OwlGod

My conversation with a robot

2010-12-09T15:57:00.001-08:00

My conversation with a robot

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 10:13 AM PST

A sex/spam bot chatted with me. It failed my turing test.

9:57:39 PM maebridge1243: hey =) i been waiting to talk to u!
10:03:27 PM WhedonHater: who
10:03:30 PM WhedonHater: are
10:03:31 PM WhedonHater: u
10:03:43 PM maebridge1243: Hey!! My name is Vanessa.. wuts going on?!?
10:03:59 PM maebridge1243: I been waitin to talk to u!! IM feeling so naughty right now lol
10:04:15 PM maebridge1243: haha im 20 yrs old i'm going to school in Florida.. sometimes i get sooo bored n lonely in my room, can u do me a favor plz ;)
10:04:23 PM WhedonHater: I have a recurring dream
10:04:36 PM maebridge1243: I signed up on this site to make some extra money,they wanna see how many ppl i can get to watch me... it is free, plz come watch me dance, ill do anyhting u want me to ;)
10:04:44 PM WhedonHater: can i tell you about my dream first
10:04:48 PM WhedonHater: ?
10:05:00 PM maebridge1243: c'mon, just accept the invite on the page baby http://www.acceptinvite.com/apj3j click there im dancing right now for a few guys and a few off my girlfriends lol hahah
10:05:12 PM WhedonHater: I see a snail, crawling
10:05:15 PM maebridge1243: y arent u here yet?!? cum watch me shake my booty hahaha, cmon only way i can go live 1 on 1 w u is if u sign up, read the site its free i promise
10:05:21 PM WhedonHater: crawling along the edge of a straight razor
10:05:25 PM WhedonHater: it is crawling there
10:05:28 PM WhedonHater: and it is still alive
10:05:30 PM maebridge1243: ok sweety =( only way we can play is if u sign up, agn read the site they wont charge u, just wanna make sure ur 18.... sign up u wont regret it ;)
10:05:37 PM WhedonHater: are you a machine?
10:05:47 PM maebridge1243: here is the site agn http://www.acceptinvite.com/app2e u dont wanna miss my sexy ass haha
10:05:49 PM WhedonHater: You are standing in a desert, and you see a turtle.
10:05:55 PM WhedonHater: The turtle is flipped on its back
10:06:02 PM WhedonHater: It cannot turn itself upright
10:06:05 PM WhedonHater: You could help it
10:06:09 PM WhedonHater: but you don't.
10:06:11 PM WhedonHater: You just watch.
10:06:15 PM WhedonHater: How does that make you feel?
10:07:07 PM WhedonHater: Can you hear me?

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: The Making of Star Wars (TM)

2010-11-26T07:06:00.001-08:00

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: The Making of Star Wars (TM)

Posted: 25 Nov 2010 10:13 AM PST

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

The Making of Star Wars (TM): The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film by J. W. Rinzler

There's always more and more, November 25, 2010

This review is from: The Making of Star Wars (TM): The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film (Paperback)

I have LITERALLY been reading about the making of Star Wars my entire life, and I learned things I never knew in this book. I'm not sure if that's because this is one of the best books about the making of a movie ever written(it is), or if it's because George Lucas is the master of the teasing drip of content(he is). Either way, this is a treat for Star Wars fans, filmmakers and people interested in moviemaking in general. It will inspire you, encourage you, and frustrate you. When you see how much work Lucas actually had to put into the first film, how hard it was to secure funding, to fight the schedule, to make it happen at all, you'll be amazed that the film ever reached theaters.

Perhaps more than anything else, this book captures a certain period of American Filmmaking, the mid-70s artistic boom. Lucas, Speilberg, Coppolla, and many others were taking the Hollywood system by storm and changed everything. Sure, now their style of filmmaking has become "they Hollywood System," but at the time it was new and fresh and dangerous.

It makes me dream of what the next filmmaking revolution will be...

A reminder that the Medal of Honor is more than a video game

2010-11-17T15:35:00.001-08:00

A reminder that the Medal of Honor is more than a video game

Posted: 16 Nov 2010 09:24 PM PST

You can read the official narrative here, or you can pickup Sebastian Junger's excellent book War, which covers the incident as well. I actually read Junger's book several months ago, and was surprised as I was watching Giunta's award ceremony today as I recognized the action being described. A quick flip back and I found that around pg. 118 the exact event for which he was awarded the medal is described. It is an intense few minutes, and Junger sums it up tersely at the end of the chapter: "It was the kind of week that would make people back home think that maybe we're losing this war."

Giunta's words at the ceremony reflect the workman like courage that I've found is common among the best members of the military I've served with: "Everyone else was doing what they were supposed to, and what I did was about the only thing I could do."

As Junger describes it in his book, the entire action took perhaps 15 seconds, during which he was shot, identified the location of the shooting, directed fire, and then counterattacked. In Junger's words, "an untrained civilian would have experienced those same 15 seconds as an incomprehensible cacophony of light and noise, and spent it curled in ball."

Giunta is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since George "Bud" Day, who was awarded the Medal in 1976. There have been multiple Medal of Honor recipients since then, but all were awarded posthumously. The future of SSG Giunta's career is likely one of recruiting and morale boosting, as since WW2 is has been the unofficial policy of the military to keep Medal of Honor recipients out of harm's way. My guess is that he will be commissioned as an Officer before he retires, as the Medal of Honor waives any college degree requirement and having that on an application is pretty compelling.

I liked the moment when President Obama "broke script" and declared, "I really like this guy."

Armistice Day: Why I serve

2010-11-12T15:23:00.001-08:00

Armistice Day: Why I serve

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:24 PM PST

Memorial Day is the day for the dead. Veteran's Day is for the living. Unless you call it Remembrance Day, in which case it's totally appropriate to remember the dead.

Either way, I just want to say something that I tried, probably not very successfully, to get across to someone who was asking me how I could be in the military. Specifically, how, as an expectant father, I could voluntarily put myself in harm's way, in a situation where the is a great than average chance that I could die. Well, technically not greater than average, but greater than if I wasn't in the military.

What I said is that I believe that service is a necessary component of being a member of a civilized society. Some kind of service. Further, a military is something that every society is going to require, at the very least for self defense and, at least in the best cases, to help other people around the world. Forget for about politics and the good or ill impact of such things for now. That's a discussion for another day.

What I'm getting at is that someone is going to have to be in the military. We have an all volunteer military, so those who don't want to serve are not pressed into service as was the norm for a long period of our history. So someone has to leave their families, someone has to put their lives on the line, someone has to make that sacrifice. Leaving your family, putting yourself in a place of harm, all of that is something that not everyone is cut out for; not everyone can live with that. I can live with that, and as long as I can, who am I to ask someone else to make that sacrifice for me?

In my mind it's about looking beyond yourself and beyond the immediate needs of your family. It's about the needs of your community, and the long term security and prosperity of your family. In my opinion, like it or not, without a strong military the US wouldn't be the place of relative comfort and security that it is today. Without the US military Asia & Europe would be very different places today. Someone has to go, and I'm not comfortable asking someone else.

Lost Weekend

2010-10-25T16:02:00.001-07:00

Lost Weekend

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 09:51 PM PDT

The thing that sucks about taking a challenging college course is that it often leads to "lost weekends," 2 days without work but filled with homework. Days like today make me feel that I should just throw in the towel and settle for what I've got now. This whole "bettering oneself" is a hell of a lot of work.

While working on homework tonight, we watched Sherlock on PBS. This new show stars Martin Freeman as Watson and someone I'm not familiar with as Holmes. It is a contemporary telling, so Watson & Holmes are texting back and forth constantly, and Watson has a neglected blog. Kind of sadly, Watson is still a veteran of Afghanistan.

The show is witty and imaginative, with some really nice visual flourishes to show Holmes' deductive process. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Downey Jr. version, but it manages to keep itself distinctive. Holmes is a bit like Batman that way, a versatile enough character that multiple interpretations can co-exist happily. This one is a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next couple of movies/episodes(the series is a set of 3 90 minute episodes, more akin to TV movies). Stephen Moffat of Dr. Who fame apparently created this show, and it's another favorite in our house.

Peaceful Warrior

2010-10-17T16:01:00.001-07:00

Peaceful Warrior

Posted: 16 Oct 2010 09:49 PM PDT

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender recently. After all my family being obsessed with it, I finally gave in and started watching it and have to admit that I was missing out when everyone else was raving about it.

I don't want to talk about all of it, but I have to say something about Uncle Iroh. I've come to believe that Iroh is one of the best characters in all of fiction. He represents everything that is great about being a poet, warrior and philosopher. He isn't perfect, and he isn't a pacifist, but he enjoys a good cup of tea and can appreciate that things look differently after some reflection.

Mako gives the performance of a lifetime voicing him, with a fierce nobility matched with warmth and compassion.

Iroh is everything that I would like to be in a person. He has a wisdom that is only found in experience and mistakes, but is born out of love and strength.

The Town: Review

2010-09-19T16:02:00.001-07:00

The Town: Review

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 04:17 PM PDT

I don't think I'll have much more to say about The Town, so I'll just get it off my chest now.

Affleck's second movie is a heist movie, to play as a companion piece to Gone Baby Gone, which was a detective movie. Here the detective is the morally upright but narratively inconvenient policeman, who serves only as an instigator to put pressure on our protagonist. In fact, Affleck and the main policeman John Hamm only share 1 scene in the entire movie, and I think they don't have dialogue as much as the other is in the room as one gives a monologue.

As a heist movie is is pretty straightforward, with the heists being very simple jobs that are complicated by the involvement of police. Their first job, the only one which they seem to have been able to plan to the level they like, goes off without a single hitch. The subsequent jobs are rushed, leading to escalating problems.

Affleck is good in this role, bringing a world-weariness that his baby faced brother wasn't quite able to pull off in Gone Baby Gone. He's also cut like a knife, rippling with muscles that he shows off with shadowy pull-ups. The most interesting thing about his character is something that the movie doesn't make much of a fuss about: he goes to AA meetings, and is a recovering drug addict. I think a lot can be drawn out of that, particularly his belief that he isn't doomed to live in his neighborhood forever. He's changed once, and he goes to meetings where the constant mantra is that he isn't trapped. There's always a way out.

The film isn't as good as Gone Baby Gone, mostly because it plays more with mainstream conventions, and as such it isn't allowed to be as unrelenting or surprising as Gone Baby Gone. The earlier film took my breath away at least three times with unexpected occurrences, usually a character acting according to their nature instead of the directives of the script.

That's not to say this isn't a great film. It's well acted, even in the small parts, and has a grim reality to it that many heist movies are lacking. Jeremy Renner is great as the obligatory "loose cannon," but he brings enough crazy to the performance that it really does seem like he might do almost anything at any moment. There is a "1 last big job" but at least it is something that is almost forced upon the characters instead of something they seek out. And for most of them, it isn't a last job. It's just a bigger than average job. The best thing about the film is a subtext, the feeling of being trapped by circumstance or upbringing. Affleck's character is smart enough to know that isn't a rule, just a feeling. The movie, a bit unfortunately, isn't daring enough to suggest that it might actually be a rule. There is talk about paying for your sins even if you've changed, but Affleck's character doesn't have much of a price demanded of him.

The Fall of Smodcastle

2010-09-04T16:05:00.001-07:00

The Fall of Smodcastle

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 05:37 PM PDT

I used to love Kevin Smith's Smodcast. It was a great insight into the life of someone who (used to be) one of my favorite directors, and, best of all, it was funny.

Sometimes it had a theme, such as a discussion of the grey market for action figures at comic book stores(my personal favorite episode, #50), or some of the oral history stuff of Highlands, NJ(I might actually start listening to his dedicated Highlands history podcast.

Anyway, as the podcast has progressed it has grown and grown, sort of like Kevin Smith's films. A huge cast of guest hosts and friends has evolved into something like 45 podcasts being spun out of this one. The main Smodcast itself is half the time a "recorded with a live audience" affair, which leads to lots of discussion particular to the audience itself. Smodcast has always been rather insular, but when the focus was upon Smith & Mosier's lives it was much more interesting than when it focuses upon itself.

And I understand Smith's need to generate revenue from this in order to pay for what, to be fair, is one of the most professionally produced podcasts that isn't produced by an out and out corporate entity. But he takes ad-supported well beyond the level of self-parody into some kind of bizarre amalgamation of content and advertising. And on a regular basis as well, just in case I'm just tuning in and might have forgotten about his sponsor.

I was tempted to say that his podcast has followed the course of his movie, but it's a bit different than that. While I feel his movies spiraled out of control from the insightful Clerks to the really great but over-reaching Mallrats to the sincere emotion of Chasing Amy & Dogma to the genuinely hilarious self-parody of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back to the overly sincere Jersey Girl to the pandering Clerks 2 to the desperate dreck of Zack & Miri Make a Porno to the outright paycheck of Cop Out, Smith's podcast has followed a more or less linear path to where it is now. It is almost as if Smith learned the lesson that trying too hard to reclaim any indie legitimacy will just give him a headache. So he's embraced the path of selling it as long as they're buying it.

I'm not trying to make a judgement upon Smith, although I do have thoughts on the idea of grasping at all these little ways of making money. Like I said, as long as people keep buying he's happy to keep selling, and more of it. It's almost like a little experiment in capitalism, seeing how much each market can hold before it collapses.

But for me, it's lost most of its appeal by becoming so diluted that none of his current podcast products offer what I enjoyed about it in the first place.

Don't even get me started on Kevin Smith doing wedding ceremonies.

The Expendables Review

2010-08-29T16:02:00.001-07:00

The Expendables Review

Posted: 28 Aug 2010 04:33 PM PDT

I have several movie reviews to write, but this is by far the shortest and easiest, so I'll just get it out of the way.

The Expendables: This movie is a huge let down. Sure, it has just about "everyone" in it you might expect, but it lacks something. I don't know what it is, but Rambo was a much better return to a classic series for Stallone than this homage. I think perhaps the real-life issues that Rambo was trying to address fit better with the elegiac tone that Stallone seems to be applying to all his current movies. It worked in Burma, where real life stories of atrocities haunt the headlines all the time. Here, seeing Stallone agonize over taking a team of badasses into an anonymous Caribbean island to overthrow a dictator & his CIA backers is just maddening. Didn't Sly hear that the leader of this island is "el hen-er-al?" I'm pretty sure there is no benevolent leader in the entire world who is referred to as "el hen-er-al."

Then the movie has some decent action scenes(a cargo plane with machine guns and the final compound battle come to mind), separated by long stretches of forced camaraderie. Most of the other bad-asses are wasted, or at most given 1 scene to show their stuff. Arnold & Bruce Willis show up for a few moments to swear a lot and look old(Arnold) or plastic-surgery fake(Willis). In fact, Willis looks both old & fake in this movie, like David Bowman at the end of 2001. Except with fewer liver spots. Even Jason Statham is wasted in this film, never really being allowed to do his awesome crazy shtick. Dolph Lundgren is good for a while when he plays to his strengths, but soon enough the movie has him wise-cracking and smiling again. Somehow, he is more frightening smiling than scowling.

Eric Roberts is pretty great as the bad guy, but again Stone Cold is basically in the movie for a single scene where he body slams multiple times while somehow not delivering a stone cold stunner. All in all, another disappointment, like the rest of the film.

The Cosmo & the Darkness

2010-08-17T16:03:00.001-07:00

The Cosmo & the Darkness

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 09:45 PM PDT

Every night I put my dog Cosmo outside after she eats. I do this so that she can do her doggy business where I prefer, that is, the yard and not the house.

Some nights she happily jaunts outside to explore the twilight hours. Some nights she reluctantly slinks out, as if I have just cast her from Eden with my fiery sword.

Some nights she is pawing at the door, eager to go before I even get there.

Once outside, she rarely stays near the door. Sometimes I'll pass by the door sometime later and see her dutifully sitting on the patio, watching me through the screen. But these are rare nights, rarer still in high summer, when the insects buzz and the sky stays light late into the evening.

Just before bed, sometimes before I brush my teeth, sometimes after, I open the back door to call her in.

Sometimes she rushes in, eager to greet me and retire to the softness of her dog bed.

But more often, I have to call and call before I hear her collar jangle in the dark. She lurks beyond the reach of our porch light, in the recesses of the yard, near the boxwoods and the compost bin, haunting the shadowy areas of my domain. I call her name over and over, straining to see her in the weak light of our hanging lamps. Then, finally, she quietly walks out of the dark and brushes past me into the house.

My dog is sleeping in the kitchen, curled up on her Costco issue dog bed and watching me with one eye open. She stirs and puts her head down, shutting her eyes. What she dreams of I'll never know. Of what she thinks of when she's stalking the long grasses of my yard, I'll always dream.

Reviews: Red Cliff & Salt

2010-07-26T16:01:00.001-07:00

Reviews: Red Cliff & Salt

Posted: 25 Jul 2010 07:53 PM PDT

I meant to write about this movie a while ago, but I got busy, so sue me.

Red Cliff(I watched the 2-part, 4 hour, International Version):

"I never thought I would be defeated by a cup of tea."

