media + log

[trochee]

Over the last week:¹

movies

• Saw Batman Begins with a small contingent from emerald_citizen. I was impressed at the faithfulness to the comics, without being campy: there were very clear references to big chunks of Year One (the look of Wayne Manor, the trips to the Far East to learn, the doubts about how to use fear) Dark Knight Returns (the automobile, the pearls), along with a successful re-introduction to Ras al-Ghul, who had never previously "worked" for me as a villain (I stopped reading the whole Batman panoply around the time they introduced Bane). I particularly liked that the script takes its time in introducing the costume etcetera, and that the hand-to-hand combat scenes were shot in the close-up, confused flurry that leaves a lot to the imagination (Michael Keaton's Batman always looked like a clown in fights).

  I got suckered by the turn-your-cellphone-off preview, which had medieval kung-fu warriors clashing in mid-air when someone's cell phone started ringing. It went on, and I was completely snookered -- I said "okay, turn it off now", out loud, loud enough to be heard throughout the theater, and then I realized that the subtitled moment had the two warriors debating what noise that was -- "it's in the audience", says one. So embarrassing to be taken in. I obviously don't watch enough movies, because it felt like everybody else in the theater knew what was coming. I felt like one of those apocryphal primitive tribesmen who talks back to the television, or asks "how do they get the little people in there." Amusing for everybody else, though I could feel my skin flush with embarrassment. This embarrassment was somewhat mitigated by being massively out-fanboyed by the entire row behind us, who [to a man, and yes they were all men] bore a striking resemblance to Comic Book Guy and as soon as the movie ended started ripping on how it wasn't really authentic.

  It was very nice to spend some time -- however non-conversational -- with both blackwingedboy and imtboo; the former I barely see at all and the latter has been frantically busy in going to a major theater conference in town (to which she received a scholarship!).

reading
Wow, I've been reading a lot.

• The Nation
• The works of Ellen Ullman, at imtboo's recommendation. She's a decent writer, and it's the first thing I've read that really seems to capture the feelings of clarity, confusion, drive and obsession that go into a programmer's life. The Bug is both frightening and fascinating in its eerie similarities to my own life -- the first-person narrator, for example, is a PhD linguist who has dropped out of the academy and become a software tester; she is forced to learn to program as a matter of pride in her job but it quickly becomes a mesmerizing world of its own to her. (nihilistic_kid didn't like it, though [some spoilers in these reviews] Mostly Fiction and the NYT did.) I won't say more -- there are a few plot points I don't want to give away -- but I encourage the geeks and geeks' friends out there to read it, or her gonzo memoir Close to the Machine (an interesting review).
• I've started reading The Confusion, which I picked up the other day. This morning I took a knife and tore the giant trade paperback into three chunks so I don't have to carry around 2.9 pounds of paper, I'm still on chunk 1.
• in a fit of bookstore madness, I went to Twice Sold Tales and left with $35 of used books: #2-4 of the Princes of Amber series, Emergence (non-fiction about group-emergent properties and processes ), Persepolis (a comic-book memoir of a girl in Iran) and Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which I've been meaning to re-read for years.

¹There's no narrative here. It's just a log of what I've been doing for the last week or so. Sorry for the lack of updates...

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Ellen Ullman sounds interesting.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

imtboo found out about her because she was an invited speaker to the conference she's attending this weekend. She (imtboo) takes this conference very seriously, so she went to look up all the speakers, and discovered this interesting person who's writing reasonably good fiction about programming about hackers that doesn't try to be all wraparound sunglasses and Mission Impossible.

[bwb-archive.livejournal.com]

Well, I've seen about 4 or 5 various implementations of the "cell phone interrupts movie" trailer notification thing. I'd never seen that one. I was even snookered into it in the beginning, thinking it was somehow a teaser for the upcoming Crouching Tiger prequel.

An interesting fact. Original casting of Alfred was supposed to be Anthony Hopkins, but he turned it down. That would have changed the entire flavor of the thing. There are some other casting, scripting initial thoughts that are too troublesome to bear (google search on "Batman" "Big Al" for more information :))

Great to see you, man.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I liked Ellen Ullman quite a bit, altho I thought her Salon.com pieces Disappearing into the Code (IIRC) were a bit better than what wound up in Close to the Machine.

[evan.livejournal.com]

i recall liking close to the machine. i have the bug on my bookshelf right now!

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

I am sure that trombo2 will love to hear that he's not the only one to be in the dark about movies or in this case cell phone announcements -- shades of "Oh, so Bruce is Batman"! :-)

[beckyb.livejournal.com]

Let me know when you're done with chunk 1...

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

I agree.

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Laughing out loud.
J told me this story...

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

I am sorry that you were embarassed. I think it's more embarassing to be completely hermetic to it and know all the commercials by heart.
I didn't mean to make fun of you when it happened. I didn't realise you were so embarassed. I forget that sometimes I am the only one who doesn't really care what anyone else thinks.

Bruce

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he'll never live it down. It was a classic moment, demonstrating oh so clearly how out of it these parents can be. I, at least, did know that Bruce was Batman!

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I was okay. I was embarrassed to be embarrassed, if that makes any sense. I agree that it is better to not know all the commercials by heart; it suggests that I'm still open to sinking into the movie instead of sitting critically outside it.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I am done. you can borrow it whenever you like.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

yeah -- I thought of that moment too, later. There's a difference between pop-culture and advertising, but that line's getting blurrier and blurrier.

Like blackwingedboy, I thought perhaps it was a trailer for the upcoming Crouching Tiger prequel.

Embarrassed? - of course not

[trombo2.livejournal.com]

No reason to be embarrassed when that was SOOOO clever of Trochee.

Why, when I called out "Oh! ... so BRUCE is Batman !", I was indicating my brisk comprehension of the exquisitely subtle plot line. No doubt everyone else in the audience was still miles behind my quick interpretation.

Be PROUD, man --- be PROUD !

Re: Embarrassed? - of course not

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

*giggles*