Cuz We Said So

Twilight

I should explain up front that I went to this film with my brother and sister-in-law.  So, I wasn't a lone forty-year-old guy in a dark theater with five hundred teenage girls.  Because that simply wouldn't be right.

I started to read the book, before the film was released, but I didn't get very far (not for lack of interest, for logistical reasons).  So I went into the movie with only the previews and the general pop culture osmosis that surrounds an event like this.  The previews had a lackluster, too bright look about them that made me think of TV shows on one of the lesser networks, not a big budget movie.  The film itself didn't dispell those worries.  I don't know what they spent to make this, but it wasn't much.  The effects are entirely pedestrian (though never outright annoying). 

The cast is pretty good, but not truly stellar.  I hope that Robert Pattinson (as vampire heartthrob Edward) and Kristen Stewart (as everygirl Bella) grow into the roles.  I liked the romance aspect of the story, and they pulled it off, but it wasn't really dramatic the way I think it's supposed to be.  In fact, my favorite character was Bella's stoic single dad, played by Billy Burke.  His understated performance was really great.

As for the vampire stuff, I did like the extended family that we meet, and the comedic aspects of them trying to welcome a human into their family.  The baseball game is hilarious.  The random vampire deciding he has to kill Bella didn't make much sense.  Maybe it's explained in the book.

There were a number of little details that were dropped into this movie that are clearly setting us up for the sequels.  I hope, since this one was such a hit, that they put a little more money and effort into the next one, and really make it sing.

Transporter 3

I was going to wait until the end of the year and do a quick one-line review of this one as a part of my end-of-year movie post... but I really, really hated this movie, so I felt the need to spend a little effort.

I liked the first Transporter, and, unlike many, I liked the second one, too.  They were fun brain candy, with some inventive action sequences, and chances for Jason Statham to be a brooding bad-ass.  But this one didn't even get that much of the formula right.  Sure, the premise that Frank has to stay within 75 feet of his car or he'll explode is kind of nifty in a "Speed" sort of way.  And Robert Knepper's performance as the bad guy is pretty cool.  But there's nothing else to recommend about this movie.

The plot is kept mysteriously hidden for so long I assumed it was more interesting than "Ukrainian minister's daughter is kidnapped to extort favorable toxic waste dumping contract."  It wasn't.  I hoped that the aforementioned daughter would be reasonably interesting on screen.  She wasn't.  I hoped that Frank's shenanigans would carry at least a whiff of plausibility.  They didn't.

It's a shame.  I was looking forward to this one.

Apple’s Latest iPhone Ad is Brilliant

The format of the ads in the series, as may you know, are that they posit one of those little problems in modern life, then demo an iPhone apps that solves the problem.   In this latest ad, the problem is, “you know when you don’t know what song is playing, and it’s driving you crazy?” and the app demonstrated is Shazam, one of several iPhone apps that will identify a song based on listening to several seconds of it playing.

Where it gets clever is that they incorporate the hooky tune that’s been the instrumental background for all of the iPhone 3G ads as if it’s being played out of a speaker on screen—then identify the song just like Shazam would.  So the commercial itself is not only actually useful to people who like the song, it gives proper credit to the artists, which you rarely see in TV ads.  (The song is “You Me and the Bourgeoisie” by The Submarines, by the way).  Then, at the touch of the screen, the ad transitions seamlessly into the vocal version of the song (also clever), which swells to fill your TV’s speakers as the AT&T and Apple logos appear.  It’s very well done. 

Of course, the song itself is about the materialism and excess of those of us in the developed world—how if we love more we need fewer physical things, and how “we not living the good life / Unless we're fighting the good fight.”  Yet it has become the theme song for one of the most well known, most influential mass market commercial products in recent memory, sold by a company built on selling premium electronics to the bourgeoisie?  I think if I wrote the song, and really felt its message, that might annoy me a bit.  On the other hand… if you’re an indie band from LA, and you can get over the philosophical implications… how cool would it be to have one of your songs picked as the theme song for one of the most well known, most influential mass market commercial products in recent memory?

