OwlGod

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Jerusalem 1913

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:25:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Jerusalem 1913

Posted: 05 Mar 2013 04:59 PM PST

Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Amy Dockser Marcus

A disappointment in every way, even in the narrator, March 5, 2013

This review is from: Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (MP3 CD)

I picked this up because the premise intrigued me: what if there was a moment, a turn in history, when things could have gone another way and there could have been peace in the Middle East? What if that peace was just another causality of World War 1, run into the sand and blood by Balkan separatists, marauding Turks and Lawrence of Arabia.

Sadly, you won't find that here. I'll save you the trouble: Marcus' argument, such as it is, that there was a chance for peace, as long as Jews, Arabs and others could learn to be good Ottomans. Peace was possible, under the iron fist of the Turk. That troublesome thing known as liberation and independence ruined all that.

It doesn't help that the writing is awful, being more interested in romantic musings about life in late 19th and early 20th century Jerusalem then actually about substance. We get interminable descriptions of how cluttered someone's study is, or what they kind of tea they preferred.

Compounding the poor writing is the awful audiobook reader, who reads like a condescending mother addressing her ignorant children. Joyce Bean also reads like she has never read english before, or even glanced at the words being presented before her to verbalize. When she mis-pronounced sepulchre, I gave it a pass because that is an unusual word, even if it is one you would think the reader of a book about Jerusalem might know. When she mis-pronounces "short lived"(saying "live" as in "livestock") I turned off the book. That was it.

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Particle system free live wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:18:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Particle system free live wallpaper

Posted: 30 Oct 2012 06:43 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Particle system free live wallpaper by Developer

crap, slows your phone & spam, October 30, 2012

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Particle system free live wallpaper (App)

This live wallpaper is very cool looking, but it slows your phone performance a lot and spams you with ads. STAY AWAY

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Native American Flute Lullabies

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn gave 1 star to: Native American Flute Lullabies

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 02:39 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Native American Flute Lullabies Various Artists | Format: MP3 Download

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Do you buy music from those demo kiosks? This is for you., April 19, 2012

This review is from: Native American Flute Lullabies (MP3 Download)

You can even push the "preview" buttons and pretend you're mashing your fingers on the cover of the album. Do you need birds chirping over the background of your flute crap? Done. Can't open your window to hear the wind so you need it on a CD? And the same flute notes played over and over thrown in for a bonus? ALL FOR FREE.

Jonathan Strawn gave 3 stars to: Recovering The Satellites

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 02:35 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Recovering The Satellites Counting Crows | Format: MP3 Download

worth $4.99 even if you're sick of Round Here, April 19, 2012

This review is from: Recovering The Satellites (MP3 Download)

You probably didn't bother buying this album back in 1996 since by that time you were so burned out on the folksy-blues-rock of the Counting Crows that you couldn't take it anymore. After a monster-smash album of stuff that sounded all the same, this one was a breath of fresh air. If August & Everything After was like the annoying country-western bar, this is more like driving through a small town at twilight.

My conversation with a robot

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:57:00 +0000

My conversation with a robot

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 10:13 AM PST

A sex/spam bot chatted with me. It failed my turing test.

9:57:39 PM maebridge1243: hey =) i been waiting to talk to u!
10:03:27 PM WhedonHater: who
10:03:30 PM WhedonHater: are
10:03:31 PM WhedonHater: u
10:03:43 PM maebridge1243: Hey!! My name is Vanessa.. wuts going on?!?
10:03:59 PM maebridge1243: I been waitin to talk to u!! IM feeling so naughty right now lol
10:04:15 PM maebridge1243: haha im 20 yrs old i'm going to school in Florida.. sometimes i get sooo bored n lonely in my room, can u do me a favor plz ;)
10:04:23 PM WhedonHater: I have a recurring dream
10:04:36 PM maebridge1243: I signed up on this site to make some extra money,they wanna see how many ppl i can get to watch me... it is free, plz come watch me dance, ill do anyhting u want me to ;)
10:04:44 PM WhedonHater: can i tell you about my dream first
10:04:48 PM WhedonHater: ?
10:05:00 PM maebridge1243: c'mon, just accept the invite on the page baby http://www.acceptinvite.com/apj3j click there im dancing right now for a few guys and a few off my girlfriends lol hahah
10:05:12 PM WhedonHater: I see a snail, crawling
10:05:15 PM maebridge1243: y arent u here yet?!? cum watch me shake my booty hahaha, cmon only way i can go live 1 on 1 w u is if u sign up, read the site its free i promise
10:05:21 PM WhedonHater: crawling along the edge of a straight razor
10:05:25 PM WhedonHater: it is crawling there
10:05:28 PM WhedonHater: and it is still alive
10:05:30 PM maebridge1243: ok sweety =( only way we can play is if u sign up, agn read the site they wont charge u, just wanna make sure ur 18.... sign up u wont regret it ;)
10:05:37 PM WhedonHater: are you a machine?
10:05:47 PM maebridge1243: here is the site agn http://www.acceptinvite.com/app2e u dont wanna miss my sexy ass haha
10:05:49 PM WhedonHater: You are standing in a desert, and you see a turtle.
10:05:55 PM WhedonHater: The turtle is flipped on its back
10:06:02 PM WhedonHater: It cannot turn itself upright
10:06:05 PM WhedonHater: You could help it
10:06:09 PM WhedonHater: but you don't.
10:06:11 PM WhedonHater: You just watch.
10:06:15 PM WhedonHater: How does that make you feel?
10:07:07 PM WhedonHater: Can you hear me?

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: The Making of Star Wars (TM)

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:06:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: The Making of Star Wars (TM)

Posted: 25 Nov 2010 10:13 AM PST

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

The Making of Star Wars (TM): The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film by J. W. Rinzler

There's always more and more, November 25, 2010

This review is from: The Making of Star Wars (TM): The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film (Paperback)

I have LITERALLY been reading about the making of Star Wars my entire life, and I learned things I never knew in this book. I'm not sure if that's because this is one of the best books about the making of a movie ever written(it is), or if it's because George Lucas is the master of the teasing drip of content(he is). Either way, this is a treat for Star Wars fans, filmmakers and people interested in moviemaking in general. It will inspire you, encourage you, and frustrate you. When you see how much work Lucas actually had to put into the first film, how hard it was to secure funding, to fight the schedule, to make it happen at all, you'll be amazed that the film ever reached theaters.

