March 30, 2006
JPod
JPod is Douglas Coupland's update of his novel Microserfs for the Google age. Since Microserfs is one of my favorite books, I'm going to be handing over some dough for this update. You can pre-order JPod from Amazon.com, or read more, including an excerpt, at the book's website. Bloomsbury offers a special edition which comes with a limited edition JPod figure from The Cubes, which makes hip little toys to decorate your cubicle.
Among the content at the book's website is the Pod playlist:
"High Art, Local News" by The New Pornographers
"I Am Not Surprised" by The Organ
"586 (BBC Peel Session)" by New Order
"Music is Math" by Boards of Canada
"Happy Cycling" by Boards of Canada
"Douglas Coupland" by The Beekeepers
"Dazzle Ships" by OMD
"Can You Do That Dance" by The Pink Mountaintops
"Voodoo Child" by Rogue Traders
"I Die You Die" by The Magnetic Fields
"Ready Steady Go" by Paul Oakenfold
"Homosapien" by Pete Shelley
"Time Zones" by OMD
"Sixtyten" by Boards of Canada
"The Temples of Syrinx" by Rush
"Girl" by Beck
"The Battle of Evermore" by Led Zeppelin
"In the Year of 2025" by Zager and Evans
"You Spin Me Round" by Dope
"1969" by Boards of Canada
"I Used to Love Her" by Guns ‘N’ Roses
"International" by OMD
"Poets" by The Tragically Hip
"Time Zones" by Negativland
"Canada Geese" by Gordon Downie
Yeah Yeah Yeah, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Heat Vision and Jack...oh yeah
Tomorrow (well, I guess it's today now), the Flaming Lips will release the video for the "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" on their website. It's the first track of their new album At War With the Mystics. It's a damn infectious song, and you can stream it off of their site by navigating to the Music tab.
UPDATE: Actually, the video is up at Yahoo. It didn't play for me; maybe that's why I've never heard of Yahoo Music.
You can also stream the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new album Show Your Bones in NME's media player (you may have to register and navigate to it, but that helps to select the true believers). Their last album Fever To Tell had some gems, and they were even better in concert when I saw them in Seattle in, oh, I think it was 2003, when they opened for The White Stripes. Fugly venue (Seattle Convention Center), incredible show. Karen O and her mates make music that bring out the happy rock star in all of us, and whenever my iPod tees up one of their tunes, my toe starts tapping. Oddly, Amazon only carries the import right now and shows a release date of April 4, which is really odd (I pinged some of my old mates to see what's up). The album came out yesterday--you can find it most anywhere, and you will, if you know what's good for you.
UPDATE: Okay, Amazon does carry Show Your Bones, and for only $9.96. It had dropped out of the search index for some reason, but it's there.
Good things come in threes, so this fourth news item is the downer. Mitch Hurwitz has given up on Arrested Development, so as far as anyone's concerned, the show has officially been pronounced brain dead.
March 29, 2006
42
Lots of exciting finishes in March Madness this year, no doubt. Color me George Mason green and yellow. Just remember, Cinderella may wear a glass slipper, but you still should have her remove them at the door.
More on the Final Four: of the over 3 million entries in ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge, 4 people picked all four teams in the Final Four correctly. About 2/3 of entrants didn't pick a single one of the Final Four teams. I wonder how many of the 284 people who picked George Mason to win it all actually go to or went to the school.
Maybe 42 really is the answer to the secret of the universe?
The proper way to pour ketchup.
Everyone thanks those in our volunteer army who are fighting in Iraq, but if a draft were instituted, everyone would raise bloody hell. During times of peace, signing up for the military seems like a decent deal, but these days, the Army is missing its recruiting numbers despite lowering its standards and raising its cash bonuses. It's one of the ugly truths about the Iraq war: those who fight the war are the ones who don't have more attractive options. The issue is close to my heart because one of my editing class projects was Edet Beltzberg's upcoming documentary on army recruiting. Much of that footage was wrenching to watch.
Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, gives a karate chop to the throat of the current Administration for the war on Iraq. I'm almost done reading Inside Delta Force, his account of the founding of Delta Force and his years in service. The book is in the news now because David Mamet used it as inspiration for his new TV show "The Unit" on CBS. The book isn't quite as thrilling as I thought it would be, mainly because Haney can't reveal a lot of classified methods and anecdotes. As for the TV show, I'm not so sure all the actors are cut out to deliver Mamet-ese. I enjoy his dialogue much like I enjoy a bloody chunk of prime grade beef, but in the hands of the wrong cook, even the finest cut of beef can be turned into lunch room salisbury steak. Haney's dismissal of the effectiveness of torture is a damning indictment of the abuses at Abu Ghraib from a different perspective--torture doesn't gain effective intelligence, Jack Bauer notwithstanding.
This might be the coolest bath toy you could buy for your toddler. I wonder if human fear of snakes is innate or arises from reading the Bible or watching movies like Anaconda, a movie which mostly developed my fear of Jon Voight in a ponytail.
Movies from Sundance always seem to be trickling into theaters. Brick was one of the consensus group favorites of our Sundance crew two years ago, though I thought the conceit of setting a film noir in high school lost its novelty appeal by film's end, giving way to a somewhat unsatisfying potboiler ending. Still, it's a gas to hear high school kids spewing hard-boiled dialogue, and what better place to transfer the stock characters of film noir than high school, a time in our lives when most of us were trying on personas in a massive game of social fencing. As compared to most multiplex fare, Brick is joltingly fresh. The movie won the Originality of Vision award at Sundance, and that was the appropriate honor to bestow on that movie.
Thank You For Smoking is the latest of this year's Sundance babies to hit the big screen. Like Brick, the movie sprints out of the blocks with gorgeous opening credits and loses breath by the finish. No one wears sleaze better than Aaron Eckhart, though, and the movie shares his charming cynicism. Until Nick Naylor (Eckhart) loses his nerve, the movie is a pleasant smartass. Rob Lowe and Adam Brody as a CAA agent and his assistant had industry insiders at Sundance crying with laughter. For those who want Eckhart neat, instead of on the rocks, try In the Company of Men, in which he played one of the more memorable characters many people have never heard of.
David Bordwell wants more from contemporary film criticism. More than just opinions or insights, he wants to learn approximately true things about film. Something tells me the two movie blurbs above probably don't meet his standard.
James sent me a link to this amazing single hand of poker between Phil Ivey and Paul Jackson. Whereas many players hide behind sunglasses, Ivey eschews them in favor of his cold, piercing gaze, against which sunglasses might be the only defense against going blind.
March 24, 2006
Fearless
Something about Chinese and Hong Kong action directors and actors gets lost in the translation to U.S. soil, like Americanized Chinese food. Jet Li is one such victim of the journey across the Pacific Ocean, and so, I would say, has Ronnie Yu (all apologies to fans of Freddy Vs. Jason, Bride of Chucky, and Formula 51, or maybe not).
