I find I’m not watching The Daily Show nearly as much as I used to, I think because Bush has dropped out of the scene so much that I don’t need the emotional release Jon Stewart was providing for me.

I bet I wouldn’t be as fanatically devoted to The West Wing now if it were still on.

The Bush Departure: Taking the comedy, leaving the tragedy.

[Tags: jon_stewart daily_show bush ]

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:”Wall-e” is such an amazing movie that it left me unsatisfied.

It’s totally enjoyable. The graphic realism is phenomenal. The creativity of the details is staggering. The directorial vision is superb. The editing is one confusing scene short of perfect.

But “Wall-e” is yet another damn kids story. Oh, adults will completely enjoy it. Scene for scene, it carries you through. You care about the characters and each segment has plenty for everyone. But ultimately the story is predictable, simple, and safe for the kiddies.

At this point in Pixar’s amazing career, it’s proven it can do anything. It can imbue a trash compactor with personality and zip it across a world subject to any rules Pixar imagines. Pixar has the technical skill to show us anything it can imagine. It has the movie-making craft to tell a story with a thousand moving parts.

Now it’s time to stop playing it safe and to and make some art. Now it’s time to stop dazzling us with what it can do, and to do it.

IMO.

[Tags: pixar movies wall-e animation entertainment reviews ]

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You can now pre-order BradSucks’ new album. And why wouldn’t you? (You can answer that question by giving it a listen…) [Tags: bradsucks music ]

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Way back when, the magazine Movieline was one of my many guilty pleasures. (Aren’t we supposed to feel guilty about all pleasures? Oy.) It was an irreverent mag for people who felt a little bad about liking pop movies.

Apparently there weren’t enough of us, or we were the wrong demo for the advertisers, because Movieline became Hollywood Life, which was more interested in the lifestyles of the rich and boring than in teasing the people we had secret crushes on. Then Hollywood Life stopped publishing, and, frankly, I didn’t care.

Now it’s back and in my mailbox as HL, an ultra-glossy, high glamor, near-card-stock magazine that epitomizes just about everything I don’t want to see in a magazine or, frankly, on paper:

The topics are out of date. The first three one-page profiles are of the big name stars of Indiana Jones, Savage Grace, and Leatherheads, three movies that came out weeks ago, and one of which failed miserably months ago. Jeez!

It fetishizes the sorts of objects no one actually buys and few of us care about: Diamonds, obscenely expensive perfume, furniture too ugly to sit in, clothing only Jessica Alba’s prepubescent sister could fit in.

The font is tiny, and although it has serifs, it is far from angelic. The stems are so fine that it is almost illegible when it’s printed white against a dark background, which it frequently is. It’s even worse when it’s black against a blue and black background photo of a shag carpet, as it is on a two-page spread. Print is not intended to be op art.

The photography is dark ‘n’ trite, because you know that’s how us jet-setting couch potatoes like it. And when they run a full page photo of Malcolm McDowell printed on blue paper, not only is his dark jacket nothing but a black lump, they tell us who provided it for the shot. John Varvatos, call your agent. Or your lawyer.

The writing is awful. Here is the opening line of the piece on Harrison Ford: “Harrison is like … a fine wine.” And that’s proudly in all caps as the lead-in. (The ellipsis is in the original.) The big article on Cannes takes three long paragraphs of value-free blather (”sleepy fishing village,” “charmed circle,” “could hardly have imagined,” “celebrity hot spots,” “breathtaking vista,” “windswept pines”) before telling us what it’s about: Some glamorous Cannes spots you might to visit. Even then, it lacks the sort of information that might be useful to a traveler.

As you’ve guessed, HL doesn’t give a flying celluloid crap about anyone new and actually interesting. For example, a two-page spread tells us that the Halcyon Company — “one of Hollywood’s most cutting-edge and innovative entertainment groups” because, well, it hasn’t actually produced anything … be sure to tip your PR agent, boys — plans on “reinventing” sci-fi by picking up the Terminator franchise. Yes, there’s nothing more cutting-edge and innovative than picking up a franchise.

