Monday, March 12, 2007

Bouncing Balls

As mentioned earlier, there was a surprise Twisted contingent at PyCon this year, and I had the opportunity to hang out with both those of the gang that I'd already met and done some hanging with, as well as those that I had not. Brian Warner was one that I hadn't had a chance to chat with much until PyCon, and it was amazing. I plan on interviewing him in the future regarding Foolscap, his thoughts on E and python, as well as the innovative business he's working for right now.

But what the hell, you ask, does this have to do with "Bouncing Balls"? Well, in addition to going (or not going) to talks, attending BoFs, engaging in extensive business networking, and eating/drinking copious quantities food/drink stuffs, we also had time for good old-fashioned geek fun: watching movies. I do use the term loosely, though, indicating essentially anything *.mov, *.avi, *.wmv, etc. Brian shared with a whole gaggle of us the joys of The IT Crowd (all six episodes), Stalking Santa (preview), George Lucas in Love (which I had never seen), and the apparently famous (and rightfully so) Bravia commercials. The paint "fireworks" advert filmed in Scotland was just brilliant and hilarious (be sure to watch the making of), but I left my heart in a superball, bouncing down the streets of San Francisco. See if the same doesn't happen to you when you watch the Bouncing Balls.

That video simply mesmerizes me. I've watched it tens of times and it still makes me feel like a joyful little kid. Just amazing. Side by side with the insanely awesome cinematography and the astounding colors, the music makes this a stunning classic. The song has been haunting me since PyCon and last night I finally had a chance to sit down and search for the artist. I didn't have to search long, though, as the Bravia and last.fm pages share all. Turns out the song is "Heartbeats" from José González's album Veneer, a cover from eccentric Swedish band The Knife. After reading more about Veneer, I bought it immediately. I highly recommend it.

And, no, I'd never see this ad before; I don't have TV service. I am of the "pull" school for entertainment, versus "push" (or "always on").

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3 comments:

Doug Napoleone said...

The music in the video is 'Heartbeats' by Jose Gonzalez:

http://www.jose-gonzalez.com/

http://myspace.com/josegonzalezmusic


A fantastic new artist, check him out.

Duncan McGreggor said...

*chuckles*

douglas, I guess the post wasn't interesting enough to read all the way through -- the last paragraph talks about the artist, the song and the band that originally wrote it ;-)

And I totally agree with you -- José is fantastic.

GregP said...

I'd seen the superballs video before, but thought it was CGI! Really makes me miss SF. Also reminds me of the superball collection I had as a kid ... I had a giant cardboard poster roll that looked like an empty tank round, about 6 inches in diameter, FULL of superballs. I used to collect them. Sometimes I'd dump them out all at once and it looked like a miniature version of that video.

Had you seen this page that has lots of cool links about the video?
http://tinyurl.com/358lb8

I absolutely loved that paint fireworks video too, along with the "making of". How cool would jobs like that be? Spend six months planning a giant event like that? Man I'm in the wrong line of work.