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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
 The world wide web: it has more than just recipes... |
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Sub Question! Is it acceptable to label "serious" war movies as action movies? For example, when trying to remember movies to put on my list, I found many people with top ten lists including movies like Saving Private Ryan, Glory or Platoon. While both are great movies, I feel a bit sleazy putting those movies on a list of top five "action" movies. I mean, to me, an action movie is a movie where you are being entertained by the action. In Saving Private Ryan the action is terrifying - and almost beautiful in it's way - but it doesn't feel right to call it "entertaining". Or should I embrace my male gaze and admit that violence entertains me? I mean, let's not try to pretend that there have never been war movies made for sheer action/entertainment purposes, although they are generally frowned upon today, it seems. |
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| List your top five favourite action movies which: 1) Do not contain a sci-fi or fantasy element (yes, this would eliminate many Kung-Fu movies) 2) Do not include a movie from the Die Hard series. UPDATE: I suppose I should include my own top five, to be fair: ( Read more... ) |
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| So, after I made that last post, I noticed that the embedded video wasn't working. Which was weird, because the video still worked on Youtube. I thought I had maybe made a typo, but no, everything was fine. Then I noticed that the video I was trying to embed was from the official music label's account. So I searched for a duplicate video (there is always a duplicate on Youtube) and embedded it instead...and it worked. Youtube is a casual site for me, and I really don't keep track of the new features they launch. But obviously they have modified their service to make videos from certain customers not embeddable. The only reason I can think of for why they did this was due to the endless lawsuits coming at them from the music labels. The logical next line of reasoning is that YouTube must be paying the music labels a rev share of the ad revenue earned from those particular channels. Why else force users to watch these videos on a certain page, which happens to contain an ad, as opposed to another? And I am sure Youtube is still taking down the duplicates as fast as they can. So eventually the post I made just before this one will have a broken embed. In case you couldn't tell, I view this as an Extremely Stupid move on YouTube's part. It's totally against Google's mandate of making things open, and it hinders the very thing that makes YouTube popular in the first place - being able to view the videos on blogs, etc. Even as a comprimise, this solution sucks. |
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| Don't ask me how I ran across this, but I'd like to throw this video up as a nomination for Worst Music Video Ever. Seriously. What were they thinking? Soft focus? Blue and purple lens filters? Slow Motion? Terrible dubbing. And what's with the homoerotic, back-to-back/face-to-face guitar playing? It would make sense except .... they're not sharing a microphone! Maybe someone forgot to give them that particular prop. And what about the story? From what I can tell, "Sister Christian" is unhappy at her catholic school until she comes across Night Ranger, secretly playing a hard-rock ballad in the auditorium, which prompts her and her friends to do their makeup and ride away with them in a vintage convertible. But it's also graduation day. What?!? And what the hell is the band doing during the scene in the cafeteria? So bad. I'm not even going to talk about the song itself. Look, I'm not picky. Hard Rock Ballads had their place, and I won't say no to Meatloaf. But I can't imagine anyone taking this seriously, even in the eighties. I mean the guy is wearing a banlon shirt. With the top button undone. This could be a Spinal Tap video. And the drummer/lead singer looks like Scott Bakula with a jewfro. That's not a criticism per se, but I just thought I'd mention it. It makes it that much harder to take them seriously. |
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| Today, as I got off the Go Train at Oakville onto the rainy platform, walking in front of me was a girl wearing a raincoat that came down to about her upper thigh. And out from under the raincoat emerged only bare legs. It looked like she was a stripper, about to do a ... raincoat show ... or something. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed that she was wearing a very short skirt. Walking towards the stairs, she spotted a friend of hers and squealed with delight. They ran up to each other and gave a hug. Friend: What are you doing taking the Go Train? Girl: Oh, I work on Bay Street now. Don't act too surprised. |
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| The saddest thing about re-watching your favourite comedies is that they are never as funny as the first time you saw them. Especially comedies like There's Something About Mary, which relies on surprise and situation for it's humour (rather than witticisms). For me, comedy like The Simpsons never gets old, but comedy like this does. We watched it last night, and it's still enjoyable, but I'd have to downgrade it from "Uprorious" to "Chuckleworthy", simply because I already know all the gags and when they are coming. Hard to remember that this is the movie that made Ben Stiller an A-lister, isn't it? And I believe it was Cameron Diaz's first comedy, if you don't count The Mask. Looking back it seems hard to believe. She is perfectly cast. Sexy as hell, but also goofy. Not many actresses can pull that off. Matt Dillon undoubtedly gets all the best lines: The best bit is still the first bit, with the zipper.[while spying on her through the window]: Husband... negative. Children and a Labrador... negative. Tight little package... affirmative. Pat Healy: Really, it's only a side thing for my true passion. Mary: And what's that? Pat Healy: I work with retards. Ted: I think I still want to look her up. Pat Healy: Who, rollerpig? Are you nuts? Ted: You said she was a real sparkplug. Pat Healy: No, I said buttplug. She's heinous. |
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| A few weeks ago, Nicola noticed that a hole had been dug in the forget-me-nots next to the tree in our front yard. We assumed at the time that it was squirrels digging for food during the winter. But yesterday, Nicola went out and looked to see if the hole had gotten any deeper and inside it was a whole nest of baby bunnies! I was able to get pretty close up pictures of them. Here is one: ( Read more... ) |
| As part of an effort to check out some of David Cronenberg's earlier work, I watched "Dead Ringers" last night. ( Read more... ) Definitely worth seeing. |
...a futurama quote for you:
FRY
If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying
home on election day and dressing up like a clown.
