Movies April-Jun 2009

I had an ambitious plan to talk about the movies I'd watch this year one at a time, and a format that involved putting up movie posters and links to imdb. I also thought I'd try to have something to say about each movie.

But it doesn't look like I'm devoting the requisite giveadamn. Instead, here's what I've seen since about April, in roughly chronological order:

The Matrix
We watched this serendipitously around the Matrix's 10-year anniversary. When I discovered that about a week later I asked myself how it holds up. It holds up OK!

Slumdog Millionaire
We enjoyed this movie, but the end seemed to be a different flick than the beginning and middle. Was that on purpose? Was there meant to be some redemptive switch that I missed being flicked?

Star Trek (2009)
This movie is just as fun as everybody tells you it is.

Tropic Thunder

Bender's Big Score
The first of the Futurama direct-to-DVD movies was OK. I laughed a little, but not a lot.

Frost/Nixon

The King of Kong
A tale well told, but my enjoyment diminished soon after when I discovered that the real story is not as simple as the one told by the fimmakers. See Jason Kottke's discussion of this.

No Country for Old Men
I forgot that this was a Coen brothers movie until M reminded me about 3/4 of the way through. Then it started feeling familiar. Unsettling, funny, and ambiguous. Reminded me of Fargo. The movie sits better when you realize it's about Tommy Lee Jones's character, not about the characters you spend the most time with.

The Beast with a Billion Backs
The second of the Futurama direct-to-DVD movies is more of the same. Good enough.

Be Kind Rewind
I guess the lesson is that even when you take creativity into your own hands, and make something people love, you still get screwed by corporations with lawyers.

He's Just Not That Into You
The movie seems to break some of the rules that the publishing phenomenon laid down. Plus, it wasn't a very good movie. Plus, Mac guy isn't a good actor yet.

Bender's Game
I wanted deeper, more incisive gaming parody out of this.

Shopgirl
I love Steve Martin, even though I'm not always sure why. The awkwardness and depiction of loneliness are funny and sad here. I enjoyed watching this movie.

Up
I cried a little.

Cash for your gas guzzler

Mildly annoyed by this "clunkers" bill the House passed.

The Short Version:

Under the House bill, car owners could get a voucher worth $3,500 if they traded in a vehicle getting 18 miles per gallon or less for one getting at least 22 miles per gallon. The value of the voucher would grow to $4,500 if the mileage of the new car is 10 mpg higher than the old vehicle. The miles per gallon figures are listed on the window sticker.

I spent some time ranting about this and erased it all.

My first reaction is to rail at the perceived injustice. I've driven the same subcompact 30+ mpg car for 10 years without so much as a firm handshake of gratitude. Now suddenly, anyone who drove a 8 mpg behemoth for less time gets cash to upgrade.

I want a reward! I was community-minded when there was little incentive. I want others punished! They need to live with the consequences of their hubris.

But that's pride and greed doing the talking.

I'm trying to learn to be on the side of grace. I want to smile when good is done, no matter why. I've received good things. Why would I want good denied to anyone else?

For those of you playing along at home, this is transformation by the renewing of my mind. And it's surprisingly tricky.

Information: free and expensive

Taken from Wikipedia
Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984, in the following context:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.


From me
Information is so valuable that there has to be a way to profit from it. It's just that information's value, when decoupled from a physical medium, is extremely difficult to gauge.

Information is unquantifiable. "Cows go moo." seems like a single mote of information, but fractally smaller bits of information are implicit in that three-word sentence. Like what a cow is. How a moo sounds. Why "go" is an appropriate verb in this instance.

At this level, information is so voluminous, that you can only charge for it in bulk. In that way, all books are like newspapers -- you bundle in important parts with the unimportant parts, without knowing exactly what any given buyer deems "important." You hope people will pay to get the parts that are important to them.

Information is also extremely context-sensitive. Noise to one person is life-saving info to another one. Depends on whether you stand next to a train track, or on it. Which one would pay to hear that whistle?

Don't have a point today. Just thinking.

Bing is worthless.

Microsoft is soft-launching its improved search engine, Bing.com.

I'm happy to say that my name was the second thing I entered to test it out, proving that I am not entirely self-absorbed (but still mostly).

Here's the horrible news. I am neither the top return, nor the dominant presence in Bing search returns. The other couple of internet-active dudes around the U.S. with my name have significantly higher placement.

Google has it right. I generally turn up as the top 4 or 5 entries in Google, based on geek cred. Eponymous pretenders rank farther down.

WTF Microsoft? Things just haven't been the same since Bill left.


Update: Aad't Hart agrees with me.