Beth's Contradictory Brain

Greater Love Has No Man...

We got our butts out of the house yesterday and went to see Gran Torino and grab some dinner. I knew a couple of bloggers I read had said it was a good movie, but I didn't read anything that really talked about the plotline. I really prefer to go into movies knowing as little as possible.

Anyway. Wow. As with so many things, it made me cry a lot. It didn't have the best editing/continuity/acting. But it sure was worth the time.

If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend it. If you do see it, let me know what you think of it.

TV Watching

Now that the fall season is gearing up, what shows are you happy to be watching??

I'm happy to see The Office and am waiting to see how good 30 Rock is this season. I'm sad it's the final season of ER, although I know it's time for it to go. I have a feeling there will be tears for almost every episode. Still loving HIMYM! I've started watching Bones this season, no idea why, but I find it charming. Hell, I'll probably have to watch Grey's this season to see the lesbian story line, but I'll dvr it and get to it when I get to it. There's still way too much that's annoying on that show. Still liking House. Heroes is fine while watching it, but then you realize how silly all the decisions these people make are. Not sure who I'm rooting for on DWTS. Shut up you know you watch it, too.

And no, I don't watch too much tv... I have a dvr so I can skip commercials and boring parts. Heh.

Update

Yesterday was a decent day.

I had looked at a map of the area around here and found a road that goes along the Potomac and thought it would be a cool motorcycle ride. I don't ride as much around here as I'd like because it's generally pretty scary to drive a car around here, and I take it personally when someone tries to run me over on my motorcycle and it makes me feel all homicidal. Not fun.

Anyway. The weather was perfect and I taped my little map to the gas tank and off I went. Then, I proceeded to misread the map and kept having to make u-turns. Thankfully, the original route wasn't too terribly long, because I ended up doing it all wrong. Instead of riding about 45 miles, I rode about 70. The upside is that the gas in the tank was getting old and I needed to use it up and put new stuff in.

It is a cool road with some nice places to stop and watch the river roll by, and it goes right in front of Mount Vernon, which is kinda neat. I'll take Nerdstar once she gets back.

Then I watched a couple of dvds.

First up was Big Rig. It was ok. The coolest part of watching it was seeing all the places we'd been to on all of our road trips.

Then I watched a sad little film called The Dead Girl. I wouldn't recommend it. Not sure why I thought it would be good and Netflixed it. I try to avoid those kind of movies - dark and independent. It's like watching too much CSI, real life can suck enough, don't need to watch that sort of thing. (Shut up, I know Buffy has it's dark stuff, but in the end it's all good.)

Not much planned for the weekend so far. I'm pretty sick of my own company.

Oh, but I have gone out and played some free poker lately at a nearby restaurant. Too many of the people are missing too many of teeth for my taste, but I did meet one nice couple. Bonus, in one tourney I got 4th place out of about 65 people, in another I got 7th. Not too shabby.

What He Said

Hehehehe... The world is a mess... and I just need to rule it!

If you don't know what Dr. Horrible is all about, well, watch it anyway! Joss is still a GOD!!

John Adams

Two more weeks. Ugh. We have gotten to text each other a lot, and spoken on the phone most days so far. Poor girl has to get up early and do some sort of PT then sit in meetings all day. I guess that's ok though, she's not supposed to be having any fun.

Yesterday I watched the first 2 of 3 dvds in the HBO John Adams miniseries. I don't like any of the actors in it, but I'm still enjoying watching it. I'd say it's a nice overview of the times it covers. And I'll never be able to express how much I admire the people (not just men) who made this country happen. I'm a true believer that this is the best nation in the history of the world.

There are always questions of what Washington and all would think of how things are today. But I'd be curious as to what, if anything, they'd change in the Constitution if they knew how it'd be so argued over for the past 200+ years. Would they have made the 2nd amendment more specific? Would they have more clearly defined what power each branch has? I know they did the best they could just balancing the issues of those times in addition to thoughts of the future.

Then I ended the day watching more Buffy season 5 - which I'll probably finish tonight so I can move on to seasons 6 and 7 eventually (depends on how much time some of the stuff in my Netflix que takes to get here and to watch).

Stream of Consciousness

It's 9:41 p.m. Saturday night and I'm surfing around the internet, trying not to feel too lonely, or to think too much, or to let too much boredom in. It wasn't a bad day, but...

About 11 years ago, maybe closer to 12 by now, I first heard Ani Difranco. Wow. Within a month of hearing Shameless and a couple of other songs for the first time, I had every cd she had made. And while I can't agree with her politics, I still think she should be required listening for every 12 year old - boys and girls.

So, I'm listening to a webstream of some performance of hers, and feeling wistful and nostalgic.

About the time I found Ani, I found lesbian chatrooms. Sometimes I miss them. Sure, they were full of drama and bullshit, but I also made some good friends. Blogging is similar, but not really the same.

Pause...

After reading the book that had the stuff about Greta Garbo the other day, I Netflixed Ninotchka, one of her later movies. As many old movies as I've watched, I had never seen one of hers. If I hadn't read the biography of Stalin I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie nearly as much. It was also interesting watching her knowing how much she later couldn't bring herself to make any more movies and hated what we would call the celebrity side of life.

Pause...

Ok, now, don't laugh. I caught Herbie Fully Loaded on my tv late last night and I watched a lot of it because of Ms Lohan being in it and all the news of her and her g/f Sam lately. And honestly. I feel bad for Ms Lohan. Right up until I had my first g/f my senior year of high school, I had lots of boyfriends. I know how weird it is for everyone to wrap their heads around the idea of "oh, you're with a girl now." But imagine if you had to figure all that out while also being some "movie star" with a particular image to maintain to keep working and all that crap. And even with all of our *cough* lesbian role models out there - I don't think it's like she's got people around her to help her with this whole new identity thing. No, I don't see Ellen picking up the phone and saying "hey, welcome to club - here's some tips on things." Hmmm, did find this nice blurb on Gawker (through Goggle, I don't normally read Gawker.)

Anyway. Just something taking up way too much of my brain.

Pause...

The six hour time difference between here and Hawaii is a total pain in my ass.

Pause... (Mom and The Kid called)

Not sure you've noticed the Grocery Shrink Ray phenon, but The Consumerist has been all over it - and it pisses me off every time I read about. Now I guess I need to pay more attention and stop buying products manufacturers do this to.

Pause...

Thank God for limitless texting. It's the easiest way for us to keep in touch since the Army is keeping her rather busy with early morning runs (ha ha ha) and meeting after meeting after meeting.

Long Pause...

Last but not least in this way too long post. Patton Oswalt's speech he gave at his former high school's graduation. Via Michele.

It's 11:22 now, and I need a shower and to at least try to sleep soon.

Wall E

We went to see it tonight and I really, really enjoyed it. I have no idea how Pixar makes you forget completely that you're watching animation. Not only did I forget the robot wasn't a real robot, I forgot he was even animated. Sigh. It's a lovely movie.

Oh yeah. And when you go see it, the Pixar short film before it is fantastic. And if you want to know how Nerdstar feels about food - think of her when you watch the bunny.

And since no one writes a better review than Lileks - just go read his.

Art

I decided it would be fun if we acted like urban hipsters for an evening. We went over to DC to check out Artomatic - 10 floors of a 12 story building turned over to 1000 artists.

It was cool. I think our favorite exhibit was one where a guy stood at a certain intersection in DC over 24 hours and took peoples pics. I thought about how it would be even more cool to see the same thing done in several different cities and then have all the pics exhibited by city. It'd be cool to see the different looks of the people in different cities.

There was also the Peeps dioramas exhibit - way fun!!

I was hoping to actually buy some more art for our place, alas it was not to be. There was one painting there we both thought was neat, but it was already sold. But out of thousands of pieces of art - there weren't any I really wanted to live with.

I realized I like photography more than paintings to look at. But my feeling is why would I want to live with someone else's photos when I can take my own.

Other art I don't want to live with includes dark and angry art, photos/portraits of people I don't know, and certainly not political art. There seemed to be a lot of those types. I guess it's cool to see women painting naked women instead of men painting naked women, but there's still no one painting naked men.

One cool aspect of this particular art show as all the ethnic diversity of the artists and art.

Anyway - what art have you seen lately and what kind do you like to live with??

Netflixed

Let's see if I can remember the recent movies. I watched Cloverfield. Not impressed. When I listened to the commentary afterwards, I realized I didn't see the movie they thought they made. The guy spoke about how he and his son took a trip to Japan recently and got into Godzilla and that made him think how's there's no equal American monster. Hmmm, maybe that's because we didn't have nukes dropped on us and then used movies to deal with it. (As I've mentioned, my nephew is very into Godzilla and we've watched a lot of the movies in the past year or so.) But, even if they wanted some kind of "American" monster - that thing they designed was just hideous. Then another guy in the commentary talked about how the creature was just a baby. When I heard that I thought WTF? That didn't come through at all. I mean, if it was a baby then what were all the smaller creatures it shed?? But worst of all, I just didn't buy the whole plotline. Really? Those particular people would stay together and go back and find the girl and risk death? I didn't think so. And lastly, I'm not sure the terror of a monster in Manhattan can compete with the real terror of 9/11 - not that filmmakers can't try, or can't use the idea or the setting, this film just didn't work for me.

I watched Lars and the Real Girl. Cute movie. Ryan Gosling is great in it. Again though, watching the extras, the writer talked about how we should just let crazy people have their craziness and accommodate them more. It's a sweet idea, but I'm not sure it's realistic. It's a nice movie about accepting people and such.

Then there was Martian Child. Another cute movie. Great kid actor.

Today I watched a sci-fi film called Sunshine. Not bad, not fantastic. You can see the ending coming, not that that hurt watching the film. I think they could have fleshed out the bad guy more (no pun intended if you ever see it) and his crazy motivation. Also - why are the outsides of spaceships lit other than for us the movie viewer to be able to see them?

Slow

I guess I should have blogged this earlier, when I got the comic and first read it, but I neglected to do so.

I'm not sure how many of my regular readers are Buffy fans, it's taking me forever to get Nerdstar even a little interested in the series.

In case you didn't know, Joss and team created a comic book series that is the 8th season that didn't happen for tv. It's been really fun reading it and seeing where things went post Sunndydale.

Things got really fun in episode 12 when Buffy has a great night of sex with one of her fellow young slayers.

Fortunately over at AfterEllen they've done a good post on it and even put up the relevant pages from the comic book. There's also a link to a great article with Joss from the NYT. Go check it out!

Oh My

SCARLETT Johansson (below) has a steamy lesbian sex scene with Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen's upcoming "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." A source tells us: "It is also extremely erotic. People will be blown away and even shocked. Penelope and Scarlett go at it in a red-tinted photography dark room, and it will leave the audience gasping." The women later have a threesome with Javier Bardem (below), who plays Cruz's husband. The film also stars Patricia Clarkson, Rebecca Hall, Kevin Dunn and Chris Messina.

I think I just came a little.

(As soon as I figure out where our Mac put the little icons from MT I'll provide the link to Page Six.)

If

If you're not afraid of you and your house getting struck by lightning for being evil

and

If you're up for a long night of really, really sick, irreverent humor...

You can do a double feature of

Farce of the Penguins and The Aristocrats.

We watched Farce last night, and the dvd extras really made it worth the time, it was all pretty damn funny, in a sick sort of way. We saw The Aristocrats back when it came out in theaters, and have put it on our Netflix list for another cold, dreary night.

Small Getaway

We didn't actually leave town, but it felt like getting away yesterday.

We got up and went to IHOP for breakfast because it's so filling.

Then we headed over to the National Archives. I was surprised to see a line of people waiting to get in. I wasn't sure how many people would be tourists instead of shoppers yesterday. It was kinda cool so many were being tourists. I've seen programs about preserving the Declaration of Independence and such, so it was cool to see it and the Constitution up close. They also had some other cool exhibits. School House to White House was neat.

Then we were going to go to The Spy Museum, but it was sold out for the next two or three hours and we ended up at the National Portrait Gallery and the The Smithsonian American Art Museum We were there for hours and still didn't see everything. It was amazing. We did see the 2nd floor where there are portraits of every president.

As always I found I'm just not a big fan of modern art. When looking at some of the pieces I thought, well, maybe if it had some sort of explanation that would be good - then I'd read the ones that did have explanations and it just seemed to make it that much more silly. The portraits in these three collections were neat to see: Twentieth-Century Americans, Bravo!, and Champions.

Anyway, it felt like a getaway from everyday life.

Too Damn Funny

Slapcountdown.com

And we've got Freaks and Geeks coming from Netflix for the upcoming weekend. I watched them all during one of Nerdstar's previous long voyages from home, so she gets to see them this time.

The Lives of Others

We watched The Lives of Others yesterday and it was stunningly well made. In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking of something to compare it to. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't sentimental, it wasn't over the top. It was just incredibly well written, directed and acted.

I must admit I really didn't know anything about post war East Germany. The Wall came down when I was in high school - but I can't say I cared much about such things.

Just the other day Nerdstar and I were talking about what the chances are America could ever turn into a place like East Germany was. I know there are those on the far left who think it is under Bush. (I have no desire to debate those with that idea.)

Having read Chinese Lives and having seen The Lives of Others, I'd say we're so far from that sort of oppression. And I hope we're immune from such things. If the constitution failed to protect us, I would pray our general fuck you attitude to people telling us what to do would prevail. Then I see how the idea of global warming has taken over and tries to get us all to change our ways. But as Nerdstar said, how many people have actually changed any behaviors in spite of the non-stop barrage of messages telling us we should?

But we also talked about how hard it would be to go against such extreme oppression once it becomes entrenched. In my younger days I would have said absolutely I would fight. As you get older and you realize that it's not just about you, it's about all the people in your life they'd use against you.

My sense when reading about Chinese people's views of the Culture Revolution in the late 80s was that they mostly tried to just get through it. I don't know that it's ever that many people on either end - the politbureau dickheads, or the informants, or the revolutionaries. It's mostly people in the middle trying to get on with the lives and waiting for things to get better.

Anyway. Seriously, watch The Lives of Others.

More Funny Stuff

I'm sure a while back I wrote about watching most of the Planet Earth series, and how it was all eat or be eaten.

But one little part of the series cracked Nerdstar and I up completely. It was the gayest little bird we'd ever seen! So this morning I finally found the clip of the bird of paradise on YouTube. It was funny enough watching this male bird so thoroughly clean it's little spot in the forest. Then, to watch it do a little dance. But when it broke out into full on "hey watch me!" we just about peed our pants laughing!! And how strange and amazing that the florescent part of it's coloring looks like two eyes and the biggest mouth you've ever seen?

Stardust

We went to see it this afternoon and I really enjoyed it. I've read the book three times over the past few years, and sent it to Nerdstar to read while she was in Iraq. It's a sweet book, and the movie was pretty sweet as well.

Loved all the actors as their characters. DeNiro was fantastic. Pfeiffer was brave - as was Sarah Alexander, who it took me a few minutes to recognize - for looking so bad for so much of the movie.

I'd recommend it!

Ratatouille

Went to see it this afternoon. I'm not sure Pixar will ever have a story as good as Toy Story, although Nemo and Monsters grew on me. I didn't enjoy Cars or the Incredibles much at all.

