Newly Digital: Professor Kalsey respectfully requests you submit your birth-of-computing memoir via the magic of Trackback.
Oh, you bet, Adam. But after the fine and sunny weekend.
[via the ever estimable Waxy.org]
I'd be remiss in not noting both Fantagraphics' online plea for patronage and the P-I's immediate front-page coverage.
I've also written a news story on this for Tablet and filed it, but, um, it ain't up yet. I'll be doing a follow-up for the print ish next week as well.
For those of you too lazy to follow the links, here's the deal: Fantagraphics is hoping to raise an additional $80,000 over and above their usual monthly revenue. The money is needed in order to pay off some loans taken out a couple of years ago to make up some revenue lost when a former distributor went bust and stiffed the publisher for about $72 grand.
How do they hope to raise the money? By having you, the loyal, discriminating, intelligent lover of the superior comic product buy more than you normally would from America's Least Businesslike Comic Company! Roughly, that is.
Anyway, that's the deal. If you figure you might pick up a Fanta title sometime in the next five years, now's the time to do it. Go to the website, pick yourself out somethin' nice, and make with the credit card, baby.
The Capitol Hill Branch of the Seattle Public Library opens today, finally, after a two-year construction process that sadly exactly coincided with the depths of the recession here. We might go have a look-see.
I neglected to blog our Thusday evening visit to Rosita's and then the Little Red Hen in the seventies of Woodlawn, hard by Greenlake.
We had a couple of margaritas at Rosita's along with dinner, and judging by the scope and scale of my hangover, they were much stronger than I thought they were at the time I consumed them.
The reason for venturing out of Capitol Hill into the uncharted Teva-and-Bjirkenstock reaches of furthest Greenlake, within eyeshot of the former Honey Bear, was dear former bandmate Barry Semple, formerly of the Bare Knuckle Boxers, The Hammerdowns, and occasionally also of Faith and Disease.
Barry is a precise, disciplined drummer who is also reliable as the sunrise, and this makes him an in-demand commodity in the Seattle music community. He's been playing with the Souvenirs for some time as well, and that country gig landed him the one that saw him on the stage of the Little Red Hen with The Swains. Although the band mentioned their website onstage, I couldn't raise it via Google; here are some tracks from a show on KEXP, without Barry, alas.
It was great to see Bear, and to hear this band; they play straight up honky-tonk country. In fact, the other big news of the night to me was the bar: it's a straight-up honky tonk itself, apparently airdropped into the wilder reaches of our fair and Nader-lovin' city from Concrete, or maybe Amarillo, circa 1972.
For me, this is great news. While it's odd that I really enjoy seeing music in clubs where I'm likely to actually bump into the same rednecks that beat the crap out of me in high school, I vastly prefer the hipster-free vibe of a place like the Little Red Hen to the cooler-than-thou, let's all stand around and frown scene that can develop at venues like the impeccably pedigreed Tractor Tavern.
Not to knock the Tractor - it's a great place to play, and a great place to see a show. But it's great to know about a joint that offers country music in its' native environment, giant hats, dancing, torn red vinyl upholstery, and all.
No Lone Star, though, sorry to say.
Salam's story: The Guardian brings Salam of Where is Raed? aboard. Congrats, Salam!
...
My swan is, I mourn, dead and ugly.
Gone. Eaten by the angry, traitorous
Shit that lives and lives not, for
The iMac is alive and not alive,
Canny and mechanical, and,
Finally, an abrasive on my tender cock.
Fuck you, gentle iMac, you kicker
Of slight balls, thou eggbeater of
My goddamn fucking nuts. You siezed
Up like a chilly epileptic when I asked
For nothing but internet access,
...
An excerpt from skot's latest masterpiece of verse.
