Recently in Reviews Category

MC Frontalot just released Solved, his fifth album (CD? Set of downloads?), and it's an excellent piece of work. (If you're in Phoenix, you simply must attend his concert on September 10th. I've been to all of his other shows in town over the years and they're wonderful.)

Here's how I'd rank his CDs:

1. Nerdcore Rising
2. Solved
3. Final Boss
4. Secrets from the Future
5. Zero Day

Solved is just that good! Now, there's great songs on every one of the previous albums, so this is just a perspective on them as an aggregate. I've listened to it about a dozen times since I got it—like many of Frontalot's works, you have to ease into them.

Here's my rundown of the best of Solved:

1. I'll Form the Head: I watched Voltron every morning as a child and this song just cracks me up. Money line: "I think it's time that we combine and rip this thing to shreds / but only if you promise me that I can form the head!"
2. Captains of Industry: I'm also a fan of MC Lars, so this collaboration worked really well for me. I really like when Frontalot begs for his audience to actually compensate him for his work. Money part:

   Try to sell music, they look at you funny.
   Not a transaction that necessitates money,
   not with the true cunning of the kids in the know.
   But you look at them cheering -- notice what? They don't sew.
   Don't go to the print shop and silkscreen their own,
   yet they're always needing something to cover the torso.

3. Stoop Sale: very catchy tune. Frontalot doesn't often journey into the storytelling genre, but he's a master at it when he does. Money line: "And that's when you have to endure / the regret that accompanies said decision-making: / all the other wishes in the world that you've forsaken."
4. Just Once: this track is a crackup—could this be a problem he'd like to have? Money line: "Just once, I don't want to hump tonight. / Why can't we hang out and talk?"
5. Front the Least: a track of modesty. Money line: "And the worst thing about my mistakes is they're all reruns."
6. Nerd versus Jock: playing to the audience, to be sure. Solid effort. Money line: "Look at now: demand for nerds. Old jocks: stock on clearance."
7. The Sketches: this is the first album of his where I don't generally skip through the interstitial sketches. They're funny and I'm glad to have been introduced to Wyatt Cenac.

I'd recommend this CD to anyone intrigued by nerdcore hiphop, the genre of rap that MC Frontalot created in 2000. He's an amazing wordsmith and produces some really funky beats as well.

I am really enjoying reading books on the iPad. So far I've read Garet Garrett's The Driver and Henry Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back. Both were free ePub versions from the Ludwig von Mises Institute and were free of typographical errors. I found reading them on the iPad to be easy and comfortable.

Emboldened by my experience reading two several hundred-page books, I decided to see what the iBookStore had to offer. I bought Elmer Kelton's The Time It Never Rained on the recommendation of a Cato Institute review. It was only $6.99 and it sounded intriguing.

The image at right is indicative of what I found. I've circled three examples that are rife in the eBook:

• "catde" instead of "cattle"
• "heU" instead of "hell"
• "hadrippedat" instead of "had ripped at"

This eBook was under the imprint of Macmillan but the errors above are suggestive of OCR issues. OCR! I would expect that sort of amateur problem from Project Gutenberg, but this was presumably from the publisher that had the original files. I'm very leery of purchasing any further books based on this one: there doesn't seem to be an update mechanism to re-download corrections.

If the Kindle app, whose eBooks I've found to be impeccable, had a two-page layout in landscape, I'd forego the iBookstore entirely.

I went to an MC Frontalot concert Saturday night with a friend and had an incredible time. Let me preface this all by saying that I am not a concertgoer: I don't enjoy crowds, am not a people-watcher, prefer studio-produced music, and am a cheapskate. The only concerts I have ever paid for was Public Enemy and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy twice; aside from that, I've either gotten free tickets or the concerts were entirely free. I do, however, love music and spend plenty of money buying it on CD, through iTunes, or, lately, Amazon MP3.

I'm a longtime fan of the Front and went to his concert last year when he came to town. He puts on a great show and so I just had to go. Plus you can't beat the price at $10. Also appearing were the Minibosses and MC Lars, whom I had heard of but never heard.

I knew it was going to be different this year as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. There was a line stretching through the entire strip mall and we were half an hour early. We passed the time joking about the various misfits we saw and most revolved around these weirdos with long hair who were wearing black jumpsuits with yellow pentagrams and dripping with fringe. They looked like Satanic disco goers.

Turns out those freaks were the unannounced opening act, Totally Radd!! (which they weren't, incidentally). I won't waste valuable electrons fully describing their set since they were really not worth mentioning.

The Minibosses were next. Apparently, they're a local band; their schtick is covering video game theme songs like Super Marios Brothers or Castlevania. Like last year, I appreciated their skill but couldn't identify of the video games they were re-creating. I had a Colecovision and a Nintendo in my childhood, but they never made a lasting impression on my because I wasn't very good.

The biggest surprise of the night was MC Lars. After listening to his set, I was annoyed that I had never listened to anything of his. The songs he played—"Mr. Raven," "iGeneration," "Download This Song," "Generic Crunk Rap Song," and "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock"—were awesome and his stagecraft was perfect. He had his laptop powering two projectors and he amazingly never lost synchronization with their presentations.

MC Frontalot was excellent, as always. He even improvised for a bit while his guitarist changed instruments. He had a new drummer since his last tour and I didn't like him as well. The only bad thing I can say about his set versus last year's is that I think his vocals were sometimes overwhelmed by the band. He performed three songs from his new CD but due to the music I wouldn't have known what he was saying if I hadn't listened to the songs previously. It could be that he was just really tired since he didn't start until after midnight and finished around 1:30 AM.

If you ever have a chance to go to one of his concerts, I'd recommend it highly: $10 for four bands and 4½ hours of entertainment is an astounding value. I don't know how they make much money but they obviously do—they've earned it!

