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friday, march 31

I wonder what Apple's lawyers think about this. 11:29 PM +

This occurred to me during dinner today: the stuff inside your stomach after you eat is just vomit, right? I mean, even though it won't necessarily come back up, once all the enzymes and stuff kick in, it's basically barf. 8:09 PM +

A friend sent me a link to Ask Jesus as a joke. Now whenever I start typing the URL for Ask Jeeves! in Internet Explorer, Auto Complete kicks in and guess what pops up. 8:07 PM +

Andy's life may be messy, but his design is pretty clean. [via keith] 3:19 PM +

Yet another redesign. The previous one was a bit of a stopgap. This one ought to stick for a while. At least it has character. And golly, it's resizable and ... more legible, I hope. Grrr. 1:57 PM +

I love this. It reminds me of this scheme Newt Gingrich once proposed for housing overflow senior citizens on the moon. 1:56 PM +

Looks like CDNow is about to become CDNotMuchLonger. 1:55 PM +

thursday, march 30

If Kathleen Turner was still a babe, this wouldn't be such a dubious distinction, but seeing as how she's not ... shudder. 11:15 AM +

This trailer is laughably bad -- dewey, flagrantly expository, and dreadfully earnest. Deadly. It plays like self-parody, and by the time Jim Caviezel, eyes a-poppin' with boy-scout moxie, intones without irony, "We can do it together!" all is lost. One can only hope (with little faith) that the actual film is better than this poor precedent. 2:58 AM +

Random thought: if someone -- say, a farm boy, I guess -- just beat the living hell -- and I mean the absolute stuffing -- out of a hen, would said hen's eggs come out all broken and stuff? I ask this because some friends and I were wondering -- couldn't figure out -- how a hen keeps its eggs intact before it lays them. I mean, is a chicken's ... er ... "bread box" (?) filled with some sort of gelatinous shock-absorbing ooze? Gross. 1:44 AM +

wednesday, march 29

An interesting -- well, at least media-rich -- item from the Adobe spin machine about Kyle Cooper's title designs. I've always accredited Cooper for the mainstreaming of such typographical affectations as substituting "3" for "E" or an upside down "V" for "A" -- isolating the recognition points in characters and glyphs while maintaining legibility (example). Remember how the film title Seven was actually spelled SE7EN? That's Cooper. His body of work is uneven and oft-copied, but striking nevertheless. 8:20 PM +

More indication that Geena Davis' career is in permanent decline: A television pilot. Sadness. But I love the coda: "She has lately diversified into archery." 6:44 PM +

This is just ridiculous. I mean, who invited the sock? (And does anyone remember this absurdity?) 6:35 PM +

Everything old is new again. 5:59 PM +

Gotta love those extrasolar planets. 2:00 PM +

The Spain shots are live. 11:22 AM +

tuesday, march 28

Did somebody say gratuitous sex? 6:09 PM +

I did not know this: Orson Welles (!) was the voice of Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. Yikes. 2:20 PM +

I got my Spain snapshots back today. They'll be up in due time; meanwhile, a teaser. 9:59 AM +

Food for thought. 7:41 AM +

monday, march 27

For some reason, this story immediately made me think of this, although there's no real connection. 7:29 PM +

A friend writes: "Scary." Agreed. 4:25 PM +

Salon redeems its Oscar coverage somewhat with Cintra Wilson's acid write-up of the ceremony. Fave quotes include a reference to last year's "Debbie Allen interpretive horror dance of embarrassment and pain," and the observation that "When Chow Yun-Fat took the stage, there weren't any Chinese-Americans in the audience to cut to, so they bunched him in with the Latinos." Well said. 1:35 PM +

Did you know that multi-billion-dollar space stations come with warranties? That expire? 12:54 PM +

And this year's half-assed-non-sequitur funny-movie prize goes to ... 10:33 AM +

It's really a shame Trey Parker didn't win anything at the Oscars. [via sheryl] 9:23 AM +

The kitty is a nice touch. 2:19 AM +

sunday, march 26

Gratuitous Oscar Smackdown

(Note: I had to break it up into chunks because Blogger is stupid that way.)

