fine whine

I’ve never been much a fan of horror films. That said, the library is rapidly running out of movies that spring to mind when I want to reserve and watch something new or different.

I haven’t heard all that many bad things about John Landis’s foray into the horror genre, An American werewolf in London and I’ve been on a mini Jenny Agutter kick since I watched Logan’s run earlier this month. As it happens the library owns about six of her films and I just didn’t feel like taking on Child’s play 2 or a Shakespeare adaptation or two (wow, talk about a range there), so I gave in and checked this out.

Overall it’s not so bad for a werewolf movie, let alone one made in the early 1980s. Part of that might be due to its setting in the English countryside and London, two places that tend to look a lot less dated in films than corresponding areas of America. Then again, this is Europe, where the history comes from (so says Eddie Izzard). So perhaps it looks dated to European eyes, not mine.

Anyway, it’s not so much the setting and costume that don’t date the film but the overall production. Clearly this was made before the days of ubiquitous CGI, but for largely in-camera effects the makeup and props work quite well. One of the early scenes in the hospital finds Griffin Dunne quite torn up and falling apart, but not cheesily so. Instrumental to that scene, however, is his character’s relative indifference to his wounds (and, well, death) and the conversational tone he adopts with his aghast (and alive) friend.

Of course later on when he’s more decomposed the illusion’s not so seamless, but you can only slap so much stuff on a person’s head and make it look real, I’d wager.

Anyway, the movie’s enjoyable enough if not really so deep. Landis copped out on the whole “character development” thing by having external factors change the people more than anything like introspection and whatnot, but this is a horror movie, after all. I think.

I’ve seen it billed as a comedy, but it’s not really that funny. There are some funny bits, but it’s not laugh-out-loud hilarious and given Landis’s track record (The Blues brothers and Animal house among others) I don’t think he was quite trying for that this time around.

So give it a watch sometime, but don’t expect to be scared silly or tickled pink. There’s a middle state there, somewhere, but nobody’s quite named it yet.

So yesterday at work I was expecting a package from a factory we use in Mexico. They shipped it last week and by now it should’ve been here, except that when I tracked it the package had apparently gone to Roissy, France.

UPS had this to say, as something of an apology, I suppose:

AN INCORRECT ROUTING AT A UPS FACILITY CAUSED THIS DELAY;THE PACKAGE WAS MISSORTED AT THE HUB. IT HAS BEEN REROUTED TO THE CORRECT DESTINATION SITE

I can understand. I mean, who wouldn’t confuse Roissy, France with Columbus, Ohio?

I finally broke down and watched Logan’s run yesterday.

Years ago I’d read what I thought was a thin paperback novelization of the movie, due in large part to words like “Now a major motion picture” on the cover atop a picture of Michael York, but I see now that this was, in fact, the actual novel from which very little was used for this film. In an effort not to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t read the book, seen the original or the inevitable (and I believe in-progress) remake, I’ll mention no more about the plot.

The production designer, or at least the location scout, was really, really good for this film. Shopping malls, water parks and hotel lobbies were all incorporated with matte paintings and model work and made for a fairly sophisticated vision of the future, circa 1976. I can now finally understand pop culture references deeper than the passing mention to this film in Free Enterprise, and can even recognize the artistry used in the Family Guy homage in one episode or another.

To be honest, I’m intrigued at what a modern filmmaking team will do with this. Some of it was rather a bit ahead of its time, with lo-fi PDAs and all, but whoever ends up doing it will no doubt need to amp up the effects (and the action) to fit today’s cinematic sensibilities. Hell, they might even try to film the book, instead of writing scenes around a bunch of (albeit quite neat) sets and locations. One bonus to remaking a movie with subject matter like this? Anybody still alive from the original is far too old (or frighteningly well preserved) for the obligatory cameo. For that matter, Michael York looked too old for the role even then.

Sometime a while ago I stumbled across t-shirt e-tailer Threadless, and at the time I filed it away as a neat idea but the shirts were a bit pricey. I also thought it would be neat to create a design for them, and promptly forgot about ever actually doing that.

Fast forward to today when I discovered that they were having a weekend sale with a decent discount, and as I was in a buying mood at the time, I decided to mull it over for the rest of the day. In the end I bought two shirts, after looking through my closet at my pretty sorry collection of cool t-shirts that I am able to wear more than twice a year.

I’m looking forward to wearing this shirt on casual Fridays. Now that zombies are cool again I should be the epitome of hipness, even without needing to watch reality television.

Speaking of TV, when I browse through photos (on flickr and elsewhere) I find myself drawn to images of broken and destroyed televisions. So this shirt really appealed to me, and I don’t have too many brown t-shirts to boot.

So yeah, I splurged, but I can rationalize my purchases because they were on sale for a third off. The sale ended tonight but anybody who wants to buy some (still reasonably-priced) t-shirts would do well to follow this link and I’ll get some minor compensation. I’ll make it back up to you in karma and goodwill, or perhaps some other small bribe.

