Denying Genocide in Darfur — and Americans Their Coca-Cola - washingtonpost.com
Sudan threatens to cut off the export of Arabic Gum, an essential ingredient in cola for which it is the lead supplier, if the US imposes sanctions.
31 May 2007
Secret Island for Elephants Discovered Off Coast of Sudan
Secret island for elephants discovered off coast of Sudan | the Daily Mail
Hundreds of elephants escaped massive hunting on the mainland.
The Batman's Irrational Exuberance
The Batman’s Irrational Exuberance
A look at the Batman of Morrison’s current run and of Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.
30 May 2007
The Golden Compass Trailer
If you haven’t seen it, the teaser trailer for this winter’s The Golden Compass is out. Bear with the LotR plug for its first few seconds.
Not a lot of daemon action in the clip, but it’s possible they’re going to be CG and the animation isn’t finished yet. Reading the book I always pictured them looking a little bit magical, maybe slightly transparent, but I think probably they’re just supposed to look like normal animals.
According to an interview done by The Guardian, director Chris Weitz is going to be downplaying some of the anti-religious themes, which doesn’t seem possible by the time you get to the third book, though I think in fact the books end up in a pretty strange place and maybe cutting some of the more out there themes isn’t so bad an idea. I like that he says he’s going to let the film speak for itself in the face of inevitable American criticism of its take on religion. I’m pretty sure though that there’s little chance the ending of the books will remain intact.
iTunes Plus and EMI's DRM-Free Music Hands-On
iTunes Plus and EMI’s DRM-free music hands-on - Engadget
Worked as advertised for Engadget, though I haven’t tried it myself. You can click a button to upgrade (for a fee) your entire library to higher quality, copy-protection-free versions.
On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist
On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist
This story was, I’ve just learned via Wikipedia, a strong inspiration of Philip Pullman in writing His Dark Materials, along with Paradise Lost.
25 May 2007
The Fountain
Going in, I expected The Fountain to be a bit more literal than what it turns out to be. I thought it was a set of three stories, one set in the past, one the present, and one the future, which it is, and that there was a story about reincarnation and lovers finding each other in different lives, which it sort of is, but in watching it you realize it’s much more subtle and spiritual than that. I do recommend seeing this film, but it’s not for everyone. It’s a bit slow and there’s no explained connection between the three stories. Pay close attention to references to the Garden of Eden and to the Mayan creation story.
Wired has a good writeup about the story behind the film. It took Aronofsky years to get the film made. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were originally attached but had to back out, forcing Aronofsky to stop and bid it back out for half the budget.
(I hate the style of artwork Amazon uses on some DVDs. Hey look! There’s a DVD included with that DVD! You can see the DVD right there next to the artwork!)
Serialized Fiction
Yesterday I was talking about bit about how the end of this season of Lost was very good, while the beginning was very slow (duh). I’m sure that the creators of the show may say that the beginning was slow on purpose because it was all buildup, and that if you go back and watch them again you’ll understand why they had to be that way to set up the ending to be so good.
Related, today Good Comics writes about DC Comics’s Countdown, which isn’t quite starting off with a bang. He says:
Serialized fiction does not work that way […] An individual comic, if it is bad, does not suddenly become good because it tied into a bigger story.
You can choose to tell a graphic novel, or you can tell a serialized story. If you tell a serialized story, you have to live and die with each serialized part of the story. If they are bad individually, then they are bad. The story as a whole might very well be good, but that doesn’t make Countdown #51 good because Countdown #25 might be. [Countdown’s issues numbers count down from 51 to 0, so 25 is still six months away.]
I tend to agree. You can’t make a bunch of TV episodes that are really slow and don’t go anywhere and expect people to trust you in October and wait for a payoff that won’t air until April or May. For a movie where the payoff is only two hours away, that’s fine, but a week between episodes is long enough that you really do have to judge each episode on its own.
24 May 2007
Lost Finale
Spoilers!
