Thursday, June 29, 2006

a policy of questioning the science...

Check out this piece that ran on the BBC program "Panorama" featuring an interview with a pollster and political consultant for the Bush admin in 2000.

"...they had to make their skepticism look credible..."


I don't know that I buy this Luntz fellow's assertion that there were significant legitimate scientific doubts about climate change in 2000, but I'll go with the rest of it - his advice to the administration and how to proceed with disinforming the American public about global warming. Certainly this consultant's influence is not the only factor behind the admin's policies and attitudes toward global warming and their... umm... remarkable stewardship of the environment in general, but it's a pretty frightening POV and puzzle piece.

Perhaps Global Warming, Jr. will use his 60th birthday wish to reverse the damage being done by willful corporate and government blind eye-turning and no one will have to worry about it again?

But with CO2 being life, and W's promotion of a "culture of life," will he be able bring himself to blow out his 60 candles...?


"Warmest regards..." Ha.

Bleah.

Keep on keepin on~

Monday, June 26, 2006

"Quiet, Bender!"

"A terrifying message from AL GORE!!!"

or...

"Why does the weather suck so much?"


Keep on keepin on~

Friday, June 23, 2006

weekend movie options...

A copy-paste of non-volleyball options for a rainy weekend. Originally included in an email to volleyballers sent earlier today...
-------------------------
At the Coolidge Corner theater in Brookline...

Tonight - A charity midnight screening of SERENITY! This movie rocks! Check it out if you can! Profits from this and 40-some other screenings around the world this week will be donated to creator Joss Whedon's favorite charity - Equality Now.
-------------------------
At the Brattle theater in Harvard Square...

Tonight - The Marx Brothers are in DUCK SOUP at 8 and 10pm!

And at noon on Saturday a 24-hour Anime Marathon kicks off. There's some good crack in that lineup. AND *COSPLAY!*
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Ongoing thru September, all over Boston and a bit in Cambridge - Cows On Parade!

(There's a link to a pdf map on the front page.)
-------------------------
Now playing...

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Highest-grossing powerpoint ever! =) Really, tho, some serious $hit. Check it out on a rainy day. If you're not careful, you might learn something!

NACHO LIBRE! Wide release. DYNAMITE sensibilities applied to the classic, all-too-familiar rite of passage story that every boy lives out - that time in an orphan monk's life when he must wrestle and defeat his worldly desires... with a tag team partner versus Satan's Cavemen! Ah, I remember it well...~

BRICK. At the Capitol and the Coolidge (smaller screen). Indie supercoolness in a hardboiled noir set in a suburban SoCal high school. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL meets STRANGERS WITH CANDY, and then beats STRANGERS for info on the whereabouts of VERONICA MARS... or something...

=)

Note that BRICK will be playing with HARD CANDY in a couple weeks at the Brattle. I've definitely gotta hit that sickness.
-------------------------
Keep on keepin on~
brian out

rolling thunder...

Pretty frickin awesome. =)

Got dark in our office pretty quick about a half hour ago. One wall of it is all window, which usually heats us up greenhouse-style over the course of the day. The clouds rolled in, then we got a first crash of thunder, an then the diagonal white lines of rain. Falling hard.

Speeding down to the ground.

Crashing and rumbling and rolling. All I can see in the rectangle of sky from the office is desaturated, not even really dark, just not bright, cloud ceiling. I imagine a view from far off would be like cloud tank effects from RAIDERS or POLTERGEIST, y'know?

Damn. This would amazing to be caught in.

I wonder if we'll get DAYS of this, like the weather forecasts have threatened. Or if this will spend itself today. The doom and gloom of weather.com for the weekend scared me away from planning a beach trip. Which actually works out okay (except for depriving me of some much needed physical activity : P), cuz I've got people to see this weekend, and should really put a dent in the massive packing/moving job that I've been dragging my feet on.

Just felt like trying to catch this dark and stormy moment. The view doesn't really photograph so well, not in pixels at least.


Hohum.

Back to the digital mines. Gotta put down a decent chunk of work so I can get in a movie fixx or two tonight. CARS w guitar heros Jeff and Kim, then DUCK SOUP on my own, and I was hoping to get midnight SERENITY in, but it looks like:

((3 x showtimes) + commute(foot + T + auto))/distance > hours in the evening

O well. Still, a big night. I've never Watched a Marx Brothers film before.

Keep on keepin on~

Thursday, June 22, 2006

midnight SERENITY Friday@the Coolidge!

Writer-creator-director Joss Whedon is sponsoring charity screenings of his FIREFLY series film SERENITY this week and weekend. Ticket sales go to support Equality Now.

In the Boston area, midnight Friday at the Coolidge!

And, playing at other locations around the world...

Also, check out Friday night Marx Brothers at the Brattle =)
-------------------
I'm way overdue for a hit of Coolidge goodness. I've been away from the Brattle for weeks as well. Both have some great options this weekend!


SERENITY - one of the best gor-am frackin honorable thieves movies ever. It also happens to be one of the biggest-hearted sci-fi flicks I've ever seen. This is what you SHOULD get in a sci-fi flick today. Effects that are dazzling AND subtle, but at no point feel like they overpower the important, timeless, bits - the characters, their relationships, plot and conflict, and the very snappy space-dialogue.

=)

This is a big screen "sequel" to the brilliant killed-in-its-wonderful-infancy-by-Fox-surprise-surprise TV series FIREFLY, created by Joss Whedon (of BUFFY, ANGEL, and lately, ASTONISHING X-MEN). If you've never seen FIREFLY, you'll get caught up real quick in the first 15 minutes of the movie. If you've got the time and some ambition, you might try to rent the FIREFLY 2-part pilot on disc one of the series on DVD as a very enjoyable prequel.

