Remi's Bloglet - Friday 22 April 2005

I've posted some comic reviews I've done up on too-fat.com. I didn't get to everything this week, hopefully I'll do better next week. So if you're interested in getting into comics, or just want to know what I'm reading, check it out. I'll probably update on Fridays from now on. Feedback would be good, too. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but if it just comes off as incoherent, well, I'd like to know. Graphics and stuff coming later. _
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05:02:58 AM, Friday 22 April 2005

A gorgeous trailer for Howls Moving Castle, the new movie from Hayao Miyazaki. _
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01:37:03 PM, Thursday 21 April 2005

I really, really enjoyed this past episode of Dr. Who. Sure, the humor is sometimes a bit off, and the effects are pretty cheesy, but the storytelling's there, there are some damn good twists, and I'm absolutely looking forward to what happens in the next part of 'Aliens of London'. _
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04:48:41 PM, Tuesday 19 April 2005

I won a contest by naming a Mantis! _
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01:13:31 AM, Saturday 16 April 2005

Remember Return to Sender? Well, Vera Brosgol has, with another animators help, made an absolutely great cartoon short. Go, download this bit torrented cartoon now! _
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04:49:53 PM, Friday 15 April 2005

Okay, this Nutrigrain ad is totally bizarre. I've been seeing some good ads recently, but they absolutely don't make me want to buy the product. Yet they're entertaining. So I share them. So I guess they work. _
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03:13:06 PM, Friday 15 April 2005

Liz, any comments on this Environmental Heresies article by Stewart Brand (founder of Whole Earth Catalogue)?
[via bohannon] _
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08:12:01 PM, Thursday 14 April 2005

I love genre-mash movies. Six String Samurai, Donnie Darko, Wizards, Dog Soldiers, it opens up the canvas so much to be able to pick and choose from the tropes of the various genre fictions and hold them up, compare them, bring out interesting effects by prying them out of their comfortable settings. The payoffs can be huge and rewarding (Darko), very amusing but light (Samurai), or just strengthen a shared mood or plotting style common to both genres being mashed (Dog Soldiers). Sometimes it's an incoherent mess that's still lovable despite its many flaws (Wizards). The best mashes are by writers who carefully consider consider the strengths of the genres they're painting with, and shape the movie to best suit those strengths, even if, like in Donnie Darko, they eventually lose control of the narrative flow as everything crashes together.

Which brings me to two movies. One, The American Astronaut is an oldschoolscifi/western/musical which has some great, funny ideas, but collapses due to poor editing and a perfunctory story that drags out too long to no resolution. The music is actually quite good, although the singing and lyrics fall prey to a certain sameness, again a lack of editing and cohesion (need I say it was written/directed/starred-in by the same person?). However, they managed to get the best live-in-a-club sound I've ever heard on the track 'Love Smiles'. It's really raw, gritty, warts-and-all, and is what I want my guitar to sound like. Check it out here, and also download 'The Girl With a Vagina Made of Glass', which suffers from the word-puke lyrics of all the vocals, but makes up for it with weirdly romantic lyrics and some interesting change-ups in the tune. So give the movie a skip, but maybe pick up the soundtrack, which has a handful of very cool songs (the instrumental Ceres Walk, Hey Boy, and the too-short chant the Jupiter Miners do whose title escapes me).

The other movie, Save the Green Planet, I haven't seen, but want to very badly. If it works, I'm expecting a movie that matches the madcap heights of Six String Samurai tempered a little with the melancholy of Donnie Darko. Watch the trailer, and gear up for something crazed. _
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07:51:11 PM, Thursday 14 April 2005

Taxes. Woo. _
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03:24:05 PM, Tuesday 12 April 2005

This Copy,Right post of Nirvana Covers is mind-blowing. The range of stuff goes from crappy downbeat semimetal to a jazz trio breakdown of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Check it out. _
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02:39:50 PM, Tuesday 12 April 2005

A beautiful copyright defying cartoon, Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown _
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03:02:37 AM, Saturday 9 April 2005