LEELA
You're not registered?
FRY
Nope. Not vaccinated either! Besides, it's not like one vote ever made a
difference.
LEELA
That's not true; the first robot president won by exactly one vote.
BENDER
Ah, yes, John Quincy Adding Machine. He struck a cord with the voters when
he pledged not to go on a killing spree.
FARNSWORTH
But, like most politicians, he promised more than he could deliver.
LEELA
The point is, one vote can make a difference. And even though it won't, I'm
still taking you to get registered.
FARNSWORTH
Yes, that's a capital idea. Let's all go register!
FRY
Professor, when did you become so obsessed with voting?
FARNSWORTH
The very instant I became old.
As you can tell, I have futurama on the Tivo. |
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 Germaine Greer comments A sample: Disney accuses Vanity Fair of drumming up controversy and deliberately manipulating a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines, as if its own motives were not identical. The photo shoot for Vanity Fair was probably carried out weeks ago but the brouhaha has been timed for the very day the magazine appeared on the newsstands. Disney could have refused to make its star available for a shoot with Vanity Fair, or, if what it wanted was to protect its brand image, it could have demanded the right to vet the pictures. I couldn't agree more. If you think that either: 1) Annie Leibovitz wasn't trying to make some sort of comment about the exploitation of child stars or 2) This whole "controversy" isn't being manufactured by Disney to sell more of their product. You have another think coming. |
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| [photography] |
| So I finally decided what to do with flickr. I'm using it for a mobile photoblog. Because I can't easily carry my good camera around with me anymore (or anyway I don't like to), I've been using my phone to take photos and blog them. This is interesting because the phone can't take photos at nearly as good a quality as my camera can - but it's good enough quality that they look all right at a low resolution. In other words, perfect for flickr. I can't really post-process them at all either. No cropping, no nothing. It's not even all that easy to frame a shot on my tiny little phone screen. So I find I'm not really thinking about it that much. I snap a photo and then if I like it, I send it off to Flickr right then and there. So each individual image doesn't really stand on it's own, but I think the collection of them, in sequence, becomes interesting. Check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sinnick/sh |
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This is what the side of our house looks like now. And in case you don't find that very interesting, here's a picture of Erwin watching me play World of Warcraft.  |
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| Coffee that costs $100 a cup...and guess what it's made of? Because, just like the jingle says: "The best part of waking up Is drinking coffee pooped from a cat." |
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| Last summer, being the first summer we had spent in our new house, I noticed that the weed situation along the side of the house was absolutely insane. It was like a jungle back there, some of the weeds were taller than me. That side of the house is fairly inaccessible; it's just a narrow strip between the house and the fence, with the air conditioner and the gas meter and pretty much nothing else. It doesn't get much light, and no one ever goes there. I simply couldn't bear going around there during the summer to try to get rid of the weeds. But I knew I needed to do something about them, or else they would encroach out into the lawn or something. So I told myself that the following year, I would take care of that area in the spring. Well, that day was yesterday. I have actually put off doing it for a while because the job was more annoying than I thought it would be. Apparently under all those weeds were these big flagstones that had been put down, probably with the goal of, well, keeping weeds away. But the weeds just grew around them. Last summer I couldn't even see any of these big stones because they were completely covered. But after all the weeds died off and the snow melted, I popped back there to size up the amount of work ... and there they were. Here's what I did yesterday: 1) Lifted all the flagstones up and stacked them up against the fence, out of the way 2) Pulled out all the weeds I could find (some were growing already! And there were many dead weed corpses left from the winter) 3) Raked and turned up the dirt to remove any old roots 4) Sprayed the whole area with some environmentally safe weed killer to remove any roots I couldn't see. 5) Laid down some weed-be-gone landscape fabric 6) Covered the entire area with pine bark 7) Carried the flagstones back and laid them nice and symmetrically on top of everything. All in all, this took me about five