The story in Ratatouille was decent, and it was fun to watch. But what always amazes me about Pixar movies is how real they feel. There are so many times I totally forget it's not live characters I'm watching, or real objects.

The short film before the movie was fantastic as always.

Yummy Sighs

I've written about Sarah before, and how I used to go hear her and Ginger play in Austin. I might have even mentioned that I kissed them both - chastely - one New Year's Eve.

She's posted a cool you tube video of her talking about Falwell's death at one of her shows and then the beginning of one of the songs off her new cd. Check it out.

Friday Night Lights

I haven't read other blog reviews yet, but I loved last night's episode. I don't think I've ever seen a better hour of television dealing with teens having s e x. I don't think there's any doubt that Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play the best married couple of tv. Their conversations last night were so great. Yes, I'm sure Julie and Matt will have sex eventually, but it was good to see a teen couple not racing into it.

And the sceens shot in Austin made me almost cry with homesickness. I love that view of the state capital from Congress. There's a link on this site to interviews about filming in Austin.

Oh yeah... They showed True Blue - the tattoo shop where Nerdstar got her tattoo.

The Original

I'd been thinking about going back and watching all 7 seasons of Buffy again, and this weekend I got started, you know, since I've got all this time on my hands. Season 1 was way back in 1996 and I was worried it wouldn't hold up, but wow, it really does.

It was fun watching those first 12 episodes and remembering all the things to come.

Shonda is always going on about how Meredith on Grey's is all "dark and twisty" - re-watching Buffy I really just have to laugh at that. Has there ever been a lead female character more dark and twisty than Buffy? I think not.

Grammy's

We weren't really too impressed last night. You know it's bad when you're looking at the clock then at what time they're supposed to end.

I was never a huge Police fan, but they had some really good stuff way back when. Although, I think the number of their songs I want to listen to isn't nearly as many of their songs I don't want to listen to. So I wasn't very impressed with their opening of the show. Sting looks amazing, though.

I think the Grammy's just have too many categories. Here's the complete list. (Wouldn't it be great if you could click each song and actually hear it?!) And they're not as clear cut as other awards like the Oscar's and such. Do we still need a Best Polka category? Did you even know Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys were up for Grammy's in a Best Dance Recording category? And that's not to be confused with the Best Electronic/Dance Album category.

I guess the Grammy's are more about performances and getting an audience than the awards themselves. I'm not sure I like it that way.

All that said, Mary J is amazing!

What did you think?

Night Out

A while back, Nerdstar bought us tickets to see Kathy Griffin in Pitts last night. We started watching her on Bravo about a year or so ago. I wouldn't say Kathy was my favorite show, but she was definitely entertaining.

We've both been sinking into depression lately, so it was really good to go out and hear someone funny and have a decent dinner.

Thankfully, while it was under 10 degrees outside, at least it wasn't snowing and the roads were clear.

Hopefully Nerdstar will write a better review later!

Heroes

I'm going on record before tonight's episode starts that Nathan is NOT the cheerleader's dad. I saw several people on other websites last week were thinking he is. But, I don't know who is.

Update: Damn!! I was so wrong! I'm not usually wrong about where a tv show is headed - which is why I love Heroes!!

Update: Here's an interview with Tim Kring on Ain't It Cool News.

Prince

Best Halftime Show Ever!!

TV Watching

I finally watched the ending of Sleeper Cell this morning. If you have Showtime and didn't watch it, I highly recommend it. I didn't watch the first series last year, but caught enough of the promos to get interested for this season. It was a really well done series. I really appreciated their efforts to show the "good" and "bad" Muslims as humans. I don't want to talk too much about actual plots in case some of you decide to check it out.

The Survivor finale was decent. I think Ozzy should have won. Although I guess you can argue that the social engineering Yul did is as impressive as Ozzy's challenge performances. I hope the producers realized that sending 3 to the final for the jury to choose from was useless. Although, I guess I do appreciate them still trying to change things up and keep it interesting.

I also watched the Sci-Fi mini-series The Lost Room. It was ok, but not great. The objects were cool. How someone figured out how some of them worked would have been interesting to know - like when the dude finally showed swallowing the quarter to make memories real. I guess I think it could have been written a little tighter.

I'm looking forward to the new game show Identity. I think it's the kind of thing I'd be good at, but who knows.

Speaking of game shows, Deal or No Deal makes me nervous every time I watch it!

Rainy Sunday Afternoon Fun

This is some funny stuff!

Catherine Tate - Are You Gay, Sir?

Catherine Tate- What Are You Wearing?

There are tons more... check em out.

Found Via Alice In Texas

Cyndi Lauper

That's who we went to see in concert tonight. And I have to say it was one of the best concerts EVER. I'm not sure the power of her voice is ever captured on her records - but I'm also not all that familiar with her records, other than the obvious stuff. She had an amazing band with her.

For the encore, I'm pretty sure she threw out the set list and ended up doing some really amazing music with her band, and then had the opening band come on and get their instruments and they all just jammed.

There's nothing better than hearing great musicians play live.

Update: Cyndi blogs about the KC show here.

?

So what is it this tv season? There seem to be several shows about bigger themes. Obviously there's Jericho and Heroes, then there's The Nine and Six Degrees, maybe even The 4400 could be included. Shows about life after big events, shows about how we're all interconnected.

Are these the after effects of 9/11 finally showing up in our common entertainment? Or are there always shows like this and I'm just imagining it?

Heroes

Wow. I couldn't tell you the last time a tv show or movie gave me chills like watching Heroes tonight did. Especially when the guy who thinks he can fly saw the art of him doing just that. And I love the Japanese guy!!

I love the premise of the show - maybe because in my heart of hearts, I've always wanted something like this to be true.

Anyway. Here's an interview with Tim Kring,creator and executive producer.

Lots of other good info here.

Survivor

Anyone else watch the beginning of the new season of Survivor? I'm pretty sure I've watched all the seasons, so I thought I'd check this one out, too.

My question after watching it is - how do we write about the show without being - in the losest definition of the word - racist?
We didn't get a very good look at most of the tribes - there simply wasn't enough air time. But... How do we talk about how the African American tribe seemed to become even more subdivided into men vs. women? Or how the Asian tribe solved the puzzles pretty well and won the challenge - and if we think that might be a trend until the tribes are shuffled or merged? The Asians also seemed to identify the least as a cohesive representatiom of their race - while the African Americans seemed to feel the need to "represent".

What I think will be more interesting than having them subdivided - will be after reinforcing stereotypes, merging the tribes and making them then interact. Tribal alliances have always been strong after merges - I can't imagine how much stronger it will be this time.

I think it'll be cool to watch. Anyone think it will at all represent "real life"?

What I've been watching

I was happy to see Vincent auf'd on Project Runway. I really hope Uli wins the whole damn thing because she keeps coming in 2nd, but I have a feeling Jeffery will take it all instead. Maybe that's the way it should be.

I was sad to see Storm off of Supernova - but I am sure she'll do much better without them. What lame ass music they make as a band - how is that possible? Oh wait, after watching more than I could bear of Monster in Box (I think that's the title) - the horrible, horrible documentary about Metallica being in therapy - and learning what absolute pussies rock stars can be... maybe I can understand their lame music.

I'm so happy House is back on, I missed him. I hate what's her name's hair being darker, she looked terrible and I hope someone in production noticed it early in shooting and we don't have to see her look that bad for too many episodes.

I was happy/sad to see "Charlie Utter" on an episode of The Closer. Maybe seeing him get killed on that show will in some weird way help me miss him less if the Deadwood "movies" never get made.

What have you been watching?

Hello Groceries

Well, I've had several songs in mind for the Monday lyrics, and damned if I can find any of them online to copy and paste. Ugh.

There was a band back in the late 60s early 70s called Chase. I only know of them because our hick band director would take their funky, jazz, rock music and score it for our marching band. For years I had an old cassette tape of their albums, then was able to find them on cd. Only once in my life, driving back to college at 5 a.m. on a Monday morning, did I hear them on the radio. And I don't think I've ever ran across someone else who knows who they are.

Here's where you can hear a sample few of their songs.

Hello Groceries was the one I was going to post the lyrics to and dedicate them to my Nerdstar!

Good Bye Deadwood

Well, I think I can live with that ending. How appropriate that Al's on his knees cleaning up blood. How sad for Trixie - but doesn't a new life always come at a price? Poor Johnny, but at least he had big balls. I'm going to miss the hell out of EB, I love his pose at the end on his roof - he gets his hotel back. I missed Doc in this episode, but I'm grateful he didn't die before the season ended. We all pretty much knew Hurst left town instead of being killed - but wasn't Langrish smart? And Richardson got to vote.

Sigh. I'm ready for season 3 on dvd to hear all the commentaries!

Here's Alan's take on it.

Deadwood

I actually screamed NOOO at my tv when Elsworth was shot. Those bastards. I knew the season couldn't end without someone dying, but I didn't see it being him!

All I can say is that because I'm pretty damn sure they can't/won't resolve everything in the season finale - they had better make those two hour movies I've read about.

Here's a better take on the episode than mine, by Alan.

Studio 60

I took advantage of Netflix offering the pilot episode of Studio 60 and just finished watching it. Wow. Aaron Sorkin is responsible for two of my all time favorite tv shows - Sports Night and West Wing - this pilot feels familiar, yet not too familiar. One of the amazing things was that it actually made me not hate watching Matthew Perry!

Check it out if you get the chance.

Deadwood

I've never loved a cast of a tv show like I love the characters of Deadwood. Yes, love. Every time I watch an episode, new or old, I worry and fret and laugh and hope and root for the ones I love and can't wait to see dead those who deserve to be dead. I'm sad there's not a fourth season. If shows like The Wire - which I admire for entirely different reasons - and Six Feet Under can have four, five or six seasons, then hell, Deadwood should have more!

I'm almost already grieving that Doc is probably going to die. (My only hope is that he makes it through the end of the season and they were planning on him dying early next season, although I'm probably wrong!) I thought it was only appropriate that Steve was killed by a kick from a horse. I wish with all my heart Joanie would get happy and Jane would get sober. I wish Al could read me bedtime stories. I'm so glad Bullock's wife is strong enough for him, and can't wait for Star and Trixie's wedding - which was probably also scheduled for the not to be fourth season - damnit! I love that Merrick just might grow bigger balls yet. I love the little Russian and that he's already standing up for the community. There will never be another tv character as fun to watch as Farnum.

Sigh.

Don't even get me started on the themes of Deadwood, how community civilizes us all eventually and so on and so forth.

Anyway. Here are two much better posts than mine about the show. Alan's and Matt's.

Two Films on DVD

Two films I saw last year at SXSW and are out on dvd this week. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. I thought it was a lot of fun.

And Seoul Train, a documentary about South Korea that I wrote about here and here.

Way Cool

I can't tell you the last time I followed another blogger's link to music and actually liked what I heard.

So to say this video of the Ditty Bops was the nicest of surprises on an overcast, lazy Sunday afternoon would be a sad understatement.

Here's their website.

Hex

I finally watched the series premier of Hex, a BBC America show. I really enjoyed it. One of the main characters is a kind of "knight in shining armor" lesbian who has a really kissable mouth! Although, they certainly found an interesting way to get around the lesbian/straight girl sexual tension. It's certainly a show worth catching while there's nothing else on in the summer.

The New Batwoman

In case you missed the news, Batwoman will be a lesbian in the new series. Yeah, I'll check out the first few issues and see if it's any good.

As for those "lesbian superpowers" - bring em on!!

Baghdad ER

Wow. I wasn't really planning on watching it. But I was setting the dvr to record Sopranos and caught the very beginning of it and decided to watch. I've seen two or three other documentaries on Iraq, but this was really something special. The website can explain it better than I can. I certainly couldn't have watched it while Nerdstar was over there. And I highly recommend it.

This is an interview with the filmmakers.

Season Finalies

Do you prefer cliff hangers or do you want it all wrapped up?

I've never been a big fan of cliff hangers. I mean, if I'm already a fan of the show I'm watching the next season pretty much no matter what. If I'm not a fan of the show - some spectacular two hour thing with a what the hell happens next ending that won't be resolved for months won't suck me in.

United 93

I went to see it this afternoon. I've got the day off and had some errands to run this morning. Nerdstar didn't want to see it yet, so I knew today would be a good time to catch it in a mostly empty theater by myself.

I remember when Schindler's List came out and it took me a couple of weeks to sort of mentally prepare myself to see it. It was another movie I went to see by myself in the afternoon so I'd have time to kind of recover afterwards. And while Schindler's List was real, it wasn't nearly as real to me as the events of 9/11 for obvious reasons.

Right up there with the sorrow and sympathy for those on the flights, in the WTC, the air traffic controlers and anyone associated first hand with the events of that day, is still my simmering rage at those who committed these horrible acts. Even just seeing the trailer for the first time brought "you bastards" to my lips once again.

There are tons of things being written about United 93, almost all of what I've read has been really positive. They're all right.

Sitting through it also reminded me of sitting through most of Shakespear's tragedies - you know it's all going to end very, very badly, yet you hold out hope anyway.

Anyway, should you see it? Yes.

Ani D

I've travled more to see Ani than is probably reasonable. I saw her for the first time in Austin about ten years ago after Caroline had left me heartbroken. Angela was kind and went with me. Ani ended the concert that night with Joyful Girl - the title I have a tattoo of.

Then maybe a year later Ani played in Oklahoma and I met up with Wendy and her g/f at the show. She flaked out on me after the concert - and that was a good thing because I had met Nerdstar only a week or so earlier and I called her from Oklahoma before the long drive back because I wanted to talk to someone about the show. That was the first show I saw Ani without her drummer Andy, and I was sad he wasn't there.

Maybe another year, or not quite went by, and Nerdstar and I planed our East Coast road trip. Ani was traveling south as we were headed north, so we caught her show in Raleigh, NC. One of my favorite pics of Nerdstar was taken while we were waiting for the doors to open. The venue was too damn hot that night, but I suffered through.

We saw her again at the Back Yard in Austin, a perfect venue. I managed to get a photo pass and took some decent pics. That was cool.

Then while Nerdstar was in Iraq and I volunteered at SXSW, I showed up one day and saw a flyer stating Ani was going to be speaking. I managed to get a decent seat there, too. And after she spoke I actually got to show her my tattoo and hug her. That was way cool.

Last night we drove just over two hours to Columbia to see her perform. She's had trouble with her wrists and took some time off from touring and now only had four or five shows scheduled. I didn't know it was going to be quite that far, and I figured an Ani concert would be a good antidote to the boring life we're living here in the Midwest.

I've never been a big fan of Ani fans. Last night I really wished I had a stack of stickers that said "HI, I'm a walking cliche!" The audience was 80% girls under 22, at least half of them baby dykes. I realized I've been listening to Ani for half of these people's lives!

I keep thinking it has to suck as an artist when your audience doesn't age with you.

