The McWetlog

Culture

The motherf***ing snakes on Snakes on a Plane
Friday, September 1, 2006 at 9:08 PM | Movies, Reptiles and Amphibians |

So, Snakes on a Plane. Saw it Tuesday night, and I’m finding myself in agreement with Kent Williams’s review in the Madison, Wisconsin Isthmus:

The movie’s neither good enough nor bad enough to leave much of an impression. Director David Ellis does seem to have gotten the memo about camping it up, but perhaps not as early in the filmmaking process as some would have liked. And so the movie kind of careens between Airport (with snakes) and Airplane (with snakes), genre and genre parody. Itching to get things started, Ellis lets his snakes — all 400 of them — out of the cargo bay much too early, passing up any chance for suspense. And most of them are so clearly digitized, you feel like you’re watching a cartoon.

That it was self-consciously over the top was what made it watchable; that its over-the-top scenes were so scattershot was what made it disappointing. You can tell where the gratuitous language, nudity and gross-out scenes were added: without them, the movie would have been more earnest, less fun, and just plain mediocre — it would have been a forgettable, low-budget bomb.

Even so, the character development and writing were profoundly weak; we needed Samuel L. to come alive more, to inhabit his typecast bad-ass persona more — in other words — say the 12-letter M-word more — in order to breathe more life into this film. As it stands, you can see the plastic surgeon’s scars.

But never mind that shit. What about the motherfucking snakes?

Continue reading this entry »

RiffTracks, ShareCrow and audio commentaries
Friday, July 21, 2006 at 11:09 AM | Movies |

For a while now, I’ve had the idea of recording an audio commentary on a few favourite movies and making them available for download on the web. (Never mind which ones, though I’m sure you can guess.)

I was a little worried about the copyright implications: I thought it’d be okay, because I wouldn’t be reproducing any copyrighted material, just a recorded commentary that you could listen to as you watched a DVD; since you had to buy or rent the DVD in the first place, no harm no foul, I thought. But you never know. Anyway, I put it on the backburner; I had plenty of other things to worry about.

Continue reading this entry »

We’re going to have to buy them all over again
Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 9:03 AM | Movies |

Oh dear. Lucasfilm is releasing two-disc sets of each of the original Star Wars movies: each set will include the 2004 remastered version and the original, unsullied theatrical version. Which means Han shoots first, Jabba doesn’t show up, Clive Revill is the Emperor in Empire, Vader says “Bring my shuttle,” and the Jedi songs are the originals — and the films don’t look like patch-jobs between early 1980s and late 1990s technology. I’m actually having trouble believing this. Via Slashdot.

Movies recently seen
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 5:49 PM | Movies |

Movies recently passing through our DVD player that I saw for the first time:

On a related note, in response to Jason’s post about this list of 102 must-see movies, alas, my count is only 40 — but not the same 40 as Jason: my 40 are probably more obscure and older than most others’.

Update, May 8: Added Good Night, and Good Luck; I forgot about it earlier.

Playing with Trains
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 8:47 AM | Books, Model Railroading |

Sam Posey’s Playing with Trains will not reveal anything new to anyone already involved in the hobby of model railroading, but for the general reader it’s a reasonably good, and evocatively written, introduction to the state of the hobby.

Posey, a former race car driver and a sports commentator, spends the first half of the book on his own model railroading history, from his childhood, with his mother helping him build his first layout, to his adulthood, when he hired someone to build his expansive Colorado Midland layout with his family. (My father read the book while he was visiting, and sniffed, as many in the hobby would, at the notion that he paid someone else to build his layout.)

The second half of the book is a new-journalism-style look at the state of the hobby, with Posey visiting a number of luminaries of the field — none of whom will be unfamiliar to anyone who’s been reading Model Railroader for the last couple of decades — and talking about their approaches. This part is a little light, a little superficial, but its great strength is crystallizing a schism in the hobby that I was only dimly aware of myself: the schism between the operators who focus on simulating, in miniature and in precise detail, the work — and paperwork — undertaken by real railroads (think Tony Koester) at the expense of scenery, and those focused on jaw-dropping scenery at the expense of realistic operations (think Malcolm Furlow, or even George Selios).

Most of us, naturally, are somewhere in the middle: we’d like to do more than run trains around in a loop, but we’d like to do more than run them on bare plywood. The Koester mode is in the ascendancy at the moment, to the extent that his book on layout design elements isn’t about the elements’ function in the abstract, it’s about replicating real things: for example, not about understanding how an interchange works in theory, but in copying a real interchange. This is a considerable change from the Armstrong mode, where understanding how real railroads work is the necessary first step, not simply slavishly replicating what really existed (without, I suspect, necessarily understanding why it existed).

LibraryThing revisited
Monday, April 24, 2006 at 9:23 AM | Books | 4

Taking my cue from Jennifer’s announcement that she’s finished updating her LibraryThing catalogue, I’ve gone and done the same thing. You can view the results here.

The steps I took were as follows:

  1. Upgrade to a paid lifetime membership with LibraryThing (US$25 via PayPal).
  2. Export my library data from Delicious Library.
  3. Make my LibraryThing library private.
  4. Upload the library data file using LibraryThing’s import feature.
  5. As the library file uploads (it’s throttled to avoid overloading the library and Amazon servers LibraryThing uses to look up book data), delete duplicate books.
  6. Delete the books that are definitely Jen’s. (We use Delicious Library to manage our combined book collection; LibraryThing is social software, so it’s got a different purpose: because books say something about the person, I want the books I chose to say it.)
  7. Delete the books that I don’t want you to know I have. (Heh.)
  8. Make my library public again.
  9. Spend hours tinkering with each entry — editing fields, choosing cover art, and so forth. Automatic importing is fast, but it’s imprecise; this will probably be a neverending task.
  10. Add a nifty badge to the McWetlog’s sidebar.