I think universally everyone liked this episode. Finally the story moves forward! I don’t think, though, that it feels so good because it was so slow earlier. The creators will surely come out and say that they intentionally set up the season to build up slowly and then be released toward the end, but really I think they were just killing time. It’s my belief that with serial dramas like this, the creators have in mind the major story points of the whole series, but then have to hold back as the grind of producing more and more episodes weighs them down. The X-Files is a paramount example of this, Twin Peaks, too. I recall an interview with the writers on 24 in the first season. They had the whole season planned out, and then by episode 10 they’d already told most of the story they wanted to, and had to start stalling (give Jack’s wide amnesia!)
Anyway, on to the finale. I was bothered last week, though I understood if, by Charlie’s dismissal of Hurley when he wanted to help out on the underwater mission, and likewise with Sawyer treating him like a kid last night, so it was great to see him burst in with the van and get credit for saving the day.
Because they didn’t show us Jin, Bernard, and Sayid’s bodies, I didn’t buy that they were dead. In season one when Charlie was almost hanged, I completely thought they were willing to kill off major characters at random. It’s a great way to bring the serious to a story (see: Serenity), but in this case it was an obvious bluff.
Charlie’s death wasn’t set up right. Watching it, we just kept asking, “why didn’t he just run out the door and slam it shut?” and “can’t he swim out that porthole?” It seems like the set builders didn’t know what was supposed to happen in the scene. Even if they whole station had flooded, they swam in, right? Why wouldn’t they have been able to swim out? They could have made the flooding start before Charlie typed the code in, so that he’d have to stay and shut off the hardware and wouldn’t have time to swim out. They even had the musical code set up for Charlie to be able to unlock it but not Desmond, but there wasn’t a time crunch while that was happening. Charlie’s my favorite character on the show, and I love the idea of his heroic death, but not its implementation. The way it was done, it looked like he just gave up so that he could be a hero.
At the start of the episode we wondered if Jack’s stuff might really be a flash-forward, but then I talked myself out of the idea because it sounded like he was listening to Nirvana in his car, but that confused me because that would place his divorce in the early 90’s, which didn’t seem right. I love that we know they’re going to get off the island, and that we know Ben’s right about it being a bad thing. We don’t know what happens, but it goes back to Alfred Hitchcock’s stuff about suspense. Knowing some of what’s going to happen lets us be very nervous for the characters. Also, it gets big points for making clever use of the flashback structure to be something more than filler.
When season two ended, I had a theory that season three was going to be about showing us what The Others are really up to, and that we’d eventually start to understand that they really are the good guys, and we’ve just had the wrong idea about them. At this point, though, there’s nothing that could convince me what Ben’s done was worth it. They can show me why Ben thinks gassing all those people and throwing people into cages and torturing people and trying to brainwash the kid and so on were justified, but there’s no way to convince me of that. They don’t need to, he’s still an interesting villain, but it would have been cool for them to paint The Others in a way that we can see where they were coming from.
23 May 2007
Is It a Good Idea to Invest in "Forever" Stamps?
Is it a good idea to invest in “forever” stamps?
Postage has actually gotten cheaper over the years when you consider inflation.
17 May 2007
15 May 2007
Connect your Xbox 360 Gamertag to Twitter
Connect your Xbox 360 Gamertag to Twitter | Duncan Mackenzie .Net
Very clever. Checks your XBOX status and updates Twitter when you’re playing a game.
Simulation II Begins
Marvel editor Tom Brevoort is running a comic book editor simulation, with a few people picked from his forum pretending to be Marvel editors and making decisions about books. The last one was a great look at the process.
14 May 2007
Bots on the Ground
Neat article about how soldiers in the military are anthropomorphizing the robots in their squads.
iTunes-Like Video Services Have No Future: Study
iTunes-like video services have no future: study
I don’t buy the premise that iTunes directly competes with free, ad-supported TV. The market IMO for iTunes video is as a replacement for TV. The “free on NBC.com” style is much more for people who miss an occasional episode.
12 May 2007
Flight of Battlestar Continues
Flight of Battlestar Continues
Executive Producer David Eick says they haven’t made a decision about the fourth season being its last, though I think it still might be.
