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Aug 222007

Hey, they’re remaking The Matrix with the guy from Van Wilder! I mean, basically. It does look pretty cool, though.

I am back in Boston. I have a couple of weeks before classes start up again, so I think I might find a project to occupy my time until football season starts. I am thinking about upgrading essentially every component of my desktop pc–this 1.67ghz AMD processor and piddling 1gb of RAM just aren’t cutting the mustard anymore. I think it’s offending my awesome flatscreen monitor to be associated with such a pile of garbage. I am going to stop writing sentences that begin with “I”.*

^* Except this next one. I am contemplating making a permanent shift to placing all non-quoted punctuation outside of quotation marks from now on. It makes a lot more sense, but I don’t want people to think that I’m some kind of dorky anglophile. Well, you know what? Screw it. It’s just the internet. From now on, periods and commas will go outside of punctuation marks!

What I’ve been up to (hint: all I do is consume media)

Movies, Television, Writing 2 Responses »

May 282007

So I exhausted my netflix discs right before the holiday weekend, and I finished my book (“Kitchen Confidential” is sort of poorly written, but the content is so good that it hardly matters–it’s an interesting complement to Ruhlman‘s corpus), and I’m all caught up on rss/livejournal stuff. And there has been almost no news (not even SPORTS news) in the last few days. So yesterday I went to Best Buy to buy a season of some TV show on DVD. I was planning on going for a comedy but they had the first two seasons of Veronica Mars on sale ($20 each) and certain internet pals of mine have been extolling the virtues of this show for years, so I decided to take a plunge and go for it.

And guess what–it is really pretty good. It has its cheesy moments, and it is a little too excited to reference the obvious cultural influences (Nancy Drew, Raymond Chandler–and I assume Buffy will get referenced at some point), but for the most part the acting is good and the writing is deft, both in terms of scenes/dialogue and in terms of multiple episode plot arcs). I’ve watched the first 8 episodes and I like where it’s going so far. Also, I’m very impressed with the music, which is low-key (i.e. it’s not like the OC, where every episode was a launching pad for some indie band) but very good.

Naturally it was cancelled (I think–although I guess there’s some small chance that it will be uncancelled), but I’ve still got quite a few hours of it left to watch and enjoy.

And while we’re here, I might as well tell you: the new Pirates of the Caribbean was thoroughly mediocre. Depp was funny, as always, but between Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley there’s all the personality of a manilla envelope filled with tax forms. The plot was somewhere between “wacky” and “incoherent,” trending towards the latter. The special effects were pretty neat (it’s worth seeing on a big screen, probably, just for some of the sea battle effects). Overall, I give it 4 out of 7 sins. On the plus side, the ending indicated that if they decide to cash in with yet another sequel, Orlando and Keira will not be central characters.

Also, I’m pretty confident that Transformers will be the mindless spectacle of the season!

Don’t forget to download this rant on V-Cast!

Economics and Advertising, Movies 1 Response »

May 252007

The blooper reel on the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 DVD is SPONSORED BY VERIZON. The blooper reel. To be honest, I didn’t know what words to emphasize there–the fact that it’s the blooper reel that is sponsored, or that there are ads on the DVD at all. Disney is the worst. Do they not realize how absurd it is to put ads on these things? Their profit margin on DVDs is already indecent–why push it? It’s just a matter of time before a case of Strawberry-Kiwi Crystal Pepsi ™ washes up on the Island on Lost–mark my words.

And for that matter, why doesn’t anyone have DVDs that skip all those stupid copying warning messages? I would be absolutely shocked if they have any positive effect on piracy. Just like every other aspect of “copy protection,” it inconveniences honest consumers while doing absolutely nothing to slow down pirates.

Damn it all.

I could really go for a Strawberry-Kiwi Crystal Pepsi ™ right now.

New music

Movies, Music 3 Responses »

Apr 022007

I haven’t been listening to much new music lately (i.e., in the last 2 years), but I’m doing my best to turn that around. Mostly by listening to music that was a big deal six months ago, or new releases by artists who were up-and-coming five years ago.

I finally broke down and listened to Lily Allen. I am enjoying it a lot, even if it is highly subject to ridicule. It’s just fun and catchy and alien enough that it stands out amongst the indie rock/hip-hop/pop horde.

