AC0

Farewell, Bob Herbert

2011-03-27T23:57:00.001-04:00

The NYT loses one of its best. I hope he decides to write an independent blog, eventually.

Salad daze

2009-07-28T08:25:00.002-04:00

Here's a collection of 101 salads, not one less! Should be fun to experiment with.

Trifecta

2009-04-07T14:25:00.002-04:00

It's interesting to have 3 out of 3 paper submissions accepted on one's 33rd birthday, while teaching course number 33.

Surprise

2008-11-03T16:31:00.002-05:00

To be surprised at a demonstrably true statement is to admit to not having done the requisite thinking around that statement.

(Prompted by an email I just wrote to a friend.)

The Art of the Subject Line

2008-08-10T15:25:00.002-04:00

Several more "clever" spam subject lines have been making their way into my inbox (shame on you, filters). Many provide mild amusement. This latest one, I believe, has elevated the Spam Subject Line into an art form: "Bush Down to 8 Friends on Myspace".

Creative spam subject line du jour

2008-07-16T07:49:00.000-04:00

"Beijing Olympics cancelled, moved to Atlanta"

No, really!

Words failed him

2008-06-27T20:45:00.002-04:00

(via Martin, offered without comment, except that words failed him)

Faculty quotas to be introduced in the IITs.

Not so green

2008-03-26T16:29:00.003-04:00

Well, well... this shiny new card I finally got is less green than my university ID.

Uncopyrightabulous

2008-01-24T23:56:00.000-05:00

Even this non-lawyer was getting frustrateed by commentators getting different kinds of intellectual property mixed up, as this lawyerly article explains at some length.

The Year of Travel

2008-01-06T12:40:00.001-05:00

Above all else, my 2007 will be remembered as the year of travel. I rang in the old year in Bangalore and just rang in this new year in Louisville. The days in between were spent living in a number of cities all over the world. I do mean living, i.e., staying for at least a week, shopping for groceries and cooking. Here are all the places that I lived in, in 2007.

Bangalore
Hong Kong
Seattle
San Jose, CA
Los Angeles
San Diego
New York City
Whippany, NJ (thanks)
Hanover (of course)
Louisville

Every one of these was fun in its own way.

Additionally, I visited these other places, also all over the world: Macau, Vancouver, Portland (OR), Dayton, Quebec City, Providence, Bombay.

Having typed this out, I can scarcely believe this long list!

Uber Cool Nerd King

2007-09-17T13:27:00.000-04:00

Because I just finished submitting a paper and had to cool down.

I have ten-year...

2007-09-03T11:16:00.000-04:00

...having arrived in the country of my current residence on this day in 1997. This is not like ten-year at CUNY, though. (Search for the string "ten-year" after clicking on the link.)

Overanalysis

2007-07-20T19:28:00.000-04:00

Painstaking linguistic analysis of a Dilbert comic strip. Only on Language Log!

PSA: Foxit Reader

2007-05-03T18:15:00.000-04:00

If you haven't tried using the small, fast, richly-featured Foxit Reader for viewing your PDF files, do so. There doesn't seem to be a plugin, but the extra window is a small price to pay for the blazing speed.

You're welcome

2007-02-03T19:40:00.000-05:00

Opening line of a recent letter sent to me by my bank: "Thank you for your recent <bankname> Bank Online Banking payment dispute."

Movie impressions: The Namesake

2006-10-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

My eagerly-awaited blog posts on Movie Impressions from Telluride did not happen this year, thanks to my travel about halfway across the world to Hong Kong. However, in a rare bit of cinematic luck, I happened to catch an advance screening of Mira Nair's upcoming film "The Namesake", last Friday evening. Amazingly enough, it was the second-ever showing of this film worldwide, with the New York City premiere to come later that weekend and a full theatre run planned only as late as March 2007.

If you guessed that the film is based on Jhumpa Lahiri's identically titled novel, you were right. Having not read the book, I must view the film as a standalone piece and it works quite fine that way. The movie spans some 25 years in the lives of its main characters: Ashoke Ganguly, his wife Ashima, and their son Gogol, named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke emigrates from India to the US for his graduate studies, marries and imports Ashima from India and eventually has two American-born children. The film focusses on the culture shocks that hit Ashoke and Ashima (especially her) and on Gogol's crises of identity and adjustment. If this sounds like an all-too-familiar FOB/ABCD story, well, it is. Unapologetically so. But, and to the film's credit, lyrically so. While the film may not be profound (and don't believe any "outside observers" who find profundity in it), it is deeply satisfying for its authentic portrayal of its central characters and their environments as they shuttle between Kolkata and northeastern US.

