Today we replaced most of our light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights (CFL). The initial outlay isn't cheap, but for the number of bulbs we have, we figured it would be worth it over the long run.
Here's our initial light bulb breakdown:
- 23 can lights (inlaid, ceiling) at 65 watts a piece = 1,495 watts
- 14 regular bulbs at 100 watts
= 1400 watts
- 5 regular bulbs at 60 watts = 300 watts
Total = 3,195 watts
At a conservative 5 kilowatt-hour rate, turning on all our lights for a solid day would cost nearly four dollars.
Now, we have bulbs that are a scant 15 watts, but supply the same light output. That means a total of 630 watts, which means a full day's output cost of 75 cents.
We're quite happy with the light quality itself. Initially we were a little wary of the "fluorescent" part of the CFL, but the bulbs produce a nice soft-white facsimile of an incandescent. The only downside to these lights that we can see are that they're not dimmable. But we don't have dimmers nor do we really want them.
So at least now at least I can say my carbon footprint is a tad lighter.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Review: One Day Like Rain (SIFF 2007)
One Day Like Rain has a lot of great shots. Shots that contrast something strange with some common activity of daily life. Grainy, washed out images. Impressions of animals and plans in their natural environment. Time-lapse scenes of sunlight filtering through leaves on trees. Indeed, this movie is chock full of great shots.
Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing I can say about this film, which for me alternated between periods of vacuousness, pretention, boredom, and fogginess.
The film presents a very loose thread of a plot: Gina, a quirky teenage girl living in California, has somehow gotten wind of an impending doom facing the world, and she is working out how to save the world as a result. She invests time, effort, chemistry sets, crystals, and her friends in an effort to do this. She makes some sort of chemical concoction that she gives to her friend, Jennifer, who drinks it and later dies. She then goes off with her boyfriend and has a romantic night out in the woods before the world apparently ends.
You may think I'm overly summarizing a lot of plot details that go along to flesh out the above, but I'm not. This is more or less all the scaffolding you get for the overarching story. The rest is a series of ambiguous scenes and empty, needlessly opaque conversations that make up the whole of the movie.
The dialog revolves around fuzzy statements and endless repetition of lines that don't advance the story one bit. "She's got it", you hear over and over. "She's trying to save the world." But you're not really shown how, or why, or when, or what she's really doing. I suppose you're intended to guess. But after a while the guessing game gets really old.
OK, so if there's not much of a plot, there's at least characters and development, right? Wrong. With the exception of Jennifer, I found all the characters flat and uninteresting. They spring out of nowhere, say a few tired lines, sit and stare out into space, and then bam! you're onto the next scene. The movie fails to make me care about any of the characters, which leaves them to be just mindless agents trying to convey something falsely deep and meaningful to the audience.
What the movie lacks in plot, dialog, and character development, it tries to make up in symbolism. Unfortunately, the other extreme takes hold here: the symbols are in your face and practically crammed down your throat. During several scenes, I was almost expecting some subtitling to show up, pointing out, "Hey, look! Two clocks on the wall ticking away...time is running out! Oh wait, check it out, one of them stopped!".
I'm all about films that offer an "experience" of sorts, or have symbolism, or can be studied from many angles. Kubrick is a great example of this: you can watch The Shining as a horror flick, or you can break it down and study its use of symbols, or how the scenes are shot, or what the characters are saying. But it's still a feature, and it's still something you can sit down and watch and enjoy and not have to study. Not so with One Day Like Rain. Director Paul Todisco has made what is potentially a film to study in film school, but what he didn't make is something that a general audience can enjoy without deconstructing it on a white board in a lecture hall.
In the Q&A after the movie, Todisco mentioned that the film came to him in about a week or two. I have to say that it certainly shows. Todisco took his time with how the film was shot. Too bad that his efforts in the other aspects of the movie didn't pan out.
I'm disappointed in SIFF selecting this film for a premiere. I was seriously considering becoming a member this year. But if this is the sort of stuff SIFF will program throughout the year, then count me out.
Overall rating: 1.0/10.0
Details:
Runtime: 90m
Countries: USA
Languages: English
Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing I can say about this film, which for me alternated between periods of vacuousness, pretention, boredom, and fogginess.
The film presents a very loose thread of a plot: Gina, a quirky teenage girl living in California, has somehow gotten wind of an impending doom facing the world, and she is working out how to save the world as a result. She invests time, effort, chemistry sets, crystals, and her friends in an effort to do this. She makes some sort of chemical concoction that she gives to her friend, Jennifer, who drinks it and later dies. She then goes off with her boyfriend and has a romantic night out in the woods before the world apparently ends.
You may think I'm overly summarizing a lot of plot details that go along to flesh out the above, but I'm not. This is more or less all the scaffolding you get for the overarching story. The rest is a series of ambiguous scenes and empty, needlessly opaque conversations that make up the whole of the movie.
The dialog revolves around fuzzy statements and endless repetition of lines that don't advance the story one bit. "She's got it", you hear over and over. "She's trying to save the world." But you're not really shown how, or why, or when, or what she's really doing. I suppose you're intended to guess. But after a while the guessing game gets really old.
OK, so if there's not much of a plot, there's at least characters and development, right? Wrong. With the exception of Jennifer, I found all the characters flat and uninteresting. They spring out of nowhere, say a few tired lines, sit and stare out into space, and then bam! you're onto the next scene. The movie fails to make me care about any of the characters, which leaves them to be just mindless agents trying to convey something falsely deep and meaningful to the audience.
