Movies, Movies, Movies

A Very Long Engagement - Oh, hell yes. Right at the start, one of the greatest opening shots of a movie, ever: The camera, overlooking a trench during WWI, pans down to reveal a piece of wood. A disembodied arm hangs from the wood, and as the camera pans down further, we realize that the arm is not, as we may have thought, the severed arm of a soldier, but rather the arm of the shattered sculpture of Christ that once adorned this broken crucifix.

This is one of those movies that makes you glad motion pictures were invented. As with Jeunet's earlier film, Amélie, one of the interesting things about this is the way it doesn't telegraph the ending. Throughout most of the film, the two possible outcomes of the story, "Mathilde learns Manech is dead" or "Mathilde learns Manech is alive", seem equally likely to come to pass. We, the audience, hope along with her that he lives, but it is truly hope, not a bland confidence that All Will Be Well; a dream, not an expectation. Each possibility could function in the story, each would make sense, each would even satisfy the audience, and so it becomes impossible to predict what she will ultimately find.

But that's only one of the interesting things about the film, and there are many. The way the story of what happened in that trench is pieced together, gradually. The scenes of trench warfare that do for WWI what Saving Private Ryan did for WWII. Indelible images, such as the soldiers emerging from a burning cornfield, their cartridge-boxes exploding like fireworks. Magnifique.

One side note, to prevent you from being distracted by wondering, "Hey, isn't that...?" when one character is introduced: Yes, that is Jodie Foster, even though you've never heard her mentioned in any of the publicity for the film, and her name isn't even on the DVD packaging. Apparently she was in Paris dubbing her own performance in Panic Room into French, and contacted Jeunet expressing a desire to perform a role in French.

Batman Begins - Best Batman Movie Ever. This demonstrates rather clearly the difference between handing your franchise to an uneven-at-best director like Joel Schumacher, and handing it to a talent like Tim Burton or, in this case, Christopher Nolan. Not to neglect the cast: Every last one of them is great, but let me just specifically mention that Gary Oldman is absolutely perfect as the young Jim Gordon.

Let me also say how happy I am that the film basically proceeds from the assumption that none of the previous Batman films ever happened, nor ever will happen, to this Batman. In movies (and comic books, for that matter), there is often a reluctance to allow even iconic/archetypal characters to "exist" in multiple, unrelated versions/interpretations. But I like the idea that different filmmakers could be allowed to put their own personal "stamp" on a character, without having to worry about "continuity" with earlier movies made by different people. I like living in a world where Silence of the Lambs made no attempt at all to connect to Manhunter (even though they did feel the need to "fix" it later by making Red Dragon). Part of me wishes the upcoming Superman Returns wasn't using footage of Brando as Jor-El.

Cannibal: The Musical - Early Trey Parker/Matt Stone opus. Somewhat more Pythonesque in many places than their later work. Not as good as South Park or Team America, though certainly, there are signs of Parker's genius already in place - the tribe of "Indians" particularly had me doubled over with laughter. Not a Great Film, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly well worth seeing, especially for Parker/Stone fans like myself.

Its too bad she won't live. But then again who does?

A Japanese researcher has developed what appears to be a Nexus-1.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."

Me, I'm just waiting for the inevitable day when their technologies get picked up by these guys.

Romanes Eunt Domus!

Here are some pages collecting ancient graffiti from the walls of Pompeii.

Among the ones I particularly want to remember for special occasions:
Lucrum gaudium - Profit is happiness
Myrtis bene felas - Myrtis, you do great blow jobs

And, of course:
I.4.5 (House of the Citharist; below a drawing of a man with a large nose); 2375: Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this.

Awesome!

Woman annoyed at being groped by airport security gropes back.

Braaiinns!

Given that Pittsburgh is where George Romero lives, and he has filmed most of his movies in the area, I wonder if we should all perhaps be a bit concerned that not only is Pittsburgh the home of the ominously-named Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, but researchers at the Safar Center have now managed to reanimate corpses drained of blood, up to three hours after death.

I realize these are probably not zombie dogs, in the strictest sense. However, with only a vague description of some of them being "stricken with serious physical or behavioral problems" it's difficult to be certain...

(via John Reilly)

Yet More Movies

Hey, I'm unemployed right now, what else have I got to do?

Million Dollar Baby - To answer Morgan Freeman's question at the end about what happened to Clint Eastwood, I prefer to think he went off, tracked down that German bitch, and went all Dirty Harry on her ass.

Yes, it's a very good movie, and deserves all the praise it's gotten. I'm still not sure I would personally have given the "Best Picture" title to this over The Aviator. They're both great, it's really a toss-up between them for me personally, so I'd probably give it to The Aviator solely because Clint already had a couple of Best Picture Oscars to his name, while Marty only ought to.

Riverworld - The Go For Broke? Why? Leaving aside the obvious fact that the Not For Hire actually sounds like the sort of name Samuel Clemens would give to a riverboat, whereas Go For Broke sounds more like a T.V. game show, why would you even bother making a pointless change like that? What benefit is there?

That's sort of my whole opinion of this one - it's a basically competent, if uninspired, adaptation of the essentials of the books, combined with some pointless changes that add nothing. Why change the main character from Nile explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton to a generic 21st-century astronaut? Why do the grailstones appear to only have slots for about two dozen grails at a time? Why is there apparently no shortage of iron ore due to the constant barrage of meteors? What's with the brief shot of the Ethical Council of Twelve at the very end, with one of them saying, cheesily, "Their voyage has begun. But will they make it in time...?" Hey: They engineered an entire planet, if there is some bizarre reason they need these half-savages in their little wooden riverboat to get to the source of the river, why don't they just go get them?

I gather this was conceived as the pilot for a series, and that since the production company and the Sci-Fi Channel renewed their option, there's still some chance of that happening. I will happily concede that as a series, the obvious thing to do is set it up as Clemens and company traveling along in the fabulous riverboat, since that allows for new and interesting things to happen all along the journey. Like Wagon Train in space, but along a river, as it were. For that purpose, I'll grant the change from a single Resurrection Day to ongoing resurrections, since it means Our Hero can arrive to find the Not For Hire already completed, rather than having to insert an awkward "Five Years Later..." transition somewhere in the pilot. That change has a purpose. I can accept that; some changes are always necessary in adaptations. It's all the pointless ones I don't understand.

The Discreet Charm...

So, I was looking at upcoming DVD releases on Amazon, and saw listed Avant Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. Down at the bottom of the listing, where Amazon puts links to lists written by users that they think might interest anyone looking at this item, one of the links was to a list of "Films for the bourgeoisie to walk out on." Oh, yes, those awful, awful bourgeoisie.

Because, you know, there's nothing the proletarian working man loves better than experimental cinema of the 1920s. Yep, the salt-of-the-earth workers just flocked to see Lars von Trier's Dogville, didn't they? No, the audience for those sorts of films certainly doesn't consist almost entirely of over-educated, upper-middle-class, bourgeois assholes, not at all.

Stupid prick.

Mind you, my point here is not that there's anything wrong with being an over-educated, upper-middle-class, bourgeois asshole. Look, I once used the phrase "self-consciously post-modern" to describe House of 1000 Corpses, and I either own or have enjoyed viewing a bunch of the movies on this dork's list. My point, rather, is simply that "bourgeoisie" has a specific meaning, and that meaning is not "common rabble whose tastes I find boring", and that in fact, the people not walking out on films like these are, precisely, bourgeois.

Movie Reviews, By Request

On our way to the theater today, the car overheated. We managed to get it into the cinema parking lot, and Brenda called our mechanic to come and deal with it. Since it took him more than 90 minutes to fix, we ended up seeing two movies while waiting. Starting with the film Chameleon has been asking me to review (which we actually saw second):

War of the Worlds - Spielberg practically invented the summer blockbuster, and really, no one else does them quite as well. As an adaptation, this is very much a post-9/11 version of the story. The scenes surrounding the initial attack are full of imagery that could have come straight from some of the video footage from New York, from people running through the city streets to the dust and ash that covers them. The film plays on the same fears we all had that day, the suddenness and inexplicability of the attacks, the scale of the destruction. I like the fact that the film stays rooted to the point of view of Tom Cruise's character, as this means that much of the conflict and devastation is implied rather than displayed, and it allows Spielberg to avoid having to explain too much: Why do the aliens need blood? What is the purpose of the red weeds? Some of these things are explained by Wells in his book, but here, to Ray (and therefore to the audience), they remain simply incomprehensible.

