Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Well, there was some complicated scheduling involved, and I'll be working a little over the weekend, but I just got back from seeing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.



Now, I've loved the books ever since I first read them in High School, even rereading them a few times since then. They were somewhat groundbreaking to me then, the first time I realized how well genres can mix, in this case, humor and science fiction.

I've been looking forward to this film for a while, but I've had to frequently take a step back and remember that any adaptation of something that meant so much to me was not likely to be perfect.

But then, I've felt for a long time that it's a mistake to insist that a film adaptation of a book adhere too slavishly to the source material, because there are simply things that books do better than films, and vice versa.

Here's the thing, if you were one of those people who got really upset that Tom Bombadil wasn't in Lord of the Rings, this film might well make you pretty unhappy. There are a lot of things that are different, so if you go in expecting the film to follow the book line by line, word for word, you're going to be pretty disappointed.

Some of the changes seemed unnecessary, some I didn't much care for, some I really liked, but none of them really upset me. The worst thing that can really be said about the film is that, from time to time, it's a little... well, boring sounds harsh, so I'll just say slow.

Reread the books, and you'll find that they really aren't as laugh-a-minute as you might recall. The film has a lot of good, but there are a few points here and there where you're just kind of smiling expectantly, waiting for the jokes to start again.

There are also a few bits where it occurred to me that some types of humor simply work better on the page than they do aloud.

That said, there is a lot that I really enjoyed. I laughed out loud in a number of places and smiled happily through many others. I hesitate to get into specifics because I think to relate anything out of context would only diminish it I think. You're either planning to see the film or you aren't. If you are, then odds are you'll see it no matter what I say. If you're not a fan of the books, then I'm not sure that the movie will convince you that you should be, but you might just enjoy it anyway.

If it sounds like I'm damning the film with faint praise, that's not my intention. There's a lot to like, but it's not perfect. Still, I enjoyed myself a great deal.

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Hoo boy, the remaining survivors will rue the day they voted out Stephanie instead of Tom. I suspect that it must have something to do with the high stress and emotions of that whole situation, because an objective evaluation should have told them that Tom was a MUCH bigger threat than Stephanie.

If they were voting her out for some other reason, that would be one thing, but if the supposed reason they voted for her was that she was a threat, (Which they all said it was), then they were just plain stupid.

Tom is clearly a much bigger threat. They had their shot, and they didn't take it. They'll have only themselves to blame if he sweeps the remaining challenges. Frankly, the fact that he lost this one was practically a fluke, since so much of what happened in the challenge happened by accident. It wasn't a particularly good challenge in that sense, but it's a good thing every so often to have a challenge like that, to just mix things up a little.

There are really no good reasons to vote off Stephanie instead of Tom. Tribe loyalty? What the hell? That's a load of crap. They've all said, Tom most of all, that it's an individual game now. And boy did he not help his own case last night with that speech of "don't hold it against me that I was strong". I mean, I can totally see his point, but he's essentially trying to tell them why they shouldn't vote off their strongest competition at the same time that he's telling them to vote off Stephanie because she's strong competition!

Boneheads, all of them. Caryn especially. For all that she might want to say about "being honest", there's a big difference between being honest and being stupid. The only good reason to tell Tom what she did about the plot against him was if she wanted to be in a strong alliance with him to the exclusion of the others, but she blew that opportunity by being so wishy-washy about it. She essentially gave him extremely valuable info and got nothing in return but disdain and suspicion from both sides.

Now, Ian and Gregg sticking with Tom is not a bad move, because voting Tom off is a step in the girls voting off the guys direction and they don't want to go down that road at all. Now, I was thinking that going for the girls against guys tact was the wrong move for Stephanie, but it looks like it might have worked if not for Caryn. Jen even seemed borderline smart last night, and I respect her a lot more now that she suggested she'd vote off Gregg if it meant going farther in the game.

So, I'm a little bummed that Stephanie is out, but at least she managed to stick around a little longer. Now that she's gone, I'm rooting for Tom or Ian still, but we'll have to see how it all plays out.

Still, this is the turning point of the season I think, where the paranoia and the scheming and the backstabbing really clicks into high-gear. Think about it, Tom is one obvious choice to vote off, but they already blew that. If he wins immunity again, who is going to go? It could almost be anybody at this point!

Just on a non-game-related note, I am very glad that I had heard that the President was speaking tonight, because I was going out to dinner and I was having to record the show. On foresight, I set the DVR to record the shows following Survivor as well, which was good, because CBS did pre-empt the shew, and if I hadn't told it to record CSI also, then I would have missed Survivor! And I would have been pissed!

As it is, it worked out fine. ^_^
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All they have to do is read about alcohol, and they're off and running. Check it out:

Exposure to Alcohol-Related Words Increase Men's Sex Drive

Forget Viagra, maybe all guys really have to do is carry around a few flashcards with "keg" and "liquor" on them.

Hmm, the latter would be best, I think.

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Requested by Mike

It took me a little while to get to this one, but here it is, as requested.

The Beach



I have this on DVD, but I didn't buy it. Interestingly enough, it belonged to a former roommate of mine who owned exactly one DVD, this one, and given that, was surprisingly indifferent towards it. She left it behind when she moved out, and I stuck it in with all my others.

I saw it a while back and remember liking it pretty well, but not thinking about it in too much detail, so revisiting it with the specific intent to review it was an interesting experience.

To begin with, it was directed by Danny Boyle, which I hadn't realized before. He's perhaps better known as the director of Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later. His most recently released film is Millions, which I have not yet seen, but my friend Mike has a good review of it here.

I've always enjoyed his work as a director, though with a few exceptions aside, I think his particular stylistic influences aren't necessarily as obvious in this film as it is in some of his others.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's begin with Leo.

Leonardo DiCaprio is, I think, sometimes underrated as a good actor. To be sure, he's a pretty face, but with the mega-success of Titanic, a lot of people seem to have gotten it into their heads that that's all he is. In this film, he is good as always, but he's got an odd character on his hands.

