Who needs shelves, anyway?

My impression of the Kindle 2 is, uh, impressive.

Hey, look! It's the mini art movie that kickass not-really-trip-hop early nineties phenomenon Portishead:



Yeah, Beth Gibbons is really sad.

I finally got their Roseland NYC concert DVD. Good times.

And I also got the Kindle 2, which makes it all to easy for me to start catching up on my high school reading list once and for all.

I had a bit of a paradigm shift: I can only imagine that this will do to books what the iTunes store did to CDs, and what Netflix is poised to do to DVDs.

While it can't replace having actual books on actual shelves, it does bring the convenience of shopping everywhere with zero additional stuff to carry. So until I throw out my suitcase, the Kindle travels with me.

Nice feature is I can email docs to read on it. The epaper is pretty good, and the form factor is better than a netbook, let alone the iphone screen. I only wonder what the rumored Apple netbook touchscreen will do to this.

We'll see.

Graphic Novel Vague

Got about 90 minutes to kill?  Wondering what the deal is with that Philip Glass guy?

More importantly, want to see a beautiful snapshot of industrialized American society circa 1982, all int time lapse?

Here you go:


That's Koyaanisqatsi, the first in the Qatsi trilogy of avant garde films made by some guy complaining about how dehumanizing technology is, and how humanity sucks in general.  Personally, I think the Glass score is inspiring in an Ayn-Rand-Fountainhead-temple-of-human-bigness sort of way.  The second and third movies apparently weren't as good.  The third one has a good score with Yo-Yo Ma doing his usual cello-for-highest-bidder thing (why else Seven Years in Tibet?) but the visuals for that one are all really crappy montages of doctored photos.

One of the best scenes of Koyaanisqatsi was a juxtaposition of microchip circuits with city grids.  How much to fall to replace that with representing information as flying ones and zeroes?  Flying Greek symbols and atom bombs?  Seriously, nuclear destruction is so twenty years ago.  Hold that thought.

My favorite scene in Koyaanisqatsi was probably the "Vessels" movement opening, with a 747 taxiing through a mirage.  Beautiful.

And here is someone's tribute to art films and Rolla, MO:



As for Watchmen...

I love the graphic novel a lot. It's pretty much the best the medium can achieve for a long time. So I tried the beat em up game on PSN, and decided to watch it opening night, last night.

Probably the best an adaptation of the GN could hope to be. Attention to detail was off the charts good.

So they monkeyed around with the ending a bit, replacing the giant telepathic squid. I think that it potentially works better that way, trimming a bit of extraneousness from the source material and tightening things up a bit. There were extra bits and pieces at the end, one of which, I thought, improved on the ending -- a simple minute of added interaction that ended up making Ozymandias not look like the arrogant prick that he ended up being in the GN. Arrogant, sure, but certainly more aware of the magnitude of what he did.

I just went back and skimmed through the finish of the GN again. I just noticed some things that I didn't catch before, and I'm not sure which version I like better. I will have to read the GN again and figure out if I like my watchemen with more or less nobility to them.

But yeah, this was the first movie I've seen in the theaters in a while, and it was worth it. Food for thought.

One more thing to not update

I put Twitter back in here on the left.  One more thing for me to not update, perhaps, but at least I can tweet on my phone.

Coming Soon

Up soon, I'll reveal the lost Aeschylus play: Orestes Beyond Thunderdome.  Stay tuned, kids.

Vertigogo

Beat Mirror's Edge last week, seemed like a good enough game with its faux-parkour move set, though I have to agree with the general consensus in that it could have been a whole lot more, gameplay wise.  But I won't, instead I'll say that the character models were so bad that it was the real reason they made the combat clunky and did almost all of the cutscenes in cel-shaded Esurance mode.  Hopefully they do an intellectual sequel that does the idea justice.  Perhaps a game where you literally do nothing but run away from baddies the whole time, and not just in a Kojima cheap move sort of way.

Valkyria Chronicles, on the other hand, was just an all around great experience.  As the game progressed, I found myself in familiar territory -- it was a vaguely Miyazaki-style setting, with twenties industry crossed with a certain medieval flair.  The characters were well done enough, the action sequences enjoyable, and the plot resolved itself comfortably without being frustrating.  And the art style was spot on perfect.



In the end, it was more entertaining than most half-season anime series, and it had an interesting story to tell.  Up next, time to see about finishing the enjoyable if rather uncompelling Dead Space.