I have a few nitpicks: Boy, it sure is lucky that the airplane that crashed into their house managed to miss their van parked in the driveway. And, for that matter, that the debris from the crash left a path for them to drive the van out later. Also, the idea that the tripods were buried millions of years ago in preparation for this attack is just silly. This may have been an attempt to draw a parallel with terrorist "sleeper cells", but it's still silly. Granted, we have only the word of a single character with no real knowledge that "they've been planning this for millions of years", but the idea of the war machines being buried ahead of time is also mentioned by the reporter, so this seems to have been the intended explanation of how they got there (rather than, for example, postulating that the machines were either "teleported" in, or fast-assembled on site by nanotech, either of which could have been part of the "lightning" strikes). Granted, it would make some sense if the aliens had, for example, manipulated human evolution into a form they could "harvest" later (for our life-sustaining blood), and they were just waiting until they needed us (perhaps they harvested other planets in the meantime...). Fair enough, but then why vaporize a whole bunch of us when the tripods first emerge from the ground? If we're a resource they're harvesting, isn't that just wasteful?

But, again, the sheer incomprehensibility of it all is part of what makes it terrifying. And it is successfully terrifying. Definately worth seeing.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Tim Burton's visual style is absolutely perfectly suited to Roald Dahl, so this new film looks stunning. Freddie Highmore is perfect as Charlie. Deep Roy is great as all the Oompa-Loompas, and their songs are consistently more fun than those in the earlier Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (if only because it isn't the same song over and over again). As for the Big Question: No, Johnny Depp doesn't improve on Gene Wilder's portrayal of the character. However, I wouldn't say he's "worse", either, it's just a very different version of the character. My primary objection to Depp was always that he seems too young (he may not actually be too young, mind you, but he seems too young). When I read the book as a child, I got the impression that Wonka was sort of a wizened old man, though a rather spry one who had entered his "second childhood". Depp certainly has the "second childhood" aspect down, though, perhaps even more so than Wilder. He also seems more genuinely like someone who has had no human contact with anyone but the Oompa-Loompas for many years.

I was generally not very happy with the added subplot about Wonka's relationship with his father. I don't remember this being in the book, and in a way it seemed like part of the same misguided trend of psychoanalyzing classic characters that resulted in all the fluff about the Grinch's childhood traumas.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It won't replace the earlier adaptation (note that I am steadfastly refusing to call it a "remake", since it is more accurately a new adaptation of the same source material), but it will live comfortably alongside it. I wouldn't be at all upset to see the same team follow this up with Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

Oh, and I'm not sure this is important, but the opening title sequence reminded me of the opening of Tim Burton's most underrated movie, Mars Attacks!

As an aside: On the way out, I noticed that along one outer wall of the cinema complex, there were four movie posters. Three of them were The Pink Panther, The Bad News Bears, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If only they had put up War of the Worlds in place of The Weather Man, they'd have been, four-for-four, all remakes/re-adaptations (of stories previously adapted to film). I find that somewhat unsettling.

Hot Polygon-On-Polygon Action!

You know, I didn't previously have much interest in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but now that Hillary Clinton is demanding a government investigation, and introducing legislation to punish stores that sell adult-rated games to minors, I'm tempted to go buy a copy, just to help the company out with their legal fees.

While I still can.

Another Movie Review

Chronicles of Riddick - First of all: The original Pitch Black was a pretty pedestrian sci-fi/horror Aliens rip-off, but it had one redeeming feature: At the point where the "anti-hero" is supposed to suddenly demonstrate that he's really a rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold by risking his own life to save someone else, he doesn't.

To some degree, this sequel compromises that, by having Riddick apparently care about people other than himself, to whatever limited extent. Having said that, this is otherwise a perfectly servicable epic science fiction film, and I really don't understand why it seems to be so widely disliked. Granted, it's not 2001, but there are some beautiful shots, and some well-choreographed action scenes, and some not-completely-generic characters to watch. I enjoyed it, personally. Even the science is mostly non-absurd. The biggest criticism I can come up with is that it doesn't make much sense for the evil conquering empire to allow a single merc ship to come to the surface of the planet they're conquering, take a prisoner, and then leave to travel to another system. But that's a single awkward plot point in a two-hour film, which I would say is probably better than average.

It seems vaguely reminiscent of Dune in some ways, perhaps because of the combination of an emphasis on religious beliefs and a production design that looks an awful lot like some of the H. R. Giger designs for the Dune movie that was never made. I can think of a lot worse properties a movie could be somewhat reminding me of.

Also, I watched the PG-13 theatrical cut. There is apparently a "director's cut" on DVD that's even better in most ways.

Weekend Movie Roundup

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Yippee, another bad zombie movie. When they're done well, zombies are one of my favorite horror monsters. When they're done poorly, it's amazing how boring they can be. First of all, here's a thought: When the bio-weapon virus your company has created gets loose and starts turning dead people into flesh-eating zombies that can only be stopped by shooting them in the head, and a crowd of people has gathered around the gigantic concrete gate you've just closed to seal them inside the city to contain the virus, (A) is it really all that necessary to disperse the crowd? Are you afraid they'll form a human pyramid and climb over the wall? And (B) if it is necessary to disperse the crowd, perhaps ordering your troops to fire machine guns indiscriminately into the crowd isn't the best way to accomplish this goal, since it will result in a large number of people who are dead as a result of injuries other than a shot to the head. You see where I'm going with this? Here's another thought: When you are surrounded by hordes of flesh-eating zombies, the reanimated corpses of the dead, perhaps the shortcut through the cemetary isn't the best way to go?

House of the Dead - Wow, this one's bad. Way worse than Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Almost bad on an Ed Wood level. As in, the director thought that since it was based on a video game, it would be a good idea to just randomly insert a few frames of footage from the game into the film every few minutes. As in, the "rave of the century" appears to consist of about two dozen people standing aroung talking, rather than dancing to the music. As in, there's a long action setpiece in which we see Matrix-y slo-mo revolve-around shots of every single character, of which there are half a dozen or so remaining at that point. I think there may even have been a couple of characters who got multiple shots like that. They were so generic, and the scene went on for so goddamn long, it was hard to tell after a while. And boy, are there plenty of gratuitous breast shots in this movie. Speaking of which, the zombies in this film are apparently both relatively intelligent and downright mischevious: During one gratuitous breast shot of a random woman/victim skinny-dipping, her boyfriend (who remained ashore) disappears. She goes looking for him, enters the creepy ancient house she wanders to, and finds him, standing there looking dazed with some blood coming out of his mouth, at which point a zombie arm emerges from his abdomen for the Big Scare before she gets eaten. Which means the zombie must have subdued the guy (without actually killing him), dragged him up the beach, through the woods, and into the house, and then stood there waiting for the girlfriend to show up, so that he could stick his arm through the guy and freak her out. I'm just surprised the zombie didn't yell "Boogidy-boogidy-boo!"

Punk: Attitude - This was a documentary on IFC about punk rock and the related "scene". Very well done. One of the things I particularly liked was that the time normally thought of as the core punk period only took up about the middle third of the film. There was a lengthy section at the beginning tracing the roots of punk through the early proto-punk bands, and even back to folks like Little Richard, and then a chunk at the end tracing the influences of punk and things like the brief connection between punk and hip-hop. I liked that, because there is often a tendancy to treat punk as if the entire punk scene had sprung fully-formed from Malcolm McLaren's brow, and it's just not true. I suspect that myth endures largely because of McLaren's gift for self-promotion. My main criticism is that with such a wide domain to cover, the film barely scratches the surface. There's virtually nothing about "new wave", which was closely related to punk in many ways. The film also really glosses over the whole neo-nazi skinhead movement (other than briefly mentioning the Dead Kennedys song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"), which was a rather unfortunate outgrowth of punk (it sort of evolved from punks wearing swastikas just to piss people off, into punks wearing swastikas because they admired the ideology behind it...). Watching this, I think you could very easily expand the history of punk into a Jazz-like miniseries.

