Wednesday, November 26, 2003
REVIEW: Inner Senses
Seen 23 November 2003 at the Brattle Theater (Eye-Opener)
* * ½ (out of four)
I must confess, I don't know if I've ever seen another movie starring Leslie Cheung. I know he's one of Hong Kong's most popular and respected actors, but that would mean seeing good Hong Kong cinema, as opposed to the narrow spectrum from Kung Fu to John Woo. So, I can't really say anything about how Cheung's last movie fits in with his body of work; just how it is as a ghost story/thriller.
And that's not so well. The set-up is okay, with Karena Lam as a young woman seeing ghosts and Cheung as the psychiatrist who works with her. He doesn't believe in ghosts, and that the girl's problems are more earthly (she has attempted suicide multiple times), but also grows fond of her.
There are a few problems here. The ghosts Lam's character sees don't have any connection to her; some are connected to her apartment, but that's the closest to a personal stake they have. The first half of the movie is pretty clunky at times, with a lot of inner monologue/exposition awkwardly delivered. And then the movie takes a sharp turn midway through.
Normally, I like that. Here, though, it doesn't quite work - the plot of the first half is wrapped up in too pat a manner, abruptly reducing an intriguing lead to a bland supporting character. Also, there are scenes where I got the impression that the writers initially wanted to go one way with whether the ghosts were real or imaginary, but decided to go the other without making the rest of the story consistent.
Monday, November 24, 2003
REVIEW: The Matrix Revolutions
Seen 23 November 2003, at the New England Aquarium (The IMAX Experience)
* * (out of four)
Random comments my brother Matt and I passed back and forth from the time we met at the Simons IMAX Theater to when we went our separate ways at Park Street (and later embellished):
"She's not really bringing that kid, is she?" (Not only is The Matrix Revolutions rated R, but the sound system in an IMAX theater could do serious damage to the ears of a girl that small)
"Look - they're not kidding. Those 'Chocolate Covered Bugs' have 'insect larva and/or cricket' listed in the ingredients. Who buys that?"
"Hang on - you actually counted how many seats were in a row and divided by two to decide where to sit? You can't just eyeball it like everyone else on Earth?"
"You know, Ryan [our racing fan cousin] will absolutely explode when he sees there's a Nascar 3D movie coming out."
"If a program you wrote started spouting philosophy rather than searching a database, you'd consider that a bug, wouldn't you?"
Bonk. Bonk. Bonk. "They need to make these seats higher. Us tall people really get hurt when a bad movie makes us pound our heads against our seat backs."
"Should we keep a count on how many times someone says something needlessly cryptic? Or just do it for the Oracle?"
"You know what's keeping me in this theater? $14, that's what."
"Are we supposed to believe there's some kind of chemistry between Keanu and Carrie-Anne Moss?"
"Sure, it's just endothermic - it reduces heat."
"I say we find whatever costumer made Monica Belucci's breasts look grotesque and kill him multiple times."
"Do you think that if they keep telling us Neo and Trinity are in love, we'll eventually believe it or care?"
"I love this character - the one who's supposed to be a stubborn, unlikable hardass but because everyone else in the movie is so damn stupid ends up being the only one talking sense. Still, it's never a good sign for a movie when it has this character."
"Good lord, just how many characters from Reloaded did I completely forget exist?"
"Laurence Fishburne and Jada Pinkett Smith - endothermic?"
"You mean there's supposed to be something between them?"
"How on earth does Trinity not realize that's Agent Smith?"
"Oh, Lord, not The Kid. Does anybody care about The Kid?"
"Neo's just having a complete Ted moment here, isn't he?"
(mostly silence - the attack on Zion was pretty sweet)
"I wonder what this day on the set was like for him. Sit in the chair, wave a couple joysticks around, and scream. Again, and again, and again."
"Biggest. Deus ex machina. Ever."
"Gee, I'm glad you told us that was beautiful. Not like we couldn't tell on our own."
"Yes, Neo, it's very sad. But, um, the clock is ticking on the fate of all humanity here."
(Points at watch)
(Makes "move it along" motions)
"When did this become the Wizard Of Oz?"
"Y'know, if I were an evil computer virus that had replicated several million times and was confronted with the man I hated more than anything, I'd be all over ganging up on him."
"New. Biggest. Deus ex machina. Ever."
"Really, I'm shocked the crucifixion symbolism took this long."
SPOILER:
"So, let me get this straight - all the human beings inside the Matrix are likely dead, the machines still rely on their body heat for power, and there's a big hole over the planet's only other source of human beings. And Zion is celebrating?"
"Man, it's a good thing we're easily impressed by new and creative ways to blow shit up."
REVIEW: The Executioner
Seen 19 November 2003, at the Allston/Bombay Cinema #1 (Weekly Wednesday Ass-Kickings)
* (out of four)
So... Let me get this straight. This is one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite Sonny Chiba movies, heck, one of Chiba's own favorites... And the only print in the US is the one we saw, with horrific dubbing by the cast of Speed Racer? Ooooooo-K.
This is, let's say, pretty bad. The story is comical in its absurdity, the character interaction is almost never believable, and the fight scenes themselves are not particularly exciting. It's too slapdash to be good camp, but too silly to be a straight action movie.
REVIEW: How To Marry A Millionaire
Seen 18 November 2003, at the Brattle Theater (Make It Wide - Celebrating 50 Years of Widescreen)
* * * (out of four)
It's a good thing this movie's wide, because it's not much in the other direction - this film, based upon multiple stage plays, clocks in at roughly an hour and a half, with perhaps ten minutes at the start given over to Albert Newman conducting the studio orchestra, followed by five minutes of opening credits. Then, in the middle, there's another long scene where a group of models (including our main characters) are paraded in front of a man ostensibly shopping for his mother (but more interested in Lauren Bacall).
It's a thin movie - Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable each get two suitors to choose between and something like an hour and a quarter between them to do it in. Naturally, they're going to choose the ones who like them for more than their beauty. It could be called dated, and in some ways it is, but consider that the plot of my favorite comedy of 2003, Intolerable Cruelty, also involves marrying for money, the only difference being that Catherine Zeta-Jones's character doesn't trade freedom for security.
REVIEW: Die, Mommie, Die!
Seen 17 November 2003, at Loews Copley Place #2 (Sundance Film Series)
* * * (out of four)
I arrived a bit late for Die, Mommie, Die!, so I missed out on the credits. A shame, because it probably had a credit sequence as clever as its utterly hilarious trailer. But, the rest of the movie was worth it.
What surprises me, in a way, is not that it worked - I'd enjoyed screenwriter/star Charles Busch's Psycho Beach Party - but that both of these movies had started out as stage plays. They're lampooning such specific genres of film that doing them on stage seems in some way unnatural. However it worked on stage, though, it's a ton of fun as a film - Busch casting himself as Angela Arden, the film's leading lady, is almost necessary to kick the absurdity level up another notch or two over an authentic piece of melodrama.
I liked the supporting cast, as well. Jason Priestly is only too willing to chew as much scenery as he can fit in his mouth, and he's given tons of opportunity, with the chance to seduce nearly every character in the film, male or female. Both Natasha Lyonne and Stark Sands are very funny as Arden's equally dysfunctional kids. Philip Baker Hall doesn't fare quite so well, having little to do but be grouchy for most of his screen time. Complaining about hemmeroids just isn't in and of itself funny.
Parody's a tricky thing to do well, especially for a genre that manages to make itself look absurd without much help. Die, Mommie, Die! manages it, though, even while mostly playing fair as a murder mystery.
Friday, November 21, 2003
REVIEW: The Animation Show
Seen Sunday, 16 November 2003, at the Brattle Theater (Special Engagement)
I don't recall a "Spike & Mike's Festival of Classic Animation" either this or last year, which is too bad - I never was terribly interested in the "Sick & Twisted" one, there's something of an after-the-fact feeling about the "Oscar's Shorts" package at the Coolidge (and, presumably, the one that played Copley Square this summer), and what you get for animated shorts at the Boston Film Festival is pretty slim pickings. Happily, though, Don Hertzfledt and Mike Judge have teamed up to present this new collection of animated shorts, which they intend to make a yearly event.
Focused as it was on recent Academy Award nominees, I'd seen a number of these shorts before. For the most part, this was an uneven show, but the good shorts were very good indeed. I'll just run down what I saw in (roughly) the order of presentation:
Looking over the list, I come across as more critical than I mean to be. While none of these shorts except possibly "Mars And Beyond" are perfect, keep in mind that most of those paragraphs took longer to write than the shorts did to watch, and my first reaction was almost uniformly positive. Also, it was great to see all those styles together, showing off the range of animation as a medium.
