Based on a recent request for movie recs to add to a Netflix queue, here's a couple from my 5-star rating list: ( 12 Angry Men... )

Watchmen succeeds in capturing the main plotline of the comic, and there are some lovely sequences where Snyder emulates the slow-paced pull-out that Moore and Gibbons created when introducing a new issue. You can tell that Snyder used the comic as storyboards, using the art to set up angles and shots. There's a bit of over-exposition in a couple of places, where the script has characters Legolas the plot points. The guy playing Ozymandias is at times so soft-spoken and wooden, it robs his particular scenes of power--Ozymandias is supposed to be cool and emotionless for the majority of the plot, but there are a couple of scenes in the books where he emotes more, and I didn't really see any of that in the movie. I would have preferred an older, more mature actor in the role.

Pacing was odd--for a three-hour movie, it flowed pretty well, but emulating the comic in plot and focus gave the movie a certain meandering quality, pointing the audience in different directions as to who to empathize with or pay attention to. Not a problem during a 12-issue comic series, but an issue for a largely single-threaded movie. Part of me thinks this would have worked a great deal better as a television mini-series.

There were some changes to the ending that I would have preferred unchanged. I'm not talking about THE BIG THING, but the epilogue. I think the changes undermine some of the themes of Watchmen, but for the most part, I thought the movie a very, very good adaptation of the comic.

Incidentally, for those of you who haven't read the comic, both the movie and the source are very, very dark and violent. You have been warned.

As I've twittered way too many times, "3 out of 4 'HURM's."

( And now, a tagged meme... )

Upon learning that his The Graveyard Book (listen to it free here) had just won the John Newbery Medal, widely considered the most prestigious award for children's literature in the United States, he posted the following messages to his twitter feed:

About to drink second cup of tea without Marmalade this morning. Also, I just won the Newbury Medal for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK....

Newbery, not Newbury. Also FUCK!!!! I won the FUCKING NEWBERY THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME. I thank you.

He posted a followup blog post in which he described his most amusing experience of the announcement.

If you haven't read The Graveyard Book, I highly recommend it.

super_donkey's cat Dooey got sick, and he's offering artwork to help pay for the treatment.

Why hasn't anyone ever told me that there's a band out there which consists of four dudes with cellos who like to play Metallica covers?

You are all fired.

Over on the Suicide Girls Newswire, some person named "TheCoolerKing" has a list of projects that The Coolest Man in the World should be contributing to. An excerpt:

Making and selling handcrafted, custom belt-buckles. Yep... Maybe this one isn't immediately obvious. Basically, I'd like to be at a party sometime, when a random lady looks me up and down before saying, "Nice belt buckle."

At which point, I'd get to say, "Why thank you... BRUCE CAMPBELL MADE IT." I don't know what would happen at that point. But I can tell you it would be awesome.

In a clear example of the problem with Wikipedia, following my viewing of 300 Monday evening, my search through the content surrounding The Battle of Thermopylae has lead me to the urge to listen to Iron Maiden's Somewhere in Time. Points to whoever can trace the train of thought...

A few notable stories from Angry Asian Man

A marketing firm, SnapDragon, has released Ten Things Every Brand Should Know About Asian-American Youth. Of particular note:

The 15 minutes of seemingly benign American Idol fame for William Hung had a surprisingly negative effect on Asian-American students. There's a feeling that Hung perpetuated the worst stereotypes about Asian people and gave non-Asians permission to indulge in two years of racial stereotyping and mocking.

To which I say, NO DUH.

I didn't watch the Oscars, but the announcer indicated that Best Adapted Screenplay winner The Departed was based on a Japanese movie. Bzzt! Infernal Affairs (with Andy Lau from House of Flying Daggers) is a Chinese movie. Yes, I know we all look alike, you uninformed, ignorant round-eye.

