So I caught a sneak preview of The Last Samurai last night with a good friend. My verdict: it's surprisingly fun pop entertainment, exciting and interesting to watch (at least until the ending...but more on that in a minute). However, it marks the end of the extraordinary series of Tom Cruise "problem pictures" that was inaugurated with Eyes Wide Shut. The Last Samurai is good, but resoundingly conventional. It isn't going to make any Worst of All Time lists, and that's a shame. For all of their problems, Eyes Wide Shut and, to a lesser extent, Vanilla Sky were movies that taught you how to watch them as they went along. The Last Samurai is as safe as Seabiscuit.

For all my efforts in defending Tom Cruise, however, I have to admit one thing: the guy has a problem with endings. Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report and The Last Samurai all end with five minutes of mostly unnecessary dialogue determined to tie up every loose end. In the past, I've defended these torrents of closing exposition as the necessary concession for making complex, slippery movies. However, The Last Samurai doesn't justify that defense: the ending just doesn't work. More accurately, the film contains one ending that does work, and very well at that, but then inexplicably coasts on for just one more scene. If you see the movie, you'll know the moment I'm talking about.

But maybe I'm being too rough on this movie. Any other actor and I'd have been generally well pleased: it has some thrilling action, an endlessly interesting story, and only a hint of interracial romance. Oh, and a Japanese baby. Is he cute? As David Mamet once wrote, he's as cute as a Chinese baby.

Schilling to the Sox!!

Speaking of campaign ads, this attack ad from the Republican National Committee deserves a look. Not only because it accuses the Democrats of being soft on terror, but because it's simultaneously so ominous and so hopelessly unslick; it looks like it was put together in about ten minutes on iMovie. As far as tone and message goes, it reminds me of the old Simpsons ad that went something like this: "Mayor Quimby supports revolving door prisons. Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob, a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can you trust a man like Mayor Quimby? (quickly) Vote Sideshow Bob for Mayor."

Also, what's Ed Gillespie doing there?

Searching the web heres' some earlier news on google ads for candidates:

Dean campaign buys an ad for "Wes Clark" and the Clark campaign strikes back.

A Media Daily News article on this subject.

Further news on google ads...

The Clark campaign has an ad. that appears when you google "Dean", "Democrat", "new hampshire primaries", and "Clark"

Dean and Clark have "Howard Dean", "primaries", and "Iowa caucus"

[adding more ads as I find them]

Talk about internet savvy... The Dean campaign has started advertising on deadlymantis. That's right. Look at the top of the page, about a third of the time one of the ads will say:

What does Dean say?
Civil Rights & Justice, American
community, equal rights for all.

Judging by the fact that the other ads are "Lesbian legal services" and something about voting democratic to stop the marriage ammendment, I assume this is a google add tied to some word related to the recent massachussets case.

A bit of sleuthing shows that it comes up on the google search for "gay marriage."

I'm glad that somebody is finally researching the scientific questions that matter. Witness the following paper on Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow. The anticlimactic answer:

Although a definitive answer would of course require further measurements, published species-wide averages of wing length and body mass, initial Strouhal estimates based on those averages and cross-species comparisons, the Lund wind tunnel study of birds flying at a range of speeds, and revised Strouhal numbers based on that study all lead me to estimate that the average cruising airspeed velocity of an unladen European Swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour.

The fact that I find this amusing probably explains why I've had so much trouble finding a date to my company party. As a famous BBC advertisement for Monty Python once said: "If your girlfriend laughs at this, marry her."

True story from the front lines of music piracy: Yesterday I was flagrantly breaking the law by transferring songs from my iPod to my brother's computer, using a nice little piece of software called iPod Rip. Among the songs I transferred were a handful that I'd recently purchased from the iTunes music store. By doing so, I seem to have triggered the virtual equivalent of an explosive dye pack: I can no longer play any of the songs from these albums, at least not on my iPod. Even if I delete the old files and try to replace them with the songs from my laptop (which still work fine), the iPod refuses to read them. Apparently this is Apple's unadvertised way of making sure that I respect copyright…or else. The annoying thing is that nothing prevented me from transferring the files in the first place; rather, it punished me after the fact. How cruel and unusual is this? I've been deprived of Moby's Play, the Avenue Q soundtrack, and Justin Timberlake's Justified. Needless to say, I'm crying myself a river.

So, I need a date for my company's holiday party on December 18. Normally I wouldn't make a desperate appeal on the blog like this, but I've realized that I no longer know any available women in New York, or at least no viable prospects. (At least, I don't think so. Hard to tell with some...) The party will be held at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Music will be courtesy of, hmmm, the King David String Ensemble. Any takers?

All this talk of bear-proof suits raises the obvious question: Has The Simpsons jumped the shark? There have certainly been seasons where my answer would have been "Yes," but I've been encouraged by recent episodes, which include the best Treehouse of Horror in a while, and a generally pleasing trip to England. (I was a big fan of Joe Millionaire in The Cherry Orchard: "I don't...have...a cherry orchard.") On the other hand, there were those leprechaun jockeys...

