Hallelujah, Thank You, Leonard

Here we are again at that pivotal time of year. The hard-working dark days of November and December have come and gone and the holiday season is upon us! I will be working off-and-on throughout the season, but still I am hoping for some serious R&R at times. I am not a religious man, at least not in the western god fearing Christian sense - but the mixed up Jewish, Catholic, slyly sexy "Hallelujah" has always rung a sweet chord with me - and it comes in handy this time of year. Thank you, Leonard. More recently, the late Jeff Buckley gave us a special gift in his version of the tune. Here's the lyrics. Feels okay to publish them here like a poem given Mr. Cohen's propensities in that area. Happy Holidays.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Let it Snow!

Well, it is that time of year again... The time that I invariably catch the remarkable, incomparable Jimmy Stewart in one of his landmark roles for the big screen, Frank Capra's 1946 masterpiece "It's a Wonderful Life." I am working on a film right now that requires visual effects to provide "snow augmentation" so as I flipped channels and came across this marvelous film, I initially just stopped surfing to think about how the crew accomplished so much damned falling snow in the film. But, of course, not much more than a moment passed before I was drawn in by Stewart's amazing, frenetic, emotionally relentless performance. There is something so convincing in his eyes in this film, the performance never fails to grab me. Of course, the spirit of the time, and it's likable themes don't hurt. But man, he's just incredible isn't he? No matter the cynicism these days about the schmaltz of the Christmas season and its overbearing commercialism, those eyes just cut right through to the heart of what Christmas means to so many people. Believing in doing the right thing. Seeing the good that comes from the struggle to achieve something morally right. People banding together to recognize and thank those who have been so generous to them in their lives. It is all that and much more.

The Red Violin

Remember "The Red Violin?" An amazing Canadian film from Don McKellar? Check out this sequence. It came up in a pitch meeting recently. About 4 minutes into the clip you the see the red violin stationary in the frame while many different players and settings fade in and out again. Ori Ben-Shabat and I were pitching some ideas for titles for a new client. We wanted to present the idea of a significant object that remained in the frame at all times, because it is important. But that somehow the object recedes for the viewer, becoming somehow subconscious even though it is there at all times. That's an amazingly cool, simple idea... The violin is there the whole time, so it starts to drift away, becoming subconscious, and you focus on what is changing instead of what is there all the while... McKellar used it as a device to sell the passage of time. But we wanted to use it to link together disparate moments in the history of the object without being didactic. Wicked... Anyway, I thought I would just mention how cool I think this sequence is in Mr. McKellar's film. As a side note, a friend of mine, Bradshaw Crombie grew up next door to Don in Toronto. Anyone want to play "six degrees of separation?"

London Calling Walshman Oct.11-16th

So I am off to The Big Smoke again. Second time this year. Hard to believe. I will be in London from October 11th until the 16th conducting interviews and seeing some future clients for Image Engine. I am not looking forward to the travel really, I never do, but it will be interesting to spend some time in Soho again. See a few mates, etc. Man, how the circumstances have changed. I spent about 2 years in London working at The Moving Picture Company as a Senior Lighting Technical Director. Now here I am heading back as a Producer. Whacko! It was a great time in my career both creatively and socially. I worked on some stunning stuff and met a crowd of amazing people. I would much rather work in London again compared to L.A. even though lifestyle-wise Santa Monica was pretty good to me. I met some great folks in L.A. also, but I guess I am just referring to the vibe of the place more than anything. I suppose it is more about "if I was gonna be on the west coast" I'd way rather be in Vancouver. But, I have to say, when London began to wear on me, it wore out fast! Could it have been the Harry Potter sized room I was living in and the guys who woke me at 6am regularly by tossing empty kegs from the pub into the street? Naw... But, I loved it while it lasted. I remember it as a very hard working, fast-paced and experience filled time of my life. Cramming work in between weekend flights to Madrid to see Meg and barely sleeping a wink all the while. I remember feeling absolutely worn out one morning and learning over to Andre "El Camaro" De Souza who was sitting next to me at the time and saying "Camaro, why is it that when I come to work I feel like I have been up for four days straight and I am hung over?" He said in his heavy Sao Paulo accent "weeellll Walshman, dat's basically because you have been and you are man." Enough said, for better or worse, the Walshman cometh.