The New York Daily News reports on a Chinese students' participation in the recent NYU College Republicans' 'Find The Illegal Immigrant' stunt. The piece recounts some of the troubling history of Chinese immmigration in America:

( As early as 1850... )

Beau Sia, an Asian poet, posted an open letter to all the rosie o'donnells in response to her defense and half-hearted apology of her own 'ching-chong' remarks on The View. O'Donnell, after viewing the piece, has apparently taken his message to heart and sincerely apologized, all the racist, sexist, and ignorant shitcocks on YouTube, notwithstanding.

Pinky and I caught the sneak preview of Marie Antoinette last night at the Midtown Art Cinema. Contrary to what she thought of my opinion of the movie, I thought the time spent watching the movie was worthwhile--the movie itself is quite picturesque and the characters likable. I've never been one to criticize a work because of historical inaccuracies (indeed, the movie does get points from me for including a pair of Chuck Taylors in the shoe montage).

We found ourselves, however, lamenting the movie's interminable length. Sofia Coppola seemed far too enamored of the aforementioned picturesque locales and actors. It may be a novel conceit to pair the scenes of this historical drama with modern, new-wave and punk hits. She lingers too long on these moments, however, basking in her own cleverness. I found myself in supreme discomfort as the last twenty minutes or so ticked away thinking, "Good heavens, cut off their heads already!"

A group of girls behind us thought less of the film than I did, but as Pinky and I worked our way out the entrance to the theater, I heard better reviews from the murmuring in the crowd. It made me pause to consider if my bad review was a result of the seating we ended up in--2nd row from the front with retro-fitted cup holders jutting into my knees from the row in front. Perhaps we would have enjoyed the movie more if we had seen it in a theater with stadium seating, where our legs could stretch out comfortably, and our necks weren't sore from craning to watch the screen.

Or perhaps filmmakers should make films where you can enjoy it from any seat in the house...

But I discovered that watching the latter part of The Iron Giant is quite effective when in need of catharsis.

You remember learning how to play soccer during P.E. in grade school? You remember how they told you if you wanted to stop the soccer ball's motion in any direction, you could pretty much just step on top of it?

I learned a long time ago that doing that with an out-of-control superball will just leave you with a formerly-spherical crunchy mass of rubber.

So if you're going to drop two hundred fifty thousand superballs down a street in San Francisco to make a commercial, you should be sure you know a way to stop them all.

I challenge you to watch the commercial without smiling.

Sweet: a 2.5 minute long version of the commercial

Aside from receiving Ai Yori Aoshi Disc 2 and Love Hina Disc 1 from Netflix yesterday, I hit Oxford Comics after work last night, and along with the Dark Horse Book of the Dead and Volume 9 of the Ai Yori Aoshi manga, I managed to pick up Chromaphile, the until-recently-out-of-print art book from Ragnar. I love this guy's stuff--a sort of retro-modern design pinup. Unfortunately, his main site's down for a redesign, but you can see some of it in an interview he did with CrownDozen.com. It even compels me to buy and iPod, despite my car already having a built-in MP3 player. Chromaphile is a bit thin for its cover price, but Amazon's got it for about fourteen dollars. Part of me wants to buy another copy to de-spine so I can frame specific pages, but the book-lover in me argues against it.

Edit: I just found this link off of the Make Magazine Blog. If you scroll all the way to the bottom (past the photos), you'll see there are links to "Full length pictures of the robe and tunic." Check out the photos, and tell me what's wrong with them.

Pinewood Downstairs print by Ragnar.

Hell, pretty much everything by him...

Since I'm taking the time to upgrade my current work machine (a sub-500 MHz machine, no less) from RedHat 7.3 to Fedora 2, I figured while waiting on the machine to quit thrashing and start the damn install I could drop an update.

Los Angeles is a neat place to visit, but aside from the tourist traps, it's not really all that pretty. For the most part, driving around Los Angeles, even during non-rush-hour hours, approaches the most infuriating kind of Sisyphean Hell. Los Angeles has all of the bad traffic of the New York area without the benefits of a far-reaching rapid transit system.

As far as neat things in LA:

• The Getty Museum is way, way cool. Now I've been to the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, and a bunch of other museums, but my architectural tastes tend toward the modern, so this campus of buildings was just as interesting as the art it housed.
  
