Monthly Archives: December 2006

The Lady in the Water

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The Lady in the Water movie poster

 

I don’t know where to start with this one. I’ve been a M. Night Shya­malan fan from the very begin­ning, even when the role was bet­ter described as apol­o­gist. Even to a fan, nearly every film comes with a “yeah, but…” dis­claimer: The Sixth Sense is an excel­lent piece of slight-of-hand with some gen­uine emo­tion, but let down by an extended mon­tage at the end recap­ping events recon­tex­tu­al­ized by the already-clear Big Plot Reveal. Unbreak­able, my per­sonal favorite, is a remark­ably mature char­ac­ter piece on a real-world Super­man, but whose comic-book ori­gins prob­a­bly alien­ated a main­stream audi­ence that wants its comic book movies clearly sign­posted by gar­ish cos­tumes and action set pieces. Signs is a per­fectly crafted sci-fi thriller that dou­bles as a wildly funny com­edy (an inten­tional one, I should be clear… more on that later), but the deli­cious sus­pense is nearly ruined in the end by the film­mak­ers’ over­con­fi­dence in their shoddy CGI alien.

The Shya­malan back­lash started as soon as The Sixth Sense, per­haps in direct cor­re­la­tion with its box office take, with peo­ple falling over them­selves claim­ing to have detected the Big Plot Reveal well ahead of time. But with The Vil­lage, the time for fans’ dither­ing began: if not nearly as bad as its crit­i­cal recep­tion, it was a dis­ap­point­ment. A promis­ing scernario sat­i­riz­ing the con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion in Bush’s color-coded police state is sti­fled by a lack of humor unchar­ac­ter­is­tic for the direc­tor, not to men­tion an under­whelm­ing twist end­ing with­out the emo­tional punch of The Sixth Sense.

The clas­sic Shya­malan film is a schemat­icly con­structed jig­saw, which in itself is a great plea­sure. But in The Lady in the Water, the tail wags the dog to an even greater degree than The Vil­lage. Humor­less, pre­ten­tious, and forehead-slappingly… well, sorry for the cheap shot… stu­pid.

The Dork Report for December 17, 2006

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U2 announces Zoo2Live, a new live album avail­able exclu­sively to fan club mem­bers. Although it doesn’t say so explic­itly, it would seem the audio is taken directly from the same show as the com­mer­cially avail­able DVD.

Nine Horses, the lat­est project from David Syl­vian, Steven Jensen and Burnt Fried­man, releases their new EP Money for All on Samad­hisound in January.

The Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion uses its new blog, On Five, to announce a new line of DVDs: “Eclipse presents a selec­tion of lost, for­got­ten, or over­shad­owed films in sim­ple, afford­able edi­tions. Each series is a brief cin­e­math­eque ret­ro­spec­tive for the adven­tur­ous home viewer.”

Free Pinky! (passed around work)

What iTunes needs: tagging.

MacHeist’s bargain-basement pric­ing on their bun­dle ($356.74 worth of share­ware for $49) has ignited some­thing of a blog­war. A par­tic­u­lar stick­ing point is that aside from the afore­men­tioned bun­dle, MacHeist gave away sev­eral “unlocked” soft­ware down­loads (free, fully-functional apps, but not reg­is­tered and thus dis­al­low­ing upgrades) dur­ing an extended build-up to the bun­dle launch. Even the most cogent analy­sis of the affair on Dar­ing Fire­ball fails to take into account one sim­ple fact: what about upgrades? I used my unlocked copy of Voice Candy the other day to record some pod­cast voiceover audio, and I was prompted to down­load a new update. If I had done so, I would have kissed good­bye to my free­bie and had been forced to pay the reg­is­tra­tion fee to con­tinue using the pro­gram. I sus­pect most of these unlocked apps have sim­i­lar built-in upgrade notices and users will be see­ing them every time they open them up, basi­cally amount­ing to free adver­tis­ing for the devel­op­ers, remind­ing users who already have the prod­uct sit­ting on their hard drive that they are not full own­ers in what they are using, and that they are miss­ing out by not becom­ing full owners.

