not a bad day...

Regardless of the late start I got on the day, I gotta say that it shaped up pretty well.

Started with the emails back and forth that look like will get me a good recommendation on a job with a company I've been thinking about for a while. Good, that.

And then the bikey shtuff... first of all, a big Thank You Hug to the collective staff of the Infrastructure Planning and Street Maintence (and whoever else) at the City of Ann Arbor for the updates to Packard Rd. Been a pain in the ass in many ways, the construction project to bolster infrastructure (water, etc.) for the SE corner of the city resulted in new pavement that includes (ta daa!) bike lanes. They went from 2 lanes each way to 1 each way with a shared turn lane, and Full Sized Bike Lanes. Which kicks ass. Happy taxpayer, I am. And really has very little effect on traffic flow, given the feeder streets to that section of Packard and usage patterns. I realize that this is only 1 mile or so of changes, but it's a step in the right direction. Oh yeah, and it's right outside MY house. Now if only Morgan and York would fix the damn neon sign. It's incredibly tacky to be in such disrepair, and it's not like they don't bank large amount of cash from their froofy booze-n-cheese business. Pony up for the maintenance bucks, guys. The asphalt road is showing you up, and it just lays there.

For those interested in urban planning and transportation alternatives, check out the Ann Arbor Non-Motorized Transportation Master Plan. It's a long slog through a long document, but brings up all kinds of interesting planning, safety, and usage pattern factoids.

Other bikey news. It was absolutely perfect weather. 60 miles run through Waterloo, no bonking. Nice.

Bikey chit chat: rolling through Waterloo I ran into up Brian (Sociology grad and part-time wrench slinger for Two Wheel Tango) and we rode back eastward together. Plenty of chance to chat, and while we were talking for most of the way, my sore shoulders and post-ride cough gave me the distinct impression that he would spank me big time in a higher-stakes ride. Talked about this and that... lamented the fact that the Bloomer Park Velodrome is so far away, but so so fun. Now where in Washtenaw county could we put one? I mean, there's gotta be at least a couple hundred people that would be interested, what with the thousands of bike folks on the Ypsi/AA/Saline/Dexter/Chelsea axis. I'd love to make a comment about how Brian, as a part-timer, does more for the cred of the shop than Dennis (owner) does with his Mr.-Grumpy-doesn't-seem-to-want-you-as-a-customer attitude, but I'm not negative like that. or am I?

So then it was a christening of my new pressure cooker with with some cow peas, bacon, garlic, and kale, and a smidge o' red red wine for the glass. Gotta tell you, I do make a damn good bean dish, if I may say so m'self. The one thing I just love about kale, other than it's apparent surface hydrophobia, is that it takes abuse like no other leafy green I know. You can cook the snot out of it (i.e., toss it in and forget about it for a while) and it just takes the punishment and comes out tasty and nicely textured. It must have a little bit of masochist in it.

So I'm gonna head out and see Eastern Promises tonight just to try to cap it off with a flourish. Viggo makes a good movie, David Cronenberg (History of Violence, Crash, eXistenZ, The Fly) does really good stuff, and Naomi Watts? Well even if she hadn't pulled me in and ripped me a new one in 21 Grams, she is so... meow. Mmm, pretty. Throw in some Russian Mob intrigue and some prison ink, and I'm ready to be entertained.

Daywatch

Coming in June... part 2 of the Nightwatch trilogy - Daywatch. If you didn't catch Nightwatch and are a fan of the epic-battle-between-good-and-evil set-in-a-modern-day-shoot-em-up with-cool-soundtrack-and-reluctant-hero type of movie, you should definitely check out Nightwatch. Getcha started, ya know?

(of course, the whole "Chalk of Destiny" thing sounds a little too much like Bulletproof Monk or Tenacious D, but I'll give the Russians the benefit of the doubt and see it anyway)

weekend movie review

Saw a couple movies/talkies over the weekend - only one good.

Fast Food Nation: blech.
Gerg Kinnear is a funny guy, and the fast food shenanigans amuse, but you saw everything you needed to see in the trailer when the exchange goes "...and the fecal coliform counts are off the charts. Do you know what that means?" "uhm.. not really" "There's shit in the meat."