The Animatrix
5/31, the Egyptian, 9:30 pm, limited availabliity
7/10
Segment, Director (notes)
1. The Second Renaissance Part 1*, Mahiro Maeda (both segments, limited previous US release credits)
2. The Second Renaissance Part 2*
3. Program, Yoshiaki Kawajiri (a Vampire Hunter D film, Bloodlust)
4. Beyond, Kouji Morimoto (animator on Kiki's Delivery Service)
5. World Record, Takeshi Koike
6. Kid's Story*, Shinichiro Watanabe (Vampire Hunter D, more)
7. Matriculated, Peter Chung (Aeon Flux)
8. A Detective Story, Shinichiro Watanabe (Vampire Hunter D, more)
9. Final Flight of the Osiris*, Andy Jones (animation supervisor or contributor to Final Fantasy, Titanic)
*Written by Matrix creators Joel and Andy Wachowski
The May 31 screening of all nine Animatrix shorts at the Egyptian is likely to be one of the most coveted tickets at SIFF this year, coming four days prior to the release date of the Animatrix DVD on June 3. The print I saw at the press screening was on film, which surprised and pleased me. On the whole, the shorts will appeal most strongly to hard-core Matrix fans; but there are works of genuine merit as animated short films in the mix.
The Miyazaki-esque Beyond and the previously-released hyper-realist CG work, The Final Flight of The Osiris, benefited most from the large-screen showing. Osiris was presented in February with Dreamcatcher and looks very much like the CG animated film Final Fantasy. That's no accident, as the director, Andy Jones, was the animation supervisor for Final Fantasy. We learn how the denizens of Zion gain knowledge of the robot army that menaces them in Matrix Reloaded. While the film succeeds, I was still annoyed by the CGI synthespians. Why not just use real actors, instead of failing with these digital dolls as we've seen repeatedly over the last few years?
The best film of the set is Beyond, in which a glitch in the Matrix's rendering software creates a haunted house that is gleefully explored by some Japanese kids. Director Kouji Morimoto, who worked on Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service, creates an affecting, beautifully imagined and visualized vignette of urban Japanese life.
With the good comes the mundane and the bad, and this set is no exception. It came as a surprise to me that the film that stood out as at least ill-advised and at worst lawsuit bait had been scripted by the Wachowskis. Kid's Story directly equates teen suicide with joining the rebellion against the Matrix. I winced, and so will others, until one day we read about it in the paper. I have no idea what they were thinking.
I could go on, but SIFF has requested pre-release reviews remain capsules, so I'll hold my peace for now. All in all, no surprises, and film snobs might have a better time elsewhere. Matrix geeks, however, won't care what film snobs think, and so it ever shall be.
Originally written for and posted to the Tablet SIFF Reviews board.
(I'll be writing a longer review of the films for Cinescape as well.)
American Splendor
Dir: Shri Sprinter Berman & Robert Pulcini
USA, 2003 : 100 minutes
Wed. 6/04 @ 7:00 pm Egyptian Theatre & Mon 6/9 @9:30 Pacific Place Cinemas
RATING: 9/10
Paul Giamatti's spectacular portrayal of comic book author Harvey Pekar amazes. When Giamatti's Pekar leaves the green room for Letterman's stage the mid-80's, the filmmakers pan to a monitor showing the real Pekar's actual appearance. It's hard to recognize that we're looking at two different men. Giamatti, who is also seen onscreen with the real Pekar circa 2002, manages to inhabit both the Pekar we first saw on Late Night and the expressively drawn versions seen in Pekar's comics, drawn by different artists.
He slouches, he slumps, his eyes bulge. He is really Harvey. Except he's not. The thoughtful, funny script has a ball playing with this, just as Pekar does in his books. I can't do the film justice here. Go see it. Giamatti's performance is only one of many things about the film that made it a wonderful moviegoing experience.
(Another reviewer on the Tablet blog was not as enthused about the film, put off by Pekar's incessant, whining self-pity. A possible difference is that I'm a comic-book geek who's long loved Pekar's work. If anything, the film lightens Pekar's comic-book portrayal by several shades of depressive, misanthropic black.)
Originally written for and posted to the Tablet SIFF Reviews board.
---
Additionally, I've been looking forward to the film since I had heard about it last year, and was very encouraged when it won some awards at Sundance earlier this year. I confess to having eagerly enjoyed the non-sequitir appearances by Harvey on the Letterman show in the 1980's, and have vivid recollections of his final appearance.
An interesting aspect of seeing it now, in the blog era, is that to one extent or another, Pekar's been blogging his own life for damn near twenty-five years now. And making damn fine literature out of it, too. A particular difference of his execution versus mine, in blogland, is that there's serious structural work, conscious literary creation of a character named Harvey Pekar, in his comics.