Thankfully, both Li and Yu decided to make a pilgrimage home to kick it old school with Fearless (official movie site here, where you can find pics and trailers). Yuen Woo Ping choreographs the fight sequences and Jet Li performs them; they are the Balanchine-Farrell of martial arts, and that's certainly the main reason to seek this movie out. Think of it as a chaser after several years of Jet Li's awful U.S. films. In Fearless, Li represents Chinese martial arts and puts it to the test against a variety of styles, from the Thai boxing of Olympic champ Somluck Kamsing to the brute force of 7-foot tall Australian wrestler Nathan Jones (last seen in the disappointing Tom Yum Goong getting tenderized by Tony Jaa).
The story, for what is essentially an action flick, is not terrible. The story is "inspired by" the life of Huo Yuan Jia, founder of the Jing Wu Sports Federation in China. Li plays Yuan Jia as a young, arrogant, and peerless fighter who later finds inner peace after a deep personal tragedy. He returns from a self-imposed exile to become a Chinese hero when he takes on top fighters from around the world to defend his nation's pride. There are bits and pieces of recognizable story arcs from The Last Samurai, Bloodsport, even Top Gun. This movie takes as many liberties with Yuan Jia's life as Hollywood movies take in its biopics, and Yuan Jia's grandson sued the filmmakers for taking such liberties, but I'm not sure how he's going to win that case. If he doesn't, perhaps he can at least convince the filmmakers to cut out a needlessly sentimental ending that reminded me of the end of Gladiator (I'm referring not to the fight scene but to the ghost spirit or whatever that was in the meadow).
Li's fighting style is usually that of impeccable form, but this time Yuen Woo Ping adds some welcome physical force to embody a young Yuan Jia's ruthless ambition. Yu perhaps overuses the slow-motion-segue-into-high-speed-shot technique to fetishize some of Li's highlight-reel strikes, but martial arts fans will be whooping and hollering. Fearless has a high density of fight sequences, my favorite being a night-time sword and fist fight inside a restaurant. The cinematography is first-rate, with that signature super-saturated, red and orange color palette that's so often used to evoke turn-of-the-century China. It has a warm, nostalgic feel.
Somebody's gonna get a hurt real bad.
And if you dig Fearless, you can rent unofficial sequels Fist of Fury and/or the remake, Fist of Legend. Both follow the Jing Wu Men school after Yuan Jia's death, rumored to be the result of poisoning by a Japanese doctor. Fist of Fury is sometimes called The Chinese Connection and is not to be confused with Fists of Fury, an earlier Bruce Lee movie [1]. It's all rather confusing--just sort it out on IMDb. Fist of Fury, or The Chinese Connection, has Bruce Lee seeking revenge for the poisoning of his teacher, Huo Yuan Jia. Fist of Legend is a remake starring Jet Li, featuring a final fight sequence that many consider to be Jet Li's finest. Yep, it's all choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping. Now that Jet Li has played Huo Yuan Jia, he can be seen in Fist of Legend to be avenging his own murder.
Fist of Legend is available on DVD in the U.S. from Dimension, but it's an awful dub into English, and I can't recommend it. Track down an overseas DVD copy with the original soundtrack.
Sunday. Gervais. Simpsons.
This Sunday brings with it the Ricky Gervais scripted episode of The Simpsons, "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife," in which Homer signs up for a Trading Spouses-like reality show and ends up bringing home a nightmarish wife.
I think that is supposed to be a pic of Ricky Gervais, Simpsonized. I look forward to the day when someone releases a pack of Photoshop or Illustrator plug-ins that allow you to transform self-portraits so you can see what you'd look like as a Simpsons character, or as rendered by the Wall Street Journal, or South Park.
IMDb lists The Simpsons feature film as being in production, with a release date in 2008.
March 23, 2006
Money
Out of 5, which was out of bandwidth, is out of hibernation...money.
As always, while Hollywood studios hem and haw and dip thier toes in the HD-DVD pool, their less timid counterparts in the video industry have already dived in, sans swimwear.
Chef sleeps with the fishes. I really expect that sometime in the next few years, Trey Parker and Matt Stone will die within a few hours of each other, under mysterious circumstances. At that same moment, Tom Cruise and/or Mel Gibson will be at their child's baptism.
61 Chinese children were adopted by Americans in 1991. By last year, that number had grown to 7,906.
I was hoping for something like the BMWFilms, but the Pirelli Film "The Call"? Eh, not so much.
Download four MP3s from new It band Band of Horses.
March 22, 2006
Okay, smarty
Jeopardy is conducting online testing next Tuesday through Thursday, Mar 28-30. You have to meet the requirements and register, then you'll be assigned a time to log on to take the 50 question qualifier.
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This online site allows you to opt out of all those credit card offers in the mail. Since even torn-up credit card applications aren't safe, this may save you the cost of buying a shredder.As a reminder, you can also sign up online for the Do Not Call registry, and you can reduce your junk snail mail further by following advice from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).
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James turned me onto the most entertaining poker show on televsion, High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network. It's a cash game, minimum $100,000 buy-in, no limit hold'em. In a tournament, all anyone ever has at risk is there initial tourney stake, but in a cash game, every dollar you put in is your own. It's not as easy to bluff or call a bluff when every dollar in is one of your own dollars at risk. High stakes cash game players (esp. Barry Greenstein) scoff at some of their tourney player brethren who've become famous thanks to TV, and this game is their chance to prove, in front of the cameras, that a cash game NL Hold'em game is the toughest game around.In the most recent episode, Phil Hellmuth's arrival was greeted with glee and derision (Negreanu shouted "Yum yum!"), and Hellmuth proceeded to lose his entire $100,000 buy-in in the three hands of his that were televised (though admittedly at least one was a tough hand to get away from). All around the table, the lack of respect for Hellmuth's game was palpable.
Players can use huge bricks of cash in lieu of chips. The use of cash adds a literal element of intimidation, and it's also an impressive visual gag for the cameras, seeing two 1 pound bricks of cash worth $50,000 each flying into the pot and bouncing across the felt. Several leggy-busty models called "sweaters" stand around in the background at all times, and amateurs who put up the $100,000 can buy in. Occasionally Lakers owner Jerry Buss makes an appearance, loses all his money, and disappears again.
Toss in former Welcome Back Kotter star Gape Kaplan as the TV analyst and you have a one for the TiVo.
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The first ever electronic replay challenge in tennis. Since it's been around on television for years now, this isn't that exciting. On TV they seem to be able to bring up an electronic replay all the time, so I don't know why the chair judge just doesn't use it on any close shot.Deep Note
These past few months, I've been staring at a computer screen for so many hours that my vision is starting to go. I find myself wearing my glasses more and more often, and though they are so mild as to be almost cosmetic, it still feels like a defeat. The default font size in Final Cut Pro is tiny, but thus far, I've refused to give in and blow it up. A few times during the day, I go and stare out the window and try to focus on something far off in the distance. Inevitably, my visual target remains blurry, much the way some childhood memories become with each passing year.