Spiderman 3: another stinker. Just waaayyy too preachy with the "revenge is not the solution" and "we all have the capacity for good or evil, and it's up to you to choose" messages. And even though he's part of the baby-faced white-boy twink trio (along with Jake "I can't quit you" Gyllenhaal and Elijah "someone take this ring from me" Wood), Tobey MacQuire just isn't that interesting to watch. The transition between good/evil spiderman was fairly lame and he didn't sell it worth crap. And all the silliness with side mini plots took way too much time.

The Last King of Scotland: The one redeeming spark in the weekend. Forrest Whittaker rocks. And that Idi Amin? Big-time nutjob, lemme tell ya. Just go see the movie. If you don't know much about him, check out the Wikipedia entry for him first. The bit about deciding on his title cracks me up: "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular" The saddest part of it all - the people of Uganda celebrate his rise to power after his coup against Obote... and the echoes of other celebrations of the vicious-dictator-after-vicious-dictator cycles of coup in African/South American countries. I'd wail to the skies "when will we learn!?", but we ain't quite learned in this country on not repeating mistakes, so it's not like it's anything not seen before.

This Film Is Fucking Wonderful

I don't know how to start this... Well, ok, how about this: You should see This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

Seriously. Move it up to the top of your Netflix queue, go see if Blockbuster has it, watch for it in your local independent theaters.

(Thanks to Pete and Laura for recommending this movie to me, by the way...)

It's this really surprising and illuminating documentary about the MPAA and specifically the ratings system that movies go through (you know, that G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 thing). The secrecy involved, the arbitrary and inconsistent way ratings are handed out, the ties to the movie industry and government lobbies.

Some of my favorite parts:
- The glaringly uneven treatment that the ratings board gives to sex vs. violence. (Lots of violence and killing is ok as long as there isn't blood on-screen, but a glimpse of pubic hair is indecent?)
- In a phone conversation between the head of the ratings board and the director of TFINYR , the ratings board person says (paraphrasing) "We [the ratings board] don't create values, we reflect the values of the culture we live in"... which would mean that if the culture was predominantly racist incestuous pedophiliacs, they would reflect that and defend their decision on "cultural values" grounds?
- Uneven treatment of hetero sex vs. gay sex. Great scene where they split-screen show identical shots from different movies. The camera angle is the same, the amount of clothing is the same, the depicted motion is the same, but if the people on screen are the same sex it gets an NC-17 rating and the hetero scene gets an R rating.
- The "surprising" revelation about industry connections (and presence of christian clergy?!) in the supposedly independent ratings appeal board.
- Interview with Matt Stone about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut where a scene was replaced and it changed the rating... the part where they find the tape of Cartman's mom in a German scheisse film. Previously the tape was of her fellating a horse. Though nothing was actually shown, talking about bestiality is apparently worse than talking about coprophilia. Horse cocksucking is indecent, but shit-eating is OK? How they came to that conclusion baffles me too.

And a curious devil's advocacy thought about censorship and libel though... if you make a documentary about an organization that is hidden from the public eye (and will not comment or reveal anything about themselves) does that mean you can essentially print/publish anything you want about them? If you make slanderous or libelous statements, the aggrieved party would have to sue you to stop you, and then in court there's the question of proof of whether the statements are true or not (and thus malicious libel, or just reporting the facts), which would reveal the hidden information. So they can't really sue because then they wouldn't be able to keep their secrets... wacky, hunh? I'm not saying that TFINYR is a work of fiction or that it's credibility is in doubt, but the nature of the secret organization means that the investigation of the secrecy itself cannot be verified for accuracy or bias.

wherever did my memory go?

If anyone finds my memories, would you mind returning them? Thanks.

I say this because I was browsing a friend's Netflix queue. I was adding comments about things that I liked and didn't like, hoping to spare them the pain of bad/unwatchable movies and wasted time. This led me to wonder and poke around in their history and see what they rated how.... which led me to wonder and poke around in my own history to see things I had watched (sort of a reversed cinematic ego-surfing).

While there's lots a remember watching, and even enjoying... did I even watch The Longest Yard? I don't remember it. Was it because beer was involved? And what the hell possessed me to get Mean Girls? For some reason, I can't remember the plot of Seabiscuit, though there sure was enough media buzz at the time that I should know it by osmosis.

