Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, January 7th, 2010
tskirvin	11:22a	Earthquake Hey, I actually felt an earthquake here! I'm surprised it took so long... USGS "Did You Feel It" Map Google Maps (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
tskirvin	11:12p	Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes (2009): ** 1/2 (out of 4) The trailer for Sherlock Holmes was one of the worst short pieces of video that I had ever seen. Its fundamental flaw was playing up the Victorian/Modern juxtaposition - fistfights! firearms! explosions! tasers! - without allowing enough context to actually make that interesting. Instead, the viewer got the (strong) impression that they were just throwing a bunch of stuff at the screen, and looking to see what stuck with the audience. The only hope I had for the movie was that most of those scenes would be left out by the director because... well, I'm not sure. It's not like I'm the target audience... Anyway, none of it was left out. But in context, it worked out a whole lot better than the trailers had led me to believe. It still wasn't good, but it was worth watching, and certainly it was fun. And that's a start. That said, what I really want to talk about is the Sherlock Holmes elements. Many of the objections that I had to the trailer were, fundamentally, problems with the idea of mixing certain concepts into the character of Holmes. Since when is physical violence a strong element of the Master Detective's repertoire? Well, the answer is "since Guy Ritchie took over". It worked in the context of his direction style, it worked in the context of the actors chosen (who did a fine job), and it worked in the context of a need to still overshadow Watson in a newly action-y pairing. The violence became part of the point, and that turned out to be okay, if not great. On the other hand, where did this fit into the mythos? Without getting into spoilers, this seemed to occur both early in Holmes' career (based on characters met), and after the stories (based on Watson's moving out and on with his life). While they were certainly going for a new mythos - something that they could make a franchise out of - it was still a bit confusing for this casual acquaintance of the original stories. I would have preferred one or the other. And the story... was kindof Holmes-y. There were the right number of "supernatural" elements. The deductive work was pretty reasonable. The mysteries weren't, for the most part, cheats, which is a good sign. And while the story may have been a little bit more momentous than perhaps necessary, it was still something that could mostly have fit in. Mostly. Anyway. I feel like I'm rambling, because that's how I felt coming out of the movie. I didn't feel ripped-off; that's good enough sometimes. ** 1/2 URL: http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies/sherlock-holmes-2009/ (Comment on this)
tskirvin	10:33p	Fantastic Mr. Fox Fantastic Mr. Fox: **** (out of 4) When I was growing up, my father loved to read to me and my brother. At first, this was mostly stuff like the Dr Seuss family of books, good stuff that read well and lent itself to memorization. But as we grew up, we got into more "sophisticated" fare. His absolute favorite was Roald Dahl, whose books (The Witches, The BFG, and especially The Twits) were twisted and humorous - what other authors do you know that write about a woman hiding her glass eye in her husband's beer? - but most of all, they're fun to read out loud. And as we grew older, and no longer quite so easy to read to, he's found other kids to read to - nieces and nephews, family friends, etc. But still, one of the things that comes to mind when I think of my Dad is the joy he got - still gets - from those dark, twisted, smart children's stories. But I really wasn't expecting to be reminded so clearly of those old days when I walked into a second-run theatre on Sunday night and watched Fantastic Mr. Fox. Part of it was the animation. I had seen the animation style in the trailers, and while I had been impressed, I didn't quite recognize at the time how close of a fit it was to Dahl's work. The stop-motion puppetry was different, immersive, effective, and ever so slightly off in a positive way. It was both jerky and graceful, and interestingly understated. The characters were visually distinctive, both in stills and in their motions. Together, it brought across Dahl's writing style in a visual manner, something that I don't think any previous adaptation has managed nearly so well. Another part of it was Wes Anderson's direction and writing. I certainly had seen his minimalist dialogue, quirky writing, and episodic formats as conducive to a children's story - something like The Royal Tenenbaums would play spectacularly for children, IMO - but I hadn't really thought of how it would work out with animation. But Dahl's work clearly matched his style in a way that I had little reason to suspect going in. The adaptation felt like a book, and the narration gave it that feeling of a bedtime story. But mostly, it was that story, and more accurately the characters in the story. The characters were either unremittingly evil and dark (the humans, a few animals), or noble and dark (the rest of the animals). Every character was flawed, and they wore their flaws on their sleeves. Their mistakes were made knowingly, telegraphed for the viewers in a way that didn't seem fake or unfair. And while the good guys may come out on top in the end - more-or-less - it's not without some losses that seem both real and relevant. Together, it felt like a bedtime story that was worth listening to long after I should be done with listening to bedtime stories. And I spent the whole movie grinning. I didn't see this movie in 2009, but it may still be my movie of the year. Or at least I think that's how it works. Certainly, I look forward to seeing it with my father when it's out on DVD. And if, for some reason, he ever works on The Twits or The BFG, I suspect I'll have to fly out to see it with my Dad on opening day. **** (Also - we have a second-run movie theatre in the Bay now? Yay, Bluelight!) URL: http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies/fantastic-mr-fox/ (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
