other cases).

Therefore if there is a law, and there is, and if that law stands and has not been found unconstitutional, why has the Obama Administration not filed charged against Glenn Greenwald? Perhaps they feel that it would stir up more opposition to America in the world. Perhaps they are afraid of testing the law in the case of a journalist.  Perhaps they are taking a wait and see attitude to see how things develop.  I have no doubt the Greenwald must be under intense surveillance.

Is there a statute of limitations on these alleged crimes? Maybe, but its also a loose thing and not as black and white as some people think particularly because of the issue of continuing activities of a conspiracy, which is certainly the case here. In other words, is Greenwald still conspiring with Snowden to publish classified material? Yes? Then the statute of limitation clock has not started running yet.

So the answers to our questions are 1. Yes, 2. Unknown you just have to try it, and 3. Unknown but they still have time should they decide later to do so.

The relevant federal statute: 

TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I - CRIMES   CHAPTER 37 - ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP

§ 798. Disclosure of classified information

(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes

available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or

interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United

States any classified information—

(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the

United States or any foreign government; or

(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or

appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for

cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or

(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign

government; or

(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any

foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) As used in subsection (a) of this section—

The term “classified information” means information which, at the time of a violation of this section,

is, for reasons of national security, specifically designated by a United States Government Agency for

limited or restricted dissemination or distribution; ....

You may find the complete statute here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798

A discussion on statute of limitations can be found here:

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL31253.pdf

Glenn Greenwald on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald

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1. Russian intelligence services aided and abetted Snowden is apparently the belief of many in the intelligence community. I have heard various explanations for why they believe this but I suspect that the real reasons also lie in the areas of secret intelligence so we are not likely to know the details for some while.

Notes on Taking the Train from Oceanside to Culver City 1/31/14

In order to understand the context of this post, its important to know that when the City of Los Angeles planned the Red Line into Hollywood, then down to Wilshire Blvd and out west to Santa Monica, that Rep Waxman got federal legislation passed that declared a "methane zone" and prevented the planned subway from getting federal money.  Its a complicated story (at least to me) but it is widely believed that we have a classic case of corruption and the influence of the rich.   There is also the issue of the Red vs the Purple line not to mention the Orange line.  In any case, the line(s) was/were rerouted and ended up on Hollywood Blvd which is, oh by the way, not entirely stupid but mostly stupid.    (1)    The furthest west one of the lines came was Highland (and Hollywood) and another line ended at Wilshire and Western.   In both cases, they are far east of where they need to be, which is, ultimately, the beach.

A metropolitan transit system is only as good as the parts of town it connects to.  It needs to achieve a critical mass before people feel able to give up their cars and take the train.  If they know they can not get to Westwood and they know they *might* need to go there, then it does them no good if the train goes to Hollywood, they will still need their car to get to Westwood.

This was about 1990 when this happened.  LA has been scrambling ever since to find a way to get rail out to the westside in any way that they can.  So finally they ended up using an old right of way, the original Exposition Line, destroyed many decades ago with the rest of LA mass transit, which runs through some very bad parts of LA but ends up in Culver City which is a reasonable place to be.  They called it the Expo Line and it started running out to Culver City about six months ago.   Waxman has also repealed his own legislation and plans are being made to extend the Purple line along Wilshire to Westwood by 2035 or so.

But in the meantime, we do have the Expo line to go from downtown LA to Culver City.

I come to LA about once or twice a month to deal with my various medical overhead.  I would prefer not to drive if I can avoid it, its boring and stupid.   But ending up at Hollywood and Highland, which was as close as I could get to Beverly Hills before, meant taking a $40 ++ cab ride each way after arriving.   So if the train is $56 round trip, the metro is $5 and the cab is $80, thats $135 vs driving your car and spending maybe $40 on gas, or a little less.

But with the Expo line, I could take the train to Culver City and back again for $56 + $5.  And I have a friend who lives and works in Culver City and who was able to drive me the three miles from the train stop to the doctors office in Beverly Hills.

It all worked fine.

It was moderately convenient and there are a few things to know which I have itemized below in case you are thinking of doing something similar.  The big problem, as always with these systems, is your schedule and how it interacts with theirs.  And that becomes more of a problem the more you need to go (or in this case return) after 6PM.   This is normal in one way or another in most mass transit systems, even ones that are 24 hour a day.  The question is whether you can live with what is there or if the schedule makes it impossible.

