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Last winter I noted that HBO had optioned the rights to George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. I incorrectly assumed this meant they were going into production but it turns out that at the time they simply optioned the rights, and they’ve recently announced that they’re funding the production of a pilot episode. Pretty great news really - it still doesn’t guarantee we’ll be seeing the series on HBO, but it’s a significant step forward and increases the chances. Here’s hoping it’s good - as the article I link to notes, if anyone can pull this off it’s HBO.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, The Song of Fire and Ice is an as yet incomplete series of gritty high fantasy novels set in a sort of alternate medieval Great Britain. It covers some generally familiar ground, but it’s really well written, has some fantastic plot twists, and plays quite a bit with conventions in the genre. They’re definitely worth checking out if fantasy is your cup of tea.
Susan and I saw Before the Devil Knows you’re Dead this weekend, and we both liked it to differing degrees. Susan didn’t care so much for the open ended conclusion, wereas I thought it was pretty great - otherwise we both enjoyed it. The story concerns two brothers with cashflow problems who decide to pull off a robbery and the chaos that follows as things go wrong. Central parts of the story are presented as out of sequence vignettes, jumping around in the timeline of events, and one particular vignette may not even be ‘real,’ but I’ll skip the spoilers so as not to ruin it in case anyone reading this wants to see it. This makes understanding the story and identifying the characters challenging at times but it kept us engaged trying to puzzle out what was going on and who was who. The acting is uneven - Philip Seymour Hoffman is great in one of the leads, as is a very aged Albert Finney, but I was less fond of Ethan Hawke’s manic younger brother (the scenes in the car rental place in particular I thought were pretty bad) and have mixed feelings about Marisa Tomei’s character. All credit to her for spending half the movie unclothed, but several scenes, especially when she leaves Hoffman’s character, just came across as forced. On the plus side, she looks great 
This is a slow moving drama, so it’s not for everyone, especially not for a lot of my regular readers, but if you’re in the mood for a well crafted, thought provoking, reasonably well acted crime drama, it’s definitely worth checking out.
I grew up reading men in tights comics, mostly the Marvel stuff, and David Banner shares my first name so I loved him as a little kid, predisposing me to like this movie. Instead I was mildly disappointed. The last 20 minutes or so are fun, with competently executed action and special effects, but they fail to make up for the rest of the film, with it’s turgid pace, uninteresting relationships, and flat acting. I mean, come on! There are some seriously talented actors starring the film - Edward Norton, William Hurt, Liv Tyler - and the director fails to get decent performances out of them. I think this is the first time I’ve disliked Norton in a film. The film is worth seeing if you’re a fan of comics or the Hulk, but all others are best off staying away, and even Hulk fans will probably be frustrated with how much the movie messes with hulk cannon (his origin, the origin of two of his nemesis being the chief offenses).
[edit] As Kevin points out in the comments, it’s Bruce Banner, not David Banner. No idea what I was thinking there - now I can’t remember why I loved the Hulk so much as a kid.
Some months ago, Netflix announced that they would be introducing new fees to cover the cost of customers like me who have Blu-Ray and opt to get Blu-Ray movies over DVD when they’re available, because the discs cost more to purchase than regular DVDs. I was irritated by this. While I like Blu-Ray I didn’t neccesarily want to pay a tithe to get movies in that format. It’s great and all, but for most kinds of movies it’s not that much of an improvement over DVD. Only big budget or carefully shot movies are markedly improved by the higher definition. Meanwhile, I figured Netflix’s fee structure would only lengthen the time it takes for Blu-Ray to catch on and for the cost of the discs to come down, because folks would simply opt not to get them if they cost more.
As of this month, Netflix is charging the fee, and they made a great compromise move. It’s only $1 more a month, easily palatable and an acceptable balance between cost and access. I was pleasantly surprised, figuring they would raise it by at least several dollars, or start charging a per Blu-Ray disc rental addon fee. Kudos to the folks at Netflix for how they handled this.
I’ve been on a bit of a Cormac McCarthy kick of late, working through Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and now The Road. It’s completely fantastic, telling the story of a boy and his father struggling their way across a post-apocalyptic landscape, questing for food and safety in a world turned barbaric. It’s also very grim. I had nightmares while I was reading it, but at the same time I couldn’t put it down. If you fancy a stroll through a post apocalyptic landscape bereft of hope, I can’t think of a better book to recommend.
How’s that for a sales pitch Seriously though, the book is fantastic so long as you know what you’re getting into and appreciate it for what it is.
Digital Rights Management is such a crock. In today’s example of why you should never, ever ‘license’ DRM’d content, check out what’s happened to the customers of Microsoft’s MSN Music business. Microsoft is turning off the lights on the service and ceasing support for the infrastructure which provides the ‘keys’ which allow you to move your content from machine to machine. You can burn CD’s to rescue the content off the hardware (while reducing the quality), so you won’t permanently lose access to it so long as you take that step and accept the quality trade off, but you should never have had to do that in the first place. As I’ve warned before, stay away from services licensing DRM’d content. Emusic, Amazon, and others now offer unencumbered mp3 files at higher bit rates than Apple and the other DRM-encumbered music merchants. iTunes may be convenient but it’s supporting an untenable business model. To those who would say say Apple would never pull a similar move, companies don’t get much larger than Microsoft, and they just did it. Vote with your wallet folks.
So back when, in my college days, I used to dance a lot - at live concerts especially, but also at parties on campus, social events, and whatnot. Somehow as I’ve aged I’ve become more reserved and self conscious about it and rarely if ever dance, to the point where it’s occasionally been an issue with my girlfriends over the last 10 years or so. I mention this because this weekend I visited my friends Dave and Lisa at their new place in Westport, MA, and Friday night we went to see Dark Star Orchestra, a Grateful Dead cover band. By the second song I was on my feet bopping with the rest of the crowd, without even thinking about it. I had a blast, and it definitely made me nostalgic for my free wheeling self back in the 80’s. It was the first time I’d seen DSO and they were great. I guess they often play actual setlists of Dead shows, but Friday they were just winging it, playing songs from many eras. The highlight was a 10-15 minute take on Alligator, which was less like Pigpen’s drunken bluesy take on it and more rock/jam band, but it was great and rocked the place.
I was also surprised to see how much dope folks were smoking. The show was in Lowell, MA, in a small concert hall, and there were only a couple of hundred people there, and I saw the cops drag out two folks and security track down several others, and yet still folks were smoking dope all over the place - great clouds of it were gushing up over the floor during the sets. Either these folks are fools (most likely) or the penalty for possession must be trivial in Massachusetts.
Anyway I had a blast, I’d definitely go see DSO again, they were great and the crowd scene brought back a lot of fun memories from my teen/early 20’s years.
I’ve mentioned a few times here how much I love live music, and how to escape paying the music company cartels I stopped buying cd’s years ago but kept grabbing live music whenever I could find legally available options, from places like archive.org for example. I recently found the Ultimate Bootleg Experience and it’s become one of my favorite feeds - just in the past couple of days I’ve grabbed a cool Stones show from ‘72 with amazing audio quality, and a decent radiohead show from 2003, and over the past several weeks I’ve found all kinds of great stuff on the site. They consistently link to excellent concerts in a variety of genres. Add some variety to your daily listening by checking out the site or adding it to your RSS feeds.
So I got a Netflix account. It’s great, as anyone who has one already knows. I added a little widget to my site down on the right, to show what movies I have or most recently had out of Netflix so you can see what I’ve been watching. If you already have a Netflix account, you can add me as a friend using one of my spam email addresses - ask me for the details so I don’t have to post them here for the spam harvesters to grab.
Hard Knocks, the HBO series that follows an NFL team’s training camp, is back after a several year hiatus. This season they’re following the Kansas City Chiefs around. It’s a really great series if you’re an NFL fan or curious about the inner workings of professional sports. They covered the Cowboys and Ravens in previous seasons. I’m not sure why they dropped it for several years but I’m glad it’s back. Check it out, 10pm wednesdays starting the 8th of August.
Wow, what great fun this movie is. Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek (Black Book) is a great little spy thriller of a type you so rarely see these days. The plot follows the mostly unfortunate but always thrilling escapades of a young jewish singer in the Netherlands during the latter days of WWII. The pacing is fantastic, the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing right up to the end, the heroine is beautiful, knows it, and shows it, and the acting and directing are both above average. Definitely check this out if you like spy thrillers. It’s subtitled though there is occasional english dialog, but look past that because if you don’t you’re missing out on a real treat.
…great. Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to spoil it for yourself.
There’s lots of sturm and drang and angry fans bitching on the net about how unhappy they are with the ending. I thought it was great - it left things open to the viewer’s interpretation, with lots of possibilities to consider, and it fit perfectly with the ambiguity that was a central theme of the show over the years. Honestly, what did people want, that Tony should get whacked and be done with it? We’ve seen that ending in any number of mafia movies and personally I would have been a lot less satisfied with that ending, whereas what we have instead is an ending that lets you imagine Tony being whacked as one possibility amongst many. I can’t imagine a better ending, and it’s left everyone talking about it. What more could you ask for?
Neil Gaiman, who produced perhaps the best comic book series ever, The Sandman, and by far my favorite fantasist, has managed to get one of his novellas turned into a feature film with some major stars attached (De Niro, Claire Danes, Ricky Gervais, Peter O’Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, and others). It’s coming out this summer, and is based on his novella ‘Stardust’ which I read and enjoyed. Here’s the Stardust entry on IMDB - this is definitely worth watching for when it gets to theaters later this summer.
Also as an aside, if you enjoy fantasy you owe it to yourself to check out The Sandman series Neil wrote. This is not men in tights comic books, this is fantasy on a grand scale with superb storytelling and great art. If you have a conception of comics as something kids read, this is the series that can change your mind. The first book is a bit uneven but 2-9 are just completely awesome. Check em out!
Fancy a tale of terror delivered to your podcast client every so often? Check out Pseudopod, a horror themed short fiction podcast. It’s very similar to Escape Pod, which I mentioned a while ago (I think they’re affiliated somehow) but focusing on a different genre.
This news has been all over the net and has made it into the national news, but in case you’re not familiar with it, a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is putting streaming radio at risk, as the rate structure they’ve proposed to put in place seems likely to drive most or even all of the independent internet radio stations out of business. It’s pretty clear that this is simply the content cartel trying to destroy internet radio. Here are a couple of resources you can review and draw your own conclusions:
An article on the Radio and Internet Newsletter
A radioparadise essay on the topic
If after examining the issue you’re so inclined, consider signing this petition
For what it’s worth, here’s what I signed on the petition:
Crafting legislation to protect the business interests of existing proto-monopolies at the expense of innovative new business development is not in the consumers’ or artists’ interest. Please reconsider and craft sensible rate structures that compensate rights holders while facilitating business development.
Check out couchville, a new tv listings site that distinguishes itself with a novel click and drag interface for listings. I’ve been using titantv ever since yahoo’s tv listings ‘upgraded’ themselves and have been very happy with them, and really titantv has a number of features over couchville that will keep it as my primary tool for listings, but couchville is still in development and shows promise, and it’s worth checking out for the interface alone. It’s also worth noting that it’s produced by the BeyondTV folks, who are the developers of the BeyondTV PVR software I’ve been using for the last 3 or 4 years. The site incorporates statistics from the users of the software, which is either a plus or a minus depending on your take on the wisdom of crowds 
Wow. Couldn’t be more please or surprised. HBO has picked up the rights to George RR Martin’s Fire and Ice series of novels and is going to produce at least one tv series out of it. HBO has been producing excellent episodic television for over 10 years now, generally much better stuff than the broadcast networks, and the Fire and Ice series’ gritty, hard core take on an authurian-themed medieval kingdom is perfect for HBO. I’m really looking forward to this.
The details can be found in this Variety piece.
I was asked to serve on the advisory board of the college radio station at work. We had our first meeting this past week and an interesting little tidbit came out that once I heard it made perfect sense, but which had never occurred to me. The current generation of students simply don’t use the radio - even if they own one as part of their stereo system they never use it. They don’t even use clock radios anymore. Why? Because almost all of them have ipods and use their computer as their primary source of music. This came out because it’s represented a challenge for the radio station (internet streaming is where it’s at), but I had one of those little light bulb over the head moments when the station director was talking about it.
This will lead to me helping them some with getting going with a platform that will enable podcasting (they’re already streaming), but the whole thing was pretty interesting to me.
Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Casino, Raging Bull…Martin Scorsese has produced some of the greatest films of my lifetime, and even his ‘failures’ are worth watching. He has a new movie out, The Departed, that’s getting almost universal praise (an almost unprecedented 95% score on rottentomatoes.com, for example). The dilemma is this - the film is an english language remake of a widely praised hong kong movie, Infernal Affairs, which I happen to have sitting in my DVR. Were you me, would you watch the original or the remake first? Were it anyone but Scorsese, I’d watch the original first but in this case I’m torn.
For whatever reason a couple folks emailed me about this recently. Maybe because I just updated the movie review section, who knows (it’s on the right in the links section). Anyway, it’s not a huge secret - basically since I’m single and have a lot of free time, I get to see a lot of movies. I also do a lot of ‘watch movie while working on laptop on the couch,’ and a lot of the movies I see are when I’m in this mode, especially the mediocre to crappy movies, which I tend to watch when I know I’ll only half pay attention whilst I’m working on something else. Lastly, I eat dinner in front of the tv, and generally watch at least half of a movie every night over dinner.
I stopped posting the movie reviews to the weblog because most of the time I only have a sentence or two to say about any given movie, and because if I posted to the weblog for every movie I watched, the reviews would quickly drown out everything else. The use of the wiki is sort of an experiment - so far it’s working ok, though I might end up folding the content back into the site, we’ll see how it goes.
And yes, I know I’m behind on the book reviews section, I’ll get to it when I can.
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