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I try to refrain from political ranting here, but it does amaze me how much our Prez seems to get away with. Even when he's caught in bald-faced lies, even when he's wiretapping us, even when the iconic image of the Iraq war the world over is of a prisoner being tortured, the next day it always seems to be back to normal (V for Vendetta, which I saw last Thursday night at the Lincoln Square IMAX, is more than a bit absurd, but that any of it even has any resonance with the current administration is outrageous). Perhaps there's some sort of political equilibrium point, such that a constant onslaught of negative news tends to diminish each in significance, the way that most people in the world rate themselves as roughly equal in happiness, despite the wide disparity in living conditions.Well, "incompetent" is at least a start.
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An alcohol concentration of 60% or higher seems to be the magic number for off-the-shelf hand sanitizers.***
I know kung fu. Not quite. But sort of.***
Wake-up calls from Maria Sharapova? Did anyone else try these or was I the only doofus? This supplied some of the motivation I needed on my voyage back from graveyard shift hours to normal hours. Unfortunately these seem to have been discontinued.***
Tonight I went to the premiere of Lucky Number Slevin at the Ziegfeld Theater. I hadn't seen a movie at the Ziegfeld before; it's gorgeous. The screen isn't as massive as that of Cinerama, but the seats and interior are much more cozy and plush, with a classy old school styling, and the sound system is first rate. Definitely the nicest theater I've visited in NYC, though the Lincoln Square IMAX is impressive as well, more for its technical specifications.Back to the movie. I saw it at Sundance in January, but what I'd forgotten is that the soundtrack is by J. Ralph, his first effort for the silver screen. He's most well-known from his song "One Million Miles Away," featured in the famous Volkswagen Jetta commercial "Big Day" (Quicktime). You can hear "One Million Miles Away" and other J. Ralph tunes at his website (which allows you to stream most of his tunes) or on his MySpace page (which only streams four of his songs).
His Lucky Number Slevin soundtrack is ear-catching. For some reason, he appears to have something against Amazon.com as the soundtrack is an exclusive to Barnes and Noble. It releases next Tuesday.
As I was seated and waiting for the movie to start, my phone rang. I thought it was Scott, who'd promised to call when he'd made it into the theater, so I immediately picked up and said, "I'm in row F, seat 12."
"Um, I'm looking for Eugene Wei?"
"Yep, I'm in row F, seat 12, I just stood up. You see me waving?"
"Uh, no. Actually, I'm calling from ___, and I wanted to chat with you about your application. I'm a professor there."
"Oh. Oops. Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry."
We went on to have an over-the-phone interview in the theater, while throngs of people milled about socializing and looking for their seats. Thankfully these things never start on time, and everyone was absorbed with scanning the theater for any of the many stars in the movie. My mind was racing and the environment was distracting. Maybe I should have postponed the call. Too late now; I'll be second-guessing myself for a few weeks.
He seemed like a really friendly guy. His specialty was sound, and he'd done lots of work for THX. I told him my favorite THX trailer, other than the original Deep Note (WMV), was the one featuring The Simpsons, the one that ends with Grampa Simpson standing up and shouting, "Turn it up! Turn it up!". I've never been able to find that on DVD, though he said it was out there somewhere. The THX Deep Note is one of my ten favorite sounds in the world. When I hear it, I just stand up and raise my arms in joy, always embarrassing for whoever is with me at the movie theater.
Someday, at the symphony, I'd love it if the orchestra, just before beginning the concert, all joined in to play the THX Deep Note, maybe before playing something like Shostakovich's 5th.
March 17, 2006
Snakes on a Plane
Finally, some footage from one of the most anticipated movies of the year, Snakes on a Plane. On that same movie clip page, you can submit a song, and if you win the audience vote, your music will be featured in the movie.
All this hubbub over a title and a premise. Well, that, and the presence of one Samuel L. Jackson. The movie was still in pre-production and had already been anointed a certain cult classic. If the movie opens strong, Hollywood will be hard-pressed to resist trying to catch lightning in a bottle, which should lead to some creative movie titles and marketing campaigns in the future. Laugh all you want, but the buzz is real, and it cost little to generate.
Mustachioed
Mustachioed: a fantastic adjective, one which could live up to the expectations of increased usage. Derived not from mustache but from the noun mustachio, meaning a long and elaborate mustache.
I think you'd agree that neither mustachio nor mustached, an adjective derived from mustache, are anywhere near as fly as mustachioed. The word just twirls around the tongue like a dancer around her pole, and it suggests not just a striking instance of facial hair but the cool and calculating gunslinger wearing it.
APC hack
This hack may only be of use in Manhattan, where the lines at the post office for human post office clerks are never short.
Much to any tech-saavy customers delight, he USPS joined the customer self-service movement a while back by installing machines/kiosks called Automated Postal Centers at many of their branches. By following directions on a touch screen, you can weigh letters and packages and purchase postage using your credit or debit card. This saves customers the trouble of waiting in line for their most common mailing needs.
The reliability of these machines, though is poor, and the glitch in the interface is that the APC often allows you to go all the way to the end of the process before informing you that, due to one error or another, you have to go to wait in line for a clerk after all.
When that happens, I've found a workaround that seems to be effective most of the time. From the opening screen, instead of hitting the "Mail a letter or package" button, press the button that says "Look Up Information." Then, press "Look Up Domestic Mailing Costs." Weigh your letter or package, type in the destination zipcode, and the machine will tell you the postage. But then it will also offer an option to purchase that postage. You can then proceed to purchase the stamp with your credit/debit card.
For some reason, that method always works, even when proceeding down that "Mail a letter or package" branch of the menu fails.
The commercial and the not-so-commercial
Antoine Fuqua directs John Malkovich as the Vatican's most powerful exorcist and Naomi Campbell as a dangerous and seductive demon in "The Call", a Pirellifilm, i.e., a high concept commercial for expensive automobile tires. Releases online next Thursday. At the prices Hollywood talent commands, I can't imagine the payback on these Anonymous Content online ad-movies pay back, but I did enjoy their BMW Films so I won't complain. Pirelli concept marketing (if it's deserving of that modifier) is like high-end beer advertising. With their calendars for VIP customers only, and now with their movies, they aim to have the world associate their tires with gorgeous, nude supermodels. I for one, will not question the effectiveness of that tactic.
Then there is Ye Yan, or The Banquet, a loose Chinese adaptation of Hamlet with some martial arts mixed in. When I first heard of the concept, I laughingly suggested Zhang Ziyi as one badass Ophelia. Then the IMDb page went up, and it turns out Zhang Ziyi is in the movie. She plays the Emperess, who I presume to be Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, though that can't be right because Zhang Ziyi still looks like she's 18, albeit someone you're really really thankful is 18. The key word in "loose adaptation" is probably "loose", so a close reading is probably overkill.
Here's a brief Windows Media clip of behind-the-scenes footage, shown at the Berlin Film Fesitval. The quality is such that I suspect it's a bootleg of a bootleg of a bootleg. More info and photos and movie clips are up at this unofficial Banquet movie page. Footage from a recent press conference is here (the page is in Mandarin, but the movie clip links are the four in the box at the top of the page).