This dude opened for her. He was ok. But he also was a perfect example of why I find it hard to take the far left seriously. His first tune was about lying to his kids about his past escapades. I don't disagree with the idea, but isn't the left all about openness and honesty? Then two of the five or six other songs were pretty extreme. One was about Ann Coulter's pussy stinking. Oh that's clever. And the other had a chorus about Pat Robertson's brains on a cross. Nice. It just doesn't win any points with me. I guess the far right has Michael Moore is fat jokes.

Good Listening

I used to go hear Ginger and Sarah play all the time in Austin. I actually heard them the first night they ever played together - doing a round-robin kinda thing with two other female singers. They're both so dynamic and talented and have amazing voices.

Then they went their own ways and Sarah moved out to LA to be close to the ocean. I've missed hearing/seeing her play. I've got their cds, both as a duo and as individual artists on the iPod. Sarah's music always fills me with happiness, sadness, and longing.

So I was happy to see on her website (linked above) that her new cd is out. I highly recommend checking it out!!

Oscar Thoughts

While driving to dinner tonight, I was talking with Nerdstar about how Hollywood wants us to think it's important, and shapes opinion, and can change, well, things. But we couldn't think of a movie that had actually really changed public opinion. Can you think of one? The only one that came to mind was maybe Philadelphia. But really, Magic Johnson getting HIV did more for HIV/AIDS awareness than any movie ever could.

So it was interesting to see the theme of the Oscar's tonight to kinda be "hey, we matter, we education, we enlighten." I just don't think that's the case. They can reflect societal changes and public opinion, but I don't think movies change anything. The one movie they brought up that might have was To Kill A Mockingbird. It is a very powerful film but was it powerful at the time? Were lives, laws, attitudes changed because of the film?

That said...

Would you rather cut short the skits and jokes and presenters and actually give the winners more time to speak? Seems kinda silly to give them a huge honor and award and then give them 45 seconds to respond.

And... if the Oscar's are so important and watched by so many people world wide - why are all the new, cool commercials rolled out during the Super Bowl instead?

TV Character Blogs

This is something I just don't get... when the character from a tv show has a blog. Current example I just ran across, Barney from How I Met Your Mother. (How I Met is a pretty funny show, but I say it's not nearly as funny as Scrubs. I love the lengths the show goes to for a joke - verbally and visually!)

Anyway. It's obvioulsy all fiction, so who writes it? The writers of the show - which might make it a little more valid, since they more or less write the character (although there are dozens of writers on any given tv show, so it's not like there's one guy in there writing Barney to "be his voice). Would it be better if the actor wrote the character's blog? I don't know. I'd much rather just read the actor's blog about the character and the show.

I do really appreciate Grey Matter, a blog by the writers of Grey's Anatomy. It's the writers actually blogging about writing a tv series. That's interesting.

Are there any character blogs out there you read?

Gay Films

We usually joke about what bad lesbians Nerdstar and I are. It's even worse up here in the midwest where we haven't found other gays.

But, I have seen a lot of the movies on the list of 50 Greatest Gay Movies. And although I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, I can't imagine why a movie about being all repressed wins over all the great "coming out"/"proud" movies.

The movies I have seen:
Beautiful Thing
Priscialla Queen of the Desert
Bound
Trick
Hedwig
Desert Hearts
Birdcage
Aimee and Jaguar
Boys Don't Cry
Tipping the Velvet
Philadelphia
Gods and Monsters
Personal Best
Bent
My Beautiful Laundrette
La Cage Aux Folles
Ma Vie En Rose
If These Walls Could Talk 2
Before Night Falls
Edge of Seventeen
High Art
Kissing Jessica Stien
Victor/Victoria
Saving Face
Incredibly True...
My Own Private Idaho
Rocky Horror
The Crying Game
Children's Hour

If you haven't seen the one's in bold, I'd highly recommend them.

TV Tonight

Just a few thoughts.

Paula really is a little creepy in making the googly eyes at the young boys. Would anyone find it amusing if a male judge were looking at young female contestants that way?

I love House. I love that there's a completely flawed hero in a medical drama. I love that they had the balls to show a hooker he hired showing up and him basically telling her to shut up and get on with it.

The other day, Throwing Things asked if Boston Legal had "gotten to message-y?" Until tonight I would have said no. I'm not saying I won't watch the show anymore... but it's not on my "must see" list anymore. I don't mind tv shows being liberally bent. I sometimes like the lone conservative voice on such shows, especially ones as charming as Denny Crane has ended up being. But tonight just seemed over handed. It was a total attack on private institutions.

Part of my contradictory conservative self is a very deep belief in the right of private institutions to do whatever they damn well please. Yes, the Boy Scouts can ban gay boys, Catholic hospitals can refuse certain kinds of treatments, country clubs can discriminate against whomever they desire, etc. - as long as there is no government money funding them. That's the beauty of this country, freedom of choice. If you don't find what you're looking for - start it yourself.

30 Days Show

Just One Bite writes about watching a couple of episodes of Morgan Spurlock's series 30 Days. I'd caught the one she writes about a few months ago and couldn't sit through the whole thing. She has some interesting thoughts about it all.

The one we caught last night was about a white, Christian guy from West Virginia going to live with a Muslim family in the Detroit area and living as a Muslim for 30 days. It wasn't too badly done. But one thing that really irritates me about such shows is that they only use the most extreme footage. I'm sure they talk to dozens of people that don't end up being used in the final cut - no, shows like this always have to use the "most dramatic" footage, which means it's not really real. I'd be much more willing to listen to whatever message their preaching if they would include the moderate voices.

Also, where's the show about the Muslim going to West Virginia to live as a Christian for 30 days?? I suspect we won't see that anytime soon. Which is another reason shows like this just don't impress me or win me over to whatever viewpoint they want to get across.

The Book of Daniel

What is it with really good tv shows getting cancelled? At least this time it wasn't Fox following their famous trend.

The Book of Daniel didn't wow me at first, but it certainly grew on me, in the short amount of time it had. It has to have one of the strongest casts I've seen. I guess it was one of those shows that managed to offend everyone. The christians wouldn't watch it because of the gay characters, the gays wouldn't watch it because of the religous stuff, and so on. Which is stupid.

One of the things I heard when I used to go to church that has always stayed with me is the sentence - if you can be offended, you will be offended. It goes through my mind all the time these days.

On NBC.com they got smart and decided to make available the un-aired episodes. The one this week is really, really good.

Daniel - "Why did my son have to die?"

Jesus - "It's the wrong question. Why did he have to live? Why did the universe demand his participation, Daniel? Look for that answer in everyone you know."

Check it out if you haven't!

Rollergirls

Oh my. Did anyone else watch Rollergirls on A&E last night?

What's so crazy is that while Nerdstar was in Iraq, I met up with one of my blog readers and he knew a girl who was doing roller derby in Austin. Alas, Nerdstar and I never went to a match.

I had tried to watch Real World Austin just to see my beloved city, but I just can't stand the show anymore. Forunately, Rollergirls shows a lot of Austin and gives you a feel for the freak factor in the city.

One thing I truly enjoyed while we spent a few days in Austin was the diversity. I mentioned that we went to Hoover's for dinner one night. It's a southern cooking restuarant - the best chicken fried steak, great bbq, grits with breakfast, collard greens, etc. - it's own by a black man, and it's located in East Austin, the poor side of town. The night we were there, out of the twenty tables there were three interracial couples, one Asian couple, one black family, at least one Hispanic couple, and an Asian family of eight or so, with a wide range of ages and income levels. I miss that here in the Midwest.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see Rollergirls, check it out.

Too Funny

Don't worry if you're dead...

found via Dooce.

Future of TV

Nerdstar and I often find ourselves drooling over lcd tvs and such. And are sometimes tempted to spend between 1K and 2k on a tv. We (ok, maybe I) watch a lot of it. But we never seem to get over the hurdles and justify the purchase.

Reading Mark Cuban's post on the future of HDTV and Jeff Jarvis' post on distribution of content certainly make me put off the purchase even more.

I certainly watch more of the cable channels than Jeff does. But that will probably change once I start the new job in the new year. Then most of my tv watching will be done through the dvr and probably on weekends. Shows like Amazing Race (which is having the suckiest season ever) and Survivor I like to watch in "real time" but that's not necessary, it just has to be the same night it airs. (I don't want to read spoilers before seeing it.) Other than that there are four or five shows I think are a must any given week. So I can see what Jeff's saying about paying for certain shows instead of or maybe in addition to certain chanels.

But I think it discounts the whole notion of chanel surfing and how much so many of us enjoy it. And what about those quirky shows you happen to catch an episode of on a network you don't usually watch, but end up loving, like Nip/Tuck?

I certainly don't think that this whole "unbundling" of cable channels will result in our cable bill being any lower, even if we only opt for half the channels we currently have.

This is just me thinking out loud as it were. Would any of this change the way you watch tv?

Must Reads

If you ever watch tv, and aren't reading A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, well, shame on you.

Two of the many wonderingful things there today.

An interview with Joss and Neil.

A breakdown of the new Amazing Race season, read the comments as well.

I had my tv sound almost totally muted about half way through TAR last night. Squeeling women - make it stop! It's interesting that Survivor seems to be ratcheting things up this season, and TAR went all sissy, family oriented. TAR should not be following in the steps of shows like Trading Spaces and going all family on us. If it's really confined to the U.S. this season, there won't be any taxi drivers speaking poor English gouging the racers. There won't be any ghettos to feel sorry for all the poor children. And where will they find horrible things for the racers to eat? Sigh.

Review

The screening for Serenity last night was pretty cool. It was a huge theater and was probably 80% full. Universal had three rows reserved for bloggers who had signed up, so we not only got to see it for free, we got great seats!

You could tell most of the people there were diehard fans of Joss' work. It's always a little weird to be immersed into total geekdom. The one time it was really fun was when we saw the South Park movie the night it opened.

I totally enjoyed the movie. Joss mastered his blend of comedy and drama just about perfectly again. It was neat watching a movie about characters I was already invested in, but the movie was never predictable as it could have been. Yes, there are a couple of things people totally committed to the series might wish had been different but I wasn't bothered by them. (I won't give details to avoid spoilers, you can email me when you see it and we can discuss it.)

I told Nerdstar it was certainly better than the last three Star Wars. I was never a Trekkie (see I probably spelled it wrong) or a huge sci-fi fan, it took me until season five to start watching Buffy, but Joss won me over.

I asked Nerdstar how she liked it, she's only see a couple of episodes of the series, she said it was pretty good, which from her is almost high praise.

It's one movie I would actually like to see a sequel for.

More and better reviews:

Doc
Vodka Pundit
Will Collier
Instapundit

Perhaps the best review I've read.

TV

I dvr'd the new show Willow is on, How I Met Your Mother. It was ok, not great, but we'll see how it goes. One of the characters says something about having to blog that and I thought, you know, if a character in a tv show says they have a blog, then they should actually have a blog for that character.

I also dvr'd Arrested Development, which remains the funniest show on tv. Again, one of the characters yells out the name of his website a few times. Low and behold imoscar.com. Fantastic!

I love dvr. I've finally gotten to tune into the second half of the second season and first half of the thrid season of The Wire. Deadwood is still my favorite drama, but The Wire is stunningly well done.

I also decided to go ahead and check out The Comeback. It's so well done is scary!

I loved the beginning of Survivor. It's about time they got tough on them! I'm so glad Stephanie is back, but I seriously doubt she'll win the whole thing, at some point they'll vote her off because it's her second chance.

Oh, I almost forgot. Tyra Banks = The Skinny Oprah. or not.

The Aristocrats

I actually had the chance to see it at the SXSW Film Festival last year, but missed it on opening night and failed to make it to the screening added later in the week. By then, I knew it was going to get wide distribution.

Last night we finally got to check it out at a new theater not too far from where we live.

I don't even think I can describe it. Hysterical - absolutely. Vulgar - extremely. Gross - well, by the end I felt like I needed to go home and shower. Did we laugh through the whole thing, totally!

If you're really hard to offend and need some laughs these days, I can't recommend it enough.

If you've seen it, what did you think? What was your favorite part? We had two, South Park and the card trick.

Amazing Race - family style

Here are the teams for the upcoming season of Amazing Race

Family pics and bios.

They're doing families of four. I'm not sure if that will make it better or worse. They all look so very wholesome, wouldn't it be boring if they really are? Then again, family in-fighting could be snarky enough! Won't it be harder to coordinate four people instead of two? I wonder if this is to try to appeal to a different demographic. In reading the bios I find that the one African American family is the Black family - that's funny, or at least it certainly could be.

Staying Power

I often have conversations with my Mom or Nerdstar about the past versus the present in music and movies and such. Newsweek asks which movie stars from this generation will we still watch fifty years from now like we watch Grant and Gable. I agree with newsweek that the generation before this one, with Streep and Redford and Eastwood certainly made movies that will last the test of time.

Listening to the top 100 movie songs I was telling Nerdstar how amazing it is that a simple song like Singing in the Rain is still such a part of popular culture about 70 years later.

What do you think will last?

Deadwood

I don't think I've ever felt as fond of a cast of characters as I do those of Deadwood. I've been watching the first seasons this past week, should finish it up today. In fact, last night my brain spent most of the night making up new story lines and side plots that ran as pseudo dreams. Weird.

Summer of History

I think I mentioned earlier that this seems to be shaping up as the summer of history for us. Watching C-Span I ran across some interesting books and made a list. We couldn't find any of them at the library at Ft. Fartknocker (as Nerdstar has decided to call it). Fortunately, Amazon sells used books, and while it cost more for shipping than the books, I still got four books for under $25.

The first one showed up the other day, Ghost Soldiers. It's the story of the rescue of POWs in the Phillipines who had been held by the Japanese. It was simply heartbreaking, as all stories of POWs are. It wasn't a totally in-depth book, but the author gives lots of information on other resources on the subject. I'm going to see if there's a book available of some of the soldier's diaries.

We finished up the first season of Carnivale the other day. It's interesting, but not the best show I've ever seen. There were many things in it that reminded me of Buffy - even preacher man's eyes went black just like Willow's used to. But it did spark my interest in the Dust Bowl of the 30s. Can you imagine such an event these days and the reaction (or should I say overreaction) of environmentalists. I'll be interested to read what they thought the future of the states affected would be and how long it actually was before the land was able to be farmed and grazed again.

Now we're watching season one of Deadwood. The West seems to be the topic for us this month.

Part of the fascination with all of these stories is to also see how much things have changed in this country in relatively short periods of time.

Goodbye Dr. Carter

Well, it wasn't the best sendoff in tv history, or even ER history for that matter. I still remember Doug and Carol's wedding. At least they didn't kill him like they did Dr. Green. But I'll be sad Dr. Carter isn't around next season.

Wow. Eleven years of ER. I've seen every episode. It started in 1994. I can't even remember that far back is seems. I know St. Elsewhere came before ER, but I never really watched it. And Chicago Hope started the same year, but didn't last nearly as long in spite of having a much better cast at the time. I didn't watch it either.

Nerdstar bought season one of ER on dvd while she was in Iraq (or before, I don't remember) but I've never watched any of them. I figured it would be cool to go back at watch the very first episode after watching Dr. Carter's last one.

How dark and tiny the original set was. I didn't remember Dr. Carter actually being in the pilot. Dr. Green, Dr. Ross, Nurse Hathaway, Benton, Dr. Lewis - all so young.