Here are some notes of the trip from Oceanside to Culver City and back again.  The total fee was $61 including the Metro day pass.  It took about 3 hours including waiting for my connection to the Red line and then to the Expo line.  The trip from the 7th and Metro station to Culver City takes about 1/2 hour.  This total of three hours is about the same as driving but less tiring.  On most trips one runs into traffic and therefore driving can take up to 5 hours on the return trip.

Whether taking the train or driving one is essentially spending all day getting to and from Los Angeles. 

Notes.

1. The trains in Oceanside all leave/depart from one area called the Oceanside Transit Center. It has a nice sign, but if you are looking for the Amtrak Station you have to know that it is the transit center that you want, and that is not at all clear from the Internet or the ground. You can look for 100 years for the Amtrak Station and never find it. 2. Parking at Oceanside is free (amazing). 3. There are four different train systems using that transit center, believe it or not, and three of them use the same lines north and south. Amtrak and Metrolink both go to LA, and they do not seem to communicate. I took Amtrak. There is also Metrolink, and God only knows which one you should use. 4. When you arrive at Union Station, you are expected to know that you need to take the Red line to the 7th & Metro stop to take the Expo line. 5. The Expo line has one color of blue dot and the Long Beach train has another color of blue dot. So all trains at 7th & Metro outside the Red line have blue dots. Ignore the dots and take the Culver City train. 6. It is not clear (to me anyway) how often the Expo line runs. Maybe every half an hour is my guess but it is just a guess. 7. Because there are no attendents you can ask questions of, you have to use the other passengers and the maintenance (janitorial) and security people to find out where to go. 8. The transfer from the Red line to the Expo line is not a transfer really, it is a new fare entirely. But since you bought a day pass you do not really care. 9. There is no where to really meet anyone at the arrival in Culver City. You just show up and are dumped into a parking lot. You basically have to get people to pick you up by stopping in the middle of the street. I think that is weird. 10. The biggest issue with using these trains is that they run less often outside the prime commuter times. So, there are two trains south from LA after 6pm. A roughly 7 pm train and a 10 pm train. If you miss your 7pm train, you have one more option, and that is the 10pm. This means that you either have to leave work relatively close to 5 pm, or take a taxi, or take the 10 pm train and get home at midnight. It would be nice if there were a few more trains in the evening. It is extremely conceivable the way things are set up that you could be stuck for the night.

I would call the current situation a major improvement.   One day LA may have a mass transit system.  Just in time for autonomous vehicles and other new technologies, I presume.

Wikipedia page on the promising Purple Line Extension

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_Subway_Extension_(Los_Angeles_Metro)
______________________________________________

1. I know that some of the very few people who read this blog think I am overstating the case, being paranoid, etc.   Guess what, I'm not.   Don't believe me, do your research and then come back and apologize.  It is well known what happened here.

Who Stole Japan's Submarine?

Great events of history often start with deceptively small incidents.   A glacier melts and suddenly we have Global Warming.  Several gay men dying in a ward in San Francisco in 1984 and suddenly we have the AIDS epidemic.

Or a submarine disappears and we suddenly have the beginning of the end of all civilization.

Recently, Japan lost one of its submarines in the Tsugaru Strait between Honsho and Hokkaido.  They have looked everywhere but can not find it.   They were using this $5M remotely operated submarine to map the ocean floor although some news articles have said that the submarine was actually used to detect other submarines at a distance.  The lost submarine was on a tether, it was not free and autonomous. It is very hard to lose such a submarine, but they did.

Somehow, the cable got cut. No one knows how. They looked everywhere in the area for the submarine, but they could not find it. It did not just drift to the bottom in the area, it did not float to the surface. It disappeared.

Maybe it was an accident and the submarine got caught on something underwater and they just could not find it.  It is, after all, very dark down there.

Graphic from a news article on where the submarine was lost

Or maybe someone cut the cable and took the submarine because they figured it would tell them a whole lot about Japanese technology.   

But, if it was stolen, who would do such a nasty thing? Would China or Russia perpetrate such a criminal act?  These countries are peace-loving dictatorships that regularly talk about destroying the West.   We might do something like this to them, of course.

No, those who would suggest that China or Russia did such a thing are just war mongers looking to increase the defense budget.   This explanation is just a front to hide the possibility of what really happened.  