Whereas here, I'm speaking in a very unselfconscious first person voice, actively seeking to present the words here in my own, actual personal manner, only occasionally seeking careful literary control. I suppose this may be a part of what Anne and others chew on in the great "is blogging journalism" debate, from another angle.
Here's a corollary question: is American Splendor, the comic book, journalism? What about the movie?
(I looked and looked for a website for the film - but couldn't come up with one!)
SIFF Reviews: Tablet's online reviews, to which I am a contributor. Unfortunately, it's a bulletin-board style site without permalinks, so I'll be reposting my reviews here as well.
Tablet also ran my profile on Jamie Hook and his film, The Naked Proof, this week, as well as a review of a Canadian film I saw for them, Marion Bridge. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the new issue's content online quite yet, so I can't link.
Rereading the pieces, I was underwhelmed. The Marion Bridge review was 150 words, which is a tough length for film, for me, and since I was of two minds on the film, I felt the review was scattered. also, the format required a numeric rating scale, 1 to 10, and I didn't know if one should use the scale like an averaged scale, where 5 would be average, or like grades, where 7 or 8 would be average. I decided if they wanted grades, they'd have used grades. I gave it a five, but it seems like everyone else was thinking the other way, as 8 is the average score other reviewers offered. Stupid symbolic ratings.
The Hook piece was OK, but felt very choppy to me, and unfortunately was marred by an editing goof in which one of two dates for the film was partially removed, leaving the impression that the film was playing in two theaters on one day. Ah well, them's the breaks. Hopefully there won't be a long line of distraught Jamie Hook and Charles Mudede fans waiting at the wrong cinema come opening night.
The Tussin-Up Web Archive is now restored, withh nearly-complete functionality (the guestbook hasn't been brought back yet). Gallery also is hosting all my photos now, but there's some sort of issue with album grouping, which makes it harder to apply changes to a broad selection of albums easily.
Therefore the Tussin albums have a grey-blue background for now and display some needless Galler nav-chrome.
I also implemented rollovers in the top frame, for fun. Just to see what comes out of ImageReady, I did it all automagically and, man, that's some needlessly complex code, lemme tell ya. It works, though, so what-evah.
Cosmic Encounter Online: yes, that Cosmic Encounter.
This game was one of my favorites, back in the day, partly because the rules forced direct social negotiation to be the basis of play. It was hilarious. The game bears some relationship to Magic, in that you gain and lose gaming capability ("powers") that affect gameplay via cards (at least in the offline version).
What made it fun, in my opinion, is that the effects and strengths of the powers were very vaguely, linguistically defined, and so everyone in the game had to negotiate the limits and effects of the powers, each time they were deployed. Which led to much bribing, yelling, plotting, stealing, and all the other sorts of things we speaking monkeys do for fun in the off-season.
I have no idea where I got my copy of the game. Did I inherit it from Eric Sinclair? I don't think so, but maybe.
paper cd case: [via karen marcelo at BB] - karen also notes a perl implementation.
Had a lovely weekend, thank you, and hope you did too.
['hem]
one-two, one-two
Off to Hokum Hall for some silent movie bliss this afternoon.
I went down to Folklife this afternoon, despite having decided against it last year, after all that baloney the enforcement nerds at last year's Seattle Center events put Jason through.
I went partly because (please note, usability engineers) I couldn't find decent information on the event this year at the NWFolklife web site.
(I think it's interesting from a usability and marketing perspective that, in this case, less information drove my decision to visit, the opposite behavior that would be generally predicted in response to such a situation. The downloadable PDFs do reproduce the schedules, and in theory they have a search interface - but that's about all the info that's available online.)
In particular, I wanted to find out about the annual instrument auction. Without information on the website that I could find easily, I had to go down to Seattle Center to find out. After asking two clueless volunteers, both of whom expressed horror that it might be no more, I located the information in the program.
Guess what? it's no more, and in the program they have the arrogance, gall, and general bitter stupidity to blame eBay. The exact words are "online auction sales," but I'm sure you can do the math.
So I don't know, maybe I had a chip on my shoulder, but after learning that, I wandered around what used to be my favorite thing about living in Seattle, seeing the festival pretty much the way I used to as a teenager: stupid hippies faking Irish and Jamaican accents, playing pale imitations of folk music without conviction, discipline, or energy.