Leo plays Richard, an American tourist who is tired of the same old thing. He's in Bangkok, looking for adventure, but he soon begins to feel that even there, people have a tendency to bring their homes with them, making even the most exotic location into just another Spring Break beach party.

"We all travel thousands of miles," he says, "just to check in to some place with all the comforts of home, and you gotta ask yourself, what is the point of that?"

And yet, even this early in the film, we get hints that maybe Richard is going to have a hard time being happy anywhere. There's an almost desperate loneliness and insecurity beneath a thick layer of bravado that he smears on like sun-block whenever he's exposed and vulnerable.

Take an early scene where he's strolling through a bazaar, commenting to himself that everything around him seems phony, just rigged up for the tourists who want just a little culture shock, but not a lot. Then one man asks him if he would like to drink some snake blood.

Initially, he's grossed out and declines, but then the man essentially calls him chicken, suggesting that he's just another tourist who wants everything to be safe and familiar.

Challenged, he accepts and soon he's got a shot glass of red liquid, snake blood mixed with (I think) some kind of alcohol. He forces it down, screwing up his face like a little kid being made to eat his broccoli. Then, once it's down, he smiles and looks around as if to say: "There, I did it. Does everybody like me now?"

Then late one night, he crosses paths with Daffy, played by Robert Carlyle, as exactly the type of guy who smart people should avoid crossing paths with. He seems drunk and probably high, and, as Richard observes: "No offense man, but you're f***ed in the head, right?"

But Daffy tells Richard about a beach. A perfect beach, one too good for people, but there are a few people there anyway, living in paradise.

The next morning, Richard finds a map tacked to his door. When he goes to ask Daffy about it, Daffy is very, very dead. His wrists are slit, and there is blood everywhere, on the bed, on the walls... Not the death of a man with a clean conscience.

But now Richard has the map. In the interest of adventure, but tired of traveling alone, he enlists a beautiful French girl and (reluctantly) her French boyfriend, and the three of them decide to find this mysterious beach.

The story that unfolds from there may not be what you expect. In most Hollywood films, the protagonist has "quirks" that make them "interesting" or sometimes even "eccentric", but those quirks will ultimately have no impact on the protagonist becoming the "good guy" and stepping up to do the right thing when things get tough.

In The Beach, Richard doesn't have 'quirks', he has deep-seated psychological issues that make him not particularly well-suited for high-stress situations. He doesn't handle personal relationships very well, and eventually, a series of lies come back to haunt him, and he has to spend an extended period of time alone in the jungle, watching and waiting. During this period, he really begins to lose all touch with reality. In an interesting scene, and one of the few that really exudes Danny Boyle's style, Richard imagines himself in a video game. In many ways, Richard's character reminded me of no one so much as Private Gomer Pyle, the looney-tunes marine recruit, from Full Metal Jacket. In fact, I suspect that this was somewhat intentional, as more than a few scenes feature Leo with his face angled downward, looking up at the camera in a shot that is classic Kubrick.

The overall theme of the movie, as I see it, is similar to Richard's dilemma at the beginning of the film. People bring their problems with them. There may be such a thing as a paradise, but as soon as people go there, it is tainted. Nobody wants to think that they are the one that ruins something, but sometimes trying to pretend otherwise just makes things worse in the long run.

The movie gets a little muddled near the end, and in some ways loses sight of it's own point. The denouement in particular seems like it wants to forget about the severity of what came before, as though the worst thing that happened was a fistfight or two. Ultimately, I think that the movie suffers from a lack of sympathetic characters, (the French boyfriend is actually the only character who always does the right thing,) and of some inconsistency of theme.

Still, there is a lot of good here. To begin with, the cinematography and landscapes surrounding the islands and the beach is really gorgeous. Also, Leo is always good, but he takes a character that most actors would have tried to make into a hero, and really follows through with the mental issues he has.

(Interesting side note: Apparently Danny Boyle wanted Ewan MacGregor for the role, but the studio made him take Leo instead. It would have been interesting to see that, because I love Ewan, but Leo really brought an excellent buried insecurity to the role that really made the character into something interesting and original.)

In the end, I'd say it's not a great film, but it is a good one, yet some of what makes it good is so subtle that I'm not a bit surprised it didn't do very well at the box office, despite Leo's star power. Still, I think that, depending on your own personal taste, you might enjoy this movie. In particular, I think people who really like Fight Club will like this one too, as I felt like there was a lot of stylistic and thematic overlap, despite the vastly different settings.

And remember everyone, feel free to request any review that you'd like me to do. Have a favorite film you'd like my take on? Looking to see something but want to know if it's any good? Just drop me a line and I'll work on a review!


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Oh yeah! We win! Thanks to excellent play from everyone on the team, we triumphed over NCISP.NET, 17 to 7.

It even made up for us getting royally stomped by Road Rash on Monday.

Furthermore, I got to play catcher for the first three innings this time. That was pretty exciting. Definitely a lot more active than sitting out in right field. It might be overstatement to say that I played catcher well, but I can definitely say that I committed no errors that cost us runs and I did often actually 'catch' the ball.

Last of all, I have now officially received my very first softball injury. Witness the gruesome carnage.

If you kind of squint, you can kind of see some bruising under the nail of the middle finger there.

But don't worry about me, I totally shook it off. I'm pretty bad-ass that way.

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You all may remember a story a while back where a study showed that alcohol reduces the risk of becoming mentally impaired!

Well, now they've done a study with mice, demonstrating that alcohol can help stimulate the growth of new brain cells!

Moderate alcohol consumption over a relatively long period of time can enhance the formation of new nerve cells in the adult brain. The new cells could prove important in the development of alcohol dependency and other long-term effects of alcohol on the brain. The findings are published by Karolinska Institutet.