Among my dream jobs would be to be Zhang Ziyi's English tutor, while she would reciprocate as my Mandarin teacher; her Chinese is just that good. Occasionally I'd butcher a pronunciation and she'd giggle. Occasionally she'd butcher an English word and I'd chuckle, and then she'd deliver a roundhouse kick to my face.
Finally, on this completely random journey through upcoming movies, we come to Drawing Restraint 9, the new film by Matthew Barney with music by his wife Björk. A viewing of the trailer suggests this is the real prize for connoisseurs of the avant-garde.
Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack by Bjork
Drawing Restraint 9 official website (still just a Coming Soon sign)
The last movie I saw by Matthew Barney was at Sundance earlier this year. Barney's segment was one of the seven shorts to make up Destricted, an art film about pornography. Art Forum chose it as the best film of 2005, so I had high hopes for a movie that might be both provocative and sexy, especially considering that among the other six directors were Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, and Sam Taylor Wood.
Well, the movie checked off the box next to provocative. This is where I enter spoiler mode, but it's one time I feel the
Matthew Barney's short, "Hoist," actually one portion of another movie titled De Lama Lmina, features copulation between nature, represented by a naked man, and technology, represented by a massive Caterpillar truck. Why do I say nature? Because the man had a turnip growing out of his a$$ and flowers coming out of his mouth. A high-def camera inserted up into the underbelly of the truck captures the footage of the man pressing his, uh, member up against the truck's lubricated and rotating driveshaft (What is the etymology behind using member to refer to a penis, anyway? Has William Safire already written a column on this?).
This contact between member and driveshaft turns out to please nature man, and things, uh, come to a head, so to speak (apologies in advance for all the childish euphemisms, but I am fearful of what Google's Adsense will pick up on). This is one time I would've been more than happy to lose the added resolution of high-definition video. 15 minutes into Destricted, and already I was covering my eyes and whimpering. The unease of the theater rose as, with every short, the audience realized that these directors aimed to deconstruct pornography, to skewer its mechanical, dehumanizing quality, and to do so without mercy. We had been lured into our seats with candy and lace, only to have a maniacal doctor enter the room and close the doors behind him as he turned on an electrical saw.
Larry Clark's segment, "Impaled," turned out to be the most diverting of the segments. He put out an casting call for a young male to perform in a filmed sex scene with a real porn star, and then he filmed both the casting call interviews and the resulting winner's big fantasy day. Like Dancing with the Stars, but without the stars and without the dancing, or American Idol, with Larry Clark as Simon, Randy, and Paula. The interviews reveal how much these young boys' minds, relationship skills, and ideas on sex have been warped by watching one porno too many.
Sam Taylor Wood's segment, "Death Valley", features a guy strolling alone through the desert of Death Valley, alone. He stops, drops his jeans, and proceeds to have sex with someone he loves, as Woody Allen once put it. For nearly 8 minutes. By the end of the movie, the theater, so restless and uncomfortable you could feel everyone shriveling in their parkas, took to clapping in unison to the guy's own, umm, beat. Please, please, please, the theater urged, just finish your business.
Gaspar Noé's segment, "We f--- alone," is the last one in the movie, and it is like one last thrashing, the cinematic equivalent of that fatality in Mortal Kombat where Sub Zero rips off his opponent's head and pulls out his spine. The entire segment is shot with a lurid red light, but even worse, it's shot with a strobe. It plays for 23 minutes. 23 minutes of strobing red light. 23 of the longest minutes of my life. For nearly all of it, a young man on screen has sex with himself and an inflatable doll. He puts a gun in the dolls mouth, at one point. There was a teddy bear involved at one point, but I don't remember how; I've probably repressed that memory as any trauma patient would. I'm not so sure I wouldn't have been relieved if the strobe had put me into a seizure before the movie's end. At least then I could have saved myself from some of that 23 minutes of torture. When the movie finally ended, I staggered out into the cold night air, feeling as if I had been that inflatable doll in that last segment. Noé, no doubt, would have been pleased, perhaps even gleeful, to see the wrecked audience members walking in circles, drooling in delirium.
Take the darkest, most unsparing after-school special, then put it on the steroid regimen that Barry Bonds was on for about six years, and then arm it with a chainsaw. That's Destricted. The movie is effective, without a doubt, but so is Jack Bauer when he really needs to get info out of a witness, and who wants to be tied up in the chair when Jack brings out the electric nipple clamps? The next morning, when my condo mates came to wake me, I was clawing at my eyes, muttering, "Make it stop, make it stop." Having summoned those images back into my conscious mind, I'm now going to go cleanse my palate by looking at that picture of Zhang Ziyi up above for about half an hour.
I look forward to the recommendations on Amazon.com or IMDb for Destricted:
If you liked this title, we also recommend...
- Salo
- Caligula (Unrated Version)
- Self-flagellation
March 16, 2006
It's not just rock stars and actors
When you think of names like Einstein, Feynman, what comes to mind? How about some of the 20th century's preeminent swingers? Size matters - chicks dig the big brain.
[Feynman] even kept a picture in his office of one acquaintance, buxom adult film star Candi Samples, signed, “To Big Dick, Love from Candi.”At the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos, the assembled brain trust was as hard-partying as a troop of college kids on spring break. Weekends with the physicists were “big and brassy,” replete with poker and booze. They played so hard that the program tried to quarantine the women’s dorms; as one boss euphemized, “The girls had been doing a flourishing business of requiting the needs of our young men.” So many babies resulted that Robert Oppenheimer (or his boss, nobody’s really sure), himself having tried to run off with the wife of Linus Pauling and bed the wife of another colleague, was told to halt the extracurricular activities. (Oppenheimer didn’t.)
March 15, 2006
Victoria
Portable cloaking technology finally a reality?
In search of the mythical pitch called the gyroball, a baseball thrown with the rotation of a football spiral, or a bullet, and nearly unhittable.
Fastest growing city on Earth: Chongqing. The two times I've been to China, I'm always amazed to travel through towns like Chongqing, that no one has ever heard of, all with populations larger than New York City.
...the planet's population is currently split almost right down the middle: 3.2 billion in the city, 3.2 billion in the countryside. But by the start of 2007, the balance will have tipped decisively away from the fields and towards the skyscrapers.I predict more men will be asking for jalapenos on their Subway sandwiches.
Tree Hugger
Sony Playstation 3 to launch in November, 2006...this and more news from the PS3 conference. Blu-ray DVD playback, HDMI output, 60GB HDD, full backwards compatibility. No price announced, though.
Set up your Netflix account to default to HD-DVDs. Not sure why they haven't distinguished between HD and Blu-ray, since those are incompatible formats. Not a whole lot of titles on the docket, but you can sign up to be notified when the initial titles release at Amazon's HD DVD store or its Blu-ray DVD store.
Keepvid.com, for preserving those treasured videos from sites like Google Video, YouTube, Vimeo, and others of that ilk.