What else could have happened then?   Notice where the submarine went missing.  That is not so far from the worst oceanic radiation leak in history, Fukushima.   Perhaps the radioactivity from this disaster has caused the mutation of giant underwater monsters.   Everyone has seen the movie Godzilla, we know the score. What if those movies channeled the future of the end of our civilization?  What if these giant radioactive monsters were sleeping but were disturbed by someone dragging a submarine over them?

That is an explanation that you will not read in the Western press anytime soon.

We may all look back at the missing submarine and realize that we were witnessing the Beginning of the End.

I want more submarines !

http://rt.com/news/japan-unmanned-submarine-lost-357/

http://news.ph.msn.com/regional/japan-navy-admits-losing-dollar5-mn-submarine-1

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140129/DEFREG03/301290038/Japan-Navy-Admits-Losing-Unmanned-Submarine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10603880/Japan-navy-admits-losing-5-million-submarine.html

Commentary on the Proposed Voynich Solution

This news item is getting a lot of Internet play but I felt that the the commentary out there did not emphasize one of the most appealing elements of the proposed Voynich solution and so we will do so here.

To backup a bit, a manuscript was acquired in 1912 by a collector of rare manuscripts whose text appeared to be enciphered and whose illustrations were exotic and whose provenance appeared to be about 16th century. Many, many people have tried to decode the text and failed. Many others have asserted that the document is a forgery or fraud and at least as many have said they believe it is genuine.

But the biggest mystery was, if it was genuine, what is its backstory? How could it have come out of nothing without someone having known about it? A secret cult ? A mysterious religion ? Proof once more of aliens from outer space who have come for our women ?

What makes this story all the better is that the proposed solution comes from a retired botanist and antiquarian who has published in the journal of the American Botany Council.

So far the response to this paper, from other botanists at least, has been very positive.

What appealed to me was the implied answer to the questions of why the language seems unknown, why no one knew of this document, why the plants are exotic and so forth.  The answer suggested by the proposal is because it was created by indiginous people in New Spain (e.g. Mexico) who later died of one of the epidemics, whose dialect went extinct with so many others in that period, and whose related documents were all burned by the Spanish as they burned so many documents in order to destroy the culture of their conquered territory.

See

http://cms.herbalgram.org/press/2014/Voynich_Manuscript.html?ts=1391064184&signature=74b0f44c56dcfc15368e7c3e2f129934

and the essay itself

http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbalgram/issue100/hg100-feat-voynich.html

The Acquisition of Deepmind and the Humiliation of the Proletariat

A recurring subtheme of this blog are the silences that occur when the author melts down into a puddle of indecision and/or rage at his failure to transcend mere poverty and the mediocrity of his society and achieve some financial and intellectual standing. Eventually I come out of my pique and return to writing productively. (1) But in the meantime I am harrassed and annoyed by example after example where those more intelligent and more capable individuals and teams demonstrate over and over again just how superior to me they really are.

This outrageous behavior on their part is no doubt personal and reflects their deep and inexplicable hostility towards me and towards my otherwise blameless and even exemplerary existance. Why do they behave in such an outrageously successful fashion if their only desire is to humiliate me? We do not know but we do know that they do it very well and over and over again. Bastards.

A recent case of abject humiliation occurred when Google purchased the three year old company "DeepMind" for roughly $575 million dollars (US). Yes another University professor took a leave of absence and with a couple of friends started a company which in three years they flipped to Google for a little under $200/million per founder.

Why would Google spend so much money for a company that has no revenue and could not possibly have generated much intellectual property? Why not? Maybe they did it for the great logo that Deep Mind has which is all we are permitted to know about their company.

You gotta love this logo.

We at Global Wahrman would like to apologize to my readers for the delay in posting to the blog, but it is to be expected as long as outrages like the Deepmind acquisition keep on happening.

Deepmind
www.deepmind.com

The Proletariat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat

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1. ... instead of unproductively as has been the case in the last week or so started in part by another interaction with the State of California. You gotta love the State of California, they are so much better than we are.

Semi-Automatic Ernst Haeckel & Procedural Modelling

The following demo is online but only while my server is up and until AT&T changes my IP number. Go to http://108.232.26.40/mscript53/mscript.html.  

Type "H" for help information.

Boy is it slow!   I think that is the fault of the speed of the upload of my internet connection.  Not all that interactive on this server, I am afraid.  But if you are patient, it should refresh.  And a "reload" gets a whole new set of objects.

Generations of computer animators have been inspired by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), famed and sometimes controversial German scientist and artist, whose Ontogony Recapitulates Phylogony is one of the more famously incorrect, yet memorable, scientific principles of the natural sciences.