Thing Happens to Person

What the hell kind of a newspaper headline is "Suspect jailed on other charges"?

Reefer Internet Porn Madness!

Cyberseduction: His Secret Life:
"In just a few mouse clicks, good-natured student and athlete Justin Peterson (Jeremy Sumpter) went from your average hormonally charged teen to an Internet porn addict."

The only way I can see this being anything but noxious is if they use Da Vinci's Notebook for the theme song.

(via Radley Balko)

Quick Movie Review

The Aviator: Well, first of all, has Scorsese ever even made a movie that wasn't at least very, very good? And then to direct that talent at a story that could just about have been written by Ayn Rand: Genius entrepeneur vs. evil interfering government. Puts a smile on my face. I particularly liked the dialogue at the Hepburn estate/socialist-artist-commune ("We don't care about money here, Mr. Hughes." "Well, that's because you have it.")

On the Ain't It Cool News discussion thread regarding the new King Kong trailer, some people complained about the CGI effects in The Aviator, specifically the "ridiculous camera acrobatics". I believe that what they meant was that the camera did things that no physical camera could ever do, and that this therefore destroyed the illusion for them (and contrasting with the big crash scene, which was a miniature shot with physical cameras, and therefore "felt more real" to them). I'm afraid I can't agree with that argument. Tools develop; they progress. The physical cameras of today are capable of things that the physical cameras of 40 years ago were not. There are possibilities with lighting open to filmmakers now that were not available even a decade or so ago. So should filmmakers refuse to use these new tools, just because they create images that would have been impossible in films made earlier? I'm not just talking about effects work, here. Should Welles have eschewed using deep focus in Citizen Kane, because it would destroy the illusion by presenting images earlier lenses could not have captured?

I find it a particularly ironic complaint with regard to this movie, given its emphasis on Hughes' combination of technological engineering genius and iconoclasm (as exemplified by the line, "Don't tell me what I can't do!")...

How Empathic Are You?

Can you identify the fake smiles?

Myself, I got 17 out of 20 correct. I misidentified two genuine smiles as fake, and one fake smile as genuine, which tells me I may be very slightly more cynical than I need to be, but not by much at all.

Google Advertisements

I've followed Joe's lead and added Google Adsense advertisements to my blog. For similar reasons: I greatly desired to see what Google's advertising algorithms would do with my recent post entitled "Dance of the Enormous Robot Dildo". Alas, the results weren't nearly as interesting as I had hoped.

String of Profanity!

Gamespot, an honest-to-god video game news/reviews site, reports on a kid in Japan who beat his parents to death, then blew up their apartment to cover his tracks. They quote the boy saying to police, "I wanted to kill my father since he made a fool out of me. I decided to kill my mother as well, since she was always saying that she wanted to die because of all the work she had to do. I felt sorry for her."

So what headline does Gamespot, a site devoted entirely to video games, remember, a site whose very existence depends on the popularity of such games, attach to this story? "GTA linked to homicide in Japan". Why? Because "the boy's schoolmates have described him as an average student who loved playing video games and who was a fan of Grand Theft Auto III."

What the fuck? How is the video game industry supposed to combat the public misperception of video games as "murder simulators" training whole generations of sociopaths, when even fucking Gamespot uses headlines like that on such a tenuous connection?

Jesus, Peter, Paul, and Mary. You might just as well put on a headline like "Studying linked to homicide in Japan" - he was an "average student", right? Or how about "Being a teenager linked to homicide in Japan", that seems equally relevant.

Sometimes, I think that if I let myself go, I would never stop slapping people.

Weekend Movie Roundup

We didn't quite manage to get out to see Batman Begins this weekend, but we did watch a bunch of stuff at home, as well as a stage production of Steve Martin's (adapted) play, The Underpants. If you're really interested in my opinion on that subject: The play is an amusing farce, though not quite as good as Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile. The performance, particularly the acting, was considerably better than the disappointing recent local production of Crimes of the Heart.

On to the movies:

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: See, this is why I love movies. I know some people complained that this wasn't quite as good as Wes Anderson's other movies, but I don't care. I've said this before, but I've seen so many movies at this point that any time a filmmaker can show me something I've never seen before, it's worth praising for that alone. Wes Anderson has demonstrated that he can reliably do that. My favorite thing in the whole film, and it comes at the very end, so don't read on if you don't like spoilers: Finally facing, again, the Thing that had hurt him so, had utterly destroyed him, Zissou says, "I wonder if it remembers me." I understand completely. I've been there. Any film that can include that kind of emotional truth is a great one, in my book.

Mulholland Dr.: David Lynch, being David Lynch. I think you pretty much either like what he does, or you don't. I happen to like it, so I enjoyed this movie. No, it doesn't make sense in a linear narrative way, but on the other hand, it makes perfect sense when you understand that part/all of the film takes place in one character's mind. Like several of Lynch's other films, it has a dreamlike logic - events on the screen relate to one another in ways that have little to do with traditional dramatic narrative structure, and more to do with the ways our mind connects unrelated images in dreams. Someone on the IMDB discussion board for this film lays out what's "really happening" in some detail, and I find it lines up pretty neatly with my own opinion, for those who insist on understanding the plot on a "literal" level. My only real disagreement with that interpretation is that I disagree with his insistence on labelling part of the film "dream" and part "reality" - personally, I think it's pretty much all dream. Some of the dream is just (probably) a more accurate depiction of reality than the rest.

X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes: A classic Roger Corman movie. A doctor experiments with increasing the frequency range of his own vision, gaining the ability to see through objects, until it all becomes too much for him. In some ways, it's largely an example of untapped potential - the concept is strong, but the movie ultimately doesn't go far enough with it. I would love to see a remake of this, by someone like John Carpenter or David Cronenburg. Imagine a version of this story in which the character at first performs miracles (a doctor able to see inside his patients), then gradually becomes disconnected with other people - much as with the legendary second wife of Adam, he sees only the biological unpleasantness inside everyone. Gradually, as his vision becomes stronger, he begins to see the Lovecraftian horror underlying reality (as in Corman's version, he abruptly does at the very end, talking about vast blacknesses, and the Eye at the center of the universe, watching us all). And then not shying away from the ending Corman apparently discussed but never actually filmed: After clawing out his own eyes, the doctor exclaims, "Oh, God, no! I can still see!" That would have made a great last line of the film, and it's a shame Corman didn't use it. As one review I just found puts it, "Frankly, it's such a good line, we all want it to be part of the movie!"

Dance of the Enormous Robot Dildo

"The ballerina gracefully dances on a small stage." Make sure you click on the picture to view the video clip, to get the full effect. And this is NASA spending money on this, apparently. "Niche robotics capabilities", indeed.

Additional Weekend Movie Roundup

Having previously posted about Identity, here are other movies we watched recently:

Sideways: Not bad at all. I don't think I'd have called it the best film of the year, but certainly enjoyable. In terms of quality and entertainment value, I'd put it in roughly the same ballpark as As Good As It Gets: Enjoyable, certainly well worth seeing, I'm glad I watched it, but perhaps not quite on the Greatest Films of All Time list. I do think that Maya's "Because a bottle of wine is actually alive" speech (seen in all the preview clips) is probably one of the more pretentious things I've seen in a film recently, but since in context it is late-night after-bar-closing alcohol-haze conversation, it's actually entirely reasonable (I've had late-night conversations like that); I'll forgive them for it.

In Good Company: We actually watched this last weekend, but I'm just getting around to writing it up now. Very interesting. I'd put this in the class of "Movies That Are Better Than They Have Any Right To Be". What I mean by that is that based on the people involved, the premise, and the marketing of the film, there is really no reason to expect it to be any good at all, but somehow it is anyway. Based on the marketing, and the fact that it was directed by the director of "American Pie", it seems like it should be a sitcom-ish cute comedy about a middle-aged guy, and his new younger boss who starts dating his daughter. To some extent, that's accurate, but it's actually a much smarter and more interesting comedy than what you'd probably expect.

