June 30, 2008
Weekendery
***
When I'm working on my computer on a project, like wireframes or sketches or just writing, one of my favorite CDs to pipe through my headphones is Ghost In The Shell: Original Soundtrack by Kenji Kawai. I'm not sure why it sells for $57 on Amazon. Perhaps because it's an import. If you can find a cheaper copy somewhere, perhaps on eBay or on your next trip to Tokyo, I recommend it.
***
Andrew Stanton consulted with Johnathan Ive, Apple design guru, on the design of Eve, the white robot in Wall-E.
A call from Stanton to Jobs in 2005 resulted in Johnny Ive, Apple's behind-the-scenes design guru, driving across the San Francisco Bay to Pixar's converted warehouse headquarters to spend a day consulting on the Eve prototype. Stanton said that it was a "lovefest" with Ive, but that the notoriously tight-lipped design wizard offered few specific modifications. "Apple is so proprietary and so secretive that he couldn't even really allude to where the future of technology was going," says Stanton. "The most he could do is nod his head to the things we said we wanted to do." (Through a spokesman, Ive declined to comment.)
***
Speaking of Wall-E, a bunch of us caught the midnight showing Thursday night at the El Capitan theater. No surprise, I enjoyed it on many levels, in particular the early scenes on earth. With a score by Thomas Newman and Roger Deakins-consulted cinematography, the creative talent was A-plus-list. Comparing it to Hellboy II, which I saw Saturday night at the LA Film Festival, helps to illuminate why the latter fell flat for me.
Wall-E and Eve, though they are robots without mouths or noses or much in the way of facial muscles other than articulated mechanical parts and blue digital LEDs for eyes, respectively, move with a fluidity and expressiveness that was lacking in most of the characters in Hellboy II. Under all that makeup, Hellboy is working with a more limited facial muscle repertoire than a middle-aged actress on her tenth round of Botox. The fish character, Abe, and a new character, Johan Strauss, have even less expressive faces. Abe wears a rubber fish mask that can do little other than blink, while Strauss has no face at all, just a glass dome for a head. Voice work can only take you so far.
Hellboy II also suffers from what plagues stories for most sequels, which is a sort of character stasis. Sequels that are conceived of only after the success of the first installment tend to be "the further adventures of..." rather than stories with any character arc. From the first movie, we know Hellboy is a sarcastic, wisecracking brute who likes to pummel monsters first, ask questions later. In this movie, he still is. The screenplay has several storylines, including one about Hellboy's uncomfortable relationships with the humans he protects, but the mix of fantasy and real-life isn't organic and tightly woven the way it was in, say, Pan's Labyrinth.
I look forward to more work from Guillermo del Toro, but I hope it's original stories and not more installments of Hellboy.
June 29, 2008
How little we (They) know
When animals attack
I haven't seen the movie, but Is this the plot of The Happening?
Nevertheless, local and federal officials have advised citizens confronted head-on by a red wing to simply stare back into its eyes.
Which sounds like advice out of a Holiday Inn commercial.
Style icons
June 14 weekend I was in Chicago for Jae and Esther's wedding and to visit with Joannie and Mike, who were moving back to Chicago, and Karen, who was in town for a wedding also.
Here are some pics from Jae and Esther's wedding which was held in Woodstock, a town I haven't visited since I was in grade school, when a family friend used to live out there. The wedding was held on Esther's parents apple orchard.
My favorite photo of the weekend came from a table setting and was of Esther's parents James and Ae Soon. James, in Seoul, looked up Ae Soon, a nurse, for a hospital tour.
If you look at the photo below, it's no surprise that they were married three years later, in 1976. His generous shirt collar coming out to grab some sun, his left hand on his belt, his right hand casually tucked behind her waist--he's the Korean Stetson man. She's rocking the stylish specs and hip handbag, and her expression says she's not playing second fiddle.
Seeing this photo I just feel like going shopping.
June 28, 2008
Dream portrait assignment
If I were Annie Leibovitz, or Richard Avedon, or some other photographer to the stars, and I was offered the opportunity to shoot any TV characters, I'd want to photograph Jamie Hector, Gbenga Akinnagbe, and Felicia Pearson, AKA Marlo Stanfield, Chris Partlow, and Snoop from The Wire.
Just three fantastic faces.
