the sopranos finale: masterful

It's been two weeks since the finale of The Sopranos and the brouhaha has nearly died down. After all that's been said, all I can add is that, in my opinion, the finale was masterful. Truly a work of art.

Open endings may not be the hottest thing in a society that craves to be beaten over the head with over-exposition (exhibit 1: most of hollywood's films). Don't get me wrong: I enjoy as much as the next guy a good ol' Die Hard or Armaggeddon, silly movies that are a good pastime.

I won't add to the countless analysis that are out there, some impossibly detailed, that indicate that, yes, Tony was indeed killed. I agree. But that's not the point. Had David Chase shown the killing, it would have had to be a complete Tarantino-style bloodbath to match the expectations around that final sequence, and it would have been completely out of place. The more muted, "just shoot the guy" would have felt disappointing (try to imagine it, it's not that hard).

So, the point? The point is that, even if Tony wasn't shot it'd still have been a good ending. Suppose he rose through the ranks to become the head of all the families? Check Phil Leotardo's fate. Or Johnny Sack's. The last two seasons of the series showed us the ending in technicolor. For these guys, criminals and sociopaths, there was no escape.

And that's what the last ten seconds of darkness were about.

With Journey still ringing in our ears, all the way.

the matrix trilogy on hd dvd

from the shameless-consumer-hat-on dept

The Matrix Revolutions aside (I still think my own matrix "abridged" script was better), the trilogy still deserves a lot of credit for breaking ground in a number of ways for the mainstream of cinema (since most of what makes the movies special had already been invented one way or another, particularly in Anime), and The Matrix remains a pretty good movie, flaws and all. I even have a soft spot for the other two, if only because they have noisy, entertaining chase sequences and some really impressive special effects. And no, I'm not talking about the burly brawl, which already looked fake at standard resolution (hey, perhaps they fixed it!).

Anyway, we'll see how this all looks at 1080p. Some movies (King Kong, Serenity) look amazing. Others (Superman Returns)... eeehh... not so much. All depends on the transfer I think. Color, brightness, digital filters and other obscure settings also play a huge role with HD content, especially HD-DVD/BluRay content.

One disadvantage: the "bonus content" is all on a regular resolution DVD (480p). This includes things like The Animatrix, and it's a shame. At least the Animatrix should be on HD no? Perhaps the movies themselves have some of that shiny picture-in-picture documentaries that I keep seeing trailers of. :-)

promenade

For the last two days I've been humming Promenade non-stop, even though I haven't listened to it, or to most of The Unforgettable Fire in a long time. I figured that a way of exorcising whatever obsession has it pegged it to my mind, I could write down the lyrics here, and so it goes:

Promenade

Earth sky sea and rain
Is she coming back again
Men of straw sneak a whore
Words that build or destroy
Dirt dry bone sand and stone
Barbed-wire fence cut me down
I'd like to be around
In a spiral staircase
To the higher ground

And I, like a firework, explode
Roman candle lightning lights up the sky

In the cracked streets trampled under foot
Sidestep, sidewalk
I see you stare into space
Have I got closer now
Behind the face

Oh...tell me...
Charity dance with me
Turn me around tonight
Up through spiral staircase
To the higher ground

Slide show sea side town
Coca-Cola, football radio radio radio
Radio radio radio...

Hm. That's much better. :)

the unit

Just saw the first episode, "First Responders," of CBS's The Unit, created by David Mamet and Shawn Ryan (creator of the still astonishingly good "The Shield").

It was really something.

Favorite quote of the first episode: "You, you and you: panic. The rest of you come with me."

Highly recommended!

serenity rocks

Let me join an ongoing cacophony of voices and say that Serenity is a must-see for any science fiction fan. Without question, it's one of the best SF (note how I avoid writing "sci fi" :-)) movies in the last ten years. Great dialogue, good humor, non-stop action, and good music to boot. There are a few minor flaws: some inconsistencies -- for example, it seems that about 3 dozen ships can essentially blockade a planet ("oh no! We have to go through them!") and a hero/heroes-saves/save-the-day ending that is, well, a bit too 1970s-ish. But those are definitely minor points. Fan-tas-tic.

'24' or how I learned to stop worrying and ignore the plot

"I heard your Dad went into a restaurant. Then everyone was a bad guy in the restaurant. So your Dad killed everybody in the restaurant. Then he ate the furniture in the restaurant. Then they had to close the restaurant"

A hypothetical comment from Ralph Wiggum to Kim Bauer.

24 hasn't jumped the shark, it's ran over the shark, taken it home, fried it, and had it for breakfast.

I mean, really. Just how many bad guys are there in the world? With capabilities that at this point almost defy the laws of physics, never mind mere human legalities. Not only these hypothetical bad guys show up everywhere, they do it faster, and better equipped, than everyone else. The plot get crazier and crazier, even without getting Kim chased by cougars, which is saying a lot.

And even so, I find myself unable to stop watching it, with guilty fascination, as if looking at a train wreck in slow-motion, rolling my eyes, literally, every 20 minutes or so, and hoping that we may get to see another one of those great Jack-Bauer-action sequences.

And maybe wait for another cougar to show up... :)

On the plus side, the West Wing had a great season finale.

PS: nothing like a rant to get those blogging juices flowing. :)

don't panic!

I've been listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the original radio series, on the iPod(s). Still can't get over the scene where missiles turn into a bowl of petunias and a whale, courtesy of Zaphod's Infinite Improbability Drive.

"[And whereas the whale expressed bewilderment at materializing several miles above the surface of the planet...], the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was 'Oh no, not again.'

Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now."

The H2G2 movie, as it happens, will be released on April 29 this year. Here's the trailer.

Can't wait!

PS: btw, I'm not sure if Douglas Adams gets enough credit as a Science Fiction writer. He should. H2G2 is fantastic as a piece of SF, and we forget that it was written more than 25 years ago.

garbage

I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and I come across this paragraph:

Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of what I have termed our Great Leap Forward. The earliest definite signs of that leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools and the first preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads). Similar developments soon appear in the Near East and in southeastern Europe, where abundant artifacts are associated with follu modern skeletons of people termed Cro-Magnons. Thereafter, the garbage preserved at archaeological sites rapidly becomes more and more interesting and leaves no doubt that we are dealing with biologically and behaviorally modern humans.

(My emphasis). To the archaeologically or anthropologically inclined of you (you know who you are!), this probably sounds normal. You may even find something to object to in that. But I had never, ever thought of garbage as something that was archaeologically useful. Strangely, I have considered many times what future generations will make of our garbage. But when I thought of artifacts found at excavations, etc, I've always had this weird image of the pristine arrowhead, being brushed carefully out of the sand. Something static. But "a pile of garbage" is... alive in some way. I'm not glorifying the fact that humans are filthy as hell, but rather the messiness of the process that is brought to light but that simple image.

BTW, this book is great, although a bit infuriating in a strange way: As I read it, I can't help but agree with his logic, at almost every step. I want to dissent, damn it! :)

my next question...

"My next question... starts as a question... and then turns into a statement... and then becomes an exclamation... and then sort of degenerates into, um, just random profanity... and noises, ok?"

A reporter on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jan. 25 2005.

LOL. Or as Skinner would say: Oooh, mercy. :)

a few books

I stayed at Russ's place for the last two days of my trip (thanks Russ! :)), and on Sunday morning we wandered around a bit and ended up at a Barnes & Noble. Part of the reason we went there was to see if they had the book Mind Hacks, co-authored by Matt, which I had been babbling about earlier. Matt gave a great talk at EuroFoo on topics covered in the book, including how reading certain things could affect your mood, and after the talk he made another interesting observation: that when breezing through spam and quickly deleting messages, we are actually reading the subject lines to a degree, and that affects our mood. Considering that they aren't precisely upbeat, this can be a factor, at least for brief moments of your day.