My sister had to mock up a fake videogame box cover for a class project. Her game was a satire of first person shooters, an eco-terrorism game called Tree Hugger. Yep, that guy who just tossed his empty soda can on the sidewalk is about to be lined up in the crosshairs. Severe? Perhaps. Similar policies in Singapore seem effective. I was taken aback mostly because this is my little sister we're talking about. Yes, we are one crazy family. You can click on the image for a larger view.
Tutorial on simulating tilt-shift photography using Photoshop. So much fun!
March 8, 2006
Deleted scenes from Star Wars
I hesitate to link to this because it feels like I'd just be speeding its demise, but for all I know these aren't that new anyhow: deleted scenes from Star Wars (Episode IV). Probably of interest only to the hardcore fans, as some of this is just behind the scenes footage.
Microsoft's Origami revealed, with a less friendly name of Ultra-Mobile PC. I'd like to see someone wear this on their belt like a cell phone. That is sure to impress the ladies.
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.
On the new revelations surrounding Barry Bonds steroid use, which most people suspected since his physical transformation into a human Bobblehead, the claim that most saddens me is that Bonds started juicing to grab the spotlight back from McGwire and Sosa. It's as if the movie Amadeus had been reversed, and Mozart was the one fuming over Salieri. I feel sorry for Bonds, in a way. For such a gifted player, he's always seemed so bitter and angry, arrogant yet insecure. Well, once the book hits the street, it should serve as a truth serum one way or another. Lance Armstrong always sued anyone who made public accusations that he doped. Despite Bonds's alimony payments, I think he could afford to take legal action if the book made false accusations. Meanwhile, I don't know Bud Selig, but I can't help picturing him with a copy of the book on his desk, a blank and shellshocked look on his face, just like President Logan on 24. He'd turn to his Mike Novick equivalent and plead, "Mike, tell me what to do."
A for Antony, C for Cat
Preview clips from the new soundtrack to V for Vendetta, with score by Dario Marianelli (fresh off an Oscar nom for his score to Pride and Prejudice). Also on the soundtrack are tracks by Cat Power (her cover of The Velvet Underground's "I Found A Reason" from The Covers Record) and Antony & The Johnsons ("Bird Gerhl").
Looking forward to catching the flick in IMAX. Nat P with the shaved head..."damn, Natalie, you a crazy chick!" That's hot.
March 7, 2006
Feeling the blahs
The night before the Oscars, I became light-headed, then feverish. During the night, I alternated between feeling like my body was about to burst into flames, and then shivering under every blanket in my apartment. By the time I finally fell asleep, the sun had been up for hours. In about 9 hours, folks were coming over for the Oscars, and if the phone hadn't been so far from my bed I think I would've called it off. I had visions of myself at my Oscars party, suddenly passing out and crashing through a glass coffee table, and then the screen would go dark and cut to the opening credits of House, with the cool theme music by Massive Attack.
Sometime during the night, my radiators stopped working, for no apparent reason. It was about 30 degrees outside when they stopped, and it was about 30 degrees inside my apartment by the time I dozed off.
It felt as if the door buzzer rang the instant I slipped into slumber. It was the FreshDirect delivery guy, dropping off all the groceries I'd ordered to use in preparing my Oscar spread. After putting all the stuff in the fridge, I tried to slip back into bed for one more hour of sleep, but it was done. Once my body sees sunshine, it's tough to force into sleep mode.
Usually, I try to prep food related to the best picture noms, but this year had me stumped. Should I pass out packs of Camels so we could all smoke through the night like Edward Murrow? Pop pills like Johnny Cash? No, that would fail to distinguish this night from any other night out clubbing in NYC. The only food that came to mind were the canned beans from Brokeback Mountain, so I settled on a main of Chicken and White Bean Chili. For this recipe, I had to char eight Anaheim chilies. I'd never even heard of this type of chili before, but fortunately Whole Foods had exactly ten of them left on Saturday afternoon.
While charring half the chilies on my gas stove and the other half in the broiler, my smoke alarm went off. As old as that sucker looks, it puts out an earsplitting, panic-inducing noise, like a robot screaming in agony. I was certain I'd woken up everyone in the entire building, and everyone on my block for that matter. I ran to my windows, but they were sealed for the winter so I couldn't pry them open quickly. I brought my air filter into the kitchen and turned it on high. All to no avail. Finally, looking at that smoke alarm, which, by the way, I couldn't reach because it was fourteen feet off the ground, I saw that it was hard wired into the wall. So I flipped all my circuit breakers, and it the smoke alarm went silent.
It was now that I recalled that the super had once told me I probably shouldn't use the broiler. Now I knew why. I stood there reveling in the silence, then went back to charring the chilies, in total darkness.
On to the Oscars, the show everyone complains about and yet still watches. With everyone bashing the Oscars, I feel sheepish admitting I look forward to the Oscars every year, though some of it has to do with the fact that there's always an Oscar pool on the line. It's the same reason March Madness is so popular. In fact, if no one gambled on March Madness, I wouldn't be surprised it lost over half of its appeal.
I don't know about that billion viewer claim for the Oscars. Who came up with that figure, and how? Even if everyone in the United States watched, and these are folks in the right time zones, that still leaves some three quarters of a billion viewers to backfill. And this year, the number of U.S. viewers looks to have been roughly 39 million. Maybe that billion is not the figure for people watching live.
The red carpet interviews, I concede, are dull. While laying out food, I stopped to listen to one or two of Isaac Mizrahi's interviews on the red carpet. He was so amusing in Unzipped, but he's a terrible red carpet interviewer. He loves the sound of his own voice too much and always seems locked in a battle for attention with his interviewee.
This year's production was one of the shortest I can recall, clocking it at just under three hours and a half, and yet it felt sluggish. Jon Stewart came out nervous in the opening monologue, a few jokes failed to kill, and awkward silence seemed to grab a chokehold. I enjoy Stewart, but this crowd, a subdued one, is vastly different than the fratboy audience on The Daily Show, the one which whoops and hollers every time the Applause sign lights up. On The Daily Show, Stewart can simply show a clip of Bush speaking, then wait while laughter pours in. His material was solid, but the audience's tepid reaction to much of it dampened his mojo and the show's momentum.
The Oscar crowd likes to drive in the center lane, which is why Billy Crystal is such a popular and successful host. You can take your jabs at the arm, but don't leave a bruise, and take too many shots at the folks in the crowd and they will stop laughing with you. The type of humor that works well at the Oscars is not the brand that is Chris Rock or Jon Stewart specialty. The Bjork-Dick Cheney joke was just right. It was political, but only tangentially, and poked fun at the entertainment industry, but only their clothing. Contrast that with, say, the joke about pulling down the giant Oscars statue so democracy could bloom in Hollywood. Or the joke about Scientology, which probably didn't get laughs from John Travolta and company. Johnny Carson was the prototype for the perfect Oscar host, but I can't think of anyone like him out there today.
Stewart's comic timing did hurt himself with a slightly mis-tuned comic timing. When a joke failed to hit, he'd fill in the silence with a follow-on comment, reaching for the bounceback laugh. "I'm a loser," he offered at one point, but the audience didn't bite. At least he tried. David Letterman got panned for his hosting effort, and he's no worse for the wear. Stewart will be fine, and he'll be able to mine his hosting gig for some laughs when he returns to the Daily Show Wednesday. They don't make comedians check all their sharp objects at the door on that show.