I propose we go to human testing right away.

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With all that's going on in the world today, it's important to really take the time for the important things in life. To really challenge yourself by doing things that stimulate your mind and your body...


Like watching reality TV and trying to eat M&M's with chopsticks.

Over at Jerry Pournell's website, in the current mail section, he's got up an excellent article that someone sent to him, regarding our situation over in Iraq, and why there is good reason to be optimistic.

Here's just the beginning:

"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them." - T. E. Lawrence

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base. Even as there has been a steady diet of bad news about Iraq in the media over the last year, even as some hawks have bailed on the war in despair, even as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has become everyone's whipping boy, the U.S. military has been regaining the strategic upper hand.

The article is very long, but it has a lot of things that I didn't know and it's made me look at a number of issues in a different light. I highly recommend it.

If you're not already familiar with it, Firefly, from Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, was a hell of a good show that was tragically cut short, taken off the air long before it's time.

However, the DVD set, with all 14 episodes showed millions of people how great a show it was, and they sold enough of them that they greenlit a movie: Serenity



It was supposed to come out this Summer, but then they delayed it until September 30th. However, they've just released a trailer.

I think the trailer looks pretty cool, though it doesn't seem to have as much humor as the show did, though that's probably just the trailer. I guess they decided to emphasize the action elements. We'll see how the marketing will evolve between now and September, but I'm psyched about this movie.

In the meantime, you can find the trailer here, or if you want to download the quicktime version, right click and save as right here.

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Well, apparently AMC has a documentary coming up about private industry movie censoring, called: Bleep! Censoring Hollywood.

But this Washington Post writer isn't impressed, and frankly, though I haven't seen the documentary in question, I suspect he's probably right on the money. AMC is hardly the channel I'd tune to if I want an insightful intelligent discussion of movie censorship. They're like TCM's annoying younger brother.

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Okay, well, it's not actually a scientific study, but this guy Stephen Johnson has written a book about it, and in this article in the New York times, he lays out a summarized version of his argument.

Basically, he suggests that contemporary television engages the mind in a much more active way, compared to television of past decades.

He begins by describing a complicated recent episode of the Fox drama, 24.

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion — video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms — turn out to be nutritional after all.

He also cites shows like The Sopranos, Lost, and The West Wing as requiring similar levels of concentration. Television shows, he argues, used to follow one or two primary characters through a single, self-contained plot thread that was resolved completely by the end of the episode. Whereas many of today's shows require active concentration and a memory of what has come before.

It's a great article, and you really should read the whole thing. Frankly, I'm persuaded, and not just because I feel a little vindicated for watching so much TV. He goes on to discuss how many shows these days, ER for example, will use a lot of sophisticated jargon in their dialogue without stopping to hold the viewer's hand through it all, thus requiring people watching to raise their level of awareness in order to follow the program. The point is that these shows are harder to just watch like a zombie. You have to keep thinking.

Also, he discusses reality TV, and though he's apparently not a big fan, he still suggests that shows like Survivor and The Apprentice are far better than their 70's and 80's counterparts, shows like The Newlywed Game, etc.

The pleasure in these shows comes not from watching other people being humiliated on national television; it comes from depositing other people in a complex, high-pressure environment where no established strategies exist and watching them find their bearings. That's why the water-cooler conversation about these shows invariably tracks in on the strategy displayed on the previous night's episode: why did Kwame pick Omarosa in that final round? What devious strategy is Richard Hatch concocting now?

He proceeds to explain a few of the reasons he thinks this is happening, and the benefits that can be found from this emerging trend, but what really won me over was the following selection, where he echoes many of the things I've been thinking lately regarding censorship and "scrubbing" of movies.

What I am arguing for is a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch "Survivor" over "Fear Factor." If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage "24" over "Law and Order." If they want to play a violent game, encourage "Grand Theft Auto" over "Quake." Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture.

Anyway, I'm sufficiently intrigued by this article, that I think I'm going to buy his book: Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter, which comes out in May.

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Those wacky folks over at the BBC have set up a Wikipedia style Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

It's called H2G2, as in Two H's, Two G's in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!" and it's pretty entertaining. Check it out, and watch your productivity plummet as you spend the rest of the afternoon searching for funny entries!!! MWA-HA-HA-HA!

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Okay, this post links to a funny essay by John Varley about stupid TSA rules. It's well worth reading, despite the horrible, horrible, unfunny pun that I was compelled to use in the post title.

It contains the following excerpt:

No, the new rule I’m thinking of concerns air travel. It seems it’s not safe enough, in this post 9/11 world. The great thinkers at Homeland Security have already protected us from people carrying pocketknives and scissors onto airplanes. Here’s the new rule:

Stuff you can’t take onto an airplane:

Kitchen matches.
Cigarette lighters.

Things you can take onto an airplane:

4 books of safety matches.

Now, I really need some help here. I’ve been raking my brain—a much more painful process than either racking or wracking—and I haven’t been able to come up with many things you can do with a cigarette lighter that you can’t do with a book of matches. You can easily throw a lighter or a book of matches. You can put either item into your mouth, thought I wouldn’t recommend eating them. Neither item will fit in your ear. You can stick a cigarette lighter or a book of matches up your ass, if that’s your bag.

He has a number of good essays up, always entertaining even when I disagree with his politics. For example, this recent one suggesting which country we should target next: Iceland: Threat or Menace?

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Those invaluable Mars rovers have done it again, this time capturing Martian Dust Devils on video!

"This is the best look we've ever gotten of the wind effects on the martian surface as they are happening," said Dr. Mark Lemmon, a rover team member and atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station.

Spirit, operated from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been using its navigation camera to routinely check for dust devils. It began seeing dust devils last month in individual frames from the camera. Lemmon said, "We're hoping to learn about how dust is kicked up into the atmosphere and how the wind is interacting with the surface. It's exciting that we now have a systematic way of capturing dust devils in movies rather than isolated still images."