Everyone else is doing it, said the little voice inside my head. Of course, with the current surfeit of opinions emerging from yours truly, 'twill be no time at all before I choke on my own foot (if I haven't already and this is all just an oxygen-deprived hallucination). Despite, or in spite, and nevertheless, forthwith is my take on this year's H'wood self-congratulation fest. Asterisks (*) indicate which nominee I think ought to win in a respective category; items in parentheses indicate films and individuals I feel have been overlooked (if applicable). Simple enough. This isn't an attempt to handicap the awards. I'm never any good at stuff like that. This is simply an expression of personal preference -- nothing more, possibly less. Also, I've eliminated the categories I don't care about (sound, costumes, shorts, docs, etc.) Read on.


BEST PICTURE

American Beauty *
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense

(Toy Story 2; Election)

American Beauty ought to win -- it's definitely the most striking and revelatory of this year's nominees. It manages to feel fresh without being especially original, and that's an achievement.

Toy Story 2 and Election -- I guess movies where nobody dies just don't get any breaks. (Please note that even The Insider is about death -- cigarettes -- i.e., things that kill people.) It's a shame. They happen to be two of the funniest, smartest films of the last decade; one is fancifully pure, and the other is so true to itself that the laughter it elicits is filled with knowing and recognition. 3:16 PM +


ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Russell Crowe - The Insider *
Richard Farnsworth - The Straight Story
Sean Penn - Sweet and Lowdown
Kevin Spacey - American Beauty
Denzel Washington - The Hurricane

(Edward Norton - Fight Club)

I just want to see Russell Crowe win because he's a total chameleon. Actually, this is the same reason I wish Ed Norton had been nominated. His performance in Fight Club is so efficient, it's deceptively facile.


ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Michael Caine - The Cider House Rules
Tom Cruise - Magnolia
Michael Clarke Duncan - The Green Mile
Jude Law - The Talented Mr. Ripley *
Haley Joel Osment - The Sixth Sense

(Hugo Weaving - The Matrix)

Jude Law's turn in Ripley is also deceptively smooth, but he haunts the film. His character has this line -- something like "I could fuck this ice box" -- and the way he says it just nails it. Very good.

Hugo Weaving is a bit of a reach, but he's a properly sly, binary villain in The Matrix, and he totally owns the part.


ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Annette Bening - American Beauty
Janet McTeer - Tumbleweeds
Julianne Moore - The End of the Affair
Meryl Streep - Music of the Heart
Hilary Swank - Boys Don't Cry *

(Jessica Lange - Titus)

Part of me wants Bening to win, because her performance is virtuoso and yet extremely believable, but the award is Swank's. She inhabits her role so completely, it makes me queasy.

Jessica Lange is the single good thing about Titus -- sexy, over the top, commanding, an emotional thunderhead -- the one credible character (all things considered) in a completely un-credible film. 3:15 PM +


ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Toni Collette - The Sixth Sense *
Angelina Jolie - Girl, Interrupted
Catherine Keener - Being John Malkovich
Samantha Morton - Sweet and Lowdown
Chloë Sevigny - Boys Don't Cry

(Cate Blanchett - The Talented Mr. Ripley)

Angelina Jolie is charismatic as hell in Girl, but Toni Collette deserves recognition for taking what could have been a nothing role and making it glow with conviction and dignity.

Cate Blanchett could perform mime and I would be into her. Her supporting role in Ripley is an old-fashioned star turn -- glamorous and evocative and very polished. I'm so into her.


ART DIRECTION

Luciana Arrighi, Ian Whittaker - Anna and the King
David Gropman, Beth Rubino - The Cider House Rules
Rick Heinrichs, Peter Young - Sleepy Hollow *
Roy Walker, Bruno Cesari - The Talented Mr. Ripley
Eve Stewart, John Bush - Topsy-Turvy

(Alex McDowell - Fight Club)

Sleepy Hollow looks like a pop-up book come to miraculous life. Remember that windmill?

And Fight Club -- remember that sequence where Ed Norton is walking around his apartment while reality distorts into an Ikea catalog around him? The film's aesthetic just runs with that -- everything has this great, anonymous, super-modern feel. Clean and terrible and blandly sublime.