Anyway, so we each got a copy and then I got other books as well, including Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, both by Jared Diamond, Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact by John Cornwell, and finally iPod & iTunes: the missing manual, which I got mainly because I want to expedite the process of understanding what the iPod can do, extensions people are writing, etc, and I have no doubt that most if not all of this information can be found online, but it's all dispersed and if I can get a good chunk of it in a couple of hours, then all the better.

You could say that all of this plus the iPod was some sort of delayed self-Christmas present. You could also say that I went on a binge. But I prefer the first explanation. :)

PS: Throughout the trip I've been raving about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I read a while ago and is truly fantastic--but I hadn't commented on.

hollywood's laws of physics (and gender)

Last night I was watching Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (on TV, I'm glad I didn't pay for theater tickets or rent it) and I ended up spending the second half of the movie waiting for Wile E. Coyote to show up as a character in the plot (the first half of the movie was spent waiting for the plot itself, which didn't appear). I did come to a few conclusions in the meantime, among them:

• It is possible to jump off the roof of a four-story building and land on concrete, then proceeding to continue your pursuit
• If after making a karate jump on the roof of a two-story floor you are shot in the chest, and then you fall to the ground below the worst you can expect is getting wet with the sprinklers that will activate just as you regain consciousness (your kevlar vest saves you from the bullet)
• If you are flung from a Dodge Viper GT racing at high speed and crash into a window you'll be able not only to continue the chase, but also to catch up to the Dodge Viper GT in only a few seconds, on foot, and silently.
• If you make Karate moves while you're being shot at, the flow of time will slow down so you can see the bullets fly past you.
• If you crash a Dodge Viper GT against a concrete wall, you can expect the concrete wall to be destroyed and yourself to be uninjured and ready to continue a fight. If you are a good guy, however, you will have a shard of glass stuck in your abdomen. Removing it will not impede your movement, though.
• and on and on and on and on...

I guess what I'm wondering is: when did breaking the laws of physics became fun? The Matrix is one of the earliest of its kind, accounting for the little detail that, you know, it happened in a simulated reality (and they are responsible for bullet-time, at least in live-action, Anime is really were it comes from). Mission: Impossible pushed things a bit, but hey, it's Mission: Impossible. M:I2, though, was way over the top, and then things started to come off their tracks. Why is it that blockbusters seem to be resort to CG when the script ain't working, even if they aren't dealing with aliens or twisters or whatever?

Why is it that they have to be just so over the top? The actresses, all of them beautiful, and talented, seem to be having fun, and this is made obvious throughout. Ah-ha. Was that the point of the movie? That the'd enjoy their residuals?

Sigh. One of my favorite movies of all time is Heat. You know why? because it was zero-bullshit. It didn't require me to suspend disbelief from here to Canarsie to buy the plot (Note: movies like MIB, Armaggeddon and ID:4 require suspension of disbelief for entering the theater, so it's okay that they are over the top :)). One of my favorite scenes in Heat is the shootout outside the bank. Cars don't explode (it's pretty difficult to make gas tanks explode, maybe because they've been designed to avoid that). People actually run for cover in the face of M-16 fire. On the opposite end, another favorite is the typical Simpsons scene with a leave falling off a tree, hitting a truck, and making it explode.)

So, comment to Hollywood: read Newton's Principia. You know, 17th-century physics. Einstein not required. If you can't get through it, just remember:

• A body remains at rest, or moves in a straight line (at a constant velocity), unless acted upon by a net outside force.
• The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the resultant force acting upon it.
• Whenever one body exerts force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body.

"Body" here, btw, refers to an object, either animate or inanimate, not to the body of your co-star, be that Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, or Drew Barrymore.

This sounds snobbish, doesn't it. Well, it may sound like that. MI:2 was over the top as well.

How about making women real protagonists, without having to behave as if they were in a casting call for Baywatch? Uh? Is this too revolutionary?

Yes, it may be that what really pissed me off was the beer-commercial aesthetics of the movie. I generally ignore the misanthropic inclinations of Bond movies, although they do piss me off as well. Why is it that they seem to be more of an issue with Charlie's Angels? Not sure. Maybe it's just that with Bond they are more of a sideshow, and Bond himself isn't a prize either (and Bond women are generally players in their own right, rather than directed by the all-knowing all-seeing Charlie), or maybe it's that at least the beer-commercial thing is not a big item.

However, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle isn't something I'd recommend.

Unless you want to see a two-hour long beer commercial.

PS: I also watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is a wacky, wacky B-movie that made me laugh out loud in spite of myself. Crazy characters, no plot, and no pretense of one either. Highly recommended.

the lord of the rings: the battle for middle earth-- a review

Long-time readers already know that I'm not much of a gaming fan. I don't even bother with most games, and the only ones I've played with interest have been those of the Doom/Quake series and the C&C series (and Myst too). I didn't play Doom/Quake for that long, probably until I got bored of fragging zombies with BFGs, but C&C games only got repetitive after several months.

Not that I have a lot of time to play games anyway, but over the years they have gone from entertainment to a good way to get everything off my mind for a while, along with books and movies. (Not all entertainment guarantees that--neither do all books or movies or games for that matter. :))

Enter The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth, which I talked about in September, when I found out it was going to be released. It was finally released last week (it was delayed from its original November release date) and I got it on Friday.

First I thought: "Wow". Then "D'Oh" after I was killed.

The "Wow"/"D'Oh" sequence continued for a while, until I figured out how to actually win one game. Aside from a couple of skirmishes, I've been playing the "Good" Campaign (essentially playing the story of the books--there's also the "Evil" campaign in which you control the forces of Sauron).

The game is astonishingly well done. Great interface (the first consistently good use of circular menus I've seen anywhere), well-balanced sides, excellent graphics and sound, plus you get to actually play a story that you know, with the characters you know.

The simulation of combat is great, both on foot and horseback--A high point is to use an army of Rohirrim to run over an incoming band of Orcs. :)

The resource gathering system (a weak point in many RTS games) is good as well, and it fits with the story. Sauron's and Isengard forces, for example, obtain resources by chopping down woods, while the Good guys (Gondor, Rohan) do it by farming. (Tolkien was probably the first Fantasy/SF writer to worry a lot about the ecology/technology balance, and he mostly put technology in the hand of the bad guys).

Aside from the usual armies, there are also "heroes" which are the characters of the books. Heroes have powers that activate with rank (regular soldiers only increase in ability to what they already do). Sometimes they deviate from the story, but that's not a big deal (in Moria, Gandalf can survive against the Balrog, for example). Then, at crucial times, the action is mixed with sections from the movies for what you're doing (say, the arrival of the Elves at Helm's Deep while preparing for the defense). This is getting pretty close to a a mix of RTS with action RPG.

Anyway, if you like wargames (or even Role-Playing Games), you should check this game out (if you like C&C, it's almost guaranteed that you will like this game too--there's even an option to activate a C&C-like input interface).

PS: it is sad that Electronic Arts treats its employees badly. The games these people create are excellent, and they deserve better.

the great playlist meme of '04

Here are the instructions:

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.

Here's my list:

1. Light My Fire - The Doors
   
2. Can't Not - Alanis Morissette
   
3. Help! - The Beatles
   
4. Great Escape (Acoustic) - Guster
   
5. Pride (In The Name Of Love) (ZooTV Live Transmission, Houston 14/10/1992) - U2
   
6. Como un Bolu - Bersuit
   
7. High Voltage (Hybrid Theory EP) - Linkin Park
   
8. Shattered - The Rolling Stones
   
9. Symphony #5 in C Minor (3rd movement) - Beethoven
   
10. Learning To Fly (Live) - Pink Floyd

via Erik, Jim.

