Category: movies

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impending steampunk cinema

Tonight is a sneak preview for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I’ve been excited to see this since I first saw the previews what must be at least a year ago. Feels like this movie has been about to come out forever. I’m really only going to see giant robots trampling through a steampunk city.

I reached a milestone today in my “rip all CDs to mp3” project: I’m finally into the ‘C’s. I have about 215 albums ripped at this point, and about a hundred of them are filed under A or B. At last count, I had about 800 CDs, (but that doesn’t count multi-cd sets or box sets) so at best I’m about a fourth done. Looking at my shelves at home is frustrating though, as the progress seems nowhere near that far.

In City of Hero news, the Atomic Pig made level 19 last night. I’ve sworn I’d make level 20 before the new update comes out… but seeing as how we’ve all already downloaded it (it just hasn’t been “turned on” yet), I’m guessing they’re going to throw the switch sometime very soon. (Which means I may not make my self-imposed deadline.) I didn’t even have to convince laura to create a character the other day when she did. She spent over two hours in the character creation process, and then spent about ten minutes playing before she was tired of it.

I have a new idea for blogistry.com (which I own but have done basically nothing with. I’m thinking about just writing or finding some kind of syndication software to syndicate blogs that are “known” experts in the blog software realm. Ideally, I’d only syndicate entries that were in suitable categories. Of course, this brings up rights issues and all that kind of jazz, so I’d probably want to get permission from everyone first. But the idea is that there’s no way I’m going to be an expert in every blog-related field. Hell, I doubt I’m an expert in ANY blog-related field at this point. My changes to WordPress are still sitting in the back of my brain, unmade and only half-formed.

I notice that I have more desire to read blogs when I’m actually actively blogging. A month or two ago in an IM conversation, Yami said she reads blogs like I play videogames. (Which basically meant for her every day after she gets off work. My video game schedule is much more sporadic and unscheduled.) Anyway, reading even just the ones I want to read is quite a hefty time commitment. I don’t think I was probably ever “into it” to the point where I would read all the ones I wanted to, and I probably never will be. I just hope I can at least keep up with my friend’s blogs for a while at least. (But by “keep up” I don’t mean every day or anything.)

It is interesting to note the rate at which emails and comments about my last entry have hit my ears and inbox. I suppose it carried a fair bit of “heavy” news, and coupled with your inability to leave comments here, you’re probably all just dying to express some kind of sympathy. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, other than to reassure people that it’s probably not as bad as it all sounded. I was quite depressed, but have been much better. Laura and I are good, but not really in danger of getting engaged again any time soon. (And she has certainly not expressed a desire to do so, despite having occasionally seemed wistful and upset about it herself.) I don’t think I’m going to go into all the gory details here, (although some part of me wants to) mostly because they’re over, and I want to focus on the present.

…like Sky Captain in T-minus 1.5 hours.

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lists and lists and lists

I’ve only read 58 of Phobosweb’s top 100 science fiction books. That’s just under half, but then again, I’m not sure I agree with their list really. Off the top of my head Iain M. Banks and Rudy Rucker are missing for sure, and there are a bunch of books that I have read that I would consider mediocre at best.

Their Top 50 sci-fi movies are not really any better in my opinion, but I did add the 16 that I haven’t seen (see below) to my netflix queue when they had them. (Apparently Forbidden Plannet (1956) hasn’t been released on DVD yet, and I couldn’t even find This Island Earth (1955) or Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) which is being remade for release sometime next year as directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans–that should be good for a laugh.)

Speaking of lists, last night I compiled a list of Fringe shows I still really want to see, and realized that this afternoon I’m going to have to try and catch AKESPEARESHAY, and Philosophy: The Music of Ben Folds. I’m sorta skipping a work meeting to see them, but the first one especially is one that I really want to see, and this’ll be the second to last show. (I don’t know if I’ll be able to make the last one.) I’m pretty sure the meeting can be postponed without anybody complaining too much.
Continue reading “lists and lists and lists”

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movies you should never watch

My list of movies that should never have been made was expanded by one last night with the addition of Audition, a Japanese movie about torture! Oh yes, you have to be a sick fuck to enjoy this one.

Other movies on this list (for those with the “What can I watch to help me become a serial killer?” question rattling around in their brains) include Vulgar (a movie about clown rape) and one I can’t remember the name of, and honestly haven’t even watched the whole way through because I got stuck on the ten minute rape scene.

Apologies to E who brought the movie over for yelling at the TV so much. She didn’t know it was going to be that bad.

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sweet movies and music

Last night I watched the Hero DVD I bought off ebay last week. I invited a few people over to watch it, but by the time they all got there, Nate was playing DDR in the living room, so a few of them did that, while I finished up a puzzle in the kitchen with Keith and Mike. It got to be 11, and everybody had to get up early, so they all left me to watch it by myself.

The movie feels a lot like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It doesn’t have quite the emotional impact of Crouching Tiger, but the cinematography and visuals are at least as good if not better. Also, I think there may be more/better fight scenes overall (a few more viewings are needed to make that judgement, however). Anyway, the fight scenes were very well done. Hell, everything about the movie was well done.

I posted a pic of the import dvd cover over on the moblog.

Today’s other news is that I picked up my listener appreciation gift for buying 25 watts from RadioK this morning. (Also wrote them a rather fat check while I was there–each watt is $10, you do the math.) Anyway, 25 watts was the only way I could get the complete first year of Some Assembly Required on CD. (I called and asked, believe me.) Seeing as how it’s the only radio show I really try to catch, and also seeing as how I basically almost never do, I figured it was worth the money–plus it’s a really good cause in general.

