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Category: Culture

Toronto Int'l Film Festival: Midnight Madness

July 31, 2007
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The TIFF Midnight Madness film list is out. It’s always interesting comparing their movies to Fantasia; you don’t generally see movies at both, because (as I understand it) there’s a mild rivalry.

As is generally the case, Toronto got the big names — Romero and Gordon this year. Naturally, Fantasia has more depth in the fantastic film category, given that they screen rather more fantastic films. And, of course, Toronto has a lot of other movies to offer. In my ideal life of the idle rich world, I go to both.

The Armageddon Blues

July 25, 2007
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Daniel Keys Moran has put The Armageddon Blues up for download, right over here. It’s not his best novel, but it’s worth reading. And it’s a good sign, because it fulfills the promise that there’s more coming. So big thanks to him.

The judge in the Rodgers/Moran court case has apparently asked both parties to stop flaming each other online. At least, he asked DKM to take his blog down and there’s nothing left of all the posts Alan Rodgers made about how evil DKM was over on his blog. Thanks thusly go out to the judge, too.

Richard Thompson, 6/30

July 6, 2007
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Richard Thompson’s one of the most depressing lyricists in the world. He’s also one of the artists I admire the most for his skill. In retrospect, a bit of emotion on my part could have been expected, since Susan and I saw him five days after we found out about the Benoit tragedy.

I teared up hard during the first song. You’ve got a viewpoint character singing about bad relationships, you’ve got guitar playing that echoes through the minor keys and embraces atonal harmony as a metaphor for futile rage, and somewhere in there Thompson’s voice has become just about as effective an instrument as his guitar. I think it was cathartic: despite what the world’s lost, life goes on, and talent goes on, and there’s aught yet to admire.

It’d been a while since I’d seen him live; the last time must have been seven or eight years ago. He’s really been pushing his singing skills. He’s more resonant and less gruff than he was back in the 80s by far.

So, yeah: a great concert. Lots of cuts from Sweet Warrior, plus enough older stuff. “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” is a brutally despairing anti-war song that’d get much more attention in any sane world; and his solo acoustic “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” — bass line plus solos simultaneously, of course — was deeply gratifying. But it was all good.

You can hear the whole concert here. That’s from the DC date of the current tour.

Fantasia

July 5, 2007
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We’re sadly not going to Fantasia this year, but next year with any luck, and it’s not like it doesn’t just keep getting better. I need to remember to call someone about ordering the program this year.

Chris said something insane about a shortage of must-see movies this year. Naaaah.

Continue ReadingFantasia

DKM Surfaces

May 28, 2007
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From his new blog:

In any event, AI War is the only thing I’ll be working on this summer, and once it’s clean, I’m going to roll into the concluding sequel — it’s been years since I’ve written SF, but I am going to publish AI War and its sequel, Crystal Wind, before the people who care about it succumb to Alzheimers.

But, yeah. He was gonna turn in AI War to Bantam in 1995. And he was gonna animate The Long Run in 1998 — “the pilot will happen.” Plans, I suppose, sometimes fall through.

There’s this weird dichotomy, too. DKM says, “Now … the book is still under contract to Bantam. I doubt they want it, but who knows?” Bantam said, back in 1998, “Mr. Moran has bought back the rights to his Players: The Ai Wars and left Bantam.”

So take it all for what it’s worth. It’s also the case that the guy went blind in one eye, and I can see how that would blow out one’s ability to write. I wouldn’t criticize him for not finishing the books; I’m just suspicious of his ability to self-evaluate the chances that they’ll get done.

Stranger Than Fiction

May 15, 2007
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Spoilers ahead.

I’m unclear as to whether Stranger Than Fiction is a comedy or a tragedy. I guess strictly speaking it’s a romantic comedy, but really, that’s not the story of the movie; the story of the movie is about how something dies. Does a great person have a downfall? Yep. So I think I have to read it as a bittersweet tragedy, albeit one with an ending which could be seen as rather happy.

