gabba gabba hey
Walking through the woods, listening to my dad tell me about Howard Keel's career was good for my soul. I loves the communing with nature, I do. Yep, I just loves to commune. I'm practically a communist. All in all a day of mixed influence that can only be had in the crazy world we live in. Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I've been away from work for a couple of days, and it's the only place quiet enough to blog from, so this is gonna be one of those "here's what's been going on with me in the last couple of days" posts that just rambles from start to finish.
Wednesday night, got home from work by six, made dinner (the new puff pastry frozen pizza in the insider's report - decadent) and headed out for poker. Made a stop off at Dave's Jumbo, and executed a DVD trade to beat the band, changing a new copy of Jersey Girl acquired in a previous trade and my old, stale, 1 disc 2 sided copy of Gone With The Wind for the spanking new, $50 4 disc flava of the same movie. As much as I love the double dipping, some of those original Warner's releases really were just dumped off of laser disc to get them in the market and so can stand some improvement. The best part was that in the course of Dave giving me a generous allowance for my trades plus a discount on my purchase I wound up getting the new disc and having the store owe me money (only $2, but still) Feels good when it's like getting something for free.
Then it was off to poker, the consistent high point of my week, win or lose. But in this case win, and better still we played over an hour of what Jason and Chandra call "TV poker", Texas Hold'em with a small and big blind. Thoroughly enjoyable, and a great group of guys to hang out with once a week.
Thursday, after some errands in the morning I decided to get myself in the mood to watch 53 one minute movies. So I did the opposite of watching a one minute movie by settling in for a 165 minute movie, Once Upon A Time In The West. (Awesome, by the way, and a great recommend by the digital bits, which is where I was put on to it as the classic DVD of the year.) Then it was off to the fest.
I've been in screenings where there were unavoidable technical problems before, but never where that meant that people I care about were personally affected. Let me just say how deeply sympathetic I am, and before anyone feels too bad about it they might stop to remember that problems aside, they actually got off their asses and made a film festival where none existed and they ought to be damn proud of that. Besides, when it comes time to write the 25 year retrospective of this thing the glitch can be part of chapter two. I hope all was well with the affected filmmakers, and although it can never be exactly the same I thought everyone did an awesome job of giving as proper a screening as was possible to the films marred by the glitch.
As the for fils themselves, I was surprised by how many were genuinely good, enjoyable minutes. I loved Daniel Cockburn's Chicken/Egg most of all, but thoroughly enjoyed Leap, L'eau, Hungus (best audience non reaction ever), Ratta Tooi (simply brilliant, the funniest time compression I've seen in a while) and especially Sex and Cecile, the only one I'd love to see expanded into a full length feature. Congratulations to Ryan Feldman for blowing my fragile little mind.
We only stayed at the after party a few minutes (I had to hike the next day) but all in all a thoroughly enjoyable night.
Friday I managed to get out of the house by a reasonably decent hour, arriving to pick up my dad only about 30 minutes later than I had planned. The rest of the day was great, and the hike itself was absolutely beauriffic, the kind of slightly overcast, crisp fall day I dream about in my perfect world, and I was exhilarated when we left. Then I spent 3 hours driving until I got home, exhausted at 6. I knocked back one more DVD, the slightly disappointing (because it was built up so much before) Force of Evil with John Garfield. Polonsky's words and the fraternal relationship both foreshadow On the Waterfront (as does Polonsky himself, the victim of the blacklist and charter member of the Hollywood Ten) but the overall effect is just a bit stagey even for the acting style of the time. I kept finding myself wishing the movie had been made five years later, when the method might have breathed some more intensity into the dialogue.
Then it was off to Dave's a Friday night ritual that lets me eat pizza, drink coke, and generally suck at xBox, which I am happy to do. I got a first hand look at Halo 2, a game I was even on the verge of enjoying. This says a lot for Halo 2, because I have never met a first person shooter I did not hate with an intensity normally reserved for the neo-nazis. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate first person shooters. They annoy me. There is nothing I hate more when playing video games than not being able to see my character on the screen. Except playing games where the thing that can kill me could be behind me where I can't see it. Oh, and I especially hate games where I die more than I live, a virtual feature in most of these "arena" fps things.
Yup, I fucking hate these things. Frankly, video games continue to suck more the better they look. The best games for me are Ms. Pac Man, Robotron, Q-Bert, The Original Mario Bros, Joust, and Donkey Kong jr. Nothing released in the last 20 years even comes close in terms of pure playabililty, something that was sacrificed long ago to the gods of high res and immersive environment. Also, video games are not more fun when they are hard, they are more fun when they're easy. If I wanted to fail repeatedly I would live my life, not escape from it.
Now it's Saturday, I've been at work writing this for more than an hour and have so far interacted with one person who wanted to know whether they could trade in their cable box here (they can't). The weekends are so slow, I've decided I'm blogging every single interaction I have today, just to show you what that's like for those of you making a living at jobs you respect.
I've been away from work for a couple of days, and it's the only place quiet enough to blog from, so this is gonna be one of those "here's what's been going on with me in the last couple of days" posts that just rambles from start to finish.
