Pauline Kael Film critic Pauline

Pauline Kael

Film critic Pauline Kael passed away today at age 82. She is without a doubt the greatest film critic of all time. She had Parkinson's Disease and hadn't published any reviews since 1991, though every week I wish I could find out what she thought of the movies just released. She's the type of critic whose opinions you would adopt as your own if you agreed with her, and if you didn't agree with her, you'd still lose some faith in your own opinion.
If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to try and track down some of the collections of her reviews. Unfortunately, most of them are out of print, but you can find many used copies on the Internet. If you just want one, For Keeps is probably the wisest choice as it includes reviews from all of her previous collections.
She wrote reviews that were works of art themselves, elevating criticism to its highest form. You'd probably never see her reviews in newspaper ads today, except perhaps for arthouse films, because she would not write the type of trite sound bites studios favor--"Best thriller of the year!". For example, she wrote of Woody Allen, in her review of Sleeper: "He has the city-wise effrontery of a shrimp who began by using language to protect himself and then discovered that language has a life of its own... The tension between his insecurity and his wit makes us empathize with him; we, too, are scared to show how smart we feel." Yes, of course!
Film buffs love her because she saw through not only the trashy blockbusters but also pretentious art films. At times, she'd admit that she had enjoyed a film with obvious flaws, and you'd be relieved that someone else was able to articulate your guilty pleasure. Other critics today, when they review classic films like Last Tango in Paris, will always reference Kael's original review. No other critic today has her pull among film lovers, critics, directors, and actors.
Among her more memorable reviews were those dismissing films like The Sound of Music and Dances with Wolves. She was fortunate to review movies during the 70's, the golden age for filmmaking in the twentieth century. She would probably be disappointed with most of the studio movies today.
Some random writings from around the web:
--Roger Ebert, a big Kael fan, looked back at her life today.
--On Ain't It Cool News, her passing was first reported by a contributor nicknamed Butt Monkey.
--An interview with Kael in Modern Maturity, in which she reveals, among other interesting opinions, that she likes Jim Carrey.
--A whole slew of remembrances at Salon, from Stephanie Zacharek to Ken Tucker to Charles Taylor
--Nothing from The New Yorker, though.
Digression--Roger Ebert writes of Lawrence of Arabia: "As for ''Lawrence,'' after its glorious re-release in 70mm in 1989, it has returned again to video, where it crouches inside its box like a tall man in a low room. You can view it on video and get an idea of its story and a hint of its majesty, but to get the feeling of Lean's masterpiece you need to somehow, somewhere, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film."
I was fortunate enough to see a 70mm print of it at Seattle's Cinerama back when that theater opened, in 1999(?). I saw a midnight showing that got out at around 4am. I fell asleep briefly after the intermission, but it entered my mind like a rich, potent dream.

Age

So they found out Danny Almonte, the "Little Unit," was actually 14 instead of 12. I have little to add to the ethical discussion, but I can say this having played Little League. At that point in life, a 2 year age difference is massive. Little League is organized so that every two years, you move up one league, and each level is named after a type of horse. The leagues progress as follows:
AGE BASEBALL SOFTBALL
5 - 6 T-Ball PeeWee
7 - 8 Pinto Division I A
9 - 10 Mustang Division I
11 - 12 Bronco Division II
13 - 14 Pony Division III
15 - 17 Colt League.
I played T-ball to Pony, and I can attest that the 2nd year players in each league were always far superior to the 1st year players. At that age, physical skills mature quickly, and I always had banner years my 2nd year in each league, while struggling in my first year at the next level.
That doesn't explain away all his accomplishments, because he still has filthy stuff for even a fourteen year old, but if he was the same age as all the other kids, he would not have thrown all those perfect games, I'm fairly certain of that.

Journalist

Anyone relying on journalists for their news, which is most of us, need to remember the context from which they report, the types of people in the business, and how they interact with athletes. Of course, it's understandable to want to shy away from tough questions. Back in college, I worked on the school newspaper for a few months, and my first assignment was to interview a wide receiver for the Cardinal. He started opposite another receiver who was catching a lot more passes, making a lot more yards. I asked him a series of tough questions, and this guy, who was 6' 4" and built like steel pipes, glared at me, said "I don't like these questions," and my interview was over.
It's pretty tough to be a critic when you're, let's say, a local sports reporter, if you need access to athletes for interviews. Or a movie critic who depends on studios for advance screenings. Book critics have it easy, as they can grab a copy from their local bookstore and don't necessarily have to meet the authors. Book reviews don't have to be as timely as movie reviews, either. Of course, the whole feud between Tom Wolfe and John Irving is wildly entertaining for all of us on the sidelines.
Local newspapers and local television news are a complete waste of time. In this day and age, when you can pick and choose your news sources from across the web or across cable TV, feed your mind something better. My picks:
--Roger Ebert, The New Yorker, Entertaiment Weekly for movie reviews (if only the ghost of Pauline Kael could screen films from the movie theater way on high)
--Motley Fool for financial news
--Sportsjones (which Nate just introduced me to) for sports coverage
--Rob Neyer, Baseball Prospectus for baseball commentary and analysis
--Entertainment Weekly for general entertainment news, though I prefer the print edition to the online version
--Salon for general discussion of American pop culture
--I use a variety of sources for news--CNN(general), CNET (for technology), Slashdot (more opinionated tech coverage)
I'm sure I'm missing some. It doesn't have quite the same charm as the newspaper tossed onto the front doorstep every morning in time for coffee and eggs and bacon, but it's a richer, healthier dose of ideas.

Next must-have gizmos

I am a gadget freak. People are always asking me what I think of this or that gadget. In the back of my mind I keep a running wishlist of must-have gadgets. What's there now?
A digital camera that achieves similar image quality to, say, Fuji Velvia 35mm film. Once that accepts regular lenses and costs the same as a 35mm camera body--use of my regular camera lenses would allow me to get much better zoom than the wimpy zooms on current cameras. 25 megapixel CCDs (equivalent to 400 speed film). That's not to say I don't think current digital cameras are good buys. Today, for the casual photographer, I think a digital camera is a better choice than an APS camera. In a few years, I would not recommend any casual photographer buy a 35mm camera, not with the quality and convenience of a digital camera. I'm waiting for a medium format quality digital camera. It will be a few years.
A PDA that is also a cell phone. Must have built in synching to my regular Microsoft applications, like my Outlook address book. WAP enabled. Those new Palm and Handspring devices won't get us there. That Sanyo phone and Kyocera Palm phone get us closer. It will be here soon. I will be able to scrap my Palm Pilot, which I hardly use because it won't synch to Outlook without additional software which I refuse to pay for.
A DVD recorder that's compatible with all DVD drives on computers and DVD players. Re-writable DVDs. Built in PVR. Web surfing optional. Dual tuners. Component outputs. The ability to record Dolby Digital or other digital surround sound formats would be a real bonus. Ability to record hi-def video signals. Some of these are available today, but none have all these features at once. Basically, this would replace my VCR and my PVR. If you can build a satellite dish decoder into it as well, all the better.
DVD-RW drives in every computer. Same as in your DVD Recorder so that anything you record on one can be ported over to the other. Let's just replace all the current recording media (CD-RW, CD-R, floppy disk, zip disks) with DVD-RW.
Combination SACD/DVD-Audio/DVD player with progressive scan. Software and modular card upgradeable. Capable of handling multi-channel SACD.
Wireless LAN in the home.
That new Bang and Olufsen Beocom 2 phone, when it comes out in the U.S.
HDTV--why people insist on 4:3 TVs is beyond me. You'd hate to go to a movie theater and watch a movie on just the center third of the screen. Why is television any different? Totally irrational. HDTV rocks, but unfortunately silly U.S. standards battles mean it won't take off for a while.
True anamorphic PAL camcorder at less than $3000.

Back in my day...

All parents have their "back in my day we used to hike to school through a snake-infested rain forest" stories. Well, I realized I am already at the age where stories like that suggest themselves to me. I read an Amazon introduction for a graphing calculator that read "for students in math and sciences" and realized that most students in high school today punch in equations on calculators to visualize the graphs. Well, back in my day, we had to buy graph paper, draw out x and y axes, and plot out points by hand. I always thought I was cooler than other kids because I bought graph paper with the really fine grids, while everyone else had monstrous grids and would have to turn in twenty page problem sets while I could draw these microscopic graphs and fit 6 on a page.
Tori Amos is touring with Rufus Wainwright this summer. Now that's a show I'll have to catch. I thought to myself the other day, gosh, I'd love to see Michael Jackson and Madonna in concert before they retire. But it might already be too late. Just one of those things you have to do so you don't have any regrets late in life. Like missing Radiohead this summer.
Good article by those Fools about the social implications of high
Powerball sweepstakes. Among the facts revealed, not surprisingly, is that people with lower income and education levels spend a much greater percentage of their annual income on lottery tickets. The sad thing, to me, is not the financial stupidity of doing so, but all the unfulfilled, desperate hope represented by those thousands of losing tickets. Nothing rational about that--economic man, meet poor man who wants a life on easy street.
Infobeat's new Entertainment e-mail forces you to open web browser windows to read the majority of the articles in their newsletter now. They used to include most of the text from their articles in the e-mail itself. I really don't like the new format.
Worse even than pop-under ads: new ads which display on top of your browser window and can't be closed. If you try and click on the ad to get ride of it (your first instinct, of course), you inadvertently click through on the ad. A few sites have shown these to me now, and I think it's pure evil. What marketers see is high click-thru rates from befuddled, panicked browsers. What they don't realize is that they have crossed a line. The great thing about browsing the web is the total control you have over your browsing experience. When that control is removed, we become very, very perturbed. Upset, even. If I were watching West Wing and suddenly an advertisement appeared on top of Martin Sheen as he gave a speech, would I be thankful for having been introduced to whatever it is that was being plugged? So why is the web any different? Just goes to show the web is populated with as many short-sighted, idiotic marketers as the offline world. So Toyota can take its damn new car, The Matrix, and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Finally booked some vacation time with the family. Bought my plane ticket home to Chicago, and hopefully I'll catch a few Cubs games while I'm there as it will be the last series of the season. September is "spent time away from Seattle every weekend" month. It will be healthy, I think. Seattle and I have been living with each other for four years, now, and we know each other a bit too well. We need to spend time apart, decide if it's right for the two of us.
I'm a firm believer in customization. You should be able to buy more things custom-made just for you. So if you're looking to treat yourself because gosh darn it, you've been working hard, I suggest the following, all of which can be tailored just for you:

