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Movie Review: A.I.

It's hard not to judge this based on the circumstances of the making of this movie, but I did my best to stay relatively uninformed and to keep my expectations at "cautiously optimistic" levels.

I was disappointed.

The movie starts out slow and cold, but without whatever things Kubrick does to keep that tone watchable. (See, there I go commenting on things outside the movie...) There is mercifully little technobabble to explain the robot emotions, and we see some disjoint scenes that lead to the mother deciding to "imprint" David, the Robot Boy. This causes him to change from creepy in a non-human/roboty way to an overly fake-emotional creepy. Then the real boy comes back (before we really get to see the mother grow to accept David fully) and we get to see how cruel real humans are, and how David's programming leads him into danger (for others, of course). See, humans aren't perfect. But neither are robots. The best thing about this whole part is Teddy, the talking super-toy.

Then we go to round 2, where David is abandoned and meets up with Gigolo Joe, a lover-bot. They make this sex robot thing seem pretty appealing. We also get our first tastes of anti-robot feelings from human, with a jealous lover and then the "Flesh Farm" recruiters. The "Flesh Farm" itself just seems ridiculous. It would have been much more convincing and terrifying to see realistic expressions of anti-robot feelings. The ludicrous roman coliseum style antics try to hit you over the head with the point (see, there are lots of people that HATE robots!) but then the crowd's change to want to protect the boy undercut it. Maybe everyone there just likes violence and destruction, and don't really care about robots. I would have loved to have seen some examples of the economic difficulties, or real emotional problems, or more realistic terrorism. After that we get some city scenes, which seem pretty fake, which may or may not have been intentional but fall pretty flat. Blah, blah, go to Man-hattan.

And there we get an actually frightening sequence of David destroying another David-robot. Eeek. See, the dad was right - if a robot can love, it can also hate. But it is a hate coming directly from the love. Does this get explored? No. The doctor seems to ignore the outburst and leaves David to find other kid robots and make a suicide attempt. And then we get some underwater scenes (sloooow) and David gets stuck right in front of the Blue Fairy he was searching for.

Is this showing us the ultimate pointlessness of humans searching for dreams that can never be real? Showing us that David had become real, with hate and loss?

Well, no. It was just the setup for round three, 2000 years later (did David really have a 2000 year battery or did he get recharged?) with some weird humanoid robots (or aliens?). Blah blah, stupid, stupid mumbo-jumbo about space-time not allowing people to be brought back. And this undercuts the entire robots being real people discussion, because it says that people are special and robots can never be the same. What the hell? You toss of something that is obviously a plot point that also tries to answer the fundamental question of the field of Artificial Intelligence? Argh. It almost makes me ignore the discrepencies in the technological level of the creatures that find David.

And then it is over. Leaving the audience confused and disconnected and disappointed.

And it was boring in parts - enough to make me think about how the music was actually bothering me.

Easily the best parts of the movie were the characters of Teddy and Joe.

I just hope that this movie is not used as an excuse to not make more movies exploring this theme.

Here is the story that inspired Kubrick to make a movie. Not this movie, I hope. We'll never know.

Movie Review: Gates of Heaven (Morris)

I was so excited when I saw this coming up on the IFC and I knew I could have Tivo record it for me. I was a huge fan of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control and The Thin Blue Line and have had terrible luck with finding other Errol Morris movies to see.

I didn't enjoy this one quite as much - the stories weren't as interesting, the pictures weren't quite as pretty, and I wasn't watching it up on the big screen. But it was still neat to see people telling their stories, especially since it was mostly filmed in the area where I live now. Amazing how different it can be 23 years later. I think I also missed out on some of the emotions since I have never really had a pet, especially not one I would have ever considered taking to a pet cemetary. It seems like Mr. Morris's ability to grab the viewer and help convey the emotions in what people are saying has definitely grown over the years, but this was still a neat thing to see.

You can't have fun at work

Although, sometimes, when you get a big chunk of stuff done, it almost seems that way.

whoohoo!

Network Outage?

The home network was down yesterday, so I couldn't post last night. I hope it is back up tonight. The power flickered out for a minute, and the router seemed unhappy when it came back up.

Stupid technology.

Movie Review: The Cell

This was a terrible movie. I knew it would be bad, but it was worse than I expected. It seemed like someone had an idea for some cool looking scenes (people suspended from the ceiling! Jennifer Lopez in a big flowing dress!) and they made up a movie around those scenes as they went along. They took a really neat idea (being able to see into other people's minds) and did absolutely nothing interesting with it. The pacing was terrible - there was no suspense built or surprises or anything. Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn both turned in boring, unlikable performances.

I can't believe I actually sat through the whole thing.

Neil Gaiman, in person

I went up to Kepler's in Menlo Park to see Neil Gaiman read from his new book American Gods and sign stuff. I went with some friends, we tried to follow the yahoo maps directions, which I think turned out to be completely wrong. But we found it, got there reasonably early, and still couldn't get decent seats. We purchased copies of the book (first time I have bought a new hardcover book in... maybe forever) and got our tickets for the signing. Then we staked out a spot standing next to the pregnancy book section and decided to skip dinner. Many people pushing by later (and let me tell you, Neil Gaiman fans are not the best smelling group of people) Neil arrived. Of course, he needed to eat first... so it was still quite a bit of waiting.