Indeed, the guiding aesthetic appeared to firstly, at all costs, avoid the embarrassing, authoritarian convention known as "song structure". Secondly, emphasize needless and flashy virtuosity for its' own sake, partly so that some structure might be provided for the dutiful listeners to insert applause at the appropriate times.
I'm quite sure that these perceptions are colored by my jaded view of the event's organizers and hosts, and that there are as many interesting and firey performers as in previous incarnations of the festival, but I, it seems, lack the patience to seek them out.
In server rebuild news, I found a perl script to automate adding files to Gallery. Hope that bellerophon can bear up under the weight. The modock site may also be complete, save the guestbook.
Paul sez, "post it."
Despite the fact of it's being a quickie I will. Originally this was a line in a comment on Paul's site, but it changed. "Bel" is an abbreviation I use to refer to bellerophon, this webserver.
It's also an old, old, North African name used by the Berber, who lived along the shores of the Mediterranean before the Romans. When the Islamic expansion came, they moved into the mountains, and some beyond into the desert.
This was composed prior to this week's earthquake in Algeria.
Originally, "Hades' mist" was "Agent Smith," in a silly Matrix reference which I've since thought better of.
For Hades' mist has touched the mind of Bel;
and before Roman eyes his city falls.
There, above the Carthaginian shore
his home shall be among the mountain folk,
Past the end of empires: one, two, three, four.
In other news, partial restores of both modock and tussinup are in place. Digging into Gallery reveals: there is no straightforward way to automate the album-building process. Foo.
A big THANK YOU to Google caching!
Today's meditative activities included getting the image-server 'Gallery' back up, the php/mysql-based site counter reactivated, and some other wrangling along those lines.
My outstanding goals, then, are:
- add images back to Gallery
- re-update the resume site
- re-deploy modock.whybark.com and tussinup.whybark.com
- re-deploy the guestbooks for both of these sites
- re-deploy the Ken Goldstein Project
Of these, getting the images into Gallery and redeploying the KGP look to be the trickiest, as both modock and tussinup are relatively simple sites that I developed offline - so, in theory, I should be able to more-or-less slap the dev copies up and fine-tune. Tussinup is dependent on Gallery-hosted images, however.
And there's the rub. On bellerophon, Gallery takes about 20 seconds to process each image - and I estimate up to 4000 images to be processed. Leave aside the whole issue of my storage structure conventions. Yeesh.
Search has been restored, as has word count (and SmartyPants and Trickle, in theory).
But the ol' mind is firing on one cylinder today and I haven't yet suceeded at some slightly more complex twiddles yet. Tomorrow.
...and we're back.
There will be countless broken image links, I realize. Please bear with me. There are many things to tackle on the machine, and I am far from having a comprehensive list. I could go on, but, of course, I must spare my esteemed dancin' banana-lovin' colleague.
Won't you try the comments?
Progress! I was able to re-deploy MT with relative ease - read-write to and from the database, writes files to the drive when a rebuild is engaged. Still some permission problems to clean up and I haven't tested the image-processing routines yet.
In other news, in their current issue, Tablet ran some 125-word comics reviews I wrote a while ago. Re-reading them, I was disappointed - I had intially written them without worrying about length and cut them to 125, and I feel it shows. It's kind of standard to include three points in a comic review: a brief plot summary, a description of the overall artistic style and approach, and some critical analysis. At 125 words, I found that was roughly a sentence apiece. Next time I'll begin with shorter copy.
EVERYTHING in the whybark.com domain got nuked. That means that the Ken Goldstein Project will need to be rebuilt, as will my blog, as will many of the miscellaneous images on the blog, and so on.
The biggest PITA will be rebuilding the Gallery-based image collections. The files themselves remain available elsewhere, but Gallery takes about 20 seconds to process each image and I'm missing about 18 months worth of digital pix as a result.
Then there's the software redeployment. Yeesh. Well, at least the writing from the blog is still there, sitting in its' database, waitng for MT to call it forth once again.
I do think it's kind of neat that I finally figured out QPQ's ssi. About two years too late, but still.
No flat file backup's yet emerged.
