Kate and I saw the new Bond flick last night (short review: nice re-launch of the franchise, Daniel Craig does a great job with the role), and as the final credits started to roll, they played that signature James Bond riff– the “dum di-di dum, da-da-da” bass line, the “da-da di dahh, di dah-daaaah” brass… Continue reading Idle Bond Thought
Category: Movies
Pimp Me DVD’s
Kate and I have a Netflix subscription that we’ve mostly been using to obtain various anime series. We’re running a little low on Japanese cartoons, though, having recently finished Martian Successor Nadesico, and with only four discs left of Trigun (two of which will probably be polished off while lolling around Friday after hosting Thanksgiving… Continue reading Pimp Me DVD’s
The Judgement of Borat
Scott Aaronson renders a judgement on the Borat movie (scroll down into the comments), but I think my opinion is best summed up by Kevin Drum: [T]he lesson of the movie wasn’t some razor-sharp subversive point about how we’re all racists and xenophobes an inch under the surface, the lesson was that if you act… Continue reading The Judgement of Borat
The Prestige
Christopher Priest’s Victorian-magician novel The Prestige would appear to be unfilmable. The book is written as two entirely different texts, one a memoir and the other a diary, plus a framing narrative about descendants of the rival magicians Alfred Borden and Robert Angier trying to figure out the secrets behind their rivalry. It’s a very… Continue reading The Prestige
Clauses You Don’t See Often Enough
The Onion AV Club has a review of the Aardman Animation CGI flick Flushed Away that contains a sentence starting with: Once the film introduces a pack of French frog ninjas led by Jean Reno,… Really, it doesn’t much matter what comes after that. I don’t really intend to see the movie, but it pleases… Continue reading Clauses You Don’t See Often Enough
You’ve Come a Long Way, Doctor
The Day the Earth Stood Still was on tv yesterday, and we watched most of it because it’s a classic, and because the alternative was bad college football. Kate had never seen it before, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t campy. There is, however, one scene that has become unintentionally hilarious over the… Continue reading You’ve Come a Long Way, Doctor
Hugo Awards 2006
This year’s Hugo Awards (either the Oscars of the Golden Globes of the science fiction/ fantasy field, depending on who you ask) were announced last night at the Worldcon in LA. Pleasant surprises abound: 1) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson won the Best Novel Hugo. As I’ve said before, I think it was far and… Continue reading Hugo Awards 2006
Horror at the Multiplex
Kate’s out of town for the weekend, leaving me here by myself (well, not counting the Queen of Niskayuna), needing to find something to do to entertain myself. My first thought was “big long bike ride,” but it’s raining, and I’m just not that committed to bicycling. Second thought was “Maybe I’ll go see a… Continue reading Horror at the Multiplex
Science at the Cinema
For some reason, I’ve been thoroughly exhausted all week, and being out late last night for a concert hasn’t helped any. Thus, you’re not going to get much in the way of substantive blogging from me today. I did want to note a weird example of synchronicity in the physics-related blogosphere, though, as both Clifford… Continue reading Science at the Cinema
A Squabble of Kerfuffles
Well, it’s as good a guess at a collective noun for “kerfuffle” as any other… There have been three moderately heated bloggy controversies that I’ve been following over the past week, that I haven’t commented on. Mostly because I don’t really have that much to add to any of the arguments, or at least, not… Continue reading A Squabble of Kerfuffles