One observation during this process: LibraryThing is a lot more feature-rich than it was when I first started using it. It’s come a long way in a short time, and I’m very impressed.

Star Wars and special effects
Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 12:21 PM | Movies |

I did a bad thing. While my father was here last week, I made him watch the Star Wars prequel trilogy. He didn’t like those movies, no sir. (Sorry about that, Dad.) Oddly, he hated Phantom Menace but didn’t mind Jar Jar. His complaints were more fundamental: a weak storyline where characters were engaged in pointless activity up until the second half of the third movie; inane dialogue; poor writing; too many damn coincidences (in a word: droids); too little lightness and too much tendentious focus on the epic; and an over-emphasis on special effects.

In particular, huge battle scenes that go on too long: it’s a chronic condition that also, for example, afflicts Peter Jackson — but that is symptomatic of the movie industry lately. I think it’s because directors are still having fun with their new toys; they were, until the last decade, limited by technology from putting anything they wanted on the screen, and now they’re going all out. But those limitations made for some inventive storytelling: look at any threadbare BBC production from the 1970s and see how much story can be told on a shoestring. (Current indie films, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily interested in storytelling, so it’s not necessarily a fair comparison.) I imagine the pendulum will swing back once directors get bored; it always has before.

Back to the Star Wars prequels. No, they’re not great. But they do have their moments, in isolation: audiovisual confections. Ambitious failures in that it’s extremely difficult to write a story whose outcome is not only known, but the whole point.

LOTR musical opening reviews
Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 7:58 AM | Culture, Tolkien |

Kelly Nestruck has seen, and reviewed, the Lord of the Rings musical; he’s got a post that rounds up the opening reviews of this show, which are mixed. (Update: See also the Toronto Star’s point that it may be a critic-proof show.) His take, in a nutshell, is that the problems stem from the play being too ambitious:

There’s no doubt that the show has many problems. They all stem from one large one, though, it seems to me: Too much ambition. Too much of a desire to be innovative both technically and artistically. Too much respect, even reverence, for the source material. I had nowhere near as much fun as I did watching, say, The Producers, but I found elements of this show much more interesting, challenging, and beautiful. And this is coming from someone who is by no means a fan of the books and movies.
The idea of putting the entire 1,000 page Lord of the Rings trilogy onstage in one musical evening is an insane one. And the fact that it worked at all, when it was initially seen as pure folly or the punchline to a joke, is a triumph of sorts.

I’m looking forward to hear what Jennifer thinks about it when she sees it next month.

Food Network drinking games
Saturday, February 4, 2006 at 8:29 PM | Food, Television | 1

Never mind the Rachael Ray drinking game (which really ought to have something for “yummo!”); how about a drinking game for Chef at Home’s Michael Smith? Every time he says “flavour,” take a drink — I guarantee you’ll be blotto within 10 minutes.

Battlestar Galactica on DVD
Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 9:14 PM | SF, Television |

Thanks to a gift from my brother, we’re working through season one of Battlestar Galactica. Out here in the sticks, where we have two kinds of broadband, our cable company does not carry Space (or a number of other channels), so we haven’t been able to watch this show, which has gotten tremendous buzz around the net. But now we’re seeing it.

We’re quite excited about it; it’s tremendously well done, with lots of moral ambiguities and flawed characters that make the show very interesting, if not necessarily comfortable to watch. Lots of intelligent touches here and there: in the way the spaceships move; in the Cylons’ use of technology; in the handling of religion; in dealing with the gravity of having a twelve-world civilization reduced to fewer than 50,000 people.

This is nothing like the original, which looks embarrassingly juvenile in comparison. We’ve come a long way in two and a half decades of TV science fiction.

A half-formed Hitchhiker
Wednesday, November 9, 2005 at 8:12 PM | Movies

Rented The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Monday night; it took me a while to figure out what was wrong with it. The problem with this movie is twofold. It captures the later, sadder, more morose Adams (think Mostly Harmless), rather than the free-form, Pythonesque silliness of the early Adams. An incoherent movie at best, it also ruined the jokes, as though they decided to save time by removing all the punchlines. Granted, it’s no great shakes to perform jokes a quarter-century old, but if you’re going to start the joke (e.g., have Arthur lie down in front of the bulldozer), at the very least finish it (i.e., have the foreman lie down in front of it for him — the absurdist punch line). If the jokes are old that you have to change them, at least replace them with new ones that are just as funny. (And make sure they’re funny, viz., if you’re going to feed Trillian to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, fans of the book will tell you that there can be only one way for her to get out of it. Unfortunately, the movie opted for something more mundane.) In the end, half-finished, half-performed and almost half-hearted. Catchy title song, though. (But why two sets of opening titles?)

Batman Begins
Monday, November 7, 2005 at 9:43 AM | Movies

I’d heard good things about Batman Begins (Amazon, trailer), but did not get around to seeing it until last night, when we rented it. I know I’m not alone in thinking that it’s easily the best Batman movie ever done. Intense, character-driven, and most of all, intelligent; for once I didn’t think I was watching an overgrown cartoon. (Ironically, Warner Bros.’ TV cartoons have been far more thoughtful, with better writing and character development, than any of the four live-action films prior to this.)

