Bring It Back
Thursday, October 16, 2008 : 12:25 AM : 0 comments
I've never seen The Last Unicorn. Is that criminal? Did I miss something? There are certain things that I feel like you need to watch at a certain age otherwise the magic is just not the same. Stuff like Labyrinth or The Secret of NIMH, maybe even The Princess Bride or Goonies. If you didn't catch this stuff when you were a kid, watching it now just isn't the same. On the list of things like this that I missed out on: The Dark Crystal, Legend, and The Neverending Story.A totally underrated film in this category is Krull (I just discovered the name of this thing), which is sort of like Beastmaster. I remember watching this movie, feeling horrible about the heroes getting hurt -- and one dying -- and wanting a magical Glaive so badly. I almost don't want to watch this again because it might ruin my memories. But it's availabe for ten dollars and it's pretty much a must buy. I think I'll be purchasing Flight of the Navigator too to put it through its paces twenty years later.
I found this blog, sadly no longer updated, that collects the theme songs and intros to classic 80's cartoons. A co-worker last year and I happened to hit upon M.A.S.K. and couldn't remember the acronym. In case you were wondering, it's "Mobile Armored Strike Kommand." We both had the helicopter guy. For three seconds we felt warm and fuzzy toward each other and reveled in our shared childhoods.
And if you really wanna bring it back, Silverhawks is now out on DVD. I can't purchase it though because so many of these cartoon series are actually horrible to watch in retrospect. For example, Thundercats were amazing way back when but now episodes are slow as molasses and painful to sit through.
To be honest, nothing made me feel the age difference more at work (our office was filled with 18-22 year olds) than talking about old school cartoons. Old school to them was stuff like Doug. Who? Exactly. There's no better way to measure generation gap than to talk about pop culture influences. Parents shouldn't deny their children the opportunity to soak in all that entertainment trash otherwise their kids will be left out in ten years when everyone talks about "Remember when....!?" Nostalgia is a not to be underrated bonding force.
There's this one cartoon that involved an eagle, a hawk, and a turtle totem pole that would come to live and attack things each episode. I think it was part of some compilation cartoon. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
If I had a daughter she would be trick or treating this year dressed like Rainbow Brite. Of course, adults like Tinsley Mortimer already have that T-shirt.
Labels: Entertainment
You live, you learn
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 : 3:41 AM : 0 comments
It's true, I just spent a good five or six hours doing a re-design for this site that incorporated the (sort of) new Blogger widgets and ding dongs. I wanted to take the blog in another direction and was so excited for it all to happen. The trouble was, my coding skills are pretty rudimentary -- if copy and pasting can be called "skills" -- so everything took much longer than expected. When I finally got a working copy ready to show the world, I realized that you can't use the new Blogger features if you're not hosted on blogspot. Hum, might have wanted to check on that before I did the project.So yeah, hours of my life down the drain. The good news is that I'm capable of sitting still for long stretches without moving. Or eating, or going to the bathroom, and possibly not even blinking. The bad news is that even when I'm trying to be productive I end up with nothing to show for it. Now the day is done...
While I'm here, I've been Netflixing like crazy and am hoping to shoot through the following series:
Mad Men Dexter Gossip Girl Twin Peaks Band of Brothers Justice League Unlimited
Labels: Technology
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
Sunday, October 12, 2008 : 11:14 PM : 0 comments
I was pretty psyched to watch this movie. Aside from having an awesome title, it seemed like it might be the teen answer to "Before Sunrise." I kept my expectations low however and that was probably wise. There's no denying that the title is still amazing and that Michael Cera and Kat Dennings as Nick and Norah are fabulous, but the movie just could have been so much more.
It was cute. It had some good lines. It had a happy ending -- that's giving nothing away. But overall there just wasn't a sense that this was a magical night. It was hard to build up a consistent sense of connection and relationship when Nick and Norah kept getting jerked around from one set piece to another. There was a little too much obvious over the top humor (along with random quirky cameos) and not enough screen time spent on just Nick and Norah. I wanted to the movie to be about them, instead, it often tilted away to focus on the antics of the side characters.