But I am happy to report that I remember, enjoyed, and am happy to recommend: Crash, Secretary, Audition (caution: squirmy Japanese horror), 21 Grams, Oldboy, Traffic, and the new Battlestar Galactica series, to name a few.

exception to The Roth Rule

I have a rule about movies, and since I'm here, I'll be happy to share it with you, kind reader. It's called the Roth Rule. It all started when I noticed that there are some actors that just never seem to disappoint - no matter what the movie is about, and even if it's not in your preferred genre, if that actor has a significant role in the flick, it's usually pretty good. I'm talkin' Tim Roth, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, etc... Either they're so skillful that they can buoy a movie up by their sheer genius, or that they somehow manage to choose to work only on films that are really good and turn out well.

Perhaps you see where this is going... I caught a stinker today. Tim Roth in Invincible. Sure, I'll accept that Zishe Breitbart was a hero to Polish Jews ever since his career as a strongman in pre-war Germany and Poland... but for cryin' out loud, the movie sucked. Terribly, terribly. Not a single person other than Roth could act worth a damn. You know how one bad actor can screw a scene up so badly that it pooches the whole movie? Imagine a cast of dozens, screwing it up constantly. Maybe it just shouldn't have been an english-language script. Maybe it just should have been in Polish or German. Then they wouldn't be as crappy on-screen. Nevertheless, you can safely ignore this movie, and I'll start re-constructing the Roth Rule to accomodate outliers. Thanks, and have a nice day.

Wallace, Gromit, and Aardman (a fireman chasing an igloo)

Been a while since I've watched Wallace & Gromit, but this afternoon was a screening of The Holey Trinity at the Michigan Theater with a preview cheese-tasting on your way into the theater. The cheese tasting was disappointing (really just a cheese-teasing, in my opinion). Nevertheless, I was there with Jeff & Jill & kids, and it was kinda cool that, for Aiden and Sadie's first-ever movie theater experience, they went to a theater that has a real live organist that plays before the movies, and an opera pit too. Of course, every movie after this for their entire lives will be cheap and tawdry after being introduced to the gilt ceilings and red velvet curtain of that historic building. Warren might have issues with the audio there, but luckily I've managed to see past that and my joy at the grandeur of the place is undiminished.

I'd make some sort of snide comment hassling people who are making snide comments (uh, that'd be me too) vs. people who work for change (i.e., if you think the audio sucks so bad... what are YOUR great ideas, hmm?), but I'm above that. Ok, no I'm not. I guess I shouldn't be too rude to the guy who educated me about three-point lighting (or "hair lighting" as it may be known in da biz) on Saturday. But yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and be hassle-y.

Back to the toons... If you haven't seen the original Creature Comforts, it's available on YouTube here. Damn great stuff - the jaguar from Brazil being my favorite, but the turtle interview with the other turtle on the hamster wheel in the background is pretty funny too. There's a new Creature Comforts apparently coming to CBS (as a series?). And back to YouTube, there's another one with the comedy that is the tragedy of politicans here.

Let's not forget Shaun the Sheep, either.

Gone Beering, etc.

This weekend (tomorrow) is the Winter Beer Fest, which I won't hesitate to say I'm pretty stoked about. Gonna make a long day/weekend out of it - breakfast/lunch/brunch, then schlep out to Lansing, sample beer all afternoon, hang out with Georgina, Stacey, Andre, (Pete & Wendy?), goof around in town, then crash in Lansing, sleep in, and eventually come home sometime on Sunday. Not a bad plan, if I say so myself.

Finally am making "the switch"... I put my TV away in the basement storage locker some months ago, but somehow neglected to discontinue cable service because it's also my ISP. Well, I ordered up the DSL, the modem came in the mail yesterday, I'm waiting for it to get activated, and then I'll be free of the crappy Comcast service once and for all. I'll admit, I really don't miss TV. Sure, it's fun to watch the Toob and all, but I haven't had a speck of withdrawl.

I've been ignoring movies out there in the world for a couple weeks - I got the annual membership to Michigan Theater a while back, but haven't used it as much as I expected... I think I'll go see Sweet Land tonight (hopefully it's not playing in the cramped screening room). Either that, or Breach.

Oh yeah, and maybe later I'll tell the story about how one of my neighbors threatened to kill me yesterday. That one's pretty interesting...

Big Boom Bond

Went out to Bastone and The Magic Bag last night with Matt for eat, drink, and Casino Royale. (a bite, a beer, and a Bond). Was hoping to meet the Mysterious Megan, but was late to Matt's and missed her by about 5 minutes.