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Saturday, October 29, 2005 at 10:23 AM | Movies

Saw Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit last Sunday at the O’Brien Theatre in Renfrew, where, despite it being a weekend matinee, the kids in the audience were reasonably well-behaved and kept their patter to under 100 dB or so. (Worth putting up with for $4.) Anyway, an incredibly enjoyable film, but it’s a long way from groundbreaking: the plot’s not dissimilar from A Close Shave, and the characters are static — there’s clearly a lot of affection for them, and all the old tropes (especially cheese) are trotted out. By comparison, Chicken Run had just as much energy, but a better story and polish.

R.I.P. Commander Canarvin
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at 7:29 PM | Television

Almost but not quite absent from the obituaries of James Doohan (Star Trek’s “Scotty”), who died this morning aged 85, is the fact that in 1979-1980 he had a role in a live-action Saturday morning children’s TV series, Jason of Star Command (fan sites here, here and here).

Jason was one of many programs from Filmation, a studio that produced a whole shitpile of low-budget cartoons from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, including the animated Star Trek, Fat Albert, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and a bunch of cartoon versions of sitcoms. With animation and even music constantly being reused, they emphasized quantity rather than quality, and boy did they ever produce; that rotating thing in the credits (“Produced by Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott”) was permanently etched into my retina by the time I hit the fourth grade. For more, see part one and part two of a feature on Filmation.

I remember watching Jason rather avidly — I may have even had a pre-pubescent crush on Susan O’Hanlon. It later occurred to me that “Commander Canarvin” kind of looked like the late 1970s version of James Doohan, but I couldn’t remember enough about the show to make the connection until today’s obit provided a title.

As an aside, that character actors are remembered primarily for their roles, with their catchphrases as their epitaphs, is a real pity; they’re invariably finer people than the dreck they perform in, or the lines they’re given (Slim Pickens’s Wikipedia entry is filled with quotes from his better known movies, for example, which has little to do with him, I think).

Interlibrary loans in jeopardy
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 at 7:26 PM | Books

Shipping books is expensive. I discovered this when I started selling off the last of my academic books via Amazon’s Marketplace program: the shipping credit was never enough to cover the postage, and was sometimes short by several dollars.

In this context, libraries have had a singular advantage: a subsidized rate for interlibrary loans. When I was a graduate student, and required all sorts of obscure, only-one-copy-in-Canada books for my research, I practically lived on interlibrary loans. Rural libraries, whose collections are understandably limited, absolutely rely on it.

But now Canada Post is trying to end the subsidy, which means, suddenly, that cash-strapped libraries will have to pay high rates for books that most will not be able to absorb. Whether or not Canada Post is justified in wanting to save the money, this will kill interlibrary loans as a service, and diminish the available resources of many rural libraries. In some cases, it may well be cheaper to buy the book online. There’s something perverse when shipping from Amazon is free with a minimum purchase, but shipping library books back and forth costs a fortune.

Alternatively, libraries may set up their own, ad hoc shipping services. When the cost of domestic stamps skyrocketed in Germany, I was told, utility companies hired students to deliver notices by hand. Raise the cost of a service, and people will cease using it. Rural libraries may resort to in-house, long-distance deliveries within a regional network — an employee in a minivan — if they can, but resources outside the local pool would remain elusive.

I expect a political solution, though.

Update (July 23): Told you, I did.

Who-ville
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 at 9:18 AM | Television

I’ve never been much for Doctor Who — low-budget British SF has always left me sort of nonplussed — but I must confess that I’ve been sucked in by the new series. I don’t think it’s just the production values; the writing’s smart, and I’m in awe of the abilities of Christopher Eccleston, who’s already given up the role. This is a profound pity: he’s extremely watchable and an absolutely fantastic actor; his predecessors look positively somnolent in comparison with his hyperkinetic style. The CBC’s Stephen Cole has a bit on the updated Doctor Who (his other columns are worth a read too).

Last night’s episode, “Dalek,” was a marvel — the Doctor Who equivalent of “I, Borg.” If you get that reference, you’ll understand immediately. (Update: James’s review of this episode: “Dalek stands among the best the original series has to offer, and it takes the series into areas it has rarely gone.”)

Super Size Me
Sunday, April 10, 2005 at 11:36 PM | Movies

Super Size Me, which I just saw on one of the movie channels, is the kind of documentary that will frighten you into swearing off meat, joining a vegan commune, and living on a macrobiotic diet for the rest of your life. Or, at the very least, make you take a hard look at your eating habits. If you’re not uncomfortable about eating fast food after watching this, there is no hope.

Making Book
Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 3:50 PM | Books, SF, Writing

Late last week, a copy of Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Making Book finally arrived from Amazon; I’d ordered it in late December (that’s “special order” for you). It’s an interesting collection of short pieces on diverse topics — often autobiographical, such as getting excommunicated by the Mormons or dealing with narcolepsy, and often whimsical. It reads, in other words, like a blog before the fact: proof positive that such writings did exist before them thar Internets; they were just in zines and such, and as such harder to find. More to the point, it reads like Teresa’s excellent blog.