Afterwards, in a post-film discussion session, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking one-on-one with Mira Nair. My better half couldn't resist asking her to pose for a picture and I was happy to tag along, so...

I caught it at the hospital

2006-09-28T17:18:00.000-04:00

Notice received today from our sysadmin: "There is a new Windows virus spreading around, at the hospital."

Mnemonic

2006-08-25T00:43:00.000-04:00

My very educated mother just showed us — nevermind!

The Economist's New Gulf

2006-07-23T08:53:00.000-04:00

What is this Arabian Gulf of which you speak? Really, Economist, just because you used to be a decent magazine a while back, do you think you can now skimp on your homework?

Which textbook would you rather buy?

2006-05-03T18:49:00.000-04:00

(via Tony)

This one?	or this one?

Choose smartly!

PSA: Tabbed browsing in Firefox

2006-04-17T16:55:00.000-04:00

This is a public service announcement. If you are using the TabBrowser Preferences extension to Firefox to enhance your browsing experience, you might want to try the newer Tab Mix Plus extension instead. It has a host of useful features.

If you aren't browsing using Firefox, you should try it now.

Once a century

2006-04-03T22:57:00.000-04:00

(via Nina)
In a little over a month from today, one very early morning at two minutes and three seconds past the hour, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

If you live in America, this will happen somewhat earlier — in a little over 24 hours, in fact.

NYTick!

2006-04-03T01:37:00.000-04:00

Redesign all you like, folks, but why do away with the venerable old font?!

Old		New

Two very different WSC stories

2006-03-29T17:46:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, the Eighth World Scrabble Championship (WSC) took place in London. The popular press has covered many aspects of the tournament in many articles spread across many newspapers. Two of these articles stood out: one on David Eldar from Australia (a phenomenal player who'd just turned 16), and one on Joel Sherman from the United States (a phenomenal player who ran into some thugs).

Why I haven't blogged in a long time

2006-03-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

I have been isolated.
(via SamA)

Pension tension

2006-01-09T07:49:00.000-05:00

The NYT has come up with a couple of quietly alarming articles. One is about the general trend of pensions coming to an end, even at well-to-do companies. An earlier one was a short news piece about IBM's recent decision. Time to enroll in Investing 101.

Harry Potter and the Eye Candy

2005-12-03T11:50:00.000-05:00

Having recently watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I quite enjoyed going through these very nice photos of costumes and props from the movie, taken at an exhibition in Japan. Some of the detail that shows up in the photos is quite amazing (and amusing), this photo of some pamphlets from the Quidditch World Cup being an excellent example.

The movie itself lands in that quite-good-but-not-brilliant zone that I've come to expect this series of movies to occupy. A good way to pass 2½ hours revisiting a story I greatly enjoyed reading. The best feature of the movie was the way it built up the character of Cedric Diggory and lent some emotional impact to his death, something the book failed at. The worst feature was the overall look and feel of Voldemort. I don't know when these fantasy movies (LoTR included) will get it through their collective heads that a face uglified by a rubbery or pasty mask is not the way to create a convincing villain! I hope they do better with Bellatrix for the next movie.

They're so quaint

2005-11-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

As this NYT article shows, a lot of people in this here country just cannot make sense of the way those quaint "South Asians" end up married.

Telluride 2005 #5

2005-10-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

The fifth and final (for me) movie of this year's Telluride was the Arabic movie Paradise Now. This is a story of two young Palestinian men (who are childhood friends) who, one day, are recruited to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv. The operation is botched at the very initial stages by one of them, after which things go off plan and we end up with a tense thriller as first one, and then both, of the men try to salvage the operation while dealing with troubling questions of the immorality and pointlessness of it all.

This movie could easily have been politically shrill but it largely avoids that. I say "largely" because there are clear moments of see-this-point-of-view dialogue inserted into the movie and to the extent that they feel "inserted", the movie fails artistically. However, the taut suspense makes the movie worth watching. Score: 6.5/10

The Aristocrats: a movie impression

2005-10-09T18:13:00.000-04:00

"Let me break the flow briefly here to describe a movie I saw more recently, that had nothing to do with Telluride."

