Irène Jacob turned 40 on Saturday.  Famke Janssen is 40, too.  Lena Olin is 51.  All the hottest actresses in Hollywood are over 40 now.

No big deal?  You must not mind getting old as much as I do.  Our fantasy women get older as we get older.  Bummer.

So maybe it’s time for a new generation.  Christina Hendricks, A.J. Cook, Morena Baccarin, Michelle Williams (thinking of the Oscars here), and Keira Knightley are all ‘78ers or later.  Long may they live, and never get older than I.

Add contributions as you will to the comments page.

Err … nice.  I hope the system’s just temporarily offline.

I’m not sure if Steven Seagal ever bothered to jump the shark or whether he was just born with a school between him and the mainstream public, but he’s still jumping something.  As his physical fitness declines and he relies more and more on slow-motion to hide his slow reactions, he’s portraying ever more benign characters forced into violence by ever more tragic circumstances.  I mean, it used to be sufficient for him to be an EPA agent forced to punch and kick by ruthless big-business profiteers.  Then, it escalated.  He had to be a Buddhist recluse forced to punch and kick when his daughter is kidnapped.  I don’t know where he can really go from here.  I mean, what, maybe a guy who nurses sick birds back to health at a wildlife refuge forced to punch and kick by a gang of thugs selling little orphan girls as sex slaves?  I mean, maybe I could write that up this weekend and sell it.  “Birdman rescues vestal orphans.”  It could fly.

(Hold on, gotta take this.  Hi.  Yeah.  No, I hadn’t heard.  Really?  Really?  Oh.  OK then.)

Hi, I’m back.  Umm … seems he’s got that one covered.  Anyone else with a spec script?  I’m out of ideas.

My brother in law has written a review of the Silent Hill movie on his LiveJournal, but I don’t have a LJ account and I’m still working on getting OpenID running on this site, so I’ll post here. Maybe he’ll link back to me.  My review is as someone totally unfamiliar with the video game.

Great: Color timing, cinematography, Pyramid Head, Sean Bean, Jodelle Ferland, the cockroaches, certain in-camera shots (such as the camera descending to frame a character through a broken chair) and certain effects shots (such as the elevator descent).

Good: The score, Alice Krige, Deborah Unger, interior production design.

Bad: The legions of identical reveals of disfigured bodies, the fact that as a horror movie it failed to elevate my heartrate even once, exterior facades of main street, Laurie Holden.

Terrible: Radha Mitchell.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

Last year’s film Suspect Zero wasn’t that bad.  It gets a 5.7 at IMDB.  I gave it a 6.  Unlike my brother, I like to watch director’s commentaries. I almost always watch them, especially if I either loved or loathed the movie. If I’m just apathetic about it and can’t imagine sitting through it again, I might skip it. So I put in the commentary for the movie. I made it two and a half minutes in. I transcribed the beginning of it for you. Enjoy.

My name is Elias Merhige and I am the director of Suspect Zero.

I did not set out to make a serial killer genre film, I did not set out to make a film about serial killers, I set out to express something much more deep, about the nature of the unconscious and the nature of justice and the nature of how the human mind works. These opening titles demonstrate the synapses of Orion’s brain, as each neurological fiber of his brain screams out to find and hunt. Right out of the titles we pull out of a drainpipe off of some lonely, forgotten highway. We come out of the unconscious, out of the earth, out of the bowels of the earth, and what do we see? A lonely can, tossed aside. A baseball that’s been used; for how many games? A broken doll that was once loved. Where is its owner?

We come upon a grimy milk carton. The rain begins to wash away the grime. The dirt falls away and we see this adorable, innocent child. Her date of birth. She’s been missing. Where is she? Most people don’t know, but since 1972, that this close to ninety thousand people: adults, women, men, children, that are all missing [sic].  Their bodies unaccounted for, their whereabouts unaccounted for.  Where are they?  That’s a fact, that’s not a fiction.

I was watching The Two Towers with my brother. It came to the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and all the young children were being ushered into caves while the men and older boys were being armed.