Perhaps more than anything else, this book captures a certain period of American Filmmaking, the mid-70s artistic boom. Lucas, Speilberg, Coppolla, and many others were taking the Hollywood system by storm and changed everything. Sure, now their style of filmmaking has become "they Hollywood System," but at the time it was new and fresh and dangerous.

It makes me dream of what the next filmmaking revolution will be...

A reminder that the Medal of Honor is more than a video game

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:35:00 +0000

A reminder that the Medal of Honor is more than a video game

Posted: 16 Nov 2010 09:24 PM PST

You can read the official narrative here, or you can pickup Sebastian Junger's excellent book War, which covers the incident as well. I actually read Junger's book several months ago, and was surprised as I was watching Giunta's award ceremony today as I recognized the action being described. A quick flip back and I found that around pg. 118 the exact event for which he was awarded the medal is described. It is an intense few minutes, and Junger sums it up tersely at the end of the chapter: "It was the kind of week that would make people back home think that maybe we're losing this war."

Giunta's words at the ceremony reflect the workman like courage that I've found is common among the best members of the military I've served with: "Everyone else was doing what they were supposed to, and what I did was about the only thing I could do."

As Junger describes it in his book, the entire action took perhaps 15 seconds, during which he was shot, identified the location of the shooting, directed fire, and then counterattacked. In Junger's words, "an untrained civilian would have experienced those same 15 seconds as an incomprehensible cacophony of light and noise, and spent it curled in ball."

Giunta is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since George "Bud" Day, who was awarded the Medal in 1976. There have been multiple Medal of Honor recipients since then, but all were awarded posthumously. The future of SSG Giunta's career is likely one of recruiting and morale boosting, as since WW2 is has been the unofficial policy of the military to keep Medal of Honor recipients out of harm's way. My guess is that he will be commissioned as an Officer before he retires, as the Medal of Honor waives any college degree requirement and having that on an application is pretty compelling.

I liked the moment when President Obama "broke script" and declared, "I really like this guy."

Armistice Day: Why I serve

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:23:00 +0000

Armistice Day: Why I serve

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:24 PM PST

Memorial Day is the day for the dead. Veteran's Day is for the living. Unless you call it Remembrance Day, in which case it's totally appropriate to remember the dead.

Either way, I just want to say something that I tried, probably not very successfully, to get across to someone who was asking me how I could be in the military. Specifically, how, as an expectant father, I could voluntarily put myself in harm's way, in a situation where the is a great than average chance that I could die. Well, technically not greater than average, but greater than if I wasn't in the military.

What I said is that I believe that service is a necessary component of being a member of a civilized society. Some kind of service. Further, a military is something that every society is going to require, at the very least for self defense and, at least in the best cases, to help other people around the world. Forget for about politics and the good or ill impact of such things for now. That's a discussion for another day.

What I'm getting at is that someone is going to have to be in the military. We have an all volunteer military, so those who don't want to serve are not pressed into service as was the norm for a long period of our history. So someone has to leave their families, someone has to put their lives on the line, someone has to make that sacrifice. Leaving your family, putting yourself in a place of harm, all of that is something that not everyone is cut out for; not everyone can live with that. I can live with that, and as long as I can, who am I to ask someone else to make that sacrifice for me?

In my mind it's about looking beyond yourself and beyond the immediate needs of your family. It's about the needs of your community, and the long term security and prosperity of your family. In my opinion, like it or not, without a strong military the US wouldn't be the place of relative comfort and security that it is today. Without the US military Asia & Europe would be very different places today. Someone has to go, and I'm not comfortable asking someone else.

Lost Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:02:00 +0000

Lost Weekend

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 09:51 PM PDT

The thing that sucks about taking a challenging college course is that it often leads to "lost weekends," 2 days without work but filled with homework. Days like today make me feel that I should just throw in the towel and settle for what I've got now. This whole "bettering oneself" is a hell of a lot of work.

While working on homework tonight, we watched Sherlock on PBS. This new show stars Martin Freeman as Watson and someone I'm not familiar with as Holmes. It is a contemporary telling, so Watson & Holmes are texting back and forth constantly, and Watson has a neglected blog. Kind of sadly, Watson is still a veteran of Afghanistan.

The show is witty and imaginative, with some really nice visual flourishes to show Holmes' deductive process. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Downey Jr. version, but it manages to keep itself distinctive. Holmes is a bit like Batman that way, a versatile enough character that multiple interpretations can co-exist happily. This one is a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next couple of movies/episodes(the series is a set of 3 90 minute episodes, more akin to TV movies). Stephen Moffat of Dr. Who fame apparently created this show, and it's another favorite in our house.

Peaceful Warrior

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:01:00 +0000

Peaceful Warrior

Posted: 16 Oct 2010 09:49 PM PDT

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender recently. After all my family being obsessed with it, I finally gave in and started watching it and have to admit that I was missing out when everyone else was raving about it.

I don't want to talk about all of it, but I have to say something about Uncle Iroh. I've come to believe that Iroh is one of the best characters in all of fiction. He represents everything that is great about being a poet, warrior and philosopher. He isn't perfect, and he isn't a pacifist, but he enjoys a good cup of tea and can appreciate that things look differently after some reflection.

Mako gives the performance of a lifetime voicing him, with a fierce nobility matched with warmth and compassion.

Iroh is everything that I would like to be in a person. He has a wisdom that is only found in experience and mistakes, but is born out of love and strength.

The Town: Review

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:02:00 +0000

The Town: Review

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 04:17 PM PDT

I don't think I'll have much more to say about The Town, so I'll just get it off my chest now.

Affleck's second movie is a heist movie, to play as a companion piece to Gone Baby Gone, which was a detective movie. Here the detective is the morally upright but narratively inconvenient policeman, who serves only as an instigator to put pressure on our protagonist. In fact, Affleck and the main policeman John Hamm only share 1 scene in the entire movie, and I think they don't have dialogue as much as the other is in the room as one gives a monologue.

As a heist movie is is pretty straightforward, with the heists being very simple jobs that are complicated by the involvement of police. Their first job, the only one which they seem to have been able to plan to the level they like, goes off without a single hitch. The subsequent jobs are rushed, leading to escalating problems.