Bastone was tasty - I got their sampler to start with, and settled on the Dubbel afterwards - Dubbel was sweeter than other Dubbels, thicker on the tongue, and very dark. Belgian purists might take issue with it's Dubbel-ness, but it was tasty regardless. Their Pilsner was nice because it had some hoppiness to it (remarkable that I liked it, I generally HATE pilsners). The Wit was fairly standard - decent, but unremarkable (where's that killer Wit that I'm constantly searching for?), the Brown was drinkable but boring, and the IPA tasted like so many IPAs that are on the market now. Heavy hop, dry, tangy, blah blah blah. You know the drill. Food was pretty good, but in my hunger I gorged myself by having the truffled mac-n-cheese "entree" as an appetizer (on what fucking planet is mac-n-cheese legitimately an entree?), and then the pork mediallions. The actual cut of pork was ridiculous. Thin, tasteless, pasty colored with thin beige pseudo-gravy. The only thin that saved it was everything else on the plate - this au gratin potato lasagna thing, the apple/nut stuff over the pork, and the pea pod/leafy greens on the side.

(hey Bastone! why the hell don't you have a website that's easy to find? And since you apparently own Grizzly Peak too, what's the deal with there not being a GP site either? Is it some sort of protest thing?)

Heading over to Magic Bag for their Brew-n-View night - was only $2.00 to get in, so that's a good movie deal, but the $6 for the 11 oz. bottle of Guiness was ridiculous. Did I tip the bartenders? You bet your ass I didn't. $6 bottle? Kiss my ass. I'll buy your rip-off because I want it, but don't think I care what you think about me personally because I didn't tip you. Next time I'm bringing my own drink in with me.

Reflections on The New Bond:
- Definitely a change from previous Bonds, and the discontinuity in the storyline from previous 007 movies apparently even has a name... they call it a reboot.
- I miss the more refined intellectual and suave Bonds of Connery, Brosnan, and Dalton. Craig is more of a brute - the shaved bulging pecs and knobby nose, jumping from one construction crane to the next, I was half-expecting John Woo to have directed it.
- The gunbarrel sequence at the opening was a bummer. Usually there's more sex and less violence. I guess it goes with the new BoomLand Bond. Blow things up instead of seducing them.
- The 20 minute Texas-holdem sequence I could have done without. What happened to Baccarat? We've all seen the "I can see his tell now, he's bluffing, I'm all-in" stare-down on TV. Don't need to see it in a movie, and it was a waste of screen time. Easy to write dialog for though...
- Some good sexual one-liners along the way that I'm sure will work their way into day-to-day life, including: "Don't worry, you're not my type." "What type is that?" "Single."
- It was disappointing that they really neglected the "ooh, James..." breathy declaration by the love-interest (as they fade off the screen into some sexual escapade) that is so iconic of Bond flicks. The interaction/role of the women in this one is definitely a shift as well. At least they didn't show any female nipple - as fond of on-screen fem-nipple as I am, it wouldn't have been out of character for a Bond movie.

And lastly, not exactly movie-related, but... as Bond is seducing/rolling around on the floor with the mega-millionaire evil villain's wife in order to get info out of her, it occurs to me: No matter how rich and exotic someone is, the sex they have doesn't scale with the "size" of their life. Bill Gates doesn't have $10 billion sex, and neither does Paris Hilton or Nicolas Cage or the late Anna Nicole Smith. They might squeak out 4-5 orgasms a night, but they're orgasms just like the ones you and I have. Grim-faced silence, soft fluffy clouds, or sweaty thrashing screamers, the accessibility of the spectrum of orgasmic capacity is, in our celebrity-worshipping society, a fairly humanizing and leveling notion.

"you gonna pull those pistols, or whistle dixie?"

I've found a new appreciation for the Western as movie... I'm not sayin' they're my new-found joy or anything, but there's some subtlety in places I didn't expect. Of course, I could be reading into the dialog and seeing something that's not there, but in most movies (and particularly in Westerns where the dialog is sparse), scenes don't happen by accident. They have to consciously be put there, like the scene in The Outlaw Josie Wales after Josie and Lone Watie are galloping out of a Texas town where they just shot down 4 men. They slow their horses, and a brief conversation follows:

- Lone Watie: I noticed when you get to disliking someone, they ain't around fer long neither. How did you know which one was going to shoot first?
- Josie Wales: Well, that one in the center, he had a flap holster and he was in no itchin' hurry. And that one second from the left - he had scared eyes, He wasn't gonna do nothin'. But that one on the far left, he had crazy eyes. Figured him to make the first move.
- LW: How 'bout the one on the right?
- JW: [thinks for a second, spits at a scorpion] Never paid him no mind. You were there.
- LW: [as they ride off into the landscape, after a pause] I could've missed.