Disk Warrior 3.0 can be downloaded directly from the Alsoft website, so that's a good thing. But it failed to fix the problem. So I'm gonna have to reformat the volume. Which means picking through the bogus drive by hand to try to keep as much of the data on the disk as possible.
The source of the problem is multifold; first, when Bellerophon crashes, I typically don't take the time to run the various disk-fix procedures on the drive, because running something like DW on the volumes will take about 8 hours on the slow, elderly machine.
Secondly, there was some pre-existing file corruption down in the bowels of the drive that led to difficulties in attempting to back up - so instead of finding the bad file and dealing with it I kept putting off dealing with it. Oops.
Finally, the corruption in the b-tree happened to hit in such a way as to prevent the various tools from fixing the disk. The fickle finger of fate, indeed.
So, I spent spome time prepping the substitute server to multihome and so forth; it's running the venerable QuidProQuo under OS 9.1.2, and is a 9500 with a g3 upgrade. I do have it set up to boot into OSX as well, but haven't set up mail and PHP and all that good stuff. Yet. In theory, it's also to act as a backup server. Oops!
This time, I don't even have a recent flat-file backup. Or maybe I do, but I haven't found it yet.
However, the datafiles are all unaffected - yet, alas, the MT perl fils are all on the volume rendered comatose by the fickle finger of fate.
E-mail should remain unaffected.
Did I say arrgh?
For the technically inclined: the volume containing my web-published data has suffered a kind of B-tree error that, while troublesome, should be repairable (Disk First Aid reports "Keys not Found"). The volume is not mountable from OSX, and the standard procedure is boot into OS 9 and run Disk Warrior. Alas, unmountable state of the volume is such as to actually prevent the boot cycle from completing.
On May 6, Alsoft released DiskWarrior 3.0 with OSX-native directory rebuilding. The Alsoft website reports that they are rather backordered. Is there a copy in Seattle? Inquiring minds want to avoid doing a disk reinitialization.
Did I mention? Aaargh.
Larry's Face: what could have been.
Scroll down to see what Fark did with Larry Goldfarb. NOTE the dancing banana.
Ah, alas, sweet glory of the KGP; for it could have been Ken.
abe vigoda status: dead? Alive? [via memepool]
Didn't Fish go off the air when he passed away?
Or maybe he actually wasn't dead. I mean, I know Jack Soo died, but I thought I heard Fish was dead.
Listen to the song.
(Sorry about the deeplinking - it's not clearly labeled as a song on the site)
KUOW's Weekday, a morning call in show for the birkenstock and doc crowd up here in God's Country, will be featuring weblogs for its call-in topic tomorrow at 9am 10am.
Having, I believe, heard Jim Flanagan stump for his ingenious community event, "Drive Yourself to Work Day," on the phone lines of the very same show I hope to hear a bit from him and my fellow peeps tomorrow morning.
The GeoURL-based seablogs might prove a handy resource for the KUOW people, as well.
UPDATE: I thought this was airing at 9am, but Anita Rowland notes in my comments that it's at 10am. I'm looking for a confirmation, but haven't found one; perhaps the station announced the show sometime during the day today when I was off doing other things.
Ah, here it is: Weekday at Defective Yeti, the blog of slated guest, Mathew Baldwin.
As I made my way home from talking with local filmmaker Jamie Hook, I grabbed a bite at the Kidd Valley near my house.
Just as I turned from the counter, another patron said something that ended with the words "...fallen." I turned to look out the door where a concerned elderly woman hovered over another elderly person, lying on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.
The attention of the restaurant shifted onto the old couple as I made my way to a seat. Employees provided a telephone and a call was placed, presumably to 911.
From my seat I could see the various denizens of the tiny park across the street from the restaurant also watching the couple. A trio of street drunks appeared to be the only persons who remained oblivious of the event.
The drunks on the bench tenderly released their bottle from the depths of their coats before passing it with reverence to the next most grabby of their number. After his slug, that lucky man exaggeratedly concealed the bottle somewhere in the folds of his clothing.
Eventually the attention of the restaurant and of the others in the park returned to what they had been doing - eating, reading, waiting for the bus - with the clear exceptions of the older members of both populations.
At the bus stop, a seventyish man with a sagging face and intricate folds of skin beneath his jaw gravely regarded the couple from under the brim of his grey fedora, hands folded behind his back. His jaw worked erratically. Open, shut open, open, shut, open. At first it appeared that he was talking to himself.