tskirvin	11:50p	Avatar Avatar: *** (out of 4) Aah, big-budget action/sci-fi movies! Is there anything better? One way or the other, you get to enjoy an over-the-top action-fest with lots of eye candy and miscellaneous silliness; and sometimes, you even end up with something worth seeing and thinking about later. Sure, they're also generally reviewer-proof, but isn't that part of the fun? And the most fun comes when you get to see the movie on opening night, with as big and motivated of a crowd as you can find. There's just something about getting home at 3am after a sci-fi blockbuster... Of course, that's not quite how I saw Avatar. The good son and brother that I am, I decided to hold off and see the movie with my father and brother after Christmas. I tried to avoid the reviews, I insisted that we find an IMAX 3D theatre to see it in, and I planned ahead enough to order tickets the night before. But in the back of my mind, I thought about how I'd missed out on the proper "experience" of the movie, and how I'd converted it to just (just?) a family bonding moment. I was a little bit disappointed, but in a "I have done my duty" kind of way. Family comes first, especially good family. Shockingly, in this case the experience was just as good a week after the movie's release. Two things made the difference. First of all, the movie was packed. Ordering those tickets ahead turned out to have been vital; and getting to the theatre a half hour ahead of time was just barely enough time to get our popcorn before the movie began, and even then we had to sit in the second row (a horrible idea in an IMAX theatre). And second, the movie really was big and shiny enough to make up for the week's delay. The movie took a decade to make; what's an extra seven days at that point? The special effects were, of course, the star of the show. Were they as good as all that? Well, yes. Yes they were. The 3D was top-notch, adding to the scenes in every case and never seeming gimmicky. The motion-capture characters finally looked good, after years of adequate-at-best experiences with movies like Beowulf or The Polar Express. The models were detailed, interesting to look at, and thematic. And the effects as a whole seemed both flashy and necessary, a combination that I haven't seen often in the last few years. (But... revolutionary? I don't know about that. There wasn't anything particularly new there; there was just years and years of refinement, the sense that the technology could be used by the filmmaker for the good of the movie. The question is not whether the effects have changed the world; it's whether they show a world where such effects can be used to advance a story, instead of replacing the story. I suppose that could be a revolution.) The story was better than I had been led to believe. Yes, the story was shallow; presumably the detail were available in the visuals or the back-story, but somehow even that didn't feel like the point. Yes, the main character's story arc resembled Dances With Wolves - but I rather enjoyed that movie, to be honest, and my personal opinion is that the overall structure more resembled Dune than anything else (and what more worthy story is there to copy, I ask you?). And yes, the other humans were beyond shallow, having a first-degree motivation at best (and sometimes not even that). Still, this wasn't garbage, which is what I had come in expecting. So I was content. The acting was, oddly, pretty good. Some parts of it were over-the-top, but mostly those came from the humans; the parts played by the CGI Na'vi were, for the most part, pretty darned good. The decision to have the eponymous Avatars look like their actors really did work for me, even it was a bit odd to see a Na'vi Jane Goodall (Sigourney Weaver). And the science and technology portrayed in the movie - well, yay! I got a little bit of computer interface design, which always perks me up; I got a lot of organic interface technology, which was fascinating and oddly plausible-sounding; I got mecha; I got a fairly interesting ecosystem, including a Protoss-esque alien race; and I got a few interesting anthropological ideas tossed in that took advantage of the above. As an added bonus, I even got a Stanford sweatshirt. And so, I came out satisfied. I'll be a bit disappointed if this wins any Oscars outside of technical categories, but that's okay. That's not to say that I came out content. I wish that the dangers of the planet Pandora had been shown to us, rather than just told. I wish that an explanation had been offered for what made "unobtanium" so important besides sheer economic value. I wish that there had been some nuance as to the corporation's motivations, rather than just "profit GOOD!". I wish that the final battle had offered some useful tactics and/or strategies, rather than just consisting of "let's put all of our forces in a general area and have them fight it out". I wish that the time frame had seemed less... arbitrary. And, most of all, I wish that somebody had looked at the movie as a whole, and realized that all of these points could have been provided with less than five minutes of additional footage, total. The mistake was made to cut the movie too much, and that irked me pretty seriously. So, all of that said (with as few spoilers as I could offer): it's flawed, but it's worth seeing, fun, and a whole lot better than it could have been. I do recommend seeing it, and I recommend seeing it in 3D on the best screen you can see it on. I don't recommend going in expecting the next Star Wars or Titanic; you're not going to get either, and you probably don't care. *** URL: http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies/avatar/ (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
tskirvin	8:36p	The "parts only" copy of Civilization and Advanced Civilization that I bought on eBay turned out to be a) complete and b) in remarkably reasonable shape. That was well worth $50. (Comment on this)