CINEMATOGRAPHY

Conrad Hall - American Beauty
Roger Pratt - The End of the Affair
Dante Spinotti - The Insider
Emmanuel Lubezki - Sleepy Hollow *
Robert Richardson - Snow Falling on Cedars

(Jeff Cronenweth - Fight Club; Bill Pope - The Matrix)

Sleepy Hollow's so beautiful to look at, I don't even need to talk it up. If you have eyes, you know what I'm talking about.

And how can you look at Fight Club and The Matrix and not admire their cinematography? Two completely hyperkinetic films with a confounding control of composition. 3:15 PM +


DIRECTING

Sam Mendes - American Beauty
Spike Jonze - Being John Malkovich
Lasse Hallström - The Cider House Rules
Michael Mann - The Insider
M. Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense *

(David Fincher - Fight Club)

Shyamalan just because he doesn't miss a trick. (Mendes overshoots with that whole plastic bag monologue.)

Fincher because the man has such an autistic (yes autistic) possession of the form, he makes Alfred Hitchcock look like Kevin Smith ... and he makes Brian De Palma look like Kevin Smith's poolboy.


FILM EDITING

Tariq Anwar, Chris Greenbury - American Beauty
Lisa Zeno Churgin - The Cider House Rules
William Goldenberg, David Rosenbloom, Paul Rubell - The Insider
Zach Staenberg - The Matrix
Andrew Mondshein - The Sixth Sense *

(Jim Haygood - Fight Club; Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez- The Blair Witch Project)

The Sixth Sense -- "Beat. Lynn glances at the kitchen table. Her gaze stops on the TWO TINY HAND PRINTS OF SWEAT formed on the table's surface." That's good stuff. You feel it like a deep breath.

The editing in Fight Club is razor-sharp, and every transition from color to black and white in The Blair Witch Project is perfect.


FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

All About My Mother *
Caravan
East-West
Solomon and Gaenor
Under the Sun

(Run Lola Run)

If a film has subtitles, I get distracted (it detracts from the cinematography) and disinterested, so I don't usually see too many foreign-language films. But I happened to catch All About My Mother and Under the Sun at Cannes last year. The latter, known to me as Under Solen at the time, is wretchedly long and soul-destroyingly boring -- three-plus hours of rustic, sublimated "romance" (middle-aged farmer has hots for pneumatic milkmaid -- YAWN) and a scene where you get to see two horses fucking. Horrors. All About My Mother (or Todo Sobre Mi Madre), on the other hand, is simply magnificent -- a surprisingly beautiful, polished and very touching film about -- what else -- motherhood, in its many guises. It should get the award just for not being unremittingly dull and ugly to look at (the production design and cinematography are superb).

Run Lola Run -- um, did this fail to snag a nom on a technicality? How could it not be nominated otherwise? It was just so damn enjoyable, and there was genuine thematic substance once the plot hiccuped a couple of times. I'm puzzled. 3:15 PM +


MAKEUP

Michèle Burke, Mike Smithson - Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me *
Greg Cannom - Bicentennial Man
Rick Baker - Life
Christine Blundell, Trefor Proud - Topsy-Turvy

Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard -- need I say more?


ORIGINAL SCORE

Thomas Newman - American Beauty
John Williams - Angela's Ashes
Rachel Portman - The Cider House Rules *
John Corigliano - The Red Violin
Gabriel Yared - The Talented Mr. Ripley

(John King, Michael Simpson  - Fight Club; Michael Kamen - The Iron Giant)

Frankly, I'm not a fan of any of the noms, but let's give it to Rachel Portman for her pretty, if repetitive, work in Cider.

John King and Michael Simpson (aka, The Dust Brothers) have managed to create a truly listenable, stand-alone electronic score for Fight Club -- but I guess that's too forward-thinking for the Academy. As for Michael Kamen, his score for The Iron Giant is old-fashioned and beautifully resonant -- genuinely deepening the emotional context of the film.


ORIGINAL SONG

Trey Parker, Marc Shaiman - "Blame Canada" - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Diane Warren - "Music of My Heart" - Music of the Heart
Aimee Mann - "Save Me" - Magnolia
Randy Newman - "When She Loved Me" - Toy Story 2 *
Phil Collins - "You'll Be in My Heart" - Tarzan

(Madonna, William Orbit - "Beautiful Stranger")

I'd like to see "Blame Canada" get it because it has "fuck" in it, but Randy Newman's songs always get me ... right .... here ... so he gets my nod (although I wouldn't be ticked off if Aimee Mann won either).