A somewhat younger man, seated at a window booth in the restaurant, regarded the scene from under a rakish snap-brim, enlivened by a spray of pheasant feathers. His hat and recently barbered grey hair were at odds with his puffy orange coat. In the booth behind him, a white-haired, grandmotherly type gazed at the scene on the sidewalk.
From where I sat, I could not see the couple.
The ambulance arrived, and as the EMTs unlimbered the gurney, the restaurant's golden oldies soundtrack segued from The Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday into the Rolling Stones' Time is on my Side.
(See the NYT's AP story Simulated 'Dirty Bomb' Attack in Seattle Tests Preparedness)
SEATTLE (ASP) -- A national economic terrorism drill for hundreds of technology workers, press and other underemployed workers began Monday with the mock meltdown of a highly-hyped "dot-com'' in a south Seattle industrial warehouse space, converted into startup-style loft offices.
Meanwhile, volunteers at Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma, about 40 miles to the south, simulated a second, simultaneous attack. The attack on the city government of Tacoma unfolded with events set in motion by the parking lot murder-suicide of Crystal Brame by her husband David Brame, at the time of his attack on his wife Tacoma's Chief of Police.
Over the course of the five-day drill embarrassing revelations about repeated failures by the highest levels of Tacoma city leaders to heed danger signs concerning Brame will be made public. As the scandal mounts, a wholesale paralysis of the executive level of Tacoma city government will be observed.
The attacks, which combine the Seattle disaster with a mock bioterrorist attack in Chicago, are aimed at testing the readiness of local, state and federal authorities to respond to large scale failures of leadership at the federal, state, and municipal levels. It is the nation's first large-scale economic terrorism exercise since the December 2000 judicial appointment of President George W. Bush, and the ongoing dismantling of the America economy being carried out in the name of 'readiness' by the Bush Administration.
Democratic Seattle officials were quick to point out that the Bush Administration initiatives are not, technically, exercises, but instead actual federal policy.
The idea, said Mayor Greg Nickels, is for regional and national agencies to see where strengths and weaknesses lie.
"In the past, we've seen the region repeatedly fail to successfully combat economic terrorism on a variety of scales," he stated. "From the blackmail that led to the construction of not one but two unwanted sports stadiums to the inability of city and state officials to do anything that will keep Boeing here, it's long been clear that we have absolutely no idea how to prepare and maintain a stable business environment in Seattle or Washington state as a whole."
He continued, pointing out how glad he was that Chicago would face a large scale infestation of SARS, exclaiming at one point that perhaps that would "bring Phil home," thought to be a reference to Boeing CEO Phil Condit.
City officials settled on the "dot-com" scenario after having considered, and rejected, a simulated meeting of the World Terrorist Organization in downtown Seattle.
"We just felt that our ninja-stormtrooper cops had really already had a sufficient amount of urban training experience," stated an unnamed but supposedly well-informed source. "Plus, we think that running a large-scale urban-unrest scenario again might result in even more criticism of poor executive-level leadership than we already get on a day-to-day basis."
The 'dot-com' scenario was also selected due to a near complete absence of representatives of the once-flourishing local economic sector in the local political contributors' pool. "There's no-one left to piss off," the official noted. "We even blamed the dot-coms for the endless Enron-derived price hikes for local utilities, and nobody ever complains!"
The exercise is expected to contribute markedly to local and national fear and insecurity, while not actively reducing unemployment or increasing business-environment stability in any way.
City officials in nearby Vancouver, Canada, applauded the effort, and noted that they have had to face few of the challenges that Seattle and Tacoma have weathered in the past few years. "Yeah, we even still have jobs for internet-oriented marketing people up here. We ran a few test-case dot-com terror scenarios a ways back and found that our local economy just wasn't as prone to distortion and outright dissembling as yours appears to be. Oh, and Seattle? If you need a place to stay this week, come on up. Always room for our poor American cousins."
Reports of black helicopters in the region and the preparation of suburban internment camps for the displaced dot-com workers, who vote disproportionately Democratic, could not be substantiated.
