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movies
Snow? In October?!
It snowed today, the first time this season, and supposedly the snowiest October on record in New York. We had no real accumulation, just a heavy white dusting on the lawn and disgusting and cold slush in the streets. It really did turn brutishly nasty almost overnight, right from very early fall — or even late summer; most of the trees still have green leaves on them — straight into winter.
I spent the day almost entirely inside. I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, which was okay, I guess, although I don’t think it’s her best work. Maybe her best character development; she spends an awful long time introducing us to people before anything really nefarious gets underway. But as a fun whodunit? I guessed who the killer was relatively early — well, as early as you can when the murder doesn’t happen until halfway through the book — but I didn’t do so on any evidence in the book. And, in the end, it seemed like that’s how Hercule Poirot solved the mystery too, unfortunately. Still, it was entertaining enough.
I also re-watched The Silence of the Lambs, which a recent episode of Judge John Hodgman (and last night’s brief capping of it) made me want to see again. It really holds up remarkably well for a twenty-year-old thriller I’ve seen more than once. (The book’s not terrible either, although Red Dragon is better. I never made it more than a couple of chapters into Hannibal.)
I watched a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the most recent episode of The Walking Dead.
I updated the Kaleidotrope website. Check it out: the cover art for the new fall issue, the last one in print, is up now, along with a quick taste of each of the twenty — count ’em, twenty! — stories contained within.
And this evening, I watched the 1972 horror anthology Asylum. It’s got a great cast, that includes such stars as Peter Cushing, Charlotte Rampling, and Britt Ekland. And some of the stories — written by horror legend Robert Bloch — aren’t bad. But ultimately the movie’s more than a little silly. Some good fun, but not remotely scary.
Well, that more or less was my Saturday, such as it was.
Thursday various
- The AV Club on Charlie’s Angels:
If you’re going to have a show that’s appallingly retrograde and anti-feminist, the least you could do about it is have the guts to just go whole hog.
- On The Mentalist:
It’s a sign of how thoroughly played out serial killers have become that, after holding such a dominant place in popular culture fifteen to twenty years ago, they all have seem to have retired to CBS.
- On Dream House:
And of course it’s never a good sign when Elias Koteas is skulking about.
- On Fringe:
When it comes to stories, there are few things more gratifying than realizing the story you thought were being told wasn’t the real story at all.
- And finally, Jean-Christophe Valtat defends steampunk:
Now it is true that steampunk is riddled with every kind of self-duplicating cliches – zombies, airships, clockwork humans, anarchists etc… – but that is a bit like saying that mathematics are riddled with cliches because they are using the same axioms over and over. Cliches (or myths, if you prefer) are technically inherent to alternate-world building, because it would be too complicated and boring to present the reader with a world where everything would have to be explained down to the least detail: you can only present something new if it is delineated by familiar objects, if only for the reader to complete by himself what the book cannot explain or describe. The novelty – in all senses of the term – comes from the collage, the montage, the criss-crossing and hybridation of historical and fantastic references, the spark that comes from banging the cliches together. A steampunk novel is laborious and volatile dosing of the pleasures of recognition and the pleasures of discovery. Then again, the dosing can fail miserably, but it is not necessarily the genre that is to blame. [via]
Wednesday various
- Mike Daisey remembers Steve Jobs:
Mr. Jobs’s magic has its costs. We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to. If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,†in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers.
- Actress sues IMDb for revealing that she’s totally old and gross. It’s an interesting case, although I don’t think IMDB has a responsibility to lie in order to combat Hollywood’s unfortunate age- and sexism.
- Mysterious paper sculptures [via]
- I’m sure by now you’ve heard this, but it’s still pretty remarkable: Online Gamers Make Discovery in HIV Battle
- And finally, learning the wrong lesson from 127 Hours.
Monday various
- Wow, Marvel sounds like a lousy place to work:
It gets downright messy. Marvel’s new offices have only one restroom for each gender. In a company of hundreds of people. The post-lunch hour piddle line is said to be especially long and people actually stagger their lunches so as not to wait in it. There’s a human resources staff of one for the whole company. Review copies? You’ve got to be kidding. Editors have to purchase copies of the books they worked on. The precious archives of assets have dwindled over the years due to not spending any money to save them.
- Mark Bittman on why the demise (well, okay, just bankruptcy for now) of Friendly’s might not be such a bad thing. I have some fond memories of the chain, more for the ice cream than the food — and certainly not the ambiance or service — but I’m also not going to pretend like this is necessarily bad news.
- Emma to Charles Darwin. He nickname for him is…um…
- Noel Murray defends the Matrix sequels. I’m not sure I’m completely convinced, but he makes a very persuasive argument.
- And finally, how many books on Amazon.com are written by robots? More than you might think. [via]