Month: January 2010

That’s one way of putting it

Zach Handlen on G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

Sommers’ action sequences have been degrading rapidly since his remake of The Mummy, becoming so disconnected from anything even remotely resembling real-world physics and cause and effect that it’s like watching drunken balloon animals fuck.

I haven’t seen the movie, but the clips Handlen provides make me nostalgic for the comparatively gritty and realistic original cartoon.

Random 10 1/15

A surprisingly low turnout last week. Were the songs really that obscure? Is nobody but me really enjoying this? Oh well, here are this week’s puzzling song lyrics:

  1. “Elephants” by Rachael Yamagata
    And I am dreaming of them on the plains, dirtying up their beds
  2. “My Brother Makes the Noises for the Talkies” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
    But what is even better is his noise for Mickey Mouse
  3. “We’ll Be Free” by BLAMMOS
    We spent so much time neglecting what’s before our eyes
  4. “Awaiting on You All” by George Harrison, guessed by Eric B.
    You don’t need to designate or to emigrate before you can see Jesus
  5. “Since I’ve Been Loving You” by Led Zeppelin, guessed by Kim
    I said you had the nerve to tell me you didn’t want me no more, yeah
  6. “Broad Daylight” by Gabriel Rios
    Lloyd’s still got them Polaroids
  7. “Apeman” by the Kinks, guessed by Generik
    I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
  8. “When Will I Be Loved?” by Linda Ronstadt, guessed by Clayton
    He always breaks my heart in two
  9. “Suck on the Jugular” by the Rolling Stones
    Let’s live lasciviously down in the muck
  10. “Got to Get You Into My Life” by the Beatles, guessed by Generik
    And had you run, you knew in time we’d meet again for I had told you

Good luck!

So that was Thursday

I helped out at our company’s exhibit booth at a local conference this morning (hence the tie in the above photo), which was a nice way to break up the work day and spend some time out of the office. And hey, I don’t usually get a chance to ride the subway to work. An author had very generously left a box of fresh pastries for us, and the conference organizers (or the hotel staff), in order to apologize that there wasn’t any of the usual free coffee, had given every booth a hefty Starbucks gift card the day before. So no complaints there. (Although the free water they did make available tasted a little like bitter coffee grounds, so clearly they were determined to use the same dispenser no matter what.)

After all that, it was back to the office with one of my coworkers, a quick lunch, and a little light editing on some PowerPoint slides. I know, the life of a developmental editor is a thrill a minute. Then it was time for home, a couple episodes of The Mighty Boosh — man, that’s an odd show — dinner, playing with the dog, and finishing reading Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, which I really liked — and about which, I suspect, more later.

All in all, a pretty decent day.

Thursday various

  • If it was up to me, Christopher Walken would read everything, not just Lady Gaga lyrics. [via]

  • Is there a good Roger Ebert and a bad Roger Ebert? Roger Ebert examines the question.

    I think I fall somewhere in between Ebert and Schneider on this, though I’m much less analytic about film than the latter. I do think Ebert sometimes lets emotion sway him too far in a movie’s favor (Congo comes to mind, for example.) But I almost understand why he likes something I think is awful, and I can’t disagree with his assertion that “film itself is primarily an emotional, not a cerebral, medium.”

  • Dave Kehr on Blu-Ray and DVD:

    For Blu-ray to look its best it requires picture and sound images of the finest, most pristine quality. That’s not difficult to come by in a contemporary release like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (the best-selling Blu-ray of 2009), but is somewhat more problematic for a film made in Germany in 1926. Blu-ray exaggerates the faults in older material: the dust specks and scratches caused by decades of wear and tear, the softness of detail or harshness of contrast caused by duplication from sources several generations removed from the film that actually passed through the camera.

    He also shares this interesting statistic: “Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video.”

    We will probably never achieve the utopian vision of having every film ever made available at the click of a mouse, but we are certain to move a little bit further in that direction in the decade ahead — with the cooperation of the studios or without them. (Copyrights will soon be expiring on the first wave of talkies.) In the meantime let us praise diversity. As confusing as the format wars may be, they keep hope alive.

  • Philip K. Dick on dreams and/or the universe’s practical jokes.

  • And finally, a famous Twilight Zone episode reimagined for a modern age. [via]