Oh, they have a “portfolio” of young Hollywood actors…whom they portray as 1940’s noir-ish stars (oddly claiming the photography is an homage to the Silent Era). In fact, overall the photos are retro as if a magazine proudly proclaiming that print isn’t dead can only prove it by looking like something you might have found in your upscale dentist’s office forty years ago.

Do you think when I mulch it, the varnish on the pages will cause my geraniums to wilt? [Tags: hl reviews magazines movieline hollywood dead_trees dead_geraniums ]

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I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but I’m hearing only good things — no surprise there — about Jonathan Zittrain’s appearance on The Colbert Report. (Out of respect for Mr. Colbert, during the show the second ‘t’ in Jonathan’s last name went silent.) [Tags: berkman jonathan_zittrain colbert_report ]

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I’ve seen it now. It’s one of Colbert’s best interviews, because he asks the right questions and because JZ is so sharp, eloquent, and charming.

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Massify is a collaborative site for filmies. For example, you might view this audition tape and decide that Jannette Bloom should be given a role. If enough of you do, she will. The competition ends at midnight on Monday. The fact that Jannette, who is a really talented director who also sings real nice, is a friend of my daughters really shouldnt influence you.

Go, Jannette

Tags: hollywood film peer_production collaboration jannette_bloom

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Our local public radio station, WBUR, just ran a piece about corporate execs who are in rock bands. (It includes a mention of my friend Jon Cahill, who by day is a graphic designer, and who designed the splendid cover for my non-splendid children’s novel, but who at night plays in The Limitations.)

It makes me wonder. My parents’ music sounded old-fashioned to me when I was a kid. I don’t think my generation’s music — The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel, to list some prototypes — sounds nearly as old fashioned to our kids. Sure, there was something sui generis about the Beatles, but Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman (more prototypes) also made remarkable and complex music, although it took me until my late forties to recognize that.

Why has my generation’s music stood up so well? Why doesn’t it sound as old-fashioned to our kids as the theme music for the Our Gang series?

[Tags: music generations ]

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Hypothesis: Entertainments in which the actors are visibly having a good time with one another, and are winking at the audience, don’t age well.

Evidence: Rat Pack movies. Burt Reynolds movies. Jimmy Fallon sketches.

Evidence to the contrary: ___________?

[Tags: entertainment movies ]

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From an article in the Boston Globe — by a reporter who saw the trick done in the flesh — here’s a video from the site of Bruce Kalver, magician:

[Tags: magic optical_illusions ]

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My wife and I saw Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park last night so you won’t have to.

I’m about to tell you what the movie is about, but I won’t go further than what you’ll read in the typical capsule review. So, if you don’t want to know that, please count this as a [SPOILER ALERT].

The movie is about a teen-ager who may or may not be involved in what may or may not be a fairly random-sounding murder. It’s told in a jumbled-up chronological order. It’s not a murder mystery, though. It’s focused tightly — and literally, since much of the rest of the frame is often blurred — on the boy’s day-to-day coping with the maybe-murder. And here’s the key to the movie’s ultimate failure: If you assembled the pieces chronologically, it’d be clear that it utterly does not address the moral, psychological, and spiritual consequences of the boy’s involvement in the movie’s central event. The disentangling is not of the boy’s feelings or culpability but of a timeline arbitrarily snaggled by the film-maker. He cuts up the narrative simply to keep something from the viewers. That’s a cheap way to manufacture revelation.

The result is a movie that is told from no one’s point of view. The boy remains a cipher. We don’t think he’s heartless or psychotic. He seems to be simply emotionally guarded the way many teens are. He is effectively portrayed as a subordinate member of his social group, under the wing of a dominant friend, and appealingly nervous about hanging with the hardcore guys at the local illegal skateboarding park. But we don’t get past his bangs and fetching face. We don’t know why he is heartless to his girlfriend. An important event with his girlfriend (no spoilers here!) is shot carefully so we don’t get any sense of how the boy felt about it. We don’t see any emotional change before and after the movie’s central event. We don’t see him wrestling with the consequences in any except the most pedestrian ways. You could edit out the central event and not affect the movie.

