movies

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]

Wednesday various

  • Movie popcorn is really bad for you. [via]

  • Then again, so too, in another way, is buying a computer at Best Buy. [via]

  • I can’t decide if this —

    An upcoming film called The Raven posits a story about what would happen if Poe were faced with the very murders he wrote about. In the movie, at the end of Poe’s life, a serial killer challenges him to solve a series of killings inspired by Poe’s fiction.

    — is a really cool or really dumb idea. I’m leaning towards dumb, to be honest.

  • I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this Random Roles interview with Alan Thicke. He’s a man who can speak intelligently and honestly about his (surprisingly interesting and varied) career.

  • And finally, who even knew there was a “murky world of Canadian ‘exploitation’ cinema“? [via]

    “Now in the U.S. when a mommy and daddy love each other, they perform bipolar sexual intercourse and make a baby. Canadians, however, are a breed of hermaphrodites who reproduce by means of auto-insemination, thus eliminating the need for sex. This also explains why we don’t really have a film industry.” – Dave Foley

Tuesday various

  • Scientists develop ‘golden fleece’ lozenge to fight off all cold and flu bugs [via]:

    The pill, which would cost 20 pence a day and would be taken once before breakfast, could be sold over the counter in as little as two years.

  • “Most expensive” foods like this often seem like a cheat to me — of course it’s expensive if it’s served in a solid gold dish! — but this one seems like it might actually earn its hefty price tag, if only because the most expensive ingredients are also edible. That said, there’s not a chance I’m paying $750 for a single cupcake. [via]
  • Arachne Jericho on embracing the inconsistencies in the Sherlock Holmes universe and why a gay Holmes/Watson relationship really isn’t such a stretch.
  • I once tried getting a book endorsement from Desmond Tutu. When his assistant turned me down, I didn’t turn around and fake one. This is one of several reasons why I am not an African dictator. (Nelson Mandela Foundation accuses Congo president over fake foreword) [via]
  • And finally, a fascinating story about a Wired writer who tried to disappear. I was particularly amused by the idea that his trackers created real Twitter accounts to look like automated spambots to draw away suspicion. Seems like the inverse of how these things usually work. [via]

A lazy Satur–it is Saturday, right?

Today was about as eventful as yesterday, although also twice as cold. I went for a walk around two o’clock, which was…well, let’s just say ill-advised in retrospect. (As Heather wisely noted, though, this would have been better realized in futurespect.) I turned back after about half an hour (the length of only one in my backlog of podcasts), desperate to be out of the wind and chill. I stayed outside just long enough to help my father take down the Christmas lights from the front of the house, and then I escaped back inside to tinker again with my short story. I think I’ve pretty much reached the end of it, although it does still need a little fine-tuning before I mail it off. (This is the postcard I bought, though not through eBay, if you’re curious.)

I also went to see Up in the Air this afternoon and really quite liked it. It’s a good deal sweeter, and sadder, than I expected, and George Clooney and Vera Farmiga have terrific chemistry together. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, which I purchased online when I got home. I’d definitely recommend it.

Other than that, basically just pottering around in the last few days of my vacation. It’s still hard to believe it’s just about over.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

I don’t know about you, but I spent the first day of the new year — the new decade, depending on how you reckon these things — doing not much of anything.

Oh sure, my father and I took down the Christmas tree this morning. And I did a little tinkering with my short story for the Geist Annual Postcard Story Contest. And I watched a few more episodes of The Big Bang Theory — how have I not been watching this show? — and then this evening I watched a pretty decent horror movie called The Signal — kind of like a neat modern riff on George Romero’s The Crazies, with some good scares and interesting thoughts on what mass psychosis might actually look like. (“Do you have the crazy in your head?!”) But overall, really, where did the day go?

I’m in the tail end of my two-week-long vacation (sixteen days, actually), and I’m starting to feel like maybe I’m ready to get back into having a daily routine. Vacation has really agreed with me, and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to go back. But, at the same time, I think I really benefit from having a more structured schedule. I haven’t really done a lot of writing these past couple of weeks, and I’ve definitely done less reading. (A forty-five-minute commute, twice a day, really does wonders to focus my time for that.)

I go back to work on Monday, and it’s kind of nice to feel like I’m ready for that.