Month: February 2016
There as been so much written about Steve Jobs as a person, co-worker and boss. But oddly enough, none of which by people who actually worked with Jobs. So this is different, a blog post from Glen Reid. He worked hand in hand with Jobs in NEXT days and early iMovie projects. The result is a fascinating look into Jobs by someone who actually stood beside him:
I am off doing other things now, again, but it’s still Product Design, and I still love it. That is what I remember most about Steve, that he simply loved designing and shipping products. Again, and again, and again. None of the magic that has become Apple would have ever happened if he were simply a CEO. Steve’s magic recipe was that he was a product designer at his core, who was smart enough to know that the best way to design products was to have the magic wand of CEO in one of your hands. He was compelling and powerful and all that, but I think that having once had the reigns of power wrestled away from him, he realized that it was important not to let that happen again, lest he not be allowed to be a Product Manager any more.
Unbelievable behind the scenes look at The Revenant. Easily the best film i’ve seen all year. Check it out…
Extremely bleak, exceedingly brutal & exceptionally cold-blooded, The Revenant is that savage beast that charges at you with relentless aggression, mauls you from head to toe without mercy, and leaves you utterly bruised, broken & helpless in the freezing cold of a harsh surrounding. Absolutely uncompromising with its content, unflinchingly raw in its depiction, and pushing its cast & crew to their limit, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest is one of the most harrowing films ever made.
While traveling back to their village after an attack on their camp — the attack being of course filmed in grand, sweeping takes by Emmanuel Lubezki who will most likely make history at this year’s Academy Awards — Hugh Glass, an American fur-trapper and frontiersman in the early 1800s, wanders off from the rest of his men and finds himself alone in the woods when he’s brutally ripped to literal-shreds-of-flesh by a grizzly bear in one of the most abrasively horrifying man vs. nature scenes I’ve ever seen in film (best CGI ever?).
His fellow clansmen (including a surprisingly good Will Poulter, a decent Domhnall Gleeson, and a once again brilliant Tom Hardy) quickly find Glass and consider him dead, or if not completely dead then close enough. Their journey continues, but Glass’ ends right there.…Or that’s what was supposed to happen.
What follows is the several-week-long journey of revenge that this broken man takes to hopefully, one day, find his vengeance. And boy does he gets put through it all, let me tell you. (“The Revenant or: And You Thought YOU Had a Bad Week”)
The amount of filmmaking craft that’s present at every second of the film is enough for you to have a sensory overload. Visually you will be stunned at every second. There simply is no weak or lesser shot in the film. In the attack on their land towards the beginning of the film, the camera spins, soars, and creeps across the land in one glorious take as arrows smash into the trunks of trees and tear through the faces of men, all made that much more immersive by the incredible sound design. And as far as production design, it might as well have been filmed in the early 1800s. Stunning doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The development of these multi-faceted characters comes across as factually grounded and believable in the context of the story. Without fail or falter, “The Revenant” beautifully presents to us the complex world we live in today. Every being has a story, everyone has a good side and a bad side. There’s no plain evil just like there’s no plain good (this isn’t Marvel), and subconsciously as an audience, you root for everyone, which makes each bone that’s snapped, arrow shot and bullet fired, that much more painful to endure.
It’s a tough, draining, long ride. It’s a draining, long ride. It’s a long ride. It’s long. But never outdone by its length. I never felt a sense of wandering in the film. besides the brief flashbacks (which didn’t add much to me) everything felt it needed to be in the movie.
On an overall scale, The Revenant is another gritty, unrelenting & audacious piece of filmmaking from Alejandro G. Iñárritu that finds the director in sublime form and also happens to be his most direct & accessible film to date. Definitely not for the easily distressed, this thrilling story of survival & retribution is destined to upset many viewers with its graphic nature of storytelling but for those who can manage to stay on board, it will be rewarding on more levels than one. Marking another artistic high for both Iñárritu & Lubezki and catapulted to a greater level by DiCaprio’s extraordinary performance, The Revenant is the best film of 2015 i’ve seen and certainly one of the proudest in the careers of its cast & crew. Strongly recommended.
I am have been thinking hard about the site lately and some issues started to arise, this blog started to feel like work. That made me sad.
Looking back, I think this came with page views. The minute the numbers started to increase much higher then I ever imagined, I started feeling an odd sense of pressure to keep the views up. The more I dug into the metadata, it was clear that the posts driving the traffic here were the ones that originally I didn’t care to do.
You may think it’s easy to just ignore such a situation. For a writer who’s never been published, I assure you, it’s not. This site’s original intention was geared for me. To reflect mostly, on the past. And I enjoyed it immensely. There are some posts hidden deep down here that truly mean the world to me. I’m not saying their good or grammatically correct, but they’re personally priceless. Also in the earlier days, there weren’t many posts, all long form, all heartfelt (in my opinion). I’m not saying I got away from this, but let me put it another way: My long form writing wasn’t striving in page views.
Nonni’s at 7 as it stood, morphed into a very “formal” site. I didn’t like that feeling. It felt like I was writing in a straight jacket sometimes. Then if I wanted to post a tiny news story about something I felt was cool, that ended up feeling too informal.
Moving forward, that needs to change.
It’s an odd feeling, to have your own site, but feel like the content is controlled by someone else.
So something has to change…
What’s changing:
So today marks a new chapter. A big one! As you may or may not have seen, the site has a new name. (WWW.DDILEO.COM) My name actually. You see, the more I started thinking what I wanted this blog to be. I want this site to be much more personal and to feel like “my” page. And the more I kept thinking about my lack of presence on Facebook. (My feelings on FB are well documented on the site), but somethings are done extremely well over there. For example, keeping loved ones in touch with your life, or just posting tidbits about your life. As it stood, Nonni’s at 7 wouldn’t allow this.
This idea was very appealing to me. Not Facebook, just the idea of small, little updates. In a sense I would love if this site turned into my personal FB-like page. If for no one else, only me. To look back and document times in my families life. Currently this site feels too “important” for such little posts.”
I don’t like that one bit.
You see, I really, really liked the idea of small updates, monthly entries of recapping the previous 30 days, or even little posts throughout the day, like maybe just a picture, etc. It was clear by some of your emails, this wasn’t desirable content. And while I appreciate your input (and there was and is much of it) I feel the need to move in another direction.
But make no mistake about it, I loved writing about my Nonni and there is plenty more where that came from. So if you are on the site, you can look at my menu tabs. One of them is entitled “Nonni’s at 7”. That is where all of Nonni entries will live. Including little pictures and snippets. It is still a huge part of my site and mindset, just not the main part anymore. The main part is focused on Me and my family now.
Things change, people change. Sometimes change is good and sometimes bad. But change shouldn’t be avoided if it fits. To me, all this change is a natural progression for myself, family and the site. I am no longer worried if I lose page views, because the people who matter will be watching for entries.
I really hope you enjoy the new direction of this site, if not, thats ok too. The internet is very big place filled with intellectual writers/thinkers much more capable then me. But as for this site and my time, refocusing was a much needed action.
Personally I am excited for the future, Im excited for life to happen and blog about it. Not to impress people and strive for a new high in page views, but to document all these great moments.
Great moments, that’s what makes life worth writing about.
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