What the movie lacks in plot, dialog, and character development, it tries to make up in symbolism. Unfortunately, the other extreme takes hold here: the symbols are in your face and practically crammed down your throat. During several scenes, I was almost expecting some subtitling to show up, pointing out, "Hey, look! Two clocks on the wall ticking away...time is running out! Oh wait, check it out, one of them stopped!".
I'm all about films that offer an "experience" of sorts, or have symbolism, or can be studied from many angles. Kubrick is a great example of this: you can watch The Shining as a horror flick, or you can break it down and study its use of symbols, or how the scenes are shot, or what the characters are saying. But it's still a feature, and it's still something you can sit down and watch and enjoy and not have to study. Not so with One Day Like Rain. Director Paul Todisco has made what is potentially a film to study in film school, but what he didn't make is something that a general audience can enjoy without deconstructing it on a white board in a lecture hall.
In the Q&A after the movie, Todisco mentioned that the film came to him in about a week or two. I have to say that it certainly shows. Todisco took his time with how the film was shot. Too bad that his efforts in the other aspects of the movie didn't pan out.
I'm disappointed in SIFF selecting this film for a premiere. I was seriously considering becoming a member this year. But if this is the sort of stuff SIFF will program throughout the year, then count me out.
Overall rating: 1.0/10.0
Details:
Runtime: 90m
Countries: USA
Languages: English
Friday, June 15, 2007
Popcorn Ban
I love it when our local civil servants take up arms against a noble cause. With such energy in rectifying this problem, you would think all of our city's issues would be resolved!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
One Reason Why I Don't Eat Beef
Millions of pounds of tainted ground beef do not a happy dinner plate make.
Review: Paris, Je T'aime (SIFF 2007)
I'm a big fan of potluck dinners. Everyone goes off and makes something unique and different, and then everyone gets together and samples a bunch of dishes. Some are good, some are new, occasionally one isn't that great, but in the end you've tried a variety of dishes and you've filled your stomach in the process.
So it was with Paris, Je T'aime. 18 mini-movies, each no longer than five minutes, tied loosely together by the theme of love, and by characters who are only casually intertwined (in ways we don't learn until the end of the film). It's a movie-goer's potluck of sorts: you get a wide variety of small bites, and in the end you feel satisfied that you've seen a great overall movie that explores a topic through many dimensions.
The nice thing about the overall film is that the theme wasn't expressed in a singular way. Like the chefs and their secret ingredient in Iron Chef, every director has a unique style and approach to their mini-movie. Some were humorous, while others were more dramatic. Some were fast-paced, and others were more lingering. I believe there had to be an editor of sorts overseeing the project, as the spectrum of movies were carefully balanced in the entire work, as was the overall tone (it went from light, to dark, to light again).
Not every mini-movie received high marks from me (there was one quite surreal one with a salesman and an aggressive salon worker that caught me off guard and left me wondering whether someone had edited an incorrect portion of another film into the movie), but they were almost all interesting enough to deserve a viewing.
And, the best part about this project is that if you absolutely hate one of the mini-movies then, just like the weather in some parts, all you have to do is wait and something new will come along.
Overall rating: 9.0/10.0
Details:
Runtime: 120m
Countries: Lichtenstein / Switzerland / Germany / France
Languages: English / French
So it was with Paris, Je T'aime. 18 mini-movies, each no longer than five minutes, tied loosely together by the theme of love, and by characters who are only casually intertwined (in ways we don't learn until the end of the film). It's a movie-goer's potluck of sorts: you get a wide variety of small bites, and in the end you feel satisfied that you've seen a great overall movie that explores a topic through many dimensions.
The nice thing about the overall film is that the theme wasn't expressed in a singular way. Like the chefs and their secret ingredient in Iron Chef, every director has a unique style and approach to their mini-movie. Some were humorous, while others were more dramatic. Some were fast-paced, and others were more lingering. I believe there had to be an editor of sorts overseeing the project, as the spectrum of movies were carefully balanced in the entire work, as was the overall tone (it went from light, to dark, to light again).
Not every mini-movie received high marks from me (there was one quite surreal one with a salesman and an aggressive salon worker that caught me off guard and left me wondering whether someone had edited an incorrect portion of another film into the movie), but they were almost all interesting enough to deserve a viewing.
And, the best part about this project is that if you absolutely hate one of the mini-movies then, just like the weather in some parts, all you have to do is wait and something new will come along.
Overall rating: 9.0/10.0
Details:
Runtime: 120m
Countries: Lichtenstein / Switzerland / Germany / France
Languages: English / French
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Where Oh Where Can I Get A Wii?
After playing the Wii a couple of times at a friend's house, I really want one. Trouble is, they're nowhere to be found.
- I've looked around online, including keeping an eye on "wii tracker" web sites that tell you when they're in stock. No luck.
- I've stopped into stores on a whim, to see if they have any in stock. No luck.
All my friends who have one scored one by following plan B above. Namely, they happened to walk into a store at just the right time and land one of a few that happened to be available. Trouble is, those times of availability are few and far between.
You may say, "Hey, there's bundles! You can get a Wii + 3-5 games!". Nope, sorry. I want the console and the games I choose to buy. The bundle games typically don't interest me.
Apparently folks on sites like Craigslist offer to sell new Wiis for a small ($50?) premium. I'm not quite that desperate...yet.
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