I'm not sure what I'll be watching come Fall. They cancelled American Dreams and Third Watch. I'll watch ER out of loyalty, but it's certainly not as good as it once was. I still enjoy Survivor and Amazing Race, but... I don't know. I miss Mad About You and Buffy. I'm about to make Nerdstar start with the very first episod of Buffy and watch all seven seasons - she will love it.

We just signed up for Netflix. I think it's so cool that old tv shows are now available, as well as new ones. I'm finally going to watch season one of Carnival and Deadwood.

It's the same old lament, nothing on tv is as good as it used to be. And movies - don't get me started. Is there anything coming out that isn't a remake?? Ugh.

The dropping costs of digital filming brought lots of talk about how more people would now have access to film making, and how this would lead to a revolution. I don't see it yet. Sigh.

Well That Sucked

Thankfully I wasn't full of anticipation for the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, or I'd be in tears.

I didn't know Disney was in anyway related to this project, or my expectations would have been even lower. I knew within the first minute that the movie wasn't going to do justice to the book. What a damn shame. We finally have the technology to really make this incredible book come to life, and it's totally squandered.

I won't get into spoilers, not that there really are any.

I'll just say it's extremely disappointing that the movie was obviously simply based on the book. What's the point of making this particular book into a movie if you're not going to use any of Adams' witty, intelligent, magnificent writing?? Ugh. Shouldn't that have been what the narrator was for?

The only good that can come from this is if the book finds a whole new set of readers!

Sports and C-Span

WOW! The women's final four games tonight were fantastic! Nerdstar and I are both Baylor Alum, so SIC EM BEARS!! How exciting that both teams in the finals have 5th year coaches that have totally turned the teams around, both are in the finals for the first time in their school's history, both came back from 15/16 point deficits, and both wear green! I'm sure Baylor would have preferred to kick Tennesee's butt Tuesday night, but oh well.

So, yeah, it was a sports and C-Span day for me.

I watched the UT women's softball team beat Nebraska.

I watched the Texas Rangers loose their last pre-season game, but not badly. I'm optimistic for them this year. One of the reasons we got XM instead of Sirius is so I can listen to Ranger games up in Kansas.

While waiting on basketball to start, I caught Azadeh Moaveni speaking about her book Lipstick Jihad and life as an American/Iranian living both here and in Iran. I'll definitely check out the book next time I'm in a bookstore.

Then it was the Baylor/LSU game.

I switch channels a lot during commercials and halftime, so a lot of these programs are overlapped.

I caught part of the authors of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers speaking. Again, next time I'm in a bookstore I'll be looking for this one.

I watched snippets of Roy Moore and Bill Press debating God and the constitution and such. It was interesting and annoying.

Of course, I watched the Michigan State/Tennesee game.

Also in there was watching Katherine Skiba, author of Sister In The Band Of Brothers: Embedded With The 101st Airborne In Iraq (Modern War Studies) another book that seems worth checking out.

SXSW Film Festival 6

I ended my film festival viewings with two more films yesterday. I'm so glad I decided to stick around for the second one.

Love Comes to the Executioner is the most original film I've seen, maybe ever. Memento was also very original. (just to give you my point of reference) I've literally never seen anything like this film. It's going to be billed as a dark comedy, but it's not that dark. It's just hysterical in a smart, sick sort of way. I wish I could find the screenplay online, because it has some of the best lines I've ever heard in a film. I have a feeling if it gets distribution, and I can't imagine it won't, it'll be a cult classic and be quoted along the lines of Office Space.

Jonathan Tucker plays the newly graduated guy hoping to land a job teaching Latin. Before going for a teaching interview, he goes to visit his mother in some small, run down town who's main business is the prison where his brother is on death row and his father has already been executed. Jeremy Renner, the guy who was in Dahmer plays his brother. Christene Ebersole is fantastic as their ex porn film star mother. And Ginnifer Goodwin plays the girlfriend.

The plot is pretty simple, although not entirely predictable, it really is the dialogue that makes this movie so unique. The main cast really pull off their quirky characters.

If you see this movie playing anywhere, I'd definitely recommend seeing it.

The other film was Kissing On The Mouth. It was written, filmed, directed and acted by four film school grad friends. It felt a bit self-indulgent to me. Three of the four were at the screening for a Q&A afterwards. It was weird after watching the sex sceens to see the actors in person.

The film opens with Ellen and her ex boyfriend kissing on the sofa and then having sex. Ellen's roommate, Patrick is doing a project interviewing people about life and relationships, so we hear the interviews as voiceovers and learn about Ellen and her ex's relationship. Other than the various sex sceens, the rest of the film is conversations between the four characters.

It was interesting to watch, but it wasn't great. It felt more like watching someone's home movies than a film, it felt a little voyeuristic. They did some unique things with the camera work that made it more a little more interesting.

In the Q&A they talked about how they wanted to "reclaim our bodies" from the extremes of porn and hollywood, and so they filmed more realistic sex. Two of the four have been dating for five years (not the two having most of the sex in the film), the other two are now dating. They all worked regular full time jobs while making the film.

SXSW Film Festival 5

Once again I saw two more films tonight, both documentaries.

The first was Occupation Dreamland. I'd heard from others who had already seen it that it was good, that it wasn't biased. It bascially follows nine or ten Army Rangers who were in Falluja before the Marines took over. They were right that it wasn't biased, but I think it might have been more interesting if it had been. It was a little interesting hearing what the soldiers had to say, but not very. The camera crew goes with them on patrol, we see them going into Iraqi homes at night and looking for weapons and such, we see them talking with Iraqi's during the day, kind of doing PR work. And while it's good that nothing "exciting" - like soldiers or Iraqis getting killed - happens, the film just seemed flat. You get the sense of increased frustration on the part of the soldiers, but there just isn't enough of any sort of context to make any part of the film matter.

Gunner Palace is showing here in Austin. Nerdstar and I are going to go see it when we're back here week after next. I hope it's better.

The second film tonight was The Aggressives. It was much more interesting. The film maker follows the lives of six inner-city, minority lesbians who define themselves as Aggressives. The best I can tell they're young lesbians who like looking masculine, but don't want to be a man. He documents their lives over five years, and that amount of time allows us to see that really, their lives aren't that different than any other inner-city minority youth. They struggle with jail time, family, jobs, dating. The film maker was there and gave us even more current updates on the young women. One had joined the Army, and even though she spoke about knowing being deployed overseas was possible, she actually went AWOL instead of going to Iraq. One had gotten it together and was doing well in college. One who had been in jail for dealing drugs, at the end of the film was working construction and seemed to be doing well, but he told us she was back to selling drugs.

The film maker is a young white guy who does casting and such. He saw one of the girls on the street in New York City, thought she was a really good looking guy and was going to get him into modeling. He did end up getting HER into modeling. Then he met some of the other girls and got to know them and hang out with them. He talked after the film about how there were literally no white people in this environment. He talked about how these young women, although lesbians, really don't want to be lumped in with white lesbians and their politics.

He said the film got picked up for distribution. I'd highly recommend it.

SXSW Film Festival 4

Last week was all sunshine and temps in the high 70s. I thought, man, I'm really not ready for it to get hot and stay hot. Stupid me! This week it's back to cold and raining, which does nothing for my snot and cough problems.

I did go see another film today. I ended up skipping the ones I had on my schedule for yesterday, there's a good chance I can catch the two I really wanted to see in the next couple of days.

There was a short film before the documentary feature this afternoon called Freaks Like Me. It was really neat. A few years ago in Barcelona there was a gathering of 7000 people from all of the world's religions. I don't know why it was a short film and not a full length documentary, because it was interesting. About 3/4ths of it was a very articulate Jewish Rabbi speaking with a small group of people. I wish I could describe it. It did remind me that if my faith isn't making me more kind and patient and less fearful, then it's probably not faith at all.

The documentary feature was Giving It All Away. It was about the life and philanthropy of Sir Roy McKenzie and his father JR in New Zealand. It was a little longer and slower than I would have liked. But New Zealand is certainly a beautiful place. I do generally enjoy personal histories like this one. It's always encouraging to see the difference one man, or one family can really make in their country.

I couldn't help but wonder if anyone will ever make a documentary about Bill Gates' philanthropy in sixty or so years.

SXSW Film Festival 3

Last night I watched an Australian film, Somersault. It wasn't as dramatic as Lila, but it was good. The cinematagraphy was nice. In the opening this young girl starts to make out with her mother's boyfriend right after her mother leaves for work. Of course, the mother comes back for whatever reason and catches them, leading the girl to run away to a resort/ski town. What's neat about the film is that the girl is neither good nor bad. She's just a girl getting by. It's a character driven film, not an action driven one, as a lot of foreign films tend to be. Which is why I like them. It's also interesting to see their approach to sex and nudity.

I stayed for part of Layer Cake, but it just wasn't original enough to finish. It was a lot like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and whatever the second film by Guy Ritchie just like it.

This morning I went to see The Grace Lee Project. It was my favorite so far. Living with Nerdstar for six years enabled me to enjoy it. Growing up in the midwest, Grace Lee didn't realize just how common a name she had until she moved to California. The film grew out of her curiosity about herself, her name and all the other women with her name. It was very well made and amusing. She was there for a Q&A after the film. She's just begun the process of showing it at festivals and isn't sure if or when it'll get distribution.

SXSW Film Festival 2

I went to see two more films last night. The first, Dust to Glory, was really, really good. It's by the same director who did Step Into Liquid. The camera work on Dust was amazing. There were some shots in the first twenty minutes or so that felt like an Imax film. The music, the editing, the story arch, all of it was fantastic. The director and producer were there for another Q&A, he was a nice, fun guy. I'm pretty sure he said it'd be in theaters by the end of April, I'd recommend going to see it.

The second film was Lila Says, a French film. It's set in a small neighborhood in France and the story teller is a 19 year old Arab guy, Chimo, who's afraid his life is going nowhere. He lives with his divorced mother and hangs out with three close friends. Then he meets Lila. She's a sexy young girl who teases him with a lot of overly sexual conversations. The story told from Chimo's point of view is a nice story of how someone can impact your life for the better. If the film had been made from Lila's point of view it would be a cautionary tale. She's an innocent girl who plays a dangerous game with her words. For the actor playing Chimo, it's apparently his first film, I wouldn't have guessed that, he was great. The actress playing Lila has been in several other French movies, she was really good in this, too.

SXSW Film Festival 1

Tonight was the start of this year's SXSW Film Festival. Last year I did tons of volunteer work and received an all entry pass to the Interactive and Film Festivals. This year I just paid the $58 and got the film pass. It only allows entry into films, not the panels and such, but that's ok with me. The only downside is that I can stand in line for an hour, but anyone with a badge (they cost more) can walk up and go in ahead of us poor pass people. I don't think it's going to be that much of a problem. I'm not planning on going to the bigger events. Although, I am going to have to try again for the film I wanted to see at midnight tonight.

I got to see two films this evening at the Alamo Draft House downtown.

First up was My Big Fat Indepenent Movie. It was great. It took all the cool indie films of the past ten years or so and mixed them all together, films like Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Good Girl, Amelie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and a ton of others. It was brilliant.

After the screening the director, producer and four or five cast members were there for a Q&A. They said they shot the film in 18 days and for just under $1 million. Paget Brewster was there. Nerdstar and I like her in Huff, so that was cool. The great thing about these screenings is you can walk up and talk to the film people after the Q&A, so I did. Paget had talked about how no one watches Showtime or Huff and that she loves The L Word. So I told her we love Huff and hate The L Word. It was cool, we spent the next seven minutes or so talking about the shows and why Nerdstar wasn't with me and all sorts of random things like we were old friends catching up. I tried calling Nerdstar but she didn't answer, so Paget left her a voicemail - how cool is that? I'm sure the film will get picked up for distribution. At the very least it'll be out on dvd by the end of the year.

The second film was Seoul Train, a documentary about refugees leaving North Korea for China and the hardships they face. It was ok, but it wasn't great. One of the directors was there and did a short Q&A. She said they live in some small community in Vail, Colorado and wanted to "make a difference" so they thought making a documentary was the best way to reach a wide audience and wanted a subject that was timely and not really being covered. I think their lack of experience and personal passion for the subject was evident. I'd be very interested in learning more about North Korean refugees, but this film just wasn't deep enough.

Ani

One of the biggest transformations my life has been thru a started when a friend and I went up to her workplace one night to check out this new thing called the internet. She worked for National Instruments and had top of the line pc and mac on her desk. We tried doing searches for things we were intersted in, but the web pages were either incomplete or nonexistant. I wasn't impressed.

Then, she explained chat rooms to me. Like the decision to move to Austin, there's no way to know just how different my life would be if she hadn't told me about them. I was too poor to buy a new computer, this was in my plasma donating days. But, this guy I was working with at a temp job had a computer he had built and would sell to me for $100. I think it cost another $30 for a modem. Of course, next came the free AOL cd and I was off and running.

Losing my religion, finding other lesbians online and the total upheavel both brought happened as I was getting close to turning 30.

One of the younger lesbians I met in a chatroom sent me a mix tape (it wasn't even a cd, it was a cassette) that had three Ani songs on it. I'm pretty sure two of them were Shameless and the live version of Overlap. I was hooked. Within two or three weeks I had at least five of her cds. I'd never heard anyone like her. Her voice and her guitar - wow.

My newfound love of Ani was the bridge into the most intense relationships I've ever had. We were both searching for our own place in the world, our own strength. Her impact on me was like a tornado blowing thru. It took a few years to sort out the remains, to sort out what was really me, and what was just debris.

Living in Clip is still the best cd I've ever heard. I didn't know it would be the turning point in her music it turned out to be. Somewhere between the fame, getting older, getting married and then divorced, her music started reflecting more resignation than fight. Then 9/11 happened and my political views went one way, and her's went the other.

I wrote just about this time last year that I got to hear Ani speak at SXSW and I got to show her my "Joyful Girl" tattoo and tell her I think she's gotten vague. Even though she hadn't been my hero for a few years, it was still really emotional to actually talk to her and hug her - to reflect on all the online chats she'd been playing in the background thru, all the lyrics bantered back and forth between the tornado and I.

I keep checking out her new cds to see if she's found her strength, her joy again. And maybe she's getting closer. But I'm not hearing it yet on Knuckle Down.

"you want me
to tell you a story
but i am weary
of entertaining
i'll have more to say when i'm happy
'course, then i'll have less to sing"

Here's hoping she finds happiness soon.

Alamo Draft House and Movies

Over the weekend, Nerdstar and I were talking about which four or five things in Austin we'd take with us to Kansas if we could. Central Market, Zilker Park, CoCo's, and Alamo Draft House were on both our lists.

Alamo Draft House started as a little movie theater down town that serves beer, wine and food while you watch the movie. Now it's about to open it's fourth location. No, serving food isn't a totally unique thing, but the movies and specials they show are! They show really old cartoons, videos of cheesy singers from the 50s and 60s, and clips from even cheesier Japanese films starting at least 30 minutes before the previews. They have screenings of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation. They host Harry Knowles annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon. They do Buffy singalongs and Muppet Movie singalongs. It's just a great place for movie lovers.

