Glen Gary Glenross

This week I watch the film Glen Gary Glenross which was originally a play written by famed playwright David Mamet. The film adaptation features a cast of legendary proportions. It stars Al Pachino, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin who perhaps delivers one of the most intimidating monologues that I have seen.  The film takes place in urban Chicago where it is centered on the sales office of vacation real estate property. Four salesmen are forced to participate in a sales competition where the man who made most sales would receive a brand new car. The man coming in second place received a set of steak knifes and the remaining two would be fired. Baldwin plays a successful businessman who is sent by the owners of the company to weave out all the unsuccessful workers out of their firm. His seven-minute speech is chilling, yet magnificent. I highly recommend youtube-ing it.

The film does a great job of using 180-degree turns on their shots. When the conversation was being transitioned from one character to the next the shot would swivel while staying in focus, which I thought was a cool effect. I recommend the film to all.

International Museum of Photography and Film

Are you aware that you are just an hour and 45 minutes away from one of the great film museums in this country? The George Eastman House in Rochester NY should be one of your soon-destinations if you have not been there.

This 1925 Jos-Pe camera has one of the largest lenses I have seen (excluding astronomy of course) Its almost half foot diameter lens enabled it to take 3 negatives simultaneously via beam-splitters, each filtered red, green and blue, that when optically composited together resulted in a full color image.

There is also a collection of some "spy cameras" some of them quite ridiculous, like this one called Pocket Photo-Revolver! I don't think anybody would be the least concerned about being surreptitiously photographed when pointed at with it!

I really love the Mutoscopes which are like glorified flip-books. These are in a hands-on area where you can play around with different devices and even print your own silhouettes or draw your own animations and play them back in a Zoetrope

Not only do they have a great collection of many of the most important cameras, projectors and other very strange paraphernalia going back to the humble simple mechanisms of the moving image, but they also present large exhibits, like the current Civil War collection as well as the upcoming 360|365 George Eastman House Film Fest (formerly known as the High Falls Film Festival or HF3) which starts in a couple of days. There will be 21 countries represented by about a 100 films that will be running in four venues around town. Among some of the highlights this year, Julie Taymor (Lion King, The Tempest, Titus, Frida) will be present to receive the Susan B. Anthony Award.

So, don't potato yourself, get of your couch and head on to one of the beautiful regions around us at the shore of one of the great lakes. Just as an extra enticement, the Strong National Museum of Play is just a few blocks away. You will be able to intoxicate yourself with every imaginable game you remember and many you have no idea they existed, from the earliest toys to the current electronic and arcade games and virtual reality research.