Film and television

Trying unsuccessfully to follow a half-dubbed Italian film with no subtitles.

28 Weeks Later: Not bad, not as good as the first. Could've done without the misplaced homage to Dead Alive's legendary lawnmower scene.

On the Web

• Hitchcock Classics: Vanity Fair puts contemporary stars in classic frames.
• Say What You Will (Requiem for a TV News Career): Chez Pazienza recounts the story of being dooced by CNN, and lacerates the television news industry in the process.
• Are Oscars Worth All This Fuss?: Interesting thoughts on what the Academy Awards were, are, and ought to be.
• RIP: Owning Music (1880–2008): Well-reasoned observations on the evolution of music distribution.

In the… See more →

Declaring a long-overdue rule: If it's not Dr. Strangelove, you are not allowed to add "or How I Learned to Stop Worrying..." to its title.

The Third Man has been chipped off the mountain of classics I have yet to see.

Just finished Season 1 of The Wire. Really impressed, and looking forward to seeing where it goes in Season 2.

Ad Specs : Web Design :: Cousin Oliver : The Brady Bunch

More accustomed to films than TV, whose cruel episodic nature makes it hard not to watch the entire first season of The Wire in one sitting.

An entire PsyD program could be devoted to Michael Haneke and his audience.

just watched a pristine print of Tenebre. I forgot how awesome the music is in that movie. Fun!

heading out to a giallo double feature.

On the Web

• Opening the Windows Vista Box: Because it seriously can’t be done without a fucking tutorial.
• Brown Tape Art: Mark Khaisman creates some stunning images with translucent brown packing tape backlit on plexiglass.
• Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64: He may have been an asshole, but man could he play.
• Lasagna Cat: A wonderfully bizarre collection of videos putting Jim Davis in his place.
• The Amen Break: The history of the world’s… See more →

It's comforting to know that Kevin Smith fanboys get what they deserve.

can't believe it took me this long to see Casablanca.

The problem with Netflix is that very few people on the planet are capable of properly handling a DVD.

registering the irony that Steal This Movie is on Google Video, but can't be downloaded.

Why would a serious documentary about the rising American obesity epidemic give itself a title as punny as Killer at Large?

El Orfanato is a good, old-fashioned ghost story done right. Very suspenseful and engaging without any cheap scares.

Rotten Tomatoes redesigned. It's shinier and denser, but at least the film pages are a bit easier to skim.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot is over and I have returned to my senses. Stupid free iTunes download. "Come with me if you want to suck."

fondly recalling the insane effort and ingenuity required to create the lo-fi, analog animations my cohorts and I made in college.

just saw eXistenZ for the first and last time.

It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

ready to try out The Wire after hearing writer David Simon's standard for verisimilitude: "Fuck the average reader. Fuck him to hell."

Apparently everyone else decided to see There Will Be Blood today, too.

On the Web

• The Moby Equation: A clever formula used to determine a recording artist’s sellout level.
• Untraceable: The funniest film trailer I’ve seen in awhile. Looks like The Net meets Fear Dot Com. Enticing, no?

In the Stereo

• Salter Cane: Salter Cane
• Van Halen: Fair Warning

On the Silver Screen

• Juno

Juno stopped just shy of being too cool for its own good. It's pretty damned well done, and Ellen Page is really something else.

The title "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger" still sounds quite surreal. I wish the title "President George W. Bush" could sound that way, too.

thanking @bobulate for recommending the superb Lives of Others.

watched 300, whose neocon smokescreen backfires by making you pine for a leader that actually gives a shit about you.

couldn't possibly be less interested in the Speed Racer movie.

An oddly appropriate end to a bipolar kind of day: the first 12 episodes of Trapped in the Closet. Thoroughly entertaining.

couldn't get through For Your Consideration.

watched Fast Food Nation with @bobulate and @jasonsantamaria. As heavy-handed polemics go, all this was missing was slow motion and strings.

On the Web

• Fray Returns: The beloved site filled with true stories is reborn as a printed quarterly volume!
• Design Doing: A nice roundup and response to recent conversations regarding the relevance of web design within the greater spectrum of design.
• Charts and Graphs of Rap Song Lyrics: The title says it all. Fall-down funny stuff.
• Curriculum Vitae: The long-awaited followup to The Story of Eh, this fantastic new book of comics from Kevin Cornell… See more →

Anyone to whom I introduce This Is Spinal Tap is doomed to love it less than I do.

Margot at the Wedding is one masochistic little film. I didn't exactly dislike it, but I wouldn't say I liked it either.

watching Hollow Man II in bed. Without such wonderful technologies as Google Video and the iPhone, I might have wasted these two hours.

It really couldn't be any simpler: If you're in the theater and the movie is playing, shut your fucking mouth and keep it fucking shut.

just watched The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III. I hope that fabled DVD set of all three films actually happens.

vowing to find out how the Forum (Center City Philadelphia's's sole remaining porno theater) stays in business in this day and age.

Show me that smile again. Don't waste another minute on your crying. We're nowhere near the end. The best is ready to begin.

just opened up my very own deluxe limited edition Helvetica DVD, complete with a lead Helvetica Neue Bold Extended letter S!

watching The Commitments, realizing once again that I own far too few R&B and soul records.

Another morning with the dog: imdb.com/gallery/ss/0103644/S…

No Country for Old Men was outstanding; sort of a more mature Blood Simple. Ssoooo glad to see the Coens back in top form.

I hate to say it, but some Steve Reich pieces are the perfect soundtrack for a low-key A-Team-style montage. Just what I need right now.

On the Web

• Behind the Scenes of Layer Tennis: Chris Glass details his side of the Layer Tennis match he played with Naz Hamid.
• The Pothole: My first guest contribution to The Superest!
• The Superest: A wonderful new site from Kevin Cornell and Matt Sutter, determined to determine who is the superest of them all.
• Radio Orphan Annie’s Secret Decoder Badges: A brief history of the decoder pins used by Radio Orphan Annie’s Secret Society… See more →

trying to figure out why Apple doesn't offer a podcast (or even RSS feeds) of the movie trailers it hosts both on its site and in iTunes.

After 24 solid hours of quick zooms, day-for-night shots, 30-year-old teenagers, and maggots-a-million, I emerge victorious. Time for bed.