And before you ask, yes I did download the whole movie file, just like when I downloaded the mp3 file of what wind sounds like on Titan, because I am, in fact, a deviant geek.



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Wow, talk about multi-tasking. Sometimes I wonder if our culture is becoming so information saturated that we can no longer be content paying attention to one thing at a time anymore. When we watch TV, we're also surfing the net. While we're reading a book, we're also listening to music and doing the laundry.

How else can we explain this: Sky-High Gamers Go to Extremes

These folks are playing video games while sky-diving!!! Super Mario DS on wireless multi-player to be precise!

"It was a rush," said Myers. "Playing in the air was pretty exciting. It was also incredibly difficult. Some of the problems were that when you were jumping, you needed to bring both hands together on the DS, and it seriously decreased your stability."

Yet, notwithstanding the risks, the four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour.

Gone are the days when falling out of an airplane was enough to occupy our full attention.

It's a shame really, because bad things can happen to inattentive sky-divers...

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In many ways, this was the film I was most anticipating. Of the three films I had already seen, this was the one that really drew my interest. I wasn't alone, because even though it was 5:15AM, about a dozen people who hadn't been there for the marathon came in just for this movie.

Transformers: The Movie



I saw this movie in the theater when I was eight years old. I remember being upset when Optimus Prime died. I remember that my imagination was captivated by the thought of a giant planet-sized robot that ate other planets. It's one of the first movies I really remember seeing.

Though I've often thought about it, I had not seen it since then, not once in almost 20 years. I'd seen it in the video store, heard about it here or there, and I'd always kind of wanted to see it again, but I never did, until I saw it at the bottom of the schedule for this movie marathon. I was pretty excited.

Sometimes, when you revisit a treasured memory of your childhood, it's just as powerful as when you first saw it.

Unfortunately, there are other times where you realize that, at eight years old, you had pretty crappy taste.

For me, watching Transformers again was the latter. Now to be fair, I was pretty tired by that point, and I think I even dozed off at one point, though it couldn't have been for more than a minute or so.

Would I have liked it more had I been wide awake? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think that my problem was really that, in my heart, I was kind of expecting it to be a good movie. I certainly remembered it that way. If I had come to the theater that evening expecting something ridiculously cheesy, I might have been more satisfied.

But the movie is a weird mish-mash of childish silliness and some genuinely disturbing stuff. I hadn't realized it before, but a few of those images had found their way into my nightmares over the years. And there is a lot of death in the movie. Not just Optimus Prime, but at least a dozen other characters. Now, I know they're just robots, but they are presented as though they are living things with "souls" so to speak, and they are just gunned down left and right, some of them rather horribly, Starscream, for example, who after being shot in anger by a laser beam, turns gray and crumbles to dust with a terrified expression on his face.

Then, what are we to make of the incredibly cheesy dialogue, some of it serious but nearly incomprehensible: "Ultra Magnus. A cursory evaluation of Decpticon capabilities indicates a distinct tactical deficiency." And other exchanges have characters calling each other names like "Beryllium baloney" and "Cesium Salami".

And don't even get me started on the bizarre soundtrack. Full of 80's pop power-balads that have only a cursory connection to what is happening on screen, if that. And at one point, seriously, "Dare to be Stupid" by Weird Al Yankovic! I'm sure I loved it when I was 8, and I can still appreciate the song, but what the freakin f*** is it doing over an action sequence in a Transformers movie?!?

Now, clearly, there are those who still appreciate it. Surely the die-hard Transformers fans love it. After all, how else can we explain the people who came in at 5AM just to see it? There must be a lot of them too, because there's talk of a big-budget, live-action Transformers movie. It sounds like a terrible idea to me, because as kinda cool as the idea of transforming robots is, I think it would just look silly in live-action.

So, I actually did gain some nostalgic pleasure from the movie, and it does have some pretty impressive images, in particular relating to Unicron, (believe it or not, voiced by ORSON WELLES in his last film appearance!). But the biggest reason that I'm glad I saw it is simply that I've been waiting to see it again for almost twenty years, and now that I have, I can stop thinking about it.

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So what better way to follow up a cult exploitation film than with a cult "blaxploitation" film? Next up: Coffy



I discovered this film while perusing the extra features of the Jackie Brown DVD. They included a number of trailers for the many seventies films that formed much of the inspiration for Jackie Brown, many of them starring Pam Grier herself. Notable amongst these, is Coffy.

Pam Grier plays the title role, a nurse whose eleven-year-old sister got hooked on heroin by a sleazy local pusher. Coffy is pissed! Thus, the rest of the movie, where she goes about getting revenge on everyone involved, moving up the latter from the dealer to the supplier. Then when her friend, a good cop named Carter, gets beat nearly to death for not being crooked, she takes her rampage even farther, to include crooked cops, powerful businessmen and even politicians.

She's tough and resourceful, and pretty bad-ass. When Coffy is pissed, you want to stay out of her way. There are plenty of people in the film who learn that lesson too late.

This is the kind of film where people get their heads blown off by shotguns, and any time where there is a remotely plausible way for a woman's breasts to be exposed, they will be. Consider, for example, when Coffy picks a fight with a number of high-class hookers at a cocktail party. It's the type of fight that Coffy prepares for by strategically placing razor blades in her hair. One by one, each of those fancy cocktail dresses gets "torn" in the fighting.

It's not high art by any stretch of the imagination, but it was never intended to be. For what it is, it's a lot of fun, and when Coffy fires that shotgun for the last time, it's pretty damn satisfying.

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By this point in the evening, it was 2 A.M. and all but the truly committed had left, and so the original sixty-some attendees had dwindled to thirty or so, and we were all pretty loopy, but the constant supplies of caffeine and popcorn from the concession stand, along with any other marathon survival supplies people had brought, we were wired to boot.

In other words, in the perfect mood for the next film: Death Race 2000.



