Deeeeeeear Pam,

Here’s another packet.  Where oh where does the time go?  I know this is a week early, but I have to leave town for a while on a grand tour of _____, and I know I won’t be shooting any more videos or starting any new books this week, so I’m sending this in anyways.  You’re probably off shooting some blockbuster or romancing some unsuspecting American, so please feel free to disregard this packet until the actual due date.  I’ll be working here and there on new Lonely Bears.

Not much new to report.  I’ve tried to keep busy with Goddard work, inane plumbing jobs for my insane landlord, and almost daily editing jobs from my Taiwanese clients.

I’ve fallen in love with Walter Murch.  Thanks, that’s just what I needed, another romantic entanglement!

The Bear misses youuuuu.

with much love,
Paul.

Dear Mr. Hughes,

I am writing to beg for an audition for any and all upcoming films in your remarkable soon-to-be cult hit series The Lonely Bear. 

Sincerely, and with eager anticipation,
Pamelita Hallisworthy

You got the part, young lady.  I’ve always had a thing for redheads, and I suspect the Bear does, too.  What I was thinking, as per your idea at some point for “An Hour with Lonely Bear,” was that at the next residency I’ll do just that, have a showing of all the bear videos, because let’s face it, video night sucks and never works, and I’d rather have the show all to myself because I’m an egomaniac.  In conversation at the residencies, it always seems to come up that I’ve made all these horribly sad videos about horribly sad things.  I know that that’s not all there is to me, and with the debut of the original LB video last residency, I hope that people started to see there’s a little more than suicide and sadness to my practice, and as such, I think people would get a kick out of An Hour with LB, since stuffed animals watching porn and smoking are cool.

Okay, okay, so you are a little tired and burned out at packet 3. Get over it. There is work here, there is thinking here, and yes, there is also perhaps a little more life-distracting-art-and –study here too. Not the end of the world at all, and you really need to be a little kinder to yourself, not to mention that you need to learn to see the pulses and rhythms of process… whether creative, intellectual or any other kind for that matter. 

Yeah, I think I’m over it now.  The past few months have been a meticulous re-creation of my standard neurochemical arrangement, since I decided that happy pills are bad for my art, my sex drive, and I’m just not that person.  I’d rather be the swinging-back-and-forth-emotionally Paul who at least gets his work done, and I think my panic last packet was the last death throes of Celexa in my bloodstream.  I might still be broken, but at least I feel like me again.

There are ebbs and flows in the way we move through time… sometimes feeding, sometimes digesting or integrating what we have “consumed”… sometimes active, productive, white hot with the intense energy of  speaking and making, and sometimes simply being relatively still and dealing with the details of life. 

The notion that we can or even ought to be making art (or writing, videos, films, objects, meaning, etc.) ALL the time, emerges I suspect from those old notions of the artist/genius, cut off from the ordinary world, and consumed to a point of obsessive-compulsion which “liberates” them from the banal details of the world everyone else inhabits.

I confess that I like to think of myself as one of those solitary crazy artist types who works with white-hot energy all the time, always making, always doing, always showing something new.  I get uncomfortable during those quiet times of digesting what I’ve done.  I have a hard time processing the process.  There’s guilt when I haven’t created something tangible (bad word..  is any video art “tangible”?) or haven’t done “enough” for a packet.  I’m trying to get better at appreciating what I’ve done, looking back at it and processing before moving on to something bigger better faster now.

And besides, being the kind of guy who would drive 300 miles to buy a girl a drink, speaks well and deeply in favour of your humanity… a quality I think essential to artistry, even if not one we hear about much in the stories they tell about Western Art History.

Ahhhh, the girl.  She’s a whole bunch of artistic possibility in and of herself.  I lovehate the beginning of things.

So, yes… the learning that lies in repetition holds wonderful possibilities. The iterations and versions which lie embedded in pretty well ANY set of images and sounds or texts could easily keep us busy for an entire career, and in fact one can look at the long careers of certain artists and see how they have continually worked and reworked the same themes, questions, and preoccupations, if not the same actual imagery. 

