Links for 2010-07-06

“I happened upon this inspired bit of British comedy after watching Goodness Gracious Me (hit and miss). I was curious why there would be a ten minute show on TV. At first, I actually thought it was a children’s instructional science program. Indeed, it is easy to to be fooled. The tone, pacing, narration, are all uncannily like those insipid PBS programs I’d watch when home sick from school or when the teacher wanted a hour off during class.”

“And thus the Great Game begins. The object of the Game is to manage your resources such that as many times a week as possible you fulfill the following conditions.

1) Your baby is asleep
2) You got more than 5 hours of sleep last night (non-sequential) and have had coffee and therefore are cleared to operate a computer
3) You have no deadlines in the next two hours, and nothing is either dying or breaking that you know about or can plausibly deny having known about later

If you can fulfill the above conditions, you work on your book. If not then not. You lose the Game.”

“Imagine you’re a student in class. Your teacher is holding two envelopes.

“Here are two envelopes,” the teacher says to you. “One contains some amount of money, and the other contains twice that amount. Go ahead and take one.”

The envelopes are identical. You pick one and open it. Inside is twenty dollars.

The teacher holds out the other envelope and makes you an offer. “Do you want to trade?””

“Shyamalan’s true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and he systematically leaches all the personality and soul out of it — in order to create something generic enough to serve as a universal spoof of every epic, ever. All the story beats from the show’s first season are still present, but Shyamalan manages to make them appear totally arbitrary. Stuff happens, and then more stuff happens, and what does it mean? We never know, because it’s time for more stuff to happen. You start out laughing at how random and mindless everything in this movie is, but about an hour into it, you realize that the movie is actually laughing at you, for watching it in the first place. And it’s laughing louder than you are, because it’s got Dolby surround-sound and you’re choking on your suspension of disbelief.”