Borealis burning bright

Aurora borealis over Inuvik

Wiggle Wiggle Woo

 

A long time ago, I don't know how many years ago it was, when I first started making gifs for my blog (which now seems like a very long time ago), there was a fad: 3D gifs (or GIFs, as they are usually called - I just use lower-case letters because "GIFs" is so bleepin' ugly). The 3D gifs were just what you see here - two very slightly different views of a scene which were rapidly wiggled back and forth to make them sort of look 3D. Technically it's a gif, but a very inadequate one because gifs usually express movement, and these look like the participants are either experiencing a mild earthquake, or sitting on jell-o.

The 3D effect is there, kind of eerily, not unlike the stereoscopic images from my Grandma's old viewer (and didn't YOUR Grandma have one of those, too?). These are a little more disquieting because they just won't stop moving. I'm not sure of the age of them, but it's well over 100 years, so that the pictures would likely be hand-tinted. As a matter of fact, it's very likely these gifs WERE made from those old stereopticon cards with the double image on them. I'm not sure what else they would use.

So what does this prove? Anything? I just analyzed one of them using my gif-making/editing program, and they each have exactly two frames. I don't know why the eye is fooled into thinking it's 3D, when it most decidedly isn't. 

Then people started making their own, and this sort of thing was popular for a while, though I guess you had to have the right equipment to take the pictures. This one has not two, but six frames, but is still limited by that incessant (pointless?) back-and-forth movement which makes the subject of the picture seem so utterly frozen.

I had to try slowing this one down. Not very exciting, is it? But it's typical of the kinds of images I was seeing back then. I remember all sorts of excited entries on web sites with a kind of "WOWWWWW!!!" tone to them: NOW YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN GIFS IN 3D! Even ready-made ones were considered the marvel of the age. Look! Oh wow! They're in 3D! Just like in the movies! All I could see was a lot of jellylike shaking.

Speeded up, you can see that everything seems to be moving in the picture except the main figure, who is just hanging there. The effect is more disquieting than ever.

WOW.

Or. . . not.

This turned out to be a fad which fizzled very quickly, mainly because it just looks so DUMB and not really 3D at all, just annoying. All the images I've gathered here are from posts from 2011, so my guess is that 2011 was the height of the fever. 2011 now seems like approximately one billion years ago. Six years is a long time, and on the internet it is an eternity. 

I can't leave this topic alone until I present a couple of truly hideous historical ones I found. I don't know how these were made, but probably with a double-sided stereoscope image. I just wish they hadn't done it at all.

History comes alive.

Elk and rainbow: Sunwapta lake

Scare-the-shit-out-of-you time!

William Shatner's Shatoetry

Everyone should know by now that I ADORE William Shatner. The man has mastered the eerie art of reverse ageing, so that he looks a little younger every time I see him. I'd say he looks about 62 now, and is . . . I have to take a breath to say it - 86. Even Betty White, the infamous hot dog-eater of my recent animation, is not quite so ageless, and though she's an attractive old lady, she is just that - an old lady. This guy is  just - what? An anomaly?

If I ever get to meet him, I need to ask: so what's the deal here? Did you really make a deal with the devil when you were 25 years old, or what? And what was the deal? To serve humanity until the end of time? It's all so enthralling. He just seems to go on and on. And that's not even getting into the horses, and how he rode that horse at full gallop in Alexander the Great, without a saddle and in a short skirt.

I saw an incredible video that said he's going to be in Cirque de Soleil, but I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. Maybe it's even true?

OMG, yes, it was last March! The last time I saw such agelessness, such an easy vitality and effervescent life, was when I watched Ringo Starr in concert. He has reverse-aged as well, in his own way, going from hangdog to hip, from mutt to marvelous. 

I don't know how these guys do it. Put it in a jar for me, will you?

When good rabbits go bad

Just when I think I've seen the all-time worst movie ever made (Plan 9? Glen or Glenda?), something like this comes along.

It's one of those super-low-budget creature-feature things made in the early '70s. It has a noble cast, from Janet Leigh (yes, THAT Janet Leigh) to Stuart Whitman to Rory Calhoun, not to mention DeForest Kelley, the legendary Bones on Star Trek. This makes you wonder if the rent was overdue or what.

For the evil menace in this movie isn't giant locusts or rogue apes or killer ants or Godzilla. Not even Gila monsters filmed to look big, or anything like that.

It's bunnies.

Bunnies which supposedly have been made real big and bloodthirsty by some sort of experiment. One escapes (ONE?), and within a couple of days, the whole area is swarmed by "thousands" of giant rabbits (though we see only a dozen or so at a time, hopping along in slow motion).

The only problem is, they're so darn cute we can't believe they'd be a menace to anyone, let alone snap off someone's arms and legs like they're made out of china.

This isn't one of those tongue-in-cheek horror-movie-parody things like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It's in dead earnest. This movie is trying very, very hard to be a scary movie. The rabbits, filmed against dinky little sets to make them look big, are depicted as bloodthirsty marauders as they hippity-hop along the bunny trail, leaving humans sprawled in a wash of maroon house paint. This just drags on for an hour and a half, but it's unintentionally hilarious. I watched it one night and my husband came downstairs and said, "WHAT are you watching?" He hadn't heard me guffaw like that in some time.