PS: for the record :), I did skip "duplicate artists." I think it definitely makes sense, considering that for some artists I have hundreds of tracks and others rate only a few, or a few dozen (There I go, trying to "make sense" out of something like this. The bane of logic). I'm surprised to discover that skipping randomly through my entire music collection is oddly addictive...

some the small advantages of living in Dublin

About two years ago I was walking through Dublin and I noticed that the then-new U2 Best of... collection had gone on sale. So I got it (of course). Yesterday I was about to go into town but the terrible weather discouraged me, and I ended up going today, around noon.

Since I appear to be attuned to releases that interest me (or my subconscious knows more than I do and is in charge, take your pick) I happen to wander into town when the new U2 album has just been released, three days before the rest of the world. Eventually I walk up to HMV and go in, get the Collector's Edition of HTDAAB, which contains an extra track on the CD, Fast Cars---a song that made me thought of Arabian, Flamenco, and Indian styles of music, all at the same time (!)---a DVD, and a book with photos and writings by the band. I don't even look at the price, something that happens to me with certain categories of goods which my head apparently refuses to consider from a financial point of view, such as with almost any kind of book--this is why I avoid browsing bookstores, I go in, walk out five minutes later and somehow I've bought a book or two. But I digress...

I put the package in my backpack, and walk out.

And at the door my first thought is: What the...?

Right there, obviously just arriving, are the Macnas U2 heads (Macnas is a performance arts group out of Galway), which first made their appearance in the ZooTV tour. So naturally I got my camera out and snapped a few pictures, such as the one above (click on it to see a larger version), and here are a few more: one, two, three, four. Or, as Bono would say: Uno, dos, tres, catorce!

Anyway, such are some of the advantages of living in Dublin and walking Grafton street now and then... :)

PS: if that isn't enough, the latest survey by The Economist says that Ireland is the best place to live in the world, quality-of-life-wise.

the new U2 album

I just listened to How to dismantle an atomic bomb and it's excellent. The Vertigo single will be released tomorrow, the album on Nov. 22 in the most of the world (including the UK), Nov. 23 in the US. U2Log has the full track listing as well as some more details on the album (It's also at u2.com, but their navigational structure is a external-link-preventing disaster).

Overall ... you get this funny feeling that you've heard this before, somewhere, but of course you haven't, which is one of the U2 trademarks IMO. Some definite whiffs of Electrical Storm, the song released in their second Best of... collection. Also of Always and Summer Rain, songs from one of the Beautiful Day b-sides.

As with most other U2 albums, it starts with a bang (Vertigo) and then mellows out a bit, with bursts of energy in between (such as City of Blinding Lights--which seems to be this album's Where the Streets Have No Name-- and All Because of You), and u2-style love songs, like Miracle Drug and Original of the Species. Then there's Love and Peace or Else not only great rock n' roll, but the political track of the album. Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own feels like a worthy follow-up to Kite from ATYCLB (For example, the line "You're the reason why the opera is in me" is clearly a reference to Bono's father).

One prediction: City of Blinding Lights (which refers to New York City, I think) will sound great live when the tour kicks off next year. I can already imagine an entire stadium singing "Oh, you look so beautiful tonight."

Bonus: via Anne, I discovered Do Make Say Think. They sound like I feel at times. Very cool.

Later: I knew that the beginning of City of Blinding Lights reminded me of something: the beginning of Sweetness Follows from R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People.

the new eminem video

Mosh, from his upcoming album Encore, is online at GNN. A strinking video on its own right, and a potent political message. I wonder if MTV or anyone else will play it though--if they did, I'd expect a pretty strong backlash...

the system of the world saga

A few days ago Salon's Andrew Leonard reviewed Neal Stephenson's System of the World saga, of which I've only read the 'prequel' Cryptonomicon. Will have to make some time to read the rest, now that all the books are out.

quote of the day

"I really like your hair."

Joel (played by Jim Carrey), in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

vertigo!

Last Thursday was the first radio broadcast of U2's new single Vertigo, the first cut from their new CD How to dismantle an atomic bomb. More than its share of Punk aesthetics throughout (even in the promo image), and more than a reminder of Out of Control, Gloria and other early U2 songs. More info over at u2.com and u2log.com (exhibit a, exhibit b).

Btw, the song begins: Uno! Dos! Tres! Catorce!. Literary license for counting to four? Or something else? :)

Plus: a video segment from TOTP and the countdown.

the lord of the rings: the battle for middle-earth

Electronic Arts, who just released the Sims 2, will release The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth in November. Since I'm partial to wargames, the Lord of the Rings, and EA's Westwood division is responsible for the Command and Conquer series, I have a feeling that this game could turn out to be one of those few that don't bore me before reaching the second level. :) The screenshot is a recreation of the escape from Moria within the game--on the website, they have videos of demos of the interface and gameplay with other classic LoTR moments such as the battle of Minas Tirith that look extremely cool.

hey! it's that guy!

Random link of the day: Hey! It's that guy!, which tracks a number of actors and actresses who are (generally) instantly recognizable on screen and yet few can name them. I could identify a good number of those. But when I didn't, clicking on an unfamiliar name and seeing a familiar face is a strange experience. Recommended. :)

homer on small-scale media

"See, Lisa? Instead of one big shot controlling all the media, now there's a thousand freaks xeroxing their worthless opinions."

From ep. 22 season 15, "Fraudcast News"

wargames

from the me-too-dept. :)

Don talks about his favorite wargames. While I am always interested in the technology involved in games (which almost invariably involves the most cutting-edge software development of the day) I am not a gaming fan. Or, rather, make that a PC gaming fan. For years I played RPGs (Rolemaster was my favorite) for many years along with strategy and tactical games (such as Warhammer 40,000).

On the PC I played extensively a couple of games (including, of course, Doom) but the one PC games that I keep coming back are those of the Command and Conquer series. The last one I've played is Command and Conquer: Generals (see screenshot, click on it to see a larger image). The online play is good, but unless you have friends online who are willing to actually play for fun instead of playing to advance in the rankings, online battles end up being short-lived affairs where the focus is on "rushing" your opponent before they rush you, which is entertaining for about 30 seconds.

There's a big difference, of course, on "fantasy" wargames such as C&C and the ones Don mentions, mainly in terms of logistics and resource management, which is the biggest tradeoff games like C&C have to make, i.e., sacrifice realism for "playability". In the real-world, supplies and logistics are as crucial as anything you can do in a battlefield, and historically it's been the case that it is the stretching of the supply lines that has played a major role in defeats or changes in strategy (In fact, if I remember correctly, in the Iraq war last year the forward units of the US Army advanced so far so fast that they outpaced their supply lines, leaving them to cross long distances without enough protection, which created the well-known security problems experienced by the supply convoys).

Anyway, if you like wargames and have never tried C&C, give it a shot (heh). (There even is an OS X version available, but I've tried the demo and it was quite slow -even on my G5 with 1 GB of RAM- so I wouldn't recommend it.) I haven't played C&C: Generals for months now, but if you've played and would like to meet up online, let me know :)--no rushing though! :-)

music for the ages

CNN: only 636 years left on longest concert:

In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world's longest concert was coming two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go.

[...]

The concert began Sept. 5, 2001 -- the day Cage would have turned 89. The composition, originally written to last 20 minutes, starts with a silence, and the only sound for a first 1 1/2 years was air. The first notes were played in February 2003.

