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links and movies
Feb. 22nd, 2012 11:36 amA few of links:
Enterprise Value-Added horde management: Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" in powerpoint.[1]
Middletown, CT, can flood without warning, now. The river gauge has been shut down.
On a more networky technical side, a good review of how to handle netops catastrophes.
The past week and change has been the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon. A bunch of movies and shorts throughout last week and then the 24 hour movie marathon over the weekend.
Some new feature films that showed up that I saw, listed in approximate order of how much I liked them. The first two are a tie for me and so are listed alphabetically.
There were a bunch of short films as well. In no particular order, stand-outs were Steam Driven with a bonus of music by the ever-awesome Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band[3]; Doctor Glamour, which starts out steampunk/lovecraft and ends up rocky horror faaaaabulous; Molly and the Masked Storm which is particularly awesome for being done by young kids (fuck, yeah), Time Stopper (the trailer's kind of misleading about the film), Windmills, Bighorn, and Stop.
The 'Thon itself had some classic old stuff (beautiful print of the 1931 "Frankenstein"[4] and an early "Island of Dr Moreau" film), Roger Corman cheeze, 1980's cheeze, recent cheeze (including "Paul" which was better than I expected and included the best cameo since "Zombieland"), the as-awesome-as-I-hoped features "Attack the Block" (aliens invade the bad part of London) and "ROBOT ENHIDRAN" (bollywood! Aishwarya Rai Bachchan looking gorgeous! big fabulous musical numbers! geeky plot things! bonus "Demon Seed" type content), and a repeat showing of Dimensions. Also, the Cowboy BeBop movie, which I partly snoozed through but was cool whenever I was awake, and which has the *best* damned soundtrack.
[1] If you feel the need to immediately listen to the song, I recommend the excellent cover version done recently for the Fincher 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' film.
[2] GoodGuy pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. BadGuy pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. GG pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. BG pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. etc etc.
[3] My thoughts during the movie: "hey, this sounds kind of ENSMB-ish." ... "Man, this sounds like 'Bella Ciao.' That's a traditional song, yeah? Cool." "Wow, this *really* sounds like ENSMB." ... watching credits: "HEY, THAT IS ENSMB! YAY!"
[4] The credits list the source material as written by "Mrs Percy B. Shelley", which is not how I would describe Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Enterprise Value-Added horde management: Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" in powerpoint.[1]
Middletown, CT, can flood without warning, now. The river gauge has been shut down.
On a more networky technical side, a good review of how to handle netops catastrophes.
The past week and change has been the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon. A bunch of movies and shorts throughout last week and then the 24 hour movie marathon over the weekend.
Some new feature films that showed up that I saw, listed in approximate order of how much I liked them. The first two are a tie for me and so are listed alphabetically.
- Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads. Imagine if Masterpiece Theater wanted to do a time travel piece. Yeah, like that. A bit of Donnie Darko mixed in. The pacing was slow, but I really enjoyed it. Some ambiguity but not too much or too little, imao.
- Pig. A guy wakes up in the desert, hood over his head and his hands tied, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Hijinks ensue. Then, he wakes up in the desert, hood over his head and his hands tied, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Different hijinks ensue. Repeat. Kind of somewhere between Memento, Run Lola Run, and a bit of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
- Time Again. Plagued by (imao) really mediocre action choreography[2], and a few 'wait, how does that work?' moments, but otherwise pretty solid time travel piece.
- Folklore. Two agents interview a bunch of folklore-based creatures. I think this would've worked better as a shorter piece. In fact, I could totally see this as a recurring thing on a sketch comedy show and it being brilliant. As it is, it felt a little long and drawn out. However, I'll give the guy huge props - he made it for $13K (including it being a SAG picture!) and every cent ended up on the screen.
- Sol. I really wanted to like this. But it got too nonsensical in multiple ways including straight-up "wait, what the hell" plotting and utterly peculiar character motivations. Also, the acting came off as really wooden - I don't know how much is the actors and how much is the direction. Given that it was the case for several people, though, I'm going to go with direction and have editing share the blame.
There were a bunch of short films as well. In no particular order, stand-outs were Steam Driven with a bonus of music by the ever-awesome Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band[3]; Doctor Glamour, which starts out steampunk/lovecraft and ends up rocky horror faaaaabulous; Molly and the Masked Storm which is particularly awesome for being done by young kids (fuck, yeah), Time Stopper (the trailer's kind of misleading about the film), Windmills, Bighorn, and Stop.
The 'Thon itself had some classic old stuff (beautiful print of the 1931 "Frankenstein"[4] and an early "Island of Dr Moreau" film), Roger Corman cheeze, 1980's cheeze, recent cheeze (including "Paul" which was better than I expected and included the best cameo since "Zombieland"), the as-awesome-as-I-hoped features "Attack the Block" (aliens invade the bad part of London) and "ROBOT ENHIDRAN" (bollywood! Aishwarya Rai Bachchan looking gorgeous! big fabulous musical numbers! geeky plot things! bonus "Demon Seed" type content), and a repeat showing of Dimensions. Also, the Cowboy BeBop movie, which I partly snoozed through but was cool whenever I was awake, and which has the *best* damned soundtrack.
[1] If you feel the need to immediately listen to the song, I recommend the excellent cover version done recently for the Fincher 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' film.
[2] GoodGuy pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. BadGuy pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. GG pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. BG pops up, *bang bang bang* ducks. etc etc.
[3] My thoughts during the movie: "hey, this sounds kind of ENSMB-ish." ... "Man, this sounds like 'Bella Ciao.' That's a traditional song, yeah? Cool." "Wow, this *really* sounds like ENSMB." ... watching credits: "HEY, THAT IS ENSMB! YAY!"
[4] The credits list the source material as written by "Mrs Percy B. Shelley", which is not how I would describe Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