Then again, it perhaps betrays my bibliophiliac nature that I think the death of a novel is a tragedy. But — no, I think I’m on target. A classic tragedy is inevitable. In Stranger Than Fiction, everyone makes the right decisions; ethics prevail throughout. It just so happens that the result of these decisions is that Karen Eiffel doesn’t complete her greatest novel.

But the alternative would have been worse. It’s to the movie’s credit that there’s a bit of uncertainty there, though. Around fifteen minutes before the end, I thought Harold was going to die, and that would have been an impressive choice. Then I thought we were going to have a saccharine ending; then it was redeemed, because it was clear that the choice made was a painful one. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson pretty much pulled this off with their final scene; perfect portrayal of two people who know a sacrifice has been made.

The two of them more or less made the movie work all along, actually. Will Ferrell was good; the role wasn’t deeply demanding, but he did avoid hamming it up and he was perfectly decent as a mostly blank cipher. I’m guessing he’ll do one of these every few years to maintain cred, and if he’s this good every time he’ll deserve whatever cred he gets. But really, it was Thompson and Hoffman deserve the credit for creating the context in which he could work.

So I liked it. As elliptical Wes Andersonesque movies go, it was no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it beat the crap out of I Heart Huckabees.

Day and Date

May 8, 2007
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A while ago, I wrote about Stephen Soderberg’s desire to see movies hit theaters, DVD, and cable on the same day. I was wrong about him not making Ocean’s 13, but I was right about it being a trend.

$30-$50 is pretty ambitious pricing even for a first run movie, but (and I’m sure this is how the price point was set) it’s cheaper than taking a family of four to the movies, if you figure in popcorn and drinks.

Recent Reading: The Lost Colony

May 3, 2007
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The Last Colony is a pretty fun read in the “crowded galaxy with humans jostling for position” subgenre of the space opera subgenre. It’s kind of hard for me to evaluate it objectively, because it kept hitting all these SF tropes I know and love. Look! A colony lands on a new planet, and yeah, that thing that happens quite often in colonizing novels happens. Hey, there’s a wide-ranging alliance among semi-hostile races. And… wait, no powered armor.

This isn’t a bad thing at all; it’s all done quite well, albeit there’s no payoff to the thing that always happens in colonizing novels. It’s just the kind of thing that suits me perfectly, and I can’t say if it’d make someone who isn’t steeped in the field quite as happy.

The politics is fun. I really like the way Scalzi writes politics; you get a good range of motivations, bad guys don’t always agree, and it’s complex but believable. People get lucky a lot, but I suspect that’s a world law of the Scalziverse.

Hm. Yeah, it definitely is. “Hey, we managed to lay our hands on this MacGuffin here for reasons which will go completely unexplained, but it’s what you need, yep.” OK, so his characters are remarkably lucky as a class.

Quibbles: there’s a big expository lump or two in the middle of the book, and a couple of characters who exist largely to feed our protagonist expository lumps. See also Scalzi’s remarks on the Fermi Paradox. It might have been a slightly better book if he hadn’t given into the temptation to answer those particular critics via lumpage, but eh, it’s a pretty small lump.

So fun reading. I really like coherent straight-forward heroic space opera. (I also like Iain Banks, mind you.) This is that.

EMI Drops DRM

April 2, 2007
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EMI’s going to sell all their music online without DRM. It’ll be available through iTunes first; it’ll also cost 30 cents more for a track without DRM, but the quality will be twice as high. If you want to keep the old price, you’ll still be able to get DRM’d tracks for a buck.

Albums will be DRM-free at the same old price. You’ll be able to convert your DRM’d tracks to non-DRM tracks for 30 cents per track.

This is pretty good. Philosophically, I don’t want to pay more for music without the DRM, but since the quality is better I won’t mentally grumble too much. And since I buy most of my music by the album anyway? No big deal.

I should be able to convert full albums to DRM-less at no charge, though.