This week: A flavor someone likes, a lesson on proper techy animation techniques, and praise for another film reviewer.
Happy Loser
As a writer who regularly enters (and loses) your “Flavor of the Week” contest, I’ve not been prepared to like any of the stories that win the weekly contest. However, I have to congratulate you on selecting last week’s winner, as Donna Ferstand’s story (“In the Beginning, There was Adam,” Feb. 27-March 4) was excellent. She is an artful writer who told a trenchant and amusing tale, and while sex stories can often be clichéd, hers was not.
Imagine: a story that both titillated and edified me! (It sent me directly to Google, trying to find out who this Archer guy was.) If I was going to take relationship advice from any of your winners so far, it would definitely be Ferstand. Her combination of wisdom and experience—not to mention a sense of humor and a pretty robust sense of adventure—are just what a sex columnist need.
And if I’m going to keep losing this contest every week, I can at least take solace when I am defeated by a writer as gifted as her.
—Lance Stewart, East Village
Point and Shoot
No no no, it’s not rotoscoping in Chicago 10 (“Cartoon Court,” Feb. 20-26), it’s motion capture! Rotoscoping is tracing footage of a live actor frame-by-frame to turn him into cartoon; it’s how Bakshi made his Lord of the Rings. Motion capture is putting your actor in sensor-covered leotards and letting a slew of computer-connected cameras record his movements from every angle. It’s what Zemeckis used in Polar Express and Beowulf. Once you have all that data in the computer, you can CGI-animate anything into existence with it (like dancing penguins or long-dead radicals) and have your camera “swirl through the room in impossible positions.”
Glad to help you out on this one. Hey, aren’t you glad you got a letter about a film review that isn’t complaining about Armond White?
Joe Strike, NY
California Meta Critic
I just wanted to write to praise Felicia Feaster’s work (“Marc Jacobs, The Pixie,” Feb. 27-March 4). Her ability to render film and art into their essential forms is remarkable, especially given her review of Shooter [last year].
—Kevin Chow, California
Happy Loser
As a writer who regularly enters (and loses) your “Flavor of the Week” contest, I’ve not been prepared to like any of the stories that win the weekly contest. However, I have to congratulate you on selecting last week’s winner, as Donna Ferstand’s story (“In the Beginning, There was Adam,” Feb. 27-March 4) was excellent. She is an artful writer who told a trenchant and amusing tale, and while sex stories can often be clichéd, hers was not.
Imagine: a story that both titillated and edified me! (It sent me directly to Google, trying to find out who this Archer guy was.) If I was going to take relationship advice from any of your winners so far, it would definitely be Ferstand. Her combination of wisdom and experience—not to mention a sense of humor and a pretty robust sense of adventure—are just what a sex columnist need.
And if I’m going to keep losing this contest every week, I can at least take solace when I am defeated by a writer as gifted as her.
—Lance Stewart, East Village
Point and Shoot
No no no, it’s not rotoscoping in Chicago 10 (“Cartoon Court,” Feb. 20-26), it’s motion capture! Rotoscoping is tracing footage of a live actor frame-by-frame to turn him into cartoon; it’s how Bakshi made his Lord of the Rings. Motion capture is putting your actor in sensor-covered leotards and letting a slew of computer-connected cameras record his movements from every angle. It’s what Zemeckis used in Polar Express and Beowulf. Once you have all that data in the computer, you can CGI-animate anything into existence with it (like dancing penguins or long-dead radicals) and have your camera “swirl through the room in impossible positions.”
Glad to help you out on this one. Hey, aren’t you glad you got a letter about a film review that isn’t complaining about Armond White?
Joe Strike, NY
California Meta Critic
I just wanted to write to praise Felicia Feaster’s work (“Marc Jacobs, The Pixie,” Feb. 27-March 4). Her ability to render film and art into their essential forms is remarkable, especially given her review of Shooter [last year].
—Kevin Chow, California