This list has been extracted from a database I'm using to manage the SIFF workload I'll be taking a crack at; the title of each film should link to a search-results page hosted at SIFF's website, rather than directly to the SIFF information page for the film itself. I gotta say, over 200 films is a huge amount of film info to try to winnow through. This list is made up of 45 films, and doesn't include the shorts and compilation presentations such as animation or what not. I'm unsure if I managed to find all of the local-interest and loaclly-produced films.
I've quoted when I have used copy directly from the Seattle Times
-produced SIFF guide. On the whole, my notes on each film are intended to convey my attitude to the film and my reasons for being interested in it.
This is a work in progress – I'm really just trying to share a tool was making for my own use with others that might find it helpful.
(For a short while I helped to typeset the weekly film guides for a publication in my hometown, and I would play a game. I would try to see if each film in the list would be described as a "touching coming of age story." Try it here and see what happens!)
|
23 (Germany, 1998)
Action/Thriller (HK, Cops, Etc)
4p, June 7, Pacific Place Hackers and computers! Paranoia! The dangers of the internet! Don’t forget to use secure passwords and change them every three months! The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Hong Kong, 1978) Action (HK, Cops, Etc) 7p, June 9, Harvard Exit Described as the "most popular screen version" of the story of the Shaolin monks and their new fighting style - it’s unstoppable! 800 Bullets (Spain, 2002) 1:45p, June 13, Cinerama A "nasty, 12 -year-old boy" sneaks off in search of his grandfather, a former stuntman said to be performing at a "run-down theme park," formerly the set of some Hollywood westerns. American Splendor (US, 2003) 7p, June 4, Egyptian This innovative film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2003 is based on the works and artistic techniques of comic-book author and irascible jazz critic Harvey Pekar. Pekar appears in the film as does Paul Giamatti as Pekar in segments that dramatize Pekar’s life; much as Pekar works wth different artists to create the stories in his long-running, critically acclaimed comic book, also titled "American Splendor." Animatrix (US/Japan, 2003) 9:30p, May 31, Egyptian All nine "Animatrix" shorts on the big screen. Just one showing! Considering that this screening takes place only two weeks after the extremely anticipated commercial premiere of the second "Matrix" film, this should be a HOT ticket. Blind Shaft (China Hong kong Germany, 2003) 9:30p, June 4, Pacific Place A pair of Chinese con-men work the coal-mining hinterlands and make out like bandits - until trust is lost. Blood Brothers (HK/China, 1973) 11:30a, June 7, Harvard Exit "Based on actual events surrounding the assassination of a general" in late 19th century China. Two bandits become friends with a mercenary in the wake of their attempted robbery of him. Bubba Ho-tep (US, 2002) Mid, may 24, Egyptian Bruce Campbell! BRUCE CAMPBELL! Jack, (Ossie Davis - no, really, Ossie Davis) believing himslf to be Jack Kennedy, teams up with an elderly Elvis Presley (a fellow resident of the nursing home) to put the hurt on an "evil Egyptian entity". I mean, how can you effin’ lose? Bukowski: Born Into This (US, 2002) 9:30p, May 28, Broadway Performance Hall I first read Chales Bukowski while spending some time in the Monroe County Jail for firstly having imbibed too freely at too young an age and secondly having repeatedly ignored miscellaneous court summonses. As a consequence, I associate Bukowski with drinking, jail, and willfully self-destructive and foolish behavior. Just as you do. Cabin Fever (US, 2002) Mid, May 31, This independently produced horror film has been burnin’ up the lines among connoisseurs of the independently produced horror flick, with special comparison to the first couple Evil Dead flicks. Probably not my cup o’ tea, but honestly, it’s time for some more isolated-cabin-in-the-woods lo-fi fearmongering, I have to agree. Caesar (US/Germany/Italy/Netherlands, 2002) 6:30p, June 12, Egyptian World Premiere I’m genuinely surprised to see this film premiering here - such a topical film, and one that features the talents of Jeremy Sisto, Christopher Walken, and the final performance of Richard Harris, would normally be expected to get a red-carpet treatment in LA and NYC. The film tells of the rise of - you guessed it - Julius Caesar. It’s part of the leading