• A BMW


• A Timbuk2 bag


• Serotta titanium bike


• White ash Louisville Slugger bat

Of course, James Bond is going back to drive an Aston Martin in his next film, which to me is the right thing to do. BMW's are great and all, but come on. This is James Bond we're talking about.
I remember when my mom bought me a personalized white ash Louisville Slugger, 33 inches. She had visited the factory while following my sister's band down to the Kentucky Derby. Hitting a baseball with a wood bat is one of the great pleasures in life. Everyone uses aluminum bats today, and the feel is completely unsatisfying.
I'm blabbering. I've not written much about myself recently. I think it's cowardice, the inability to face the truth. I'm spinning my wheels. When I get like this, I'm tempted to do drastic things.
You know, it's so damn hard to floss the far back molars. Is it just me?
In a concession to the lousy economy, I've taken to borrowing books (from the library, even!) again. So if you have a good book to loan me, I'll swap you. I've even started renting more movies off Netflix rather than purchasing them from Amazon. I've been putting half my paycheck back into Amazon, it's ridiculous.

The next new new thing

I've decided this week to figure out what the next new thing will be. I'm not sure yet, but I need a new course. Stay posted.
Decided to attend Rob's wedding after all, so all my weekends in September are now booked.
Surging through its fifth round in Japan, Spirited Away became the first foreign hit to cross $100 million this year, joining 12 U.S. titles.
Aaliyah died in a plane crash on Saturday. A twin engine Cessna. Strange, how much a celebrity death will affect me. I didn't even know her. Probably because a disproportionate number of celebrities or famous people fly in small planes like Cessnas and Gulfstreams, it seems like I read about one of those going down every few months.

A-ha

I was wondering why I couldn't see any Quicktime content in IE. Now I know. If you've experienced this problem, you can download an ActiveX control to solve the problem. Meanwhile, if you build a page that incorporates Quicktime, fix those links for your IE 5.5 SP2 and IE6 users. Those are probably customers who stay on top of new browsers, and are probably folks you'd want to keep.
So thankfully, I'm back to watching Quicktime trailers in IE. Iron Monkey is the next in the line of old Hong Kong martial arts flicks being re-packaged and released theatrically in the U.S. in the wake of the popularity of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and similarly re-purposed films by Jackie Chan. I watched the trailer and had to laugh at the obvious but likely effective way they market the film to a U.S. audience as compared to the way it was marketed in Asia back in 1993. Yuen Wo Ping is now the "acclaimed fight choreographer of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" when in fact he directed and choreographed Iron Monkey long ago. That's just how he's known to the general population here in the U.S. Also, they don't bother pointing out that the film stars a young Wong Fei Hung since likely only HK movie buffs would know him as the character brought to fame by Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time in China series and Jackie Chan in Drunken Master 2.
I'm feeling probably what lots of folks feel when some obscure band they've loved for years suddenly hits it big, but any exposure for Asian cinema is a good thing. Still, I don't consider Iron Monkey to be a classic--Yuen Woo Ping is a better fight choreographer than he is a director.
Trying to sleep right now as I have to rise at 5 a.m. to test some data feeds, but I have problems with conking out before 1 in the morning. I need to start riding again in the morning, or something.
This, from some newsletter I receive, filed under "one additional place besides Hard Rock to visit if single and in Las Vegas":
'COYOTE UGLY' BAR COMING TO LAS VEGAS
The NEW YORK, NEW YORK Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is set to get its own COYOTE UGLY Bar this fall. The southern-style saloon promises beautiful female bartenders who will perform wild shows ranging from fire-blowing to choreographed dance numbers atop the bar each night. A talent search for bartenders will be held throughout Nevada in September, culminating with a try-out event at NY, NY.
http://www.nynyhotelcasino.com
Well, Howie and Mark are now both headed to UCLA business school in a few weeks. I'm happy for them, but bummed I won't have a posse when I jaunt down to the Bay Area anymore. They've been there forever, it seems. Everyone I know is starting new things--new jobs, new projects, new lives with spouses, new apartments or houses, new cities. I alone remain exactly the same. I must channel Madonna and re-create myself. Should I put out a pop album? Change my wardrobe? Date someone scandalous?
Karen is off to Boston Saturday, and Joannie starts her clerkship the day after Labor Day. I still think of them as my younger sisters, so it's odd to think of them both now out in the real world, outside the classroom, with rents and paychecks. It's older brother syndrome.

