Movies July 2010

Chocolate
Maudlin, but the final fight scene was worth the price of admission. I don't even know how you'd plan a fight scene on the side of a building... it was fantastic to watch, and eminently stealable for D&D.

Battlestar Galactica (2003 miniseries)
This has ageda little? But it's still quite good. Looking forward to watching the first couple of seasons again with M,

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Dwane McDuffie keeps knocking these out of the park, scriptwise. Every other aspect is also quite good!

The Last Airbender
"Your exposition is here, Mr. Shyamalan. Where d'ja want it?"
"Oh, just put it anywhere."

Shiri

A Korean action movie that was pretty good! Recommended.

Superman Doomsday
Pretty disappointing.

Inception

Christopher Nolan does movies I want to see, so I wanted to see this. I enjoyed it, but I didn't just loooove it. It was a smidge too intricate for movies, too much expository work. That level of plot intricacy works in novels, but movies have a ceiling, I think. Also, Lady or the Tiger endings have been frustrating since immediately after "The Lady, or the Tiger?". I think Cobb never made it back out. But maybe... maybe he did?

Jericho, season 1, disc 1

A short-lived, pretty good TV drama about life post-nuke attack in the U.S. of A.

Observations:

• Jericho is far too racially integrated to truly exist in Kansas.
• The black guy's character is so aggressively mysterious I want to punch him through the television.
• This show seems to have the same curious hiccup that other genre-esque dramas have: The writing staff appears to have more show to fill than quality to spend. Some storylines and arcs are suspenseful and challenging, while others in the very same episode are dumb as doorknobs.

We'll keep watching though.

Helvetica

I like fonts, but this documentary failed to hold my interest. This seemed pitched more at insiders than outsiders. Every once in a while, a moment of "oh, that's interesting," would take you off guard, but then it would switch to some aged German or Swiss man saying something dry.

Surrogates

Relentlessly mediocre. I was sort of interested in seeing this last year in the theater, but not interested enough to do anything about it. Now I know why. This movie spent all its money on Bruce Willis and marketing, not necessarily in that order. It had scenes that in all senses -- script, acting, lighting, camera work, scenery, and more -- looked like were lifted from the "how to shoot an '80s action TV series" handbook. The story was workmanlike in its conventionality.

Pillow talk

Over the last few weeks I have found new fire to start a new product line. I am making pillows.

For a couple of years now, I've had boxes of Karlstad sofa covers from Ikea sitting around my office. They were on sale for like, $1 each, and I bought a couple on spec. I assumed I would make monsters from them at some point, but the fabric is sort of upholstery-grade, tricky business on the 6-12 inch scale I usually work in.

I made a round back pillow out of a t-shirt for a show a few weeks back, and it set my mind to thinking about pillows. Then I went to Shanghai to visit a friend, and saw some cool pillow/monsters with a certain shape. I sketched it in my notebook and brought the idea home.

After modifications and trials with fabric and various shapes, I hit upon this design, which I'm pretty happy with. We've had a prototype on our sofa for a few weeks now, and we both really enjoy it. It's not just weird looking, it's comfortable. I'm leaning on it now as I write this.

The production units are going up on Etsy as I get them done and photographed. Check 'em out while they last!

I also have vague plans to try to advertise this batch around crafty places the Web. That's new territory for me, but last time I put up a bunch of stuff on Etsy, nothing moved for 3 months. I also barely told anyone it was there, so I have to consider that I could be partly responsible.

Bynamite idea!

This New York Times link about a start-up that proposes to pay users for their personal information might be hidden by tomorrow, so I'm cherry-picking quotes here:

“Our view is that it’s not about privacy protection but about giving users control over this valuable resource — their information,” Mr. Yoon said.

...

Every search on Google, Mr. Acquisti notes, is implicitly such a transaction, involving a person “selling” personal information and “buying” search results. But people do not think about, or are unaware of, the notion that typed search requests help determine the ads that Google displays and what its ad network knows about them.

Bynamite, Mr. Acquisti said, is “simply trying to make these kinds of transactions explicit, more transparent to the user."

...

In essence, the company has a libertarian, free-market ethos. If consumers have more power and control, it says, personal information should flow more efficiently to the benefit of both consumers and advertisers, who will be able to more accurately aim their ads.

...

IF Bynamite gains momentum, Mr. Yoon predicts that individuals will be able to use their portfolios of interests as virtual currency. He calls the idea a “consumer’s preference wallet.

I've said several times that Facebook can have, resell, and use my personal info for the low, low price of $20. Let's make it $25 because I'm a good capitalist.

That number should be way higher, because Zuckerberg knows they're making way more than $25 off each user. But I like to play nice, and thanks to scarcity rules, I don't have a lot of bargaining power. So 25 bucks for my name, email address, and marketable interests. I've never heard or read on the whole wide Internet anyone else making that kind of claim, and I'm surprised about it.