I kind of have to chuckle to myself when I think about how that ratty little stuffed bear has suddenly become a major focus of my artistic practice.  He was omnipresent in my childhood, sat on top of a dresser for over a decade collecting dust (hidden during moments of embarrassed teenager girl-in-the-bedroomness), came with me to college when I realized that hey, girls like cute stuffed toys, right?, probably witnessed far too much drinking and debauchery there, and has now finally earned his place on the leopard-print futon with his friends and daily travels across the internet to make strangers laugh.  Makes me wonder what other little items like that I have right now that I’ll tap into in the future for my artwork.

I appreciate your discussion of public funding (government support) for the arts, and even though I live and work in a country where we have strong public funding for the arts, I suspect that I share your vague “uneasiness” with the notion of “expecting” such support. The grant system in both our countries is very competitive, and is bound to attract all kinds of artists and projects that might indeed “expect” public support… but here at least, very few of us who apply for grants, have any expectation at all, and most would go ahead and make the work without support unless its material or research costs were prohibitive.

Maybe I just have a problem with people thinking that they deserve anything at all.  It really irks me when Goddard classmates talk about applying for grants, winning Fulbrights, etc.  There’s opportunity there, yes, but so often it seems they just want the money and the actual art is secondary.  I’m still going to be arting even when my wallet’s empty and I’m eating cardboard sandwiches.  To me, it’s the difference between someone who creates for creation’s sake and someone who creates for financial gain.  Money is nice, but shit, it’s not everything.

Our rational for public funding in Canada is likely quite different from in the U.S. , and has to do with cultural identity, contemporary, cutting edge , non-commercial practice, and a recognition that our “markets” do not always or often support the creation and production of “excellence”, especially of the “made-in-Canada” kind. 

There’s a certain kind of sadness that I feel when I’m at my parents’ farm half an hour from the border, watching Channel 11 from Canada, and all I see is Seinfeld and 90210 reruns.  It’s not just that it’s sad for me to see that broadcast on Canadian television, it’s sad for me to see that broadcast anywhere.  I’ve seen enough of original Canadian television to know that there’s great stuff being made, so why would programmers resort to re-running tired American series?  It’s the same with other forms of entertainment.  I just downloaded the new Barenaked Ladies album from iTunes (an excellent and addictive service, if you ever check it out.  far too much piracy-free music available for $0.99; my credit card is weeping.).  I remember when BNL was this wacky little Canadian group with fun folky guitar songs, quirky lyrics, an hilarious live show (first concert I saw).  Now, it’s the same old homogenized, Americanized pop bullshit.  It’s sad, it’s distressing, and I hate that groups would sacrifice something deep and clever and unique to appeal to the lowest common denominator, American pop radio.  Sarah MacLachlan anyone?  I remember watching her accept a Juno award, and that was something special.  I’d rather have the Canadian “versions” of these people than the Americanized versions.  I LIKE that they were made in Canada!

And frankly, if my governments are going to support research and development in science and medicine and technology and the corporate sector, then I am happy to fight to secure a similar kind of investment in the arts.

I agree completely.  It’s like the old conflict of funding public schools.  What’s the first to go when a school is having financial difficulty?  The football team or the art supplies?  I interned at a high school where the only art supplies available to the students were Elmer’s glue and cardboard.  Lots of cardboard.  The school had a hell of a sports program, though.  Same thing in undergrad.  The fine arts building was literally falling apart, but they dumped millions of dollars into a Division III football team.

Perhaps there IS a key to this conundrum in your comment about making “public art” or working with “communities”. When a writer publishes their intellectual property, they own the economic rewards of that work through royalties, yes? When a visual artist shows work in a public gallery (not a commercial one, with an intention to market and sell the work) where no one pays to see it, how do they then “benefit” from the economic rewards traditionally associated with intellectual property? In Canada we pay visual artists an exhibition fee when they show in public galleries… and we do this in recognition of the principle of “payment for public use”. It makes sense to me, especially as art practices emerge where there IS no object or material product to “sell”… where there is only a time-based video work, say, a performance, or an ephemeral site-specific installation. 

Now that’s an interesting concept: an exhibition fee for public galleries.  I’ve never thought about that before, what happens when the pieces aren’t there for commercial gain.  I think it’s a great idea; I don’t know if anything like that exists in America or not, since I’m not big into the gallery scene.