John Woo makes a movie that is by an order of magnitude more mature than anything he's done in the past. Windtalkers was awful and ridiculus when it tried to be serious, and I can't think of another John Woo movie that really tried to be serious and even contemplative. But Red Cliff manages to be both, and moving too boot, in the midst of telling the story of one of the largest military encounters of in recorded history.

Let me say just this: Red Cliff is the movie that you've wanted every Trojan War movie to be. This is, finally, at long last, a movie that shows Generals as unstoppable forces on the battlefield, without making it silly. When an army calls for reinforcements, and one guy shows up and you know what? He IS adequate reinforcements. The foot soldiers are (most of the time) just there to kill time, catch arrows and generally be mowed down until the generals hash things out.

All this, and it also has a fantastic story of friendship between two very intelligent men, Tony Leung's Zhou Yu and Takeshi Kaneshiro's Zhuge Liang. These men are constantly needling each other, but they have a genuine respect that grows into affection and admiration over the course of the film. It says a lot about the quality of John Woo's filmmaking that their first meeting features a bit of zither improv that is as thriling as the battle scenes.

Everything about this movie is exciting and powerful, showing a military victory achieved by smart thinking, good luck and the timely intervention of a woman. So much of history has turned on such things...

Salt:

"Then you are a Russian spy."

This movie is hard to describe without spoiling it, and it is nicely twisty plot-wise, so I shall resist my usual urges.

Suffice to say, this is a wonderful paranoid action movie, based around some an amazing opening chase sequence and a couple of really great infiltration pieces later on. Nothing ever quite catches up to the pace of the opening sequence, but Phillip Noyce makes me remember how great Clear & Present Danger was back in the day by keeping things varied and interesting. Kurt Wimmer, serving as writer, brings some of the inventive action sense that he used in Equilibrium & Ultraviolet without those movies ridiculous sci-fi plots keeping things down this time.

Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor are all great as the 3 leads, brining lots of variety and depth to their performances. In a lot of ways, this movie reminded me of Mission Impossible & Minority Report. Only it was better than Mission Impossible but not as good as Minority Report. The trailer really only shows the very beginning moments of the film, so it blows through those quickly and then keeps going. Anytime a movie does that I'm interested, and this one kept things going with solid action, great performances, and a surprising emotional heart.

Parenthood & State of Mind

2010-06-29T16:02:00.001-07:00

Parenthood & State of Mind

Posted: 28 Jun 2010 09:40 PM PDT

Watched 2 movies on Netflix over the weekend that I hadn't seen before.

Parenthood, which we watched because Nicole & I are fans of the new series. This one was weird, since it is so close to the new series, but very different in some ways. The youngest brother is a total jerk in the movie, but a hard working parent in the new series. The Steve Martin character is also much more of a goof in the movie then in the series. In general, the whole movie is a lot less serious than the show. It also felt like a damn Pixar movie with its Randy Newman theme song.

A State of Mind. All about two teenagers preparing for North Korea's mass games. These kids spend 2-4 hours a day rehearsing for months, years even, just to perform. The level of, I hesitate to call it brainwashing but lets say something more than enthusiasm, is stunning. The way that every activity of every moment of every day is devoted to the state. Amazing. I'm also shocked that North Korea doesn't win some kind of team gymnastics every Olympics. The choreography and athletic ability on display is incredible. I'd like to see a follow up about the people who organize the mass games. What that must take, the kind of stress they must be under, that's a story that needs to be told.

Toy Story 3 is a great finale but a terrible sequel

2010-06-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

Toy Story 3 is a great finale but a terrible sequel

Posted: 19 Jun 2010 11:23 PM PDT

Toy Story 3 is a great movie. It is by far the best looking of the Pixar movies yet, is hilarious and touching and sad, and it brings a satisfying end to the series while leaving it open enough that they could keep returning to the well if they really wanted to.

But it is a terrible sequel. Especially considering how perfect Toy Story 2 was, as a film and a sequel. Toy Story 2 came out 4 years after Toy Story, but you can watch those films back to back and not miss a beat. Everything in Toy Story 2 is a natural progression of Toy Story, and the movie steps forward while keeping everything grounded in the basic plot structure of the first film.

Toy Story 3 is a very different beast. First, it deviates strongly from the structure of the first 2 films by having the whole "1 toy(or group of toys) has to rescue others" condensed from basically the entirety of the first two films into a short section near the beginning. Second, there are no new songs in the film at all. Toy Story 1 & 2 weren't exactly musicals, but they had memorable songs from Randy Newman. The only new song here is a new version of an old favorite.

Of course the thing that sets this apart the most from the previous 2 sequels is the finality of it all. There is no doubt that this is intended to be an ending to the story, and as such the characters come to very different fates at the end of the film, bucking the trend in 1 & 2 to reset the status quo at the end of the picture.

But lets talk about the great stuff. Sunnyside Daycare is a fun and interesting location, with lotso' fun things that happen, and tons of little bits of toy action always going on in the background. The new toys are uniformly awesome, but Michael Keaton really steals the show as Ken. Ken is simultaneously teased for his history as an also-ran to Barbie and made into the coolest of all the new toys, possibly the coolest that the Ken toy has ever been depicted. Lotso' Huggin' Bear is fun, but he ends up being a bit too silent during some key scenes that could have really fleshed him out as a fuller character. There is also a VERY creepy baby, and an overly adorable new human character.

I have to say that the graphics deserve special mention. The opening sequence is visually stunning, and the entire film makes Toy Story 1 look like garbage. Pixar really pulled out all the stops on this one, and there is a sequence near the end at a garbage pile that at some points looked like actual toys clambering over actual garbage. Incredible.

The film also gets rather apocalyptic at certain moments, and it might be a bit too much for the kids who are generally a huge target audience for these films. I felt that of all the Pixar films this one was specially geared to the people who were young children when Toy Story came out 15 years ago, and less to new audiences. This film not only requires a certain familiarity with the characters but a certain maturity in the audience to appreciate the emotional points they are trying to make.

The only thing that didn't work for me is the material with Andy. The problem is that while the toys may care about Andy a great deal, the audience doesn't care about Andy at all. It makes some of his longer scenes feel tiresome and distracting, as the movie is suddenly focusing on a character who has no connection to the audience.

Jonathan Strawn gave 3 stars to: Iron Man 2

2010-06-05T07:23:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Strawn gave 3 stars to: Iron Man 2

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 08:34 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Iron Man 2 DVD ~ Robert Downey Jr.

Tell tell tell, no show, June 4, 2010

This review is from: Iron Man 2 (DVD)

Iron Man 2 is a huge step down from the first movie. To be fair, it is still pretty entertaining, but in many ways it is like The Incredible Hulk, except it goes in the opposite direction. Where that movie improved on Hulk in many ways(mainly by embracing the Marvel Universe), this film ends up being of comparable quality, but by comparison to the first film it is a huge let down.

Actually, in a lot of ways it's a huge let down. There really isn't a conflict to speak of, outside of a few plot contrivances. Tony Stark is dying. Except he's not really dying, as it seems everyone and their brother has a way to fix his problem. Tony Stark has some corporate rivals. Except they're jokes, never really threatening in any way. Tony Stark has someone who has a grudge against him, someone's who might be as brilliant as Tony in a darker way. Except their confrontations are both resolved in anticlimactic moments of action. Moments, at best.

The whole problem with the film is that it is all tell and no show. Tony Stark famously says that he has privatized world peace. Except we never see anything close to him actually doing that. In the first film we got a tease of Iron Man fighting warlords and terrorists. Here, we get magazine covers and people talking about vague accomplishments of Iron Man, saying that he's "on watch," but we never see any of it. Then Tony has a breakdown later in the film, a drunken brawl with his friend. Nick Fury shows up and says he's been neglecting his duty and causing messes for Fury to clean up. Except, again, we see no neglect, we see no mess.

All in all, there are only really 2 action sequences in the entire film. The first, the famous racecar showdown, is great. Legitimately great. Until it becomes a joke where John Faverau makes himself the big hero. The second big sequence is decent, but it is overly dark, and when it's time to be over it's just over. Iron Man whips out a couple of super weapons and ends the battle in seconds.

All in all, the problem, to my mind, seems that Faverau wanted to just let the characters riff on each other, eating up screen time cheaply and spending his money on really big but not very exciting action sequences.

That said, there are the elements of a great film here. All the returning actors are great(except Faverau himself, who is just a series of bad jokes in a part that is inexplicably prominent), and Rockwell and Rourke are fantastic as the new villains. Rockwell is hilariously smarmy and annoying, playing an arms dealer who wants to be unscrupulous and underground, but isn't really up to being as threatening or evil as he wants to be. Rourke brings a nice quiet intelligence and menace to his role, playing well off of Rockwell and Downey. I'm actually quite glad that Faverau isn't that involved in The Avengers, as this movie just seems like an exercise in filmmaking excess. And not even the good kind of excess, that involves over-blown action sequences.

Clone 8: Facebook, Diaspora & the Internet

2010-05-13T16:01:00.001-07:00

Clone 8: Facebook, Diaspora & the Internet

Posted: 13 May 2010 09:55 AM PDT

http://bit.ly/9hM4D7

I had a discussion about this with some other geeky folks yesterday, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the whole Facebook privacy thing.

Get over it.

Sure, Facebook is being rather impolite by retroactively changing privacy settings, but in their original TOS, there was plenty of fine print that allowed them to retroactively do, well, pretty much whatever they wanted. Just like just about every other website. Including my beloved livejournal(note the last section that says, "LiveJournal may at any time revise these Terms of Service by updating this posting. By using this Site, you agree to be bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to determine the then-current Terms of Service to which you are bound.")

So GET OVER IT.

No one is making you use Facebook. Sure, I'm not a huge fan. I rarely log into facebook itself, prefering to let stuff like my twitter just feed there automatically. But I keep it because Facebook offers a service that I can't get elsewhere, by nature of how many people are using it. I have a myspace for the same reason(actually for the same reason circa 2006, when I got a myspace account). Sooner or later people will move on to something else. Like I said on Twitter, Facebook is living out an accelerated version of AOL's lifecycle. Or Compuserve's. Or Delphi. Or any internet portal of your choice. At one time those things seemed "essential" to the people using them. But the power of the internet is that no one service is truly "essential." (Except maybe the 13 root name servers that control the entire Internet, thus making the whole point of the net's origins as a redundant distributed and unkillable network kind of moot). You can always move on, and sooner or later, you will. Remember when AOL was big enough to BUY Time Warner? Wow.

Getting back to my conversation yesterday, the issue at hand was privacy. Someone mentioned Diaspora, a new social network that, to my understanding, is essentially a framework that you run on your own or someone eles's server. The idea is that you will have as much control as you like over the service, and it has a lot of built in options(including crazy PGP encryption, just in case you don't want the NSA reading about your cat's latest antics). As one person explained it to me, in a perfect world social networks would run on your personal computer, and simply communicate with other people's computers, thus giving you full control over your data.

So, now stay with me, it would be a "network" of computers that are distributed all over the world, and they would be connected by some kind of "web" like structure that would allow them to communicate. This "network" might have interdependence with other "networks," so that it could be some kind of "internet."

Does this sound like stupid reinvention of NOTHING to anyone else? There are literally countless tools for you to create your own internet presence, hosted on your own computer, that you control 100%. The reason people don't use these, and the reason I predict people won't use Diaspora in the way that anyone envisions, is that it's inconvenient. I don't want to run my own server. That's crazy.

Crazy, or just really into computers. (a very telling sign is the fact that the creators of Diaspora put a UNIX joke on their chalkboard)

People use Facebook, google, yahoo, flickr, whatever, because it's more efficient and more convenient to let someone else manage the network of computers. That efficency, that ease of use, is the value YOU are getting from Facebook. Sure, you could setup your own social network through any number of tools, start a wiki based on your high school or the descendants of that great dog you had when you were a kid. But who wants to do that?

Some people do, sure. But those people are the kind of people who hated Facebook from the start, even more than I did. They have no use for it. The kind of people who have a use for Facebook are what we might call "ordinary" people, people who live outside the rarified world of coding and network protocols. People of my parent's generation surely, and that's the key.

While I believe that the idea of a technological "singularity" is kind of bs, I do think that there will always be a generational gap in technology, probably increasing. There will always be a market for services that take the heavy lifting out of it, that make it easy.

And those services will want something in return. If you don't want to pay for that service straight up(imagine if Facebook just started charging?), then expect them to take something else. Like your data, that they can use to try to sell you crap from their sponsors.

Imagine that someday someone might invent a technology that beamed free video into every household in the country, video that you could watch without having to pay any kind of ongoing fee, but that was supported by advertisements. Ads that were targeted as specifically as possible to the kinds of people watching certain programs.

Of course the right answer to all of this is for two things to happen.

1. Don't put ANYTHING on the internet(ANYWHERE) that you don't want other people knowing. Kind of defeats the point of the internet anyway.

2. Don't judge people too harshly by what they say on the internet, unless you only know them on the internet. Just get it into your head that there are 2 worlds here. They have some level of interaction, and can inform each other, but they are not the same. It's a conscious change in thinking that we all have to make. The internet should be treated with the same weight as a casual conversation on the street. Sure, someone might say something outrageous, but you should let them explain it to you after reflection later before you judge them.

Clone 7- The Ramans do everything in Threes

2010-05-03T16:03:00.001-07:00

Clone 7- The Ramans do everything in Threes

Posted: 02 May 2010 09:24 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/d2ulUP

io9 just promoted a student film based on Rendezvous with Rama. It has decent production values, a professional look, and a decent setup for the rest of the story. The exterior look of Rama is a bit too Star Trek IV for me, but it does fit in with the book.

Rendezvous with Rama - Vancouver Film School (VFS) from Vancouver Film School on Vimeo.

This video, which I saw on a SIGGRAPH 2006 DVD is pretty great too, although it isn't quite a polished it is has an even better sense of scope. It also captures the life of Rama, which the other downplays in favor of mystery.

http://bit.ly/aTfwUi

I also found this video, which isn't as great, but still beats this, which is just weird.

Jonathan Strawn's Customer Reviews to Blogspot

2010-05-03T07:45:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Strawn's Customer Reviews to Blogspot

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: Management

Posted: 02 May 2010 08:33 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Management DVD ~ Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston's attractiveness is inversely proportional to the glamour factor of her roles, May 2, 2010

This review is from: Management (DVD)

The 3 best things I've ever seen Jennifer Aniston in are Office Space, The Good Girl, and now Management. The more "regular girl" she plays the more attractive and charming I find her. The more glamourous she tries to be, the more it feels fake. She should be doing the kind of roles that Sandra Bullock was doing 10 years ago, now that Sandra Bullock has proved that she can play a slickly beautiful woman in The Proposal.

Steve Zahn plays an earnest but obviously immature character with subltly and surprising grace. The movie is billed as a romantic comedy, and it does follow a lot of the familiar rom-com beats(complete with zany supporting characters), but it's really a story about growing up. Zahn has to get out of the comfortable lifestyle, and he's rather forced out of it by circumstance, and Aniston's character pulls, or entices, him to move beyond his comfort zone.

There's an undercurrent of dreams and happiness deferred here, that's never really mentioned, but is clear in several of Aniston's loveliest scenes. In one beautiful scene she sits up at night and contemplates essentially settling for Steve Zahn. The movie never says it, never even really gets close, but it has a lot of interesting themes of putting aside the grand romance, putting aside the things that you keep chasing after so futilely and taking what's there, taking the happiness that you have.

Clone 6- X-Files FTW

2010-04-27T16:00:00.001-07:00

Clone 6- X-Files FTW

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 10:06 PM PDT

I don't care what sort of dark deals that Netflix had to strike, the coup of having all the seasons of The X-Files on streaming is worth any number of delays for new release crap. I'm finally justified for NOT spending hundreds of dollars on DVD sets. Who needs Avatar when you can have the many evolutions of Gillian Anderson's hair? (I'm partial to her Season 4, post-"Never Again" makeover).

Nicole & I started re-watching at Season 1, and it holds up incredibly well. The conspiracy episodes actually hold up the worst, as the more teasing and hinting that they do the more I get bored, especially knowing the anticlimax that awaits that particular narrative dead end. The "monster of the week" episodes hold up much, much better, although some of the early ones are pretty hokey. I'm also shocked at Gillian Anderson's youth. She looks like a baby in the first season. A baby walking around in pantsuits and spouting medical jargon.

Also, how did The X-Files do an awesome version of essentially the same premise as The Happening years before M. Night thought of it? What. A. Twist.

Clone 5- Karma is BS

2010-04-21T16:08:00.001-07:00

Clone 5- Karma is BS

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 10:03 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/cxUdr7

I was listening to a podcast on The Lovely Bones, and I had a thought. Pat Robertson is clearly not considering Christian theology when he says his stupid things like "Haiti made a deal with the devil and got an earthquake" or "New Orleans is full of sinners and got a flood." He's thinking in a karmic sense, not a Christian sense.

This point was raised by a speaker on the podcast making the point that karma is explicitly non-Christian, because in karma there is no room for grace. The entire point of Christ, and a large part of the rest of the Bible, is that people DON'T get what they deserve. How many passages in the Bible are devoted to people pleading for God to judge the wicked? How many times do prophets ask 'how long will you wait Lord?' (Hint: Lots of times) Karma is about getting what you deserve. It fits in perfectly with almost any morality, because if you judge someone to be doing evil(no matter how you choose to define it), then you can sit back and tut-tut "I told you so" when they trip on their face or get audited or whatever. The Bible isn't about that. The Bible is full of examples of the righteous having horrible lives(see Job, Jesus, the Apostles, most of the prophets) while the wicked live large, at least for a while(see most of Israel's kings, the Romans, pretty much anyone who conquered Israel). If there is one ultimate message of the Bible, it is that we will absolutely NOT get a fair judgement in this life. Ecclesiastes says it best, "the sun shines on the righteous and unrighteous, the just and unjust alike."

Sure, there's a message of FINAL judgement, but that happens after death, maybe not even until the end of time itself. And if there is one thing that won't happen at the final judgement, it is gloating over the punishment of the wicked.

Anyway, getting back to the point, karma is like "the secret." It's appealing because it has a superficial logic. You get what you deserve, what you do happens to you. But just ask anyone without rose colored glasses and they'll tell you that's bullshit. No one really gets what they deserve. Shit happens. The reasons for it are beyond the minds of us poor humans.

This is why the "karmic" view is so common in stories. It provides a catharsis, a emotional justification for everything. The bad guy gets hit in the head with an icicle because he's a bad dude. We get to smugly declare "such is the fate of all who do evil."

Karma can also be a basis for the most wicked of all human emotions, revenge. You want to "get" someone back for what they've done to you. They deserve it. They should receive in kind what they've done to you. You are an instrument of karma, putting the universe into balance. (on a side note, that's why I'm against the death penalty, but also believe in killing in defense of one's country. One is vengeance, the other is necessity.)

Grace, on the other hand, is something that any relationship counselor will tell you is necessary for a successful relationship. You have to let things go, not hold grudges, not keep an account of faults. Doing so will poison any relationship. This applies equally to marriages, friendships, co-workers and nations.

Keep in mind that Jesus commanded us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But there is no commiserate promise that "then others will do unto you as you have done unto them." Nope, none of that. Just the opposite in fact.

How I did it (triple booting my Macbook)

2010-04-19T16:01:00.001-07:00

How I did it (triple booting my Macbook)

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:32 AM PST

HOW TO TRIPLE BOOT UBUNTU, WINDOWS 7 AND OS X (ALL 64-BIT)

I've just finished getting my Macbook Pro triple booting into OS X, Ubuntu and Windows 7. It wasn't quite as obvious as it seems based upon the internets, but it is not really that hard. Just remember that many of these steps HAVE to be done in a certain order.

I used Wired's How To wiki as my basis, but they leave out several things and don't talk about my particular preferences, so this is my streamlined and supplemented version of that.

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

First, backup your computer using Time Machine. I haven't had to restore from a backup during this process, but if you do this then you can fuss around with your computer all you want without any worry, because it's all just a restore away from being back to square one. Go ahead, backup now. I'm serious. Backup. I'll wait. I have coffee.

GATHER YOUR FORCES

Things you'll need to do before you start:

Windows 7 64-bit install disk.

Ubuntu x64 Alternate install disk.

Gparted bootable utility.

REFIT.

Get Windows 7 & Ubuntu disks ready. For Ubuntu, download the "alternate install" disk, you'll need one of the options on it. Also download and burn Gparted onto a cd. Then download REFIT, and have it handy in a folder or something.

This is a good time to check and see if you'll have to make alterations to your Windows install disk. Open a terminal and run this command:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

This should spit something back that says either EFI32 or EFI64.

If it says EFI32, then you'll need to change your Windows install disk. There are 2 ways to do this.

You can use the method described at this website if you have a Windows machine available.

Or you can use the method on this other site if you only have your Mac.

RESIZE YOUR HARD DRIVE

Ok, you've backed up, right? Because step 1 is the scariest step.

Resize your hard drive partition.

Open up Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)type "diskutil list" and take note of the name of your main hard drive partition (probably disk0s2).

In the following example, I have a 500GB HD with 480GB of actual space:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 379G JHFS+ Linux 20G JHFS+ WIN 80G JHFS+ REFIT 5G

This is what that means
disk0s2 = the disk you want to resize(ie. your main OS X disk)
120G = the size you want to keep for OS X
JHFS+ = the format of the 2nd partition
Linux = name of 2nd partition
20G = name of 2nd partition
so on and so forth for 3rd and 4th partition.

The 4th partition(REFIT) is optional, but I do it for increased security. If you're not overly worried about someone else being able to get into your computer, then don't worry about it and just do 3 partitions.

INSTALL REFIT

The boot loader that you get when you hold down the option key on your Mac only supports 2 bootable operating systems, so you'll have to replace it.

Download from rEFIt sourceforge page

Copy the subfolder called "EFI" from the downloaded image to the rEFIt partition.

If you don't care about security that much then just copy it to your root volume.

Putting it in its own partition enables you to have a firmware password to prevent any joker from stealing your laptop and booting from a CD or to a command prompt to bypass your password. Yes, I know you can still bypass the firmware password. But it's harder.

Go back to the Terminal. Go to the /efi/refit/ folder, or wherever you put it and run
./enable.sh

Get your gParted disk ready, and reboot. If you put rEFIt on its own partition, hold down option and select the rEFIt option. If you didn't, then the rEFIt screen should come up automatically.

FIX WINDOWS PARTITION WITH GPARTED

Put in the gParted CD and select it from the boot option screen. Just keep hitting enter for all the default settings until it gets to gParted's linux interface.

The gParted program should open automatically, but if it doesn't it's on the desktop.

Select your Windows partition(identify it either by label or by size)delete that partition.

Select the new "unallocated space" and make a new partition. Select a new size as close to the old one as you can get, making sure to leave ~128MB of space after this partition. Select the format as "unformatted." This is so that Windows will have a nice clean partition it can recognize to work with. Click apply, let it go, and restart, but DON'T LET THE COMPUTER GO TO OSX. If you do, you may have to do this step again.

INSTALL WINDOWS 7

On restart, swap out the gParted CD for the Windows 7 DVD, and select it from your boot menu(either rEFIt or from the Apple Boot Option screen). Install as normal, doing a quick format to NTFS on the partition you just made with gParted. If you're doing this right this step should be easy and straightforward. No problem. Go through all the steps. If you miss the boot option during one of Windows multiple install reboots don't worry, you can go all the way into OS X without problem. The install will pickup when you boot to Windows next.

Then get out the install disk that came with your Mac and install the bootcamp windows drivers. Ignore the Windows warning that Boot Camp causes problems. What does Windows know?

If you have an older Mac, you'll have to trick Boot Camp into installing the drivers on a 64-bit Windows. For that, just go to the subfolder \BootCamp\Drivers\Apple and run BootCamp64.msi using the Windows Vista compatibility mode.

INSTALLING UBUNTU LINUX

This is actually the easiest step. Start the installer(I did it through the Boot Select instead of REFIT), and it should be pretty painless. There are a couple of things to remember here. First, make sure you install to the right partition. Just remember which size you made for Ubuntu a while back. Then make sure you remember the device id for the disk you're using. It will say something like disk0s3 or whatever. Remember that!

Also, when you are selecting partitions don't select a swap partition. It may give you a warning telling you to do so, but ignore it. You'll fix this later. Also, there is no easy way to setup another partition to use for swap, so it doesn't even matter.

A few minutes later you'll be asked where to install GRUB, the Linux bootloader. Make sure you put this on the same disk as you installed Linux. This is not the default. Use the device id you remembered from a moment ago(disk0s3 or whatever).

Linux should be mostly done by now. Once it's running, go to this page and setup a swap file according to the instructions. You might also need to run some of the commands on this page to get all your mac specific things working.

Congrats! You're done.

Clone 4: Remakes at a Funeral

2010-04-15T16:06:00.001-07:00

Clone 4: Remakes at a Funeral

Posted: 15 Apr 2010 02:21 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/c3iyLj

I have some friends who feel very strongly that the current remake of Death at a Funeralis a travesty, an outrage, the kind of thing that people point to when they say "Hollywood doesn't have any original ideas anymore!" All valid opinions. I feel a bit this way whenever I hear about someone remaking a foreign film. Oddly enough, these feelings of "why bother" come up even when the same filmmaker is remaking his own film(as in Michael Haneke's Austrian & American versions of Funny Games, or, the classic, but people tend to forget it when talking about Hitchcock's 2 versions of The Man who Knew Too Much, and DeMille's The Ten Commandments).

Also oddly, no one ever dismisses a feature length version of a short out of hand, although perhaps they should(given Shane Ackers rather pointless remake/extension of 9) or shouldn't(given Wes Anderson's brilliant feature version of Bottle Rocket). Almost everyone likes to forget the times that remakes have improved on the originals, like John Carpenter's The Thing, or John Huston's The Maltese Falcon[the 3rd version in 10 years, so says a nice IFC article]).

This whole little lesson on film history is prompted by Roger Ebert's review that says the new American version of Death at a Funeral is better. And FUNNIER. Also interesting is that it's directed by Neil Labute, no stranger to remakes(2 movies, as well as 2 movie remakes of his own plays, as well as an adaptation of a novel, making him the remake Devil, if you think of remakes that way), and who's also a GREAT director and writer. Curiousier and Curiousier.

Again, there seems to be some kind of outrage that the Death at a Funeral remaking is happening only 3 years after the British original. Odd, then, that few people take it upon themselves to get outraged that 3 versions of The Ten Commandments(all of which might be considered remakes) came out in an 2 year period!(don't believe me, 1, 2, 3).

Anyway, that's not to say that anyone shouldn't have strong opinions about remakes, just like people are free to have strong opinions about books that are being made into films. Both situations raise the question, if the original was done and well liked, why make a new one?

I guess all this is predicated by your opinion of the original. If you loved it, I can see why you wouldn't want it remade. If you hated it, didn't see, why would you care?

Me, I'm a fan of remakes. I find them interesting, to see what different voices do with the same material. Shakespeare has been reinvented countless times, music has the strong tradition of the cover song that a performer can make their own, etc. How many paintings and statues of the Pieta have we seen? Is Michaelangelo's the only one we need? Perhaps. But we'd be lacking something as a culture if we didn't have all of these.

I think I read an interview with Neil Gaiman once where he said that of course he wants the film versions of his work to be great. Why wouldn't he? But he can't promise anyone that they always will be, and that's ok too, because it's not like the books or comics are going anywhere. If the movie turns out to be rubbish then that's sad, but you can just go back to the beloved book and hope that someone better will try again someday.

Imagine if Peter Jackson had thought, 'hm, I'd really like to make a Lord of the Rings movie, but between the 2 animated versions they've just about covered it. Ah well, here goes The Frighteners 2.'

Just to give you some perspective though, I'm the person who bought both versions of The Exorcist: The Beginning, a film I don't particularly like, because I'm fascinated by the 2 very different versions, with mostly the same actors on all the same sets, shot in the same style. Even if both versions end up with a movie that is pretty much crap, I paid full price for each.

Spring fever

Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:33 PM PDT

No time for a clone post today, but I just wanted to out down how great my day was. It started out with a bike ride to work, all the way since I missed the bus, then a good, productive day at work, then a beautiful walk to Carl's Jr. for milkshakes with Nicole & Cosmo. After a delicious dinner, I went for a run, doing 3 easy miles in the near pitch dark. The run was a gamout of smells, from the open sewer in the north end of the neighborhood to lavender on the path by the arroyo. And above it all, the stars in a deep purple and orange sky. Just bliss.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Clone 3: The Wild Hunt Trailer

2010-04-14T16:06:00.001-07:00

Clone 3: The Wild Hunt Trailer

Posted: 13 Apr 2010 09:50 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/9ysFf2

This looks like a combination of Deliverance and The Wicker Man, by way of LARP. Yes, the Society of Creative Anachronisms(which, I believe, was recently in the market for a new "King of New Mexico" or something) is just one cult-leader type away from making this movie a reality. Some of the parts also remind me of the hard core Civil War re-enactors that Elmore Leonard featured prominently in Tishomingo Blues. The guys who say you have to earn your rank through participating in multiple battles, but they'll still respect you if you show up dressed as a general, since, after all, you're a general.

Clone 2: Interview with The Room's Tommy Wiseau

2010-04-12T16:04:00.001-07:00

Clone 2: Interview with The Room's Tommy Wiseau

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 09:17 AM PDT

This interview and story is a great companion piece to the aggressively weird The Room. Strangely, no one ever mentions my theory The Room started out as a pitch for a soft-core porn. I've certainly seen worse films that exist only on the promise of satin-obscured sex.

http://bit.ly/cLVxlI

Thing 1: For User so Loved the World

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 08:43 PM PDT

All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible.

Nicole watched Tron for the first time today. She liked it, but said the visuals were "just ok."

I've considered Tron one of the best sci-fi Christ parables. So does someone else.

Kevin Smith, America and Health Care

2010-03-23T16:05:00.001-07:00

Kevin Smith, America and Health Care

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 09:19 PM PDT

In wake of the long-in-coming health care reform bill, I've been thinking a lot about America. No, not the continent.

No, not the other continent either.

The "idea." Sure, it's the United States of America, that's the official name of the country. It's on our money, it's written down somewhere I'm sure. But what I'm talking about is the kind of thing that comes to mind when you say things like Neil Armstrong, Apple Pie and World Series.

People talk about American values like they're going out of style. Everywhere you turn, you hear that the American way of life isn't what it used to be. Time was, there was a chicken in every pot, a bun in every oven and 2.5 kids in every house. Everything was grand, because every immigrant instantly spoke English, politicians were morally upright and hemlines were low enough that kids never had sex without at the very least feeling really guilty about it.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, let's talk about another part of nostalgia, something that I feel is backed a little more by history. Hard work, that kind that walks uphill in the snow, both ways.

Hard work is what built the country that we know and love. Sure, sometimes that hard work had a little help, but it was something that we were known for almost from day 1(even before).

Anyhow, what makes America great is making stuff. All sorts of stuff. Think about it: cars, rock & roll, airplanes, hammers, whatever. When you think about how most of the world knows America, it's through our stuff. Fast food, running shoes, mp3 players. That kind of stuff.

When I think about what I think is wrong with America, it all comes down to a trade deficit. But it's more than that. I don't think we're going down the tubes just because we don't make all our things at home. It's about what's being made. It's the ideas that we should be exporting. Apple, for example, makes almost everything in China. But, as they proudly proclaim on every box, they were designed in Cupertino.

Anyway, I'm getting to two things I saw this week that made me think about this. First is this excellent and rather inspiring clip from a recent 30 Rock episode. I'm not sure if it's meant to come off as genuine, but I feel it is, because if there is anything I think Tina Fey really believes in it is the value of creativity. What I like about this clip is that it emphasizes that creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's the way that we make money. It drives the world, by making something new and shipping it off. It goes all the way back to the first caveman who turned a rock into a hammer by tying it to a stick. But I digress, let Jack Donaghy say it better:

The counter-point to this, is this week's maddening Smodcast by Kevin Smith & Scott Moiser. In the midst of a long and mostly hilarious defense of accepting money from a sponsor(Smith's reasons for needing to defend himself for taking a sponsor are related to why I think his movie's have declined in quality, which I'll discuss later), Smith makes a strange analogy. He says, and I paraphrase, that America isn't in the phase of needing to do everything anymore. As he says it, America's done enough, done what we wanted to do, and now it's in the stage of life where all it really wants or needs to do is sit back and eat some junk food while watching TV. He uses this as some kind of analogy for why he has taken the money so that he can break even on the podcast, not trying to make much money off it and not losing anything.

This drives me insane for two reasons. First, Smith sells himself short. He's one of the most consistently creative people working in entertainment. Right now, he has a movie in theaters, he has a comic book in shops now, he has a new edition of his book(My Boring-Ass Life), and he produces new episodes of podcast regularly. For good or ill, he makes a lot of content, and pretty often.

Second, Smith's attitude reflects everything I think is wrong with America. Sitting back, playing video games, watching TV, whatever it is you're doing, if you're not making anything, then you're part of the problem. There's nothing wrong with relaxing, nothing wrong with sitting back, nothing wrong with taking it easy. But there's something wrong with doing nothing else.

My suggestion: start a blog. Write about something you like. Start taking pictures of things you find interesting. Draw. Sing a song(record it). Take something broken and fix it. Plant a tree. Train a dog. Make it a goal to end each week with something existing in the world that didn't exist at the beginning of the week. It doesn't have to be great, doesn't even have to be good. Just start making. Maybe it'll catch on, maybe not, but it'll make your life better. We all like to accumulate stuff, but if you're going to accumulate stuff, you might as well accumulate stuff that you have a hand in creating. It's the kind of satisfaction you can't get from just buying thinks. The kind of satisfaction that you feel when you look at something, and you remember the blood, sweat and tears you put into it. Heck, I have a few things kicking around here(my car & hand-made bed among them), that literally have my blood, sweat and tears in them.