Maybe Van Sant is trying to show us a teen who is so alienated that not even an event as horrific as the one he shows us — an intense and graphic scene out of a horror movie — can get a response from him. If so, it’s got to be an indictment of an entire generation, or perhaps of the teen years themselves, for Van Sant seems to tag the protagonist as typical to a fault. Are we supposed to think that teenagers are that impervious to events outside their own narcissistic sphere? If so, then this movie is Van Sant saying “I just don’t get kids today.” But I don’t think that’s his point. I think he thinks he’s showing us the turmoil under the skin.

Except he forgets about the part where he shows us the turmoil under the skin.

* * *

By the way, Ted Fry of the Seattle Times is among those who disagree with me. Here’s his opening paragraph:

Gus Van Sant’s capper to a trilogy of experiments in elliptical narrative and lyrical structure is a masterful triumph of art, craft and empathy for the complicatedness of being a real teenager. With “Paranoid Park,” Van Sant has solidified his niche as a singular American film auteur whose vision melds formal skill and abstract invention with an intuitive sense of the poetry movies can exploit to convey their unique interpretation of life.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. [Tags: movies van_sant paranoid_park reviews ]

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Big deal. My own algorithm for solving the Rubik’s cube puzzle is faster and requires only a hammer and a quarter pound of superglue.

(But seriously: Wow.) [Tags: legos rubik ]

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West Wing helped keep the Bush years from shriveling my hope to the size of a tick carcass by reminding me that government could — at least in some alternative universe — be smart, fact-based, principled, and for the people. So, of course Obama’s rise has reminded me and millions of other West Wing fans of the Matt Santos (= Jimmy Smits) campaign in the last season.

Now it turns out (according to the Guardian) that the West Wing writers based Santos on Obama, at least to some degree.

Go Santos Obama!

[Tags: obama matt_santos west_wing politics entertainment ]

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Remember Grokster? It was an attempt to be Napster without having a centralized database of songs and users. It was shut down by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

Go to Grokster.com now and you are not only told that Grokster is no more but that you are at risk simply by having gone to the site.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 123.123.123.123 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don’t think you can’t get caught. You are not anonymous.

(The IP address they give is the right one.)

The site then suggests:

In the meantime, please visit www.respectcopyrights.com and www.musicunited.org to learn more about copyright.

RespectCopyrights.com really should be called FearCopyrights.com. It’s an MPAA scare site that doesn’t let you know you still have rights when using copyrighted material. (It captures the back arrow key in your browser, which is not only annoying, controlling and disrespectful, it’s a way of driving up the hit count.) MusicUnited is an music industry pro-DRM propaganda site. Hey, it’s their right. It’s a free country. Sort of.

[Tags: copyright copyleft grokster riaa mpaa broadcast_flag drm ]

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Finishing Crysis has confirmed my disappointment that PC Gamer chose it as Game of the Year, especially with Bioshock as a contender. Jeesh, what’s a game got to do to win Game of the Year around here?

Crysis was good. The graphics are the most photo realistic ever, even though I had to stop ‘em down and revert to DX9 to run the game — and this is with a high end machine and graphics card. But, the plot is totally familiar, the enemies were derivative — Matrix-y vermin, HalfLifey striders — , and the game play was fun until it ran out of steam in the final acts where increasing the size of a boss replaces having a new idea. Overall, Crysis is good but not great, much less best of the year.

Bioshock, on the other hand, was far more creative. It was an improbable yet convincing world, beautifully rendered, with fantastic sound and terrific comic acting. It was involving not just as a narrative but as a place. Yes, there were some nits ,the DRM was especially insulting, and the gameplay was occasionally off — solving the pipe flow puzzle gets tiresome after the first couple of dozen times — and the very last scene sort of sucked, but Bioshock violated rules in the name of creativity and actually had some ideas in it.

In the fullness of time — now — the crowning of Crysis over Bioshock will be seen as the folly it is.

PS: The Orange Box was also better than Crysis, and is officially your PC Gaming Value of the Year. [Tags: crysis bioshock orange_box pc_games games ]

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The Berkman Center has an amazing string of events set up this spring, in part as a celebration of the Center’s tenth year. You can see the list here.

