Greg Sanders

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

I remember the pictures from the book more than I remember the story, so obviously I’m not a purist.  In event, I thought the adaptation was great but at the same time is certainly not for all kids.  That said, I know little about child development, so find some other reviewer if you need specific tips on if this is right for your kid.

There are rather scary bits as well as a heavy dose of psychological realism combined with troubled personality types.  The sugar that helps the dark parts go down is first and foremost appropriate absurdities of childhood combined with Max’s storytelling ability, Jim Henson studios created monsters, and to a lesser extent the neat backdrops.

My one sentence summary would be to take the comic strip Peanuts but merge the real life adults personality-types with the fantasies of the Snoopy oriented strips.  Thus, the joy of childhood oriented trailer is fairly deceptive though cool in its own right.

I’d say catching it in theaters is probably most important for muppet monsters/Dark Crystal fans.  If you care less about that sort of thing, it’s probably okay to catch it on DVD.

Review: Evil Dead, the Musical at the Landless in D.C.

The Evil Dead musical was an amusing little parody of the Sam Remi/Bruce Campbell horror films of that name.  There were also some references to Army of Darkness thrown in, but by and large no scenes from that film.

I hadn’t seen the Evil Dead movies although I am a real Army of Darkness fan.  Seeing them certainly wasn’t necessary, but interest in horror parody is.  So if you haven’t seen Army of Darkness, see that first really.

In any event, there was a good dozen songs or so with original tunes, the tunes sometimes showed up  more than once, but as far as I know they were all original to the musical.  The show had some different people than the original Broadway cast, but from what I’ve listened to on the Amazon page above, I think the singers compared well.  My favorite pieces were all in the second half: All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons, and the whole Necronomicon dance sequence.  That said, as the title of the last song attests, it’s worth noting that this song parodies the misogyny of some horror flicks more than it subverts it.

Beyond the singing, which to my pleasure was consistently easy to understand, the acting well suited the material and the lead did a good Ash.  The technical direction was definitely limited by the size of the tiny DCAC stage and I’m guessing a lower budget than the Broadway show, but on the whole it was successfully evocative and fun.  On the whole, at $25 and with the inconvenient but pleasant trek to Adams Morgan from Woodly Park Metro I’d recommend this for those excited by the idea of an Evil Dead musical. 

One practical note: there is some samurai film style blood fountains that splash the audience.  If you want to play it safe, you may wish to bring your own tarp.  They sell garbage bags with appropriate holes in them for $1, but if you’re my size those want cover your legs at all.  I used a newspaper for that purpose.

Image take by Laura Darby who had been kind enough to invite me

Film Review: The Place Promised in Our Early Days

A beautiful film with an interesting science fiction setting, the Place Promised in Our Early Days ultimately feels like a lovely but slight short story.  The characters and romance are interesting enough but fairly unremarkable.  If anything, the two boys developing a jet plane on their own while in middle school makes them less remarkable given tropes of young geniuses in anime.  The supporting cast was better on that score, but I wouldn't rush to the theaters if any of them got their own picture.

Instead, the star is the world: a divided Japan occupied in part by the (presumably Soviet) Union.  Most of the action takes place on date commuter trainlines and around border-area buildings abandoned to nature.  The main driver of the plot is a tower which evokes fairy tales but has its basis in physics.  The art direction strikes a good balance between realism and aestetics, giving the feel of being a tourist to a very real other world.  The history and politics of this alternate Japan are not fleshed out in detail, but what is described is plausible as are some of the impacts for the character's lives.

If this slighty appeals, by all means borrow a friend's copy or watch it at a convention.  If you're an addict of Miyazaki-style backdrops then this may be a satisfying purchase, particularly if high school love triangles appeal.

Promotional Poster used by wikipedia among other locations

Blog roll addition: Hathor Legacy

Hathor legacy is a cultural criticism site with the tagline “in search of good female characters.”  They recently revamped things by consolidating their multiple feeds into a single one (they also have a LJ feed), so this seemed like a good time to link.  The design of the core site doesn’t excite me, the text is a little big and you need to read more to get the details on any post.  However, that’s not an issue with the feeds, so I don’t really care.

My favorite discussion has been one by guest author Audra on Laura Roslin, the female President in Battlestar Gallactica.  The write-up does a good job of both addressing her strengths and acknowledging that she does make a fair number of iffy decisions.  The discussion went off topic some, but added more analysis and kept the things interesting well after the initial post.

A second post I enjoyed was one I disagreed with put up by Kris Ligman.  She thought Portal did more to advance female protagonists than Mirror’s Edge because the latter’s marketing was really driven by its main character.  Loving both games, I disagreed, as did other commenters, but while the discussion was a bit harsh on Kris I think she handled herself well and updated her views as new info came to light.  Potential for good discussion really is key in my view to a good criticism site.  Another fun series by the same author is a salutary set of pieces on the women of Metal Gear Solid.

The site was started by Jennifer Kesler who both gets a nice mix of writers and wades into comments as a moderator when appropriate, which is key to getting the commenting community that I enjoy.

Coraline 3-d review

3d seems to be coming into its own.  It certainly wasn't necessary for the film but provides a nice enhancer, an experience more like surround sound than a  gimmick.  That said, if 3d isn't available, the film is still worth seeing.

I actually have an autographed copy of the book, thanks Danielle, but it's been a while since I've read it so I'm not well positioned to judge the many changes.  I do think the film stands on its own as more than just beautiful stop-motion animation.

Spoilers in these links: For analysis I recommend Gategrrl over at Hathor Legacy and Judy Berman over at Broadsheet.  For a more critical take check out Lampbane's post which gets into differences between the movie and the book.

Review: Quantum of Solace

I’m a bit late to this party, but as a big Bond fan I had to throw one up anyways.  The film is fun and shows that Casino Royale wasn’t a fluke, although it wasn’t as good as that film.

Strong points: Craig’s Bond and Dench’s M really made this movie, their scenes together sparked and the relationship between the characters drove the best elements of the city.  Seeing Matthias and Felix back was also great and underlined the parts of the plot that worked best. I love Sienna and am happy to see it in films.  I once spent a lovely evening lost in that city and imagine the rooftops would be even trickier to navigate.  Notably, the films continue to do rather well from a feminist perspective, making the one villain a serial rapist was unnecessary, but the ultimate resolution worked well.  The story and politics of the film were a bit surprising: the US role is plausible enough and I’ve always had a soft spot for the obliquely mentioned Evo Morales.  I’m with Yglesias in liking the dynamic though noting agree that there were some silly bits.  I disagree with him about the name, they use Quantum right.  Revenge basically provides relief, but in the smallest unit that can be measured.

Weak spots: My main complaint is with the hyperactive camera work.  I have no objection to setting up parallels between the action and something else going on nearby.  The problem is that the camera moved to quickly, by the time I’d reoriented myself the scene changed again.  The action all looked great, just give me longer cuts please!  The parkour scene in Casino Royale was so great in part because I could understand the difference in style.  The choreography was all good, it doesn’t need the cameraman shouting at me to reinforce it.  Finally, the main villain didn’t really grab me, he had enough dynamism to be a chief lieutenant perhaps, but that’s about it.  Happily, the film also built up a longer term villain who in Austria proved to be the smartest of his group.