Affleck is good in this role, bringing a world-weariness that his baby faced brother wasn't quite able to pull off in Gone Baby Gone. He's also cut like a knife, rippling with muscles that he shows off with shadowy pull-ups. The most interesting thing about his character is something that the movie doesn't make much of a fuss about: he goes to AA meetings, and is a recovering drug addict. I think a lot can be drawn out of that, particularly his belief that he isn't doomed to live in his neighborhood forever. He's changed once, and he goes to meetings where the constant mantra is that he isn't trapped. There's always a way out.

The film isn't as good as Gone Baby Gone, mostly because it plays more with mainstream conventions, and as such it isn't allowed to be as unrelenting or surprising as Gone Baby Gone. The earlier film took my breath away at least three times with unexpected occurrences, usually a character acting according to their nature instead of the directives of the script.

That's not to say this isn't a great film. It's well acted, even in the small parts, and has a grim reality to it that many heist movies are lacking. Jeremy Renner is great as the obligatory "loose cannon," but he brings enough crazy to the performance that it really does seem like he might do almost anything at any moment. There is a "1 last big job" but at least it is something that is almost forced upon the characters instead of something they seek out. And for most of them, it isn't a last job. It's just a bigger than average job. The best thing about the film is a subtext, the feeling of being trapped by circumstance or upbringing. Affleck's character is smart enough to know that isn't a rule, just a feeling. The movie, a bit unfortunately, isn't daring enough to suggest that it might actually be a rule. There is talk about paying for your sins even if you've changed, but Affleck's character doesn't have much of a price demanded of him.

The Fall of Smodcastle

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:05:00 +0000

The Fall of Smodcastle

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 05:37 PM PDT

I used to love Kevin Smith's Smodcast. It was a great insight into the life of someone who (used to be) one of my favorite directors, and, best of all, it was funny.

Sometimes it had a theme, such as a discussion of the grey market for action figures at comic book stores(my personal favorite episode, #50), or some of the oral history stuff of Highlands, NJ(I might actually start listening to his dedicated Highlands history podcast.

Anyway, as the podcast has progressed it has grown and grown, sort of like Kevin Smith's films. A huge cast of guest hosts and friends has evolved into something like 45 podcasts being spun out of this one. The main Smodcast itself is half the time a "recorded with a live audience" affair, which leads to lots of discussion particular to the audience itself. Smodcast has always been rather insular, but when the focus was upon Smith & Mosier's lives it was much more interesting than when it focuses upon itself.

And I understand Smith's need to generate revenue from this in order to pay for what, to be fair, is one of the most professionally produced podcasts that isn't produced by an out and out corporate entity. But he takes ad-supported well beyond the level of self-parody into some kind of bizarre amalgamation of content and advertising. And on a regular basis as well, just in case I'm just tuning in and might have forgotten about his sponsor.

I was tempted to say that his podcast has followed the course of his movie, but it's a bit different than that. While I feel his movies spiraled out of control from the insightful Clerks to the really great but over-reaching Mallrats to the sincere emotion of Chasing Amy & Dogma to the genuinely hilarious self-parody of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back to the overly sincere Jersey Girl to the pandering Clerks 2 to the desperate dreck of Zack & Miri Make a Porno to the outright paycheck of Cop Out, Smith's podcast has followed a more or less linear path to where it is now. It is almost as if Smith learned the lesson that trying too hard to reclaim any indie legitimacy will just give him a headache. So he's embraced the path of selling it as long as they're buying it.

I'm not trying to make a judgement upon Smith, although I do have thoughts on the idea of grasping at all these little ways of making money. Like I said, as long as people keep buying he's happy to keep selling, and more of it. It's almost like a little experiment in capitalism, seeing how much each market can hold before it collapses.

But for me, it's lost most of its appeal by becoming so diluted that none of his current podcast products offer what I enjoyed about it in the first place.

Don't even get me started on Kevin Smith doing wedding ceremonies.

The Expendables Review

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:02:00 +0000

The Expendables Review

Posted: 28 Aug 2010 04:33 PM PDT

I have several movie reviews to write, but this is by far the shortest and easiest, so I'll just get it out of the way.

The Expendables: This movie is a huge let down. Sure, it has just about "everyone" in it you might expect, but it lacks something. I don't know what it is, but Rambo was a much better return to a classic series for Stallone than this homage. I think perhaps the real-life issues that Rambo was trying to address fit better with the elegiac tone that Stallone seems to be applying to all his current movies. It worked in Burma, where real life stories of atrocities haunt the headlines all the time. Here, seeing Stallone agonize over taking a team of badasses into an anonymous Caribbean island to overthrow a dictator & his CIA backers is just maddening. Didn't Sly hear that the leader of this island is "el hen-er-al?" I'm pretty sure there is no benevolent leader in the entire world who is referred to as "el hen-er-al."

Then the movie has some decent action scenes(a cargo plane with machine guns and the final compound battle come to mind), separated by long stretches of forced camaraderie. Most of the other bad-asses are wasted, or at most given 1 scene to show their stuff. Arnold & Bruce Willis show up for a few moments to swear a lot and look old(Arnold) or plastic-surgery fake(Willis). In fact, Willis looks both old & fake in this movie, like David Bowman at the end of 2001. Except with fewer liver spots. Even Jason Statham is wasted in this film, never really being allowed to do his awesome crazy shtick. Dolph Lundgren is good for a while when he plays to his strengths, but soon enough the movie has him wise-cracking and smiling again. Somehow, he is more frightening smiling than scowling.

Eric Roberts is pretty great as the bad guy, but again Stone Cold is basically in the movie for a single scene where he body slams multiple times while somehow not delivering a stone cold stunner. All in all, another disappointment, like the rest of the film.

The Cosmo & the Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:03:00 +0000

The Cosmo & the Darkness

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 09:45 PM PDT

Every night I put my dog Cosmo outside after she eats. I do this so that she can do her doggy business where I prefer, that is, the yard and not the house.

Some nights she happily jaunts outside to explore the twilight hours. Some nights she reluctantly slinks out, as if I have just cast her from Eden with my fiery sword.

Some nights she is pawing at the door, eager to go before I even get there.