“I care about the kids as much as the next guy,” I said, “but surely even a seven year old boy or girl could ferry arrows to the front lines?”

“We don’t talk about the arrows!” said my brother.

The End of Late Fees!  Big advertising blitz!  Rejoicing in the streets!  All hail!

So I asked the young woman at the counter what the details of this are.

Joshua: Could you tell me the details of the new program?
Employee: You still have a due date, but you have seven days from the due date to bring it back.
Joshua: And then what?
Employee: And then we sell it to you automatically, and it’s yours to keep.
Joshua: You what?
Employee: We charge you for the video, and you don’t have to bring it back.
Joshua: That’s pretty sneaky.
Employee: You have 30 days from when we charge you to return it for credit.

But hey, that’s not a late fee, I guess.

I almost want to let them do that to me once so that I can make a tidy profit when the inevitable class action lawsuit goes through.

Oh, and the “refund” you get?  “You will be charged a restocking fee plus applicable taxes.” Why? “BLOCKBUSTER incurs processing, administrative and other costs when we have to convert rental product to a sale, as well as when you return the product after that sale. The restocking fee helps to cover that cost.” Poor buggers. You almost feel sorry for them, don’t you? Pitiful bastards with their administrative costs when the big mean customer makes them take a video back.

I almost left my purchases sitting on the counter and walked out, but I didn’t want to be confrontational with the employee who, despite complicity by having no intentions of informing me of the new policy without my asking, couldn’t seem to care less. And I really wanted to see Life of Brian tonight.  But I had no idea how mad I’d end up.

The address, if you want to cut up your card and mail it with a nasty letter, is

Blockbuster Inc.

1201 Elm Street

Dallas, TX 75270

This company is so going to tank.  Divest now.

I saw Bowling for Columbine for the first time today. It’s in my top ten or twenty favorite films of all time. Michael Moore is a big guy, but his balls are outsized even for his frame. The portion where he stands up to Charlton Heston was really uncomfortable. I have no idea how he did it.

Tom Mauser is my new personal hero.

I watched Outfoxed today. Aargh. What a frustrating movie. It left me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. I have, however, come to the conclusion that Bill O’Reilly either needs to be somewhere where he can be taken care of and receive regular shots, or he needs to be somewhere where he can be taken care of and shot regularly.

Don Hewitt, of whom I’m no great fan, is retiring from 60 Minutes, of which I’m also no great fan.  I heard him on NPR yesterday talking in a highly opinionated fashion about the propensity of Americans to change the channel repeatedly and essentially “walk out” of the program; he compared the remote to “a gun”. He posed the following question: how many feature films have you walked out of in the theater? He claimed that no one would be able to name five. This is supposed to prove that we have “nothing invested” in television programs, compared to movies.

Well, I’ve walked out of four films, and I’ve fallen asleep in three others (post-childhood.) I’m also a third his age. Extrapolate at will. I have a feeling others have comparable statistics. So, if you’re inclined, post at the board.

OK, if you’re curious: I walked out of:

1. Trespass (1992, 5.9 stars at IMDB),
2. Hard Target (1993, 5.3 stars,  stars),
3. Natural Born Killers (1994, 6.6 stars), and
4. Starship Troopers (1997, 6.6 stars)

I fell asleep during:

1. The Ghost and the Darkness (1996, 6.4 stars),
2. The Core (2003, 5.5 stars), and
3. Cavale, aka On The Run, aka Trilogy:One (2002, 6.8 stars)

I tend to forget, with how much gore is permitted in R-rated films these days, how much more gory they can get when they are unrated.  Good grief.