After a brief but overwritten introduction (I wonder if it was a default one created by a publicist or if the store tried to create their own), he got up to the microphone and decided to continue his sequential reading of the book. Apparently, when deciding what to read from the book, he was selecting location-appropriate passages, or just working his way sequentially through the book as he went along. Since he was doing a signing closer to San Fransisco tomorrow, we got the sequential reading - from Chapter 3. I was a bit concerned about having him describe what had happened so far, since I hadn't read the book and hadn't even heard much about it (it is nice having authors you feel you know well enough just to read without any advance insight), but I don't think it revealed too much. I'm not sure how that will work as the tour stretches on.

The crowd was actually older than I imagined it would be - but I guess all the high school dorks who loved Sandman have gotten old, like me. Ahh well. Some seemed to be obsessive comic book dorks ("Drool!" one woman commanded while holding her original first issue of Sandman. Ummm, no thanks. The story is just as good in the TPB.) but some were nice - I met a nice but overly intense woman who worked at a used bookstore in San Jose. Oooh, that would be a nice job, even if it did lead her to renting storage space to keep all her books. That's should be the limit, right?

After the reading, Neil answered questions, which were decent, although he was willing to run with the more obvious ones. He actually seemed to handle the crowd well - not with an overly enthusiastic, fake vibe, but with a "this isn't my favorite thing to do, but I really do appreciate you all coming here, so I will try to be entertaining" feel. It was kind of nice.

Then the long wait for the signing, which itself was fairly uneventful. One of the people I was with got some neat sketches in her books, I just got the signatures. And the catch phrase for this book, I guess - "Dream Dangerously".

We figured that was the way authors handled book signings - come up with a good default phrase to use that relates to the book, and you can use it whenever the person doesn't have something else to request. I wish there was something better you could ask writers to do at signings, similar to having an artist do a sketch. Something like getting them to write a paragraph about a crazy topic.

Oh well.

How many authors would I actually go to book signings for?

I think I might be more likely to go for authors that I don't really know well, but wanted to find out more about. Kepler's seemed like a nice place... I should follow their schedule a bit more closely. They are right next to the Caltrain station.

Double Rainbow

It was one of those moments I really wished I had a camera with me.

Over the course of dinner the rain moved past and a rainbow started to come into view. The colors started to sharpen, until finally there was a nice rainbow arc in view. Of course, it seemingly ended in the Taco Bell across the street. Click! That would have been picture 1.

After dinner on the drive home, we could see the entire rainbow, stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. It was amazing. Even more amazing, there was a fainter rainbow outside the main one, creating an even larger arc. And if you looked closely at the main one, it appeared as if yet another arc was trying to escape at a steeper angle, although it faded out after a little ways, but enough to create an interesting mix of blurred colors. That would have been pictures 2 and 3, at least.

No camera, though, so no pictures.

This site

I'm still not sure when I'll ever want to share this with the people I know. I'm not sure how this affects what I do and do not put in here. I have this feeling that if you didn't know me, the personal stuff here would not be very revealing. I feel like if you did know me, things here might give you insight you would not have obtained just by talking to me. That's scary to me. It's strange how I have a desire to document and record, but not to share those thoughts.

Maybe I just need to institute an anti-late night posting policy, and I'll be better off.

oh well

the prettiest wink i ever did see

the prettiest wink directed right at me

the sweetest smile

on a sweet little face

and I know it's all wrong

I know it can't go on

the hand of god is a big one

even when i know its not there

Movie Review: Boys Don't Cry

This was an extremely depressing movie. It can be painful, in a good way if it is done well, to watch characters that make bad decisions, have bad things happen to them, and never see it coming. It is even more difficult when you know it is all based on a true story. This was a well done movie, although it is hard to separate the quality of the movie from the power of the story.

It makes me feel very lucky to live where I do, where the Gay Pride parade is shown on TV and cities provide coverage for gender reassignment surgery. Not that the area isn't without its prejudices and intolerances, but at least it seems to get some things right.

Comic Review: Lone Wolf and Cub, Volume 1 (Koike and Kojima)

I've talked about some of my feelings about Japanese things before, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I love the idea of samurai and ninjas and all that stuff. Lego ninjas were probably more exciting to me than Lego Star Wars. So now I have finally gotten around to starting one of the classic manga set in medieval Japan. I had a friend in middle school was into it, but he wasn't excited about sharing things, so I never saw much of it. But it was always on the mental list of things I should read.

So, after all that buildup, what did I think? I was a little disappointed. I think I still lack the background of Japanese culture to fully appreciate some of the stories (like the one with the prostitute at the hot springs) and nuances. The artwork was beautiful, but I sometimes had to flip back to verify which character was which. Some of this were the slightly more ambiguous word balloons, and some was the storylines which don't hold your hand through everything, but I think I started to adapt to it as I went on. I also noticed a lot of the differences from American comics as described in Understanding Comics (which I should have reviewed already, but I'm behind. Apologies!) I also wondered if, since this was the first volume, that some of the premises and personalities were being discovered as things went on - media often takes time to get up to full speed.