One last thought.  I went online and bought the song immediately after hearing the ad; I’ve always like the instrumental version, and I liked the vocal version even more.  But I bought it from the Amazon MP3 store, not from iTunes.  Know why?  DRM.  I’ve gotten into the habit of buying from Amazon instead of iTunes, because I won’t tolerate someone else trying to lock up my music.  As it turns out, “You Me and the Bourgeoisie” is an iTunes Plus track—it has no DRM.   Too bad for Apple I didn’t know that—their ad did a great job of closing a sale for their competition.  Getting rid of DRM sooner, rather than later?  Probably a good idea.

The Infiniti G37 Convertible—Finally!

After years of making fans of the G Coupe wait for a convertible, Infiniti finally rolled one out last week, at the LA Auto show.  And I have to say… I think it looks pretty sweet.  While I still prefer the look of the G35 to that of the G37, I think I could learn to adapt, given the convertible hard top, which functions through a mechanical ballet that is a beauty to behold—check out the video to see it in action.

A Year Later, About As Expected

Exactly one year ago:

Israel and Palestinians commit to 2008 peace treaty - Reuters

November 27, 2007 - With handshakes, leaders of the United States, Israel and the Palestinians agreed on Tuesday to launch immediate talks to secure a peace treaty by the end of 2008 that would create a Palestinian state. President George W. Bush announced the deal at the opening of a 44-nation Middle East peace conference, with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas standing at his side. "We're off to a strong start," Bush told delegates to the day-long conference, which included 14 Arab states -- among them Syria and Saudi Arabia -- as well as major powers Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Did you see this story when it came out?  Do you remember your impressions?  Did you think it would turn out something like this?:

Palestinian rocket hits Israeli house

November 27, 2008 - Israeli police say a rocket fired from Gaza has hit a house in southern Israel but caused no injuries.

Israel has kept its frontier with Gaza closed except for occasional shipments of essential humanitarian aid since a truce with Palestinian militants there started unraveling in early November in a series of cross-border rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes.

Israel says the border crossings will stay closed until the rocket fire comes to a stop.

The Middle East is nothing if not tragically predictable.  I’d love to be wrong, but something tells me we won’t be seeing a peace treaty in the next 35 days.

links for 2008-11-20

• Windows 7 Touch Control Makes Media Center More Awesome
  Including some video of it in action
• SimCity for the iPhone may ruin my life (in a good way)
  Nice.

Interviews about DOWA

For those interested in learning about Russell-Lutz-as-Author, click here.

links for 2008-11-14

• A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis (Mint.com)
  A well-done (and depressing) illustration of how a bubble forms, bursts, and blows up the economy.
  (tags: visualization money financial)

Playing with the Big Boys

Politico reports this quote from Newt Gingrich:

The Republican Party right now is like a midsize college team trying to play in the Superbowl.

True, dat.  Gingrich knows why the Republicans got its 1994 mandate: ideas.  Go back to the Contract with America.  I don’t agree with all of it, but it was a clear, actionable plan replete with reformist ideas centered around a resonant theme: government isn’t the solution to the problem, government is the problem.

In 2008 we face a host of issues that Republicans should be able to champion – especially energy independence, free and fair trade, and an intelligent national defense policy.  What we got – across the board – was a bunch of scattered sound bites.  The Contract with America wasn’t some ultra-right-wing set of ideas.  It never mentioned abortion, marriage, religion, or any of the topics that right-wing talk radio keeps hammering on.  It was eminently practical and resonated with the electorate because it seemed principled.

What happened?  The Republicans passed some of the Contract and then got distracted by the witch hunt impeachment of Bill Clinton.  Rather than out-governing Clinton, they lost the focus and became the most overspending Congress in history.  George W. Bush didn’t help matters either.

Republicans are looking every which way for a person to lead their party.  That’s not going to work.  For Republicans to regain the White House, they have to find a set of resonant principles.  From these principles will emerge an appropriate spokesperson.