Like with Conan, I hadn't seen this film, but I definitely knew of it as a cult classic. In particular, when Kill Bill was in theaters, people mentioned it alongside Kung Fu as something they knew David Carradine from.

I also knew the premise. Set in the future, a satire on violent sports where drivers compete in a transcontinental road race, scoring points when they run over people.

I got what I expected on that score, but I was pleased to discover that the film is also pretty clever. Like any good seventies exploitation film, it's got plenty of the two B's, blood and breasts, but there are also fun little moments of dark humor, as with the races passionate fans, who treat the whole thing like an elaborate game, trying to see exactly how close they can get to the racers without getting run over. And of course, they usually get just a little bit closer than that.

Also fun are the different drivers, who choose their personas, then dress up their cars and themselves accordingly. "Calamity Jane" wears a cowboy hat and adorns her car with a pair of long, pointy bullhorns. "Matilda the Hun" is a Nazi, who plasters swastikas on her "Buzzbomb", and gleefully shouts "Blitzkrieg!" whenever she mows down a hapless pedestrian. A young Sylvester Stallone plays "Machine Gun Joe", and dresses like a 30s gangster.

To the extent that the film has a hero, it's "Frankenstein", played by David Carradine, a driver who wears a mask and dresses head to toe in skin-tight black leather. Supposedly, he's been in so many crashes that he has "half a face, half a chest, and all the guts in the world!" He's the reigning champion, but he and the other racers have more to contend with this year, as a group of resistance fighters seems determined to stop the race at any cost.

Also fun is the subplot regarding the president of the 'United Provinces of America', an extrapolation of American "imperialism" where the United States rules most of the world, and the fascist "President" rules from a palace in Bejing, entertaining the masses with the race, just like gladiators in ancient Rome. It's important to maintain the propoganda, so when the rebels begin taking out the racers, it is important to put the right spin on it. Therefore the people are told that France is attacking the racers, determined to destroy the race, "just like they destroyed our once proud economy."

The movie, as I mentioned, is cleverer than you might expect from a movie so deliberately constructed to offend people. But walk in with an enjoyment of exploitation films and an appreciation for dark humor, and you'll love it.

UPDATE!!
Oh, man, how could I forget? Just for extra fun, the print we watched had Swedish subtitles. Is that cool or what?

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So after the cheesy musical surrealism of Xanadu, it was time to move to something that, while still fun, was a little weightier and more serious.

Conan the Barbarian: Thief, Warrior, Gladiator, King... Arnold



I'd never seen this before, though I'd long considered it a significant gap in my film education. The truth is, I didn't even really know that much about it, other than that Arnold Schwarzenegger played Conan, and that it was about a famous barbarian, featuring sword fighting and the like.

I'd had the impression of the film as being more historical and less fantasy, and I definitely hadn't forseen the abundance of exposed breasts, but while it was somewhat different than I had expected, it was no less entertaining.

It's definitely not as technically slick as a lot of the more contemporary adventure epics, but that's to be expected given when it was made. Instead of technological proficiency, (though I imagine many of the effects were pretty spiffy at the time,) the film has heart. There is none of the cynical wink-at-the-camera type self-awareness that we'd likely see if this movie were made today.

Conan is not a cultured man-about-town that just happens to be good with a sword. Early in the movie, as he is discovering his own skills as a gladiator, a naked woman is brought to his private cell for him to have his way with. He approaches her gently, reassuringly, and offers her a fur to cover herself with. "Ah," we think, "he's a gentleman." But no. He leads her over to the bed and proceeds to have his way with her. He didn't want to hurt her, but he still intends to satisfy himself, by Crom.

James Earl Jones plays Thusla Doom, a sort of philosopher-warrior who was amongst those who invaded Conan's village when he was a child. It was Thusla Doom that appraised young Conan's mother with sad eyes, as she bravely tried to shield her son from harm. Then he calmly decapitated her right in front of Conan.

For a long time, Conan had no way of doing anything about it. He spent years enslaved at hard labor, then more as a gladiator, building his strength and learning to fight. It's many years later and he's an adult by the time he picks up on Thusla Doom's trail again, but Conan is the type to hold a grudge.

Along the way, he picks up some companions, notably Valeria, a tall, blonde warrior-woman who is practically custom-tailored as a match for Conan. Smart, funny, tough. She's pretty awesome actually. Considering that I hadn't even known there was such a character in the movie, she was a pleasant surprise. One that I'll have to keep in mind for the edits on my own barbarian warrior-woman story.

Anyway, if you've seen it, you know the rest of the plot. If you haven't, you don't need to know any more. I think it's a great adventure film that delivers the goods, even without the benefit of sophisticated CGI special effects. That said, given Arnold's accent and all the odd words contained in the dialogue, there are times where I wouldn't have minded having some subtitles.

So after the wonderful opening note, the marathon moved on to the next film: Xanadu.



This movie was released in 1980, that awkward adolescence between the brave-new-world cheesiness of the seventies and the horrid pink-shirt machismo of the eighties, and boy does it ever show.

Consider, for example, one sequence in this film where the protagonist is wearing the following:

- Feathered, shoulder-length, seventies hair
- A pink hawaiian shirt with cartoon fish on it, opened halfway down his chest
- Red short-shorts with white trim
- Knee-high athletic socks
- White roller skates with red wheels

And this is presented with an earnest confidence and a total absence of irony or self-consciousness. You'd think that would be the perfect example of the worst fashion the early 80's had to offer, but you'd be wrong. The surrealistic delight of watching this movie is being near-blinded by the supreme ridiculousness of one scene only to have the next one top it. Again and again and again.

The plot is just as weird. Apparently Zeus, for some reason, becomes concerned with a tortured young artist. We know he is tortured because his workspace is messy and he tears up one of his paintings, conveniently done on paper instead of canvas.