Okay, I've recommended this track to a couple people, but everyone needs to go over to Pimps of Gore and download the Andrew Bird track "Skin is, My". All of the Bird stuff is good, but Skin is freakin' fantastic. It has a virtuoso quality and pop sensibility that's unbeatable. _
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01:11:54 PM, Thursday 7 April 2005

"I'm sorry officer, black people never come into my shop, I felt threatened!"
"Well, I guess killing this woman and her three children with that shotgun is okay then, Mr. Smith!"
"I had to finish off the last one with a machete."
"Well, now, the law only covers defending yourself with a firearm, we're going to have to take you in for some perfunctory questioning."
"What are you going to do with the bodies? I don't want them mouldering over night."
"Don't you worry, we'll put them in the trash and incenerate them. Criminals don't deserve funerals! Now, if you'd get in the squad car."
"Yes, of course, officer, of course."

Just when you thought Florida couldn't get any more insane _
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02:29:44 AM, Thursday 7 April 2005

I figure I might as well map it all out, eh? Whispering Pines Elementary School. That big brown-green empty place was a forest before Hurricane Andrew. Centennial Middle School If you zoom out to the third granularity, you can see the bottom of a manmade lake at the top of the screen. It's the same manmade lake at the bottom of the Whispering Pines screen. Then MAST Academy, my high school. And, finally, my college apartment, two blocks northeast of St. John's. _
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07:15:42 PM, Wednesday 6 April 2005

Playing with the freaky new Satellite Pictures feature on Google Maps, I looked up my High School. That's right, I went to school on an island, across the street from a beach (the swimming pool wasn't finished until my junior year, tho)._
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04:02:14 AM, Tuesday 5 April 2005

An awesome hip-hop as Dance Dance Revolution video. Two pasty white guys rappin' in an arcade. Sweet. _
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07:47:33 PM, Monday 4 April 2005

A great article on why this one blogger hates The Family Guy. I disliked it, but after some thought, sure, it borders on hate. At the very least, Family Guy is indefensible as even mediocre television. _
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09:51:55 PM, Sunday 3 April 2005

So, other than the guy shouting "TOO HOT!" during Jessica Alba's dance sequence, Sin City was a lot of fun. Marv's sequences are definitely the best (if you can laugh at a pill-popping, foul mouthed hero who murders his way across a city to find a whore's killer, it's easier than it sounds on paper), but big props to Alexis Bledsel, who brings Gilmore Girls cadence to Dashiell Hammett dialogue. A very cool movie, but not for the faint hearted. _
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10:03:35 PM, Friday 1 April 2005

The Decemberists 16 Military Wives video is wonderful. It's not particularly technically proficient, but it's my favorite sort of music video, the kind that tells a story that highlights an aspect of the song without just using the narrative the song lays out. Funny faces, black eyes, lunch room sanctions, subtitles, and school uniforms, this video has it all. Plus, the band's released the video via bittorrent, so we broadbanded folks can get a nice, big mp4 version.

The Decemberists new album, Picaresque, goes on sale today, and it is excellent. I'm going to go listen to it now. And probably watch the video again. _
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05:29:38 PM, Tuesday 22 March 2005

I was bored, so I looked at the 'final rock montage designed to blow your synapses' at the end of the new web-only HHG trailer, and ran across this. It's only up for two frames, but I don't think anyone wants to miss cute doll versions of all the Heart of Gold characters. _
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02:05:10 PM, Wednesday 9 March 2005

Cave Monster is beautiful, funny, and strange. A cave monster sees a shrink, patch-wearing cats, men with accordions! This strip has it all.

[via phil in the blanks, who is doing great work for the Daily Grind] _
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01:35:25 PM, Wednesday 9 March 2005

Go watch the web-exclusive trailer for the new HItchhiker's Guide movie here. They get it. _
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12:46:42 PM, Tuesday 8 March 2005

Okay, so I've been an ardent anti-Dr. Who person for a long, long time. However, I just watched the first episode of the new Dr. Who series, and was quite surprised that I really enjoyed it. A good pulpy plot, a funny, engaging Doctor, and a generally interesting female lead (companion, right?). I'll watch it again, should be loads of fun.