Who knows, perhaps it’s Newt.

links for 2008-11-06

• Putin Plan To Return Aa President
  He grew tired of having "de facto" on his business cards?
• Obama campaign workers angry over unpaid wages...
  Come on, he's just spreading the wealth... from the campaign workers to the campaign, in this case.

Just Kidding About That Poison Pill Thing

Yahoo Now Wants To Be Acquired by Microsoft:

Talk about a 180. Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco; him and his company are tired, battered and bruised. But his message is now - suddenly, and amazingly - clear: Yahoo wants to be bought by Microsoft.

Microsoft, you’ll recall, offered $31 a share for Yahoo when the company’s stock was selling for $20, and Jerry did everything short of booby trapping his office to kill the deal.  Now the stock is selling for $14, and the company is letting go of 10 percent of its work force.  With Jerry and the board members who backed him still working there, are the cuts are happening in the wrong place?

links for 2008-11-04

• Edwards discusses his cameo as Dr. Greene on `ER'

Top Ten Fictional Presidents

We're poised to select a new President today, so in honor of that occasion, I offer my picks for the best fictional Presidents:

10) Joseph Staton (Rep/TX?) - played by Dennis Quaid in "American Dreamz"

Really?  This guy?  The vague gloss on W designed to lampoon the current administration's dim bulb view of global terrorism?  Sure, because Staton betters himself.  He realizes that he doesn't know everything, and stops relying on advisors and starts to learn things for himself.  Imagine a President growing in the office, rather than simply going gray.  One can only dream.

9) "The President" (?/?) - played by Henry Ford in "Fail-Safe"

Poor guy had no choice, really.  Through exactly no fault of his own, he has to decide between total nuclear devastation of the planet, and the destruction of New York City.  He makes the choice--anyone would.  But he doesn't simultaneously lose his mind.  For that, he gets a spot on the list.

8) Thomas Whitmore (?/?) - played by Bill Pullman in "Independence Day"

Refused to respond quickly to the threat of alien invasion, then overcompensated with a nuclear strike.  But he flushed the idiot NSA out of his administration and weathered personal tragedy before rallying his troops with one of the best pre-war speeches since Henry V.  (Flying into battle with those troops gains points for coolness, but immediately loses them again for putting his life at risk unnecessarily.)

7) Andrew Shepherd (Dem/WI) - played by Michael Douglas in "The American President"

He dates a lobbyist, then gets her fired.  That might be enough to put him at the top of the list!  This was Aaron Sorkin's appetizer before the feast of "The West Wing", so Shepherd has most of Bartlet's virtues, without the yawnfest stories about the Visigoths.

6) Dave Kovic (as Bill Mitchell) (Dem/DC) - played by Kevin Kline in "Dave"

So, he wasn't really President, technically, but he got his hands dirty working out a budget for child education, he charmed the pants of every person he met, and he deftly and unselfishly weathered a scandal that he never actually created.  We could use a few fake Presidents with Dave's heart.

5) Jackson Evans (Dem/?) - played by Jeff Bridges in "The Contender"

This tale of a controversial choice to replace a dead Vice President is mostly about the "contender" in question, but this shark-eating POTUS is insidiously charming, and very presidential.

4) James Marshall (Rep?/?) - played by Harrison Ford in "Air Force One"

His no holds barred policy on terrorism triggered an attack on himself, thus endangering both his family and his country.  But then he literally kicked the main terrorist right off the plane.  Yeah!

3) David Palmer (Dem/MD) - played by Dennis Haysbert in "24"

Palmer didn't always make the right play--trusting his horn dog brother springs to mind.  But he stood by his shrewish wife like a good husband... until she was literally a national security crisis waiting to happen, and he broomed her.  He successfully survived a play by the Vice President to knock him out of power.  And he almost always trusted the advice of Jack Bauer, which pretty much guarantees your survival in the 24-verse, at least until Season 5...

2) Tom Beck (?/?) - played by Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact"

And W thought 9/11 was bad.  Beck had to contend with the possibility of the end of all life on the planet.  He steered the country through the mind-bendingly awful crisis with dignity and humility.  You had to love him... as long as you were under fifty years of age.