By the way, a large big part of this philosophy was inspired/informed by Jonathan Coulton's "Thing a Week" work ethic.

Alice in Wonderland & An Education

2010-03-17T16:02:00.001-07:00

Alice in Wonderland & An Education

Posted: 16 Mar 2010 06:41 PM PDT

Saw two films this weekend. Oddly enough, both featured young English girls of olden times(1880s~ & 1961~) encountering unusual older men and learning valuable lessons about themselves & life.

Alice in Wonderland is the latest of Tim Burton's literary adaptations(all of his films post-Mars Attacks! have been literary adaptations of one sort or another, except Corpse Bride[which is probably his best all-around work since Sleepy Hollow], and CAN YOU BELIEVE that Tim Burton hasn't done a non-adaptation since Ed Wood?!), and the least of his recent work, almost as bad as Planet of the Apes and not nearly as fun as that film.

There are two main problems I had with this version(or sequel or whatever it is) of Alice in Wonderland. The first is that the film just looked drab. Wonderland, as the name implies, is supposed to be a visually abundant place that delights the eye at every turn. I GET that Burton & Co. were going for a post-apocaylptic "Underland," but the ended up with a look that just felt dirty and faded. Sure, that suits the story just fine, but it wasn't interesting or unique to look at. Even the scenes that were supposed to be bright, like the Red Queen's palace, still felt flat. Second, the story really disappointed me, especially in the character of Alice and the development of her role in some sort of final battle for the fate of Wonderland. At the beginning of the film Alice runs away from a life(in the "real" world) that is setup to be unattractive at best and awful at worst. She hates the roles that women are expected to fill in 19th century England, and she rebels against being a traditional woman in a traditional world. SPOILER WARNING: She then falls into Wonderland, spends the whole time debating it's reality and insisting it must be a dream, finally accepts it as a real place and then decides to leave Wonderland and return to dreary old England. Why?! Who knows? She establishes herself as the hero of Wonderland, which is full of charming and interesting people who speak in rhymes and have talking animals as friends, and then she decides to return to England so she can become an apprentice(an APPRENTICE!) to the man who stole her father's company after his untimely death. I can't fathom it at all. There is no establishment of any reason for her to be wanting to return to England so much, and there is nothing appealing or interesting about the action that takes place in England. The denouement of the film is a huge let down, going from a triumphant battle to a discussion of business opportunities in the Far East. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what meaning there might be in this ending, but it's beyond me. END SPOILERS.

There are plenty of other things I dislike about the film, such as the plot that is both meandering and rushed at the same time, and the general look of the film as a continuous special effect that simply calls attention to its artificiality. Then there are things I just don't get, like why Alice goes from "I just want to go home" to swinging a sword in battle in a matter of moments. Or the fact that they start referring to castles with elaborate fantasy names (Cour Islen or something like that) instead of just saying "The White Queen's Castle." I wasn't bored, but I wasn't really entertained or interested either.

And Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is not as bad as it looks in the trailers, but not that great either. He has a bit more depth than I was expecting, somewhat like his Willy Wonka, but once again he seems shoehorned into extra scenes for no reason just because he's played by Johnny Depp.

An Education on the other hand is a intriguing exploration of women's roles in the 1960s, and of the seductive effect of a glamourous scoundrel. It features wonderful, subtle acting, that catches all the nuances of being a father who wants his daughter never to be in need of anything, a mother who remembers what it was like to be young and foolish, a girl who is young and foolish but still smart and mature, and a scoundrel who is charming and sly and vile at the same time. Of all the actors in it Peter Saarsgard gets overlooked the most in other write-ups, and since he's a personal favorite actor of mine I'll single him out. He brings a warmth to a role that by all rights should be totally creepy, and he actually makes you feel bad for him being such a jerk. You want to like him, because he's charming and says all the nice witty things, and he's pretty unabashed about being a bad person, but you love him even so. You want him to be the guy who really does the right thing, even if he's a bit older than his girlfriend. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when his true nature turns up, which is every bit as vile as he seems.

Just a fantastic movie, a movie that can make you both pine nostalgically for young love and wince at how stupid teenagers can be, and cringe at how manipulative or enabling adults can be, even well-meaning parents.

Edge of Darkness Review

2010-02-28T15:01:00.001-08:00

Edge of Darkness Review

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 09:14 PM PST

Edge of Darkness is a lot like Chinatown, and that is the biggest downfall of the film. It feels like Chinatown in so many places that you'll end up wishing it was as good. Not to say it isn't always good. In many places it's great, particularly in Danny Huston channeling a sniveling version of his father's menacing character from Chinatown, and Denis O'Hare is great as a spy worried about the messy loose ends that come from killing people willy-nilly. And of course Ray Winstone rules all as some kind of consulting spy, who seems to answer to no one and I'm not even sure why he's brought into the whole thing at all, and he certainly doesn't do what any of the people who hired him want him to do.

You know the broad outline of the plot; Mel Gibson's daughter is killed, everyone assumes it was a disgruntled criminal he put away when he was a cop, but the more he looks into his daughter's death the deeper the rabbit hole goes. Something about national security and mysterious eco-terrorists. That doesn't matter.

Much like Chinatown, what matters is Gibson's dogged determination to get to the bottom of things, and his lack of interest in what exactly he's getting to the bottom of. All he really cares about it finding the specific person who pulled the trigger on his daughter. The odd thing is that there are millions of loose ends dangling around that no one tugs on, but maybe that's all part of the fun. Gibson is good with accents and does a decent Boston one, and he's certainly believable as a grieving father. Huston, O'Hare & Winstone are all enjoyable in their roles, and a slimy US Senator shows up for 2 scenes that are just the right mix of creepy and funny.

The best scenes in the film are anything involving Winstone, and the action scenes, which are believable and exciting. Huston's villain is also a real treat. The film suffers the most in the latter half, with a lot of odd situations and scenes that go nowhere, and seem to exist for no particular reason at all. The worst part of the film is the neat wrap up at the end. Everything is practically tied up with a bow.

All in all it's not a bad thriller. Not really a great one, although it has some good scenes. Mel Gibson's scene where his daughter is shot is particularly good, very well written and acted, touching without being melodramatic.

Some Stories About Love: Get Over Yourself

2010-02-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

Some Stories About Love: Get Over Yourself

Posted: 15 Feb 2010 06:25 PM PST

I just have to say something about some stories I've heard recently. The first is from over a year ago, but it was re-broadcast recently and is funnily relevant.

When NPR's David Kestenbaum was a physics's grad student he and some fellow students did some tinkering with the Drake equation to prove that there was not a single woman in the greater Boston area that any of them could POSSIBLY fall in love with. His story, and some related bits, was broadcast on This American Life in early 2009.

Then, just recently, some hack in England named Peter Backus did the same thing and got some traction for an, apparently unpublished, paper that he wrote about it. The paper is somewhat tounge-in-cheek, and he does acknowledge the previous work in this field on his website, but still, hardly original research here.

Then there was a book by Lori Gottlieb recently that had the provocative title, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her essential premise seems to be that being to choosy when you're young can lead to being alone when you are old, a premise that seems totally self-fulfilling(ie. of course if you are alone when you are older you must have been TOO choosy when younger). She makes the case that you should settle for a man who is nice and kind and funny and smart and has a good job, or, failing that, just settle one someone who has the most of those qualities out your potential mates.

All three of these cases are founded upon some very strange assumptions, that are born more out of romantic comedies than out of any semblance of reality. The first, which both of the would be-SETI scientists tackle, is that there is "THE ONE." The idea that there is a single person in the world who you can be happy with, and every other person out of the 6 billion+ would be a pale comparison, is laughable. It is a conclusion built upon faulty data. Obviously, the data is from people who are in happy relationships. Just ask me. I would say that there is no one else who could make me as happy as Nicole makes me. That is true. And it is a stupid thing to say. Of course Nicole is the one person in the world who can make me happiest, because she has actually done that. But to project that potentiality backwards is just foolish. Nicole did not make me happiest the moment we met. Not even the first month. What made me happy was the relationship that grew out of knowing Nicole. I'm happier now than I've ever been before, but that does not mean I was unhappy in my marriage last week. Happiness is not a finite resource. It can continue to increase even as you experience more of it. In fact, it expands to fill any available space. Kestenbaum posits the possibility that the ONE person for him might be in a remote village in China, and he would most likely never meet her, and even if he did, she would probably not speak English and they could never communicate. This is even more ridiculous than the general idea of a ONE person. The idea that there could be a ONE person for you who you might never meet is impossible. If you are going to accept some kind of universal fate that has determined that exactly 1 person is compatible with you in the whole of creation, then if you don't meet that person THEY CAN NOT EXIST! If there is ONE person for you, by definition you will meet that person and fall in love with them and live as happily ever after as you can. Because it is FATE! If you don't meet them, then guess what? There was no one for you! Because if there was someone FOR you, you would have met them.

Which brings me to the latter 2 arguments, which are related to some elements of the first, and the problem with people blaming their unhappiness on external factors. The smartest thing that Gottlieb says is that the reason she is alone is because of her own choices. The dumbest thing that the men say is that they can't find anyone, but then they eliminate 80% of women from their equations because they assume they will find them unattractive. The reason that some people end up pining away alone is because they pass by chances when they happen. There are lots of lonely people out in the world, looking for someone to keep them company. If a person is unable to spend time with someone because they are looking for a different body type or whatever are dooming themselves. Like the person who is unemployed because they are too proud to take the jobs that are available.

Then again, there is something to be said for the old saying that you can't settle down without settling.

Best Movies of 2009

2010-02-14T15:03:00.001-08:00

Best Movies of 2009

Posted: 13 Feb 2010 11:18 PM PST

In no particular order at all:

Taken. Brings old school, non-shakey, non-cg action back in a great way. Liam Nesson is always great in non-period/fantasy pieces(see Love Actually, one of the only movies Nesson's ever made where he gets to act like a normal person), and he sells the entire movie in that famous speech he gives on the phone.

Coraline. A visually perfect adaption of Neil Gaiman's short novel, but it misses a few key points of the novel and is lesser for it. Most importantly, the film cuts the true love of Coraline's parents, rendering them much less sympathetic and Coraline much more justified in her dissatisfaction.

The international. A spy story, that's really more of a police story, told with style and heart. Clive Owen is a great everyman who's out to fight against the most abstract of villains, an international bank. He meets a beautiful NYC cop who's helping him, they happily don't have a romance, there's a stunningly great shoot-out at the Guggenheim, and at the end the bank gets away with everything. There's a lot that can be read into this movie, but it's also just a great ride.

Watchmen. The movie that no one thought would ever get made, the most anticipated comic-book adaptation of all time, and here it is almost a year later and I can't bring my self to care. What a shame. It rightly doesn't try to adapt straight, going for a streamlining and altered version, but it loses too much of the gutsy, take no prisoners attitude of the original. It says something that in depicting what is supposed to be the most twisted version of world peace ever, the filmmakers couldn't even bring themselves to destroy the World Trade Center. This is an important film, for showing how you can do so many things right in adapting material, but lose the core of it. As Alan Moore said, many years ago I think, what is the point of a film version of Watchmen? The comic was so much about being a comic, that if the film just played out the story it loses the main point of the material.

Tokyo! A nice triptych of films, each interesting and sometimes powerful. A mix of comedy, cultural satire and otherworldly surrealism, from 3 different and fascinating directors. The Boon Joon-ho(The Host) entry is my favorite, mixing cultural perceptions of Japan with a kind of apocalyptic doomsaying. Michel Gondry's has some fantastic special effects too, that are just stunning in their subtly.

Knowing. A surprisingly good sci-fi/suspense story, vastly superior to the thematically similar The Box, which was ironically directed by Richard Kelly, who was once attached to write & direct Knowing. Knowing is old school sci-fi, wrapped in a modern thriller's colors. I'm still disappointed that they changed the time capsule element away from crayon drawings of disasters to boring old codes, but it's still a great movie.

Star Trek. I don't generally like J.J. Abrams, and I haven't liked Star Trek since, oh, the late days of Deep Space Nine. So I was surprised by how great this film was, capitalizing on both classic Star Trek & modern sci-fi action. It does lack the very heart of what made the original series work, the sense of exploration and discovery, but it brings the best elements of the characters forward into a new kind of environment. Oddly enough, the weakest link in the film was Leonard Nimoy. The connection to classic Star Trek worked well enough, but it wasn't a strong enough element of the story to have real resonance. The opening scene with the USS Kelvin, featuring a bunch of characters that we only knew for moments, was more powerful. When exactly was the last time anyone on Star Trek sought out new life and new civilizations?

Drag me to hell. In the spirit of Evil Dead, with a little bit of Army of Darkness thrown in, this comedy horror is played straight but with a little wink in the direction of hilarious. The whole thing would be terrifying if it weren't so ridiculous, but some scenes, like the botched seance, are just too cool to pass up.

Away we go. Best movie about marriage I've ever seen. John Krasinski & Maya Rudolph play it honestly and happily, in the best marriage ever on screen, even if they aren't married. All about trying to find something happy & normal in this crazy world.

Moon. A perfect little gem of a science fiction film, with an amazing performance by Sam Rockwell and a nice riff on HAL-9000 by Kevin Spacey. The movie is essentially just Sam Rockwell and some sets and an occasional model, but it is really good. It captures a feeling of isolation and loneliness that is absolutely palatable. And the Moon special effects are just the best I've ever seen.

The Hurt Locker. Not as good as everyone says, but good still. The characters aren't cliches but real people, and the movie captures the constant paranoia that is modern warfare. The only problem I really had was that the film kind of cheats on a true military experience by contriving to keep the characters isolated from the rest of the military, which, in my experience, is a difficult thing to do.

Public enemies. Another movie that I didn't really like, but I keep thinking about. This one is all style and almost not substance, which is too bad because the substance of the story is pretty interesting. Like Miami Vice, the real star is the wounded woman lead, and I'm hoping that someday Michael Mann will realize that it's ok to push the macho men to the side and focus upon these interesting women who live on the fringes of their world. If/When he does, he'll make something truly special.

Harry potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The first movie based upon a Harry Potter book I read that I felt really improved upon the book. I enjoyed the first HP movie, which had such a wonderful world even if the story was kind of weak. The 3rd movie is just magical and practically perfect, and this one is just about as good. It takes my least favorite of the Harry Potter books and actually makes all the material I hated(the teen-drama stuff) into something compelling. It's a very, very good movie about trying to put away childish things, about the pain of having to grow up, and about the cost of maturity. And it has wizards and just fantastic visuals(the shot of Harry & Dumbledore standing on the sea stack in the middle of the storm is instantly iconic).

A perfect getaway. A sleeper thriller that I almost didn't see until I read that it was supposed to be great, and it is. Yes, it has a twist, but that doesn't really even matter. The important part is Timothy Olyphant as the most bad-ass ex-military hippie ever. He's equal parts creepy and cool, and has all the best lines. Even with the twist the movie keeps you guessing, since everyone is acting kind of off from the start, and no one is really what they seem.

District 9. The bleakest view of humanity I've ever seen put to film, there is not a single redeeming character who is a member of Homo Sapiens. The main character is a vile, spineless functionary, who's 'heroic' actions are born out of the same self-interest that motivated his most awful actions earlier in the film. Still, the film has the most fully realized non-humanoid aliens ever seen in a film, and manages to get more emotion of a crustacean faced giant than James Cameron was able to get out of Sam Worthington.

Ponyo. Another Miyazaki classic. No, it's not his best. Yes, every movie he makes is a treat and should be savored. This one is a visual feast, with a rather weak story. The opening undersea sequence is fantastic, and the diluvian visuals near the end of the film are equally amazing. In between is a odd little story that is fun but just fluff.

Inglorious bastetds. Another one that I can't say that I really loved, but I can't stop thinking about. Tarantino is at his best as filmmaker here, constructing some of the most tense scenes in the history of cinema, with unforgettable characters and snappy repartee. The only problem is that the whole thing doesn't really hold together, and it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. & Brad Pitt doesn't earn his final line.

Bad lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Best movie of the year in my mind, mainly because it is the one I can't stop thinking about. Nicolas Cage is a good cop who keeps getting screwed over, seemingly trapped in circumstances that not only encourage him to become more corrupt, but reward it. He navigates the post-Katrina New Orleans in a drug induced haze, but he still wants to do the right thing, most of the time. Val Kilmer is hilarious as Cage's unabashedly vile partner, and Eva Mendes is the classic hooker with a heart of gold. But the real star is Werner Herzog, who pulls humanity out of the most ridiculous and depraved situations, and gives us a film that is touching, repulsive and hilarious. And, IGUANAS!

The Princess & The Frog. I feel like I like this movie more for what it represents than for what it is. The movie is good, really good, but just the idea that Disney is going to keep doing classic animation thrills me. It means that my children can look forward to this kind of material for years to come. Or not, since this one kind of bombed in the box office. Still, Disney movies are perpetual money makers, so they should have no problem turning a tidy profit eventually. The songs are good, if a bit repetitive, and the two leads have a real romantic chemistry. The only real problem with the film is that it felt kind of low-stakes, no real threat. Heck, the villain didn't even want them dead, he was content for them to live as frogs. The animation is beautiful though, and the story is surprisingly adult for a Disney movie, probably due to the fact that the main characters were actually grown-ups, not hormonal teenagers.

