I’ve started reading Fafblog (”the whole world’s only source for Fafblog”), which is the most off-the-wall political satire site I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes it’s so off-the-wall it’s not even about politics, as in this entry about bananas and the new Garfield movie.
Incidentally, I have a few Gmail invitations left if anyone wants one.
A recent Boing Boing post caused me to browse around NationalLampoon.com, where I was entertained by How To Assemble An IKEA Computer Desk. …because you’ve been drinking beer all night, and therefore will have no need to go to the bathroom.
Last night I also finished reading Neverwhere. This is only the second book I’ve read by Neil Gaiman, and the first was Good Omens. Since that was cowritten with Terry Pratchett, it has a very different feel. Neverwhere is not a funny book, though it does have a few laughs here and there. It’s a character book, and I recommend it.
What impressed me most about the book was how Gaiman leads the reader to track Richard’s own feelings about his surroundings. Starting with the shock and disgust about being pulled into and trapped in London Below, through a growing connection with and respect for its people, to finally a feeling of alienation on return to London Above, the reader (well, I did anyway) feels the same way about the world in the narrative as Richard does. That’s cool.
If this were made into a Hollywood movie (it’s already a BBC miniseries), Croup and Vandemar would be played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Or not.
Neverwhere comes of course from a long line of novels in which a fantasy world exists beside the “real world,” accessible through some strange portal - The Wizard of Oz, Through the Looking Glass, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc. This is in contrast to the other two major ways of setting up a fantasy world: embed it in the real world, but make it secret, as in Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; or just dispense with the real world entirely and set your novel in fantasy without reference to the contemporary mundane, as in The Lord of the Rings and essentially all science fiction, which generally relegates the mundane to the near or far past to make way for the [dys|u]topian future.
Also, it made me want to visit London.
Johnny English, which I watched last night, has some funny bits. The trouble is that most of the laughing I did was well before the joke was actually delivered. Maybe I’ve just seen too much Rowan Atkinson, so that now I know what an Atkinson joke looks like before it arrives.
In short, a movie that was funny enough to finish (particularly the tow truck chase scene), but not well done enough to really recommend.
And John Malkovich’s “French accent” was downright painful.
Edmunds reports that Lexani Wheels of Yorba Linda, California, is now selling “a line of custom wheels that are available covered in various leathers or imitation leathers.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any pictures of these wheels at the manufacturer’s website.
Beta releases of software aren’t expected to be perfect, but to be effective at gathering feedback, at least a basic amount of functionality has to work - otherwise no one will use it for long enough to find the undiscovered problems. Microsoft is currently preparing Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. This is a bit more important than their usual service packs because it will most likely be the only client OS release between now and Longhorn, which is probably at least 2 years away. So the beta of XP SP2 needs to be good. For example, Deer Hunter 4 needs to work.
Tonight, as I watched Cidade de Deus, I was thinking, “I’m going to have to watch Scarface again so I can remember why that’s considered a better movie than this.” As I was checking imdb.com to post this, I discovered that City of God rates 8.7 at IMDB while Scarface rates only 7.8!
What does Cidada de Deus have over Scarface, which is considered a modern classic? Quite a lot, actually - richer characters, better camera work, and, most importantly, a message of hope in the fate of Rocket.
A bunch of very ugly cars. Note that there are multiple pages - you might miss the tiny “Next” link near the top. (Via Autoblog.)
Today, the G8 summit ended. Mostly, they talked about the same thing everybody who hasn’t been talking about Ronald Reagan has been talking about, which is Iraq. For contrast, here’s what [SatireWire claims that] they talked about at a previous summit.
Les Triplettes de Belleville is the strangest movie I’ve seen in quite a while. What can I say about a such a short movie, animated in caricature, with hardly any dialog? I liked it. Fun story, good music, and animation that isn’t always as simple as it looks.
At the townhouse complex where we live, they have repainted the signs indicating visitor parking. One suspects that English may not be the painters’ first language.