I don't recall a "Spike & Mike's Festival of Classic Animation" either this or last year, which is too bad - I never was terribly interested in the "Sick & Twisted" one, there's something of an after-the-fact feeling about the "Oscar's Shorts" package at the Coolidge (and, presumably, the one that played Copley Square this summer), and what you get for animated shorts at the Boston Film Festival is pretty slim pickings. Happily, though, Don Hertzfledt and Mike Judge have teamed up to present this new collection of animated shorts, which they intend to make a yearly event.
Focused as it was on recent Academy Award nominees, I'd seen a number of these shorts before. For the most part, this was an uneven show, but the good shorts were very good indeed. I'll just run down what I saw in (roughly) the order of presentation:
Looking over the list, I come across as more critical than I mean to be. While none of these shorts except possibly "Mars And Beyond" are perfect, keep in mind that most of those paragraphs took longer to write than the shorts did to watch, and my first reaction was almost uniformly positive. Also, it was great to see all those styles together, showing off the range of animation as a medium.
Monday, November 17, 2003
REVIEW: The Event
Seen Sunday, 16 November 2003, at the Brattle Theater (Eye Opener series)
* ¾ (out of four)
I'll admit it - it just might not be possible for me to enjoy a pro-suicide movie. Especially one, like The Event, that exists to exalt assisted suicide. Even if I were in Matt Shapiro's position, dying of AIDS and not responding to treatment, I couldn't imagine killing myself, because a cynical (or is that optimistic?) part of me would just know that some kind of breakthrough would be announced the next day, and how stupid would I look then? And assisted suicide? That's putting the people you love, care about, and trust into ethically and legally precarious positions so that you can avoid responsibility one last time.
But even if I agreed with this film, I don't think I'd like it. Although writer/director Thom Fitzgerald peppers it with some amusing black humor, he has made an "issue movie" which neither engages in debate nor makes anything close to a strong argument for its cause. It portarys Shapiro (Don McKellar) as a saint, and his mother (Olympia Dukakis) even refers to him at one point as a "hero", akin to a police officer who died in the line of duty.
The woman she makes this observation to is Nick (Parker Posey), an assistant district attorney investigating Shapiro's death (the "goodbye party" which precedes it is the "event" of the title), along wtih a number of other apparent assisted suicides who were all connected to the same doctor (Brent Carver). Nick could have been an interesting ethical counterpoint, someone who believes life is precious and feels that the willingness to end another's life erodes respect for life in general. But, instead, she's just working the case because it's the law and upholding the law is her job, even apologizing to the doctor at one point.
I'm not sure where my disagreeing with this movie ends and where my disliking it begins. I think the filmmaker is so certain of the rightness of he beliefs that he didn't allow any conflict or drama in, and that in the end the film (and the audience) suffers for it.
REVIEW: Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World
Seen Friday, 14 November 2003, at Loews Boston Common, Screen #14 (new release)
* * * ½ (out of four)
It's good for the soul to sit through the credits for a film like Master And Commander. The sheer amount of glossy, well-produced, technically astounding features that Hollywood sends to our local cinemas every week can cause a frequent moviegoer to take for granted just how much effort goes into producing these films, especially one with the degree of difficulty this has.
The plot is nothing new - you have your basic beloved, veteran captain and ship; the more intellectual, relatively pacifistic foil; the stealthy, more advanced, unseen enemy ship; orders being exceeded in a way to put the crew in serious danger; the officer who does not have the crew's confidence and respect; the need to sacrifice some of the crew to save the ship. The difference between Master And Commander and, say, Crimson Tide is one of details.
But what details! Few movies in the genre are so well-researched, and the way the tactics and necessities of 19th-Century naval warfare are described in an offhand, but precise, manner are impressive. The shots on the water are gorgeous, especially the opening image of a fog bank being illuminated from within by cannon fire.
Performances are generally solid, though the movie tends to drag for a few minutes before the crew begins preparing for the final battle sequence: They're doing standard sub/ship movie stuff, and I was anxious fort hem to get back to what makes this movie unique, as opposed to what was mostly familiar.
Still, highly recommended - director Peter Weir is not known for messing around and he delivers what may be the greatest fighting-sailor movie ever made.
REVIEW: Dragon Fight
Seen Wednesday, 12 November 2003, at Allston/Bombay Cinema (Weekly Wednesday Ass-Kicking series)
* * * (out of four)
Despite what the three-star rating would seem to indicate, Dragon Fight is not really a good movie. In fact, it is decidedly sub-par in almost every area other than fight choreography - which is, in fact, rather impressive. Jet Li and his sparring partners do a nice job without much (if any) wire work.
This movie does gain a certain amount of camp appeal, though, by sheer dint of how hard it tries. It must have been a considerable expense (relative to the genre) for a Hong Kong martial arts movie to shoot in San Francisco, even closing off streets to stage some vehicular mayhem. But while great attention is being paid to detail and craft in some areas, the movie is terribly sloppy in others. Characters speaking English invariable sound ridiculous; I had to rely on subtitles to understand what some of the Chinese Triad bosses were saying. But even the white and African-American characters sounded awful. The producers must have hired people they found on the street, or perhaps the director just kept screaming for a more "intense" performance, whether it matched what real people sounded like or not.
I enjoyed it because, he, Jet Li can kick some ass, and it was a good (if small) crowd, which had been softened up by trailers for Taoism Drunkard and stuff like The Gravy Train. In another environment, though, the cheesy production might have been annoying rather than oddly charming.
* * * (out of four)
Despite what the three-star rating would seem to indicate, Dragon Fight is not really a good movie. In fact, it is decidedly sub-par in almost every area other than fight choreography - which is, in fact, rather impressive. Jet Li and his sparring partners do a nice job without much (if any) wire work.
This movie does gain a certain amount of camp appeal, though, by sheer dint of how hard it tries. It must have been a considerable expense (relative to the genre) for a Hong Kong martial arts movie to shoot in San Francisco, even closing off streets to stage some vehicular mayhem. But while great attention is being paid to detail and craft in some areas, the movie is terribly sloppy in others. Characters speaking English invariable sound ridiculous; I had to rely on subtitles to understand what some of the Chinese Triad bosses were saying. But even the white and African-American characters sounded awful. The producers must have hired people they found on the street, or perhaps the director just kept screaming for a more "intense" performance, whether it matched what real people sounded like or not.
I enjoyed it because, he, Jet Li can kick some ass, and it was a good (if small) crowd, which had been softened up by trailers for Taoism Drunkard and stuff like The Gravy Train. In another environment, though, the cheesy production might have been annoying rather than oddly charming.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
REVIEW: The Human Stain
Seen Sunday, 9 November 2003, at 11:40am, Landmark's Kendall Square Theater, Screen #1
* * (out of four)
The Human Stain doesn't really do much wrong, but I'm not sure I really see the point of it as a movie. It's got some terrific actors - really, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise seem to be overkill for their parts - and is nicely shot. But there's also no escaping that it was adapted from a book, one which was undoubtedly able to spend much more time on each of the characters.
Anthony Hopkins's character, Coleman Silk, gets the most time. He's an interesting choice for the character, for reasons I won't get into because I think I may have enjoyed the movie more had I not known his character's secret. After a hammy beginning, his performance settles down nicely. Nicole Kidman is also strong as Faunia Farely, the janitor forty years his junior that he falls for. Nothing wrong with Harris as Faunia's ex-husband or Sinese as Nathan Zuckerman, a writer friend of Silk's.
Much of the early part of the movie seems contrived, though - Silk loses his job for calling two students who haven't shown up to class "spooks". I guess I'm ignorant, but I have never heard of that being considered a racist term. The way in which he meets Zuckerman also defies belief. And even if I bought into Wentworth Miller playing the same character as Hopkins, only 55 years younger, he seems stilted, not like a real college kid at all.
The structure also seemed off. Sinise's character narrates as if it were a book, and indeed in the end speaks about the book - The Human Stain - he is writing. Which may have worked fine, in the book. In a film, though, it's an intrusive device
I can't quite recommend The Human Stain, the film. The book may well be a different story.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
[MISC] Paragraphs only vaguely related to each other
So, I've been working at SodexhoPASS USA for the last couple of weeks, give or take. Not a bad place, but it's still only a contract job with a hard October due-date. It's also out in Newton, which makes for an hour-long commute where I've been very fortunate as far as the weather is concerned (note to self: buy umbrella). Hopefully, the dream high-paying with benefits job in downtown Cambridge will appear sometime soon.