I normally acquiesce to charges of curmudgeonly behavior. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes it's accurate. But this quirk doesn't belong in that category. This is one of those rare instances where I'm right and everyone else is wrong for some reason.

You should expect a cut of the money when someone uses a resource you provide. I doubt this will be a pure, beautiful, cash-based transaction that I want. But it shows me I'm not completely alone in my thinking.

Where smart fails

Why Intelligent People Fail is a succint catalog of failure.

As Kottke points out, it's pretty much the same reasons everyone else fails.

Intelligence is wildly overrated. Smart is great. But smart has practically no correlation with success, however you define it.

Smart people need to be told this, and they need to continue to see the statistics that back this truth. Because smart people think they're super-special by virtue of an inborn trait. And everyone wants to be smart, and to be considered smart, to the point of self-deception. That's cultish behavior centered around a trait that has recently decided to look down on religion.

I find it personally galling when people use intelligence as a bulwark against theism. Although no one has ever said to me, "I thought you were too smart to believe in God," the surprised looks I've received when I talk about Jesus say it just fine. (On the flip side, a woman once assumed I was an atheist because I "looked so smart.")

Malcontent intelligentsia for the last 150 years or so have tried to con us into thinking that intelligence implies humanism. As in so many other instances though, intelligence corresponds with one thing: Intelligence. MENSA is a disappointing epicenter of this self-congratulatory canard.

You can mix and match intelligence with any other human trait. Anxious. Beautiful. Racist. Musical. Spiritual. Good, bad, silly, it doesn't matter. Intelligence doesn't make you better or worse. It just makes you smart.

The crux of the problem is that people confuse intelligence with wisdom. Wisdom takes you to good and lofty places. Smart just knows how to read the map. It don't know nothing about picking a good route or a good destination.

Movies June 2009

Legend of the Drunken Master
Early Jackie Chan. He hasn't hit his stride yet here, but he's still fun to watch.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, season 3
While working on the A:tLA card game a few years ago for Upper Deck, I watched all of season 1 and part of season 2 to get up to speed on the show. I liked it for the rich setting, well-written characters, comedy, and unexpected twists. So I jumped at finishing the series on Netflix, finishing season 2 and watching all of season 3.

I love this show more than ever now. It transcended children's entertainment, and the love its creators invested in it shows. Plus, the M. Night Shymalan version comes out next month, and it's nice to be reacquainted with the characters before that hits.

Master of the Flying Guillotine
More kung fu classic cinema.

Mystery Team
This movie about boy detectives who solve a real adult crime was pretty fun. I watched it because I'm becoming a fan of Donald Glover, who wrote for 30 Rock, stars in Community, and is part of the Derrick Comedy group. Maybe not a great movie, but a fun movie.

Death Note
The Japanese movie base on the manga about a guy who finds a notebook with the power to kill whoever's name is written in it. And the cat and mouse to find him once the police figure out it's weird murder. I've never read the manga, but the movie was good diversion. Above average. Kept me interested.

Death Note: Last Name
The second part? I guess? See above.

Connected
A short film about people after some apocalypse. Tense and well done. You can watch it now.

JCVD
Jean-Claude Van Damme is the Rodney Dangerfield of the action movie star set. Some pathos. Some comedy. Pretty fun.

Steel Magnolias
Nice dialogue.

The Karate Kid (2010)
And we close with modern Jackie Chan. You know, this was fine. The best part was Jackie Chan beating the mean kids up. The rest was nice enough.

Movies May 2009

The Office, season 4

The Office, season 5

Once Upon a Time in the West
A great western. I just watched it and I already think I probably need to see it again.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Twilight Samurai
5 Stars. Not a martial arts movie in a Bruce Lee sense. Very little swordplay. But moving and sweet.

The Return of the Jedi

The new free lunch

Yesterday at my favorite burrito chain, Qdoba, I was musing to M about whether a completely ad-run restaurant could work. I'm paying $6 for a burrito. I don't know much about restaurant margins... they're thin I hear... but how expensive is it to make that burrito? Ingredients, hired help, rent, blah blah... what are we talking, an amortized three bucks each? Let's say $3.

This particular Qdoba is located near a bunch of expensive universities. Haverford and St. Joe's kids are in there all the time; Penn isn't too far away as the crow flies. That is juicy marketing target -- young AND moneyed.

If you could guarantee delivery of rich college eyeballs, how much would a well-targeted advertiser pay? Would they pay $3 per impression? Would five advertisers pay $.60 each?

What if you made your customer fill out a survey for their free food too? Wouldn't some marketing firm love to have that steady stream of data? They'll pay more than $3 a pop to get these peoples' opinions in other venues, right?

Then sell space on some tasteful wall posters, sell the tray liner space... as long as you don't get greedy and sell every ceiling tile, you could make this work.