• Took the WB Studio Tour, and walked around the inside of the Dragonfly Inn. I even touched Sookie's kitchen phone. I thought briefly of stealing one of the pictures of Davey that were in magnet frames on the fridge, but I'm too much a niceboy.
  
  No Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, or Scott Patterson sightings, although our tour guide did bring us around the left (mostly-unseen, not the same wall as Doose's) side of Luke's Diner. He mentioned that they might have been filming scenes inside, and I made the crass move of pointing at the window, so if you see some idiotic Chinese guy through the wooden blind slats pointing during an episode, that's me.
  
  I'm disappointed I didn't get to dress up as Santa, but hey, that was a fucking pipe dream anyways.
  
• Saw Jason Priestly at the Farmers Market with what I assume was his exceedingly hot girlfriend/spouse/lover.
  
• Saw Ty from Trading Spaces get on my flight back to Atlanta. I would learn later that the man lives in Grant Park and is a frequenter of 97 Astoria where my buddy Blake is a bartender.
  
• Also on my flight, Linda Blair, looking shorter than I imagined. Luckily, Captain Howdy didn't make an appearance, so no spontaneous crucifix-wankery.
  

From ludditerobot: ( that interest thing )

I guess this list might have been more interesting if more people listed the interests that I share with no one or one other person:

24-hour revenge therapy, big slick, burrito bros. taco co., chen-style tai chi, free radio gainesville, jon resh, maybe it was utah, pastacore, rock concert movement

I've fallen out of the addiction of doing memes, but I think I had to fill this one out, simply because I'm nothing if not a sinner.

Ganked from kawaiiryuko
( The Seven Deadly Sins Meme )

Overheard at the office:

"Are you talking about Cirque du Sol?" [sic]
"No, not that one..."
"Because it's not worth it...I mean there was some neat things, but $245.00..."

I'm suddenly reminded of the two rubes (and I'm being quite generous there...) who sat next to us when we saw Alegria a few weeks ago. The woman actually screamed, "You suck!" to the clown who was mocking our section.

Really, other than a suggestion to buy cheaper tickets, I'm speechless.


A very happy birthday to the Coffee Achiever. Since you're already torn about where to go for her birthday dinner (based primarily on the dessert options), make sure you follow this link after your celebration...

After Capn Ken's glowing endorsement of Party Out of Bounds, Rodger Brown's book on the alternative music scene in Athens, I went searching around for nostalgia on Gaineville's 90s punk scene. Having been in a band in high school with Brian Bowers of Bombshell, I'd always been on the periphery of the scene when it was growing the likes of Less than Jake and Hot Water Music. The best chronicle of these halcyon days is Amped: Notes from a Go-Nowhere Punk Band, by Jon Resh, former guitarist and "singer" for the band Spoke.

So while I'm trolling Google for mentions of Jon and his writing, I suddenly spot a link to the blog of Patrick Hughes, formerly known as Crank in the Independent Florida Alligator's Thursday entertainment rag, and author of such poetic gems as:

Eye on a stick!
Eye on a stick!
I'm gonna stab!
I'm gonna jab!
Stab! Jab!
Eye on a slab!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

and

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Plants are often green
Now give me back my fucking Parliament tapes, dammit.

From what little I've read of his blog, he still has quite a way with words, and he's still a big fan of the imported Kung Fu movie.

Sweet.
Current Mood: nostalgic

Have you been in the Apple stores?

You know in the kids' section, at the short table where the iMacs are, you know those little chairs that just look like cushiony, black spheres?

I want some of those. They wouldn't necessarily go with my decor, but they're rather comfy and fun.

I found spiralingmoon a few months ago linked off of the friendsfriends, and I forgot about it until a bit ago. She paints using her own menstrual blood. I think the average person probably finds this rather squick-worthy, but honestly, it doesn't bother me so much (Hell, I wrote a short LOTR-Buffy crossover drabble where it plays a significant role).

I will say, however, that I tend to prefer the figurative/iconic work that she was creating around this time last year--the abstract pieces aren't nearly as compelling.

