The Accidental Blog

New Hospital Adventures: Day 3

2008-07-22T15:27:00.003-04:00

Before I can fully explain Tuesday night at the hospital, I have to tell you a few things.

First, something that a few people reading this know: I have long had the ability to sleep—easily and completely—anywhere. And I mean anywhere. In the past I've slept across three rickety chairs barely suitable for sitting, in a rickety bus travelling on a road that even pothole-hardened Montrealers would find daunting, and on an abandoned tennis court in the Adirondacks. (Last year I even fell asleep standing up, but I think those circumstances were a little extreme.) Honestly, the only person who can match me in this area is my mother. It's a great asset for travelling.

Second, as others reading this can attest, I can sleep through anything. Once I'm asleep, I'm asleep, and no amount of sirens, shouting, or room-shaking loud music can wake me. This is why that whole incident back in February with the disoriented hospital roomie who was shouting at the top of his lungs for help didn't affect me at all.

Third, sleep itself is more difficult these days. Between my chest catheter (it's no fun rolling onto the clamps' pointier ends) and my injured shoulder, it's hard to find a comfortable position to sleep in—never mind the need to keep my fat left foot elevated, on top of that. Add to that my night sweats, which are getting worse along with my body's decreasing ability to manage its temperature, and, well, you get the picture.

All of these things came to a head on Tuesday night. When we talking about that night, the first thing my mother mentions is the poor disoriented woman who was screaming for two hours. That was the least of my concerns, as I was able to sleep through a fair bit of it. The problem was getting comfortable enough to get to sleep and stay asleep. Not only was I sleeping on a narrow gurney, it was cold in emergency (at least to me), which made it hard to balance my need for cover with my need for ventilation to keep the sweats at bay. Being attached to an IV pump and the newly minted upper back pain made it worse. When I could get to sleep, I couldn't stay asleep. When I came back from the bathroom in the middle of the night at one point, I thought, "That damn gurney might actually have beaten me." Late I woke up gasping after a particularly bad attack of the night sweats, changed my clothes, and came to the realization that i was actually afraid to try to go back to sleep.

I eventually did, and despite one minor sweat incident, managed to sleep in two two-hour chunks. But although I felt better in the morning (good enough to navigate the hallways and elevators and pay my hematologist a visit), I didn't really have a good night's sleep and tried to avoid lying in the gurney. When I got ready for bed at home later that night, I actually said, "Thank God, a bed"—something I have never uttered in my entire life.

It would be nice if this story had a happy ending. It kind of does, as I was released with five days' worth of look-at-the-size-of-those-things antibiotic tablets, and the pain in my back went away. But sleep is still increasingly problematic. It has nothing to do with the hospital stay, but it's a nightly reminder. And that's just no fun.

New Hospital Adventures: Day 2

2008-07-20T11:30:00.003-04:00

Monday night in emergency is something of a blur for me, because I didn't get a good night's sleep at all. It was very cool in the room, so I was fidgeting as I alternated between being too hot and too cold. Also, I was constantly being visited: I had a blood culture taken when my fever spiked at 39 degrees, I was visited by my hematologist before she left work as well as my old CEGEP buddy when his shift ended (at midnight!), nurses came in to get my vitals every few hours as well as an early-morning blood test, a nurse with an awesome tattoo (as far as I could see—I was too tired to ask him about them) came in to do an EKG, and one of the doctors I knew from my last stay, who happened to be doing her rotation in emergency, stopped by. Factor in the late arrival of my desmopressin, which had me making a few extra visits to the bathroom, and you can see why everything was a little messed up.

I did get an hour or two of sleep in at the end, and when my eyes opened I realized I didn't feel quite as out of it as I had on Monday. Then I sat up quickly and felt a sharp pain in my upper back that sent me right back down. It seemed I had slept in a funny position, and the sudden shift didn't help. Ow.

Gingerly, I got myself into a sitting position and found that I was actually able to sit up and read a magazine, something I was totally incapable of the previous day.

Vicky came by to relieve my mom of her shift, and brought me some fresh clothes. We waited to find out what was happening with me, and discovered that they were waiting to admit me, if only they could find a free bed upstairs. Eventually, once it was determined that I wasn't neutropenic, I was moved to a different unit within emergency (the green unit) which was smaller and far quieter overall, but didn't have any separate rooms—so I got to hear the conversations and occasional plaintive cries during those few times I was awake. Eventually my mother came back to relieve Vicky and, after a few puzzles and a short walk, I settled in for the night's sleep.

New Hospital Adventures: Day 1

2008-07-16T18:31:00.002-04:00

So here we are, on Wednesday afternoon. A few hours ago, I finally got home from what I had hoped would be a short hospital visit.

What happened? Well, I arrived at the hospital Monday morning feeling weak, after having spent all of Sunday in bed, pretty much too weak to move and occasionally drifting into a mild fever. Vicky had spoken to the oncologist on call (who happened to be my hematologist) and she said if I didn't improve, to come in the following day.

So I did. My nose was stuffed, my throat was sore, my head ached, my chest hurt and although I could walk or talk neither was something I wanted to do for too long. Vicky, my parents and I got to the hospital and I headed straight upstairs for a vitals check and blood test, with a note that I should get a blood culture if I had a fever.

I should mention here that blood cultures are standard for fevers; if you saw that picture of me in the Gazette in March, I was having one done at the time. Blood cultures are blood tests used to check what, if any, bugs have gotten into your system. Just in case the fever is brought on by an infection in the chest catheter, there are three groups of blood draws. One from the each line of the catheter, and one from the arm. I hate blood cultures for two reasons: (a) it takes days to get the results, so you're on pins and needles wondering what you've got, and (b) I hate getting stuck in the arm.

So anyway, I didn't have a fever, but I muttered that I knew I was gonna get stuck sooner or later. After seeing my hematologist (who noted that some of my sinusoidal area was ever so slightly tender), I was directed to get a chest X-ray and a sinus X-ray. Vicky and I went downstairs, registered, and sat in the waiting room.

And then suddenly, everything went weird. My balance went a little off, and it looked like I was seeing the world through a mass of light purple blobs. It slowly started to get worse, and I mumbled something as I slowly started to list to starboard. Vicky asked if I was okay and I mumbled something else and then she asked if I needed a stretcher. I sat up, and realized I couldn't stay vertical for very long. I said yes, propped my head in my hands, and waited.

A gurney was brought in short order, and I managed to walk the three or four steps needed before sitting and then quickly lying down.

What I didn't realize then was that I'd be in a gurney for most of the next 48 hours.