One other surprise for me was thesmall size of the reprints. It says it is the "original Japanese format" but I often wished for larger reproductions of some of the pages. But it was convenient for reading, and it was cheap, so it wasn't all bad.

Overall, I enjoyed this, and am cautiously optomistic about future volumes, but if it continues on just the same, I don't think it is my thing.

Are my views on Japanese culture finally changing? Uh oh.

Soccer Game: Loss, 6-2

Not quite the rousing comeback one might have hoped for after last week. Thuy scored again, on a pretty neat play. Two of their goals came on penalty kicks for handballs in the penalty box, one of which also resulted in a red card. Not so lucky. I rotated through stopper, sweeper, and left mid, probably doing the best at mid, since most people were pretty tired at that point. Sweeper was really hard because I kept pulling up too much and not getting back. Of course, they usually had a bunch of people coming down, so it was hard, but I wasn't doing that great. And to end the game, I knocked headswith someone and got a nice ache at the back of my skull. What are the symptoms of a concussion again? The web can answer this for us, of course. Medline Plus haspages on head injuries and concussions. I think I'll be OK, though.

Movie Review: eXistenZ (Cronenberg) SPOILERS

Here's something in the "is it real?" movie category (see Total Recall, The Matrix, etc.). Only this wasn't an over the top special effects movie, but more of a thriller. If you have a virtual reality game that seems as real as real life, how do you know which is which? I thought it was well done, and I really liked Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, and the organic technology was pretty neat. I wasn't as comfortable with the lack of understanding of the structure of the game, which may have been intentional, but I think it may have been more effective if we had a little more context.

My main problem with the movie requires talking about the end, though. Not that the end was bad, but I wasn't completely pleased with how they did it.

Overall, though, I felt like it was a pretty enjoyable movie.

I think it was unfair that the movie started in game reality. Besides the organic technology, which could have been the sci-fi thing that allowed for these games, there didn't seem to be a real clue that we weren't in the real world. To have the final scene then pull away to say "everything you've been watching has been the game" seems a little unfair. I feel like if I watched the movie again, knowing this, that I would be disappointed. Maybe I should have taken notes, though, since I don't think I remember what happened with all the game-within-game levels, like the pod that crawled inside the bioports.

I was also unsure about the "game character urge" concept. How much of the game was under the control of the players? How fun is a game that forces you to follow certain paths? What were the urges in the top-level game they were in? Very strange.

I don't like Adam Sandler

I don't like Adam Sandler movies, so I tried to set expectations for this movie as far down as possible. And that is exactly what I got - a really terrible movie. Really terrible! For all the people involved in this movie, there were no really funny scenes. Some laughs, but that may have been trying to console ourselves over having spent $5 at Blockbuster to bring this home. This movie even made heaven seem unattractive.

I think, besides the overreliance on one bad theme (hell) and bad special effects (Henry Winkler and the bees)for the jokes, the main problem this movie had compared to other Adam Sandler movies was with his character. Nicky seemed fairly dull, spoke in an extremely annoying manner, and as the son of Satan was much more difficult to identify with than his previous characters.

Not that this movie is worth spending too much time analyzing.

Welcome to the family?

Thanks to Greg, the apartment is now home to a Tivo. Yay, Tivo.

Setup went fine, despite 1 million cables due to DVD players, digital cable boxes, and the Tivo. I'm not sure what speed the modem is at, but it certainly would have been nice if it was able to download over our DSL connection. Of course, the real slow part is not the download but the "importing" and "indexing". How slow is the processor? How much does it really need to do with the data it got?

So, after 2 or 3 hours of setup and processing, things seemed to be OK. Finding the right code for the IR transmitter so we could see the digital channels through Tivo was a pain, and the interface for that wasn't very good (not remembering where you were in the menu, not letting you have a page down option, etc.).

Then it was time to play, so I started setting up Season Passes and things, only to quickly run into the limitations in the 1.3 software with multiple showings. Sigh. And then I noticed that it wasn't changing the channels to anything over channel 100 correctly. Uh oh.

Ed did some digging online, and the most common suggestion was to build a "fort" around the IR transmitter and receiver, to block any interference. A little bit of aluminum foil later, and we had a "fort". It worked!

Tivo and arts and crafts projects, together at last...

Then we started flipping through channels to get some Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down data, and I saw a movie I was interested in. But it was late, and I was tired, so I wasn't going to start watching it. And then my roommate says "you should record it." Oh yeah! I must be getting stupid. We'll see if it gets it when I get up tomorrow.

Now we just need to wait for the software upgrade, and we'll be in fine shape.

It wasn't as painless as one might hope, though - I can better understand why this hasn't started to replace VCRs.

Movie Review: Traffic (Soderbergh)

For some movies, it is good to watch them with a group of friends that talks back to the movie. It really makes stupid movies more enjoyable, or bad movies. Sometimes it is even good for good movies, because it can help amplify the mood.

Traffic is not one of those movies. But that was my environment for watching it anyways.

Despite that, I enjoyed it. I was actually enjoying all of the different plot threads, although the Catherine Zeta-Jones story was easily the least interesting. I got a little worried when Michael Douglas started to reprise his "Falling Down" role, but things held together reasonably well. There were a few preachy spots, usually by an interesting choice of character, but it wasn't too overbearing for the length of the movie.