After debates in Germany about what exactly "as slow as possible" could mean -- anywhere from a day to stretching on infinitely -- the group of German music experts and organ builder behind the project chose the concert's 639-year running time to commemorate to the creation of the city's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361.

Another plus: the composer won't have to deal with art critics once it ends. :)

are you pondering what I'm pondering?

The Slashdot poll today is asking who is Most Likely to Take Over the World. The Brain is third so far, which can only mean that tonight's plan has something to do with pretending to be third in the Slashdot poll but take over the discussion board (as he clearly has) since most people there are discussing his brilliant if oft-foiled (oft-by Pinky) plans.

Pinky: TROZ!

Brain: What is 'Troz'?

Pinky: Well, that's 'Zort' in a mirror! He-he. TROOZ!

[source]

the fog of war

And last night, aside from looking at DNA databases, I watched The Fog of War, a documentary-interview-mix with Robert S. McNamara, former US Secretary of Defense, in which he speaks candidly about tactics, strategy, logistics, World War Two, and, of course, Vietnam. Quite good, if sometimes a little lost in aesthetics rather than substance. There are many good quotes and interesting moments (I'll watch it again soon, I'm sure). One of the things that I found striking was that he quite plainly confirms that Kennedy wanted to "get out" of Vietnam (also mentioned in Oliver Stone's JFK), a notion that, as I understand it, was disputed for a long time after the war ended. He also talks about the Cuban Missile crisis, and the fire-bombing campaign over mainland Japan in early 1945, a campaign that wiped out large areas of Japan's major cities and killed thousands of civilians --the fire-bombing of Tokyo alone caused 100,000 civilian casualties (and that was before Hiroshima and Nagasaki), discussing the "mindset of warfare" and tactical and strategic considerations. And the section of Vietnam inevitably made me think of some recent events.

Something that I didn't know was that McNamara met, during the 90s, with both Fidel Castro and Leaders of the Vietnamese army that was fighting the US, and how that helped him re-examine the situation in hindsight, knowing the facts as seen from the other side. McNamara says that he basically asked Castro whether he would have recommended that the Soviet Union get into a nuclear war with the US over Cuba, to which Castro answered, more or less, "yes, in fact I did recommend that" clearly disregarding the fact that such a conflict would have also destroyed Cuba itself. (McNamara himself says, and it isn't hard to believe, that nuclear holocaust was avoided because of "luck"). With Vietnam, McNamara talks about the basic misunderstanding between the US and the Vietnamese as to each other's motives--the US was fighting a local war in the context of the larger cold war conflict, while the Vietnamese were fighting (in their view) a civil war for independence, and how this lack of understanding ("empathizing with the enemy"), which had proven in his mind crucial to solving the 1962 crisis, quite probably prolonged the war unnecessarily.

Sometimes he refuses to go into more detail, fearing, as he calls it, "controversy." I'd say that what's there already is controversial enough, but it makes me wonder what he isn't saying.

Anyway, not self-contained by any means, but a good addition to history books and other documentaries. Recommended.

on bloomsday

From The Economist: an unforgettable odyssey. And the NY Times has a great editorial today on Bloomsday and Ulysses. Quote:

[...] the real sound of this novel is the sound of the street a century ago: the noise of centuries of streets echoing over the stones.

Indeed.

Too bad I won't have time to participate in some of the events of Rejoyce 2004.

reshooting a movie--in the editing room

An article on how movies that are in trouble try to redeem themselves in the editing room. As an interesting tidbit, there's a mention of Woody Allen's Annie Hall having been originally a murder mystery. I definitely didn't know that!

rain and a movie

Last night Deep Impact was on TV, and while I didn't see it (I prefer the all-out crazyness of Armageddon to the pretend-seriousness of DI) I suddenly remembered that The Day After Tomorrow had opened last friday. So this morning I took a half-day break from work and went to see it. It was entertaining, yes, but in part an empty exercise as well. In recent days there have been comments to the effect that the science of the movie is flat-out wrong--which is surprising considering that many of those commentators say also that we don't know enough--but was most vexing I guess wasn't effects were right or wrong, but how they were not only limited to the northern hemisphere, but also how everything just seemed to be hunky-dory after the population of half the planet had either been killed or dispersed, leaving the North uninhabitable and the South--well, nothing bad at all happened in the South! That more that anything, I think, took the legs out from under the tone of pretend-urgency of the movie.

When I was getting to the office from there it started to rain, and I mean, really rain, and I was soaked and cold in no time. So I just got home, dried out (hopefully fast enough to avoid a cold) had something to eat, and stayed here.

Anyway, I think that I prefered Ice Age, since at least it had that little rat that kept destroying glaciers and mountains when chasing after nuts. :-)

the end of the US TV season

So with this week comes the closing courtain of the US TV Season. Yesterday night was the season finale of 24, which, while reasonably good, still didn't nearly match the first season. Salon has an excellent review (warning, spoilers abound). According to the rumors, Jack Bauer's daughter, Kim, will not be a regular character in the next season. To which I can only say: Finally! If all that's been achieved this year is to get that character off our TV screens, then it's been worth it, virus or no virus. (Oh, and somebody please talk to the CTU people, they've been having trouble lately with keeping a secure environment, what with all the babies and distraught wives... sometimes 24 seemed like an episode of Friends with codeword clearance).

And speaking of Friends... it ended as well, this time for good. Now do we want to guess on the number of people that didn't know how it would end?

The West Wing season finale was last week, with two excellent episodes that reminded me of the quality of the first two seasons. While TWW clearly struggled to regain its footing this year after creator Aaron Sorkin left presumably seeking greener pastures (or something), the last two episodes (and some in between) are an almost complete redemption. The West Wing is possibly one of the best shows in the history of TV and I'd hate to see it butchered. Here's hoping they keep it up starting next September.

movies

A couple of movies I've seen recently that went uncommented-upon in the midst of my no-blog-status.

21 Grams: Very good. Very good. Heavy. But good. Did I mention it was good?
The Last Samurai: Not bad (surprisingly). Pretty accurate, at least broadly, in historical terms, and Tom Cruise manages a good performance. Plus I have a thing for Bushido, so...
Thirteen: Good as well. Also (relatively) heavy, but it felt ever-so-slightly contrived since nothing irreversible happens (some would argue with that I imagine, but given the situations in the film there are lots of possibilities for Really Bad Things, a sort of tension that never gets resolved. Now that I said "irreversible"... now that's a movie that is truly harsh. Saw it a while ago.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World: Not so good. Science Fiction movie set in the past pretending to be a historical movie (not unlike Troy, from what I've read, I mean, come on, no Gods?). Russell Crowe is always good but the premise of the movie is hard to believe (unless the French captain in it has GPS and Radar technology available that is). It tries for epic but ends up falling somewhere between the trailer for Finding Nemo and a chase scene of Miami Vice. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, but the setup of the movie is so expansive but it's difficult not to be disappointed (particularly in retrospect) when you realize it's just two ships running around in the middle of the Pacific. It was entertaining though. :)

the incredibles

Just watched the trailer for Pixar's new movie The Incredibles. Now that looks good!

controversy and ticket sales

Related to this post (and this one), the New York Times today has an article on the, um, "controversy" surrounding the movie. Funny (but not ha-ha funny) that a crucial element isn't mentioned at all: that Fox might be glad that groups are fighting each other over this movie, creating free publicity and so on, or that maybe they even fostered it a bit. Hm.

one of those really good moments in 'the west wing'

"[What they saw on the radar] was not a spaceship from another planet, just another time. A long-since abandoned Soviet satellite, one of its booster rockets didn't fire and it couldn't escape Earth's orbit... a sad reminder of a time when two powerful nations challenged each other... and then boldly raced into outer space.