The whole concept of video as a time-based medium still gets me all gushy inside.  It’s just awesome to think of what I create as never really existing as a whole, just fragmented moments of experience, art that only truly exists in memory.  Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to video; it parallels living in its position between existence and faded recall.

Substantive Work:

I am delighted you have ordered the Conversations. I am convinced you will devour it, and will be as delighted with what you learn about writing (from Ondaatje) as what you find in Murch (who in my view is a genius!!!! And an articulate one at that!!!!) These men have really thought about what they do… about the processes involved, about the intentions, the history, the dynamic metaphors… my god, Paul, I cannot wait to hear what you think about this book when you get your teeth into it!

More comments below, but holy crap, what a book!

As for needle, thanks for including it. I recognize you are revisiting some old ground here, both conceptually and formally, but think it speaks in an interesting way to how you manage, work with, and find ways to deal with sadness or pain through video and music. For me it sits almost like a journal entry, or a poem that one might write upon the loss of a friend, and I like that you can “use” your “art form” to do this more personal process. 

I’ve been having so much trouble writing lately that I find it interesting that you’d compare this video to a journal entry.  Maybe I’m hitting a wall with my writing because I’m putting so much energy into these video projects.  There aren’t any words left when the immediacy of these images is slapping me in the face all the time.  In editing “needle,” I could sense myself in a very meditative state, and as I was putting segments together, it was like I was writing in my mind.  I was assembling a journal entry as I was assembling the video, but I never got around to writing it out.  I guess some of it must have bled through into the video instead.

And of course, in closing, I will circle back to where I began and hug hard the Lonely Bear. I suspect you have, in this third one, crossed over an edge somehow, into what I call “series mind”.  By this I mean you have found not so much a “formula”, but a kind of strategic set of tools, which can then be brought to bear (forgive the pun) on narrative possibilities. This is in fact how I work, not so much in film, but 2-dimensionally… finding a kind of template of possible elements that will form the boundaries of how I explore multiple “encounters”. The “series” is a powerful vehicle to really play deep in a field of meaning, and I am totally supportive of what you are doing here, even IF it is a lot of fun. 

I’m definitely getting the “series” feel from LB at this point.  Discussed more below, but I’m realizing the power in creating a set of elements that can be repeated and subtly altered so that the audience has a certain expectation but experiences the surprises and novelty of experimentation.

SO… make more, and more and more… at least until you literally cannot think of another story you might tell with these elements. The other thing I want to encourage you to do, is get them out somehow… to other audiences, other eyes. Put them on a tape, send them to Saturday Night Live, or get them uploaded to a website that attracts lots of viewers, or get them to a local cable station for play on community channels, etc. They really ARE hilariously funny, deeply appealing and I suspect have a much larger audience than they have yet discovered for themselves. Film and video festivals would eat these alive… An Hour with The Lonely Bear…etc.

Oh, I’ve been making more and more and more, four for this packet and two more currently in the pipeline.  My goal is six for packet five.  I’ll admit that I’m afraid of experiencing creative burnout with the bear, but there always seems to be something popping up that I can take advantage of to surprise and entertain the viewers.  As far as getting the Lonely Bear out there, I submitted links to albinoblacksheep.com, a heavily-trafficked links site that sent enough people to my ifihadamonkey.com and timeforkink.com sites to flood them and knock them offline until December because of bandwidth overages.  Word of mouth for the LB has really been unbelievable.  I do plan to have “An Hour With Lonely Bear” at the spring residency.  What I’d really like to do, if technologically possible at the time, is shoot and edit a Lonely Bear video while I’m at the residency, which would give you an opportunity to participate as an actress, and it would be an added bonus for viewers who come to the showing, because they’d recognize Goddard landmarks and people, and it might be a lot of fun to encourage student participation while I’m there.  “Lonely Bear in the Goddard Cafeteria.”  “Lonely Bear Visits the Haunted Manor Second Floor.”  “Lonely Bear Walks All The Fuck The Way To The Library.”  “Lonely Bear Strikes Out With _____.”  You get the idea!

So… those are my comments for this round… am rushing off in all directions. Packets streaming in, little film gig shooting this weekend, trip to NYC mid-November to spend some non-cyber non-phone time with my “love”. (How NUTS is this anyway??? 1145 miles as the crow flies, and what crow in their right mind would fly so far in a straight line anyway?) (See? I don’t really “trust” love either!)