Cool link of the day: This Flash movie illustrating a song made entirely in windows SNDREC32.EXE. It’s a pretty sweet song actually, and worth listening to.

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bill an the gang

well, I got so many great comments on that last post that I decided to reply out here.

Firstly, Roody, you should recommend me some W.J. Williams stuff. I’ve never read any, and I’m not sure where I would want to start. Of course, I’ve got like a dozen books on my shelf at home to read (as soon as I finish the two novels I’m in the middle of right now), but I want to add some to the list!

Second, Hollywood can suck it, as far as I’m concerned. ;)

kill bill part deux… was just not for me. I’m probably just not enough of a film buff to have understood (or cared) about how this movie was an homage to anything or anyone. Sure, there were different styles of film (more so in the first one, I felt–I’d have liked to have seen another cartoon/anime part in the second film) but I guess I feel like Tarantino just didn’t take that idea far enough for me to have enjoyed it for that aspect.

Also, I think the second film sucked in comparison to the first one. For instance, I LOVED the action scene with the crazy 88 in the first one, but lets just say the second one didn’t live up to its action-scene expectations for me. I didn’t feel like the first movie was too long, but I DEFINITELY felt that way about the second one. The first one was non-linear, but without being confusing in any way… but during the second one I didn’t always feel like I knew where in the story we were. I’m not going to say any more about what I didn’t like in the second one cause I don’t want to give anything away here… but lets just say that I enjoyed the trailer for Hero (yes, the same one I just bought on DVD) more than I did the movie we were there to see.

Next item on the agenda–categorizing movies by ‘good’ versus ‘worth seeing’. Was kill bill v.2 worth seeing? Yes. Was it good? Definitely not. I guess I just think a lot of campy and/or action intensive movies are worth seeing, but I would never call them good overall. For me, personally, a good movie has to have plot, acting, writing, action, special effects and cinematography that all at least compare in some positive way to movies that do any of those particular traits really well. The movies that just have one or two aspects going for them are usually mediocre at best. But I usually don’t even mind a mediocre movie if it does something really well. Fight scenes, for instance. Kill bill v.1’s fight scenes made the movie worth seeing for me, but it basically had very little other redeeming value in my opinion.

And of course there are infinite other possible categorizations for movies. The imagination is the limit.

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movie compulsion….

At various times, I’ll admit, often in the midst of depression, I feel the urge to purchase things. Owning things is so stupid… yet the act of acquiring them can also be intensely satisfying.

I splurged on Monday and bought some movies off ebay. Twin Warriors, Hero, Juvenile and Wonderful Days. Twin Warriors is the only one I’ve seen before, and I remember it as one of the better choreographed kung-fu movies I’ve ever seen. I read somewhere that most of the fighting is actually Tai-Chi as well, (The hong kong release title was The Tai-Chi Master.) and I’m sorta excited to watch it again with that in mind.

Hero I heard about last weekend at Minicon in a panel where guest of honor Walter Jon Williams showcased his kenpo skills and talked about how martial arts has influenced his writing. The kenpo was interesting, but I left mainly with a list of action movies I now want to see.

Juvenile and Wonderful days were just movies I decided to pick up because they were a) cheap on ebay, b) highly rated on IMDB and c) foreign science fiction films I’d never even heard of!

Alright, I’m off to spend a little bit of time with laura before we go see a sneak preview of Kill Bill vol. 2 tonight. I’m glad I don’t have to pay money to see the sequel. I sorta reserved judgement on the first one, despite some excellent action sequences. I don’t really feel action alone is enough to carry a movie anymore… it makes it “worth seeing”, but not, in my opinion, good. Although maybe I should also say that there are some movies I like only for the action, and that is enough for them to be good–but if there also happen to be other aspects of the film that I dislike, then the action is not enough by itself to sway the movie into my “good” graces.

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turkey down, ham to go

So, what do 20 or 30 relatives who see each other about once a year have in common? Relatively little.

Ha!

Actually, the one thing we seem to all share in abundance is the desire to watch DVDs. Particularly sci-fi DVDs. (I suppose the medium is not really all that important, DVD just happens to be the most convenient format available.) My cousins have a wall-projection TV mounted to the ceiling of their basement, (where all of us minnesota cousins are sleeping for the duration), and the surround sound system down there is pretty kick ass.

Today I have watched: Reign of Fire, Ocean’s Eleven (ok, that was last night before we went to bed), Castaway and Death to Smoochie (which I bought on DVD for $10 at the video store), plus bits and pieces of 2010, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Spy Kids. We didn’t actually watch 2010, because I convinced people that if we were going to watch it, there was a perfectly good DVD downstairs, (and they happened to be surfing the cable channels and stumbled onto it.) We still saw about half an hour of it, in the middle somewhere. Remind me to watch the whole thing sometime.

I should have finished my book instead. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m reading Jeff Noon’s new novel, Falling out of Cars. It’s pretty weird. I love the writing style, but so far the story has gone nowhere, and not very fast at that. The premise is decent, but I’m afraid when all is said and done it may have been a better short story than it has been a novel. I’ll let you know when I finish it.

Oh yeah, and my cousin Rebecca has a couple of blogs. I haven’t pried the URLs out of her yet, but she’s got one on blogger and one on LiveJournal. I mentioned movable type, and she at least knew what it was. We have yet to sit down at a computer togetherÂ…

I read this popular science article about vole monogamy this afternoon. It’s interesting. Makes me wish we were that simplistic. Hell, maybe we are, and all the speculative stuff at the end of the article is just hot air. (That was kinda what I thought it was as soon as they stopped talking about voles, so who knows?) Now I just need to get my hands on some liquid oxytocinÂ…