movies

They say it’s a Wednesday

I’ve lost track of the days, although not enough to be unaware that I’m quickly running out of vacation, just four short days left in this end-of-the-year run before heading back to work. I spent this day doing some of the same as yesterday, working on the Kaleidotrope website. It’s not a major overhaul, at least in terms of design, but it’s taken more than just a few tweaks to go from being a print to an online zine. I’m sure it’ll be a whole new learning process even after I launch.

When I wasn’t doing that, I watched “An Unearthly Child,” the first batch of episodes ever of Doctor Who, from 1963. I received a DVD set of William Hartnell’s first episodes as a Christmas present, and while I’d seen some of the Dalek episodes that followed these, I’d never seen the very beginning. It’s…well, maybe it’s easiest just to say it was a rather different show back then from what it is now.

This evening, I picked my parents up at the eye doctor, since they both had appointments, and their eyes were too dilated afterward to drive safely. We went out to eat at a new Latin place that had been written up in the New York Times (and for which we had a coupon), which turned out to be quite good. Even if service was a little confused. Friendly and attentive, but confused. And even if getting into the bathroom was a ridiculously complicated production number: first through a very heavy beaded curtain, into a dark room where you had to stumble around to find the light switch, only to discover to discover the toilet was behind you. Limited space, but a little ridiculous.

Anyway, the food was quite good.

And then we came home and I watched All About Eve, which was really terrific. Bette Davis, in particular, gives a deservedly iconic performance, but the whole film’s great fun.

And meanwhile, it’s gotten remarkably cold and windy the past couple of days. One might almost be tempted to start believing in winter again.

Fridayed

A quiet day, not least of all because I somehow managed to sleep until 11. I went to the cleaners, got some pizza for lunch, worked a little on the Kaleidotrope website. (Any fears that going online would mean the end of tedious layout and formatting were, I am pleased to report, ill-founded.)

And now I’m settling in to watch My Name Is Bruce before calling it a night.

Friday various

  • An Outtake from Word Freak: The Enigmatic Nigel Richards. Possibly the world’s greatest Scrabble player…though he doesn’t take much enjoyment from the game. [via]
  • Israeli Man Changes Name to Mark Zuckerberg to goad the company into suing him. I have no love for Facebook, but his company seems like a pretty clear violation of Facebook’s terms of service, and the man himself seems like an ass.
  • Jon Scalzi on the “flying snowman”:

    This is not to say that, when encountering fantasy work, one has to abandon all criticism. But if you’re going to complain about one specific element as being unrealistic, you should consider the work in its totality and ask whether in the context of the work, this specific thing is inconsistent with the worldbuilding.

  • Zach Handlen on the TV adaptation of Bag of Bones:

    A good genre story is designed in such a way as to distract you from its inner machinations. Intellectually, you can go back and say, yes, this was a scene of rising action, this was a character development moment, this was a piece of information that will become crucial later on, this was was a resolution of an earlier mystery. Everyone quotes Chekhov’s comment on a gun in act one going off in act two, and at heart, that’s all stories really are: First you load the pistol, then you aim it, then someone pulls the trigger. It’s a method of delivery for a series of stimuli designed to provoke audience response, and the better the book, movie, or TV show, the less time you spend thinking about the mechanics of the process, and the more time you spend luxuriating in the response.

    I have to admit, I kind of want to see it now.

  • I noted this on Twitter, but it bears repeating: if you’re offended just by the idea that some Americans are not Christian…then you are a bigot.
  • Terry Gilliam continues to dream the impossible dream.
  • As much as I think I’d love any movie where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy do nothing but talk to one another, I kind of hope they don’t make another Before Sunrise movie. The two, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset work so well together, and I feel like revisiting the characters would be going to the well one too many times. (They also appear in Waking Life together.) Still, I’m willing to be proven wrong.
  • A gorgeous photo of the Milky Way from the top of the world [via]
  • Speech Synthesizer Could ‘Resurrect’ Dead Singers. I think that sound you’re hearing is the echo along the Uncanny Valley. [via]
  • And finally, some wonderful bedtime stories from Doctor Who cast members:

This day just makes me sixth

Today I watched the first episode of American Horror Story and The Hangover, both of which were rather disappointing. The difference, of course, is that I basically expected AHS to be bad, since the batcrap insanity of its awfulness was the main (and maybe only) selling point of the whole endeavor. I have co-workers who watch it religiously, but I don’t know that any of them would argue that the show is good. Tonally, the pilot episode was a little like if David Lynch had decided to direct a sitcom. Then again, I started to deeply appreciate the awfulness of last year’s Happy Town, so maybe I’ll continue watching. And rumor has it that when the show returns next year, it will be with all new stories and characters — some played by the same actors this year. So even if I absolutely hate hate it…

This is what I’m telling myself, anyway.

The Hangover, on the other hand, was just disappointing. For such a big hit, full of ostensibly funny people, it’s kind of a shambling, only sporadically amusing mess. I wouldn’t call it bad, but partly because it never really works itself up to be much of anything.

I also did a little work on the Kaleidotrope website, but I’m still trying to figure that out.

Taking the fifth

Day five of my vacation, and I have to admit, I finally broke down and briefly checked my work e-mail. Of course, then I went and saw the new Mission Impossible movie, so it’s not like it was all work for me today. I also read a little, wrapped some Christmas presents, and then this evening watched another movie: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Which, amazingly, I’d never seen before. It’s not perfect, and the effects sure are dated, but it’s genuinely quite entertaining. No spoilers, even some thirty years later but that ending must have blown Trekkies’ minds back in 1982.

Oh, and Ghost Protocol is pretty good, too. Well staged action and at least as good as the one right before it…which, actually, I only barely remember. (Say what you will about Brian de Palm’s muddled first outing, it’s memorable.) Aside from some really annoying technical glitches in the theater — a dark screen for almost twenty minutes, then a picture with no sound, and then trailers superimposed on the screen during the last five minutes — the movie was quite fun.

And that was…Wednesday, right? Yep, a decent enough day.