But is it really Bond?  I say yes.  My thoughts on Craig’s characterization after the spoiler warning cut.

Review: Let the Right One In

Saturday night I went out to see this Swedish vampire pick.  The buzz was rather good and I think it held up well.  I’m not normally a horror fan so part of the appeal when I see horror movies is the relative novelty, sort of like why I’m a big fan of the relatively rare Mr. Pibb. 

The story focuses on Oskar, a twelve year old boy who is troubled by bullies, and Eli who appears to be a twelve year old girl.  I’m not sure how usual this is for horror, but it follows the perspective of the ‘monsters’ for a good portion of the film, although Oskar is generally the viewpoint character.  With some key exceptions, the setting, Sweden in the winter of 1982, is fairly dour.  Generally speaking, the most fleshed out and interesting characters are the two kids, the adults aren’t generic, but don’t get developed that deeply.  That seems to fit fairly well with the child-centric perspective, that said, this film is appropriately rated R.

What I liked most about the movie was the craft, the special effects are sparse but consistently pack a punch, there are also a lot of small sweet or funny moments, although typically with dark overtones.  It isn’t too graphic as horror goes, although there are people murdered on screen.

Finally, I think the vampire mythos is implemented extremely well.  They’ve got a handy set of powers but also vulnerabilities such requiring an invite (see the title), the need to avoid sunlight, and the hatred of natural creatures (notably cats).  They aren’t especially broody and do seem to specifically need human blood to survive.  Finally, there’s a savage edge that’s particularly creepy and mainly shown through good sound work.

So check out the the trailer if this seems like your sort of thing, you probably won’t  be disappointed.   We’ll likely be seeing more of the actress that plays Eli, she seems really talented. Brief spoiler-y discussion after the cut, only really of interest to those that have seen the film.

You make the call

Is the following abstinence advocacy or just fair warning for would be engineering students?

Via Yglesias who got it from the Poor Man Institute.

Man on Wire

In August of 1974 Philippe Petit and friends put in motion a plan to allow him to tightrope walk from one tower of the World Trade Center to the other. The new documentary Man on Wire describes what lead up to that crazy attempt and how it went down.

The Washington Post review by Ann Hornaday does a good job summing things up, so I’ll just add a few comments. First, the documentary can be fairly exciting because it tells the story of a caper using all the dramatic trappings of caper flicks. I love that sort of movie, and the removal of violence from the equation doesn’t make me enjoy it any less. They use a mix of recreations, original footage, and interviews to dramatize the whole story, I think the balance works pretty well although I wasn’t always sure what was original and what was recreated.

Most will know the outcome, but there’s still room for suspense about how it happened and what role all the supporting team played. The one thing the film doesn’t tell you is what everyone has been up to in the subsequent years. The ending gives a quick summary of how relationships were changed, but that’s about it.

I really can’t see myself taking part in something like this, just for the art and challenge of it. But I am glad the world has people that will.

Picture of an earlier wire walk from http://www.manonwire.com/

Wall-E: Guest commentary

By the fiancee.

First of all, let me say that I did enjoy Wall-E. It was a fun movie. The first third of the movie, focusing on Wall-E’s life on Earth and his initial encounters with EVE, was brilliant and strikingly poignant. If the entire movie had managed to continue that mood, I would have happily listed it among The Incredibles and Ratatouille and both Toy Stories in my higher echelon of Pixar films.

It’s when they leave the planet that the problems start. While my space-geek self was squealing with delight over the beautifully rendered journey from Earth to the Axiom, it was also asking a fair amount of questions: "Wait, how is Wall-E able to hang onto the outside of a spaceship as it’s flying through the atmosphere? How are they flying so close to the sun?" (And later on, as Wall-E and EVE are joyfully soaring around the exterior of the Axiom in another lovely sequence: "How are they flying all around the thrusters and not getting incinerated?") True, it’s been shown that Wall-E is quite durable, as he had a spaceship practically land on top of him and came out none worse for the wear, and true, this is fiction, but there’s no reason for fiction not to obey the laws of physics when there’s no obvious reason to do otherwise.

Then we get to the human race, or at least the subset that’s been living on the Axiom for 700+ years. There has been some controversy as to whether or not the writers were really trying to equate fat with lazy and that all problems will be solved if people just lose weight. That’s an oversimplification of the argument, but you can find more in other posts. I tend to agree with the explanation of humanity as overgrown infants, and also point out that this is probably the portrayal that would be the least scary to children.

At any rate, the Axiom-ites live in a perpetual state of distraction and idleness, quite literally fed what to think and what to do. But hey, all it takes is a couple of cute robots and a tiny plant to shake things up and get them on their way back to Earth, and once they get there, they’re all ready and raring to go in rebuilding human civilization on a still mostly-ruined planet.

It’s not that simple, folks. Rebuilding a ruined planet is incredibly difficult, especially considering the fact that you’ve got no one with the relevant skillsets and everyone is in horrible physical shape. How many people, after the initial thrill wears off (and likely very quickly at that) are going to go back to their lives of leisure aboard the ship? It’s like the inverse of Battlestar Galactica: their lives aboard the ship don’t suck and they’re not in any danger from their robots, so how long will curiosity be able to drive them?

I understand that the film has to stop somewhere, and I did like the usage of Egyptian and other ancient civilization motifs in the ending credits to show that they truly were rebuilding civilization. But the ending, upbeat and positive as it was, left me somewhat unsatisfied. I wanted them to go just a bit further, to explore exactly how humanity’s return to Earth would affect them, to see who stays and who goes back to the ship, to really see the world that they build.

My immediate reasoning for most of the problems I had was that it was a family film and there was only so much they’d be able to show and so much depth they’d be able to reach. However, in that lies the problem. Never before have I had to use "Well, it is a family film" as an excuse for any of Pixar’s movies. They’ve all had some underlying level of sophistication and a simple, fundamental message about things like family or following your dreams or not forgetting where you came from, a message that can strike true no matter what age you are. Wall-E tries, with its "be good to the Earth and think for yourself" messages, but it comes out as being too simple and not as encompassing as the writers probably hoped.

The more I think about Wall-E, the more questions I have. If it was so easy to snap humanity out of its collective ennui, why hadn’t something happened sooner to trigger it? We see babies, toddlers, and adults, but where are the children and teenagers? If they had all this wondrous technology when they were leaving Earth, why make such a half-assed effort at cleaning it up? Has their tech level stalled, or have the robots been making improvements as they went along? If it’s the former, why haven’t things started breaking down?

I appreciate that the film is making me think and garnering so much discussion, but ultimately it doesn’t quite deliver on its promise. Pixar has set the bar for its movies so high that it shouldn’t be entirely surprising that on occasion it falls just a bit short. It’s a good movie with some amazing sequences rather than an amazing movie.

Life is cheap[er] after the Bush years

One thing you have to say for the President, he’s pretty consistent on this score. I’m surprised the price of life only dropped by 1.1 million.

Hellboy 2: Review

Saw it and enjoyed it, but don’t strongly recommend it. Guillermo del Toro continues to have quite a distinctive an imaginative way of presenting fantasy worlds. Both for better and for worse each magical entity seems fairly unique. This isn’t to say that there’s no duplication, just that with a few prominent exceptions even two creatures of the same general species tend to look completely different. On the upside, this means one wondrous visual after another, on the downside it takes away some of the pleasure of pattern recognition and figuring out the rules.

The action was terrific and speaks for itself. However, the plotting was a bit by the numbers with character choices often seeming driven by the dictates of the story and the themes rather than any consistent internal motivation. That was far less of a problem in Pan’s Labyrinth, a del Toro film I loved, with the exception of when Ophelia’s breaking a key and well known fairy tale rule for insufficiently established reasons.

Wall-E discussion (Spoilers): Part 1, the big controversy.

Enjoyed it. There’s reviews everywhere so I’m skipping straight on to spoilers. Here’s a pretty pictures to let those of you who haven’t seen it yet bail.

Planning to do a few posts, I’ll start over at Slate Daniel Engber criticizes the film’s depiction of a chronically obese humanity:

According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!

But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They’re weak-willed, indolent, and stupid.

Amanda Marcotte offers an alternative explanation that the fat is really a stand in for an infantalized population.

What I didn’t expect, and what floored me was that they were basically overgrown babies, fat with short arms and no bone density or ability to walk... *Yes, I realize that this has all sorts of weird implications in a culture where fat people are subject to all sorts of unfair stereotypes. But once the choice was made to represent grown adults as overgrown babies---which is the best choice for how the movie plays out---I’m not sure how you get around that problem.

I think Marcotte nails the filmmakers intention exactly. That said, intentions don’t automatically translate into success. While the movie ignores any genetic ties to obesity it also doesn’t blame the individual, the cause is entirely environmental.

(Think about how Americans are slave to our cars, for instance.) I think making the people of the future near-literal babies (with lots of comparison shots to actual babies to drive home the message) was a brave choice, and made the movie work much better than the alternatives would have. It makes humanity much more sympathetic, because people aren’t wicked, just living these half-lives of utter dependence on robots. Their computer screens are Plato’s cave, but they do embrace the opportunity to move outside the cave when it’s given.

I wonder if the Plato’s cave analogy was intentional, it does seem really spot on. In any event I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I can see why it really bothered one overweight person [to the point of] crying. On the other hand, 100% of the humans in the film were fat and really it took only the slightest bit of jarring to get them to begin to break from their infantile state. So on the whole, I’m with the film on this one. I think the best way to have better handled this would be to get sophisticated on how exactly modern society and technology influence us. More on that in a future post.

Get Smart: Quick review

Good stuff.  More action than the old series and less wordplay.  It would have been nice to have a bit more of the wordplay but the action while not necessary didn't really bother me.  I actually found it even better than I expected from the reviews and enjoyed it substantially more than I expected after the original previews.

Cool points of note: highly active Chief, skilled agent 99, generally respectful treatment of most characters despite their range of foibles.  This respect and classy/good natured element of the film showed most clearly in a scene where Max and 99 were competing against one another.  Same is true of a few bits with the requisite KAOS heavy.

The political humor was also rather well handled, mostly low key but also funny and satisfying.

Only other slight complaint is that Seigfried was a bit too focused on being menacing.  His level of menace worked well, but I'd liked to have seen more back and forth with him and Max or 99.

Does looking up facts make you stupid?

Ross Douthat passes on a summary of a Walter Mossberg talk.

A lot of his talk had to do with the issues constant connectivity raises for deep knowledge ("people hate iPhone users," he remarked, "because you can never have an argument about facts without them whipping out the phone and looking up the answer" - a description that I’m afraid I resemble, even though I have a Blackberry and not an iPhone) and deep reflection (in the future, Mossberg noted, we may never be free of "that subtle feeling that maybe you need to check Slate, or Facebook"), and he echoed some of the points that Nicholas Carr makes in his Atlantic essay on how the internet may be changing the way we think, and not necessarily for the better.

I definitely know iPhone users that whip them out constantly to check facts. While this may have deleterious effects on memory I don’t see how more facts are supposed to degrade the quality of our arguments. Citations and hyperlinks might make for less interesting reading at times, but they’re key for figuring out what really happens.

Moreover, our kinds of deep knowledge our shifting. We’re becoming more like librarians, we’ll know some things, but on many other topics we’ll simply know where to look to get the information quickly. I have a few favorite studies I quickly can refer to for common arguments, I know their general findings but I need to look it up to get the numbers.

They actually know what quantum means!

So Chris Orr points me to the new Bond trailer and finds reason for cautious optimism.

Orr doesn’t like the name, Quantum of Solace. I do like it. Quantum’s relevant definitions area "a specified portion" or "the smallest amount of a physical quantity..." So in essence the title is a reference to a measure of comfort for the death at the end of the last film. From the trailer I suspect that the source will be revenge and from the name I surmise that it will provide minimal comfort.

Ironman review

As I said in my brief, the film was superior. All of the actors seemed well chosen, the main characters were fairly interesting with executive assistant Pepper Potts standing out as a independent person willing to stand up to Tony Stark. As our hero, Stark himself, Robert Downey Jr. was simply perfect as an adult who didn’t come of age but did find more to life than just hedonism. I like having adult heroes as at this point I’ve come of age so I’m more interested in questions of what to do with ones life afterwards.

Stark makes an interesting contrast to Bruce Wayne (aka Batman), Wayne pretends to be the person Stark is, but Wayne’s skills are much more rounded and Stark is a better engineer. The movie did play up both Stark’s flaws and strengths quite well and I particularly enjoyed a moment in the final fight where Stark used a trick he only knew about because he irresponsibly pushes the limits of everything he does.

Part of the fun of the movie was also the conspicuous consumption. As Ann Horraday said, Iron Man has just as much of it as the Sex and the City movie does, it just happens to take a different form. I actually don’t care that much about the fancy cars but I loved the house and the lab. The movie also focused a lot on Stark’s development and invention process, which was great. Also the robots were really cute, plausibly engineered if overly intelligent, and quite funny.

Saw Iron Man tonight

Lived up to the trailer.  Man that was a fun movie for tech geeks an engineers.  As a military-industrial complex critique  was dated/misfocused but that's what I'd heard going in.

Anyways, write up tomorrow.

Also, I was rather amused when I took the time to check what a certain organization would be abbreviated as.

Quick addendum: Whoever did casting should win an award.  All around brilliant.

Why do we like Hamlet?

Noah Millman of the American Scene has a spectacular review of Hamlet as staged at the Stratford Festival. I would love to catch that staging, although I doubt I will. Nonetheless, this is the best piece of criticism I’ve read in a while and I read a fair amount of good criticism.

A sample:

Why do we take to Hamlet [the character]?

The false but easy way to make the necessary connection with the audience is simply to make Hamlet more appealing – play him as less brutal to Ophelia than the text directs; cut lines that play up his brutality; and so forth. The more true but also too easy way to make the connection is to play up Hamlet’s weakness, his psychic vulnerability – make us believe that, on some level, he really is mad. Carlson takes the harder, truest route, and aims to win us over by sheer display of intelligence. His Hamlet is peevish and dispeptic, but he runs rings around everyone else in the play. He does not want to be alone, but he is alone, perforce, and that loneliness has made him bitter. And you can see him, over and over again, trying to find someone who will not disappoint him, and finds only Horatio...

Read the whole thing.

The blog itself, the American Scene, is one of the conservative/libertarian blogs I read for good writing and insight into that part of the opposition that argues in good faith. This sort of piece is my reward.

Top 10 subways

Wired has a 10 photo spread on the world’s most impressive subways. Sadly, though not unreasonably, Washington doesn’t make the cut. I’ve ridden six of the ten, I will not be satisfied until I’ve ridden all of them. The picture below is of Moscow’s, I knew that it was impressively engineered and timely but had no idea it had any stations this opulent.

Via Yglesias

Photo by Vanity Press used under a Creative Commons license

Touche Ann Hornaday

I read Ann Hornaday’s review of Sex and the City in the Washington Post and one paragraph stuck out.

Parker, far from a conventional beauty, rocks a mean smoky eye, and proves that even at 43 she’s a clotheshorse extraordinaire. Here she works the screen like a catwalk, never ending up, like Carrie did in one famous episode, as fashion roadkill. (For the uninitiated on their way to "Sex and the City" this weekend: Think of the clothes, shoes and accessories simply as the movie’s version of Iron Man’s robot suit, Speed Racer’s cars or Indiana Jones’s fedora and bullwhip. And judge not others’ escapist fetishes lest ye be judged.)

I normally scoff at that sort of thing, but I’ve got to say game, set, and match.

Review: Indy 4

In my book, the film was a success. Good, not great, it successfully caps the orignal trilogy. There are some rather good action set pieces, although I’m not sure any quite rise to the legendary level achieved my many in the first three. I don’t think there’s any real point in seeing this if you haven’t seen the earlier movies, but that’s a pretty small potential demographic anyhow.

Being a bit intentionally vague, I think the core of the movie is really the triangle of Indy, his love interest, and the teen Mutt. Shia Lebouf, who played Mutt, actually rather surprised me. His character was probably a bit too much of a ’50s stereotype, but even so he worked well with the others and I ultimately liked him a lot. I actually wasn’t a big fan of him in Transformers but it appears I underestimated him. Female love interest was everything I hoped. The other two supports were alright, particularly Indy’s interaction with Mac, but certainly are no Brody or Sallah. Denholm Elliot, the actor who played Brody, actually died back in 1992, he’s definitely missed and the film does a fairly good brief tribute to him.

The Crystal Skull itself works okay, and I’m definitely grateful that Spielburg and Ford fought with Lucas to tone that stuff down. The initial warehouse sequence and the jungle battle are probably the best action in the movie, although I was rather fond of an early tomb raid that actually felt about as realistic as this series gets. Bleh on the ending, much of it just fairly directly repeated prior themes and the rest I don’t think the series needed. One of the critiques I’ve seen is that the film could have actually addressed the increasing sovereignty of countries over their archeology heritage, and I think that’s true but more of a missed opportunity than a critical flaw.

And on to spoilers.

Blogroll addition: Roger Ebert

While I disagree with Roger Ebert on gaming I am a fan in general and was quite happy to learn about his new blog.  One of his earlier posts actually touched on a common bit of history involving the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  He'd gotten his start in reporting there and my Dad got his undergrad degree there as well.  It was one of the places I applied to and I got to go on a rather awesome campus visit for Cyberfest.  Here's Ebert's description:

I wrote earlier about going to a speech in Urbana given by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. He spoke about earth satellites, but the key element is: The speech was in Urbana. Years later, it was with tingles tangling on my spine that I heard HAL 9000 announce that he had been born in the computer lab at the University of Illinois in Urbana. So far as I know, Clarke had never been to Urbana and never returned, but I assume that while he was there he visited Illiac, one of the first big computers, and its gradually-developing successors. When he was writing the "2001" screenplay, the Urbana connection made itself.

That's been my theory. It didn't hold water with Clarke, however. In March of 1997 we held a birthday party for HAL 9000 at the University, called "Cyberfest," which also considered Artificial Intelligence in general. For the climax, we screened "2001" in 70mm, and had a cybercast interview with Sir Arthur via the net from Sri Lanka. He loomed for 20 feet above us, his image and voice dominating the room via a signal carried by one of the satellites he wrote so much about. Of course I asked him about the Urbana connection but alas he did not remember giving a speech in Urbana and doubted it had much to do with the movie.

Oh thank goodness

From Roger Ebert’s blog:

At noon Sunday, I attended a press screening of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." I returned to my laptop, wrote my review and sent it off, convinced I would be in a minority. I loved it, but then I’m also the guy who loved "Beowulf," and look at the grief that got me. Now Indy’s early reviews are in, and I’m amazed to find myself in an enthusiastic majority. The Tomatometer stands at 78, and the more populist IMDb user rating is 9.2 out of 10. All this before the movie’s official opening on Thursday.

I don’t think that kind of early reaction guarantees a good movie, but I think it substantially raises the odds of an enjoyable movie.

Excellent rant on both Wizard of Oz and Wicked

Kalinara has a great takedown of both the movie Wizard of Oz and Wicked’s shotgun critique of it. There’s spoilers for both, although I only throw that in because of Wicked, decade old movies don’t get spoiler warnings.

But really, the only real evidence we have to her evil is 1) what the munchkins say, which is awfully one-sided and they cheer when someone is crushed to death in front of them. 2) She’s got winged monkeys and a seekrit hideout. As opposed to some carnival guy who lives in an Emerald castle with weird underlings inclined to give people makeovers who he rules via trickery with giant machines. 3) She attacked her sister’s killer, which okay, really isn’t kosher, but obviously given the ruling people of Oz, she wasn’t going to get any sort of justice. And 4) She’s ugly.

Whereas, in the movie, Glinda and the Wizard convinced a young girl that the only way she could go home was to KILL SOMEONE. When she had the way home all the time...

I think in the end, this is why I don’t have any interest in Wicked. I
mean, it’s an interesting story (from what I’ve been told), but
ultimately, I tend to think there’s more than enough support for a
pro-Wicked Witch, re-viewing the movie at least, without changing or
adding a lot of things out of nowhere.

Read the whole thing. I think for the movie writers, this is just one of those cases where they figured something was intrinsically evil based on what it was. I’ve had similar thoughts about a level in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles where you just break into this monsters house and kill the family and the staff. There may have been some setup before hand that I missed but it looked pretty dang weird.

My personal favorite parody of the Wizard of Oz was the one by Futurama’s Tales of Interest. Managed to hit all the obvious jokes while still having a fair number of surprises.

RIP Charlton Heston

Stephen Hunter at the Post is the obvious choice to write an Appreciation piece for Heston and it’s quite good:

He and his producers and directors understood his appeal, and used it for maximum effect on the big Technicolor screen. Rarely a doubter, never a coward, inconceivable as a shirker, he played men of granite virtue no matter the epoch. He played commanders, biblical prophets, Jewish heroes, tough-as-nails cowpokes, calm aviators, last survivors, quarterbacks and a president or two. ...

Later in his life, he took that stance into politics, becoming president of the National Rifle Association just when anti-gun attitudes were reaching their peak. Pilloried and parodied, lampooned and bullied, he never relented, he never backed down, and in time it came to seem less an old star’s trick of vanity than an act of political heroism. He endured, like Moses. He aged, like Moses. And the stone tablet he carried had only one commandment: Thou shalt be armed. It can even be said that if the Supreme Court in June finds a meaning in the Second Amendment consistent with NRA policy, that he will have died just short of the Promised Land -- like Moses.

Anyways, the one thing I hadn’t known about Heston was that he had been an "early celebrity marcher" for civil rights. I certainly disagree with his stance on gun control, but I think as Hunter argues that he certainly did seem like a true believer. I had thought that Michael Moore’s harassment of him in Bowling for Colombine was rather untoward. By that point in his life you could definitely see the effects of Alzheimer’s. I have no strong reservations about going after real bad guys past their prime, like Pinochet, but no way is Heston in that category. And Hunter is probably right about dying just short of his goal. From what I’ve read, the Supreme Court is highly likely to come down on behalf of an individual right of gunowner-ship. The question is how strict a standard regulators must meet to limit that right.

Anyways, in other Post news, Gene Weingarten won a Pulitzer for his article where Joshua Bell played violin before commuters that largely ignored him. I enjoyed the piece and it was fun to debate, although I’d think his piece on the Great Zucchini was even better. His chat is still well worth reading although I haven’t been that excited by his experiment with the Gene Pool. I don’t read forums in general though. I tend only to be excited by well modded comment threads and/or those where the host dives into discussions. Congrats!

I do enjoy Ross Douthat's film reviews

The following quote is spoilery, but only if you follow the link to read what movie it’s in reference to:

On a less high-minded note, I also liked the ending because I’m an irredeemable dork who gets annoyed at the way monster movies and alien-invasion movies tend to depict the American military as essentially helpless against creatures from another world, with some deus ex machina our only hope of salvation. Obviously, this helplessness is a necessary plot device as much as anything, but I always tend to think that if a huge monster showed up in New York City, or alien tripods starting stalking the East Coast, we’d find a way to take them down. So it was nice to see a monster movie where the U.S. military gets to win one, for a change.

I’ve long felt that way, both for nationalistic reasons and because I find helpless battles pretty boring. This holds for films, books, games, etc. Even if the military is going to lose, at least let them adapt some and get a few hits in.

I think the basic reason for these total defeats is to play up how dangerous the bad guy is and to make the heroes more important. For some reasons it’s not enough that the heroes could be the margin between victory and defeat. Instead they, or the deus ex machina they put in motion, is that only way to even dent the bad guys.

For lots of examples, check the TV tropes entry Redshirt Army.

Chicago 10

As someone who only knew the outline of the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention, I rather enjoyed learning more about it in this fun and snarky documentary. It’s clearly sympathetic to the movement, but at the same time gives some context and shows some of the movements limitations and some of the reasons they probably didn’t have that much support outside of the white college student and older radical set.

The film tells the story of the protests while focusing primarily on the trial of eight participants and their two lawyers. They’re better known as the Chicago 7 which leaves out the lawyer and Bobby Seale, a Black Panther leader who got his case separated eventually. The film doesn’t cover them all equally, particularly since some seem a lot quieter at trial. My favorite was the lawyer who did most of the talking, with Seale second for managing to be fairly dignified given the circumstances.

The film recreates the trial using animation and actors reading the transcript. That works rather well, only downside is that the cell shading wasn’t really too my taste. Fiancee thought that the lighting wasn’t really accurately reflected in the shading, just felt a little wrong to me. The highly stylized cartoons were cute, but maybe not what they were looking for trial-wise. That was intermixed with some other recreated transcripts as well as a fair amount of footage of the events themselves. Note that it is really focused on the movement and the protest, you don’t get much of a feel for the mainstream politics or the legal aspects.

Main thing missing from the film was a sense of impact. The majority of the dying by U.S. soldiers hadn’t happened yet, so in that sense it was clearly a failure. Democratic politics were shaken up, although I’m not sure how much that directly traced back to the Chicago 10. On the other hand, I’m not sure how to tell that story with the methods of the film.

Persepolis

I finally got around to seeing Persepolisthanks to some friends who took the initiative of suggesting it. The story covers a girl who grows up during the Iranian revolution escapes to Vienna for a bit, runs into some trouble, and goes back to be a young adult in theocratic Iran.

I think the film is a great success because of terrific often hilarious animation, excellent pacing, and appealing if flawed characters. The story never dwells too long in one section of Marjane’s life. There’s a fair amount of down moment, but they’re interspersed with humor and inspiration. You won’t come away an expert on Iran, but you’ll get a better feel for what life is like there. The purpose of the film was explicitly to show the humanity of the Iranian people, and I think it succeeded.

My only complaint was that the previews leading up to the movie sucked! They were like the indy versions of Matthew McConaughey’s ’Fool’s Gold.’ Unsympathetic characters having fights or sex and in one case dealing with the first arrival of aids. Wow. How hard is it to have at least three minutes of appealing content in a movie? That and they accidentally put on the wrong real so we started out watching Be Kind Rewind which confused everyone. But it allowed my late friends to show up with the popcorn and not miss anything, so that’s okay.

Picture from the Sony Movie Website. I do wish they’d explicitly state their use rules.

Greg reviews movies you've already seen: Brokeback Mountain

I watched Brokeback Mountain today while dog-sitting; the sheep-herding of suburbia. The movie was actually a bit different than I expected. I had figured there’d be an extra half hour of cowboy stuff with less time with the families and in the latter years. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong.

The story is a variant on the star-crossed lovers being kept apart by society tale. I’ve gotten fairly bored with those stories, but here it works because the characters consider what it would take to actually be together and the end result is quite plausible without requiring lots of contrivance and idiocy (::cough:: Romeo and Juliet ::cough::).

Anyways, for those that haven’t seen it, the movie is worthwhile because the acting is superb. You actually understand the emotions involved and how the Closet screws up everything for everyone involved. I tend to think making the wives reasonably sympathetic was probably key to the success there.

Also, the movie has helped me understand why some conservatives think gay marriage would destroy traditional marriage. Having that option would have resulted in a quick(er) ending to the marriages in the movie. Similarly, think of your classic stand-up comic marriage of a guy wanting sex and a woman wanting financial/emotional support. Thing is, it hurts everyone involved so it should fall apart [although kids do complicate the matter, might not always be in their immediate best interests. But these things will tend to fall apart anyhow and with more freedom there’s better options for soft landings. That and less marriages that shouldn’t have been in the first place.]