The Austin Film Society is showing a series of Takashi Miike films on Tuesday nights at Alamo. Nerdstar and I had seen a trailer (I have no idea when or where) for Audition and thought it looked cool and creepy. Then I got the email from AFS about the screening and because I'm a member I get in for free. Figured I might as well check it out.

There was so much hype about the film I wasn't sure what to expect. AFS was treating it like an NC17 film. I was on the phone with Nerdstar before heading out to see it and was wondering how it would compare to something like Swimming With Sharks or even some of the killings in The Sopranos.

This review on IMDB seems about right to me. I was expecting a lot more torture and creepiness so I felt a little let down on that aspect, but I think overall it was a well made character film.

We also watched 2LDK before Nerdstar headed back up to Kansas. It was a fun, sick little film! And the special feature on the dvd about making the film is pretty cool, too.

It's nice to see creative film making coming from Japan.

Lewis Black

Nerdstar was really cool and surprised me with tickets to Lewis Black last night. It was a great show! It's always fun to hear a really good comedian live. Especially these days when everything in this country is so damn censored! It was crazy, security at the venue was a lot like security at the airports - tight. I'm thinking, what, are there death threats against him? He did a fantastic segment on God and the different looks at Him in the old and new testaments that was a lot like conversations I've had about the same topic - so that was fun! He also talked a lot about gay marriage and such. Sometimes it's weird to me when straight people are so enthusiastic about gay issues. Can't explain that really.

The Life Aquatic

We went to see The Life Aquatic yesterday afternoon. We both thought it would be a fun, lighthearted movie to end the year on. It just wasn't that great. It felt like watching a B movie about making bad documentaries. I read a little of the local weekly rag's review and knew it was a Wes Anderson film who did Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, so I didn't have a set idea of how the movie would be. There were a few laughs from the audience, but not a lot.

I pretty much left thinking, what was that about? There wasn't a real stand out plot line. It wasn't about romance, although it could have been about a couple of romances. It wasn't about revenge, although the trailer kind of set that up.

So it was just a wandering around story about this supposed eccletic group of people. That might have worked if the acting hadn't felt so much like a B movie.

That said, I'm sure it'll be a big hit, I always seem to dislike those.

Asylum Street Spankers

We're winding down this horrible year with good food and a little fun. Well, actually, we always have good food - hence the round shaped bodies.

Last night we went to the Saxon Pub to hear the Asylum Street Spankers. Their website said the show would start at 9, which is about right in Austin. I knew they haven't played here in a while, that the Saxon Pub is a tiny venue for such a popular band, and it would be crowded. Thank God I'm anal and like to get to places early. We got there just before 8, got in and the place was already jam packed. Turns out the show actually started a little after 8.

The band started here in Austin and has been playing for over ten years, with various members coming and going. You really have to go to their site and hear a sample to know just how fun they were to see. Nerdstar said it was like mixing NPR type music with Prairie Home Companion and having them take acid! They play upright bass, fiddle, banjo, steel guitar, kazoos, and washboard. The female vocalist can sound like you just stepped back into the 20s and 30s. Oh, and she played a saw - how cool is that?

But even more fun than the musical abilities are the lyrics. They sing about drugs, the drug war, a sweet little cat - aka pussy, a tribute to beer and did a cover of Nine Inch Nails Closer that means I'll never hear the original the same way again. Let's just say he introducted it as a song about besteality and at appropriate spots the band broke into farm animal noises.

It's just such a shame that adults who are drunk have no concept of manners. But that's a rant for another time.

They're going to be in Houston tomorrow night, other than that I didn't check their show listings. But I'd totally recommend going to see them

Good Weekend

Although being unemployed for so long often means we don't always know what day it is, this was a good weekend. We rented several videos the other day because tv, even with over 100 channels, sucks. We finally watched Spellbound. Nerdstar is now convinced she wants our kids to at least start out as nerds - go figure! Those kids really are amazing, though. Then we watched A Home At The End of the World, with Collin Farrell and Robin Wright Penn and some other dude. It was decent. Better than a lot of movies I've seen this past year.

Then last night we watched a Swedish film Kitchen Stories. I usually enjoy foreign films and this was no exception. A very simple story about this company is Sweden that researches kitchen habits and walking patterns by having someone sit on a high platform in the corner of someone's kitchen and take notes. The older man regrets signing up to be observed before the observer ever gets there, and so of course, he causes him trouble. Naturally, they become friends over time. There are less than ten characters in the whole movie, and they're all men. Yet, it's a very sweet film.

Last night was also Wanda Sykes in concert. Nerdstar wrote her review here. It was actually a lot of fun! Watching the audience before she even came on stage was entertaining. I swear there were more gay people than black people in the audience. But that's probably Austin for you. She has a good routine and seemed really relaxed and happy to be doing it. There was even once when someone in the audience yelled out an addition to her joke that really was very funny and she laughed and clapped for them and then elaborated on it. I'd bet $100 she uses it in her routine next time.

The weather has been colder here in Austin than I remember from last winter, but maybe my memory is just bad. But last night was a nice night to be out and around downtown.

Favorite Show

I love Inside the Actor's Studio, even if James Lipton looks creepy. This season has been especially cool, Salma Hayek, Martin Scorcese, William Macy, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lopez. Sometimes I'll see the preview of who's going to be on there, like Jennifer Lopez, and think, why them, they're too young, not enough films, etc. Then I'll watch the episode and hear their love of acting and the process and the job. It's fun to hear stories of how they got a certain role, where they grew up, what working with other people was like.

I'll probably be watching

I suppose this type of reality show was inevitable. Wickedly Perfect. Emmy Award-winning journalist Joan Lunden hosts WICKEDLY PERFECT, a new reality show that pits 12 people with a creative knack for the finer things in life in a no-holds-barred competition to crown the country's new authority on at-home living. These perfection-obsessed contestants, whose motto is "anything you can do, I can do better," will compete in different areas of beautifying the home and entertaining, including party planning, gardening, cooking, baking, sewing, crafts, floral arranging and decorating.

Drawn Together

I love South Park. I love smart humor as opposed to juvenile humor. I'll take Eddie Izzard any day. I'm also pretty hard to shock. Yes, there's a line of decency, and while it changes from person to person, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to entertaining adults.

That said, Comedy Central's new cartoon Drawn Together just about left me speechless and thinking - I did NOT just see/hear that! Not that I wasn't laughing, I just couldn't believe some of the jokes, gags, songs, and general goings on. It's eight cartoon character spoofs living together ala Big Brother.

So if you like your humor bold, offensive and edgy - check it out. It's on Wednesdays after South Park.

Nice Weekend

It's been a pretty good weekend. Nerdstar was planning on coming back from Houston on Thrusday, but her car broke down closer to Houston so she had it towed back there. (Actually, one nice thing was that the family's mechanic who had checked out the car the day before towed it back to his garage at no cost.) I thought it might be as simple as the fuel filter because the car has only been driven a few times while she was deployed.

As you know we had tickets to Bob Schneider friday night. I was pmsing and already kinda down so missing the show and having her be gone a few days more would have totally sucked. Fortunately, the mechanic changed out the fuel filter and she finally got on the road about 3:30 or so. Then, she called from the road saying she had had to pull over to the side of the road again. It's now about 6:15 and she's just over an hour outside of Austin. Worst case scenario, I go and get her and Ramen, leave the car to be dealt with later, we grab something to eat and get to the concert. She decides to wait about ten minutes and try driving again. I start holding my breath.

The car made it the rest of the way home. (She bought it at Carmax and got the really long warranty, so we'll get it checked out this week.) She got here about 7:45, time for us to grab some dinner at her favorite Twainese place and head downtown for the show. We got there in plenty of time to do some people watching before the music started. While Antone's here in Austin has some of the best musicians come thru, and has a fantastic sound system, the crowd there is always annoying.

It's hard to say why they're annoying. Nerdstar and I talked about it last night, it's not that the people there aren't doing exactly what they would be expected to be doing - preening, drinking, talking on their cell phones, flirting. And I'm sure there are people there who were annoyed with us, the two lesbians being affectionate in a straight venue.

Anyway. The music was really good. The opening band was Dragonfly Jones, it was just vocals, bass, lead guitar and drums, but they reminded me of Led Zeplin type music, but some songs were more bluesy or southern rock. They were good.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon plant shopping. Found a great nursery and got a couple of strawberry plants, some rosemary, some cute little blue flowered plant, and some peppermint and spearmint plants.

Then we went to a midnight showing of Shawn of the Dead. It was fantastic!! The movie was supposed to start at 11:55. The theater is one that serves dinner while you watch the movie, so they generally start seating plenty early to get the orders taken. Not last night. We finally started seating at about 12:20. While we're all out there standing in line, about three different couples decided to just hang at the front of the line. Huh? That and the waiting at that late hour made us a little cranky, so thankfully the movie was really funny and entertaining!

It's still hot and humid, but within the next thirty six hours that's all supposed to change - we can't wait!!

Books and movies

Nerdstar and I both love books and movies, and sometimes we even like the same ones :-)

A friend of hers recommended Kitchen Confidential so we checked it out at the library the other day. I enjoyed it. It's a "behind the sceens" look at what one man's life as a chef is like. Then, one of the men in her unit gave her Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike before leaving Iraq. She really enjoyed it. I'm about halfway thru and I'm really liking it. I think we're both more into fiction than non-fiction these days, enjoying biographies and travel stuff.

We went to see What the *&##)* Do We Know the other day. I heard some women at the Psychic Fair raving about it and we figured ok we can check it out. It wasn't nearly as good, or as intellectually deep, as I would have liked. Honestly, Nerdstar and I have had lots of conversations about life's big questions, and taping those would have been as interesting. Between that, the Psychic Fair, and a couple of other things I have felt like we're in a kind of grace period. It's good to be patient and wait on things, not rush them. We'll see how long that lasts.

Friday night we rented Chris Rock's new stand up dvd, Mean Girls and Jersey Girl. (As a fan if Gigli and former New Jersey resident, Nerdstar could not resist Jersey Girl.) We both like Chris Rock, and his new stuff was funny, but his segment on politics wasn't that funny to me. I think I'm too burned out for it to be funny. His last segment on relationships was hysterical. Mean Girls wasn't as funny as I thought it would be. Maybe it was just too good intentioned. I think I'm finding I'd rather my comedy didn't have good intentions, didn't try to make a point. And Jersey Girl, oh my, it was horrible. Beyond horrible. Nerdstar swears Gigli was even worse, but I don't believe it. I'm totally convinced Ben Affleck is the Worst Actor EVER, yes, even worse than Keanu. It was torture to sit thru.

I am looking forward to seeing Ray, then The Incredibles and Spongebob!

Team America

OMG - we loved this movie! In a world where everyone takes themselves way too seriously, this movie was the perfect antidote. I loved that they blew up the tourist attractions in Paris, that they had the balls to have puppet sex, puppet vomit, and a hilarious blow job. I love that they had the balls to totally redicule actors who think their political opinions are somehow worth something. And of course, I loved that they made Michael Moore a suicide bomber - he should take the hint!

Yes, it's juvenile. Yes, is crude and vulgar and gross. Yes, it's hysterical!

Go see it, and if you're not laughing, well... lighten up.

Movies, Hero and Asian Films

It's so nice to read a smart woman with similar taste in movies. Ann Althouse, a new find for me, wrote a fantastic review of Hero and of moviegoing in general.

You'd think with all this time on my hands I would have seen a lot more movies the past few months. But every time I go to Blockbuster and look at just about every movie on the shelves they just bore me, and I'm bored enough without help.

I, too, had heard the great reviews of Hero and how beautiful it was. I even went on Sunday or Monday (how sad I can't remember which right now, all the days are the same this week) and sat thru it in a full theater.

Sidetrack - I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again. I hate noise. Especially eating noise. So trying to hear a movie over the din of packages opening and popcorn being crunched drives me nuts.

Hero is a beautiful movie. So that aspect of it was nice for me - just to sit back and take in the colors and backgrounds and movements and let my mind relax. But trying to keep up with the plot - and then actually care about the characters - just ended up feeling like too much work. It can be really cool when movies go back to the same events and show them from different perspectives. This time I just got tired of seeing the same characters kill each other and in the end didn't really care if they all stayed dead.

I enjoy watching Asian films. I'm pretty sure most Chinese films are made in Hong Kong, so they're in Cantonese instead of Manderin - which Nerdstar speaks. It was interesting that in Rush Hour 1 and 2 they used both Cantonese and Manderin - not sure why. I can't speak but three words of Manderin (hi, grandma, and ok) but I know it when I hear it, as opposed to Cantonese or Vietnamese or Korean.

Channeling Nerdstar

Saw The Manchurian Candidate this afternoon. Mostly, I was bored. The only real evil in the movie was neither the government nor big coorporations, it was an overly (apparently way overly) loving mother with just a tad too much ambition for her son. Maybe if I hadn't seen the original and didn't know too much of the plot it would have held my attention better, but I doubt it.

Feeling like my entertainment need just hadn't been met, I wandered into see Harold and Kumar. I actually enjoyed it.

All I can figure is that I'm channeling Nerdstar today because I miss her so much. There's just no other explanation for me liking a rather silly movie over a serious political drama.

We'll rent it when you come home, baby!

Manchurian Candidate

I watched the original a couple of months ago - what a great movie! But from what I've seen of the previews they have totally screwed up the remake. Instead of being brain-washed by the communists, apparently the mind control is now done by chips implanted by a giant corporation. Right, because in our current world situation those giant corporations are a much larger threat than any foreign groups.

Lightening Up

After finally finishing the Buffy dvds late last night, I was still more awake than not, so I decided to totally change direction and put in my Looney Tunes dvds. It's so cool that just the opening music can make you grin like the chesire cat. I watched disk 4 last night and disk 2 this morning. Duck Amuck rules! There are a lot of my favorites not in this collection, but the commentaries and documentaries are really cool.

Now it's all baseball for the rest of the day. Rangers vs Astros - GO Rangers. Then it's the start of the 2004 College World Series - GO Longhorns!!

Control Room

I went to see Control Room this afternoon.

The immediate subject of Noujaim's documentary "Control Room" is al-Jazeera, but its real theme is the huge gulf in understanding that exists between Americans and the Arab world and the way events, big and small, connected to the war in Iraq have taken on markedly different weight, meanings and emotional import.

It was informative and frustrating. One of the opening statements is that anyone planning a war had better have media/propaganda high on their list of priorities. I believe this administration has totally lost the propaganda war, not only here in America, but also with the world. And there's no excuse for that. I think Bush believes that the inherent rightness of this campaign is self evident. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

It's not that I believe the media should simply be a tool of the government. In fact, I'd say it's pretty clear they're not even close. But without being a tool of the government, the media still has an obligation to inform the public. And they've failed us miserably in that front.

There is a culture war going on, and it's not between red and blue states. It's between radical Islam and the free world. Where are the educational programs on the Arab world and their views?

In this hour and a half or so documentary I lost count of how many times Israel was mentioned as a relevant factor in our war with Iraq. There probably aren't even a dozen Americans who would think that was true. Yet almost the entire Arab world believes it.