I will also mention something I actually first said some time ago: If he plays his cards right, I believe Topher Grace could very well be the next Tom Hanks. He's easily as good an actor, with a similar charm, and he seems to be doing an equally good job of picking projects so far (unlike, say, his colleague Ashton Kutcher, who seems to be a remarkably intelligent young man in all the interviews I've seen, yet tends to pick brainless dumbass movies to act in...).He may not have had a success comparable to "Splash" or "Big" yet, but I, for one, won't be surprised if/when he does.

News, and Preliminary Weekend Movie Roundup

Just an FYI: Friday was my last day on my current job. My boss didn't seem too happy about it, actually: Monday, she came to me and said that her boss had decreed that because profits were down, they needed to cut development costs for the quarter (ending this month), so he suddenly canceled the project I would have been working on through the end of July. In the email she sent around to the entire team to let them know that three of us were leaving at the end of the week, she said things like "This was unexpected. I usually like to give folks at least three to four weeks advance notice of when I will end their contract. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that luxury this time", and "We are at a point now where every cut hurts us as a team."

I don't expect it will take me too long to find something else. I have several irons in various fires, including applying for positions both at this same company, and at the one that laid me off a year ago. I'm optimistic.

So, on to a quick review of the movie we watched earlier tonight:

Identity: Eenh. Interesting premise, not executed as well as I had hoped. I will point out that this is another case of a "twisty" suspense movie where I (literally, no exaggeration) turned to Brenda before we started watching and said, "Without having watched a frame of this film, here is my prediction of what the big twist ending is:" Yes, I got it right. Again. I had formed this prediction based on the TV trailers, and the title of the movie. What this says to me is that either I am a genius at predicting twist endings, Hollywood movies have gotten way too predictable, or Hollywood trailers have gotten way too revealing.

Without spoiling the twist for others, I will say that it would have been interesting to see it done slightly more realistically, and also to see it done by someone like David Lynch. Those are not mutually exclusive - I maintain that Eraserhead was, and remains, the most realistic depiction of a dream/nightmare ever committed to film.

This can't be real, can it?

Seen on the MARC Baltimore-D.C. commuter train:



Surely this is the work of some guerilla artist making an ironic political statement. Right?

The Supreme Court Justices Are Assbags

Well, six of them anyway. O'Conner, Rehnquist, and Thomas still have a little sense left in their heads.

Plenty of others have registered their displeasure with the Gonzalez v. Raich decision yesterday. I'd write up an analysis of everything wrong with the decision, but I'm perhaps a little too disgusted to be rational about it. Fortunately, I don't really need to: Radley Balko has already done a bang-up job on that count. Go read all his posts on the matter. Particularly worth noting are the posts on the left's response to the decision, and a where-do-we-go-from-here look at some pending legislation.

The idea that someone growing marijuana for their own use can be prosecuted on the theory that it's "interstate commerce" is just absurd. Did they cross a state line bringing the buds into the house from the back yard? If this is interstate commerce, then the federal government has no limitations on their power to regulate whatsoever.

Say this peach is the Earth...

Japanese scientists are to explore the centre of the Earth. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below.

Aaaaah!

Kneel before Rod!

[PC | Console] Gaming Is Dead?

CNet predictably predicts the Death of PC Gaming.

This is not exactly anything new. This question seems to come up every time a new generation of consoles is released.

The argument invariably goes something like this: With a whole game console available for under $400, why would anyone pay over $2,000 to play PC games? The new consoles are putting out graphics equal to or better than the best available video cards for PCs, so the more expensive PC offers nothing beyond what the consoles do!

Among the flaws with this argument: People don't pay over $2,000 to play PC games. People pay $1,500 or so for a computer to do all the things one uses a computer for (web, email, office apps, graphics editing, music downloading, etc.), and then spend an extra couple hundred for a video card that they don't need for all that stuff, but which enables them to play games. Comparing the full system price of PCs vs. consoles is comparing Apples to oranges.

As for the second point, that the graphics from a $400 console are as good as the graphics from a $400 video card for a PC: Right now, at this very moment, that's true. However, well before the next generation of consoles is released, probably after about 18-20 months, the $400 PC video cards will be putting out graphics far beyond what the non-upgradeable consoles can do.

And when they are, the folks at CNet and other PC/Tech magazines will be predicting the Death of Console Gaming.

Myself, I expect things to continue much as they always have: Serious game geeks like me will have both a PC and at least one console. College students will have access to both PCs and consoles, even if they don't personally own them all. Technogeeks who aren't interested in games will have PCs. People who can't afford computers will have consoles.

Wow

"As usual, Bill Maher is right."

Erica Jong, apparently still under the impression that we may be less than five years away from nuclear annihilation. And here I could swear we survived the '70s.

First paragraph: She's upset about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty dying. Second paragraph: "I look at my 16-month old grandson, Max, and I try to wrap my mind around a nuclear accident in New York" - wait, "accident"? How would a nonproliferation treaty prevent a nuclear accident in New York? Do we even have any warheads stored in New York? "The materials are there. The terrorists are there." Well, now, if there are terrorists involved, I don't think it's an "accident" we're really worried about, now is it? "What we do know is the more materials out there the more the percentages against our survival go up." Lovely writing, there. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? "The percentages against our survival go up."

"Think about New York in case of some kind of Chernobyl happening here." Wait, WTF? Chernobyl? What does a catastrophic accident that it would literally be impossible to duplicate on purpose in the U.S. have to do with terrorists and nuclear nonproliferation treaties? "Multiply 9/11 times a million." My god, that would be... nine-hundred-and-eleven million! "People die, get radiation poisoning, children die or get cancer, the stock market tanks, the world stops dead..." Yes, that's right, a tragic nuclear event in New York would cause the complete and global collapse of civilization.

So: The death of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty means that within the next five years, the entire world could be plunged into barbaric dark age, the likes of which has never been known, by a Chernobyl-style nuclear accident, caused by terrorists with a loose nuke. Presumbably, they were holed up in New York where they brought the loose nuke in from whichever ex-Soviet country they bought it in, preparing to transport it to Washington (or wherever they planned to detonate it), when one of them jostled it and it went off accidentally. Or, since that still doesn't sound much like Chernobyl, perhaps the loose nuke's control rods caught fire somehow...?

Anyone who cannot find at least one impossible and one implausible thing* in that last paragraph I wrote, is hereby not qualified to discuss nuclear policy. Nothing about nuclear weaponry, nuclear power, nonproliferation treaties, or the threat of nuclear terrorism. Just keep repeating to yourself: Duck, and cover.

*I counted three of each. There may well be more.

Revenge of the Sith

Saw it. Not too bad. Better than the previous two, certainly. It still had some problems. Oddly enough, where I and II felt thin on story and thick with "filler", this one felt rushed in some crucial places. Like, f'rinstance, Anakin's turn to the dark side, where literally one line is "What have I done", and his next line is, "I will do whatever you ask," pledging his loyalty to the soon-to-be emperor.

Toward the end, I started to feel like we were going through a checklist of Things That Have to Happen to Set Up Episodes IV-VI: Luke & Leia born, check. Kids split between the Lars and Organa families, check. C-3PO's memory wiped, check.

Still left some unanswered questions, though. Like, how come Uncle Owen didn't recognize C-3PO, who he had apparently grown up with (after Anakin left him on Tatooine and his mother married Owen's dad)? And what are we now to make of the touching scene in Return of the Jedi, when Luke asks Leia about her (their) birth mother, and Leia says she remembers her being filled with sadness... since we now know that Padme died in childbirth, so Leia never actually knew her at all. And since R2-D2 didn't have his memory wiped, how come he never bothered to mention to Luke anything like, "Dude, that's your sister you're kissing..."

Best Headline Ever

From Reason Online: "Rejected By Creationists, Monkey Embraces Polytheism"

Sengoku Jedi

I have a new picture up in my Renderosity gallery, but since Hello makes it so easy, I'll let you see it here, too:
 

As noted in my gallery post, the title comes from an old review of the "Shogun: Total War" computer game, in which the reviewer accidentally referred to the sengoku jidai period of Japanese history as "Sengoku Jedi". I wanted to pay tribute to some of George Lucas's inspiration for the jedi.