Movie sign

So at my friend’s birthday party we watched some of the Oscars as well as some clips from Filmmaking Frenzy. The later a contest to do five minute remakes of movies to promote the new film Be Kind Rewind. I’ve heard mixed things about but will see if given an easy opportunity.

The contest winner, Beastmaster, for Filmmaking frenzy wasn’t that great in our view. The party was bored about half-way through. Die Hard was better but it was hard to hear the dialog. Another finalist, the Princess Bride, was excellent. Better than I would have expected, the sheer amount of fandom for that movie would make it too easy to just reference crowd pleasers and nothing else.

On the Oscars. I thought Jon Stewart did pretty well and was glad he brought the female singer for Once back on stage after she was cut off. That and the binocular/periscope montage was hilarious. That said, the writers strike is over, why were there so many other montages. Okay, it’s the 80th anniversary, I don’t care, stop showing us strings of 15 people giving out or getting old awards. I think I’ll resume my habit of not watching the Oscars, but it can be fun at a party.

Inflation up

I see from Kevin Drum that inflation is now at 4.3%.

Seems like we’ll want to get that down a bit, but I think there’s a brief to be made for the idea that keeping inflation rather low for the past couple decades may have been a bit of a mistake.

Keeping the dollar strong was a big factor in keeping our trade deficits high. The recently weakening dollar has caused exports to surge back which is the main factor battling against the present/potential recession. At the same time, it’s made imports more expensive so in addition to other causes has encouraged inflation.

I think the stagnant median wages over the past couple decades suggest that we’re paying a price for those cheap imports. Getting back some jobs including higher skilled jobs in aerospace and the like could be a start to countering some of the negative affects of globalization. In addition, America has a terrible savings rate so the average person benefits some from inflation so long as wages at least hold steady.

Anyways, it’s also worth noting that the IT revolution in the 90s probably resulted in a one-time surge in the global labor pool. With cell phones, the net, and such it became possible to exploit a lot of existing under-employed labor and infrastructure world-wide in addition to a lot of capacity building. Developing world countries can still grow of course, but now they’re running up against limiting factors other than distance.

Musharraf's party gets stomped

Saw the news in TNR which also noted that unsurprisingly the Islamist parties did poorly too. The big question before hand was would the elections take place and would they be allowed to return accurate results. For the moment, it appears that Musharraf’s party is ’allowing’ itself to be defeated as it were. The true magnitude of the loss versus reported outcomes will be hard to tell, but considering how badly the fair in early returns, it looks fairly credible.

This round isn’t over yet, but having some semblance of an accurate count was more than I was counting on. My compliments to everyone involved, for the moment including Musharraf for being less of a despot than I feared.

#$^@ing Brilliant!

I vehemently recommend U2-3D to any fans of the band. 

There's not quite the energy of being at a live show, but it dang near gets there.  The wide range of well-mixed camera angles get you way closer to the whole band in concert than anyone but the closest row of fans and often closer than them.  The 3d does really add to the experience by making it feel that much more real, and for one song and the credits they really play around with it.

I think this format really works.  Particularly for superstars like U2 that already do a highly effective mix of medium.  Man those Latin American concerts seemed awesome.

I did see it in IMAX, not sure how much of a difference it made, but it sure felt worth it.

Indy!

Reading a few more conservative blogs pays dividends. There’s a new Indy trailer out!

Not sure how I feel about the kid. Female villain seems alright so far. They seem to be handling the transition to the Soviets well. Also, the tombs may be a little too elaborate. No need to get too fancy just because you have the special effects budget to do it.

But mainly the action and lines are good, and well, it’s Indy. Looks like they’re going to hit at least Die Hard 4 quality, which would make me a very happy. If it’s better than that I’ll be overjoyed.

On a side note, the editing felt a little choppy. I think they were cutting it for time due to the first twenty seconds or so of prior movie summary. Trying to trim things for trailers is pretty common, so I’m not going to worry about it.

[Updated after reading the Vanity Fair article Isaac Chotiner linked to]

Good news: Spielburg specifically talks about slow-cuts, not fast-cuts, that’s a good sign. I’m guessing old style may just be harder to work into modern trailers.

Lucas is apparently obsessed with his particular MacGuffin and thinks that they’re key to the Indy movies. Eh.. maybe, maybe not. Apparently they brought in the father-son dynamic to Last Crusade because the MacGuffin was weak, but I think that dynamic would be much better than a Arc like strong MacGuffin. I worry a bit, but he’s got Ford and Spielburg pushing back against him, so I think it might just be okay.]

Italian Job (original) review

I’d bought the DVD of the original on a lark, I think I picked it up on a DVD sale from Borders.

Anyways, the movie was fun and often a bit silly. Only some of the plot lines came together, particular the mafia bits, but the main heist was quite satisfying. The real appeal of the movie is mini-coopers driving all around Turin, Italy in all sorts of amazingly crazy ways. Good stuff.

There was some casual misogyny, basically the normal objectified, rampant sexual harassment, and not that helpful females. Not necessarily guaranteed in a film of this period, but meh.

Main point of interest, computer traffic control was actually around for the original movie. Who knew? We’d basically figured it came with the remake.

Anyways, the ending is rather unconventional. Fiancee argues that it could have been quite satisfying if they didn’t have all the untied supporting threads. I tend to agree, I thought the way it ended was great, but it is annoying that there was a lot of setup that never paid off. Probably there was meant to be a sequel, but that never happened as far as I know.

Hogfather [DVD] review

Hogfather is the movie adaptation of Terry Prachett's book of the same name.  The book is about Discworld's Santa Claus and involves the "Death" set of characters.  The movie's fairly obscure, so I'm targetting this review at those already familar with the book.

This is a pretty straightforward and not all that exciting adaptation.  The effects are pretty good, but in most cases the acting didn't really excite me.  Susan was alright, as was the Arch Dean of Wizards.  Death and his butler were both quite good, although in Death's case its more a matter of voice acting.

On the upside, the film is entirely true to the book.  I wasn't surprised that Terry Prachett had full oversight and no complaints about the production.  It might have benefited a bit from being shorter but I don't think that would have made a huge deal either way.

I think the main problem is that it just wasn't really fully imagined as a movie.  It feels very bookish and not in a great way.  The finale is quite solid but prior to that the action bits are more montages and the lines feel more like they're being read than spoken.  The friend who loaned it to me said it felt a bit too British, I'm not sure that's the problem but I can see what he means.  Often the movie felt like it was trying a little too hard, the score tended to telegraph and emphasize the jokes in a way I don't think was that helpful.

So, I don't think it's an adaptation that will really make people angry, it just isn't necessarily something you should go out of your way to get it unless you want to see a visual version of the book or have a bunch of people to watch it with.  I think it's probably okay for people that haven't read the book, not quite sure how switch the ordering would change your preferences though.

Is the U.S. following the same monster movie pattern as Japan?

So, when reading a review of Cloverfield (minor spoilers in post) I followed a link to a Guardian blog postthat noted an apparent an American filmmaker obsession with destroying New York. While many of these movies are pre-9/11 (if after the first World Trade Center attacks) Shane Danielsen comments on Cloverfield "[w]atching it, you’re struck by how American cinema is still struggling to process the events of 9/11."