I'd recommend seeing the film. I do have to admit that in light of Abu Ghraib it was hard to listen to what Bush said after the capture of PFC Lynch and the other soldiers.

Another telling quote, though, was from Samir Khader, a senior producer at al-Jazeera - he said that he'd be willing to work for Fox News in his pursuit of the American dream, and that even if he can't achieve the American dream, he's going to send his kids to America to go to college.

This was a theme I read a lot in the book about Africa, no matter what a person's views of the American government, they all wanted to live here or send their kids here.

Read the article linked, it's a good one. See the movie if you get a chance.

UPDATE:
Interestingly enough, Richard Galen has a link to his testimony before:
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform in the United States House of Representatives.

Read some exerpts from his printed testimony below - or better yet, go to his site and read the whole transcript.

Cool Music

Bob Schneider is one of Austin's best musicians. He also has a great website. Go here, go to "playlist" and then click on the link for his Lonelyland album. You'll not only get to hear my current favorite cd, but also his commentary on the songs. I don't have his newest one yet, but soon.

I really love "The World Exploded" although I don't see it happening anytime soon. And "2002" he wrote in 1997 about things that could happen by then. It's a funny song once you know it's not true!

Really, go listen, it's worth the time!

SShhhh

Do not tell Nerdstar, because with her being gone I can't even blame her.

I'm watching Jackass The Movie.

But it's just been that kind of week.

You never know

The best part of being a compulsive channel surfer is you just never know what you're going to find!

It's very strange and a little disconcerting to see Shirley McLaine, Audrey Hepburn and James Garner in movie together. It's The Children's Hour made in 1961. Even more strange is that McLaine and Hepburn are running a school for girls and a horrible student starts a rumor that they're lesbians!

As with several projects involving Lillian Helman, the backstory is nearly as interesting as the written work. In this case, her trailblazing play "The Children's Hour" was morphed into a film called "These Three". Because lesbianism was one aspect of the plot, the story had to be sanitized to meet the Hays Code in place at the time. The changes imposed on it actually resulted in a striking and memorable film. Years later, the same director (Wyler) attempted to tackle the original story in it's unaltered form, but, ironically, it was unable to match the level of the first movie. Here single, closely knit teachers Hepburn and MacLaine are just realizing their dream of running their own girls school when a bitter, vengeful child creates a snowballing, vicious rumor about them out of spite.

When all is said and done, the film is a well-heeled curiosity falling short of greatness, but offering a great early glimpse of attitudes toward homosexuality on the big screen.

I caught it on Turner Classic Movies.

It's The Same All Over

I went to see a wonderful Iranian film tonight shown by the Austin Film Society called Ten.

There is no set up, no background info, the films start with a ten or eleven year old boy on the screen and the conversation between him and his mother. The film then progresses thru ten different conversations between the driver and her son, her sister, and others.

What we see is that family, sex, faith, love, heartache, marriage, independence, and traffic are the same all over.

Whether it is screened in your city, or you have to find it eventually on dvd, I really can't recommend this film highly enough.

Interviews with the director Abbas Kiarostami:
One
Two

Remakes

One of the many previews I saw yesterday was for the remake of the Stepford Wives. Gotta agree with FilmBrain's take on this one.

Nerdstar and I caught the original on some cable network quite a while back. I don't think I'd seen it before, although I've always been aware of the references to it. It was definitely a creepy social commentary, and now they're making it a comedy. From the previews it didn't even seem like a very dark comedy.

I love old movies. I love what they tell us about the time period they were made in. I love the beauty of actors like Cary Grant and Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman. I love the beauty of movies shot in black and white.

And for the most part I can't stand remakes. I think they're completely unnecessary.

Yet, I like cover songs. I like when a new artist take a really great song and make it their own.

I wonder why the discrepancy.

Comics and Kill Bill 2

Today was a day of new comic books and Kill Bill 2. I got the final comic book in the 1602 series, and I just haven't been very impressed with the whole series. I guess it was written for more hard core Mavel fans than me, and that's fine.

I also picked up the final book in the My Faith in Frankie four book series and loved it! It's cute, funny, irreverent, and the girl gets the girl and her god.

I wasn't sure I wanted to venture out to see Kill Bill 2 today because I knew the theater would be a little more crowded than I like. But I also hate seeing endless previews and having to skip endless reviews before going to see something. It was definitely worth seeing today! Yes, QT is an arrogant ass, and was really self indulgent with the dialoge in this movie, but the really cool parts more than made up for it. I absolutely loved the fight between Uma and Daryl - fanastic. It's a totally different film than the first one, and yet just as good. QT also did something really cool with the filming - which I'll post below just in case...

Now the Yankees are losing to the Red Sox, and later the Rangers play the Mariners.

Even better - it's Dallas v Sacramento and Houston v LA in the first round of basketball playoffs. So with any luck at all - both CA teams will be tossed by Texas teams in the first round :-) Go Mavs!!

Gay Radio

I've been a stock holder in both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio for about two years now. I've even got little Zachary investing in Sirius. Nerdstar and I used to have XM in her car, but that car has been sitting in Houston for almost a year now and I just haven't been driving enough to spend the money to put satellite radio in my car.

While seeing how much money I lost in the stock market today, I saw this news article on the gay channel on Sirius celebrating it's 1st year anniversary. I didn't know they had a gay channel. Pretty cool. Although the idea of having to listen to Harvey Fierstein is worse than fingernails on a chalk board.

Every once in a while I hear talk of a gay cable tv channel, but if Queer Eye and Will and Grace are any example of the programming, no thanks.

See, again, this is me being contradictory. While I think it'd be way cool for there gay tv and radio and everything else - diversity is good, I'm not usually a big fan of the content of such things. I don't like Ellen or Melissa or the Indigo Girls or KD or Queer Eye or most episodes of Queer as Folk and I could write a fairly long post on the stereotypes and wrong messages of The L Word.

What separates me from a lot of my conservative side, though, is that I don't think it's the end of American culture that such performers are on the airways! I'm a big advocate of changing the channel or hitting the off button if you don't like such content.

Variety Fluff

Ok, I admit it. I watched the Britney concert on Showtime a week or so ago. It was like watching a car wreck (worn out cliche that that is). Between the obvious and horrible lip synching and the soft core porn it was absolutely riviting!

Now, thanks to my dvr, I'm watching the actually wholesome and entertaining Nick and Jessica Variety Hour. Cheesy rules! Yes, those are some spectacular boobs! (No, Nerdstar, not as wonderful as yours!!) I loved the commercial last week about the show talking about "the duo." Jessica as Dolly - the only singer with bigger ones - hysterical! Kermit and Miss Piggy - cool!! Although I must say, if they ever release the "making of" we'll probably need calculators to keep up with the number of takes it took Jessica to get all of her lines right!

At least Nick and Jessica can sing. The other contrast is that I would let my 13 year old watch Nick and Jessica, Britney - not a chance.

To save a little face, I did watch the seasons end of The L Word. What a mess. But, they succeeded, I'll be watching it again next season.

Power of Movies

I'm watching Inside the Actor's Studio with Tom Hanks. They're talking about Saving Private Ryan and how his dying word are "Earn this." It immediately makes me think of Nerdstar and all the other soldiers and Iraq. And not in any arrogant way or such thing, I hope that in the near future the nation of Iraq "earns" the freedom we're enabling them to have.

But on a little less serious note, it also makes me think of the power of movies. How cool and influential might it be to have movie theaters in Iraq showing films like Braveheart or Apollo 13 or any of dozens of other movies about freedom and hope and possibility.

So my question is - if you could set up a little theater in Iraq and could show just one movie you think would help inspire them to really embrace freedom and democracy - what would it be?

Update:
Many thanks to Michele for sending her readers this way - you guys always have such great ideas for this sort of thing!

Bring on the revolution

Jeff has a post about Walmart undercutting Apple in the price of music downloads. Not much real news there. The interesting part is the quote about the quality of music maybe improving - or not - when the cost of making music also keeps getting cheaper so more people can do it, when you can produce quality singles and "put them out there" without having to produce a whole cd.

It's still just the beginnings of this decentralization revolution. When teenagers can inexpensively produce the same type of materials, whether music, blogs, or films, as the film and music industry leaders, and then inexpensively pass it around to their friends and then, thru the internet, God knows who else, totally bypassing the machine, it truly is revolutionary.

Technology and the internet are actually bringing into reality a level playing field that we've never seen before.

A Little Lighter

Honestly, I'm not serious ALL the time. I was channel surfing yesterday morning, usually a very dreary thing to do on Sundays, when I ran across Aaagh! It's the Mr. Hell Show! Damn is that stuff funny!! I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud in the twenty minutes I was watching. Unfortunately it's not on DVD yet.

Then last night I caught South Park. It was brilliant and funny. Again, I was laughing out loud. Cartman and crew were ninjas and the show was done partly in anime style animation instead of the normal South Park style. Brilliant!

UPDATE:
Ok, I knew Hugh of Gaping Void was brilliant, but wow. Thankfully, he saw this entry and left a comment. I tried going to Toons To Go to order the promotional dvd for the Mr. Hell Show, but it appears they're out. I've got my dvr set to record all the episodes Showtime is running and will just have to save them to VHS for Nerdstar to see until they're all available on dvd.

Reflections on SXSW

This post started as a comment I left for Jeff Jarvis, but I decided to try to flesh it out a little more here.

What I found in sitting in on panels from both the music festival and interactive conferernce, and listening to a couple of directors/producers of the movies I saw, was that although the music, film and interactive festivals overlap schedule wise, I didn't find that they did information wise. There were a couple of cross industry panels, but not enough. The film and music people would do well to get with the tech/blogging guys (yes it did seem to be 90% guys) and work out new strategies for using blogs as marketing/promotion/ideas whatever. And I can't imagine how much money tech/blogging guys could make hooking up with the film and music industry.

From both struggling musicians and film makers, a lot of what I heard was how the big machine/system has control over everything. So, it doesn't seem this power of the people in information is spreading as thoroughly or as fast as it sometimes seems to us bloggers. Imagine what buzz a film maker could produce if he blogged the process. We've seen it more with novel writers putting their stuff up for comment and editing.

I think there has to be a decentralization revolution coming.

More Films

I'm becomming more and more impressed with the SXSW Film Festival. The number of films of all genres, the premiers, all of it.

Last night I saw Young Adam. I can't say I enjoyed it really, but I can say it was beautifully shot and very well written. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to talk about the actual plot line without giving too much away. If you like slow but steady Scottish films, I'd say check it out if you get a chance.

Tonight I got to see two more flicks. First up was Love Me If You Dare, a fantastic French film. (Not that it felt particularly French.) It was shot in the most beautiful colors I think I've ever seen in a film. The first half is about a boy and girl as kids, the second half is them as adults, not that they're any more mature. It was funny, smart, well written, and suprising. I'd highly recommend it.

Following that, and for sleeping purposes I wish the order had been reversed, was the very somber Straight Into Darkness. It's about two American soldiers over in Europe in 1945 who have defected. They find what they think is an old abandoned mill only to find it's being inhabited by an older couple and many orphans. It wasn't an easy movie to watch. To go from a film so full of color, to one that is so stark was hard. There's no heavy handed message to the movie, which I think would have made it unbearable. It's just a sad, innovative and even in some ways subtle look at the affects of war on children. The best part of the evening was hearing the Writer/Director and producers talk briefly about their experience making the film and working with children from orphanage in Romania.

Saturday

Today ended up being way cooler than I thought it would. It started with a good lunch and then moved to an Austin Film Studio tour. Several years ago when it was clear the airport would be moving from central Austin to farther out, Richard Linklater and other Austin Film Society people got with the city to see about using some of the hangers as film studios. And it actually happened. Anyway, check out their website, lots of great movie stuff going on here in Austin.

Oh how cool - so in checking out their website to link to, I find out Hellboy is going to be premiered here tomorrow at midnight for SXSW. Woohoo!!

I headed over to the convention center for a couple of panels to kill time until the movie. The highlight there was meeting Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.Net. Nice guy.

I wasn't really impressed with the "Small Media to the Rescue" panel. For one thing, the panel guys weren't really small media and to the extent it was supposed to be at all about blogging, they weren't bloggers either. Jim Moore, author of Bush's Brain - the book behind the film, was there, as was the publisher of Mother Jones and Dan Gilmore of the San Jose Murcury News. Maybe they're using small to mean alternative. They talked a little about ads and blogs as a revenue source, nothing new there. Dan Gilmore mentioned that having libel insurance is a good idea. Moore ranted about Drudge and is evidently a big believer in the vast right wing conspiracy. Which is laughable in the face of the liberal tone of the whole conference I've mentioned.

Finally, it was off to the world premier of Bush's Brain. The 1200 seat theater was packed and there's no telling how many people were turned away. All I can say it that I was totally unimpressed. My biggest impression is that it's all a bunch of sour grapes. Karl Rove has evidently been in politics for at least 30 years. So the authors and film makers were able to interview people from over the years who lost to Rove because of Rove's dirty tricks and unwavering desire to win. Hmmm. Just how hard would it be to get on tape the enemies of any person who has been in politics that long? Not very. When Molly Ivins is one of the interviewees in the film you lose major credibility in my book right off the bat.

The one part of the film that really pissed me off was they went out and found a Vietnam veteran who had adopted a boy who had enlisted in the Marines and was one of the first soldiers who died in Iraq last year. They interviewed his adopted parents and wife. There was no connection to Rove at all in this part of the film, just some statement that Republicans are elitist who don't care that soldiers die as a result of their eevvviillll policies. It was cheap and if Republicans used such material the liberals would be livid.

The audience loved the film. The producers said they don't have distribution for it yet, I'll be interested to see if they get it. About 1/3 of the movie is about Texas politics in the 80s, not very interesting really. They don't cover Florida in 2000 at all. They bring up Joe (?) Wilson and Valerie Plame, but we all know that's still unresolved. I just didn't hear anything in the film that was "ooooohhhh" worthy.

The best part of my day was standing in line before the film with a man named Mark. He's a New Yorker down for the interactive part of the festival. We talked a little about 9/11, his family, his job, stocks, movies, the future of the music industry and so on. Nothing beats a fantastic conversation with a stranger. Hi Mark - hope you have fun in Austin and have a safe trip back home!

Rain and Comics

Running errands in the pouring rain isn't all that fun, but stopping by the comic book store can change that. I thought 1602 #7 would be out today, but it's not in the store until tomorrow. Fortunately/unfortunately, I found two other four book series that are pretty cool.

My Faith in Frankie is funny. This poor little god leaves his hometown and finds a baby who believes in him. He is her own personal god while she's growing up, then the problems start when she is a teenager and wants to find a boyfriend and her god gets jealous. It's really cute (which is a terrible word I know). When Frankie ends up making out with this guy in his car, Jeriven (her god) sends a bunch of rabbits and the guy freaks out and takes her home. She gets pissed at Jeriven and calls him to show up. He brings her a baby rabbit as a peace offering. Frankie tels him: "That fucking rabbit comes near me, his name is gonna be stu." "You really need to watch your langauge. I told you, he's a baby." "He's a rabbit, Jeriven. Fucking was the only word in that sentence he understood." That cracked me up.

