Scrubbles.net » Floppies

Weblogs of Note 2

Matt — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:44:01 +0000

When it comes down to it, I don’t leave much time for reading weblogs anymore. Blame Facebook and Twitter (where I follow my fave bloggers anyhow), but a weblog has to be something truly special nowadays to catch my eye. The experience of running a weblog and finding topics to write about makes me appreciate even more when someone else does it well. Like, f’rinstance, these three:

Dear Old Hollywood is the handiwork of Los Angeles resident and classic movie fan Robby Cress. This is a very nostalgic weblog to this reader, not just for the films and stars he writes about (obviously) but for our love of L.A. and the luster it holds even today. A former studio page, Cress covers a variety of Old Hollywood topics with enthusiasm and a friendly vibe (hallmarks of many a great blog). Most impressive are his posts examining various filming locations of flicks both legendary and obscure around the L.A. area. Astonishing legwork in action!
The Obscurity Factor is a relatively new enterprise from Ben Sander, the New York-based performer better known as domestic doyenne Brini Maxwell. The weblog chronicles Ben’s celluloid discoveries, rated on an “Obscurity Factor” scale of 1 (easy to find but unsung amongst the general public) to 10 (a filmic hen’s tooth). Many of the films covered are studio-backed dramas and comedies of the ’60s-’80s lost in the shuffle of passing time, territory very similar to what I’m doing on my weekly Flick Clique posts. I’ve found a lot of stuff to watch on Netflix and such via Ben’s posts, and urge others to check it out as well.
The Second Disc is a fantastic music reissues weblog curated by two diehard fans, Mike Duquette and Joe Marchese. For those of us whose consumption of Classic Pop albums also encompass finding as many b-sides, remixes and outtakes related to said album, this place is a goldmine (it’s also somewhat disillusioning, since in a roundabout way it reveals how routinely the major labels neglect their own back catalogs). My favorite parts are the Reissue Theory posts delving into what could be included on deluxe reissues of various beloved albums. Earlier this week, stuck in the waiting process of jury duty, I spent hours delving into those Reissue Theory archived posts — they’re delightful.

P.S. I wasn’t picked for jury duty.

Forest for the Trees

Matt — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:32:29 +0000

This drawing was made while looking out the window at my parents’ cabin in Northern Arizona, using Autodesk SketchbookPro for the iPad. It’s a fun program to use; they just need to make it easier to save files while you’re working on them. I’ve had a couple of times (including on this drawing) where the drawing was almost finished, then somehow I got out of SketchbookPro and all the latest work was never saved. I also have an annoying habit of getting into the section where you can rotate or move the drawing, then it ends up getting saved that way. Cool program, needs some fine tuning.

Ten Years a Scrubbling Fool

Matt — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:23:16 +0000

A milestone: this week marks the tenth anniversary that I’ve been doing this weblog. It’s hard to believe a whole decade has passed since setting up a Blogger account so I could have a more dynamic element on my little site — complete with impenetrable web address containing a tilde (the scrubbles.net domain name would come a few months later). Although as of summer 2000 I had already been doing a monthly music review site (coded by hand!), this new venture opened up a completely new world. Before, the web felt one dimensional; after, it was a veritable lovefest of sharing, discussing, giving and receiving. All these years later, it still astonishes me that anyone would be interested in my ramblings on whatever crappy movie/book/album comes my way.

So, here’s to ten years of the bl*g! To celebrate, here are some links to other bloggers’ tenth birthday posts:

Jason Kottke: Kottke.org is ten years old today (March 2008)
Brad Graham: The BradLands at 10 (May 2008)
Anil Dash: Ten Years! (July 2009)
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper: PCJM Turns 10! (August 2009)
Kevin C. Murphy: Ghost in the Machine: The First Ten Years (November 2009)
Cory Doctorow: 10 Years of Boing Boing (January 2010)
Meggan: Quiddity is now 10! (February 2010)

Related: Eight Years of Scrubbles.net (highlights reel); Seven Years of Unpigeonholable Tomfoolery (a look at the Scrubbles logos from 2000-07).

