movies

Somehow this was a Saturday

Still fighting the cold, which is at its worst when I try to do something silly like sleep. I had to get up early this morning, to drive my father over to the local car mechanic, and there was a point, maybe around three or four in the morning, when I thought, hell, sleep isn’t working, maybe I should just stay up. I’m glad I didn’t, because as is I needed a nap in the late afternoon.

We went out this for dinner to celebrate my mother’s birthday, and then I came home and watched Drive, which was quite good.

I also watched this past Sunday’s Walking Dead episode, which I think I’ve been building up the courage to watch. The episode right before it, the big event right before the season’s most recent brief hiatus, was…well, pretty damn intense. It’s a good show, despite some problems, but it’s not always the most fun zombie apocalypse going.

Saturday

It snowed today, though not so much that you’d really notice. Most, if not all of it was gone by the middle of the day. Last winter, that kind of snow wouldn’t have even been worth mentioning.

This evening, I watched a pair of movies, more or less back to back. First, I watched the distinctly weird The Nines. The AV Club called it “winningly loopy” and a “cinematic mindfuck,” which seems fairly accurate. (Although, fair warning: the less you know going in, maybe, the better.)

After that, I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I thought was surprisingly quite good, especially in the second half, although it’s definitely not the feel-good movie of the year. Andy Serkis probably did deserve some kind of special recognition at this year’s Oscars.

That, plus some Kaleidotrope slush (and disappointing episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Supernatural), was pretty much my Saturday.

Some kind of week

I don’t quite know how this happened, but I wound up with more work at the end of today than I had at the beginning of yesterday. It’s really shaping up to be that kind of week.

I took a quick break in the middle of it to attend one of our regular “brown bag” lunches, this one with pizza — good, if cold, and with a real shortage of plates — and screenwriter Richard Vetere. It was okay.

Then this evening, it started to snow. Not a lot, and it’s already tapered off, but it’s sometimes nice to be reminded that it’s actually winter.

Wednesday various

  • tudent receives free cocaine with Amazon textbook order. Is this where we’ve going wrong with our textbook sales? [via]
  • How College Football Bowls Earn Millions In Profits But Pay Almost Nothing In Taxes. Are you ready for some economic disparity?! [via]
  • The Texans who live on the ‘Mexican side’ of the border fence: ‘Technically, we’re in the United States’ [via]
  • Roger Ebert on why movie revenue is dropping:

    The message I get is that Americans love the movies as much as ever. It’s the theaters that are losing their charm. Proof: theaters thrive that police their audiences, show a variety of titles and emphasize value-added features. The rest of the industry can’t depend forever on blockbusters to bail it out.

  • And finally, Scott Tobias on why 2011 was secretly a really good year for movies:

    I don’t mean to be bullying or schoolmarmish about it, only to point out that when great films get pushed to the margins in our technology-rich times, far more than just a handful of self-selecting New Yorkers have a chance to see them. The key is to not let awards-season hype color your perception. We consider 2007 a monumental year because its strongest achievements—movies like There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, and Zodiac—happened to have healthy budgets and the backing of major studios. Compare that to a 2011 where a pleasant-but-disposable trifle like The Artist is leading the charge, and it’s little wonder that perception marks it as a weak year. (The Tree Of Life may be the only 2011 film high in both ambition and visibility, and will almost certainly top every critics’ poll as a result.) But for the adventurous—and again, you don’t have to venture off the couch to be among them—2011 was an embarrassment of riches, full of lively, diverse, form-busting visions across all genres and around the world. And the best of them ask something of the viewer, offering rewards in exchange for an active engagement. Just don’t expect all the question marks to turn into exclamation points: To quote some advice to Michael Stuhlbarg’s spiritual seeker in A Serious Man, “Accept the mystery.”

Tuesday various

  • Netflix is pretty sure it has no future in DVDs. You know, I like streaming and on-demand, but the selection is still not that great, relatively speaking. If Netflix could ensure the same level of selection and quality with streaming as with the physical DVDs…well, I’d still occasionally be annoyed they were most often DVDs without special features of any kind, but I’d be more willing to switch over to streaming-only. (If the high cost of having both doesn’t force the issue for me at some near-future point.) But Netflix can’t promise that. Some of it is out of their hands — studios are covetous of their movies and shows, and some (like HBO) see Netflix, maybe rightly, as a direct competitor. So I really do hope Netflix doesn’t continue their push towards streaming-and-only-streaming, that they realize it wasn’t just the Qwiskter name that upset customers. I want a wide and varied selection of movies and shows. I don’t want more of “You can’t watch that, but have you ever tried this…?”)
  • Indonesian man arrested for kicking woman he thought was a ghost [via]
  • Want to smell like a superhero? [via]
  • “Twitter is the contemporary postcard—social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.”
  • And finally, Basil Fawlty Impersonator Chat:

    As Mark Evanier notes, “There are literally more professional impersonators of Basil Fawlty around than there were episodes of Fawlty Towers.”