![[photo of curb with 'GUESS PARKING' stenciled in black on white]](/media/2004/GuessParking.jpg)
Amazon.com lets you make lists of stuff they sell, which is a useful little site feature. This way you can find other music/books/etc that appeal to the same sorts of people. Amazon tries to do this automatically using their recommendation engine, but I find the “Listmania” stuff more useful, or at least more interesting.
One list, The Top 25 Weirdest Items You Can Purchase Through Amazon!, is interesting, but not useful. Via Boing Boing.
This evening on the Netflix Channel - Four Rooms:
I suppose Four Rooms have been the inspiration for The Hire, a series of five short films commisioned by BMW in 2001, and then three more in 2002, all starring Clive Owen as “The Driver” (like Tim Roth’s “Ted the Bellhop” in Four Rooms, only a serious cool guy rather than a goofy clown) with various big name directors. I don’t think I would recommend Four Rooms, but the eight episodes of The Hire are all worth a download.
A sneak preview of the new Visual Basic.NET context menu in Visual Studio 2005 (not confirmed). Very silly. Via Chris Sells.
Why do squirrels run out in front of cars? Hazing.
“Does the Tree of Delicious Nuts Exist?” ScarySquirrel.com knows.
Reservoir Dogs, which I watched this afternoon at home, is a very fine film. Quentin Tarantino is the master of telling stories out of order. He makes it easy to trust that the needed details will be provided, and he keeps you interested in what happens to the characters, even as he reveals things about them that completely change your understanding of them. I am not, by nature, a big fan of blood and guts movies, but his sense of humor is too compelling to pass up.
One thing I’m curious about is why he sometimes casts himself as minor characters in his films (Mr. Brown in this one). Its his prerogative, of course, but why? He doesn’t appear to have any special acting chops.
The RIAA has contracted with a biometrics company called Veritouch to produce the iVue, a portable music player with a fingerprint reader. Current “legal music downloads” like the iTunes Music Store and the new Napster use a system that ties purchased tracks to individual computers. In the case of iTunes, you can “authorize” up to five computers to play tracks you buy (iPods don’t count against this total - you can put the tracks on an unlimited number of iPods as long as the iPod is physically connected to an authorized computer for the transfer). Napster may allow for more than one computer too - I don’t know.
But the iVue will tie tracks not to computers, but to the physical presence of their buyer (or, presumably, a reasonable facsimile). Mark is right: this has “a zero percent chance of catching on.” And I should hope not; do we really want to move towards a world where Blockbuster charges you a different rental fee depending on how many people are in the room while you show the movie? And modifies your TV to enforce that policy?
Yesterday I saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at the AMC Studio 30. I’ve read the five books, and I enjoyed the first two films. This one was much better. Less emphasis on the school year, holiday scenes, classes, Quidditch, and tests; a faster pace with less exposition; some nice cinematic touches, like the season transition shots. The clock motif was laid on a bit thick, but I like clocks, so it’s OK. The John Williams theme was made less oppressive in part by using it less and in part by varying the instrumentation. I think musical continuity is important for sequels, but this was a welcome change.
Overall, I think Alfonso Cuarón did a better job with the material than Chris Columbus did, so I’m sorry to see that he isn’t involved in next years entry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (my favorite of the books), which Mike Newell will be directing. The only film of his that I’ve seen is Mona Lisa Smile, which, while not bad, failed to impress.
I can’t decide whether I like the idea of switching directors around to film pieces of a story. That method meant we got Cuarón’s Potter rather than seven of Columbus’s good-but-not-great Potter. It worked pretty well for Star Wars Ep. IV-VI, too. (Does anyone doubt it should have continued for Ep. I-III?) But it certainly would have hurt Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, and probably Indiana Jones as well.
There are many lists of programming languages on the web, but this one has some hilarious quotes, such as:
Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice.