Song of the Lonely Mountain

I'd heard Neil Finn was doing the end credit song to The Hobbit movie; I'd thought I'd have to go see the movie or buy the soundtrack to hear it!  I know Crowded House songs have been featured in soundtracks before, and I know his brother Tim has done credits songs before, but this is the first one I've heard Neil doing.*  Quite a bit different from his usual songwriting - much more orchestral and ethereal-sounding, although of course I've only listened so far on a tinny single Nook speaker...

In other observations about this movie, after so much Sherlock watching lately, which most people I know are clueless about, it's slightly weird to notice six-foot-tall images of Martin Freeman's face suddenly looking out from all the bus stop signage in the last week or so.

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*I take that back - he did the soundtrack to a film called Rain in 2001, which I haven't seen or heard, unfortunately.  I remember my Finn email list talking about that one, but it's not widely available here.

NPR: Apple Visionary Steve Jobs dies at 56

While I'm more of a Microsoft user, I can't say I'm totally without influence by Steve Jobs creations, and I will not deny the world has lost a creative genius.  Steve Jobs is credited with being the first to make computers available to the average person, kickstarting the music download industry, and changing the way we purchase and listen to music.  As a family, we own several iPods of varying sizes (mostly older models, though), and I've been a user of iTunes for a number of years.  He also had a hand in getting what has become a large part of the movie industry started. 

In 1986, I was attending Humboldt State University, and was excited to get tickets to a two-day animation film festival, the second day of which was entirely computer animation.  It was extraordinarily expensive at the time - I believe I remember a quote of about $10,000 per hour of animation to produce, using very large supercomputers, so most of what existed then were shorts.  One of the shorts I saw then, sitting in the dark in a college auditorium, was by a new company (most of them were) of a large and a small desk lamp interacting - the large one acted as if it were a parent, while the small one hopped about, balanced on a ball and generally acted like a puppy.

According to NPR article above:

Jobs was eventually fired in a 1985 boardroom coup led by John Sculley — the man Jobs himself had hired to be CEO of Apple. But Jobs was driven to make computers vehicles for creativity, and after he left Apple, he purchased a little-known division of Lucas film and renamed it Pixar. In 1995, Pixar released the first animated feature to be done entirely on computers. That film, Toy Story, was a huge success, and Pixar followed it with other big hits including Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.

(my emphasis added)

Luxo Jr., above, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1987 for best animated short and  later became part of Pixar's logo; he can be seen at the beginning of every Pixar movie, forming the "i" in the name.

While sometimes I complain about how some animation is "too" computer generated, Jobs set it on an inexorable path, and computer animation is now found in almost every kind of visual entertainment, sometimes where you might not even suspect it.

On Facebook, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco quoted a statement by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, Pixar's heads:

"Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time."

Good-bye, Mr. Jobs.  You'll be missed.

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