Once outside, she rarely stays near the door. Sometimes I'll pass by the door sometime later and see her dutifully sitting on the patio, watching me through the screen. But these are rare nights, rarer still in high summer, when the insects buzz and the sky stays light late into the evening.

Just before bed, sometimes before I brush my teeth, sometimes after, I open the back door to call her in.

Sometimes she rushes in, eager to greet me and retire to the softness of her dog bed.

But more often, I have to call and call before I hear her collar jangle in the dark. She lurks beyond the reach of our porch light, in the recesses of the yard, near the boxwoods and the compost bin, haunting the shadowy areas of my domain. I call her name over and over, straining to see her in the weak light of our hanging lamps. Then, finally, she quietly walks out of the dark and brushes past me into the house.

My dog is sleeping in the kitchen, curled up on her Costco issue dog bed and watching me with one eye open. She stirs and puts her head down, shutting her eyes. What she dreams of I'll never know. Of what she thinks of when she's stalking the long grasses of my yard, I'll always dream.

Reviews: Red Cliff & Salt

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:01:00 +0000

Reviews: Red Cliff & Salt

Posted: 25 Jul 2010 07:53 PM PDT

I meant to write about this movie a while ago, but I got busy, so sue me.

Red Cliff(I watched the 2-part, 4 hour, International Version):

"I never thought I would be defeated by a cup of tea."

John Woo makes a movie that is by an order of magnitude more mature than anything he's done in the past. Windtalkers was awful and ridiculus when it tried to be serious, and I can't think of another John Woo movie that really tried to be serious and even contemplative. But Red Cliff manages to be both, and moving too boot, in the midst of telling the story of one of the largest military encounters of in recorded history.

Let me say just this: Red Cliff is the movie that you've wanted every Trojan War movie to be. This is, finally, at long last, a movie that shows Generals as unstoppable forces on the battlefield, without making it silly. When an army calls for reinforcements, and one guy shows up and you know what? He IS adequate reinforcements. The foot soldiers are (most of the time) just there to kill time, catch arrows and generally be mowed down until the generals hash things out.

All this, and it also has a fantastic story of friendship between two very intelligent men, Tony Leung's Zhou Yu and Takeshi Kaneshiro's Zhuge Liang. These men are constantly needling each other, but they have a genuine respect that grows into affection and admiration over the course of the film. It says a lot about the quality of John Woo's filmmaking that their first meeting features a bit of zither improv that is as thriling as the battle scenes.

Everything about this movie is exciting and powerful, showing a military victory achieved by smart thinking, good luck and the timely intervention of a woman. So much of history has turned on such things...

Salt:

"Then you are a Russian spy."

This movie is hard to describe without spoiling it, and it is nicely twisty plot-wise, so I shall resist my usual urges.

Suffice to say, this is a wonderful paranoid action movie, based around some an amazing opening chase sequence and a couple of really great infiltration pieces later on. Nothing ever quite catches up to the pace of the opening sequence, but Phillip Noyce makes me remember how great Clear & Present Danger was back in the day by keeping things varied and interesting. Kurt Wimmer, serving as writer, brings some of the inventive action sense that he used in Equilibrium & Ultraviolet without those movies ridiculous sci-fi plots keeping things down this time.

Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor are all great as the 3 leads, brining lots of variety and depth to their performances. In a lot of ways, this movie reminded me of Mission Impossible & Minority Report. Only it was better than Mission Impossible but not as good as Minority Report. The trailer really only shows the very beginning moments of the film, so it blows through those quickly and then keeps going. Anytime a movie does that I'm interested, and this one kept things going with solid action, great performances, and a surprising emotional heart.

Parenthood & State of Mind

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:02:00 +0000

Parenthood & State of Mind

Posted: 28 Jun 2010 09:40 PM PDT

Watched 2 movies on Netflix over the weekend that I hadn't seen before.

Parenthood, which we watched because Nicole & I are fans of the new series. This one was weird, since it is so close to the new series, but very different in some ways. The youngest brother is a total jerk in the movie, but a hard working parent in the new series. The Steve Martin character is also much more of a goof in the movie then in the series. In general, the whole movie is a lot less serious than the show. It also felt like a damn Pixar movie with its Randy Newman theme song.

A State of Mind. All about two teenagers preparing for North Korea's mass games. These kids spend 2-4 hours a day rehearsing for months, years even, just to perform. The level of, I hesitate to call it brainwashing but lets say something more than enthusiasm, is stunning. The way that every activity of every moment of every day is devoted to the state. Amazing. I'm also shocked that North Korea doesn't win some kind of team gymnastics every Olympics. The choreography and athletic ability on display is incredible. I'd like to see a follow up about the people who organize the mass games. What that must take, the kind of stress they must be under, that's a story that needs to be told.

Toy Story 3 is a great finale but a terrible sequel

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:03:00 +0000

Toy Story 3 is a great finale but a terrible sequel

Posted: 19 Jun 2010 11:23 PM PDT

Toy Story 3 is a great movie. It is by far the best looking of the Pixar movies yet, is hilarious and touching and sad, and it brings a satisfying end to the series while leaving it open enough that they could keep returning to the well if they really wanted to.

But it is a terrible sequel. Especially considering how perfect Toy Story 2 was, as a film and a sequel. Toy Story 2 came out 4 years after Toy Story, but you can watch those films back to back and not miss a beat. Everything in Toy Story 2 is a natural progression of Toy Story, and the movie steps forward while keeping everything grounded in the basic plot structure of the first film.

Toy Story 3 is a very different beast. First, it deviates strongly from the structure of the first 2 films by having the whole "1 toy(or group of toys) has to rescue others" condensed from basically the entirety of the first two films into a short section near the beginning. Second, there are no new songs in the film at all. Toy Story 1 & 2 weren't exactly musicals, but they had memorable songs from Randy Newman. The only new song here is a new version of an old favorite.

Of course the thing that sets this apart the most from the previous 2 sequels is the finality of it all. There is no doubt that this is intended to be an ending to the story, and as such the characters come to very different fates at the end of the film, bucking the trend in 1 & 2 to reset the status quo at the end of the picture.