And don’t forget Monday evening’s performance by and conversation with Brad Sucks, a thoroughly webby musician with a pure heart and low self-esteem. It’ll be in Griswold Hall Room 110 at Harvard Law. It’s free and open to all; rsvp to rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

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This Mon, Feb 11, at 7pm, there will be a Very Special Web of Ideas: A concert by and conversation with Brad Sucks (AKA Brad Turcotte), the webbiest musician on the Web. We’ll listen to some songs performed live and talk with Brad about what the battle over “business models” means to someone making music.

Note that we’re not holding this one in the Berkman Center. It’ll be in Griswold Hall Room 110 at Harvard Law. It’s free and open to all; rsvp to rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

[Tags: berkman brad_sucks brad_turcotte music RIAA ]

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We saw Michael Frayn’s Tony-award-winning play, “Copenhagen,” last night. Disappointing.

It’s about the mysterious meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941 in Newark, NJ. (Nope. In Copenhagen. Just kidding. Haha.) The play goes over various “drafts” of the meeting, trying out possible explanations of why Heisenberg, a loyal German (or is he??), would seek out his former mentor, a half-Jewish Dane living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Heisenberg was the head of the German effort to create an atomic bomb (or was he??), and Bohr snuck out of Denmark and joined the Manhattan project (or did he?? … well, yes, he did). The play has some crackling good scenes as the two men fill us in on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi effort. (Bohr’s wife is the third person in the play, but she’s just annoying, given to saying to the audience things like ‘And then: Silence.’ Embarrassing.) But it’s over-written and, worse, depends upon a stupid pun: Y’see, Heisenberg is famous for his Uncertainty Principle, and all of human understanding is also uncertain, so since both use the word “uncertainty,” they’ve got to be the same thing, right? So, let’s make a play about it.

Yech.

Say, I have an idea! Let’s write a play called “Croton” about Pythagoras. It will draw a dramatic parallel (so to speak) between Pythagoras’ theorom about right angles and his own uprightness. “It is all a matter of finding and living the right angle,” he will say. “After all, aren’t we all a hypoteneuse?”

Or we could do one called “Strasbourg” about Louis Pasteur’s family life, because just as is his work confirmed germ theory — small bodies pass from one to another, changing everyone they touch — his wife and he pass their children back and forth, each time changed by that gentle touch. Also, he had an infectious laugh and a contagious enthusiasm.

Or how’d you like to invest in this sure-fire winner: “Naugatuck.” It tells the story of Charles Goodyear, who discovered vulcanized rubber quite accidentally — or was it on purpose? — and who lived a “vulcanized” life because, well, um, you see, things happen sorta accidentally - or on purpose? - especially when we bump into fiery emotions that transform us into more rigid and yet more durable beings. Yeah, that’s it!

And then: Silence.

[Tags: copenhagen theatre plays entertainment arts heisenberg parody frayn ]

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Some time in the early evening of February 11, I’ll be conducting a very special (as they say in the entertainment biz) Web of Ideas session about how the new business models for music are affecting music…by interviewing BradSucks, who will also favor us with some songs.

I’m a big fan of Brad’s, so I’m quite excited about this.

[Tags: bradsucks music ]

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J. Kristin Ament has been writing sarcastic recaps of episodes of the AMC show “Mad Men.” They’re hilarious. For example, here is one from the week before last (the one with the erotic washing machine).

I’ve been enjoying Mad Men, but find myself holding back from utter and complete enthusiasm because, I think, there’s something too mannered about it. It’s still in thrall of its premise. But there’s so much to like: The acting is terrific, the writing is pointed and funny, the sociology is exhilirating if a bit overdone, the art direction is fantastic, I care about the characters. It’s on its way to becoming an unreservedly great show in its second season, especially if the writers can stay away from the big, melodramatic arcs; the writing is better in the details than in the big strokes. IMO, of course. [Tags: mad_men j_kristin_ament humor tv]

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BradSucks has posted the main track of his new song “Out of It,” and is asking you to provide the backup vocals. [Tags: bradsucks collaboration ]

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I’m only a little bit into Bioshock, but so far it’s the most immersive game ever. It’s game play may turn out not to hold up as well, but as of now, it’s actually got HalfLife2 beaten. It plops you rather literally into a utopia-gone-sour created by a suave visionary named Andrew Ryan (who, I’ll bet, is as to Ayn Rand as Howard Roark is to hard work). The graphics, the sound, the voice acting, the settings — post-WWII sf — all work to make the city feel like there’s an entire world behind it.