And in that pause and those three words "you were there," he communicates a notion that seems to be conveyed best in a Western with sparse dialog and squinting towards a vast landscape: they only met weeks ago, but Josie trusts him with his life. He didn't even have to think about it at the time of gunplay - he just knew that Lone Watie had his back. So much so that he didn't have to think about it. At the time LW asked, he even had to think back about why he didn't have to worry about the man on the right. JW says this to LW, communicating his friendship and trust indirectly, as in all Westerns (and lots of other "guy movie" genres). That he already knew LW would be there, and that LW wouldn't have missed because JW is confident in LW's steady aim - showing his confidence and trust yet again. In Clint Eastwood's trademark squint, there's almost a smile there, and if it weren't a Western, the ol' "punch on the shoulder" among friends would fit right into the scene there.

Lord of the Perfumer (Tykwer movie)

I thought it was going so well... until it went and fucked itself. (and I'll try not to spoil any ending details)

I went to see Perfume: The Story of a Murderer at the Michigan Theater tonight. You may remember Tom Tykwer from the remarkable Run Lola Run a couple years back, and this one is as remarkable to begin with. Starts slow, with a little bit of that fairy-tale story narration background and development. The visuals are great. The journey and obsession of the perfumer is compelling. And the transition from victim to hero to villain to messiah to __?__ is slow and smooth. Credit to be given for that.

But Tykwer sharply and directly screwed the pooch when he brought on the whole-village orgy scene (I bet you're wondering "now how could that be a bad thing?" Trust me, bad acting, even by 1000 naked extras, is still bad acting). This would be the point where the movie became a hackneyed cross between Jitterbug Perfume (the quest for the ultimate scent "something the ancients knew but was lost in modern history") Lord of the Rings ("one perfume to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them") The Pied Piper, and Jack the Ripper.

One thing about Grenouille not having his own bodily smell, yet collecting and preserving the smells of others - a little too heavy handed with the smell-as-metaphor-for-soul. It's fairly clear that Grenouille is essentially a sociopath and has no understanding or empathy for other human beings. If he did, he wouldn't be killing. Maybe it's his lack of scent that makes his sense of smell so powerful?

Hell, maybe you'll like it if you see it. If you do, do let me know what you think of the turn it takes right at the orgy/public execution (which isn't the ending, by the way).

House of Sand and Fog

Fan of movies of visceral personal tragedy? If you haven't seen House of Sand and Fog, with Sir Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly... go rent it. The quiet struggle, the descent into despair, the agony of the compound tragedy, all of it. Talking about it seems so weak in comparison. They didn't get an Oscar for it (Lord of the Rings got it that year, so I don't begrudge the academy) but... damn.

(see also: 21 Grams - another emotional-spin-cycle-rip-your-guts-out human struggle)

Babel movie

Saw Babel last night (new movie - the Brad Pitt/KateWinslet movie about connections between people all over the world to a single bullet). Like some of the other work by director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), it definitely is an ambient film. There are characters, plot, setting, and all that, but were it succeeds is more by setting tones than any of the above. The transitions from heartbreaking anguish to moments of sublime tenderness are so smooth you don't even notice... until it goes back to grief. Something of an emotional marathon not unlike 21 Grams. Good visuals, too.

Brad Pitt was unremarkable, and Kate Winslet spent most of the movie half-conscious and bleeding incoherently on-screen, but the less-recognizable actors made up for the deficits. One regret - that there wasn't more resolution to Gael García Bernal's character. I don't know where this guy came from, but ever since Amores Perros and The Motorcycle Diaries,
it seems like he just doesn't ever disappoint. Along the lines of my thoughts on Arcadia Brewing Company and Tim Roth - they just always seem to do no wrong in their work.

as if Blade:Trinity weren't enough, now there's a series? I just don't understand how this storyline can be so long-lived. Just.... how is this possible?