Friday, December 06, 2002

The Great Stanford Buffy Population Equilibrium Study [Slashdot] You know what the best part of this is? Somebody's really going to get a graduate degree thanks to this work.
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Just got back from seeing Equilibrium in one of those mega-cine-plex-hells - y'know, the ones with ticket windows, art deco decor, and fold-up armrests so you can snuggle while watching the movie. I was frightened by the movie theatre - normally, I'd go to the one just outside my office, but they're not showing Equilibrium. Not that I entirely blame them. Now, I enjoyed it. It had some great action sequences - plainly derived from The Matrix, without doing the now traditional bullet-time bits. It didn't really seem like actual violence most of the time - dance with guns is a more accurate description. The story? Eh. It's Distopia-R-Us - a hodge-podge of Farenheit 451, 1984, and, uh, The Matrix, among others. I felt distinctly uncomfortable in a few scenes - the good kind of uncomfortable for this kind of movie - but in the end, it was rather predictable. Stylistically nifty, not much content to it. In other words, definitely worth my five bucks for a big-screen matinee, but not a full price ticket. Probably not worth a rental, either - if it ain't friggin' huge, what's the point? But the biggest thing I took out of the theatre? Let me give you some background: I loved The Matrix. Loved it a lot. It's a truly great movie, in my opinion - sure, it's completely derivative, but it's an amazing combination of its influences. Other movies have gone down similar roads since then - most successfully in Dark City and eXistenZ. Both of those movies had a distinct advantage over The Matrix, though - their casts. Dark City had Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly...eXistenZ had Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe, Sarah Polley...The Matrix? Despite their success since then, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano aren't in the same league. Laurence Fishburne is, yes, but don't forget that friggin' Keanu Reeves was the lead. And sure, he wasn't *bad*, per se, but he wasn't good either. What am I getting at? Simple - Christian Bale should have been cast as Neo. Period.

6:56:39 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

US Treasury Secretary resigns. Paul O'Neill unexpectedly resigns just before the markets open on Wall Street. [BBC News | World | UK Edition] Huh? It's not just O'Neill - Larry Lindsey, White House economic adviser, also resigned. That's maybe the two most significant economic policymakers in the Bush White House resigning at the same time. Honestly, I have no idea what this means - but it sure seems to suggest a change in economic direction by BushCheney. Where do they go now?

10:31:49 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

IBM getting Rational. Big Blue plans to pay $2.1 billion in cash for the company, whose products help software developers create models of business processes. [CNET News.com] I think I'm having a Keanu moment: "Whoa!" [Dave Seidel :: Wavicle] Me too. I'm only really familiar with one of Rational's products - ClearCase, their ultra badass source control system - but I know that they've got gobs more interesting products. IBM gets all the cool toys...

10:26:49 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Well, it looks like my rise up the Salon blog rankings has been just about arrested... There's only one completely inactive blog ahead of me on the list - the dearly missed VeryModern Astrology - though there's also Pornographer's Picks, which seems more or less dead. Of course, it would require that blog not getting a single hit for about two years for me to catch up to *his* hit total. I'm also sure I'll be passed by any number of other hotter, younger, more nubile blogs in the future - Secular Blasphemy, I'm looking at YOU! - but hey, at least I passed our old friend Joe at people are stupid. =)

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Funhouse. This is a link that I really do need to put up. Rare is the day that I don't receive at least one visitor searching for this. In 1970, The Stooges made one of the all time great disks, 'Funhouse'. It was thirty-six minutes of pure musical anarchy, and it's influence looms large to this very day. Funhouse also spawned one of the finest pieces of rock writing ever, Lester Bangs 'Of Pop and Pie and Fun'. (Disgusting revelation: A google search on Lester Bangs and Funhouse returns me ahead of this classic review), So how could Funhouse possibly be improved? Simple, if you're Rhino Records. Expand it to seven hours and fifty-two minutes. Yeah, click on that link up above, and marvel at the 28 different takes of 'Loose', the 33 tracks of studio dialogue, and the 15 versions of 'TV Eye'. Good Lord! And you wanna know the most disgusting thing about this grotesquery? They sold out before I had a chance to get my copy.[Fried Green al-Qaedas] Oh my GOD! I've never read this Bangs piece before. This is amazing, I mean, beyond amazing. Reading Lester makes me feel about rock and rock writing in the same way that reading Warren Ellis makes me feel about comics and comic writing. There may be better writers than Bangs or Ellis, but it's pretty fucking rare to find someone as passionate, angry, excited, and energized about the material as these guys. Mark, thank you. This link has made my day.

9:58:10 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Nomar Garciaparra and Mia Hamm are engaged - my god. They'll have superkids with unworldly athletic abilities. I don't know about you, but I'm afraid.
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World Briefing: Europe. THE NETHERLANDS: Bombs At Ikea Were Extortion; ITALY: Never Understimate The Power, Etc.; GREECE: Air Traffic Controllers Strike; SLOVENIA: Prime Minister Nominated; FINLAND: No More Free Pornography;. [New York Times: International] Yes, that's right - a Helsinki cable-tv monopoly has announced that they'll be cancelling free porn shows on two channels. What will the Finns do now?

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