When that video first started, I thought I'd only make it through thirty seconds, and then I ended up watching the whole thing. It's really well edited. Various ways of telling people that you're not here to make friends are carefully grouped into categories, and transitions from one category to the next are accomplished with edge cases. It's the Anatomy of Melancholy of not being here to make friends.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 12:42 PM on July 11, 2008

Works fine for me, but only in Firefox. It's broken in Safari.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 8:37 AM on June 22, 2008

Aw, nuts.

By the way, Mac users in this thread who haven't checked out majick's link above really should.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:39 PM on June 23, 2008

J. J. Abrams is developing this story into a feature film at Paramount.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:44 AM on June 18, 2008

There's a great opera based on Crowhurst's story--Ravenshead, by Steve Mackey.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:23 PM on June 12, 2008

that is WAY more serious a site than I was expecting.

It sounds almost like it was written by Nice Pete from Achewood.

(Also--no Annie Hall in the list of films reviewed? No Deer Hunter?)
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:56 AM on June 10, 2008

bap98189: the even/odd pattern for ST movies still holds because anything after VI isn't real Star Trek.

(*runs, hides*)
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 9:22 AM on June 9, 2008

I have to ask, why was the lighting in Indiana Jones 4 so bizarre?

Not an expert, but to my eye that's a signature look of Janusz Kaminski's photography. The first three Indy movies were shot by Douglas Slocombe, but Kaminski has been Spielberg's regular DP ever since Schindler's List.

Compare the look of Indy 4 to the look of Minority Report, where the Kaminski-ness is turned up to 11.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:04 AM on June 9, 2008

Caduceus: ...because certainly anything with Patrick Stewart is real.

Oh...I don't know. Anything? Anything? (see around 1:13)

(full disclosure--I love this movie to pieces)
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:39 PM on June 9, 2008

Pecinpah--the music is familiar to me from another source (I may even own it) but for the life of me I can't remember artist or title. My brain keeps telling me it's one of the tracks off Ghosts by Nine Inch Nails--I don't think that's right, though.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:26 PM on May 30, 2008

Floydd posted while I was typing that last comment. It is NIN? Ghosts just blurs together for me into a bunch of pleasant electronic tunes that don't distract me from whatever else I'm doing.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:28 PM on May 30, 2008

Also, Penguin UK is reissuing Fleming's 14 Bond novels in hardcover this week. The new editions have beautiful retro cover art. (I don't think they're available in the US, though.)
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:29 AM on May 26, 2008

Is this the thread that gives me an excuse to talk about Wii Fit, which showed up on my front porch last night? Reactions--

--Yeah, it doesn't pull punches during the initial diagnosis. It told me that I was overweight (174 lb., 5' 9"), re-rendered my Mii with a little belly, and then suggested I set a "weight loss goal."

--Lesson learned: yoga is hard if you've never done it before. I have a feeling that learning yoga through Wii... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 5:38 AM on May 22, 2008

...I'd appreciate any and all WiiFit reviews; really curious about it, and trying to decide if I should pick it up, or if it'll just be a batch of fitness related money down the drain.

The jury's still out for me on how good it is as a fitness tool. Karmakaze mentioned Dance Dance Revolution above--I've played at home for a few years now (and can play better than most people), and while 30 minutes of expert-level DDR can be a serious aerobic workout,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:23 AM on May 22, 2008

After playing with the balance board a bit more today--this is an amazing piece of tech.

After playing Wii Fit for long enough you'll be invited to take the Ultimate Balance Test. Basically, you have to distribute your weight on the board evenly (50% on the left foot, 50% on the right) and hold the position for three seconds. Each round has a decreasing margin of error, and the margin of error for the third and final round is a measly .1%.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:02 PM on May 22, 2008

I'm coming to the conclusion that almost any nonfiction book whose title has a colon halfway through, with the word "how" or "why" immediately following it, only seeks to confirm what its intended audience already believes to be true, rather than forcing its audience to consider a new idea in depth. See also:

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:17 AM on May 14, 2008

As for where I learn about new music these days--

--iTunes gives away at least two free singles each week, usually from new or undiscovered artists. The albums those singles come off of tend to be inexpensive--if you have Amazon Prime it can be cheaper to buy the physical CD than to download the album from iTunes. I've bought at least two albums that way in recent months.

