Movies January 2009

Inglourious Basterds
This movie defies my normal liked/didn't like dichotomy. I liked parts of it... Brad Pitt is a fun actor who also got the show-stealing part. But like all Quentin Tarantino movies, the gore seemed gratuitous. The movie would have been less shocking, less visceral without it, but I guess I'm not the dude who thinks that's a bad thing.

The fairy-tale bit was subtle. When I would later think about some over-the-top aspect of it, I would remember its "Once Upon a Time" beginning, which helped contextualize things. Overall, this was a well-executed flick, accompanied by great writing and fine acting.

Avatar (3D)
After hearing the rapturous stories of the wonders of Avatar in 3D, M and I decided to give it another chance. She liked it a little more this time, but I liked it even less, because it wasn't a good enough story to hold my interest a second time. I got bored and fidgety at one point, went to the bathroom mid-movie, which is practically against my religion. It's an OK movie -- it's just not a great movie. Like Titanic, people have swooned and thrown money at it. Unlike Titanic, I don't understand the furor from primary sources, not just from a disinterested distance.

Samurai Champloo, disc 5
OK, taking breaks between SC discs loses the flow for me. I'm watching them in a row from here.

Samurai Champloo, disc 6
Only 3 episodes? Aw man. I really like this series.

Samurai Champloo, disc 7
Oh, endings. How often you are not what we wished. I secretly wanted this to end like the samurai revenge flick this promised to be, i.e., dead principals like a Shakespeare tragedy. Considering how smart and mature some of the individual stories were, I thought it might happen! But it didn't happen. I really enjoyed the series overall though, and would happily watch it again some time.

Gilmore girls, season 7, disc 6
Skipped a couple of intermediate season 7 discs, because I didn't like the way the season was going. Jumped back in for the last two episodes of the series. It was ok.

30 Rock, season 3, disc 1
Still pretty funny!

King Corn
I've read my Michael Pollen; I've done the homework. This documentary was fair and clean. There is just nothing sensible about American corn growing any more. Everyone involved knows it, but no one wants to be the bad guy and put the brakes on.

I'm complicit. I love cheap food too. This is what we've done for ourselves, and you have to admit, cheap food is pretty awesome. I'm glad to live in a place and time where I get the benefit of astonishingly inexpensive food. But what good is cheap food that is also nutritionally vacuous?

I used to wonder what thing we didn't see coming would kill my generation. Previous generations smoked or ingested lead. It seemed safe enough until we learned more, and found out those things had a hidden awful side.

I don't wonder any more. Because now I know it's high fructose corn syrup. It kills us early, and it will still be 10 to 20 years before that shit is properly outlawed. And it's in so many things you buy at the grocery store, that it's bloody hard to escape.

And since we've ceded a lot of our food knowledge to giant agribusiness corporations, we can't fend for ourselves as well as we used to. And good food is expensive. Problems. Problems.

The 40 Year Old Virgin
Especially after watching the DVD extras, I have to wonder: Just how much of this movie was scripted? Because it seemed like there was a whole lot of improv.

Experience is the best torture.

No! Teacher! I meant to say teacher!

Reading: my shame exposed

Today, as I made another stab at organizing my office, I rounded up several books from the atop the computer and in cardboard boxes and two from a pillowcase (worst night's sleep ever). Then then I did a bad thing to a book-in-progress: I put them on bookshelves.

Putting unfinished books on a shelf is naked capitulation. On a shelf, it's camouflaged with all the other ostensibly read books, to be admired en masse, but not individually reconsidered.

Now that I track my book consumption on Goodreads, the proof is even more damning. I finish 5 or 6 books a year (not counting graphic novels). That's all. I stopped tracking in-process books on GR because they sit in stasis so long. But I purchase more books in a year than I read.

Today's most glaring surrender was New Ideas From Dead Economists. I received the book for Christmas two years ago. Every few months I would read the next chapter, having largely forgotten the contents of previous chapters. I've liked what I read, and now I even know what Malthusianism is, why it keeps coming up, and why people use it as a derogatory term. That's come in handy!

But the book ultimately failed to penetrate the atmosphere, and has now settled into far orbit on the shelf, where I'll probably only ever look at it again through a telescope.

This week, I started a strange new enterprise, reading The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard via Project Gutenberg. I've read very little so far, but I wonder how having a browser window open will fare compared to books piled up. I wonder.

Update: Finally started and finished in one sitting on Feb 3.

Pink Noise

I found SimplyNoise, a site that plays and allows you to download white noise, pink noise, and red/brown noise.

As a result, I also discovered the Wikipedia page for colors of noise, a concept of which I was not even aware, so hooray for learning.

I've been listening to white, pink, and red/brown noise all day, and I've concluded that I'm not a dude who benefits from having these background noises. I can feel my brain pick up speed after I turn the noise off, like turning off the AC in your car--you didn't even know it was a drag it isn't anymore.

But I understand other people are really helped by various colors of noise, so I'm glad they exist!