In a total non-sequiter, I miss Fresh Samantha already. I sadly haven't been able to afford $2.50 juice drinks in my current semi-jobless state, but today Star Market had coupons right on the "Odwalla" fridge (Odwalla being the company that bought Fresh Samantha and has now retired the brand) for 75c off and the self-checout lane was ignoring the do-not-double stamp on it. So a $2 lemonade could be had for fifty cents.
Or, in this case, a "Strawberry Lemonade Quencher". Which didn't really impress me much at all. Sure, it's better than a 5% juice Snapple (what isn't?), but it didn't have much of a lemonade taste (and Fresh Samantha lemonade was really good stuff). Not bad, but not worth a premium price for.
It just sort of irritates me that Odwalla chose to enter the New England market by buying and shuttering Fresh Samantha rather than coming in on their own. It reminds me of how, back in the eighties, Broderbund bought Synapse software. Both were companies that made games and productivity file for 6502-based computers. Broderbund, though, wrote for the Apple II and converted to other systems, while Synapse wrote for the Atari and Commodore lines and converted from that. Within a couple years, though, Synapse was gone, and fans of theirs had to make do with what Broderbund put out. Not that Synapse would have lasted much longer - the industry was changing too much, and Broderbund itself isn't even a pale shadow of what it was - but it just sucks to see a company beat out its competition with their wallet as opposed to their product.
-Jay
In a total non-sequiter, I miss Fresh Samantha already. I sadly haven't been able to afford $2.50 juice drinks in my current semi-jobless state, but today Star Market had coupons right on the "Odwalla" fridge (Odwalla being the company that bought Fresh Samantha and has now retired the brand) for 75c off and the self-checout lane was ignoring the do-not-double stamp on it. So a $2 lemonade could be had for fifty cents.
Or, in this case, a "Strawberry Lemonade Quencher". Which didn't really impress me much at all. Sure, it's better than a 5% juice Snapple (what isn't?), but it didn't have much of a lemonade taste (and Fresh Samantha lemonade was really good stuff). Not bad, but not worth a premium price for.
It just sort of irritates me that Odwalla chose to enter the New England market by buying and shuttering Fresh Samantha rather than coming in on their own. It reminds me of how, back in the eighties, Broderbund bought Synapse software. Both were companies that made games and productivity file for 6502-based computers. Broderbund, though, wrote for the Apple II and converted to other systems, while Synapse wrote for the Atari and Commodore lines and converted from that. Within a couple years, though, Synapse was gone, and fans of theirs had to make do with what Broderbund put out. Not that Synapse would have lasted much longer - the industry was changing too much, and Broderbund itself isn't even a pale shadow of what it was - but it just sucks to see a company beat out its competition with their wallet as opposed to their product.
-Jay
Friday, August 01, 2003
[MISC] Did something vaguely like work today
And I guess I'll even get paid for it. I got a call from someone at Randstad earlier this week, who found my resume on Monster and apparently wasn't aware I had already signed on with them nine months ago. They asked me to go to the Harvard Square branch and take some tests on Access. Which seemed silly - the stuff on my resume was much more complicated and useful than what they tested me on (honestly, is the ability of a DB guy to change the font on a table particularly important?). Then I go out to Newton in order to meet the folks who need an "Access guru", and he quizzes me on all sorts of things.
So what do I do when I come in today? I'm supposed to design one of those paper forms with the little boxes that an automated scanner can read. And either those scanners don't come with software to do it or they don't know about it, so I wind up doing it in Visio, which really isn't suited to the task, but seemed better for it than anything else installed on the machine they sat me at. So, in the end, you had a database/Visual Basic guy using charting software to create a text form, and they apparently loved it. I just shook my head; this is an important office for a large international company.
But, hey, they're willing to pay me. Fortunately, I got email/calls from another company that might actually want me to do development work full-time. Hopefully that'll come through, because then you get the medical benefits and potential raises and all that good stuff. And no more dealing with Randstad, where the left hand really seems to have no clue what the right hand is doing and the assignments they come up with are just strange.
So what do I do when I come in today? I'm supposed to design one of those paper forms with the little boxes that an automated scanner can read. And either those scanners don't come with software to do it or they don't know about it, so I wind up doing it in Visio, which really isn't suited to the task, but seemed better for it than anything else installed on the machine they sat me at. So, in the end, you had a database/Visual Basic guy using charting software to create a text form, and they apparently loved it. I just shook my head; this is an important office for a large international company.
But, hey, they're willing to pay me. Fortunately, I got email/calls from another company that might actually want me to do development work full-time. Hopefully that'll come through, because then you get the medical benefits and potential raises and all that good stuff. And no more dealing with Randstad, where the left hand really seems to have no clue what the right hand is doing and the assignments they come up with are just strange.
Friday, July 18, 2003
[RED SOX] Ugh
In cartoons, you see it all the time. A character blithely walks out over a cliff without any sort of support, only to fall when it's pointed out to him that gravity suggests they really shouldn't be there.
Last winter, the Red Sox hired Voros McCracken to develop statistics and research for them. Voros's most famous work is something called Defense-Independant Pitching Statistics (DIPS), which to oversimplify, says that pitchers have very little control over what happens to balls in play, and the surest path to success is to strike out a lot of people while avoiding walks or home runs. These are things most pitchers want to do anyway, but this was the first time balls in plays were minimized so much, with numbers to back it up. Considering that Lowe's success last season flies in the face of DIPS, having the guy who developed the system on staff and showing Lowe his work might be the equivelent of the Roadrunner pointing down while Wile E. Coyote stands out over open air. The best thing to do would be to shore up the infield defense behind him, but it takes a miracle to get Freddy Sanchez into a game.
Lowe really had nothing last night. In four innings, he didn't get much in the way of ground ball outs, what important outs he did get seemed to come via the K, and a few defensive miscues hurt him bad. The bullpen was mostly solid, aside from that blast mite-y Casey gave up, so at least something good can be said of the pitching. Still, it seemed to take a lot more effort than it should have - Lowe threw about 80-90 pitches in his four innings, but most telling was Chad Fox throwing 30 pitches in the top of the seventh, while Halladay had thrown something like 60 pitches in the first six. Of course, he was just having a good game - the flaw in the whole take-and-rake strategy is that when a guy like Halladay shows up and throws strikes, a hitter can be down 0-2 quickly, without much to show for it.
Despite all that, I had a fine time indeed at the ballpark. I called my brother to see if he wanted to use my spare ticket, but he had to work late. I suspect he wouldn't have minded too much when he saw where I was seated - not being a big fan of heights, being in the last row of those steep right-field roof box sections might not have appealed to him. Fortunately, I was able to unload the ticket for $20 before the game, and the guy apparently just wanted to get in because he didn't sit next to me (which is fine, because he looked kind of sketchy). I probably could have gotten more, what with the game being a sellout, but it was a single ticket, twenty minutes before game time. Besides, I have a fear that if I sell a $37 ticket for $38, I watch the game from jail. Just because the vermin scalp tickets pretty openly in front of the gate doesn't mean you can't get picked up for selling an individual ticket, right?
Last winter, the Red Sox hired Voros McCracken to develop statistics and research for them. Voros's most famous work is something called Defense-Independant Pitching Statistics (DIPS), which to oversimplify, says that pitchers have very little control over what happens to balls in play, and the surest path to success is to strike out a lot of people while avoiding walks or home runs. These are things most pitchers want to do anyway, but this was the first time balls in plays were minimized so much, with numbers to back it up. Considering that Lowe's success last season flies in the face of DIPS, having the guy who developed the system on staff and showing Lowe his work might be the equivelent of the Roadrunner pointing down while Wile E. Coyote stands out over open air. The best thing to do would be to shore up the infield defense behind him, but it takes a miracle to get Freddy Sanchez into a game.
Lowe really had nothing last night. In four innings, he didn't get much in the way of ground ball outs, what important outs he did get seemed to come via the K, and a few defensive miscues hurt him bad. The bullpen was mostly solid, aside from that blast mite-y Casey gave up, so at least something good can be said of the pitching. Still, it seemed to take a lot more effort than it should have - Lowe threw about 80-90 pitches in his four innings, but most telling was Chad Fox throwing 30 pitches in the top of the seventh, while Halladay had thrown something like 60 pitches in the first six. Of course, he was just having a good game - the flaw in the whole take-and-rake strategy is that when a guy like Halladay shows up and throws strikes, a hitter can be down 0-2 quickly, without much to show for it.
