Tag Archives: sarasota

Robot And Frank (Movie Review: Excellent)

Posted by apt46 on April 16, 2012 None comments

This is a charming movie currently making its way around the film festivals in preparation for a wide release in the fall. It’s about an old cat burglar who’s starting to show signs of dementia — forgetting certain things, becoming disoriented, not realizing what year it is, and so on. He has a son and a daughter on opposite sides of the Occupy movement: the son is a successful MBA type, and the daughter, a Peace Corps hippie. It’s set in the near future, and since such things will be possible soon, the son buys him a caretaker robot to make sure he doesn’t forget to eat or get lost walking around town. From there, things evolve into an Odd Couple scenario, with the robot trying to make Frank live a healthy life, and Frank trying to make the robot help him steal things.

Frank and the robot

 

What’s outstanding is that despite the premise of dementia, the movie is very lighthearted. The characters of Frank and the robot are both warm and likable, and the plot is interesting. Frank is played by Frank Langella, who played Nixon in Frost/Nixon, and among a lot of other things, Skeletor in Masters of the Universe. The robot looks a lot like Honda’s ASIMO, probably on purpose, and his voice is done by Peter Sarsgaard. Other actors whose names you might recognize: Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, and Jeremy Sisto.

Frank Langella and director Jake Schrier at the 2012 Sarasota Film Festival

 

The film won the Alfred P. Sloan prize at Sundance, which is given for the best sci-fi/techy movie — the phenomenal movie Primer won it in 2004. It was also the opening movie at the Sarasota Film Festival, and has nothing but good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. So add it to your Netflix queue, lest you forget about it.

Rating: 9 out of 10 apartments (5 is average).

Pictures From The 2011 Sarasota Chalk Festival

Posted by apt46 on November 7, 2011 1 comments

The Sarasota Chalk Festival ends today, and this weekend most artists finished some amazing masterpieces that took days to draw.

The above LEGO terracotta army was inspired by the giant LEGO man found on a Sarasota beach in the prior week.

 

There are a lot more pictures from the festival on Flickr.

Previously in chalk art, there was a very well done illusion in Stockholm.

Third Giant LEGO Man Washes Up On Sarasota Beach

Posted by apt46 on October 25, 2011 8 comments

This morning on Siesta Key Beach (a.k.a, the best beach in America), some guy found a giant LEGO man in the surf. It’s 8 feet tall, made out of fiber glass, and is wearing red pants and a green shirt that says “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE.”

Sarasota LEGO Man (Photo by Herald-Tribune/Jeff Hindman)

 

Giant LEGO men like these have also washed up in other beach resort towns: Brighton, England in 2008 and the first one in Zandvoort, Netherlands in 2007. They all wear red pants, but the one in Zandvoort had a blue shirt; the other two had green shirts. And the ones in Sarasota and Zandvoort were 8-ft tall and had the “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE” slogan, while the one in Brighton was 6-ft and had no slogan.

That slogan, by the way, is the title of Ego Leonard’s website; he’s an artist and has a picture of a LEGO man on the site that says “HELLO HOW ARE YOU DOING TODAY.” If you for some reason use only his last initial, his name is Ego L. ; if you then did the last-name-first thing, you’d end up with L., Ego — the LEGO man. The earliest the Internet archive time machine crawled his page was in October of 2007, two months after the first man was found. His website title was the same.

Zandvoort Lego Man (Photo by c.e. delohery)

 

Brighton Lego Man (Photo by Kent News & Pictures)

 

Lego Man on Ego L.'s website

 

There’s a very interesting pattern at play here: besides the fact that they appear in beach resort towns, you can draw an almost straight line on the map, going southwest, connecting all three towns. And each time, it crossed (or went around) land too — first, across South East England, then across Florida. It took nine months for the phenomenon to cross the North Sea to England, and then just five days shy of four years to cross the Atlantic to Florida. In miles per month traveled though, it went four times faster across the Atlantic: 5,000 miles in 48 months vs 375 miles in 15 months; maybe it had a faster ship to cross the ocean.

 

Giant LEGO man route

 

If the pattern holds, it should next land somewhere around Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, sometime in mid-2013 — assuming same speed over land, and a bunch of other things. Finally, here’s a video of the Zandvoort one:

Update, Oct 26th, 2011: The Herald-Tribune emailed Ego Leonard, who responded thusly:

I am glad I crossed over. Although it was a hell of a swimm. Nice weather here and friendly people. I think I am gonna stay here for a while. A local sheriff escorted me to my new home.

From The Herald-Tribune

Best Beach In America: Siesta Key Beach

Posted by apt46 on May 27, 2011 2 comments

Dr. Beach (unfortunately not his actual name, but he is an actual doctor in coastal sciences) released the 2011 beach rankings, and Siesta Beach is the winner. The beaches are ranked according to how they score on 50 criteria, most of which are surprisingly relevant to what makes a good beach: sand softness, air & water temperature, presence of sewage, amenities, noise, how crowded it is, etc. Siesta’s usually ranked in the top three, but in the 21 years of the rankings, this is the first time it got the gold.

Siesta Key Beach

 

Last year’s winner was Cooper Beach in the fancy Hamptons on Long Island, though for some reason it didn’t even make the top ten this year. Coronada Beach in San Diego and Kahanamoku Beach in Hawaii got second and third, respectively.

From Dr. Beach

Sarasota Among Top 25 Arts Destinations

Posted by apt46 on May 24, 2011 1 comments

American Style magazine has a somewhat confusing list of arts destinations — it says there are 25 of them, but separately lists the top 25 big cities, mid-sized cities and small cities: 75 total. More so, it seems to go by the strict definition of city limits which places for example, Miami in the mid-size class while Tucson is in the big class; nevermind that the county Miami’s in is almost three times as populous as the one that claims Tucson; and that no one in their right mind would call Miami a mid-sized city and put it in the same class as Colorado Springs. Perhaps next time they should go by Metropolitan Statistical Area, hmmm?

Sarasota Opera

 

But misguided classification aside, Sarasota was 5th on the list of small cities. Florida made a big splash in general, however: St. Petersburg was 1st among the mid-sized cities, Tampa 7th, and Miami 10th; Key West was 7th among the small cities, Bradenton was 10th, and Naples was 18th. Below, the top five in each category; the lists are compiled from a poll of the magazine’s readers.

Big Cities:

  1. New York
  2. Chicago
  3. Washington D.C.
  4. San Francisco
  5. Boston

Mid-sized Cities:

  1. St. Petersburg, FL
  2. Savannah, GA
  3. New Orleans
  4. Charleston, SC
  5. Scottsdale, AZ

Small Cities:

  1. Asheville, NC
  2. Santa Fe, NM
  3. Gloucester, MA
  4. Saugatuck, MI
  5. Sarasota, FL

From American Style, via The Herald-Tribune

Sarasota: “the Best Place to Mix with Artists and Athletes.”

Posted by apt46 on March 9, 2011 None comments

According to the April issue of Men’s Journal, Sarasota is “Florida for people who hate Florida”, except for all the sunny days, which only evil black-hearted people hate. Then it goes on to mention all the awesome artsy and athletic things around town.

Via The Herald-Tribune