the slob

I usually don't pay much attention to best dressed lists, but I liked how this one characterized the each of the top 10 with a character archetype.
EILIDH MacASKILL, fashion editor for Britain's DAILY EXPRESS newspaper, controversially omits style icons VICTORIA BECKHAM and LIZ HURLEY from the list, but justifies her choices by associating each star with an archetype.
The list reads:
1 KATE MOSS - the icon
2 CHLOE SEVIGNY - the independent
3 CATE BLANCHETT - the sophisticate
4 SARAH JESSICA PARKER - the label freak
5 PENELOPE CRUZ - the starlet
6 CAMERON DIAZ - the LA casual
7 SOFIA COPPOLA - the muse
8 RENEE ZELLWEGER - the vintage revivalist
9 CATHERINE ZETA JONES - the old-time glamour gal
10 SHARLEEN SPITERI - the tomboy
I should do that for my friends.

Dear Santa

I want a new DVD+RW drive and an Oxygen GVX420 graphics card and two Apple Cinema displays.
I've been a good boy. If you give these to me, I promise to make a movie for you on DVD.
Thank you.

Sun Fun Rain Pain

I am too much in the middle. The space between happy/fulfilled and sad/angry/bitter/hungry. There is no art in the middle. I need to choose which direction to go. I'm not much good in the middle. Mediocrity lies in the middle. Work me hard, or not at all. Put me in despair, or bliss. How many great artists weren't hungry? Okay, except for Haydyn (or was it Handel? I always forget). That's the thing about Seattle weather, it's usually grey, somewhere in the middle. I'd rather have pouring rain or bright sunshine. Blah. I currently have several directions I could follow to induce some self-hatred or disgust or bitterness. I just haven't had the gall to lock myself up with those demons. I skirt along the cliffs everyday, though. Like a scarecrow dancing around a log fire.
Tori Amos has a new album coming out, Strange Little Girls. She released some very low bit-rate versions of one of the songs, I Don't Like Mondays (listen in RealAudio or Windows Media), and it's nice. One of the more unique concert experiences these days is hearing just Tori and a grand piano, and she's returning to that for her upcoming tour. Tori inspires very respectful, adoring fans. It's an odd, peaceful experience.
The Standard is dead. I could do without the magazine, but too bad Media Grok will go down with it.
Interested in fiction? B.J. Myers wrote a long essay in the July/August 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly titled "A Reader's Manifesto: An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose." Unfortunately the article is not reprinted on the website, but I found it thought-provoking and suggest you pick it up if you have an interest in contemporary fiction. Among the others Myers criticizes are Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, David Guterson, Cormac McCarthy, and Annie Proulx. If you can't find the article, there is an interesting synposis and reaction to the article in of the essay in Salon in the Books section.
I agree with Myers that plenty of work by the folks above would not go down in history as classic, but I do enjoy some of the sentences they've spun, especially McCarthy. Proulx I haven't read, Guterson is nothing great, and DeLillo can be somewhat dry, but I loved All the Pretty Horses. The opening chapter of Underworld is brilliant. The rest is somewhat dull. I would agree with Myers that not many contemporary writers are the equal of writers from our past like Faulkner, Proust, Nabokov. And that good fiction need not be dull. And that winning a contemporary book award, like the National Book Award or the Booker Prize or the PEN/Faulkner is not guarantee of quality.
Still, Myers is right, much of modern fiction bores. That's why I keep returning to short fiction, where I don't think you make any tradeoffs between the quality of the prose and enjoyable storytelling. For longer works, instead of novels, try non-fiction, which may lack elegant or breathtaking prose, but whose stories amaze you simply because they're true. I'm reading The Informant, and it keeps me up late at night, not because it's great writing (it's solid, straightforward reporting), but because the story is so unbelievable.
If you want to just enjoy some good storytelling and some quality prose I suggest anything by Tobias Wolff. I list some of his works on my reading page.
I find books on tape amazing, thought it maybe because I've never really listened to one. How do they finish reading such long books in only a few cassette tapes? I must have a distorted sense of how long it takes to read some of these books, or they're reading significantly condensed versions of these stories.
I finally had some time this weekend to scan and post some more of my photos from Spain and Portugal. Some of them came out alright, though clearly a few times I got burned by forgetting to bring 400 speed print film for my Leica, or getting caught with slide film in my Nikon when I needed my Leica. From now on, I think the Leica will always have 400 speed print film. By the way, my Leica is pretty old school, and doesn't have much in the way of fancy features, like a zoom lens, etc. But it takes great shots, and I have a thing for old school mechanical and electronic devices.
I've decided I'm going to get a library card. So I can check out books like this one about mosquitoes and learn all the interesting facts it has to tell and then return it. My Visa needs a vacation from Amazon.