June 27, 2008
Interview with Guillermo del Toro
[via thesetoday from many days ago] Interview with Guillermo del Toro as Hellboy II is just around the corner.
And he has retained a highly contagious passion for every aspect of filmmaking. He refuses to start using a 2nd unit camera team, preferring to oversee every shot with trusty cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who has shot all of his movies.
On projects he hopes to shoot in the future:
And if you’re very lucky he’ll show you his constant companion, a dog-eared notebook stuffed with intricate sketches of past, present and future films. Highlights include demon drawings from Mephisto’s Bridge (a 15-year-old del Toro script about a Faustian doppleganger) recycled into Hellboy II; and concept art for dream projects like satanic Sherlock Holmes mystery The List of 7 and H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains Of Madness, about the discovery of a lost civilisation in Antarctica.
Pages from his scrapbook related to Hellboy II are online.
On the connection between his childhood and his choice of material:
I saw my first corpse at four, I worked next door to a morgue as a teenager, I’ve had guns put to my head and seen people killed in front of me. That’s why I turned down directing Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban and The Chronicles Of Narnia – I don’t understand youth because I’ve never had one.
Hellboy II closes the LA Film Festival tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it as he's a consummate visual stylist.
June 25, 2008
New Yorker caption contests
Many on the web dismiss the New Yorker caption contest entries as neither funny nor clever, but I can never think of any good ones, even though the contenders selected each week seem obvious in hindsight.
Wanted, in the rear view mirror
It's taken me many days after seeing Wanted at last week's opening night gala at the LA Film Festival to jot down my thoughts here, and that probably says enough. It wasn't fun enough to spur me to rave about it immediately, but to pick on Timur Bekmambetov's latest movie for thin to little character development or logic seems as insightful as grousing over the poor gas mileage in a Hummer. But still...
I saw Night Watch at the Tribeca Film Festival a couple years back, and I entered that movie and left that movie feeling the same things I felt going into and coming out of Wanted:
Going in: "Ooh, that looks like fun!"
Coming out: "Ehh."
Bekmambetov's specialty might be termed visual rococo. What might be simple and direct becomes, in Bekmambetov's hands, overelaborate and extravagant. There's a place for a director like that in this ever-escalating war for the summer blockbuster to end all summer blockbusters. In a movie about assassins, for example, it's not enough to have men in trenchcoats flying in slow motion across the screen, a handgun blazing in each hand, doves soaring out towards the sky like refugees from a magician's dressing room. John Woo has covered that ground, and then some.
Fanboys are always looking for new visual excess in their summer fare, and Bekmambetov and the screenwriters pull out a few new tricks. Bullets curve as shooters whip their guns with a lateral motion, almost like tennis rackets or frisbees, as they fire. Not one kill occurs in real time. The frame rate ramps from molasses-like slow motion to hyper speed, and back again, all the better to showcase bullets tearing through flesh and exploding fireworks of blood.
There's no doubting his visual ambition, but if only someone could bridle it towards the service of directed storytelling. I'd like to spoil the story for you, but that would imply that one existed. If the premise is tough to swallow even when explained in the arresting baritone of Morgan Freeman, that's a sign not to try. I'll only note that it involves binary code and weaving and an ancient league of assassins called The Fraternity and...oh, forget it. Did you know Angelina Jolie rises out of a hot tub in the nude? Not animated Angelina Jolie, either, like in Beowulf.
Jolie playing a foxy assassin named, well, Fox. Fortunately. She has few lines but spends much of the movie with the hint of what on most mortals would be called a smirk playing at the edge of her world class lips, but in her case it's either a hint of bemused delight at the wilting power of her sexuality on the men around her or some variation of the smile on the Mona Lisa. Watching her stride across the screen is like watching a tiger pacing or listening to the low growl of Italian sports car engine purring in first gear.
Perhaps it's fruitless to think a summer action movie can excel at engaging both the teenage groin and the adult brain, but then again, Angelina Jolie can go from sex symbol to human rights ambassador with one flight in her private jet. As Brad Pitt can attest, sometimes you can have it all.
June 24, 2008
Where the Hell is Matt?
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
[via Uncrate] Girl Talk has a new album out. Like all the cool kids are doing, Girl Talk lets you name your own price for 320Kbps MP3s. Pay more and you get more, like an option for FLAC files at $5 and an actual packaged CD at $10 (packaged CDs! how quaint and retro!).
