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Category: Culture

Triple Once

August 17, 2003
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Pleasingly, Columbia just released the Once Upon A Time In China series on a two-DVD set for a mere twenty-five bucks or so. Each movie is on one side of a DVD, so there’s no quality compromise. Alas, they left out the commentary from their previous edition of Once Upon A Time In China I, but one can’t have everything and it was just a commentary from a Hong Kong film expert rather than anyone connected with the production.

The picture quality is great, blowing away my memories of the scratchy print I saw in the Towne lo these many years ago. And it’s three of Jet Li’s best flicks for $25. I can’t think of any reason other than having the single movie editions why a Hong Kong action movie fan wouldn’t want these.

Oracle of Britain

August 11, 2003
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Remember what Warren Ellis said about Mark Waid, spiky metal things, and Marvel? Read that, then read this.

“Joe’s done a lot to make right what has been an unfortunate situation,” Waid said. “Not only is there no bad blood, but the door is open for me at Marvel and in some form or another, there is more Fantastic Four in my future.”

10 of 10 for Mr. Ellis. Well done, sir!

Look West

August 11, 2003
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Bravo started airing reruns of West Wing today with a six show marathon, so of course I watched the whole thing. Now I really recognize the vibe Mr. Sterling failed to achieve. Yep, that’s Sorkin, all right.

I liked it OK. Snappy dialogue, noble and honest politicians and staffers. My new theory is that Democratic resentment of Bush arises from his failure to live up to the example set by President Bartlet. (Sure, I’m joking.) But it’s a good show, and I like the impossibly witty characters.

So here’s my million dollar TV show idea. It’s a one hour drama, set in, say, Chicago. It focuses on a few families which are linked in some unlikely fashion; some are rich, some are poor, but all of them are doing something that matters. Oh, I know: it’s a newspaper drama! So you can have the spunky young hungry reporter and her husband and the editor and the owner and so on.

Half an hour of each show is written by Joss Whedon. Half an hour is written by Aaron Sorkin. Whedon owns the teenage kids. Sorkin owns the grownups. They can always throw plot twists at each other; Sorkin has to have the owner react when his daughter is caught smoking pot with the son of the hungry reporter, for example.

Ratings gold. The only problem with it is that David Kelley will be very miffed at being left out.

News muse

August 6, 2003
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Kevin over at funmurphys.com has more thoughts on media, following up on his comments here. He’s got an excellent point, which in my book touches on the true value of the Internet: you can get more information faster. Context is what’s valuable, and information provides context.

This is one reason I link to conservative blogs as well as liberal blogs. The other reason is because I’ll link anywhere if I get good writing out of it.

Without a net

August 6, 2003
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Warren Ellis is writing a novel on the Internet. Using LiveJournal. It starts here. You also get occasional comments on LiveJournal itself:

Sometimes I think of LiveJournal as the world’s biggest technogoth community. LJ has been both lauded and derided as a space for people with black clothes and strange hair to work out their alienation and disaffection in electronic public. That hasn’t stopped it being successful, and it hasn’t stopped it being a tool for national and international networking. As a piece of “social software,” it’s not flawless, but its influence and effect has been huge.

The first thing we all do when we find out about this: we link to it. The second thing we do, those of us who have LiveJournal accounts: we add him to our friends list.

Stop and think about that one for a second. On LiveJournal, adding someone to your friends list doesn’t just mean you can read their entries easily. It also means that they’re on the list of people who can read your private entries, unless you’ve customized things a little.

At the moment, 332 people have added Warren Ellis to their friends list. He has access to the private entries of, well, most of those people. He can read them talking about things they don’t mean to show to anyone they don’t know — let alone a writer who’s always searching for new material for his perverted comic books.

In my universe, I’m going to believe that he did this on purpose, knowing full well what access he would be granted.

London crawling

August 3, 2003
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John Tynes claims, accurately, that Dirty Pretty Things is the “best damn film of the year.” So far, true. Stephen Frears has turned out another little gem. He paints the story using the edges of society, creating art with the conventions of the dark thriller genre. It’s not just a thriller, and it’s not just one of his social pieces; it’s an elegant braid of both.

Audrey Tautou kind of slips into the impish Amelie persona once or twice, which is a little odd for someone playing a Turkish immigrant, but it more or less works. The rest of the acting was superb. Benedict Wong was especially good, and got the best line in the movie in the best scene of the movie. Lucky guy.

I kind of want to be more descriptive, but it’d be a shame to rob anyone of the pleasure of letting the movie unfold. The setting is great, and the art direction is very evocative. There are moments, when the lead is suffering from nasty sleep deprivation, when Frears captures that feeling without falling back on the grainy filmstock and heightened contrast that’s already become a cliche.

It makes me want to go back to The Hit (mmm, Tim Roth) and watch all the Frears in order, excepting maybe the one with Julia Roberts.

I answer yes

August 2, 2003
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Don’t let anyone tell you affirmative action is only for minorities these days. I’m thinking Bishop Caldwell is crazy like a fox — he’s picking up a fair amount of attention, which easily assists with both his stated objectives and any yearning for publicity he might feel.