The San Gabriel Valley in Perspective, or, Why You Shouldn’t Feel Sorry for How Much the Wedding in Father of the Bride Cost

Here is a comparison of median household incomes in the San Gabriel Valley, where I live:

Yes, that’s almost a factor of four range, and yes, San Marino (where Steve Martin and family live in Father of the Bride) is twice its nearest competitor.  All of these towns are are close enough to drive to

for a movie (not that San Marino has any theaters) or a meal (San Marino has exactly twelve restaurants, each located on one of only two streets.) To help visualize the towns, El Monte and Rosemead are pretty grimy, Alhambra is beginning to see a renaissance since the rebuilding of its downtown, Monrovia is fiercely small-town America and has some turn of the (last) century homes, South Pas and Arcadia have nice, big, new homes, Sierra Madre is a nice foothills community with a charming downtown, San Marino is clannish, conservative, and opulent, and the rest are fairly basic L.A. suburbs.

For comparison, Los Angeles proper (across its communities, including inner-city areas and the San Fernando Valley) has a median household income of $36,687, right near the bottom.

“Toni Collette has proven she can do about anything — but she can’t do this.”  Ebert, with whom I sometimes disagree but whom I almost always respect, pans Connie and Carla, reassuring me that I don’t have to go see this movie despite, along with 98% of Americans, having liking Vardalos’s previous effort.

Among his other new reviews, he gives Kill Bill: Vol. 2 a perfect four stars. No, I’m not going to link to it. You shouldn’t read it. I sure didn’t. It’s my most anticipated movie for this year. The only reason I haven’t seen it yet is that Jenn wants to see it and we haven’t gotten the first one from Netflix yet. (Come on, red envelope. Come on, red envelope.)

Why was I at Ebert’s site to begin with?  I wanted to see what he thought of Eyes Wide Shut, which I just saw. And his response surprised me: he seemed to pan it in his review, then gave it 3.5 stars. If this was mailed to him blind, with no identifying information, and if he was hypothetically dense enough not to recognize the director screaming “I’m KUBRICK!” through the whole thing with bizarre lighting and endless cart shots, I wonder how he would have scored this auteur piece. I think we give A-list, brilliant, directors a little too much credit when interpreting their works.

Not that I thought it was terrible. I’m trying to be really careful not to ruin anything, so I can’t really discuss the good parts in detail, but I’ll stick to the stuff everyone probably already knows about the film. The orgy scene was incredibly eerie, and had the potential to be world-class if the ham-handed digital insertion of black silhouettes to earn it the R Rating hadn’t been done. (And to digress for a moment, let me say that was completely unconscionable. In no way should someone under 17 see the film. The studio forcing the edit is pandering to our societal stigma of adult-labeled material. Our society, on a general level, wants to see adult material: sex, nudity, action, violence, but for some reason we’re only comfortable seeing it if no one reminds us that kids shouldn’t be seeing it. We’re adults, they’re kids. We’re allowed to like things that are inappropriate for them.) The costumer should have won an Oscar. I get the Homeric bit — the episodic nature of the story, the “variations on a theme” composition — but that’s been done to death. It didn’t work for me. It’s been thousands of years. Not every protagonist needs an Odyssey. But to its credit, the film did something a bit unusual for plots of this type, which was to maintain a perfectly planned plot arc via these disconnected vignettes.

I’m venturing a bit close to the material.  Sorry.  Let me try to step back.

Stepping away from the details, my main complaint with the film was the following. For all the hype of it being ground-breaking, edgy, and artsy, it was one of the most morally parochial films I’ve ever seen. (I won’t go into more detail here, but I’ll take this to email with anyone who is interested.) The juxtaposition of the filming and the philosophy is bizarre, and I think irreconcilable. Kubrick was both screenwriter and director, so it’s not a case of mismatch between two people. If Kubrick really is as parochial as the plots and the too-tidy resolution indicate, then it’s inappropriate to show the images he chose to show to his audience, even — especially — for shock value. If he really was post-traditional morality enough to believe the stuff belongs on celluloid, he should get off his puritanical high horse and admit that relationships are more complex than the pencil sketch he committed to paper and film.

There seems a trend in, say, the last ten years, to make movies where the “twist” is that some portion (frequently a large portion) of what you just watched, action committed to honest-to-goodness celluloid, properly dressed, acted, and scored, never actually happened in the story, that you have been watching the delusion of a main character filmed not as a delusion but as reality. I’m not going to list the films I’m thinking of here, because doing so will spoil the point of the movie, but I can name four five six without putting much thought into it. The questions are, how many can you name (again, please don’t list them)? And do you think this is losing its novelty?