Time for some more Netflix queue reviewin' (long overdue from the looks of it):

• Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): a great adaptation of Austen's most famous novel. Keira Knightley is pretty good, but I was most impressed with Donald Sutherland's acting.
• Baby Mama (Netflix): I really liked this movie, but I'm predisposed to that on account of being a huge Tina Fey fan. Amy Poehler was much better than I expected and I found myself actually caring about the characters.
• Kiss the Girls (Netflix): good enough thriller. The plot was interesting but there were many distracting (and glaring) holes. Like, who allows a victim to participate in apprehending a serial killer? Come on.
• City Lights (Netflix): Charlie Chaplin's last silent film. I know plenty of people will defend silent movies as just as good as talkies—I'm not one of them. I've watched enough of them to have an informed disdain—except Buster Keaton, who gets a pass because his films are still hilarious.
• The List (Netflix): I like Wayne Brady. Wait, I liked Wayne Brady. This piece of crap belongs on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. The acting is terrible, the plot is predictable, and the characters are shallow. Awful—but seriously worth buying through my Amazon affiliate link.
• Shenandoah (Netflix): James Stewart is a Virginia farmer who vigorously tries to avoid the Civil War occurring around him. But then one of his five boys gets taken prisoner mistakenly and he's one pissed off actor. Very good, maybe a little slow, but plenty of wonderful lines.
• Trust the Man (Netflix): David Duchovny plays a sex addict—hmm—in this relationship movie. It wasn't bad though rather pointless. I did like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character.
• Hairspray (Netflix): excellent movie irrevocably marred by John Travolta in drag and fat suit. Seriously, I have no idea why they cast him as the wife of Christopher Walken. He was painful to watch and would have been perfect without him.
• Balls of Fury (Netflix): I had extremely low expectations going into this movie. I hoped that Christopher Walken would be funny—he was—but I found myself laughing hysterically often and drawn into the story. It's lowbrow, don't get me wrong, but high-quality slapstick.
• Mad Men Season 1 (Netflix): this came highly recommended from a number of sources. I watched one disc worth and had enough. The first couple episodes found me really wanting to like Don Draper, but then it got slimy and smarmy. Maybe a 60s advertising agency was like that, but it left me cold. I'm not a prude; I just don't like watching affair after affair after affair.
• Gone Baby Gone (Netflix): decent thriller about the kidnapping of a four-year-old that ends up being a lot more complicated than at first. I liked it but I don't need to ever watch it again.
• Be Kind Rewind (Netflix): Terrible. The preview made it look stupid but I thought it would be one of those "so stupid it's funny" movies. Nope, just stupid.
• Sunshine (Netflix): unique science fiction movie about a mission to re-light the sun, which is nearing burnout. I love the premise but then they had to mess it up with a horror twist that was wholly unnecessary. The race against time and technological limitation was compelling enough as it was.
• Sex and the City Season 1 (Netflix): entertaining fluff to watch. I can see why so many adored the show, but it didn't grab me. Again, maybe I just don't enjoy watching whiny, promiscuous women.
• Raise the Red Lantern (Netflix): incredible and beautiful film about polygamy and arranged marriages in China. The period is ambiguous. It focused on the interplay between the wives; I would have liked to see more about the master.
• Deadwood Season 1 (Netflix): I rented this once before and never got into it, which is surprising since I will watch any Western that crosses my transom. It's gritty and vile, making it perhaps more authentic to the real Deadwood.
• Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl (Netflix): comedian Robert Wuhl channels Howard Zinn for the benefit of some NYU students. There's definitely a liberal slant here, but it is funny as hell nonetheless.
• Mrs. Henderson Presents (Netflix): Judi Dench decides to invest in a theater in World War II-era London, hiring Bob Hoskins as the manager. They turn the show into a continuous burlesque while conforming to the strict standards of the time and become a sensation. Hoskins is great and the movie is worth watching.
• August Rush (Netflix): This one was just a little too pat for my tastes with a resolution that was both utterly predictable and a horrible groaner. It could have been so much better, but they blew it.
• P.S. I Love You (Netflix): a husband finds out he has a brain tumor and writes a series of letters to his wife in an posthumous effort to help her through the grief. Very sweet, tender, and believable movie. I'd recommend it.

If you want in on my Netflix friendship (hey, buddy!), feel free.

In my off-the-cuff quick review of The Dark Knight, I said that I would write up a lengthier one after I had seen it a second time and could focus on a couple of points that confused me originally. I saw it again a couple of weeks ago and it really didn't hold up well the second time.

Most intriguing the second go round were The Joker's villainous experiments in game theory. The one involving Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes tied up in warehouses full of explosives but on opposite sides of town didn't originally strike me as anything special originally, but it was more obvious this time that Batman actually went to save Rachel and that The Joker had consciously switched the addresses. That meant that picking one over the other meant that the one chosen is the one that dies. Much more dastardly than I had originally thought and it also made it understandable why Batman "chose" to save Harvey Dent.

The ferry experiment, in which The Joker loaded two ferries with explosives and then gave the other boat's detonator to each set of passengers, was much more disgusting the second time. Originally, I thought that the convict's taking of the detonator and throwing it out the window was a moral statement that they should have refused to play The Joker's twisted game. Further, I thought that the other ferry's wavering and refusal to push the button at the last minute was a wrestling with a difficult decision and opting to not partake of it.

However, I'm now convinced that it was a sacrificial act and very repulsive. By waiting, they had effectively doomed both boats to destruction by The Joker—they did not know that Batman would save them. In the face of a serious emergency, they chose to forfeit the responsibility of a decision. It is possible that The Joker would have wired each detonator to blow up the ferry that it was on or blow them both up—it's certainly feasible that there was a nihilistic trick up The Joker's sleeve—but they had no way of knowing. Either way, both groups clearly did not value their own lives.