Finally, I created this icon this morning in honor of xopherg's new TiVo. I, myself, bought a third one yesterday.

I've seen this show before. Should I see it again?

Cirque du Soleil's Alegria is coming to Atlanta in March and April. I saw the show at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi some two years ago, when they were wrapping up the long-standing installation, and honestly, it's one of the best Cirque shows I've seen. One of my other friends thinks the music is the best of the ones she's seen (I personally think O's music is better, but Alegria is a close second).

The problem here is the tickets. Now, I'm definitely going, but the horns of the dilemma are as follows: Should I get one ticket or two? Of course, I'm a proud, card-carrying member of the Dateless Goober Society, but just because I am at the moment, doesn't mean that I will be in six months (who the hell are you kidding? -James' internal monologue) and it's not like I can't take someone else on as friends anyways.

The other question: Should I buy Tapis Rouge tickets? Tapis Rouge is French for "Red Carpet," meaning it's the end-all-be-all of Cirque show experiences, complete with a special entrance, special parking, hors d'oeuvres and desserts before the show and during the intermission, respectively; a special gift, and a souvenir program. When I saw Dralion, I got the Tapis Rouge tickets and had the opportunity to meet the cast of the show.

The problem here is that the Tapis Rouge tickets are currently $190 dollars, a far cry from the $90 or so that I seem to recall spending on the Dralion Tapis Rouge (A side note: when the French play poker, to declare themselves all-in, they say "tapis"--fitting that I would have to practically go all-in to get two Tapis Rouge tickets...). That's really an exceeding amount of money to pay for a show that I've already seen (indeed, if I get two!), especially when I can get good seats for $70 a piece.


Of course, it just might be worth it if I get to meet the hula hoop girl...

Yeah, I know I haven't updated in a few days. I'm mad at Livejournal. Actually, I'm mad at Linux Opera for crashing for no apparent reason after I typed up my massive Saturday-Sunday Vegas journal entry on Friday afternoon. I was all, "Screw you guys! Ah'm going home!"

I went to see Blue Man Group this past Saturday with batnandu and Lillania. Tracey Bonham and Venus Hum opened for them. Not quite sure about Bonham, but Venus Hum kicked my ass. I picked up their CD direct from their merchy hands (take that RIAA!), but it turns out that the CD has that crappy copy protection shit on it--I can't listen to the CD on my work computer. I hear you're supposed to be able to use a felt-tip pen to defeat this, but I don't want to screw-up the audio.

For those of you who have seen the show, fight the power!

I made this!

BMG themselves were pretty amazing. I tried to remember all the Rock Concert Movements, but the only one I remember the exact number (that isn't on The Complex) for is #10: The Blackout. And everyone has the wrong timing on Rock Concert Movement #6, and Please Yell if You're Paying Attention.

On Monday, I managed to post two drabbles for sunday100.
Current Mood: tired

Having never seen what I imagine is a standard topless showcase in Las Vegas, I cannot say definitively, but Zumanity is certainly one of the hottest shows I've ever seen, if not the hottest show ever (and that's considering a few years of going to strip clubs not infrequently).

My first encounter with Zumanity was in April sometime, when I saw this billboard on the outside of New York, New York Casino. Of course, I was intrigued, and my subsequent investigations online brought me to Zumanity's official website.

So when I learned that everyone was planning a trip to Vegas for the APA national championship in August, I was overjoyed. I generally never miss a chance to catch Cirque du Soleil--since my first trip to Vegas some three years ago when I caught Mystére, I've been quite a Cirque du Soleil addict--I went to Biloxi specifically to watch Alegria, and got local tickets to Dralion and Varekai. My biggest regret of my last trip to Vegas wasn't that I dropped something like $300.00 gambling, but that I stayed up too late the night before O and was too tired to stay completely alert during the show.

With that in mind, I've always seen snippets of a sexuality/innocence dichotomy in Cirque du Soleil. Although Mystére is very much an all-ages show, Elena Lev, the hula hoop girl of Alegria appears like a young girl in her act, but her act imbues her with a strong sense of femininity. Several players of O frolic about, wet in their underclothes. The "Ballare" Aerial sequence of Dralion emphasizes romantic love, but in a pure, somewhat chaste sense.