Ahhh, love is grand.  Someday maybe I’ll be in that again.  Until then, here’s two lines of American Psycho that I just love:

We buy balloons.
We let them go.

Anyway, my dear one, I send you love, the kind you CAN trust, and wish you well on your next packet, which will bring us almost to the finish line of another semester. My God, where does it go, the time?

Things speed up because our galaxy is collapsing.  I hope I graduate before we flatten out completely.

Hugs, and a small kiss for The Lonely Bear, right where his nose rotted off!
Pam

You know, that gives me an idea for a Lonely Bear video to shoot at Goddard: “The Lonely Bear Makes Out with Pam.”

Video:

• consumed (v.6)
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/consumed06mpg02.mpg
• 4:47, 24.4mb.
• I have a love/hate relationship with technology, as you well know.  The hate side of this romance has manifested itself in “consumed” versions three, four, and five, which won’t render under any circumstances, and for the life of me, I can’t find any logical explanation why not.  Version six rendered, though.  Don’t ask me why; it’s basically an altered version two.  I invested in an expansion pack for Pinnacle Studio 8 which includes dozens of new transitions with which I’ve been experimenting, and the ability to edit dissolves and fades and make my own transitions.  In projects like the Lonely Bear videos, I don’t use any scene transitions at all between shots, but in projects like “consumed” and “To Wound,” the dissolves between shots are an integral part of creating that dream state, the fluid merging of distinct elements into a hazy, uncertain whole.  Version six of “consumed,” besides exhibiting some of this transition experimentation, now includes an altered soundtrack where I’ve superimposed pieces of John Cage’s “Dream” into my own composition.  I do intend to keep working with “consumed,” but I’ll admit that I’ve been dumping most of my creative energies into the Bear series.
• The Lonely Bear: Bag of Surprise!
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/surprise01mpg01.mpg
• 3:33, 18mb.
• The Camel develops a crush on an internet girl, so he collects things in a Bag of Surprise that he’ll give to her when they finally meet.
• The focus in this video is on static imagery, from the accumulating items from the Bag to the match cut from Lonely Bear to Giant Evil Lonely Bear.  It’s this video where I really started to get a “series” feel to the bear videos, because I’m aware of repeating elements, not only the physical copy and paste of the beginning and end credits, but thematic elements like looking at porn and washing/not washing the dishes.  Repetition limits if it’s a direct repetition, but I’m finding that most of the humor and success comes from subtle alteration of repeated elements.  What could be limiting becomes a certain kind of freedom, because the audience is beginning to expect the repeated elements.  If I alter them, there’s still that expectation, but appreciation for the difference.
• The Lonely Bear: The Grapes of Wrath!
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/bearanim01mpg01.mpg
• 4:00, 21mb.
• After the stuffed animals go to the bar without him, Paul, facing a deadline, decides to animate the animals instead so he can get his work done.
• This video isn’t even really a video; it’s a collection of stills with a soundtrack.  It took what felt like FOREVER to make, but I think it was worth it in the end.  I’d been playing around with Flash animations, but I realized it would be simpler to just animate using Paintshop .jpgs and arrange them in Pinnacle.  I took stills with my video camera, imported them into Paintshop, and placed the animal cartoons over the static backgrounds.  The animals themselves were relatively simple to draw and layer into the backgrounds.  An important element of this particular video is the fact that I’m a part of it, not as an actor portraying the shady guy who sells the bear his friends in the original Lonely Bear, but as the guy who actually makes these videos.  Self-referential, self-indulgent bullshit, but it made people laugh.
• The Lonely Bear: Kegger!
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/kegger01mpg01.mpg
• 3:07, 16mb.
• The Lonely Bear is invited to a kegger at Beerman’s place while his animal friends stay at home to do drugs.
• I consider this video a sort of “coming out” for the Bear, since most of it was shot at my friend Beerman’s apartment during a party.  All the previous videos take place solely within 1003 E Fayette.  The people at the party had all seen the bear videos, and now it was their turn to see the production of one as it happened.  Nothing of real substance in this video, just a little fun.  There are pieces of it I’d like to expand on in future videos, like the fight sequence and the transformation from Lonely Bear into Giant Evil Lonely Bear.
• The Lonely Bear: Monkey Around!
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/bearmonkey01mpg01.mpg
• 03:46, 20mb.
• The Penguin has trouble sleeping, and The Lonely Bear reveals the presence of a Limbless Monkey in the apartment.
• Debut of the Lonely Bear Cub, the Lonely Bear’s Mother Bear, and the Limbless Monkey.  Flashback sequence, an unsuccessful attempt to break a beer bottle on my kitchen floor.  Thought I’d focus on The Penguin because I haven’t done much with the character yet.