But for us digital dependent imagers, it is his meticulous drawings of the natural world that hold endless appeal. Obsessive, stylized, and completely delightful, there isn't a one of us who would not be thrilled to own a print of one of his works on his or her wall.

Whether Radiolarian or Anemone, his Kunstformen are an endless inspiration.

I wrote a modest program to generate small, probably water based organisms inspired by the master. Although the results are no where near where they would need to be be worthy of the art that inspired them.   I need to emphasize that I am trying to duplicate Haeckel, although it almost sounds that way, nor am I trying to recreate the fabulous range of creatures.  I am trying to procedurally define a class of objects that somewhat resemble what you might see in a microscope looking at a drop of pond water ... one of the classes of those creatures, not all of them by any means.

The idea is that you are looking at a semi-automatic catalog of obscure life forms, each of them different, yet related by an unknown (to the viewer) process or processes.

There is also some shader stuff going on to try and achieve a certain technical look.  There is much more to do there.

Each time the program's browser page is refreshed it comes up with a new set of objects. It was written in Webgl.  Of course that wont work on the following images, it only works when running it live.  If you are lucky my server will be up and the IP number at the top will be working.  (One day I will have my own server or a server I can use with a real, known IP number.)

The creatures and their look is defined by about 32 (or so) parameters.  8 of these parameters define the physical object geometry, 8 define an overall look, and the rest are miscellaneous parameters to define things like scale and overall reflectivity.  

Ernst Haeckel on Wilipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel

Die Radiolarien

http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/haeckel/radiolarien/

The Secret Meaning of Stanley Kramer's "Mad, Mad World" Revealed

There are reasons to believe that when the studio cut Stanley Kramer's Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), down from 210 minutes to 154 minutes that much more was lost than miscellaneous sub-plots. We are told that the studio took the film away from Kramer because of its length and the effect that would have on potential boxoffice. But others believe that something much more evil was behind the studio's actions, that the studio was upset by the director's dark vision of the greed of the average American, and conspired to take the film away and transform it into the shallow, madcap comedy that was released.

Consider the greater body of Stanley Kramer's work as a director. These are some of the most serious and acclaimed films of the 1960s including such films as On the Beach (1959), one of the best films about the dire consequences of nuclear war, amd Guess Who is Coming to Dinner (1967), an important film about racial integration in 1960s America. Add to that Ship of Fools (1965), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and , Inherit the Wind (1960) and ask yourself, are these the films of a director of madcap comedies filled with pointless car chases?

The rage of a frustrated common man?

Degrading sex and drug lifestyle?

Perhaps the "W" stands for Weltanschauung ?

The main story line calls out for a serious interpretation. The plot is one of greed getting the better of groups of average Americans who become aware of a hidden cache of stolen money buried in a little California town several hundreds of miles away. Their behavior quickly devolves from one of cooperation to one of vicious and deadly competition, shedding values like old clothes, and acting reprehensibly towards each other as they gallop after the money.

The story gets darker as the Spencer Tracy character who plays a policeman on the Santa Rosita police force is told to his face that he will not receive a pension on retirement because everyone on the force hates his integrity and stern enforcement of the law. Driven to desperation, he chooses to abandon his values as well, wait for the others to find the money, then come in and posing as an active duty policeman, take the money and run for Mexico. Surely this is as tragic a fall from grace as we can find in all of the American cinema?

The dark irony of this misunderstood film is only made more powerful by the brilliant choice of lead actors, an ensemble cast of the country's most noted comedic actors here at last given a chance to show their serious side in a powerful parable about greed. Could there be a better choice of ensemble cast than Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Buddy Hacket, Ethyl Merman, Dick Shawn, Mickey Rooney, Sid Caesar, Jim Backus and Edie Adams, all well-known comedians in what may have been their first and certainly most serious dramatic role?

If we could see the footage that was left on the cutting room floor, the missing 18 minutes that would extend the film from the restored 192 minutes to its full 210 minutes, what would we find? Would we find impassioned soliloguies from a degraded and unrepentant Phil Silvers? Perhaps a secret and unhealthy S&M relationship involving Dick Shawn and his mother Ethyl Merman? Was this Jonathan Winter's great opportunity to demonstrate his worth as an actor of tragedy? Perhaps Edie Adams' portrayal of a sex-addicted love slave of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney would have been the apex of her career and led to an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. We may never know.