The Dork Report for December 7, 2006

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At last, the Icon­Fac­tory Quick­Pix 2006! (spot­ted on Dar­ing Fire­ball)

All the bas­tiches wot done ripped off Panic. Not just their graph­ics, but even a photo of their office.

Clean­ing up my book­marks… Here’s one I saved a while ago but can’t remem­ber if I posted: a work­ing Lego Harp­si­cord

The indis­pen­si­ble guide to Bad Movies. Every­thing from MST3K clas­sic Manos The Hands of Fate (which trans­lates as, of course, Hands The Hands of Fate) to Peter Jackson’s early clas­sic Meet the Fee­bles. And remem­ber, don’t Has­sle the Hoff… in space!

Oh no! Movie Place has passed on! I wouldn’t go as far as Hodg-man: “IT WAS ARGUABLY the rea­son I moved into my first apart­ment on 105th Street. OK: I WILL CEASE TO ARGUE–it was THE rea­son” but I would say that it was a strong moti­va­tion to stay in Morn­ing­side Heights for sev­eral years after fin­ish­ing school. And it’s also partly true to say that one rea­son I was more will­ing to even­tu­ally move out was the advent of Net­flix. (spot­ted on 43Folders)

The Dork Report for December 6, 2006

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A Doc­tor Who Mag­a­zine poll picks David Ten­nant as the best Doc­tor, above no less than leg­end Tom Baker! Spot­ted on Behind the Sofa, with whose own list I also can­not agree. Who are these peo­ple? For my (US) money, here are the best Doctors:

  1. Tom Baker
  2. Christo­pher Eccleston
  3. David Ten­nant
  4. Sylvester McCoy
  5. Peter David­son
  6. Paul McGann
  7. Patrick Troughton
  8. William Hart­nell
  9. Jon Per­twee
  10. Colin Baker

The Dork Report for December 5, 2006

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Some­how I don’t see Les him­self plug­ging his axe into a Mac­Book and fid­dling around with Logic, but you never know: the new Gib­son dig­i­tal gui­tar. (guest sub­mis­sion from Dave)

A fully-annotated elec­tronic ver­sion of the WII man­ual. Icon­fac­tory help­fully fills in the miss­ing pages. (guest sub­mis­sion from Dave)

Mar­ginal Rev­o­lu­tion Poorly designed objects. My con­ti­bu­tion was scooped by “bhauth” about halfway down in the com­ments: not so much the stan­dard cd jewel box pack­ag­ing, but the cel­lo­phane wrap­ping. (spot­ted on Design Observer)

The Dork Report for December 3, 2006

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What if George Lucas were to take a crack at retroac­tively real­iz­ing the visions of other film­mak­ers? Here’s G-Lu’s Sin­gin’ in the Rain. (guest sub­mis­sion from Andrea)

Con­tin­u­ing the wind-up to the new album, UNKLE’s online pres­ence expands: UNKLE and James Lavelle on MySpace, Richard File’s offi­cial site, and new offi­cial UNKLE online shops for the US and every­where else.

Don’t Panic: Cabel Sasser is up to some mis­chief in his local Sub­way. Spot­ted in the com­ments: an even more ambi­tious TGI Friday’s menu sub­sti­tu­tion. (guest sub­mis­sion from Dave)

Alan Moore on the 25,000 year-long his­tory of pornog­ra­phy in Arthur Mag­a­zine. (note: the arti­cle is spread between two dif­fer­ent PDF files: parts one and two)

Joseph Arthur is in the stu­dio with his (newly-christened) band The Lonely Astro­nauts, and has posted Let’s Just Be, an entire album for free down­load (but dona­tions appreciated!).

All the kewl kids are talk­ing about Tom Waits’ new Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bas­tards. Espe­cially check out the Pitch­fork inter­view. (guest sub­mis­sion from Andrea) (shame­less Amazon.com affil­i­ate link)