A Movie From an Alternate Universe

Someone sent me the stormtrooper pic below, in response to the thing about costumes. It seems awfully familiar, somehow...

Star Wars
Episode IV: Apocalypse Now
 


Stormtrooper Captain Willard: "Coruscant. Shit. I’m still only on Coruscant. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one, brought it up to me like room service."


Vader [A shadowy figure with James Earl Jones’ voice]: "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight... razor... and surviving."

Huh-huh, he said "package"

Suspicious package was fake foot-long plastic penis

What else is there to say, really?

"A wookiee is a sometime food."

Apparently, Bill O'Reilly recently commented, "I'm not a 'Star Wars' fan. I can't tell a Wookie from a Libertarian," which prompted a response from the Libertarian Party. More importantly, it also prompted a "What's the Difference Between a Libertarian and a Wookiee" joke comment thread on Reason magazine's blog.

A few of my favorites:

A libertarian won't tear your arms out of your sockets when they lose.
There are enough Wookiees in the Galaxy to have their own representatives in the Senate.
There’s no such thing as a blue Wookiee.
One can be found in the woods with a crossbow and a bandolier, the other is an imaginary character.

Far funnier than that, however, is the Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes.

They missed this one, though.

The Game Turn Indicator marker does not expend movement points, nor does it exert a Zone of Control.

So, a deal has been reached on the Senate filibuster issue. For now.

I'd like to offer an open-ended prediction: Any legislative action which requires a 2/3 majority, but which can have that requirement changed by an action that itself requires only a simple majority, will inevitably be changed, sooner or later, to require only a simple majority.

Why? Because sooner or later, the majority party will find itself in a situation like the one the Republicans were in here: They have a simple majority, but not a 2/3 majority. They don't have enough votes to implement an action requiring a 2/3 majority, but they do have enough votes to change the requirement such that the number of votes they have will then be enough. In other words, they have enough votes to do what they want to do, they just have to go through the extra step of changing the rules first.

In a game-design sense, the Senate rules are broken: A 2/3-majority-requirement that can be changed by a simple majority collapses to a simple-majority-requirement.

It's easily fixed: Just pass a new rule that any stated majority requirement cannot be changed by a majority vote of less than the stated requirement being changed. That is, if an action requires a 2/3 majority to pass, then the rule requiring it cannot be changed by less than a 2/3 majority either.

Otherwise, I guarantee something like this will come up again.

We Ain't All Baptists Down Here

Okay, this is just flippin' weird. And although CNN doesn't mention it in their version of the story, according to Fox News, it's not just a church, it's a Satanic church (Fox also demonstrates why there are certain categories of police investigation which should never be referred to using the verb, "probe").

Ordinarily, I'd be skeptical, especially when they say things like "details of the case have become increasingly graphic." This sounds almost exactly like the "Satanic Panic" cases of the late '80s/early '90s, which tended to "become increasingly graphic" as the supposed victims became more and more creative with the stuff they were making up. However, in this case, they're apparently getting their information from the alleged perpetrators, which makes it harder to discount.

I do just have to ask, though: "one count of crimes against humanity for alleged sexual acts involving animals" - How is a sexual act involving animals a crime against humanity? It apparently involved a dog, so a crime against caninity, maybe, but a crime against humanity?

Weekend Movie Roundup

Another light week for movie watching.

Team America: World Police (Extended/Unrated Version): Still as funny as it was in theaters, but with more puppet sex (I didn't notice any other major additions). Probably not quite as good as South Park (the movie or the series), but still plenty entertaining. No commentary, unfortunately, but the making-of extras are interesting.

Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns): Your basic story-of rock band documentary, nothing outstandingly good or bad about it. Recommended for those who like They Might Be Giants. I assume it probably wouldn't convince anyone who doesn't already listen to them.

Van Helsing: I don't know how this Dracula keeps his fangs sharp, with all the scenery-chewing he does. Overacting aside, there's really nothing much to recommend this one, unless you enjoy watching flying vampire babies die by bursting like jelly-filled popcorn kernals. Also, it is fortunate for this movie's PG-13 rating that vampire women are discreetly nipple-less. For those who have seen it, and hopefully without giving too much away, am I the only one who thought they missed an obvious call-back: Van Helsing, at some point at the very end, should have said, "I will see you again." I suppose that would have come dangerously close to showing character development and growth.

On a related note, I see that Time Magazine has published their critics' list of the All-Time 100 Best Films. Kudos on some unconventional choices, like Brazil and Miller's Crossing. Interesting decision to include made-for-TV miniseries, like Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Singing Detective. I'm not sure I agree with that decision, and having made it, I'm not sure why Roots isn't included in the list. Some other issues: Ikiru and Yojimbo, but not Ran or Seven Samurai? And Drunken Master II? I love Jackie Chan, but I'm not sure I'd rank this among the Greatest Films Of All Time.

Woo-hoo!

Bring on the porn!

Actually, given the obvious and inevitable application of this technology, it's vaguely disturbing that it's first being tested on chickens, and to hear the team leader describe it as "the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed." Ick.

Weekend Movie Roundup

Not too much this weekend. Mostly just clearing space off the TiVo.

Richard III: Very nice. Ian McKellen is predictably wonderful in the role. The "updated setting" works, for the most part. It's not as far out as, say, Titus, but the vaguely fascist trappings of Richard's reign do sort of underline some of the things Shakespeare has to say about him. This would also make a good double-bill with Looking for Richard.

The Core: Ranks right up there with Supernova among Movies To Avoid, with laughably bad science, formulaic and predictable plot, flat characters, etc. While watching this, I came up with a phrase to describe this kind of movie: It has an ablative cast of characters - most of them exist solely to die in one way or another, so that the one or two main characters can live happily ever after, while still allowing the movie to have a decent body count. My particular favorite bit in this movie, though, is the notion that they are going to start the liquid outer core of the Earth spinning again by detonating five 200-megaton bombs. Do you know what a 200-megaton bomb would do to the Earth's core? Well, you know what it feels like when a gnat lands on your arm? (That "bad physics" page estimates the normal rotational energy of the outer core as the equivalent of about 32,000 200-megaton bombs...) Though a close second has to be the EVA they do: Emerging in their shiny-cloth spacesuits into the tens-of-thousands-of-pounds-per-square-inch pressure, one announces, "It's a good thing the suits can withstand the pressure." Yeah, you'd almost think it would take some sort of rigid suit design to stand up under all that. Oh, and then there's the bit where they increase the explosive yield of their 200-megaton bomb by setting some plutonium next to it... and.... I'd better just stop now.

A Minority Opinion

A whole series of them, in fact, from Mark Thornton (senior resident fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute):

"Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, one of the finest allegories on classical liberal political economy to ever appear on screen."

"People will no doubt eventually recognize that Lucas is writing a reflection of Western civilization, a reflection of our own experience."

"Therefore we can trace Anakin's problems back to government intervention in the economy."

Take This Job And...

The 10 Most Bizarre Employment Cases of 2004

213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do

Pizza Delivery Rants

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

My Evil Twin

For some reason, whenever anyone I don't know very well calls me by the wrong name, they almost always call me Steve. For years, I have said that this clearly means I have an evil twin named Steve out there somewhere. It's the only logical explanation.

This morning, I had an email waiting for me in my inbox at work:

FW: 2005 TRUCK INVENTORY 31L

STEVEN;

I SENT THIS TO CHRIS BY MISTAKE

PETE

I knew it!

Way back when, I commented on the "no gay marriage" amendment issue thusly:

[Sen. Santorum is] afraid ... that if gay marriages are legal, hordes of straight people will abruptly turn gay, and people will stop reproducing altogether. Kind of makes me wonder if the good Senator lies awake at night thinking to himself, "Boy, if only homosexual marriage were legal, I'd be wearing glitter makeup and buggering that hot pool boy, Ramon, inside of a week," and therefore imagines that the rest of us feel the same way...