It didn't really give me any new views into the drug war, and I was sympathetic to its points, but it seemed to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short time. I'm not sure how I felt about the depiction of Mexico, but I don't really have any personal experience to judge it with.

Comic Review: The Complete Concrete (Chadwick)

This is one of those things that comics seem particularly well-suited for - a thoughtful examination of what it would be like if someone in the real world gained superpowers. No supervillains, no fight scenes, no childish dialog. Instead, we get different attempts at trying to use the power of a concrete body for helping people, accomplishing things no one has done before, gaining fame, and trying to enjoy the ordinary things in life. I think it is wonderful.

This series collects the original series of issues, done back in 1986. It's amazing to see how good it is, and how no one else seems to have carried the ideas forward since then. Paul Chadwick does a fantastic job creating real characters, with real motivations, full of conflicting emotions and worthy goals and confusion and obliviousness. It's amazing how he can take the one simple premise of a speechwriter having his brain transplanted into a powerful alien body and explore so many interesting questions with it. We get to think about the nature of fame, how it is acquired, how even good people can be seduced by it, how it can affect people. We get to explore ideas of what is most beneficial to society - being a symbol, or contributing to individual lives directly. We get to explore unrequited love. All sorts of good stuff, all in a very entertaining package. Good stories, great artwork... the kind of comic I wish I was capable of creating.

Expensive Drink

Chris took the Project Management class out for dinner to Fiesta del Mar. And he wanted to buy margaritas for us, so we got a pitcher of "The CEO" margarita. $10.50 per, $40 for the pitcher. So, that was easily the most expensive drink I have ever had. And it tasted like a margarita - maybe not quite as harsh, but still that near-citrus taste that I'm not a huge fan of.

Oh well.

Concert Report: Built to Spill, The Delusions, Suffocation Keep

I went to this show with a friend who has the most amazing luck finding parking in SF that I have ever seen. So, after driving up with virtually no traffic, we find a street spot right near a place to eat, only a block from Slim's, where the show is. How great is that? We grab a sandwich, then walk over to the club. It seems like a pretty decent place when it isn't packed, and we got a spot near the door so we had the occasional refreshing breeze when it started to get hot and stinky.

The first band, Suffocation Keep, seemed pretty competent, although lacking the stage presence or catchy hook or crowd interaction to really make it interesting. Definitely a nice surprise as an opening band I had never heard of, but not good enough to make me go looking for their CDs. They had a pretty typical indie rock feel, although it was really hard to hear the vocals above the band. Not sure if that is their fault or Slim's, oh well.

The next band, The Delusions, picked it up a step. They had three vocalists, including a pretty cute keyboard/guitar player, and lots of different instruments for the different songs. I think one guy must have a secret desire to be in a country band, playing a steel guitar and singing with a hint of twang. But it was good! A unique sound, some catchy songs, even a trumpet part on one. Whoo, trumpet!

And then, finally, it was time for Built to Spill (What is it with bands having crappy websites?). They started off a little slow, playing some new songs, I think, or at least songs no one seemed to recognize. The crowd seemed like they tried to be in to it, but weren't really. And Doug turns out to be an old, slightly balding, slightly pudgy guy. Without much stage presence, just kind of standing there. I was disappointed, because the show didn't seem to be giving me anything more than the CD, except for a distracting crowd (the downfall of being near the door, I guess). But then he got to some familiar songs, and the mood picked up, and it was cool to see some of that amazing guitar work in person. The tone kept up, with some new songs interspersed with old ones, although I was a little disappointed that some of my favorites were not played. And then it was time for the final few songs, which included some more members of The Delusions, including the trumpet guy, which made my day. The last song ended with an extroadinarily long jam, lots of guitars and drums and it was pretty awesome. The crowd seemed to be in to it for a while, but then seemed to give up and a lot of people left. What the hell? What is wrong with crowds out here? They never seem to get into it enough. You're paying to be there, you might as well try to enjoy it as much as you can. Maybe everyone is too worried about their cool demeanor being spoiled? blah.

And then it was time to escape the heat and the sweat and get home to get some sleep before work. Yeah!

Soccer Game: Loss, 6-1

First game of the summer season, not a great way to start. There were several new people, and we had a hard time keeping to our positions. We did OK during the first half, but seemed to tire out a bit more for the second half. The new team also doesn't have a regular goalie, so the guy who played goalie today did great, but wasn't as good as the goalie on the last team. Spoiled, we were! I played stopper, and did OK. Had a few good intercepts in midfield, but wasn't effective getting back on their breakaways. Of course, they usually had 3 people down there, and we'd only have 2 defenders, but... it was a little rough. I think the team seems like it has some potential, though.

One of the new guys is training for a marathon, but he said that this kind of stamina was different than that for running, so he was getting very tired out. I thought that was interesting. Although it also means I won't be trying distance running in the near future.

Note: On monday I found out the good defender we had isn't really on our team... confidence level dropping...

Movie Review: I Shot Andy Warhol

I feel very strange about Andy Warhol. I've been to the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, and there is some really neat stuff and some really uninteresting stuff. I have a hard time believing that all of it is supposed to be serious, or interesting. So the most interesting part of this movie to me were the scenes in "The Factory" where Andy was interacting with others, or other people were involved in creating the art. It seems like such a different world, and I wonder if that distance is because of the time or because of my lack of involvement with anything like that.