So a muse, played by Olivia Newton John, who spends approximately two thirds of the movie on roller skates, is sent to inspire him to create a roller-disco with an aging multi-millionaire, played by Gene Kelly, who used to be a clarinet player. She was only supposed to inspire him, she never knew she would ... fall in love.

This is the kind of movie where... strange things happen. Sometimes, they are simply bad writing. For example, at the beach, when he needs to chase after this beautiful "mystery girl", the main character runs up to a girl, grabs her moped away from her and says "I need to borrow this." Apparently, he really needs that moped, and it would be a downer if the girl got mad, so she smiles and says "Sure!"

Translation: "Yes, I will loan my moped to you, a total stranger, for an undisclosed period of time so that you can chase after another total stranger, that you don't even know, and who is running away from you."

Sometimes, the characters go to a set that has no conceivable plausible reason to exist, for example, a large studio set owned by a record label, that produces holographic representations of a variety of romantic landscapes for the characters to roller skate through in a romantic fashion. The excuse given for the existence of such an absurd and unbelievably expensive thing? Apparently, to "inspire the musicians." The unsubtle symbolism of the slowly erecting palm trees on the beach landscape is just a bonus.

At another point... No, I can't ruin it for you. It happens during a romantic musical number, when they suddenly... look a little different.

The acting is also bizarre. Gene Kelly is a good actor, but this role is a very good example of changing times. While it surely was intended to be completely innocent, it comes off today as almost creepy and very very gay. The main character provides the sort of stiff, awkward acting we usually get when singers or dancers are given the lead in a bad movie. The odd thing is that he isn't a particularly good singer or dancer either. He's moderately good looking except for the clothes and the hair, but I can't help thinking that, if you don't need someone who can act, sing, or dance, then there are probably better looking guys to be had.

This is not a movie to watch alone, lest your head explode. However, if you ever want to have an eighties theme party, where you have a bunch of drunk people who grew up in the eighties, then a viewing of Xanadu could be a lot of fun.

Did I mention it's a musical?

P.S. Apparently we were priveledged to see a special "International version" of the ending, awkwardly cut into the regular American ending. I'm about to completely spoil both endings for you, but if you are watching a film like this for the endings, then you deserve to have them spoiled, just to teach you a lesson.

The American ending features Kira, the muse who had been forced to leave earth forever, returning anyway for the climactic musical number and to be reunited with her boyfriend. Our version had her come back just for the musical number, then disappearing, leaving the poor guy all alone, for about four seconds, at which point the movie suddenly flipped awkwardly back to the original ending where they are together. It was pretty much the perfect finish.

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As it happens, it's not terribly difficult to stay up all night for a movie marathon. Recovering is trickier. While technically I have since slept enough to make up the distance, I've been feeling groggy and disoriented almost all weekend.

Still, would I do it again? Um, give me a couple days, but yes! It was a blast.

First up, we had a true classic: Big Trouble in Little China


If you haven't seen it, I hardly even know where to start. Directed by John Carpenter of The Thing and Halloween fame, it departs from the cold and sticky horror of those films, and instead becomes a deliriously goofy and sly bastard child of the supernatural action genre and the kung-fu, chop-socky flick...

It's a little hard to describe.

It was a little hard for the studio too. Not to mention film-goers. At the time of its release, people didn't know what to make of it and it was the biggest flop of John Carpenter's career.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. The movie opens with a scene that was never in the script and was added at the request of the film's producers. A government official is questioning an old asian man about his "version of what happened."

"You mean the truth," says the man.

The conversation turns to the whereabouts of one Jack Burton. "You leave Jack Burton alone," says the man. "We are in his debt. He showed great courage."

Now why was this scene added? Well, the producers apparently felt that truck-driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) wasn't coming across as heroic enough, and so this scene was intended to build him up a little before he officially appears. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell didn't object, because frankly, the very idea of the scene makes the whole reality even funnier.

You see, Jack Burton is not heroic! Or at least, he's not a hero. He's the sidekick! He's the comic relief. The one who makes one-liners while the hero is kicking ass. He just thinks he's the hero, and that the real hero is his sidekick. And the movie treats him that way, as the main character and the hero.

That was the central idea of the movie. What about an adventure where the sidekick thinks he's the hero? So the very idea that the producers would insist on adding a scene at the beginning to make this guy look more "heroic" just adds to the joke.

The movie moves forward following the tried-and-true formula of any action-adventure, where things start small, but then the "evil plot" gets progressively bigger and more complicated, moving from one action set-piece to another until we reach the big climax. Unfortunately for Jack Burton, he knows less about what's going on than anybody else in the movie. He spends the entire film at least two steps behind everybody else, yet he continues swaggering forward like he's got everything under control.

There are multiple scenes where the other characters have the sort of "solving the mystery" puzzle-pieces coming together conversations, and he looks back and forth between them like he's watching a ping-pong game, occasionally contributing a "Huh?" "What?" or even "What does that mean? Huh? China is here? I don't even know what the hell that means."

But he is undaunted. As an asian gangwar goes on in the alley outside his truck, he helpfully draws a knife from his boot and sits there in the truck, knife at ready, just in case the situation becomes clear enough for him to figure out who he is supposed to be fighting. Later, as they are sneaking into the palace of Lo-Pan, a 1000-year-old Chinese sorcerer, and are confronted by a soccer-ball-size floating monster with dozens of eyes that apparently acts as a magical security device for Lo-Pan. The other characters are verbally sparring with Lo-Pan through this creature, but it's not going well, so Jack helpfully shoots at it. "You never know 'til you try!" he explains.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Suffice it to say that I've loved this movie since I was a little kid, but I tell you, the best way to watch it is on the big screen with a theater full of fellow fans who know what makes it great.

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Last night's episode of Survivor drew some mixed feelings from me, but it also had one of my absolute favorite moments in it. (More on that at the end.)