The Cool Creaps Into the Air

Autumn. I love this time of year. There's a moment in the fall when you realize that summer has truly passed. Maybe you hadn't noticed the crimson creeping into the scene, or a smell in the air... And then, it hits you. It is a melancholy moment, but strangely you nearly always look forward to it, and are glad when it transpires. Perhaps it happens via a gust of wind that carries with it a crispness you haven't felt in some time, or a moistness that's been lacking of late. You take notice of all the usual signs: the changing colours in the trees, the growing darkness that comes more quickly in the north, the bigger more dramatic clouds & rain. We spent the weekend in Victoria and all of these things came to pass. Just that much closer to the vast Pacific Ocean, we witnessed the wind gusting familiarly, recalling old memories. It reminded me of going to school in September as a kid and the cool, damp walks to school through the neighbourhood in the mornings. Back then, there were still the last solemn plots of land with orchard trees standing silent in the suburb, like they were maintaining some kind of vigil. Halloween was special. There's a great White Stripes song "We're Going to be Friends" that I think captures aura of it. Does anyone let their kids walk to school anymore? Mateo in his little sweater and vest, running in the park against the wind, his laughter floating on the gusts, picking up fallen leaves... I tell you man, pure happiness. And I didn't even mention the fresh apple pie!

More Great Work by Ben Reeves

My long time buddy and fellow U.B.C. Fine Arts alumni Ben Reeves has just had a very successful show in Toronto at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. This work represents a virtuoso impressionist influenced splash of colour an texture from Vancouver's painters' painter. I'll leave the rest of the pontificating to this well written review from The Globe and Mail.

Smoke and cream pie: the ultimate cover-up

By GARY MICHAEL DAULT
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Ben Reeves at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects

Painter Ben Reeves seems quite taken with the idea of superimposition. In the case of the painting reproduced here, for example, his Car and Petals, the Vancouver-based artist has very convincingly offered up an image of a tomato-red Volkswagen Beetle, delicately covered with fallen pink Magnolia blossoms. There are two pictorial elements in dialogue, in dynamic equilibrium: one that covers, and one that is covered.

Curiously, though, the artist's winning new exhibition (Smoke, Flowers, Cars) at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (his first solo show in Toronto) doesn't begin with the artist's determination to cover something with a second something. In fact, you get about half way through it before the impositions begin to happen. The paintings in the first room, which seem only to be about Reeves's exquisite paint handling, are entirely imposition free: That is to say, they are about one thing at a time, and not about two things at once.

Reeves's big Ice Breaker, for example, is just that - a lush, sensuously brushed painting of an ice breaker, negotiating frigid, thickening seas. Why an ice breaker? Who knows? Except that there is something about the ship's hard, hulking form, and the bright, thin sunlight falling all about it, that serves Reeves's purposes well - one of which, at least, is to slather on the oil paint in a way that carves his chosen subject from the canvas's blank space with the kind of exuberant, painterly abandon you don't see much any more. On the wall opposite Ice Breaker, there
is another lushly painted but imposition-free work, called Smoke (Close Up). Like Ice Breaker, it's a painting with a lot of brio - but that's really all. (The atmospheres of other famous paint-handlers, by the way, lurk within its churning field: Willem de Kooning, for example, and Richard Diebenkorn, and even Britain's Frank Auerbach.)

But when you round the corner into the second gallery, past a curiously listless painting called Broadway and Oak (Magnolia) - the only purpose of which may be to introduce the upcoming imposition idea (blossoms fallen on the grass and sidewalk) - you suddenly find yourself in another painterly world: Here, Reeves crackles wildly into life - and immediately proves himself to be a funny, caustic, inventive and highly original painter.