Now, I have further evidence that the "religious right" thinks precisely that way.

Follow me on this: One of their arguments is that allowing gay marriage will lead inevitably down the slippery slope to people marrying goats. Now, as Ellen Degeneres says, "I've never even wanted to date a goat."

But on Alan Colmes' Fox News radio show, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley revealed recently just why right-wingers are so afraid of that particular slippery slope (audio and transcript):

AC: "You had sex with animals?"

NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule." [...] "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

Now, I'm not shy. I'll happily admit I'm a raving perv, but even I have higher standards than "it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates", and I've certainly never even considered having sex with a mule.

So there it is: The right wing fears permissiveness because, unlike the rest of us, they can't control their own disgusting urges.

Denver, CO: America's Dog-Killers

Pit-bull ban may reveal unwarranted prejudice

Apparently, a pit bull killed a kid. Denver decided that the proper reaction to this tragedy was to round up all the pit bulls and kill them. That'll learn 'em!

We'll just ignore the obvious: "...there have been fatal attacks in the U.S. by Pomeranians, that half a dozen attacks that caused death or serious injuries were by cocker spaniels." Nope, it's gotta be the breed. They're born bad.

Just like their owners, perhaps?

"There appears a racial end of this," Bill Suro says.

"Look at the dogs that have been impounded, and the surnames of their owners. . . . They aren't killing dogs from Cherry Creek. They pick on the easiest people to pick on, the ones who give up easiest," he said, adding that he has forwarded this claim to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mine! Mine!

Up for auction on Ebay: The Entire Universe.

Unintended Consequences

Let's assume, just for a moment, that global warming is a real, immediate threat, and that one of the symptoms is that the glaciers are melting (yes, yes, I know, "There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years", just pretend for a moment that there is).

Swiss wrap glacier to slow ice melt: "The fleece-like material, hard to distinguish with the naked eye from snow, will reflect the rays of the sun."

Presumably, it will reflect the rays of the sun more effectively than snow itself would. The goal, apparently, is to prevent the glacier from melting by reflecting away the heat from the sun.

That means that the latent heat energy that would otherwise have been absorbed by the process of melting the ice and snow of the glacier, transforming it from solid to liquid state while keeping its temperature constant, will instead be reflected into the air...

...where it will raise the temperature of the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating the problem of global warming.

Isn't it the environmentalists who keep going on and on about the precautionary principle? It's the First Law of Thermodynamics, folks: Just because that energy doesn't melt your precious glacier, doesn't mean it quietly ceases to exist.

Line Forms Here

Motorola Debuts First Ever Nano Emissive Flat Screen Display Prototype

“And according to a detailed cost model analysis conducted by our firm, we estimate the manufactured cost for a 40-inch NED panel could be under $400.”
...
Motorola’s industry-first working prototype demonstrates:

• Operational full color 5" video section of a 1280 x 720, 16:9, 42-inch HDTV
• High quality brightness
• Bright, vivid colors using standard Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV phosphors
• Display panel thickness of 3.3 millimeters (about 1/8th of an inch)
• Low cost display drive electronics (similar to LCD, much lower than Plasma)
• Display characteristics meet or exceed CRTs, such as fast response time, wide
viewing angle, wide operation temperature

Ok, manufactured cost of $400 probably means retail price of around $800, once the initial price-gouging has been cut down by competition. Assuming the price scales linearly, that would make a screen the size of the one I have now around $1,100 retail, which compares favorably to the $1,800 or so we paid for it about 18 months ago. I'd say by the time I'm ready to buy a new TV, these should be well within my price range. 1/8th of an inch thick, with response time similar to CRT? Sounds good to me. If I'm upgrading, I might hold out for one with more than 720 lines of resolution, i.e., one that could display a 1080p picture, but now I'm just being picky.

What I really want to know, though, is whether I'll be able to buy one of these sets that doesn't have its own built-in speakers? For that matter, I don't really even need a built-in tuner. I'll mostly be using direct source inputs (cable box, DVD, TiVo, game console), and if I really want to pull one of the local channels in through the antenna for some reason, I can just use the tuner in either of the two VCRs I have sitting there. The vestigial speakers are the main things I want to lose, though. They're never going to be high enough quality to compete with what I can get separately, and I'm tired of paying for bits of electronics I have no use for.

I realize it's a somewhat alien concept to the generations (like, er, mine) used to TVs being big bulky self-contained boxes, but I rather like the idea that in the future (even more so than now), my television will be strewn about the room in small bits: "There's the screen, the tuner(s) are over here, the volume control is on the other side, and the speakers are all over the damn place."

The Fiendish Star Wars Experiment

The Science of Consistency

Ah! but here was the genius in Dave’s proposed Fiendish Star Wars Experiment: he would show the films to Charlie in numerical order (and thus fictional-chronological order) rather than in the order that they were released. Charlie would meet Vader as a child before the character becomes an evil adult.
...
Getting the child to watch the series with fresh eyes from Episode I through VI in order, in a way that we Generation Xers never can, would enable us to watch the child for signs of confusion: the child might spot contradictions that our chronology-skewed brains never would. Other obvious research questions suggest themselves: When would Charlie first notice that Senator Palpatine is a bad man who wants to become Emperor, for example? When would he first have doubts about Anakin? Would Charlie be saddened that in Episode IV Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru don’t remember their old friends C-3PO and R2-D2?
...
Tragically, the entire investigation—upon which so much theorizing rested—was cut short when Charlie’s mother, Sharon, in a misguided attempt to please the child, rented Return of the Jedi (which is Episode VI, not even Episode IV or V!) before Episode III came out in theatres.

Fortunately, any children born after next week can be guaranteed to be uncorrupted, so at worst, it should be no more than five years or so before we can learn the results of a similar experiment with a new subject.

Unfortunately, that also gives Lucas time to re-release episodes IV through VI in new versions that resolve any remaining paradoxes and contradictions created by episodes I through III.

Weekend Movie Roundup

Some furious DVD-watching went on this weekend. In the order we watched them:

House of Flying Daggers: Very pretty. Probably not quite as good as Hero, overall, but still well worth viewing. Brenda commented that the plot was like an opera, what with all the tragic love-triangle business.

Videodrome: The Criterion Collection DVD. The movie, as everyone should know by now, is amazing, visionary, prescient, etc. Criterion has released this in what may be the coolest DVD packaging ever: The outside of the 2-disc case is printed to look like an old Betamax videotape, and slides into a slip cover like the ones around such tapes.

Meet the Fockers: Eenh. Harmless, light fluff, about what you'd expect. The outtakes of Dustin Hoffman goofing around are funnier than most of what's in the actual movie. I anticipate with vertiginous dread the inevitable sequel, "Meet the Little Focker", in which their baby is born and/or enters toddler-hood.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Wow. This movie does what so much good SF does (and what so much bad SF doesn't): It uses a technological development as a vehicle to explore some aspect of what it means to be human. That aspect, here, is the question of whether ridding yourself of the bad memories of a love lost would be worth the cost of also losing the good memories of that love, from before it was lost. I tend to agree with the film's ultimate answer to that question: "No."

Saved!: Cute teenage romantic comedy. Some reviewer, I think it was Ebert, said when this came out that it was very even-handed, that the religious people in it weren't caricatured. I disagree. In fact, several of the religious people in it are caricatures, and you can even map the degree to which the characters are well-developed, non-caricatures by how far away from the born-again Christian view they move over the course of the film. The more faithfully "born-again" they are, the more shallow and egotistical they are. As an orthodox atheist, I'm not exactly offended by movies making fun of religious folk, but I don't think this movie could really be called "even-handed". "Heavy-handed" would be a more accurate description of a film in which one character throws a Bible at another, who picks it up and says, "This is not a weapon." One does not even need to notice the "Special Thanks" to the book Atheism: The Case Against God in the closing credits to know what the film's philosophical viewpoint is.

The Marvelous Man-Sheep!

Face front, true believers! "Jocular" Jason Chamberlain presents The Marvelous Man-Sheep!

The “idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered,” the academies report warned.

