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Category: Culture

American: The Bill Hicks Hagiography

July 12, 2011
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There I go giving away my conclusion. Ah well. Anyways: American: The Bill Hicks Story is on Netflix streaming, and if you don’t know Bill Hicks you oughta watch it. If you do know who he is, you can watch it to get all pissed off all over again, or you could watch it because there’s some really cool footage of his teenage comedy act.

The problem I had is that the movie shows Hicks as a saint. Even when he’s going through his alcoholism, it’s not really his fault. He hung around with a dangerous crowd, right? And he got off alcohol soon enough, after which it’s smooth sailing until he dies of cancer in the most polite, family-oriented, sane way possible. The movie was authorized and supported by his family, who come across as really decent people. His parents didn’t object to his comedy, which is saying something. But I still suspect the seal of approval might have gotten in the way of any real examination of the man.

I’m still glad I saw it. There’s a 60 second clip of his infamous heckler routine — the bit in Chicago where he gets heckled early on and decides to turn the evening into a brutal, stop and go, stutter-step deconstruction of the relationship between audience and comedian. I’ve seen the whole thing, cause it’s on YouTube, and the brief clip in the movie is worthwhile all by itself. I just wish the movie spent more time thinking about the alchemy that transmutes anger like that into comedy like that.

Sleeper

June 16, 2011
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I’m calling it: John Carter of Mars is gonna be the sleeper hit of 2012. Andrew Stanton of Pixar is directing and he has a pretty good track record. Taylor Kitsch is about perfect for the role of John Carter. And the rest of the cast! Mark Strong, James Purefoy, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston, Dominic West, Samantha Morton, Ciarán Hinds, etc.

I mean, not that it won’t fall prey to the geek movie trap and all. But man, that’s set up to be a huge hit. Disney’s pretty good at marketing, too, I hear.

The A.I. War

March 28, 2011
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There’s a time when I would have been overwhelmed with the news that The A.I. War was out.. In 1994, it was almost done. I barely remember who I was back then. 1994? I was still working at Netcom. Wow. In those days, The A.I. War was the next stage in a 33 book masterpiece of future history. That was exciting.

We read the first three chapters in 1998. Still excited. Well, I’m still excited now. Just differently so.

Stuff happened between 1994 and now. I don’t blame DKM for taking fifteen years to get this sucker out. My impatience pales in comparison to the pain that some of that stuff caused those involved. I still had to dull the edge of my excitement somewhere along that timeline. Plus Terminal Freedom, oof. Charitably, I don’t like Jodi Moran’s writing as much as I like Daniel Keys Moran’s writing. Uncharitably, they needed an editor. There’s way too much self-insertion and there are way too many authorial darlings in there. All in all, I wasn’t sitting around waiting for The A.I. War. Blame it on false starts and trepidation.

Now? I’m not overwhelmed. But I find I’m pleased, and yeah, excited. I think I’m excited for potential. A couple of days from now, when I’ve read it, maybe I’ll believe in the Continuing Time again. I’m glad that there’s a chance I might.

That’s The Rush of Geek Feet

March 21, 2011
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Hey, it’s time for a new Neal Stephenson novel. This one is going to be called Reamde, which is probably a gloss on README, which is funny. Particularly to me. This was announced like a year ago but I wasn’t paying attention. It’s about gold farmers in MMORPGs, and it will be nearly 1,000 pages long, and it will come out in September. That’s also funny to me, although I imagine it isn’t a reference to the Eternal September. I happily anticipate being grumpy about MMO inaccuracies.

YAPKDM

March 6, 2011
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The Adjustment Bureau is carried a long way by Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, with an assist from Terence Stamp, but the directing was indifferent and the script wussed out in the end. And at a crucial point in the middle; watch for the library scene, where we find out that much of the central philosophical dilemma is completely irrelevant.

It’s a Philip K. Dick movie, so you kind of have to know the odds aren’t that good going in; you expect to get an interesting mindtwist of a premise executed without total commitment on the part of the director/screenwriter. Check on all counts. I put this one a bit higher than most, just because Damon and Blunt were so good. Awesome chemistry, great acting. But this is George Nolfi’s first movie, and man, even the experienced directors tend to hit the reefs on Dick adapatations. He also wrote the screenplay, so I can confidently blame him for everything I disliked.

Which is to say that the ending fails to take risks. It’s comforting rather than dangerous. You can read the original story, which is quite short. In the end of that one, our protagonist willingly compromises to save his own skin. In the movie, it’s not surprising that Matt Damon gets a happy ending, but it is disappointing. There’s a reading in which he sacrifices a great deal to get that happy ending, which is in fact the surface reading, but I’d point out that certain parties spend the whole movie lying to Damon and he knows it. I’m not sure he’s made any real sacrifice at all.

Also, someone better could have turned the hat chase scene into something really special. So lost opportunity all around. It’s still totally worth a matinee, because of the acting, but not more than that.

Object of Dreams

March 2, 2011
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Should you ever happen to be in Singapore and desirous of spending a thousand bucks or so on me, this is what I want. It’s the nearly complete Shaw Brothers collection, 668 films, on one set-top box. Presumably there’s a hard drive in there. HDMI output, 720p picture quality, from the Celestial Pictures remastered rereleases. Man, that would be awesome. At a thousand bucks, it’s reasonably priced on a per movie basis, too. Alas, they won’t ship outside Singapore.

Two Ice Cream Books

February 19, 2011
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I got two books on making ice cream. I’m very pleased with one; I am not so pleased with the other.

Perfect Scoop is really good. David Lebovitz was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse and he cares a lot about good ice cream; his cookbook gives a nice solid grounding in ice cream theory and then rolls into a ton of recipes. There are also sections on granitas, toppings, and things to serve ice cream in. It’s a very foodie cookbook but it’s also very practical — there are not a lot of super-weird ingredients and he’s not snotty about using just the right thing.

His blog has a lot of recipes, not limited to ice cream, but you can get a feel for his techniques and style with this one. Which sounds great, but I do like white chocolate. You may note that his recipes tend towards using less sugar than the average, which is a plus for me. Not that I don’t like sweet ice cream; however, a guide to less sweet ice creams is good.

Finally, it’s a really pretty book. Lots of nice ice cream photography. Ice cream isn’t the most interesting subject in the world (look, another scoop of frozen dairy in a glass bowl!). On the other hand it gives me a good idea of desired textures.

So that’s the good. Bad: Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. The history of the company is kind of interesting but the recipes, OK. They mostly have eggs, and there is no cooking of the eggs. It’s an entire cookbook full of raw eggs. Grrr. This tells me there’s not much thought given to the recipes, and it also tells me they weren’t that concerned with really giving away how their commercial ice creams are made, because I’m also pretty sure we’d figured out salmonella by 1987. Don’t buy this one, it’s not worth it.

Best Movie Marathon

February 8, 2011
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Hey, that’s cool. AMC is running a two-day/one-day marathon of the 10 Best Picture nominees. 15 cities get the one-day marathon, and everyone else gets the two-day marathon. Probably the two-day marathon is saner. Sixty bucks a ticket for ten movies plus a $20 food card, so it’s four dollars a movie, which is not bad at all.