It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
I just installed Brad Choate’s MT-DSBL plugin, hacked slightly so that it checks against both the Distributed Sender Blackhole List and the Blitzed Open Proxy Monitor List. (Perhaps I should add SORBS?) Hopefully this’ll cut down on spam.
If this interferes with anyone’s commenting, please let me know.
Edit: it screws up mine. Off for now.
Edit: found the problem (my colo provider’s DNS is somewhat over-zealous). It’s back on.
In the lobby of the Lowes Harvard Square today, while waiting for Million Dollar Baby, I saw the following two posters side-by-side, much like they are below if your browser window is quite large.
Both these movies are distributed by Warner Brothers. They’re both comic book adaptations. They ought to both appeal to a similar audience. What are the execs at Warner Brothers thinking? This is why Marvel-based movies are on a fairly strong run, while DC-based movies are not.
I admit it: the lure of a free Mac mini led me to take a peek at Freeminimacs.com. The deal is that you sign up for one of several offers via their site, and you get ten of your friends to do the same thing, and you get a free Mac mini out of it. Presumably your friends go out and do the same, and so on.
The economics of this seem to make sense — it’s your basic pyramid scheme, but less objectionable because the upfront cost of getting involved is minimized. The percentage of people who complete the offer is fairly low, while the people behind it are making money on everyone who starts the process. So, sure, for a free Mac mini I was willing to give ‘em my email address. My spam filter is mighty.
Alas, the offers don’t really match up with anything I’d wanna sign up for. Credit cards, Blockbuster Online, random cheesy stuff. Which isn’t surprising, I suppose.
Bill Condon’s next movie will apparently be Dreamgirls. I’m quite happy that I won’t have to wait another six years for his next. It’ll be a remake of the stage musical, which I know nothing about; the storyline isn’t terribly compelling to me. But hey, it’s Condon.
A while back I pointed to the University of California’s online academic text archive. Robin Laws put this to good use, discovering a collection of Hollywood screenwriter interviews. I’m gonna read just about all of those.
My Boston Angel campaign will, of course, be called Whitey’s Angels.
Andrew Sullivan passes on extensive quotes from a Stratfor report on Iraq. I’m not entirely sure you can characterize Stratfor as “pro-war,” but they are a significant private intelligence agency and their conclusions bear examination. From the quotes, it boils down to the insurgency having become self-sustaining and the US not having enough forces to contain it.
Screw it — while there are three or four 2004 movies I want to see that I could see if I was willing to delay this puppy another couple of weeks, I’m gonna go with what I’ve got. The rules, as per last year:
This is the list of my ten favorite movies of 2004. I didn’t see every movie I wanted to see, so I can’t claim it’s the ten best movies of 2004. I’m also being a little liberal about foreign flicks; if it was made in 2003 but was released in the US in 2004, or if it hasn’t been released in the US yet but I saw it in 2004, I’ll count it as a 2004 movie within reason. E.g., Days of Being Wild was released in the US in 2004, but was made in 1991, so it doesn’t get on the list.
Without further ado, the lists, not in any order: 30 movies plus a special mention for a 2003 flick of rare quality.
Sine Qua Nons
Closer: they say there’s a new cruelty in the arts, but if you ask me this sort of thing is as old as the movies. I loved Closer for being pure and elegant and unrelenting, not to mention for the acting.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Wes Anderson continues to make the movies he wants to make, and I continue to love them. Everyone’s talking about Bill Murray, but has anyone else noticed the way Jeff Goldblum is quietly slipping away from his typecasting back into indie film?
Kinsey: fearless and ballsy and committed. This was the movie which struck me as being the most personal directorial statement of the year.
The Incredibles: Pixar transcends animation by virtue of the decision to bring in the remarkable Brad Bird. It’s a great movie not because of the marvelous CGI, but because of the story and the voice acting and the perfect production values.