350, and "I don't see any end in sight"

Watching the two new "Simpsons" episodes last night, I was moved to remark, "Sad, isn't it, to see the once-great "Simpsons" brought down to such a level?"

So it's a little disheartening to read Matt Groening say:

"I'm particularly proud of our recent episodes. I think they're as sharp and surprising as anything we've done since the beginning of the show," Groening said.

Now the article does to on to say:

(He concedes that some fans carp the new episodes are inferior to old ones; being measured against a fond memory is a standard problem for comedies, Groening argues.)

But part of the problem I've had with them lately is not that I'm measuring the current episodes against a fond memory, it's that I'm measuring them against the current episodes of "South Park". I may have said this before, but: I'm not sure exactly how or when it happened, but "South Park" is now a better show than "The Simpsons". It is consistently funnier, and they have a considerably defter touch when it comes to socio-political satire. At its height, as I remember it, "The Simpsons" was better than "South Park" was at the same time. Since then, they've traded places, presumably through some combination of "South Park" getting better, and "The Simpsons" declining.

Throughout last night's hour of new "Simpsons", I found myself occasionally chuckling, but with no real laugh-out-loud moments, and worse yet, there were multiple times I noticed that I wasn't laughing at all at something that was clearly meant to be a laugh line. When your audience becomes self-consciously aware that your jokes are completely falling flat, there's a problem.

They're evolving...

This is clearly the first stage of an evolutionary leap that will ultimately lead to horrible, deadly creatures, of the sort previously confined to the fever-dreams of Japanese videogame designers: Exploding toads.

It has been speculated that [the swamp dragons'] habit of exploding violently when angry, excited, frightened or merely plain bored is a developed survival trait to discourage predators. Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you'll have a case of indigestion to which the term "blast radius" will be appropriate.
(Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms).

For those who don't read Slashdot

An interesting blog: The Darth Side: Memoirs of A Monster. Also, apparently Chewbacca is blogging from the other side's point of view. And Boba Fett has one as well, although his and Lord Vader's don't seem to match up in terms of timeline. Probably due to relativity or something.

"Whose trachea do you have to crush with your mind to get a little service around here?"

Terror Level Toys

As tempting as the and the ones were, I've opted for the one you see over there, solely because it uses Noam Chomsky to represent what seems to be the most common level in effect. That effectively conveys the notion of "terror", to me...

My Mind Boggles

Sex offender accused yet again

Two things:

A 19-year-old Union man, who had just been released on bond from a previous sex offense...was arrested by Union police who said he was having sex with a 14-year-old girl inside a car in plain sight of passersby.

Ok, so three days before you're going to be sentenced for the sex-with-teenagers you already pled guilty to, you're having sex with another teenager in plain sight of passersby. Just how dumb are you?

Union police said McKenzie met the 14-year-old on the Internet.

Oh. My. God. Someone actually met a real 14-year-old girl on the Internet? This is, no exagerration, the first time I've ever heard of that happening. Granted, there will be selection bias in news reports, but in every other news item I've ever read on this sort of subject, the "14-year-old girl" they thought they were meeting turns out to be an undercover cop posing as a 14-year-old girl, who then arrests the creep (and why is it always 14, specifically, that they pretend to be?). I have occasionally proposed the not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek theory that there are no actual 14-year-old girls on the internet: They're all undercover cops.

Maybe that actually explains it: This guy wanted to get caught. He tried to arrange to be arrested by an undercover cop posing as a 14-year-old girl, but when she somehow turned out to be one of the three actual 14-year-old girls on the internet, he had to have sex with her in a car out in plain view in order to get caught.

Oh, Hooray

Michael Bay wants to remake The Birds. Personally, I don't see the point. The Birds already has a perfectly good remake in the form of Night of the Living Dead.

Actually, for all Michael Bay's reputation as a talentless hack, he did direct one of the greatest films of all time. In fact he's arguably a master of the under-one-minute short film. I wonder if he could be persuaded to make his Birds remake 30 seconds long?

My Eyes Won't Roll Back Far Enough

This show might be worth watching, if only they would also interview the native people and get their opinion of the stupid fucking rich white people jetting in to admire their "lifestyle". Let me explain something: Nepalese villagers are not using cow dung to plaster their walls because it's environmentally friendly, they're doing it because it's all they have.

Jesus Fuck. For anyone still wondering: This, right here? This is the sort of thing that explains why Trey Parker & Matt Stone made such vicious fun of celebrities in Team America: World Police.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko)

Great Moments in Unbiased Journalism (Part III)

P.C. scholars take Christ out of B.C.

When the first sentence is "In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out", and the last sentence is the quote, "It sounds pretty silly to me", shouldn't this be labeled as an op-ed piece? And a rather snarky one, at that.

The main bias problem I see, actually, is why even write about it now, anyway? I can remember history classes in college officially replacing B.C. with B.C.E., and A.D. with C.E., more than ten freaking years ago. What suddenly made it an AP national news item today?

Is this AP writer suddenly accusing the nebulous Left of "a concerted attack on the religious foundation of our social and political order" and "secularization, anti-supernaturalism, religious pluralism, and political correctness" as a continuation of "Justice Sunday", the conservative-Christian response to the Senate Democrats' "filibuster against people of faith"?

I don't particularly care one way or the other about the issue of changing the rules to eliminate filibusters. I'd probably marginally prefer that they be permitted, if only because I think anything that makes it more difficult for legislators to legislate is usually a Good Thing. But I do think that presenting judicial appointment votes, and filibusters thereof, as a battle of Christendom vs. Vile Heathens is scary and dangerous.

The Sins of the Fathers

From a thread on another blog:

The question is, is a military invasion the best way to prevent such behavior on the part of tyrants particularly given that said dictator, Saddam Hussein, was a beneficiary of American largesse for years? Donald Rumsfeld himself, acting on behalf of President Reagan, handed the guy anthrax in the mid-1980s. We didn't really care what old Saddam did to his own people as long as cheap oil keep comin'.

(chinadoll)

I've always found incoherent the argument that "But we gave Saddam [weapons/money/support/etc.] for years!" Our past support of a regime does not excuse whatever atrocities they have committed since then. Or even *while* we supported them. By that logic, Britain couldn't have done anything when Germany invaded France, because they had previously let them get away with invading Poland. If it is wrong to support regimes that commit atrocities, then our past support was at best a compromise of our principles to further some other goal, and at worst an outright mistake. Smacking them down now is just rectifying that past mistake/compromise.

(me)

As for the response that it doesn't matter whether we gave Saddam aid or not it was not an endorsement of his policies I've heard that one too. While in China the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime came to light which was a surprise to many Chinese people since Pol Pot was an ally of China's against the Vietnamese. And the answer was the same as provided above: we never endorsed his policies in exchange for material aid which was intended for defensive purposes.

(Betzee)

As far as I can tell, the argument here is, essentially: We supported Saddam Hussein in the past, therefore we cannot legitimately attack him now. The problem is, I can't derive the second part of that sentence logically from the first part.

Was our past support of Saddam morally right or wrong? If you say it was right, then you are endorsing mass murder. If it was basically wrong, but excusable due to a greater (perceived) threat (i.e., the lesser of two evils), then conditions have changed, and that excuse no longer holds. If it was wrong, and not excusable, then the sooner we reverse our position, the better.

There are only two ways I can see that being a past "beneficiary of American largesse" can have any possible relevance: It might make him a more dangerous target, since he may possess resources we gave him that could be used against us. Or, if we had a contract, and he had upheld his end, then our invasion would be a breach of that contract (though if that's the case, it must have been a pretty lousy contract to begin with, from our point of view). But I have never heard this presented as either a strategic or a contractual argument against invasion.

Make no mistake: I'm not saying that our past support of Saddam was not an endorsement of his policies. I'm saying that even if our past support of Saddam was an endorsement of his policies, that does not mean we are required to continue endorsing his policies today. I'm saying it has no relevance to our current behavior.

A reductio ad absurdum: During the height of the Cold War, the U.S.S.R. launches a nuclear attack against us. The bombers are in the air, on their way to their targets inside the U.S. Are we precluded from trying to shoot those bombers down because we were allied with Russia during WWII? I would say we are not.