It came to my turn for the chest X-rays, so I was wheeled in and felt good enough to stand for them. I lay back down in the gurney and was wheeled over to the room for sinus X-rays. While waiting for the technician, Vicky and I sat on the gurney and joked about the fact that the door marked "Always Leave This Door Closed" was usually opened, with the room used as a shortcut between two parallel hallways. I felt okay (well, no worse than a few hours earlier) when I sat down for the first X-ray, but in the few seconds before the next everything went wonky again and I had a quick lie-down while I caught my breath. After the second X-ray, I got back in the gurney and pretty much stayed there until I was wheeled back upstairs and climbed into another gurney and waited for my doctor to show up and look at the films.

When we had left the house that morning, my mother had mentioned that I might consider the possibility that I'd have to be admitted. I did, but I didn't really want to think about it. I figured I either had a cold or my white blood count had finally become elevated enough to be problematic. It turned out neither was the case. The X-ray technician's conclusion was mild pneumonia, and the very first thing that went through my mind was that it was pneumonia that had killed my grandfather exactly fourteen months earlier.

The hope was that I would be admitted to my old ward, but they were full to the brim so I was sent to emergency until space could be found, preferably in isolation since the blood results hadn't come in yet and there was suspicion I might be neutropenic. I ended up in the red unit (emergency has three units: red, green and blue), in room 12: as it turns out, a psychiatric room. Psychiatric as in the bed already in the room had straps on it.

By now it was approaching 5:00, and my mother elected to stay overnight with me. It turned out that my E.R. doctor was none other than an old classmate from my CEGEP days (he clearly stayed in sciences, unlike me). I ate dinner when it arrived, ran through another blood test and some more Q&As, tried unsuccessfully to read a bit of my magazine (I was too weak to hold it up and the room was too cold for my hands to remain exposed anyway), and called it a night.

You Give Me Fever

2008-07-14T10:27:00.002-04:00

Was going to take a moment out to write yesterday about my two blood transfusions on Friday (#27 and #28, for a total of for transfusions overall), and how I coped with the boredom by watching four episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and catching up on my Coverville music podcasts. (Best cover of the lot: Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower. Most, um, odd: Paul Anka's Eye of the Tiger.) It was surprising that I needed the tranfusions at all, as I felt quite energetic. But numbers don't lie, and my hemogloblins were low.

Anyway, the reason I didn't write about this yesterday is that I spent all day in bed. I woke up with a sore throat, a stuffy nose, a mild fever, and the sensation of my brain loosely floating in my skull and occasionally banging against the sides. So now we're off to the hospital, and I get to miss the last two films I wanted to see at the Fantasia film festival. I'm not sure which irks me more.

Run Wrake's The Control Master

2008-07-07T16:45:00.000-04:00

Now this kind of advertising I can get behind. Run Wrake (who we already love—and maybe fear a little—thanks to Rabbit) has applied his quirky collage technique to The Control Master, a pseudo–1950s-sci-fi film in which an evil genius and two heroes battle. The commercial angle here is that all the elements of the film come from CSA Images, a stock art company. Not that that gets in the way of the enjoying the film for even one second.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

The National Film Board of Canada Expands Its Audience

2008-07-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

As a Canadian cinephile, I'm often frustrated that more people outside of the country don't realize what a rich cinematic history we have.

A lot of that history is bound up in the National Film Board of Canada (the NFB, for short) which has spent the last 69 years pushing at the frontiers of, among other things, animation and documentary filmmaking.

A pal who works at the NFB recently tipped me off to their latest online initiative. Over on beta.NFB.ca they've created a free, public online repository of NFB shorts and features, starting with over 300 films from their archives. The films can be shared and embedded YouTube-style, as well.

This isn't the first time the NFB has dipped into their vaults for their online audience. Two years ago, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the creation of the animation department, the NFB put 70 of their animation shorts on their Focus on Animation site. However, that played as something of a "greatest hits" collection; not that that's bad thing, but it didn't have the scope of beta.NFB.ca, which even in this preliminary stage offers a more textured view of the history of Canada, Canadians, and cinema as a whole.

As its name implies, beta.NFB.ca is still a work in progress, with a few rough edges to be found in search, among other things. Also, the emphasis so far is on older films, which doesn't quite give the sense of the NFB's gradual evolution as it started to include more works from Canadian filmmakers looking at the world outside its borders. But hey, there's plenty to keep us occupied until they get truly settled in. Here are three tidbits.

What do nuclear annihilation and Scrabble have in common? The Big Snit:

The 1964 experimental film 21-87 was enough of an inspiration to George Lucas that he snuck a reference to it into Star Wars. It's quite a leap from one to the other, isn't it?

Give an emerging filmmaker (and creative taxidermist) a Nikon digital SLR, and you get Carla Coma's stop-motion oddity The Squirrel Next Door:

[Cross-posted from Today @ PC World.]

Always Have a Plan B

2008-07-03T09:33:00.001-04:00

I've been cagey ever since the day I got the news that I might have a matching donor, and I remained cagey (although slightly less so) when that donor was confirmed. The reason is simple; there are any number of reasons a donor could back out before they begin the procedure. It doesn't necessarily have to do with fear or callousness; it could be for medical reasons (if something turns up that appears to make the procedure unsafe for the donor, it's called off), or for pragmatic reasons (I recently read on a potential donor's blog about how, as a single mother, the extended hospital stay her donor centre required for the filgrastim injections wouldn't have worked out; fortunately, there were two other matching donors).

The fear that the donor might back out is heightened by the fact that as a black recipient, I have a much lower chance of finding another donor who can act as a backup—it's hard enough as it is to find one matching donor. And without a Plan B, what do you do when Plan A fails?

This is not a purely academic concern. You might remember back in May when Tamu wrote about Eunique Darby, a Syracuse teen who needed a bone marrow match and was fortunate enough to find one the day before the National Marrow Donor Program's annual Thanks Mom event. What I discovered a few weeks ago—and didn't report in the vain hope that good news would be around the corner—was that Eunique's donor had backed out. So rather than the feelings of relief and preparation for the transplant procedure, Eunique and her family have had to go back to square one.

I was unaware that the family had planned for a drive as part of the Juneteenth celebrations, but, as always, there are many ways to register. No matter where you are in the world, check out our list of registries for more information on registering in your area. Eunique needs a Plan B. For all I know, I might need one, too.

Persepolis on DVD

2008-07-02T14:16:00.001-04:00

Just a few weeks ago I was in a car with Tee Bosustow, on the way to an interview for his Toon In podcast. We kicked around a few thoughts on different animated productions, and when I mentioned that I really liked Persepolis, he said he wasn't as enthusiastic about the film.

"What?!?" I said. "Let me out of the car right now. You know what? Don't even bother stopping. Just slow down and let me jump out."