And how ironic if these hypothetical masterpieces of the cinematic art were sacrificed to the greed of the shallow studio executives in a film nominally about greed!

How often must we hear that the corrupt and corporate Hollywood system betrays the filmmaker and compromises his or her vision? It is time to call a stop to this disgraceful behavior.

We at Global Wahrman believe that the studios must undo this travesty and restore this important film to its original vision. If it means remaking it over and over again at vast expense until we get it right, then that is the price we must pay in the service of great art.

__________________________________________________

IAMMMMW on Imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057193/

IAMMMMW on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Mad,_Mad,_Mad,_Mad_World

Inflation Calculator of $350K in 1960 adjusted for inflation to 2013

http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=350000&year=1960

An analysis of the locations used in IAMMMMW

http://cinemassacre.com/2008/09/20/the-holy-grail-of-movie-locations/

Imperial Chrysler Club Web Page on IAMMMMW

http://www.imperialclub.com/~imperialclub/Movies/Mad/index.htm

On The Beach (1959) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt

Thoughts on the Visual Effects Nominations for 2014

Here are my comments on the visual effects nominees for this year's Academy Awards.

To recap, there were ten films on the longer list, and five films nominated for the award. The films which were nominated are Gravity, Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3.

The films that were not nominated are Oblivion, Elysium, Pacific Rim, Thor: The Dark World, and World War Z.

Many of these films had over 1,000 shots, in fact most of them did. That is an astounding amount of work, I am not sure it is a record for any one year, but it might be. However, quantity is not quality.

Of these, Gravity will win the academy award for visual effects. I have forseen it and so has everyone else. Yes, there could be an upset, but no one expects that so far as I know (I guess that is the definition of an upset...). Although there is some confusion about the various techniques being used, there is no doubt that Gravity is a filmmaking tour de force that uses visual effects brilliantly to bring off their story. Of the people I know who have seen the film, all but one of them declares that it is an amazing film. It deserves to be there. The fact that we will now be forced to endure nightmarish imitations is just a sad fact of life.

Hobbit/Smaug was interesting but did not overwhelm me. The 48 FPS was, again, interesting, but I have seen this all before (admittedly projected on film when I saw it before) and yes the same problems that Showscan had, Hobbit/Smaug had as well. Since no one seems to be the least bit interested in learning from the past, I won't bore you with this. There is nothing new under the sun. I had trouble seeing why people acclaimed the visual effects, though. Dragons are hard and this dragon is pretty good, but it never once convinced me it was really there, nor did many of the other visual effects convince me that we were there. If there was a category for visual effects in the service of a fantasy/animated film, it might qualify but in the pure visual effects genre I do not get it. However, obviously the subsection did get it and it was nominated. It was certainly a tremendous amount of hard work, whatever else we might say.

Star Trek Into Darkness was very good, but was it that much better than Elysium or Oblivion to have received the nomination over the other two? I don't really see it. The problem is that there is a very high level of effects across so many films. How can you choose ? I felt that Elysium and Oblivion had elements that were innovative and I did not feel that way about Star Trek. But whatever.

It is the final two films, The Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3 that I take some exception to.

The Lone Ranger reminded me a great deal of Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Lots of car chases, I mean train chases, lots of practical effects. Nothing new. Good solid quality work. Could it be that the more mature members of the subsection united behind the two films that used the most practical and traditional (scale models) effects? (Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3). I think that is very likely what happened.

Best part of the movie.  Could there be some subtle sexual imagery here?

Unbelievably stupid skydive rescue scene.  I don't care how hard it was to do if the idea was dumb.

Of all the films, Iron Man 3 was by far the worst. The classic visual - effects - means - exploding - shit film, par excellence. Loud, but stupid, with none of the charm of the first movie. Just a lot of exploding stuff and improbable physics, the parachute rescue was about as stupid as I have ever seen. How could this have been nominated over Elysium or Oblivion or Pacific Rim? Perhaps it is just nothing more than the factions uniting to support the traditional technology. I happen to like traditional technology, but not on stupid films, please.

For me, the best water was in Pacific Rim, the best monsters were in Pacific Rim, and the best use of scale was in Pacific Rim. Sure it was a silly "monsters eat Hong Kong" movie, but hey, so what else is new at the VFX bakeoff?

Which brings me to my final point. The problem with the bakeoff is that it is all about visual effects films, and that does get tiresome. Maybe we could slip in a little romantic comedy or something now and then just to liven things up ?