"I don't have much time. I'm here to read about the Telluride movies. But get on with it and be quick."

"Well, calling it is a 'movie' is misleading. There is no story, no interesting camera work, no impressive visuals, no lessons to be learnt about life or the universe or anything at all, in fact. Instead, various well-known American comedians (and a few British ones) take turns at saying some of the most grotesque, nauseating, obscene and horrifying things that they can think of humans doing to themselves. Members of a family come on stage and display wild sex, father-on-daughter, son-on-mother, mother-on-daughter, threesies, whatnot. The family dog sometimes joins in the fun as well. And not satisfied with sticking to sex, they involve all sorts of bodily fluids, excretions and sometimes appropriately-shaped external devices as well. Before it was halfway done, several members of the audience left the theater and some others who were not wise enough to do so spilled the contents of their stomachs in response to the nonstop barrage of grotesquery. In fact I thanked heaven that I had chosen a seat in the very last row and so, was in no danger of being barfed upon from behind. As it is, on the way out I had to be really careful so as not to trip over any leftovers and slide all the way down the stairs..."

"But..."

"None of this grossfest is actually on display on screen, though. Instead we have comedians making this up impromptu as part of the telling of an elaborate joke whose sickness is exceeded only by its pointlessness."

"Wow, what is this movie called?"

"The Aristocrats."

Telluride 2005 #4

2005-10-09T17:19:00.000-04:00

This weekend isn't really all that free, but it's probably not going to get much freer later and, well, I do have enough time to finish reviewing the movies I saw at this year's Telluride.

The fourth feature this year was the Hungarian movie Sorstalnaság (English title: Fateless). Regular readers of this rarely-posted-to blog (if any exist!) may remember that my favourite movie from last year's Telluride was a Hungarian movie: Kontroll. Apart from their common language, the two movies are utterly different. Kontroll had "indie" written all over it; Sorstalnaság is a big budget production enthusiastically funded by the Hungarian government, with Nobel laureate Imre Kertész handling screenplay and distinguished Italian composer Ennio Morricone handling the score (director Lajos Koltai is no unknown figure either, having impressed as a cinematographer before this). Kontroll was edgy, kinetic and unpredictable; Sorstalnaság is muted, deliberately paced and tells an all-too-familar story.

That familiar story that supplies most of the action in Sorstalnaság is that of concentration camp life during the Holocaust. However, do not try to fit this movie into a narrow category of "Holocaust movies", for this movie is really about the story of one teenaged Budapest boy, Gyuri, and his experience of the camps as a detached, introverted teenager. When the movie begins, towards the end of WW2, we see that Gyuri is a quiet kid, wiser than his age would indicate, whom adolescence has made not rebellious but cynical. A seemingly inconsequential decision to take the bus rather than the train, coupled with some very unlucky timing, puts Gyuri on an inexorable path leading to capture, detention, deportation, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other concentration camps. What we, the viewers, see as a grotesque distortion of normality is, for teenaged Gyuri, simply continuing education about life. He simply takes it as his new reality and carries on, never once screaming or crying through the entire length of the movie. Yet, by the time the movie enters its extended coda where Gyuri returns from the ordeal, we realize that he has become a man we will never understand because there is absolutely nothing comparable in our life experience to help us understand him.

With a body count of zero, this is about the least explicitly violent movie ever to tackle any aspect of the Holocaust. Yet, there are two scenes so deeply disturbing that they haunted me for days afterwards. I won't reveal what they are; watch the movie and decide for yourself. Score: 8/10

Telluride 2005 #3

2005-09-25T16:12:00.000-04:00

It is very hard to do a good job of writing about a movie of such idiosyncratic brilliance as Neil Jordan's latest Breakfast on Pluto, which was the third of this year's Telluride @ Dartmouth features. Cop-out though it may be, I would like to quote the official Telluride blurb on this movie, as I think it is a great short review.

Neil Jordan (Crying Game, Mona Lisa) adapts Patrick McCabe's novel about a boy born to be different. Patrick Brady (Cillian Murphy) is abandoned as a baby in a small Irish town, escapes to London and, as a witty and deceptively tough young transvestite, searches for his mother and learns to navigate big-city life. Jordan captures the excitement and political turmoil of the 1970s in a film that's alternately hilarious, moving and magical. Murphy has quietly impressed audiences in films including 28 Days Later and Batman Begins, but nothing could prepare us for this stunning performance — it's certain to be his coming out.