The biggest revelation with the second viewing was that it's not nearly as good of a movie as I thought. The disjointed subplots first felt like the painful inhalation when you come up for air before being dragged down: one concluded and then another one immediately began. This time, though, I could see how they just extended the movie into discomfort. It's as if there were a brainstorming meeting prior to the start of the script and they couldn't decide on a single, coherent plot so they just took the top three ideas and went with them. This time, it was just tedious.

I still think it was a good movie, just not as great as I had thought.

Jack Handey's What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats is easily the funniest book I've read in recent memory. If you're familiar with Deep Thoughts or Fuzzy Memories from Saturday Night Live, you may be surprised to learn that Jack Handey is an actual guy who writes like that normally.

You'll find this collection of essays, short stories, and sketches funny throughout if you like his particular style of humor, which I do. You'll appreciate the helpful asides in "My Nature Documentary":

Show monkey finding binoculars. Monkey learns how to use binoculars. (Have plenty of film, because this may take a long time.) Monkey climbs up tree and scans horizon. We see his point of view, which finally focuses on yes, the giraffe! He screams (BB pellet) with joy.

Or the view of self presented in "How I Want to Be Remembered":

According to our scientists, with their electronic soul trackers, Jack is in Heaven now. And not just regular Heaven, which any jerk can get in to, but special secret Heaven that even some angels don't know about.

There's much to be learned about management from his essay on "The Respect of the Men":

You don't get the respect of the men right away. You can try, by getting down in the dirt and begging them for it, or by kissing their boots, or by doing your funny cowboy dance for them. But trust me, these are not going to work.

I especially liked the science-ish article on "The Animals Around Us":

Or consider even smaller animals, which live unnoticed among the hairs of our private regions. They are called crabs. No, don't worry, they aren't actual crabs. And they certainly aren't large enough to eat, unless you could somehow get thousands of them. But they are with us, year after year.

My favorite nugget is entitled "Attila the Hun's Greatest Speech," which is introduced as the source for many of the most famous orations in history and consists entirely of famous lines interspersed with motivational statements to the assembled Huns like "Caesar, tear down this wall! Or at least open the gates and we'll tear it down for you."

I could go on and on selecting bits from this short but hilarious work, but I'm pretty sure that I'd run afoul of copyright soon. I found myself guffawing on more than one occasion; if these quotes or his earlier work tickled your funny bone, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

For years, I've struggled with finding a decent set of tools to practice Getting Things Done. I started with the Hipster PDA and moved on to some notepads and Zen To Done. I've tried just about every permutation of Web-based application. Heck, I liked GTD-PHP that I bought the domain and host the project for free.

But none of them have worked for me. The Hipster PDA was good but it suffers from all of the problems of paper-based systems: there's no indexing or searching and you always have to carry around a pen. The notebooks were even more inconvenient; the desktop applications didn't help if I wasn't carrying my MacBook which I almost never do; and the Web applications had monthly fees and required a computer with Internet access to function. So I bided my time and kept on the lookout for the Holy Grail.

I can confidently tell you that I have found it! It's OmniFocus by OmniGroup. It's Mac-only and $79.95 but it suits me perfectly. Its power stems from the fact that the desktop application at home can sync with the desktop application at work which can sync with the iPhone application in my pocket. $79.95 (plus $19.99 for the iPhone version) is certainly expensive, but I found it invaluable after using it fully for its 14-day trial.

It has a bunch of nice touches: parallel or sequential task lists, quick entry that really is, the focus modes. It's a competent implementation of GTD—the incidentals of the UI aren't important. But the syncing is worth every penny of the cost. When you're away from a computer, you have access to your projects and contexts. Check something off and it's synced to your home and work computers. It just works—you never have the problem of managing database files and shuttling them between the computers in your life.

And that makes getting things done the focus rather than maintaing your system.

I saw The Dark Knight on Friday morning but I don't feel comfortable reviewing it just yet. I want to see it again just to make sure of a few salient points. I plan to see it again in a week or so at an IMAX theater to get the full experience. Until then, let me just say that I think it is the best Batman film ever. I loved Batman Begins and this one was much, much better.

Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was amazing. He played the nihilism perfectly. Michael Caine as Alfred describes him thus: "Some men just like to watch the world burn." Ledger makes you believe that that is his exact motivation. I think he really stole the show and would deserve any Oscar that he'll surely be nominated for—even though the Academy would just do it because of his untimely death.

In the end, I highly recommend that you see this movie if you like Batman at all. It's audacious, visually stunning, and exceedingly well-acted. I'm seeing it twice and I can't remember the last movie I saw twice at the theaters.

I expected Wall-E to be an anti-materialist, anti-capitalist, and environmentalist piece of tripe that I was going to regret seeing or exposing my children to. But I have not found a Pixar movie yet that I didn't enjoy to some degree. (The Incredibles was my favorite followed by Ratatouille and A Bug's Life. Least favorites: Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo.) I had these expectations because the liberals I follow raved about it and the conservatives I follow despised it. I think that means that the actual meaning of the movie is deeper than it appears, which allows viewers to see on the surface what they would like.

The movie, in case you're not familiar with the basic story, is about a small robot that's been left on Earth to clean up its trash for the last 700 years. The robot, Wall-E (who is given voice by Ben Burtt, the same guy who did R2-D2), develops something of a personality as he scours the trash for interesting items. One day, a spaceship lands and emits another robot called Eve, a probe robot (designed by Jonathan Ive, the guy behind the iPod), who is on Earth looking for signs of plant life. She was sent there by the captain of a ship containing the entire population of Earth. The humans, having consumed Earth right into inhospitableness, abandoned the planet and left robots to clean up the mess in preparation for their eventual return.