What will be the next thing that challenges us ...?

...that makes us go farther and work harder?

Do you know that when smallpox was eradicated it was considered the greatest single humanitarian achievement of the century?

Surely we can do it again... as we did in a time when our eyes looked towards the heavens, and with our stretched fingers... we touched the face of God."

Jed Bartlet, in Episode 5, Season 1, "The Crackpots and These Women".

ten years after Cobain

Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth remembers Kurt Cobain in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, with the aptly titled: "When the Edge Moved to the Middle". I was thinking just yesterday of how disgusted I am of what passes for popular music these days (btw, I'm not saying that it was better in the past, it's just that for some reason I've been more sensitive to it recently. I mean, I cringe to think of, say, the time of Disco). Few songs have any meaning at all. There is no innovation in the music. Then the videos: Visual effects. Photoshop-ed bodies. Sub-second shots. Smile. Click. Smile. Slick. Jump. Smile. Every single time (I'm not kidding) I happen to land on MTV or related I remember Beck's MTV makes me wanna smoke crack.

It's the underground that matters. The subconscious of society. And Nirvana was at the center of one of those few times when the underground went overground, and briefly (so very briefly) took over.

Strangely enough, I wasn't into Nirvana at the time, I re-discovered it on my own, and on my own terms, at the end of the 90s.

So today I'll repeat that Heavier than Heaven is a must-read. I'll listen to favorites like Heart-Shaped Box and Pennyroyal Tea.

I'll listen, and wonder.

random simpsons quote

Mr. Burns (addressing the employees at the power plant):

"Compadres! It is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season!

And remember... a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya."

From Deep Space Homer

best. superheroes. ever.

According to me, that is. :)

I was thinking of mentioning this on Sunday but then it, well, didn't happen, and work consumed me. Now I was taking a break and reading blogs... what else is there to do when it's so cold and windy out there? And, btw, will this cold stop? It's almost April already! Last Saturday not only we had near-zero temperatures, but we also had gale force winds!. But I digress...

So I see that Anne brings up the topic of superheroes, which reminded me of what I was going to write about: my top five favorite superheroes (since I've got High-Fidelity on my mind, and hence top-five lists!), and their best stories. (Note: some images below are clickable).

1. Batman

Who else? But of course, not just Batman-any-batman-batman, but Dark-knight-Batman, creation of Frank Miller's genius, also responsible for other graphic novel classics such as Ronin.

Miller reimagined the legend of Batman in the mid-80s as the Dark Knight: when the story told in Miller's Dark Knight Returns begins, Batman is old (more than 50), and he has been inactive for ten years. Gotham City has grown unruly and anarchic, and few think that Batman actually existed: he has become a legend. At the same time, he has grown bitter, and a lot less tolerant. When he decides to resume his vigilante ways and bring back order to Gotham, it's No more Mr. Nice Guy, but the enemies of the present are not what they used to be (The Joker, for example, is a raving all-out psychopath). This Batman influenced all that came afterwards in all mediums, including Tim Burton's masterpiece at the end of the 80s, and is most definitely not Adam West in tights with Robin prancing around next to him and warning "holy jokes Batman!" (which isn't to say that the movies got, er, "campier" --and crappier--, the further away they moved from Burton's original in time). He's no longer a troubled person that battles crime or being a corporate honcho, now it's clear that there's an underlying element of dangerous psychosis to someone who runs around at night dressed like a flying rodent on state-of-the-art machinery. The deep scars created in his childhood are evident, and they make him more human, and consequently all the greater as a superhero.

Miller followed The Dark Knight Returns with Batman: Year One in which he retells the story of Bruce Wayne as he fumbles his way into superhero-dom, fleshing out the characters to never-seen-before depths.

Miller's DK2, the Dark Knight Strikes Again, is a fantastic piece of art, where Batman has to fight against a Government that has grown in its Fascist tendencies and where do-goodies like Superman have compromised so much with it in the name of "fighting evil" that they have actually become "part of the system", which is controlled by Lex Luthor and Brainiac--and there's only the man in the cape ready to outwit them. (Yes, this is no mere hyperbole). Here Batman becomes as radical as the forces he opposes, and while sometimes Miller stretches it a bit in different dimensions, it's well worth the read. Incidentally, Alan Moore (which I'll mention again below) also added to the Batman story with the classic The Killing Joke, in which he explores the psychology of both Batman and Joker further than most.

2. V

V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore is, in my opinion, one of the finest pieces of literature ever written, never mind graphic novels or comics. Moore also created Watchmen (in which superheroes move in the shadows of a world that no longer cares about them and have to deal with very real, down-to-earth problems) and From Hell (and I don't have enough superlatives for these two books, so I won't bother. Suffice it to say that if you like comments and you haven't read them, well, you just should--and while you're at it also read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Moore as well, which is nothing like the movie).

V has some elements in common with Batman, but there's another reference that is more relevant here and that is Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration (which I mentioned here with Ensayo sobre la ceguera, another book that touches on some similar ideas). In the graphic novel, Britain has become a police state after a nuclear war left most of the world in ruins (though Britan was spared after removing its missile silos), and V emerges from seemingly nowhere to challenge the established order. There are so many ideas on each page that Pynchon comes to mind (just an analogy though, I'm not saying that a graphic novel can approach the depth and complexity of, say, Gravity's Rainbow!).

V is basically an anti-hero, which is what's required for the times (in fact, he takes a similar role to that of Batman in DK2). I don't want to disclose how it ends since the astonishing ending is what 'makes' V, but "Ideas are bulletproof" is one of my favorite statements of all time. :)

3. El Eternauta

Not strictly a superhero (but then again V wasn't, either), created By Hector Germán Oesterheld, one of the best comic writers from Argentina, El Eternauta covers the story of a group of people fighting an Alien invasion in Buenos Aires. El Eternauta has elements of "Golden Age" science fiction, literature (with the idea of Robinson Crusoe's island turned into a home in the vastness of a city where most people have been killed by a deadly Snowfall), and it never compromises (although the two sequels turned to veer off into more traditional superhero storylines that suited less the story than the evolving politics of the time).

One of the (many) things that appeal to me about this story and character is that they are uncommon: there aren't any fancy locales, but the greatness and gritiness of reality, or unbelievable heroics, but the heroism that comes from taking a stand when you have to. It's just a man, and his family, and his friends, fighting against all odds with whatever they have. The everyday, down-to-earth nature of it makes it all the more worthy.

A great story, plus great characters, with El Eternauta as the quintessential image of a someone wanting to relive the good days of the past, and finding, in a very real sense, that you can never escape the present. A masterpiece.

4. Lobo

Possibly the wackiest, craziest "superhero" ever created, Lobo never fails to crack me up. Again, he's more of an anti-hero (I seem to have a thing for them no?), but he's shown his tender side every once in a while. The story of Lobo is as crazy as the character: he's the last one of his race, because he killed everyone else on his planet (he was bored by them, and he wanted to be "unique"). He lives in an asteroid in deep space. (The Little Prince, anyone?). With him ("swimming" in space in orbit around the asteroid) live a group of space-dolphins, which are the only living creature he respects and loves. He can survive in space without food, air, water, or a spacesuit for that matter. He only listens to heavy metal music, and only from a particular space-radio station, and he got an implant so that he can hear it 24/7, transmitted directly into his brain anywhere in the galaxy. At the beginning, each drop of blood from Lobo created an exact replica of him. This created major chaos but it really annoyed the original Lobo, which killed most of the them until he fought to the death with the last clone (the problem is that no one knows who won--so maybe it's the Clone that's still out there!). The Legion of Superheroes captured him and through some genetic-engineering thingamagic "disabled" the cloning feature in Lobo--and tried to kill him by dumping an entire mountain on top of him (unsuccessfully I might add). He fought against Superman and it was a draw!