He goes on to say:

I can’t recall another culture - even the Sumerians, no strangers to
fatalism - which has rehearsed its own extinction with such apparent
relish.

Obviously not a man familiar with Japanese cultural products. As NPR picks up:

Fifty-four years ago, Godzilla gave more than a nod to a historic tragedy by using a gargantuan beast to terrorize a city. In that case, says Bill Tsutsui — a professor of modern Japanese history at the University of Kansas — Godzilla was referencing the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan and the devastation of World War II, which had ended just nine years prior.

"We see Tokyo consumed in flames and of course this brings to mind for viewers the fire bombings, which again, were only less than a decade away," Tsutsui says. "You can’t help but think of all those familiar images that all of us see of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: a wasted landscape, rubble everywhere, a few spindly burnt-out tree trunks. It really would have captured for Japanese audiences of the day very close memories of the war."

No deep thoughts here, it’s just interesting to see some elements of the pattern repeat itself. That said, as much of an impact as 9/11 had on us, it directly affected far fewer people than U.S. bombing of Japan. On the other hand, the fire bombing of Tokyo wasn’t on 24 hour news networks.

Possible things to look forward to: directors ending movies in ways that are not simply illogical or banal but nigh incomprehensible.

Juno Review

I saw it tonight and quite liked it.  Quick rundown, teenaged girl gets pregnant and deals with the consequences, and it's a comedy.  Really it's the female viewpoint response to Knocked Up.  While not that big on abortion I think it can safely be described as profoundly feminist.  It really is about Juno, the title character, her choices, and her interactions with the people around her.  She can be a bit of a cipher, but the supporting characters are all rather well developed and I like them a lot.

This is also definitely a hipster movie.  I liked a few of the songs, although while the folksy indy music fit the tone most of them, particularly the intro, didn't do it for me.  The characters are constantly witty, to an utterly unrealistic degree, but the acting is also rather good anyways so I think it works.  That said, it really did not work for the <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/custom/today/bal-to.juno21dec21,0,5190317.story">Sun's reviewer</a> so if snarky hip girls aren't your thing than this isn't the movie for you.  It's a bit more life affirming than say Ghost World, but that's probably a good reference point for whether you'll like this.

Anyways, the communal environment of the theater is fun, but you can probably replicate it by renting it with some friends.

Filler

I’ll get some real entries up later today, but for now, a random question for readers and possibly commenters to think on.

Would your average right-wing media personality be more offended if they were wished "Happy Holidays" or "Feliz Navidad" by a store clerk?

Data: Use of the filibuster (as measured by cloture votes)

Ezra Klein has a chart showing that the Republicans have already made a record number of filibusters even though we’re only half way through the Congressional term. To be clear, they are not on pace to set the record, they have already broken it.

From Ezra:

I rather liked Kevin Drum’s assessment of the situation when he termed the current Republican Congress the Party of Nyet, noting that they were so used to filibustering absolutely everything that came down the pike that they accidentally filibustered a bill they supported, and had to scramble off autopilot to save it.

All that said, this is happening in large part because the Democrats are allowing it. As I said in my previous post this is like a fighting game where the Republicans keep doing the exact same move over and over again and we don’t deploy the necessary countermeasures. Could the media’s coverage of this be much better? Is the Republican agenda bad for the country? Did they say we were cheap when we filibustered? Of course. But I’m not going to blame them for actually bothering to play the game when we aren’t.

Fast Zombies

Slate has an important article detailing the history of fast of Zombies. Key drivers seem to be attempts for authenticity rather than horror cheesiness, directors with experience in music videos, as well as more threatening game zombies.

Anyhow, I’ve been meaning for a few years to watch 28 days later and sequel. Think I’ll also give a go to RE4 and its controversial sequel. I’ll have something to say about fast zombies then. However, my first instinct is that perhaps we should respect the pedantry of those that refer to 28 days later zombies as infected and thus a different breed of baddy.

Golden Compass: The Movie Powerpoint

I saw Golden Compass yesterday afternoon.  It was enjoyable enough for those that have read the book, but I don’t think I can recommend it to those that haven’t.  Unfortunately, it was in a middling state between a movie that cut enough out of the book to fit comfortably in its run time and a movie that went long enough to get in what’s in the book.

As a result, many of the scenes clearly had the gears showing.  The whole thing was laden down with exposition, if it weren’t for the daemons the characters would have to constantly exposit out loud to themselves.  While watching you, to make up an example, you will know for example that a particular scene had to:

• Introduce the armored bears to the North.
• Solve a puzzle to provide needed exposition.
• Provide the motivation for the next scene.

Because that’s all the scene does and then you’re on to the next slide.

Characters make unsupported logical leaps all the time.  This is particularly true with the movie’s divination element (being vague to avoid spoilers) that had special effects I found profoundly unsatisfying.  The divination sequences didn’t even hint at some of the information that they revealed to the relevant character.  As a result, even though we’re shown the process, the information feels like it comes out of nowhere.  It might have been better to show nothing.

That said, I should give the movie some earned praise.  I rather liked the aforementioned armored bears.  There’s one key battle that played out just like I remember it.  You don’t get shown why a particular tactic works so well, but it makes sense even without the extra knowledge from the book.  This is how a short movie made from a book should work, show enough that it makes sense and hint at the details the readers know.  Also the special effect when someone is dusted as it were is really cool.

I have a feeling based on what some friends said that the directors’ cut will be better.  It sounds like the initial test audiences were puzzled by the film but the solutions made things worse.  Many of my friends particularly complained about the early ending.  Anyhow, if you’ve seen the [book] and want to see it with pictures go ahead and go I suppose.  It gets less crazy exposition heavy after the first third.  For everyone else, read the book and if you haven’t read it in time to see the movie in theaters, wait for the director’s cut DVD.

 

[Update: Fixed typo in title and in the last paragraph.]

Hitting one another with foam swords: The documentary

Sadly I apparently missed the airing of Darkonon the IFC. Well, at least it’s getting attention. It’s a great documentary that I saw like a year and a half ago at the Silver Docs festival.

Here’s Slate’s review:

Founded in 1985, Darkon is one of America’s oldest and largest LARPs, and the showdown between two kingdoms within it, Mordom and Laconia, was captured in the documentary Darkon, a movie so mighty it needed two directors (Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer). The film has its television premiere on the IFC Channel tonight at 9 p.m., where it joins the ranks of movies like Hoop Dreams and Murderball as one of the great documentary dissections of how Americans play....

Darkon has 700 members, fielding up to 150 people at any given battle. "The documentary shows us at the height of our imperialistic pretensions," says Kenyon Wells of his country, Mordom. "We’re dominating the world and reveling a bit in being the imperialistic bad guy. We hadn’t lost a land fight, let alone a war, in 15 years." Mordom attracted the best new players, they had the deepest pockets, and they loved winning.

