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So I have a bit of a tendency to buy DVDs (and now Blu-Rays too), and then not watch them. I've got quite a few piled up. I haven't really been buying many new discs though, so the piles aren't really getting bigger, which is good.

Today, I picked one out and watched it -- MirrorMask. It was really good! After watching it, I went to Amazon and looked it up. I don't even remember buying it from Amazon, but apparently I did, because there's a banner across the page saying that I bought it in April 2006. Wow. I had no idea how long I've been letting this stuff pile up!

Labels: movies

I went into NYC today and saw The General at Film Forum, as part of their all-day Buster Keaton marathon. I would have liked to have seen one or two more films while I was there, but I didn't want to stay in the city all day. There's a nice overview of all the films in the marathon here. I first became a fan of Buster Keaton when I was in college, a long time ago. I haven't managed to see more than two or three of his films though.  I really need to rectify that. I think I should try to find time to watch Sherlock Jr. soon.

Labels: movies, NYC

I was flipping through channels this morning, and landed on TCM right as the final scene in The Great Dictator was starting. That final speech is great:

"We think too much, and feel too little."
"More than cleverness, we need kindness."

And so on. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't think I've ever seen this whole film, all the way through. I'll have to see if it's coming up again on TCM and set up my DVR to record it. Either way, that final speech is worth watching and re-watching.


After I originally posted this, a friend pointed me a Roger Ebert article on this film. It provides some necessary context for this movie, both in terms of Chaplin's career, and the larger historical context. He mentions that the film "comes to a dead end" with this final speech, and that it "deflates the comedy and ends the picture as a lecture." True enough, I guess, but I kind of like it.

Labels: movies

I saw "How Green Was My Valley" yesterday at the Walter Reade. There's a bit of narration at the beginning that I like a lot. Here's a bit of it:

There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can close my eyes on my valley as it is today, and it is gone, and I see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the plenty of the Earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful. Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday.

I was going to file that away, and post it on Father's Day, but I decided to post it now, while I'm thinking of it.

Labels: movies

100th Anniversary of Akira Kurosawa's Birth

Cool. Lots of Kurosawa on TCM this month. My dad was a big Kurosawa fan. If he was still around, I bet he would have called me tonight to tell me that Seven Samurai was on.

Labels: family, Japan, movies

Happy Birthday, Kurosawa Akira!

Labels: Japan, movies

Here are a few random lists, of books & comics I read, and movies I saw, in 2008. I don't suppose I have any good reason for posting these. I was just kind of bored with the Rose Bowl, so I started making lists. I'm not bothering to list anything I read or saw, but didn't really enjoy, so you can assume that all these books/comics/movies are recommended to anyone who might have tastes similar to my own.

books I read in 2008:
1. Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
2. The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer
3. Zero Game - Meltzer
4. Areas of my Expertise - John Hodgman
5. Something Rotten - Fforde
6. Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
7. Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett
8. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
9. Idea Mapping - Jamie Nast
10. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
11. Old Man's War - John Scalzi
12. Death Masks - Jim Butcher
13. Bood Rites - Butcher
14. With No One as Witness - Elizabeth George
15. Certain Justice - P. D. James
16. A Taste for Death - James
17. Spirit House - Christopher G. Moore
18. Tales of Beedle the Bard - J K Rowling

some comics I read:
1. Coraline - Neil Gaiman / P Craig Russell
2. 21 Down - Gray / Palmiotti / Saiz
3. Teen Titans: Titans Around the World
4. Shadowpact
5. Fell - Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith
6. a bunch of Hellboy and BPRD comics
7. Invincible (Vol 1-4, I think)
8. Kid Eternity - Grant Morrison / Duncan Fegredo
9. Challengers of the Unknown - Loeb / Sale

movies i remember seeing:
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
3. Stargate: Ark of Truth
4. Stargate: Continuum
5. Battlestar Galactica: Razor
6. Dark Knight
7. Hellboy 2
8. Iron Man
9. X-Files: I Want to Believe
10. Batman: Gotham Knight
11. Wall-E
12. Gone Baby Gone
13. No Country for Old Men

Labels: books, comics, movies

I'm going into NYC today to catch a bit of the Satoshi Kon program at the Walter Reade. I've seen all this stuff before, of course, but Mr. Kon himself is going to be there, so I can't miss that!

Labels: anime, movies, NYC

The film guide for the Tribeca Film Festival is up. I'm going to try to get into the city and catch a few films this year. I caught a few good ones last year, and I'm looking forward to finding a few interesting movies again this year. Here's a list of some possibilities:

• Idiots and Angels: a new Bill Plympton film. I saw some of this (in rough form) at a Plympton panel last year in San Diego (I think). It looks like a lot of fun; the usual Plympton weirdness.
• The Caller: Frank Langella and Elliot Gould in a "neo-noir thriller." It could be good.
• Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon: Historical Chinese epic. Sounds like it should have some nice battle scenes. And it's got Sammo Hung!
• Terra: This appears to be a computer-animated SF movie. I don't know much about it, but it looks interesting.

And that's all just from a quick look. I'm going to have to get organized, figure out what's showing when and where, and then see about getting tickets and getting into the city.

Labels: movies, NYC

I got an e-mail today indicating that Peerflix will be (mostly) shut down on April 23. They're basically shutting down DVD trading, but leaving the web site up. I guess they think they can turn it into some kind of news portal, or a competitor to IMDB, or something like that. I got a fair number of DVDs through Peerflix, and traded away a fair number too. Not a lot, maybe a couple of dozen discs total. I always found the service to be a bit of a kludge, but it worked out fine for the most part.