Living with the iPad

Matt — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:47:53 +0000

About a month ago, Christopher came to me with a surprise announcement: he was ordering a new Apple iPad. He was thinking about getting something similar to replace our old Dell laptop computer as a simple internet connection for us while going on long trips. As the Apple person in the family, I was delighted with this development — it certainly was going to get more use from me than that crappy Dell.

Now, I’m no early adopter when it comes to new technology, but the iPad really epitomizes what I’d want from a techno-gadget. When the iPhone first came out, I thought “this would be nice without the phone.” Then Apple released the iPod Touch, and I thought “this would be great if it was bigger, so you could read e-books and browse the internet.” Voilà, the iPad! The first generation iPad isn’t perfect; it’s still a bit bulky and the screen could use a few more square inches. However, even after a few weeks I can tell it will be a useful part of our household. We’ve already had a few times while watching a movie when C. will whip out the thing to check on an actor in the Internet Movie Database, a move that would have been not worth the extra work using the laptop.

The first thing I noticed on the iPad is how intuitive the interface is. You move around with the brush of a finger, like on the iPhone but more natural. Typing is accomplished with a small pop-up keyboard. Sure, typing with one hand takes getting used to, but I was able to adapt to it startlingly fast.

The first thing we did was to synched it up to my Mac’s iTunes. I downloaded several free apps, including some news feeds from NPR, the BBC and USA Today. While one could access all three via Safari, I kind of enjoy having them in their own uncluttered state. Browsing on Safari is nice, but the type is a bit too small and I had more than one instance of accidentally tapping the wrong link. As for the controversial lack of Flash, I’ve barely noticed it. Strangely enough, the best app I’ve seen has been MultiPong, a beautifully rendered simple pong game. Speaking of simplicity, there’s also a virtual koi pond app that Christopher immediately gravitated to. I bought SketchBook Pro, which packs an impressive array of features into a measly $7.99 app. At this point I’m just fooling around with it, somewhat frustrated at how I keep accidentally using my fingers to resize my sketches (hmm).

I’ve also explored e-books a little bit with Apple’s iBooks and Amazon’s Kindle app. First off, I think it’s totally cool that Amazon even has a Kindle iPad app. With it, you can see books in color and set the type at a comfortable size, even having pages displayed in brown on sepia (my favorite). I downloaded a cheap copy of Treasure Island with nice color illustrations by N.C. Wyeth; hopefully it’s a sign of things to come that more illustrated ebooks will come along. Although I haven’t explored Apple’s reader, I can already tell that the Kindle has an edge for being able to bookmark pages (if iBooks have bookmarks, I haven’t seen it (note: iBooks does have a bookmark, I now see)). One enormous downside of both is that the type is completely forced justified and not ragged right like in most paper books (remember those?). The font choices aren’t too thrilling, either. Hopefully future updates will remedy that.

Perhaps the most ringing endorsement I have for the iPad is that writing about it here makes me want to fire the thing up and explore more — off I go!

My First Modem

Matt — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:39:11 +0000

I recently came across a true artifact of its time while cleaning out the garage. This Hayes Accura 1140 modem was purchased after I moved into my first apartment in 1994. Armed with it, a Macintosh IIci, and a new America Online membership, I was ready to blaze the Information Superhighway — at 56K per second! Listen, I even had my place equipped with a separate phone line to enable websurfing and talking on the phone simultaneously (considering my pathetic social life at the time, not really necessary). I’m also not afraid to admit that the AOL membership was mostly used to find dates and look at porn. This was back when it took 15-20 minutes to download one photo, mind you. Thank our lucky stars that the internet has grown up since then, and so have I.

Dig this early AOL commercial from 1995. “A friend of mine told me ‘Try America Online.’ I said ‘Why? I’ve got a computer.’” That line always seemed so bizarre to me, even back then. What, were they selling to complete idiots?