Origins of Dubya

The origin of 'Dubya'
From: usaweekend.com
Columnist Molly Ivins coined it in 1995; it's the spelled-out Texas-drawl version of Bush's middle initial (for "Walker"). Her editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tells us Ivins "owned 'Dubya' from the mid-'90s to 1999, then it caught on with everyone else." Well, not really everyone. Close friends call Bush "George W." His dad sometimes calls him "Quincy," a reference to John Quincy Adams, the only son of a president to become president. And almost everybody else calls him "Mr. President."

The Bothers

Now, I love upcomingmovies.com, but the ads it plasters all over the place are driving me nuts. Today, a giant ad for O popped up as if it was painted on top of the site. Of course, my idiotic reaction was to try and click on it to make it go away, popping open another browser window for the movie O. That really pissed me off in a way that only a computer can (like when your PC crashes while you're writing a paper and you haven't saved your work in a while).
When more than a few sources worth listening to buzz about the same thing, my ears perk up. Roger Ebert, Bean, and Memepool all sing the praises of Waking Life. Heard about it from the film fest circuit, and now the trailer is here, and damn if it isn't one of the
coolest trailers I've seen in a long time. In fact, my only complaint about the movie is the official website pops open about fifty browser windows on my computer. Pop under ads, especially X10 and credit card interest rate pop under ads, are driving me insane. I'm about to disable Javascript on my browser just to get rid of those damn things. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!
Just saw The Others, which was a fairly clever haunted house mystery suspense film. I won't discuss the movie, as I think half the fun in seeing it is trying to figure out what's going on, why things are going bump in the night. Strange that the official website is in Spanish (yes, the director is Spanish, but it's an English film). If they made this film about the web, the ghosts haunting us all would be those damn pop under ads. Someone out there needs to invent a free program that prevents X10 pop under ads from displaying on everyone's computers. Maybe Norton Antivirus can classify it as a virus and add an inoculation. I've seen software to prevent those pop unders, but it's not free. I deserve a pop-free web experience, damn it!

Four

I just realized that I totally missed my four year anniversary at Amazon.com. It passed last week. I can't believe I forgot about that. I think, and of course you can never be a truly objective observer of yourself, that this is healthy.
Four years is a good time for major life changes and evaluation--that's been the pattern since high school. Either you choose to change your life significantly, or life chooses for you.