"Beautiful Stranger" is one of Madonna's most enjoyable songs in years, and far better than the movie it's featured in. So why the fuck was it passed over in favor of dreck like "Music of My Heart." Ack. I guess the Academy felt there aren't enough songs out there with "heart" in the title, so it's making a statement? Rrrright. 3:14 PM +


VISUAL EFFECTS

Jon Thum, Janek Sirrs, John Gaeta, Steve Courtley  - The Matrix *
John Knoll, Dennis Muren, Scott Squires, Rob Coleman - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
John Dykstra, Jerome Chen, Henry F. Anderson, Eric Allard - Stuart Little

(Fight Club)

There's a tracking shot in The Matrix where we follow Laurence Fishburne's escape trajectory just before his calf is pierced by a bullet -- he's frozen, mid-sprint, his foot splashing in a puddle -- and it totally feels integral. The visual effects in this film aren't just anicllary eye candy -- they're essential, and they break new ground. They push the narrative further.

Some effects are so seamless that you're only aware of them because they represent improbabilities. That's why I have to give some credit to Fight Club. Great morphs, match-moving -- you name it, and it's all subtle and unobtrusive. Check this page out to get a feel for what I'm talking about.


SCREENPLAY - ADAPTATION

John Irving - The Cider House Rules
Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor - Election *
Frank Darabont - The Green Mile
Eric Roth, Michael Mann - The Insider
Anthony Minghella - The Talented Mr. Ripley

(Jim Uhls - Fight Club; Brad Bird, Tim McCanlies - The Iron Giant)

Election is just plain smart. It speaks for itself. I hope it gets the award.

Fight Club is so striking that you almost forget that, for all its outrageousness, it manages to maintain coherence. That's worth something. And if you've ever taken a gander at the original Iron Giant, you'll understand what an inventive adaptation the screenplay is.


SCREENPLAY - ORIGINAL

Alan Ball - American Beauty
Charlie Kaufman - Being John Malkovich
Paul Thomas Anderson - Magnolia *
M. Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense
Mike Leigh - Topsy-Turvy

(Lawrence Kasdan - Mumford; John August - Go)

Magnolia is remarkably lithe for such a morose and massive amount of written material. It takes talent to make something that long so compelling.

Mumford is subtle and pitch-perfect -- it never strays from or betrays itself, it just draws the viewer in. And Go is another example of a story that could have simply disintegrated, but instead is inventive and quick enough to keep the convolutions smooth and steady.

(Phew!) 3:14 PM +

saturday, march 25

Okay, so I totally scared the shit out of Mark Linn-Baker today. Who? What? I'll explain.

I hate theater. The acting is frequently too broad and the characters tend not to speak *to* each other so much as *at* each other, out of the corners of their mouths, et cetera. It's not my thing. I never go to plays. (And musicals deserve a separate concentric circle of hell, but don't get me started.)

Having said all that, a friend had tickets to Tom Stoppard's latest production, The Invention of Love, and needed someone to go with her. I'm willing to test (if sometimes inadvertently reinforce) my prejudices, so I accepted her invitation.

The play itself is actually a not-bad (of course I'm making allowances) fantasia about ... er ... the poet A.E. Housman's unrequited love for his friend and Oxford classmate, Moses Jackson ... and ... er ... Oscar Wilde is in it somehow and there's a scene where everyone plays croquet ... and ... um ... I wasn't really paying attention. But, like I said, the play wasn't bad. There were some clever, thought-provoking exchanges mixed in among Stoppard's highfalutin intellectualist frippery, and the performances were actually fairly dignified. (Usually, watching a play fills me with a sort of humiliated dread for humanity. All those non-sequiturs and one-liners ... groan. Suffice it to say, I don't particularly care for television sitcoms either. Same shortcomings, in many cases.)