My nomination for the perfect host to restore some energy into the Oscars remains Jim Carrey. If they'd just unleash him, he'd be Billy Crystal but with a chance of broadening the appeal of the show to include some younger viewers.
Other thoughts during the evening, tape-delayed by a night so you can TiVo-scroll through all the bad bits I'm going to blame on my illness:
- The opening pre-recorded montage, with intros of past Oscar hosts, had a few duds. The bits with Steve Martin's kids weren't that funny, but the Mel Gibson bit from the set of Apocalypto almost rescued it. Mel may be crazy, but at least he hasn't lost his sense of humor.
- Half of the Oscars production lives and dies with the cutaway shots. When Stewart made a crack about piracy and how many actresses could barely afford enough dress to cover their breasts, the show immediately cut to a pregnant Rachel Weisz. Probably a coincidence, but I was taken aback. Very un-Oscar-like.
- On the other hand, the cutaways to Clooney were priceless. Gil Cates likely had a camera trained on Clooney the entire night, a wise move on his part. With picture in picture technology, shouldn't all viewers have the choice of having one of several stars always open in a subwindow on the television screen? Where was the shot of George Clooney when Three 6 Mafia gave him thanks? Where were the cutaways during their performance of "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp"? There's one person who must enjoy the Oscars every year, and that's the person who sits in a studio and sees the feed from every camera in the theatre. That guy's got some good stories.
- Three 6 Mafia - terrific acceptance speech, which began with them walking to the wrong microphone on stage. That was an undeniably catchy tune. The scene in Hustle & Flow, when that song finally comes together, had me grinning, and, along with "Wings" from Brokeback Mountain, "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" was the most memorable musical number from the year in movies. I wish I had a handle like "Juicy J" or "Crunchy Black." Three 6 gave props to everyone, even Gil Cates. Speaking of which, I want to give a shout out to Clooney here. George baby, you're the daddy. Let's work together, baby.
- Another group that looked like they were having a good time were the four crazy French dudes accepting the Oscar for March of the Penguins. The stuffed penguins they were holding were dressed better than they were; something tells me those guys will be paying some damage fees on those rental tuxes. Two of them weren't wearing bowties, and another's bowtie had gone vertical by the time he spoke. They sounded like they'd had a few bottles of vino prior to arriving. Leave it to the French to know how to live.
- One reason the Oscars always fall short of expectations are the dull thank-you lists that are most acceptance speeches. It always feels a bit political and insidery to thank producers, studios, publicists, and so on and so forth. Not all thank yous are dull, but the bar needs to be higher. A good example was Robert Altman. He noted that he couldn't possibly thank everyone he'd worked with, so he thanked only his doctor, Jodie Kaplan. That woman might be keeping him alive. She meets the bar.
- Robert Altman had a full heart transplant?!? What the hell? How does one keep that under wraps? Amazing. Sadly, the first movie that leaped into my head when he revealed his secret was Untamed Heart. I felt bad for Altman because he'd never won an Oscar for himself prior to this, but people are mistaken when they disparate the Academy Honorary Award as a consolation prize. The Academy may get it wrong in one year on any one award, but it's tough to be wrong when you're honoring someone with a lifetime achievement award. How many people in the audience last night could even hope to win one someday? Nicholson. Maybe Streep. Possibly Spielberg.
- At first, I thought, "How rude, they're playing music and the winner hasn't even begun his/her speech!" Then it became clear that they were playing music to accompany every speech. Not a good idea, and sure to go the way of the "awards presentations in the audience for lesser categories" from last year's broadcast.
- If you hadn't seen Crash and just watched the interpretive dance segment occurring behind Kathleen "Bird" York during the singing of "In the Deep," you'd think Crash was a zombie movie.
- It must be satisfying to win the loudest round of applause during the In Memoriam segment. Someone like Jack Nicholson must sleep well just knowing that someday, when he finally knocks off, he'll be the last one shown in that segment, to rapturous applause.
- When Dolly Parton came on stage to sing "Travelin' Thru", I thought she was introducing The Corpse Bride. It's a cruel industry that won't let its ladies age gracefully. She's 60 for goodness sakes.
- Lots of fake bakes in Hollywood. I can't say I'm a fan of the bronzed look. Some of the women, if they'd been naked and bald, would've resembled life size Oscar statues.
- Not Jennifer Garner, though. She nearly did a face plant, but give her a break, she must still be adjusting to the cantilevering forces brought into play by her post-pregnancy figure.
- All the next-day outfit analysis seems to have scared actors out of taking any sartorial risks, which is too bad. These people are gorgeous and wealthy and successful. At least let us believe, if just for a night, that they might make an occasional fashion misstep like the rest of us. The one time she attended, Bjork was adorable when she was describing in an interview how a friend of hers had made that swan dress. Now we may never have such moments again, and that's a loss for all of us. That said, after Reese won for best actress, it would have been marvelous if Charlize Theron had untied that bow on her dress last night to reveal a hawk. Then Charlize could've whistled, signaling the hawk to fly to the stage to claw Reese on the face and fly off with her statue. No one would be saying anything about Charlize's dress today if she'd done that.
- One fun way to liven your group during an Oscars episode is to compete to shout out the names of all the movies referenced in the Oscar montages as they flash on screen. If you were able to name all the westerns and film noirs, well then you're a true movie buff. Or just old. Or probably both.
- Jack Nicholson can read from the teleprompter and it's still entertaining. Maybe he could just come out as the presenter of every award, each time with a different partner.
- Paul Haggis once was known as the creator of Walker, Texas Ranger. Now he'll be introduced as writer of one best picture winner, director of another. Now that's a Cinderella man.
Brokeback Mountain, my pick for best picture among the five nominees, manages to seize your heart without tearing open your chest to massage it by hand. It works at you from the inside out, and by movie's end you understand why Heath Ledger chokes the life out of every word, because his story isn't "that gay cowboy" story. No, as it turns out, we'd heard this tale before.
There's a brief cutaway during Brokeback Mountain. Those who've seen the movie will know which one I refer to, and so I can discuss it relatively spoiler-free. Still, skip the next stretch if you haven't seen the movie and haven't read the short story.
The cutaway in the movie leaves much up to the audience's mind. Did what happened in the cutaway truly happen? Is it a cutaway to a Ennis's imagination, or is it the work of an omniscient narrator, so to speak? I checked back in the short story by Annie Proulx to see how she handled it.
In the short story, Ennis hears the news from Lureen. She tells the story of how it happened. But Ennis disagrees.
"No, he [Ennis] thought, they got him with the tire iron."
Later, when Ennis is speaking to Jack's parents, Jack's father says to Ennis, "He had some half-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin, and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then this spring he's got anaother one's goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He's going a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack's ideas it never come to pass."
The next line refers to Ennis's thoughts: "So now he knew it had been the tire iron."