Despite all that, I had a fine time indeed at the ballpark. I called my brother to see if he wanted to use my spare ticket, but he had to work late. I suspect he wouldn't have minded too much when he saw where I was seated - not being a big fan of heights, being in the last row of those steep right-field roof box sections might not have appealed to him. Fortunately, I was able to unload the ticket for $20 before the game, and the guy apparently just wanted to get in because he didn't sit next to me (which is fine, because he looked kind of sketchy). I probably could have gotten more, what with the game being a sellout, but it was a single ticket, twenty minutes before game time. Besides, I have a fear that if I sell a $37 ticket for $38, I watch the game from jail. Just because the vermin scalp tickets pretty openly in front of the gate doesn't mean you can't get picked up for selling an individual ticket, right?
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
[RED SOX] All-Stars
I may have to reconsider my disdain for "This Time, It Counts!" That was a pretty good game last night, although I think the biggest improvement was that Fox toned their act down. There were no over-the-top ceremonies, no chatting with Joe Torre and Don Zimmer during the game, and no omni-present Jeter-cam (honestly, when I heard he wasn't in the game, I was sure Fox would put him in the booth or doing interviews in the AL dugout). No Budzilla, either. Fox basically just showed a baseball game, and it went well.
As to whether the game was played differently or was more intense because something was on the line - there's good and bad to that. Nomar only played three inning and got one at-bat, and Tek didn't play at all. I have to admit, it made the game less interesting to me; it must have been even less fun for the folks in Detroit and Tampa who love their team despite everything. I did find it kind of amusing that Soscia, whose fluke team seems less likely to go to the World Series this year than Dusty's Cubs, was apparently much more concerned with winning (versus getting everyone in) than Baker. But Baker's got that reputation, I guess, of being a guy whose main concern is making people happy. Not quite Torre, but give him enough appearances and he could be.
As to whether the game was played differently or was more intense because something was on the line - there's good and bad to that. Nomar only played three inning and got one at-bat, and Tek didn't play at all. I have to admit, it made the game less interesting to me; it must have been even less fun for the folks in Detroit and Tampa who love their team despite everything. I did find it kind of amusing that Soscia, whose fluke team seems less likely to go to the World Series this year than Dusty's Cubs, was apparently much more concerned with winning (versus getting everyone in) than Baker. But Baker's got that reputation, I guess, of being a guy whose main concern is making people happy. Not quite Torre, but give him enough appearances and he could be.
Monday, July 14, 2003
[MISC] Things Looking Up
Geez, has it really been almost two weeks since I entered something here? So much for the purpose of this blog being to make me a better writer by making me write every day.
Still, the scary "I don't know how I'll pay August's rent" situation is past. A new roommate should be moving in today, one Juan Carlos Jiminez-Marquez. It was great fun, yesterday, to take down all the online "roommate wanted" ads. Depositing the check for the security deposit shall be even more fun.
And, I've finally got a job interview tomorrow, after first talking to the recruiter two weeks ago. Takes long enough, sometimes. I am hoping like heck that it doesn't rain. The job is in an office park out in Newton, and the MBTA bus only goes to the end of the street, with something like a half-mile to walk after that. Already, I'm thinking about just wearing a T-shirt and putting my "interviewing outfit" on once I arrive at the place.
Speaking of jobs, here's an amusing ad - a job for a computer programmer at the Boston Globe, but the ad on BostonWorks (a Globe site) doesn't allow you to apply online. Sure, I do have a printer and stamps, but it just strikes me kind of odd to try to recruit technical people with the internet but not do it all the way.
Still, the scary "I don't know how I'll pay August's rent" situation is past. A new roommate should be moving in today, one Juan Carlos Jiminez-Marquez. It was great fun, yesterday, to take down all the online "roommate wanted" ads. Depositing the check for the security deposit shall be even more fun.
And, I've finally got a job interview tomorrow, after first talking to the recruiter two weeks ago. Takes long enough, sometimes. I am hoping like heck that it doesn't rain. The job is in an office park out in Newton, and the MBTA bus only goes to the end of the street, with something like a half-mile to walk after that. Already, I'm thinking about just wearing a T-shirt and putting my "interviewing outfit" on once I arrive at the place.
Speaking of jobs, here's an amusing ad - a job for a computer programmer at the Boston Globe, but the ad on BostonWorks (a Globe site) doesn't allow you to apply online. Sure, I do have a printer and stamps, but it just strikes me kind of odd to try to recruit technical people with the internet but not do it all the way.
Thursday, July 03, 2003
[MOVIES] Terminator 3
Terminator 3 isn't the big, knock you flat on your back experience that Terminator 2 was back in 1991, and still can be today. It does a lot of things very well - and is in fact exceptional in a couple of places - but is somewhat generic at times. Where the first Terminator was a taut, gritty action movie wrapped around an understated (and cleverly science-fictional) love story, and T2 had an unmatched go-for-broke intensity to it, T3 isn't anything we haven't seen before. It's biggest problem is probably that Nick Stahl and Clare Danes are able enough actors, but don't generate the emotional intensity that Linda Hamilton, Michael Beihn, Joe Morton, and Edward Furlong did in previous installments. They're nice, I liked the characters, and I understood John Connor's demons, but they only rarely were able to make the jump to where you believe that what happens to all of humanity depends on what they do.
Instead, the machines take center stage. Which isn't any bad thing - Schwarzeneggar inhabits the role of the T-101 like he was made for it, and Kristanna Loken is, especially during the first half of the movie, great fun as the T-X. She has the knack of looking pleased with herself without actually smiling, so you could just be assigning human emotions to a machine in your head, if you like your killing machines to be just that. And it's a kick when she analyzes the DNA from a blood sample with her tongue. It's not like watching actual people when they take center stage, but it's not watching a printing press, either.
The movie's biggest potential problem is that the plot is, basically, the same as that of T2 - machine travels back in time to assassinate John Connor, another machine follows, and Connor winds up attempting to get to the man who builds SkyNet. To the filmmakers' credit, they have some fun with tweaking how similar the two movies are at points - T-101 going into a bar to get clothes being a case in point. And Clare Danes as Kate Brewster is a great addition - she fits the middle ground between the "Sarah Connor, damsel in distress" and "Sarah Connor, badass" of the first two movies. She can take care of herself, but isn't in-your-face about it.
The movie's big draw is, of course, the action. It's the good stuff, with a big first-act chase scene that sets a new standard for vehicular mayhem, even compared to The Matrix Reloaded. In fact, director Johnathan Mostow keeps the tension high enough toward the end that I completely let slide something I normally would pick up on and complain about - until a character realizes the same thing, too late. Indeed, the last act of this movie is something pretty special - the comic relief slows down, and the movie actually becomes eerie, in a way, without resorting to the usual atmospheric tricks. It follows mayhem with stillness, and made me really wonder about the Terminator movies' future in a way that I really hadn't before.
T3 isn't a masterpiece, but it's a pretty darn good movie that manages to add something new to the Terminator series. Supposedly, Warner has purchased the distribution rights to T3 and T4, and I must admit to being curious where the story goes from here.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
[MISC] MathCounts on ESPN???
Yikes... It's absolutely surreal to see an event I participated in broadcast nationally on ESPN (well, ESPN2). Mainly because I'm not athletic in the least, of course. But even if it wasn't on ESPN, just knowing that the competition was being taped for later broadcast, even if you're talking about The Learning Channel or one of those digital cable stations they didn't have fourteen or fifteen years ago would have froze me completely.
Of course, if you look at how I did when I participated in the event, it's debatable whether anyone would have noticed that I'd frozen.
Of course, if you look at how I did when I participated in the event, it's debatable whether anyone would have noticed that I'd frozen.
[MOVIES] July & August at the indies
Okay, since I've just spent a good deal of time whining about the less-than-ideal experiences at some of Boston's mainstream theaters, let's counteract that with something I love: Looking over the programs for the next couple months at the "alternate" venues and commenting on them. My comments will be in blue. Also, note that films seperated by an ampersand are a single-admission double feature, but those on the same day but seperate lines are two seperate admissions.