Now for some pie.

Star Treck

So how about that new Star Trek trailer?

A lot of fans have their tunics in a twist over this.  They complain about the lack of continuity and the changed design cues that make them uncomfortable.

This is a good thing.

The original Star Trek was about having fun.  Sure, it had its heavyhanded extended metaphors, but the sheer idea of it all, and the fact that everybody involved was having a good time, more than made up for it. The problem seems to be that there was a Next Generation that stole the mindshare of a generation of fans -- people who thought of it as somehow more genuine than the good old TOS.  Sure it had more new worlds and better effects, but it was just so damn smug.  And not a lot of fun.

What the franchise needs is a good kick in the head.  (Well, and a fresh start, I guess.)  There's something just unpleasant about the idea of canon.  After all, if there's only one telling of the story that drags on, it's just a franchise.  You have to start taking hammer and tongs to continuity to get to the meat of things -- becoming myth.  Look at Batman.  Batman as myth transcends the fact that most Batman tellings weren't actually very good.  We only remember the great ones, and they contradict each other.

I have to wonder, though, if Abrams is the right man for the job.  Even if he doesn't do a very good job of it, he'll have popped open the box, and we'll see more resets soon.

Resets are a good thing.  Ask Batman.

Your tank is in my fantasy!

Remember Ring of Red?  The tactical RPG about an alternate history Japan divided and conquered by the Nazis and Soviets in the bizarro Cold War?  With its various infantry classes supporting giant diesel powered walking tanks and hybrid grid and third person action views?  I don't think so.  It was a great game, but just too durned hard and unforgiving for me to finish.  But why do that when its spiritual successor is on the PS3?

So there's Valkyria Chronicles.  The graphics are reminiscent of the sketch and watercolor style of the newly remade Final Fantasy Tactics.  The setting feels like something in Ace Combat's ancient past, what with the contorted but vaguely familiar continents and country names.  The cultural setting feels like World War II, fought with 1920s technology, fought by people out of the Crimean War.  And there's a bunch of coed draftees around and old yet somehow most advanced evar tank.

Good times.

Also joined the legion of DS owners, and have been skirmishing through Final Fantasy Tactics A2.  It's more of a remake of FFTA than a sequel so far, and it feels much more polished, which is just great for a game that was a polished and less spiky version of the original FFT of old.  (Both that and Disgaea on the PSP are more unforgiving and leveling-intensive).  So FFTA2 will probably be my DS game of choice for a while... apparently there's a new Valkyrie Profile coming to the DS soon!

Game on.

They Didn't Go There

Weeeeellll, just saw Transformers.  Maybe it was the Chianti doing its job, but I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I did Iron Man.  Perhaps I am going stupid in my old age?

What can I say about it other than that it's Independence Day by way of The Rock (noble stupid bloodshed), and it just happens to have giant talking robots?  That Shia LeBouf is better than all those small town jackasses who died in AVP2 because he got some hyperactive witty banter?  That it didn't have any more a political message than that F-22s, Black Ops, and by extension America herself unequivocally kick talking alien robot ass, irregardless of benevolent talking alien robot assistance?  That irregardless isn't a real word, and that I like using it anyway?  Nor is trashfabulous , and that I will too?  Even though I never saw Puff, Puff, Pass?

The thing that kind of depressed me was when I looked at Megan Fox and the hacker chick with a southern hemisphere British Colony accent.  (Didn't even care enough to discriminate Aussie vs. Kiwi)  (Aussie.  IMDB.)  I had no idea what their natural hair color was by birth, but it almost certainly wasn't what they had on screen.  One more sign that I'm getting old... makes me think of the girls in junior high who only used shampoo.

Anyway, Transformers knew it was a very stupid movie, and reveled in the fact.  Iron Man, well, I should just reiterate that RJD was just too good for that movie, and that Terence Howard was, for that matter, and leave it at that.  Let's not talk about Gweneth Paltrow and her hair I couldn't even tell if she dyed for her role or not.  I will say, though, that there's something wrong with Kirsten Dunst dying her blond hair red and Bryce Dallas Howard dying her red hair blond for Spiderman 3, though I'm not even sure what right now.  Chianti.

Off to bed, and then to work.  Who's going to join me in a few choruses of "America, F*** Yeah!"?