11 May 2007
Super-Sized Office
Though it’s been recanted, there was talk a few days ago that NBC would start airing The Office as an hour-long show every week. I’m glad they’re not sticking to that plan. I love the show (as I did the British version), but I’ve always felt that the super-sized episodes didn’t quite work. The extra material fits great onto a DVD, but when you’re watching the episode, you want those jokes that didn’t quite work out to be trimmed away. Sitcoms should be lean and funny, not long and wordy.
Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff Confirm Final Season of Battlestar Galactica
Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff Confirm Final Season of Battlestar Galactica
This is the right call I think. Though probably motivated more by money (low ratings), creatively it’ll let them go out on a high note without diluting the story too much.
10 May 2007
DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: THE LONG TAKE
DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: THE LONG TAKE
Nice list with videos of some of the most famous long takes in cinema history.
09 May 2007
Television "Veronica Mars" Pretty Close to Renewal
Television Veronica Mars pretty close to renewal
Generally one doesn’t hope for network retooling, but only time will tell if it was worth it.
Official Google Reader Blog: Feed Your Television
Official Google Reader Blog: Feed Your Television
Official post about the Wii version of Google Reader.
08 May 2007
There's Still Time for a Delay
Arriving in stores next week are All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #5 and Ultimates 2 #13. The last issue of the latter series shipped September 27, and the former hasn’t had a new issue since May 17 of 2006, meaning it’ll come one day short of having been a full year. That both books are coming out on the same day could be a portent of something terrible.
Google Launches Google Reader for the Wii
Google launches Google Reader for the Wii
Has specific commands for the Wii Remote.
They Might Be Giants Goes Exclusive with Launch on iTunes
They Might be Giants goes exclusive with launch on iTunes
“Exclusive” is misleading — it’ll be out on CD a month later, but you can get it from iTunes first.
06 May 2007
The Perils of Coincidence
Critique of Spider-Man 3’s story. For the record I enjoyed the movie, but agree that the story was too weighed down and depended on coincidence too heavily.
05 May 2007
I find myself wanting StarCraft 2 to not be an MMO
Rumors are flying that the next StarCraft will be an MMO. Blizzard’s a talented enough company that I don’t think they’re just make it “WoW in Space,” but I do have my fears. Blizzard tried to do a few online real-time strategy things with the battlegrounds in WoW, but they didn’t fit into the framework of the rest of the game and had to be significantly nerfed/retooled. Perhaps let me in StarCraft play and level up a squad of Protoss instead of just one character, or even raise an entire army that I play online. Maybe have ongoing campaigns that players join into, like what Alterac Valley was going to be originally. It didn’t work in WoW because people don’t want to join into a battle that started days ago and their side is losing, but if you desired the game with this stuff in mind, it could work.
All this makes me want to find a PC to play the Warhammer 40,000 RTS game.
Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops
Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops
I’m not surprised. There’s no way the expense of a computer for every student adds its dollar value in education, especially if you consider how many teachers that could have paid instead.
CNN to Release Presidential Debate Footage without Copyright Restrictions
CNN to release presidential debate footage without copyright restrictions
Great news. Allows the public to use footage of debates without having to get permission from CNN.
04 May 2007
Free Comic Book Day May 5th 2007
Free Comic Book Day May 5th 2007
Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. There’s supposed to be a good Spider-Man story and a fun horror comic called The Astounding Wolfman coming out (and free!).
03 May 2007
Google Personalized Homepage becomes "iGoogle"
Google Personalized Homepage becomes “iGoogle”
This makes me not want to use the service. It looks like a lame attempt at a “what if Apple and Google merged?” Photoshop contest.
02 May 2007
Iron Man's Movie Armor
Looks nice. Nothing changed much from the comics, which was a great design to start with, and it makes for a good transition to the comics for some viewers.
01 May 2007
'Heroes' Pulls Rug From Under "Watchmen"
Heroes pulls rug from under Watchmen
I don’t think Heroes will affect Watchmen ticket sales, if it ever gets made, but certainly it’s apeing a lot of stuff from comic stories. (big spoilers for Watchmen)
Talking JSA with Dale Eaglesham
Talking JSA with Dale Eaglesham
Nice interview with the artist. This series reboot has been very good so far.
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