LaLa, which is a similar site for CD trading, still seems to be somewhat active. I haven't had any of my CDs requested in a while, so *I'm* not doing much on it, but it looks like other people are still getting something out of it.

I guess you could go with the assumption that on-demand movie downloads from places like Amazon and iTunes killed Peerflix, but I don't know if that would be quite right. That's probably part of it though. There's really no way to make a lot of money just off the service fees on a DVD-trading site. If it's really well-managed, you could probably make a small profit, but it's not going to make anybody rich. Whoever was investing in Peerflix probably just figured that out.

This all plays into the general trend away from physical products and towards just pushing bits, whether it's music, movies, software, or books. I still think physical products, in certain areas, are going to be important for some time to come. I think people are still going to buy books and DVDs, but I think we're moving away from renting movies in physical form, and I think we're eventually going to move away from "renting" hard copy books. We'll eventually get some system set up where we can "borrow" e-books from our libraries, and check them out onto a Kindle or something similar. And I think Amazon will eventually allow for paid book rental on the Kindle -- maybe it'll cost $10 to buy a book, or $4 to rent it for a month. (Feel free to come back and read this post again in five years, and laugh at how wrong I am!)

Labels: movies

When I bought my HD-DVD player back in November, there was a mail-in offer for 5 free discs. I'd mostly forgotten about it, but when I came home from work today, there was a bag outside my door with five HD-DVDs in it. The list of discs that you could pick from wasn't great, but I did wind up with a few decent titles, and a couple of OK ones: Full Metal Jacket, The Thing, Darkman, The Frighteners, and The Italian Job. I don't know if I'll bother buying many more (or *any* more) HD-DVDs, since the format seems to be getting deader every day. Maybe if I find all the Harry Potter movies on sale at some point, I'll pick those up, just to have a compete set.

Labels: movies

I didn't do much today, aside from watching football. I'm not making any major resolutions this year either. I did make all the arrangements to go to WonderCon today though. As usual, I wasn't really sure I wanted to go this year, but a few things convinced me to go again. Basically, a good guest lineup, plus a general desire to get out of New Jersey for a few days. And a chance to see the Chinese New Year Parade again!

I haven't really done much reflection on 2007. Normally, I would get kind of reflective on New Year's Day, but I haven't really been in that frame of mind. Well, just for the heck of it, here are some things I've done in 2007:

Books and comics I've read and liked:

• Absolute Watchmen
  
• Nextwave
  
• David Allen's Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything (though I haven't finished RFA yet)
  
• the first two Jasper Fforde "Thursday Next" novels
  
• a couple of Jim Butcher "Harry Dresden" novels
  

Movies & TV shows I've enjoyed:

• Paprika (my favorite movie of the year, for whatever that's worth)
  
• Once
  
• Ratatouille
  
• The Simpsons Movie
  
• Rise: Blood Hunter (okay, not exactly high-brow, but fun)
  
• Torchwood
  
• Life on Mars
  
• Heroes
  

Music I've liked:

• Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
  
• Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
  
• Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
  
• Pizzicato Five - Made in USA (from 1994, but I'd never heard it until this year)
  
• Derek and the Dominoes - Layla (I only just got around to buying this CD in 2007)
  

Pointless stuff I've spent money on:

• new couch
  
• iPod Touch
  
• TomTom One LE GPS
  
• Dell Inspiron laptop
  
• MacBook
  
• Microsoft Office 2007
  
• Motorola SLVR
  
• 19" widescreen LG monitor
  
• Toshiba HD-DVD player
  

Things I didn't get around to doing:

• buying a new car (the old one's still working, but maybe not for much longer)
  
• checking out the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Met
  
• visiting the new Morimoto restaurant in NYC
  

Well, that's just a bunch of random lists off the top of my head. I guess the two big things that happened in 2007 for me were the office move my company did (from Edison to Somerset), and my mostly successful implementation of GTD.

Labels: books, comics, hardware, movies, music

Looks like one of my favorite films, Diva, is playing at the Film Forum soon. I haven't seen this one in quite a while. I'm not sure why I like this movie so much, but it's really great. I don't think I've ever seen it on a big screen either; just on TV.

Labels: movies

I went into NYC and saw Once today. It's really good. It's a shame it's not in more theaters. I haven't listened to The Frames recently, but this film reminded me of how good they are. I may need to pull out a couple of old Frames CDs now, and/or pick up the Once soundtrack.

Labels: movies, music

Film Forum is running a series of old James Bond films, starting at the end of this month. I've never seen any of the old ones on a big screen, so this might be fun. (I've seen them all a dozen times or more, I'd guess, but usually on TBS, or whichever cable channel happens to have the rights at the time.)

Labels: movies

I was watching The Incredibles just now, and I realized something that had gone right past me the first few times I saw the movie. When Helen says "india golf niner niner", that's a reference to Iron Giant, which was released in 1999. Obvious, now that I think about it. (I'm used to looking for THX-1138 references in George Lucas films, but not Iron Giant references in Pixar films.)

Labels: movies

Happy New Year!
- I got a chance to see Adaptation and Nicholas Nickleby this weekend. Both were definitely worth seeing.
- So what's going on at Macworld right now? Boy it'd be nice to be in San Francisco right now.
- I give up on the Giants. Hey, the NFL admitted that there was an officiating screw-up on the last play, though. Can we just play the game over next week? Can we? Huh?

Labels: Apple, football, movies

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