The meat of the book, in substance if not in length, is the essay “On Copyediting,” derived from an internal document at Tor Books for their copyeditors. Since my work has, from time to time, included such diverse elements as may be considered copyediting, this was compelling stuff. But, probably because my own copyediting was highly specific and technical, viz., federal statutes and regulations, I wasn’t aware of some of the more general idiosyncracies of the field. Notably, style sheets — I’d never heard of them before in a copyediting context (an article reprinted in a 1994 book is probably not referring to CSS). So much for doing any freelance copyediting. But, Google is my friend: here’s a sample style sheet and, from the SFWA, A Writer’s Guide to Understanding the Copyeditor. Aha. Now, we had those at Justice; they just weren’t individualized, naturally.

Miyazaki DVDs; Howl’s Moving Castle; Joe Hisaishi
Sunday, April 3, 2005 at 3:10 PM | Anime, Movie Scores, Movies

Two more of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies were released to DVD in February with new English-language voice tracks — Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Porco Rosso (1992). Of course we got them shortly thereafter, though it’s taken me a while to tell you about them. The executive summary is that they are both good and you should buy them both, but I thought I should say a bit more. As usual, I’ll say everything except what the movies are about; you can find that out through the links.

Nausicaä is widely regarded as Miyazaki’s masterpiece, though I believe he himself is less happy with it. I can’t imagine the impact it made in 1984; I’ve seen so much of his later work that it’s difficult to evaluate. Princess Mononoke (Amazon) covers many of the same themes, and is in many ways a more mature and successful work. Nausicaä, though, was Miyazaki’s “first” film — the first he wrote and directed, if I’m not mistaken; he’d directed and worked on other animé before. It has all the topoï that keep recurring in his later works: young protagonists, strong women, flight, reconciling humanity and nature; no unamibiguously good or evil characters.

Porco Rosso, on the other hand, may well be Miyazaki’s least Miyazaki-like, simply because the characters are mostly adult. The conflicts are personal rather than epic, which would place Porco alongside Kiki’s Delivery Service (Amazon) and Spirited Away (Amazon), were it not for the clear children’s focus of the latter two movies. In its focus on flight, it’s quintessentially Miyazaki, though airplanes are quite mundane in comparison. Except for the fact that the protagonist has the face of a pig — pigs show up a lot in Miyazaki’s more recent films, don’t they? — it has few fantasy elements.

One thing I found maddening was how elliptical these two films — especially Porco — could be. Too many plot points — key plot points — were left dangling in Porco: the FAQ clears up some of them, but the film by itself leaves you guessing. A little ambiguity is by no means a bad thing — but in the right places, please. (A similar bit about Nausicaä’s clothing changing colour was insufficiently clear.)

In other Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli related news: the English-language dub of Howl’s Moving Castle will be released in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on June 10, with a wider U.S. (and hopefully Canadian?) release on June 17. Mark your calendars and check your theatres.

Finally, Joe Hisaishi is responsible for most of the music on Miyazaki’s films, and let me tell you, he’s responsible for some of the most insidious cinematic earworms I have yet encountered. What’s frustrating about that is that the soundtracks are hard to find. You can usually find “image albums” — music based on the storyboards — as imports on Amazon, but they’re something on the order of $35. So far I’ve only been able to find soundtracks for the two most recent U.S. releases on Amazon; certainly they’re not on iTunes.

The Incredibles at the Oscars
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 5:51 PM | CG Animation, Movies

Never got around to telling you how much we enjoyed The Incredibles when it came out in November; but you could probably infer that from the awe in which I hold The Iron Giant (Brad Bird’s previous movie) and the high regard I have for Pixar films generally. Though some were hoping for a best-picture nomination, I think the fact that a cartoon has been nominated for best original screenplay is a very positive sign. Though, if you’ve seen this movie, it’s not at all a surprise.

John Barnes’s One for the Morning Glory
Sunday, January 23, 2005 at 5:44 PM | Books, SF

Just finished John Barnes’s 1996 fantasy novel, One for the Morning Glory — about which I’d heard good things, so when I saw it at the library I picked it up. Most of the reviews I’ve seen compare it with The Princess Bride, but I think that’s superficial: it’s because both are playful and light in tone, rather than the heavy high-vatic drudgery one expects from epic fantasy. True, this is a fairy tale that does not take itself completely seriously; but, while the tone is light, breezy and immediately engaging, the story itself is not frivolous, and is at times quite dark. It is, as some have commented, the Brothers Grimm at novel length, with the wonderfully subversive proviso that the characters themselves are fully aware that they themselves are in the middle of a Tale, and conduct themselves accordingly. It’s tremendous fun, and worth a read if you can find a copy; unfortunately it appears to be out of print at the moment.

Karen Traviss’s novels
Sunday, January 16, 2005 at 5:27 PM | Books, SF

Good new writers should get as much word-of-mouth as possible; Karen Traviss deserves a bit of buzz. She’s been compared (favourably) to Arnason, Cherryh and Le Guin; comparisons aside, if you like complex alien societies and tough moral questions in your SF, grab her stuff immediately — you’ll love it.

Her first two novels, City of Pearl and Crossing the Line, are the first two-thirds of a trilogy that’s ostensibly about first contact (with four separate, and fully fleshed out, alien cultures), but has a lot to say about ethics, conflict, and alterity. (Follow the links for a plot summary; this isn’t a book report.) Everyone, alien and human alike, has their own motivations, worldviews and ethical systems; the interplay between these cultures makes the plot wonderfully complicated and the books awfully fascinating — full of interesting, believeable characters.

The second book does end on a cliff-hanger, but Traviss manages to bring it off, with the result that instead of tossing the book across the room, I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel, The World Before, due out late this year.

