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[Stepher]

The Color of....

[complx1605]

Ok, I dont know if this is anything but here is my take on "The Color of"

When you hear this expression The Color of what do you think of? Well I think of "The Color of Money" Well the color of money is GREEN, right?

Well if you look at the sceen where Jim enters Sloman's Slo-Dance the (EXIT) sign above the door was GREEN, with all the lights out except the letter "IT"

So I belive this might be tied into the 3rd clue "IT" being the money, "Green" being the color.

Or I could just be losing my mind.

[monkeypants]

Color of....

[imbri]

I have the same list as monkeypants (well, accept for the Harley Davidson longshot )

I was torn for a while (and still a little bit) with Red/Blood. As I was thinking my color might be screwy. Glad we have the same color 'problem' with our TV set

Brooke

[eyeLurk]

"La respuesta es anaranjada"

[LordKinbote]

You guys do realize that there is such a thing as a "blood orange", right?

---Scott

[Ozy_y2k]

I also seized on the "orange" vibe pretty early on.

This is probably quite a bit OT, but an interesting thing about orange and its use in film (and, I think, in Push, NV) as a symbolic device.

In the GODFATHER movies, Francis Ford Coppola consistently used oranges, or the appearance of orange-related objects, as a visual leitmotif which presages imminent disaster. For example, in GODFATHER 1, Don Vito Corleone and his minions are idly browsing the storefront shops of a fruit market and sifting among the orange stands when a hit is placed on the Don by passing rival family thugs. Sonny is eating an orange when he is gunned down at an ambush in the tollbooth, and Vito has his fatal heart attack while surrounded by oranges in a sunny grove.

More examples:
http://www.jgeoff.com/godfather/oranges.html

This oranges=disaster symbolism is at least as legendary among film geeks as CITIZEN KANE's mysterious "Rosebud", and has been riffed on, both seriously and for parody's sake, by numerous other filmmakers so often since 1971 that "orange" has almost become filmic shorthand for "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, BAD THINGS AHEAD!!!"

Is this a purposeful homage or hint by the Push producers? Well, anything's possible, but my money is on recognizing the fact that these guys know their stuff, and intend to communicate something through judicious use of visual and literary symbols. Aside from all of the fairly transparent Biblical nods (the Mary/Martha dichotomy, Shadrach, Caleb not burning in the fires, etc.) and poetic (Eliot, Glassman) references, there have been, I think, knowing nods and winks to filmic history and culture as well.

THE COLOR OF MONEY, the Scorsese sequel to THE HUSTLER, is the most obvious signifier of late. It may be worth noting that: (a) Scorsese was a contemporary of Coppola, in the "new vanguard" of young early-70's filmmakers whose fuck-the-system maverick style and fluid use of camerawork and dollying obviously inspired Affleck and crew; and (b) the scene where Jim stands stock still in the middle of a busy casino, drinking in everything with perceptive eyes while everyone else speeds around him, has a visual antecedent in a similar scene involving the young Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise) in the Scorsese film.

Other film-noir and "hard-boiled" crime film tropes and homages in Push which may or may not be clues: the numeric knuckle tattoos sported by the psychotic tattoo artist, which were reminiscent of Robert Mitchum's "LOVE/HATE" tats in the original CAPE FEAR; the "red rooms" of Sloman's which very nearly parallel the look of the Black Lodge in the Lynchian universe of TWIN PEAKS; and the slo-mo lingering fire fetishes which have graced every decent film noir climax, from the return of the Wicked Witch to haunt Lula Fortune in WILD AT HEART all the way back to Edward G. Robinson's climactic shootout and flameout scene at the end of LITTLE CAESAR.

Now, I know as well as the next guy that if you squint hard enough, you can find connections in damn near ANYTHING. So do I think Ben and crew are trying to tell us anything with the "Oranges Everywhere!", or the "COLOR OF...." title, or all of this film history theory blah blah blah? Probably not, I just find it "interesting," the same way I find the existence of a widely-understood or accepted meme-type phenomenon that rapidly propagates across the web because it appeals to the primal understanding of the Western civilization culture maven to be "interesting". If nothing else, it shows that these guys sure do know their structural genre cliches.

Ozy

[LordKinbote]

Just thought I'd mention that a Blood Orange is a type of martini, and on Push Times, Eunice the funeral home owner says "The dead know no business hours." She waves her glass, "And neither do martinis."

If you want to see the ingredients in a Blood Orange, go to http://www.blood-orange.com

---Scott

[sapagoo]

Early Morning Spec

[shadow]

Orange

[Ozy_y2k]

interesting thing about that picture...

the shot is mostly black, with a teeny bit of oranges at the bottom. odd use of negative space for a supposedly "journalistic" photo.

steg? visual filter? hidden message?

O

[catherwood]

Re: the picture in Push Times -- my first thought was stegonography too, but it is a .jpeg and not a .gif or .bmp -- my knowledge is thin, but i thought you needed an image with a color palette to do steg?

Re: Ozy's film school sidebar -- whew!

Re: blood orange -- i'm not sure i got that from the TV show alone. Perhaps this is a case where the online clues are muddying the waters more than helping.

Re: orange -- I thought the drinking of orange juice was very staged, more so than Sloman eating an orange. I noticed and then forgot about the title being in orange. But none of these clues are as incongruous as the word "television" on a name plate, for example. I'm hoping that one of the Bible sermons leads to a verse about harvesting fruit.

Re: red -- While blood was a major theme, I would look for places in the script where it feels like a forced plant. For example, Sunny is talking about books on her TV show, and she mentions that she knows the story will be good when there is "blood" on the cover. (Hopefully, she meant the word in the title of the book and not actual smears of blood.) Also, I noticed that the ABC text which indicates which show you are watching (you know, that overlay: "Now - Push, Nevada / Next - Funniest Home Videos) used a logo which was a red circle. Now, maybe that was always the case, or maybe LP requested a red circle, or maybe i'm just seeing fnord things.

Re: the overall episode -- I don't have quite the buzz from this one as the others. I will want to watch it again, of course, but it's not as much of a craving. I think i miss the more extreme avant garde aspects of the first two eps. Mainly i miss the swoshy™ time-warp effect we had when Jim first tasted the soup or looked at his watch. In fact, i was really expecting it when he reached for a tall glass of water (and the camera seemed to make sure we watched him drink it down).

I'm sure i'll think of more to say later. ;-)

[mottjr]

Re:Steg

There is very little limitation on the types of files which can be steggedand a color palette is by no means a requirement I have even hidden files inside of flash files to prove this point to someone in the past.

As I have said before in other places, the difficulty in using steganography in an ARG is that the PMs have to find a way to at least hint at the program that was used to steg the file. Even if you knew the image was stegged and had a pretty good idea of what the password might be, you would still have to try the password in every program available until you hit on the proper one. Steganography software is not interchangable.

Steg was used extensively in the first Alias game, but one of the first tools we were led to was the proper software package. Later, when ther PMs decided to change software, they were kind enough to point us in that direction also.

-Jim

[mottjr]

[Tien_Le]

Possible Alias V.2 tie-in