Tonight we watched Robots which, by my count, is the thirteenth major blockbuster film entirely created with CGI*.

Naturally I have omitted from my count the likes of Jimmy Neutron and Veggie Tales and other non-blockbuster or kid-exclusive films. I guess I’m a snob.

Moreover I’m something of a Pixar snob. The last Pixar movie I watched was the superlative Incredibles. The last Dreamworks movie I watched was Shrek and I’ve never seen a Blue Sky Studios film until now.

Then again, this is only their second one.

Dreamworks hasn’t impressed me since they made Antz which didn’t seem all that bad, as much as I can recall of it. At the time I watched it I enjoyed it a bit more than I did A Bug’s Life but that could have been my propensity at the time for the films of Woody Allen and not those of the entomological propensity. Were I watch the two of them now it is in fact difficult to say which I will enjoy more, and if I can’t come up with anything better to reserve from the library I might just try the comparison.

As I said, Antz aside, I haven’t found myself too fond of the all-CGI films in which Pixar had no hand. I’d like to think that I’m bigger than to just like one studio (or ideology or whatever), so I make up bogus excuses about overly exaggerated, cartoony art direction and too up-to-the-minute pop culture references. Dreamworks (they of the Shrek juggernaut) is far too guilty of this for me to even consider watching the supposedly-abysmal Shark tale.

But back to Robots. Some time ago I’d seen the preproduction renders and I admit even then the art was quite impressive. The visual team did a great job imagining what a world comprised of rocket-age robots just might look like, and colorfully so. Too bad the writers weren’t nearly up to the task of matching them for sophistication.

After all, no movie deserves a ten minute sequence about armpit farts (though I must admit the chalk outline of the lightpost-bot afterward is a nice touch). That was one of four times where the movie came to a halt. Another was a brief dance number scored to Britney Spears’s “Hit me baby one more time” and the other two were elaborate action set pieces that looked cool but dragged on well past the suspension of belief. There’s a bit that makes up at least a quarter of the film that shows a cross-town transit system that would’ve done Rube Goldberg proud, except for the fact that in the end it ultimately does have a purpose. The domino sequence, on the other hand, is completely without purpose.

I can’t find it in myself to really dislike the film, though. They threw a lot of interesting stars into the production, some worth hearing. For every Halle Barry or Paula Abdul or Jennifer Coolidge there was a Paul Giamatti, Drew Carey and Mel Brooks. The cast was almost too star-studded, as I couldn’t determine that it was in fact Greg Kinnear playing the slick executive since his star is so much dimmer than Ewan and Stanley and Halle’s.

Overall though it was obviously the triumph of lots of style over very little substance. Frankly I didn’t care much at all for the story nor was I surprised by much of what happens. The lesson Blue Sky (and Dreamworks, and even Disney these days) need to learn is that a good story matters more than anything else, no matter how cool the rest of it may look.

Contrast Ferngully: the last rainforest with The Last Starfighter. Both feature early CGI, though Starfighter’s is much more advanced; what matters though is that the story is just so much better than that cheesy cartoon we’ve all but forgotten as enviromentalism is no longer cool. But I digress. Back to the ‘bots.

Jessica rather enjoyed the movie, and in the interest of showing her things that amuse her I’ll likely get Ice Age, Blue Sky’s first foray into the world of big-screen pixels. I’d avoided it until now as it looked utterly uninteresting, but I’d rather we sit through that than another vapid Reese Whitherspoon vehicle.

Of course, as soon as she’s among the cast of a CGI flick it’ll be a whole different matter entirely.

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*My list, in no order whatsoever, is thus: Toy Story 1 & 2, A Bug’s Life, Antz, Monsters, Inc., Final Fantasy: the spirits within, Ice Age, Finding Nemo, Shrek 1 & 2, The Incredibles, A Shark’s Tale and now Robots.

You know, the Honda Ridgeline is really, really ugly. It looks like somebody grafted the midsection of an old Chevy Caprice onto the front end of a mid 80s Ford pickup with the rear end of a Subaru Brat scaled up to match them. Then throw in a bit of the Tonka-esque influence of the Avalanche, and you’ve got one of the ugliest trucks on the road.

Well, to me, at least. Fortunately I haven’t seen a single one yet outside of television commercials and billboards. Perhaps I’m not the only one thinking they’re an eyesore.

Generally when I receive a junk email message that finds its way through my filter it’s worth checking out, or at least one in ten is. In this case, I cannot divine what it is that they are trying to sell me, other than the cryptic clue in the subject “Re: (11-94) Dru.gss” and probably some hidden HTML.

I just get a kick out of randomized emails, and not too many get past Spamassassin. This one did.