So you can see why both groups see the movie as they do. For the liberals, it's a parable of humanity's future if we don't Do Something. For conservatives, it's a propaganda piece put out by Hollywood liberals completely out of touch with reality. On a superficial level, I think they're both right. The future in the movie is run by a single corporation that provides everything for the people; the luxury spaceship that they live in is completely automated and they needn't lift a finger; and the Earth is so uninhabitable that nothing grows there for centuries. That's pretty damning stuff, a sort of hyperbolic An Inconvenient Truth.

But it's not the central theme of the movie. For me, the core idea of the movie is summed up by the captain, who exclaims "I'm tired of surviving, I want to live" when faced with a choice between continuing life aboard the ship or returning to Earth and starting a new Jamestown without all of the resources or helpful Indians. In that moment, the captain has realized that life is about values and the struggle to achieve them. By having everything handed to him and letting his life be run on autopilot (literally in his case), he's missed out on a life proper to a human being. Furthermore, in a deliciously ironic twist, the robot is the value pursuer and it inspires the captain to reclaim his dignity.

For me then, the movie was about working for what you want and accepting responsibility for your life. There is always a temptation for us to take the easy way out: to let others do our thinking for us, to let others pander to us and become our masters, to let others provide for us. But that is not the good life: it is a betrayal of our very humanity. Sometimes it takes an unusual source to remind us of that.

(NOTE: It was Jennifer Snow's review that made me decide to give the movie a shot. Thank you, Jennifer!)

[UPDATE: My wife reminded me of one of the best parts of the movie. Whenever Wall-E, who was solar-powered, got his morning charge and started up, the chime is the Mac startup sound. I'm so proud of her!]

Here's the latest installment of my quick reviews, slightly larger than normal because I had forgotten to do this sooner. For a change, let's limit the review to a maximum of 140 characters—à la Twitter:

• Duck, You Sucker (Netflix): Proof that even Sergio Leone made stinkers. I wouldn't have thought so had I not seen this. Absolute waste of James Coburn.
• The Lives of Others (Netflix): Absolutely great movie about the corrupting influence of the Stasi, for both the people and the Stasi themselves. Five stars, two thumbs up.
• Tom Green: Inside & Outside the Box (Netflix): Do not consume too much in one sitting. It will seriously distort your perspective. If you don't already like Tom Green, sit this one out.
• Sullivan's Travels (Netflix): Hokey 40s movie about whiny director who wants to get in touch with the common man. Best part: reminded me how far we've come in movies.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Netflix): Rambling, dawdling, meandering, and self-important epic that concentrates too much on Jesse James as folk hero and Robert Ford as idolator.
• The Siege (Netflix): FBI can't stop terrorism. Army seals off Manhattan and imposes martial law. This is how Hollywood views us: chomping to intern them Muslims.
• The Onion Movie (Netflix): The Onion cashes out. Watch the podcast, it's better. This generation's Kentucky Fried Movie? Perhaps. Best part: http://xrl.us/Cockpuncher
• The Bucket List (Netflix): Damn it, you made me enjoy Jack Nicholson. Maudlin but mesmerizing. Sappy but sentimental. Ending is dreadfully, utterly predictable.
• Death at a Funeral (Netflix): At funeral, kids find out dad was having an affair with a midget, who wants money to keep quiet but gets killed. You-know-what ensues.
• My Beautiful Laundrette (Netflix): Ambitious guy steals drug money to renovate laundromat. Hires school chum turned tough. Screws same in back room. Why did I rent this?
• Mad About You: Season 1 (Netflix): This is the reason why Helen Hunt was on my list for so long (and why I own Twister). Mercifully M.A.B.E.L.-free.
• Duck Soup (Netflix): "Marx Brothers at their sidesplitting best." I'd hate to see their worst. Making fun of Hitler shouldn't be this bad. Couldn't finish.
• Pacific Heights (Netflix): Michael Keaton rocks as a creepy renter who just won't leave. Good subplot involves oppressive San Francisco government and cost of housing.
• Battle Royale (Netflix): Japanese bad kids dropped on island with weapons and only one can survive. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a true story, which it isn't.
• The Americanization of Emily (Netflix): James Garner and Julie Andrews. That was enough for me, but the wacky plot kept it interesting and the anti-war rant wasn't overblown.

If you're interested in being Netflix buddies, feel free to follow me. I've rated a lot of movies.

I just got back from a midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Overall, I liked it. It is primarily action-oriented and Shia LeBoeuf wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. By the time the credits started rolling, I was decidedly ambivalent.

I get that Indiana Jones is larger-than-life, that he's a swashbuckling professor/explorer. I think the first three movies did a great job of situating him squarely within our reality—though it varied slightly from movie to movie. This latest version borders on the preposterous a few too many times: Dr. Jones isn't a superhero and the Amazon isn't a fantasy land. Now I know that this isn't supposed to be accurate or even possible, but previous installments were realistic except for (maybe even in spite of) their fantastic central premises: the Ark of the Covenant, an underground cult, and the Holy Grail.

And it didn't have to be this way. Amazonian ants that carry people away? Come on. KGB agents seemingly swarming throughout America at will? Give me a break. Indiana surviving a nuclear bomb test by hiding in a refrigerator? Nuts. An ancient temple that reconfigures itself as if the monumental blocks were Legos? Puh-leez. Shia LeBouef swinging through vast swathes of jungle on vines? No way. But in each of those situations, Spielberg (or the writer) could have opted for a more realistic resolution. That he didn't is perhaps a Spielberg touch.

The ending, which I will not detail here, was very rushed and very unsatisfying. I don't know why they chose to do it that way. They were obviously shooting for spectacular, but fell short and ended up at puzzling. This issue doesn't detract too much, however. I would recommend seeing it as it does follow in the tradition of the heretofore trilogy.

[UPDATE (6/18/2008): Matthew Baldwin just saw it and basically agrees, though he was much more amusing.]

Here's the latest crop from the Queue, capsule-style:

• Becoming Jane (Netflix): Anne Hathaway stars as Jane Austen in this biopic. I'm not sure of Austen's real life, but I can easily see where she got her source material after watching. I'm a big fan of Hathaway's and her portrayal of Austen as a strong, independent woman was compelling. It made me want to read a biography of Jane Austen—that's a good indication of my recommendation.
• Rush Hour 3 (Netflix): I had very low expectations of this third pairing of the aging Jackie Chan and the one-note Chris Tucker. It didn't disappoint along those lines. My emotions at watching this flick ran the gamut: cringing, disbelief, disappointment, resentment, boredom, and even a touch of hostility.
• Dan in Real Life (Netflix): Steve Carrell is excellently cast in this role, but he plays Dan as a little inept—a little too much Michael Scott and not enough Andy Stitzer. He's a widower who finally meets the lady of his dreams but discovers that his brother is already dating her. Most of the movie is very uncomfortable in that you just know what's coming. It turns out okay in the end, but there's plenty of spots where you're left thinking, "This guy's a trainwreck!"
• How to Steal a Million (Netflix): Audrey Hepburn plays the exasperated daughter of a master (and recidivist) art forger. He's lent his master work to a museum to increase its value, but they need to bring in an expert to examine it for insurance purposes. So Hepburn enlists the aid of an art thief to steal it from the museum before her father is exposed. It's pretty clever with the twists and turns.
• The Usual Suspects (Netflix): done in flashback, this heist movie is a little too predictable for me. In fact, I'm getting a little tired of the flashback format. The film recounts the events that led up to the sole survival of the least-likely member of a gang during the commission of their big crime.
• To Be or Not To Be (Netflix): "screwball comedy" set in Warsaw at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. I've never been a fan of Jack Benny, but he's pretty good in this one. I think three years later they wouldn't have been so apt to use "concentration camp" as a joke. I laughed more than I expected and the twists and turns in the plot are engrossing.
• Kings Row (Netflix): rightly called Ronald Reagan's best performance. It's a psychological drama about an Everytown, U.S.A. at the turn of the last century where things are not as they seem. Apparently, the book was even more scandalous—I've already got it requested at the local library. It reminds me very much of Little Children, which I also liked a lot.
• Witness for the Prosecution (Netflix): an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play that really throws you in the end. A possibly-philandering man is accused of murdering what seems to be his sugar mama. It seems pretty open and shut but he convincingly asserts his innocence. His only alibi is his wife, who ends up as a witness for the prosecution. I think it compares favorably to any modern courtroom drama.
• Lifeboat (Netflix): set in the early days of World War II, a ship is sunk by a U-boat and a group of survivors are cast adrift in one of the lifeboats. Their prospects are bleak due to lack of supplies and they discover that the German they saved is the captain of the U-boat that got sunk at the same time. It's directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but it belongs squarely in his early work.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks (Netflix): gah. It's a desecration of the famous cartoon trio, which wasn't all that great to begin with. Littered with bathroom humor and topical references, the movie really isn't appropriate for the young children that represent its target audience. But anyone older than that is far too mature to want to watch this tripe.
• Amistad (Netflix): excellent movie about the real-life court case argued before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams involving a slave ship overrun at sea by the slaves. It does an adequate job of covering the case itself and a tremendous job of showing the barbarism of the slave trade. Hard to watch, but very worthwhile.

With credit to Diana Hsieh for the inspiration, here's some quick reviews of movies I've recently watched:

• Bee Movie (Netflix): dreadful. We didn't watch the whole thing, which is exactly what we set out to do in order to make sure it was appropriate for our daughters. It's not, but only because it is so mind-numbing that we wouldn't inflict it upon them.
• The Browning Version (Netflix): excellent! Michael Redgrave gives an exemplary performance. I'm a fan of Rattigan's work, so I must locate the play version of this.
• Real Women Have Curves (Netflix): passable fare about the struggle between what you want and what others want for you.
• Persuasion (Netflix): I'm a sucker for Jane Austen and this was a great production. I like the plot and theme immensely.
• Enchanted (Netflix): Amy Adams is wonderful in this clever film. The songs, though improbable, are catchy. My girls loved it from the get-go and I can't say that I blame them. Not at all schmaltzy, it offers a more sane version of the princess mania that's raging right now.
• The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Netflix): 70s camp and utterly ludicrous. I honestly can't remember why I added this to my queue.
• Premonition (Netflix): a little confusing and I'm pretty sure that it's internally inconsistent as well. I fell asleep a couple times during it but woke up enough to catch the deeply unsatisfying ending. Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of fatalism.
• Eight Below (Netflix): I'll admit it—I added this to my queue because it was a drama with Jason Biggs. I wanted to see whether he could pull it off. Not particularly, but he's supporting cast. Eight sled dogs are left to fend for themselves in Antarctica when a huge storm hits. Their sled guy feels really bad about it. Several months later, they are rescued. This one rates an "enh."
• Control Room (Netflix): documentary about Al-Jazeera and the second Iraq war. I thought it let the network off too easily; they are clearly fomenting anti-American sentiment.
• Scotland, PA (Netflix): Christopher Walken is great, but I'm a little tired of Shakespearean adaptations set in modern times. This time, it's Hamlet set in a 70s burger joint. Uh yeah. Maura Tierney is lovely, but a little hard to bear in this one.
• In the Heat of the Night (Netflix): good look at Southern racism. Poitier seems a little wooden in this role as a northern homicide detective drafted into the investigation of a murder in Mississippi. I'm happy to have finally seen "They call me Mr. Tibbs!" in context.
• One, Two, Three (Netflix): a real groaner. They pulled out all the stereotypes for this one. Cagney plays a fast-talking Coca-Cola executive in Berlin. Horst Buchholz, magnificent in a later movie, is horrible as a card-carrying East German Communist.
• The Name of the Rose (Netflix): exciting enough medieval thriller set in a monastery. Monks are dying and only Sean Connery has the guts to claim that it might not be demonic possession to blame. Great if you're into asceticism, which I am not.
• Payback (Netflix): I avoided this Mel Gibson flick when it came out, but I was surprisingly captivated by its twists and turns. Nothing here but dark fun.
• District B13 (Netflix): notable only because a) it stars David Belle, creator of parkour and b) it's a French action film. If you like Jackie Chan movies for the action, you stand a good chance of being able to sit through this.
• GoodFellas (Netflix): gritty, hard-to-watch mob movie. There's really no point to the film other than maybe anti-recruitment for the mafia. Good if you like mob movies, which I sometimes do.
• Fido (Netflix): I absolutely adore the alternate universe posited by this movie—nuclear war has created millions of zombies and an inventor has developed a collar that renders them obedient (as in not out to eat your gray matter). These newly-useful zombies become free labor for those who survived. Fido, in this case, is the companion to a lonely boy. It's thinly-veiled social commentary but the premise is novel.
• The Ref (Netflix): I can't stand Denis Leary. I decided to give him one last chance on this one, but he blew it. Leary stars as a burglar who holds a dysfunctional family hostage and becomes their mediator and therapist. Oh, and he makes snide, facile comments non-stop.
• Saving Private Ryan (Netflix): I avoided this movie in reaction to the hype and fawning. I deeply regret it. It suffers the same fate as nearly every Spielberg movie, but damn if this isn't the best-looking war movie I've ever seen. Glory runs a close second.
• The Prince and Me (Netflix): prosaic comedy about a girl who falls in love with a guy who turns out to be royalty. It follows all the standard sequences and revelations, but it's cute and worth it if you want something light and fluffy.
• After Innocence (Netflix): documentary about people serving life sentences exonerated by DNA evidence. It changed my mind about capital punishment. No, really. Like I was on the fence about the matter before watching it and wholeheartedly against it afterwards. The problem with capital punishment is that there's no restitution if you're wrong. And the death penalty then becomes murder.

I'll try to make the next installment considerably shorter. If you're a Netflix customer and want to be my friend, I'm game.

Frequently, I find myself shaking my head at kids today. I'm not quite to the point of requesting them to stay off my yard, but it's getting closer and closer. The females dress more and more risqué, the males more punky. The music seems insipid, though I know that that's always been the case. In my more reasonable moments, I consider that there have always been elements of banality and senselessness in every generation.

But then I see a movie like High School Musical and I think that maybe things are getting worse. It makes Mean Girls look like high culture. It trades in every stereotype in the book and wraps its plot (such as it is) in tired bromides. And it is totally lacking in character development. The leads are a consummate bookworm who can't be bothered to put the book down during a New Year's Eve party and a basketball jock who spends his whole vacation practicing.

But then they're paired at the party for a random karaoke and suddenly it's as if they've been on the Mickey Mouse Club their entire childhoods. They don't need the karaoke machine, their voices are pitch perfect, and they riff off each other as if they'd practiced. But alas their vacations are concluding and they'll likely never see each other again. Except, lo and behold, she's just transferred to his school in Albuquerque!

I won't spoil the rest of the movie because a) I kind of have already forgot a lot of it and b) you shouldn't really care. I generally agree with Kathy Sierra's admonition but there's only so much you can take. I think it's safe to say that HSM is the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure of this generation.

Last night was the Mr. Conservative screening at the Goldwater Institute and I had an absolute blast!

First, the Goldwater really knows how to put on an event. They had great snacks before the show (including beers, a wide variety of sodas, and bottled water) and movie concession stand snacks for during the show (including bags of popcorn!). For the Q&A after the show, they had the producer of the documentary (and granddaughter of Goldwater) CC Goldwater and Barry Goldwater Jr. The sizable hall was packed as well!

Between the Q&A and the documentary itself, I really got a feel for what was going on back in 1964 as well as what kind of man Barry Goldwater was. There really hasn't been anyone like him on the political scene since he left it, though some have been pretty close. He spoke his mind and, more importantly, his was a principled political philosophy. Some of the things he said seemed inconceivable (and they probably were then too) but they shouldn't be. Far too much of politics today is posturing and it truly sickens me.

His son made an excellent point about the seeming contradiction between his conservatism and his late-in-life support of gays in the military, abortion, and the separation of church and state. He said that his father never changed his views, only the agenda changed. If they had been issues in the sixties, he would have came out just as he did. I desperately wanted to ask his son about Goldwater's statements against the religious right and his views on Ronald Reagan, but I never got the chance.

I met with a few of the Institute people and they were very impressive. These people get the Institute's message of "limited government, individual responsibility, economic freedom." They weren't dismissive of Objectivism and viewed its adherents as fellow travellers at worst. What was most refreshing was their explicit distancing from the religious right. That is what's needed if we're ever going to take back the GOP from the neocons and the fundies. That is why the Goldwater Institute has my support. They, like their namesake, are the vanguard of conservatism—I say that only in the Goldwater sense as I prefer to identify myself as a capitalist (or libertarian if I have to).