His previous album, Night Ripper, was one long mashup of all sorts of popular tunes into one long danceable French bread loaf, and I suspect his new album is similar.
iPhone 3G pricing
Much has been made about the fact that the new iPhone 3G, while having a retail price much lower than the original iPhone ($199 versus $599 for the original iPhone or $399 price for the current equivalent model), has a monthly data plan rate much higher (I pay $20 a month now for unlimited data and 200 text messages, and the equivalent plan on the new 3G will cost $35 a month).
But the truth is, if Apple's goal is to drive up the volume of unit sales, this pricing scheme is great. People hear $199 and that's what they fixate on, not on the monthly bill which will chip away at their wallet over many months. Lowering the retail price of the handset while jacking up the monthly fees is smart pricing strategy.
I personally haven't decided whether to upgrade to the new model, but I have no doubt that millions of first-time buyers will find the new handset pricing just the reason to jump in. Apple set fire to the Motorola house and shattered some windows at the Blackberry mansion, and now, with this new pricing, they've returned with gasoline and a bazooka.
Encounters at the End of the World
On Saturday night, I saw Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World at the LA Film Festival (the end credits dedicate the movie to Roger Ebert). Whether you enjoy Herzog's movies, especially his documentaries, depends quite a bit on whether you appreciate his world view. To steal some words from Bogdanovich, you see a Herzog movie, you know "who the devil made it."
This, his latest documentary, is a meandering account of Herzog's journey to Antarctica to understand what type of person goes down to the end of the world. Given a grant by the National Science Foundation, Herzog warned that he would not be going down to shoot another movie about "cute, furry penguins" but instead was curious about, among other issues, why men domesticated horses while he had yet to see a chimp or monkey riding a goat. Or something like that. It's not surprising, Herzog's attraction to people who'd choose to live and work in the extreme conditions of Antarctica. Give me your bold, your insane, your ambitious, and your bizarre, those living on the edge: that has always been Herzog's fascination.
If there were the equivalent of typefaces for voices, I'd pay an unbelievably high number for that of Herzog. Of course, it's not just his thick German accent but also his severe and often dour outlook on the world that combine to form one of the more distinctive voices in film. In one scene, as a linguistics expert speaks on screen, the audio fades out and Herzog's voiceover comes in over the image of that man speaking. Herzog muses that during the time that he listened to the man speaking, some three languages likely died out in the world. Another time, as a woman speaks on screen, the audio fades out, and Herzog chimes on: "Her story went on forever."
Much of the humor of the movie is in such directorial asides. On landing at Antarctica, his first stop is Camp McMurdo, of which he notes "contained abominations such as an aerobics classes and yoga studio."
When he does visit a small colony of penguins, his attention is drawn, naturally, towards the same odd behavior he seeks out in men. He asks the local naturalist who has been studying the penguins if he has noticed any signs of derangement in the penguins. Confused, the naturalist notes that he hasn't seen any penguins bashing their heads against the rocks. But Herzog has the last laugh as he spots one penguin heading off in the wrong direction, towards the mountains, and towards certain gloom, a point Herzog makes with a tone of utter satisfaction.
At movie's end, when Herzog seizes on a message of impending environmental doom and the extinction of humanity, it's almost so conventional as to be surprising. But the real unifying theme is a common quality in all the people he encounters there. They are all dreamers, but the type who've gone as far away from the rest of civilization as they can, and when they can go no further, they find themselves together, at the South Pole.
June 23, 2008
The itch, oh, the itch
Atul Gawande writes in this week's New Yorker about the science behind itching. Timely, for me, as my leg, encased in the cast for several weeks now, has started to itch with a vengeance. Any area of my leg that can be reached by a disassembled wire coat hanger has been explored, but there are areas that are not reachable in this tight cast.
Is it preferable to the pain I felt earlier? Perhaps, for relief can be had, however briefly, by scratching. But I'm reminded of this Montaigne quote from the article:
Scratching is one of the sweetest gratifications of nature, and as ready at hand as any, But repentance follows too annoyingly close at its heels.
Many a moment at work or at home, I attempt random mental exercises designed to distract myself from the itching, but meditation backfires. It clears the mind and leaves nothing but an blinding spotlight on the itching.