For here, in this second room, imposition reigns supreme. This is where Reeves's smoke paintings are. Three smoke paintings and one cream-pie painting. The four of them are, in fact, nearly obliterated by Reeves's having muffled up the first element of each painting (a portrait) with a second element (smoke, cream). In Smoke 1, Smoke 2 (golfer), and Smoke 3 (girl smoker), the beautifully rendered faces of Reeves's subjects are almost obliterated by the "smoke" - which is made of big, fat, wet-looking globs of grey pigment that the artist has exuberantly and wickedly troweled over the finished painting beneath. In Cream Pie, the same thing has occurred, with globs of "cream" instead of "smoke." This is imposition with a vengeance. And yes, there's a certain slapstick quality to the proceedings (smoking begins to look as silly as being winged with a pie). In the end, though, it is the artist's paint-handling that astonishes. Heavy clouds of "smoke," splatters of "cream pie," it doesn't matter. Reeves has found a way to pile up the paint in such a way that leaves you uncertain whether it's the subject of the painting that counts here, or the way the paint is handled. The balance between the two is brilliant, funny, irritating and disturbing. It's virtuoso stuff.

Walshman Takes On Morning Traffic & Wins!

PRESS RELEASE

Walshman Sustains Pre-G.W. Injuries, Survives!

Vancouver, B.C.

In a dramatic incident not unlike the 2005 Yan Ulrich pre-Tour training crash, it was confirmed today that local Vangroovey Clydesdale Class road cycling champion "The Walshman" sustained non-life threatening injuries during a routine training lap of the city's storied Stanley Park.

Having jostled with morning commuter traffic through the rain-slicked historic Gastown neighbourhood, The Walshman was preparing to "hit the jets" and fly onto the Georgia St. viaduct when he was abruptly brought to a metal twisting halt by a 2005 Toyota Corolla. Stunned on-lookers watched as The Walshman's 230 lb frame crumpled the feeble import in an impressive display of athletic violence.

Although The Walshman felt he had extolled "sufficient vehicular damage" in retribution for having been cut off by an indecisive intersection foible, the incident does not come without its costs. "I was feeling primed for a top performance at this year's Gentleman's Weekend Ball Hockey Bruiser Blowout" claimed a blood soaked Walshman as he waited for paramedics to remove glass from his forearm on the picturesque downtown sidewalk, "now my hopes are dashed. I don't know what to say, I feel like I let me line-mates down."

When hearing the news, an admittedly dejected Coach Pearce, who this year had spent much personal time priming "The Clydesdale Cannon" as he is known in roadie circles remarked, "The Walshman was building towards this moment for several seasons, he was in top condition, I've never seen him so potently athletic."

The Walshman has vowed to push on at this year's Gentleman's Weekend. recalling the heroics of The Legend of the Red during past Ball Hockey Bruiser Blowout Championships. "The Legend was an inspiration as he hobbled about the rink" said a reflective Walshman while he lay on the doctor's table being stitched, "I only hope that I can live up to his tremendous geriatric athleticism."

Security video camera footage to follow.

-end-

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

The official film website is up now for "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium." The shot pictured here is one that I supervised on-set with Raymond Gieringer from Intelligent Creatures and was composited by Ian Fellows. This show has been a long haul for Image Engine and had its fair share of ups and downs as most projects do, but overall I am really glad to have been a part of it. I can't wait to see the final product! Better yet I have worked on something that hopefully some day Mateo will watch and enjoy! Who doesn't love a magical toy store right?

Sleepy Hollow... Again!