Money quote from the documentary: "Barry said, 'If I had won, you wouldn't have spent those years in a Vietnamese prison.' I told him, 'You're right. It would have been a Chinese prison.'" — John McCain

Bourne Ultimatum was a big disappointment. One reviewer that I generally enjoy lauded it, so I had some good expectations that it definitely didn't meet.

Now, let me preface the following by saying that I don't expect much from mindless action movies. I myself am a big fan of nearly-everything Jackie Chan has done—and it's often hard to speak of a plot existing in those movies. I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and didn't care for the second one. I wasn't looking for anything great, but I wasn't prepared for how awful it was.

The best word to describe this movie was ridiculous. The plot had gaping holes that required the audience to leave their minds with their ticket stubs. For example, I thought that Bourne was pardoned in one of the previous movies. Why are they still after him in this go-round? And I'm willing to accept that the government sometimes operates in secret shadows that mere mortals such as myself couldn't comprehend, but since when has the CIA effectively done so? And don't even get me started about the sophistication of the surveillance equipment they were using.

That was all peripheral complaints though. For me, the worst part of the movie was the cinematography. Whenever any conversation was taking place (and sadly there were quite a few moments of lingering, monosyllabic dialog), the camera got a bad case of the jitters. It was as if the cameraman had Parkinson's or had just invented a new camera rig called the (Un)Steadicam. I know that steady framing if passé nowadays but that jerkiness is usually reserved for action shots.

And those action shots took the spasms to unprecedented levels. I'm used to action scenes being difficult to follow—it's an effective way to cover up the stunt work—but this is the first time in my memory where I gave up trying to focus on what was happening. It was as if the director took his visual cues from Looney Tunes fighting. All that was missing was the inexplicable smoke and punctuation marks flying around.

Sadly, the "ultimatum" in the title wasn't present. The ending left a clear opening for the next sure-to-be-overhyped installment. This is one of the few times when I would have preferred the main character to have died after being shot as he was jumping from a 10-story building into the East River. Note to Universal Pictures: if you must do another sequel, please please please name it Bourne Again. It's such a bad pun, yes, but it absolutely cracks me up.

Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy, is a dystopic comedy about two completely normal, average people who are forgotten in a top-secret Army hibernation experiment gone awry. Instead of the one year that they signed up for, they find themselves awaking in an America five hundred years in the future. Expecting an advanced civilization, they quickly discover that the dumbing down of American culture has left succeeding generations dumber and dumber. In that climate, they are hailed as the smartest people in the world and quickly placed in the service of resuscitating the degenerating American economy.

I was eagerly awaiting this movie's release since it had had a very limited run in theaters. As you may know, Mike Judge is the man behind Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, and King of the Hill. Like each of these works, Idiocracy is a mixed result that is more good than bad.

The premise is rife with possibility since it represents an excellent opportunity to make fun of current events and culture using slippery slope. Given 500 years to play out, nearly any penchant or fashion in our culture could lead to the most bizarre and fantastic conclusions. There are times in Idiocracy when this is used to great effect, such as with the most popular show on television, Ow My Balls!, and the most popular movie in theaters, Ass—which is just 90 minutes of footage of someone's behind along with accompanying flatulence. But there are times when it just falls flat, such as when the Rock Army plays electric guitar in the House of Representing or a Carl's Jr. ATM-like device calls the police to take custody of a woman's child because she can't afford the large fries. To my recollection, the ratio of biting satire to eye-rolling groaners is about 40-60. That's acceptable and consistent with Judge's other works.

I would recommend this movie keeping in mind that it is a light comedy.

It's not often that I find a movie that is irredeemable. Normally, I can eke out some pleasure or positive out of just about any movie. Strangely, I've encountered two utterly worthless movies in one week: Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I'll spare you a review of the former—mostly because writing a review of one boring movie is enough.

I was truly looking forward to watching this movie because everyone that's told me about it has been positively effusive in describing its hilarity. And I loves the funny. I watched the movie to the end, hoping minute by minute that I would at last encounter something beyond raunchy, over-the-top drivel and being disappointed each time. I don't mind raunchy and over-the-top so long as it's not drivel. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, however, was not well-executed, completely unsubtle, and rarely clever.

The story—and it's really a one-trick pony—is about a guy named Andy who has not had sex at the ripe old age of 40. Some of his co-workers take it upon themselves to end his dry patch. Hilarity ensues. Or, rather, hilarity was supposed to ensue.

At every opportunity, the movie took the vulgar route—the road sadly more travelled. It could have been a touching and funny look at the kind of guy that lives his whole life wanting but never knowing the touch of a woman. Instead, it revels in all the nerd and awkward geek stereotypes it can think of.

I hated this movie.

I just finished watching the last episode of the TV show, Wonderfalls, which has been playing on LOGO for quite some time now. I've been completely enamored of the show ever since I discovered it airing, but I didn't want to write up anything until I had seen the entire run. You know, some shows peter out after awhile and I didn't want to sing its praises prematurely. Since it was cancelled by Fox after 13 episodes, I didn't have to wait too long to contribute my paean.

Now that I've seen the whole thing, I'd like to sing its praises. Loud and to everyone. This show is simply the best show I've ever come across. Bar none. There you go.

Okay, there's some people that aren't going to cotton to such a bold statement. What about Firefly, what about Star Trek: The Next Generation, what about Get a Life!, and so on. All good shows; heck, all great shows. But one shows got to be the best and I think you couldn't go wrong with Wonderfalls.

Now that I have your attention, allow me to attempt to explain its plot. The show centers around Jaye Tyler, played adroitly by Caroline Dhavernas, a twenty-something who works at a Niagra Falls gift shop as a cashier and lives in a trailer park. She's got a philosophy degree from Brown, but she's something of a slacker. Everything's nice and boring, which she wants, until one day a deformed wax lion from one of those machines present at nearly all tourist traps tells her to return a quarter that a lady dropped. She complies—after questioning her sanity—and a chain of events takes place as a result of her action. This convinces her that something odd is afoot.