Wednesday night, got home from work by six, made dinner (the new puff pastry frozen pizza in the insider's report - decadent) and headed out for poker. Made a stop off at Dave's Jumbo, and executed a DVD trade to beat the band, changing a new copy of Jersey Girl acquired in a previous trade and my old, stale, 1 disc 2 sided copy of Gone With The Wind for the spanking new, $50 4 disc flava of the same movie. As much as I love the double dipping, some of those original Warner's releases really were just dumped off of laser disc to get them in the market and so can stand some improvement. The best part was that in the course of Dave giving me a generous allowance for my trades plus a discount on my purchase I wound up getting the new disc and having the store owe me money (only $2, but still) Feels good when it's like getting something for free.
Then it was off to poker, the consistent high point of my week, win or lose. But in this case win, and better still we played over an hour of what Jason and Chandra call "TV poker", Texas Hold'em with a small and big blind. Thoroughly enjoyable, and a great group of guys to hang out with once a week.
Thursday, after some errands in the morning I decided to get myself in the mood to watch 53 one minute movies. So I did the opposite of watching a one minute movie by settling in for a 165 minute movie, Once Upon A Time In The West. (Awesome, by the way, and a great recommend by the digital bits, which is where I was put on to it as the classic DVD of the year.) Then it was off to the fest.
I've been in screenings where there were unavoidable technical problems before, but never where that meant that people I care about were personally affected. Let me just say how deeply sympathetic I am, and before anyone feels too bad about it they might stop to remember that problems aside, they actually got off their asses and made a film festival where none existed and they ought to be damn proud of that. Besides, when it comes time to write the 25 year retrospective of this thing the glitch can be part of chapter two. I hope all was well with the affected filmmakers, and although it can never be exactly the same I thought everyone did an awesome job of giving as proper a screening as was possible to the films marred by the glitch.
As the for fils themselves, I was surprised by how many were genuinely good, enjoyable minutes. I loved Daniel Cockburn's Chicken/Egg most of all, but thoroughly enjoyed Leap, L'eau, Hungus (best audience non reaction ever), Ratta Tooi (simply brilliant, the funniest time compression I've seen in a while) and especially Sex and Cecile, the only one I'd love to see expanded into a full length feature. Congratulations to Ryan Feldman for blowing my fragile little mind.
We only stayed at the after party a few minutes (I had to hike the next day) but all in all a thoroughly enjoyable night.
Friday I managed to get out of the house by a reasonably decent hour, arriving to pick up my dad only about 30 minutes later than I had planned. The rest of the day was great, and the hike itself was absolutely beauriffic, the kind of slightly overcast, crisp fall day I dream about in my perfect world, and I was exhilarated when we left. Then I spent 3 hours driving until I got home, exhausted at 6. I knocked back one more DVD, the slightly disappointing (because it was built up so much before) Force of Evil with John Garfield. Polonsky's words and the fraternal relationship both foreshadow On the Waterfront (as does Polonsky himself, the victim of the blacklist and charter member of the Hollywood Ten) but the overall effect is just a bit stagey even for the acting style of the time. I kept finding myself wishing the movie had been made five years later, when the method might have breathed some more intensity into the dialogue.
Then it was off to Dave's a Friday night ritual that lets me eat pizza, drink coke, and generally suck at xBox, which I am happy to do. I got a first hand look at Halo 2, a game I was even on the verge of enjoying. This says a lot for Halo 2, because I have never met a first person shooter I did not hate with an intensity normally reserved for the neo-nazis. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate first person shooters. They annoy me. There is nothing I hate more when playing video games than not being able to see my character on the screen. Except playing games where the thing that can kill me could be behind me where I can't see it. Oh, and I especially hate games where I die more than I live, a virtual feature in most of these "arena" fps things.
Yup, I fucking hate these things. Frankly, video games continue to suck more the better they look. The best games for me are Ms. Pac Man, Robotron, Q-Bert, The Original Mario Bros, Joust, and Donkey Kong jr. Nothing released in the last 20 years even comes close in terms of pure playabililty, something that was sacrificed long ago to the gods of high res and immersive environment. Also, video games are not more fun when they are hard, they are more fun when they're easy. If I wanted to fail repeatedly I would live my life, not escape from it.
Now it's Saturday, I've been at work writing this for more than an hour and have so far interacted with one person who wanted to know whether they could trade in their cable box here (they can't). The weekends are so slow, I've decided I'm blogging every single interaction I have today, just to show you what that's like for those of you making a living at jobs you respect.
posted by Mattvideo at 10:12 AM
1 Comments:
Nice to see some props for Sex & Cecile, cuz you're right, it's freakin' brilliant. Given that we expected to receive a couple of hundred "first intercourse" movies (and only ended up getting a handful), Sex & Cecile's a personal fave because it so cleverly subverts your expectations for that kind of thing. Wanna hear about a girl losing her virginity? Fine! Here's a CRAZY OLD GEEZER! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.
-Tederick
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