Yesterday, via Vero, I discovered a couple of charming videos featuring British chrildren’s choirs singing pop hits. First, there’s Lily Allen’s “Chinese”:
I thought it was all girls, but you can spot a few boys in the latter half of the video. And then something a little more old-school:
I’m in Fort Frances, Ontario for a day’s consulting work tomorrow. I got there in a rather unusual fashion: Victoria to Seattle, Seattle to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to International Falls, Minnesota. From there I caught a cab across the border to Fort Frances (here’s a map showing their relative positions). I’m not sure why I’m so pleased by crossing a border in a taxi, but I think it’s the first time I’ve ever done it.
I was also amused by this sign at the International Falls Airport:
According to Wikipedia, they make a rather fraught claim to be the coldest city in the US:
International Falls long promoted itself as the “Icebox of the Nation”, however the trademark for the slogan has been challenged on several occasions by the small town of Fraser, Colorado. Officials from Fraser claimed usage since 1956, International Falls since 1948. The two towns came to an agreement in 1986, when International Falls paid Fraser $2,000 to relinquish its “official” claim. However, in 1996, International Falls inadvertently failed to renew its federal trademark, although it had kept its state trademark up to date. Fraser then filed to gain the federal trademark. International Falls submitted photographic proof that its 1955 Pee Wee hockey team traveled to Boston, Massachusetts with the slogan. After several years of legal battles, the United States Patent and Trademark Office officially registered the slogan with International Falls on January 29, 2008, Registration Number 3375139. Only a few days after announcing its success in the trademark battle, International Falls had a record low temperature of −40°F (−40°C), beating a previous record of −37°F (−38.3°C) in 1967.
As I write this, it’s about midnight local time, and a balmy 11°C.
As the days grow longer, the movie budgets grow bigger. Here are the latest movies I’ve seen, to add to the big list:
State of Play - 8/10 - Another byzantine screenplay by Tony Gilroy, who also wrote Duplicity (and, it turns out, The Devil’s Advocate). Russell Crowe plays yet another shaggy, heroic loner, this time with Rachel McAdams as his wing-man. All poor Helen Mirren does is spout British curses as the weary publisher worried about bankruptcy, but she’s as watchable as the rest of the cast. Journalists have gotten a lot of bad press lately, so I didn’t even mind this overly rosy depiction of their work.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine - 3/10 - Hugh Jackman works out! That’s really the best takeaway from this maudlin, plodding movie on Wolverine’s creation myth. Why are so many superhero movies so utterly without fun? I guess a lot of comic books are the same way: way too serious for their own good. From the score to the cinematography, everything in this film trades on a silly, tired stereotype.
Star Trek - 8/10 - I reviewed it here, so I’ll just say that it’s a rip-roaring space opera in the style of Star Wars and Serenity (this video highlights how much the plot owes to George Lucas and Joseph Conrad). It’s the first good, fun blockbuster of the summer, and rarely has a dull moment or an off-key scene.
Angels & Demons - 5/10 - As mediocre and muddy as The Da Vinci Code, with an equally implausible plot. By ‘implausible’ I don’t mean that it couldn’t happen. I mean that there isn’t much rational causality between plot points, and the thing has more holes than the IIS in a meteor storm. The plot, for example, has a ticking time bomb plot. Yet the bomb itself is this obscure, bizarre device which depends on a draining battery for its timer. I felt particularly sorry for Ayelet Zurer. She’s the Euro-arm-candy replacement for Audrey Tatou. She’s lovely, but utterly pointless.
Last week I was in the Giant Ant Media offices. In a passing conversation, Giant Anter Leah taught me the movie-actor-movie game, where one person names a movie, the other person responds with an actor from that movie, and the first person has to name another movie the actors has appeared in. It instantly appealed to the cinephile in me.
A couple of days later James and I were having dinner after an event, and I told him about the game. This conversation ensued:
JAMES: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
DARREN: George Clooney.
JAMES: Out of Sight.
DARREN: Jennifer Lopez.
JAMES: Nice. You know, that was her at her hottest.