Allston Cinema Underground ($8 admission)
Turn It Up! Music Meets Movies
5 July - 6 July: Fugazi: Instrument ($5)
11 July - 12 July: Tom Waits: Big Time
13 July: Wesley Willis: The Daddy Of Rock And Roll
18 July - 19 July: Shane McGowan: If I Should Fall From Grace
20 July: All Kindsa Girls: The Real Kids
23 July: Nobody Knows: Chronicle of An Unsigned Band
That's a lot of colons. Those $8 admissions for bands I don't know probably will keep me away.
The Hip Hop Film Fest
25 July - 26 July: Freestyle: The Art Of Rhyme
25 July: Word
26 July: Breath Control: History of The Human Beatbox
27 July: Soundz Of Spirit
27 July: Street Legends
Allston hasn't announced their August line-up yet, but apparently there will be more kung fu. Yay! I had great fun at the shows I went to, but attendance seemed to drop off between mid-May and late June.
Brattle Theater ($8.50, $5.50 for members)
Genre Films of The 50s (Mondays)
21 July: Bad Day At Black Rock & On The Waterfront
28 July: All That Heaven Allows & Pillow Talk
The films that inspired Far From Heaven and Down With Love, respectively. Meaning I may just take in Pillow Talk, especially with a good show at the Harvard Film Archive that night.
4 August: High Noon & Ride Lonesome
Haven't seen High Noon. Should fix that
11 August: The Thing & The Man From Planet X
18 August: Rear Window & The Sniper
I have seen Rear Window quite a bit, though. Still, The Sniper looks nifty.
From Panel To Frame: Comic Books In The Movies (Tuesdays)
Co-sponsored by Million Year Picnic, the local comic shop I patronize. I'm sort of surprised not to see many more conventional superhero movies; I'd like to see Batman in a theater again. Still, the "vertical" programs are short this time around, so I guess they went for the more highbrow stuff.
22 July: American Splendor
Opens at Coolidge Corner, and likely other theaters, a month later. Could easily sell out ahead of time
22 July: Ghost World
29 July: Barbarella
Saw it at SF/27, no need to do that again. Now, if it had been a double feature with Danger Diabolik...
5 August: Ghost In The Shell & Metropolis (2001)
Tempting... Metropolis was my favorite movie to come out (in the US) last year.
12 August: Crumb & Fritz The Cat
19 August: Blade
Recent Raves (Wednesdays)
23 July: Spider
30 July: Morvern Callar
6 August: The Good Thief & Bob Le Flambeur
The Good Thief is the only one in this series I got to in the regular theaters, so it'll be the one I skip. I'll probably check out Bob Le Flambeur, though.
13 August: The Man Without A Past
20 August: Ten
Chinese Period Drama Featuring The Films of Zhang Yimou & Gong Li (Thursdays)
31 July: Farewell My Concubine
7 August: Raise The Red Lantern & Ju Dou
14 August: To Live & The Story Of Qiu Ju
21 August: In The Mood For Love & Shanghai Triad
Masterpieces all, or so I'm told. Still, every trailer I've seen for this genre makes them look sumptuous but dull. I'm not saying they should mix Once Upon A Time In China 3 in or anything, but I can't get psyched for these
Special Engagements
27 June - 10 July: Le Cercle Rouge
This has a neat trailer, with a seemless blend of the original French theatrical trailer and stuff plugging the rerelease. I know this, because I've seen it a couple dozen times in the last month. Lots of opportunity to see it, apparently.
11 July - 17 July: Fellini: I'm A Born Liar
12 July - 13 July: 8½
11 July - 17 July: Versus
Apparently the print didn't get to Allston in time to actually be shown, which would have been a major bummer if I didn't know this engagement was coming. I'm all over this; the trailers before the other Ass-Kicking Asian Summer movies there are just cool as heck.
18 July: Cremaster 1&2 & Cremaster 3
19 July: Cremaster 3 & Cremaster 4&5
20 July: Cremaster 1&2 & Cremaster 3 & Cremaster 4&5 ($10 ticket)
Heh. The Museum of Fine Arts was charging $10 for each show. This could be tricky, though - the middle one is three hours, so if you're going to want to bail, it'll be during that. But once that's over, the last two apparently go quickly.
24 July: "Trailer Treats" ($12 for the 8pm "party" show)
25 July - 27 July: Lilya 4-Ever
Great reviews; I'll check it out.
26 July - 27 July: Microcosmos
1 August - 3 August: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (restored, full-length version)
8 August - 9 August: Roman Holiday & To Kill A Mockingbird
10 August: Cape Fear (1962)
15 August - 17 August: Tattoo
22 August - 4 September: The Weather Underground
5 September - 11 September: A Woman Is A Woman
Coolidge Corner Theater ($8; $5 members)
Coolidge Selects (Video screening room)
11 July - 24 July: Bonhoeffer
25 July - 7 August: On_Line
Looks the most interesting, but $8 is a lot to spend for projected video.
8 August - 21 August: What I Want My Words To Do To You
22 August - 28 August: OT: Our Town
29 August - 4 September: Boys Life 4
Summertime Blues (Mondays in July)
7 July: Bluesland: A Portrait Of Blues In America
14 July: John Lee Hooker: That's My Story
21 July: Ray Charles: The Genius Of Soul
28 July: Martin Scorcese Presents: The Blues (compilation reel)
I like the Blues, and always feel like I should know more about it, but these collide with the 50s Genre Films at the Brattle, so they'll probably lose out.
Sounds Great (New sound system on main screen - about time!)
24 July: Singin' In The Rain
Missed it at the Arlington Regent. Missed it at the Brattle. Didn't blink when the new DVD came out. And, really, even though it's some kind of classic, the trailer makes it look overstuffed with songs that stop the action dead. So, I'll probably miss it here, too.
BF/VF Meet The Director
8 July: Stonewalk
12 August: The Cloggers Of Putneyville
Kung Fu Madness (Friday/Saturday Midnites) ($6 tickets)
5 July: Dragon Fight
I'll probably be in Maine, so I'll miss Jet Li kicking triad ass. ::sigh::
11 July - 12 July: Mismatched Couples
Donnie Yen in a Kung Fu Breakdancing Spectacular? Sold.
18 July - 19 July: The Victim
Sammo Hung's best? Sold.
25 July - 26 July: Crippled Avengers (aka Mortal Combat)
Not quite as quick a sale as the others, but handicapped kung-fu could be good fun.
Crazy About Swayze (Saturday Midnites)
5 July: Red Dawn
12 July: Dirty Dancing
19 July: Road House
26 July: Ghost
Pass.
80s Scifi (Friday/Saturday Midnites)
1 August - 2 August: Goke, Bodysnatcher From Hell (actually, 1968, "lost" Japanese film)
Anyone who knows me knows I'll be unable to resist that title.
8 August - 9 August: Robocop
Never seen it; probably should.
15 August - 16 August: The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension
22 August - 23 August: Spaceballs
29 August - 30 August: Krull
Harvard Film Archive ($7 admission)
Cinema A-Z: Treasures From The Harvard Film Archive
1 July: A is for American Tragedy - The Crowd & McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Piano Accompaniment by Yakov Gubanov on The Crowd. I'm sorely tempted, despite being broke.
2 July: B is for Behind Bars - Down By Law & Genera Della Rovere
3 July: C is for Children of War - Forbidden Games (Jeux Interdits) & Lacombe Lucien
4 July - 5 July: D is for Divine Intervention - A Matter Of Life And Death (aka Stairway To Heaven) & Au Hasard, Balthazar
6 July: E is for Exploitation! - Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls & Possession
45 minutes were apparently cut from Possession for its US release. If I'm back from Maine in time, this could be a good twin bill to see Sunday night.
7 July: F is for Forbidden Love - The Wedding March & Camila
8 July - 9 July: G is for Ghost Stories - Dead Of Night & Hour Of The Wolf
10 July: H is for Historical Revision - Arsenal & The Nasty Girl
Gubanov again, on Arsenal.
11 July - 12 July: I is for Insanity - Pierrot Le Fou & Betty Blue
13 July: J is for Jannings... At Last - The Last Laugh & The Last Command
Gubanov on both.
14 July - 15 July: K is for Kitchen Sink - Room At The Top & Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
16 July - 17 July: L is for Love Triangles - Two English Girls (Les deux Anglaises et le continent) & Un Coeur En Hiver
18 July - 19 July: M is for Mail Call - Jour De Fête & The Kremlin Letter
An interesting double feature - Tati and what looks like a pretty good spy movie. Say this for these HFA twin bills, they're not just showing you the same movie twice!