Every once in a while I will catch a few moments of a film on television in the evening, and somewhat rarely these days, I am inspired. Although in summation, Tim Burton's take on "Sleepy Hollow" didn't live up to my expectations... The rushed and somewhat silly ending, the odd choice of jokey lines here and there... When I see it now I almost always respond the same way. "God, that's gorgeous!" The film is an absolute triumph of art direction and production design provided by Rick Heinrichs and crew. My mind spins immediately into a myriad of personal projects I might undertake to explore that look and feel. There really are so many amazing aspects to the way the world of the film is created and unified throughout. From the physical town location that was actually built, to the forced perspective backdrops on the huge stage sets, to the spectacularly realized forest set - I love it all. It is a film that truly takes advantage of that which only film can deliver, the visual authority of a history painting, only one better - because the image moves! And tonight, having been reminded of a few stunning moments during this film, my belief in the medium is restored. If only for a night. Thank you Mr. Burton!

Rise of the Image Engine

So Image Engine has finished up a small selection of shots for the upcoming 20th Century Fox release "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer." Basically a 911 job (we were the last and smallest of all the visual effects vendors chosen to work on the film), but I think it is the highest profile work the studio has ever undertaken - unless perhaps "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" turns out to be higher profile, but I doubt that. Anyhow - a pretty cool step forward for everybody I think. The shot pictured here - I robbed from the theatrical trailer which is out now - was the largest chunk of work. A dynamic panning shot revealing a spy satellite circling the earth. A straight forward all computer generated shot, although it was actually a lot trickier than you'd think. The foreground element was all done through our Maya & 3Delight pipeline, but the background was a kind of 2.5D approach using a scene set up in Maya and then exported out for use in Nuke. The background is essentially a huge (4K) matte painting from source imagery of the earth (I think from the Hubble or something). It required loads of noodling to get it right. The people - Corrina Wilson, Oskar Wahlberg, Ori Ben-Shabat, Reynold "Bo" Mosley, Greg Massie, Jeremy Mesana, Roberto Hradec, Stefanie Boose - all did a wonderful job. Given the last minute notice and the inclusion of the shot in the film's trailer - it was a pretty crunched schedule. Onwards and upwards!

El Gran Pueblo

Madrid... What can I say? I feel like I know the city a little bit now that we have been there quite often and it seems to be like another possible home... Yet, as evidenced by Meg's father's cousin Marcelino's tour of central Madrid - I don't. One night during our stay we went out for an evening stroll and tapas with Marcelino and it was illuminating to say the least. This is the kind of thing that you just cannot pay for... Local, biased knowledge of "what's good." We visited about 5 tapas bars all in the area between Opera, La Calle Baja & La Latina. We stopped in for one or two tapas each time and a simple, small "caña" of red wine. I must say that all the walking definitely wore off the effects of the food and drink because every time we stopped I was starving and thirsty! This trip through El Gran Pueblo was a little more complicated with Mateo being along for the ride, but he was a champion traveler and it was I that fell ill with some kind of nasal infection. Methinks it was a classic combination of the ole "we're finally here, I can relax now" phenomenon as well as our crazy hectic schedule in London (to say nothing of the madness at work before I left!). Still we managed to get around with Meg's mama and Mateo and see quite a few of our favourite spots in the city. I have said often to people: Madrid is like a soft boiled egg. Somewhat difficult to assess at first glance, and like Paris somewhat difficult to access, but once you crack your way in... It is a warm and inviting place indeed.

The Splendour and The Stench of The Big Smoke

I have always found London a inviting place - gentile you might say! - though complicated by expense (it is as horrendous as people say) and a preponderance of bureaucratic civility! Of course, when living in The Big Smoke as opposed to traveling through as tourist your feelings change as you get on with the rigors of daily life. Much of London is grim. Dirty and sullen on dark winter days with little respite from the city encroaching on your soul. Escaping as I did while living there to the relative tranquility of Cambridge and a good friend's flat at the weekend was a godsend! There were moments of pleasure and fun and I always miss the pub! And I have to say that something about the stern British fight to get on in spite of things won me over a lot of the time. Finally, there was a time when I had had enough and the light of California came calling - if only for a short while... London's splendor was restored for me a bit on this trip (although I had to plug my ears every time I paid for something to avoid going deaf from the recurring grenades going off in my wallet) and I guess that had to do with staying largely to Earl's Court, Hyde Park, Kensington and Mayfair. My brief jaunt into Soho for a pint with friends reminded me briefly of the 'London as a shit hole' factor. Tough to forget really, and I left with as mixed feelings as I arrived, fond memories of long days at work at The Moving Picture Company and even longer nights at the pub all swallowed up by the atmosphere blending into a single gray element... Did I mention it was sunny?