So I suspect the movie cutaway is meant to reflect Ennis's belief as to how it went down, as in the short story. We don't ever know the truth, and by that point in the movie it doesn't matter, because one way or another, they'd already broken both Ennis and Jack.
The movie that most moved me last year, however, was not nominated for any Oscars. It wasn't even made for theaters originally, but for TV, which may have disqualified it from the Best Foreign Film category. The movie is La Meglio gioventù, or The Best of Youth. The miniseries aired in four episodes in Italy, and in the U.S. it is split into two DVDs of three hours a piece. Everyone will mention the length of this movie when recommending it to you, but for good reason. We balk at the thought of sitting through six hours of any form of entertainment. But at the end of The Best of Youth, I felt the sorrow one feels after turning the final page on a long but beloved novel. If NBC's coverage of the city of Turin and Italy itself during this year's Winter Olympics left you dissatisfied, and even if it didn't, please do devote six hours of your life to The Best of Youth.
I leave this year's Oscars with this question: Is it really hard out there for a pimp? This sounds like a job for Steven Levitt.
March 6, 2006
And the winner is...
...Wendy, for best performance in my Oscar pool. Out of 21 major categories, she missed only 3, nailing all 8 major categories and one of the three short categories, scoring 37 in my modified scoring system, which assigns 2 pts per feature length film category and 1 pt each for the three shorts categories. A dominating performance. She e-mailed me just the day before to note that she always won her Oscar pool, and then her entry was the last to show up in my pool and the last one standing. She was like Babe Ruth pointing out to center field before the home run. Please step up here and post your acceptance speech, Wendy. Unlike the Academy, we won't put a time limit on you, nor will we play distracting music while you type. We want to learn your secrets.
Of the folks who attached an entry fee to their ballots, though, yours truly eeked out a win by 2 pts over Eleanor, 30 - 28. I thought about sending you the moolah, Wendy, but as you know, it's hard out here for a pimp.
March 5, 2006
Saturday Night Sort of Live
The funniest bits on SNL now are all pre-recorded. Maybe they should change their name to Saturday Night Taped. Hey, if it improves the show, I think folks would settle for that, and most everyone catches these shorts on YouTube anyway.
UPDATE: Well, SNL lawyers are killing YouTube SNL video clips faster than Barry Pepper sniping Germans in Saving Private Ryan, so the clip below is likely dead. Thankfully trying to suppress this stuff on the web is like trying to play whack-a-mole in hell. Here's another site hosting the clip, and if they kill that one, just go to your preferred file-sharing app or to Google.
Natty P! I'm feelin' ya, girl.
Portrait of the blogger as a young man
Cleaning up old junk, I found a class journal from what I think was first or second grade, in September 1981. Here's the first entry, with typos and grammatical mistakes reproduced faithfully:
Dear Dad,If I were a rich man:
Can I use the tv today. I'm watching the Greatest American hero. I know you don't like that show but I think you'll let me watch it. Today we had indoor reces. It wasn't fun but we could draw.
If I were rich I would buy ten batteries a year for electronic games. I would buy some wood and build a secret fort with a fence around it. Then I'd buy thing to put inside our fort like a telephone, things to put on our window for holidays.More profound musings:
When I grow up I would like to be a scientist because you might discover something and become famous! If you bring a book about how you make a formula you might make something that can make a garden grow in ten seconds! I wish someday that you will grow to be a scientist.Young gourmand:
My favorite cold or hot lunch is a drink or juice such as lemonade, orange juice, grape juice, icea cream, sodapop and a popsicle. My foods are pizza, taco, tetor tots, lobster, shrimp, lazonia, corn, corn soup, fruits, chicken, spaghetti, and ashed potato. Because they are delicious.Fierce competitor at an early age:
When its my birthday I like to play fun games like musical chair, pin the tail on the donkey, hide and seek, hot potato, and tugawar, When you win.More on food:
My favorite meal is Popeye's chicken and taco flavored pizza, spagheti with meatballs. Because they'r always hot and sizzling and they all taste diffrent. When I see them my mouth waters like crazy! Do like them?Not a future winter Olympian:
My favorite winter sport is snowmobiling.I've never been snowmobiling. Here, I express an entrepreneurial bent:
If I were ten feet tall I would try to get a bird and sell it for ten bucks.Early signs of OCD? No wonder I got beat up on the playground:
I hate when the lunchroom is so noisy that my food can't digest. And I like it when Mr. green tells them to be quiet. I smell the foods of other people when I'm finished.
March 4, 2006
And the losers are...
The annual Razzies were announced, and the big winner, as it were, was the Jenny McCarthy flick Dirty Love. Ironically, it screened at Sundance in January 2005, which just goes to show...umm...hey! Look at her chest!
March 3, 2006
TGIF Movie Quiz Part 2
Here's the second half of the movies quiz posted last Friday (thanks to FreshArrival for the link). This one's easier than the other one, which everyone seemed to top out on at 26/30, though part 2 has one that has me totally stumped.
Here are some answers for last weeks' puzzles' most common stumpers (in white ink, so run your cursor over the titles to find out what they are, though if you're still working on last week's puzzle then you shouldn't read on).
#4 was The Legend of 1900. Tough one unless you're familiar with the oeuvre of Tim Roth, or unless you were such a huge fan of Cinema Paradiso that you sought out Giusepe Tornatore's other work. #9 was Zatoichi. Yes, Takeshi Kitano has just gone medieval on that guy in the photo. It's a bizarre remake with Kitano's take on the famous blind swordsman. Not surprisingly, his rendition is cruel and violent, with buckets of CGI blood spraying across the screen. Still, it has its moments, including moments of random choreography between actor movements and the soundtrack, like when some farmers swing hoes into the ground in a mesmerizing rhythm.
Most everyone seemed to know #18, which is a pleasant surprise. Who knew Cube had such a big following? Maybe they were hooked by the opening clip. Ouch.
#23 is Charlie's Angels, and #24 is Equilibrium. I saw the latter on a bootleg DVD from China. It's an unoriginal sci-fi flick with kung-fu, a la The Matrix. You can almost write the voiceover for this movie's trailer: "In a world without feeling, without art....one man...will rise up...and restore hope to mankind." The one creative bit was that the hero, played by Christian Bale, has these handgun cartridge reloaders built into his sleeves, perhaps an homage to Travis Bickle. To reload, he just releases the old cartridge, twirls his handguns so they face the ground, and a new cartridge ejects from his sleeve into the guns.
In the scene pictured, Christian Bale has just been apprehended by a police squad. He proceeds to go Neo on them, neutralizing them in a perfunctory ballet of guns and martial arts with all the stoicism and efficiency of a top cuber restoring Rubik to its state of order.
Oscar picks
Though some categories are locks, picking the winners this year seems much tougher than last year. It's not too late for you to enter my Oscar pool, if just for fun, and those of you who have already now know my picks.
You can find the full list of nominees here.