20 July - 21 July: N is for Nostalgia - Play It Again, Sam & Amarcord
22 July - 23 July: O is for Oracles - The Thief Of Bagdad & The Last Wave
24 July - 25 July: P is for Polanski - Knife In the Water & The Tenant
26 July - 27 July: Q is for Queer Renegades - Without You, I'm Nothing & Caravaggio
28 July - 29 July: R is for Roeg Images - The Man Who Fell To Earth & The Masque Of The Red Death
Hmmm... Good stuff at the Brattle these days, too.
30 July - 31 July: S is for Simply Sellers - The Ladykillers & I'm All Right Jack
I don't think I've ever seen a Sellers movie. I should rectify that.
1 August: T is for Trailers - Trailers, Trailers, Trailers
Wow, two trailer shows within a week of each other. Great planning, huh?
2 August: U is for UK Underdogs - High Hopes & Raining Stones
3 August: V is for Vitti Vignettes - The Phantom of Liberty & High Infidelity
4 August - 5 August: W is for Women's Pictures - The Women & Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
6 August: X is for X-Rated In America - W.R.: Mysteries Of The Organism & Blue Shorts
7 August - 8 August: Y is for Youth Gone Wild - Zero For Conduct & If...
One of the few cases on this program where one film is a clear influence on the other.
9 August - 10 August: Z is for Zombies - Night Of The Living Dead & I Walked With A Zombie
One of these Zombie films is described as a "West Indian version of Jane Eyre." Guess which one.
Allston Cinema Underground ($8 admission)
Turn It Up! Music Meets Movies
5 July - 6 July: Fugazi: Instrument ($5)
11 July - 12 July: Tom Waits: Big Time
13 July: Wesley Willis: The Daddy Of Rock And Roll
18 July - 19 July: Shane McGowan: If I Should Fall From Grace
20 July: All Kindsa Girls: The Real Kids
23 July: Nobody Knows: Chronicle of An Unsigned Band
That's a lot of colons. Those $8 admissions for bands I don't know probably will keep me away.
The Hip Hop Film Fest
25 July - 26 July: Freestyle: The Art Of Rhyme
25 July: Word
26 July: Breath Control: History of The Human Beatbox
27 July: Soundz Of Spirit
27 July: Street Legends
Allston hasn't announced their August line-up yet, but apparently there will be more kung fu. Yay! I had great fun at the shows I went to, but attendance seemed to drop off between mid-May and late June.
Brattle Theater ($8.50, $5.50 for members)
Genre Films of The 50s (Mondays)
21 July: Bad Day At Black Rock & On The Waterfront
28 July: All That Heaven Allows & Pillow Talk
The films that inspired Far From Heaven and Down With Love, respectively. Meaning I may just take in Pillow Talk, especially with a good show at the Harvard Film Archive that night.
4 August: High Noon & Ride Lonesome
Haven't seen High Noon. Should fix that
11 August: The Thing & The Man From Planet X
18 August: Rear Window & The Sniper
I have seen Rear Window quite a bit, though. Still, The Sniper looks nifty.
From Panel To Frame: Comic Books In The Movies (Tuesdays)
Co-sponsored by Million Year Picnic, the local comic shop I patronize. I'm sort of surprised not to see many more conventional superhero movies; I'd like to see Batman in a theater again. Still, the "vertical" programs are short this time around, so I guess they went for the more highbrow stuff.
22 July: American Splendor
Opens at Coolidge Corner, and likely other theaters, a month later. Could easily sell out ahead of time
22 July: Ghost World
29 July: Barbarella
Saw it at SF/27, no need to do that again. Now, if it had been a double feature with Danger Diabolik...
5 August: Ghost In The Shell & Metropolis (2001)
Tempting... Metropolis was my favorite movie to come out (in the US) last year.
12 August: Crumb & Fritz The Cat
19 August: Blade
Recent Raves (Wednesdays)
23 July: Spider
30 July: Morvern Callar
6 August: The Good Thief & Bob Le Flambeur
The Good Thief is the only one in this series I got to in the regular theaters, so it'll be the one I skip. I'll probably check out Bob Le Flambeur, though.
13 August: The Man Without A Past
20 August: Ten
Chinese Period Drama Featuring The Films of Zhang Yimou & Gong Li (Thursdays)
31 July: Farewell My Concubine
7 August: Raise The Red Lantern & Ju Dou
14 August: To Live & The Story Of Qiu Ju
21 August: In The Mood For Love & Shanghai Triad
Masterpieces all, or so I'm told. Still, every trailer I've seen for this genre makes them look sumptuous but dull. I'm not saying they should mix Once Upon A Time In China 3 in or anything, but I can't get psyched for these
Special Engagements
27 June - 10 July: Le Cercle Rouge
This has a neat trailer, with a seemless blend of the original French theatrical trailer and stuff plugging the rerelease. I know this, because I've seen it a couple dozen times in the last month. Lots of opportunity to see it, apparently.
11 July - 17 July: Fellini: I'm A Born Liar
12 July - 13 July: 8½
11 July - 17 July: Versus
Apparently the print didn't get to Allston in time to actually be shown, which would have been a major bummer if I didn't know this engagement was coming. I'm all over this; the trailers before the other Ass-Kicking Asian Summer movies there are just cool as heck.
18 July: Cremaster 1&2 & Cremaster 3
19 July: Cremaster 3 & Cremaster 4&5
20 July: Cremaster 1&2 & Cremaster 3 & Cremaster 4&5 ($10 ticket)
Heh. The Museum of Fine Arts was charging $10 for each show. This could be tricky, though - the middle one is three hours, so if you're going to want to bail, it'll be during that. But once that's over, the last two apparently go quickly.
24 July: "Trailer Treats" ($12 for the 8pm "party" show)
25 July - 27 July: Lilya 4-Ever
Great reviews; I'll check it out.
26 July - 27 July: Microcosmos
1 August - 3 August: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (restored, full-length version)
8 August - 9 August: Roman Holiday & To Kill A Mockingbird
10 August: Cape Fear (1962)
15 August - 17 August: Tattoo
22 August - 4 September: The Weather Underground
5 September - 11 September: A Woman Is A Woman
Coolidge Corner Theater ($8; $5 members)
Coolidge Selects (Video screening room)
11 July - 24 July: Bonhoeffer
25 July - 7 August: On_Line
Looks the most interesting, but $8 is a lot to spend for projected video.
8 August - 21 August: What I Want My Words To Do To You
22 August - 28 August: OT: Our Town
29 August - 4 September: Boys Life 4
Summertime Blues (Mondays in July)
7 July: Bluesland: A Portrait Of Blues In America
14 July: John Lee Hooker: That's My Story
21 July: Ray Charles: The Genius Of Soul
28 July: Martin Scorcese Presents: The Blues (compilation reel)
I like the Blues, and always feel like I should know more about it, but these collide with the 50s Genre Films at the Brattle, so they'll probably lose out.
Sounds Great (New sound system on main screen - about time!)
24 July: Singin' In The Rain
Missed it at the Arlington Regent. Missed it at the Brattle. Didn't blink when the new DVD came out. And, really, even though it's some kind of classic, the trailer makes it look overstuffed with songs that stop the action dead. So, I'll probably miss it here, too.
BF/VF Meet The Director
8 July: Stonewalk
12 August: The Cloggers Of Putneyville
Kung Fu Madness (Friday/Saturday Midnites) ($6 tickets)
5 July: Dragon Fight
I'll probably be in Maine, so I'll miss Jet Li kicking triad ass. ::sigh::
11 July - 12 July: Mismatched Couples
Donnie Yen in a Kung Fu Breakdancing Spectacular? Sold.
18 July - 19 July: The Victim
Sammo Hung's best? Sold.
25 July - 26 July: Crippled Avengers (aka Mortal Combat)
Not quite as quick a sale as the others, but handicapped kung-fu could be good fun.
Crazy About Swayze (Saturday Midnites)
5 July: Red Dawn
12 July: Dirty Dancing
19 July: Road House
26 July: Ghost
Pass.
80s Scifi (Friday/Saturday Midnites)
1 August - 2 August: Goke, Bodysnatcher From Hell (actually, 1968, "lost" Japanese film)
Anyone who knows me knows I'll be unable to resist that title.
8 August - 9 August: Robocop
Never seen it; probably should.