Well, it took long enough, but I finally found some Dark Chocolate M&M's! I found them at the local Wal-Mart and picked up a few bags.

At first, they taste just like the normal milk chocolate version, but then that wonderful dark chocolate aftertaste kicks in. WOW! Mega-tasty.

But dangerous. Be warned. I sense much hunger in you. Hunger leads to temptation. Temptation leads to tasting. Tasting leads to obsession.

And obsession leads to fat.

Anyway, they're pretty good.

Speaking of Feel-Good Sports Movies, I happened to catch this one last night.



Shaolin Soccer is a Chinese film made by Stephen Chow, and it's weird, but extremely fun.

Basically it takes the standard formula for Hollywood sports movies and follows it in a very disciplined way.

"Ex-player with problem is now coach with unfinished business, needs to put together a team. Assembles a team composed of an earnest leader with something to prove, and a number of people who have potential, but need to be reminded of their own confidence. They suck at first, but they train hard, and they improve. They get pretty good, and they're winning, but then they reach the finals and they must defeat the reigning champions, a despicable team that will be mean and cheat at every opportunity, and is of course managed by the coach's old rival." Oh, and how could I forget "the player who refuses to play until they show up just in the nick of time for the final game."

To demonstrate how strictly Shaolin Soccer follows that formula, the reigning champions are actually named "Team Evil."

Okay, so it's a sports movie. So what?

Well, here comes the twist. The earnest team leader is a Kung Fu master who is convinced that Kung Fu can make anybody's life better, but nobody will listen to him. So he decides that to win the soccer championship using his Kung Fu skills will show everybody how useful they can be. The rest of the team are all of his former Kung Fu classmates, all of whom have given up their skills and taken day jobs. He must inspire them to take up their powers again and together, they must learn to be a great soccer team.

If I haven't already sold you, then let me say this:

This is not "real" Kung Fu. This is cartoon Kung Fu. Dragonball Z mixed with Pai Mei mixed with the Matrix. When kicked, the ball becomes a flaming fireball that knocks the opposing players out of the way like bowling pins hit by a cannonball, literally sending them flying into the air. A player known as "lightweight" actually seems to fly through the air, a la "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". When the goalie spins the ball on one finger, it creates a vortex of air and grass clippings that trails behind the ball like a vapor trail.

It's incredibly goofy and fun and a hell of an entertaining time. And if all that weren't enough, there is plenty of physical comedy and one-liners to be found as well.

The movie is available on DVD, but I caught it on TV, probably because they are promoting Stephen Chow's new film, Kung Fu Hustle, which opens in limited release on Friday. You can see the trailer right here. It looks like lots of fun as well, so if starts playing anywhere near you, you should definitely make a point to see it, not merely because you'll enjoy it, but also to show theaters and distributors that there is a market for these films!

Also, check out this interview with Stephen Chow.

Check this out:

Qatar to replace camel riders with robots

Apparently out there, camel racing is big business, but there's a lot of problems with children forced to be jockeys and underfed to keep their weight down.

So what's the obvious solution? That's right, robot camel jockeys.

In Qatar, ruling sheiks have responded to calls for banning the use of boy jockeys by embracing robots as the best solution.

Sheik Abdullah bin Saud, the Qatari official in charge of the project, said the plan is to keep developing the robot until it is ready to take over.

"Improve the speed, the weight, the aerodynamics, to reach the ultimate goal of completely phasing out children used as jockeys," Sheik Abdullah said.

How do they work? Well...

A camel handler follows the rider in a vehicle and uses a joystick on the laptop-sized remote to issue four instructions: forward, backward, sideways and whip action. The robot, in turn, uses those commands to drive the camel.

The 60-pound robot is also equipped with a global positioning system satellite beacon and shock absorbers for the rough ride.

To prevent camels from rejecting the robots, handlers spray their jerseys with traditional perfume used by trainers.

And these robots are actually moving up in the pack!

"We're 10 seconds slower than the fastest time recorded for a 5-kilometer race," he said.

The one thing I'm still wondering though, is what all those kids will do once they don't have to race camels anymore? And what about the poor camel-racing teams that can't afford to hire the robot jockeys? I smell a Hollywood feel-good sports movie coming on!

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Well, I know all you Hungry Squirrels fans are chomping at the bit for an update, but unfortunately, we did not have a game yesterday. Our next game will be on Monday.

However, to tide you over until then, here is a picture of me in my softball uniform.



50 Christianabucks to anyone who can tell me what team my hat is from. (P.S. It's an actual baseball team, not just an amateur softball team.)

Requested by Kevin

Wow, rather quicker than I expected, I have my very first requested review up. Normally they won't be up this fast, but it just so happens that I re-watched this movie less than a week ago with a friend who had never seen it before. As such, I feel qualified to review it right away without re-watching it.



You know, considering that UHF isn't actually a very good movie, I sure do love it to hell and back anyway.

I was 11 when it premiered in 1989, and already a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic, though frankly, at that age I had not actually heard most of the original songs that he parodied. I tell you, it's a surreal experience to finally hear the serious original song that you've known for years as only a parody.

Anyway, I knew I wanted to see the movie as soon as I had first heard about it. On opening day, I had plans to see the first show with a friend of mine. But she wavered at the last minute and I was forced to leave her behind, thus making this the very first movie that I saw in the theater all by myself.

Sitting there in the theater, alone in the dark with Mr. Yankovic... *ahem* With his film I mean, was a profound experience for me. In fact, I think that I could trace much of my contemporary eccentricities back to that very day. Hmm, maybe I should sue...

Anyway, I loved it. When it eventually came onto TV I taped it, and it actually became a family favorite, with several lines turning into running gags that are still in use today.

So why do I say it isn't really a very good movie? Well, I suspect that, were I to watch it for the very first time today, coming in clean with no nostalgia or emotional baggage, I might laugh a little, smile more, then move on and then mostly forget about it. The plot is a little thin, and it's really just an excuse to string all the mini-parodies together, some of which are pretty funny and some of which are... eh...

