musings

It worked! My blog is now mirrored with my LiveJournal! Is this useful? I don’t much care ; it’s neat. And if it makes it easier for my LJ friends to keep up to date with my goings on, that’s just peachy.

This web journal thing has kind of changed the way I communicate because by reading my friends’ journals, I feel like I’ve caught up with them when, in fact, we haven’t spoken with one another in months or, in at least one case, years. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Testing out LivePress.

Stephen and I took Sarah (his daughter) to see Madagascar this afternoon. It was okay. I wasn’t expecting much – in fact, I was expecting that the trailer gave away all the funny bits. I wasn’t far wrong – the trailer gave away half the funny bits. The other funny bits all came from Sacha Baron Cohen (better known as Ali G). His character was utterly hysterical. The stars of the movie (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Schwimmer) really weren’t very funny at all. What is it with David Schwimmer, anyway? That guy’s voice inspires in me the urge to punch him. Repeatedly. Anyway, performances aside, the movie has some serious problems with pacing. We’re talking 20 minute long stretches of utter boredom problems. Multiple 20 minute long stretches of abject boredom. In an 80 minute film. Bad screenwriter! No cookie for you! If you do see it, stick around for the “music video” during the end credits – it’s about the funniest thing in the film.

I saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tonight.

Eh. It was about what I expected. No, actually, it was better than I’d expected. I expected terrible dialogue (check), terrible acting from Hayden Christensen (check) and decent performances from Ewan MacGregor (who was actually excellent) and Natalie Portman (yep). The plot wasn’t bad, given that you know where it’s going to wind up, but the details made it more interesting. You finally got to see what motivated Anakin Skywalker into becoming Darth Vader. But really the best part of the movie was Obi Wan’s reaction to Anakin’s betrayal. Ewan MacGregor is a fantastic actor – his final speech to Darth Vader was worth the price of admission.

The special effects (if that’s even fair – the whole movie’s a special effect) were a mixed bag. As usual, the sets were stunning. Great lighting effects, great ambiance and believable looking scenes were pretty much everywhere (well, the living quarters were all spartan to the point of asceticism, but barring that). Where things fell apart were the animations. Nothing seemed to have any weight – characters bound into motion, leaping into the air, seemingly popping from stock-still to top speed with nary a hint of acceleration. I know Sith and Jedi all Use the Forceâ„¢ but droids and mundane creatures all had the same style of motion.

Anyway, overall I got a slightly better movie than I expected – and RotS is far and away the best movie of the new trilogy. If this is really the last Star Wars movie it, at least, ended on a (relatively) high note.

As an aside, I simply can’t get enough of that Jesu album. It’s the front runner for album of the year so far. By the way, if it shows up in the little iTunes thing on the sidebar of this site, and the album cover shows a CD called “Sacred Classics” it’s Amazon being brain-dead. Despite the fact that “Jesu Jesu” (the Artist/Album keyword pair) has an exact match, it’s the second hit in the search, regardless of whatever sort criteria I use.

This past Thursday I met Kourosh for dinner downtown (Kourosh was in town for a week for work reasons) and we went to a place called Salad King. Salad King’s an interesting place – it’s cafeteria-style seating. They’ve got gigantic benches that run the width of the room and you share the bench (and associated table) with whomever else happens to be there. It’s a Ryerson hangout, so the crowd was really young too, so we had that vibe going on too, but the lack of ambiance in the place was completely overshadowed by the quality of the food. Quite simply, Salad King was some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had. I’m eagerly looking forward to my next visit there, because the food was utterly spectacular. (The upper floor of Salad King, by the way, is a sister restaurant called Linda that has traditional seating and is slightly more upscale.)

After dinner, we stopped in at the gigantic HMV just for a lark. Stupidly, I spent money. I’ve been (largely) income-free since starting Electron Jump Games – about 18 months now. I’m also a total CD whore. I can’t walk into a record shop without buying something so it’s been easiest to just avoid temptation altogether and not go into the stores. My will failed me, and (predictably) my will failed me again. I picked up two CDs – the self-titled first album from Jesu and Remote by Splintercage.

Jesu is Justin Broadrick’s post-Godflesh project. While it has echoes of Godflesh throughout, it’s kind of Godflesh without the hate and bile. In many ways it evokes post-rock bands like Sigur Ros and Mogwai. It’s 74 minutes of pure bliss. Slow, droning, grinding melancholia. Atmosphere in spades. I’ve listened to it end to end at least a half dozen times in the past three days. It’s a brilliant album. I’ve since ordered Jesu’s debut single Heartache (chase the link, there are samples there) and await its arrival with bated breath.

Splintercage is ex-Parade bass & guitar player Stephen Seto’s electronic persona. It’s a swirl of minimalist texture and ambiance. It reminds me a lot of Mick Harris’ work as both Lull and Scorn (less minimal than the former, less heavy than the latter). Definitely a good score for me. That one’s a bastard to find, but you can order it from Ant-Zen, Splintercage’s record label.

According to this news article, New York City’s MTA’s proposed plan to ban photography has been abandoned. Looks like there’s still some sanity left in the world.

Last weekend my office was robbed. We lost about $5k worth of stuff. Fortunately no data was taken, only hardware that can be easily, if not cheaply, replaced. Looks like the thief managed to steal the building’s master key. We’ve since had the locks changed and arranged to have an alarm installed. Curse the bastard (we’re pretty sure it was a one-man job) that made us have to go to such lengths.

We probably should have had the alarm installed from day one – we were always really paranoid to make sure the door was locked, but to quote Max Peltier (Strange Days):

The issue isn’t whether you’re paranoid, but whether you’re paranoid enough.

Clearly, we weren’t.

I had a bit of a lame Friday night. Cy dropped by and we rented a couple of movies – by utterly random coincidence, both featured the truly lovely Naomie Harris. We grabbed After the Sunset and 28 Days Later ….

After the Sunset was, well, a dud. It’s a caper flick starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek as a pair of jewel thieves, and Woody Harrelson as the FBI agent attempting to capture them. It’s not that it’s a desperately bad movie, it’s just lame. Now, it wasn’t all bad – it did feature almost 97 minutes of Salma Hayek wearing little more than a bikini. I’ve seen movies that were equally lame that didn’t have 90 minutes of bikini-clad Salma Hayek and they were, indeed, less enjoyable than After the Sunset.

28 Days Later … was amazing. On a purely visceral level, it was far more satisfying as a zombie movie (though the zombies weren’t actually zombies) than either of the Resident Evil movies or House of the Dead (I’ve not seen the other recent zombie movie, the remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). But really, it wasn’t actually a horror movie at all. It has all the requisite splatter and gore, but it’s far more deliberately paced, without the hundreds of jack-in-the-box startle shots so common in horror films. If you’ve not seen it yet, rent it – it’s a very good flick.

I don’t know how he keeps doing it, but Todd keeps finding the damnedest stuff. Deanimator is a great old school game in Flash.

I found the Bootleg Browser on Salon – it’s a site that links to audio and video of concert bootlegs, sorted by artists. Very cool.