After being commanded to do several more things by other inanimate animal figures, she starts to believe she's going crazy. Each thing she does at their behest ends up being exciting and unexpected. She tries to resist their urging at one point but relents after they drone a stereophonic version of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." She gives up any resistance after that and rarely questions the wisdom of their requests throughout the series.

There's a variety of subplots that play out over the course of the series, but I couldn't possibly do them justice. Suffice it to say that they do not detract one bit from the main plot line, which is artfully developed across the entire set of 13 episodes. The theme, if I had to pin it down, is that you should accept your destiny because it might lead you to something worthwhile that you'd never considered before. Okay, that's a horrible theme—on account of there being no destiny—but it's very well developed and presented. One could probably also make a convincing case that the animals' talking is actually Jaye's subconscious but that could just be reading into things.

The most amazing aspect of the show is the character development. There's seven main characters and several regular ones. As the show progresses, you can really identify and empathize with the characters. In fact, I found myself predicting what a given character might do or how he might react to a situation. Further, their personalities are very nuanced and complex: Jaye and Eric, her romantic interest, for example, are individually complex and their relationship is fascinating to watch grow. Maybe it's just me, but I've never encountered a show that had such a rich story and backstory.

It's a shame that Fox cancelled the show when it did but I'm glad that I was able to see it this way instead of being restricted to the four episodes that they actually ran out of order. I would heartily recommend this show to anyone that likes intelligent comedy and interesting psychologies.

[UPDATE (1/17/2006): I just finished watching the entire series again—I bought the DVD set for Christmas—and I now think it's even better than I remember. Watching a series sequentially instead of disjointedly allows one to appreciate the character development much better. Watching episodes with subtitles allows one to catch the very subtle and witty dialogue. My next viewing will be with commentary so I can get the full Wonderfalls experience. Sadly, I don't see this coming to the big screen à la Firefly.]

Ayn Rand's benevolent universe premise posits that the universe isn't against us, that other people are a source of pleasure, and that life is worth living. It's a fundamental view of life, one that precedes and predates one's more consciously held philosophical beliefs. Its antipode, the malevolent universe premise, rests on the exact opposite conclusions. Psychologically, these two perspectives evince themselves as optimism and pessimism. The benevolent universe premise isn't Pollyanna-ish, though. It makes general characterizations of the the way things are; there is nothing in it to preclude evil in the particulars of everyday life.

Having the benevolent universe premise as I do, I'm not a big fan of most fiction. Much of today's movie and literary scene operates on the opposite sense of life, leaving me bored at best and incensed at worst. Either way, most books and movies just don't resonate with the fibers of my being. When one does, though, I cherish it with all my might. With that in mind, allow me to share my recommendation of Nevil Shute's novel Trustee from the Toolroom.

The book follows the adventure of a lifetime for an insignificant Englishman named Keith Stewart. He's a freelance writer for a weekly magazine about building working miniature models and he has never been out of England. The story begins by showing the reader the interesting yet boring life that he leads. It describes his nice, little workshop, the small house that's utterly forgettable, and his pleasant, unassuming wife who works in a small retail store near their house.

Their little world is upended when Keith's sister and brother-in-law perish in a shipwreck near Tahiti on their around-the-world trip to the United States in their sailboat. They had left their daughter Janice in the Stewarts' care until they reached Seattle whence they would send for her. Keith finds out that all of her parent's worldly possessions had been liquidated to purchase diamonds that could be resold once in America. A search of their accounts and possessions indicated that these diamonds had gone down with the ship. The parents' will also named Keith as Janice's guardian and the estate's trustee.

Keith grew increasingly troubled at the thought of Janice growing up without the inheritance rightfully due her and decided to venture out to try and recover it. His $3,000 per year salary is woefully insufficient to cover the expense of the trip so he is forced to divine alternate means of getting around the world. He quickly discovers that the magazine is very popular in engineering circles and that his articles are the most popular due to their simple prose and competent direction. An English airline owner offers to give Keith a ride to Honolulu via airplane since there is room aboard the freight shipment while another avid reader uses his connections to get him out of a jam in Tahiti.

What I most liked about this book was how the events of the story unfold. Every time Keith faced a new obstacle to get to the next destination, someone intervened on his behalf or offers assistance just when it's needed most. It's exactly what you would expect to happen, only it's very rare in literature and the movies for such generosity and kindness to be portrayed. In a sense, then, it's refreshingly unexpected and the suspense builds up even though it probably shouldn't.

The characters are also a highlight. In the beginning, Keith Stewart looked to be a quiet, tedious little man. As the story wore on, though, additional facets of his character were shown: astute engineering mind, incredible eye for detail, courteous honesty, and unwavering bonhomie. His wife displayed an unforeseen adaptability that belied her mundane lifestyle. The simpleminded sailboat captain that took Keith from Honolulu to Tahiti went from an oafish moron into a efficacious sailor. Each character, supporting or not, is well developed by Shute and this reader became very interested in their lives.

It was a very rejuvenating experience. All too often I get caught up in the impersonal, often brusque way of modern life where people cut you off on the road and cheat to get ahead. These things happen, but they're inconsequential in a wider context. By and large, people are good, life is excellent, and the world rewards the good. After reading the book, I felt a renewed sense of appreciation for my fellow man and a more congenial disposition. In short, it was a reaffirmation of the benevolent universe premise. If your sense of life has taken a beating lately and you want it back, Trustee from the Toolroom is a well-written, inspiring palliative.