finally got around to watching ang lee’s the hulk. i remember being puzzled and astonished to hear that he was directing it, but i guess it’s something like truffault doing his version of farenheit 451, right? anyway, so it’s not great but it’s not terrible, somewhere between spiderman and daredevil, definitely more on the spiderman side. jennifer connelly looks great, although she could look great in a paper sack, that whole nick nolte storyline is sort of confusing and superfluous, but more than anything, the hulk really looks good. totally believable, good use of mocap, and even the facial expressions are pretty good, for a huge hulking monster.
due to the socal wildfire, hmc was almost stuck in baltimore trying to get back home from nyc. thank goodness she finally got back at 3am after being delayed for six hours. however, it turns out that rachel luna’s aunt lives in baltimore, so at least she would have had someone to turn to. work those six degrees!
just got back from the kid koala concert. fucking incredible! of course, not only is kid koala the most adorable dj on the planet, but who would have thought that everyone he brought with him on tour this time would be just as cute, if not cuter? this whole show almost exploded from cuteness! first there’s the fantastic dj jester, the filipino fist from san antonio, who spun a sweet 80’s/90’s retrospective set mixed in with new and old-skool hip-hop. and then the incredibly adorable lederhosen lucil who rocks out a la stereo total, and must definitely be seen live to be appreciated. hil-arious. and then of course kid koala, who played songs live with p-love, showed us slides, led us through a game of bingo, as well as other entertainment. all in all, a wonderful show, that made me forget my horrible experience from two days ago. i don’t know why all my friends weren’t there. i don’t know why everyone in the world wasn’t there? what are these lame excuses? date? house dinner? are you fucking kidding me? whatever. you can do all of that shit some other day. go out tomorrow. skip a meal, for god’s sake. there’ll be another kidney donor. go see this show now, before it’s too late!
i did a italian job double feature yesterday, watching both the original 1969 michael caine/noel coward version as well as this year’s marky mark/charlize theron/ed norton remake. the original was pretty cute, a comedy heist caper, very mod, and great to see all those original minis zooming around. lots of oddly anachronistic bits which are fun to see and puzzle over. but surprisingly enough, the remake was actually quite enjoyable. to be fair, it’s more an homage as opposed to a remake, as it retains some elements but has an entirely different plot, tone, and identity all in itself. it was actually quite fun, much unlike the string of other remakes of the ilk (la femme nikita/black cat/point of no return, bob le flambeur/the good thief).
also saw the chemical brothers spin a dj set last night. sucked.
we went to see the new cohen brothers’ film, intolerable cruelty last night. we ended up going to the new arclight cinemas in hollywood, which is in the old pacific cinerama dome, which they’ve renovated into a multiplex. the geodesic dome is still there, and in fact they’re still showing “it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world,” which was the single-strip cinerama film that opened the theatre back in 1963. but now it’s been remade into a deluxe “movie-lovers’” theater experience. what does that mean? well, in short, it seems like there’s still the big screen in the dome which has been renovated, and then all the other screens are not only thx certified but designed with their help, with dolby SRD digital if not SDDS digital, with wall-to-wall screens, special german projectors, and carefully minimized audio bleed between auditoriums. but the real big thing is that when you buy your ticket, you specify whether you want to sit in the front, center, or rear section, and then you get an actual seating assignment, e.g. row 11, seats 13 & 14. which means that you don’t have to get there early to try and save seats, and instead you can just waltz in just as the movie’s starting, having spent the time shopping at amoeba hollywood next door instead of normally watching those horrible slideshows of ads. (although, don’t get there too late, the ushers(!) won’t let you in if the movie’s started— more of the deluxe experience). of course, this all comes at a cost: $14 a pop. although i guess if you compare that to going to universal city to see a movie for two, it sort of works out, since tickets there are $10 a piece, and then you need to throw down $8 for parking so…
as for the movie, it was a lot of fun. described as a screwball comedy by the new york times, hmc said that she ultimately agreed with that tag, which is high praise since she’s a big fan of the screwball comedies, as defined by the great preston sturges in films like the lady eve, with the magnificent barbara stanwyck, and sulllivan’s travels, which has one of the best performances in the wasted career of veronica lake. it’s delightfully silly, and it’s certainly refreshing to be in a movie, and halfway through think to yourself, “i have no idea what the hell is going to happen next!” clooney is great in this, and uses his 40’s era looks to great effect. catherine zeta-jones is mostly great, but it’s probably a spoiler if you want more thoughts on her…
she’s totally great and of course looks gorgeous, and is quite believable as the cold conniving gold digger, but hmc and i both agree that she never really comes through as having fallen in love with clooney at the end; there’s no reason to believe it. unless it’s a greater scam for IC2, but unlikely. still, it’s a minor quibble, it’s still very enjoyable.