But that's not the end of it. In the Lobo Paramilitary X-mas Special, he squared off against a crazy Santa Claus and his band of armed-to-the-teeth elves (he won). He was killed and went to hell, but he made such a mess there that they sent him to heaven, from which he was (of course) expelled, and since no one wanted him the, um, powers that be decided to re-incarnate him. First as a bunny (but he gets killed again). Then as a wickedly powerful woman (killed again, yes). Then finally as himself again. In The Last Czarnian we see Lobo chased by:

• The Legion of Decency (a group of psychotic, tea-sipping grannies)
• A convoy of space truckers (their leader is an Elvis impersonator)
• The Oneida Police Swat Team (who want to kill Lobo after he kills their police chief)
• The Storm Troopers of the Pan-Galactic Demolition Dance Company (who want revenge after Lobo upstaged them during their chainsaw ballet) (!)
• The Orthography Commandos (a group of hooded literacy loonies that hold lethal spelling bees) (!!)

Insane, sure. But lots of fun. :)

And, last but not least...

5. Wolverine

My favorite character from X-Men (with Jean Grey/Phoenix behind), Wolverine is by now known to all as some guy in a movie that smokes cigars and likes to ride in fast bikes. But (as the movies well show, although I fear that sometimes these subtleties might get a bit lost in the noise) Wolverine/Logan is a pretty screwed up person, generally looking out for himself more than for the greater good (although when forced to choose he's a pretty decent guy). The claws and the Adamantium skeleton are insanely cool, but his self-healing abilities are even better (and there could be no first without the second!).

The psychology of Wolverine is generally overlooked, but fascinating on its own right. Wolverine/Logan is one of the main reasons why I like X-Men in the first place--without him something would definitely be missing from the story (unlike other what would happen if some other major characters where missing).

And, an honorary mention to: The Demon who is as funny as Lobo but (because of a curse) has to speak in verse, The Demon is a spirit banished from (where else?) hell, that inhabits the body of a poor guy that can't do anything to stop it (except take up buddhism!). The series of four books The Demon v. Lobo is truly something to behold.

Wow, I just realized that I've been writing for almost an hour! I guess I needed the break. :)

not sure I understand...

Let me get this straight: Bono saying "fucking" (one word, one time) during a presentation of music awards is retroactively declared to be "indecent and profane". Janet Jackson baring one breast (no nipples) is so "indecent" that not only she ends up apologizing profusely but makes future music shows be censored in real time.

Now, Jackson's "indecency" comes in the half-time show of a game that is one of the most violent in the world, all the while in the previous months news coverage has treated viewers world-wide, at all hours, day or night, to scenes of senseless slaughter, war, and destruction. The attack on Baghdad, one year ago, was broadcast live.

Then I remembered that when Stanley Kubrick's fantastic Eyes Wide Shut came out in the US, much was made in a famous "orgy scene" which was in the end censored (blocking the "offensive images" digitally) to slip by with an 'R' rating (When I came to Europe I could finally see the uncensored movie, I could finally see that what had caused all the trouble were just a few seconds of images that were not meant to be "sexy" at all). But a movie (also good) like "Saving Private Ryan", which depits the horrors of war in graphic detail, has no problem at all in obtaining that same rating. Similarly, the excellent Mulholland Drive by David Lynch contains a single sex scene and less than 5 seconds in which digital effects were also applied to obtain something that would allow the movie to get an 'R' rating.

So, tell me again why does it seem that...

...a live feed of bombs falling on a city, or images of war, conveniently sanitized to avoid seeing the suffering it causes on all sides, are fine, but a woman's breast is indecent?

...interrupting programming to display the gruesome images of the broken bodies of terrorist victims is allright, but saying "fuck" is a big deal?

...there is no problem at all with depicting violent death, torture, and destruction, but the slightest mention of sex fires up the censors?

Yes, the US is currently going a lot further than before (and than most other western countries) in all of this, but let's not kid ourselves: everyone does it.

And I still don't understand.

evolution

Last night I took a break and watched Evolution on TV. I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't see it when it came out on theaters, and I never thought of renting it. But I had a good time, and there were a few genuine laughs here and there. I generally enjoy movies that don't take themselves too seriously, particularly when it's patently obvious that they are silly. Good examples of this are Armageddon and ID4: Independence Day, or both Men in Black. They are also good to turn your brain off for two hours--or rather, required to enjoy them at their fullest. :)

And yes: blogging frequency has definitely declined for me. Crunch time, since we've got a release in a few days, but I'm sure there will be have-nothing-to-do-with-anything posts (like this very one) as well as the other kind, randomly spaced over the next few days.

mysteries of science

Why animals don't shiver, and how this affects the minimum time required for heating a medium-sized kettle

Recent observations have raised the important question of why animals don't shiver. Is it fear? Is it an ages-old instinct to avoid waste of precious energy and resources? Or is it simply not cold enough?

Cross-species and cross-country analysis of Discovery Channel videos as well as other educational paraphernalia has shown that shivering occurs in so-called "higher" species, such as humans, as part of a larger set of extremely advanced survival techniques developed over millions of years, which includes quivering, whimpering, whining, griping, and ticket scalping at the entrance of public events. These advanced survival techniques also express themselves through humans' more nuanced behavior: when confronted with their own wallet, humans will throw a tantrum, get angry, will give vindictive looks as they put the wallet back in their pockets, or will call the police, while most animals simply start chewing said wallet without a care in the world.

It should also be noted that the descendants of the eohippus, well known for their ability to perform amusing acrobatics when in presence of the issue of February 1997 of Science Magazine, do shiver, especially when put inside a large fridge, although the shivering stops after a few hours along with other signs, such as the beating of the heart. Strangely enough, a group of four shivering animals will arrange itself in circular, cuadrangular, or other geometric forms, or, most commonly, randomly, without any training whatsoever!.

One of the measured average distances between oehippus-like creatures thus arranged has been exactly 293.487384 milimeters, which is also, notably, 1/2387.347834 of the distance between the Eiffel tower in Paris and the clock in the townhouse of Springfield, New Jersey, where the experiment was being performed. The incredible significance of this value raises not only the question of how the animals knew how to place themselves exactly (on average) at that distance (293.487384 milimeters) from each other, but also the fantastic precision of the instrument used to obtain that measurement.

And, after years of experiments, no relation has been found between the shivering of animals and how this affects the minimum time required for heating medium-sized kettles, in spite of several laboratory tests where the animals were provided a kettle to make some tea if they wanted to.

Stay tuned for other incredible revelations of Mysteries of Science!

of blogging and "reality"

[via Dave] an article in the Village Voice, in which the writer, Whitney Pastorek, vilifies weblogs for destroying human interaction and forcing her to check websites all day to see what her "friends" are doing.

First, somebody should point Whitney to an RSS reader. It would be faster for her to check feeds, rather than make rounds on her friends' websites.

The piece is funny, but throughout it there's an undercurrent of disgust, as if blogs were against nature in some sense. I suppose carrying around a tiny four-inch brick of batteries and electronics that interrupts you at will is the most natural thing in the world (yes, I'm talking about cellphones--or does Whitney avoid them too?).

Maybe her friends find weblogs to be a good, unobtrusive way to communicate. Maybe her friends, lacking the ability to publish their thoughts on the Village Voice, have found a way to do essentially the same, thus threatening the uniqueness of what she does. (Isn't that article a lot like a weblog entry, btw?). Or maybe there's something deeper going on here.