Weekly Mishmash: April 11-17

Matt — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:03:16 +0000

Cradle Will Rock (1999). Tim Robbins’ chaotic yet timely film chronicles the staging of the most notorious play produced by the WPA in the 1930s, Marc Blitzstein’s union-friendly musical Cradle Will Rock. We saw this in the theater when it was originally released and it still holds up. It’s interesting to revisit it during this quasi-Depression time and note how familiar the anti-socialist hysteria portrayed here is. I don’t think this is a perfect film; it’s too wide-ranging in scope and Robbins succumbs all too often to the “keep the camera moving” bug that also afflicted Stephen Fry when he did Bright Young Things. Some scenes are excellently staged and acted, while others are done in an offhand, parodic manner which makes me wonder how historically accurate everything is. Among the huge cast, the only true villains are Bill Murray’s cracked vaudevillian and the uppity case worker played by Joan Cusack. Generally I liked the cast, except perhaps Susan Sarandon hamming it up as a flamboyant Italian diplomat. My favorite was Cherry Jones as Hallie Flanagan, the headstrong manager of the WPA’s theatre division. She completely rocks, and has a beautiful speaking voice to boot (I kept thinking she’d be so much better than Oprah at narrating the nature documentary series Life).
Hollywood and Vine (1945). Another offering in our “cheapie public domain comedies of yore” series! Hollywood and Vine was another cruddy yet genial and fast-paced production from P.R.C. In it, aspiring actress Wanda McKay meets screenwriter James Ellison on her way to Hollywood. She brushes the amorous gent off, but eventually relents when the two end up rooming in the same apartment complex. The pair also become parents to a talented mutt (Daisy, best known as the family pup from the Blondie movies) who becomes a canine movie star. Yep, this movie doesn’t make a lick of sense, and the best celebrity cameo they could come up with was the fake Russian prince who ran Hollywood eatery Romanoff’s. McKay and Ellison are both unbelievably bland actors with zero screen presence, but at least we have the reliable Franklin Pangborn on hand as a soda jerk. Typical of this film’s flights of fancy is the scene where Ellison persuades McKay’s character from dismissive to “I’m giving it all up to marry you and have lotsa babies” in thirty seconds flat.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). I know I must have seen this movie when it originally came out, but even so this compilation of the first three Disney Winnie the Pooh shorts is so awash in lyrical, pastel-colored charm that one can’t help but feel a nostalgic pang with it. These films date from 1966-74, the last gasp of classic old guard Disney animation. The stories are silly, leisurely paced and Disneyfied to a fault, but I love the way they incorporated the A. A. Milne book itself into the action, such as when a rush of water washes the words off the page. This DVD included a bonus Pooh short from 1983, which was as plodding and charmless as the trio in this film were magical. It just goes to prove that when they had it, they really had it.
Michael Clayton (2007). I had to chuckle when I read the Netflix reviews on this complaining that it was too talky and boring. Fact is, this was an excellent legal thriller with an absorbing story played by a cast at the top of their game (including Tilda Swinton, somewhat Jodie Fosterish as a dangerously ambitious careerist). The hard to please Christopher actually ranks this and Departures as the two best movies we’ve seen this year.
Word Jong Party. We’re not huge gamers around here, unless you count the pre-Facebook edition of Scrabble. We do, however, enjoy some of the less threatening stuff on the Wii — such as the farming sim Harvest Moon: Tree Of Tranquility. In that game, the most harmful thing you can do is piss somebody off by gifting them with a stinky hunk of algae fished out of the ocean. Lately we’ve been enjoying Word Jong Party, which is basically maj-jongg played with lettered tiles. You advance through the game by making words, the longer the better. Completely harmless and fun, and a bit easy for us Scrabble vets, but the graphics are cute and each day brings a brand new puzzle to enjoy.

Those Are People Who Died, Died

Matt — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:38:02 +0000

I was in the middle of reading about the fascinating people profiled in the annual Lives They Lived issue of the New York Times Magazine when I heard shocking news about the passing of another fascinating person. One that I knew, actually: Brad Graham of Bradlands.com. It appears that he died in his sleep of natural causes on December 31st, at the young age of 41. Yeah, I don’t believe it, either.

