Reviews

Movie: Manufactured Landscapes

Movie: Manufactured Landscapes

While we’re on the subject of great Maker-movies, I feel obliged to mention Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which is a survey of the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose métier is finding beauty in the midst of environments radically altered by human activity. If you watch no further than the first shot, you will have seen one of the most amazing takes I’ve ever seen in any movie, ever: It’s an eight minute tracking shot of a Chinese factory floor that just goes on and on and on, and you keep thinking “This place can’t be that big; this shot has to end soon.” And it doesn’t. And the images of the ship-breaking beach at Chittagong, Bangladesh, are like something out of a post-apocalyptic video game. Beautiful and frightening.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan4
Movie: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Movie: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

No person who thinks of him- or herself as a “maker” should miss Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which is loosely based on Judi and Ron Barrett’s eponymous 1972 children’s book. I don’t have kids, but I loved it, and this movie kind of made me want to have one, at least for a day, so I could watch it with her. The scene where Flint is curled up in a waste barrel, lamenting all his failed inventions (“Spray-on shoes!” “Ratbirds!”), while his relentlessly uncreative father looks on helplessly, is particularly choice.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan16
Alt.CES – EyeClops digital optics toys

Alt.CES – EyeClops digital optics toys

The Jakks Pacific EyeClops brand made waves back around the 2007 holiday season with their super magnifying camera toy, which set a successful design strategy they’ve since followed up on with their Night Vision 2.0 and PROJECTOR NAME toys: Take a professional piece of digital optics and make a functional $50 toy version.

I bought both their active night vision and video projector toys for my nephews this last Xmas. The older of the two, Michael, agreed to review them for us:

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan12