Archive for the ‘Playing, Reading, Watching, Listening’ Category.
As part of a dumb class action lawsuit, I received a 1 month 3-DVD-at-a-time subscription to Netflix at no cost to me. I’m sure the lawyers were richly compensated. See section 1.2 of “Amended Settlement Agreement” below for the specifics of the lawsuit.
(Frank Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. Class Action, San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-04-434884, local copy of Amended Long Form Notice of Class Action and Proposed Settlement, local copy of Amended Settlement Agreement.)
These are still on my list… didn’t have time to have them mailed to me:
The King of Kong
Robot Monster
Superbad
S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
Waking Life
So here’s what I rented in 30 days… (reviews to come eventually!)
The Omega Man
Failure to Launch
Sideways
The Bucket List
Strange Culture
The Departed
Crash
Psychos in Love
Children of Men
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
A Scanner Darkly
The Illusionist
X2: X-Men United
National Treasure
Solaris
Stranger than Fiction
Sin City
Batman: The Dark Knight on 2-27-09. Intense. Quite a ride
V For Vendetta 3-28-09. I came out of the movie thinking it was completely excellent. After a few minutes of mulling I can think of many plot holes and unexplained bits. So I’ll just say that the theme and visual elements of the movie were excellent. A little something was missing… maybe it got lost on the editing room floor? Still a worthwhile movie!
Primer at the recomendation of Warren Lynch (film maker). It was really good and entertaining.
X Men 2 and X Men 3 – Jeez, they are scary violent. I mean, when you go up against Wolverine, he doesn’t knock you out or paralyse you or anything; he puts 6 long metal blades into you and moves them in opposing directions with superhuman strength. He kills you. And the ending of X Men 3… yow, Jean Grey uses telekinesis to tear everyone in a 100 yard radius into what look like 1/4″ blobs of flesh.
Star Trek. Saw it at the Metreon on the IMAX screen last night with Brenden, Charlotte, Jon F and Rick T. Wow. This is the summer’s blockbuster. Very heavy on the attitude, energy, emotion and visuals. A couple plot holes but that’s not what the movie was about. It was more about getting kick-ass backstories for the ST:TOS characters that we thought we already knew and loved. This morning I was exhausted; I think it was because the movie took it out of me. Phew!
On my home from work on April 1 I came across the Ferocious Few rocking hard in front of the Montgomery Street BART station. They really rock.
This is a followup to my first post about this event.
The second amazing thing I experienced at Caminantes de la Tierra was Israel Haros. He read a poem to the audience near the beginning of the show and followed that up with this very intense performance that I’m just going to have to experience again to fully get the gist of.
Very cool.
Much of Lulacruza’s music is available online on their website.
Last week I saw Lulacruza performing with several performance artists. The show was fantastic.
One of the most notable aspects of the show was what I’m calling the “Visible Dancer”. It was performed by Diana Suarez-Vargas, a Bay Area dancer and multimedia artist.
A dancer in a darkened theater. She started low, sliding around the stage mostly sitting down. Behind her the video screen was dark except for a few faint red wisps. As she moves around to the music I can see that there is a small video screen on her chest. It is showing many flowing abstract images. As she becomes more animated, the purpose of the screen in her chest becomes clear, it is showing what is going on inside her… it’s a window into her heart. That might seem hokey until you actually see it. It’s amazing.
The screen behind her continued to show vague outlines until she begins dancing more and more animatedly. Eventually I can make out wispy outlines of a dancer on the screen. I realize that the screen is showing a kind of spiritual x-ray of the dancer before me.
The effect is profound. The dancer and the x-ray are not entirely in time with one another… as is appropriate for trying to capture such energy. Sometimes the dancer leads, sometimes the x-ray. Sometimes the image fades and I see other things. I think the x-ray isn’t capturing the dancer’s motion but her intention.
As she moves, the heart window changes. Sometimes looking like flowing silk, sometimes almost dark and empty, sometimes I can see flames through the window as if I’m looking through the open door of a furnace. This is very intense.
More about the show
In this video, one of the creators of Wuala gives a pretty good explanation of reed-solomon error correction and erasure codes.
When Charlotte’s family was here, we all went to see Wicked at the Orpheum Theater. It was really quite a show!
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T on 3-1-09. Pretty fun. Pretty trippy.
Muppets from Space on 3-1-09. Nope, it didn’t have the spark that Jim Henson brought to the Muppets. Pandering to children doesn’t make for good programming for children or adults.
Howls Moving Castle on 3-8-09. Good anime. Weird plot as is usual of Japanese.
Star Trek: Nemesis on 3-something-09. Kinda weak. At least it had lasers and the Enterprise smashing into stuff. “Hey, we found all these parts of a robot that look just like Data, let’s put him together and see what happens! Hey, we’ve got a robot that looks like Data only dumber, let’s download the full and complete memories of a Starfleet officer into him and see what happens! “Hi, I’m Data and I’m gonna die but that’s ok because there’s BACKUP DATA!” Oof.
Oh and remember how the Enterprise smashed into that other ship? Wouldn’t like 1/4 of the crew of the ship have been killed? I mean, 1/4 of the saucer was completely smashed. In mourning for Data, did Picard forgot to mourn the 200 or so people he killed. Or maybe the ship has airbags. Yeah, that’s it.
Doctor Horrible. I’ve rewatched this thing so many times. I rewatched it with friends on Saturday night. Joss Whedon is in my pantheon.
Thank You For Smoking – I loved this movie! Laugh out loud funny and wry. Charlotte wasn’t nearly as into it as I but she liked that I liked it.
300 – Very cool. And darned if it isn’t historically accurate.
Wow, 3-D movies might just have come of age. I saw Coraline at the Alameda theater with Charlotte, Vevi and Rick the other night. The movie was such a terrific escape. They didn’t overuse the 3D and, just as importantly, it didn’t give me a headache.