Of course, it isn't a good sign for the movie if I'm wondering about this during most of it.

It's hard to make a movie based on a real story since real stories do not follow the standard dramatic rhythm. And this movie suffered from that - lots of buildup, lots of background, and then a somewhat sudden shift in personality and the title even happens. While Valerie always seemed off, it was hard to see the steady progression of her character. And maybe there was none, she was probably crazy after all, but it makes it harder to really get in to the movie. Almost as if a documentary would have been more interesting. I'd be interested to see what the movie and TV appearance were really like. And hear what people that had interacted with her really felt. I'm sure some of that was conveyed in the film, but you know everything in the movie can't be exactly true, so you are left trying to figure out what the real story probably was underneath all of the movie exterior.

Movie Review: Tomb Raider

Well, I still think Angelina Jolie is somewhat attractive after watching the movie, so it wasn't a complete disaster. And the action sequences were reasonable. But it was amazing just how bad the story was. As one friend I saw it with said, "it was true to the game." This does not make me feel better. Some mumbo-jumbo about planetary alignments (in three phases?) and three pieces needed and time control and whatever. Take any scene and I am sure you can find logical inconsistencies with it. And maybe that is OK if the movie is able to distract you for long enough (see The Matrix) but this couldn't. And maybe that is not the fault of Jolie, or the people playing her butler and techie assistant, but it is the fault of the director and who knows who else. Take that techie character - what function did he serve in the entire movie? Absolutely none. Comic relief? Why did she bring him with to Iceland? Argh. I have to stop. If I go on about all the things that bug me, this review may never end. You could probably do worse than this for a dumb action movie (as long as you don't mind watching Angelina) but you could definitely do better.

Brock Meeks and Bad Software

I really like Brock Meeks. He seems like the kind of angry reporter that disappeared back whever news started becoming bland. I saw him speak at CMU, with only 20 people or so in the audience. He still gave a great talk about being a reporter, seeing how government actually works in Washington D.C., and how that might affect technology and censorship. He also announced that he was going to start working for MSNBC, after a long time as Wired's D.C. correspondent.

Anyways, he has an article about how much software sucks currently, and how it is even worse that people don't complain about it. As a software developer, I think he simplifies things a bit too much, but I wholeheartedly agree with his main point - software needs to be better. Of course software companies know about a lot of bugs in their products and release them anyways - they are the more minor bugs most people will never encounter, so it doesn't make sense for the company to delay the whole release just to fix those. That's what those .01 and .1 releases are for. I don't want to sound like a crazy free-market type, but if companies didn't release with those bugs and tried to wait for it to be perfect, the software might never make it out the door before the company ran out of money. I think the problem may be more about how development processes don't often encourage developers to think of the end user, to have time to fix little problems instead of trying to jam last minute features in, or to be rewarded for writing bug-free code.

But if you get frustrated with software, you should definitely start making your opinion heard. And try to find something better.

This site has no style

...but now it has Style Sheets. That's something, right? At least I can try to tweak the colors. I am appreciating the current faded-look, must have something to do with the current emotional state, but at least I can tweak things easier. Maybe I can con someone into helping make the site look nice. Of course, I may have to let them read the site, then... sounds like trouble.

Comic Review: Ghost World (Clowes)

I'm really enjoying reading the comics that I got to pick out. And it is sad that the state of the comic world makes it such a surprise when I read a story about two young women, just graduated from high school, enjoying the summer and worrying about the future and dealing with other people. No absurd, dramatic events. No one dying. Just some mischief, lots of conversations and observations, things that seem related to real life. And done well - interesting and far too brief. The art was also really interesting, a relatively clean and simple look, black and white with a single shade of blue for shading. The blue really kept things visually interesting. And the story was entertaining, never jarringly unrealistic, in fact - it dealt with the emotions of longing and fear of loss quite well. It was just really good. I hope to read more things like this so my expectations aren't so low.

I expected to be more creeped out by the idea of a (presumably, although I'm not really sure how old he is) older man writing about teenage women. But I think it was actually carried off reasonably. Wow.

Comic Review: A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Fatal Bullet (Geary)

I finally used the gift certificate for the comic book store, so I was able to get several books that, hopefully, will expand some of the comic boundaries of the reviews here.

First up is this book, which is a look at the assassination of President James Garfield. What a fantastic concept! Thoroughly researched, drawn in a style reminiscent of the art of the time, presenting the story in a straightforward way. I really enjoyed it, of course, I am an occassional history geek. I really enjoyed the look of the book, and the writing seemed very direct and clear. I was a little annoyed with some of the narrator's voice, as if some assumptions were made about things (like how great a person Garfield was) without enough justification shown to us. Perhaps this was a reflection of the attitude of the time? There was a panel telling the story of how Garfield calmed a crowd from rioting, for which there was a footnote labeled as an "Author's Note" that the story was told in a campaign biography, but was entirely fabricated. I think this does indicate the narrative was influenced by the beliefs of the time. Which makes me a little less certain of the historical accuracy of the story, but gives me a stronger feeling that it gives you a sense of what it was like back then. I think the artwork also helps with this - it is definitely stylized to represent that era, but it keeps everything consistent and realistic. Lots of detail in the backgrounds, lots of wonderful shots (like the overhead view of the room where Garfield was shot), I felt like it enhanced the story quite a bit.