Walshman Drinks London

All right my lovely UK people, after two years away from the smelly streets of Soho, The Walshman will once again be in your midst - however briefly! I am passing through on holiday. Join me for a warm pint and a bag 'o crisps at The Dog and Duck public house, located on the corner of Bateman and Frith Streets, Soho, 8PM or thereabouts, May 31st!!!

London Hotel Recommendations?

Meg, her Mother, Mateo & I are coming to London! For 4 days in late May - arriving the 30th - before we head on to España for 2 weeks of R&R in and around Madrid.

WE NEED A HOTEL RECOMMENDATION! We are attending a wedding in South Kensington, and we would like to have Mateo close to one of London's great parks, so we would like to be in the Notting Hill / Holand Park area... But we're open to suggestions! Battersy Park? COST IS A FACTOR! So we are looking for nothing fancy, but not a grotty hovel either.

PLEASE HELP! ANY HIDDEN GEMS & SECRETS LONDONERS!?!?

Walshman Drinks Los Angeles

Okay people - I hope to see you at The Beachwood (intersection of Washington Blvd & Abbot Kinney) at 9pm on Wednesday. The place should still offer some good atmosphere despite the lack of our esteemed colleague Mr. DLG (who I might add is still living in London of all places - rumour has it he has cut his hair and is wearing a beret). I am sure by now Mark has fallen in love with a Spanish Infanta and has laid plans to start a vinyard in La Ribiera Del Duero region. But I digress... In his stead, my buddy, none other than The Hasselhoff himself will be arriving via beach cruiser to slug back a couple stiff ones. See you Wednesday.

A Week in the Life of Walshman V7.1

Monday
4:00am - wake up feeling like a rock star (even though at this stage I am strangely not hung-over) and can't get Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" out of my head for some reason, too many episodes of "American Idol"
4:30am - Robin Hackl picks me up in The Batmobile (his suped-up Audi A6 Avant) and we head to the airport
6:00am - on the flight to Toronto I watch "Children of Men" on the 5X8 inch LCD screen in the back of the seat in front of me and confirm that Alfonzo Cuarón is a brilliant but flawed director and I still love him more for "Y Tu Mama Tambien"
2:30pm - eat an outstanding burger at the Grand Hotel where we are staying - the burger: a simple yet complex symphony of taste
3:30pm - go for a long walk through downtown Toronto on a lovely (though still smoggy) sunny afternoon and take in a bit of the University of Toronto campus
5:00pm - have a beer with Robin while a Bohemian woman sits next to us packaging small plastic envelopes full of dried lavender for "resale" and I recall for her my experience in Paris at the lavender festival in Place de Voges in Le Marais
6:00pm - watch painfully as a Quicktime I am trying to download from Image Engine's FTP website to my laptop in the hotel room chokes on the hotel-crapola wireless connectivity and eventually abandon all hope that it will download successfully, head off to meet up with prospective clients for dinner and a beer
7:30pm - meet up with said prospective clients at The Bedford Academy pub and shoot the shit about their project and visual effects projects in general for the next several hours
11:00pm - head back to the hotel for some much needed sleep