I can't kill Luke Skywalker

2010-02-06T15:21:00.001-08:00

I can't kill Luke Skywalker

Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:35 PM PST

I've played a lot of video games that let you be "evil." I've logged hundreds of hours in the Grand Theft Auto series, completed Fable as a really evil jerk, and played through more than a few RPGs gleefully blowing up cars and warring with the cops. I have no problem with these "evil" acts. I finished Infamous with the absolute evil ending, draining people of life energy as the begged for mercy. None of that phased me. Playing the games as "evil" was just a fun escape, a time to play against the conventions of the world. I'll never drive a tank against armies of police in real life, and even if I did I wouldn't have unlimited ammo for the tank. The question of morality never entered into the equation. It never felt like it had any real weight, no matter how hand-wringing the characters get in Infamous or how many times my "wife" in Fable yelled at me until I took her to the woods and fed her to a demon door. Saved me the trouble of a divorce.

The only game that ever gave me a twinge of morality was Shadow of the Colossus. The whole point of that game seems to be about making you question the morality of every video game you've ever played. It's quite effective, but there isn't any choice. You are compelled to your actions, and the game ends on a melancholy note that you've unwittingly participated in a tragic undertaking. This wasn't really that disturbing, but played out more like an epic tragedy, thoughtful and poignant.

But I finally found a game that I not only was disturbed and horrified by, but that upset me so much that I put the game down and have no desire to ever finish it.

The game is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition.

Now I only played through about 25% of the main game of The Force Unleashed. I enjoyed it, liked the story, but it just felt repetitive and I didn't ever want to really invest my limited gaming time in finishing it.

But I was interested in the expansions that play out an alternate-reality version of the Star Wars films, with the protagonist of The Force Unleashed taking on the role of Darth Vader.

For those who aren't familiar, The Force Unleashed was set as a prequel to Star Wars, featuring tie-ins like Princess Leia & stealing the plans for the Death Star. Ostensibly you have choices between good & evil, but that usually boils down to how many droids or jawas you kill, and if you did it on purpose of if they just wandered into your line of fire. The only real choice is at the very end, where you choose to kill or spare Darth Vader. If you kill him you are consumed by the dark side and become the new sith Lord serving the Emperor.

So I started playing through these extra campaigns, and it started out well enough. The first level is you fighting your way through Jabba the Hutt's palace looking for information about a pair of missing droids. This part was fun, blasting Gammorian guards and fighting Boba Fett(who, true to continuity, goes out like a punk). Then you kill Obi-Wan Kenobi.

That's right. YOU, the player, kill Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Then you kill his Ghost.

Yes. You kill his Ghost.

I was a little put off by that. Not so much fun seeing a decent re-creation of Alec Guinness being tortured by my actions.

The next level though, the Hoth level, was it. Again, it started well enough, with some fun jumping around ice caves and fighting wampas. Star Wars has lots of monstrous creatures that are fun to fight. Then I started fighting rebels, which wasn't that bad because they were basically Stormtroopers in different outfits.

Then I fought Luke Skywalker. I electrocuted him with force lightning. I smashed him with cargo boxes. I taunted him about how I killed his father. He ran away.

More rebel troops, more wampas, and then I have to fight Luke again.

This time I'm really just beating the crap out of him.

Let me make this very clear: to beat this level, you have to beat the snot out of Luke Skywalker, basically kill him(although the cut scenes say otherwise).

This was not fun. This was awful. To be fair, Luke is pretty tough, and I was having a hard time beating him. It came down to a point when I realized that to beat Luke I'd have to try several more times and come up with a good strategy.

It was at that moment that I had to consider how much thought and effort I wanted to put into defeating Luke Skywalker.

The answer, was none at all.

So congratulations LucasArts, you've finally made me believe that it is possible to make a mindless action game that is morally offensive without being tasteless. You've found my limit.

I can destroy cities in GTA, nuke civilizations in Civilization, sacrifice my wife to blood gods in Fable, but I can't kill Luke Skywalker.

That's going too far. I'd be killing part of myself.

Avatar: My Review

2010-01-11T15:16:00.001-08:00

Avatar: My Review

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 12:11 AM PST

Best Buy should have co-produced Avatar, because it will be on a loop on their TV displays for the foreseeable future. The short review is, you might as well spend the money to see this in a nice 3D theater, because there is no other reason to ever watch it.

A quick note, I was impressed at the size of the crowd almost a month into release. One screening sold out and the one we made it into had a line almost as long as the Star Wars prequels.

Avatar is a well made film, without question. There is a level of filmmaking craft, attention to detail, cinematography, acting and visual effects that are brought together in a way rarely seen in films. Cameron is one of the best directors in history at staging action, and he manages to have scenes of tremendous scope that are visually sensible and are paced to an unmatched precision. The 3D is as un-distracting as anything I've seen, although I only really found it breathtaking in one vertiginous sequence high in the skies.

Too bad the story really, really, really sucks.

In one way, all James Cameron films are the same. He establishes some amazing piece of technology, spends a good portion of the film showing it off, then destroys it. Here, the technology is the entire world of Pandora itself, and it is beautiful and he spends 2/3 of the movie lovingly showing it off. Then he destroys it in a thrilling and differently beautiful last 1/3. (for the record, the tech that Cameron destroys in previous films: T-800, Power Loader, The Underwater Oil Rig, T-1000, The Harrier, a big damn boat). True Lies is the only film that is an anomaly, since the Harrier only shows up in the last bit, but it serves the same purpose, albeit more briefly.

Avatar's problem is that Cameron spent who knows how long developing technology and cinematic techniques for this movie but stopped at what seems like draft 1 of the script. Rolling together just about every noble savage/Last of the Mohicans cliche together with a hodgepodge of Native American cliches(& a bit of D&D elves for good measure), he then lifts the Pueblo Revolt for the final action scenes. The characters were mostly one-dimensional and the dialogue was boring as all get out. It doesn't help that for most of the movie there isn't much of a story beyond "hey lets check out this crazy planet!" The story's flatness is why the movie won't last. It is nothing more than spectacle, and it'll be gone shortly after the next spectacle.

I thought it actually followed the basic structure of Titanic really closely. Spend a huge amount of time basically wandering through this painstakingly created environment, then spend a shorter period of time racing through it as it falls apart. Titanic actually had more interesting characters and a better story, such as it was. It was a sappy romance with a bit of fun cross-class comedy, and it knew it. Avatar was so bogged down in what felt like an overly self-important message story that the fairly ridiculous & over the top action never got a chance to shine. If only the Navi had been evil necromancers. Or at least Dark Elves.

If James Cameron had asked my opinion:

I would have suggested the film open with how Sam Worthington got into the wheel chair. Some kind of horrific future Earth conflict. Give him a little more jaded attitude about the war, something to foreshadow his sudden but inevitable betrayal.

I would have had a Native American actor as a prominent member of the human crew, not just as the voice of the Navi like Cameron does. And if the Navi were left the way they are in the film, I would have had somebody, at some point, come right out and say, "hey, isn't it funny that we're LITERALLY doing the same thing to these people that we did to the Native Americans, and oh by the way they practically ARE Native Americans." Then the conversation could go from there.

I never would have explained the Colonel's scars.

The standout good things:

The world of Pandora, the jungle and the Navi are truly breakthrough effects. Performance capture characters that are actually better actors than the humans(Sam Worthington), and Zoe Saldana shows how much a gifted performer can bring to the process. Her character is worlds better than all the others, and the others aren't that bad to begin with. I especially liked Sigourney Weaver's avatar, which looked like a younger version of Sigourney Weaver. The planet itself suffers from a similar style to many of the Star Wars prequel planets, but it is much better looking and much more fully realized. Cameron & Co. really succeeded in making the jungle feel like some kind of above water version of a coral reef.

The moment when the Navi have a close interaction with a human actor. I was waiting for it, and I thought it looked great. Best VFX without any doubt.

The arrival on the planet got me excited about someone doing epic scope hard scifi, and some of the imagery pushed all the right high fantasy buttons for me. Especially the floating islands.

Stephan Lang. The man has made a minor career for himself playing crazed military types(Gen. Pickett, Stonewall Jackson, this guy), and he chews the scenery wonderfully here. His character is so patently insane that it makes the self-righteous comments about people taking land for resources seem all the more self-righteous. Cameron lets him go as far off the leash as he can in the film, and when he does it is glorious.

Michelle Rodriguez playing a tough as nails military woman who is NOT a knock-off of Vasquez from Cameron's own Aliens. I didn't think it was possible, but she did it.

Things I hated:

Giovanni Ribisi talking like his mouth was full of marbles through the whole film.

The spaceship shots at the beginning of the film were downright awful. Someone said the blueish Jupiter clone that Pandora orbits ruined the film for him, and while I didn't mind it so much later on, when it first appears it looks terrible. No excuse for poor effects in a film like this.

All the stuff about the story, but most especially just how obvious the Native American parallel was and how many missed opportunities for really interesting storytelling there were.

Ridiculous things that I was tickled by:

They actually call it UNOBTAINIUM. I laughed when I heard that because I couldn't believe the balls that Cameron had as a cheesy scifi writer to actually come right out and say it. I guess that should have put the rest of the movie in perspective.

They use a Space Shuttle as a bomber. A super slow, super huge, super easy to stop bomber. Awesome.

The mech suits not only carry around gigantic guns instead of having built-in weapons, they have a gigantic knife handy in case something happens to the gun.

Big Easy Double Feature

2009-12-29T15:10:00.001-08:00

Big Easy Double Feature

Posted: 12 Dec 2009 10:00 PM PST

I managed to setup the oddest yet most appropriate double feature at the movies this weekend. Two magical films about New Orleans. 2 films that have more true love for the city than all the earnestness of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ever did. Nicole said that between the two they give a full picture of New Orleans, from the fairy tale to the grim reality to the honest humanity.

I'm talking of course about The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and The Princesses & The Frog.

Bad Lieutenant is a stunningly fun, depraved and beautiful film. It mixes noir, exploitation, procedural and redemption story all in one brilliant absurdist swoop. From the digressions involving heart-broken alligators and possibly illusory iguanas to the spellbindingly beautiful monologue that Nicholas Cage delivers in an rusted out wood shed. Remember Sideways, when Virginia Madsen stops you dead in your tracks with her stunning soliloquy about the wine as a living thing(you can read it here). Somehow, a film that opens with two cops betting on how long it will take a man to drown ends up as the most unexpectedly wonderful film. Not just an exercise in watching Nic Cage stare at iguanas, although that scene is certainly a highlight. Even Brad Dourif even shows up playing a normal human being. Certainly one of the best movies of the year. Unlike Rescue Dawn, which Herzog seemed compelled to play straight(probably out of respect for real events), this film pulls in some of the best elements of Herzog's recent experiments in new ways of filmmaking and storytelling like The Wild Blue Yonder(awesome film, check it out!) and Grizzly Man.

The Princess & The Frog on the other hand presents a classical Disney film that is updated to the 21st century, sometimes somewhat oddly. For all the paranoia about Aladdin telling "gentle children to take off their clothes," The Princess & The Frog has the most innuendo of anything that can rightly be called a Disney film. Perhaps its because of all the Disney animated stories, the characters here are the most fully adults of any in the history of the studio. No fairy godmothers or kindly grandparents steering their kids here. These characters are grown-ups, talking about opening their own restaurants, marrying for money and paying the Devils their due.

The animation is as sumptuous as you would expect from a studio trying to prove that it is worth the effort of coming back to life, even if I did count at least 3 other animation studios that assisted in the production of this film. Tellingly, there still isn't a trailer out for the next hand animated Disney film, but this film feels fantastic. There is a great energy and variety to the animation, and it blends wonderfully with the music. I find it funny that John Lasseter supposedly didn't want Alan Menken to do the music because he thought it would be repetitive since Menken did Enchanted. So he went with Randy Newman, who's done how many Pixar movies now?

As far as the story goes, I was impressed with Princess Tiana's gumption. Probably less so than any other Disney princess, ever, she had no time to wait for Princes to help her out. It's not unusual for a Prince in a story to be jolted out of his complacency by a Princess, but Tiana does more than that. She is the active player in this story, bargaining with the Prince Frog and looking out for her own interests. He has to pursue her pretty vigorously, since she has no time for gadabout royalty. Her interest in the Prince is based upon his character and his actions, not his title.

Media Thoughts

2009-12-06T21:05:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

The Christmas Carol 3D

Posted: 05 Dec 2009 10:26 PM PST

Saw this over Thanksgiving, thought I'd give it some attention(finally).

I've seen all 3 of Robert Zemeckis' performance capture movies now(4 if you count his executive produced Monster House), and A Christmas Carol is by far his most accomplished.

The Polar Express did a good job of capturing the look of Chris Van Allsberg's iconic paintings, but it suffered from the much maligned "dead-eyes." However, in my mind the film had much larger problems, including Zemeckis' continuing tendency to trade the gentle wonder of a story for a roller coaster ride. A quite literal roller coaster ride in a a couple of cases. Then there is the spooky(instead of magical) North Pole, that better resembles a haunted city than the home of the Christmas spirit.

Monster House is still my favorite of all the performance capture films because it never for a second attempts to create "realistic" characters. By using the conventions of traditional animated characters and a really fun story, the movie is just fantastic.

Beowulf was an interesting film, if only because the 3D cinematography overwhelmed the performance capture. The story by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery was also a fascinating take on the tale, spinning the poem we all know as Beowulf's own, exaggerated and self-gratifying version of events. The performance capture was only distracting when it got a little too close to Anthony Hopkins.

A Christmas Carol is a pretty straight version of the "classic" story(so billed in the credits), with a set of over-the-top action sequences tying the 3 main vignettes together. The opening scene is the best use of 3D in the film, with a genuinely stunning and surprisingly(for Zemeckis) gently snowfall that accompanies Scrooge as he leaves the undertaker's office after stealing the pennies off the eyes of Marley. This is followed by the first of several fly-throughs of 19th century London. Scrooge and Cratchet are both done in a beautifully realized style that doesn't attempt to copy Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman. The famous opening scenes in Scrooge's counting house work well until a poorly realized version of Colin Firth interrupts as Scrooge's nephew Fred.

The rest of the film is pretty standard, although some touches like Bob Cratchet playing in the snow with street urchins are quite nice. The scene with Marley is by far the highlight of the film, at once terrifying and slyly funny. It's also the most showy use of 3D, but it works since Marley is trying to go over the top to scare Scrooge.

The film goes as you might expect, until it falls off the rails with a pointless chase sequence involving the ghost of Christmas future. The Ghost of Christmas Future itself is a really awesome visual, a 2D shadow that occasionally emerges as a 3D skeletal finger to point meaningly.

The biggest problem in the film is an outgrowth of its greatest strength: The Design of Scrooge. Jim Carrey dissolves into Scrooge, and his character design is beautiful and interesting and like nothing that could be done with a real actor. The only problem is that no other character in the film, save the ghosts, can come close. And when a lousy 3D version of Robin Wright Penn shows up(looking exactly as bad CGI as she did in Beowulf) the movie really went off the rails for me. The energy, Scrooge's look, and the quality of the story(duh) kept me going, but I can't imagine watching this again unless I'm looking for some specific shot or scene.

One final note. The score by Alan Silvestri is really fantastic, a great mixing of classic Christmas carols together with new material that blends perfectly into a spooky score. I've bought a couple of the soundtrack pieces, and I noticed something interesting in the sound mix. Maybe it's my ears and my perception, but it seemed like the gloriously produced choral version of "Hark the Hearld Angels Sing" that introduces the vision of was muted at strategic points. In the soundtrack album the song is played straight, but in the film every line that references explicit Christian religious elements is muted so as to be little more than background noise. There isn't any dialogue during these scenes, so it isn't to help you hear the lines better. It seemed like an attempt to strip a little of the religion out of the patently religious story. Interesting.

All in all the film is a beautiful and fun spectacle in 3D, but if you miss the 3D then you'll miss out the most compelling reason to see the film. Watching it once will help you complete your collection of A Christmas Carol films(I'm partial to The Muppet Christmas Carol, Mickey's Christmas Carol and Patrick Stewart's one man show). Watching it twice will likely make Colin Firth's floppy hair freak you out.

Media Thoughts

2009-11-26T21:07:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

The Blind Side

Posted: 26 Nov 2009 02:22 PM PST

The Blind Side is not a bad movie. Not by a long shot. It is a great telling of a true story that should be inspiring and uplifting, and it does both things well. But it is not a great movie. Not by a long shot.