I saw The Wicker Man the other day.  I may be naïve, but I had no idea they made movies this disturbing in 1973.

(No, I won’t link to it at IMDB. If you want a disturbing film, better that you know absolutely nothing about it, other than the fact that I gave it nine stars at IMDB.)

If you, dear reader, watched two thirds of David Cronenberg’s Spider in October while distracted with a new baby, then watched the remaining third five months later after forgetting several important points, you owe it to yourself to watch the film again with the commentary running.  Also, if you watched the film under any other circumstance, you owe it to yourself to watch the film again with the commentary running.

I saw Kill Bill: Vol. 1 today.  I loved it.  Adored it.  A phenomenal film.  I gave it ten stars at IMDB.  I’ve only done this a couple of times before.  Schindler’s List.  The director’s cut of Das Boot.  You get the idea.

You can learn all sorts of interesting information from the IMDB page.  (Including that Chiaki Kuriyama is not really seventeen.  She’s legal.  Even when the film was made.  Barely.  Helps assuage some guilt feelings.  What a difference a year makes.  Anyway.^*)  The trivia page is especially fun, and while it doesn’t actually tell you the name, it tells you where and how The Bride’s name can be found in the film.  (Lazy?  Do a Google search.  Or look here.)

But the most interesting thing comes on the goofs page.  Under “Incorrectly regarded as goofs”, we find the following:

The many continuity lapses and other apparent technical errors are a matter of deliberate stylistic choice in this pastiche of 1970s “B” action movies.

Which is groovy and everything.  Really.  But isn’t it just a bit too convenient?  I mean, don’t you think every film director would like to have this notation in his or her film’s goofs page?  Or just shorten it to “The mistakes are intentional, deal with it?”  The Big Stuff: I’m with you on that.  Nobody bleeding on the snow, for instance, even when sporting massive gaping wounds.  But the tiny stuff, like the mascara smudge under Go Go’s left eye disappearing during the fight scene.  Are Tarantino worshippers really going to tell me that the makeup artist went in and painted a smudge just so we can have a continuity lapse to marvel at?

One thing especially unusual about this film is how quickly time seemed to pass.  The movie was scheduled to start at 2:30, but I had forgotten to reset my watch for the return to PST.  So as the previews started, I reset my watch from 3:30 to 2:30.  Then, at a certain point in the film I glanced down at my watch to gauge where we were, and it read 4:30.  But by this point I had forgotten I had fixed my watch (following this still?)  So I thought, “Oh good, there’s an hour left.”  Then the film cut to credits.  No idea what happened to that extra hour.

If you haven’t seen this film, have a strong stomach when it comes to amputations, and trust my opinions at all: go see it.  It’s fantastic.

(Note added 29 October 2003: “To my credit,” I told my wife, “I think I was supposed to find her sexy, and I think I was supposed to be uncomfortable about it.”  “I’m sure,” she responded.  “Ninety percent of a Tarantino film is making the viewer feel uncomfortable.”)

I watched a movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000 the other day: 1993’s Quest of the Delta Knights (see a preview here, if you don’t mind every important plot element being revealed.)  It’s currently rated 1.8 out of 10 at IMDB: when it gets 200 more votes it will, if the score stays the same, qualify for their list of Bottom 100 Films, and will come in somewhere between position 7 and 10.  A score of 1.8 will tie it with Hobgoblins, and will leave it just slightly higher than Gigli and Manos.

Thing is, I liked it.  Not “It’s so bad it’s good.”  Not “It was an unintentional comedy that had me cracking up.”  Not “It’s great for the cheese factor alone.”  I liked it.  It was just fine for what it was, an ultra low-budget adventure story filmed with various Renn Faires as backdrops.  It starred Emmy-winner David Warner and Golden Globe-winner Olivia Hussey, and they and the young Corbin Allred gave perfectly respectable performances.  I’ve saved the episode on the TiVo, as I intend to subject someone to it to gauge another viewer’s reaction.  I just don’t think it’s that bad.  Anyone else willing to fess up to liking this movie?