Wide Web World

The web can be a dangerous place, as the Code Red worm demonstrated. But at times, it also connects people in the most unexpected, amazing ways. The world is so much smaller. I watched Wong Kar Wai's BMWFilm The Follow, was intrigued by the music, and tried like heck to track down the recording used in the movie. Turns out it wasn't off any commercially available CD. I even tried e-mailing the BMWFilms webmaster. Then tonight, I come home, and I have an e-mail from someone named Shiun, containing a link to the website of Jeff Rona where MP3 versions of the music were posted. Shiun had been searching for the music as well, come across my site, noted my interest, tracked it down, and dropped me the link. Cue the music from those Nortel Networks or Cisco commercials, with multi-cultural kids and monks and shepherds around the world connecting to each other through laptops. Yeah! Thanks Shiun. By the way, the music from The Follow, a rendition of the Cuban ballad Unicornio, is lovely. Check it out.
What is the X-files morphing into? Something different than the show I used to watch, for sure. Directors exert the greatest influence on a movie, in my opinion. Many TV shows are a bit different, though, as they seem to focus more on character and less on style. TV shows tend to establish a given style which deviates little over time, so while the style of the show is noticeable early on, eventually it fades into the background. The X-files style is fairly clear to all its fans by now, and I watched primarily to see how the characters Mulder and Scully evolved.
Now, with Mulder gone, a new cast of characters has joined the show. It's still a decent show, but it's not the one I loved in the old days. What used to be a can't miss show for me might not be this fall. The latest addition? Cary Elwes, of The Princess Bride fame.
"According to The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, Cary Elwes (Princess Bride) has signed on to a recurring role in FOX's THE X-FILES. Elwes, who makes his first appearance in the show's November 4th season premiere, will play FBI assistant director Brad Follmer, and the ex-boyfriend of the agent played by Annabeth Gish."
About a week ago, a former friend of Pete Rose came out and leveled some new accusations at him. Rose is still trying to get into the Hall of Fame, and as has been his style recently he defended himself vigorously. Generally, the public seems to be in favor of forgiving him and letting him into the Hall. Turns out the original report which led to his ban from the Hall is available online. I flipped through it, and it sure seems like Rose is guilty of betting on baseball and on the Reds. Sure, he was a very good baseball player, but I don't see how you can let someone who called into question the integrity of the game itself into the Hall. Seems like Rose should just admit his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of the powers that be, but that seems to run counter to his combative personality. The truth shall set you free, Pete.
Bill recently pointed this out to me: that song by Train, the one playing on the radio now, that sounds like a Counting Crow song? It has a line "the best soy latte you ever had". What?!? That will either be viewed as a nostalgic, time-capsule lyric by future generations or will help to relegate this song to the trash bin in three months. I'm guessing the latter.
Do you enjoy pop culture--movies, music, TV, general entertainment? If so, you should subscribe to Zentertainment's newsletter. Good compilation of news in the entertainment world. Some overlap with Ain't It Cool News on the movie front. For example, this interesting rumor:
WALKER TO WRITE WORLD'S FINEST MOVIE
DAILY VARIETY reports screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, Sleepy Hollow) has been hired to write an untitled live-action movie teaming up Superman and Batman. Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm) is attached to direct the WARNER BROS. film, and its expected that he'd cast George Clooney to play the Caped Crusader. There's no word on who would play the Man of Steel, but AINT IT COOL ran a crazy rumor over the weekend that John Travolta would be meeting with the studio today for it. WARNER BROS. also has producer Jon Peters developing a SUPERMAN film, Darren Aronofsky developing a BATMAN: YEAR ONE film, and Boaz Yakin developing a live-action BATMAN BEYOND movie.

Happy birthday Karen

It's Karen's birthday today. Happy birthday! Now get off the phone so I can wish you a happy birthday.
Ken and his friend Dan were in town all weekend, and the weather was perfect for their Seattle visit. Hadn't seen Ken in a while, and found out he's running the Chicago marathon. If only I'd known a bit earlier, I probably would've tried to run it with him. As it is, maybe I can make it back to accompany him the last 5 or 6 miles. That would be fun to train for. His resting heart rate is down to 48. I'm jealous.
Dan has a story to tell, too. He fell out of one of those hydraulic lifts while working a construction job. Four stories. He barely remembers any of it but did some serious damage. Ankle? Mangled. Femur punched through his pelvis. Torn ligaments in his arm. Crazy stuff. At the time he was training for a half ironman. They left this morning and are off to Yellowstone. They've been driving all over the country, having started in Chicago. I'd love to just hop in my car and trek off to see the country, too.
Read this in IMDb news today:
Tyra Banks is heading off to camp in the rugged mountains above Los Angeles - to boost the self-esteem of hordes of teenage girls. The supermodel-turned-actress will take 80 girls with her on the TZone retreat to address such issues as gender stereotyping, insecurities, self-esteem and relationships with the opposite sex. The retreat, which Tyra founded, is currently in its second year, and she now aims to expand to cities across the country. She says, "Last year I paid all the costs myself. This year there were a few donations, plus the $125,000 I won for TZone on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire has helped a lot. I've been so fortunate in my life, I'm anxious to help other girls. During our week-long sessions at camp, I tell them about everything from the use of make-up to the handling of hardships. Once I had a growth spurt of four inches and lost 40 pounds without dieting. I was laughed at and ridiculed. It's not politically incorrect to make skinny jokes - and for two or three years it was tough on me."
Not to knock the girl for lending a hand, but I'm not sure that story came off the way she would've wanted it to. Or maybe it's just me.
Cubbies dropped out of first place. =( Don Baylor is a lousy manager. He loves to criticize his players through the press. I'd hate to have him as my manager. Talk to me face to face. Don't spout off to a reporter. That's lousy.
You know what the problem with online news clips is? There are never any pictures. I wonder why.
Ars posted a thorough review of the new Microsoft Office XP. Enough cool new features to make me hope that they'll upgrade us to it at work, but also enough to make me realize I could never justify paying several hundred bucks for it to use at home. It's not that much better than Office 2000.
Saw the Gipsy Kings at Chateau Ste Michelle (a winery) on Saturday night. Had a great time with a big crew, lots of wine, and some good food, but I must say, for $60 GK should have played a longer set. They came on a bit after 7, and played until about 9, but took a long intermission in the middle. And when's the last time they wrote any new music? If they come again next year I may have to pass. Unless they bring Madonna or Britney Spears along with them for some duets.
Got on my bike again for the first time since RAMROD. Took Dan for a ride around Mercer. Got another flat about 5 minutes out on the road. I'm ditching the Vittoria tire I have in back. That thing flats like crazy. My butt hurt--I do not think it enjoyed its reunion with the saddle.