More to the point, has my life jumped the shark? If college was a TV show, this is rapidly turning into ER, where all of the original cast members have gradually been eliminated. Am I the Noah Wylie of my own life? Or this that too solipsistic? (The producers haven't even found a hot Indian girl to join the cast yet.)

Noah's reading of our college experience as a TV show, if I recall correctly, was that the original season was an edgy comedy about a roomful of lonely college guys. In subsequent seasons, it was sexed up a bit. More than one cast member written out of the series. Some goofy supporting characters began to receive a lot more air time than they probably should have, a la Newman on Seinfeld. "But the series really jumped the shark," Noah observes, "when Alec moved in with Haiwen...and became an investment banker."

Sunday's episode of The Simpsons involves Homer crafting an elaborate set of bear-proof armor. As a public service to those who aren't aware of the real-life inspiration for this episode, I proudly present a link to Project Grizzly.

The official site notes that the film follows Troy Hurtubise "from the donut shops and biker bars of North Bay to the mythic Rocky Mountains." Yes, well, if you're looking for actual bears, biker bars probably aren't a bad place to start....

Yay! Tuesaday Morning Quarterback is back! At Nfl.com.

The trailer for Troy is up at apple.

The other fasicnating thing about reading Loving v. Virginia (see this earlier post) is how similar the argument for the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws is to the argument for the constitutionality of heterosexual marriage only laws. I didn't think the anology between these two things held when I was reading articles making the connection, but when you look at the actual arguments presented in Loving v. Virginia the connection becomes much more clear.

In Loving v. Viriginia there's an argument that, basically, there's no equal protection violation because the law treats both blacks and whites equally in terms of punishments and because blacks can still marry, so long as they marry someone black.

Similarly in the recent gay marriage cases you see essentially the same argument that there's no equal protection violation because the law treats gays and straights the same way, gay people can still get married, so long as it is to someone of the opposite sex.

I thought this was a bad analogy, but now I think that's just because I didn't understand the anti-miscegenation debate well enough, and it looks to me now like they're really the same issue.

The other week I was talking to someone about a math problem and he wasn't allowed to tell me the example which they'd constructed to solve it because he was in the process of applying for a patent. I remember being a little weirded out by this, I mean why should some mathematical object be patentable? The more I thought about though the more it seemed consistant with the current trend to patent things like genes. Anyway this trend went one step further when today the patent office announced that they "will consider ‘serious’ applications to patent specific integer numbers." For more details see this article.

The same week that they almost elected this guy, Louisianans also struck a blow at annoying telephone menus by not being able to talk "right." There's probably some joke to be made about what a bad idea voice recognition voting devices would be, because then no one would have been able to vote for him with his decidedly un-Southern last name.

Sigh.

If you have two minutes to spare, this might amuse you. Courtesy of my sister.

Sometimes it is easy to forget how far we've come in the past half century. In 1955 the Virginia Supreme court wrote "the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy. Id., at 90, 87 S. E. 2d, at 756." (quote from the SCOTUS decision Loving v. Virginia) and in 1967 they upheld this decision. 1967 was only 36 years ago.

Salon has an article about Professor Hamamoto's attempt to make an all-Asian pornographic movie, a clip of which was featured on The Daily Show segment I saw last night. I can't read the whole thing, but Noah can probably give us some color on it.

The real reason there aren't more Asian-American males in porn, I suspect (and the clip from Hamamoto's film only confirms this), is that most Yellow men just aren't capable of exuding raw sexual magnetism. Not that we haven't tried. Boy, how we've tried.

Uh-oh. I have The Daily Show to thank for the following link, a scholarly article by University of California professor Darrell Hamamoto about the absence of Asian-American males from the porn industry. (I'm afraid that I can't provide the title of this article without this blog being banished forever from the York, Pennsylvania public library. Suffice to say that it's a variation on The Joy Luck Club). I'd intended to post this article as an example of the sort of thing that Haiwen will write when he a) gets tenure and b) goes completely crazy. However, the following paragraph was an unexpected bonus:

The transfixing power of White racial imagery as embedded within Asian American sexuality is seen in the short but sensational criminal career of Andrew Phillip Cunanan of San Diego, California. The son of a Filipino American immigrant who once served in the U.S. Navy (he has since returned to the Philippines, having been implicated in an embezzlement scandal), Cunanan is alleged to have murdered five people, including the couturier Gianni Versace. The accused killer's former roommate Erik Greenman speculated that it was Cunanan's obsession with Tom Cruise that helped set off the killing spree that had people across the nation riveted to news reports. According to Greenman, Cunanan was "passionately" in love with Cruise and told of bondage and Foucauldian power-exchange fantasies that involved the actor. "He had pictures of Tom plastered all over his bedroom," says Greenman. "He'd rent five Cruise videos in a single night and spend the whole evening stopping the films frame by frame, studying Tom's every nuance and gesture." Cunanan also kept a carrying case full of visual material featuring Cruise, including photos, movie reviews, and articles. While making the rounds of cafes and leather bars at night-a routine he called "Tom Cruising"-Cunanan reportedly would seek out men who bore a physical resemblance to his Top Gun.