Two Thursdays ago, I visited the doctor to have my cast reset again. This time, Carl, the male nurse who specialized in the business of adjusting and replacing the casts of patients at this orthopedic office at UCLA, was going to try to bring my foot up to a neutral 90 degree angle with my leg. My foot was about 20 degrees off. If he could get me to 90 degrees, I'd wear this cast for an entire month before my shift to a soft boot. If he couldn't get me to 90 degrees, I'd have to visit again in two weeks for another recasting.
The previous recasting was excruciating. This time my foot was so close to neutral already that I hoped for an easier go of it. To keep myself in a positive frame of mind, I tried engaging Carl in cheerful small talk as he sawed off my cast. I asked him about the history of Achilles tendon repairs, trying to give him opportunities to share his expertise.
Dear reader, you will either be filled with a joyous schadenfreude or consumed with empathic terror when I tell you that it was to no avail. When Carl placed a board on my foot and then leaned against it with all of his 300 pound weight to pry my foot up, I experienced what I am near certain was the most violent, unbearable pain of my life. I screamed and nearly flew off of the table on which I lay on my belly. It felt as if my Achilles tendon tore again.
For those who don't know what that feels like, the closest analogy I can summon is that if you were trying to do the splits but could not because you were not flexible enough, and Shaquille O'Neal came along and jumped onto your shoulders and caused you to drop into the full split position with a sudden tearing of your groin and leg muscles, that comes close to simulating the pain I felt as Carl threw his weight into that board again and again.
Carl, who had seemed mildly pleasant during small talk, reverted to the unsympathetic brute I'd come to know my previous visit. As I grunted in pain, he grunted in mockery and chided me, "Stop squirming away."
So once again, I had to call on friends to drive me home as the pain was unbearable. This time around, Carl warned me that with these last twenty degrees, I'd experience not only several days of pain but occasional muscle spasms.
"If I were you," he cautioned, "I'd take my pain meds regularly, and I don't recommend missing a cycle."
Before heading home, and even once there, I popped Vicodin like they were breath mints. This cured none of the pain but left me with an overpowering nausea that caused me to throw up in the afternoon.
A day later, I was on a plane to Chicago for a wedding. Thankfully, the leg spasms left me after one night. However, I do not recommend flying coach when recovering from an Achilles rupture. Actually, I don't recommend flying coach in general, it is one level above traveling as cargo, and I mean that literally, as your luggage is beneath you in the plane's belly. It may be that there is more leg room in the cargo hold, and more than once I thought of asking if that was a possibility.
As for right at this moment, why am I up at 2 in the morning the night before the work week begins? Because of an itch I can't reach in my cast. I was going to note that this should be an add-on circle to Hell, but it turns out it's already earned a spot there.
Itching is a most peculiar and diabolical sensation. The definition offered by the German physician Samuel Hafenreffer in 1660 has yet to be improved upon: An unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch. Itch has been ranked, by scientific and artistic observers alike, among the most distressing physical sensations one can experience. In Dante’s Inferno, falsifiers were punished by “the burning rage / of fierce itching that nothing could relieve”
June 21, 2008
An age old question
What happens when an ambidextrous pitcher faces a switch-hitter? Confusion.
Things got a tad dizzying when designated hitter Ralph Henriquez, who had taken his on-deck circle swings as a lefty, entered the batter's box from the right side.
Venditte put his specially made glove (it has six fingers, two webs and fits on both hands) on his left hand, and got ready to pitch right-handed.
Henriquez then changed his mind and switched sides of the plate, because a batter sees the ball sooner when it is thrown by a pitcher using the opposite hand.
So Venditte shifted his glove to the other hand.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And again.
Apparently unsure of how the rules handle such an oddity, the umpires didn't stop the cat-and-mouse game until Venditte walked toward the plate and said something while pointing at Henriquez.
Umpires and both managers huddled and the umps decided the batter and pitcher can both change sides one time per at-bat, and that the batter must declare first.
The ruling favored the pitcher, since he gets to declare last.
June 18, 2008
Wanted
If you're wondering what kind of movie Wanted will be, these few excerpts will make it clear:
I'm seeing it tomorrow night as it opens the L.A. Film Festival. If nothing else, it looks to feature Angelina Jolie as a taciturn, moody, sexy assassin, which, all things being equal, tends to be how I prefer them.