The number of IMDB Top 10 Films I have seen: 8 (80%)

The number of IMDB Top 100 Films I have seen: 57 (57%)

The number of IMDB Top 250 Films I have seen: 105 (42%, although I’m not sure if I finished three or four of them.)

The number of IMDB Bottom 100 Films I have seen: 11 (11%: two on Mystery Science Theater, one I stopped watching, and three [Speed 2: Cruise Control, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and Batman & Robin] that really were not that bad.)

How do you compare?  Post your answers.

I just watched Red Dragon.  Really liked it.  If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend it.  I am such a fan of Silence, but I was extremely disappointed by Hannibal.  I really wanted to like this movie, and fortunately it came through.  Great film.

About thirty minutes into it, I told Jennifer that I was really enjoying it, and I didn’t want it to end.  “I hope it goes over two hours,” I said.

“Two hours?” she asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah, that’s not all that long.  If it goes for 132 minutes, it’s gone more than two hours,” I said, referencing the runtimes listed on the NetFlix sleeves we get.

“Oh, I guess so,” she said.

So near the end of the movie I was watching the clock.  There is the main end of the movie, then the “afterword” of sorts that ties it into Silence.  Then a sudden cut to black, and roll credits.  The cut to black?  At 1:59:59.

The number of negative comments about The Blair Witch Project at IMDB have taken me by surprise.  I thought the film was fantastic.  I saw it in prerelease in 1999, before the firestorm of Artisan-funded hype had arrived, which was probably advantageous.  I was not expecting “the most frightening movie ever” or any other hyperbole lavished upon it.  All I knew was that it had received positive reviews at Sundance … and I had seen the online mythology.

This multimedia approach, to build a mythology explicitly for the film, yet outside it, was inspired.  I found it exciting, and I perused the site with interest before screening the film.  I never thought, even for a moment, that the mythology was real.  I have been shocked by the number of people taken in by it.  Yes, I fight against religious superstition, hoaxes, and pseudoscience on this site, which means that I am forced to confront the gullibility of people all the time.  But the credulity of the public never ceases to amaze me.

I am at a loss as to the points of complaint against the film.  Was it overhyped?  Yes, but that is hardly the filmmakers’ fault.  Were the filming and cinematography amateurish?  Yes, but that is the whole point, as is the unrehearsedness of the actors’ dialogue.  And the common complaint that there was no musical score, and that we never see the Witch; are people really this ruined by modern films?

Yes, the movie is almost three years old, and I am probably beating a dead horse.  But this also means that the third anniversary of its release is coming up.  If you have not seen the film before, I suggest you rent it, turn out all the lights, and enjoy.

On Russell Crowe: “animal magnetism combined with an unsophisticated demeanour (think Doctor Dolittle meets Eliza Doolittle.)”

- Dennis McCafferty.  “Honey π.”  Sunday Herald online.

Sick this week, I have had time to watch quite a few films.  Some were excellent, some mediocre, a couple pretty bad.  In case it is of interest (and to keep my brother happy by making a long post) I offer a review here.  Ranking movies quantitatively can be near-impossible (not to mention foolish), but I do my best to rank the following films in descending order of my preference.