DARREN: Agreed. The zenith of her hotness.
And thus, a website was borne. A week later, we present Zenith of Hotness:
A website with a humble purpose: to scientifically ascertain the peak of a given actor or actress’s hotness.
Vote on when your favourite stars achieved maximum hotness. If you think they haven’t reached their Zenith of Hotness, choose ‘Still Ascending’.
Lately I’ve been inundated with advocacy for the single transferable vote (STV) referendum that’s part of next month’s provincial election. Everybody wants me to vote in favour of it. And I will, because it seems like an excellent idea (as does Beth, as it happens). If you’re unclear on how the STV works, read the Wikipedia entry, check out STV.ca (why they didn’t go with “upgrade your vote” as a slogan, I’ll never know) or watch this rather dour animation.
As you know, there was a similar referendum in 2005, but it failed to achieve the 60% threshold necessary to pass. If I recall correctly, it was basically a PR problem–the issue didn’t receive sufficient attention.
Which brings me to my question: what are the arguments against the STV? The only one I could find was that it’s more complicated than first-past-the-post. That is, people can choose to rank multiple candidates instead of just picking one. I suppose this is marginally more challenging, but voters can still just opt to select their favourite candidate and leave it at that.
I’d also imagine that the established parties might feel threatened, in that a new system will unpredictably affect their futures. What other criticisms have you heard?
Jules recently posted about her web stats. They tell her, among many other things, that she still has one or more readers who are still on Windows 3.1 (originally released on March 18, 1992). I thought I’d check the stats for this site for the same very, very late adopter. No such luck–the oldest visitors that my Google Analytics account shows are on Windows 95 (two of them in the last month, as it happens).
Then I thought to check what percentage of Windows users are using Vista, and what fraction is still on Windows XP. Windows Vista was released a little over two years ago, on January 30, 2007. It has, as I’m sure you’re well aware, been plagued by criticism. I know many XP users who will skip Vista entirely, moving straight to Windows 7 (as of yet, it has no slicker name).
I checked this site, as well as a client’s site (they’re in the software industry). I compared Windows XP and Vista usage for January, 2008 and January, 2009. Here’s what I found:
For this site, as a percentage of all visitors on Windows:
XP
Vista
January, 2008
80%
15%
January, 2009
66%
31%
For a client site, as a percentage of all visitors on Windows:
XP
Vista
January, 2008
81%
13%
January, 2009
74%
21%
Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because there’s a fraction of users on Windows 2000, NT, CE, 98, 95, ME and so forth.
I checked a couple of other sites, and the numbers look more like my client’s site than my own. Vista usage floats around the 25% mark for January, 2009. What should the adoption rate look like? I really have no idea. Microsoft surely hoped that a majority of their users would be on Windows Vista by the time they released Windows 7.
My movie viewing has been pretty spotty in 2009 thus far. I’ve only seen five films. Here are the latest two to add to the list.
Defiance - 6.5/10 - One of Daniel Craig’s better performances–he’s at his seething, snarling best. This is the second film in which he plays a vengeful Jew (the other, Munich, is superior). Defiance offers everything you’d expect, and there are very few surprises. I was struck by how little of the Jewish religion the film depicted. I’d expected (and hoped, in truth) to see more.
Gran Torino - 6/10 - Clint Eastwood has become a great director in his later years, so this film is very watchable. Eastwood (also seething and snarling) is an effective actor in a familiar role–elder guide and guardian to wayward youths. The movie’s subject and themes–the dreadfulness of America’s race relations–feel pretty done to death as well. Without giving too much away, the actor/director indulges in some serious self-deification by the end of the movie. I was left wondering if he was actually having us on a bit. The other glaring issue is that most of the supporting cast has no acting experience, and it shows. They’re inexperience onscreen was, for me, a major distraction.
Is that odd? It’s a totally unobtrusive Pulsar that Julie gave me years ago. I’ve probably changed the black leather strap on it at least five times, and the battery at least twice. The face is a bit dinged up, I guess, but it works perfectly.