The main thing to add is that Neil Jordan has a wonderful gift of matching music to scene and excellent taste in pop/rock music. Very few other directors seems to possess both; the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino are the only names that spring to mind right away. Thanks to the music, what is already one heck of an entertaining and wild ride becomes a truly four-dimensional experience. Score: 9/10

Telluride 2005 #2

2005-09-25T15:31:00.000-04:00

The second night of Telluride @ Dartmouth featured the French movie Caché (English title: Hidden), from the Austrian director Mihcael Haneke, known for his minimalism. The story is that of a successful TV host Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) whose steady life and relationship with his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) and son are sorely tested when a videotape is mysteriously delivered to him one day. The tape contains lengthy, boring, still camera footage of his own house but, more importantly, arrives wrapped in a paper containing a childlike, yet deeply disturbing, drawing of a boy with a triangle of blood gushing out of his mouth.

More such videotapes continue to arrive, often wrapped in similarly disturbing drawings, that obviously mean something to Georges that he refuses to share with Anne. Eventually, however, circumstances force Georges to reveal to Anne some dark secrets of his boyhood days. How will the movie now resolve things? Can it, even? No spoilers here; watch it and find out!

The best thing about this movie is that by using his minimalist approach, Haneke lets the viewers interpret the events on screen any way they like. Some read it as commentary on modern urban life, some as an allegory for current international events, especially terrorism and its connection to colonialism. Others, including me, simply see it as a story of comeuppance that brings out all the tense moments that its protagonist endures. Score: 7.5/10

Another year, another Telluride

2005-09-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

It's a new year and I'm back... with my first impressions of five movies from the 2005 edition of Telluride @ Dartmouth, perhaps the finest cultural event in this town.

Having followed this event for three years now, I sense that the opening night features the movie most likely to become a mainstream hit. In 2003, it was Girl with a Pearl Earring, and in 2004, it was Being Julia. In hindsight, neither of these ended up being even close to the best mainstream movie of the year; in fact, each of these was soundly beaten by a Clint Eastwood movie: Mystic River in 2003 and Million Dollar Baby in 2004.

This year's opener was Capote, a movie based on the events in the life of Truman Capote that led to his landmark "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. As a movie, it is fairly ordinary, despite a terrific performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Having only seen him in throwaway sidekick-type roles before (such as in Magnolia and The Big Lebowski) I enjoyed the revelation of his considerable acting talents. But beyond his acting the movie does not have much going for it. Read the NYT's Capote obit from August 1984 and consider the wealth of aspects of Truman Capote that a great movie could have brought out. The present movie does only lip service to most of these. Score: 5.5/10

Borderline ethical

2005-08-15T01:01:00.000-04:00

I found myself at the local Borders last weekend, seeking a book I wanted to read (B1) and a book I wanted to buy (B2). The prices were $20 for B1 and $25 for B2. I was willing to wait another week or three before buying B2, so I just bought B1 and was rewarded with a book discount coupon (C1) and a beverage discount coupon (C2) to be used within the next eight days.

Having read (and enjoyed — thanks, JKR) B1, I brought it back to the store this weekend to exchange for a copy of B2. Amazingly enough, the clerk applied C1, reducing B2's price to $18! Faced with the unexpected situation of having surplus cash in the amount of $2, I celebrated with a nice mocha beverage that it paid for, after an application of C2.

Sorry, were you expecting a moral?

Regression

2005-08-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

My god, this is downright depressing.
Heaven help them...

Married in heaven

2005-06-04T19:44:00.000-04:00

or thereabouts... well, they tried and came pretty darn close.
WTG!

Quick brown fox update

2005-05-12T13:45:00.000-04:00

(via Turnip)
Quick Benedict XVI was formerly Jospeh Ratzinger.

You and your research

2005-05-09T13:17:00.000-04:00

This was the title of an excellent talk given at Bell Labs in 1986 by Prof. Richard W. Hamming, in which he expounded on his observations on the question "Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?" It's sound advice for all ages and is bound to be applicable well beyond the research world.