Paul Di Filippo
Sunday, January 16, 2005 at 3:34 PM | Books, SF

In a strange coincidence, Jennifer and I are each reading a short-story collection by Paul Di Filippo at the moment: she’s reading Ribofunk; I’m reading Strange Trades. I’m a few stories into the latter, which has a doozy about underground currency called “Spondulix” that could easily serve as the basis for the next Coen Brothers movie. In addition to writing way-cool stuff, Di Filippo is legendary for his support of, and tendency to publish with, small presses; even so, I’m baffled by the fact that the novel-length version of Spondulix is apparently only available in a 300-copy limited edition. That can’t be it, can it?

Répète!
Friday, January 14, 2005 at 8:55 AM | Cartoons and Comics

In English, Pépé Le Pew has a thick, Maurice Chevalier style accent. But what does he sound like when dubbed into French? Corsican. Sort of like Charles Pasqua, apparently.

Return of the King Extended Edition
Tuesday, January 4, 2005 at 10:35 AM | Movies, Tolkien

Chances are that by now you’ve already seen the extended edition of The Return of the King — even if your name is John Moltz — but here’s my take on it.

The first thing that bears mentioning (as Andrea noted) is just how chaotic putting this film together was — something that’s abundantly clear from the appendices and from the writers’ commentary. Not just in the mad, last-minute rush to get the film completed, but in the changes in the story between principal photography and the final result. They took the footage they had and used it differently — in a different order, say — when the story changed. It looks like ROTK was the most reworked of the three films.

These explain some of the inconsistencies that people like me love to pick over: why Pippin is riding with Gandalf when the old boy rescues Faramir and Co. from the Nazgûl, why Arwen’s and Elrond’s apparel changes from one second to the next in Rivendell, and why the newly added scene with Saruman seems a little unfocused. (Presumably this explains where Aragorn’s horse went at the Morannon.)

All of which speaks to how big a project this was, and how easily they could have ended up over their heads. It’s amazing that it was done; even more that they did it as well as they did.

But if they had gone ahead with their plan for a duel between Aragorn and Sauron — they used some of that footage in the fight with the troll — I would have slain them all. No no no. Thank you for not following through with that foolishness.

The extra footage is the usual mix of the following four types:

  1. Essential material that I wish they hadn’t cut. (All the scenes of Frodo and Sam in Mordor that had been cut, for example. Also, the fine scene between Denethor and Faramir.)
  2. Important material that helps us make sense of scenes that would otherwise be confusing. (More material on the White Tree, what happens to Gothmog, the Houses of Healing.)
  3. Neat material that adds considerably to the movie, but isn’t vital. (I’d put the Mouth of Sauron and the extra footage during the siege in this category.)
  4. Superfluous material, the benefits of which are outweighed by the penalty inflicted on the movie’s pace — and on your bladder.

In a change from the previous two films, the extra footage does not just add to the film, it changes it: lines are given in a different order; characters suffer a different fate; events occur at a different time of day.

The end result is a film that is more cohesive than the theatrical version, with some fine moments that deserve not to be missed, but that really, really feels long. At least there are fewer superfluous bits in this one than there were in The Two Towers.

Don’t miss the insane bits. The easter egg is in its usual place, but it’s not what you’d expect: it’s not as high concept as the previous two, but it’s funny as hell. And the actors’ commentary: do not miss the actors’ commentary. Pure chaos.

A brief ramble about audiobooks
Monday, January 3, 2005 at 3:39 PM | Books

Via Jessamyn, an article about the benefits of audio books, by an English professor who professes to be embarrassed by the fact.

Listening to tapes while engaged in mindless but unavoidable activities, I get through about 30 books a year that I would not otherwise have read. It’s almost like I’m sneaking in an extra half-lifetime of reading in the course of doing my ordinary chores, which have a way of getting done more thoroughly as a result of listening while I work.
There is no way I can justify devoting the next two weeks of bedtime reading to Tom Wolfe’s new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons. I have too much professional reading and course preparation to do. But I can permit myself to listen to all 25 hours of Wolfe’s novel while I am in the shower, eating breakfast, and driving to and from work.

It put me in mind of a passage of Stephen King’s On Writing, which I read earlier this year:

Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are on tape. As for all the wonderful radio you will be missing, come on — how many times can you listen to Deep Purple sing “Highway Star”?
(p. 148)

Audiobooks have always seemed like a good idea to me, especially when I’ve had long bus rides to deal with. (That 13-disc set of The Silmarillion, ripped to my iPod, really passed the time on weekends when buses are slow and infrequent.) They’ve also been a godsend on long highway trips.

But at present I don’t commute. In this town, no trip on foot would get me more than a few paragraphs further along. Making the car iPod-compatible, through a new stereo deck with an aux-in or a wireless transmitter, would open up all the audiobooks available through iTunes. (Without a cassette player in the car, the audiobooks on cassette aren’t an option, though the CD versions still are. Incidentally, they’re all awfully expensive — especially the unabridged versions — don’t you think?)

Now, were I to begin commuting into Ottawa on a regular basis — a likely scenario if I get full-time work or even a short- or medium-term contract — I’d almost certainly iPod up the car and get a few of the audiobooks I’ve been eyeing on iTunes double quick. I don’t know if it’s my imagination that the CBC is less listenable than it used to be, but I’ve been switching off the radio more and more — usually as something tedious came on. So it’d be nice to have something else to listen to. I might not even mind the traffic congestion.

