I just watched Children of Men on DVD. Good movie but a bit tough to watch at times. One of the DVD extras is The Possibility of Hope (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) which:
The documentary explores the intersection between the film’s themes and reality with a critical analysis by eminent scholars: the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek , anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein, futurist James Lovelock, sociologist Saskia Sassen, human geographer Fabrizio Eva, cultural theorist Tzvetan Todorov, and philosopher and economist John N. Gray.
Very good stuff if you like thinking about the future, the nature of people or just like sci-fi and the ideas that inspire it.
Well it looks like the numbers for Grindhouse are abysmal. Dropping 74% in revenue from its premiere week is not good. Caught the film yesterday and I have to say it was completely fucking awesome. T&A, explosions, gratuitous violence, and muscle cars make for the most brilliant thing I have seen on screen in a long time. At this point I really hate how fat, stupid, and lazy Americans have become when Are We Done Yet? is grossing more than Grindhouse. WTF?
All the hype about the Borat! is true. I laughed hard at climax of Lil’ Miss Sunshine but that was about 5-10 min of the movie. 80% of Borat! is just that damn funny.
I was reading the valleywag article about MySpace’s origins and how my only friend on MySpace, Tom Anderson may be a marketing ploy. Then I realized that they missed the biggest ground-breaking fact of all. Tom Anderson is the name of Keanu Reeve’s character in The Matrix before he becomes Neo. Holy crap! That either means that this Tom Anderson will either save the world from inevitable destruction or that MySpace is an early beta of the Matrix program. Personally my vote is with the latter.
Also interesting is that the Tom Anderson of the Matrix, and possibly the MySpace one too, was inspired by the protagonist of It Conquered the World. Add in a dash of Rupert Murdoch and let that one stew in the brain for a while.
I watched A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday. I’ll give it a mixed review. I had some issues with Dangerous Woman character and her actions drove a lot of the plot. I did not hate the casting of Lindsay Lohan as much as I thought I would. She did OK with the material but putting her next to Meryl Streep really spotlights her flaws as an actress. By far the best part of the movie was John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson in their last song, “Bad Jokes”. That is pretty much worth the price of admission.
One other thing I will add. We went to the Saturday matinee were probably 20 years younger than the average of the theater audience’s age. And one thing about old people is they have no hesitation with talking during a movie. Shouting out plot points about 10 minutes after they were revealed and I would guess many were repeating dialogue for the older and deafer members of the audience.
So I am a fan of Garrison Keillor and the radio show but this is a tough movie to recommend to non-fans. I would give it a 7 overall mainly due to some great acting and well-written dialogue.
YouTube is so yesterday. They have gone overboard with the “copyright infringement” and other violations. Plus you have to wonder how long they can stay out there with a bandwidth bill of $1 million a month. I cannot see any business model they would have with user submitted content that would pay that plus turn a profit.
Anyway, check out Veoh. They are new and so far I don’t think they have pulled down any content for … anything. If you register, you can have run of the place. And they do video distribution through a p2p client. They post small snippets of videos on the site and then you can download the full thing. Great way to get around those pesky bandwidth costs. I have tried embedding a video (language is probably not entirely work-safe). Enjoy!
UPDATE: Son of a bitch! Wordpress does a lot of fucking around with my code by default that I did not much care for. Finally got it worked out after I turned off the WYSIWYG editor. Jeeze what an pain in the ass.
An Inconvenient Truth Slideshow - Read what Lessig thinks of the slideshow that the movie is based upon.
OK, I have been lazy (busy with the real world) with posting, design, ranting, DotW’ing. Anyway, I have been sitting on some key DotW’s for a while. Hopefully here in a week, I can post them. The design will just take some time. Wordpress handles things significantly differently from Moveable Type. Great for using templates, but for the DIY’ers, it’s more painful. Feel free to comment on those deserving Douchebaggery status. Some names off the top of my head; Hayden (for NSA wiretaps, etc), O’Reilly, Coulter, John Gibson.
Also, there is a lot of talk about Gore running in 2008. I am really starting to warm up to that idea. I could see a Gore/Clinton campaign in ‘08 but would love a Gore/Feingold run. Also, here is the release info for An Inconvenient Truth which I am reading very good things about.
This weekend I had the opportunity to catch up on some Netflix viewing. Here are my reviews:
Cowboy del Amor - Enjoyed it and found it funny and endearing. Ivan Thompson (the cupid cowboy) is one of those guys who reminds you of your favorite great uncle with always a good one-liner. Recommended
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices - Kind of mixed on this one like I am Wal-Mart as a whole. I thought all the points were valid but nothing new. I am always careful when documentaries use music to manipulate emotion and this one does. Also some of the arguments are very weak while others are solid. Recommended but this one will probably only preach to the choir.
The League of Gentlemen - Biggest recommendation on the list. This one is funny on a dark, twisted level that may not be for everyone but should be. It’s British and has men in drag along with serial killers, transexual cab drivers, egregious unemployment officers, and more euphemisms for onanism than you can shake a stick at.