hours (including a trip to home depot to pick up more pine). It wouldn't have been such a big deal if these flagstones hadn't weighed like 75llbs each. There were fourteen of them, each about 30x30 inch squares (a bit like this), and after picking up and lifting the first one I was seriously considering giving up. But it was such a nice day, I figured I'd just go for it. I managed, but despite my attempts to lift these big stones correctly (ie, with my legs) I'm telling you my lower back still hurts quite a bit today. However, the area looks nice and clean and weed free now, plus it smells great - like a pine forest. And more importantly, it is completely maintenance free! Hopefully I will not have to care about that part of the house for the next five years. We shall see what happens this summer. |
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tired – APR 25, 2008 01:23 PM | I'm too tired to work. I'm sitting here with a document on my screen, but I'm daydreaming. |
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By the way, after watching Death Proof (not all that great, but has some fun moments) I have come to the conclusion that the most under-rated actor in Hollywood is Kurt Russell.  Sometimes it's hard to remember when he stars in crap like "Poseidon" or "Miracle", but he can be really great. He's the best thing in Death Proof .... actually he's the best thing in all of Grindhouse. He's kind of funny and creepy and then becomes pathetic. He's really great. Speaking of Grindhouse, I'd give it a 6.5 or so, and I'm not surprised it tanked at the box office. I liked Robert Rodriguez's movie (Planet Terror) more than Tarantino's (Death Proof) because it's kind of funny and gross and exciting, even though it's bad. It oscillates between being deliberately bad and just plain old bad. Tarantino's movie plays like a few long pointless scenes. Individual scenes are okay, but they never really build to anything. The first car crash scene is great though. And Kurt Russell gets all the great lines:
STUNTMAN MIKE
So, how about that lap dance?
ARLENE
I think I'm going to have to give you a rain check.
STUNTMAN MIKE
Well since you'll be leaving in the next couple of days, that rain check will be worthless.
But that's okay. I understand if I make you uncomfortable. You're still a nice girl, and I
still like you. But I must warn you of something - you know how people say "You're okay
in my book" or "In my book, that's no good"? Well, I actually have a book. And everybody
I ever meet goes in this book. And now I've met you, and you're going in the book! Except,
I'm afraid I must file you under ... chickenshit.
Yeah, it's good dialogue. I think Tarantino gets horny writing dialogue for his favourite actors. Or maybe it takes those actors to deliver Tarantino's dialogue well. For example, while Russell is great, the performances of the girls in Death Proof come off a little forced, a little affected. (by the way, Sam Jackson still holds the "Best delivery of Tarantino dialogue" award. It's an honourary, lifetime award.) The "fake trailers" in Grindhouse are okay. Rob Zombie's trailer sucked, but the rest weren't bad. The best scene in the trailers was from Eli Roth's trailer for "Thanksgiving". Michael Biehn is playing a detective. He and a cop are crouched next to a decapitated dead body
COP
(touches the corpse, then tastes his finger)
It's blood.
DETECTIVE
(looks away)
Son of a bitch
One hilarious moment. But the only one. All in all, I'd say Grindhouse is probably worth watching, but I wouldn't want to sit through the whole thing. If you, like me, have Tivo, you can watch it in segments. It's better that way :). |
amused – APR 23, 2008 01:44 PM | I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but you really need to check out this week's Zero Punctuation review. Hilarious. It rings so true. And here I thought I was weird because I didn't like playing Super Smash Brothers when it came out for the GameCube. |
Check out this sinfest strip: This is why I like sinfest. I don't find the writing all that great to be honest. Sometimes it's cute or amusing, but that's about as far as it goes. But I love the art. A lot. It's probably the best art you can find in a webcomic today. It reminds me of Bloom County, only slightly mangafied (that's mangafied, not magnified. It's a word!) In particular, it's panel 3 that does it for me here. No dialogue, but you know just what's happening, through his use of "###", which I love. His religious humour is what attracted people to his comic in the first place, but I don't find it particularly funny or edgy, to be honest - usually the jokes are pretty flat and obvious, like this one. (I mean come on, how old is that joke?). Here's a recent one that's not bad I guess. Most of the good strips are the ones with the cat and dog. Contrast these strips with PvP's Kirby + Scratch strips. I prefer sinfest. I think the characters are much better defined, more loveable, more true to their cat and dog essence. |