Brad was one of the earliest bloggers I knew of, and pretty much the kingpin of the (small) community of gay bloggers around in the early ’00s. Back then it was such a thrill to be writing on the net, and having someone else noticing what you were doing was an even bigger thrill — especially when that someone was as friendly and witty as Brad. His August 3, 2001 post, using the first Scrubbles redesign to explore childhood fear of Dow Scrubbing Bubbles, was typical Brad. We weren’t close friends or anything, but his warmth and humor was something I treasured over the years (we even briefly bonded over the ’70s kiddie-com Big John, Little John on twitter last year). I’ll miss you, Brad.

MetaTalk: Remembering our friend Brad.

Twitter and Facebook

Matt — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:00:24 +0000

Twitter and Facebook. What’s your opinion? I proudly avoided both sites for a long time — Twitter for being dumb and trendy, Facebook for being home to smarmy real estate agents and lawyers. Now, however, I can’t get enough of either of them. If I want to share a short link or observation with the world, I’m much more likely to do it via Twitter or Facebook. If that thought or link needs a longish explanation to go with it, the story will get posted here.

I know a few people who post identically to both Twitter and Facebook, but I actually use both sites for different means. Twitter is an extension of my “blog” persona. I use it to (try and be) witty, make nonsensical observations, and share my love of goofy pop culture of the past. Facebook is for the “real life” me, a way to stay in contact with flesh-and-blood folks I know or once knew. I first joined it when some non-online friends of ours suggested joining to play games of Scrabble. I also have a guilty tendency for completing all those stupid Facebook quizzes and polls. I’ve notice something over time, though — the longer I’ve been on both sites, the more these distinct personae are merging. Many blogging friends are also Facebook contacts, and I’m sure the “real life” family and friends in my life will eventually find out about Scrubbles.net. Thoughts, anyone?

A Redesigned Scrubbles.net

Matt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Hey there — notice something different? I’ve redesigned Scrubbles.net. This is the first true sitewide retooling in five years. Although I still have some kinks to work out, I’m happy with the swanky retro-computer look we’ve got going here.

This redesigning process began about a year ago, actually, in search of a good WordPress theme. I’ve noticed that many of the popular and nicer looking WP themes have one element that works, and a whole bunch of other elements that don’t work. Either the typography is fabulous and the layout is lousy, or the sidebar is beautifully designed but the rest of it uses terrible colors. It’s always something. I was about at the end of my rope before coming across a gorgeous and subtle theme called Vanilla Cart. Top to bottom, I love it. For the logo fonts, I went with Eurostile condensed and Gala (which cost a lot, but it’s absolutely perfect — sometimes one has to spend money for perfection). I also brought back this weblog’s original tagline, which hasn’t been seen here since about 2002. There’s even a new cartoon portrait of yours truly on the sidebar.

Although I currently have about 80% of the redesign in place, there are a couple of issues with the CSS that I’m sending out a plea for help on. Specifically:

I have a kickass repeating background for the redesign, similar to the one on my Twitter profile — but I can’t get it to work. I’ve tried everything on this theme’s CSS stylesheet, but the only changes result in a pure white background. Any CSS experts out there who can help?
This theme also has an option for you to use your own logo — but when I tried it, the logo was positioned down at the white space above the blog entries. I want it positioned above the “Home” and “About Me” tabs (which is where the blog name and description are normally positioned if one does not use a graphic logo). How can I move it up to its proper place without screwing everything up?

We Are Married, Too

Matt — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:29:47 +0000

From Christopher: “I want to let you know about a new blog I have started called We Are Married Too over on blogspot. It is intended to be a showcase for lesbian and gay couples around the world who have been legally married.”

The first entry is on our July 3, 2008 union. Awww. Wanna contribute? Contact Christopher at wearemarriedtoo (at) yahoo.com.

Twitter Bird

Matt — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:46:09 +0000

Advertising Age‘s Simon Dumenico analyzes why Oprah Winfrey and Twitter might not be such a good match. I gotta admit that I’m really taking to Twitter. I enjoy reading the 71 people I follow there (which really isn’t that many, all things considered), and I often post a “tweet” once or twice a day. If I think of something short and pithy, my first impulse is to post a simple Twitter tweet rather than do a long weblog entry. It’s a fun diversion, but it doesn’t replace blogging for me.