Best picture: Brokeback Mountain
Best director: Ang Lee
Best actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Many have tabbed Heath Ledger as the likely runner-up, but I suspect Joaquin Phoenix is likelier to upset. Voters will want to see Ledger do it again, to put more distance between new gay cowboy Heath and old 10 Things I Hate About You Heath.
Best actress: Reese Witherspoon
It ain't me babe. Oh, wait, it is!
Best supporting actress: Rachel Weisz
Amy Adams performance is the one I remember, but hardly anyone saw Junebug. Their loss.
Best supporting actor: George Clooney
Tough category to pick with Paul Giamatti, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Matt Dillon all with equally vocal supporters. I'm just as curious as everyone else, though I'm going with George because everybody loves George. Except David Russell.
Best animated film: Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
I missed Howl's Moving Castle while it was in theaters, and based on box office figures so did many other people. Nick Park has a perfect Academy Awards record. Though I love claymation and Wallace & Gromit, Curse of the Were-Rabbit didn't leave me giddy. Much of the humor felt flat to me, and I preferred Corpse Bride. I doubt enough voters felt the same way. In a larger pool, I'd probably go with Corpse Bride just as a contrarian bet.
Best foreign film: Sophie Scholl - The Last Days
Didn't see any of these. Doesn't seem like anyone is talking about Joyeux Noel or La Bestia nel cuore (Don't Tell). Sophie Scholl - The Last Days, Paradise Now, and Tsotsi - they all seem equally likely to win.
Best documentary: Murderball
In most cases, I believe in the law of overwhelming box office. That is, if only one movie in a category did any significant box office, it's likely to win simply because more voters saw it than any of its competitors. That would point to a March of the Penguins cakewalk. But Murderball is the better documentary.
The winner here should've been Grizzly Man, yes, and Herzog also had White Diamond.
Best original screenplay: Crash
Best adapted screenplay: Brokeback Mountain
Art direction: Memoirs of a Geisha
Though Kong has a warm, retro look, my guess is that all that CGI will handicap it in this category. I haven't seen Memoirs of a Geisha, but judging by the trailer and word-of-mouth, its bright palette and swishing silks will catch voters' eyes.
Cinematography: Memoirs of a Geisha
Again, just a guess since I've not seen the movie. Brokeback Mountain has the wide open landscapes, but Memoirs of a Geisha has those choreographed performances, with their dramatic lighting.
Film editing: Crash
After having taken an editing class, I've realized that this category is impossible to judge fairly. Only the editors and perhaps the directors have any idea what the editors had to work with to produce the final product everyone else sees on screen. I think it was Walter Murch who once said of himself and the other four nominees for the Oscars in this category that none of them was the best editor, that it was probably some editor who had transformed a terrible movie into something watchable that deserved the Oscar.
Minus that, most voters choose their favorite movie (under the premise, and a good one, that the editing had a lot to do with the movie's quality) or the movie with the most apparent editing. For most voters that will be the same movie this year, Crash, with its interwoven storylines. If The Constant Gardener were also a best pic nom, this would be a tougher choice, because it has an even more complex structure, with its leaps back and forth in time.
Michael Kahn is the big name in this category, but that universally disliked love scene montage in Munich will do him in.
Sound mixing: Walk the Line
I really enjoyed the alien human-evaporating ray beam's sound in War of the Worlds, but that's probably not a nice thing to write out loud. Sequences like the prison scene, with the clapping of the prisoners muffled but audible through the prison walls, will guide Walk the Line to the gold, bald, naked statue here.
Sound editing: King Kong
Original score: Memoirs of a Geisha
For a movie I didn't see and that was heaped with scorn, Memoirs sure is nabbing a lot of Oscars on my ballot. I'm probably wrong on at least one of these Geisha picks, but I have no idea which one. John Williams' BAFTA earns him my nod here. Gustavo Santaolalla's score for Brokeback Mountain is perhaps the most well-known, just because of all the Brokeback trailer knockoffs, but it's also much shorter than the work of the other composers, which I think might hurt him.
I really enjoyed John Williams elegiac score for Munich and Dario Marianelli's classically romantic score for Pride and Prejudice, also.
Original song: "In the Deep" from Crash
Will they perform all the nominees this year, and if so, who will sing "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"? Let me make clear that I'm all in favor of an de-funked, operatic rendition from Josh Groban, with Sting in the background uttering "whoop that trick" as a faint harmonic echo.
It's between the other two songs, "Travelin' Thru" and "In the Deep". It's a toss-up. I'll go with the song from the Best Pic contender.
Costume design: Memoirs of a Geisha
Colleen Atwood is the most decorated entrant in this category, and colorful kimonos are difficult to match as visual candy.
Makeup: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Another category where bold and apparent wins out over subtle, so Cinderella Man definitely won't win. I didn't see The Chronicles of Narnia, but I suspect it offers enough animal creature makeup to offer a credible alternative to Revenge of the Sith. No one in the Academy seems to want to vote for the Star Wars movies.
Visual effects: King Kong
War of the Worlds actually had more seamless visual effects than King Kong, which featured shots like the "running with the bulls except with dinosaurs" that seemed so clearly CGI. Spielberg is peerless at making his visual effects mesh with real life. And yet, many people disliked War of the Worlds and seemed breathless at King Kong, and the sequence on the Empire State Building is cool. Kong was also more dense with visual effects than any other movie I saw this year.
Best animated short: 9
For the first time, I actually saw all the animated short nominees at a screening at the Academy Theater in NYC. My favorite of the group was The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, but I'm guessing folks will go with 9. Tim Burton is going to produce director Shane Acker's feature-length version of that short, which follows a rag doll locked in a duel to the death with a giant mechanical creature in a dystopic wasteland.
Best documentary short: The Life of Kevin Carter
I didn't see any of these, so this is a guess based on some other awards it has claimed.
Best live action short: Síðasti bærinn í dalnum
I saw all these at the same screening as the animated shorts. None of them wowed me, and several were too predictable, especially Our Time Is Up (though it did feature Hurley from Lost) and Ausreisser (The Runaway). The two that weren't were Six Shooter and, at its conclusion, Síðasti bærinn í dalnum, which is pronounced, um, like it's spelled. The latter is more serious in tone, so I'm going with the Icelandic short.
March 2, 2006
Stroked
Wednesday night I went to the Strokes' first concert of their 2006 tour at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Great show, and I don't have anything to add to Stereogum's summary of the concert (and setlist). The last time I saw The Strokes was in 2003 in Seattle at the Exhibition Center, just an awful place to see a concert.
The Strokes came complete with their own fly girl, Lucy Liu, dancing up a storm in the lower stage left box with uber-Strokes-celeb-groupie Drew Barrymore, who was content to tilt her head back and mouth the lyrics towards the ceiling with a stoned grin while squeezing a cigarette between her fingers.
I left the show with just the right amount of deafness in my ears and blood racing through my head. I want to be Julian.
XXI
I agree, the new Wieden and Kennedy Air Jordan commercial for Nike is awesome. Gave me goosebumps and a curious watering in the eye. The move which most recalls Jordan for me is simply the kid with his hands on his knees, chomping on gum with the Jordan scowl.