Time's 50 Best Websites of 2008
Hulu is listed in Time's 50 Best Websites of 2008. If you're a fan, you can help us out by going there and placing a vote for Hulu (you have to score us on a scale of 1 to 100). They rank sites based on average rating. It's not the most scientific method, but a bit of PR never hurts. Even if you aren't a fan, you'll likely find some sites of interest in the list.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Day 3 of Hulu Days of Summer brings one of my favorite movies ever.
June 16, 2008
Lost in Translation
We're launching a summer event at Hulu. Every weekday through mid-August, we're going to add something great to the site. We add videos everyday, but for this event we've gone out and pushed for some extra special content. We have an RSS feed for this event for you RSSegetarians.
First up? Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Enjoy!
By the way, isn't it only a matter of time before some scenes of Scarlett Johansson in this movie are mashed-up with footage of Barack Obama? Seems like Obama Girl's got some competition.
June 14, 2008
R.I.P. Tim Russert
I read the news as I was waiting to board my flight to Chicago today, and it felt as if a beloved uncle had passed away.
June 11, 2008
Unaccustomed Earth
These days, I don't have as much time to read as I'd like. It's mostly a few stolen moments each night before passing out. So for me to finish a piece of fiction means it has to surpass great obstacles, namely my physical fatigue and attention-deficit disorder.
I enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, missed her follow-up novel The Namesake (and now if I ever read it all my mind will be fixated on the image of Kumar as the lead character, damn you Hollywood movie trailers), but picked up her latest collection of semi-linked short stories, Unaccustomed Earth.
It is superb. It is about the Indian-American experience, but it is also about the Asian-American experience, and about the American experience. Like the best of books, it is both specific and universal.
McSweeneys recommends us
Hulu made McSweeney's Recommends. It's one of those high fives that means more because it's a reference I often visit.
Yes, I recommend McSweeney's Recommends, which I guess makes it a meta recommendation.
June 10, 2008
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report
Full episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are now available on Hulu.
Because I always seem to be at the office these days when these two shows air, and because I heart Stewart and Colbert in ways some States would consider illegal, it's a happy day for me. Yes, it's the 21st century and my news coverage of choice comes from two satires. Don't be scared. It may not look the way you thought it would, but this is progress.
Here's Stewart on McCain's speech from last Wednesday, the day of the final Democratic primary. Whereas Obama gave a rousing speech to thousands of screaming fans, McCain...well, I'll let Jon take you through it.
And here are the most recent episodes of the two shows, from last night.
June 6, 2008
Bluetooth headsets
With a new law banning cell phone use while driving unless you're using a headset going into effect in California shortly, and with renewed suspicions of the dangers of cell phone radiation on the brain, it's time for me to take the plunge and purchase a Bluetooth headset. I had one early model a few years ago but lost it.
I hate the look of Bluetooth headsets in the ear, they look like props from some bad sci-fi movie, but they're more attractive than being thrown through your own windshield or having a tumor growing out the side of your head.
There are nearly 800 results in Amazon's wireless accessory store if you search "bluetooth headset." So tell me, dear readers, what headset do you recommend?
I think in maybe 10 years I'll short a bunch of cell phone manufacturer stocks as a hedge against brain cancer.
SomethingStore
I decided to take a roll of the dice with SomethingStore.com since I'd read so much about it recently. Mail in $10 and receive a mystery item through the mail.
I ended up with an ugly Made in China pocketwatch, one that, had I purchased it in China, would have cost 10 cents. I guess if they were all winners it wouldn't be much of a business.
Drinky drinky
"New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging"
The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.
I'm skeptical. The amounts tested on rats are always ridiculously high. However, that note about four glasses of wine a day is a dangerously seductive nugget to throw out there. If your liver doesn't fail first, maybe you'll enjoy a few extra years of sobriety to compensate for the earlier percentage of life spent in a drunken stupor.
June 4, 2008
Remains of last weekend
I had my leg cast swapped out last week. When I walked into the office, the nurse who admitted me took one look at my leg and recoiled in shock.
"What the hell kind of angle is your foot set at?" he asked. My foot was pointed straight down, like a ballet dancer on point.
"I don't know! I woke up from surgery and my foot was set that way," I said, suddenly concerned.