"Tom Cruising?" "Foucauldian power-exchange fantasies?" Holy shit. No more jokes about Tom Cruise inspiring any killing sprees, S.; as usual, reality got there first.

"Dear Diary: Jackpot!.

There's an interesting contrarian review of Master and Commander in today's New York Times by Jason Epstein, the former editorial director of Random House. Epstein points out a number of big problems with the story, and suggests that fans of the original novels will be disappointed by the movie version. On the other hand, he concedes, the masses may love it:

The film's crashing and banging, the feeling at all times of emergency, heightened by a pounding score, even when the seas are calm and with no enemy in sight, the huddled intimacy of a crowded ship under threat of attack by a powerful enemy or in a violent sea, may appeal to fans of action films for whom O'Brian's subtle characterizations, being out of sight, will also be out of mind.

Which is interesting; as a man's man sort of action fan myself, I'd argue that much of Master and Commander feels positively sedate (which is part of what I loved about it). In the end, all of Epstein's barbs could be equally directed, and with more reason, to Lawrence of Arabia, say, which is a great film that takes great liberties with history and plausibility and doesn't have much to do with Seven Pillars of Wisdom, its alleged source. Which isn't to say that the books aren't better. Aren't they always?

Analog has finally updated the website for their January/February issue, which includes a story by a talented newcomer named "Alec Nevela-Lee" [sic]. Sigh.

So the finalists for the design of the World Trade Center memorial have just been announced. Each entry, no surprise, seems worthy and thoughtful. My only comment, if anyone cares, is that several of these designs depend upon electrical illumination for their effects, which seems like a bad idea. Their use of light is often surprising and ingenious, but I'd rather see a lasting, permanent monument that would retain its meaning without any human care, even if the power were to fail (or, say, if this country were to cease to exist). Maybe this is just my classical side speaking, but there's no guarantee that these memorials will still be plugged in after two thousand years, and it'd be nice to have something that will speak eloquently to people in the fortieth century, even as a ruin, after all the lights have gone out.

I was mildly surprised that nobody brought up the whole Scientology thing in our recent epic debate over the merits of Tom Cruise. Even a booster like myself has to admit that his fixation with Scientology is somewhat troubling, especially now that Cruise is drawing Penelope Cruz into the fold. (Cruise also credits Scientology for making him into a great samurai. Why am I posting this?)

Breaking News
The Massachussets Supreme Court just released their decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health holding 4-3 that a prohibition on same-sex marriages violates "the basic premises of individual liberty and equality under law protected by the Massachusetts Constitution" (3 justices) and the Massuchussets ERA (1 justice).

In conclusion the majority writes:

"We declare that barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution. We vacate the summary judgment for the department. We remand this case to the Superior Court for entry of judgment consistent with this opinion. Entry of judgment shall be stayed for 180 days to permit the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion."

Wow, Erol Morris does Robert McNamara. It'll be fascinating to see if he can do as good a job with a famous character as he does with his usual obscure and odd characters.

There are a bunch of movie lines that I've always wanted to use in real life. Many of them are from The Untouchables. Alas, Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute and thus clearly a man of action, has beaten me to the punch: "Getting in a public relations fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger," he says in the Times, "is like bringing a knife to a gunfight."

Ah, the joys of News of the Weird:

Gunn had confessed, saying he killed his tenant using a crowbar, a butcher knife, a handsaw, a fireplace poker, a 12-inch bolt, a straight-edge razor, an ax, walking canes, a pool cue and a large salad fork.

This article at msnbc begins:

"As one of only 192 blacks who scored higher than 1450 on the SAT this year, Alice Abrokwa is being wooed by some of the nation’s most elite colleges."

I had no idea things were that bad... 1450 isn't that high and 192 is really low. Is our country really doing that abomidably bad of a job of teaching black children? (Yes, haiwen, this is an invitation for a rant...)

In tangentially related news this week's FM is on the lack of economic class diversity at harvard. It's an interesting read, especially for me since i was in that 9% of "poor" harvard students.

So my december plans are set. I'll be in new york city from the night of thursday 11 Dec. to the morning of monday 15 dec, in york pa from monday 15 dec till jan 4, and then leaving early jan 5 and getting back to oakland at noon on jan 5. If any of you are in any of those places and want to see me drop me an email.

French winemakers have a pro-drunk driving advertising campaign...

Oh, and by the way, the holiday edition of Analog Science Fiction & Fact is finally on newsstands across the country. Buy it.