• interpaul
• I’ve started coding the backbone of the “interpaul” project, which I envision as a vast online library of all things having to do with Paul Evan Hughes.  This project has been inspired by Tim Berners-Lee’s original concept for the world wide web, a gigantic hyperlinked resource, constantly updated, constantly shifting focus.  I’ve played around with hyperlinked text before on paulevanhughes.com, but this project will be something far beyond the links sprinkled here and there I’ve made before.  What I intend to build is a network hosted on paulevanhughes.com built from hundreds of hypertext pages, each dealing with a very specific item, a name, a song, an event, and each page linked to and cross-referenced in every other document that pertains to said items.  I first began to kick this idea around in my head after doing some research on John Cage for my new novel.  I downloaded a track called “Dream,” instantly fell in love with it, and used it in the new version of “consumed” detailed above.  Since I wanted to know more about Cage, I started reading some online biographies and autobiographical statements about and by him.  It wasn’t until the third or fourth web page that I read something that struck me like a hammer: Cage built his first altered piano while he was an artist in residence at Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.  Well boy howdy and guess what!  [passage excised]  It’s those little connections that fascinate me, and I envision the interpaul project to be a huge, sprawling network that will highlight seemingly inane connections like that.  It will be a media-rich environment, merging the usual text with image, audio, video, flash, each page deep-linked to dozens or hundreds of other pages.  The user experience will never once be the same, because I intend to update this project often, adding new avenues of exploration, new links, new connections.
• http://www.offensemechanism.com/bear.html
• Just a little page I made to provide a central location for all the bear videos.  I intend to expand the page soon and add detailed character studies, stills from the videos, plot synopses, and Flash animations as I learn to use the program.