(and, in case you're wondering where I got it, btefnet) _
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03:05:50 AM, Tuesday 8 March 2005

Alphabetical lists are enough to make someone want to change their name. _
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01:45:02 PM, Tuesday 1 March 2005

Blah _
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03:34:58 AM, Monday 28 February 2005

Just updating the sidebar. _
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03:09:37 AM, Monday 28 February 2005

Secretland relaunches! Enjoy the new adventures of Allen and his gang of twisted imaginary friends. Week daily from now until doomsday! _
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02:53:07 AM, Monday 28 February 2005

So I've gone insane and entered The Daily Grind Iron Man Contest. I'm playing to win here, so you can expect lots of comic goodness out of me, starting February 28th! _
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02:03:35 PM, Thursday 24 February 2005

How To Loathe Drawing Manga Style is a pretty amusing new webcomic. _
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11:42:54 AM, Thursday 24 February 2005

Last on the bus, I'm scrobblin'. (also, I'm glad that Anne likes the Tain so much, it warms the heart to introduce new music to folks, or is that recontextualize old music? I dunno, heartwarmin' either way.) _
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09:05:08 AM, Thursday 24 February 2005

Y'know what? I don't want a non-cardboard portrayal of Hitler. Any humanity for him is too much. Any portrayal beyond that of a monster is too kind. He was the architect of a keenly executed and brutal bodycount, in war and in peace, and his name should be burned into our minds, along with Stalin, Nixon, and Pol Pot, as bastards supreme, stark lessons of black & white in a grey world. Fuck "Downfall" where it stands, I don't care how good it is. To treat Hitler in a nuanced and serious manner, to attempt sympathy with him or for his Reich, to deal with him as anything more than a grave threat that needed to be put down by the combined military might of the world is enough to make me ill and spark my silent rage.

Or maybe it's 6am and I'm sleepy and this is unjust. _
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06:03:05 AM, Tuesday 22 February 2005

I was reading this, about the characteristics of 'Good Apple Software' (in the form of a best of the year rundown), one of which is tabs, and it occured to me: Why don't the Adobe family of products use tabs? Especially Photoshop (and maybe Illustrator) where you often have multiple images open at once, it would be nice to just be able to click on a clearly-marked tab, and bring that file to the front, instead of hunting around through multiple windows like I usually do.

Sure, I can hit "command `" to cycle through the windows, or the Window-->Document menus, but it would be better if I didn't have to hunt through the files or a menu bar, I want to just click the top of the image window and get where I'm going. I mean for God's sakes, the program already uses tabs to organize the toolbars! That said, I haven't used CS, is it implemented there? _
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03:51:03 PM, Friday 18 February 2005

I've just added my first new webcomic since Something Positive to my list of daily reads, Wapsi Square. The first year or so is pretty rough. I like low humor and all, but I need variety, constant 'big boob' jokes got old. However, I stuck it out and it turned into a three-dimensional and funny interpersonal drama with occasional, well-done fantasy flourishes that evolve with the story and its characters. The art is also really wonderful, smooth and attractive (why is this such a problem for so many webcartoons?) and there are no fewer than three well-realized female characters, all with different ambitions and quirks. Wonderful. _
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03:08:46 AM, Thursday 17 February 2005

Alan David Doane, a comics commentator, put together a really interesting graphic of 100 things he loves about comics, ranging from The Ultimates, Daniel Clowes, and The Comics Journal to Achewood. If you want a quick look at some great stuff in comics, read the commentary. Good stuff for everyone. _
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05:17:39 AM, Wednesday 16 February 2005

A silly sea adventure using the simple Risus ruleset is getting underway on the long-abandoned Baron Wiki (instructions for Wiki newbies). All are welcome to play. _
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01:11:13 AM, Saturday 29 January 2005

Everyone's seen the Dick Cheney Dressing Down article, but this is about the only reaction that makes sense. _
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03:46:15 PM, Friday 28 January 2005

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