1) Josiah Bartlet (Dem/NH) - played by Martin Sheen in "The West Wing"

He was compassionate. (Seeing him talk to a scared radio man on a ship in a hurricane is tear-jerking TV gold.)  He was tough.  (He thought long and hard about cold-bloodedly killing that terrorist-intelligence guy from Kumar, but in the end he did it.)  He was the devout Catholic who fought for a woman's right to choose.  He started the series as a neophyte in matters military, and ended it by committing US troops to Central Asia for who knows how long.  And, honestly, would YOU have told the world you had MS?

Bonus List - 6 Useless Fictional Presidents

• President Blake - played by Perry King in "The Day After Tomorrow" (Wait?  There was a President in that movie?)

• "The President" - played by Donald Pleasence in "Escape from New York" (What does it say about the politics of the time when the President is portrayed as a punching bag?)

• President Ashton - played by William Hurt in "Vantage Point" (Harrison Ford would have totally kicked those terrorists' asses!)

• Allen Richmond - played by Gene Hackman in "Absolute Power" (Keep it in your pants, Mr. President!)

• James Dale - played by Jack Nicholson in "Mars Attacks!" (By the end, you're glad when he's skewered by a creepy alien mechanical hand.)

• Paul Hollister - played by Beau Bridges in "10.5" (Everything about that mini-series was really, really awful.)

History Will Note... Then Wonder... Why?

From Rasmussen:

Unless McCain pulls off a stunning comeback, history will note the final two weeks of September as the decisive and defining moment of this campaign. On September 14, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll showed McCain up by three points. Then, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the Wall Street debacle began. McCain’s lead disappeared almost immediately. By September 26, Obama reached the 50% level of support and was ahead by five percentage points.

Why?

DOWA - Admire Please

Russell's new book is out.  The Department of Off World Affairs is a fun and sprightly read.

Warning: contains spoilers

Talking Point-a-Rama

“Synchronized Presidential Debating.”  Bob Schieffer: “By now, we’ve heard all the talking points, so let’s try to tell the people tonight some things that they haven’t heard..”  Or not. 

Via John C. Dvorak on Twitter.

Gas Prices in the UK, By Comparison

Per the Times Online:

The average price of unleaded petrol on BP forecourts yesterday stood at 99.5p a litre. The industry average is 95.8p.

Math+Google tells me that 99.5p/liter is $6.04 per gallon, a reminder that as much as we might dislike gas prices that are higher than we’re used to, we’ve still had it very easy in the US.  And of course, gas in Houston is down to $1.95 this morning.

Meanwhile, what’s a forecourt?  Do our gas stations have those?  Perhaps forecourts are pricey, and that’s why BP’s gas is so expensive.  I propose a move to cheaper, forecourt-free fueling stations would do the British a world of good.

Gas Prices in Houston

below $2 a gallon.  Ditto Tennessee (via Professor Reynolds.)

New Endorsement for McCain

This is pretty hilarious:

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

Wow.

...the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of terror attack would work for Obama.  Clearly, if they do try something like this, or even consider it, the terrorists do not understand US politics.

“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

The piece goes on to describe the situation in Somalia, one, of which, I was previously unaware.  Something about Somalia trying to end their civil war, and the US greenlighting Ethiopia to invade, so that "islamofascists" didn't take over the country.  Fun stuff.

Rant About Superstition

I'm staying in a very new hotel in New York City, which opened about a month ago. Brand new construction. Very nice. And no 13th floor. Apparently, New Yorkers are still superstitious. They still believe that a 13th floor is bad luck. I don't know whether to be angry at such medieval thinking, or simply laugh at these New York idiots.

What makes me even more incredulous, is that they are clearly not actually scared of the "thirteeness" of the floor. It's still the 13th floor, even if you call it the "14th" floor. If the 13th floor is unlucky, you should build it and leave it unoccupied, empty. That's clearly the safest course of action. What they're really saying is that they're afraid of the numeral 13. Those two digits, in conjunction, bring about bad luck. Change the number on that button of the elevator, and then you're all set. Fate averted.

Fools.