Saddam's regime was at some point (we can argue over precisely where) along a continuum from smiling happy friendship, to launching a nuclear attack. There must be somewhere along that continuum where we are allowed to reverse our earlier position of supporting the regime. We can argue over precisely where we draw that line, and we can argue over which side of the line Saddam was on. But to deny that such a line exists strikes me as simply delusional.

So I suspect that bringing up past support of Saddam is nothing more than America-bashing: Oh, look, we're hypocrites. That's fine, as far as it goes (I like Green Day as much as the next punk), but it's not a rational argument. If anything, it's a kind of ad hominem. It's an attempt to delegitimize America's current actions by bringing up past behavior, in which America either compromised its principles, or simply exhibited bad judgment.

There were, and are, several legitimate arguments against invading Iraq, but this is not one of them.

Literal Offshoring

Sea-Code apparently offers the benefits of offshoring combined with the benefits of local coding, by putting a bunch of low-cost Indian software developers on a reconditioned cruise ship parked a few miles off the coast of California.

Supposedly, this means they don't have to deal with getting work visas or US employment law. I'm somewhat skeptical about their ability to make this work, considering the ship is parked 3.1 miles off shore, but someone in the Slashdot thread about it points out that that's far too close to be in international waters (US territory extends 12 nautical miles, and the "exclusive economic zone", whatever that is, goes out to 200 nautical miles).

Still, I look forward to being able to file defect reports filled with "avast" and "ye scurvy dogs".

Approaching Nerdvana

It's just possible my obsession with technology is getting slightly out of control. Here, you can see my new dual-monitor setup peeking out from behind the color laser printer: 

Well, I upgraded my video card recently, and the new one can drive multiple displays, and I had an old monitor just laying around collecting dust in the basement. What would you have done?

Oh, goodie

Officials want to avoid another Schiavo case: Legislation would keep judges out of process

For such a patient, a judge could not find that there was clear and convincing evidence to withdraw food and water if there were a dispute among the patient's relatives about whether that was the patient's wish, they said.

The family members whose views would be considered would include the patient's spouse, parents and children, said Jacobson, who took the lead at a news conference.

Also, the view of a majority of the patient's siblings could be considered, Jacobson said.

Apparently, such a patient's same-sex life partner is just S.O.L. Because, y'know, giving those people the same rights/status as heterosexuals would destroy civilization.

Wisconsin: America's Cat-Murderers

Wis. Governor Rejects Cat-Hunting Idea

Poor, little Wisconsin kitties... they just came to America's Dairyland looking for saucers of milk...

"Some experts estimate that 2 million wild cats roam Wisconsin, and the state says studies show feral cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds a year."

OK, but then if you do manage to significantly reduce the feral cat population, what are you going to do when the state is overrun by teeming multitudes of songbirds? Not to mention mice, moles, rabbits, and all the other things that I would expect the wild cats aren't just ignoring.

And if you don't significantly reduce the number of cats, is it really worth the public relations disaster? I'm picturing PETA posters featuring evil hunters in cheesehead hats blasting away at sad, big-eyed kittens. On velvet.

So, in summary: What genius even proposed this idea in the first place?

Besides, as everyone on the internet probably knows by now, there's an obvious and much more pleasant solution to the problem.

Wendy's Finger

A leopard attack?

Boy, this case just keeps getting weirder and weirder, don't it?

Fiat Lux

3 Then Congress said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
4 And Congress saw the light, that it was good; and Congress divided the light from the darkness.
5 Congress called the light Day, and the darkness They called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

"Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs...The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use."

So saith Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, co-sponsors of an amendment to some energy legislation that would extend daylight-saving time to include March and November. Yes, they apparently believe that by passing this law, they will increase the quantity of daylight.

Oh, my God

Extreme Bugs Bunny. Just go watch it now. Unless you're at work. Not work safe. No.

Update: Found another URL for it, though that one doesn't have the link to the relevant news article.

On Sin City and Constantine

Sin City (yes, it kicks ass), thus far, appears to be both a critical and commercial success (Rotten Tomatoes score: 79%, #1 box office opening week). It's also one of the most faithful screen adaptations of a comic book I've seen. It's flawed, to be sure, but its flaws are Sin City's flaws, not flaws unique to the film adaptation.

I haven't seen Constantine yet, and don't plan to until it hits the movie channels. However, from what I can gather from the reviews and descriptions I've read, they seem to have taken most of what was appealing about the comic books and thrown it out in favor of a much more generic Hollywood "fallen hero striving for redemption" concept. Critics seem to generally dislike this movie, and it hasn't exactly been a blockbuster success (Tomatometer: 44%, never higher than #2).

Now, I have no problem with someone making a movie about a guy who, as a result of an unsuccessful suicide attempt, can now see demons, and fights them in an attempt to buy his way into Heaven when he dies. As Hollywood "high concept" goes, I've heard worse. I don't have a problem with making a movie about Will Smith fighting robots, either. What I don't understand is why you would spend the money to acquire a license to the John Constantine character, or the I, Robot title, and then make this trite high-concept movie that changes so much about what made the books interesting and popular in the first place. People who aren't fans of the comic/book are not going to base their decision to see or not see this movie on the comic/book license: They don't care, one way or the other. People who are fans of the comic/book are going to be pissed off that you screwed it up. In other words, the only people whose decision will be affected, one way or the other, by the fact of the license are going to be less likely to go see the movie.

Now, there's enough of an "automatic" market for action-adventurey, special-effecty type movies that you may still be profitable, even after annoying the fans. But that "automatic" market doesn't care what you call it, or what the characters are named. And the sci-fi/comic book geeks would probably be a significant piece of that "automatic" market anyway, for a non-licensed movie, and to basically start out by changing things in such a way that you alienate part of your potential audience, and precisely that part that could have been the most vocal word-of-mouth advocates, doesn't seem to me to make much business sense, to say nothing of artistic sense. Unless geek word-of-mouth hurts a movie more than it helps it, but I find that hard to believe given the relative successes of, say, Lord of the Rings, Sin City, and the Spider-Man and X-Men movies. All of those are both financially successful and fairly faithful to the source material. Granted, faithfulness isn't enough by itself (Daredevil was pretty much faithful to the comics, too...), but it does seem like there is some correlation there, and it makes logical sense to me that there should be.

Because Somebody Has to Say It

Holes are positively attractive. Let's look inside one, and see: This is a typical hole. Not a hole in the wall, but a hole like a well. Well, well, what the Hell? That's the sun at the center of the Earth. What a nice, warm fire!

(Firesign Theatre, Everything You Know is Wrong!)

Yow

Found this under the headline "Manic, Psychosis-Inducing Timewaster" (along with the comment, "I think I'll go slam my head in the door a few times."). Hence, I pass it along to you, my closest and dearest friends.

Unfortunate Cropping

This was one of the headlines that greeted me when I opened up my homepage (click to see the full-size, readable picture): 
;

New political party? I wish...

I rather like this reference to "Rep. F. James Sensebrenner III (Prig, Wis.)".

Dayton: Silicon Valley of the Midwest

We're wireless.

Leaving aside the issue of whether wireless internet access is something that ought to be provided by the government, I'm not sure people are going to want to hang around abandoned buildings and brave the occasional near-riot just to use the net.

"File sharing causes tremendous financial loss to the movie business, untold hardship to support workers, and costs thousands of jobs."

(Quote source: Jack Valenti)

Oh, glorious awesomeness...

Boing Boing reports on an event of mad genius. Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, was on his way in to the Supreme Court hearings regarding Grokster, one of those evil P2P file-sharing/copyright-infringing apps that Valenti says are going to destroy the movie industry.

Someone from the EFF got him to autograph a Betamax tape. And not just a blank Betamax tape, but a Betamax tape containing an "unauthorized" recording of Woody Allen's Sleeper.

You may recall Mr. Valenti's testimony in the 1982 "Betamax Hearings" before Congress, in which he predicted that the videocassette recorder would destroy the TV and movie industries: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." Because, you know, they could be used to duplicate copyrighted material.