1. Cabaret Balkan: This film is entitled Bure Baruta in the Serbo-Croatian.  It is difficult to keep this review anything but an exercise in superlatives.  The plot is deeply symbolic, with each of the characters seemingly an archetype, or, as one reviewer put it, “an aspect of the Balkan psyche.”  My knowledge of the specific history of the region is limited so many of the references are probably lost on me, but many themes are comprehensible without context: perceived emasculation under an oppressive regime, the resort of a traumatized people to absurdism, a status quo of mutually accepted violence smoothly escalating to murder, the blinding effects of nationalism.  In one vignette, the author seems to contend that “Western cleverness” cannot be transposed into the Balkans, which is something to ruminate on.  Despite a few heavy-handed allegories (for instance, the young activist who takes a bus full of people hostage, intent on making the passengers aware of their surroundings and angry at injustices, and is killed by the official driver just as his message begins to sink in) the symbolism is effective.  The use of an absurdist, effeminate, decadent cabaret performer as the vehicle for direct authorial voice intrigues me.  The film is marked by magnificent acting (excepting a few minor characters), especially from Nebojsa Milovanovic, Mirjani Jokovic, Aleksandar Bercek, and Nebojsa Glogovac; the former two offered portrayals that I expect to be seared into my memory for life.  I rated this movie 9 at IMDB.
2. Memento: I don’t remember the last time a suspense film has been this effective for me.  It takes the feeling of the last minutes of The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, or Se7en and extends it over a two-hour film.  I recommend you do not de-Rot13 the following unless you have seen the movie already.  N srj cbvagf bs cflpubybtl ner n ovg jrnx (pna bar ernyyl ratenva pbzcyrk ireony zrzbevrf guebhtu pbaqvgvbavat?) naq guvf gnxrf njnl sebz gur chapu bs gur raqvat fyvtugyl.  Ohg V jnf pnhtug hc va gur pyrirearff, gur gehr fhfcrafr nf gb jung jnf tbvat ba, naq gur terng npgvat.  Gur fpevcg frrzf irel rnfl gb jevgr cbbeyl naq irel qvssvphyg gb jevgr jryy.  Puevfgbcure Abyna (jub nyfb qverpgrq vg) unf jevggra vg jvgu terng fxvyy.  I strongly recommend seeing it without even reading the back of the box.  I rated this movie 9 at IMDB.
3. Genghis Blues: Like many people, I expect, I was first introduced to the culture and music of Tuva through Richard Feynman’s books.  A few years back I purchased Deep in the Heart of Tuva from the always-cool Ellipsis Arts….  The mini-book that accompanies the CD discussed the fascinating Tuvan rituals and culture.  When Genghis Blues, a film chronicling blues musician Paul Pena’s trip to Tuva debuted at Sundance, I knew I had to see it.  Unfortunately I missed it in the theatres, and I have waited until this week to see it.  It is a charming, sometimes heartbreaking, at all times amazing story.  Pena, who is blind, taught himself Tuvan throatsinging by ear; he also taught himself the Tuvan language at home using an electronic text reader, translating Tuvan texts letter-by-letter into Russian, then translating from the Russian to English (no Tuvan-to-English dictionaries existed.)  The film, though marred at times by amateurish photography, shows the beauty and generosity of Tuva and its people, the courage and devotion of Pena, and the enchanting and haunting Tuvan throatsinging in a more in-depth fashion than I have yet seen.  I highly recommend this film, which I rated 8 at IMDB.
4. The Gift: This film, about a psychic woman’s investigation of a murder, is one of those films in which the quality of the final product is far better than it has any right to be.  Based on a cheesy, formulaic plot and featuring uninterestingly-written characters, this film is redeemed by the top-notch acting talent who imbue the characters with magnificent depth.  The always-amazing chameleon Cate Blanchett provides a convincing portrayal, as do Giovanni Ribisi and Greg Kinnear (who is showing himself to be quite a talented actor.)  Katie Holmes is miscast (about five years to young for the role) and Keanu Reeves (an actor whose performances I sometimes respect) is barely competent, but they are made up for by the trio I mentioned first.  The plot could have been ten times better, but the acting talents commandeer the reins and turn a cheesy pseudo-suspense film into an interesting, if predictable, character-driven story.  The acting leads me to rate this as high as 6.5; this turns into 6 on IMDB’s scale.
5. Willow: I have not seen this charming family-film fantasy since the late ’80s, when I enjoyed it much more.  There are charming touches to be sure (the dwarf Nelwyn referring to the normal Homo sapiens as “giants” and using miniature horses as mounts, for instance) but the film in general comes up lacking.  Sets look cheap and unimpressive, there are plenty of obvious façades, and the plot lacks a true climax.    Val Kilmer as Madmartigan, the self-proclaimed “greatest swordsman who ever lived” is fun to watch, as is (for entirely different reasons) the gorgeous Joanne Whalley, but the good points are not enough for me to rate this above 5 at IMDB.
6. Vatel: This film is a period-piece-for-the-sake-of-making-a-period piece, an overindulgent costume drama, a story in search of a plot.  The sad and depressing elements of it are simply not balanced by sufficient quality, and I was left thinking “that’s it?” at the end of it.  Uma Thurman and Gerard Depardieu are both talented actors, but they are given nothing to work with in this film and (unlike in The Gift, reviewed above) predictably make nothing of it.  There is a certain foolishness that embraces swooning, unrequited love stories regardless of how trite and vacuous they are; this film falls into that category.  “Oh, isn’t this film lovely and romantic?”  Well, frankly, no.  This gets a 4 from me.
7. The 6th Day: OK, what can I say?  This is the enantiomorph of Vatel, which I review above.  Perhaps to satisfy some cosmic symmetry, this film provides the vacuous, trite “guy film” counterpart to the vacuous, trite “chick flick”.  Cheesy psuedoscience runs through it, the kind that makes one wish they hadn’t bothered trying to explain the premise in the first place.  Arnold is Arnold, true to form.  The jokes are lame, the effects high-budget but unoriginal, the script the thinnest vellum placed over a camp-wannabee star vehicle. Arnold intones, in his strong bass, “You cloned the wrong man!”  You now have the entirety of the story as well as a large serving of the cheese, and you have saved yourself the $4.50 you might have spent renting the DVD.  This gets a generous 4 from me.