Manos: The Hands of Fate
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 at 5:10 PM | Movies

Oy.

One of the goodies I got Jen for Christmas was Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Essentials, a two-disc set consisting of Manos: The Hands of Fate and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The latter film will probably turn into a holiday tradition in our household. It’s Manos I want to talk about here.

Again: Oy.

That concludes my discussion of this awful film, this awful-out-of-focus-overdubbed-badly-edited-cornball, morimaite-sincahonda, hoom

Um. It’s pretty bad. The MST3K folks had a field day with it. There’s a reason why this was voted the most popular of their episodes, and why it’s on the Essentials DVD.

Before you rush out and view this film, prepare yourself by reading the Agony Booth’s review of Manos and this Mimosa article, which looks at the experiences of the crew who worked on the film. The poor bastards.

In other MST3K news, my father gave Jennifer Vol. 3 of The MST3K Collection, which contains another batch of short films. This is worth noting because one of them features famed Florida reptile impresario Ross Allen — the Steve Irwin of his time: the Everglades rat snake, Elaphe obsoleta rossalleni, was named after him — chasing down wildlife in the Everglades. None too gently, either: this wouldn’t pass muster today, not by a long shot. And there were two dreary Union Pacific safety films, one on level crossings, the other on workplace safety, both of which taking forever to plod to the point. Yech. Of course, if they weren’t bad, you wouldn’t have wisecracking robots in silhouette there, would you?

Update: Here’s Jen’s take on Manos. Yes, she has a blog now.

Hero
Monday, December 13, 2004 at 10:44 AM | Movies

We rented Hero last night. With a narrative structure (and naïveté) seemingly poached directly from Rashomon, delivering one alternate, colour-themed flashback after another, the film is far more effective than if it had played its rather thin plot straight. Though it’s a bit repetitive. And slow-paced (which also reminds me of Rashomon). It’s also a pretty film. Its presentist and somewhat heavy-handed celebration of Chinese unity has been noted elsewhere, and is a bit jarring: apart from the propaganda value for the current regime, it’s not contextualized enough (other than the opening map). (To be fair, even Shakespeare’s plays frequently toed the Tudor line.) Still very watchable, especially if you don’t know what’s coming (note the absence of spoilers in this mini-review) and you like the weirdness that comes off a different narrative form. Oh yeah, and freaky wu xia swordfighting.

Travel writing
Sunday, December 5, 2004 at 3:50 PM | Travel, Writing

If you’ve been following my del.icio.us links — and you should; they’re over there on the sidebar — you’ll have noticed that I’ve linked to a few travel writing resources. I’ve long been interested in the genre — if nothing else, I enjoy reading it, especially the non-service-journalism, non-luxury, off-the-beaten-track stuff. It’s a little disheartening to find out what a grisly business it is, with writers getting next to a pittance for their work. In part, that’s because publishers can: lots of people want to be travel writers. Anyway, in addition to these guides on travel writing, there’s also a blog that covers “the travails of travel writing.” (Most of these links were found via Gadling, an adventure-travel blog.)

I can think of at least two friends who will find this stuff very interesting.

Related: My travel writing links.

Recent reading
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 at 12:14 PM | Reading List

Where Is Here? Canada’s Maps and the Stories They Tell by Alan Morantz

Crossing the Line by Karen Traviss

Current reading
Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 6:03 PM | Reading List

Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick

Model Railroading with John Allen: The Story of the Fabulous HO Scale Gorre & Daphetid Railroad by Linn H. Westcott

Currently reading …
Friday, September 17, 2004 at 10:25 AM | Reading List

Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling

Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

Books, snarfed like popcorn
Monday, August 9, 2004 at 11:46 PM | Reading List

The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux

Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov (marathon reread of new editions)

Realistic Model Railroad Operation by Tony Koester

The next Miyazaki film
Friday, August 6, 2004 at 11:52 PM | Anime, Movies

Hayao Miyazaki’s next film is called Howl’s Moving Castle; it’s competing at the Venice Film Festival next month and is scheduled for release in Japan in November. More information at Nausicaa.net; there are also Japanese-language trailers on the Studio Ghibli site. I can hardly wait for the inevitable English-language release, though I expect I shall have to.

Some Arrogant Worms stuff
Friday, August 6, 2004 at 11:48 PM | Culture

Some quick notes on our favourite musical comedy act, the Arrogant Worms:

  1. Have I mentioned that I think that their latest album, Toast, is their strongest in years? I didn’t think much of Idiot Road, and Gift Wrapped and Semi-Conducted didn’t have much in the way of new material, so I’m glad to see them back in form. Also, their live stuff is always much more fun to listen to.
  2. The DVD of their televised concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, with, natch, orchestrated versions of their ditties — it was televised on Bravo a couple of years ago and it’s the basis of Semi-Conductedis now available. Our copy arrived earlier this week. The DVD seems a little rough around the edges, a little unfinished, but, like their concerts, is plenty fun watching.
  3. If you’re a fan, too (say, you’ve arrived at this blog entry via Google), join us on the Arrogant Worms tribe, won’t you?

The latest reading
Sunday, August 1, 2004 at 4:18 PM | Reading List

The Void Captain’s Tale by Norman Spinrad

City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

Missed the LOTR Symphony
Saturday, July 24, 2004 at 11:22 AM | Movie Scores, Tolkien

Shit. How did I miss this? (Richard didn’t.)

