Thinking Out Loud

  • The Dork Report for January 18, 2007

    The Dork Report for January 18, 2007

    Wikipedia’s Unusual Articles entry does exactly what it says on the tin, and it’s a veritable goldmine. Just to name a few gems at random: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, famous body parts, list of self-referential songs (no longer online: en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/List_of_self-referential_songs).

    Bouncing back from last year’s biking injury, Michael Brook lines up his 2007 tour dates.

    Hey, there are dorks in Congress [no longer online: youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4WA58rMu0], too! (guest submission from Andrea)

    Frack up your desktop with some Battlestar Galactica icons from The Iconfactory.

  • The Dork Report for January 15, 2007

    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 with all your virtual friends, Web 2.0-style, and strike a blow to privacy and productivity everywhere.

  • The Dork Report for January 12, 2007

    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 of the privileged few assumed to have early access to items like this goes beyond the highly-paid CEOs, managers, and industrial design teams; what about the poor schmoes who have to crank out the web sites, product packaging, and manuals without even being able to tell their family and loved ones what they did at work all day, honey?

    The New York Times examines 24‘s politics, and strongly reminds me why I refuse to watch the show to which I was once addicted.

    Rolling Stone posts video of Joseph Arthur and The Lonely Astronauts live.

  • The Illusionist

    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 no doubt digital approximations of the real thing, but lovely (and less distracting than it sounds) nonetheless. In a brief moment of meta-commentary, the solution to a magic trick is deconstructed on screen as involving an early movie camera.
    • As if Paul Giamatti still needed to prove anything after his recent run of top-shelf performances, he is extraordinary here; not merely content to affect a realistic Viennese accent, he impressively transforms the entire timbre of his voice.
  • The Iron Giant

    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 up such a hardened emotional rock as myself.

  • The Dork Report for January 10, 2007

    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)

  • Bong Joon-ho’s Salinui Chueok (Memories of Murder)

    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 time to fully investigate character and incident.

  • The Dork Report for January 6, 2007

    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 for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn’t use lavatory paper?

    Of course, there’s another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700.

    Terry Jones

    A dream interview, no matter which way around: Read Yourself Raw runs the complete transcription of Alan Moore vs Brian Eno (no longer online: readyourselfraw.com/profiles/moore/moore_vs_eno/chainreaction_eno.htm) originally on BBC Radio 4.

  • The Dork Report for January 5, 2007

    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 Adobe CS3), ThinkSecret returns to form with a real piece of Apple news: actual screenshot from a forthcoming spreadsheet app [no longer online: thinksecret.com/news/0701iwork.html] likely to be a part of iWork ’07 almost sure to be announced at MacWorld next week.

  • Banlieue 13 (District B13)

    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 moments are bolted-on and heavy-handed, serving as mere filler between admittedly awesome parkour sequences. I had more fun at The Transporter.