After seeing Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, I'll have to concede that all the things I admire about Tom Cruise (his obsession with quality control, his shrewd way of choosing projects, and his willingness to take on challenging parts with great directors) apply equally, and perhaps with more reason, to Russell Crowe. Crowe is by far the better actor, of course, and his recent string of home runs is almost as impressive as Cruise's: L.A. Confidential, The Insider, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind are filled with enough energy and versatility for an entire career...and they were made over a period of just under five years or so. Even Proof of Life was tough, intelligent, and satisfying as long as Crowe was onscreen.

And Master and Commander is so deeply satisfying, so well-crafted and lean, that I can barely believe that it was made for $120 million. It may be the most impressive $100 million+ blockbuster ever made, and just about the only one with a good story. Most "epic" films, even the great ones, suffer from an indifferent script or characterization; I loved Gangs of New York, for example, but not because I cared about (or knew) what was happening, or why. Master and Commander is so tightly constructed and written, by contrast, that it would seem like the most expensive novella ever made, if it weren't so rich with detail and incident. The only worthy comparison is with Bridge On the River Kwai. See it.

Today the Twins traded my favourite player for a guy named 'Boof.'

I know I'm late with this, but I guess I've got to post the recent Ten Worst Films of All Time poll by the BBC's Film 2003. Here's the list:

1. Titanic
2. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
3. Pearl Harbor
4. Vanilla Sky
5. The Blair Witch Project
6. Batman and Robin
7. The Avengers
8. Battlefield Earth
9. Eyes Wide Shut
10. Highlander II: The Quickening

No surprises here: Titanic, a great example of how quickly success can turn against you, along with some notorious bombs and a handful of challenging, sometimes brilliant movies that wrought havoc on the audience's expectations. (I'm surprised that Punch-Drunk Love didn't make the cut.) Incidentally, one of their quotes about Eyes Wide Shut is a direct quotation of what I heard in the audience on the movie's opening night, on the second of the four times I saw that movie in the theater: "What the hell was that all about?"

Passing over such obvious choices as Chungking Express, Blue Velvet, and High Fidelity, I'd say that there are only two films that I can call truly life-altering: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Say Anything. 2001 was the movie that really launched me into cinema at the age of eleven; it bored me to death at ten, but at eleven, it was suddenly the greatest movie ever made (even if I still didn't know how to spell "Odyssey"). As for Say Anything, one line of dialogue says it all: "What I really want to do with my life...what I want to do for a living...is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it." How has this line changed my life? Well, it hasn't, at least not yet. But someday it will, as soon as I awake from this living doze I'm in.

The movie of the week is I Know Where I'm Going!, a sweet, slight romantic comedy from 1945 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Powell and Pressburger, as I've mentioned before, are currently my favorite directors, and I Know Where I'm Going, while a minor work compared to The Red Shoes or The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, is full of their usual invention and visual wit. It's about a headstrong young British woman (Wendy Hiller) who goes to Scotland to marry her wealthy fiancee, but falls in love with another man (Roger Livesey) while waiting to cross to the island. Lots of loving photography of the Hebrides, visual jokes, and colorful supporting characters, like Under the Tuscan Sun written and directed by a couple of obsessive artisans. If it were remade today with Ewan MacGregor and, say...I don't know...Keira Knightley, it would be a big hit.

The DVD is especially worth renting because of a short documentary feature included with the movie, I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited, which, in an odd way, is even more moving than the film itself. While it includes interviews with the usual talking heads and surviving cast members (including Petula Clark, who plays a little girl in the movie), it focuses on a woman named Nancy Franklin, who claims that I Know Where I'm Going! changed her life. Franklin's name may ring a bell to faithful readers of The New Yorker; she's a career editor, and currently their television critic. (There's a touching moment when Franklin, a charming Joan Cusack-type, shows off the view of the Empire State Building from her office window, and explains how she used to draw the blinds and play "Rhapsody in Blue" to visitors when she first got her job.) The documentary doesn't explain how, exactly, this movie changed her life, but you can fill in the blanks easily enough, and its quite touching to watch Franklin tour the locations where the movie was filmed.

Anyway, I love hearing stories like this, and I plan on posting about what movies have changed my life later today. (You may be surprised...) Anybody who wants to contribute is more than welcome.

Can you really respect a state whose official song is "Hang on Sloopy"?

While randomly browsing online, I found Quentin Tarantino's complete first draft of Kill Bill, which dates from long before the movie was split in two pieces. I'm not going to so much as glance at it before Vol. 2 comes out, of course, but at some point, assuming that no Director's Cut is planned, it will be interesting to see how Bill might have been structured in its original three-hour form. (This link is just to make sure that I can find it again.)

Various sources are reporting that all appearances of Christopher Lee as Saruman have been cut from The Return of the King. I'm only a middling fan of the movie series (and of the books, for that matter), but even I'm somewhat shocked by this. It's been years since I read the trilogy, but I do remember "The Scouring of the Shire" much more vividly than the rest of the book, and it just doesn't work without Saruman. Predictably, Tolkien fanatics can discuss this development more interestingly than I can.

