It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Tomorrow I begin the trek up to Montreal for FantAsia. I am so much looking forward to this I can’t even begin to explain. Sadly, I won’t make Porco Rosso, but Cutie Honey is an acceptable replacement.
To do:
If you live in the Bay Area, you may wish to help save the 4 Star. Or not — it’s not as if people down on the Peninsula get up to San Francisco that often. But believe me, it’s a great theater. I used to go there all the time and it’d be a shame if they had to close.
Also, it’s the business I want to run someday.
I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle, and it’s good enough to be worth waiting eight years for, let alone the four years it’s been since Galveston. So no complaints here.
A little about the milieu, first. It’s the modern world, akin to Mockingbird, with that touch of elemental unexplained strangeness. Like Mockingbird, it’s set in Texas; like many of Stewart’s novels, it’s about family. In the author’s notes for Mockingbird, he says that “I had in mind something that would ‘fit’ with Resurrection Man, but with the quantities of light and dark reversed; a scary comedy, as it were, rather than a brooding novel with occasional jokes.” I think that Perfect Circle is a better match for those words; it echoes the relationship between death and family described in Resurrection Man through a lens crafted of punk music and Texas.
If I was going to write a cover blurb, on the other hand, I’d say something like “Perfect Circle establishes Sean Stewart as the American Nick Hornby,” which would make all the High Fidelity fans happy until they read any of his books besides Perfect Circle. This is why I’m not in marketing.
And come to think of it, Perfect Circle isn’t a comedy, either. So never mind the whole thing and just read it already. There are not one but two chapters on Salon, so you’ve no excuse not to fall in love.
Turns out Jet Li is making his good movies over in France these days. Bob Hoskins and Jet Li, together again! Plus Morgan Freeman, although I can’t watch Morgan Freeman these days without thinking of my friend Jamie’s blockbuster Morgan Freeman idea. He wants to make a movie in which Morgan Freeman is, you guessed it, the grizzled wise gentle cop chasing a serial killer. But Freeman turns out to be the killer in some particularly vile and sadistic fashion.
Anyhow, this looks great.
Warner Brothers is allowing us, the plebes, to vote on which classic movies they’ll release on DVD next. Kinda fun, even if there’s no information about how the voting works. Me, I liked All Fall Down, Ice Station Zebra, Kansas City Bomber, King Solomon’s Mines, and Party Girl.
Billy the Kid to Rio: “Will you keep your eyes open? Will you look right at me as I do it?”
I more or less randomly watched The Outlaw today; it was on this set of Western classics I picked up last weekend on Jack Gulick’s advice. Fifty movies for thirty bucks was too good a deal to pass up.
When I cracked open the box, I noticed The Outlaw. I like Howard Hughes, or at least his legend, so I popped it in. I only expected a cheesy Western with a lot of Jane Russell. Imagine my surprise when I got a Billy the Kid played by a guy who looks like a fey Johnny Depp and more subtext than you can shake Lucy Lawless at.
“Doc, if you’re not already fixed up, you can bunk with me tonight.”
“No thanks, Billy, I’ve got a girl. She and her aunt just moved in town. You got a girl, Billy?”
“No, I ain’t got nothing, except that horse.”
“You can’t fool me, a good looking boy like you… you must have a girl somewhere.”
“No, I don’t trust ‘em.”
So the first act of the movie is about how Doc Holliday decides to partner up with Billy the Kid, deserting his old friend Pat Garrett. The second act is Doc and Billy arguing over the beautiful Rio (this is where Jane Russell comes in) and Doc’s strawberry roan; it’s unclear which is more important. The third act resolves it all.
Pat Garrett: “You and me never had any trouble ‘till he came along.”
Besides being charged with tension, it’s actually a pretty decent movie. The final faceoff sequence is about as good as anyone could want. The gunslingers use their weapons like the words they can’t always find, to argue and to sting and to wound. I gasped a couple of times, but then again, I’m suggestible.
The coda doesn’t work quite, but I imagine that’s what you get when you fire Howard Hawks as director and try to finish a movie yourself. I could have done without the over-aggressive score, too. Regardless, none of that stopped me from enjoying the movie a lot.
Tasty. See it if you get a chance.
If Kevin Drum can do it, I can do it. My cultural preferences follow; the preferred choice is enboldened. Sometimes I don’t answer because I don’t have enough experience, and sometimes I don’t answer because I don’t care. More the former, sadly.
So that’s settled, then; my pal Chris and I are venturing up to the Great White North (in the form of Montreal) the last weekend of this month to partake in movies. My schedule is basically the same one I outlined earlier, plus Saving Private Tootsie. I chose Hillside Strangler and Into the Mirror over my alternative choices in the end. I have tickets and I have a hotel reservation.
If anyone happens to be in Montreal that weekend, lemme know and we’ll have beer or coffee or something. My free time will be sparse for obvious reasons, but I imagine… maybe I should say “we’ll have popcorn.”
I’ll blog the whole thing, of course. I have already staked out wireless locations. Although if anyone knows anyone in the Concordia IT department who might be able to get me access to the campus wireless network over the weekend, that would be superawesome.
The Good Eats kitchen is up for sale, sort of. You get the kitchen, but not the utensils or the pots or pans or anything. But, you know, the stove is nice. And the house seems nice. It’s completely wired for Ethernet.
You also get a meal cooked by Alton Brown. I think the best line in the listing is this: “For the ultimate birthday or holiday gift just buy the home for the dinner and resell afterward!”
What Steven Spielberg movie? I’m all about the webs, baby. You’re either gonna see it or not so I’ll just skip the ooohs and ahhhs and cut right to the spoilers and commentary.
Oh, one thing. Step back with me to the halcyon days of 1994. Remember the guy who directed Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, and the guy who directed the Evil Dead movies? They’re gonna be critically acclaimed directors who make billions of dollars at the box office. No, really.
Very funny old world.