Category: Personal

CurmudgeonFilter: Verizon is promoting its “In” plan with a TV ad that has a dad trick his kids into shoveling snow, a traditional child’s responsibility, but then he admits to his little womanwife that there’s no f’ing way he’s going out in that cold. How funny is that?

The Wire is finished but 24 is back Sunday night and you just might want to watch this two and a half minute trailer and read the transcript of the DVD-only scene that explains Jack’s exit from CTU to get in the mood. (Okay, HBO has the Season 2 premiere of Carnivale on as well. With Desperate Housewives starting a run of fresh episodes and NFL wild card playoff games, looks like a good day to ignore the weather and watch TV.)

You can watch the first five minutes of the new Jennifer Garner comics-based Elektra on Yahoo! Movies, it’s a different view than the trailer, though I can’t say I’m any more anxious to see the flick than I was 10 minutes ago.

This 2003 film was really beaten up by critics and a box office failure. The hype was all about Meg Ryan playing against type, not at all the sweet pretty thing she’s done over and over again, and even (finally) some onscreen nudity. Tivo Suggests recorded it so I figured what the heck. I’m not sure I should have bothered, haven’t really decided whether it’s worth watching or not.

In the Cut stars Meg Ryan as an English teacher in Manhattan who wants to be (of course) a writer but all she does in that regard is collect words and scraps of poetry to pin on her wall. Plus she tutors a hardbodied young black student in bars and he has the hots for her. Jennifer Jason Leigh is her half-sister, same father, who lives above a go-go bar and makes appointments with doctors to fuck them in hopes of landing one as a husband.

A woman is brutally murdered in Ryan’s neighborhood and a detective, played by Mark Ruffalo, comes by to check if she saw anything related, but she says no; Ruffalo, without any reason beyond appearance, feels an instant sexual attraction to her. There’s another savage murder. Ryan and Ruffalo have sex after a nasty bar conversation. Still another murder, the victim someone close to our heroine. Ryan is confused and is trapped by the villain.

My first problem is Mark Ruffalo. He does well in the right roles but I’m still waiting to see him move at a speed greater than lethargic–which never happens. Urgency, excitement and the like, which would be appropriate in at least some of his scenes in Cut just aren’t able to emerge. Second is the absence of sufficient build up in the script, co-written by director Jane Campion and novelist Susannah Moore, of clues hinting at the villain’s identity so when we do learn who did it, the surprise carries no weight in its punch and I just didn’t care.

Positives are there too: this is a rough film, in many ways. The language, the imagery, the movement, the plot, the sex are all very angular and rubbed up on raw edges. Seeing Meg Ryan in a sex scene after all these years. Most of the ingredients are almost but not quite there. In the end I guess my final words are:

not recommended

Jackie Earl Haley: Then and now. Man, he was one of the icons of my teen years, glad to see he’s getting back into the movies.

Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors and a top auto exec known as being a car guy rather than salesman or bean counter, takes to blogging like a natural in his first entry: Saturn: Product Will Reign. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to find out that his post had been at least polished or vetted by the marketing staff but regardless it is written in a very natural voice, emphatically positive without crossing over into fanboy/cheerleader land. I’m not a big car guy at all, though I like seeing new things (hence the Auto Show photos) but this ought to be an interesting blog to follow. More fodder for The Red Couch. [via Steve Rubel]

The Big Guy and I did make it to opening day of this year’s San Jose International Auto Show and this time my camera batteries did not give out right away. New gallery will be posted hopefully tonight.

Nicholas Kristof, in today’s Times, touches on a point that’s been on my mind the last few days. While the response of people around the globe to last week’s Tsunami disaster is wonderful, why do we only respond to situations in such a way after natural disasters?

American giving in the weeks after 9/11 aside, Kristof mentions much larger–in human cost–problems such as hunger, malaria and AIDS which attract some funding but not nearly what’s needed. My inner dialog was comparing the current situation to that of Darfur, where tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands displaced during a civil war, an ongoing disaster in which Western attention, aid and intervention could halt further additions to the numbers affected.

Yet not only has there been no public campaign for humanitarian aid donations, the rest of the world has done little but talk at the warring sides and gotten in turn what appears to be little but words. I’m not pointing the finger at America, or the Bush Crew, in particular, because I don’t see any government really driving this issue. Kristof has a point, that public and private giving in America is far lower than any other nation to which it can reasonably be compared.

Here we stand: an outpouring of generosity rarely seen on an international scale for one problem with many other problems undiminished. Humanity, as a whole, has a command over global resources of a level that could cure all the world’s ailments traceable to historical scarcity. Hunger, lack of modern shelter, diseases for which there are known cures could be resolved if the richer nations made a decision to do it.

This can be achieved with minimized ecological impact and positive economic growth if, and only if, our tendency towards greed and selfishness are able to be forced aside. John Robb continues to point out that opponents of change to date, which he labels Global Guerillas, can and are taking advantage of modern resources to wage their campaigns. I’m not here to suggest some Pollyana-ish flight of fancy–there are and will be people threatened by this possibility, including those captured by their own positions of power which are dependent on wealth or religion, who will use the tools at hand to them, economic, political and military to block any such plan.