Tuesday
4:25am - cruelest of all hotel in-jokes, the alarm goes off unexpectedly causing expletives to fly freely from both Robin and myself
4:30am - try to get back to sleep... unsuccessfully
6:00am - wake up having not slept for the past hour and half and begin to prepare for the day ahead of on-set Supervision for Image Engine's ongoing work on "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium."
6:00am - ah, the beloved hotel breakfast buffet
7:45am - Robin and I arrive on set and hook up with Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Tod Haug (photo on left) and Visual Effects Producer Camille Celucci who are now at the helm of visual effects for Zack Helm's directorial debut
1:00pm - finally have a chance to meet Zack personally and thank him for involving us in his project, he seems much more open and gregarious than our last meeting
2:00pm - we wrap up our participation in the shoot having completed a full old school tape-measure driven set survey, Digital SLR multi-exposure reference photography of the set lighting, reflection ball and gray ball passes on film in-camera, Digital SLR general reference photography, and a series of HDRI Spheron captures of the set lighting... A bang-up job if I do say so myself
2:15pm - just before we leave Robin and myself, as well as the entire on-set crew watch in stunned silence as Natalie Portman 'switches on the acting chops' and delivers an incredible, endearing amidst the chaos of the re-shoot, leave believing a little bit more in 'acting'
3:00pm - meet with the aforementioned prospective clients again to review our test shot that is ongoing at Image Engine, all goes well... We find out later that the visual effects supervisor show the director for the first time! A new level is achieved...
4:00pm - head back to the hotel for a very late lunch and some roof-top hot-tub R&R in the sun (taking in the fabulous, exotic Toronto skyline, of course... Uh, yeah) Robin and I talk extensively about where Image Engine was a year ago and where it is going
8:30pm - head for another walkabout in downtown Toronto and dinner, end up at a place called "kultura" and eat some spectacular modern fusion tapas and have a few glasses of very nice red wine... Not surprisingly talk revolves mostly around the trails and tribulations of Da' Engun...
10:30pm - meet up with Reynold "Bo" Mosley at a seedy Queen St. bar called The Bovine Sex Club, apparently a famous hard rock bar... More beer... Uh, yeah... Did I mention more beer?

Wednesday
1:00am - arrive back at hotel and decide that microwaving the hell out of a two day old slice of pizza - and eating it - is a far better option than waking up in 5 hours with a huge hang over, having eaten said slice of pizza, I question the aforementioned logic
6:00am - wake from the dead feeling like David Lee Roth in 1980
6:30am - thank god for the hotel breakfast buffet, alcohol neutralizing savior that it is... Except for the curdled milk, of course
8:30am - flight back to Vancouver, get stuck in a middle seat and suffer like a caged animal all the way home
10:30am - arrive in Vancouver and head straight to Image Engine for a debriefing of the trip
3:30pm - head out of work with my brain in a serious hang-over-jet-lag-fuzz to meet Meg and Mateo who I miss like mad by now and have some refreshingly sane real life flushed back into the system, along with some spectacular Indian fusion food at Vij's cafe
5:30pm - home at last, Mateo fed, bathed and to bed, I crash...

Thursday
6:45am - Mateo is up, thank god he slept in!
11:00am - somehow rouse myself enough to stick to the run-though of a project meeting with some chaps from The Queen's own country, first time we show clients anything internally on the 2K player, it all goes really well and we hope to see them again soon
1:30pm - spend the rest of the day in a daze

Friday
12:30pm - Lunch with Bucket at Calabria Caffe on Commercial Drive, the usual conversation subjects apply - messed up projects and/or studios, self-propelled two-wheeled bliss of one kind or another, and the politics of cafe etiquette
5:30pm - skip the call of the pub and head home for the wind-down phase of Mateo's day, dinner, tub, stories, sleep
10:00pm - decide to get some rest and prepare for the next full-time job: the weekend!