Australia's role in the Vietnam war

2005-04-29T01:23:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in today's edition of The Age, titled "The war we gatecrashed," by Australian writer and New South Wales solicitor-general Michael Sexton. The thesis is that Australia encouraged the US to enter a full-blown conflict in Vietnam and then invited itself to this war.

Operator!

2005-04-08T12:24:00.000-04:00

(via martin)
No one likes listening to menus over the phone, so it makes sense to try and memorize the escape sequences for the Very Big Companies whose customer service line you frequently call. Unfortunately such memorization is dull. But fortunately, someone has done something about it.

Who wins?

2005-03-31T18:34:00.000-05:00

The left hand wishes to clap and the right hand wishes to write.
Who wins, and who is happy?

and so it is
just like you said it would be
life goes easy on me
most of the time
and so it is
the shorter story
no love no glory
no hero in her skies
i can't take my eyes off of you
i can't take my eyes ...
and so it is
just like you said it should be
we'll both forget the breeze
most of the time
and so it is
the colder water
the blower's daughter
the pupil in denial
i can't take my eyes off of you
i can't take my eyes ...
did I say that I loathe you?
did I say that I want to
leave it all behind?
i can't take my mind off of you
i can't take my mind ...
my mind
'til I find somebody new
— Damien Rice, 2003

Thoughts on a few 2004 movies

2005-02-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

It just so happens that I've been thinking of some of my favourite 2004 movies. I've been quite sure for a while that (the unfortunately titled) "Million Dollar Baby" is the best of those that I saw, with "Sideways" and "Before Sunset" coming in a close joint second. Apart from that, three other things stood out:

Paul Giamatti's performance in "Sideways", showing, using some body language and throw of voice, that men are bundles of complication too.
Julie Delpy's performance in "Before Sunset": nothing short of astonishing for how it convinces us that this is the woman in "Before Sunrise" grown ten years older.
The cinematography in "Spring Summer Fall Winter... and Spring", a superlative work of art that is worth 1000 × 1000 words. Incidentally, if you want to get some idea of what my environs look like at various times of the year, see this movie.

Guess how many of these made it to the Oscar nominations list.

Nerdy puzzles, a whole year's worth

2005-01-18T22:57:00.000-05:00

I was at MIT last weekend, spending a day at QIP 2005. While some of us pondered what the world would be like if our computers were quantum, some thirty-odd teams of hypernerds grappled with the puzzles of Mystery Hunt 2005, all for the sake of a worthless coin (which was duly found by the winning team). Click the link for a year's worth of these puzzles.

Especially recommended puzzles, based on what I've read so far: Commencement Ceremony (start with this), Heavenly Hash, Odd Man Out, Ginormous.

Thought for the day

2005-01-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

¿ʇᴉ əsnqɐ ʇ,uɐɔ noʎ ɟᴉ əpoɔᴉun sᴉ pooɓ ʇɐɥʍ
(uᴉʇɹɐɯ ɐᴉʌ)

The hardest simple sliding block puzzle

2004-12-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

If you can solve this puzzle without external help, let me know. If you're ready to give up, read this; it might make you feel better.

Goodbye, Telluride 2004

2004-09-23T01:57:00.000-04:00

It's been fun. To recap, here are my ratings for this year's movies:

  Being Julia ............... 8/10

  House of Flying Daggers ... 6/10

  Finding Neverland ......... Skipped

  Kontroll .................. 8.5/10

  Enduring Love ............. 7/10

  Bad Education ............. 6.5/10

Now let's see what the big-name reviewers have to say when the movies get commercially released.

Movie Impressions - V

2004-09-23T01:44:00.000-04:00

Finishing off the Telluride @ Dartmouth festival tonight was the highly-anticipated Almodóvar movie "La mala educación" ("Bad Education"). Since his last movie, "Hable con ella" ("Talk to her") was quite a success, and critically acclaimed to boot, comparisons are inevitable. Neither storyline nor mood put the present movie anywhere near the last one, but similarities in form are noticeable: both films are tragicomic, present their most significant events in narrative flashbacks, and depict present-day interactions between characters united through cataclysmic events in their past.

Storywise, "Bad Education" is structured like film noir and ends up parodying the genre. Since any discussion about the plot of a film noir is a spoiler, I'll refrain from providing any; the mini-description at the Telluride website is a good enough teaser. I'll just add that the movie depicts lots of sex and no naked women.