Notes from underground

Losingest thoroughbred ends 90-race skid. Really, was this necessary?The horse has lost 90 races in a row, is there any need to rub it in?
This might be a fairer test of man versus, umm, non-man. Back in 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost a six-game match against IBM's Big Blue computer. Many people regard that moment as a sad moment in human history, having finally been outclassed by a machine in a game of strategy it had always dominated. Well, new world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik is going back to the board to defend human honor against a computer. Kramnik will get a chance to rest between matches and to study earlier games played by the computer, something Kasparov didn't have in his match against Big Blue. I don't play chess, but I find these human versus computer matches fascinating. I plan on following along with a chess board this October. Maybe I should pick up chess. It has a certain sexiness to it, like counting cards in blackjack, or craps.
I bought a few shirts online from Banana Republic and as thanks they sent me a link to download a Banana Republic.com screensaver. A screensaver? What marketing genius thought of that? I hope they didn't spend much money on that. I'll take a pair of free socks instead, thank you very much.
You may have heard--the new Star Wars Episode II film title will be Attack of the Clones, which prompted much mockery from fans everywhere. Why not The Clone Wars? I agree with the public, Attack of the Clones sounds ridiculous. As the announcement on the site notes, the new title "harkens back to the sense of pure fun, imagination and excitement that characterized the classic movie serials and pulp space fantasy adventures that inspired the Star Wars saga." But fans want to take the films seriously, and titles like this and characters like Jar Jar Binks don't help.
The plot synposis: "Ten years after the events of The Phantom Menace, not only has the galaxy undergone significant change, but so have our familiar heroes Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), Padm

Power searching

If you're using Internet Explorer to browse the web, you can search directly from the address line. Just enter your search term into the address window, but preface it with the name of the search engine you'd like results from, voila--one stop shopping. I learned this from Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch newsletter, which I highly recommend if you're at all interested in search.
Google also has a new page called the Google Zeitgeist. Interesting stuff. Once a week, they post interesting stats about what folks are searching on in Google. Go check it out.
Last honest, heartfelt plug (really, I don't get paid for these): I enjoy reading the Industry Standard's daily newsletter Media Grok. They provide humorous recaps of how major news outlets cover the biggest stories of the day. Since no one single paper ever seems to cover stories consistently well from day to day, Media Grok is like getting a read on the average of coverage across the board.

New News

CNN is rolling out a revamped look for Headline News tomorrow morning. It's intended to appeal to younger people (currently the average age of a Headline News viewer is 54, or 64, or something like that). I'll have to check it out. Supposedly it has all sorts of tickers and information display panes all around the news anchors. I hope it's not like the Bloomberg channel with all the scrolling tickers.
No current newspaper or news channel has exactly the right mix of content and presentation to appeal to me. That's why I have to subscribe to so many different magazines, newspapers. Since the beginning of time, newspapers are all:
News/Frontpage
Business section (stock quotes, etc.)
Sports
Arts/Entertainment section
Local interest (if a regional paper)
Classifieds (if a regional paper)
Maybe a travel or technology section
Advertisements/coupons/catalogs
What would the ideal sections be in my newspaper? Good question. I have to think about that. What would they be in yours?
It's tough to reach the younger demographic. CNN may try, but no one rivals MTV in that category. They're ultra-powerful in the ad market in that way.
George Bush is really fit! He is in the top 2% for people his age, runs 3 miles four times a week, has a resting heart rate of 43. I saw that in a paper today. Stats from his regular White House physical. Impressive for a guy his age, and bad news for his detractors, I suppose. Hmm, if the president can run three miles four times a week, no excuse for the rest of us not to get at least that much exercise as well.