"Man oh man," he said, shaking his head. "That's the most severe angle I've ever seen."
The guy who was responsible for recasting me looked like Milton from Office Space but about 200 pounds heavier. He had an exasperated "seen-it-all" weariness about him, as if he wished this train of patients with ruptured Achilles would stop appearing in his office but knew that it wouldn't. He looked at me and shook his head, and I felt judged, guilty of some hubris that had led me to this sorry state.
To remove the cast, he pulled out a small handheld circular saw and made two cuts from top to bottom on either side of my leg. The saw blade protruded about an inch, and my cast looked to be about an inch thick, so when Milton put saw to cast I strained as hard as possible to push my leg as far away from the blade as possible. I was terrified, and my leg cowered against the opposite side of the cast. Milton didn't seem concerned and pulled the blade straight down with an almost bored nonchalance.
He pried the cast off, and for the first time in weeks, I saw my leg. There was a four inch wound running up the back of my leg from my heel, stitched together with black thread in a cross-hatched pattern.
The surgeon came in, took a look, said the wound looked to be healing fine, and left. Milton asked him about the crazy angle of my foot, but he replied that my wound was healing and that was the important thing.
Milton had my lie on my belly, and then he rubbed some local anesthesia on my wound. Just as I started to feel it burn, he began (I think) removing my stitches. It felt as if someone was putting a soldering iron to my ankle, and I bit my arm to stomach the searing pain.
Then it came time to pry my foot up partway towards the normal 90 degree angle that feet are at when you stand normally. There was only one problem: after two weeks of being pointed down, my foot did not want to come back up. Milton asked me to try pulling it up myself, but despite urgent messages from my brain, my foot did not move.
I couldn't see Milton over my shoulder, but I pictured the slightest of grins on his lips as he grabbed my foot and a board of some sort and pried my foot up.
I let out a grunt as a violent pain shot up my leg. He continued to pry, I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. If someone had walked in on us, it would've looked like a UFC fight, with Milton trying to break my foot to get me to tap out.
I didn't submit, but Milton did notice that I was in pain.
"You think this hurts? I just pulled your foot up like 20 degrees. Next time I'm pulling it up the rest of the way, like 40 degrees. You better take some painkillers before you come in." And then he cackled maniacally: "Bwahahahahaha!"
Okay, he didn't cackle. But after seeing the beautiful nurses in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I can't lie, the walrusian Milton was a bit of a letdown.
I hobbled out of Milton's torture chamber with a new, slim cast on my leg but in enormous pain. I sat in the waiting room and immediately inhaled two Vicodin, which I hadn't touched in a week and a half.
The best thing to come out of this office visit was obtaining my doc's signature on a form authorizing me for a temporary handicapped parking placard. I mailed that off to the California DMV as soon as I got back to the office.
Milton, we will meet again soon, but I will be bringing my two friends, Percocet and Vicodin.
***
Amputees sometimes experience phantom limb. There's an analogous videogame sensation. Whenever I hear a song from Rock Band on the radio, I feel a phantom guitar in my hands and see green, blue, yellow, red, and orange notes dropping from the sky.
***
After trashing his teammates in the preseason, Kobe Bryant goes and says he stayed with the Lakers because he tweaked his leadership to instill his teammates with his DNA. Arrogant, yes, but also maybe not the best thing to say given his, uh, personal history, both past and present.
***
Yes, the Lakers have Zen master Phil Jackson as coach, but let's not forget that Doc Rivers has the Celtics shouting "Ubuntu!" coming out of every huddle. Open source operating system? That seems pretty zen to me.
***
Sometimes it feels like the web is too big. Look at this list of sites of "Top 60 music websites that deliver the greatest free music."
60 sites! I'd be more than happy with, say, 10, but to be honest I probably use maybe 3.
***
Now that I'm on crutches, and now that a temporary handicapped permit is on its way to me in the mail, I flash dirty looks at any non-handicapped person I catch coming out of the handicapped stall in the bathroom.
If I hadn't had to pee so badly after the Indiana Jones screening that morning it opened, I would've stayed around until I caught whoever had occupied the handicapped stall at the Hollywood Arclight.
Speaking of the new Indiana Jones movie, I've read a lot of fans of the new Indy movie who dismiss anyone who didn't like the movie as elitist. Sorry, but those people are wrong.