The other series is Thessaly: Witch for Hire. Thessaly was a character in the Sandman series. I like the way the story is narrated over all the action. And the guy in this one is smarmy as hell. It was a good read.

Datytime TV as Drivel and Reality TV as Therapy

Michele has been sick and on her sofa for a few days and manages to sum up what I've been mulling over much better than I ever could.

Yes, I admit it, I'm addicted to cable news. Mostly because I can't bring myself to watch the other drivel on during the day. I'm burned out on the Learning Chanel trying to show me the light on self/home improvement. I never could watch the talk shows or the judge shows. But she's right - the news is all the same. And it's all just smoke up our asses. They don't even try to be objective anymore, it's all about who has the better guest poser who can spout out the best sound bite of the day. At the very least, if they wanted to really present issues, there wouldn't be three minute time limits to each segment. Just once I'd like to see a news host have the patience and perserverance to make the guest just. answer. the. question.

What I am addicted to watching is shows about "real" people. Yes, no matter how much Real World sucks, I'm drawn in, not to mention these endless Real World/Road Rules challenges. But that's just the start. Now that I have Showtime I've gotten to watch Freshmen Diaries. Then there's the new Survivor with the past players. (Which is an idea I thought of long ago, except I wouldn't have had any of the winners back.)

And what I'm seeing is that having a camera crew film you for months on end - and then having the opportunity for you and the entire world watch your life (yes even edited) doesn't seem to make for good therapy. I used to wonder if it would. Back in the early days of Real World I wondered if they sobered up or were better boyfriends/girlfriends, or nicer people after watching themselves be complete asses and idiots on tv. But now that we're seeing those same people again and again, we see that they don't change. Yes, to some extent, even the non-actors end up playing a role of themselves when the cameras are around.

What I do know is there's not a chance in hell I'd let a camera follow me around for a couple of days, much less months. I'd rather be oblivious to my quirks than have them on tape to be so clearly seen.

The L Word

A new gay and lesbian club in downtown Austin held a big premier party for Showtime's new series The L Word.

I must say, it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Of course, hot girls kissing and having sex is always a major plus in my book for viewing choices!! The lesbian characters weren't as one dimensional as I thought they'd be. Although, looking around the bar at the women watching the show, and looking at the women in the show - can't say those two groups resembled each other very much.

The show isn't overly nice to men, the poor men in the show are either about to have their girl leave them for another girl or are just dispensers of sperm. There was more straight sex than some of the women standing behind me would have liked.

It was hard to hear all of the dialogue in the crowded bar, but I'm definitely going to watch it again!

Update:

Ok, that was just way too easy. I called Time Warner Cable and within five minutes of dialing the phone I had Showtime added to our cable.

I got to see the last 35 minutes of The L Word again, this time with dialogue. It was better than I first thought. I won't do any spoilers. It airs again Tuesday night for those who missed it tonight, you know, all those football fans out there. They played on stereotypes smartly. The diagram was hysterical. The plot lines aren't as predictable as I would have expected. And again, girls kissing - all good!!

And I'll just add, I miss Nerdstar a whole hell of a lot!!

Elaboration

Let's see if I can articulate why ROTK so disappointed me. I read the three books just before the first movie came out. They touched and moved me. I love the themes of loyalty and courage and honor and duty. They are timeless. So I was very happy to see the first two movies so wonderfully bring an epic tale to the big screen.

But ROTK fell completely flat. The most moving aspect of this part of the story is that each of the components has lost touch with the others, has no idea what's going on with them, no real reason to have any hope that any of them will survive their efforts, much less have a positive impact on anyone else. In spite of everything, they hold on, hold out and press on. The movie captured none of the hopelessness overcome by camaraderie and duty.

And what makes it just sad is that we know Jackson to be capable of so much better.

Ugh

This morning I went to a 10:30 showing of The Return of the King. All I can say is it was dull, disappointing and utterly uninspired. How sad.

Noir

I am so happy I decided to go ahead and get the last two dvds in this seven dvd series. It was worth not only the money, but also the wait. I don't care if you've never seen any sort of anime in your life, if you love beautiful story telling, strong women, fantastic endings, and tales of true friendship and redemption - you've got to see this series. There just aren't enough stories like this in the world - in any form or genre.

Things that made me laugh

I love channel surfing. On IFC today I ran across The Dinner Game. I'd seen it before and it was just what I needed this afternoon, smart and funny! If you get a chance, check it out.

Last night I started watching the second season of Coupling. Damn that stuff is funny!

Then tonight I watched the Charlie Brown Christmas program. Nerdstar would probably say I'm more like Lucy than I'd like. No music on this earth brings a smile to my face faster than the Snoopy song. (You know the one.)

Baseball

I've left a couple of comments on Michele's site about watching the world series. Might as well talk about it here.

First of all, National League games are boring as hell to watch. Period. I understand making the pitcher's hit from a tradition stand point, and agree that they should have to hit, just like everyone else. But the reality of it is they can't hit and it makes the game suck. They always end up coming up to bat when the team has finally gotten a couple of base runners with two outs, and they get a stupid third out to end the inning leaving God knows how many base runners on base all season. It sucks. Either don't make them hit at all - or make them be decent hitters just like everyone else. I don't care if they only play one every four or five games, and not even the whole game (because major league pitchers certainly can't be expected to pitch a complete game). Being a good pitcher is no excuse or substitute for being a decent hitter.

Now, as for Fox's coverage of the world series - shoot me now! I had to mute the extra innings last night because I could not stand to hear one more stupid sentence from the commentators. I keep changing channels when there's not an active at bat because the cross promotional crap from Fox is out of hand! That they placed a stupid call to Simon is inexcuseable. That they had the cast of the new series Skin sitting in decent seats was shameless. And on and on and on.

I can't even listen to it on the radio instead of the Fox broadcast, because it's not being broadcast on any of our local stations. (I love listening to baseball on the radio - it's the only sport that translates well on radio.)

It's just a damn shame what they're doing with sports broadcasts these days.

Bias in tv shows

The new tv season is well under way. Now that I’ve got the digital recording service thru Time Warner I’m watching tv more efficiently, I can watch all hour long shows in 43 minutes zooming thru commercials, but I think I’m also watching more shows. I can record away and watch them all in one evening or on the weekends when there’s nothing but college football on Saturdays and the NFL on Sundays. It’s certainly coming in handy with the baseball playoffs going on. I can watch the games and record the shows I’m not watching.

That was all a long tangent. Let’s see if I can get to the point in this post. (Points are not easy for fuzzy brains to find.) I expect shows like The West Wing to have a certain political slant to them; duh, it’s about politics. But I don’t expect subtle little political commentary on other shows. In the season premier of Angel one of the characters made a big deal of putting a Dixie Chicks poster up in her new office. Then on ER’s season premier there was a whole dialogue about how everyone with any taste must be a Dixie Chicks fan.

How interesting that both shows decided to show support for the Chicks. Some little show of solidarity? Neither time was it essential to the plot line, served no purpose in the story arc, but there it was.

What I’m trying to decide is if I think they should or shouldn’t do such things. I mean, ok, freedom and expression and speech and all that aside. Does it make me want to watch their tv shows less? ER is the longest lasting relationship I’ve had, I’ve watched every episode from day one. For now it’s not really a big deal for me with these two shows. Whoopi on the other hand – forget it. Five minutes is all I can get thru before she just shows what an asshat she is.

Kill Bill and related tangents

Man, a week off from work and my sleep schedule is wrecked. It's after midnight on a school night and I'm wide awake. My entire family is nightowls who love to stay up late and sleep in. Driving home from the movies this late at night reminded me of my college days. My mood is somewhat similar as well, kinda dark and wreckless and bordering on self destructive.

Anyway. Kill Bill was fantastic! I loved the cheesiness of it. I really loved the soundtrack. I loved the squirting blood, even if it reminded me of Monty Python every time. I loved that he broke it into two parts instead of rushing the story and the action. I loved the pussy wagon. Great flick!

But waiting for the movie to start was almost intolerable. That stupid include others/pass it on public service announcement makes me want to punch the nearest stranger for the fun of it. The assinine "please don't pirate movies, I need to make a living" plea. Uh, hello, I'm AT the theater, you're preaching to the choir and pissing it off. At least five commercials. And trailers for movies that should never have been made in the first place. Over fifteen minutes of crap before the movie actually starts. I hate being held hostage and made to watch things I don't want to see.

So, I'm wondering how theaters are going to compete with affordable 52" HDTV flat screen plasma televisions and dvds that are even better than just seeing the movie in the theater because of all the special features. Because annoying the hell out of me before the movie starts doesn't make me want to come back. The only advantages theaters have now are screen size and the chance to see it right after it's released. I just don't know that those are enough to keep them going. Especially as more people treat the movie theater like their living room anyway and talk too loudly to each other and the movie screen.

I know, box office receipts aren't really falling off yet. But I think that unless they make some big changes, within the next five years they will.

I knew I wouldn't be getting to sleep anytime soon after Kill Bill was over, so I wandered into Under World. It was pretty good. The vampire/other worldly creatures rules in Buffy/Angel and Anne Rice's books have become so engrained in my brain it's hard to watch or read things that vary from them. The ending was an obvious set up for a sequel. And I couldn't help but wonder why if you're going to shoot everything at night or in very dark settings, and have all the characters dressed in all black, and have it raining all the time, why not just shoot it in black and white?? But still, it was a decent flick.

I was also wondering though, especially during the opening fight in Kill Bill, just how much influence Buffy has had on not only girl fights, but also on women as warriors. The tv series started about eight years ago, and the Buffy movie predates that. I think it really changed a lot for strong women, maybe especially strong young women, roles. And I know it redefined the rules of girl fights. I think it's fantastic and a great thing for young women to see portrayed in entertainment.

Thirteen

Wow. If you have kids, teach kids, counsel kids, know someone with kids around this age - I'd recommend this movie. It's an intense look at the disconnect that happens with kids and parents and siblings and so on. It's wonderfully written, acted and filmed. You can read better synopsis of this movie than I could write, so I won't bother with that here. I will say that the ending is very powerful.

There was a question and answer time after the movie with Catherine Hardwicke, the director. The thing that stays with me the most from that is her answer to a question about the R rating and people's reaction to the intensity of the movie. She said that people without kids and who don't work with kids were reacting negatively to it, but that teachers and counselors said it was rather mild in some ways - no one gets pregnant or dies or goes to jail or gets seriously hurt. She also talked about the color saturation of the movie - how it's mild in the beginning, then progresses thru the four acts reflecting the mood at the time. It's not overdone, but a nice touch.

She talked about how the film was really born out of her trying to mentor Nikki Reed whom she had known most of Nikki's life. When Nikki hit thirteen Ms. Hardwicke saw all the changes she was going thru and wanted to help her find a creative outlet for all that energy. Nikki wrote a first draft of the movie with her over Christmas break. Ms. Hardwicke said in that draft the adults were essentially two dimentional and evil - so she had to flesh them out in the rewrites. Then they filmed it the next summer.

She talked about Holly Hunter liking the authenticity of the script and signing on and that really helping to get the film made.

I got a chance to talk with Ms. Hardwicke very briefly afterwards, I asked if there was one thing she really hoped to achieve with this film - what would it be. She's really all about kids not feeling they're the only one going thru things, and parents not feeling so alone. We talked about the disconnect and she's hoping the film can really spark conversations. She's also really big into mentoring and giving kids creative alternatives.

It's a movie well worth your time.

Movie Premier

I'm going to a regional preview tonight of Thirteen at the beautiful Paramount Theater. The director will be doing a question and answer afterwards, should be cool!

I'm a fan of Evan Rachel Wood because she was on the cancelled series Once and Again. I still have my favorite episode on tape. Jesse and her friend Katie (played by Mischa Barton who was in Lost and Delirious and is now in Fox's new series The O.C.) finally acknowledge their attraction to each other and kiss - it's so sweet and scared and shy and true. There had been a growing attraction in several preceeding episodes that was so well written and acted. And even though the show was being cancelled and they couldn't focus on this part of the storyline, they made it clear thru the final few episodes that this relationship was going to continue. These actors are so young and they just let everything show in their faces.

Fortunatley, Lifetime is showing the reruns late at night and I can tape them and watch them as I have time. They just started over with the first season which I didn't see the first time around.

(this was a much better written entry before I lost it and had to rewrite it - ugh!)

Movies

Most of my weekend consisted of eating and watching movies. Friday after work I rented Final Destination 2 and Talk to Her. I had also recorded Gaslight earlier in the week. Then last night I caught Cool Hand Luke on TCM.

"Final 2" wasn't as good as the first one, because it wasn't as novel. The deaths were still very imaginative and all, but I think if the films had taken themselves a little more seriously and been for an audience other than teenagers, they could have been some of the scariest movies ever. It would have been like watching the first Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead Final just really required too much suspension of belief because they didn't put the budget they should have into it, or the real indepth plot. But the idea of Death hunting you down... scarry. I also learned that while I'm not usually affected by scarry movies, it's still not a good idea to watch them at night while living alone and then going out to walk the dog on insufficiently lit streets. I guess it resonated with me because I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Death comic books. Fortunately, Death is much nicer in his world.

Talk to Her is by the same guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso Cuaron. I watched "Y Tu" probably about a month ago. It was ok, sad, but not a great movie like I'd expected. Talk to Her was a little weirder than I'd expected, but enjoyable as a lot of foreign films are. But today I read that Alfonso is going to direct the next Harry Potter movie - fine - but he also: Regrettably, he also feels it necessary to compare Lord Voldemort to George Bush ("[i]n combination with Saddam," no less). That doesn't bode well for the originality of thought he'll bring to the enterprise.

Gaslight With the amazing and beautiful Ingrid Bergman was painful to watch simple because the man she marries is so completely evil.

And finally Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman. He's not exactly handsome, but he certainly had appeal when he was younger.

So, I watched a modern day horror flick, a mystery movie from the 40s, a prison movie from the 60s, and a foreign film - I'm nothing if not ecclectic.

I think the movies from the 60s and 70s fascinate me because while those time periods aren't that distant in the past, they were so very different than today. It's kinda fun to see what the grownups were watching and doing when I was a little kid thru the movies of those times. Hmmm... but 30 years from now would I really want my kids to think they can get a glimpse of my current life from watching movies made now? Probably not.

Are movies really a good representation of life in any given time period?

Nice Surprise

What a nice suprise. I had ordered Death: The High Cost of Living, and Death: The Time of Your Life comic series and they've been sitting on my dining table for at least a week while I finished American Gods.

If you're a lesbian who's ever even considered reading a comic book, Death: The Time of Your Life is a really sweet one. It's about an accoustic guitar playing poet singer and her life and her girlfriend and love and choices.

What made me smile is that the title of chapter one is "Things you just do when you're bored." Caroline once told me that being bored was no good reason to do something. I told her it's sometimes the best reason to do something.

Vacation and Sandman

Woohoo! I am on vacation. Even if it is just a short one. This time tomorrow I'll actually be with Nerdstar!