It’s interesting to note the Twitter users who, unprovoked, chose to follow me. Some are bloggers that I follow, or ex-bloggers who fell off my radar. Others are perfectly random people. Often I’ll get a fellow designer or illustrator that I never heard of before (similar to Flickr). Sometimes I’ll follow a famous person, and be thrilled when they follow me back. Then I’ll check their profile and find that they’re following 17,000 other Twitterers — oh well.

Steve and Jayne and 8K of RAM

Matt — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:58:38 +0000

Andy Baio of Waxy.org shares a curio from the past — Computability, in which Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows explain the concept of home computing to the layman of 1984. I think I deserve some kind of award for listening to all 35:45 of Steve and Jayne bantering over modems and monitors. The accompanying hour-long video remains to be seen, however. Hmmm, wonder where I can view episodes of their old PBS show, the one where they played famous historical figures?

Comp DOA

Matt — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:18:10 +0000

Two nights ago, I had a little computer situation. The screen on my six year-old iMac went black, just like that.

Granted, it wasn’t completely black. I could still see a very faint impression of windows on a desktop. With some research, we found out that the bulb on the Mac’s LED screen burnt out. The rest of the computer was okay, but since the monitor is attached we had to find a way of fixing it. Turns out this problem is fairly common, but the methods of fixing it are neither easy nor cheap. While trying to figure out how to proceed, I set out to save as much data on as many writeable DVDs as I could. This involved shining a halogen lamp directly at the screen and trying hard not to lose the cursor in the murk on the screen.

Since the old iMac was getting to be a painfully slow dinosaur anyhow, we decided to truck out to Best Buy and get one of the new iMacs. These things are huge. The smallest, 20″ model just barely fits in the hole on my computer desk. To insert disks in the side, I have to drag the thing out of its cubbyhole. That aside, it’s a gorgeous and speedy machine and I’m so glad to have it. No longer will I have to endure the “rainbow pinwheel of death” just to load a web page or something. In the meantime I have to go through the laborious process of reinstalling software, fonts and (the worst part) configuring my email. I haven’t even started on rebuilding my iTunes music library. It’s going to be a long weekend.

Library Club President

Matt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:49:05 +0000

I don’t think I’ve giggled so hard as while browsing through Flickr’s Yearbook Yourself photo pool. On another note, I’m impressed with how the mall marketing aspect of Yearbook Yourself is integrated with the site (meaning it’s not nearly as obnoxious as it could’ve been). You can swap genders, too! Here’s how I would look as a Class of ’54 girl with two-day stubble:

Big Fat Link Log 3

Matt — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:06:45 +0000

We’re nearing the end August. Do you know what that means? Sticky thighs and melting ice cream? Yeah, that — and it’s also time for an update to the annual list of the weblogs I’ve been reading. It just keeps growing and growing, which is another reason why I prefer to keep this thing on a single entry as opposed to taking up lots of room on a sidebar. The starred new additions are not exactly new (even for me), but they are some of the weblogs that have caught my eye over the past year or so. To them and all the other hard-working bloggers on this list, thank you.

Twittering Our Lives Away

Matt — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:55:53 +0000

I’m on Twitter now. I know. This seems like one of those trendy social networking sites that everybody flocks to, then abandons after a year or two — but it’s actually pretty fun. Since I don’t own a mobile, I’ll end up using it to post little observational bits that are too short to make it as a Scrubbles entry. Thanks to Bob for the heads-up.

Eight Years of Scrubbles.net

Matt — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:10:16 +0000

Psst. I never notice these things until they’ve gone and went, but over the past week this very weblog has entered its ninth year of operation. Happy birthday to Scrubbles.net! To celebrate the occasion, I put on my best metaphorical party dress and cherry picked a few of my favorite vintage (don’t call them old!) posts.