despite coming down with a little cold, i flew down to lost angels yesterday to see the start of basketball this season, a preseason double-header with the clippers playing the cavaliers, and the lakers playing the suns.
it was the first game in our new season ticket seats, and i have to say that i’m ecstatic. they’re down on the main level sort of in the corner, but close enough to see the action really well. once i got used to watching the game from that perspective as opposed to the normal tv sideline angle, it was great.
in the first game, the new hope of the league, lebron james, played better than he did the day before against the lakers, but still i’m not sure he’s going to hold up under the massive expectations that have been placed on him. they’re not only expecting him to save the cavs, but become the new jordan + magic + shaq + kobe all in one. in the second game, although shaq and kobe didn’t play due to injury, it was still great seeing the mailman and the glove out there for the lakers.
all in all, everything’s better in l.a., basketball-wise, especially compared to the sad-sack warriors. the team is better, the stadium is better, and most of all, the laker girls are way better. hmc and i agree, it’s all about those three simple words: skin-tight short shorts.
The 101-story structure — which includes a mall, office space and an observatory — won’t formally open until next year in east Taipei. Called Taipei 101, the skyscraper looks like a tall stack of gift boxes. But the developers liken it to a bamboo shoot with notched sections.
The building is about 165 feet taller than the world’s former highest office building, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The highest freestanding tower remains the CN Tower, a 1,815-foot communications structure and outlook point in Toronto.
Taipei 101 is not expected to hold the tallest building title for long. In China, developers say the Shanghai World Financial Center will be higher when it’s completed in 2007.
once again, china’s out to keep taiwan down. where’s the love?
i just got this tiny little item which is very cool, but only in a very specific way. it’s a pocketdock, which is made by this german company sendstation, and i had to have them ship it to me from frankfurt. what it is is a tiny little adapter that converts the ipod dock connector to a regular firewire connector like on all the old ipods. which may not be useful to you, but it’s very useful to me, which means that i don’t have to carry my special ipod dock cable around with me, but instead can just plug any firewire into that adapter, to recharge my ipod, or hook it up to a mac, etc. for example, i can just bring the pocketdock and use all of hmc’s 2g ipod stuff when i’m in lost angels. or when i’m hooking it up to the imac, i don’t have to take the cable off of the dock which i usually keep attached to the stereo.
very cool! i wonder how long it’ll take me to lose it?
went down to lost angels this weekend to see our friend polar bear play at this party in the desert. it turned out to be not too far out in san bernadino county, only like an hour from my parents house. it ended up being this tiny little thing thrown by some kids down in the valley in conjunction with some tranceheads from o.c., all of them pretty adorable. 50 people at the most, but it ended up being a lot of fun. just nice to be out in the open air, watching the moon rise, watching the sun rise, and listening to beats out in the desert, sleeping under the open sky.
however, there was that one part in the middle of the night when some of them got this brilliant idea of trying to burn some of the bushes around there for heat, only the bushes weren’t actually dead and dry, since they were desert bushes, so all they did was smoke and smell a lot like if you had set fire to a porta potty. not that good an idea. if the original burning bush had smelled like that, who knows what moses would have done?