One thing that bothers me (in movies) of late is how the dorky shy guy will magically be approached by the girl of his dreams. Then he keeps on rejecting her or keeping her at a distance for no apparent reason. And then she just keeps throwing herself at him. That just doesn't seem realistic to me. I mean, fine, if it happened to me once I'd take it all back. That's not a challenge Cupid, just a hint. Overall the movie was definitely a good time but it had the potential to be so much more. I'm definitely going to check out the book though."Kat Dennings has an odd, arresting beauty: sleepy blue-green eyes, porcelain-pale oval face -- and lips so red and juicy they look like the prototype for the wax ones little girls used to wear at Halloween. Along with the slight space between her perfect teeth, the effect is sexy and slightly comic."
-New York Times-
Didn't I Blow Your Mind
Saturday, October 11, 2008 : 12:34 AM : 0 comments
Oh what I would give to have John Hollinger's job. Watch the NBA all day and then apply fun statistical models to everything. As the new season approaches, Hollinger has given a break down for every player and even better, did individual scouting reports on all of them. That's insane! Seriously, like every player has a scouting report.It revealed great things like how Tony Parker rarely uses his left hand, even on layups. Or how Dirk Nowitzki might be the best shooting big man of all time -- Larry Bird just rolled his eyes. And how Dwayne Wade is a huge gambler on defense. Armed with this information, my (W)NBA career is surely only a few months away.
Seriously, I'd want these people's jobs: Bill Simmons, John Hollinger, or Steve Sabol. In that order.
Make sure to click on the player cards and check out the Hollinger reports. A few examples: Carmelo Anthony, Deron Williams, and Rajon Rondo. The most fascinating part of the reports is the little line at the bottom that compares the player in question to whom they're most like (at their current age). For example, Andrei Kirilenko is comparable to a young Derrick McKey. Michael Redd is Jerry Stackhouse. Joe Johnson is the second coming of Michael Finley. Plus lots of head scratchers like Shawn Marion is most similar to Chris Mullin?!
In other news, the Celtic's season opener and championship ring ceremony is on October 28th. Clear your social calendars. Also, the special edition DVDs of their season will be available starting then too. The set will feature complete games so everyone can relive their crushing victory over the Lakers. Over and over and over again...
Labels: Sports
Tell Lara I Love Her
Friday, October 10, 2008 : 1:23 AM : 0 comments
I sat down tonight to take in a classic, Doctor Zhivago, with my mom. She saw it when it came out, over forty years ago. I saw it maybe twenty years ago, when I was in fifth grade I think. I believe we watched it in class actually. I'm not sure what the teacher was thinking. Sure it's a classic film but was I supposed to get anything out of the film as a ten year old? All I remembered about the movie was the ubiquitous Lara's Theme. Which has kind of haunted me these twenty some odd years.Well, let me just say after re-watching this thing that it's great. Romantic, gripping, and not what I expected at all. I thought it was just a love story but it's actually so much more than that. The story is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and that fact utterly escaped me the first time around. I didn't recall anything about a rape either. Or maybe I didn't even know what the hell had just happened. And while Julie Christie's Lara had always been captivating in this iconic way, I can't say that I really liked her character. She was just kind of there and didn't exactly seem like she was worthy of Zhivago's love. His dutiful wife (played by Charlie Chaplin's daughter), totally gets shafted.
Actually, all the characters were just kind of there. Dr. Zhivago himself didn't really capture the imagination and even though horrible things kept happening to him, he didn't seem to have any real emotions. Throughout the movie I was Wikipedia-ing everything and got more background and perspective on the book, the film, and the history of the Revolution but without all the research, I might have been a tad bit lost. Still, I think I loved the film and would definitely watch it again. Maybe I'd even give this 2002 version a try, which stars Keira Knightley, and um, Bill Paterson. Okay, maybe not.
Apparently the movie was the Titanic of its day. It won multiple Academy Awards, made tons of money, and was loved and hated in equal measure. I can see both sides because it is kind of slow and overly long. Still, I was really drawn into the story and it gave me the same wretched/wonderful feeling after watching any (good) film about unrequited love. A powerful feeling of romance swept over me even if I'd be hard pressed to explain why when looking at the details.