The food would have to be good. You couldn't ever let food quality drop. But otherwise, this seems like it would make at least as much profit as a regular burrito joint. There must be some reason why this hasn't been tried yet, right?

Then, that very same day, I see this: Panera: Pay What You Can Afford.

“Take what you need, leave your fair share,” says a sign at the entrance of the Saint Louis Bread Company Cares Café. Patrons who can’t pay are asked to volunteer their time.

The café, which reopened Sunday as a nonprofit, has cashiers who provide receipts with suggested prices and direct customers to the store’s five donation boxes. The menu is the same, except for the day-old baked goods brought in from sister stores in the area.

“I’m trying to find out what human nature is all about,” Ron Shaich, who stepped down as Panera’s CEO last week but remains as chairman, told USA Today. “My hope is that we can eventually do this in every community where there’s a Panera.”

Not quite the same thing, but maybe one better.

The continued work of awakening

I dreamed last night that I heard Steve Taylor died, so I Googled him to find out if it was true, and to my horror -- surprise twist! -- there was no mention of Roland Steven Taylor on the Internet at all.

Now that I'm up, I don't know why that was horrific, but in dreamworld, this was like taking the final exam for the class you forgot you signed up for. OMG serious.

On awaking, I immediately went downstairs and let the dog out and checked my email. Sometime later in the morning, I checked on Steve. Nobody panic.

If you knew me well in college, you knew I was pretty into Steve Taylor. He was funny, clever, pro-Jesus, and he could do it all in song. My personal ambition sleepwalked through college... I couldn't say I wanted to do what he did. But Steve Taylor was a noise the direction of wakefulness.

Around the time I graduated, he released his best album, Squint, and then traded performing for producing. It was the mid-90s, we were all becoming different people at that point. I started working on Dungeons & Dragons for a living then. We've all been there.

In the mid-aughts I checked in on Steve again, and found he'd gone to movie making. He made a flick starring Michael W. Smith of all people, called The Second Chance. It's a buddy movie about a white suburban pastor and a black inner-city pastor. It's in my Netflix queue now, I'll let you know what I think at the end of the month after I watch it.

And today? Now? He's in Portland working on a Blue Like Jazz movie.

BLJ's author, Donald Miller, is someone else I would have wanted to emulate if his books had been around in college. I'm sort of glad they weren't. They could have misled a sleepwalker.

These days, I get a prickly feeling on my neck when I consider trying to create some piece of art for an explicitly Christian audience. It seems as though it would be easy for me. And financially rewarding. I could do funny, touching memoir for the saved set. I could do a passable Don Miller.

But as I start down that road, I think of Jesus talking:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

A whole chunk of text there, Matthew 5:43-48, has kept me up nights. That bite's got a lot of hard-to-swallow. Jesus tells you to be "perfect" in there. He tells you the rough truth that God makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. And to me, he says that writing books for my brothers and sisters is not particularly what I'm called to do.

Look, God has a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people to be doing. I still love Steve Taylor's music and wit, and Don Miller is a decent writer. Don't hear me saying that what they've chosen to do is wrong or subpar or Not In God's Will.

But as my personal ambition rubs away eye boogers and stares into the bathroom mirror wondering when it shaved last, those noises... they're not for me to follow. I don't want to greet my brothers for a living. There's too many other people out there who need introductions.

I am glad Steve is alive, though. Check out his movie blog.

I am two metaphors for the economy

I am the canary in the coal mine of American jobs. As a serial freelancer and contract worker, I am the first one down when unemployment gas leaks out.

Happily, lately, I've been finding jobs again. If you're not clear how the economy's doing, ask me if I've got a job. It's a telling pixel of what's on the bigger screen.

Movies April 2010

The Men Who Stare at Goats
This movie could have been funny, but somehow... maybe in the editing? The jokes just fell flat. It was like comedy archaeology: You could see the bones of jokes. The set up, the punchline, the reaction, they were all there, but the meat was gone. Not funny. I don't understand what went wrong. All those great actors were doing decent work. But then the movie fell flat. Weird.

Whip It
If I were a girl, I guess I'd feel lightly empowered or something after this.

Fringe, season 1, disc 1

This is ok, I guess. The X-Files-y sci-fi of it is pretty cool, but the characters don't do much for me.

The Office, season 2

Netflix on Xbox lets us stream whole seasons of this show. So during protracted illness and unemployment, we watched a hella lot of Office. It's pretty good, although I am thankful that the show becomes less excruciating as it goes on. I had anxiety dreams starring Michael Scott halfway through the season I'm not eager to reproduce.

The Office, season 3
More of this.

Zombieland
This was fun. Pretty fun.

Transformers Animated
The animation here was weird, like, either the Koreans went off-model with impunity, or somebody was trying something "new" that didn't work when it comes to character elasticity. Especially the little girl, who seemed to change shape and proportions at random.

The story was ok though, especially for a G1 man such as myself.