also saw kill bill vol. 1, which was entertaining, but certainly not the fantastic action thrill ride it’s being made out to be. on the other hand, it’s certainly ultraviolent, but somehow not that shockingly so. maybe it’s just the genre i’ve been viewing recently, so maybe i’ve been desensitized to it, having just recently watched fireworks, battle royale, etc. the fight scene with go-go is pretty great, and i really like the katana holders in the airline seats on air-o. there’s one big duel which is a little anticlimactic, and i guess you explain it bushido style, in that the slightest error in technique determines the winner, but it’s not really like some big fat hong kong swordfest (which you’ve just watched anyway) but more like the duels in the seven samurai or in the video game bushido blade. on the other hand, maybe it’s just because that actor can’t really fight.
and lucy liu is good up to a point, but she really can’t carry a scene. horrible flashbacks to charlie’s angels: full throttle and her and john cleese trying to act daddy & daughter. ugh.
well, it’s done. despite a hanging chad problem again, arnold won in an incredible landslide. the first time bush sr. got elected to president, i swore i was going to move to canada. this past time when w. got elected, i didn’t make that threat, because i knew that canada’s too cold for me now. but now that arnold’s gov, maybe i should move to at least another state? but where else can i go where it’s nice and between 65-75 degrees every day? and by the ocean? ah well, it’s only six months until we can recall arnold, so maybe i should just wait it out.
as for the results, among the fringe candidates, larry flynt came in seventh with 15,350 votes, gary coleman came in eighth with 12,631 votes, mary carey came in tenth with 10,017 votes, while gallagher was only sixteenth with 4,844 votes and angelyne was 28th with 2,256 votes. the big loser was todd lewis, an “independent businessman, actor, and bum hunter” from santa monica whose pledge to “clean up sacramento like i did skid row!” only netted him 174 votes.
oh, and of course, the biggest fringe candidate won, but we already said that.
i wish it were just a girlsarepretty entry, but it’s for real. i just went and voted in the california recall election. up until now i’ve just felt that it was pretty absurd, but standing there in the plastic voting booth, looking at all the names for replacement governor, i couldn’t help but feel sad. sad that if this does pass, and arnold does become the governor, we’ll be living in the most ridiculous place in the world, with a joke president that didn’t win, with a joke governor that most people don’t want, in the joke sham of a system that declares equality and freedom but is just a big fucking joke. just looking at all the candidates, from the anonymous to the infamous, including people like angelyne, arnold, porn star mary carey (who, by the way, almost makes the most sense. is mary the raph nader of the recall election?), gary coleman, gallagher, and larry flynt, you can’t help but be disillusioned with the political “process”.
lord help us all.
thank goodness for computers. just think of the day in the future, when you sit down with your grandkids, and tell them what life was like before computers?
“well, little red snapper jones jr., back before we had computers, we had to plug in grandma’s vibrator in the wall or even use batteries, which was much less convenient than being able to plug it into the usb port of our computer. and then afterwards, we had to strain our noodles by hand, instead of being able to do that with the computer as well. yes, kids, life sure was tough in those backwater times. now go on and git! i don’t want you kids outside when it’s such a nice day to surf the web!”
on the other hand, they still don’t let you get off to the beat… talk about feeling the bass!
so i saw the film version of battle royale last night. i don’t know if i was just overhyping it in my head and just too excited just after reading the book, but it was a little disappointing. it ended up being a little too frenetic, with people dying left and right, and while of course you don’t get the richness and the backstories and the character development that you would in a book, it just felt that most people were just generic bodies to pile up for the few main characters, who weren’t even developed that well either. it’s hard to say if it’s just because i read it so recently and that it’s so simple in comparison; maybe if you saw it without reading the book first it would make more of an impression.
on the other hand, i just watched pollock as well and that was pretty great.