But lets talk about the great stuff. Sunnyside Daycare is a fun and interesting location, with lotso' fun things that happen, and tons of little bits of toy action always going on in the background. The new toys are uniformly awesome, but Michael Keaton really steals the show as Ken. Ken is simultaneously teased for his history as an also-ran to Barbie and made into the coolest of all the new toys, possibly the coolest that the Ken toy has ever been depicted. Lotso' Huggin' Bear is fun, but he ends up being a bit too silent during some key scenes that could have really fleshed him out as a fuller character. There is also a VERY creepy baby, and an overly adorable new human character.

I have to say that the graphics deserve special mention. The opening sequence is visually stunning, and the entire film makes Toy Story 1 look like garbage. Pixar really pulled out all the stops on this one, and there is a sequence near the end at a garbage pile that at some points looked like actual toys clambering over actual garbage. Incredible.

The film also gets rather apocalyptic at certain moments, and it might be a bit too much for the kids who are generally a huge target audience for these films. I felt that of all the Pixar films this one was specially geared to the people who were young children when Toy Story came out 15 years ago, and less to new audiences. This film not only requires a certain familiarity with the characters but a certain maturity in the audience to appreciate the emotional points they are trying to make.

The only thing that didn't work for me is the material with Andy. The problem is that while the toys may care about Andy a great deal, the audience doesn't care about Andy at all. It makes some of his longer scenes feel tiresome and distracting, as the movie is suddenly focusing on a character who has no connection to the audience.

Jonathan Strawn gave 3 stars to: Iron Man 2

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn gave 3 stars to: Iron Man 2

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 08:34 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Iron Man 2 DVD ~ Robert Downey Jr.

Tell tell tell, no show, June 4, 2010

This review is from: Iron Man 2 (DVD)

Iron Man 2 is a huge step down from the first movie. To be fair, it is still pretty entertaining, but in many ways it is like The Incredible Hulk, except it goes in the opposite direction. Where that movie improved on Hulk in many ways(mainly by embracing the Marvel Universe), this film ends up being of comparable quality, but by comparison to the first film it is a huge let down.

Actually, in a lot of ways it's a huge let down. There really isn't a conflict to speak of, outside of a few plot contrivances. Tony Stark is dying. Except he's not really dying, as it seems everyone and their brother has a way to fix his problem. Tony Stark has some corporate rivals. Except they're jokes, never really threatening in any way. Tony Stark has someone who has a grudge against him, someone's who might be as brilliant as Tony in a darker way. Except their confrontations are both resolved in anticlimactic moments of action. Moments, at best.

The whole problem with the film is that it is all tell and no show. Tony Stark famously says that he has privatized world peace. Except we never see anything close to him actually doing that. In the first film we got a tease of Iron Man fighting warlords and terrorists. Here, we get magazine covers and people talking about vague accomplishments of Iron Man, saying that he's "on watch," but we never see any of it. Then Tony has a breakdown later in the film, a drunken brawl with his friend. Nick Fury shows up and says he's been neglecting his duty and causing messes for Fury to clean up. Except, again, we see no neglect, we see no mess.

All in all, there are only really 2 action sequences in the entire film. The first, the famous racecar showdown, is great. Legitimately great. Until it becomes a joke where John Faverau makes himself the big hero. The second big sequence is decent, but it is overly dark, and when it's time to be over it's just over. Iron Man whips out a couple of super weapons and ends the battle in seconds.

All in all, the problem, to my mind, seems that Faverau wanted to just let the characters riff on each other, eating up screen time cheaply and spending his money on really big but not very exciting action sequences.

That said, there are the elements of a great film here. All the returning actors are great(except Faverau himself, who is just a series of bad jokes in a part that is inexplicably prominent), and Rockwell and Rourke are fantastic as the new villains. Rockwell is hilariously smarmy and annoying, playing an arms dealer who wants to be unscrupulous and underground, but isn't really up to being as threatening or evil as he wants to be. Rourke brings a nice quiet intelligence and menace to his role, playing well off of Rockwell and Downey. I'm actually quite glad that Faverau isn't that involved in The Avengers, as this movie just seems like an exercise in filmmaking excess. And not even the good kind of excess, that involves over-blown action sequences.

Clone 8: Facebook, Diaspora & the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:01:00 +0000

Clone 8: Facebook, Diaspora & the Internet

Posted: 13 May 2010 09:55 AM PDT

http://bit.ly/9hM4D7

I had a discussion about this with some other geeky folks yesterday, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the whole Facebook privacy thing.

Get over it.

Sure, Facebook is being rather impolite by retroactively changing privacy settings, but in their original TOS, there was plenty of fine print that allowed them to retroactively do, well, pretty much whatever they wanted. Just like just about every other website. Including my beloved livejournal(note the last section that says, "LiveJournal may at any time revise these Terms of Service by updating this posting. By using this Site, you agree to be bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to determine the then-current Terms of Service to which you are bound.")

So GET OVER IT.

No one is making you use Facebook. Sure, I'm not a huge fan. I rarely log into facebook itself, prefering to let stuff like my twitter just feed there automatically. But I keep it because Facebook offers a service that I can't get elsewhere, by nature of how many people are using it. I have a myspace for the same reason(actually for the same reason circa 2006, when I got a myspace account). Sooner or later people will move on to something else. Like I said on Twitter, Facebook is living out an accelerated version of AOL's lifecycle. Or Compuserve's. Or Delphi. Or any internet portal of your choice. At one time those things seemed "essential" to the people using them. But the power of the internet is that no one service is truly "essential." (Except maybe the 13 root name servers that control the entire Internet, thus making the whole point of the net's origins as a redundant distributed and unkillable network kind of moot). You can always move on, and sooner or later, you will. Remember when AOL was big enough to BUY Time Warner? Wow.

Getting back to my conversation yesterday, the issue at hand was privacy. Someone mentioned Diaspora, a new social network that, to my understanding, is essentially a framework that you run on your own or someone eles's server. The idea is that you will have as much control as you like over the service, and it has a lot of built in options(including crazy PGP encryption, just in case you don't want the NSA reading about your cat's latest antics). As one person explained it to me, in a perfect world social networks would run on your personal computer, and simply communicate with other people's computers, thus giving you full control over your data.

So, now stay with me, it would be a "network" of computers that are distributed all over the world, and they would be connected by some kind of "web" like structure that would allow them to communicate. This "network" might have interdependence with other "networks," so that it could be some kind of "internet."