Recent reading: some browsing, some rereads, and an e-book
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 at 4:27 PM | Reading List

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (site)

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (reread)

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov (reread)

A Place So Foreign and Eight More by Cory Doctorow (site, download)

Recently read books
Sunday, July 4, 2004 at 1:48 PM | Reading List | 1

Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer (author, book)

When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté (site)

Rainbow Boas and Neotropical Tree Boas by R. D. Bartlett

Red-Tailed Boas and Relatives by R. D. Bartlett and Patricia Bartlett

On Writing by Stephen King (author)

Castle in the Sky review
Monday, June 28, 2004 at 10:00 AM | Anime, Movies

James Bow watched Castle in the Sky the other night; he’s got a pretty thorough review. A lot more thorough than my brief note, anyway.

Shrek 2
Wednesday, June 2, 2004 at 9:29 AM | CG Animation, Movies

Saw Shrek 2 last Thursday night: a lot of fun — there were moments when we were laughing convulsively — though the busy plot sometimes lacked the coherence and elegance of the original. On the other hand, there’s a lot of raucous energy. It’s enjoyable.

More Miyazaki
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 at 9:48 AM | Anime, Movies

Finally saw two more Hayao Miyazaki films on DVD last week: Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky. Both are, of course, fantastic, and you should see them.

Castle is the earlier of the two, and is convulsively, exuberantly imaginative, full of flying contraptions that should never work and other stunning bits of brain candy. It’s a full-on adventure story that reminds me somewhat of Tintin — but on shrooms.

Kiki is, for a movie about a young witch who flies around on her broom, somewhat more down to earth; like Spirited Away, it’s about, and mainly for, young girls — an animé Bildungsroman. It’s lighter and funnier, too. Two words: the cat. Voiced in the English version by the late Phil Hartman, the cat is a show-stealer.

In both films, Miyazaki, who is reportedly obsessed with flight, animates it very well: you can absolutely feel the wind when someone is in the air. Oh, he’s good.

The Incredibles trailer
Friday, May 14, 2004 at 10:50 AM | CG Animation, Movies

Pixar alert: there’s a new trailer for The Incredibles available. More information on the cast at the movie’s site (Ratzenberger, of course; Samuel L. Jackson?). Sounds an awful lot like a sendup of the Fantastic Four.

The truth behind those starched collars
Friday, April 30, 2004 at 9:45 AM | Culture

Don Cherry’s wardrobe explained.

Star Trek comics
Tuesday, April 13, 2004 at 1:20 PM | Cartoons and Comics

The Gold Key Star Trek comic series: I had two of the reprint volumes (“The Enterprise Logs”) as a kid. I remember that they were utterly unlike Star Trek in the first few issues — references to rocket motors, pink phasers, everybody but Spock in a green shirt, bald Klingons — but adhered more closely to the canon over time, I thought back then. I’m still trying to remember whether they were any good, though. Another nostalgia fix, via The Cartoonist (as so many good things are).

Arrogant Worms blog
Thursday, March 18, 2004 at 9:08 AM | Culture

So the Arrogant Worms have been blogging during their tour; let’s see if they keep it up. It’s fun, and personal, with lots of backstage anecdotes. Sort of like Moby’s blog, only less, um, ethereal.

Elmore Leonard’s rules for writers
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 8:09 AM | Writing

Elmore Leonard’s ten rules for writers: Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle (via Making Light).

Shore’s scores
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 8:05 AM | Movie Scores, Tolkien

The CD of the Return of the King soundtrack showed up yesterday, courtesy of a little birthday gift certificage from the brother. (“Because it’s my birthday, and I wants it.”) Howard Shore’s stuff is fun to listen to — your usual movie soundtrack symphonic score with signature themes à la Wagner, only it’s a kindler, gentler Wagner, just like Tolkien, whose own Ring saga is much more humane. (The Silmarillion, on the other hand, is just as brutally operatic.) And if they release a CD of the two-hour, eight-movement symphonic version — as in it’s structured as a symphony, not just played by a symphony orchestra — which had its North American premiere in Montreal last night, I’ll snap that up too.

Amazon reviewers feud
Saturday, February 14, 2004 at 12:48 PM | Books

A glitch at Amazon.ca caused the names of anonymous reviewers to be displayed, revealing that many authors, apparently to combat poison-pen reviews by colleagues and adversaries, had published glowing anonymous reviews of their own work, the New York Times reports in a profile of the feuds going on via the Amazon reviews system.

September 21, 2004
Friday, February 13, 2004 at 11:21 AM | Movies | 1

The original Star Wars trilogy is finally coming to DVD; a four-disc set will be released on Sept. 21. Except that it maybe shouldn’t be called the original trilogy: only the special (read: altered) editions will be available (via Slashdot):

Of course, the big question mark amongst fans has always been whether Lucas would allow the original, unaltered original editions of the trilogy to also be released on DVD. Not possible, said Ward, who confirmed that the upcoming set will feature only the 1997 Special Edition versions of each film. “What George did in 1997,” Ward explains, “was [to] make the movie he originally wanted to make.”
So what are the faithful to do if they don’t want to watch the altered 1997 editions of the trilogy? Either give in, or don’t buy. “We realize there’s a lot of debate out there,” says Ward. “But this is not a democracy. We love our fans, but this is about art and filmmaking. [George] has decided that the sole version he wants available is this one.”

Not surprisingly, there is some controversy about this (via Mr. Barrett).