And now I know a lot more about President Garfield than I ever did before.

Addiction

If I get too addicted to having all these movie channels available to me in the new apartment, I am in trouble. Although it is helping build up the movie review collection. If only I would spend the time to improve the quality of the reviews, right?

Movie Review: Witchblade

For a superhero movie, they actually put some decent production values into this. Fun camerawork, a nice overall look to things - it was almost like a real movie. The direction seemed fairly unclear in a lot of the fight scenes, which may or may not have been intentional, but they went on too long as a result. The performances were mediocre, but that may have been more of the cheezy script's fault. I wish they had a police advisor or something, because I have this feeling real cops would never work that way. Breaking in to buildings? Without calling for backup? Hrmm. So, yeah, it was OK but not that great. The series might be interesting, though, if they know where they are going with the background and powers of the witchblade itself. You can get away with a lot in the movie because it is mysterious, but once you start defining the rules it becomes much more challenging (see X-Files). It also might give the actors some more time to fit into their roles better. Yancy did an OK job, as did Mr. Chokachi (surprisingly?), but some of the other people were kind of hard to watch (like her boss). But the unusually good production values for this sort of movie kept it watchable overall. We'll see what happens with the series.

Movie Review: Galaxy Quest

I had heard good things about this going in, which was a problem, because my expectations were a little too high for what the movie gave us. There were lots of funny scenes, and I thought the aliens were really done well, and Sigourney Weaver and Tony Shalhoub always do a good job, but I think the movie didn't flow very well for me. They spent lots of time setting things up with the crew, but I didn't believe Tim Allen's change of heart at the convention. I did buy his enthusiastic approach to the situation when he figured out what was going on, but then I was confused by the rest of the crew's ways of dealing with what was going on. And I was dissapointed Sigourney's character never really got to do anything. It's hard to consider it a parody if it falls into all of the same traps as what it is parodying (see Scream).

Perhaps my favorite line, though, was when the Spock-like character was being introduced with something like "Give hima hand! He's British!" Perfectly capturing the essence of the sci-fi fans I get annoyed with, who think they can judge good acting when all they watch are genre shows.

Maybe we all fall in to that trap somewhat, but I think it strikes a lot of sci-fi fans in particular. Time to start the research project?

Anyways, the movie was enjoyable, but not a classic parody by any means.

Movie Review: Pitch Black

I am a geek, so I do have an unhealthy appreciation of science fiction movies. Most of the time, this leads me to feel disappointment that the movies turned out so poorly, bad scripts and bad acting and bad science... but every once in a while I find a movie that understands its place, tries to work within its budget effectively by leaving things to the imagination, and finds unknown but adequate actors. Pitch Black definitely fits into that type of film - I had low expectations, which it exceeded. The story was simple but interesting, most of the creatures were left to the imagination (not quite enough, though) and the story revolved around the elationships between the characters more than the sci-fi premise. The acting was all fine, there were some reasonable plot twists as things went on... I was able to thoroughly enjoy it for what it was. Of course, phone calls interrupted a few of the dramatic scenes towards the end, but I'm pretty sure that decreased my enjoyment rather than increase it.

Maybe I can blame David Twohy a bit less for his involvement with WaterWorld after this.

Distractions

OK, the plan is to make another attempt at updating the look of this site, and do it in a more flexible way so I can integrate the review database pages with the same styles. And once that is done, I can maybe put something up on the front page and make this whole site available. And then you people can be reading this in the archives. It is a little strange to try to write all this in a neutral voice, knowing there is no one reading it now, but someone may be in the future.

But I valiantly struggle onward, or something.

Trying to get the 1 month of updates in a row, still. Hopefully no emotional tragedies will strike this time. And the earlier updates today were late yesterday, so I'm counting that as ok.

The Web is gone?

Netscape is no longer a browser company, Suck and Feed might be shutting down, people are taking "breaks" from their weblogs, hotwired is gone, salon is almost bankrupt, lycos and yahoo are portals, not search engines, IUMA, IMDB, CDDB have been either shut down, bought out, or who knows what, altavista is useless... is the old web gone? Replaced by bright, shiny Internet Explorer enhanced AOL/TimeWarner BigDumbCompany web? There are still some interesting voices out there, but it seems like a lot of energy has drained out of things. Maybe we should all take a summer break, relax, regroup, and come at this again with a better perspective. Drop the ideas about becoming millionaires. Think about how to create something useful for yourself, for others, a way to share thoughts and ideas, a way to use all the cool things that have come out of the last 5 or 6 years of growth... and realize that if you make something good enough, enough people will gather around it to keep it going. Not always as a money making venture, but remember, that isn't the goal now. Just enough to keep it going, keep yourself going, making things better little bit by little bit...

Movie Review: Evolution

I went in to this with low expectations. That was good - it meant I could relax and enjoy it. And there were a few things to enjoy. Some funny lines, some funny reactions, a giant alien asshole... all inside of a very unoriginal, bland story. Just like you'd expect.