My mom's friend lent her this boxed set of old Oscar classics so I'll probably be working through stuff like Lawrence of Arabia and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in the near future. It's family bonding time!
"There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He's the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand?
I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut."
-Komarovsky, Doctor Zhivago-
Labels: Movies
Louis Vuitton Don
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 : 5:35 AM : 0 comments
"[Takashi] Murakami's retrospective is a clear indication of what results from this close marriage between art and consumerism: a castrated art -- one completely devoid of critical content. Murakami's work is part of a growing movement of Japanese pop art, with Murakami frequently referred to as Japan's Andy Warhol.
Superficially, the two artists seem to have a lot in common: Both use imagery appropriated from popular culture, both employ repetition of imagery as a common pictorial motif. Perhaps most important, neither artist actually executes their own artworks, instead employing a 'factory' of assistants to manufacture their paintings and prints, with the artist only touching the finished work to sign it.
Yet, to play up this comparison is to undervalue an important distinction between the two: Warhol, at least in his early work, criticized mass imagery even as he appropriated it. Murakami's work lacks even a whiff of subversiveness; it remains, at its core, a celebration of banality."
-(Super)flat Pop-
Labels: Entertainment
Stuff I've Been Reading 10
Monday, October 6, 2008 : 2:31 AM : 0 comments
BOOKS READ:
My personal goal while being back in San Diego and settling down again is to read a dozen YA novels in the next month. What I've discovered while working on this goal is that I can't read YA stuff along with other things. Usually I have a few books I flip around in but when I'm trying to get into the head space or tone of a YA novel, I can't read really read anything else or I lose my train of thought, as it were. Or maybe I just like these YA novels so much that I'm getting sucked in and don't want to stop.Girls For Breakfast - David Yoo Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons Personal Days - Ed Park Sweep - Cate Tiernan How to Write A Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper - Michael Reisman
Other things I'm hoping to fit into this schedule are books about reading and writing. One of them is titled "How to Read a Book." It's advertised as "the classic guide to intelligent reading" and comes highly recommended. I kind of love it, even if it's slow going. Seeing as I've never really taken a literature or writing class, I feel like I need to self educate myself, and fast. I was talking with a friend the other day and she said that I could probably remedially just learn some proper grammar by working through the right books. That would involve discipline and self motivation of course, but it's something I should challenge myself to do because it's my livelihood!
I mean, when I was playing with Lulu Titlescorer, a fun little app that tells you the chances your book will be a bestseller based on the title, I got lost on the little drop-down boxes about the words in my title. I mean, do I really fully understand what a "proper noun used as adjective/modifier" or "preposition/article" are? Um, maybe not.
I took my best swing at it and my chances of producing a bestseller with my next book is 69%. Not bad right? Roll the dice and cue the champagne!
Labels: Books
Choke (2008)
Thursday, October 2, 2008 : 4:28 AM : 0 comments
This definitely isn't as palatable as Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk's other adapted work. I'm gonna say that you either love or hate this movie. I, of course, just mostly liked it. Any emotion too strong either way is way beyond my means apparently.
Everything in the movie is sort of absurd, the smaltzy gets a bit heavy, and the tone swings wildly between depressing and hilarious, but I found myself entertained every step of the way. Which is much better than anything something like Burn After Reading had to offer.
Sam Rockwell is creepy and attractive at the same time, which is pretty hard to pull off if you think about it. His big sidekick Brad William Henke is sort of Seth Rogen's cinematic older brother, back when Seth Rogen was actually funny -- like for a second. As for Kelly Macdonald, some people might cringe over her acting skills but I really dig her weird monotone-ish, perpetually hurt, delivery and find her very capable. But like my friend said after watching the movie, "She's like Kate Winslet. But not."
I think I'm going to go read the book now. Then again, maybe I should pass on that. It might be too much for my virgin eyes/ears. Fox Searchlight had novel promotional swag for the movie, which caused a brief Internet blip a few months back. Additionally, I love The Christian Science Monitor's terse review of the film, which speaks volumes -- a plot point concerning Jesus' foreskin might have turned them off -- plus the reviewer dismisses Fight Club. Blasphemy.