A feeling of Victorian propriety pervades these shows, something that's altogether absent from Zumanity. Zumanity is all about confronting desire, and exploring it. Our emcee for the evening is a throaty-voiced drag queen, and she introduces the players--an eclectic bunch of dancers, contortionists, acrobats, and hunks. For the most part, the show has your standard Cirque du Soleil fare--there's the usual aerial show and the contortion act--but the atmosphere is one that exudes sex and sensuality.

One of the first acts of the show, the contortionists of Zumanity borrow a chapter from that other show in Vegas, O. From the center of the stage, a small goblet of a pool presents two young girls. After removing their nightgowns, they dive into the pool and swim about one another, rising from the water to bend and shift and laugh and kick the water. They touch one another softly, and, like a playful lover, plunge back into the wetness in hide-and-seek.

From this somewhat innocent beginning, however, the show takes a winding road through sensuality. During one sequence, where two perfectly-bodied men perform an acrobatic push-pull dance of love-hate, a topless figure emerges from the background stage shrouded in windblown tubes of sheer fabric. After flirting with the girls sitting next to me, one of the performers whispers to me, "Her name is Sophie. Isn't she beautiful?"

"She's incredible," I reply, as one tube falls away. And she was, distracting me as the two men end up kissing after their tango of sorts.

The show is not without humor--prior to opening, a troupe of four, dressed like Quakers, attempt to dissuade us from partaking of the Devil's lust. Throughout the show they interject sequences where their frigid dispositions melt just a little, until their own finale where they dance almost naked before us.

Our drag queen emcee, as well, has a healthy sense of snark, playfully passing jokes on audience members, and remarking on how one girl's "tits are ready to explode."

But humor isn't the true draw of Zumanity. In another sequence, two latex-clad women light torches from a flame in the middle of the stage, and draw them across each other's skin. A man and a woman balance precariously upon one other. I watch background performers, clad in revealing lingerie, caress and paw at one another in passionate embraces.

For a while I watch the show and am simply drawn in with the sex appeal. Sitting on the tapered edge of Cirque's usual teardrop-shaped stage, I spend much of the show splitting my eyes between the main act and the background performers. I'm not quite sure my unique perspective on the show helps the show's sexual theme--from my vantage point, the show is far more intimate, more personal.

Zumanity's twist on the usual aerial act is to portray a chase of sorts--a dwarf man, muscled and fit, yearns for the tall statuesque woman flying about on the white fabric. He chases her, and sometimes, he catches her. But somehow, the air takes her away again, and he must pursue, again and again. Again, I split my time between main act and the background performers during this sequence, dancing about one another. At one point, I look straight in front of me, and a tall, slender, short-haired blonde, bare-breasted and draped in sheer white, lightly strokes the chest of the man under her, as she props herself up above him on one arm.

It is the kind of quiet moment reserved for lovers and lovers alone. Envy and loneliness overtakes me in that moment, and suddenly I am regretting my coming to see this show without a lover. Everything from that point on--the playful flirting one of the performers did with a lovely girl two seats down from me, the two girls lighting each other on fire on stage, the orgiastic circle of performers in one of the closing acts, and the tiny, tickling kisses one performer places upon the violinist's neck as she plays a solo for the main act--all of it overwhelms my sense of being alone.

When the show suddenly ends, I am both depressed and relieved. The show is less about titillation and more about a sensual intimacy, and is best viewed with a lover in wait for later in the evening.
Current Mood: lonely

Strike that--reverse it.

Well, with the upcoming three and a half days off, I've had to get things ready, apart from my usual obligations--last night's pool league, book club tonight. Today I got a package in from my parents which required my signature and initials in over a dozen places (there's a rainbow of tape flags marked "Sign Here" and "Initial Here" sticking to the edge of my desk at the moment), and I need to find a UPS drop box to throw this thing in so they get it soon.

