Category: Arts & Entertainment
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Click in the middle of the Rocking Chair. You’ll thank me later.
At the end of last month, ABC launched a new viral marketing campaign for the upcoming season of “Lost.” It’s an ad for the series’ fictional airline, with a press release announcing that Oceanic would start flying again after the Flight 815 disaster, and a promo website called FlyOceanicAir.com. And oh no did you see…
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Literacy 2008: Preliminaries: Lost Horizon
(I read this book over the Christmas break, so it doesn’t count towards the 26 books I’ve resolved to read in 2008. But I have a corollary resolution to post something on this blog every day this year, no matter how short or irrelevant, so I’m cheating and rolling back the date.) (I’m also cheating…
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Old News, Everyone!
My favorite thing on the internet of the moment is this old-school video for “Psyche Rock” by Pierre Henry, the inspiration for the theme song from “Futurama.” Transistors as bombs and spermatozoa: awesome.
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Unliterate no more
Since I failed miserably at every single resolution I made last year, I’m going to take it simpler in 2008, and only choose one. Someone on a message board announced he’s challenging himself to read a book a week this year; I read too slowly and am too easily distracted for that, so I’m aiming…
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For want of double-paned windows, the kingdom was lost
I saw Beowulf in IMAX 3D at the Metreon this afternoon. Anybody who has interest in this movie but hasn’t seen it yet for whatever reason, I’d say that 3D, whether it’s the IMAX version or not, is really the way to go. It delivers pretty well on the spectacle, and that kind of thing…
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Say what you will about populism filmed with stylistic excess; at least that’s an ethos.
No Country for Old Men is about as close to perfect as you’re ever going to see in a movie. Not a single shot is unnecessary. The pacing is perfect; both for the movie overall, and for individual scenes that feel as if they were meticulously orchestrated down to a fraction of a second. Almost…
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All of this I’ve seen before, and I will watch it all again.
I got back from Thanksgiving to find the “Battlestar Galactica: Razor” movie waiting for me. On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d rate it radical. (For comparison, the episode where they get off of New Caprica rates a holy crap that was wicked awesome, and the one where Starbuck gets kidnapped on a farm…
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In the event no actual movies are available, the Internet may be used as a substitute.
They’ve been warning us for years that the onslaught of digital distribution, torrents, iTunes, rental-by-mail services, and the new entertainment-in-pill-form (not available in some markets) was going to change everything. What they failed to warn us about were all the tragic implications of the entertainment glut. Case in point: there are currently movies by Wes…
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Tensions Mount as Rival Factions Set To Conquer Lucrative Making-Fun-of-Movies Territory
Astute readers will notice I haven’t been updating this weblog, and that’s because of a desperate attempt to get caught up with work. (That’s what happens when every time you get stuck writing, you run to the safety of The Orange Box and watching Japanese movies from the 80s about schoolgirl detectives). But it’s still…
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Delinquent Schoolgirl Yo-Yo Detective, you’ve shattered every bone in my heart.
On his Invincible Super-Blog, Chris Sims wrote a fine review of the 1987 Japanese movie Sukeban Deka that was enough to make me put it at the top of my Netflix queue, and for that I’m thankful. Still, it’s hobbled by the old “aren’t those Japanese people wacky?” mentality that doesn’t really capture the sheer…
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“I’m about to go analog on your ass.”
I just want to make sure everybody else heard that, and it wasn’t just me. In “Bionic Woman” this week, Isaiah Washington’s character interrupts the completely pointless training sessions between the Bionic Woman and Yoda-san, telling her she needs to bring out the animal inside herself, and he actually says the line, “I’m about to…
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In a sense, it is OUR so-called “civilization” that is truly the more uncivilized.
Or, Shallow and Not Particularly Novel Insights Gleaned from Watching Return to the Blue Lagoon on Satellite Just Now: It’s got Milla Jovovich in it! For some reason, I’d always thought The Fifth Element was her first movie. Even in her jailbait days, Milla Jovovich was shockingly beautiful. The “Brian Krause” in the movie is…