Okay, so maybe that's not exactly how it went down. For that matter, I don't really remember why he didn't like it as much as I did. But at the time his reasoning struck me enough that I recently re-read the comics in anticipation of the DVD release, which I watched not too long ago, along with all the extras. Here are some of the impressions I came away with:

It's always kind of funny when you mistakenly get the DVD with Spanish menus.

Catherine Deneuve is at the Persepolis press conference at Cannes and doesn't get asked a question? How is that possible?

I suspect that Iggy Pop is incapable of sitting in one place for too long without taking his shirt off.

Finally, upon rewatching I think that Persepolis is as much a tribute to Marjane Satrapi's grandmother as it is an autobiography. Never mind the bittersweet ending; from the moment the young Marjane opens her mouth to question authority in school, she's negotiating the principles of self-awareness and honesty to oneself that her grandmother taught her against the realities of the world around her. Whether she's telling off members of the Guardians of the Revolution or standing up to French bigots, she's channelling her grandmother; and guess who's the person she goes to whenever she has serious problems, and the first person to bite her head off if that's what she needs?

Because of the story's geographic and spiritual location in Iran and the timing of the movie's release, some might consider Persepolis political. Because of the strength and intelligence exhibited by Marjane, her mother and her grandmother, some might consider it feminist. After watching the extras, I don't think Satrapi would agree with either sentiment. Persepolis is the story of ordinary-yet-extraordinary people—we all know folks who fit in that category—in trying circumstances, and the legacy that she carries.

Yeah, I'm still on the Persepolis bandwagon.

Where to Get It
Buy Persepolis books and DVDs from Amazon.com

[Crossposted from Frames Per Second.]

Blood and Ottawa

2008-06-29T16:11:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday it was noted that my hemoglobins were a bit low, so on Thursday I had to get two blood transfusions (my 25th and 26th, for those keeping count; my 37th and 38th overall). As I've mentioned before, the whole procedure is actually quite boring. This one was more so because (a) the clinic was completely full, and (b) there had been a mix-up with my cross-match, which meant it had to be looked for, determined to be missing, and then redone. Even though I got there at the respectable hour of 9:00 a.m., I didn't leave until 5:00 p.m.—a new record.

The time was passed by reading two Invincible trade paperbacks, watching two episodes each of Battlestar Galactica and How I Met Your Mother, reading a few articles in Interactions (an Association for Computing Machinery publication on human-computer interaction, or HCI), and listening to a Studio 360 podcast. Oh, and napping as best as I could.

It really is a lot of effort to do nothing all day. I went home and ended up falling asleep early.

Anyway, earlier in the week we loaded up the car with all of my immediate family (except my sister, who was at work) and drove down to Ottawa to consult with transplant specialists to get more information and decide which way to go in terms of my transplant. My original thinking had been to undergo a fourth chemotherapy treatment that would use different drugs in the hope that it just might put me into remission, as bone marrow transplants have a better chance of success if the patient is remission.

However, after speaking at length with the doctor, it seems that this isn't the best way to go. It's felt that these chemo drugs won't have a great chance of getting me into remission, a sentiment shared by several of the hematologists at the hospital (including my doctor) and myself. I already knew that, but was willing to go for the long shot. The specialist's experience, however, suggests that it would be better to get the transplant while I'm in the best shape possible—that is, as healthy as can be aside from the leukemia—rather than ravage my insides in the hopes of getting into remission.

What it comes down to is that any choice I make is a risky one; I just had to choose which path is, in the long run, the least risky. After thinking about it for a little while, I decided to go for the transplant as soon as possible, without being in remission. We haven't sorted out all the details yet, but assuming my schedule, the Ottawa Hospital's schedule and the donor's schedule all sync up, I should be undergoing the transplant procedure in late July or early August. I'll be spending the weeks leading up to that preparing in a variety of ways (more on that later) and trying to get myself in the best shape possible, through a careful combination of diet, rest and exercise. I'm also hoping to enjoy a bit of the annual Fantasia film festival, especially as it's probably the last film festival I'll be able to attend for 2008.

WALL-E

2008-06-27T10:37:00.001-04:00

I hate it—I mean, really hate it—that whenever an animated feature is reviewed, writers feel compelled to mention whether or not kids would like it. It's a testament to the fact that, regardless of what the individual writers, editors or publishers feel, the public at large still can't process the idea that adults might want to watch animated features for themselves.

Past responses to this prejudice have included making films that are most definitely not for children, making films that are mainly for kids but include nod-and-wink throwaway gags for adults, and making films that kids and adults can enjoy equally. These have worked to varying degrees, but they all carry with them a fairly standard idea of what children will watch and enjoy.

WALL-E is a bit different in this regard, because it expands the idea of what kids will find entertaining. When Cast Away was released eight years ago, a big deal was made of the fact that there was no dialogue for almost half the movie (in the literal sense; Tom Hanks's character did speak, but no one answered). A similar fuss is being made over the lack of dialogue in WALL-E, but the unspoken question is, will kids be able to sit still for a 103-minute film where the main characters rarely speak?

From the reactions of the kids in the audience (especially the ones in the row right behind me) on Wednesday night, the answer is yes. And in the same way that Tom Hanks's acting was credited for making the dialogue-free parts of Cast Away so compelling, the Pixar animators must be given props for the remarkable acting in WALL-E.

With one exception, none of the many robot characters in the movie can truly speak, and the two that do (WALL-E and EVE) pretty much only say their names, each other's names, and the word "directive." That means that every robot character has to rely on rigid bodies and eyes (or eye surrogates) to communicate and express emotion. Interestingly, WALL-E himself is among the least flexible of the movie's robots; he has treads instead of feet, a pair of rigid mechanical viewfinders instead of an eye-mimicking LED display, and unbendable arms with three flat "fingers" at the end.

In sum, the movie has to be carried by characters that can't speak and are all limited compared to human bodies, and the main character is in some ways the most limited. And it works, thanks to Pixar's careful application of animation's twin traditions of pantomime and bringing inanimate objects to life. There are several references in WALL-E to A113, an in-joke that refers to CalArts's old character animation classroom. In few other films is that gag as relevant as it is in WALL-E; the movie is such an accomplished expression of the pre-digital yet universal art of conveying emotion and story purely through movement that when human characters show up and start talking, they seem clumsy and inelegant in comparison.

So, yes, kids will like WALL-E, as will adults. And we have the art of animation to thank for that.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Mo' Meds, Mo' Problems

2008-06-22T23:50:00.003-04:00

This is a bit convoluted, but it's the only way to explain the last few weeks, and what's to come. Please bear with me.

Four weeks ago, my medical life was relatively simple. I only had to take three or four pills a day: one pantoprazole tablet, which helps keep my reflux in check (I developed the reflux problem during my third round of chemo), and three pills of desmopressin per day, which moderates my diabetes insipidus (i.e., it keeps me from running to the bathroom twice an hour).

A week after that, things changed a little. We'd confirmed the donor, and were going to figure out the next steps soon. However, I'd also been retaining water, and my whole body was a bit bloated. My doctor said it was probably due to the desmopression, so she recommended diuresis to solve the problem. That meant going off the desmopressin and basically peeing the excess water out.

A week after that, the water retention problem had mostly gone away, though I was experiencing some of the constant thirst I'd had back in December, and of course I was running to the bathroom a lot. Meanwhile, my doctor noticed my white blood count was elevated, and said we'd want to get that under control before we started any new chemo.

Oh yes, about that chemo. This fourth go-round would use two completely different drugs that would attack the leukemic cells differently, and hopefully put me into remission. There is, of course, no guarantee, but my feeling was that since a transplant while in remission has a much greater chance of long-term success, it was worth a shot. So I slowly started taking desmopressin again to regulate the peeing, and was prescribed Hydrea to help keep my white blood count in check (it was elevated) in preparation for the chemo. I was also prescribed my old friend, Allopurinol, which counteracts excess uric acid.

Two weeks ago, I noticed that while both my feet were still kind of swollen, the left one was more so. And it was a bit less comfortable. Still, it wasn't drastic. I just kept elevating my feet, and taking minimal desmopressin—just enough to keep my sleep from being interrupted at night.

Eventually my right foot returned almost to normal, while my left foot seemed to be expanding. Furthermore, what started as a minor tingling in my shins seemed to be becoming more problematic—standing up meant a sudden pain in near my knee that slowly moved toward my ankles, almost like it was flowing. It made it hard to walk at first, though massaging my foot and walking made it easier. Oh, and the area around my calf was tender.

During my last checkup, my doctor mentioned that the Ottawa Hospital is one of the places that performs transplants on people who aren't in remission. We thought that was wonderfully convenient, as Ottawa is just two hours away and of course we'd still be under the Canadian healthcare system. However, after she looked at my foot and I explained my pains, she ordered an ultrasound for the next day, just to make sure it wasn't deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), essentially a clot that was blocking circulation. Just as a precaution, I was injected with a blood thinner. (For some reason, they couldn't use my chest catheter. I took the shot in the stomach, which hurts a lot less than you'd think.) Oh, and since my white blood count went up by 50% (!!!) my Hydrea dose was upped by 150%.

The next day was the ultrasound. Guess what: no clot! After a bit more examination, my perplexed doctor figured it might be cellulitis (no relation to cellulite, although my foot—then extremely and painfully fat—might have suggested otherwise). So for that I was prescribed Duracif, an antibiotic.

So here's my new daily drug routine:

- 1/2 an hour before breakfast: 1 pantaprazole tablet, five Hydrea capsules, and 1 desmopressin tablet (sometimes half a tablet, depending)
- at breakfast: 1 allopurinol tablet, 2 Duracif capsules
- at dinner, 2 Duracif capsules
- before bed, 1 desmopressin tablet

What fun! At least my foot is gradually deflating, and the pain has diminished considerably.

Anyway, the day after the ultrasound we heard from the transplant specialist in Ottawa. Seems he has some concerns about my forthcoming chemo treatment; he feels that those specific drugs, should they not put me in remission, are likely to cause complications on a transplant.

This poses something of a dilemma. The best chance of a successful transplant (one that cures the leukemia and the monosomy 7, but also one that I survive) is one that is performed while I'm in remission. But of course, the very reason I need the transplant—the monosomy 7—makes it hard for me to get in remission. The chemotherapy treatment we've been considering has a slim shot at succeeding, but as I said before, I'd been thinking that I'd rather take the chance and hopefully get a shot at getting in remission. However, now, as I understand it, undergoing this chemo and not getting in remission will actually put be more at risk compared to getting a remissionless transplant—however, getting a transplant without being in remission is already considerably riskier.

Tomorrow we meet with the doctor(s) in Ottawa to get more details and discuss options and probabilities. And then I distill all this knowledge and make the most important decision I've ever had to make it my life.

I hope this explains why, when people congratulate me about finding a donor, I say that things are far from over.

Canada Warming Up Its Own DMCA

2008-06-20T09:54:00.002-04:00

It used to be so easy. I'd just tell people that as a Canadian (and therefore not under the thumb of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), I could merrily crack DVD encryption for personal use without breaking the law. Reactions would range from envy to applause, or sometimes a mixture of both.

But alas, it's looking like these good things may be coming to an end. On Thursday, the Canadian government finally released Bill C-61, legislation that would give us our very own DMCA, or at least something uncomfortably similar.

Bill C-61 is essentially a series of amendments to the Copyright Act that would ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, which the DMCA did for the USA in 1996.

Some of Bill C-61's proposals are astonishingly reasonable. For instance, Canada has never, legally speaking, had fair use, but rather the stricter concept of fair dealing. However, Bill C-61 enshrines the right of an individual to make personal copies of copyrighted works to digital devices, so long as only one copy is made per device. Remember when the RIAA claimed that consumers weren't allowed to rip CDs they legally owned foir use on their MP3 players, but for their magnaminous generosity? That tactic wouldn't wash up here. Furthermore, researchers would be allowed to crack encrypted media for research and academic purposes, thus avoiding things like the Dmitry Sklyarov fiasco.

But even some of these reasonable measures have unreasonable corollaries. Since contracts between consumers and rights holders explicitly supercede the Copyright Act, then Amazon's non-transferability clause trumps my right to give away any tracks I so desire. Bill C-61 spells out what's legal in giving away any other form of media (I have to really give it away, not keep a copy lying around), but my rights are abrogated when it comes to MP3s I buy if Amazon or eMusic says so. Also, that whole cracking encryption for research thing? It's allowed only if you have the permission of the rights holder. Yeah, let's see how often that happens.

What really burns me is that Bill C-61 will make it illegal for people to crack DVD encryption. Not that I'm a raise-the-Jolly-Roger pirate, but I crack DVDs all the time as a matter of convenience. When I recently travelled to Los Angeles, I brought six movies (and their extras) with me to pass the time. Breaking the CSS encryption saved me the trouble of carrying eight discs with me. And the bill's vague wording makes me wonder: would my multi-region DVD player constitute a "technology, device or component [that] is designed or produced primarily for the purposes of circumventing a technological measure"?

It's amazing. We had twelve years to observe the parts of the DMCA that didn't work or were too ambiguous—and then, with few excepctions, we went right ahead and copied them.

[Originally written for PC World.]

CHOQ to the system

2008-06-19T22:12:00.003-04:00

A few hours ago I was sitting in a radio studio for Université de Québec à Montreal's CHOQ-FM, where I was a guest on their Les Contes à Rendre spoken-word program. My friend Yasmin Hudsmith invited me to tell a story related to my cancer, and I ended up throwing out my first two efforts (a light-hearted look at the weeks leading up to my diagnosis and a more somber reflection on mortality and the people left behind) and quickly wrote the one I ended up using on the air, a tribute to one of my fallen cancer buddies.

I'm still in the process of editing the audio for the permanent Heal Emru archives, but I thought I should point you to the recording of the original broadcast in its entirety. If you understand French (I had the only spoken English segment), the whole hour is worth a listen. You can find today's airing at http://www.choq.fm/archives-contesarendre-19069-0.html#archives; either download the MP3 by clicking the really tiny "Téléchargement" link above the mass of text, or listen online by clicking the small play icon slightly above it. I start talking about 5 minutes in.

Update: You can now listen to the clip directly from Heal Emru by clicking here.

The Animation Show, Vol. 3

2008-06-18T21:18:00.001-04:00

It's a given that even with such a wealth of animated shorts on the Internet, there's nothing like rubbing shoulders with like-minded people at a film festival. But when it comes to festival compilations on DVD, things get a little trickier. After all, if you're going to watch a bunch of shorts on the small screen, why buy them on DVD when you can probably find many of them, legally or otherwise, online?

That question plagues the third iteration of the annual Animation Show DVD release; a quick glance at its contents revealed three shorts that I'd seen online already, and I'm sure most, if not all, of the rest are lurking around somewhere.

Ah, but then you wouldn't have the distinct pleasure of watching 103 minutes of some of the best shorts of the past three years by pressing just one button from the comfort of your couch. Really, there isn't a false note here. I've seen Rabbit, City Paradise, Tyger and Learn Self Defense a gazillion times, and cheerfully sat through them from start to finish again. The kaleidoscopic Collision was serviceable and short enough not to be too taxing, and One D entertained me despite its one-note gag, unsurprising animation in-joke and glaring technical inaccuracy. (Hello, these characters are two-dimensional, not one-dimensional. Watch Ladd Ehlinger, Jr.'s interpretation of Flatland to see it done right.) Overall, a nice variety of films in a nice variety of styles.

Also, you wouldn't get great extras like an animatic and three video interviews, along with text interviews you can read by putting the DVD into a computer. That's some good bang for the bucks.

For all that, though, there are a few things that bother me here. I'm still not sure if I'm keen on the DVDs including a bunch of shorts that weren't screened during the theatrical run. I expect to see shorts on the big screen that I won't see on DVD due to rights issues, but it feels kind of odd that neither medium, by itself, is the complete experience.

Most glaring, however, is the inclusion of an eight-minute trailer for MTV's The Maxx, which is stuck in the middle of the festival extras instead of with the MTV trailers. (The Animation Show DVD is distributed by MTV Home Entertainment.) It's strange, because it's not part of the festival content, but its placement implies inclusion in the festival. Er, um, why exactly? It feels like a bit of corporate pimping, which doesn't reflect well on anyone involved.

Where to Get It
Buy The Animation Show, Vol. 3 on DVD from Amazon.com

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

The Match Game

2008-06-15T13:47:00.002-04:00

It all started a month ago—on May 13, to be exact.

My mother and I had gone to the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital—where I would most likely get a transplant if I found a donor, and the place where quite a bit of research in bone marrow stem cell transplants takes place—to meet with a doctor to discuss some questions we had. Questions such as, what if I had to resort to a haplocompatible (half-matching) donor? And what if I couldn't get into remission?

We met first with one doctor, who we filled in on details about my experience so far. After a short wait, he reappeared with his colleague, and before he addressed our questions he went over some other details about my case, and almost incidentally mentioned that a potential donor had been found.

"Wait a minute," you're asking. "That far back? Why didn't you say anything?" The key is in that one word: potential. Finding a potential donor means everything has lined up in terms of HLA typing so far, but further tests need to be done to determine complete compatibility and suitability. (Just a brief explanation about compatibility: Only the first six HLA markers are recorded when someone registers to be a donor. The remaining four markers need to be verified as matches as well.)

I used to joke that so far as I'm concerned, all donors are potential until I actually have stem cells being pumped into my body. There's some truth to that, as there are any number of reasons the donor wouldn't have panned out. It could have turned out they didn't match all ten markers. Further testing could have revealed that they had some disease they didn't admit to or didn't know about. Or they simply could have changed their mind about donating. This is why we didn't want people to stop the search—because nothing was guaranteed.

On June 4, we got better news. The person turned out to be a perfect match. Tamu wrote a press release, and within hours we were deluged by congratulatory phone calls and e-mail.

In a perfect world, the next few steps would be easy: I'd get into remission and undergo the transplant. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, as I've been having trouble getting into remission in the first place. Starting next week, I'll be undergoing a fourth chemotherapy regimen, one that targets the leukemic cells in a different way than the previous three treatments. (A nice side benefit: I can do these treatments as an outpatient, so no lengthy hospital stays just yet.) If I'm lucky, this new method of attack will put me in remission and we'll start the transplant procedure—assuming, of course, the donor doesn't back out.

But what if I'm unlucky? This isn't an idle question, but a distinct possibility. The monosomy 7 that necessitates the transplant makes it harder for me to get and/or stay in remission. So this is where things get interesting. If I'm not in remission, then a transplant becomes a far riskier procedure; the stats I've heard so far put the success rate at 1 in 4, tops. Moreover, the folks at Maisonneuve-Rosemont don't do transplants on patients who aren't in remission, which would mean I'd have to travel out of province for treatment.

Finding a donor is great, but the adventure's not over yet. Not by a long shot.

Self-Destructing DVDs Make a Comeback

2008-06-01T22:04:00.002-04:00

Didn't we already go through this ten years ago? Flexplay Entertainment is making good on its threat -- er, promise -- to produce rental DVDs that self-destruct 48 hours after they've been opened.

The technology's not all that new; Flexplay DVDs have been around for about five years, though on a more limited scale. The premise remains unchanged: Flexplay's patented disc adhesive reacts to oxygen when the DVD's package is opened, beginning a slow chemical reaction that renders the disc unreadable in 48 hours.

The idea is that you can rent a movie without having to worry about when you'll watch it -- the disc remains playable so long as it's sealed -- or about returning it. Staples will start carrying Flexplay DVDs this month, for $4.99 each.

