Brain Drippings

Arriana Huffington and Rob Johnson wrote an article over at huffingpost.com with their idea on how to deal with the Big Four US Banks (Wells Fargo, Bank America, Chase, and Citi–ranked in order of evil from Emperor Palpatine’s right index finger to his right middle finger). (continue reading…)

awesome |ˈɔsəm| adj. extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear

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It’s very early in the morning and I get a phone call from a friend out of state.

“Turn on the TV, now.”

“What channel?” I ask.

“Doesn’t matter.”

The line goes dead. (continue reading…)

When I was a child there was a riddle that went something like this:

A man and his son are in a car accident and are seriously injured. They are both unconscious when they arrive at the hospital.  The son is sent into surgery and the doctor says, “I can’t operate, this is my son.” How is that possible? (continue reading…)

Basil Rathbone 1892 – 1967

One year, two films. Five Years, twelve more films. Fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies over 50 years ago and still the definitive Sherlock Holmes actor.

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As summer is fast approaching we find ourselves with a  lot of ‘download this, fill it in, and fax it to us’ forms to fill out. Permission forms, waivers of liability, membership forms, &c. the usual detritus of scheduling activities for the kids over the long break. The trouble is, almost all of these are PDFs that are not setup as PDF forms, so we have to physically print them and physically fill them out, and physically put them in a fax machine (19th Century technology still hanging on by a thread in the 21st Century!), and send them off.

Or do we?  I have a computer, and I’m not afraid to use it.  Here’s what I do.

First off, I open up Pages (but this will work in Open Office or maybe even Microsoft Office) and I drag in the PDF ‘form’ in, essentially making it a background image to my page. I set it to 100% size and I make it fit the page. Then, I create text boxes for each field. I have to turn off wrap-around (“Object causes wrap” in the Pages inspector), but that’s about it.  I position each field right where it needs to go, and then I print the form to a PDF, all filled out.  I even have a screen capture of my signature saved on my computer (stored on an encrpted disk image) that I can put in, so no paper ever needs be involved. I can then fax the form, or if I whine enough, I can usually get a email address to send the form in via email. No muss, no fuss, no phonelines, no paper. As an added bonus, I have a copy of the permission form or application on my computer and I can go back to it anytime I need to (like last summer when one day-camp lost the liability waiver and idn’t tell me until I was dropping the kid off. I begged a couple of minute son the computer and printed it off right there).

On the other hand, I could just learn to write legibly, but that doesn’t seem very likely.

The top Sci-Fi Television Series of all time
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WATCHMEN (2009)

Capsule: A worthy adaptation of a seminal graphic novel,  Watchmen manages to find a balance that should please both fans of the comic and people who are new to the story.  Only the most die hards will be disappointed at the story changes to fit the movie into 2h40.  High +2 (-4 to +4) or 8.5/10.

WATCHMEN manages to stride a fine line with grace, balancing the needs of a movie against a seminal graphic novel that spans several hundred pages. I know Alan Moore is upset by this adaptation (not the movie specifically, but the simple FACT of the movie), and though he may demand I turn in my Alan Fan Club card, I have to say I found some of the changes in the movie were an improvement. In particular, the whole resolution seemed like a much better idea than the original, strategically. More than this, I cannot say.

On the other hand, there were some changes that didn’t quite manage to make a lot of sense.  In the graphic novel, the world of 1985 is running on electric cars and airships and clean cheap energy.  The movie 1985 has no such changes, and yet we still have Hollis’s sign “Specializing in Obsolete Cars.” Obsolete is a strange choice of words  in a world where petrol is still king. Towards the end there is a death of one of the characters that, with the changes in the movie’s plot, makes absolutely no sense. Minor quibbles.

Visually the movie is pretty close to perfection, evoking both the grimy apocalyptic feeling of the graphic novel and the spandex-tights of Silver age comics. The action sequences are very well done, without all the over-cutting and super-fast “hey, we might have seen something if you’d stop cutting” editing that is so common to action movies. In several places there are top-notch fight scenes that look more like something out of a 1970′s Bruce Lee movie in that the camera simply sits back and lets the action happen, full-frame. The judicious use of slow-motion, again not over done for every punch like some new SFX toy the FX guys got this week, but instead inserted where it will do the most good, is extremely good.

The violence is unlike anything most people will be expecting in a ‘heroes in tights’ sort of film.  This was a grimy, violent, and bloody graphic novel, and the movie does not shy away from that at all. We do not have long intense fight sequences and nary a drop of blood. At times the film is quite gruesome in a way that the graphic novel, with its still images, could never be. This is, somehow, even more effective in this film than in many others. I don’t shy away from violent films, but I found myself cringing in my seat several times during WATCHMEN and I think the reason is that you do not expect the superhero movie to be truly violent. And even when it is, over and over, each time it’s a bit if a shock.

The soundtrack, particularly through the first half of the movie, is absolutely wonderful, with songs chosen that immediately bring you full circle to the time period. Nena’s “99 Luftballons” intros a discussion on the impending nuclear holocaust; Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyrie, a la Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, over a battlefield in Viet Nam (the failure of the Tet Offensive); Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” softly underplayed during a conversation between some of the world’s top CEOs, including Lee Iacocca; these are but a few examples.

And finally, the place where WATCHMEN really shines is in the casting. Every single actor is spot-on for the role. I admit that I was not so sure about Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffery Dean Morgan, or Patrick Wilson. And I thought Billy Crudup looked more like Dan than Jon.  OK, so I was wrong.  They were all convincing, and all drew you in to their characters. If I have any complaint here, and it is a minor one, it is that sometimes Jackie Earle Haley’s Kovacs sounded a little too much like “Dirty” Harry Calahan.

“Let us remember these timeless words.  With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.  Let it be said by our childrens’ children that when we were tested we refused to let the journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter, and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

OK, I am investing waaaaaay too much time in Strictly Come Dancing.  Not only and I watching the show as soon as is possible on this side of the Atlantic, but I am also watching “It Takes Two” every day.  (continue reading…)