I’m still just warming up. It may get tiresome or disappoint in any of the ways that games, narratives, and computer programs can disappoint. But so far, it’s swell. [Tags: bioshock games halflife]

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Today’s Dilbert is destined to be shown during the introductory remarks at every Web 2.0 conference for the next two years. And it uses the phrase “tag-based folksonomy,” albeit it as a phrase so technical it’s suppose to scare us. It

And today’s Doonesbury is destined to be shown during the introductory remarks at every “Future of Media” conference for the next two years. Along the way, the strip mentions DonorsChoose.org, a cool site that will get a boost from the plug, thus inadvertently showing the power of the mass media that the strip questions. (I blogged about DonorsChoose here.) [Tags: dilbert doonesbury donorschoose web2.0 media everything_is_miscellaneous]

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Google Earth, the coolest app ever — go to “Crisis in Darfur” if you have any doubts — now includes a hidden flight simulator, as discovered by Marco Gallotta, a South African student. Once you’ve started Google Earth, type Control+Alt+A in Widndws or Command+Option+A in OS X. You’ll then be given a choice of two planes to fly. The controls are documented here. [Tags: google google_earth games darfur ]

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Edward Rothstein of the NY Times reviews Shakespeare & Co.’s Antony & Cleopatra alongside their production of Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing. I saw both and think Edward works too hard to find a Big Picture analogy between the two. Yes, the Stoppard play cleverly relies on a character mistaking a performance for life, but the play and the characters were too slight to make anything metaphysical of it. And while A&C is obviously about the political and the personal — and, as my sister-in-law Meredith Sue Willis points out, also about the personal struggling to become mythic — I just didn’t believe it. Or much enjoy it.

I blogged about A&C here. Meredith Sue Willis just blogged about Rough Crossing; look for the August 25 post. She’s a poet, novelist, teacher, and a hell of a writer.

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I hate to say it, but I also wasn’t bowled over by the new Kenneth Branagh “As You Like It” being shown on HBO.

I’m a big fan of Branagh’s Shakespearean movies, yes, including “Love’s Labour Lost.” But this one was weird, and not because it was set in Japan for no apparent reason. (Oh, there were some nicely framed indoor shots, but I didn’t think it was worth the distraction.) The first hour of this two-hour abbreviated version seems to be setting us up for tragedy. Touchstone — enjoyably played with exuberance by Alfred Molina — is the sole source of levity in this half, making him feel like the clown in a tragedy. Perhaps Branagh was thinking that he needed to deepen the drama so that the romance would be deepened, and the acting is indeed so good that I was touched by the love of the lovers. But the plot contrivance of this play is so outrageous that it can’t really handle much drama. (A boy plays a girl playing a boy playing a girl, although now of course we have a girl playing a girl playing a boy playing a girl.) And Branagh cut much of Rosalind’s part, so we don’t get a sense of her — an odd choice.

Still, there’s lots to like about the production, starting with the acting. Branagh finds a lot in the relationship of Orlando and his brother, Oliver. The play looks great, even though a forest in the UK plays a forest in Japan playing a forest in the UK, so to speak. And we want Branagh to do more Shakespeare plays. So, go out and buy the action figures and eat the Wheaties with Rosalind on the box. [Tags: shakespeare as_you_like_it antony_and_cleopatra reviews kenneth_branagh tom_stoppard rough_crossing hbo meredith_sue_willis ]

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We were expecting so much. My family loves Shakespeare & Co., the Berkshires-based institution. The Company’s founder and spirit, Tina Packer, stars in this production — taking a leading role for the first time in many years. And the play has gotten raves, including in the Boston Globe.