I don't care if you did like the movie, but don't tell me about summer popcorn flicks. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great summer popcorn flick. This latest Indy flick...cost me three hours and $11.
***
This is old, but still worth posting. Chris Matthews obliterates a right-wing lunatic on TV. One of Matthews' finer moments.
June 3, 2008
Kobe vs. MJ
Bill Simmons, in his ESPN chat this week:
Grant (Chicago): Can someone put an end to all the "Kobe is as good as MJ talk." Kobe wins one championship (i'm assuming the Lakers win) without Shaq and he's all of a sudden as good as MJ? I don't get it, Kobe hasn't even had one season that would crack any of MJ's top 10. Not to mention that Kobe isn't mentally tough enough to have gotten through those physical eastern conference playoffs in the 90s.
Bill Simmons: It's such an absurd argument that it's not even worth writing about. Kobe has shown flashes of MJ-dom, and he definitely dipped into those waters in the playoffs, but Jordan played at that level for 10 solid years, and he was doing it during an era when players got pounded and they didn't have the hand-check rules. I have written this before but I honestly believe that, if the MJ from '87 to '93 played with the rules in place from '05 to '08, he would have averaged 45 a game
John Hollinger, in his ESPN chat today:
david I (manhattan): How many total titles with this current roster will it take to truly put Kobe in the same sentence with MJ and not get many arguments?
John Hollinger: At least three. Possibly more. I'm sorry, but I just want to puke anytime somebody compares a contemporary player to Jordan. There's no comparison at all. That's no disrespect to Kobe, who will likely go down as the second-best SG of all time. But MJ was absurdly good.
There are people who think Kobe is MJ's equal or superior. Those people don't know anything about basketball.
Game over
Longer than the 3OT Penguins-Red Wings game last night, the Obama-Clinton battle finally comes to a close, with Obama claiming the Democratic nomination. Every one is ready to move on, except Hillary, who still has not conceded.
But I'm going to crack open a bottle of the good stuff tonight and celebrate. I would've loved to have been there for Obama's speech tonight. Even reduced to a small web video window, Obama's speech gave me goosebumps. Contrasting his speech with McCain's speech tonight isn't like comparing apples to oranges, because it would give McCain's performance too much credit to place him in the the same food category.
These are the two candidates I wanted running against each other in the Presidential election, but, well, you know where I stand on the ultimate outcome. Ironically, McCain would prove most formidable and interesting an opponent if he reverted to the McCain of old, the one David Foster Wallace covered in the 2000 Election. But that day has passed.
June 2, 2008
The Recruiter
One of the projects I worked on when at The Edit Center in NYC is making it on air this summer as part of HBO's Documentary Films Series. Directed by MacArthur Fellowship winner Edet Belzberg, The Recruiter introduces us to Sergeant First Class Clay Usie, one of the most effective Army recruiters working in America, and four of the teenagers he recruits into the U.S. Army.
My classmates and I edited some of the early footage into scenes which our instructors assembled into a rough cut. One of our instructors, Adam Bolt, went on to be one of the two editors on the documentary.
I first saw the final cut of the documentary at Sundance in January. Having worked on the project, I'm biased, of course, but I really feel like it is that rare documentary that, in this day and age, presents a very balanced view of a topic that could easily devolve into either a liberal or conservative sermon.
It's also the first movie project I've worked on in which I have an official credit, as an additional editor, so it holds a special place in my heart.
Fiction issue
This week the Fiction Issue of The New Yorker arrives, and in it are new short stories from Nabokov and Tobias Wolff and George Saunders, among others. I look forward to getting my print copy, which, now that I live in LA, never seems to arrive as quickly as I'd like. In NYC you receive it on Monday, but in LA it usually comes on Wednesday.
And yes, the issue contains Anthony Lane's review of Sex and the City, a review written in the blood he seemed to have coughed up during the screening he attended. I'm not always in the mood for Lane's reviews, which can seem more like vehicles for him to tune his own voice than to delve into the merits of the film, but this one is a keeper. Yes, the movie will make its millions regardless of its critical skewering, but the movie Lane describes (and which I have not seen) sounds like a feminist disaster, which one would not have said of the TV show, at least the episodes from earlier seasons which I've seen.