But like I said, we've done this dance before. It was in 1998 that a bunch of retailers offered us DIVX (no relation to the video codec), a -- wait for it -- self-destructing DVD format for renting movies, with a 48-hour viewing window. PC World's Dan Tynan echoed the prevailing sentiment when he included it in his 2006 article The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time; the technology was on the market for barely six months before it was yanked.

The Staples and Flexplay folks are probably banking on the fact that unlike DIVX, Flexplay discs don't require a proprietary player. But beyond that, is there really any benefit? People who think it's too much trouble to return a disc to the video store have likely already got Netflix queues as long as my arm. Plus, DVDs that aren't new releases are cheaper than ever -- given the choice of renting a disc for $5 and owning it for $7, a significant number of people will opt for the latter. It looks to me like history will be repeating itself.

[Originally written for PC World.]

Isn't "Premiere" Supposed to Mean "First?"

2008-06-01T21:04:00.002-04:00

The entertainment industry, particularly Hollywood, is a strange world. I've spent years of intense study demystifying its many arcane practices, but there's still one thing I don't understand: how can Lou Diamond Phillips and family have been attending the "premiere" of Kung Fu Panda earlier today when I, my sister, and a cinema full of parents, kids and animation fans saw it on Wednesday?

It's not the first time this has happened. Back in 1999 I attended the Toronto International Film Festival's screening of Princess Mononoke. As part of an abortive assignment for Animation World Network, I later interviewed Gillian Anderson and Neil Gaiman—and Anderson (among others) referred to the Los Angeles screening she attended a week or two after mine as the "premiere." (One person referred to it as the "world premiere," despite the film's having been released in Japan two years earlier. But I think that was just a slip of the tongue.)

Seriously, what is it with this?

The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954

2008-05-27T00:00:00.002-04:00

Countless column inches, magazine pages and pixels have been devoted to the question/problem of racist black stereotypes in animation, and at some point someone says these cartoons need to be framed or presented in their historical context. It's unstated, but that phrase often means "Let's acknowledge that these cartoons were produced in a less enlightened time, and that the images are offensive. But man, are they funny. Can we go back to watching them, please?"

Not that the first sentence is untrue, but it's a simplistic reading at best. If you really want context, then start with Henry T. Sampson's That's Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900-1960, which catalogues the many American cartoons that used these images, along with plot descriptions, production credits, and industry publication reviews—necessary and welcome, but maybe a little too clinical. The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954, in contrast, takes the same kind of data as That's Enough Folks and shapes it into a decades-long narrative.

Lehman recounts a chronological history of film animation from its beginnings at the hands of J. Stuart Blackton through most of the Golden Age of animation, weaving in descriptions and explanations of the types of racist images used. This really does put things in context, as for the first time we get to see how the evolution of these images and the gags behind them corresponds to the evolution of animation, movies, pop culture and society at large.

After I finished the book—at 137 pages it's a quick read—it occurred to me that The Colored Cartoon is, in itself, an answer to many of the questions and misconceptions that have swirled around this debate for at least as long as I've observed it. Why is it okay to make fun of Elmer Fudd, who is white, but not black characters who chase Bugs Bunny? The seemingly obvious answer is that Elmer Fudd's skin colour isn't the source of the humour, his ineptitude is. For those that argue that a black character's ineptitude isn't necessarily racist, Lehman's long-range view breaks down the different types of stereotypes and why even the most innocuous-looking depictions were part of a larger trend. Is the call to stop broadcasting cartoons with these images a recent example of political correctness run amok? Hardly. The NAACP—you know, black people—have been protesting these cartoons since World War II. (If you'd read Donald Bogle's Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, you'd know that. But if your reading list is restricted to animation books, The Colored Cartoon will fill you in.)

The Colored Cartoon isn't perfect. Far from it, in fact. While I liked how Lehman sometimes talked about simple economic or technological issues (like the trouble early animators had with lip sync) and how they affected what was seen and heard onscreen, I was less enthused by some of his conjectures that were presented as fact. Was Bugs Bunny a descendant of African-American mythical trickster figures like Br'er Rabbit? Sure, I can get behind that interpretation. Does that make him, and his trademark cool, an example of black culture being mined and transformed for cartoons? Maybe, but that leads to the thorny question of intent. While animation artists like Bill Littlejohn and Martha Sigall weigh in throughout the book, they don't offer any insights here, which leaves Lehman's assertion as an untestable theory.

I'd have preferred if the book was longer (but then, with good books I usually do), held back on the theorizing and gave us more animator interviews, more in-depth stories of activism (I like Lehman's frank description of the NAACP's missteps, and I'd like to see more interviews in that area) and more industry insights—for starters. Still, imperfect doesn't mean bad. At the very least, The Colored Cartoon is a start—a start at providing the often-cited context for this debate that will allow it to move on to a different level. That alone makes it a worthy entry in this still-nascent field.

Where to Get It
Buy The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 from Amazon.com

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

I, Vampire

2008-05-26T20:57:00.002-04:00

I forgot to mention that last Thursday I received two more units of blood, bringing my blood transfusion count to 24 and my total transfusion count to 36. (I seem to be keeping a 2:1 ratio blood transfusions to platelet transfusions.)

The nice thing about blood transfusions is that afterwards I feel really energized. Otherwise they're incredibly unremarkable. This is especially true with a chest catheter, because there's no need to stick an IV in my arm; just plug and play. But what they lack in discomfort they make up with tedium. Here's how it plays out.

First is the cross match; a vial of blood is taken, and brought to the lab where it's tested against the units of blood meant to be used for the transfusion. (While they already have my blood type on file, the cross match is to determine compatibility against the units' antigens.) So that takes a little while. Then my blood pressure and temperature are taken, and if everything is good we start the procedure... which doesn't involve blood just as yet, but rather a saline drip.

When the first unit of blood is ready—each transfusion I've had to date has involved two units—it's added to the IV pump, which mixes it with the saline drip. Then it's just a matter of sitting and waiting, as it takes about 105 minutes to get one unit of blood into me. I usually spend the time reading, doing puzzles, writing, playing sudoku or sleeping—whatever's needed to pass the time. When I'm actually in hospital, it's no different from anything else because I always have the pump with me anyway. When I'm an outpatient, then I'm more or less confined to my chair, because there's nowhere else to go.

When the unit's done, the remaining blood is flushed from the tubes (and into me) with the saline, and I wait for the nurse to get to me. (On Thursday, the first unit ran out right in the middle of lunch hour, when the number of nurses on the floor drops to two. So I had to wait a little longer than usual.) Then she checks my temperature and blood pressure again, and if necessary we repeat the whole thing with another unit of blood, which we usually have to wait for.

Like I said, no pain, just tedium. Last week I got in around 10:00 and left around 3:00.