My main problem, though, was with the science. I didn't expect the movie to be a shining example of realistic portrayals of science in the movies, but they were so close they should have spent another 10 minutes and gotten it right. Sure, you probably couldn't fix David Duchovny's character's total lack of good decision making, but the whole "base pairs" thing and the selenium thing - ugh. So close, yet sooooo far.

And all of the actors in the movie seemed to be playing the characters they always play. If they aren't going to try anything new, I don't feel particularly inspired to spend time commenting on it.

I'd recommend staying home and renting Ghostbusters instead, unless you set your expectations appropriately, go with some friends in a similar mindset, and don't pay too much for the ticket.

Comic Review: Meridian TPB #1

A lot of the reviews I had seen of this talked about how the target audience was very unusual for today's comic industry - preteen and teen girls. But you know what? I don't care about the target audience. That's for the marketing types. I care about the story. And that is also unusual - it is a book about a teenage girl. And it portrays a teenage girl in a somewhat realistic manner.

Sure, she lives on a world with antigravity rocks, and her father and uncle were big-time political leaders, and a subtle war breaks out in the first few issues, but the main character, Sephie, seems like a real person. She has moments of doubt, moments of courage, moments of intelligence, moments revealing her lack of experience - not just a one-dimensional portrayal. And that makes this book very enjoyable to read.

The first trade paperback, collecting the first 7 issues, sets into motion the political intrigue storyline, an ecological versus industry storyline, and, of course, the main character's coming of age story. None of them are really beat over your head, although I'm not completely sure I understand Sephie's real motivations yet. Maybe it's just me, but the whole idea of people blindly following the teachings of their parents strikes me as a little unbelievable. But, I find a lot of things in the real world unbelievable, too.

The artwork in the book was also pretty neat. The original artist gave the book a Disney-esque, manga-esque look which I thought was extremely effective. The first issue contained a few cheesecake shots, but after that things toned down and it was a much more realistic portrayal of people than you tend to see in comics, despite the stylized look. The seventh issue started the artwork of the former fill-in artist, and it was OK, but not nearly as unique. More generic, typical U.S. comic-book style art. Oh well.

Overall, I think this is my favorite CrossGen book so far. It had enough interesting, unique concepts to keep me interested all the way through, and I got a good feeling that the story was going to go somewhere interesting.

Comic Review: Astro City: The Tarnished Angel (Busiek and Anderson)

If you try to do anything as an ongoing series, you are bound to run out of things to say. Look at TV shows that have been on for years, or book series, or just about any long-running comic. If you haven't planned a way out, you'll get trapped saying the same things over and over until everyone gets bored of it.

Astro City tried to avoid that by being an anthology series, with all the stories set in and around the namesake city. And it had a great original premise - telling the stories about superheroes and people living in a world with superheroes that rarely get told. Showing a typical day in the life of a superhero, but focusing on the non-superhero activities instead of the heroic ones. Looking at a family moving into a city filled with superheroes, and how they react to their first supervillain attack. Lots of wonderful ideas.

But eventually, even that idea starts to become something you get used to. And with this volume and its predecessor, the stories have started to seem much more like typical superheroes. The focus has been on more of the superheroes and their heroic deeds. Sure, the stories have been well-written and have played with the superhero cliches instead of embracing them, but they didn't hold that same sense of uniqueness and wonder that the earlier stories had for me.

This volume is about a former supervillain who has server out his prison sentence and wants to make a clean start. Of course, that is a difficult thing for someone who is recognized by everyone as a supervillain due to his steel-jacketed skin. And so it starts as a cliche crime story, rather than a cliche superhero story. And maybe that is my problem - I enjoyed the story, but it wasn't a well-plotted crime story. It was an average crime story, with some superhero elements thrown in. That's not too revolutionary of an idea to me.

Maybe I was spoiled by some of those earlier issues. But I think Kurt Busiek is a much more knowledgable about comics and superheroes than criminals and crime stories, and it showed up here as a weaker storyline. It still had some nice elements, like the Mock Turtle issue, and the Golden Gloves family, but the El Hombre thread fell very flat for me.

The art, of course, was wonderful, although the covers were not too exciting to me. I think I am getting sick of Alex Ross art.

Overall, I enjoyed this thoroughly, but felt like it was much more of a traditional comic book than some of the earlier Astro City. And I'd like to see something that was stretching the boundaries a bit more. And I think it starts showing Kurt's weakness at stepping too far from traditional comic book stories.

Crazy Programmers

I enjoy programming, but it takes a special kind of person to enjoy programming Windows applications in assembler. Or to go through this. I can't tell if this guy is crazy, or really cool. Probably both. It is neat to see someone so dedicated to their principles, even if they are crazy programming principles.

So I decided I don't like programming *that* much. I'll take advantage of higher level languages, even.

Walking

I now live close enough to work that I can walk there. And back. How cool is that?

It's not a particularly great walk, since it is a freeway overpass and lots of traffic and some anonymous high-tech companies, but it is nice to have a little time out in the outdoors without any media or conversation or pressure or anything.

I may eventually try to expand into the "bike to work" category as well, but for now I will enjoy my 20 minutes of walk.

I am hoping that I am not enjoying this just because I never have to drive to lunch and I get to have the little bit of morally superior "I walked to work" response to people...