15 August - 16 August: The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension
22 August - 23 August: Spaceballs
29 August - 30 August: Krull
Harvard Film Archive ($7 admission)
Cinema A-Z: Treasures From The Harvard Film Archive
1 July: A is for American Tragedy - The Crowd & McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Piano Accompaniment by Yakov Gubanov on The Crowd. I'm sorely tempted, despite being broke.
2 July: B is for Behind Bars - Down By Law & Genera Della Rovere
3 July: C is for Children of War - Forbidden Games (Jeux Interdits) & Lacombe Lucien
4 July - 5 July: D is for Divine Intervention - A Matter Of Life And Death (aka Stairway To Heaven) & Au Hasard, Balthazar
6 July: E is for Exploitation! - Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls & Possession
45 minutes were apparently cut from Possession for its US release. If I'm back from Maine in time, this could be a good twin bill to see Sunday night.
7 July: F is for Forbidden Love - The Wedding March & Camila
8 July - 9 July: G is for Ghost Stories - Dead Of Night & Hour Of The Wolf
10 July: H is for Historical Revision - Arsenal & The Nasty Girl
Gubanov again, on Arsenal.
11 July - 12 July: I is for Insanity - Pierrot Le Fou & Betty Blue
13 July: J is for Jannings... At Last - The Last Laugh & The Last Command
Gubanov on both.
14 July - 15 July: K is for Kitchen Sink - Room At The Top & Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
16 July - 17 July: L is for Love Triangles - Two English Girls (Les deux Anglaises et le continent) & Un Coeur En Hiver
18 July - 19 July: M is for Mail Call - Jour De Fête & The Kremlin Letter
An interesting double feature - Tati and what looks like a pretty good spy movie. Say this for these HFA twin bills, they're not just showing you the same movie twice!
20 July - 21 July: N is for Nostalgia - Play It Again, Sam & Amarcord
22 July - 23 July: O is for Oracles - The Thief Of Bagdad & The Last Wave
24 July - 25 July: P is for Polanski - Knife In the Water & The Tenant
26 July - 27 July: Q is for Queer Renegades - Without You, I'm Nothing & Caravaggio
28 July - 29 July: R is for Roeg Images - The Man Who Fell To Earth & The Masque Of The Red Death
Hmmm... Good stuff at the Brattle these days, too.
30 July - 31 July: S is for Simply Sellers - The Ladykillers & I'm All Right Jack
I don't think I've ever seen a Sellers movie. I should rectify that.
1 August: T is for Trailers - Trailers, Trailers, Trailers
Wow, two trailer shows within a week of each other. Great planning, huh?
2 August: U is for UK Underdogs - High Hopes & Raining Stones
3 August: V is for Vitti Vignettes - The Phantom of Liberty & High Infidelity
4 August - 5 August: W is for Women's Pictures - The Women & Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
6 August: X is for X-Rated In America - W.R.: Mysteries Of The Organism & Blue Shorts
7 August - 8 August: Y is for Youth Gone Wild - Zero For Conduct & If...
One of the few cases on this program where one film is a clear influence on the other.
9 August - 10 August: Z is for Zombies - Night Of The Living Dead & I Walked With A Zombie
One of these Zombie films is described as a "West Indian version of Jane Eyre." Guess which one.
Monday, June 30, 2003
[MOVIES] The Environment
Every once in a while - like, once a month - someone at HTF will start a thread or resurrect one saying "I'm not going to movie theaters any more! The sound sucks, the people are rude, and it costs too much! I'm just gonna wait for the DVD from now on!" Sometimes there's a rider saying "well, maybe I'll see the big releases that have to be seen that way. But that's all!" Now, I'd argue that every film deserves to be seen in its native environment first, but whatever. Up until recently, I'd be one of the people defending the theatrical experience until it became perfectly clear that I and others who agreed with me were being totally ignored. Those threads are about people knowing that they are sacrificing an important part of the movie experience and wanting validation that they're not missing much.
Usually, I have to admit that I haven't had many bad moviegoing experiences - even though the new theaters (new in that they weren't open when I moved to Cambridge in 1999) at Fenway and Boston Common make the theaters I'd patronized previously seem inadequate in comparison, I can't say I found a whole lot of fault with the older ones. I was going there for a movie, and as long as it was competently projected, I figured I had gotten what I paid for. If the audiences weren't ideal, I must have been tuning them out except in extreme situations.
I'm not ready to join that crowd yet - heck, I just ordered 20 "Weekday Escape" tickets from the Loews discount ticket website - but the last couple of movies gave me some insight into their thoughts.
First, there was May last Thursday. Wasn't really fond of the movie, but what really shocked me was the room it was in - I counted 69 seats in Copley Square's #3 theater. Consider that, before GCC Fenway and Loews Boston Common was built, this place tucked into the Copley Square Shopping Center was one the mainstream first-run places for a city the size of Boston, and it's no wonder the city was considered seriously underscreened. But it's the design of the place that is truly aggravating - I arrived ten minutes early, and tried several different seats. There were no good ones. The room has a reverse slope, such that each row is actually lower than the one in front of it, and the screen itself is at least six feet above the floor. Which means everybody has to crane their necks up. The first row is about four feet from the wall, and the last row (actually only three seats plus spots for wheelchairs) actually sits underneath the projection booth's overhang. The projection itself was mostly all right, except for the "in the event of an emergency..." snipe, which was upside down and backwards (and thus without sound). This was on a Thursday... Did nobody in the theater really notice it all week, or did they just not care?
The lesson, of course, is not to go to Copley Place to see a movie unless that's the only place it's playing in the Greater Boston area. If you have a bunch of $4 Loews tickets and, being out of work, really can't afford the $6.50 for a matinee at Kendall Square or a book of discount tickets there, consider it incentive to get a new job fast.
Tonight I went to see 28 Days Later at Boston Common - one $4 ticket that had to be used by the end of June 2003, and Charlies Angels 2 was sold out. In contrast to Copley Place, all of Boston Common's screening rooms are stadium seating, with few bad seats. I'd say none, but there's probably not a theater on Earth where being stuck at the extreme left or right of the front row doesn't create the temptation to see if you can exchange for another show. But some jerk had a laser pointer. He or she seemed especially fond of trying to hit the irises of a character's eye, or trace the outline of his nostrils in a close shot, or something like that.
Explain to me the thought process behind doing this. If you're the only person or group in the theater and the movie's not holding your interest, I suppose it might be no big deal, but I was trying to watch the movie. I did not pay to watch 28 Days Later And A Guy With A Laser Pointer. It's just rude. Much of the movie was shot and edited in such a way that it was difficult to keep the pointer focused on anything (which I think is one of the movie's problems, from an aesthetic standpoint), but that meant that this was mainly happening during "character scenes", so to speak. I was tempted to join the person who at one point yelled to knock it off, but I wasn't about to give this doofus the attention he or she was clearly craving.
Also, someone sitting in the seats further up probably wouldn't notice it, but I certainly was able to recognize the telltale discoloration caused by soda meeting screen. Folks, movie screens aren't just white painted walls, or stretched-out bedsheets - they are made of a semi-reflective material that cannot be easily cleaned and cost over a thousand dollars to replace. If something in the movie displeases you to the point where you have to throw something, make it dry popcorn, all right? Otherwise, you're just lowering the quality of your experience next time you see a picture in that theater.
Ah, well. Ultimately, neither situation was truly bad enough to try to get theater management involved - all they really merit is a rant on a blog that nobody else reads. As much as I love home theater - aside from having movies available to watch whenever I get the urge, the secondary effect of fewer people going to a second show and thus more new movies being released is great - I do fear that being able to watch movies in their living room may have conditioned people to act like they are in their living room whenever they watch a movie.
Usually, I have to admit that I haven't had many bad moviegoing experiences - even though the new theaters (new in that they weren't open when I moved to Cambridge in 1999) at Fenway and Boston Common make the theaters I'd patronized previously seem inadequate in comparison, I can't say I found a whole lot of fault with the older ones. I was going there for a movie, and as long as it was competently projected, I figured I had gotten what I paid for. If the audiences weren't ideal, I must have been tuning them out except in extreme situations.
I'm not ready to join that crowd yet - heck, I just ordered 20 "Weekday Escape" tickets from the Loews discount ticket website - but the last couple of movies gave me some insight into their thoughts.