But what I'm leading up to is this: Mark Linn-Baker was in the audience. Once again, you probably have to ask (if you didn't click on the hyperlink earlier) -- Who? Well, I didn't know his name off the top of my head either. My friend and I arrived early and were killing time in the lobby when I saw this almost subconsciously familiar face and reflexively blurted: "Cousin Larry!" Yes, Mark Linn-Baker was "Cousin" Larry Appleton on the terrible '80s sitcom Perfect Strangers. (The one with Balki and the two flight attendant girlfriends and assorted other inanities contrived to screw up small children's conceptions of the world.) I'm not ordinarily prone to public eruptions, and I don't care enough about famous people to make a big deal when I see one. (Actually, I don't even think Mr. Linn-Baker is very famous, although I'm told he has a presence on Broadway. Whatever.) But this wasn't a brush with fame. This was just bizarre. Basically, I would have had the same reaction had I seen Alf or, say, Mr. Sun Fizz. It was just a random pop cultural confluence and my lower brain reacted before the rest of me knew what was going on.

So after I collected myself (I had to step outside and let the waves of laughter subside), Cousin Larry just looked really nervous. My friend, who hadn't immediately picked up on our proximity to the sub-lebrity, informed me that I had "totally freaked him out." And indeed, during intermission, I caught Mr. Linn-Baker staring at me with what appeared to be apprehension, no doubt worried that I was gonna harass him or something. With some good cause, I guess. I mean, ya gotta figure, if you were Balki Bartokomous' foil on a terrible show probably running in endless repetition in various sectors of the Third World, you probably have to contend with some level of daily embarrassment. Poor Cousin Larry. He was probably saying to himself, Here I am in Philadelphia, and no one's recognized/laughed at me today. Today's a good day.

And then I went and compromised it. My bad. Yeah!

(Incidentally, how did I know for sure that it was Mark Linn-Baker and not some uncanny look-alike/unfortunate soul? Well, the play's director introduced herself to him just before the play began and I saw a bunch of admin types chatting him up during the intermission. They totally had his number. 'Nuff said.) 9:09 PM +

I caught Girl, Interrupted last night. I liked it. 1:02 PM +

Justin writes: "Would you trust your kids with a baby-sitter who advertises with this sign?" Actually, it sorta reminds me of the "Mr. Sanders" sign fixed above Winnie the Pooh's front door -- albeit with serial-killer inflections. 11:18 AM +

Salon's Oscar coverage is an embarrassment. Facile, thinly realized, brainless, and generally anemic. I'm surprised -- and disappointed. (In the interest of magnanimousness, this is at least mildly interesting.) Of course, the paucity of merit may just be a reflection of the subject matter. 11:03 AM +

friday, march 24

Dense but kick-ass, in an Aliens or Diamond Age sorta way. [via slashdot] 1:25 PM +

Drunk drivers suck. 1:12 PM +

The agony and the ecstasy: NASA pulls another Mr. Bungle, but this smacks of redemption. 11:10 AM +

Creepy. And yet I have to admire the shameless sacrilegiousness of it. I'm reminded of the "new and improved" Jesus from Dogma. [via justin] 10:48 AM +

"Julia and Julia." The best special effects, for my money, are the ones you don't detect. Authenticity is the greatest illusion. Another example. 9:18 AM +

An impromptu technical demonstration from Evan? 3:04 AM +

thursday, march 23

Tweaked the layout a little more -- emphasis on little. It's all about creeping elegance. 9:20 PM +

Cisco and Microsoft in a pissing contest ... of sorts. But talk about your golden showers. 4:36 PM +

Another album that's been out for a while, but it still quickens the blood. Props. 10:02 AM +

Count me in. 7:55 AM +

There's some definite eye candy here. This image in particular is eerily beautiful. [via slashdot]

Concept art, especially for motion pictures, is a rich creative category unto itself, as anyone who's ever bought one of those heavy "making of" Disney coffee table books can attest. My favorite title in this category (although it's actually not massive and pertains somewhat loosely) is Dietrich Neumann's Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner. The passages with  commentary from Anton Furst about his production design work on Batman alone are worth the price of the book. 12:08 AM +

wednesday, march 22

In all fairness, NASA's doing some pretty amazing stuff. The space program is still in its infancy. Baby steps. 8:31 PM +

More tales of NASA woe. 7:46 PM +

It's somebody's thankless job to design stuff like this. Blah. I don't know if their target audience (um, kindergarten teachers and middle-aged housewives who watch daytime soaps?) is particularly web-enabled. It's like one of those Zen conundrums -- if you build a web site and no one gives a shit, is it really there? But I should be humble. Those words could come back to haunt me.