Was it good? Certainly, but it wasn't great, and didn't come close to being the capstone that "Talk to her" was. That movie worked so well because we, the viewers, cared deeply enough about the fates of its characters to be drawn into the bizarre details of their pasts. I get the feeling that this time around Almodóvar got so engrossed in providing us those bizarre twists from the past that he forgot to first develop his characters so that we actually cared. Thus, for the last third of the movie, I knew that the final pieces of the puzzle were going to be revealed but I didn't really care how things turned out. Sad.

I would give this a 6.5/10. By way of comparison, "Talk to her" gets a 9/10.

Movie Impressions - IV

2004-09-23T01:30:00.000-04:00

I did not have time last night to write about yesterday's Telluride movie, the British film "Enduring Love". This is one of those movies I probably would not have been tempted to watch had it not come with the recommendation stamp and the accessibility of Telluride. And I would, therefore, have missed a damn fine movie. The movie stood out among this year's selections for being the only decidedly introspective one. The direction is skilful enough to keep you from noticing the slow pace. Somehow, despite the lack of kinetic action, the movie builds up enough tension to make you hold your breath as you watch the serene and talky park scene that ends the movie. In fact the entire audience I watched the movie with exhaled a huge collective sigh as the tension was finally broken.

"Enduring Love" is framed as a stalker story, but with a twist: the stalker is homosexual. Within this context, the film ponders about the arbitrariness of the life-changing incidents, the butterfly effect, the cold biological basis of love, and of course, the stalker mindset. Rather than write my own synopsis of the story, I'll lazily point you to a nicely-written review of the Ian McEwan novel on which it is based.

The movie is fairly faithful to the novel and does not add any touches of cinematic brilliance. With source material this good, perhaps the decision to use a straightforward and restrained approach was a good one. I rate this 7/10; as a stalker movie and as a philosophical one it falls two notches below the utterly brilliant Audrey Tautou starrer "À la folie... pas du tout" (known, for some reason, by the very different English name "He loves me... he loves me not") — that movie gets a well-deserved 9/10.

Movie Impressions - III

2004-09-20T23:58:00.000-04:00

Telluride tonight featured the Hungarian movie "Kontroll", superficially a good-versus-evil thriller, but with twists and subplots so bizarre I'm not at all sure how to review it. I don't know how to explain its brilliance without your knowing what occurs on screen, and I can't tell you much about what happens while avoiding spoilers.

The movie's events occur over the space of a few days in the subway system of an unnamed Eastern European city (it's shot in Budapest, but the title "Kontroll" is meaningless in Hungarian). A mysterious badguy is pushing commuters to their deaths in front of arriving trains. Our protagonists, a bunch of nutcase homeless ticket inspectors who seem to live in the subway's underground world, are up against this badguy... as well as a slew of commuters who don't give a damn about their authority to actually inspect tickets. Other colourful characters that pop in and out include

a woman who rides the trains dressed completely in a teddy bear outfit,
a subway driver who works in a state of permanent inebriation, and
a slippery punk kid called "Bootsie" who taunts the ticket inspectors by spraying them with shaving foam.

Don't let this discourage you if it sounds confusing; all will be clear when you watch the movie!

"Kontroll" is liberally peppered with comic moments and is very fast-paced -- a rarity in Eastern European cinema. The camerawork is just superb and shows the subway system in all its messy and grimy detail: you can smell the place! You eventually long to get out and smell fresh air, and the movie builds up tremendous anticipation for the moment when you'll finally do that. There is, of course, the badguy who must be dealt with, so you might think that makes for a predictable ending. Wrong! In fact, I would bet that no ten-minute sequence in this movie is predictable.

Watch it and find out how it all really plays out.

The movie has a cool official website, and there's a bunch of nice stills at the National Film Archive of Hungary website.

Movie impressions - II

2004-09-18T23:54:00.000-04:00

Continuing the Telluride @ Dartmouth festival tonight was the Chinese film "House of Flying Daggers". Since it's totally in the same genre as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and even stars Zhang Ziyi from that movie, comparisons are inevitable. Indeed, I've already told you 90% of what you need to know about the movie. All that remains is to point out the major differences.