Gozu: Takashi Miike made a movie about growing up and being a son and all that kind of thing; it just happens to be phrased as a surrealistic yakuza movie.
Last Life in the Universe: “Hi, we’re from Thailand and we would like you to pay attention to our cinema.” It convinced me. If it hadn’t been for Hero, this would have been the most beautiful movie of the year.
Zatoichi: Kitano deconstructs the classic Zatoichi story with gleeful abandon. His use of sound to echo Zatoichi’s perceptions of the world is icing on the cake.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: in a year full of surrealism, this movie won. There’s a richness to the story that comes from the surrounding characters; Joel and Clementine wouldn’t be all that they were if it hadn’t been for Patrick and Mary and Dr. Mierzwiak.
Before Sunset: my review is coming, but until then, I’ll just say that this was the perfect companion piece to Closer — I want to show a triple bill with Before Sunrise, Closer, and Before Sunset. The technical skill it took to make a movie that a) was tightly scripted, b) exists in real-time, and c) appeared so spontaneous amazes me.
Hero: questionable politics, yes; it’s still a movie that took the vocabulary of wuxia movies and used it to create an art film. An audacious reconstruction of the martial arts genre.
How Could I Miss
Million Dollar Baby? Cause it hasn’t released wide yet. Finding Neverland? I’m just a little wary of biopics, even though I shouldn’t be. Goodbye, Dragon Inn? Sheer inertia. When Will I Be Loved? Cause I didn’t hear about it, damn it, which pisses me off. The Saddest Music in the World? Came and went too quickly. Infernal Affairs? Fell asleep the one night it played in Boston. Hotel Rwanda? Another late opener. We Don’t Live Here Anymore? And I claim to be a fan of Peter Krause. Purple Butterfly? Hasn’t opened in Boston yet, but it’ll be eligible for next year’s list. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead? Another one that slipped under my radar.
But now I’m depressing myself. Time to talk about more movies that I actually saw.
Best of the Rest
Honorable mentions go to Shaun of the Dead, which I never reviewed but which perfectly married comedy and zombies; Spider-Man 2, which combined with The Incredibles and Hellboy to create the best superhero movie year ever; Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which will never be less in my eyes than a perfect evocation of pulp as it was; House of Flying Daggers, which nearly beat out Hero for the top ten list; Garden State, which I just enjoyed; Sideways, in which a flawed story was mitigated by some of the very best acting of the year from an unexpectedly good cast; Kill Bill, as a whole, because I can’t really consider either of the two movies complete without each other; Collateral, which should be shown as a double feature with To Live And Die In L.A.; and Spartan, for Val Kilmer and David Mamet.
Special mention to Fog of War, which didn’t open wide until 2004 but which was a 2003 movie. It deserves to be on one of my top ten lists.
Interesting factoid: Alberto Gonzales, nominee for the post of Attorney-General, apparently believes Gavin Newsom, as an elected executive of the government, has the right to take a stand against laws he considers unconstitutional:
MR. GONZALES: Senator, I do believe there may come an occasion when the Congress might pass a statute that the president may view as unconstitutional. And that is a position and a view not just of this president, but many, many presidents from both sides of the aisle.
Obviously, a decision as to whether or not to ignore a statute passed by Congress is a very, very serious one, and it would be one that I would spend a great deal of time and attention before arriving at a conclusion that in fact a president had the authority under the Constitution to —
OK, so I’m overstating it a little; one might feel that the President has certain rights that the Mayor of San Francisco does not. However, those rights aren’t enumerated in the Constitution, so I think I’m on pretty solid ground. And the general principle is clear. The mayor’s office is in the executive branch. Gonzales is stating that he feels the executive branch has the right to ignore statues passed if it feels they are unconstitutional.
My previous thoughts on the matter, in which I presciently presume that “Ashcroft and Bush no doubt feel that it is unconstitutional to force them to provide counsel to Jose Padillo,” are here.