Nah, not today, anyway. 6:01 PM +

Mike Slocombe's photography is good to begin with, but his commentary makes it great. There's a life behind these images, low-key and cool. 5:21 PM +

A litany of NASA's recent mishaps. Interesting insinuations -- to say nothing of the implications. [via slashdot] 2:38 PM +

I've had this album for ages, but I've been listening to it a lot lately. I've been a fan of Danny Elfman since his work on Batman -- my earliest memory of being consciously aware of the power of a strong musical score in a film. I remember being bummed when I went to purchase the soundtrack and got this. It wasn't until a few months later that the desired item was released. (I didn't know the difference between scores and soundtracks at the time; I was only eleven.) Ironically, my favorite Elfman score is the one he composed for Black Beauty (an otherwise mediocre film), which was released only briefly and has inexplicably been out of production and unattainable ever since. A few tantalizing, lulling snippets of it can be found in various compilations, but the complete article remains elusive. (Almost as elusive as Rachel Portman's absolutely superb score for Where Angels Fear to Tread, but that's another story.) Incidentally, here's a great Danny Elfman resource. 10:22 AM +

This is pretty funny. [via wetlog] 7:30 AM +

It's sort of become an urban legend that there's this one dude who holds a monopoly on voice-over work in movie trailers. I can't really vouch for the veracity of this assumption (a half-assed pass through Ask Jeeves! was fruitless), but there must be some subconscious validity to it, or why else would this trailer stick out? When was the last time you heard a woman read the riot act in a preview? I think never. 7:14 AM +

tuesday, march 21

Hmm. Sounds like Tom Green's pulling an Andy Kaufman. Or maybe not. There's always the benefit of the doubt ... or a kick in the nuts, as it so happens. 11:49 PM +

I decided to clean up the layout a little. Like? Dislike? It's showing up fine in iCab 1.9a and Communicator 4.72 on my Mac. There's a very slight unevenness to some of the text in Internet Explorer 4.5, but then IE chokes on all sorts of stuff. I'm too tired to check it out on a friend's Windoze box right now, but if you encounter any glaring display glitches, drop me a line. 11:10 PM +

I think it's pretty safe to say that this is pure crap -- cynical, perfunctory, inert, colorless. 1:51 AM +

monday, march 20

This is cute. I like it. 11:20 PM +

An inscrutable and utterly gorgeous site. Gray is good. Flicker is good. It's trip-hop for your eyes. 3:29 PM +

The Mars In-situ Propellant Production Precursor: science fiction insanity -- except it's real. And crazy cool. 2:30 PM +

sunday, march 19

I just got in. Spain was a blur. I'm bleary. Work looms. April looms.

In Madrid, my friends and I came across this chocolate candy called "Conguitos." The packaging, featuring an anthropomorphized rendering of the eponymous sweet, stared out at us from sundry newsstands teeming with multilingual porn. We found it again (or perhaps it found us) at a bus station in Toledo, behind vending machine Plexiglas. By then, it had begun to work its way into our imaginations. We took "conguito" to mean "conquistador" (phonetics being the sole logic in this case), and would invoke our little "Chocolate Conquistador" from time to time, although no attempt was made to procure a sample. This oversight went unchecked through Barcelona, Montserrat, and Majorca; we finally came to our senses and corrected it at the Madrid airport during our return loop. I present him to you now, in all his evocative glory. He has traveled far.