Mainly because the writers and filmmakers couldn't find a narrative arc to sustain the film. The first 1/2 of the movie concerns Sandra Bullock's character encountering and helping the downtrodden but sweet(and huge) teenage Michael Oher. She discovers that he is homeless and decides that the only decent thing to do is to take him in. Fortunately for her, he is as gentle as a teddy bear and much brighter than most of his teachers assume, so he quickly blossoms once he gets a little kind attention. He also happens to be a gifted athlete, and after some coaching(from Bullock, not the coach), he becomes a star football player. Over the course of this Bullock endures scorn from her rich friends and faces some of Oher's tragic past. This all cumulates in the so-called big games, actually Oher's first, where he faces racism and his own gentle nature and emerges as a football superstar.

Unfortnatly, the movies continues for another hour from there. We get an endless montage of NCAA coaches making cameos trying to recruit Oher, making jokes about their school mascots and being scolded by Oher's (too) cute kid brother. Then the movie gets bogged down for a good 15 minutes in a totally meaningless subplot involving the NCAA investigating Bullock's character and accusing her of helping Oher just so he would play football for her alma matter.

Sure, all of that really happened. But the movie displays a basic lack of understanding in how to translate reality(which is often boring and takes a long time) into a good movie story(which is interesting and happens in a 2 hour span). There is also the problem that for a movie that will be of large interest to football fans it is a terrible football movie. The football scenes are mundane at best, and the behind the scenes stuff(Oher getting recruited & investigated), is just boring.

Truth to be told, this isn't a sports movie at all. It's the story of Bullock's character, and how her intervention and attention saved Oher's life and gave him a chance at success after almost anyone wrote him off. Everything not involving football is engaging and good, and everything involving football is boring and poorly staged. The film is shot with the same unimaginative but functional style that worked well for the director's hit The Rookie, and killed his follow up, The Alamo.

Bullock is the bright spot of the film, stretching herself somewhat beyond her usual roles and immersing herself in the part. Her absence is a large part of what makes the football scenes less interesting, and the manufactured drama near the end of the film feels all the less genuine because of her great sacrifices earlier.

If you like Facing the Giants, this movie will give you another spiritual football film(with much less overt religion), but one that is much less effective at depicting actual football.

Media Thoughts

2009-11-21T21:12:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

Something's going to happen. Something wonderful.

Posted: 21 Nov 2009 07:39 AM PST

I re-watched 2010: The Year We Make Contact last night while Nicole was out with her girlfriends cooing over vampyres and such at the movies. I've always liked 2010, but it gets the bum rap when compared to 2001. Sure, 2001 was a groundbreaking scifi film, that made an entire legion of films like 2010 possible, but 2010 wasn't just a shallow cash-in. It has its own sense of cool, futuristic space design, including Heywood Floyd's awesome house and the incredible Leonov spaceship(Babylon 5 and Aliens fans, you have met the inspiration). The effects are still stunning to this day, not too flashy but using the (at the time) new imagery from the Voyager missions to great effect. The sequence where John Lithgow floats miles above an airless Io towards the silently spinning Discovery spaceship is breathtaking and nail-biting even now. The little details of the effects, like the way that Roy Scheider uses a couple of pens in zero-g to illustrate a spaceship maneuver are great. And lets not forget the cast of Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban and Helen Mirren as the hottest of all the hot Soviet military types ever to be in movies. The stuff with the Monolith and David Bowman is hugely effective, and the little lines like "Something Wonderful" and "All These Worlds are Yours" bring goosebumps to my neck anytime I hear them. The finale with Jupiter's fate is as awe-inspiring as it ever was, and of course HAL is as interesting ever and even tragic in this film. His brief relationship with Bob Balaban is really touching, even if it isn't developed very well.

The things that haven't aged so well are of course the Cold War storyline and the fact that for all its cool design the interior of the Leonov looks like reused sets from Alien. Some of the effects for people floating around in space suits aren't the greatest anymore, but it is over 20 years old. Dig this film out sometime and enjoy it.

Media Thoughts

2009-11-20T21:09:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

Get this party started

Posted: 20 Nov 2009 08:39 PM PST

So tonight was just great. And I really needed a great night. The past couple days have been, hectic. We're having plumbing problems, and we actually had to sleep at my parent's house last night to use their toilets and showers. Until a plumber actually gets out here(tomorrow at the earliest), we're living in pre-20th century conditions in our home.

Forget all that though. Tonight was the New Mexico premiere, a invitation only preview screening of "Tales of the Maya Skies." Yes, the film that I've been working on for months. We had a get together tonight, with lots of people I like, who said lots of nice things. I had a lot of fun at work today putting together material from the production into slideshows, video presentations, etc. Tons of fun. I really want to get together a production website of all the things that we did for it. Lots of it isn't even digital, it's old fashioned tangible artifacts. Things you might find pressed between pages of a musty old book in a forgotten corner of the library. The sort of thing you'd be amazed to find in the hollow between two walls.

I felt like it was my moment in the sun, my time to shine. I got to hang out and be told good things by friends and family, to show off what I'd been working on, what had been keeping me from them.

The best thing, the absolute best thing, is that our work on the show turned out so much better than I ever imagined. It was really amazing how it came together, and I'm so proud of how it turned out. The whole show is really pretty good, it somehow pulled itself together after all the false starts and heartbreak. There are liters of blood spilled over every frame, every moment of the film, but it is almost worth it. Maybe someday, somehow, people will even get to see it.

If anyone is is the San Francisco Bay Area, Chabot Space Center is having a big premiere for the public tomorrow. Food, games, activities, lots of fun stuff to be had for all.

Tales of the Maya Skies: "The Hero Twins, the Birth of Corn and the Creation of the Sun and the Moon from DomeFest on Vimeo.

Media Thoughts

2009-11-14T21:13:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

The Box Review

Posted: 13 Nov 2009 10:43 PM PST

The Box is a textbook example of bad storytelling.

I had high hopes for this story. A mysterious stranger, questions of fate, destiny and free will. Some connection to NASA in the 1970s. James Marsden. Richard Matheson. Frank Langella. Heck, I even liked the original version of Donnie Darko enough to give Richard Kelly another shot. Even Southland Tales had enough interesting ideas buried within the horrid mess of that movie for me to get something out of watching it.

The basic premise is that Marsden & his wife, Cameron Diaz, are a down on their luck couple offered $1 million if they push a button. The button is delivered in the eponymous box, but is actually called a "button unit" multiple times in the film. Frank Langella shows up and offers some veiled threats along with the usual terms of "you can't tell anyone, you only have 1 day to decide, etc." The catch is that if they push the button, someone they don't know will die. Hijinks ensue.

I haven't read the short story, but I wouldn't be surprised if it plays out in all the same beats. The ending of the film feels like the ending of a short story, but the problem is that they padded it out with filler to make it feature length. The padding is mostly good, and the film maintains an interesting suspense until the final act, when it becomes repetitive and uninteresting. Insulting even, which I'll detail in a minute.

Don't bother with this film for any reason unless you are a big fan of someone involved in the production(ie. Richard Matheson, James Marsden, and Frank Langella, for me at least).

spoilers follow

(a quick google shows me that this film actually recreates the 80s Twilight Zone adaptation faithfully, then goes further. The short story ends just after the first button press)

I actually found it really interesting in the way that it treated Frank Langella's mysterious stranger as a con artist. The entire pitch with the box is a con, right from the start when he offers a "crisp" $100 bill as thanks for Diaz's time. The con is painfully obvious, starting even before the $100 bill with his unasked for "gift" of the box. As the con progresses, more and more strings are revealed to be attached and it turns out that the reward you get is not exactly what he implied it was, even if he is careful about his wording. As the story goes on it seems that he is pulling a con on the highest levels of government, utilizing them for his own means and offering who knows what in return. The only thing he actually mentions is the impending extinction of the human race, so I got that there is some kind of Day the Earth Stood Still style evaluation going on, but it's never developed beyond implications of some kind of higher power.

The whole problem with the final half of the film is that it is totally useless in terms of a story. What is the point of a story? That could go on forever, but one thing that a good story isn't is simply telling you what you already know. I've seen so many Christian movies that fall into this trap, telling you that "hey, you know what? Jesus is awesome and so are Christians!"

The key moment in this film is when Marsden encounters a man who was the previous recipient of the box. How he found out about Marsden is left a mystery, but it is implied that there is some logic and connection between the people who get the boxes. The man explains the cruel choice he was presented, and he suggests to Marsden that the Langella is not unstoppable, and that it might be possible to break the cycle somehow. Except then that character is removed from the story, and Marsden proceeds to be do EXACTLY WHAT THE OTHER GUY JUST DESCRIBED. To the letter. There is no breaking the cycle. There is no choice. No free will. Not even a discussion of it. The story laboriously shows the characters doing exactly what we have either been shown or told the other characters have already done. WHY?! What is the point? The movie tells you what happens, then strings you along on the expectation that there will be some clever thinking by someone to avoid their fate. But no. The movie just connects the dots and paints by numbers. It was maddening. Does Richard Kelly have no idea how to tell a story? Not even the basics of it? I'm starting to think so. He has some great ideas and a great sense of atmosphere, but this final act storytelling is just so terrible.

I could go on about how I disliked other aspects of the movie, from the pointless cutaways to unimportant characters while the main characters were actually doing something interesting to the statement(voiced by Diaz's character) that a deafblind life is no life at all. For a movie that was actually very thoughtful about its depiction of people with deformity, that was kind of shocking.

But I won't dwell on those points. It was slightly more disturbing that we see twice and are told about a third woman who pushes the button, while their husband wring their hands and think about it rationally. The women in the film are practically hysterical in their characteritures of overwrought women who act impulsively and then put their long suffering husbands through the consequences of their lack of foresight.

Media Thoughts

2009-11-11T21:06:00.001-08:00

Media Thoughts

Veteran's Day: Surviving Is The Only Real Glory

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 08:16 AM PST

On this day, the 11th day of the 11th month, at the 11th hour, the guns in Europe finally fell silent. The Great War, the War to End All Wars, the war know known as only the first World War, was over. Of all the wars in history, this is perhaps the most tragically pointless. There was no warlord with plans for world domination. There was no great social injustice to be corrected. There were no huddling masses yearning to be free. There was only a massive military buildup and a spiderweb of treaties that carried forward the petty rivalries of the nobility into the modern age, and threw millions of young men into the meat grinding hell of the trenches.

Veteran's Day is my favorite holiday, for the selfish reason that its mine. My holiday.
It is also my favorite because it reminds me that at one time someone thought it was important enough to honor veterans with a day. A great day too, Armistice Day.

I was in the military before 9/11, back when no one cared if you were in or not. Not really. It was just something you did. Sure, people died from time to time in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, but it was 1 or 2 every few months, and half of them were from accidents anyway. Lots of places around military bases were actively hostile to the military, and with good reason. We weren't angels after all. Or if we were, we were killer angels. You wouldn't want to take us into your home straight away. Clean us up, put us in our fancier uniforms, and make sure there was a senior Non-Comissioned Officer around and we could be presentable, still a little unpolished.

Then 9/11 came around and it was all flags and handshakes and "thank you for your service." Maybe the country needed a reminder, but at what a cost. I prefer a nice greeting card sent out to people, with their property taxes perhaps to save on postage. Just something gentle that reminds you to consider the sacrifice that so many young people go through so that our nation can sleep soundly, fat, dumb and happy.

Things have started to swing the other way now, and I don't sense that many people have much true investment in what the President does next in Afghanistan. The pendulum has started to swing back towards apathy, and as much as it pains me, it does not surprise me.

The pendulum never stops swinging, and if apathy is the price of peace, then it is a price that I will gladly suffer. The danger, the tragedy, is that even now, as we enter the apathy of peace, young people in the flower of their youth are standing in harms way, at our command. They are thousands of miles from their family, forsaking our prosperity and rejoicing in the smallest of comforts. Enjoy your peace, but don't forget their conflict.

I'll share some links with you now, some stuff I like to reflect upon on Veteran's Day.

First is Pericles Funeral Oration, which, while more properly appropriate to Memorial Day, has some great things to say about military service, from so long ago:

"For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich."

I also like the line from Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One, "The only real glory in war is surviving." So true. Not all heroes are dead, not all scars can be seen.

I first saw this when I was maybe 6 years old, part of Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown(or as I like to call it, It's the Old World, Charlie Brown).

I always found this sequence incredibly affecting, and I've never forgotten it. I think the rest of the film has something to do with a lost school bus and the Red Baron, but I can't say for sure. But this section, this section is burned into my memory and I think of it often.

This is a recent song, and I don't know anything about what Ritter intended, but I find it lyrical and heartrending. It seems the conventional wisdom was wrong, and seeing our nation's young women dead and maimed by war hasn't really changed anything.

Finally, a set of pictures of me in the military.

Media Thoughts

2009-10-31T21:03:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

Top Halloween Movies (1/5)

Posted: 31 Oct 2009 04:59 AM PDT

Halloween. Of course. John Carpenter's original, that made his directorial career and essentially invented the slasher movie. You can't get a better Halloween horror movie than this(although I'll give you 4 others that are in the running). It takes one of the most purely fun holidays and turns it on its head, using the very icons of the modern American celebration against you. It starts with the most terrifying Jack 'o Lantern ever, and then turns a costumed child into a masked killer. When the action picks up again years later, the acts of dressing in costumes, scaring friends and even door to door trick or treating are subverted by the spectral Shape into a frenzy of killing. Even the more ancillary activities of teenagers sneaking off for sex while the parents and younger siblings are away are roped into the milieu. By the end of the film it has become clear that Michael Meyers is not just a guy with a knife and issues against his sister. He has become a supernatural agent of fear and evil, the literal Bogeyman, named as such in the final line of the film. Even his disappearance after being shot by Dr. Loomis indicates his non-corporeal nature. The body of the human being Michael Meyers is just a vessel for some kind of otherworldly force, more powerful than anything encountered yet by man. Carpenter's direction is at his absolute best here, a high point that he would never quite regain even though he made several other fantastic movies in his filmmaking career. The timing of the action, the cutting of the scenes and the subtle cinematography tricks to play with audiences expectations and keep the suspense building are a master's class in how to make a thriller. The Shape is a perfect horror movie villain, all the more so because he appears in such a small percentage of the total screen time.

Finally, how can I not mention Carpenter's score. Again, his best work, which is saying a lot when compared to his work in such films as "Escape from New York" and "The Fog." But the piano theme by the Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra(actually just Carpenter and his friends) is unforgettable and instantly chilling.

Media Thoughts

2009-10-15T21:15:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

Behold!

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 09:01 AM PDT

My ongoing household renovation efforts, the most recent of which is the repair of a loose tile and replacement of the toilet, are stalled at the moment while I wait for my brother to take a shower.

In other, better, news, for those of you who don't follow me on twitter or facebook, my scene from the movie "Tales of the Maya Skies" is finally online!

You can watch it right here, right now. I'm still gathering up production art and assets, so I don't have any of that ready to post yet. But soon! In the meantime, I'm still working on our version of the poster and just cleaning up stuff so we can move on to bigger and better things!

Tales of the Maya Skies: "The Hero Twins, the Birth of Corn and the Creation of the Sun and the Moon from DomeFest on Vimeo.

Media Thoughts

2009-09-23T21:05:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

Inglouriously Yours, an essay on Bastards & War

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 09:38 PM PDT

If it matters to you, there are spoilers for almost the entire movie, but not for anything that matters. The vagaries of the plot are almost irrelevant to the enjoyable aspects of the movie, so read on.

A note: I've been working on various versions of this for almost 3 weeks, ever since I saw the film. Suffice to say it gave me lots of stuff to think about, and lots of fun conversations with friends. Consider that one of the highest recommendations I can give to a film.

No matter what else you say, Quentin Tarantino can make a hell of an entertaining film that also gives film nerds like me tons to think and talk about. I've sat down at least 3 times to try to write down my thoughts on Inglourious Basterds, and each time I started a totally different type of writing about a different aspect of the film. I want to just get out the short version before it gets so late that the film is old news.

First, the film is really at war with itself. Tarantino sets it up as a vicarious revenge fantasy, along the lines of something like I Spit on Your Grave, or The Punisher. These types of stories play to the darker parts of human nature, by providing villains so vile that we watch the supposed heroes enact gruesome revenge and torture upon them and cheer, because they deserve it. Movies like Hostel(directed by Basterd's co-star Eli Roth) play this to an extreme, with the most pornographic tortures inflicted upon the human body in order to justify the sometimes even more bloody retribution. It plays together as a perfect cycle, escalating the violence as the movie nears its climax, while at the same time giving the audience a sort of moral justification to thrill in such destruction of human flesh. Tarantino played with this somewhat in Death Proof, which turned the tables on Kurt Russell's sadistic driver with a trio of vengeful ladies. Here, Tarantino sets the revenge scenario up with the deliciously vile Col. Landa, who masks his villainy behind a veil of politeness and respect. The opening scene is one of the most nail biting of recent cinema, comparable in my mind to Noe Bell's heart-stopping car-top antics of Death Proof, but it is all done with subtleties of acting and writing. The performances are quiet, nothing showy, and the eyes tell much more than the banal conversation. The french farmer knows he is screwed from the first moment, and Col. Landa knows he knows it, but they play the game of small talk until Landa's casual observations reveal his true calculation, and the cool is broken. The contrast of manners and evil are an old but effective way to evoke audience disgust, as we view Col. Landa as not only a killer but a hypocrite. All his pretensions of respect were merely a ruse to mask his true intentions. The audience is as betrayed as the farmer, having been drawn in by Landa's melodious words, and we want to see him get his comeuppance.

