Nah, I don’t do these on a schedule or anything. James Fallows writes about word processors … in 1982. Paywall, sorry. Really good reminder of what computing used to be like. The Sol-20 he was using was a pretty important machine, historically speaking. Do you interact with other human beings on a regular basis in any way? Read this piece. It’s aimed at engineers but it’s good general advice, which I can summarize as “learn to write well.” You know how you can always find the rough spot on a floor by walking on it barefoot? People notice bad writing, spelling, and grammar even if they don’t know they notice it. ...

Previously… The song coverage is more varied than I’d thought. For example, Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy has all three levels of coverage. “Johnny Strikes Up The Band” has line-by-line lyric tracking, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” has no lyric tracking, and “Werewolves of London” has syllable-by-syllable lyric tracking. “Werewolves of London” is in the Sing: Classic Rock playlist, for what it’s worth. It seems more and more like the process that generates a Sing-compatible track is either manual, automatic but time-consuming, or costly in terms of licensing. Otherwise surely you’d want every album with a playlist song on it to be fully enabled, to give explorers like me the sense that there’s a ton of coverage?

Movies reviewed this week: They Call Me Trinity, Day of Wrath, Arsenic and Old Lace, Bullet Train, A Matter of Life and Death, Unfaithfully Yours, Bay of Angels, Felicia’s Journey, and Infernal Affairs III.

I am not a karaoke aficionado, for the record; I just like singing loudly to the music of my childhood. So I updated my Apple devices today, as one does, and with the updates came Apple Music Sing. It’s pretty cool; like it says on the tin, for songs it works with, you can turn the vocals way down and the lyric display shows you where you are in the song – down to the syllable – and you can sing along. Nice. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Maya at 24, Taipei Story, Infernal Affairs II, Performance, The Menu, and The Lair of the White Worm.

I was writing this up elsewhere and I thought it’d be worth saving here too. This particular version is prompted by the release of the 2022 Sight and Sound poll results. The Master -- my favorite PTA. Is it the best? Easy to argue that one, but it’s messy and sprawling which I love, and it has my favorite actor of all time, who I still mourn. Tokyo Story -- what an incredibly heart-rending movie. The sadness lies in the stillness. It is as calm as The Master is messy. In the Mood for Love -- the greatest visual director of our time (I kindly assume he’ll make another movie some day) and two of the best actors I’ll ever see. Nostalgia. Coincidence. Sadness. Crash -- my favorite expression of Cronenberg’s thesis statement: mankind will evolve into something else some day and we’d best be ready for it. I love the chilly violence of the Toronto highways in this. Beau Travail -- not just for that final scene, although I will happily explain why Denis Lavant is remarkable for hours, just ask me, see if I won’t. If there’s a common theme to these first five movies (and there is), it’s desire. Claire Denis knows how to put desire on screen. The Third Man -- I swear I didn’t notice until I was making this post, but this list can be divided into arthouse and genre, and we’re now in the genre section. For a long time Casablanca was in this slot but The Third Man replaced it for me. Vienna as a haunted house. Brazil -- this is the movie that taught me there was more to life than the multiplex, and I still love it for the messy excess of it all, plus it’s about rebellion and I find that still resonates with me. The Big Sleep -- yeah, the plot makes no sense, but I’m not in it for the plot. I’m in it for Bogart and Bacall and a poisonous toxic Los Angeles and the snappy dialogue. And for Dorothy Malone. City of God -- did you hear about the time a couple of Brazilians took the pyrotechnic effects from The Matrix and the disjointed narrative that Tarantino didn’t invent anyhow and bent them to their whims to tell a story about their homes? It’s really good. Lawrence of Arabia -- I have been lucky enough to see this in 70mm on a high quality screen three times, and if I could only ever see one movie like that again it’d probably be this one again. For my money, there has never been a better epic. Those dunes. Holy Motors, Hiroshima Mon Amour, 8 1/2, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and Three Colors: Blue could very easily be on my top ten as well.

Sarah Polley haș some absolutely wonderful thoughts about making a movie ( Women Talking) with a mostly female crew. If you’re really fretful about assigning any behaviors to genders in particular, consider it as a piece about how much value there is in challenging norms. “They crafted a budget based on 10-hour days, shot in and near Toronto, so everybody could be home for bedtime.” Can’t wait to see this one. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Run Lola Run, The Rules of the Game, Detour, Werewolf by Night, The Banshees of Inisherin, and Like Rabid Dogs.

New text AI! Let’s try it on some tabletop RPG work. Bold is my prompts; I’ve snipped the polite banter out of most of the AI’s answers. Spoiler: this is way better than the last one I tried. If I repeat the same prompt it gets a little repetitive, but still not bad.

Movies reviewed this week: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Dragon Inn, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, if…., Shaolin Temple, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Kes, The Meetings of Anna, Bones and All, Decision to Leave, and Down Twisted.