Soccer Game, Tie 4-4

Combined teams again this week, and very few people from work, but things went OK and we tied. The usual combination of lucky shots and missed opportunities and silly defensive breakdowns. It was getting pretty hot out there, though, which made it really hard to run up and down the field. I played stopper most of the game, and did OK, had some decent plays to keep the ball up the field, but wasn't able to get back on defense as much as I should have. But we had Paco on defense, and he is incredible, so it was OK most of the time. But on 2 of the goals they scored I felt like I might have done a better job. But I think I was doing better than last week. Improvement is a good trend.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)

I don't really want to get into the story behind why I decided to read this book, but trust me, there was a good reason. And it seemed like a good idea to see what the big deal was with these Harry Potter books. I read the first one before I started doing this site, so I'll just review the second one here.

You know the basic idea, right? Young wizard boy, in a school for wizards. Evil, magic, and monsters are all big parts of the setting. Lots of funny words, like "muggles" (non-magic users) and "quidditch" (a wizard sport). All the kind of stuff you'd expect from good kid's fantasy literature.

And it actually is pretty decent. Well written, usually well paced, lots of little cliffhangers, enough twists in the plot to keep things interesting, and a fairly consistant setting for everything, which is nice for things involving magic and other fantasy elements. It seems like great stuff for kids to read.

But here's my main problem: in the world of Harry Potter, everyone who uses magic keeps it hidden from the "muggle" world. There exists a whole parallel society with fantastic powers and abilities that rarely interacts with the everyday world of most people, not even understanding many aspects about it. And they spend lots and lots of effort to keep it this way. I find this condescending attitude towards everyday people very disturbing. Shouldn't people with these abilities be responsible for helping people who do not have those abilities? This idea keeps me from fully appreciating the more typical morals of the importance of friendship and not judging people based on their appearances and all those sorts of things. Do these ideas only apply to people in the elite ruling class?

But the fact that the book makes me question these sorts of things is probably a pretty good sign for something that is categorized as a "children's book".

And, for the record, I think I liked this second book more than the first, although I read them both over a long period of time, and that retrospective memory isn't what it used to be.

Movie Review: Bringing Out the Dead

I'll admit, I wasnt really in the mood to watch this, but I felt like I wanted to see it at some point, so why not? And I guess I'm not totally disappointed with it, but it wasn't very powerful. Nick Cage does a fine job looking emotional, and a lot of the supporting cast is good, but the story doesn't seem to do much, and the emotional storyline doesn't seem that interesting or surprising.

But it is a Martin Scorsese movie, so... it makes me wonder if filmmakers tend to get worse as they get older. You'd think they would improve, having better skills and techniques, having more patience, having more control over budgets and the studio's involvement. But maybe that passion goes away, or other things become a priority beyond movies, or maybe all the good ideas have been used up. Or maybe they build up too much respect for the editor to be able to do a good job.

Movie Review: Requiem For A Dream

I knew it was supposed to be disturbing.

And it was.

I'm not sure how much the initial part of the movie was setting up the tension and how much I created myself knowing that it was supposed to be a disturbing movie. But once things started to fall apart for the characters, the tone was carried off extremely well. There were some unclear things about character motivations and some of the plot points (although why the son and mother never interacted again was a bit more clear in one of the deleted scenes on the DVD) but the tone carried it through for me.

I got through so much of the movie glad that there were no gratuitous needle scenes, and then when there was a needle scene, it really made an impression. Oh wow.

And the acting seemed better than I expected - who would think that Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans would be watchable for so long? Ellen Burstyn also did a fine job, but I'm not typically impressed with overly dramatic roles - going crazy has to be easier to act than a more subdued, subtle emotional role.

The "clever" camera work and split screens and other tricks from Darren Aronofsky weren't too distracting, either. Many of them were effective at building the mood of the scene, although perhaps they were distracting from the actors' performances.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, in that disturbing way. And I am very glad I am not a heroin addict.

Very glad.

Movie Review: The Player

This was one of those movies I was supposed to have seen already. In fact, I had never seen any Robert Altman movies. And I think I should be writing movie reviews? Heh. Well, at least I knew I was supposed to see it...

And it turned out to be very good. The love interest scenes were a little more uncomfortable for me due to my own emotional state, and I worried about the in-jokes and winks to the audience would get to be too much, but things held together really well. It was "well-crafted", or something, something indicating care and attention but an understanding that it is a craft, not art. Not something trying to change your life.

And the movie within a movie at the end was hilarious.

Success?

The computer is back up, which was expected. And it is hooked up to the network, which worked as soon as the ethernet cable was plugged in from the router. That is amazing to me. Usually these things are so much more complicated. I think this means it is probably relying on some default setting from my previous DSL connection, which will inevitably stop working soon. Yup.

But for now, it seems like the apartment is starting to take shape.

Walk to Work

Well, I have moved all my stuff to the new place. And I slept there last night. And I was able to walk to work this morning! Yeah! Very nice.

But somehow, even though I had an apartment full of stuff, there are a bunch of things I need to get for the new place. That is probably the biggest moving expense - the excuse to buy a bunch of new things. We'll see how much I can resist. I don't think I'll be able to do without the shower curtain for too long, though.