5 Groovy Sites for Free Music Downloads

2008-05-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

Short of "free food" and "free beer," "free music" is one of the sweetest phrases you can hear. But getting tunes gratis doesn't have to mean ending up on the RIAA's Most Wanted list. These five sites will let you easily fatten up your music collection with tracks that creators and recording labels are giving away--all in DRM-free, MP3 format. An extra bonus: None of these sites require an e-mail address or any kind of registration.

What's the catch? Well, don't expect to find much top-40 material here; the four major labels are still pretty tight-fisted with their properties. But that's not really much of a catch: Saying good-bye to Mariah Carey and Madonna means saying hello to independent artists (some of whom have been in the business just as long) who will round out your most-played list quite nicely.

1. Venzero Mixtape

Some audio player manufacturers will happily give you music, on the condition that you buy their product first. German company Venzero is a bit more generous, having launched the Venzero Mixtape: a rotating collection of MP3 tracks by "exquisite bands" that anybody can download. Or at least that's the theory. Since launching the Venzero Mixtape, the company has changed the lineup only once. The nine tracks that make up the current mixtape are a pleasure to listen to, however, so even if Venzero never gets around to picking up where it left off, you still come out ahead.

2. Epitonic

My favorite brick-and-mortar record stores--I can call them that because they still have plenty of vinyl--not only offer a wide variety of music but also have staff who can talk intelligently about what they offer. Even when I walk in just to say hi, I usually end up walking out with a new CD and new knowledge.The closest experience to that in the online world is Epitonic, where you don't get just free music--you get free schooling too. The site features extensive writeups on all the featured artists (including links to similar acts), streaming audio, and at least one free MP3 per album.

Unfortunately, Epitonic hasn't really been updated for almost two years. But the site has enough content that you can still spend hours, if not days, exploring new musical avenues.

3. Mush Records

Like other independent music labels, Mush Records has artists who cover a lot of stylistic ground (they describe their range as "electronic instrumental, underground hip-hop, downtempo, abstract hip-hop, experimental, indie-rock, jazz-based grooves, turntablist compositions, electronic pop, saturated folk, left-field, dreamy stuff, more versions of hip-hop, and on and on"). And Mush is not afraid of giving away music and videos for free, since the company expects visitors' interest to be piqued enough for them to spend a few dollars on a CD.Unlike Epitonic, Mush Records separates the areas where you learn about artists from where you download media. On the one hand, it makes music discovery a little less organic. On the other hand, the site's extensive archive of articles written about their artists gives a more textured look at their work. Either way, a collection of 70-plus free tracks is nothing to sneeze at.

4. iSound

If you're a musician, iSound seems like a dream come true: The site provides tools for artists to create their own pages to promote and sell their music online. If you're a music fan, iSound seems like a potential nightmare--you'd expect to have to wade through plenty of questionable material to find one gem.Both of those perceptions are accurate, but what separates iSound from similar online services are three features that let music fans quickly zero in on what they like. First is a search tool that finds bands based on their similarity to three artists you enter; second is a list of the 200 most popular tracks; and third is an icon that tells you if a band has any downloadable MP3s before you click through to their page. Using these tools I easily racked up more hits than misses.

5. The Live Music Archive

The top two reasons I love going to concerts are the feeling of camaraderie (I'm surrounded by people who are into the same music, though I run the risk of a Coke spilling on my shirt) and the chance to hear my favorite songs performed outside of a studio setting, sometimes arranged in new and creative ways. The next best thing to being there is a concert recording, but relatively few bands make recordings available for sale, and many bootlegs are kind of iffy soundwise.Then there are the bands that don't mind exploring the gray area in between. The Live Music Archive features high-quality concert recordings from bands that are cool with noncommercial distribution of their performances. Dip into the extensive roster, and you'll find names like Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg, and the godfathers of sanctioned bootlegs, the Grateful Dead.

[Originally written for PC World.]

Texas IT Has Bugs in Its System

2008-05-18T20:14:00.001-04:00

We tend to forget that one of the first computer bugs was a real one. Texas computer users are rediscovering that first-hand.

The bugs in this case are crazy rasberry ants, named after the exterminator Tom Rasberry, who first identified them after they appeared in Texas in 2002. (You can see a recent video about the critters here.) The thing is, in the six years since their introduction to the state -- mostly in Houston-area counties -- they've been resistant to most conventional ant pesticides and multiplying like crazy.

Okay, so there are thousands of tiny ants swarming all over the place. It's a little creepy, but what does this have to do with technology?

Everything, it turns out, as the ants have wreaked havoc in the past when they've made their way into computers. Get enough ants on a circuit board and they can cause short circuits. A recent Computer Dealer News story refers to incidents in 2006 and 2007 where the ants shorted out computers in a Texas chemical company, affecting pipeline flow. They also refer to infestations in NASA's Johnson Space Center, which were fortunately contained.

It's like a bad horror movie, but it raises an important question -- what happens if they start infesting Houston proper? As the fifth-largest city in the US, technology disruptions could have a serious impact. Expect sleepless nights and a lot of foot-stompin' in the southwest's IT departments soon.

[Cross-posted from PC World.]

My Secret Identity

2008-05-16T20:59:00.002-04:00

Oh, snap. I just realized that with my lack of hair, I've become Charles from Diesel Sweeties.

Remiss on Remission

2008-05-12T21:03:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to write an update for the last two weeks, but I haven't really had much chance to sit still. So, with zero ado, here's the news.

We walked into my hematologist's office for my regular weekly checkup on the 30th, and she gave us the bad news: the previous week's blood smear revealed enough blast cells to make it clear that I wasn't in remission. (Or, possibly, that I was in remission for a very short while. Those cells weren't always there.)

It's vexing, because it almost feels like I've been going through chemo and away from home for nothing. That's not true, of course, but it is a bit frustrating when you find yourself pretty much back where you started, but with less hair and a few lingering mouth sores. (By the way, my hair is returning and my mouth is just fine, thanks.)

Mind you, this situation wasn't entirely a surprise. A few weeks back, while I was still in the hospital, my hematologist and I were discussing monosomy 7. It was her opinion that it was the monosomy 7 that had kept me from going into remission the first two times, and she said it was possible that it might prevent me from going into remission this time around. It appears that was the case.

The question now is, where do we go from here? Three possibilities are some other form of treatment, a bone marrow transplant before remission, or a double cord blood transplant. (Cord blood transplants come from banked umbilical cord blood, and have their own advantages and disadvantages.) These and other possibilities are being explored, and since my leukemia appears manageable, we have time to examine these other options—which is what we've been doing these past few weeks, along with stumping for more people to register as potential bone marrow donors.

So it's a good news-bad news thing. On the outside I look fine, and in truth I feel fine. But inside I'm still messed up. More news as we get it.