Hello,
And he tightened his lips. I’ll have the rods to you, until the
France and Spain in Europe. It is the intention of France that
into the treasury opened by the Baron in the name of the King of
venture with him, they asserted, and they would go out of it with
even the things that had happened in Bridgetown were not enough t
half the peril with which it was fraught for himself. He turned
lordship can’t smell a papist at four paces.
rays streamed down upon that mangled, bleeding back until he felt
misapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of
it a haze which circumscribed their range of vision to something
 
Have a good day.

Hidden away in the source, of course, is a link and some more text about a pharmacy by mail, but I needed to search to find it. I suspect if I used the same diligence to find myself a real pharmacy (and everybody else did) we wouldn’t be getting these messages.

I mean, how many people are really waiting for an internet pharmacy to plop into their inboxes? “Whoa, hey, now I can order that Zocor I’ve been waiting for!”

haiku takes up space
since I opt to write nothing
until much later

[I’m not really posting this, as I am in the air flying over the arctic circle at the moment. I also don’t really want to figure out which time zone in which this should be posted.]

Every day here at the Kowloon Hotel I find a newspaper in a bag on my doorknob, and on my way out I usually chuck the paper onto a growing pile atop my desk. Today, however, I opted to bring it with me, leaving the empty bag to look forlorn and devoid of purpose on my doorknob. I must assume that the proper authorities will give it the care and attention that it needs, just as my room is always mystically tidied up when I return with my pajamas folded and my free water bottles replenished. It’s magic, I think.

So anyway I grabbed today’s Standard and flipped through it during the morning cab ride (5.42 kilometers this time over 10.55 minutes and found some interesting things.

On the second page I discovered that the (Frank Gehry-designed) Los Angeles Walt Disney Concert Hall (which is enough proper nouns to create several smaller buildings) is apparently reflecting heat at some nearby condominiums. I am assuming that Frank never considered what his parabolic sheets of steel would do to the people and buildings at their focal points. Read more about the building here. According to the little bit in the paper, a “A US$90,000 (HK$702,000) makeover of the structure’s stainless steel panels is being carried out in an effort to reduce the heat reflected at condominiums whose air-conditioning system is being overwhelmed.” So it’s not particularly local but it’s an interesting to know for no reason at all.

In that category also can be filed an update about the Michael Jackson trial. I’m staying in the dark as to what is going on, so to read about people being trapped in the Neverland fortress make no sense to me, nor stories of Jackson staffers physically threatening the guests, nor rumors of smear campaigns and maligned hypnotists (well, he’s only attached to the trial because he shares a publicist with Mike). About those I really do not care, nor will I seek more information. I did find one thing interesting: this former publicist has testified that she had a theory that Sony is actively seeking to let him destroy himself so that they will somehow get their music rights back–to the Beatles and his own and so on. It’s an intriguing idea and no doubt merely the first of the new conspiracy theories surrounding famous black men and their trials. Or not.

I discovered that one of the companies with which we work to make our jeans (and other clothes) is also the owner of the Circle K chain of convenience stores. To discover that is to realize that I really don’t know much at all about the companies with which we have dealings.

Then again I don’t know much in general, particularly about the international community. According to a recent survey (sampled dubiously, mind you) over half of the Chinese people surveyed thought that the “the US is trying to contain the mainland’s development” but even more than that “admired or accepted American culture”. Just over ten percent considered the US government to be “friendly”, citing concerns about US’s attitude about Taiwan (and the weapons we apparently sell them) but also noting the war in Iraq being waged under false pretenses. Furthermore four of every five thought that the US and China could come to blows in the future solely because of the whole Taiwan issue. I honestly know very little about Taiwan, and would probably give pretty skewed and scattershot answers to a similar questionnaire given to me about us and China and Taiwan. And in other nearly meaningless metrics, some estimates peg the number of smokers in China at 350 million, which other estimates would indicate to be some thirty six percent of the population. This is also apparently one third the number of smokers in the entire world, according to other estimates. That is a lot of smokers, in any estimation.

China is almost an entirely different world altogether. Up front I must admit that I only got two hours into the Canton province on Tuesday, but I suspect what I saw is representative of much of the country, and I will be generalizing about all of the large country based on a very, very small chunk of one corner of it. China is under construction. All of it. Everywhere we went there were buildings being torn down and thrown up and lots being leveled and streets being paved and overpasses being built. It is a state of utter chaos.

There’s a story on page A11 about the government attempting to clamp down on rampant illegal power plant construction. I don’t know much about the law, but I think there should be far more involved in building a power plant as compared to, say, having a stall at night selling knockoff Prada and Rolex merchandise, but apparently several plants are underway at this very moment, recklessly so. Moreover they are “often irrespective of environmental procedures and without proper planning procedures.” which is good to know, I suppose. Note that down, clandestine megawatters, that you should plan properly and be nice to the environment–not that the government seems to be doing anything of the sort.

And not that this is related to anything, but I need to remember that the “New Mail Notification” wav file that I prefer is ir_end.wav for that special ‘woosh’ that seems somehow nicer than the generic dings and bings and whatnot.