--Pitchfork: mock their writing if you like, but each day they introduce me... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:10 AM on May 5, 2008

Coincidentally, Rhino is reissuing the first four Replacements albums tomorrow, with extra tracks. (Pitchfork review.)
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:24 PM on April 21, 2008

If loving DiGiorno's Stuffed Crust Pizza is wrong, I don't want to be right.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 8:17 AM on April 18, 2008

I loved that, but for the audio, not the video.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 6:08 PM on April 17, 2008

As a Clinton/Obama agnostic, all I know is that I'm watching a debate right now that's a travesty. God forbid we should have any discussion of policy when there are flag pins and sniper fire to worry about.

It's like the moderators are mocking not just the candidates, but me.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 5:52 PM on April 16, 2008

[...] if Obama can win this thing [...] then just maybe America's political culture can finally kick these halfwit talking heads into the gutter of irrelevance and find its way to redemption. This, I think, is what Clinton supporters fail to see [...]

I see what you're saying here, but this isn't about Clinton representing the old guard and Obama representing new politics--this is an endemic problem with the American mainstream press, and it has... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 9:22 AM on April 17, 2008

I read Gormenghast last summer, after a friend of mine nagged me about it for a solid year. Reading it in public is a good way to meet people--people who've also read it will eagerly introduce themselves to you.

Re: Titus Alone--loved loved loved the first two books, hated the third. Part of the problem with it (other than the cars, the bad editing, etc.) is that it reveals Peake's weakness--he can't write fully sexualized adult women. In the first two books he's great,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:30 AM on April 16, 2008

What about Amazon's prices on cookies? Are they competitive?

I know this isn't what you were talking about, but these are the nummiest cookies on God's green earth.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:28 AM on April 15, 2008

Oh--that first line is a quote from Saxon Kane.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:28 AM on April 15, 2008

I've come to love silent movies in recent years, but in the single time I've watched Birth of a Nation I was bored nearly to tears by it, like sotonohito. I see how it developed some interesting film language that we take for granted now, but the reason I'm impatient with it is exactly that--we take it for granted that when we see a shot of a person looking intently at something out of frame, and then a shot of a letter being held in a hand, then that person is reading the letter. So the reason... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 9:58 AM on April 6, 2008

Anyone who wonders why Ebert's loved should listen to one of his commentary tracks. See, especially, his track on Dark City.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 6:15 AM on April 2, 2008

Re: the list in the final link--

I can't see how Donkey Kong 64 is overrated, since I don't know anyone who defends it as a great game to begin with. I even bothered to beat it to get my $60 worth, and Rare didn't even try to make a challenging game that time out--the hardest part was beating the original Donkey Kong game you discovered within it.

Perfect Dark's habit of turning into a slideshow in the final levels of single-player mode was not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 4:00 PM on March 29, 2008

I'll do more than disagree. I'll call that statement out as being utterly clueless. They're two completely different genres, fer heaven's sake, two completely different approaches to gaming. One is fast-paced action, the other is more casually paced adventure. Unless you connect the two by focusing on the way the characters scale and manipulate the environment, in which case, that's a pretty thin case for "redundant."

Strong words! And a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 10:44 AM on March 30, 2008

I played SoT after I finished and fell in love with Ico, and I gotta say I was never directly reminded of the more abstract Ico.

Interesting--for me it's the reverse. After I played SoT straight through in a weekend, I was told by a couple of people if I liked that, then I'd love Ico. That may have prejudiced me toward viewing Ico as a less technically advanced version of PoP. (Also, Ico's diehard fans are wont to say things like,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:05 PM on March 30, 2008

Ico is an adventure game. The focus is on "What should I do next?" PoP is an action game. The focus is on "Can I do it?" Yes, there's some overlap, but the difference makes them feel like different genres to me.

I see what you're saying here. And perhaps genre is ultimately a matter of feeling, not definition. However, while it's true that the rewind function lets you experiment without penalty (which was the biggest problem with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:58 PM on March 31, 2008

For me it was the "don't do drugs" episode of Bravestarr (which I've mentioned on MeFi before).

Also, one out of every five or six Smurfs episodes was traumatic, so it's hard to pick just one. Watching that show was like playing Russian Roulette--would the scary cartoon be the first, or the third, or the second? (See, for example, this description of the scariest Smurf cartoon IMO, "The Purple Smurfs.")... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 3:40 PM on March 26, 2008

Holy crap, I found video of the Purple Smurfs episode. Watch it before it gets taken down.

For those of you about to watch this who don't know the plot--God help you.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 3:47 PM on March 26, 2008

Also, what was so scary about the purple Smurfs? I watched the video in this thread, and it seems like a pretty standard Smurfs episode.