Looking back, I’d venture to say that Scrubbles.net’s legacy (if there is one) might be that it was among the earliest of the “look at the crap I found” type weblogs. It’s always been my mission to write about whatever ephemera or pop culture catches my fancy, with a distinct lack of trendiness, and hoping what amuses me amuses others. Gotta admit that sometimes I come across popular, more thematically focused blogs and wish I had even half their traffic. But in the end I’d rather have a small, loyal audience than a large, fickle one. “Love me, love my quirks” is pretty much the dictum around here.

So sit down, grab a piece of cake, and savor the results of trolling the archives going all the way back to the beginning (note that the pre-2006 entries suffer from broken style sheets, outdated links, and a general look of krep). Behold, “Scrubbles.net: The Greatest Hits”:

09/11/01 — September 11th, 2001. A personal observation of what happened over the course of that day. For some reason, I could only process the horror of what I was feeling through the lens of pop culture.
09/27/01 — A floor-by-floor analysis of the break rooms at work. Quirky, navel gazing posts like this were unusual in 2001 but would become more common as the years went on.
06/13/02 — Introducing Discards. A cache of found slides becomes a little-known corner of the Scrubbles.net universe.
10/27/02 — On the groovy costumes in UFO.
01/28/03 — A rant against Frida Kahlo. Honestly, I forgot about this. Didn’t know I hated Frida Kahlo so much!
01/09/03 — Influential songs in my life.
06/26/03 — Recollections of ’80s Movies Filmed in Arizona.
10/31/03 — Seven Things That Frightened Me As A Child. Fun.
02/02/04 — A Yuppie Teakettle for Everyone. Musing on design for the masses.
04/22/05 — Illustrations of Charles Harper. Ladies and gents, the most visited page at Scrubbles.net. Had I known, I would have included more examples. Unfortunately, other weblogs still link to this page even as I’m coming up with newer, better stuff. Attention, Charles Harper fans: please read my new stuff. Please.
05/30/05 — Captured on Film. Screen shots and commentary on the glamorous Manhattan of The Best of Everything (1958).
06/02/05 — Wonderland in Chrome. An unassuming little post that got linked on Boing Boing and drove hundreds of curious clicks. Who knew?
07/10/05 — Off the Treadmill. On learning to enjoy a downsized life. I need to write a sequel to this one.
01/07/06 — Artistry In Motion. More Harper discoveries, given a nicer setting.
02/14/06 — Blogging Tips from a D-Lister. Somebody had to find that advice useful.
03/26/06 — White Lace and Promises. Ruminations on twenty different versions of “We’ve Only Just Begun.” May have been Scrubbles.net’s definitive “jump the shark” moment.
05/12/06 — The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The first time embedded video was used on the weblog.
01/01/07 — Another Year of Couch Sitting. A self-pitying reflection on 2006, the year of lowered expectations. 2007 and the first half of 2008 followed right along in the same vein.
01/22/07 — What Makes a Making Of. I thought this was a nice post. I worked hard on it. It generated zero links or comments!
06/04/07 — Cheap Thrill: Joan Crawford on The Sixth Sense. This was fun; I have to do more “Cheap Thrill” posts.
01/21/08 — Cheap Thrill: Children’s Books 1957-69. Speaking of which. This might be the most real estate hogging Scrubbles post ever.
04/23/08 — WDW Day One: Epcot Future World. In which I bore my dwindling audience to tears with an exhaustive, five-part travelogue.
07/04/08 — Riverside, July 3.