An Odd Memory of Jeff Wall

Every once in a while this happens to me: I remember something. Strange though it may sound. It is true. Even though it feels lately like I have maxed out on gray matter: every new piece of information replaces an old one! Something bubbles up from the recesses of my mind... Today I remembered the short story of the small part I had in creating the image posted here. This is a famous photograph titled "Dead Troops Talk" staged by Vancouver artist Jeff Wall. In the early 1990's in a warehouse off of East Broadway Jeff recreated this scene, intended to be a bizarre snap-shot of the 1980's conflict in Afghanistan presented in a history painting scale photo light box. Jeff set it up by fabricating the entire hill-side out of wheel barrow after wheel barrow of earth supported by a structure of plywood. Well, for about a week I went there with my friend Ben Reeves (now an accomplished Vancouver artist in his own right) to help Jeff build this scene. I don't really even remember what we did exactly - I think we moved dirt around. Anyway, I don't remember anything particularly revelatory about the work - aside from the technique being significant at the time: shooting on huge 12 inch negatives separate plates and then recomposing the image digitally choosing all the appropriate takes for different aspects of the image. Pretty standard today. Pretty crazy back in the day. What do I remember? Moving dirt.

Tax Time in Canada

Rick Mercer is up to his usual fine level of comedy regarding tax season in Canada. The thing is - he not far off at all! As you may know I have traveled extensively since about 2003, nearly always working my ass off during the travel. This has created an inevitable trickle down of difficulties when filing taxes. Now, I have been 'good about it' always filing... Or so I thought! And paying good money to have things taken care of... Or so I thought! Recently, upon returning to Canada from the United States I have had a litany of re-filing, splitting incomes, claiming foreign tax credits, etc. What is always funny to me is how your great accountants - who really do a great job - inevitably find a way to save you $4000.00 and the charge you $3500.00. "Hey man," they say "at least you're up $500.00." When you're thinking - but aren't you up $3500.00? And they are the 'good guys' in this case. There's the government don't forget - Canada Revenue Agency! Good god these people really need to redo the plumbing man! I can not tell you how difficult it has been to simply file an adjustment to my 2005 tax return and claim the Canada Child Tax Benefit. More letters than I can count and every time to a different person! Cripes! Anyway... I forge ahead. Only to find out I inadvertantly forgot to file my 2004 taxes. Egad! I had them all prepared, and then due to a bizarre set of circumstances... They were never sent. Of couse, this will be my fault.

Thanks - I Found Them!

Trent Carlson and Andrew Currie are at Anagram Pictures! Thanks to all those who replied to my desperate call for help. No need to mention any names. Kevin Gamble! Kevin, you may be sly, resourceful and clever - but that doesn't mean you're not still... a jerk!

Where is Andrew Currie!? Where is Trent Carlson!?

Fire up the long range Walshman-radar people! Does anyone have contact info for these two Canuck directors? I met Andrew Currie and Trent Carlson back in the day at Mainframe Entertainment, but they are both currently A.W.O.L. from The Walshman's contact list! So help a brutha out and pass them on to me if you can my people. And Thank You!

Walshman Drinks Los Angeles

Join The Walshman for drinks and L.A. style posh tapas at The Beachwood in Venice Beach (Abbot Kinney and Washington Blvd.) on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 in the evening. I am in town for the B.C. Film Commission's Digital Post-Production Trade Mission and will need some serious R&R after a major chin-wag session in Hollywood. I was thinking why not head down to the Ole drinkin' hole while I am in town! So... Come one... Come all! And we will rehash all the good times and free love that was had while working at Rhythm and Hues (L.A.'s computer graphics hippie commune). You can let me know that you are coming by posting a comment!

Image Engine Seeks Senior Compositors

The visual effects for television department at Image Engine is seeking at least 2 senior compositors. Interested folks should contact Jason Gross, Visual Effects Supervisor = jgross@image-engine.com and/or Christopher Mossman, Head of TV = christopher@image-engine.com. Send in the usual supporting material - demo reel and C.V. etc. These positions are longer term contracts (shorter term contracts are also available). Core positions on the team, yadda, yadda. Image Engine is looking for people who know television work really well and are savvy to the ever increasing demands of television visual effects work. There is some incredible work being created for television in Vancouver these days - and Image Engine is doing some of it! 2006 saw the television department at Image Engine handle nearly 400 visual effects shots for "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" as well as a handful of shots on "Three Moons Over Milford." It is a busy department at Vancouver's most up-and-coming visual effects house!