Culture

July 12th. (original) 900-plus pages, the publisher says it’s a firm date, and Martin himself seems pretty sure about it as well. It’s a good year for long-awaited fantasy novels!

Should you ever happen to be in Singapore and desirous of spending a thousand bucks or so on me, this is what I want. (original) 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.

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.

This video makes me wildly happy because a) it illuminates how explicitly Tarantino intended Kill Bill as a remix, b) it shows how well he executed his plan, and c) it reminds me how much I liked Kill Bill.

I took advantage of a Christmas Amazon gift certificate to fill a few holes in my old Hong Kong movie collection plus make a gesture towards catching up on more recent Hong Kong flicks. I know the Hong Kong movie scene is never going to be quite what it was back in the day, but it’s not like the last decade was a wasteland or anything (original). I’m behind! Thus Susan and I watched Sha Po Lang last night. (You’d find it on US video shelves as Kill Zone; despite Miramax’s reputation and the horrendous new title, it’s an unclipped unmangled version.) Simon Yam was the big draw for me, cause I’ve always thought he’s a great Hong Kong character actor, plus it’s got a great rep, plus of course Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen. ...

Hulu has the full run of Coupling (original); the British version, not the really bad American remake. Steven Moffat of Doctor Who current fame was the show’s creator, plus you’ve got Jack Davenport and Gina Bellman in every episode. You’ve sort of got to like sitcoms about people who are not entirely angelic, but it’s kind of sweet too.

Short shameful confession: I’m kind of enjoying the hell out of the Horus Heresy books. Of course this is only because Dan Abnett is quite a competent writer and so on, but excuses aside, big serious people in powered armor are marching across the galaxy and falling to corruption one by one! I have never taken pleasure out of a Warhammer 40K Space Marine book before. Nom nom nom.

We recently cut the cable cord. It turns out that you can get an HD antennae that feeds a Tivo well enough, and that covers anything on Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and CW. AMC is the big exception, but it’s cheaper to buy the episodes on iTunes than it would be to maintain the cable bill. I was gonna get HBO in the spring to watch Game of Thrones, and HBO does not do downloads for non-subscribers, but c’est la vie. Also I lose a lot of the NBA playoffs. Thankfully there are sports bars. Anyway, for the sake of the decision-making process I thought hard about what I actually watch.

Two interesting ebook questions: when will publishers get around to releasing the backlist as ebooks, and who will be the quality gatekeepers in a world of self-publishing? You may think the second question is a moot point, and can be answered by some form of collective criticism, aka Metafilter, but I’m going to throw out some relevant news anyhow. As I understand it, part of the problem with the first question is that publishers don’t own the ebook rights to their backlist. It wasn’t part of the standard contract back in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. This means authors can do it themselves, if they like. Please take a moment to read this post from John Scalzi before continuing. ...

John Woo’s new movie, Red Cliff, will be hitting US soil on November 20th. If you are a die-hard John Woo fan, you’ll see it. If you’re a John Woo fan who’s been disappointed by such cinematic masterpieces as Paycheck, you should see it: all reports are that he’s back to form. If you’re not a John Woo fan but you like big historical epics, you should see it. Everyone else: also see it. ...