Rejection slips
Tuesday, February 3, 2004 at 8:34 PM | SF, Writing

Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s demolition of the whiners at RejectionCollection.com is a must read for its inside look at the editorial process — at least at Tor.

Dialogue and differences
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 at 6:11 PM | Movies, Tolkien

It’s not uncommon to find something in Jackson’s films that somehow betters Tolkien’s original, dramatically speaking. Here’s what Brian says about diction in ROTK, film vs. movie:

For what it’s worth, its tone and style is so like the other two movies — whereas the third book is so profoundly different from its predecessors, all stilted and high-tongued — that it’s another testament to Jackson’s abilities that he made it into such a well-rounded unifying piece for the story arc.

I’m re-reading the book now, and it’s all declamation and description, rather than the ordinary dialogue that began the trilogy. (Which, I suspect, reflects how the book was written.)

Think I’m going to need to see it again.

Holy Shat
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 at 4:40 PM | Culture

The Shat is reportedly going to release another album (via the Kottke). The first album he shat out was The Transformed Man, highlights of which are available in the Shatner-Nimoy extravaganza, Spaced Out.

More thoughts on the movie
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 at 2:48 PM | Movies, Tolkien | 1

Not satisfied to leave it at this, here are some more thoughts on the film version of The Return of the King that develop from the original post, or that I forgot to include in it.

Continue reading this entry »

First impressions and nitpicks of ROTK
Friday, December 26, 2003 at 6:42 AM | Movies, Tolkien | 3

Hopefully I’ve procrastinated enough that most of you interested in this post will already have seen the movie, but if reading my impressions of Peter Jackson’s take on The Return of the King would somehow spoil it for you, read no further.

Continue reading this entry »

Opus sucks?
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 at 8:34 PM | Comic Strips

Though I think it’s probably premature to pass final judgment — invoking the Next Generation third season rule — Colby Cosh’s verdict (and that of some others) on the new Opus strip is, to say the least, that he’s underwhelmed.

Bold new movie idea: a lasagna-eating cat
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 at 8:20 PM | Movies

Garfield: The Movie. The Apocalypse: Nigh.

Early reviews
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 at 7:59 PM | Movies, Tolkien | 4

I won’t be able to see The Return of the King until tomorrow; I worked today — we’re putting together our Christmas issue early — and it’s snowing a little too much for our liking, so we’re holding off opening night. Reviews from the 12:01 set are already starting to proliferate across the web (never mind the newspapers): Ceejbot, Locust Wind, Making Light, Polytropos.

Correction: The Locust Wind and Polytropos links are not to reviews per se, as Nate himself points out in the comments, but to discussions of what Tolkien would have thought about the films. See the Polytropos ROTK review here.

Random Tolkien items
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 at 9:39 AM | Movies, Tolkien | 2

There is a problem with commenting on a DVD release before listening to the commentaries — your Profound Insights, such as they are, basically parrot (or are answered by) the director’s comments before you even get a chance to hear them.

Continue reading this entry »

Opus 1
Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 9:01 AM | Comic Strips | 1

Someone scanned the first Opus Sunday comic (via Jerry). Wouldn’t make a practice of doing that, mind you. Have yet to find out who carries it locally; couldn’t find a Saturday Citizen (Canadian papers run their thick, colour-comics-inclusive weekend editions on Saturdays) around the shop. (No, journalists don’t buy their own papers, silly.)

Polytropos on The Two Towers
Tuesday, November 25, 2003 at 5:05 PM | Movies, Tolkien

Polytropos is much more coherent than I was in his review of the extended edition of The Two Towers (via Electrolite).

Newsweek on ROTK
Monday, November 24, 2003 at 6:59 PM | Movies, Tolkien

Newsweek gets the jump on breathless Return of the King coverage, with the usual amount of behind-the-scenes movie-making inside baseball, which is all you get because the movie isn’t out yet (via Slate). Entertainment-industry journalism: feh.

Opus day
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 5:23 PM | Comic Strips

More on the run-up to the launch Sunday of Opus (see previous entry): a transcript of an online chat with BB himself, and a parody interview with Opus by MeFite Wendell (via MetaFilter).

St. Rupert
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 4:42 PM | Culture

I hereby nominate Rupert Boneham as patron saint of everyone who ever made the mistake of thinking that hard work on behalf of a group would make them be accepted by that group. Boy have I seen that before. (Someone photoshop him onto a “Think Different” poster, hmm?)

Four hours of The Two Towers
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 8:48 AM | Movies, Tolkien | 1

So my copy of the four-disc, extended edition DVD of The Two Towers arrived in the mail Wednesday. Bloody fast shipping time for Shawville: Amazon only announced it had shipped two days before. I picked it up from the post office around noon.

Guess what I did Wednesday afternoon? If you guessed that I sat, rapt and slack-jawed, in front of the screen for four hours straight … well, you’d be dead-on.

Continue reading this entry »

The return of the penguin
Thursday, November 20, 2003 at 8:45 AM | Comic Strips

Any time an interview with Berke Breathed is published, it’s worth linking to. Immediately. Not only is the imminent launch of Opus (oh frabjous day) the biggest thing to hit the comics industry since Bill Watterson retired, but Breathed’s corrosive shots at the comics industry (watch out, lasagna-eating pussycats) are, as always, a must-read. (Via Boing Boing)

Note: Entries prior to November 2003 did not have categories assigned to them, and are not included in category archives; please consult the monthly archives.