As implied in one of the links in my other comment, it's got a minor but crucial difference in plotting from every other Smurfs episode. The usual pattern is that Papa Smurf saves everyone from catastrophe at the last minute. This episode is the only one in which Papa Smurf... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:34 PM on March 30, 2008

zardoz says, above: The polls I've read about are pretty clear that Obama would beat McCain, but McCain would beat Clinton, if the general were held now.

This was once true (and may become true again), but at this moment at least two polls indicate that it is not true.

Gallup: Clinton 49%-Obama 42%; McCain 47%-Obama 43%; McCain 48%-Clinton 45%. The last day of that polling was Tuesday, the day of Obama's speech.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:00 AM on March 19, 2008

The Daily Howler's assessment. (Scroll down to "About that speech.")
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 12:59 PM on March 20, 2008

Matt Tabibi, "Generation Squeeb":

The endless onslaught of tiny scandals trains the electorate to be hyper-responsive to temporary, superficial outrages while simultaneously chipping away at their long-term memories, their inclination to look at the big picture, their ability to grasp subtleties of opinion and policy.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:17 PM on March 28, 2008

The Phantom Empire was just released on DVD this year in a brand-new transfer.

My favorite serial film was made far earlier than these, though: the French film Judex.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 7:37 PM on March 26, 2008

Half of me thinks this is a hoax (since the shop is sold out of all its items). On the other hand, we do live in the future, so I want to believe. Also, I want one.

I'd love to know what the price tag on that thing is, and whether the software has regular updates with new beats.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:50 PM on March 25, 2008

If you are having as much trouble streaming this as I did, The Pirate Bay's torrent is fast.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 11:05 AM on March 24, 2008

This might have been better off in what's now the catch-all Democratic primary thread.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 6:47 AM on March 24, 2008

When I was in graduate school, there was one semester when I received funding but didn't have to teach, so I'd spend my entire day working on my dissertation. I had a TV next to the computer, and I soon discovered that if I timed it right, in my area you could watch three different episodes of Jerry Springer scattered across three channels each day. I did this five days a week--the mindlessness of Springer was a perfect counterpoint to the work I was doing.

The thing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:37 PM on March 19, 2008

I haven't read any Clarke in a long time--3001 was the last novel of his I read. But for some reason I read 2010 over and over and over again as a child--I think I liked it even more than 2001, and though the film version of it certainly doesn't compare to Kubrick, it's unfairly maligned. It's worth seeing once just for the amazing visual effects by Richard Edlund.

Also, I changed my wallpaper to this today.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 4:20 PM on March 18, 2008

This guy's argument in the first piece is basically: he'll only win if a good number of people vote for him despite his skin color -- i.e., maintaining their prejudices but exempting him.

Though there is much to disagree with in the essay, more than I have time to deal with now, I think the argument is more complicated than that. Specifically, Wise seems to be claiming that Obama can be a successful candidate only if he actively distances himself from... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 8:35 AM on March 11, 2008

I went to grad school with Adam (though he was a few years ahead of me in the program). He was a great guy--strong academic command of the material (his dissertation, as I remember, was on blues lyrics), plus he could actually play the stuff. If I remember correctly, he got his tenure-track position at the University of Mississippi by unexpectedly breaking out his harmonica in the middle of his on-campus interview.

I saw him perform as half of Satan and Adam a couple of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 6:09 AM on March 8, 2008

FYI: $6.99 shipping for the 2xCD version. So, $16.99 total. Fair enough, considering there's no middleman.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:50 PM on March 3, 2008

One more thing--time may prove me wrong, but I think the $300 price tag for the ultra-magical edition will ultimately cripple demand for it, considering that there's already a common version of the material. Even though there's only 2,500 copies, I see them being available for quite a while--years, I'd expect.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 2:56 PM on March 3, 2008

Yeah, I was about to come here to post that time has proved me wrong in a major, major way.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 12:29 PM on March 4, 2008

Also: (1) this music is pretty good, but good enough to merit a $300 collectible edition? Even with the bonus doodads and the signing and numbering, I'm not seeing $300 there--the profit margin on it must be insane. Maybe a lot of people bought it with the intent of flipping it on eBay? The Halo numbering does encourage the collector's impulse.

(2) To state the obvious, if that's the kind of demand he can gin up with nearly zero advance publicity, then Reznor will never... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 12:40 PM on March 4, 2008

Yes, sparkletone: I knew that when I posted.
posted to MetaFilter by Prospero at 1:38 PM on March 4, 2008