Andrew Tobias links to this article in the Washington Post about George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager who has been anointed "the major financial player of the left." The reason? Contributions to liberal causes to the tune of $15.5 million. And he means business:

Asked whether he would trade his $7 billion fortune to unseat Bush, Soros opened his mouth. Then he closed it. The proposal hung in the air: Would he become poor to beat Bush?

He said, "If someone guaranteed it."

I should also note that Soros is the former boss of Victor Niederhoffer, mentioned before on this blog. In his memoirs, Niederhoffer refers to Soros as "the palindrome."

(Hm, am I trying to procrastinate?)

Here's a new hometown hero.

And from the 'How Very British' front: The chief of Sussex police is going to make a personal visit to the family of a man that the police shot and killed even though he was unarmed and in bed with his girlfriend, in order to tell them, 'We're terribly sorry.'

Baseball news: Apparently Alan Trammell got one third-place vote for Manager of the Year, for fearlessly leading the Detroit Tigers to an American League record 119 losses. Or maybe it was for leading them to victory in four of their last five games, thereby avoiding the major league record for losses? Who knows.

Inspired by the Men's Journal list, I'm trying to think of famous movies where no women appear whatsoever, at least not in speaking roles. Glengarry Glen Ross comes close (there's a brief appearance by a "Coat Check Girl"), as does Paths of Glory (which does feature a memorable song at the end by the future Mrs. Kubrick). Apparently there are no women in speaking roles in the upcoming Master and Commander. (Since I'm seeing the movie this weekend with an avowed misogynist, this is probably a good thing.) The only women in Lawrence of Arabia are seen from a distance, ululating. But women love Lawrence of Arabia, right? (At least, one girl of my acquaintance did. But that was years ago.)

Yep, more lists: Men's Journal picks The 50 Best Guy Movies of All Time. Only the top ten movies are listed on their site, but their choices seem reasonable, given the criteria they've set down:

We believe that a true guy movie is a movie only a guy can love. A crucial distinction. Pop one into the DVD player and your wife or girlfriend should run screaming from the room. We frown upon films that are too serious or sensitive. The Deer Hunter got KO'd despite lengthy elk hunting and torture scenes because Meryl Streep was in it. Sure, she's a great actress, but rules are rules: no films with Meryl Streep.

Which is too bad, because The Deer Hunter is the racist, violent, borderline fascist guy movie of all time. I haven't seen the rest of the list, but their criteria would also seem to disqualify L. A. Confidential, my own top choice, because despite its violence and fascination with the masculine code, it's still a movie that even a mother could love. I'm curious about the rest of the list, though. Did they include The Searchers? The Wild Bunch? Glengarry Glen Ross?

So, um, I'm going to take a moment to write about the animation I like. Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection is now available on DVD. Buy it, rent it, or just visit a friend who has it. (My copy is currently en route.) Yes, it's missing a lot of classics: not just "What's Opera Doc?" and "One Froggy Evening," but even "Rabbit Hood" and "Robin Hood Daffy" ("Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Dodge! Parry! Spin! Thrust!") are conspicuously absent. But c'mon: "Rabbit of Seville," "The Scarlet Pumpernickel," and "Duck Amuck" (the greatest cartoon short of all time) alone are worth the price of the four-disc set. I do miss the annual Looney Tunes retrospective at the Brattle in Cambridge...which still ranks as one of the most joyous experiences I've ever had at the movies...but this more than makes up for the loss.

(Update: I've just discovered that both "Rabbit Hood" and "Robin Hood Daffy" are included on Disc Two of the wonderful new edition of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Well, heck. You can never own too many DVDs....)

From The Onion: Mom Finds Out About Blog. Hmmm. Some excerpts:

"I don't have one of those sites that's a big tell-all about one-night stands and wild parties," Widmar said. "I mostly write about the animation I like or little things that happen to me and my friends. But there are definitely things in there that I wouldn't, well, write home to Mom about."

Widmar said he imagines his inbox filling up with e-mails containing elaborate questions about an off-hand comment on Kill Bill.

Hmmm, indeed. No comment.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback has a new temporary home.

Before noticing this tribute in the Fashion pages of the Times, I wasn't aware that C.Z. Guest had died last weekend. C.Z. was one of those figures whom I found inexplicably fascinating, probably for the same reason that I occasionally browse the Times wedding announcements: she was a woman famous for little more than being rich, stylish, and beautiful, friend of Truman Capote, horsewoman, New York society hostess, former "glamour girl of the Massachusetts north shore." Hemingway was the best man at her wedding. Even if you have no particular affection for the idle rich, it's hard to dislike anyone who could inspire tributes like this: "She could be unbelievably funny without realizing it," Oscar de la Renta said. "She assumed, for instance, that everybody had a pony."