A lesser writer would have devoted the rest of the film to various plots to get Col. Landa. Perhaps the Basterds hear of the equally famous Jew-hunter, and engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Jew Hunter versus the Jews who hunt. But Tarantino is a better writer than this, and despite his aspirations to make an exploitation movie he gives us something deeper. Col. Landa continues to figure in the film, but he is never a target for revenge. His presence at later events is a happenstance at best, a side-show that gives something interesting to talk about(because he is an interesting talker), while the real revenge is enacted upon other Germans.

Note that I said Germans, not Nazis. There is a difference, no matter what the Basterds or Tarantino says. Nazis were a political party, like Democrats or Republicans or the Green Party. Sure, when they gained power they re-made Germany in their image, but as a matter of fact members of the Wehrmacht were constitutionally forbidden from joining a political party. The SS were the military branch of the Nazis. As Valkyrie showed so effectively last year, there were plenty of German soldiers who had no love for Hitler. The 2 Germans who meet their most direct and personal ends in the film are distinctly painted in a sympathetic light.

The best developed is Pvt. Zoeller, the hero of the film within the film. He is essentially a German version of Barry Pepper's character from Saving Private Ryan, the simple small-town soldier who is a crack shot with a rifle. He even compares himself to Sgt. York, the American hero of World War 1 who once compared shooting Germans in the head to pot-shots on turkeys back home. Zoeller is likable, friendly, and, most importantly, a movie geek. He tries to make friends with Shoshanna, now hiding in plain sight as the owner of a Paris cinema. Zoeller is hopeless trying to romance a woman who's family was murdered by Landa's men, but he earns great audience sympathy for his efforts. In the last moments of the film though Tarantino realizes that he has created an immensely likable character who now must be killed or allowed to escape. In the rules of a revenge fantasy, he can't escape, so he has to die, and in order for his death not to take away from the thrill of revenge, it must be justified. So in his last lines before dying, his character makes a 180 turn and becomes some kind of monstrous jealous boy. His demands and threats run counter to his entire character, but they do play into another theme of the film, of performance.

Death Proof and Kill Bill were also very much about performance, perception and bravado. Kill Bill featured a cast of characters, each trying to "out bad-ass" each other, and each presented as a legitimate bad-ass in their own right. The Bride is the biggest bad-ass of all as she kills her way down her list of unstoppable killers. Death Proof was more about the bragging persona of a guy in a bar, who can't back up his boasting when he is taken out of his chosen scenarios. As long as its him in his "Death Proof" car against unsuspecting ladies, he wins every time. When he comes up against a capable set of opponents, he breaks down into tears before finally being killed for his crimes.

Inglourious Basterds is full of people playing roles. The scene in the basement bar is all about performance, both textually and sub-textually, with meta-references to the card game and the actors themselves. Col. Landa plays the role of the polite official who is inconvenienced by the unpleasant business of hunting jews when he would much rather be enjoying fine pastries. Shoshanna plays the role of the obedient theatre owner, and Zoeler plays the two roles of reluctant war hero and demanding occupier. It is unclear which role is Zoeler's performance, or if either is his true personality. Perhaps the most interesting performance is Brad Pitt's character Aldo Raine. Raine never once seems like a real person in the film. Every word he says, every action he takes, is for the benefit of those observing. He wants his men to see him as a bad-ass commander, the Germans to fear him as a blood-thirsty leader, and even his double-agent ally to fear him and anger him at her peril. The final scene in the film, when Col. Landa gets a form of payback at the point of Raine's knife, is the final realization of his performance. For him to act in any other way would be a betrayal of the persona he has created for himself, and it would have to be in front of one of his own men in addition to Landa himself.

It is interesting that Landa, the main villain of the film, gets off with a "mark of Cain" instead of death. Of all the characters in the film, real historical persons excepted, he is most deserving of death. In addition to the Jew Hunting opening scene, he brutally strangles the traitorous actress Hammersmark, apparently without any real reason for doing so as he was never trying to spoil the plot. Landa is setup, in the rules of revenge films I explained before, for the most brutal revenge. But, vicious as Pitt's actions are, Landa ends the film able to walk away to presumable safety and retirement in America. If Pitt's mark denies him status as a war hero, he will at least survive the war. As Samuel Fuller(WW2 vet himself)'s film The Big Red One said, "Surviving is the only glory in war."

Which brings me to the most affecting character in the film, for me at least, and what I believe to be one of the only "honest" characters, who doesn't play a persona but acts true to themselves for the entirety, however brief, of their screen appearance.

I've been in the military going on 10 years now, serving both active duty and national guard service in the Army & Air Force. Perhaps my own personal experiences and beliefs are being reflected when I say that the German Sergeant Werner was the most affecting character in the film. Sgt. Werner is introduced as one of three survivors being interrogated by Pitt & Co. after their unit has been killed. Around him the Basterds are scalping the bodies of the dead Germans, but his blatant disrespect of the dead is ignored by Sgt. Werner, who it is shown is well aware of the Basterds and their modus operandi. Nevertheless, Sgt. Werner treats Pitt's Lieutenant with the respect due to an officer from a POW, saluting and responding politely to his questions. When Pitt demands to know of nearby German positions, Sgt. Werner tells Raine that he cannot possibly expect him to divulge any information that would put German lives at risk. A reasonable, lawful position. If nothing else, Sgt. Werner can see what has become of his own men, and if he is well aware of the Basterds MO, then he has little incentive to give up any information. As we see from the fate of the poor solider who does give up the intelligence, even collaborators are not left un-scarred. Still, Sgt. Werner acts honorably for a German soldier, calmly sitting in his place as Raine calls forth the "Bear Jew" for another German who "wants to dies for his country." Raine's mocking intonation of this sentiment can be seen as psychological intimidation for the benefit of the remaining prisoners, but it could also be Raine's own blood-lust, or at least the perception of blood-lust he wants to project, showing through any veneer of military duty. When Eli Roth's baseball bat wielding Donny Donowitz, "The Bear Jew," emerges from the shadows of the nearby tunnel, Sgt. Werner quietly listens to Raine's description of his impending death as the only form of entertainment the Basterds get while behind enemy lines, comparing it to a nice night at the movies back home. When the Donowitz lines up his bat on Sgt. Werner's head, he scornfully asks if his medals were awarded for killing Jews. Sgt. Werner simply replies, "For Bravery," and Donowitz silently bashes his head in with the bat. After assaulting his body until it moves its last, Donowitz plays up the scene with mock baseball announcements about Ted Williams, and the rest of the Basterds cheer the gory death of the Sergeant.

The way that Tarantino shoots Sgt. Werner in this scene implies, to me, that he respects the character as an honorable soldier. This scene, more than any other in the film, casts the Basterds in a negative light compared to the Germans. Sgt. Werner is respectful, honorable and, as evidenced by both his medals and his death, brave. The Basterds in this scene behave as nothing less than schoolyard bullies, sociopaths who delight in the torment and death of their helpless and outnumbered captives. Raine's mocking of the idea of a soldier dying for his country brings the conflict between the Basterds and the Germans into a sharp relief. It is not a war between countries. In fact, several of the Basterds are from Germany and Austria, having fled the Nazi regime. It is a war between ideals, in this case the ideals of National Socialism and Jewish Revenge. Raine and his men never speak of service to the United States or other allies, and Raine shows a casual disdain for such authority in the final scenes of the film. They are not men willing to die for their country, but rather men willing to kill, and probably die, for the deaths of Nazis. In short, they are terrorists, assassins and murderers. They have no concern for their own survival or escape, and the final plan to destroy the Nazi high command is essentially a very complicated suicide bombing(Shoshanna's role is of a similar nature). Sgt. Werner on the other hand is a simple soldier. His personal political beliefs are never elaborated upon, but his character as a soldier is clear. He is willing to die in order to protect his fellow soldiers, and he is brave enough to face the inevitable with dignity. When confronted with abject depravity, he responds with humility and honor.

Tarantino said in an interview in The Atlantic, that he was tired of movies that showed Jews in the Holocaust marching dutifully to their deaths. He wanted to show them fighting back. But of course he couldn't do that in the context of the Holocaust itself, so he created a imaginary group of terrorists to strike fear into the hearts of Germans. But when he talks about being tired of seeing people marching to their deaths, he is missing something important, and his thinking reflects an immature and almost juvenile way of looking at the situation. It is easy to say, as I've heard in dozens of schoolyard discussions over the years, that if you were faced in a situation of being led to your execution, you would attack the guards in a desperate attempt for escape. It is easy to think that if thousands of prisoners are being guarded by just a few dozen guards, the prisoners could riot and escape. It is far more difficult to actually led such an outburst. The first person to attack a guard is dead. No question. So is the second. And the third, on down the line until finally the mass of humanity overcomes the power of the gun. It takes a certain kind of person to throw away their own life like that, when it is absolutely certain. A soldier wants to win the battle to be sure, but they would also prefer to go home when the battle is over. To throw ones life away requires a great dedication to the cause, or a great devaluation of ones own life. This is the difference between Sgt. Werner and the Basterds. Sgt. Werner is a soldier, doing what he believes to be his duty, following his orders as best he can to protect his men and accomplish the mission. The Basterds are fanatics, closer to something like the Waffen-SS or Al Queda, devoted to killing as many of their enemies as they can before they are finally killed. They have few illusions about their own survival, and it seems to be only a matter of time before this small squad of men are finally cornered. The deaths of the 2 Basterds who remain in the burning theatre are a good example of this, as they remain, even as the building burns down, shooting Nazi High Command officials until the bombs strapped to their legs finally explode.

So there you have it. My opinion, on how Tarantino set out to make a vicariously thrilling revenge fantasy, but in the end his superior skills as a writer and director brought out something better. He created a film that humanizes Nazis and presents American Jewish soldiers(of the so-called Greatest Generation) as blood-thirsty terrorists. And in the end the terrorists win. There are so many other things I could talk about, but I'll mention only one here for reflection. As I've said, I believe that the Basterds in the film as basically presented as terrorists working for the Allies, committing murder and suicide attacks in order to inspire fear(the very definition of terrorist). As a soldier, I was disgusted by their actions, by their desecration of the dead, by their mocking execution and torture of helpless prisoners. But, I have to pause and think about the nature of war. When it really comes down to it, are any of the horrendous actions of the Basterds any worse than fire-bombing a city? Are they any worse than Sherman's "March to the Sea?" Are they worse than dropping a nuclear weapon on a industrial center? Every war, inevitably, has civilian non-combatant causalities. The destruction of manufacturing capabilities or economic centers are as vital to winning a war as destroying tanks and shooting at soldiers on the battlefield. So, in the end, is there really a difference between dropping a bomb onto a house and digging a knife into the forehead of a prisoner. Terrible, horrible, awful things, done in the name of winning the war. Without such things, the world would be a very different place. So many of the things that we think of as great, a prosperous and peaceful Japan, a Europe of allied but autonomous countries, the very existence of the United States and many of the freedoms we take for granted and hold most dear. All these things were made possible because human beings were killed in a multitude of ways, on the field of battle in ways both noble and sickening. That contradiction is something that will probably never be answered on this Earth.

Media Thoughts

2009-08-03T21:02:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

"Braid" - A Time for Every Season

Posted: 01 Aug 2009 09:06 PM PDT

Braid is a game I feel truly bad about waiting so long to play. It is a game that means something. Something wonderful. And here I am talking about how great it is nearly a year after it first came out. But I waited and played the Mac port of the game, thus supporting my primary gaming platform. Yes, I know, hardy-har har. I guess if it ever comes out on the Wii I should buy it there too. Waiting was well worth it to me.

Braid is a game that will always be mentioned in the same breath as "art." It is, undeniably, a work of art. Perhaps not the greatest, but great. Really, really great.

A lot of people debate weather video games are art. Usually those are people who don't play video games. Gamers are well aware of the sublime simplicity of something like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros., and the complex beauty of an epic like Kingdom Hearts or even the Wagnerian sagas of Halo or the Divine Comedy of Doom. One of the problems with viewing games as art is that the most "artful" games only really reveal their beauty to a player who is able to make the commitment of time to invest themselves in the game. Because the player is an active participant, anyone who doesn't play can't really appreciate the game's art in the same way.

My point in all of this is that Braid is a perfect game for non-gamers to appreciate as art. First of all it is short. Only 6 or 7 hours, and most levels can be completed in a matter of minutes. Second, it is easy. Once you figure out the solution to each maps puzzle the actual mechanics of solving the level are, for the most part, intellectual exercises and not that hand-eye coordination intensive. If you can make it through world 1-1 of Mario you can beat Braid.

Finally, it has a distinct visual and audio style that immediately sets it apart from the traditionally cartoon-style games and the contemporary highly-polished style. The art by Dave Hellman makes the first impression of the game one of great beauty. Like the graphics, the music is beautiful without being distracting. The visual and aural achievement of the game are at once arresting in their beauty but as the player progresses the true greatness makes itself apparent. Each screen is easily readable and uncluttered, possessing almost nothing that is not significant to the puzzle at hand. The artwork's style allows it to gently fade into the background while the player is struggling over the latest puzzle, and the music remains soothing even when the player rewinds time over and over to attempt a puzzle. In some situations the backwards music is played more continually and even then it does not become a distraction.

Speaking of time, the actual gameplay with its time manipulation based puzzles is elegant and fun, with responsive platforming controls that pleasantly remind you of the classic games of yore.

The story in Braid gets some amount of attention, mainly because it plays against expectations. I had it mostly figured out by about halfway through the game, but I had the benefit of hearing that it was unusual, and I've played enough games that "subvert" video game conventions to understand what was going on pretty early.

In short, Braid is a game that you will play through quickly, maybe even in one day, but it is a game that will stay with you long after that.

Media Thoughts

2009-07-07T21:07:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

Up up and away

Posted: 06 Jul 2009 10:40 PM PDT

We saw Up on Friday, at long last. Coming off something like Wall-E, which was about BIG things, Up took me a bit off guard with its lighthearted adventure story. It wasn't really about anything in particular, just a little romp through South America in search of a beautiful landscape. callmesteam said he was surprised by how villainous the villain was in it. Sure, he talked about killing the main characters and sent his dogs after them, but he was really more of a mustache-twirling bad guy out of a 1940s movie serial. The movie pulls at a lot of heart-strings, but it just seemed kind of like it was on autopilot to me. The jokes were pretty good, and the movie was certainly pretty, but it just seemed more predictable and contrived than most Pixar movies. Not bad in any way, just not mind blowing.

Nicole & I also watched the stand-alone Deathproof. It was certainly longer and more talky even than the Grindhouse version. More of the same to be sure, but again, not necessarily better. Nothing that was cut really adds anything to the film in any way.

Media Thoughts

2009-06-25T21:11:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

Network (1976) - 35 Years of Telling us TV will rot our brains

Posted: 25 Jun 2009 10:28 AM PDT

For our family & friends movie education night last night, I choose Sidney Lumet's awesome Network(Watch online or buy the DVD). Famous for its "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" scene, many people don't remember that the rest of the movie was a scathing criticism of new-entertainment, all the more prescient because it was released almost 5 years before CNN even debuted. The Peter Finch as Howard Beale rants are almost a separate film from the more thoughtful elements with William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Holden's character is particularly unusual, having little to do with the Beale plot after he leave the network about a quarter of the way into the film. Dunaway may be the prototypical icy woman executive, coldly discussing murder, terrorism and the potential for ratings and ad revenue. Her affair with Holden puts a human element into the film that is lacking from the high theatrics of Beale's swooning prophet antics. I'm still puzzling over how the two elements relate to each other, except that Dunaway is almost young enough to be a part of what Holden describes at one point as the generation raised on TV. Her disconnection between the harm her programs are showing and even perpetuating could be seen as an illustration of the very things that the film is meant to caution against. Robert Duvall is in the movie quite a bit, but he fails to make much of an impact playing a regular corporate hatchet man. Ned Beatty is much more effective in a single scene raving as madly as Finch about the "primal forces of nature." When I first saw it I thought he was as crazy as Beale, but watching the film again it comes across as a sales pitch. The classic "know your audience." Beatty's character knows Beale is quite mad and truly believes himself to be a prophet, and he communicates with him thusly. How do you get a prophet to tell your message instead of his? Present it to him that YOU are the higher power. Genius.

The thing that really struck me was the message of the film. News becomes entertainment. People are so apathetic that they hear a madman ranting about takeovers over their country, perhaps even telling the truth, and all they want is to watch him on TV. Masses that gladly trade their allegiance to religion, politics, or what have you to a face on a screen. The power of TV and mass media to transform. The selling out of the United States to corporate interests. The loss of individuality. Generations being raised on a steady diet of amusement instead of education. Diversion instead of discussion. People too lazy to do anything about the horrors in Vietnam, more interested in the latest movies and reality tv than Watergate.