• Easton Ellis, Bret. American Psycho. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
• I liked the movie, but the book just blows it out of the water.  I’ve never before read anything by Bret Easton Ellis, but if his other novels are half as good as American Psycho, I’m going to have to read them all.  I very seldom find a book that I can sit down and read for six hours a day until I’m done with it.  Delany’s Stars In My Pocket comes to mind.  What I appreciate the most about Easton Ellis’s style is his ability and willingness to linger…  By that, I mean that he’ll spend an entire chapter writing about Huey Lewis and The News.  He’ll describe in exact detail what everyone in a scene is wearing, not just the color and cut, but the price and the designer.  At first, such digressions from the narrative are annoying and seem pointless, but after a while it becomes evident that since the book is first-person, these vast descriptions are an indicator of just how “psycho” our main character Bateman really is.  He’s the perfect narcissist, the epitome of materialism, and these passages show just how focused on appearance and trivia he is.  I’ve wanted to find more transgressive authors to read, since my latest novel is a step deep into that territory, and American Psycho, blood- and cum-soaked as it is, was a great example.  To me, it read so much like one of the dozens of utopia/dystopia books that students have to read for high school and undergrad English classes.  The world portrayed in this book is so far from anything I’ve ever experienced that the world itself felt like a complete fabrication, that mid-eighties cocaine-dusted Wall Street world.  It’s hard to believe that such a world ever existed, but it certainly did, and those people who were living components of it are still out there.  Enough food for thought in this novel to choke me.
• Lion, Jenny, ed. Magnetic North: Canadian Experimental Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
• I’ve finally finished reading this compilation, and what I wish most is that I could find (and afford) the video series that apparently accompanies the text.  The layout of the book, with stills from the various videos discussed, is somewhat helpful in giving just enough of a visual indicator to begin to understand the discussion in the text, but it leaves me wanting more.  This format does give me plenty of ideas about how to assemble my portfolio when it’s time.  I found myself having to slow down sometimes, to actually look at the images instead of turning the page to get to the next text block.  Once I slowed down and looked instead of saw, I found dozens of interesting compositions.  There’s also a good discussion of the public support/government funding that exists in Canada, building upon what we’ve been discussing in the last few packets.  Goddard has always amazed me with the number and caliber of artists coming there from Canada (of course including you, Ms. I’m Paul’s Advisor and Rare Birds Is on HBO Again).  Guess I’m just another American ignorant of the great things going on to the north, although in my defense, I grew up on “Mr. Dressup” and “Degrassi Junior High” and the other fine programming of CKWS.  It’s definitely a great book because it gives me a different view of video art from a country/culture that is so geographically close and so seemingly different from that I’m coming from.
• Murch, Walker. “Dense Clarity - Clear Density.” November 11, 2003. Online: http://www.ps1.org/cut/volume/murch.html
• Henry posted this link on the Goddard message board.  I was surprised to find a great article written by my new love Murch about his audio editing and soundtrack construction for films such as “THX-1138” and “Apocalypse Now.”  The read is so dense, so filled with information, but it’s brilliant and beautiful, just like the under-appreciated Murch himself.  He discusses “encoded” sound versus “embodied” sound, and relates those concepts to that of the color spectrum of a rainbow.  The article is unlike the casual conversations in “The Conversations.”  His technical mastery of audio just shines through as he discusses how “complicated it is to be simple, and simple it is to be complicated” when creating the audio side of a moving visual piece.  Since many of my video projects have soundtracks with many layers, I found this essay helpful because I know how hard it can be to get just the right balance between the sound layers, bringing certain elements to the front, burying others, all in response to the visual side, or even in complete disregard for it. 
• Ondaatje, Michael. The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
• This book could very well be the “Remediation” or “Dhalgren” of this semester.  By that, I mean that I read through it in days, felt like a learned more from reading it than I could have in any number of video editing textbooks, and I’m remembering Murch quotes at random moments.  Did I mention somewhere that “The English Patient” and “Apocalypse Now” are two of my favorite five films of all freaking time?  You sure hit the nail on the head by recommending this book for me, Hall!  I’d never heard of Walter Murch before, but now I’m hopelessly in love with him and I want to be him when I grow up.  He seems like such a brilliant but unknown and unappreciated talent, the man who stands behind the Avid and turns these films from messes into Academy material.  The book is great because they discuss films that everyone has seen and give a real behind-the-scenes helping of insight into the process that made the final versions final.  I regret that I haven’t seen “The Conversation” yet, but I’ve added it to my Amazon cart.  I find that I learn the most when given concrete examples, and I found myself skipping to the segments being discussed in “The English Patient” and “Apocalypse Now: Redux” on dvd.  It’s so dense, so rich; too much to pick and choose from to discuss.  I just loved the banter between Ondaatje and Murch, relating the editing of TEP to Minghella’s screenplay and the original book, the peculiar challenges Murch sometimes found in successfully editing a scene.  I wasn’t just impressed with Murch’s video editing side; his audio background is amazing, as evidenced by the article I’ve included below.  I really appreciate the way he seamlessly goes from audio to video editing.  I realize the particular difficulties inherent to each side of the end product, as someone who composes and edits both audio and video for each project.  There seems such a spiritual side to Murch, such an intuitive talent.  I loved his anecdote about editing a particular scene more than once and cutting at the exact same frame more than once.  There seems so much to composing that can’t be explained in numbers or artistic elements, just a reliance on gut feeling and a deeper understanding of the emotional and thematic implications of placing a cut here or there, holding an image for a frame longer, adding a second of silence.  Murch is a genius by any standard.
• Rogers, Tom. “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.” November 11, 2003. Online: http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
• I ran across this site while reading a review of “The Matrix: Revolutions,” (haven’t seen it; don’t intend to) and as someone who’s a big fan of scientific accuracy in films, I think the site is a veritable treasure-trove of solid science and analysis of science errors in popular films.  A month or so ago, I wrote a segment of my new novel that dealt with many of the concepts explored on the Stupid Physics page in “Heiligenschein,” such as NO SOUND IN SPACE.  It’s a personal pet peeve, and I wouldn’t even call my brand of science fiction hard sf.  The site lists off quite a few grotesquely-popular recent films and tears them a new scientific asshole.  I love this stuff, and someday when I start making films of my books, I’ll be sure to use these guys as a resource.