Next on my listening list: the new Ted Leo. I am PUMPED to hear this one.

Also, I could really go for a new Daft Punk album. I love those guys. Unfortunately they’re busy working on a movie which doesn’t even feature their music!

Brush your teeth!

Links, Movies No Responses »

Mar 222007

Excellent.

Gaming Netflix

Movies, Tech 2 Responses »

Mar 062007

I don’t rate movies based on what I think of them. I rate them based on whether I think I would like similar movies. I do this all the time, rating certain mediocre things as good and rating other mediocre things as awful. It basically comes down to this: I don’t trust their ratings algorithm to accurately identify what I like from accurate ratings. Why? Because when I rate an objectively cheesy and dumb movie as good because it has some sort of ideosyncratic value to me, Netflix uses that information to recommend a bunch of terrible movies. And, similarly, when I rate an objectively good movie as bad because it just didn’t quite work, Netflix removes dozens or hundreds of recommendations for things that, in all likelihood, I would enjoy.

Here’s an example. I have been watching Undeclared, Judd Apatow’s TV followup to the ill-fated but excellent Freaks and Geeks. My honest opinion of Undeclared is that it’s just okay. I honestly find listening to the commentary tracks more entertaining than watching the regular shows. But because I like most of Apatow’s other work (Anchorman, 40 Year Old Virgin, etc.), I gave it 4 stars on Netflix, so that it would recommend more Apatow-ish shows/movies to me.

I can’t imagine I’m the only person who tries to anticipate what a recommendation engine will do and aims to game the system to get optimum results.

Obviously, this is relevant for any service that is based on a recommendation engine. I use Amazon’s stars the same way, and there’s lots of other similar stuff going on in other areas.

Bonus content:
Definition of the day: Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines “monopsony” as “an oligopsony limited to one buyer.” Tremendously helpful, thank you MW.

Watch Now Revisited

Economics and Advertising, Movies, Tech No Responses »

Mar 012007

Reihan Salam reviews Netflix’s Watch Now service in Slate. Basically, he sees it as a great concept with some serious technological and content problems to work out. Of course, he also says:

I will note here that my Netflix habits are unconventional. During my early days as a Netflix subscriber, I spent anywhere from 1 to 3 hours a night watching DVDs on fast forward with the subtitles on. Because I read fairly quickly, I was able to follow twists and turns at high speed, thus increasing my cultural literacy in record time. This is impossible with Watch Now. To fast-forward, you grab the slider and drag it to the right, then wait. It’s more like teleporting than running at high speed.

Um, yeah. Most people rent movies to, you know, watch them–not just to get the Cliff’s Notes version. (This also goes a long way to explain why he doesn’t have a problem with the “sub-DVD” image quality–he isn’t watching movies for anything but the dialogue and plot, so who cares how it looks?)

This post written by Kevin Spacey!

Media, Movies, Politics/Law 2 Responses »

Feb 282007

An op-ed by Angelina Jolie. Yes! It’s just a matter of time before she gets her Nobel Peace Prize!

Anyway, whenever I read something like this, I wonder how much (if any) of the writing comes from the celebrity whose name is on the top. I know that people ghostwrite books all the time, but do they ghostwrite these bite-size polemics? Just based on the eloquence of the language and the artful structure of many of these pieces, I’m guessing yes, but it just seems wrong. Outsourcing a heartfelt plea for global justice smacks of inauthenticity–it’s one thing to hire a hack to help you make a quick buck off your hardcore fans (not a good thing, necessarily, but defensible at least) but it’s another thing to say to a staffer, “I’m against landmine use, could you put together an emotional essay about it for the Times?” Of course, this whole post is incredibly unfair; I have no idea whether Jolie actually wrote that thing, and there’s no evidence suggesting that she didn’t. But it doesn’t feel very likely to me.

At any rate, I actually think it’s great that Jolie is using her celebrity for a good cause (and “suggesting” to Brad that he might want to do the same). And she’s been doing it for a decade now, so it’s hard to chalk it up to a cynical stunt. Ultimately, even if she’s just lending her name to someone else’s writing, she’s contributing to a cause she cares about and trying to make the world a better place. That’s a huge improvement over this guy, even if he did write it himself.

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