This one is listed under "comedy" on YouTube, though I assure you it's made with the utmost seriousness. The filmmakers ask us to accept the fact that when the rabbits wouldn't cooperate, actors in bad rabbit suits and even hand puppets acted as viable stand-ins. What ISN'T so funny is what happens to all those fluffy-tailed, hippity-hoppity, twitchy-nosed, lop-eared Peter Rabbits: they're all electrocuted and end up lying in a heap of smoking ruin. 

I hope nobody took their kids to see this. It's the one horror movie where you hope the "monster" will win.

And here's what the critics said. . .

Robert Sellers
Radio Times

A total bloody shambles.

TV Guide

The mind marvels at the bravery of the person who walked
into the producer's office to pitch this idea.

Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Well worth watching for those enamored by bad films that are
unintentionally funny.





Bob Baker
Time Out

Impossible not to admire the total withholding of irony in
Claxton's approach to this kamikaze project.

Eric Henderson
Slant Magazine

Rabbits produce two things in obscene quantities: other rabbits
and rabbit pellets.

Christopher Null
Filmcritic.com

One of the worst films ever made.

John J. Puccio
Movie Metropolis

The only thing more lifeless than the corpses in Night of
the Lepus is the movie itself.





Roger Greenspun
New York Times

It is this technical laziness as much as the stupid story
or the dumb direction that leaves the film in limbo and
places it in neither one camp nor the other - neither with
Attack of the 50-Foot Woman nor with Flopsy, Mopsy and
Cottontail.

Staci Layne Wilson
StaciWilson.com

Here comes the 'eater' bunny!

Shane Burridge
rec.arts.movies.reviews

A failure on every level.

Glimpse of heaven: roll cloud

Giraffes for dinner

Electrophone Girl

When I first saw this image of a winsome, euphoric young woman with what looked like earphones on her head, I thought, what the hell year was this taken? I immediately wondered if she was about to be therapeutically electrocuted, as was the fashion back then. Electricity was thought to be a panacea, a cure from everything from sexual desire to neurasthenia (whatever that is).

I was to learn - and thank Wikipedia for this! - that, in fact, she was listening to the radio. In 1895! There was a kind of radio in the 19th century, and people could listen to broadcasts of plays and concerts from the comfort of their own home. 

Radio 30 years before radio. Who knew?

If you look more closely at this image, now doing the rounds of the internet, you will notice it has been defaced by "somebody" (not me!) to give the beautiful young lady crude-looking rings, a necklace, a nose ring and wristwatch (which I am sure she never had, wristwatches not having been invented yet). I don't know what the doodles signified, except that perhaps someone assumed she was a time traveller projecting herself decades into the future.

But no. She did it all through her telephone. People were using their phones for all sorts of inventive things back then, enjoying music and plays and comedies and opera, all manner of entertainment. It was Smartphone without pictures. Then, as is usual with the human race, we forgot all about it, the knowledge sank without a trace, and was resurrected 120 years later as a Brand New Thing.

Once more we are playing with our phones, sopping up music and entertainment and even wearing funny things on our heads that would make a Martian think we had gone insane.

Electrophone System

The Electrophone system was a distributed audio system which operated in the UK between 1895 and 1926. This system relayed live theatre and music hall shows and, on Sundays, live sermons from churches. This was a subscription service and users would firstly ask the operator, by using their normal phone line, to connect them to Electrophone. The Electrophone switchboard operator would ask them which theatre they wanted to connect to. 

A 1906 advertisement stated that they could choose from among fourteen theatres — the Aldwych, Alhambra, Apollo, Daly's, Drury Lane, Empire, Gaiety, Lyric, Palace, Pavilion, Prince of Wales's, Savoy, Shaftesbury and Tivoli — in addition to concerts from the Queen's and Royal Albert Halls, and, on Sundays, services from fifteen churches. For opera, they would be connected to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.

To pick up the programs, multiple large carbon microphones were placed in the theater footlights to pick up the sounds of the performers. In churches, the microphones were disguised to look similar to bibles. Home subscribers were issued headphones connected to their standard telephone lines. The annual charge was £5, which limited its affordability to the well-to-do. Queen Victoria was included as one of the listeners. In 1897, it was noted that coin operated receivers had been installed in some hotels, which provided a few minutes of entertainment for a sixpenny. Additional lines were installed, for free, for use by convalescing hospital patients.

Although fairly long-lived, the Electrophone never advanced beyond a limited audience. In 1896 there were just 50 subscribers, although this increased to over 1000 by 1919, and just over 2000 at its peak in 1923. However, competition due to the introduction of radio broadcasting resulted in a rapid decline, falling to 1000 by November 1924. In early 1923, an Electrophone director was quoted as saying that "it would be a long time before broadcasting by wireless of entertainments and church services attained the degree of perfection now achieved by the electrophone." However, that proved to be overly optimistic, and as of June 30, 1925, the London Electrophone ceased operations.

A second, much smaller system, was established in Bournemouth in 1903, but the maximum number of subscribers only reached 62 as of 1924. This system was finally discontinued in 1938, after it was determined during the previous year that there were only two remaining subscribers.

Blogservations. Two subscribers! That beats my yearly sales of books by exactly two, so I'm impressed. But I'm even more impressed that back in the Victorian era, someone thought of broadcasting concerts and plays and church services to a home audience, using technology that already existed. Someone was most definitely thinking ahead.

I'm also intrigued by the image of the young woman with the tennis racket over her head. 

Did someone just brain her with it, or did she brain herself? Or is this how you listened to those magical broadcasts, clamping this weird-looking gizmo over your head?