All these things seem prophetic, don't they? All of those arguments could be made in a satire, today, this very minute, and they would seem relevant. Change the specifics(Vietname=Iraq, Watergate=Abu Ghraib) and you have a scathing criticism of modern media and American culture. So what does that say about this 35 year old film?

I think it might say that the film is wrong. These things aren't the end of society. The popularity of mindless entertainment has not lead to the downfall of civilization. Iraq, for all its horrible and terrible aspects, isn't and never was as bad as Vietnam. A progressive, liberal and minority President sits in the White House. Sure, the government is spending ridiculous amounts bailing out big business, but those businesses are now more beholden to the government than ever, rather than the other way around.

Most tellingly of all, the generation raised on TV has become the curmudgeons who are bemoaning the generation raised on the Internet. The same people that were the young, irresponsible punks who cared for nothing but the latest blood & sex on TV are now the ones worrying that their children care for nothing but blood & sex on the net. The cycle goes round and round and, somehow, the world keeps turning. Those darn kids and their loud music keep growing up and learning to be responsible so that they can complain about those darn kids and their loud music.

Media Thoughts

2009-06-15T21:03:00.001-07:00

Media Thoughts

This is not just a test post

Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:33 PM PDT

I'm testing a new posting method to sync this journal with my media blog(Lonely Media), but don't just ignore it.

If you do, you'll never know that I think The Tudors is an interesting companion piece to Rome, brining high drama to obscure bits of famous history, but from very different tacts. Rome has the classic idea of "ordinary people caught up in epic events," and The Tudors focuses almost exclusively on the King & his court, the major players themselves. No peanut gallery to comment upon to relate to there.

Stealing, honoring or just tapping into the mind of God

2009-03-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

Two of the few TV shows that I watch regularly engaged in outright theft of storytelling elements from other properties. Now, I'm as big a fan of re-engaging the same ideas in a new way, and I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with taking good ideas from something that's been done before. Just look at how many great stories have spun out of stuff like the Bible, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, etc. There is even a name for the phenomena of ideas coming back again and again and again, sometimes completely unintentionally, sometimes purposefully, sometimes completely naturally(as in, nature). All along the watchtower and all that. Hey Jude being played in a town somewhere in the wastelands. As Flannery O'Conner once titled a short story, everything that rises must converge. For more on this, especially in the visual realm, check out Lawrence Weschler's amazing book Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences

But in some cases, the lift is so direct that it really defeats any point in doing it again, except as a homage to the original material. I'll let you be the judge, but both of these examples did more to remind me of the originals than excite me with their own spin.

March 26's episode of The Office, where Michael leave Dunder Mifflin to start his own company and implores his staff to join him at his own company.

Jerry Maguire, in which Tom Cruise DOES THE EXACT SAME THING WITH NEARLY THE SAME SPEECH! Only, about 13 years earlier.

The Jerry Maguire scene is often said to have been an homage to the final scene in The Graduate(and TV Sqaud makes the connection with The Office), but I think the Jerry Maguire scene puts much more of its own take on the theme than The Office did. Still, I do feel a bit bad comparing The Office negatively to two of the best movies of all time.

Another example of an homage to the final scene of The Graduate is the brilliant Michael Clayton, which correctly gleans that the subtleties of the scene are its true genius. The Office had a brief flash of this as Michael walked away from Dunder Mifflin, but unfortunatly the TV time constraints mean that they can't have an incredibly powerful scene like this.

Meanwhile, over in science fiction territory.

March 27's Dollhouse, about a drug that both gives a nutty high and revives traumatic memories.

Star Trek's The Naked Time, about a virus that removes inhibitions and causes general nuttiness.

EDIT: EMBED NOT WORKING - CLICK TO WATCH AT CBS.COM

Amazon.com Widgets

Taking the web out of webcomics

2009-03-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield have been producing a weekly, totally free, webcomic called FreakAngelsfor a while now. It is a post-apocalyptic tale featuring a group of people who have vaguly-defined superpowers. They live in a ruined, partially flooded London, leading a group of people and trying to build some kind of sustainable society in the face of the usual roving gangs of canniabls and bikers. The writing is high quality Ellis, witty and fun without the over-talking that hurts some of his material and not as spare and depressing as something like Fell. The art is a unforgettable mix of almost Disney style cartooning with a heightened realism. What I mean by that is the characters skew towards big eyes and expressive faces, but some of the little gadgets are drawn with precision that an engineer would admire.

Volume 3 started today , and Ellis says its a great jumping on point. I dove straight in mid-way through volume 1, and I never even bothered to go back to read the first couple "issues," but they are all still online and free should you choose to do so. I can't recommend it enough. Sure, it won't change your life or win any literary prizes, but it is free and a little dose of culture, entertainment and mental stimulation every Friday. You can also buy Freakangels Volume 1 TP if you choose to have your comics in dead tree form.

(FreakAngels)

What I would order from Whedon's Dollhouse

2009-02-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

I don't have much love for Joss Whedon. I hated Buffy, never watched Angel, mildly disliked Firefly, mildly enjoyed Serenity, and loved Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog.

A mixed, bag, to be sure.

But Dollhouse presents an impossible dilemma. It is Joss Whedon, and it stars Eliza Dushku, so I normally wouldn't even give it a second glance. But it also has Olivia Williams, Harry Lennix and Tahmoh Penikett. These are, in order, the awesomely hot English teacher from Rushmore, the ultimate bad-ass Aaron the Moor from Titus and Helo from Battlestar Galactica. So I feel a need to support these character actors I love and watch the show.

And it isn't that bad. Whedon has found a format that fits his writing style perfectly. He can have new situations every week, so the fact that his writing is kind of schitzophrentic actually makes sense. The tech guy is the only character who speaks in "Whedon-speak," and Lennix's constant radio conversations with him actually give a good outlet for Whedon's penchent for monologues. Dushku is a constantly changing blank slate, which also fits her acting style and ability pretty well. The only downside so far is that the story arc is rather vague and is developing through a scene or two per episode, making it seem rather tangential to the rest of the series.

My one big complaint is that the "clients" for the Dollhouse are not imaginative enough. If you could order a person with any personality you wanted, why settle on a motorcycle-racing sex slave? Assuming that its main function is a high-end brothel, why not get a little more creative? How about a time traveler from the 51st century?

Which is the point I'm trying to get to: In real life the Dollhouse scenario would seem to be custom made for role-playing. How about a disgraced Jedi who is hiding on our backwater planet to avoid the empire? Or a caveman who's been recently thawed out of ice? How about an intelligent dog who is not trapped in the body of a person and must get back to the witch doctor's cave before the full moon?

There are all kinds of scenarios that don't involve anything more than someone thinking that they are something to work. You don't have to deliver a lightsaber; just have the "Jedi" believe it was lost. So far the examples we've seen are, besides the motorcycle racer, a hostage negotiator and an extreme sports nut. I hope they get a little crazier. And don't get started on the whole concept the show has that you have to create the composite out of real people: just find a crazy person who believes they're from the future to mix with the smarts of a super-scientist.

Me, I would order an evening fighting crime with Batgirl.

Agora Trailer (AKA Rachel Weisz in The Passion of Hypatia!)

2009-02-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Amenábar's new movie, apparently titled Agora(which was a place of assembly in Greek city states, and that seems to be the meaning here) has a trailer. This is the movie that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Not only is Amenábar a fantastic director, making 2 of my favorite movies[Abre Los Ojos aka Open Your Eyes(remade as Vanilla Sky, another great movie) and The Sea Inside], but I'm a total sucker for Roman-era epic stories. Throw in Rachel Weisz as one of the most famous women of antiquity(seen in a 19th century painting, at left) and I'm totally there.

The look of the trailer reminds me quite a bit of The Passion of the Christ. It certainly seems to have the same production values. This story could actually play out as an interesting counter-point to that film since Hypatia is killed in a brutal manner that is not dissimilar to Jesus. Except Hypatia was killed by a Christian mob. So this might be the ultimate anthethesis to Mel Gibson's film.

Babylon 5 & 2010

2009-02-05T08:41:00.001-08:00

I was wacthing the highly entertaining 2010 the other night, for the first time in years. I was struck by a number of things, notably how well it holds up compared to 2001. Don't get me wrong, 2001 is great, but it is slow as molasses and not very "thrilling." It works much better as something to think about than 2010, which gives you the visceral thrills like the space-walk over Io.

I hadn't watched 2010 in so long that this was the first time that I had noted the direct rip-off that Babylon 5 made of the ship design. Designer Paul Bryant admitted that he did the design of the Omega-Class Destroyer as an homage to Syd Mead's design for the Alexi Leonov. The entirity of the ship seems to be a combination of the rotating section and basic profile of the Leonov with the bristling antenna of the Sulaco from Aliens. I'm not saying any of this to diminish the artists who created it, since I'm a firm believer in art building upon art, and all of these guys were working with similar principles of a spaceship concept that would be realistic, intimidating and cool to look at. All these images are fan made or models, in order to get a better look at the ships.

The Alexi Leonov

http://www.truedimensions.com/lego/customs/viewer.php?m=2010&image=1

U.S.S. Sulaco

EAS Agamemnon

Super Bowl Trailers

2009-02-01T21:48:00.001-08:00

Star Trek: I find it interesting that the orbital skydiving that was cut from Star Trek: Generations makes a sort-of reappearance here. Otherwise it remains a trailer motivated by action, not character. I wish they would trust the actors enough to let us see at least part of a scene instead of just snippets of dialogue.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen : I'm assuming that's their new version of Devastator, who made an apperance in the first film as a single big 'bot, but here I'm guessing that gigantic thing is a bunch of Decepti-creeps merged together.

Up: Pixar's latest. Apparently there is a new trailer out, but all I could find on Disney's ad-riddled site was the old trailer from Wall-E, and a new scene that's pretty good but short. I would embed and/or link, but the ads depress me too much. Sorry Disney.

Fast and Furious: Paul Walker says "a lot has changed." Apparently the few things that haven't changed are Walker's acting, Diesel's glower, and the entire rest of the preview. The Fast and The Furious excited a lot of people with its reliance upon real cars racing over CGI, and this trailer goes in almost totally the opposite direction. It seems that not a single person involved in the sequels understands what people liked about the original.

Land of the Lost: Probably the best trailer of the bunch, although the trailer doesn't have much of the feel of Sid & Marty Krofft. It seems to be definatly set on a future Earth instead of a alternate universe, although that's just my own speculation and it could be anything. Hopefully it will end up as good as the highly underrated movie version of Lost in Space
.

G.I. Joe: Perhaps because I never got into the old cartoon, but nothing about the G.I. Joe movie excites me. Although I do like the powered-armor that shows up briefly. No embed, but here's a link.

The Real League of Their Own

2008-11-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

Google recently uploaded ~~thousands~~ millions of photos from the archives of Life magazine. Life, for you kiddies out there, used to be known for all the kinds of amazing photos that you find these days at places like Big Picture.

Anyway, perusing just a sampling I found some gems, stuff that makes me wonder how Women's Baseball never caught on. Just look at these photos and tell me that this wouldn't appeal to the prurient interests of men in the 1950s? They've got everything: glamour, athleticism, attitude, uniforms, injuries, weapons. Its a veritable cornucopia of sexual fetish.

On second thought, maybe its not that much of a surprise that this went out of fashion in the 50s.

Snoopy Vs. Charlie Browns

2008-11-08T07:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what to make of this. I wonder what Charles Schultz would think. The fact that it looks like a fun game just confuses me more.

Did you notice the Nazi/Imperial Charlie Browns that Snoopy is fighting?

Today in History: 1940 - A practical demonstration of the importance of Physics

2008-11-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

Aeroelasticity is the study of the interaction of aerodynamics, elasticity and inertia. These 3 forces are incredible powerful and govern a large amount of the movement that we take for granted every day. Put them together, and you have tremendous convergence of energy.

On this day in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge tore itself apart from the force of Aeroelastic Flutter. It had opened only 4 months earlier, on July 1, 1940.

It is often taught in physics classes, and these very famous videos are often shown. It is amazing that a camera was present at the time it collapsed.

This second one is the same footage, but it has been colorized, and the quality is better. Also, several shots appear to have been mirrored.

Obama declared winner by bi-monthly Santa Fe Paper

2008-10-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

The only possible logic I can see behind this is the fact that, as a bi-monthly, the election will be old news by the time their next issue comes out, and they have to capitalize on it somehow.

I think it would be rather funny, for this newspaper not the country in general, if the election ended with another 2000-esque recount and by the time the next issue comes out December it is still up in the air.

(New Mexico Independent)

The Cetacean Institute in Sausalito

2008-10-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

Wired has a great little photo gallery all about one of my favorite places on Earth: The monterey bay aquarium.

On this day in 1984, it opened. I think I visited it for the first time in 1985 perhaps, and it was forever immortalized in 1986 as the "Cetacean Institute" in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

If you have never been there, then count yourself unlucky and go there as soon as you can.

Either way, this photo gallery is a good intorduction. You can also look at my own photos, which I took on my honeymoon. One of my first priorities in my marriage was to share this with Nicole.

What It Does All Mean (1 of ?)

2008-10-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

I have very little idea what Jim Carrey's new movie is actually about. Something about a guy who promises to say "yes" to everything. It sounds, on the surface, like a variation on Liar, Liar and I really think that Carrey needs to have a hit at this point in his career. Is he still getting $20 million per picture? Judging by his last few, I would say that he is not worth it.

Personally, I would love for Carrey to give up comedy movies and move more into the territory that he mined so well in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I wanted to mention that Jim Carrey's new movie has the most generically awful poster, EVER. Look at it! What does it tell you? Nothing! Unless this is some kind of joke on The Sound of Music. Maybe...Ah, who knows? Hollywood poster people are to incomprehensible to me.

For fun, I threw together some other Jim Carrey movies that this poster could easily be an advertisement for. I particularly like the way that it looks when combined with Fun with Dick & Jane. It almost seems appropriate for this poster.

Just a test.

2008-10-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Just a test. Trying some new coding.

Politics and FullDome

2008-10-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

As someone who worked in a Planetarium (LodeStar in Albuquerque at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History), I took great offense to John McCain's disparaging remarks about Barack Obama's support for a $3 million "overhead projector." This projector was to be installed at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, IL, the beautiful location that recently hosted DomeFest.

Fortunately, my friend forwarded me this article, which explains it much more clearly than I could:

Modern astronomy and visualization technology have progressed exponentially since the current projector was installed. The ability of a planetarium to share the discoveries of modern astrophysicists depends on the technical capabilities of its theatres and projectors. If the Adler is going to continue to be one of the country's leading science educators, it needs a new projector.

-Jim Sweitzer, writing for Discovery Space

You can also see some more info on the projector at Gizmodo. Once again, McCain proves that he knows nothing about science, and cares even less.

See McCain's original diss below:

Charles Babbage's Little Big Planet

2008-10-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

I don't know which I find more amazing, but both of these blew my mind. Computers, made using only gears and simple switches, without any electronics involved:

This, a computer designed in 1847 and built in the early 21st century:

or this, a computer built within a video game (Little Big Planet), using tools designed to make traps and puzzles:

This game is amaing. It speaks well to the physics engine that such a thing is possible. I want to see each and every one of Rube Goldberg's designs recreated in this.

The Devil's Footprints Reference Images

2008-09-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

These are a couple of images from The Devil's Footprints, a 2003 comic from Dark Horse. These two sequences in particular have a lot of ideas that I like, and I wanted to put them up as research for a potential future project.

Tropic Thunder's False Advert

2008-09-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

Nicole and I went to see Tropic Thunder last weekend. Pretty much what I expected; not great, but funny enough even if it was a bit predictable. The standout was defiantly Brandon Soo Hoo as the pint-sized leader of the drug smugglers. He'll be in G.I. Joe next summer, so keep an eye out for him.

This scene isn't even in the movie.

I did want to mention the blatantly misleading trailer though. By my count there were at 3 major changes from the trailer to the movie I saw in a theatre. First was the scene above that wasn't even in the movie. That's the one from the trailer that had Ben Stiller head-butting some guy and then apologizing for "leaning into it." That entire sequence was apparently cut, as nothing close is in the movie. So if that is funny to you, just know you'll have to wait for the DVD to see it.

No Panda's in the theatrical version of this scene.

Next up is the sequence from the fictional movie within a movie, Scorcher 5(I think): Total Meltdown. In the trailer Stiller's character is inexplicably holding two parka wearing Panda bears in pouches on his vest. Funny. Plus, it provides additional context to a couple of key sequences in the movie involving Stiller's character and Pandas. Except it's not in the movie either. Sure, this exact shot is there. But those Panda's are plain old human babies. I don't know why this was changed, but I for one was particularly tickled by the random parka-wearing Pandas, so this was a change that really upset me.

Finally, we have the one change that makes sense for the trailer. Ben Stiller's hands in this shot from the trailer are simply missing. In the actual film they are still there, splayed open like florets, with blood everywhere. I can see why that would have to be changed for a "All Audiences" trailer, and if you watch the "Red Band" trailer(@ /slashfilm) you can see his hands as they are in the movie.

Most of the time I'm pretty forgiving of movies making changes from, or for, the trailers, but I really liked the Pandas.