The storyline of HoFD is simple: set in 10th century China, with the Tang dynasty's power waning, it pits the corrupt government against a shadowy rebel group called Flying Daggers. Hero works for govt, heroine for FD; you can guess what transpires. They both end up on the run from the police and run into occasional ambushes featuring martial arts and lush forest scenery. So far so good.

Though gravity-defying action sequences abound in HoFD, they are much more believable than those in CTHD. Unfortunately, HoFD goes for a more ludicrous kind of fantasy: defying conservation of mass. I mean mass, as in human bodies! We repeatedly see our two protagonists begin a fight sequence against four enemies and end the same fight having felled about twenty. Why do I feel so bothered by this? After all I'm forgiving them the flagrant violations of conservation of angular momentum (the daggers which fly and whirl in eye-popping fashion). And I'm even forgiving them the ridiculous set up they used to give the plot two wicked twists.

Talking of plot, it's thicker than you might expect based on what I've outlined above, but overall it's a disaster. It's not because of the set up I've mentioned above; it's because the twists come a little past the halfway point. After this, the movie plunges rapidly into cheesy Bollywood territory with mortal wounds failing to be deadly for just long enough to allow three different characters to weep, howl, and show the power of love.

I would give this a 6/10; it did have a spectacular first half. Yesterday's "Being Julia" deserved an 8/10. For comparison, I gave last year's Lars von Trier film "Dogville" the only 9/10.

Movie impressions - I

2004-09-18T01:06:00.000-04:00

The Telluride @ Dartmouth mini film festival has begun and I look forward to five nights of watching some very good films. I like recording first impressions of any notable movies I watch, so watch this space as I report on a nightly basis for the next several nights.

Tonight's movie, "Being Julia", is easily the most refreshing new movie I've seen this year and blows away all competition (those who've been following along know that I'm yet to watch the acclaimed "Maria Full of Grace" and "Before Sunset"). A free adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's penultimate novel "Theatre", it tells the story of the successful 45-year-old actress Julia Lambert hitting a crossroads in her life. In a foolish attempt to seek the sensual love that she never got from her husband and manager, she falls for a young American fan of hers who, having made the conquest, tries to use his new-found emotional power over her. Around the halfway mark one might wonder if the movie hasn't run its course, but soon there comes the long punchline that makes up the final quarter where Julia finds the inner strength she needs for her unique form of revenge.

The movie features cute costumes and sets depicting 1938 London, plenty of charming and very English repartee, and the occasional sage observation about life, the universe and everything (this being 1938, they hadn't yet computed the answer which is, of course, forty-two). The acting is superb all around and is very effective at bringing out the undeniable higher love that does exist between Julia and her husband; I expect this latter point to be overlooked by casual watchers who don't pay attention.

For the usual details such as credits, look this movie up on IMDB.

Fiction on NYT op-ed page

2004-09-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

Today's NYT is running a decidedly quirky and Calvino-esque piece of fiction called The Sixth Borough, by one Jonathan Safran Foer (an unknown person to me). I'm not sure what to make of it, and parts of it are rather cheesy, but it was a welcome change on the op-ed page.

Where to dine in Rome

2004-09-14T19:16:00.000-04:00

Epicurious has a nice article on the topic. It should be useful in just over a month!

Falling Bodies

2004-09-14T16:46:00.000-04:00

The NYT is running a well-written article about the poor souls who jumped off the WTC's top floors rather than burn to death inside on that fateful day. Ghastly, painful stuff, but well worth reading.

Brian Wilson to finally release "Smile"

2004-09-12T13:46:00.000-04:00

So says this article from the NYT. Based on the fragments that showed up on the "Smiley Smile/Wild Honey" CD, which I possess, this should be a fascinating album no matter how smooth or rough it turns out.

Some new films I'd like to see

2004-09-07T19:10:00.000-04:00

The NYT article Serious Films for Popcorn Season has a useful list of "serious" films that I would like to catch up on, including "Maria Full of Grace", "The Door in the Floor," "We Don't Live Here Anymore", "A Home at the End of the World", "Before Sunset", "Bright Leaves", "Garden State", "Bright Young Things", "Intimate Strangers", "Mean Creek", "Stander" and "Festival Express". This is easier said than done, given my geographic constraints (not to mention the soon-to-come temporal ones), but it's good to have these things bookmarked. One never knows when opportunities to watch these will arise.

AC0.0

2004-07-17T01:24:00.000-04:00

Hello, world.