Weekly Mishmash: June 29-July 5

Matt — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:49:52 +0000

Endless Ocean. This game was pretty much what I expected — an open-ended scuba diving simulator on the Wii. One can go on dives, get to know fish better by petting them (yeah, that works in real life), deal with a whiny girl on deck, and perform tasks to earn scuba equipment and other rewards. Though the above-water graphics suck, the diving itself is an enveloping, scarily realistic experience. The fish and various undersea creatures behave so true to life it’s like being in a real aquarium. Though it didn’t knock my socks off, this is a beautiful excuse to chill out and relax.
The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947). It’s Rosalind Russel month at TCM — yay! We kicked it off with a viewing of this little-seen thriller which Russel made for Columbia in 1947. In a plot plugging into the Psychiatry Chic zeitgeist of the era, Russel plays a war widow haunted by the fact that her husband sacrificed his life so his comrades could go on to lead productive lives. On a quest to confront each veteran, she’s intercepted by reporter and part time lush Melvyn Douglas — a guy who also happens to be one of Russel’s targeted men. Although there’s nothing to write home about in the film’s hokey storyline (penned by the wonderfully named Lenore Coffee), Miss Russel does a great job being agitated and lovely at the same time, Douglas is solid and there are several effective, moody scenes. It certainly is an unusual film, structured around Russel’s dreamlike impressions of the various men — and when a young Sid Caesar shows up to mug away things decidedly turn surreal. It was a fun time, which is not something I could say about the other two cinematic efforts from this week.
Heading South (2005). A muddled and ugly little film about middle aged female tourists rendezvousing with Haitian prostitutes. Granted, someone could have made an interesting film dealing with that subject, but the direction is so bad that huge chunks of screen time just amble along aimlessly — which only makes the central women look even more pathetic. This film has nothing remarkable to say, the leading actress is a wishy-washy bore, and the talents of Charlotte Rampling are completely wasted. Avoid at all costs.
Three… Extremes (2004). A trio of stomach-churning and bizarre vignettes by the leading horror directors from Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. I love a good scary Asian movie every once in a while, but this shorter format really underscores how cliché-ridden much of this stuff is — the requisite Creepy Little Girl even shows up! Though all three films had their moments, none of them grabbed me. Kinda like the evil kid from The Grudge, come to think of it.

Weekly Mishmash: May 18-24

Matt — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:58:24 +0000

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005). A French Canadian film about a dysfunctional family of five brothers growing up in the ’60s and ’70s — centering on Zac, the twee, self-possessed brother with a supernatural “gift” for healing and a serious Bowie fixation. The first 45 minutes are brilliant and darkly funny, calling to mind Amelie, but in the end it dragged on too long and seemed a bit “meh” to me. I was expecting a penetrating gay-themed coming of age tale, but in fact the central character is bisexual and the film dwells more on how the other characters perceive him. The soundtrack and period settings are great and it’s worth a look if you like screwy family films, but don’t expect to be blown away.
Critter Roundup. A title from Nintendo’s new WiiWare line in which you’re a farmer who has to fence in various animals (shades of the classic arcade game Qix). Not worth $10, but fun in its own modest way. Might be the only videogame in which one can get killed by bumping into a chicken.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). “You’ve never seen Temple of Doom?,” Christopher said to me recently. Yep, I’ve seen films #1 and 3 in the original trilogy, but this one passed me by until recently. Why it took 24 years is beyond me, but now I can see why it was never very attractive to me — Kate Capshaw and that Asian kid. Really, could they have found two more shrill, annoying actors to play those parts? I believe Raiders was about as perfect as an action-adventure can possibly be, but with this one Spielberg clearly dumbed things down into a loud, gross kiddie flick. The movie is okay if you watch it with lowered expectations (it’s beautifully mounted with some ace set pieces), but really the only reason this one still gets love today because many saw it at an impressionable age. Nostalgia rears its ugly head again!
Johnny Belinda (1948). Never saw this one before, either, and it was much better than I believed it would be. For a ’40s studio film, it’s refreshing both in the abundance of outdoor photography and its honest, unflinching treatment of rape. Jane Wyman is excellent as the deaf, childlike Belinda, but I think the part could have been done just as well by a dozen other actresses working at that time. The supporting cast, all of ‘em, are also excellent.

My Muxtape Is Chullin’

Matt — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:22:13 +0000

I have been so busy lately, getting some extra work in before taking the dream trip next week — but I did have time to do a little fun thing last night. I went to Muxtape.com and set up a little playlist at scrubbles.muxtape.com (thanks to Jonny). This playlist is the result of an early ’90s female R&B fixation I was on earlier this week, and it’ll keep me briefly hopping for the inevitable more work later on. It’s phat, it’s da bomb, Bill Bellamy digs, peace out.