First, there was May last Thursday. Wasn't really fond of the movie, but what really shocked me was the room it was in - I counted 69 seats in Copley Square's #3 theater. Consider that, before GCC Fenway and Loews Boston Common was built, this place tucked into the Copley Square Shopping Center was one the mainstream first-run places for a city the size of Boston, and it's no wonder the city was considered seriously underscreened. But it's the design of the place that is truly aggravating - I arrived ten minutes early, and tried several different seats. There were no good ones. The room has a reverse slope, such that each row is actually lower than the one in front of it, and the screen itself is at least six feet above the floor. Which means everybody has to crane their necks up. The first row is about four feet from the wall, and the last row (actually only three seats plus spots for wheelchairs) actually sits underneath the projection booth's overhang. The projection itself was mostly all right, except for the "in the event of an emergency..." snipe, which was upside down and backwards (and thus without sound). This was on a Thursday... Did nobody in the theater really notice it all week, or did they just not care?
The lesson, of course, is not to go to Copley Place to see a movie unless that's the only place it's playing in the Greater Boston area. If you have a bunch of $4 Loews tickets and, being out of work, really can't afford the $6.50 for a matinee at Kendall Square or a book of discount tickets there, consider it incentive to get a new job fast.
Tonight I went to see 28 Days Later at Boston Common - one $4 ticket that had to be used by the end of June 2003, and Charlies Angels 2 was sold out. In contrast to Copley Place, all of Boston Common's screening rooms are stadium seating, with few bad seats. I'd say none, but there's probably not a theater on Earth where being stuck at the extreme left or right of the front row doesn't create the temptation to see if you can exchange for another show. But some jerk had a laser pointer. He or she seemed especially fond of trying to hit the irises of a character's eye, or trace the outline of his nostrils in a close shot, or something like that.
Explain to me the thought process behind doing this. If you're the only person or group in the theater and the movie's not holding your interest, I suppose it might be no big deal, but I was trying to watch the movie. I did not pay to watch 28 Days Later And A Guy With A Laser Pointer. It's just rude. Much of the movie was shot and edited in such a way that it was difficult to keep the pointer focused on anything (which I think is one of the movie's problems, from an aesthetic standpoint), but that meant that this was mainly happening during "character scenes", so to speak. I was tempted to join the person who at one point yelled to knock it off, but I wasn't about to give this doofus the attention he or she was clearly craving.
Also, someone sitting in the seats further up probably wouldn't notice it, but I certainly was able to recognize the telltale discoloration caused by soda meeting screen. Folks, movie screens aren't just white painted walls, or stretched-out bedsheets - they are made of a semi-reflective material that cannot be easily cleaned and cost over a thousand dollars to replace. If something in the movie displeases you to the point where you have to throw something, make it dry popcorn, all right? Otherwise, you're just lowering the quality of your experience next time you see a picture in that theater.
Ah, well. Ultimately, neither situation was truly bad enough to try to get theater management involved - all they really merit is a rant on a blog that nobody else reads. As much as I love home theater - aside from having movies available to watch whenever I get the urge, the secondary effect of fewer people going to a second show and thus more new movies being released is great - I do fear that being able to watch movies in their living room may have conditioned people to act like they are in their living room whenever they watch a movie.
Sunday, June 29, 2003
[COMICS] Disney's throwbacks
The first comic book I remember reading was an issue of Richie Rich. It was sitting in "Crossroads", one of those restaurants small towns have which are open for breakfast and lunch but not dinner (of course, the name might have been different; I can remember it being called "Crossroads", "Fran's Place", "Atienza's Cafe", and "Stone's Restaurant"), right next to the newspapers there for adults to read while drinking their coffee. It had multiple stories, simple layouts - indeed, whenever the layout got a little complicated, there were arrows to lead the reader from panel to panel - and a house style so uniform that it could have been one artist or many.
The two "new" Walt Disney comics from Gemstone are kind of like that, only bigger and, yes, more expensive. At $6.95 each, they're on the pricey side, but that does get you approximately 60 full-color pages. That's about the same per page as a $2.95 22-page book (color optional), and if you're looking for good comics for kids, you could do a lot worse. The books have a good balance between long and short stories, and there's absolutely nothing in them that would worry a parent.
The word new is in quotation marks in that last paragraph because these aren't really new book; they just haven't been published for four years. "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge" is #319, and "Walt Disney's Comics" sports a whopping #634, which would be over fifty years of monthly issues. For the most part, though, there aren't any continuity issues. Kids getting the books for the first time might wonder who this "Phantom Blot" character Mickey is fighting with is (unless the Blot has been showing up in ABC's Saturday Morning cartoon; the local station doesn't run it). I myself admit that it took me some time to reconcile the versions of some of the characters in this book with the versions that appeared on DuckTales 15 years ago. (Ain't multiple continuities a pain?)
Going forward, I don't know if I'll keep picking up "Walt Disney's Comics"; I just didn't hear the characters' voices while reading it (especially not Donald's), and it was pretty short on Mickey while being entirely Goofy-deficient (also no Pluto, Chip & Dale, and Daisy). I am, however, hooked on "Uncle Scrooge".
Part of the reason is that I really did like DuckTales as a kid, and that series was inspired by these comics, but mostly for the Don Rosa story that leads the issue off, "The Dutchman's Secret". It's 24 pages of great comic book - easy enough for a kid to understand, but filled with solid storytelling with plenty of adventure and humor for all ages. And it seems like a funny thing to say about a comic book about talking ducks, but it is meticulously researched. It's clear that Rosa put a lot of effort into this story even before reading his editorial where he talks about how "The Dutchman's Treasure" is actually the most famous lost treasure in the United States, and how he worked at making sure all the facts in the story are accurate (save, of course, the presence of Scrooge McDuck). I could tell that certain elements, like the "secret Spanish symbols", were likely genuine, because of how well everything fit together.
It makes for fascinating reading, as Scrooge, Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie bring their intelligence to bear on the problems in the story. And it's really encouraging to see someone paying that much attention to detail. We're in the middle of the season where people advise you to "turn your brain off" during a movie, and seem to simply not understand when you suggest that getting things right might make for a more interesting story that can be enjoyed by more people. Don Rosa gets it, though, making "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge" my favorite comic from the past week.
The two "new" Walt Disney comics from Gemstone are kind of like that, only bigger and, yes, more expensive. At $6.95 each, they're on the pricey side, but that does get you approximately 60 full-color pages. That's about the same per page as a $2.95 22-page book (color optional), and if you're looking for good comics for kids, you could do a lot worse. The books have a good balance between long and short stories, and there's absolutely nothing in them that would worry a parent.
The word new is in quotation marks in that last paragraph because these aren't really new book; they just haven't been published for four years. "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge" is #319, and "Walt Disney's Comics" sports a whopping #634, which would be over fifty years of monthly issues. For the most part, though, there aren't any continuity issues. Kids getting the books for the first time might wonder who this "Phantom Blot" character Mickey is fighting with is (unless the Blot has been showing up in ABC's Saturday Morning cartoon; the local station doesn't run it). I myself admit that it took me some time to reconcile the versions of some of the characters in this book with the versions that appeared on DuckTales 15 years ago. (Ain't multiple continuities a pain?)
Going forward, I don't know if I'll keep picking up "Walt Disney's Comics"; I just didn't hear the characters' voices while reading it (especially not Donald's), and it was pretty short on Mickey while being entirely Goofy-deficient (also no Pluto, Chip & Dale, and Daisy). I am, however, hooked on "Uncle Scrooge".
Part of the reason is that I really did like DuckTales as a kid, and that series was inspired by these comics, but mostly for the Don Rosa story that leads the issue off, "The Dutchman's Secret". It's 24 pages of great comic book - easy enough for a kid to understand, but filled with solid storytelling with plenty of adventure and humor for all ages. And it seems like a funny thing to say about a comic book about talking ducks, but it is meticulously researched. It's clear that Rosa put a lot of effort into this story even before reading his editorial where he talks about how "The Dutchman's Treasure" is actually the most famous lost treasure in the United States, and how he worked at making sure all the facts in the story are accurate (save, of course, the presence of Scrooge McDuck). I could tell that certain elements, like the "secret Spanish symbols", were likely genuine, because of how well everything fit together.
It makes for fascinating reading, as Scrooge, Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie bring their intelligence to bear on the problems in the story. And it's really encouraging to see someone paying that much attention to detail. We're in the middle of the season where people advise you to "turn your brain off" during a movie, and seem to simply not understand when you suggest that getting things right might make for a more interesting story that can be enjoyed by more people. Don Rosa gets it, though, making "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge" my favorite comic from the past week.
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