The origins of this weblog problem for her seem to stem from her perception that weblogs are cutting down on "real" interaction:

These days, I do not even hear about the stupid stuff that's going on—"I got a haircut" or "My apartment burned down"—because the bloggers assume that I have read about it on their blog. Which I have not. And then I wonder why they are not answering their home phone, and immediately assume we are in a fight.

Or:

I invite my friends to [literary readings in which she performs], hoping for affirmation and free drinks. How heartbreaking, then, when no one arrives! Phone calls are made: I am sad that you did not come to my event! The bloggers reply, invariably: But I linked to you on my blog! That is just the same as if I showed up in person!

It is not. It is very different.

(Really? It's different to link to a webpage than go to a place and talk to people? No kidding eh? Truly shocking revelation. Thanks for the tip. And as for: "I do not even hear about the stupid stuff that's going on—'I got a haircut' or 'My apartment burned down'---that's the first time I've seen "my apartment has burned down" in the category of chit-chat, or, as she puts it "stupid stuff").

In my experience weblogs enhance real world interaction, not the other way around. I've gotten into conversations because of what I've read in other weblogs, and people have come up to me to talk about what I said at some point--creating new threads of conversations that might otherwise never have happened (this is more marked with people you don't see as often as you'd like, due to geography, or work, or whatever). And let's not get into how many people I've met, online and off, because of my weblog.

In person, issues can be discussed more in-depth. In fact, weblogs are good for a number of things, but they fail a little bit at some types of conversations since it's easy to miss the context of something that's being said (the source of many weblog "fights"). In person, if someone misses the context of what you just said, you explain yourself better. With weblogs, it baloons. Weblogs, on the other hand, have both an immediacy and a pemanence that makes them good for a number of other things, including long drawn-out conversations where ideas are evolving and being exchanged. In the end, they form a feedback cycle with "real world" interaction that enhances both.

But she still feels weblogs have taken something away, rather than added to it. So I thought about it... what's the only way in which a weblog can cut down on your "real world" interactions? When is it that they stifle conversation? When is it that a weblog allows you to say it all and nothing's left to be said in person?

How about when all your conversations center around superficial crap that can be explained in two words and which dissipates after five minutes?

In other words, if a weblog can really kill off "real world" interactions with your "friends" maybe it's time to think if those "friendships" are anything but meaningless chatter about the weather, haircuts, and pretending to be nice to each other.

Weblogs have made you realize that your life is a sequence of interactions that can be replaced by a few hyperlinks and 500-word entries?

Then maybe it means that to be so easily replaced those interactions were actually just superficial drivel. Deal with it. Or not.

But shooting the messenger isn't going to do you any good.

subtlety in 'the simpsons'

Through a referral chain I found Subtly Simpsons which documents some of the great background references made by the writers. I had caught most of those, but some where new to me. Worth the read.

Recently there have been a couple of things that I can't get out of my head regarding the Simpsons which, while not cultural references, totally crack me up. One is when Moe becomes friends with Maggie and they are spoofing The Godfather saga left and right, and they have to go find Maggie, who followed some mobsters to an Italian restaurant. The following exchange ensues:

Moe: We're going to Little Italy
Homer: I'll get our little passports

Heh. The other one is when Homer is trying to prove to himself (and Bart and Lisa) that he's still "cool" and he's trying to explain to this Dad about it:

Homer: You wouldn't understand, Dad, you're not 'with it'.
Grandpa: Well, I used to be 'with it'. Then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm 'with' is not 'it', and what's 'it' seems weird and scary.

LOL.

that's the spirit!

[via Erik] Michael has a hilarious post entitled The Irish go to War with France. Go read it. :-)

angels in america

I first heard of Angels in America through this Salon review and it left me intrigued. However, knowing how slowly Irish/UK TV (we get both here in Ireland) moves to get shows, both good and bad, from across the pond, I didn't read the review and then simply forgot about it. Why bother?

But then Channel 4 showed both parts of this six-hour miniseries Saturday and yesterday. It was a surprising experience. These days it's very difficult to walk into a theater or watch a show or anything where you haven't seen previews, opinions, discussions on it, etc. But it happened to me in this case. I had no idea what I was about to see.

What I saw was a great piece of art, funny, sad, and deep, all at the same time. There are moments when the characters turn to poetry mid-conversation and it almost feels (as the Salon review says) as if they're reciting Shakespeare. Al Pacino and Meryl Streep are excellent (as usual) but the other actors are on par with them, except maybe for Mary-Louise Parker, who doesn't quite pull it off. The story ostensibly centers around five gay men and two women whose lives are intertwined one way or another at the start of the AIDS pandemic in Reagan-era US. The writing is intensely political, but it never gets preachy. Magical realism is the order of the day. But there's more than that, for example people just trying to regain their balance in a world that is undergoing a massive tectonic shift, something some of the characters can perceive but not quite put their finger on, dealing with the ghosts of your past and the shadows cast by the future... Anyway, I don't want to ruin it for someone who hasn't seen it :), but if you can, check it out.

the lord of the rings: the return of the king

And so it ends.

I just came back from seeing The Return of The King, and I must say: Wow.

The Two Towers had been (I admit) slightly dissapointing. Too many liberties taken with the story, for my taste. Mostly, I think that the second movie suffered because it didn't end with a massive cliffhanger (as the book does) but rather carried the "cliffhanger moments" into the beginning of RoT. But RoT being what it is, all is forgiven.

The battle of Minas Tirith has to be the best battle scene I've ever seen, and maybe the best ever put on the big screen. When the Rohirrim charged against the hordes massing outside the city I could only hope that it would last just a little longer. Frodo's and Sam's journey from the gates of Mordor to Mount Doom is a bit cut here and there (no encounter with a company of Orcs, for example), but it retains its essence (I can clearly remember the overpowering dread throughout those 60 pages in the third book).

How the tension was maintained across the wide range of things that were happening at the same time was also very impressive. Eowyn's confrontation with the Nazgul was great (although they skimped on the consequences for both her and Merry. Okay, maybe not skimped--ignored :)).

As far as other things that were missing, well, the "Scouring of the Shire" was the single biggest no-show, but I understand why they had to cut it. I can only hope that the "director's cut" on DVD will include it (assuming they filmed it, that is). No mention of the effect of the Ent's drink on Merry and Pippin, and an oversimplification of what the Palantiri did (including no mention of the role Gondor's Palantir had to play in Denethor's madness). The corniest, most off-place moment was Aragorn asking Gandalf "What does your heart tell you?" which made me roll my eyes. Come on! He's a demigod for crying out loud! (a Maiar, like the Balrog, Saruman and Sauron) What is up with this sappy Titanic-like moment? (DiCapio wasn't around, I checked). I guess it made sense dramatically. Anyway. A few oversimplifications here and there, the most notable being at the end, with a simplified version of the fate of The Fellowship ommiting a number of important details (e.g., Sam's ultimate destination, having been a ringbearer if only for a short time, or some more details about the Three Rings of the Elves). But those are small problems compared to the achievement that was putting LoTR on the big screen. I probably count as one of those "die hard readers" that are usually so hard to please.