All it does is tell time. It has no fancy digital functions (which have, not surprisingly, fallen out of fashion), nor is it good to 200 feet underwater. It has none of the silver and gold bulkiness that I frequently see in men’s magazines on the wrists of brooding male models and an even broodier Clive Owen. I cannot wind it by shaking my wrist.
I have friends who have lots of watches. Travis has, as last count, well, I’m not really sure, but I think it was north of 40. He’s a collector, though, so that seems like a different league altogether.
I have no urge to buy another watch until this one breaks. Is that a common or unusual perspective? How often do you buy watches? How do you decide that it’s time for a new one?
You know, through three and half seasons I’ve found Battlestar Galactica to be a strong show. It’s got a very watchable visual style, decent acting for a sci-fi series and, until recently, a really engaging plot. I especially liked how creator Ronald Moore skillfully wove contemporary themes through the show. It’s something that science fiction often does, but Moore and his writing team managed it without being overly preachy. I’d recommend the show to nearly anybody.
There’s seven or eight episodes in the show’s fourth and final season–there was a quizzical six month hiatus between the first and second halves of this season.
Something seems to have gone deeply wrong in-between.
I was underwhelmed by last week’s episode, and tonight’s was really no better. The show just seems to be recycling scenes and plot points from early seasons. How often have we seen (minor spoilers from tonight’s episode ahead) these scenes before?
Starbuck jawing with fellow officers in the pilot’s room.
Admiral Adama and President Roslin having mopey conversations about her mortality.
Tom Zarek fomenting dissent among the fleet.
Ships rebelling against Admiral Adama’s ham-fisted martial decrees.
Admiral Adama approving the use of deadly force against his fellow humans.
A lot of pitched drama about babies.
And the show seems to have abandoned any of its perspective on or critiques of our world. The last two episodes just seen like talky soap operas in space.
Maybe the extra few months away from the show flipped some ambivalence bit in my head, but I find myself totally unimpressed with BSG’s latest efforts. Anybody else?
Last night we saw Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” at the Belfry Theatre. I was frustrated. On the one hand, Stoppard is an elegant, masterful writer. And the cast was terrific. Jennifer Lines (deserves a Wikipedia entry, so I started one for her) was, as usual, luminous.
However, the play is mercilessly long and talky. I put it at more than two and a half hours. And it’s mostly about the well-worn topic of infidelity. Maybe my attention span is shrinking, but I’d rather watch Patrick Marber’s shorter and fiercer “Closer”, which covers much the same territory in about half the time.
And I was baffled by the staging. The design team seemed to toy with my perceptions–is it 1980 or 2006? Why do two upstage doors provide access to corridors which are already open to the stage? And why is the set so austere? And what was with all that naff music? As the elderly patrons around me sang along to pop tunes from the fifties and sixties, I couldn’t help but feel like the design team was pandering to its aging audience.
I figured that it had to do with the play-within-a-play nature of the script, and that director Michael Shamata was just trying to mess with our heads. Still, I found the staging more irritating than engaging. I also have a general bias against art about art. I’ve read enough writers writing about writing, and seen enough plays about the theatre.
That said, here’s an excerpt from the writers on writing camp that’s too great to pass up. Stoppard is a terrific writer, and this is one of several really beautiful passages in “The Real Thing”. From an old-school Lycos page, Henry is wielding his cricket bat, and comparing good writing to a lousy script he’s just read:
HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly…[he clucks his tongue to make the noise]. What we’re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might…travel …[He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.] Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you’ll drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands stuck into your armpits. [indicating the cricket bat] This isn’t better because there’s a consipracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It’s better because it’s better.
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend “The Real Thing”, but if you’ve got patience and a love for great writing, you’ll probably enjoy it.
The Belfry’s publicist, Mark Dusseault, is making great use of some social media channels. They’ve got a fairly active Flickr account, and they post video clips to YouTube. Here’s one from “The Real Thing”:
As the days grow longer, the movie budgets grow bigger. Here are the latest movies I’ve seen, to add to 
Last week I was in the 