I'm only halfway thru volume 2 of the Sandman series and I'm loving it!! In one part Sandman wants to get his helmet back from a demon and the demon challenges him to an imaginary super rock paper scissors. The demon becomes a wolf, Sandman becomes hunter on horseback. The demon becomes a stinging fly so the horse throws the hunter, Sandman becomes a spider to eat the fly. The demon becomes a snake to eat the spider. Sandman becomes a bull to crush the snake. Eventually Sandman becomes the universe, all light. The demon counters with becoming the anti-life, darkness, the end of everything. Sandman becomes HOPE.

I love that so much! What else could defeat darkness?? So of course, then Lucifer says, ok so you've got your helmet, but you have no power here, dreams have no power here. Sandman counters with - I might not have any power here, but would hell have any power without the dreams of heaven?

Again, way cool.

I mentioned that I'm also re-reading Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. One of the main characters, Alobar, is determined for his life to be his own and he wants to defy death. He's not afraid of death, he just wants it to be on his own terms. Along his journeys he meets Pan, who explains that gods aren't really immortal, they cease to exist if no one believes in them.

Naturally, in the prologue to The Doll's House, volume 2 of the Sandman, Neil Gaiman writes " But the Dream Lord is of the Endless, the race that are not Gods (for Gods die, when their believers are gone, but the Endless will be here when the last God has gone beyond the Realm of Death, and into non-existence)..."

And then in the introduction, Clive Barker says this of Neil "Mr. Gaiman is one of those adventurous creators who sees no reason why his tales shouldn't embrace slapstick comedy, mystical musings, and the grimmest collection of serial killers this side of Death Row. He makes this combination work because he has a comprehensive knowledge of the medium and knows where it's strengths lie." The exact same thing could be said of Joss Wheadon and his creation of the Buffy universe. (You knew I'd mention Buffy somewhere in all this!)

I'm sure in all of this my brain is trying to tell me something. I'm just not sure what. Does it want to be immortal? Ugh! Although, my favorite immortal character is the one in Hitchhiker's Guide that decides to use all of that time to personally insult everyone who's ever existed. I have a feeling that idea would be very tempting after a while.

I can feel things in my brain shifting, slowly changing. I'm not worried about it or too terribly preoccupied with it. I've gone thru so many changes in the past ten years, what's one more? It certainly won't be the last. Maybe this time apart from Nerdstar, when so much seems to be on hold for an indeterminate amount of time, it's a kind of incubation for whatever is next. Because it's certainly going to be time to shake things up. Move, new job, kids, who knows... just time for different.

Anyway. I'm sure I'll log on from somewhere in Seattle. If not, try all those wonderful writers linked in the blogroll - or better yet, turn off the computer and go have some fun!!

Escapes

Keeping myself entertained and distracted while Nerdstar is away is getting a little expense. No, it's not as expensive as gambling, wild women, and drugs would be, but still...

What's cool is that my distractions are all turning out to be "other wordly." I've watched seasons 1-4 of Buffy and season 1 of Angel. I've read Good Omens, Neverwhere and Stardust by Neil Gaiman. And now I seem to have gotten sucked into his Sandman graphic novel series. When I went to Amazon to find this series, I didn't realize there were ten of them at about $13.50 a pop. So, I got five of them and will probably get the other five in a few weeks. Then, of course, I'll have to check out The Books of Magic series as well.

There was a friday five question a couple of weeks ago about what book or movie setting you'd like to live in. I was tempted to say that if I could be the hero in the books I read, well, ok. But, honestly, I'm not hero material. Oh sure, the power and fame and sexiness and fulfilling destiny sounds fantastic. But they have to go thru way too much. I was thinking not only of Buffy, but of Lestat in Anne Rice's vampire series. Or of Arthur and Ford in the Hitchkiker's Guide series. I certainly wouldn't want to be Mel Gibson's character in Braveheart. And the worlds these characters live in aren't fun and full of sunshine. (Not that I like sunshine. LOL) There is usually lots of death - and usually of the minor characters, so I couldn't be the hero or the common folk. I don't think I'd make a good sidekick either. I'm not good with unquestioning loyalty.

I've written before that I'd love to be able to travel time. I'd love to go back and see Jesus and the disciples and the early church. I'd love to see this land before concrete. Things like that. But again, there's not another time period I'd want to stay and live in.

Maybe that's why I've always been into reading. I can live in other times and worlds thru the words of really great writers.

Hodge Podge

Mentally I'm always playing "this time next...." Naturally, today it's this time next week I'll finally be with Nerdstar! It's a good thing we're already done the touristy stuff in Seattle, because really, I don't think we'll spend much time out of the hotel room other than going to eat.

What is it with house cleaning and studying that make you get everything done except house cleaning and studying?? There's nothing on tv yet, I don't want to burn thru the Buffy season 4 dvd. I've got a couple of books to read, but don't feel ready to start one. So I thought I'd get a little cleaning done before the weekend. Because, you know, I have such exciting plans otherwise. ha ha ha

I was in the mood for something new to listen to so I thought I'd go thru Nerdstar's cd collection again. It's rather eclectic. I have a feeling she buys cds on a whim. And our tastes in much don't match at all. So, here's just a few of the cds I pulled out to listen to over the next few days:

The Corrs, GooGoo Dolls - A Boy Named Goo, Wynonna - Collection, Genesis - Invisible Touch, Best of U2 1980-1990, Best of Van Halen Vol. 1, Garth Brooks - The This, Erika Badu, Anokha - Asian Underground, James Taylor's Greatest Hits, Vince Gill - High Lonesome Sound, Simply Red - Greatest Hits, Gin Blossoms, and Missy Elliott - Missy Misdemeanor.

Well, it's almost time for The Amazing Race.

Ugh

This is one of those days it's too painful to keep my eyes open, much less think coherent thoughts. Ramen kept me up most of the night again last night. I sure hope he starts to like sleeping in the bathroom.

I went to see The Italian Job after work yesterday. It was an ok film, not too great, not too bad. I think the very basic story line is because it's based on an older foreign film, and that made it nice to watch.

The other ten people in the theater were complete asshats.

The preview for Kill Bill looks great.

Sarah Dashew

I've written before about going to hear Sarah and Ginger play and how much I love their music. Then Sarah moved out to LA and I've missed hearing her. She was working on a new mini cd that I was really looking forward to hearing, but she just decided it wasn't good enough.

Anyway, this is her site - if you want some really good music check out the store part of it and buy her cds! She has an amazing voice and some of the songs will make you laugh and some will make you cry.

And if you live in LA, check out her show dates and catch her live - she'll knock your socks off!!

Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo was the most amazing animation I've ever seen, and the story was decent. Going to see it in a theater full of kids while PMSing might not have been the best idea, but it wasn't too bad. I'm just really wanting kids these days.

Anyway. I'm not sure why they had to make Nemo "handicapped" - it didn't add anything to the story.

They previewed The Invincibles - the next Pixar movie, but it doesn't come out for a year and a half. It looked pretty funny though! I just wish Pixar would drop Disney. There was a preview for the next Disney movie, Brother Bear, I wanted to puke! This man turns into a bear thru some mystical experience and then spend the rest of the movie learning how eeevvvviiillllll MAN is while trying to find how to be one again. You'd think PETA wrote the script.

They're remaking Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis as the mom and it actually looked pretty funny!

When movies are remakes of old films or foreign films, I wish theaters would take at least one weekend and run the original and the remake back to back. I'm sure Hollywood would hate that - since the remake is rarely as good or better than the original, not to mention, they'd also probably rather we didn't know when films are remakes, especially of foreign films. In fact, name me any remakes you think are better!

The man who plays Mr. Bean is going to be in a take off of the Bond movies. I tend to like British humor better than American, so it might be worth a couple of hours to go see!

And the 3rd Spy Kids is going to be in 3D and that just looks way cool!

Channel Surfing

Every once in a while channel surfing pays off. I ran across On Any Sunday on Turner Classic Movies. It's a 1971 documentary about all different kinds of motorcycle races - from ice races in Canada to desert races in southern Cali to the hill climb of the Widow Maker. It was so fun to watch. No environmental issues, not any significant safety concerns, just a lot of crazy men and women on two wheels trying to go fast and have fun.

You can order it on video here, you know, if you hate summer reruns as much as I do!

Bye Buffy

Buffy - wow. Brilliant. I was afraid Joss would actually let everyone die. You never know with him. Brilliant.

TV

Naps are wonderful things! I came home from work today, did not pass go, did not collect $200, but went straight to bed and went to sleep. You'd think with Nerdstar being gone and all I'd get a lot more sleep due to a lack of better things to do. Instead, I'm not sleeping well at night and have been exhausted the past couple of days.

Ok, did the West Wing episode last night strike anyone else as stupid? I pretty much stopped watching it after 9/11 because it just couldn't keep up with reality. Then this season I started watching Angel instead. But, the network kept hyping these last couple of episodes, Angel is over, so I tuned in. Now, I kinda understand the whole father vs president thing. But I think that was a pussy response to step down. I kept trying to imagine if the Bush twins were kidnapped or something - somehow I don't see him handing control of the county to the Dems because he doesn't have the balls to make hard decisions. Anyway. Did it really have to be John Goodman?? Did the republican really have to be a big fit guy?? (Not that wimpass Matthew Perry as a republican was any better.) It's hard to say if next season will be better or worse without Sorkin. Too bad they won't bring in some fantastic republican writers and go that direction. With the surge of Fox news and all, you'd think they'd try it just for ratings sake.

Well, I'm off to watch more basketball - go Mavs! go Spurs! And the season finally of ER. I've watched ER from day one, it's just not the show it used to be.

Who knew?

I'm a fairly new Buffy fan, started watching a couple of seasons ago and have watched a ton of them on re-runs. Then three weeks ago I started watching Angel.

So last night in the opening credits of Angel a name jumped out at me - Ben Edlund. Hmmm... no, it couldn't be the same Ben Edlund of The Tick comic books - it is!!!

How cool is that?? I love The Tick. I have most of the comics that Ben did, and a few done by others when he quit. I also have several of the animated cartoons I recorded on VHS back when they were run on Comedy Central in the middle of the night.

Burnt Money

I forgot, we did watch a cool foreign film last night. It's title in English is Burnt Money. It was set in Argentina mostly. It was about a small group of male crooks, two of whom were lovers. As I keep saying about the foreign films I watch, there's no way Hollywood could have made this movie - their stereotypes of both gays and crooks would have prevented it. It was mostly a love story in a dark setting. At times it reminded me of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and at times Thelma and Louise. Yet, it's not really like either. (you know what I mean.) Check it out if you can find it. We rented it from Blockbuster.

Born Rich

I caught a news story interviewing the guy who made this film, Born Rich, the other day. I'm hoping it'll be distributed and shown somewhere in Austin, or at least released on video.

Sunday

Today was very relaxing. It was nice to sleep until noon, watch some tv, be a bum. Although, I did something I haven't done in a long time, I hand washed the dishes. The dishwasher in this duplex sucks!!

I watched Indiscreet with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman this afternoon. Omg is she just beautiful. It was so cool to see just how much Isabella looks and sounds like her, that soft sexy accented voice. mmmmmm

I also watched the Ellington dvd. It was such a sweet, endearing movie, or rather, the characters were sweet and endearing. They were two men who were just getting out of a mental place and living on their own together. I'm always struck by how hollywood couldn't make films like the foreign films I watch. A movie like this would have either been a stupid comedy or overly sentimental or something. So, thank God for foreign films!

Now I'm just waiting, as always, on Nerdstar to get back from Houston.

Saturday Night

I'm feeling a restlessness I haven't felt in a while. I didn't expect to feel it tonight. Nerdstar is in Houston. We've had some tensions between us and frankly, I was looking forward to having the house to myself today and tomorrow. I have nothing to do except what I want to do.

I think the disaster today is playing a part in my mood. I think it sucks that there's this feeling of - oh, it was only seven astronauts, they knew the danger. It's like if something isn't as tragic as 9/11 it doesn't register. Maybe that's just me.

I've spent almost an hour trying to get MT to upload the pictures I took earlier this week. No luck, it says transfer=100% but then doesn't pop up the next little screen to finish the process. So, I tried to be all techy and just upload the file into the directory in MT using my c panel. Well, that works fine except then I don't know the link to the file to post it in an entry. Yep, frustrating!

Last night we went to dinner and then to Barnes and Noble, I've got plenty to read these days so I wandered into the cd section. I bought six, yes, six cds.

The very best of Deee-Lite (It makes me smile!)
The Best of Chick Corea
The very best of Acoustic Alchemy (I'll probably end up getting more of theirs)
Ugly Americans - Boom Boom Baby and Stereophonic Spanish Fly (They're a local bad who was wildly popular five or so years ago.)
and DJ Micro - Music Through Me (My very first techno cd, which I'm listening to while I'm online.)

I don't listen to music much at home, I don't drive my car very often so I usually have the local news/talk radio station on driving to work and back, so mostly I needed something to listen to at work. Spinner sucks, the local radio stations play too many commercials all day long, and I can't really afford XM for my office (not even sure it would work since I don't have a window.)

I rented dvds this evening. I watched About A Boy earlier. It was ok, about what I expected. I also have Lovely and Amazing, which I don't know much about, and Elling - a Norwegian film with subtitles.

If this were back in my single days, it's the kind of night I'd say fuck it all and pick a bar and go sit and drink and watch people. I would spend two or three hours in the bar and never say a word to anyone, just sit there and feel invisible. I've spent a lot of time feeling invisible. And it's not that I couldn't do that tonight. I think I've just gotten too old to bother.

Guess I'll log off and watch another movie and try to occupy my brain.

25th Hour

After a lazy day on the sofa for me, Nerdstar and I went to eat some Chinese food and to see 25th Hour, the new Spike Lee movie with Ed Norton - two talented men who's works I've usually liked and admired. 25th Hour was no exception, in fact, I'd say it's Spike's best film ever! I'm not sure Norton can ever top Fight Club in my view, but this was maybe an even better performance in some ways.

I'm so glad they left it set in the complete context of NYC after 9/11. The opening credits over the skyline of NYC with those two tribute light beams was fantastic! The scenes that had things directly tied to 9/11 were fantastic. I haven't seen any other films brave enough to do that.

Even more impressive is how a movie about a guy getting ready to go to jail didn't once seem to cave into tired old hollywood cliches. After sitting thru several previews of tired old rehashed plots, 25th Hour was a breath of fresh air.

One other detail I loved was the use of THX in the club scene, having the different dj sounds coming from the back was fun!

It's not a fast paced movie, more a character study, but more than worth seeing!

Best Line

The best line in Buffy last night was "I'm bored, Episode 1 bored." Too funny. I don't know his name, but I love the uber geek character and all the references that character makes. I have only watched Buffy for two or three seasons. I hated Riley and just wasn't interested when Angel was on it, it seemed more juvenile then. But these last few seasons are brilliant. Even the musical! I can't wait to see how they resolve all of this supreme evil, demolish the earth stuff. They've already killed Buffy to save the world, and I think it's smart and brave of them to have her being brought back from the dead be the reason all of this bad stuff is happening now. I loved the line she said about her being the thing evil things have nightmares about, or however that went.

How do you think this will all end?