The movie was fantastic because the story it told was interesting. ’Good’ kingdom versus ’evil’ kingdom. House husband versus an executive. The competing leaders are both hams in different ways and a lot of fun, as are the various other participants that get interviewed. That and there’s the clash of foam sword on foam sword. What else could you want?

The DVD apparently comes out late February. I’ll buy it when that happens and have a showing. But prior to that, or for anyone that isn’t in my area, it’s probably worth checking On Demand if you have it to see if you can watch this thing.

Question to Readers: Anyone know any Darkon players? It’s MD/VA based but bizarrely while I was a fencer and knew a fair number of Society for Creative Anachronism guys I had never heard of this particular game before the movie. Go figure. Not looking to join up, I’ve got other empires I’m worried about, but I’d be interested in stories.

Interested in reading more about traveling in China?

I still have a few entries to go, but let me recommend James Fallows blog over at the Atlantic. If you want to skip the non-China posts, go straight here.

I think he’ll soon be on my blog-roll.

No Country for Old Batman Rogues

From Salon’s review (emphasis mine):

Bardem’s character has an outlandishly made-up-sounding name, Anton Chigurh (Gesundheit!), but he stomps through the movie like a nameless ghost. He also wears one of the most absurd haircuts ever committed to film, a kind of Prince Valiant bob, minus the fringe. And he’s a nasty piece of work, all right: He kills ruthlessly and thoughtlessly, loading bullets into people’s heads seemingly just for kicks. Existentialist to the max, he tosses a coin to determine whether or not he’ll spare the life of the owner of a small convenience store.

I’d be much more inclined to see this movie if they acknowledged they were ripping off Two-Face. That particular detail has made every review I’ve seen, although none of the reviews I’ve read mentioned the repeat. That’s actually something I miss about Roger Ebert, he’d tend to note such rip-offs and praised Office Space when it acknowledged stealing an idea form Superman 3. Not that he really knows comics or anything, but Two-Face has been a major antagonist in a modern Batman movie.

Tolkein's writer friends fought bloat in Lord of the Rings

There’s a cute story in the Times Online about J.R.R. Tolkien and his a group of his fellow writers called the Inklings.

J. R. R. Tolkien finishes with the sentence: “‘Well, I’m back,’ he said”. It is a touchingly understated conclusion which returns the prose to the homely simplicity of the inaugural chapters after the archaic epic mode of The Return of the King.

However, as Diana Pavlac Glyer tells us in her scholarly and perceptive study The Company They Keep, this is not how Tolkien originally intended to finish his trilogy. He had in mind a further epilogue, set sixteen years after the events of the rest of the book, which would have provided another, superfluous glimpse into Gamgee’s domesticity. In this ultimately excised version, a grey-haired Sam reads stories of his adventures to his children, spinning them tales of wizards and orcs and walking trees. There is even the faint suggestion that Sam has been narrating the story of The Lord of the Rings itself, before, at last, we depart the Shire for good, leaving Sam and Rose in a state of connubial bliss, tale-telling by the fireside.

What stopped Tolkien from publishing this ending was his membership of the
Inklings – that renowned circle of Oxford writers and academics who met for
seventeen years from 1932 and which counted C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams
and E. R. Edison, the author of The Worm Ouroboros, among their number. It
was they who pointed out the glutinous sentimentality of the scene,
marshalling their forces to argue that it added nothing of substance to a
narrative which had already swollen far beyond the “second Hobbit” requested
by his publishers.

Two points:

1. J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings would make a great name for a filk band.
2. Geez, imagine how much longer Lord of the Rings might have been without these guys.
3. Could someone please form a similar group for Peter Jackson?

Via Sullivan.

Indy Rumors (spoiler in link)

So, some key details of the next Indy plot "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"  have leaked.  (Here There Be Spoilers) The setting and overall adversary both make sense.  I am reassured by the big spoiler.  I lost a bit of enthusiasm because of the name and some artifact I've never heard of, but this news perked me right up.  The specific plot-line described is nothing special but the actor(s) and/or actress(es) involved make me very happy.  And I think that's all I can say without risking spoilage.

In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon is a superb documentary about the Apollo project.  It features extensive interviews with ten astronauts (of the 24 ones that went to the moon).  They're all impressive and Wit a lot of them I feel I could sit and listen to their stories all day.  Particularly Mike Collins who is the funniest of the group and Alan Bean who often seems the most human.  Also, fun fact, Buzz Aldrin's other nickname is "Mr. Rendezvous" and it isn't because he's known for romantic liaisons.

The film weaves together all the Moon missions and there's a lot of great footage.  I really got a feel for the whole range of the Moon missions including the landing.  The landing was fairly new for me because I have seen Apollo 13 which of course didn't make the landing.  Also, all the footage is original, there's no CGI whatsoever, and that is of course much different than Apollo 13.

I'd recommend this film to any space buffs that want to know a bit more of the human side.  That said, this isn't a drama, it isn't about the families or the supporting engineers, its about the astronauts.  Another side note, not surprisingly these are all white men, there's a bit more diversity in the background shots and the control room though.  Not great, but a bit more than I expected given the time.  I suppose when we go to Mars the astronaut pool will be even more impressive as they'll have more people to draw from.

As a final note, I felt some sense of loss.  What the heck are we doing now that compares to that?  Although now that I've thought about it for an hour or so, I think in a lot of ways the internet is the Moonshot for my generation.  We all have seen it grow those who had the technology to do so have contributed some to its content or structure.  I think it's an accomplishment to be proud of.

That said, the space race will be back, its just hard to say how soon.  I figure the next round will have one of two triggers:

1. The PRC kicks America in the pants by getting to the Moon themselves.
2. Someone, quite possibly one of those entrepreneur burning money on the issue, figures out how to lower the price of breaking orbit by an order of magnitude.

In Colour of Magic movie, Twoflower to be played by Sean Astin

Ragnell comments:

Okay, I know Twoflower is the Tourist stereotype (though I think they can play that as more the silly American tourist than the Japanese tourist and still cast an actor of Asian descent -- insurance salesman on vacation struck me as the American in Europe plot idea) and the whole Agatean Empire is transparently stereotypical Asia, but this strikes me as more instances of making a mostly white franchise even more white under the banner of "sensitivity." Just more of a pretty nasty trend of taking out offensive Asian characters and not putting any good Asian characters in to replace them.

I tend to agree.  Particularly because, judging by the comment thread, Twoflower mostly comes across as an obnoxious tourist and not specifically an obnoxious Asian tourist.  So I don't think this is really an offensive character if played right.   I don't actually remember Twoflower that well, unlike his luggage, so while I'd oppose whitewashing I don't have a real dog in this fight.  I'll definitely go see the movie, but it's the later books that I vehemently love.

On a similar not, I was rather amused when reading Nick Fury, Agent of Shield to discover that one of his baddies was a stereotypically Asian criminal organization called "The Yellow Claw."  I read in Wikipedia that in an appearance in a recent comic the leader "claims that the phrase "Yellow Claw" is actually a mistransliteration of the Chinese characters, and that his title is actually 'Golden Claw.'"  Good call that.

[Update: Corrected the spelling of Sean Astin's name.]