Does this sound like stupid reinvention of NOTHING to anyone else? There are literally countless tools for you to create your own internet presence, hosted on your own computer, that you control 100%. The reason people don't use these, and the reason I predict people won't use Diaspora in the way that anyone envisions, is that it's inconvenient. I don't want to run my own server. That's crazy.

Crazy, or just really into computers. (a very telling sign is the fact that the creators of Diaspora put a UNIX joke on their chalkboard)

People use Facebook, google, yahoo, flickr, whatever, because it's more efficient and more convenient to let someone else manage the network of computers. That efficency, that ease of use, is the value YOU are getting from Facebook. Sure, you could setup your own social network through any number of tools, start a wiki based on your high school or the descendants of that great dog you had when you were a kid. But who wants to do that?

Some people do, sure. But those people are the kind of people who hated Facebook from the start, even more than I did. They have no use for it. The kind of people who have a use for Facebook are what we might call "ordinary" people, people who live outside the rarified world of coding and network protocols. People of my parent's generation surely, and that's the key.

While I believe that the idea of a technological "singularity" is kind of bs, I do think that there will always be a generational gap in technology, probably increasing. There will always be a market for services that take the heavy lifting out of it, that make it easy.

And those services will want something in return. If you don't want to pay for that service straight up(imagine if Facebook just started charging?), then expect them to take something else. Like your data, that they can use to try to sell you crap from their sponsors.

Imagine that someday someone might invent a technology that beamed free video into every household in the country, video that you could watch without having to pay any kind of ongoing fee, but that was supported by advertisements. Ads that were targeted as specifically as possible to the kinds of people watching certain programs.

Of course the right answer to all of this is for two things to happen.

1. Don't put ANYTHING on the internet(ANYWHERE) that you don't want other people knowing. Kind of defeats the point of the internet anyway.

2. Don't judge people too harshly by what they say on the internet, unless you only know them on the internet. Just get it into your head that there are 2 worlds here. They have some level of interaction, and can inform each other, but they are not the same. It's a conscious change in thinking that we all have to make. The internet should be treated with the same weight as a casual conversation on the street. Sure, someone might say something outrageous, but you should let them explain it to you after reflection later before you judge them.

Clone 7- The Ramans do everything in Threes

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Mon, 03 May 2010 23:03:00 +0000

Clone 7- The Ramans do everything in Threes

Posted: 02 May 2010 09:24 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/d2ulUP

io9 just promoted a student film based on Rendezvous with Rama. It has decent production values, a professional look, and a decent setup for the rest of the story. The exterior look of Rama is a bit too Star Trek IV for me, but it does fit in with the book.

Rendezvous with Rama - Vancouver Film School (VFS) from Vancouver Film School on Vimeo.

This video, which I saw on a SIGGRAPH 2006 DVD is pretty great too, although it isn't quite a polished it is has an even better sense of scope. It also captures the life of Rama, which the other downplays in favor of mystery.

http://bit.ly/aTfwUi

I also found this video, which isn't as great, but still beats this, which is just weird.

Jonathan Strawn's Customer Reviews to Blogspot

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:45:00 +0000

Jonathan Strawn's Customer Reviews to Blogspot

Jonathan Strawn gave 5 stars to: Management

Posted: 02 May 2010 08:33 PM PDT

Jonathan Strawn reviewed:

Management DVD ~ Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston's attractiveness is inversely proportional to the glamour factor of her roles, May 2, 2010

This review is from: Management (DVD)

The 3 best things I've ever seen Jennifer Aniston in are Office Space, The Good Girl, and now Management. The more "regular girl" she plays the more attractive and charming I find her. The more glamourous she tries to be, the more it feels fake. She should be doing the kind of roles that Sandra Bullock was doing 10 years ago, now that Sandra Bullock has proved that she can play a slickly beautiful woman in The Proposal.

Steve Zahn plays an earnest but obviously immature character with subltly and surprising grace. The movie is billed as a romantic comedy, and it does follow a lot of the familiar rom-com beats(complete with zany supporting characters), but it's really a story about growing up. Zahn has to get out of the comfortable lifestyle, and he's rather forced out of it by circumstance, and Aniston's character pulls, or entices, him to move beyond his comfort zone.

There's an undercurrent of dreams and happiness deferred here, that's never really mentioned, but is clear in several of Aniston's loveliest scenes. In one beautiful scene she sits up at night and contemplates essentially settling for Steve Zahn. The movie never says it, never even really gets close, but it has a lot of interesting themes of putting aside the grand romance, putting aside the things that you keep chasing after so futilely and taking what's there, taking the happiness that you have.

Clone 6- X-Files FTW

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Clone 6- X-Files FTW

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 10:06 PM PDT

I don't care what sort of dark deals that Netflix had to strike, the coup of having all the seasons of The X-Files on streaming is worth any number of delays for new release crap. I'm finally justified for NOT spending hundreds of dollars on DVD sets. Who needs Avatar when you can have the many evolutions of Gillian Anderson's hair? (I'm partial to her Season 4, post-"Never Again" makeover).

Nicole & I started re-watching at Season 1, and it holds up incredibly well. The conspiracy episodes actually hold up the worst, as the more teasing and hinting that they do the more I get bored, especially knowing the anticlimax that awaits that particular narrative dead end. The "monster of the week" episodes hold up much, much better, although some of the early ones are pretty hokey. I'm also shocked at Gillian Anderson's youth. She looks like a baby in the first season. A baby walking around in pantsuits and spouting medical jargon.

Also, how did The X-Files do an awesome version of essentially the same premise as The Happening years before M. Night thought of it? What. A. Twist.

Clone 5- Karma is BS

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:08:00 +0000

Clone 5- Karma is BS

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 10:03 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/cxUdr7

I was listening to a podcast on The Lovely Bones, and I had a thought. Pat Robertson is clearly not considering Christian theology when he says his stupid things like "Haiti made a deal with the devil and got an earthquake" or "New Orleans is full of sinners and got a flood." He's thinking in a karmic sense, not a Christian sense.