However: we have not yet excavated the conquistador from his packaging, out of a "fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge," to borrow and completely abuse a quote from Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. Well, that, and the damn thing looks a might revolting. (Much of our Chocolate Conquistador humor has been potty-minded -- e.g., Montezuma's Revenge, an Inquisition in one's pants, etc.) So for now, the intrepid explorer sleeps, which is also what I'm about to do. More later. 10:26 PM +

saturday, march 11

"Rain check." Miserable weather outside. I'm flying to Spain in a few hours. The weather there's looking a little sloppy too. In any case, the next update will be a week from Sunday -- unless I end up in an Internet café or something and the desire to log onto Blogger is overpowering. Winks, smiles, health, wealth. 12:27 PM +

friday, march 10

This is horrifying and sad. 10:18 PM +

Look, they quote me in the very last paragraph (scroll all the way down): "When my friends and I saw the 'point of no return' warning on the girl-astronaut's suit-screen during the space-walk, we were like, Who manufactured the suit? ACME by way of Warner Bros.? It was a Wile E. Coyote moment, to be sure." And here's the original item. 7:59 PM +

I finally caught The Hudsucker Proxy in its entirety (oversight, I know). What a fantastic snowglobe of a film -- self-referential, self-contained, self-knowing. It's a film about infinity -- the recurrent motif of the circle -- and infinite possibility. Carter Burwell's music sparkles, Roger Deakins' cinematography is lacquer-smooth, Dennis Gassner's production design is a triumph of simple geometry and burnished metal, and the Coen brothers' narrative is a typically bravura spiral lattice. Good stuff. 4:20 PM +

"McCain Terminates Interview With Shriver." Hehe. You'd think Maria Shriver would have bigger things to worry about. 12:31 PM +

Now this is a well-designed weblog. 12:14 PM +

What's eating Gilbert Amelio? 12:08 PM +

The Martian saturation continues with a dose of reality. 8:32 AM +

Kevin Smith versus Mickey and Co. Frankly, this is one of those public spats where neither party comes across favorably. Smith's supporters say groan-inducing, embarrassing things like, "If Walt Disney were alive today, he would not have let this happen. I'm sure he's rolling over in his grave right now"; Disney-owned ABC is just plain embarrassing anyway (occupational hazard when you're a large television network); and no one seems to be asking the important questions, like: Exactly how many Disney dollars has Smith pocketed so far? Everyone has a mouth. And a price. 2:34 AM +

"Once upon a time, when Hollywood filmmakers wanted to depict the first meeting between humans and aliens, it was simple: They wrapped a guy in tin foil, put a percolator on his head and called in the military. Then, sometime around 1977 (the year of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'), the aliens became ethereal New Age beings, bathed in light, with Important Lessons to teach us. Now we can't get rid of the little bastards." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, in fine form, offers a smart, savory roasting of Mission to Mars. 2:07 AM +

Admittedly pointless, but decidedly cool. 1:50 AM +

thursday, march 9

I love Salon. 5:31 PM +

Today's theme seems to be trailers. This is an awesome resource if you recently heard some really great music in a preview and can't figure out where it's from. 10:10 AM +

The fanboys are in a Pavlovian lather over this teaser for The Hollow Man. I think it's a little cheesy. But hope springs eternal. 8:52 AM +

"This is a striking[ly] lyrical trailer that seems to have perfectly captured the aching heart of Cormac McCarthy's brilliant novel." I think this is a striking statement that pretty much sums up where most mass-market filmmaking is heading. The "experience" of the trailer is often purer and more satisfying than the film it advertises, which in turn is somewhat more viscerally effective than the ultimate product of the whole vicious cycle -- a pan-and-scan, cropped-and-pixilated pick-up at your friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. Nevertheless, there are some pretty cool TRAILERS coming up. (Yep, that's apparently newsworthy, folks. Dunno about the actual films. I'm still bummed about Mission to Mars. Great Vangelis score in the previews, horrible, horrible Morricone score in the final film. And that's only the tip of the landfill.) 1:38 AM +

wednesday, march 8

A friend writes: "Another example of the slow decadence of our society when people start going after the people sworn to protect them." It makes for a grim tableau. 7:23 PM +

How cool is Pixar? Very cool. 6:42 PM +

A threat to consumers' rights? 12:46 PM +

tuesday, march 7

Interesting site. Built-in obsolescence, considering the subject matter, but appealing design. 11:03 PM +

In keeping with today's Mission To Mars bashing ... 7:45 PM +

Well, looky here. 2:05 PM +

monday, march 6

It's lame how every new animated Dreamworks feature basically references and rehashes Disney's "Dogma 1989" (my term for the "creative renaissance" which began in earnest with The Little Mermaid in 1989). When Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to set up a rival animation studio at SKG, he could have taken the considerable resources at his disposal and ignited the next revolution in prestige animation. Instead, his first labored effort was the onerous Prince of Egypt -- a two-dimensional morality play somehow even more excruciatingly wooden than Disney's comparably misguided Pocahontas. And while the Mouse House has lately been distancing itself from the clockwork musical conventions skewered so frequently and thoroughly by both The Simpsons and South Park, Dreamworks continues to put out films which make such dubious boasts as "Blah blah blah, new songs from Elton John and Tim Rice, blah blah blah." Blah, indeed.