Out of curiosity I checked IMDB’s user ratings of these films; aside from moving Cabaret Balkan from slot #1 to slot #3, my ordering is the same as the ordering of the amassed IMDB scores:

It is hard to believe that it is after midnight now.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything I want to do these days.  This is mostly a good thing: there are a lot of activities that interest me at the moment, so I am never at a loss for something to do and enjoy.  Here is a list of activities I have wanted to pursue in the past couple of days, only a subset of which have been accomplished or attempted.

1. Play with Cakewalk.  Use it to record some of my musical compositions, with multiple vocal and instrumental tracks.
2. Order more stamps from Iowa Stamps & Coins for my ongoing (but unnamed) philatelic art project.  Work on the art project.  Transfer the pieces to a new album.
3. Work on a redesign of mcgees.org.
4. Install the new printer that has been sitting on my floor, in a box, since the day after Christmas.
5. Play some more with the new TiVo.
6. Watch some of the movies recorded by it.
7. Listen to my new CDs from Christmas.
8. Research the sport of fencing.
9. Add advertising to ScotchFinder (the advertisers are arranged, I just need to do some re-coding of the site.)  Add the ability to search the database via a toll-free telephone number.
10. Research whale deafness.
11. Continue reading The Annotated Alice, Infinite Jest, and The Life of Samuel Johnson.
12. Research PocketPCs, potentially to buy one soon.
13. Make hotel reservations for the UK trip.
14. Search Fresh Air archives.
15. Buy add-ons to the hamster habitats.
16. Clean my study.
17. Reinstall Microsoft Visual Studio at home from my CDs, which I haven’t done since my hard drive crashed.

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  (You probably think some of these are fake, thrown in for humor.  That is not the case.  Even the whale one.)  Implicitly on the list, of course, is to write about the activities in this ‘blog.

My makeshift way of dealing with the situation has been to get 5.5 hours of sleep per night.  I think this is beginning to take a toll.  It’s getting close to 12:30.  I will probably go watch half an hour of “Antiques Roadshow” on TiVo, pour a malt, maybe scoop a bit of Ben and Jerry’s (which is, by the way, now the most popular tourist attraction in Vermont.  Yikes.)

More descriptions of the activities on the list will follow, as time permits.  I have found that it is frequently easier to write about one’s experiences doing something after one has already done the something.  Wish me luck for making the time.