Robert Altman died yesterday night (original). He was one of the very best. On his last film, A Prairie Home Compansion, Paul Thomas Anderson stood in as the backup director just in case — so this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. But it is hugely sad.

Quote from the weekend, from S.: “It’s like cow-tipping, but with endangered species.”

I thought this review was interesting as a sample of flawed political discourse. Also fun for those who want to hear about how Happy Feet is a dangerous, offensive movie, but I’m gonna shine a flashlight on the clever rhetorical trick. Or, in this case, probably not a clever rhetorical trick — it’s probably just a guy who doesn’t realize exactly what kind of hyperbole he’s engaging in. The trick is this: you take someone generally considered to be offensive on your side of the political spectrum, and you take a behavior you disapprove of on the other side of the political spectrum, and you say “it’s OK to disagree with me, but that behavior is exactly like this offensive person!” It gives you this veneer of reason, cause you’re being all rational and bipartisan and admitting there are slimeballs on your side of the fence. However, it also irrationally conflates what may be perfectly reasonable behavior with behavior that is generally accepted as slimy. ...

Not in the least to my surprise, Lieberman is now suddenly willing to think about caucusing with the Republicans. Way to go, Joe!

The Sony Reader continues to impress. I’ve read two complete books on it now, thanks to the $50 credit you get at the store when you buy it, and the thing just works. It’s readable. When I’m reading an book on the screen of my computer, I tend to skim. With this thing? Not so much. I’ve kind of given up on using it as an RPG library for now, because PDF is not its best format. But I don’t feel a twinge of regret at that, because it’s so darned cool otherwise. Yesterday I was eating lunch and I finished the book I was on. Instinctive thought: “Oh, damn, now I have no book for the rest of the meal.” But no, I had 20 more books, and no additional weight. I mean, if you put me in a bookstore and said “you can get that book on paper or on the Reader,” I might well choose the Reader. ...

There’s a really funny painful video here in which one Brian Atene explains why Kubrick should cast him in Full Metal Jacket. The followup is here; someone claiming to be Brian does a great job of snarking at the original. After watching ‘em both, through many winces, I’m making the unfounded bet that this is a publicity stunt of some kind. Some random Youtube guy who’s never posted a video before happened to get his hands on a 20 year old videotape, and took the time to digitize it? Maybe, but more likely not.

Dear Red: (original) Thank you for 1986; and all the others, but thank you for 1986. That was the year I learned to love basketball: packed around a little television in my dorm, watching the fuzzy images of Bird and Parish and McHale storm through the league. My dad scalping tickets for the playoffs. 36-6 in the third quarter. The Celtics. Thank you.

Commentary on the Sony Reader (which you can get at Borders in the Cambridgeside Galleria right now, if you don’t feel like waiting till December for it to ship online): It’s better than any e-book experience I’ve ever had. The form factor is superb; it’s a smidge larger than a normal paperback, and much thinner. There’s very little distraction from the screen. The screen is excellent — e-ink is way easier to read than an LCD screen. The only quibble I have is the flash when you turn a page. I think it’s just how e-ink works, and I think I’ll get used to it, but it’s a tad annoying right now. ...

While I have done a number of fairly embarrassing things in my life, I have never… No, I don’t think I can describe it. Go here. (original) For another view, try this. Perfectly work-safe. The words “forty million dollar elbow” are involved, but it’s not a sports story. Wow.

Questions came first. Is it a pale shadow of Infernal Affairs? Will Scorsese have the guts to sail to the wind and let the bleakness blow through him? Will Nicholson be too much? Will DiCaprio be enough? Can Scorsese make it tight enough for us to feel the pain? Is it Boston? Yeah, it’s Boston. The original was a tense, restrained exercise in suspense and pain. It was good, or better than good. The Departed takes the plot — the same lines, in places — and spills it out on a canvas made of Boston’s racial tensions and class divisions. It’s an equal to its predecessor through an alchemical transformation of mood, theme, and locale. William Monahan is from Boston. He was born ten years before me, which means he grew up watching South Boston riot when black kids showed up at their schools. That’s where the movie opens; that’s where it’s from. ...