And, if you don't hit this big screen SERENITY opp, well, you should definitely get FIREFLY and SERENITY dropped into your netflix queue. It is some of the best space-crack, I'm tellin you.

Keep on keepin on~

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

What happens in the barn...

...stays in the barn.

Or so says the promotional material for an upcoming CG animated feature - BARNYARD. I'm not in any rush to go out and see it, altho I do appreciate a good kid-tipping. (Sorry, this isn't about THE SHIELD. =)

Have you seen any ads, or the trailer, for this? Do you notice anything... peculiar?

I started a wee ramble on this while scattin on the Parade o Cows currently hittin Bostonia, and then harassed my friend Jess about it via IM, and finally had the 1am-thought that I should try spooling the scattin out at a more sensible pace here.

Okay, so! The main characters of BARNYARD are cows, see? They lead hidden lives, see, all smart and walking upright on hind legs, and apparently gifted with an opposable thumb-hoof... or something..., see? Which allows them to participate in that activity which we consider to be unique to humans, and demonstrates that we are apart from and better than other beasts... And what is this mark of higher intelligence, of civilization and culture, that proves that among all of the spaghetti monster's creations, we are blessed?

Partying, apparently.

Hey, it's not my movie. I might've said volleyball, or canning salted meats, or foleying martial arts films, or 10-sided dice, or banjo playing, or disgruntled teens, or deciding it's a good idea, once our naturally provided source of it disappears, to continue to consume milk for many many years, taken from another species...


Okay, I'm rambling away from my ramble, sorry. Have you checked out the trailer?

Okay, so, you see how the stars are the cows? And the cows, they're these rambunctuous guys, right? Okay. Think about that...

COWS.

GUYS.

They're standing up on their hind legs and if they were talking at you, I would understand if you might miss a word or three as you are a bit distracted by their flapping udders.

Now, I know cartoons and animated worlds are not the places to visit for realism or consistency (except perhaps for FANTASTIC PLANET, or the leg-warmered bird and fishiness of the Don Bluth animated segment of XANADU =). I mean, how do Mickey and Minnie get away with bossing around their dog Pluto? And if Pluto's a pet, what the heck is Goofy? And how the heck does Donald go pantsless without making the police blotter?

I suddenly wish I had the multimedia power to replace Jar Jar Binks with Goofy in all the prequels.

But, c'mon! Nickeloden is gonna push boy-cows (not bulls - you do see the udders, right? Well, we HOPE they're udders...) as their main characters in a feature film? Doesn't that just seem... irresponsible? Wrong? Maybe... MAYbe they do something really smart and clever and self-referential in the movie, to acknowledge/explain this TRANSAMOORICA strangeness... Or maybe, it just seemed funny, absurd, and it's cartoony, so, why not? No one expects reality on this screen, right? Still... This just makes me wish I could divert all box office bucks from this movie to PBS.

Perhaps it's not so fantastic. These cows are just a little bit different thanks to the GM corn that's been mixed into their feed...?

Man o Mantooth. What am I going on about here?

I'll chalk it up to some sleep deprivation and stress and time crunch brought on by closing on a condo with my sister and brother-in-law, visiting parentals, and choked up bandwidth at work.

My parents' visit was a good time. Low key and all. I paid for lunch at S&S. (I remember Carol M. once saying, "S&S, that's the place you take your parents when they visit.") They paid for dinner (bulgogi and sushi! =). We toured the new condo-homestead and they deemed it Good. We watched some WINTER SONATA (the Korean melodrama sensation) I recorded on a whim but hadn't yet found a right time to watch on my own. And, oh yes, how could I forget what was, no doubt, the high point of their visit? I took them grocery shopping with me, cuz I needed to get some supplies for volleyballing at the beach the next day, when I kicked them out of the apartment. Heh.

Allright, I've gotta finish up some workywork. I was working on it earlier this evening, at a slackerly pace, between visits to the laundry room and a bedeviled ham sandwich dinner, but around midnight was feeling pretty loggy. I went to bed, but after a half hour, couldn't drop off into slumber. Typical. I was yawning HARD around siesta time at the office this afternoon, but come midnight, I can't settle down enough to sleep.

So, I watched some JUSTICE LEAGUE (the one with Supergirl and the Legion of Superheros =) and started typing this.

And aren't you just so lucky I did?

Boy-cows... WTF?

Keep on keepin on~

p.s. I'm not in a hurry to see BARNYARD, but it doesn't mean I won't. =)

p.p.s. But definitely not before I see CARS. So... Were there, like, dinosaur-cars in the prehistoric world of CARS? Wiped out by a meteor-car strike so that millions of years later their remains could become the oil that their Paul Newman and Owen Wilson voiced descendants would run on...?

p.p.p.s. WOW! I can't believe I found "Don't Walk Away" from XANADU on Youtube! I went looking for it a year or so ago and didn't find it. I suppose Youtube and Google video might not have been up back then, eh? Or at least, not yet enough of a destination to be primed with "kitchen sink" material. I just listened to "Xanadu" on Sunday on new my summer 2006 drive-to-the-beach mixx CD.

Ah, XANADU. Greek mythology, Solid Gold dancing, roller skates, Olivia "Sandra Dee" Newton John, Michael "Megaforce Warrior" Beck, and Gene "Gene Kelly!" Kelly! Such Goodness! I walked into it under duress when I saw it lo, those many years ago. It was one of my sister's "picks," y'know? But I came out of that theater with a new appreciation of peasant dresses, leg warmers, and ELO. I do love that movie. =)