Meanwhile, Pixar is eating everyone's lunch. 12:25 AM +

sunday, march 5

Rupert Everett explains Madonna's weird accent. 2:51 PM +

This is addictive. 1:21 AM +

"'I'm not doing well,' a sobbing McBurnett said, relating the Feb. 11 incident. 'I keep seeing his little body going under the car. He made a sound I've never heard before. My heart is broken. He was my baby.'" Naturally, she's talking about her dog. I won't comment on the tragic implications of what happened, but it sure reads like a  Farrelly Bros. comedy. 1:06 AM +

saturday, march 4

Two random thoughts floating in my brain as I woke up this morning: (1) When people have their jaw wired shut, what do they do about brushing their teeth? (I mean, is there some sort of rinse they have to use? Does it start to smell bad?) And (2) why didn't they just wire Hannibal Lecter's jaw shut in The Silence of the Lambs? (I had to read the screenplay for my screenwriting class -- yeah, I know, groan -- and I've been wondering.) These lines of inquiry will no doubt assume their proper proportions of How Dumb and Who Cares? once I've woken up a little more. 11:04 AM +

friday, march 3

"Bok globule." 'Nuff said. 3:22 PM +

Remember that horrible Land of the Lost series on Saturday mornings during the 1970's and early '80's? The one that combined terrible stop-motion "special" effects with live-action backgrounds? (It was remade, with comparably hideous results, during the early '90's ... I can never even pretend to like retro-kitschy shit. If it was disturbing and awful to me when I was a child, when I wasn't even as discerning, it's probably even more atrocious now.) Well, this is Disney's mega-budget (reportedly $300 million) CGI take on a similar concept -- rendered characters, live-action scenery. The trailer plays it like a cross between Armageddon and The Lion King. (I'd throw in the recent Tarzan, but that would be redundant.) And yet, for all that, I think it looks pretty damn cool. 2:25 PM +

The modern space probes are assembly-line candy bars compared to the old (relatively) copper-and-steam jobs chugging along at the bleeding edge of the solar system. Little pebbles skipping out farther than any little piece of us has ever gone before,  while we cling to possibility and dream of flying. A now there's talk of chaos theory. 3:36 AM +

This is what happens when the media diddles itself. 3:07 AM +

"What's that [Werner Herzog saying] about new images? We need them or we will die. Paul Verhoeven's prepping the life support." Read on. 2:56 AM +

thursday, march 2

Kevin Spacey sorta resembles Jeff Bezos in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. Isn't it interesting how "movie stars" are often photographed in a discreet, tasteful manner (e.g., in profile, chalky lighting, muted colors, matte textures, etc.), whereas "geeks" (exluding crossover new-media whores like Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs) are usually shot front-on (oily skin, crazy eyes) under what appears to be fluorescent office lighting? Another way the media fuck(s) with us. 5:25 PM +

Hehe. Ha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Heh. 10:26 AM +

Today's moment of zen. 12:18 AM +

wednesday, march 1

Anything that makes me relive the peculiar horror of Baby Geniuses, even momentarily and only through free association, deserves some sort of put-down. 7:26 PM +

Here's a little bit of perspective. 1:37 PM +

"England isn't really like this." 12:18 PM +

The word "million" with the intimation of "dollars" seems to excite a Pavolovian response in some people. An embarrassment of riches, in a manner of speaking. 12:04 PM +

Weird. The glue on a Citibank reply envelope tastes like peanut butter. 2:23 AM +

"Elf Grahams hand puppets offer hours of playtime for kids!" Creepy and pointless. Not to mention shameless. 12:06 AM +