Here's an old but fun site on what to do if you win the lottery.

Speaking of Mme. vs. Mlle....

Rumor has it that one pressing life question has finally been resolved: which of our blockmates will get engaged first? (Hint: it's not me.)

The New Republic has a fascinating article about the man who will probably be running against Karl Rove.

I'm rather depressed to discover that 3 of my top 5 musical groups/artists have best ofs being released this year. On top of that a fourth is having a reunion tour.

All my favorite music is over and dead.

(For what it's worth Badly Drawn Boy has snuck into that 5th spot.)

The New York Times science page has a new top 25 list out.

For what it is worth, it is pretty bad.

I for example was one of those rare people who didn't know the ending of Citizen Kane, though I did guess it before the end.

It occurs to me that the IMDb poll mentioned below is missing a couple of obvious candidates: A Beautiful Mind, maybe, and Vanilla Sky, certainly.

Obviously, I have no sympathy for anyone who blows the ending to any movie, even a bad one. (This scrupulousness on my part has prevented me from making all kinds of bad Fight Club jokes, for instance.) However, of all the movie endings listed below, I think I'd be most furious at anyone who intentionally blew the ending of Citizen Kane for someone who wasn't already aware of it. It's a miracle to go very far in life without learning the secret of Citizen Kane, and seeing the movie with that surprise intact is a gift that few people are afforded these days.

I can't resist posting a link to today's IMDb.com Poll, which asks: "What now-infamous spoiler do you think shouldn't be considered a spoiler anymore?" Warning: You shouldn't click on this link unless you've seen, or have no plans to see, all or any of the following: The Sixth Sense, The Others, Citizen Kane, The Crying Game, The Usual Suspects, Psycho, The Empire Strikes Back, Fight Club, Seven, Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, What Lies Beneath, or Planet of the Apes. No mention, of course, of The Human Stain. Or Magnolia, for that matter.

Mme. Dewar, one of our Constant Readers, sends this link to the New York Times article When Bad DVDs Happen to Great Films. It's a sobering read, and it contains the annoying news that remastered DVDs of Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather Trilogy are scheduled for release later this year, after flaws in the picture quality of the much-hyped earlier releases (which, of course, I own) became too glaring to ignore. (Although, of course, you have no business watching Lawrence of Arabia for the first time on DVD, anyway, given its occasional revivals on the big screen.) The article also contains the following observation:

Consider: A DVD stores only 17 gigabytes of data. A two-hour film, transferred to digital data and otherwise untreated, would take up more than 150 gigabytes. So the data must first be massively compressed, mainly by digitally sampling a frame, then sampling only the information that changes in subsequent frames.

It's an interesting statistic, and it only underlines the many reasons why digital projection, still being hyped as the wave of the future, should never, never be allowed to replace traditional projection, at least not entirely. There's just no way that any digital medium can replicate the level of detail possible in old-fashioned movie formats, and the result can only be a decay in picture quality on the big screen. As usual, George Lucas is to blame. How could this pompous shyster be the same man who once owned a dog named Indiana?

Oh yes, Troy. Hmmm. Well, the casting works. Quick quiz: One of the following paragraphs is a description of Achilles from Gregory Nagy's Heroes and the Homeric Iliad. The other is from a CNN.com article on Brad Pitt. Can you guess which is which?

...the idealized bridegroom, sensual in his heroic beauty...the ultimate bridegroom...The very mention of him in song conjures up the picture of a beautiful flower cut down at the peak of its bloom.

...his marriage to Jennifer Aniston this summer only increased his sex appeal, making him "a poster boy for manhood in the new millennium."

Hard to tell, isn't it? Still, I'm not sure whether Brad Pitt properly "conjures up the picture of a beautiful flower cut down at the peak of its bloom." Ladies, any thoughts?

All in all, I'm not sure about this movie. I'll grant that the trailer and the official site do seem a little bit...strained. But Wolfgang Peterson is a director worth taking seriously, and the screenplay is by David Benioff, who wrote the novel and screenplay for 25th Hour, the best movie of last year. Also promising: Peter O'Toole and Brian Cox, the grandest old men in the movies, as Priam and Agamemnon. Finally, casting Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus and Orlando Bloom as Paris only makes Helen's dilemma all the more heart-wrenching. I mean, whom in Apollo's name would you choose?

I don't often post television recommendations to this blog, but if you live on the West Coast, tune in to Bravo at 8:00 tonight (or at midnight, I think, for the repeat). You won't be sorry. The reason? The cast of The Simpsons on Inside the Actor's Studio, answering questions in and out of character, improvising brilliantly, and generally giving the audience the time of their lives. It's hard to single one actor out, but I'll say that seeing Harry Shearer rapidly switch between Smithers and Mr. Burns is an especially joyous experience. Best hour of television I've seen in a long time.

My apologies to those of you who have seen something like this before.

