Quick things
Why is Westpac bank turning into my mother? Do they really expect to get more customers like this?
Great quote:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
– Robert J. Hanlon
Star Trek: all creeds and colours of humanity, in a spirit of co-operation and harmony, working together at hating the Romulans.
This trailer for the movie Knowing… doesn’t really make me want to see it, but if the train carriages look familiar to Melburnians, that would be because it was filmed here, and they used old Melbourne Hitachi carriages for filming, though apparently the subway scene is set in New York City.
The General
A few weeks ago we watched Buster Keaton’s The General the other day. It’s public domain, a free download from the Internet Archive.
Very funny stuff, and some quite remarkable stunts considering they had so few safety precautions compared to nowadays.
I had been pondering if it was rude to talk during a silent movie.
The conclusion was: yes. It may not stop you hearing the dialogue, but it does interrupt your concentration.
Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr is also on my list.
Brief things
Computer: I like it when computers reach the point at which a good upgrade is cheap, quick and cheerful. In this case on my two-year-old box, tripling the RAM cost me $45, tripling the hard disk space cost $130. And as the new disk is faster than the old one, I’ll take the opportunity to re-install everything onto it, and clear out its sinuses in the process. … Would have helped if I’d bought the correct hard disk cable, of course.
Cluster headaches: They came back for autumn, but the medication has pretty much got them under control.
Solar hot water: It’s been a year since I got solar hot water installed. From a user point of view, there’s absolutely no difference. By the time it reaches you at the tap, it’s just hot water. I’d love to tell you it made a clear and noticeable difference to the gas bills, but looking through them, I’m not seeing it, in part because water, heating, and cooking is all tied up in there, and also apparently (at least according to some BOM figures I cast my untrained eye over), 2008 was slightly colder than 2007.
The toe: It’s healing. Most of the swelling has gone, but it’s still a little uncomfortable to walk in shoes.
Star Trek: Booked for Sunday in Gold Class. Looking forward to this.
No country for old captains
A few quick reviews.
No Country for Old Men — great stuff from the Coens. Gripping. Quite violent though; bits of it almost gave me nightmares. Is it trying to make a point at the end? Ummm… probably.
Burn After Reading — more Coen brothers. Some very funny characters, and genuine surprises along the way. Amusingly noticed a scene where George Clooney was running in the exact spot Josh Lyman from The West Wing had a running scene. Quite a few laugh-out-loud moments.
Hyperdrive — Some good gags, such as resetting the entire ship to default settings (rendering the phasers inoperable until you’ve accepted the End User Licence Agreement), but just doesn’t quite fall into the unmissable brilliant comedic masterpiece that the reviews on the cover imply.
Star Trek Generations — Kirk meets Picard… a kind of Star Trek Time Crash. I saw this in the cinema in 1995, and watched it again a few weeks ago on DVD with the kids. Good stuff, though not as impressive as on the big screen. Data’s exclamation (courtesy of his new emotion chip) as the Enterprise heads crashing towards the planet is particularly funny; I remember many in the cinema laughing out loud over that.
(Mind you, according to the Star Trek Curse theory, Generations was a dud. Hmm, I’ve never seen the next one, First Contact, but it sounds like a cracker.)
The Hollowmen — Just brilliant, and as an outsider, I suspect frighteningly accurate.
Dad’s Army — I loved this show as a kid, so grabbed it recently from the local public library. But it’s aged terribly, and not just because the premise is from almost 70 years ago. It raised a few laughs, but just doesn’t seem as funny as it was thirty years ago. I know it’s considered a classic, but I won’t be seeking out more to watch any time soon.
Nine Queens
Ever see the film Nine Queens? It was very enjoyable Argentine movie about a couple of conmen. I’m not sure where my copy is at the moment, but anyway…
(SPOILER FOLLOWS)
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Civil rights themes
Judging from the reviews, Salute looks like a good film. I was pondering if it might be educational to my kids, when I noticed the rating.
PG. For “Civil rights themes”. Hmm. Can’t say I’ve spotted that particular classification before.
It almost sounds like more of a recommendation than a warning.
Friday fotos
Another top class bit of parking. Okay, so it doesn’t appear to actually say “No parking”, but it’s not hard to imagine what the intent was.
I haven’t seen the Get Smart movie yet, but I’m quite amused by these telephone box adverts for it.
In Rippon Street, they’re apparently very proud of that beautification award that they almost won, twenty years ago.
Books and TV and movies and stuff
I used to give either thumbs up or thumbs down. I’m switching to thumbs up, thumbs down, or neither.
Microserfs — This is the kind of book I should just lap up, isn’t it? A geek novel? But I didn’t. It dragged.
J-Pod — More enjoyable than Microserfs. Douglas Coupland’s self-referential bits were a bit hard to take, but overall I enjoyed it a lot more.
Torchwood series 2 — Less gratuitious L/S/V, it’s calmed down a bit. The insertion of Martha and more Who references (especially in the penultimate episode) made it all more enjoyable to watch, though I didn’t think there was a stand-out episode this year, not in the same way I enjoyed Random Shoes. The finale was a bit of a let-down, but came up with some surprises. I’m not a hard-core Buffy fan, and don’t know what those that are would have made of Captain Spike. The BBC actually put out a PG-rated version, but I think even that is pretty dark for kids to see. I’d watch it again one day — it wasn’t brilliant, but it had its moments.
Fistful of Quarters: The King of Kong — Great stuff. Not so much about classic video games as about the personalities involved in the world of classic video games — so non-gamers will enjoy this. The people involved are geeks, and know they’re geeks. The trust from the score referees in the messianic Billy Mitchell, and their mistrust to his challenger is particularly interesting. Not surprised Mitchell wasn’t happy with the way the film portrayed him. Definitely thumbs up. (Maybe I should start giving the double-thumbs up where appropriate?)
Next I need to see Chasing Ghosts.