But I thought the performance lacked many of the Company’s signature delights. Although the language was as clear as ever, and many of the performances were strong, the director Michael Hammond staged it inertly. It was as close to watching actors stand and declaim as I’ve ever seen the Company come. Some of this he clearly did on purpose, as when the factional leaders meet and form an alliance. But the rest of the play also was staged as a rectangle within which people talk. Usually, Shakespeare & Co. fills the place with movement that enlivens and enlightens. To this performance’s detriment, two nights earlier we’d seen the Company’s version of Midsummer Night’s Dream for the second time, which is staged beautifully and hilariously. But A & C didn’t just pale by comparison. It was, put most positively, staid. And that’s really being too generous. For example, Hammond chose to insert battle scenes that were slow motion, stylized ballets that conveyed nothing; they might just as well replaced them with a placard that read: “Insert battle here.”

And, although I hate to say it because she has been such a force for making Shakespeare matter despite the barriers of time and language, I thought Tina Packer was not very good in the part. I never believed her. Her final scene — granted, by that time I was already resenting being held in the theater — struck me as a parody of a stagy Shakespeare reading…Cleopatra as performed by Mrs. Rittenhouse. Where she should have shown us Cleopatra’s allure, she was coquettish. Where she should have broken our hearts, she resorted to tricks — the brave smile, the looking away. She was at her best, I thought, in her scenes with her maidens; the Company usually excels at women’s roles.

I liked some of the other performances. Nigel Gore, so good as Bottom, was believable as Antony. I was especially surprised by Craig Baldwin, one of the lovers in Midsummer’s Night Dream, who brought nuance and sympathy to Octavius Caesar’s cold determination. Walton Wilson as Enobarbus, well-delivered the beautiful explanation of Cleopatra. He evoked her better than Packer did.

I’ve never seen this play before. I’m glad to have seen it, but, alas, not because of the strength of this performance of it. I hate to say it. Go instead to see A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Twice. [Tags: shakespeare reviews tina_packer antony_and_cleopatra berkshires ]

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For an alternative view of the same performance, see Meredith Sue Willis‘ blog, where she’ll soon be posting about it. She’s my sister-in-law and a novelist whose opinion is far better founded than mine.

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Gwabs has a cool little trailer up showing how much fun it’ll be to go hand-to-hand where the destructible environment is your desktop. (Windows only. [Tags: games gwabs ]

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Our daughter Leah brought back from Prague this very cool, hand-made, three-person chess board.

I haven’t tried playing it because, as a result of an ancestral genetic mutation, I am unable to visualize spatially-arrayed objects even when I am looking at them, much less three moves ahead. But it might be fun for you Normals.

As far as I can tell, it doesn’t violate either of these two patents: 1 2. Of course, I also can’t figure out what the hell these patents are describing. [Tags: chess prague games]

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In 2008, Cliff Richard’s first hit, “Move It!,” will come out of copyright because the British government just refused to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings from 50 years to 70 years after the artist dies.

Richard’s is up in arms about this. Instead, lets help Cliff Richard celebrate the ultimate success of his work: Fifty years later, it’s touched enough people that it matters that it’s moving into the public domain.

Congratulations, Cliff! You should be very proud that you have the opportunity to see something you made become something all culture now can rely on! [Tags: copyright copyleft cliff_richard ]

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Sicko is brilliant. And hilarious.

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Last night we saw Shakespeare & Co.’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lenox. Over the course of the twenty years we’ve been going, this was one of the best productions of this play, and one of the flat out most enjoyable productions of them all. It’s hilarious.

Jeez, that guy could write! [Tags: shakespeare ]

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As I write this, it is my mother in law’s 80th birthday. I love her, I like her, and I enjoy being with her.

As far as arbitrary markers go, an 80th is a big deal. We’ve marked it by gathering the entire family, as well as the four couples known collectively as The Wine Group who have known her since high school. They are only slightly reduced by age: One couple is now a single, they are all shorter than they used to be, one of the men runs down conversational paths a little too long. Still and all, when I was a lad, eighty year olds were by and large dead, and for the survivors we had words like “dotage” and, if they were lucky, “spry.” I don’t know if being 56 enables me to see past the wrinkles and pates o