Old New

Went with Bill to Area One on Friday night. Mainly to see New Order, but the overall collection of talent was impressive. Paul Oakenfold. Outkast. Moby. The Orb. The Roots. Timo Maas.
Seeing New Order brought me back to high school. Bernie and Peter were there, but Gillian was not. I couldn't tell if Stephen was there. Surprise guest guitarist was Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. Billy really had very little to do most of the night. I wonder why he was touring with them at all. Most of the time he just stood there in his fishing hat, looking around like he was bored out of his mind.
The New Order set:
Atmosphere
Regret
Crystal
Love Will Tear Us Apart
True Faith
Your Silent Face
Bizarre Love Triangle
Touched by the Hand of God
Turn My Way
60 Miles An Hour
Temptation
Blue Monday
Very cool stuff. I'm glad they went retro, even as far back as to start with a Joy Division tune. The highlights, for me, were Your Silent Face and Temptation. Peter Hook has put on some weight and looked like Ray Winstone from Sexy Beast.
Oh yeah, he still plays the bass spread-eagled, holding the bass down almost to the ground. He did seem a bit stoned, but maybe that's just how he is.
The only songs I truly missed were Love Vigilantes and Perfect Kiss.
Bernie is a terrible dancer, and with the advent of Prozac he's also much too cheerful, but good for him. Biggest problem with the concert? Had to choose between Oakenfold and New Order/Outkast because they played at the same times. I'm not sure who set the lineup, but I don't think you should have to choose between the biggest acts for that price, $60, which was otherwise a good deal considering all the talent there.
"Manchester United! David Beckham!" Bernie kept shouting. No encore.
They're pretty much the reason I went. New Order still lays down a sonic landscape with their guitars that is unique. I miss it, though I'm not real keen on their new album Get Ready. Maybe it will grow on me.

More Pie

Went to a screening of American Pie 2 with Dan tonight. We have a tradition of getting out to see trashy comedies, and this continued the run. Fairly predictable humor--less of a story arc than the first film and more a continuous string of jokes which peters out by the end. But along the way, good fun. It will do well next weekend at the box office.
Last Sunday Bill and I went out to WOMAD. Not sure what that stands for, exactly, but basically it's a world music festival. We caught Peter Gabriel and the Afrocelts. A very northwest type of concert. Henna tattoos, rose tinted glasses, that scene. We were trying to watch the concert (Gabriel had his daughter accompany him vocally, which was nice) this crazy character we dubbed Charles Manson (because of his physical resemblance to that serial killer) pranced around making an ass of himself. Climbed a tree and started throwing leaves on people. Then pulled a flag out of the ground and started waving it around. Took a water bottle and sprayed everyone. Talked loudly and incoherently while Gabriel played. Bill and I were becoming quite annoyed, but Manson found this group of folks to play to: a series of couples with their children, all tripped out on acid. They passed around the eyedropper once or twice, maintaining their chemical imbalance and dancing around all crazy. If they passed the eyedropper to one of their young children, or god forbid their one of their babies, I would have lost it.
Made me think that hippies are not necessarily any more noble than working stiffs like myself. They can be just as degenerate, as much of a drain on society.
David and Jenny at work shared this Amazon customer review with me today, and it's classic. I can't believe it's serious, but then again...
It's a review for The Magnificent Seven:
1 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
One out of Five Stars Rip off of a classic western, January 28, 2001
Reviewer: A viewer from Palm Beach, FL USA
This movie seems to be a scene-by-scene copy of one of my favorite movies-"Magnificent Seven". Magnificent seven is a classic movie that has been copied many times, but I didn't know westerns were popular enough in japan to be copied. Not a bad copy but doesn't hold a candle to the original!
At least 106 out of 107 of our customers pass film history 101 here.
Looking for an alternative to Napster now that the lawyers have throttled it? I just started using Audiogalaxy, and while its interface takes a bit of getting used to, it worked like a charm for me last night.
Joannie's somewhere in Europe. She got to see the last stage of the Tour. I'm jealous. Considering doing a Tour, um, tour next year.
Pop under ads are driving me nuts. At the end of a session browsing the web all those open browser windows are like lint. There must be a name for them. Surf dandruff? Still, looking at how much press and traffic X10 has received, it's pretty unbelievable. At the right price, it might not actually be as bad a marketing campaign as it appears. I should dig into it one of these nights when I have a few minutes of free time and figure it out.
Peter is marrying in Prague next week. I want to go so badly, but plane tickets are so expensive and hard to come by. I'd love to be there to see him walk the aisle, and to see a bit of Prague. Maybe my frequent flier miles will come through for me at the last minute? Peter, I'm working on it! BTW, Peter, that's the coolest wedding invite I've ever received. Very spare--even, dare I say it, bauhaus, if I knew what that meant. German industrial design. Chic.
This whole Condit/Levy thing creeps me out. Do old politicians in D.C. really stoop as low as to prey on interns half their ages? Read an interesting article, I think in the NYTimes Magazine, about how the environment in that capitol--politicians working long, lonely hours late at the office, and young, impressionable girls away from home--breeds many such affairs. I wonder if the Amazon work environment is conducive to inter-office romance. I probably shouldn't even send my mind down that alley. Okay, I won't.
Someone the other day corrected me when I said we should add a question about sex to a market research survey.
"You mean gender."
Um, no. I didn't even stop to think about it at the time, but I just realized that people don't have gender, pronouns do. People have sex. Just to set the record straight. As Austin would say, yes please.