And then apart from getting things for this trip, I'm also have to figure out the schedule for the next few weekends. Blue Man Group is playing at the Civic Center on the 23rd. So looking forward to this show. I've been listening to Audio in the car for the past few days. When I first heard about the show, I was planning to work up to doing Rock Concert Movement #4, but first I got lazy and then I hurt my back. Oh well.

And then the weekend after that is Dragon*Con. Anyone reading this attending? I figure bratsey will probably want me to get her an autographed something or another from James Marsters, if she hasn't already asked someone else to do so.

Add to all of that the compelling desire to complete Xenosaga on the PS2. When I read the back of the package, it said something like "up to 80 hours of gameplay!" "Yeah, right" I thought. Few games made these days ever amount to anything over two days' worth of enjoyment, but I'm pleasantly surprised...and unwittingly addicted.

On top of that, I'm waiting 'til after the trip (and Xenosaga) to start Splinter Cell, and Soul Calibur II comes out on August 29.

Right now, however, it's all about Vegas, baby.

We're gonna be up five hundy by midnight.
Current Mood: excited

Most of the people in HP fandom have already read A.S. Byatt's NYT Op-Ed piece on the Harry Potter adult readership phenomenon.

Caleb Carr, mystery/sci-fi novelist and military historian, praises Byatt's piece in a response letter to the NYT:

For those of us who have many times found ourselves trapped in discussions (if such they can be called) of this sort with adult Potter fans, but who have lacked the clarity or sensitivity to state our side of the case so well, Ms. Byatt's article is indispensable: a classic and precise piece of true criticism, neither bile nor reverence, but brilliant dissection.

Let children who love Harry read on. But let adults know that their obsessive devotion is feeding something far more frightening than the dark arts: a retreat from the complexities of adulthood in a dangerous world.

Aside from the insulting insinuation that I'm some closeted shut-in who can't really face up to things like terrorism or house payments, isn't "a retreat" what all fiction is for--evading the stress or mundanity of your current living for a brief solace of something novel or different? Even the most realistic or allegorical of fictional stories allows you to move beyond the confines of your microcosm. Why must Harry Potter, who, despite Carr's incorrect assumption, does live in a dangerous world, provide some point of reference to the horrors of everyday life? Isn't Star Wars or The Matrix guilty of the same fantastic retreat?

As for Byatt's assertions, while many have already seen Charles Taylor's A.S. Byatt and the Goblet of Bile, I'll add the following quote from Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor to Rolling Stone, who writes in his "I'll Take My Stand: A Defense of Popular Culture":

It's often struck me that many skeptics about popular culture succumb to one of its more obnoxious aspects--the reduction of complicated aesthetic issues to a hit parade--when setting forth what they think should or shouldn't be part of the curriculum or canon, or even when just expressing their conviction about what is worth knowing. What is the point, though, of pitting one type of music, or one work of art, or one type of knowledge against another, as if in a popularity contest? That seems to me to betray even very traditional notions of the attitude an intellectual life should instill.

---

"I'll Take My Stand: A Defense of Popular Culture" by Anthony DeCurtis is available as a part of Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture, but honestly, IMO, out of the five essays that I've read, it's the only one worth it so far...

If only I:

1. knew how to play the drums
   
2. could catch marshmallows in my mouth thrown from more than 60 feet away
   
3. lived in Seattle

Current Music: "Look to the Sky" - System S.F. feat Anna

Sigh.

I just bought tickets to Las Vegas and to Zumanity.

Now I need to make sure that I don't spend 200 dollars on books for the next three months.

My boss just said "I've got a theory..."

I'm such a geek.
Current Mood: geeky

Incredible...

The folks on Fark and Something Awful have done some great Photoshops of old WWII propaganda. It looks like Wildstorm's Micah Ian Wright has taken some inspiration from those contests and made some Propaganda of his own.

He's got a Cafepress store with all of the posters. In his words:

...copy the posters and post them everywhere. I mean everywhere. Bathroom stall doors, under windshield wipers, on the bumpers of SUVs... anywhere you can imagine pasting one up. I don't know... maybe America is too far gone, but if I can wake one single person up from their tv-induced stupor, then I've done my job.