That said, I am not seeing it for the first time. I've got lots of nostalgia and emotional baggage, and given all that, I love this movie to pieces.

Even if I had not just rewatched it recently, I would have been able to quote entire scenes from memory. ("Today, we're teaching poodles how to fly." / "Look Bob, a twinkie-weiner sandwich!" / "SUPPLIES!" / "Do I still get to be the janitor?") In particular, the Raul's Wild Kingdom bits are especially good. (Tragically, Trinidad Silva Jr., who played Raul, died in a car accident before he had even finished filming all of his originally planned scenes.) But also lots of fun are Gedde Watanabe, and early appearances from Michael Richards, Victoria Jackson and Fran Drescher. Not to mention Kevin "Festering Bowl of Dog Snot" McCarthy.

My friend Lee, who saw it for the first time this weekend seemed to enjoy it, but with mostly the reaction that I described above. Laughed some, smiled more, and now she's satisfied her lifetime need for this movie. (If I'm wrong, please speak up, Lee!)

I should point out also here that Roger Ebert HATED this movie. Check out his ONE-STAR review! However, in that review, he says the following:

"Those who laugh at "UHF" should inspire our admiration; in these dreary times we must treasure the easily amused."

I guess that makes me easily amused, because whether it earns your admiration or not, I laughed like hell.

As I've been adding movie reviews to my site, I'm occasionally reminded just how many movies I have seen but not reviewed, and it occurred to me to wonder if there are any movies that people would like me to review that I haven't.

As such, I'm putting it out there. Any movies that you want me to review? Just let me know. They can be current releases or old classics or anywhere in between. If you ask, I'll make an effort to see the film, (or see it again if it's been a while,) and put up a review.

I'm adding a new link beneath my Movie Reviews Permalink on the right-hand sidebar. It isn't anything fancy, just a little contact form that will send me an email with the request.

So, let me have it! What movies would you like to see reviews for? You can use the reviews as guidance for your own film watching, to satisfy your personal curiosity, or even to mock mercilessly at my lack of taste. And consider this an ongoing offer.

On a related note, I've also put up a spreadsheet listing my entire current DVD collection. Feel free to scan it for ideas or just to continue mocking, this time at my lack of a life.

I just discovered that a local independent movie theater is having a fund-raising "Dusk Til Dawn" movie marathon!

From 7PM Friday night to 7AM Saturday morning, they'll be showing:

Big Trouble in Little China

Xanadu

Conan the Barbarian

Deathrace 2000

Coffy

and Transformers: The Movie

I am so there!

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Congress just passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

Now, I have some mixed feelings about the bill, but on the whole I think it's a good thing, because for starters, it really cracks down on film piracy. Among other items, it makes illegally recording a film with a camcorder into a federal offense. I think that's a good thing, because I definitely believe in the concept of copyrights.

One of the items in that bill however, legalizes technologies like Clearplay, which automatically filters select movies on DVD, skipping the offensive scenes.

Now, I don't like that, even as a concept. You can read my earlier post for more on why, but thu truth is that I don't think it should be illegal for people to do whatever they want with a movie they've already purchased, especially since this sort of thing is likely to make sales go UP more than down.

Still, I once again urge anyone planning to use those technologies to really give it additional thought. If a film isn't suitable, can it really be made suitable by just snipping out a bit here and there? Is there no value given to artistic effect? Do you want a fig leaf on the statue of David? How about pasties on the Venus de Milo? Now, maybe it's a bit specious to compare Titanic to the Venus de Milo, but it's all a continuous spectrum and it's hard to draw the line sometimes.

Another review in my series of watching anime "classics", this time, Hotaru no haka, or "Grave of the Fireflies."



This film is brutal.

This film is fragile.

This film is beautiful.

This film is horrible.

This film made me cry harder than any other movie ever has.

This film is the story of Seita, a young teenager, and his little sister Setsuko. They had the severe misfortune to be children living in Japan near the end of World War II.

War is really really awful, even when it's necessary. I'm not going to get into the politics or the tactics of World War II, because this movie isn't about World War II. It's about two children whose mother is killed and their home burned by firebombs dropped from enemy planes. Whether or not a war is "necessary" or "just" doesn't change the terrible fact that innocents will always die as a result.

Always.

This is the story of two of them.

In researching the film a little bit, and given the current diplomatic conflict between Japan and China, there is a lot of discussion going on regarding whether or not, with this film, Japan is attempting to cast themselves as the "victims" of World War II.

Someone inclined to feel that way from the beginning may remain unmoved.

That said, I think that those people will be missing the point of the film. Americans are not seen nor mentioned except behind the mask of ominously impersonal bombers and fighter planes. The one time "Long Live the Emperor" is shouted, it is by a delusional government official, waving a flag and waging a losing battle to raise morale as people's homes are burning to the ground. The movie is in fact most critical of those whose pride allows them to continue pursuing a hopeless cause in the face of horrific suffering.

But this movie is about Seita and Setsuko as they struggle to survive through ever-increasing hardships. When their mother is killed, they go to live with their aunt, who clearly cares more about the extra ration of rice they represent than about the children themselves. Eventually, they leave her and take up residence in an old bomb shelter. Their father is a naval officer, and they cling to the hope that one day, he'll come home and save them.

But he doesn't.

I'm not spoiling anything, because the movie opens with Seita, alone and dying of starvation in a train station. We are guided through a flashback by his spirit, and the story that leads us back to that train station, and to the casual tossing of a candy tin is one of the most emotionally shattering films I have ever seen.

I'm tearing up again even as I type this.

As much as I don't want this review to be about current events, under the impact of this film, I couldn't help but mourn for the innocents who are lost forever to the world in any violent conflict.

It is the fundamental tragedy of mankind that wars are sometimes necessary. The key, I think, is n