So. Great, great movie, and a worthy conclusion to the trilogy (movie-wise that is). If you haven't seen it, try go see it in a theater, it's what it deserves. Now, I just have to wait for the box set with all the extended versions and watch it all over again... :-)

movies, movies, movies

Speaking of movies. The worst two movies of 2003 were, by far, SWAT and Tears of the Sun. Both were an incredible disappointment. SWAT is supposed to be a thriller I guess. Tears of the Sun, some kind of adult drama. Both made me laugh more than most comedies (now that I think of it, I'd rate them as best comedies of the year). They are so terrible in so many senses that it's hard to know where to start describing them. At the center of the problem in both cases was the story, then the script, and then it radiated from there. Anyway, avoid them if you can. SWAT might make interesting viewing for late-night TV. Tears of the Sun, with all of its pretentiousness, doesn't even get to that level (which is a major disappointment, since the director was Antoine Fuqua, whose previous movie was the incredibly good Training Day). The Hulk was also a big disappointment. The editing is fantastic though, recreating comic-book feel on the screen--very well done but since the story is pretty bad in the end it just looks like an empty gimmick.

Among movies that left something (or a lot) to be desired (aka the "watchable" category, aka the "meh" category) that I saw were:

• The Italian Job. A strangely happy, well-dressed group of thieves that made me feel as if I was watching an episode of Friends rather than a Heist movie.
• Matrix Revolutions. No comment.
• Terminator 3. I guess that watching a movie thinking it's going to be crap improves its chances of rating it as "Meh" later...
• The Recruit. Too predictable, much ado about nothing. Pacino is good as usual, Farrell as well, but the material is not that great.
• Identity. My expectations were too high for this one--Cusack is excellent in it though.
• The life of David Gale. Not bad, but again pretty predictable, which takes the fun out of it, especially when you figure out the plot in the first five minutes.
• Confidence. Also predictable.
• Daredevil. Funny Colin Farrell, nice CGI, not much else.
• Anger Management. Not very funny as far as I was concerned--the final scene in the Yankee Stadium was memorable though.
• 28 days later. An excellent movie until they blew it by losing their nerve at the end. It should have had an open ending.
• The league of extraordinary gentlemen. Having read the graphic novel (which predates the movie), the film version feels like sanitized garbage. On its own, it rates a "meh" :).

Now for good movies I saw last year, more or less in the order I remember them, which is probably a relatively good measure of how much I liked them :) -- many of these can't be compared to each other though:

• The 25th Hour. Some notes on it here.
• Frida, which is the best performance by Salma Hayek I've seen. Great display of how editing & post-production can be great if used properly--such as in transitions between Kahlo's paintings and live-action sequences to show influences, how she saw things, etc.
• The Hours. With this movie everyone was talking about Nicole Kidman and her famous nosejob, it truly had everything: great acting (Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep and Ed Harris all turning in great performances), great script, great editing, great directing. Can you tell I liked this movie?
• Gangs of New York. Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Martin Scorcese, with music by U2--what more can we ask for? :)
• The Dancer upstairs (directed by John Malkovich). Simply fantastic.
• Kill Bill Vol. 1. Tarantino is back. Need I say more?
• Chicago. And I don't like musicals that much!
• Hollywood Ending. Classic Woody. Woody aficionados probably all really liked it, everyone else probably thought "Meh".
• Phone Booth, in which Colin Farrell shows that his acting in the excellent Tigerland was no fluke.
• Avalon. An unknown movie that should rightfully be a cult-classic (and maybe it is :)). (review).
• 8 mile. Eminem didn't have to act much for this, if we are to believe the press releases, but it was good nonetheless.
• Pirates of the Caribbean, in which Johnny Depp shows that he can create magic with a bit of eye liner. Seriously, without Depp this movie would have been crap (I could see him thinking "Take that Errol Flynn!" Heh). A movie of Grade A entertainment with no brains, and comfortable about it.
• X-Men 2. Well done, understated, and an improvement over X-Men, which had already been good. Hopefully the final installment of the trilogy will maintain this tradition. I really want to see The Phoenix rise.
• Matrix Reloaded. Regardless of my disappointment with Revolutions, this movie opened up so many possibilities that I think it was pretty good.
• Adaptation was good as well, if a bit too self-conscious for me. There comes a point when I've had enough of the in-your-face self-referencing.
• Seabiscuit. A strange movie in that it starts slow and picks up the pace a lot. I think they did it on purpose, to mirror the qualities of a horse race (particularly as the horse in the movie runs them). Regardless of whether I'm right about my interpretation or not, really enjoyable once you get past the first half-hour.
• Equilibrium. This is Fahrenheit 451 meets The Matrix (I couldn't resist, I find these one-line analogies funny for some reason). Entertaining and well done.

I'm probably forgetting a few, but that's ok. Btw, many of these movies were actually released in 2002, but they were only released here in Ireland at the beginning of 2003 (e.g., Gangs of New York).

reading “Voynichese”

Here's something weird and interesting from this week's Economist: an article on the Voynich manuscript. Quote:

THE Voynich manuscript, once owned by Emperor Rudolph II in 16th-century Bohemia, is filled with drawings of fantastic plants, zodiacal symbols and naked ladies. Far more intriguing than its illustrations, however, is the accompanying text: 234 pages of beautifully formed, yet completely unintelligible script.

Modern scholars have pored over the book since 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich, an American antiquarian, bought the manuscript and started circulating copies in the hope of having it translated. Some 90 years later, the book still defies deciphering. It now resides at Yale University.

The manuscript is written in “Voynichese”, which consists of strange characters, some of which look like normal Latin letters and Roman numerals. Some analysts have suggested that Voynichese is a modified form of Chinese. Others think it may be Ukrainian with the vowels taken out. But Voynichese words do not resemble those of any known language. Nor is the text a simple transliteration into fanciful symbols: the internal structure of Voynichese words, and how they fit together in sentences, is unlike patterns seen in other languages.

The other alternatives are, as the article notes, that the manuscript is either in code, or simply a hoax. Nevertheless, my geek-sense flares up when reading about something like this. Oh boy! An entire manuscript to decrypt, and a few centuries old to boot! Does that sound like fun or what?

tony blair and the simpsons

and this from the we-don't-want-you-making-any-comparisons dept:

A few months back I read that Tony Blair was going to guest-star in an upcoming Simpsons episode. As it turns out, the episode is premiering in the US this week, and yesterday The Times of London had a cover story on how 10 Downing Street flexed its lobbying muscles to stop the episode from airing coincidentally with Bush's Sate Visit: The US Visitor Blair didn't want us to see -- yet. Quoted from the article:

DOWNING Street really did try to prevent an oafish American causing trouble on a visit to London.

Tony Blair, a longstanding fan of The Simpsons, recorded his dialogue for an episode of the cartoon series at Downing Street in April.

But the episode, entitled The Regina Monologues, has been the subject of intense negotiation with Fox TV, which has claimed that No 10 prevented any tapes being released before George Bush’s visit to avoid any possible embarrassment.

Aides denied this but confirmed they had requested that the show should not be trailed in advance because “we didn’t want a lot of hoo-ha about it”.

Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s former communications director, is understood to have vetted the script and suggested a number of changes.

In one draft, Homer announces: “I’m going to act the way Americans act best — unilaterally.”

He then breaches security to crash a Mini Cooper through the gates of Buckingham Palace, catapulting the Queen out of her horse-drawn carriage.

(my emphasis) Heh. Too funny. I wonder if they will avoid the comparisons anyway. I think it's likely, given the astonishing short memory and attention span of the media these days.

funny, funny ad

The screen turns black, and the verses from Bryan Adams' Everything I do (I do it for you) start to sound. Sentences flash on the screen, white letters on black background, one sentence every three seconds or so:

This is Bryan Adams

He is Canadian

This tuesday

It's payback time.

Ireland v. Canada

From an ad on Ireland's TV3, regarding the football match this tuesday.

LOL!

ain't that the truth :)

"[Welcome] to the twenty-first century. It's pretty much like the twentieth, except that everyone's afraid and the stock ma