Kihachiro Kawamoto Films on DVD

2008-05-11T01:29:00.001-04:00

If there were awards for truth in advertising, then Kino International would have to win something for the use of one adjective. The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto contains the bulk of the animation master's work, seven short films made between 1968 and 1979.

Kawamoto is considered a stop-motion animator, and his recent feature-length masterpiece, The Book of the Dead, features gorgeous sets to accompany his beautiful puppets. However, this DVD serves as a reminder that his shorts were rarely quite so straightforward. All of the films on the DVD involve the manipulation of physical objects—if not puppets, then cutouts—but Kawamoto freely mixes them with drawn animation and flat paper cutouts with varying degrees of abstraction.

In earlier films like 1972's The Demon, Kawamoto plays with this stylization by having characters move in sync with the background music's rhythm, almost as if they were performing the story as a dance. By the time of the final film, 1979's House of Flames, he's also using stark lighting and elegant compositions to suggest, at times, a stage play. The three middle films in the collection, An Anthropo-Cynical Farce, The Trip and A Poet's Life (from 1970, 1973 and 1974) all break from the use of puppets and the use of ancient Japan as a setting, but are no less compelling. They are perhaps a bit more obtuse in that unique way that independent animation from the 1970s could be.

Kino has also released the feature-length The Book of the Dead, which features some of Kawamoto's most exquisite—there's that word again—stop-motion work to date. Like his best-known short-form films, the movie features Buddhism in ancient Japan. However, this time Buddhist teachings are central to the film, as it takes place in the eighth century, around the time that Buddhism was being introduced to Japan from China. Unlike his shorts, Kawamoto has chosen here to fill out his sets with physical objects and far more characters, all realized with considerable detail. It's hard to watch a sequence with a room full of elegantly dressed puppets with their clothes blowing in the wind and not be awestruck by both the scene's verisimilitude and its poetry.

As lovely as these releases are, there are a few things I'd have liked to have seen. The Book of the Dead uses the English narration with no option to hear the original Japanese (though all the dialogue is still in Japanese, with optional subtitles) and neither disc includes any kind of extras. While Kawamoto's work speaks for itself, the level of craftsmanship on display on both DVDs leaves you wanting to see and hear more. Finally, completists are likely to wag their fingers: The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto lacks four shorts that were included on the Region 2 Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection DVD.

Where to Get It
Buy The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto from Amazon.com
Buy The Book of the Dead from Amazon.com
Buy Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection from YesAsia.com

[Cross-posted from Frames per Second.]

Speed Racer Learns from Manga, Can Teach Feature Animation a Few Things

2008-05-09T00:01:00.003-04:00

I'm generally not a fan of live-action adaptations of animated TV shows, because they almost always disappoint. The problems usually start with the choices the filmmakers make in order to get animated (or animated-looking) characters into a live action universe. The Flintstones had fake-looking rock sets; Alvin and the Chipmunks and Scooby Doo had CGI critters in an otherwise realistic universe; Fat Albert had the TV characters coming to life in the real world.

In Speed Racer, the Wachowskis do what none of the creators of these other films had the will to do: they created a cohesive universe in which all of the elements in any given frame look like they belong together. In the process, they also highlight something that's been missing from mainstream animation for quite some time.

As I was sitting in the cinema watching Speed Racer, it occurred to me that I already knew how most journalists were going to describe the movie's look. Some would say that it looks like a video game, or that it's anime come to life. They're dead wrong. Outside of some race scenes the movie looks nothing like any video game you've actually played, and outside of a few Akira-like shots and a nod to the original series opener, it looks nothing like any anime you've ever seen. Really, these are just phrases that reviewers use when they want to say that there are lots of things moving around very fast, or that have bright-coloured, futuristic-looking elements.

In a strange way, however, they're also right. Speed Racer, like many video games, demands that its viewers process a lot of visual information at once. Like anime, it stylizes motion in a way that isn't entirely realistic but is believable within its own reality.

If anything, Speed Racer's filmic cues come from green-screen/digital-set movies like the most recent Star Wars trilogy and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, along with shorts that feature heavily processed and manipulated live action, like Gaëlle Denis' City Paradise. But the Wachowskis' real inspiration here is manga. This doesn't just apply to the racing scenes, but to just about anything set outside of the Racer family home. Take a look at these images, and pay special attention to how they put the focus on certain foreground objects or characters and use the backgrounds to denote movement, atmosphere and mood, These compositions are pure manga:

Better still are the transitions, in which the camera moves around a foreground character's head and the backgrounds change to show scenes either as a transition or as a flashback to the past. Some of these scenes are multi-layered, including audio from both the current time and place and the location or time being referenced. There's even one scene where one character tells Speed about about something that will happen in the future; as the camera whirls around Speed, the background shifts to show scenes that highlight what the other character is saying—and eventually we discover this isn't speculation, but what actually happens in the future. The whole sequence interleaves between the present moment and flash-forwards, kind of like an episode of Lost on, well, speed. (Lazy journalists will look at all this and make references to audience members with short attention spans or ADD; the truth is, you really have to pay attention if you want to follow it all.)

I'm just scratching the surface here. All in all, Speed Racer is a visual effects spectacle that doesn't reserve its inventiveness for eye-candy money shots; rather, it's a carefully constructed, dynamic reality that is unlike anything seen on the big screen. All of which brings me to the question I kept asking myself when I left the cinema: why haven't I seen anything like this in feature animation for so long?

It's a cliché these days to say that effects-heavy summer movies are cartoon-like, and there's some truth to that. But it's also true that live-action movies have, through the heavy use of CGI, taken animation's "anything can happen here" mentality and run with it. Meanwhile, feature animation has largely concerned itself with looking more realistic, obsessing over things like realistic fur and hair. Even those productions that aren't so fixated are, relatively speaking, conservative. I've very much enjoyed Pixar's films, but when you get right down to it they mostly fit into a niche best described as "Talking ____s," with the blank filled in by toys, bugs, fish, rats or what have you. The Incredibles was an exciting departure, but so far the new direction that it signalled appears to be a dead end.

Where's the wow? Where's that moment when you jump up in your seat, excited because you've been shown something you've never seen before? Speed Racer provides that in spades, but in feature animation it's been sorely lacking. I remember seeing Tron in 1983, Akira in 1988 and Mind Game in 2005 and each time feeling like someone had redefined what was possible in animated cinema because I was being shown things I hadn't seen before. I've had that same feeling many times over since then, but when it comes to animation it's generally been in OAVs, shorts and—much to my surprise—television.

I'm all for the blurring of boundaries, but to me movies like Speed Racer indicate that feature animation is ceding ground to live action. Something is very wrong with this picture.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]