"Spsupoedly reesrahcers hvae dermetnied taht popele can raed wrods amlost pefretcly raergdelss of seplilng as lnog as the wrods are in cotnxet and the frist and lsat ltetres are in palce.

Hwoeevr, I biveele taht cnnasnoot oderr is nresecasy to ersnue cheoposmnrein."

Looking for a good birthday present for Almea, I came across (and ultimately purchased) a large wall map that looks something like this. It is very difficult to look at this map for a long time, as my head starts to spin. On this website and on the pamphlet that was enclosed with the map, they had some interesting historical anecdotes (they're not footnoted directly so I can't verify them, however). First off, most medieval maps had the east on top, because that was the direction of paradise (hence the word "orientation"). North-oriented maps didn't come into vogue until the advent of compasses, which pointed north themselves. Supposedly, there were a slew of south-oriented maps at that time too, before north won out as the conventional top.

Here is another map dreamt up by those plucky Canadians. It projects the world based on how far everything is from Toronto.

There's an interesting article in the Times about the long-awaited film version of Prozac Nation, the controversial Harvard freshman-year memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel, famously described as "the closest thing Harvard ever produced to Britney Spears." (I don't know if that's true. Any other nominations?) The movie was finished in 2000, but Miramax has repeatedly shelved it. Currently, it's scheduled for a release sometime next spring. Word is that it's pretty lousy, but that it also contains Christina Ricci's first topless scene.

More interesting, at least to me, is the tidbit that the producer of Prozac Nation is a woman named Galt Niederhoffer, who read the book while a student at Harvard and optioned it for Millennium films. Her last name rings a bell for anyone in the hedge fund business, and a quick Google search reveals that she is, in fact, the daughter of Victor Niederhoffer, who was one of the world's most famous speculators and hedge fund managers before losing a lot of money in 1997. I'm not sure what this means, but that's the funny thing about the Harvard web: it connects people as different as Liz Wurtzel and Victor Niederhoffer in unexpected ways.

I've read Mr. Niederhoffer's own memoir, The Education of a Speculator; it's extremely literate, anecdotal, and shamelessly narcissistic. This article gives a good sense of his style: it moves from a discussion of Greek tragedy to barbs at Kenneth Lay to a statistical analysis of whether companies perform worse in the market after appearing on the cover of Forbes. (The answer: yes.) And it concludes with some verses from daughter Galt, who has a "forthcoming" coming-of-age novel of her own, American Thighs...written in iambic pentameter. It's good to be rich, isn't it?

My sources tell me that if you put a tireguard over your rear tire, or if you install a bike rack, it greatly reduces the amount of water that gets splashed up.

On a different note, I found the wonderful microwave website (I don't remember if it's been posted, but I couldn't find it). There are still a lot of experiments on here that I'd like to try. I'm not too keen on the soap one though because I don't want all my food to end up tasting like soap.

Apropos of my recent post about Disney's scavenging of Shakespeare for its cute animal movies, such Hamlet in The Lion King, I've just stumbled across this description of The Lion King 1 1/2, an upcoming direct-to-video release that might well have been titled Warthog and Meerkat are Dead:

Hilarity reigns in this all-new movie starring Timon and his windy pal Pumbaa -- and featuring the new song "That's All I Need"! Now, in The Lion King 1 1/2, see how things really happened -- according to their perspective -- in this rip-roaringly funny story within the story of The Lion King. Find out the truth about some "passed" events -- such as when King Mufasa introduced his young heir to the animal kingdom. Let's just say there was something behind that dramatic moment when all the animals bowed to their new ruler!

The whole thing sounds positively Stoppardian. Still in the pipeline: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Goofy.

It's a shame that the discussion on this blog seems to dry up as soon as Tom Cruise is declared off-limits. Oh well.

An impulsive late-night ego search on Google yields the surprising news that the January/February issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact is already available online as an eBook for the PalmPilot. Among the stories is a little number I like to call "Inversus." Analog's website hasn't been updated yet with the new issue, but I can only assume that "Inversus" should be making its long-awaited appearance on newsstands sometime soon. If this is indeed the case, get thee to your nearest Barnes & Noble and buy a copy or three. It would be a lovely dearthday present.

Speaking of "swishbuckling," "whalebone-loosening," and "two dead men repeatedly stabbing each other," I proudly (?) present Parley!, your one-stop source for Pirates of the Caribbean slash fanfiction. It's the sort of thing that I knew existed as soon as the thought occurred to me. It's basically full of stories that pose and answer the intriguing question: "So what did Will and Jack do while they were alone on the Interceptor?"

Warning: Not safe for work. (As the Posting Guidelines page observes, "This isn’t a het archive, sorry.")