I watch a lot of TV and have recently noticed architectural flourishes on numerous buildings that simply astound me. One example, in particular, that pushed my thinking on this subject was a Manhattan skyscraper which, tens of stories above the street, has a set of two or three story tall columns just beneath its top. These columns can not reasonably be seen from the street, the angle is too steep given the size of the surrounding buildings, only from vantage points high up in other tall buildings and so can only have been included to boost someone’s ego and pretence of prestige. But how much did this add to the building’s cost?

And this is how I would pay for my proposal: cut back on such unnecessary vanity spending and invest that money in development. Little amounts here and there, a Lexus instead of a Bently, Suave instead of Paul Mitchell, can easily add up to billions a year that used properly–and by properly I mean through transparency and avoiding as much as possible the corruption that’s plagued programs historically–in funding local farms and other suitable economic entities, schools and medical clinics would limit fundraising to no more than ten to 15 years before all nations are self-sustaining.

At this point in my dream I wake up. I read the headlines from Iraq, Israel, Colombia, Russia, China, here in the US and discussions on global web boards. I read the science articles about the coming chaos from global warming, which is widely discussed, and the rising ocean temperatures, which are not but may be much more catstrophic in the near term.

Released in America with the title Beyond Hypothermia, 1996 Korean gangster flick Sip si 32 doe faces off an emotionless female assassin (Wu Chin Lin) and a passionate Korean mobster (Han Sang Woo), with a seemingly witless noodle vendor caught in the middle. The American title apparently refers to the assassin’s barely alluded to subnormal body temperature though there’s also the opening scene in which she does the business from inside an icehouse fortuitously located above and across the street from the location of a hit.

The theme here is human connection–she has none, not even with her ‘mother’; he is consumed by his, determined to avenge the killing of the boss he failed to protect; and the noodle man has lost all human warmth and then is drawn into her stuttering romantic (sexual?) awakening. Plot is minimal: the assassin does several jobs, one is killing the triad boss, and after each job she returns at closing time saying nary a word but nonetheless enchanting the noodle man. She was seen and chased after the triad killing, gets away, and yet (we’re never told how) word gets back to him on how to contact her handler. From there the explosive collision is inevitable.

But that isn’t really a criticism because Sip si 32 doe is all about visual imagery and violent interaction as a modern mode of ballet. Perhaps such an assessment is old hat by now but director Patrick Leung really does an excellent job with it. Even the final gun battle has sensibility different from what Americans first came to know through the work of Leung’s mentor John Woo; there’s very little evidence of such Woo trademarks as a gunman, preferably the protagonist, jumping across an opening between shielded spots blazing away with two big handguns.

All in all this is a worthwhile film for genre fans though I might have enjoyed it more with the original Korean (or Chinese?) dialog instead of the dubbed English.

recommended

Douglas Hoffman’s answer to the 2005 Edge Annual Question is stunning. Gyan, in the MetaFilter thread discussing, says that Hoffman is of the panpsychic camp.

Check out the extremely impressive trailer for the upcoming Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez collaboration on Sin City, based on Miller’s acclaimed graphic novel series. [via The Movie Blog]

Props to the California DMV for doing a quality job in the Online Registration Renewal. Took two or three minutes and no fee for paying with credit card, I even saved the 37¢ for a stamp.

My pen will not be deterred by editors refusing to furnish my words with their deserved platform! Here is one sent to the Washington Post:

There seems to be one reality overlooked by everyone involved in the debate over immigration reform (Bush Immigration Plan Meets GOP Opposition, 1/2/5): legalizing people currently working in America illegally will add substantially to the cost of employing them. Many proponents assert, as Fletcher notes, that these people do work legal residents are not willing to do, and this may be true, but also true is that employers spend far less on undocumented employees. Beyond lower wages are savings on payroll taxes (including social security) and benefits that will be necessary expenditures when the workers are legal. Any legitimate discussion of solutions to this enduring issue must take into account these costs or be deemed irrelevant.

On the other hand, columnist Stanley Crouch shows how Essence is stepping up to the plate on aproblem central for its readers: At last, women lash out at hip hop’s abuses.

Apparently not only is our President never wrong, he must always be celebrated: ‘Pony Up’ and Then ‘Party On,’ Inaugural Officials Say. So much for showing good taste or even empathy by our Administration. Perhaps celebrated isn’t quite the right word, perhaps venerated is more what he wants…

Malcolm Bricklin, the man who brought Yugos to America in the ’80s, has set up a joint venture that will bring Chinese cars to our shores. Reminds me of this 1986 SNL classic…

I came to an important realization yesterday, after reading of the latest pronouncements from right wing intellectual leader James Dobson, though it may have been obvious already to others. Dobson and others in his circle don’t care one whit about whether their tactics and speeches are fair, truthful or consistent with past positions on the same issues. Redefining the meaning of politically-loaded terms or shaving the context from what opponents say is absolutely acceptable. The only concern is advancing their agenda because they know in their hearts of their righteousness; the rest of us had better accept this devious strategy and account for it in our own efforts if we really want to return them to the political fringe where they belong.

Spent a bunch of time today watching EPL matches and updating the Big 2005 Movies page.

Best wishes to you all for 2005, may it be wonderful and yet the worst year of the rest of your life!