This point was raised by a speaker on the podcast making the point that karma is explicitly non-Christian, because in karma there is no room for grace. The entire point of Christ, and a large part of the rest of the Bible, is that people DON'T get what they deserve. How many passages in the Bible are devoted to people pleading for God to judge the wicked? How many times do prophets ask 'how long will you wait Lord?' (Hint: Lots of times) Karma is about getting what you deserve. It fits in perfectly with almost any morality, because if you judge someone to be doing evil(no matter how you choose to define it), then you can sit back and tut-tut "I told you so" when they trip on their face or get audited or whatever. The Bible isn't about that. The Bible is full of examples of the righteous having horrible lives(see Job, Jesus, the Apostles, most of the prophets) while the wicked live large, at least for a while(see most of Israel's kings, the Romans, pretty much anyone who conquered Israel). If there is one ultimate message of the Bible, it is that we will absolutely NOT get a fair judgement in this life. Ecclesiastes says it best, "the sun shines on the righteous and unrighteous, the just and unjust alike."

Sure, there's a message of FINAL judgement, but that happens after death, maybe not even until the end of time itself. And if there is one thing that won't happen at the final judgement, it is gloating over the punishment of the wicked.

Anyway, getting back to the point, karma is like "the secret." It's appealing because it has a superficial logic. You get what you deserve, what you do happens to you. But just ask anyone without rose colored glasses and they'll tell you that's bullshit. No one really gets what they deserve. Shit happens. The reasons for it are beyond the minds of us poor humans.

This is why the "karmic" view is so common in stories. It provides a catharsis, a emotional justification for everything. The bad guy gets hit in the head with an icicle because he's a bad dude. We get to smugly declare "such is the fate of all who do evil."

Karma can also be a basis for the most wicked of all human emotions, revenge. You want to "get" someone back for what they've done to you. They deserve it. They should receive in kind what they've done to you. You are an instrument of karma, putting the universe into balance. (on a side note, that's why I'm against the death penalty, but also believe in killing in defense of one's country. One is vengeance, the other is necessity.)

Grace, on the other hand, is something that any relationship counselor will tell you is necessary for a successful relationship. You have to let things go, not hold grudges, not keep an account of faults. Doing so will poison any relationship. This applies equally to marriages, friendships, co-workers and nations.

Keep in mind that Jesus commanded us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But there is no commiserate promise that "then others will do unto you as you have done unto them." Nope, none of that. Just the opposite in fact.

How I did it (triple booting my Macbook)

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:01:00 +0000

How I did it (triple booting my Macbook)

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:32 AM PST

HOW TO TRIPLE BOOT UBUNTU, WINDOWS 7 AND OS X (ALL 64-BIT)

I've just finished getting my Macbook Pro triple booting into OS X, Ubuntu and Windows 7. It wasn't quite as obvious as it seems based upon the internets, but it is not really that hard. Just remember that many of these steps HAVE to be done in a certain order.

I used Wired's How To wiki as my basis, but they leave out several things and don't talk about my particular preferences, so this is my streamlined and supplemented version of that.

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

First, backup your computer using Time Machine. I haven't had to restore from a backup during this process, but if you do this then you can fuss around with your computer all you want without any worry, because it's all just a restore away from being back to square one. Go ahead, backup now. I'm serious. Backup. I'll wait. I have coffee.

GATHER YOUR FORCES

Things you'll need to do before you start:

Windows 7 64-bit install disk.

Ubuntu x64 Alternate install disk.

Gparted bootable utility.

REFIT.

Get Windows 7 & Ubuntu disks ready. For Ubuntu, download the "alternate install" disk, you'll need one of the options on it. Also download and burn Gparted onto a cd. Then download REFIT, and have it handy in a folder or something.

This is a good time to check and see if you'll have to make alterations to your Windows install disk. Open a terminal and run this command:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

This should spit something back that says either EFI32 or EFI64.

If it says EFI32, then you'll need to change your Windows install disk. There are 2 ways to do this.

You can use the method described at this website if you have a Windows machine available.

Or you can use the method on this other site if you only have your Mac.

RESIZE YOUR HARD DRIVE

Ok, you've backed up, right? Because step 1 is the scariest step.

Resize your hard drive partition.

Open up Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)type "diskutil list" and take note of the name of your main hard drive partition (probably disk0s2).

In the following example, I have a 500GB HD with 480GB of actual space:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 379G JHFS+ Linux 20G JHFS+ WIN 80G JHFS+ REFIT 5G

This is what that means
disk0s2 = the disk you want to resize(ie. your main OS X disk)
120G = the size you want to keep for OS X
JHFS+ = the format of the 2nd partition
Linux = name of 2nd partition
20G = name of 2nd partition
so on and so forth for 3rd and 4th partition.

The 4th partition(REFIT) is optional, but I do it for increased security. If you're not overly worried about someone else being able to get into your computer, then don't worry about it and just do 3 partitions.

INSTALL REFIT

The boot loader that you get when you hold down the option key on your Mac only supports 2 bootable operating systems, so you'll have to replace it.

Download from rEFIt sourceforge page

Copy the subfolder called "EFI" from the downloaded image to the rEFIt partition.

If you don't care about security that much then just copy it to your root volume.

Putting it in its own partition enables you to have a firmware password to prevent any joker from stealing your laptop and booting from a CD or to a command prompt to bypass your password. Yes, I know you can still bypass the firmware password. But it's harder.

Go back to the Terminal. Go to the /efi/refit/ folder, or wherever you put it and run
./enable.sh

Get your gParted disk ready, and reboot. If you put rEFIt on its own partition, hold down option and select the rEFIt option. If you didn't, then the rEFIt screen should come up automatically.

FIX WINDOWS PARTITION WITH GPARTED

Put in the gParted CD and select it from the boot option screen. Just keep hitting enter for all the default settings until it gets to gParted's linux interface.

The gParted program should open automatically, but if it doesn't it's on the desktop.

Select your Windows partition(identify it either by label or by size)delete that partition.

Select the new "unallocated space" and make a new partition. Select a new size as close to the old one as you can get, making sure to leave ~128MB of space after this partition. Select the format as "unformatted." This is so that Windows will have a nice clean partition it can recognize to work with. Click apply, let it go, and restart, but DON'T LET THE COMPUTER GO TO OSX. If you do, you may have to do this step again.