My brother reports that he just saw a preview of the all-star Henry IV: Parts I and II premiering this month in New York, featuring an anemic Ethan Hawke as Hotspur and, as Falstaff, Kevin Kline in a big fat suit. This may give Kevin Kline the distinction of being the only modern actor to have convincingly played both Falstaff and Hamlet, which is no mean feat.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind being someone else's Keira Knightley. This whole debate makes more sense if you know, among other things, that Keira Knightley is the Pirates of the Caribbean star who got her start, as this blog noted some months ago, as the "decoy queen" to Natalie Portman in The Phantom Menace. Now, I am, or was, quite the Natalie Portman fan at one time, long before I actually began to pass her in the hallway on my way to Introductory Latin Prose Composition. However, at this point in history, I would make the shocking argument that Keira Knightley is actually better than Natalie Portman. My arguments:

1. Better breakthrough role. You could make arguments for Pirates of the Caribbean versus The Phantom Menance, but more importantly, Keira Knightley was allowed to be funny, sexy, and altogether luscious in that role, whereas Natalie Portman was allowed to pose stiffly in Kabuki makeup and make goo-goo eyes at a little boy.

2. Better last name. "Keira Knightley" is much more sprightly and vivacious-sounding. As for Natalie's real last name...well, let's just say that I don't feel like being sued, so never mind.

3. More attractive. I believe that Keira Knightley's eyes are about a millimeter further apart...and that millimeter makes all the difference.

4. Finally, Keira Knightley never snubbed Alec at the Signet. Sigh.

In this article in the new york times on Nicole Kidman's career the The Human Stain spoiler appears as a throw-away paranthetical remark. Somehow people just don't think this secret is at all worth keeping despite the trailer hiding it. I guess everyone who reads the paper of record is assumed to already know the plot of all major novels.

I got a bicycle and started riding it everywhere in June. Yesterday for the first time since then it rained. I didn't realize just how bad riding a bicycle in the rain is. I got about two blocks before turning around and going home, I never made it to the department. Any suggestions for how to cycle in the rain? The spray off the wheels was just ridiculous. My current plan is to wear my waterproof pants for the ride down and then change when I get to school.

In other rain related news I got this amazing waterproof hat at the army surplus store for only $15. It looks just like normal fabric but have the amazing nanotechnology behind stain-resistant pants. Not only did they keep me completely dry during the drizzle yesterday evening, I just did an experiment of dumping an entire cup of water on my hat, and it literally just runs off. It's wonderful. I feel like I live in the future.

Speaking of coaching, here's an article on the man about to become college football's winningest coach which is worth a read.

Mystic River is, no surprise, superlatively well-acted, well-shot, and well-written, even if the last five minutes seem oddly unnecessary. It's awfully grim, though, and it doesn't provide much in the way of "take-away" moments; that is, while I was impressed throughout, I didn't find myself replaying moments in my head after the movie was over, the way you do when you've seen a true classic. However, these are quibbling comments about a movie that is really quite powerful and worth seeing.

The best part of the evening, though, was the previews. I was reminded of why it's so nice to be going to the movies in late fall: instead of squirming through a bunch of lousy trailers for movies you'd never see, you find yourself alternately intrigued, surprised, and cheerful at the prospect of releases like Big Fish, In America, and even Love Actually. (Ah, Love Actually. That trailer is awfully effective, but who in God's name would I take to see it?)

Above all, The Last Samurai. This is embarrassing. I desperately need to pan a Tom Cruise movie for once, if I'm going to retain my dignity as a critic and human being. But what can I say? There's never been a major movie star, at least in my experience, who has hit so many consecutive home runs: Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, and even the two Mission: Impossible films have all been a part of my pantheon at one time or another.

The Last Samurai would seem like an obvious candidate for a strikeout; I mean, who's this Edward Zwick character, anyway? (Confession: I met the man once, I think. Our conversation consisted entirely of him mentioning that he was working on a film called The Last Samurai, and my saying, "Oh, you mean with Tom Cruise?" He answered in the affirmative. Later, we may have had a discussion as to whether an artist can be happy. Not sure what he said in reply.) But alas: The Last Samurai looks really, really good, or at least has the slickest trailer imaginable. Anyway, we'll see, I guess.

By the way, after reading that Bob Knight bio on the Indianapolis Star website, does anyone else think that looks a lot like the obituaries-on-file that have come up several times on this weblog?

It's November, and everybody knows what that means -- it means that basketball season is here! The Chakeres era at Santa Fe Prep begins on Monday at 3:30. I won't be there, but hopefully I'll be able to make it to the late practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

My brother and I were fortunate enough to attend a coach's clinic a couple of weeks ago hosted by this guy. I am happy to report that he is as gruff and demanding in real life as he appears in person, and playing for him would be quite an ordeal. But he knows his basketball, and so we took some things that we're hoping will be able to work for our team.

The team also watched Hoop Dreams together last weekend, and I was struck by how perfect the movie was. I have never read or watched a fictional story about basketball or about high schoolers that is more compelling. I might still pick Hoosiers as my all-time favorite basketball movie, but that's because we need fairy tales and because Hoop Dreams is not really about basketball.