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The Dork Report for January 15, 2007
A belated announcement: Mean Teacher opts for a new blog persona in the new year: Ordinary World. Thrill and wonder at her first-class movie reviews and tales from the catbox. Nintendo stuff on my cat: WiiKitty (no longer online: www.wiikitty.com]). Twitterific, a new (free!) application from The IconFactory. Twitter allows one to never lose touch…
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The Dork Report for January 12, 2007
Fortune‘s piece on Apple’s secrecy surrounding the iPhone highlights two points I’ve always wondered about: 1. in a business world where Hewlett-Packard is the news for literally spying on its own employees for high-level boardroom leaks to the press, Apple’s security measures look decidedly quaint. And 2. as a web designer, I often think that…
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The Illusionist
The Illusionist perhaps suffers from being released in proximity to The Prestige, a far superior period piece also with magic as a storytelling conceit. However, The Illusionist has two strong assets to point out: The cinematography is truly beautiful, comprised of sepia images (seemlingly projected by oil lamp) and old-school iris out transitions. These are…
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The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant is a sorely underrated animated film, remarkable on so many fronts, not the least for being a rarity (among the company of The Incredibles — not coincidentally also directed by Brad Bird) as a story truly for the ages and for “all ages.” Also one of the few movies capable of choking…
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The Dork Report for January 10, 2007
How much do Lost fans not know? IGN’s Top 50 Lost Loose Ends (no longer online: tv.ign.com/articles/745/745595p1.html). (spotted on TV Squad) (no longer online: tvsquad.com/2006/11/27/ign-lists-the-top-50-lost-mysteries)
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Bong Joon-ho’s Salinui Chueok (Memories of Murder)
A police procedural based on a true serial killer case, a rare phenomenon for South Korea in the 1980s. Grizzled detectives chasing down a serial killer is well-trod territory in film, but director Bong Joon-ho approaches it with a genre-defying sense of humor. Also surprisingly effective is its pleasantly lackadaisical pacing that truly takes its…
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The Dork Report for January 6, 2007
Python Terry Jones steps out of drag and crunches the numbers on the Iraq war (spotted on Neil Gaiman’s Journal): This will bring the total spent on the White House’s current obsession with war to almost $500bn – enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone…
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The Dork Report for January 5, 2007
The condensed Kottke.org, 2006 edition. Holy frak! Battlestar Galactica hasn’t merely been granted a fourth season, there’s also to be a direct-to-dvd feature film. (spotted on BattlestarGalacticaSite.com) (no longer online: battlestargalacticasite.com/2007/01/battlestar_galactica_movie.php) After a period of relative quiet after being hounded by Apple’s lawyers (during which they often focused on scooping other companies’ unreleased projects like…
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Banlieue 13 (District B13)
To the editors of Time Magazine that picked District B13 as one of the 10 best films of the year [update: link no longer online], I can only ask, dude, Que la baise vous pensaient-elles? Yes, granted, it touches on some extremely sensitive and timely issues in a racially and culturally divided Paris, but those…
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The Dork Report for January 4, 2007
That sound you just heard was this Dork Reporter having a geekgasm. Damon Albarn & Terry Gilliam have teamed to create a Gorillaz feature film. (no longer online: pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/39801/Damon_Albarns_Resume_Is_Better_Than_Yours)
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The Dork Report for January 3, 2007
If ever a band were known for hating each other, it’s The Police. Despite everything, they’re planning a reunion (no longer online: harpmagazine.com/news/detail.cfm?article=10783) (spotted on Popwatch). I’m probably one of the last people in the world to see this, but it’s so awesome I must post it nonetheless: Lasse Gjertsen’s short film “Amateur”, on The…
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The Dork Report for January 2, 2007
33 new drawings by Dave McKean (no longer online: subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=gaiman&Category_Code=B&Product_Count=36) for the Mirrormask script book (spotted on Neil Gaiman’s Journal)