August 2023

I think this is the first chance I’ve had to see Ghost in the Shell with its original Japanese dialogue track, and watching with subtitles reinforced my previously noted view that this film is way too chatty for its own good.

Ghost’s set was largely unchanged from the one I saw last year—and I enjoyed it just as much a second time—so I won’t describe it again. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a note of how impressive Amon Amarth’s stage production was, especially for an opening band. The stage was bookended by three-story Viking statues. The drum riser sat atop a massive Viking helmet encasing video screens projecting eyes, fire, lightning, and… See more →

Apart from stock footage inserts, there isn’t a single scene in Cade: The Tortured Crossing that isn’t shot on green screen, and I kind of hope Neil Breen stays with that approach in future films. The 7th Guest aesthetic really works for him.

He does look more at home, though (to the extent that he ever looks at home anywhere), in the suburban Las Vegas locations he’s traditionally used than the alternately lavish and decayed… See more →

I’ve been revising a metadata structure for blog posts and a sitemap for a few months now, and since I haven’t felt the need to tweak either of them in awhile, they’re probably solid enough to document here.

Metadata structure

The blog post metadata has been developed to accommodate a wide variety of post types, to give me a lot of flexibility in how to present them, and to give users a lot of options… See more →

I knew right away that the arrival of Metallica’s …And Justice for All in my suburban home in June of 1989 was a pivotal moment. I didn’t even wait for my birthday party guests to disperse before sneaking up to my room to listen to it, even though its tone was decidedly at odds with the celebratory atmosphere. It was the darkest thing I’d ever been exposed to, forcing me to contemplate unvarnished truths about… See more →