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"Screen Capture" a Whole Web Page on Mac OS X

[Ignore this if you're not a web geek.]

So, back in my Windows days, I was a fan of HyperSnap, a screen-capture tool that could "auto-scroll" Web pages, which saves one from having to capture one portion, scroll down, capture another portion, then bring those into an image editor, and stitch them.

On Mac OS X, no tool offers this functionality. But I just figured out a way to do it. Maybe somebody else did, but I couldn't find it.

1. In your web browser (I use Safari), go to Page Setup.

2. In the Settings menu, select "Custom Paper Size"

3. Click "New"

4. Enter the dimensions for your paper -- make sure it's bigger than a typical web page you'd want (I've got 11" x 33")

5. Give those dimensions a name (e.g., "Screen Capture")

6. In the Settings Menu, return to "Page Attributes"

7. In Paper Size, select your custom name.

8. On the web page you want to capture, select Print...

9. Choose "Preview..."

10. This will open the page in Preview. You can Command-C to Copy, and then Paste it into wherever you want it.

This might seem onerous, but you only have to do the basic set-up (1-7) once. From then on, it's just "Print" to Preview, cut, and paste!

Love Me Or Leave Me - Set Your Tivo!

On Thursday the 17th, Turner Classic Movies will show Love Me or Leave Me, a "biopic" of Ruth Etting, who made her way from small Chicago clubs to the Ziegfeld Follies and beyond, in a career managed by a Chicago gangster. My dad clued me into the prior airing of the film with this email:

Just in case you haven't seen this flick, it is as good a movie musical-bio-drama as I have seen. If that seems a limited category, then let me add that one of the very best studio films I have ever seen.

The movie just misses greatness, but Cagney's performance is either the first or second best of his entire career. I cried at the end of the flick in 1955 because I knew I would never see another performace that good again. And I haven't.

Doris Day is a revelation. Her acting and singing and body are everything you could ask of a woman. Nobody knew it at the time, but DD was living through her own tormented marriage at the time she was playing this part.

Cameron Mitchell must have been under studio contract, and his performance shows it.

I just watched the whole thing again a couple of nights ago. And TCM is screening it again at 4:30 this coming AM. In the original wide screen format.

It's yours for the taping.

After I saw the film, I wrote back:

An impressive, impressive flick. Thanks for pointing it out to me -- I would have never thought of seeing it on my own.

> The movie just misses greatness, but Cagney's performance is either the first
> or second best of his entire career.

After WHITE HEAT?

> I cried at the end of the flick in 1955
> because I knew I would never see another performace that good again. And I
> haven't.

That might be true. He is amazing in it. He portrays a Man perhaps better than I've ever seed a Man portrayed on film...

> Doris Day is a revelation. Her acting and singing and body are everything you
> could ask of a woman. Nobody knew it at the time, but DD was living through
> her own tormented marriage at the time she was playing this part.

Which, from what I read, continued another 10 or so years, until her husband died, and DD realized she was broke.

For me, it was a curious film, because I'm not really cognizant of much of the movie's context--the life of Ruth Etting (I hadn't realized this was a biopic until after I saw the film); what people expected of Doris Day at this point in her career; or how it stacks up against other contemporary musicals. All that said, the film stands on its own, marvelously, thanks to Cagney's performance and Day's character's shrewdness. The human emotion seems improbably complex for a studio picture of the mid-50s, making you wonder if everyone understood what they were making. I still haven't figured out if Etting (in the picture) is conniving, innocent, lucky, shrewd, selfish, misunderstood, or all of these things. You don't expect a Doris Day vehicle (which I'm guessing is how this was initially considered) to offer so many shades of humanity that you leave the picture scratching your head about what you saw.

To which he responded:

All of your comments are right on the button. It can surprise us--the level
of sophistication that sometimes slipped into studio product. But when you peer deeply into the credits of the director and writers - all of them - you can see that these were interesting and serious filmmakers.

HE WALKED BY NIGHT is another excellent movie on this week. I loved it for what it was when it first came out. But when you see Jack Webb in it, you now know where his concept for DRAGNET got its start.

And He Walked By Night is a good film, but that's a post for another day. . .

Avast Ye! Scurvy Dogs! Arrr! And All That

Yesterday caught Pirates of the Caribbean, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. A rollicking adventure, it has what you'd expect: lots of swords, ships with damned men, parrots on shoulders, cannons, a damsel in distress (who can hold her own in a fight). It also has good stuff you wouldn't expect -- heaps of good humor, Johnny Depp doing an amazing Keith Richards impersonation, delightfully gruesome skeleton special effects (reminiscent of Harryhausen), clever allusions to the theme park ride, and just a very well sustained sense of fun.

Seeing Keira Knightly in Bend It Like Beckham, you knew an ingenue that pretty would be cropping up again, and IMDB shows her to be quite active. I'm curious about Love, Actually -- writer Richard Curtis has proved himself repeatedly in the past, from the Blackadder TV series to Four Weddings and a Funeral to the underappreciated Bernard and the Genie. This will be his directorial debut.