INSTALL WINDOWS 7

On restart, swap out the gParted CD for the Windows 7 DVD, and select it from your boot menu(either rEFIt or from the Apple Boot Option screen). Install as normal, doing a quick format to NTFS on the partition you just made with gParted. If you're doing this right this step should be easy and straightforward. No problem. Go through all the steps. If you miss the boot option during one of Windows multiple install reboots don't worry, you can go all the way into OS X without problem. The install will pickup when you boot to Windows next.

Then get out the install disk that came with your Mac and install the bootcamp windows drivers. Ignore the Windows warning that Boot Camp causes problems. What does Windows know?

If you have an older Mac, you'll have to trick Boot Camp into installing the drivers on a 64-bit Windows. For that, just go to the subfolder \BootCamp\Drivers\Apple and run BootCamp64.msi using the Windows Vista compatibility mode.

INSTALLING UBUNTU LINUX

This is actually the easiest step. Start the installer(I did it through the Boot Select instead of REFIT), and it should be pretty painless. There are a couple of things to remember here. First, make sure you install to the right partition. Just remember which size you made for Ubuntu a while back. Then make sure you remember the device id for the disk you're using. It will say something like disk0s3 or whatever. Remember that!

Also, when you are selecting partitions don't select a swap partition. It may give you a warning telling you to do so, but ignore it. You'll fix this later. Also, there is no easy way to setup another partition to use for swap, so it doesn't even matter.

A few minutes later you'll be asked where to install GRUB, the Linux bootloader. Make sure you put this on the same disk as you installed Linux. This is not the default. Use the device id you remembered from a moment ago(disk0s3 or whatever).

Linux should be mostly done by now. Once it's running, go to this page and setup a swap file according to the instructions. You might also need to run some of the commands on this page to get all your mac specific things working.

Congrats! You're done.

Clone 4: Remakes at a Funeral

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:06:00 +0000

Clone 4: Remakes at a Funeral

Posted: 15 Apr 2010 02:21 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/c3iyLj

I have some friends who feel very strongly that the current remake of Death at a Funeralis a travesty, an outrage, the kind of thing that people point to when they say "Hollywood doesn't have any original ideas anymore!" All valid opinions. I feel a bit this way whenever I hear about someone remaking a foreign film. Oddly enough, these feelings of "why bother" come up even when the same filmmaker is remaking his own film(as in Michael Haneke's Austrian & American versions of Funny Games, or, the classic, but people tend to forget it when talking about Hitchcock's 2 versions of The Man who Knew Too Much, and DeMille's The Ten Commandments).

Also oddly, no one ever dismisses a feature length version of a short out of hand, although perhaps they should(given Shane Ackers rather pointless remake/extension of 9) or shouldn't(given Wes Anderson's brilliant feature version of Bottle Rocket). Almost everyone likes to forget the times that remakes have improved on the originals, like John Carpenter's The Thing, or John Huston's The Maltese Falcon[the 3rd version in 10 years, so says a nice IFC article]).

This whole little lesson on film history is prompted by Roger Ebert's review that says the new American version of Death at a Funeral is better. And FUNNIER. Also interesting is that it's directed by Neil Labute, no stranger to remakes(2 movies, as well as 2 movie remakes of his own plays, as well as an adaptation of a novel, making him the remake Devil, if you think of remakes that way), and who's also a GREAT director and writer. Curiousier and Curiousier.

Again, there seems to be some kind of outrage that the Death at a Funeral remaking is happening only 3 years after the British original. Odd, then, that few people take it upon themselves to get outraged that 3 versions of The Ten Commandments(all of which might be considered remakes) came out in an 2 year period!(don't believe me, 1, 2, 3).

Anyway, that's not to say that anyone shouldn't have strong opinions about remakes, just like people are free to have strong opinions about books that are being made into films. Both situations raise the question, if the original was done and well liked, why make a new one?

I guess all this is predicated by your opinion of the original. If you loved it, I can see why you wouldn't want it remade. If you hated it, didn't see, why would you care?

Me, I'm a fan of remakes. I find them interesting, to see what different voices do with the same material. Shakespeare has been reinvented countless times, music has the strong tradition of the cover song that a performer can make their own, etc. How many paintings and statues of the Pieta have we seen? Is Michaelangelo's the only one we need? Perhaps. But we'd be lacking something as a culture if we didn't have all of these.

I think I read an interview with Neil Gaiman once where he said that of course he wants the film versions of his work to be great. Why wouldn't he? But he can't promise anyone that they always will be, and that's ok too, because it's not like the books or comics are going anywhere. If the movie turns out to be rubbish then that's sad, but you can just go back to the beloved book and hope that someone better will try again someday.

Imagine if Peter Jackson had thought, 'hm, I'd really like to make a Lord of the Rings movie, but between the 2 animated versions they've just about covered it. Ah well, here goes The Frighteners 2.'

Just to give you some perspective though, I'm the person who bought both versions of The Exorcist: The Beginning, a film I don't particularly like, because I'm fascinated by the 2 very different versions, with mostly the same actors on all the same sets, shot in the same style. Even if both versions end up with a movie that is pretty much crap, I paid full price for each.

Spring fever

Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:33 PM PDT

No time for a clone post today, but I just wanted to out down how great my day was. It started out with a bike ride to work, all the way since I missed the bus, then a good, productive day at work, then a beautiful walk to Carl's Jr. for milkshakes with Nicole & Cosmo. After a delicious dinner, I went for a run, doing 3 easy miles in the near pitch dark. The run was a gamout of smells, from the open sewer in the north end of the neighborhood to lavender on the path by the arroyo. And above it all, the stars in a deep purple and orange sky. Just bliss.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Clone 3: The Wild Hunt Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (jonnyflash) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:06:00 +0000

Clone 3: The Wild Hunt Trailer

Posted: 13 Apr 2010 09:50 PM PDT

http://bit.ly/9ysFf2

This looks like a combination of Deliverance and The Wicker Man, by way of LARP. Yes, the Society of Creative Anachronisms(which, I believe, was recently in the market for a new "King of New Mexico" or something) is just one cult-leader type away from making this movie a reality. Some of the parts also remind me of the hard core Civil War re-enactors that Elmore Leonard featured prominently in Tishomingo Blues. The guys who say you have to earn your rank through participating in multiple battles, but they'll still respect you if you show up dressed as a general, since, after all, you're a general.