edge of a slew of classically-derived films, which included USA network’s miniseries "Helen of Troy" recently, not one but two biopics about Alexander the Great currently headed for production, and Wolfgang Petersen’s upcoming period blockbuster "Troy." To what do we owe this surge of interest in what have been called "the oldest dead white men?" Dude, haven’t you heard? It’s empire time! Pax Americanus on your ass, got it? Try to keep up, mm’kay? (Well, there’s some other reasons too. The mid-nineties translations of Homer. The triumph of the Lord of the Rings films, unabashedly modeled on classical heroic narrative. A little film you may have heard of called "Gladiator". Stuff like that.) Le Cercle Rouge (France, 1970) 4p, June 8, Harvard Exit Dir. Jen-Pierre Meliville, "Le Samourai", "Bob le Flambeur" Extended version of this 1970s French film noir. An additional 40 minutes rejoins the film as originally released in the US. A Chinese Odyssey 2002 (HK, 2002) 7p, June 9, Egyptian Is this a period film? It’s hard to tell from the description. "A young emperor and his sister sneak out of the palace." In the 'real world' they meet up with someone dubbed King Bully. Cinerama Adventure (US, 2002) Documentary 7p, may 29, Egyptian David Strohmaier, the leading film historian on the Cinerama format, had just completed this film at the time of the Cinerama Festival, which he was instrumental in assembling, here in Seattle earlier this year. Strohmaier’s enthusiasm and knowledge for this fascinating subgenre in film history is infectious in person, and the story itself is simply fascinating. Since the Cinerama is one of only two theaters on the West Coast capable of displaying the technologically-peculiar films (which require three projectors), and one of the directors of the seven films created for the system lives in Seattle, this is a must-see for me, at least. Come Drink With Me (HK/China, 1966) 9:30p, May 24, Harvard Exit Golden Swallow is saved by Fan Dabei after she’s felled by an evildoer under the command of gang leader Jade-faced Tiger. Love blossoms, yet the gang plagues the area. What shall the lovers do? (Golden Swallow. Heh.) | Demonlover (France, 2002) Action (HK, Cops, Etc) 7p, june 10, Cinerama Thriller centering on the attempted purchase of "TokyoAnime," a "3-D pornographic manga video game." Gimme summa dat. Actually, I’m more interested in the idea of a movie about hi-tech business acquisitions. Foolishness! Waste! Arrogance! Wealth! Brilliance1 Heartbreak! Say, maybe THAT’s my script... Dominoes (US, 2002) 9:30p, May 25, Egyptian Locally produced - World premiere. "Ten Seattleites spiral in and out of sex, love and relationships as they try to find meaning in all the usual - and not so usual - places." Is this set in a pizza joint? If so, who plays Julia Roberts? Double Vision (Taiwan/HK/US, 2002) Mid, June 7, Egyptian Winner of HK Academy Award 2003, Best Supporting Actress. "‘Double Vision’ pairs a washed-up cop with an equally burnt-out FBI agent as they investigate brain altering black fungus, evil Taoist sects, supernatural forces, and a psychotic serial killer." The trailer’s effects were impressive. In English. Played up "demons" in the trailer. Cops on the trail of demons. There ya go. Dream Cuisine (China/Japan, 2003) 6:30p, June 1, Broadway Performance Hall A 78-year old Shangdong master chef wants to visit her childhood home in Shangdong province China from her longtime life in Japan in her dotage but hubby is opposed. Longtime readers will understand my interest in the description of Shangdong cuisine - no sugar, no lard, no MSG. It intrigues me, as I am acutely aware of my lack of fundamentals in Chinese and Japanese cookery. I’ve eaten varieties of Asian cuisine since I was a child - being unable to reproduce it as easily as I can varieties of European cuisine frustrates me. The Enbalmer (Italy, 2002) 7p, June 10, Egyptian A gay dwarf taxidermist is key to a young man and woman’s developing relationship. I covered the first US festival appearances of this flick for Cinescape, and it looks so strange I can’t help but be interested. Apparently very beautifully shot. Ever Since The World Ended (Canada, 2002) 2p, May 28, Broadway Performance Hall "Twelve years after the Kotto Plague reduces the population of the San Francisco Bay area to 186, local filmahers Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Little interview survivors, document the empty San Francisco streets, and undertake a hazardous journey into the savage hinterlands of Marin County." What’s not to like? G--Sale (US, 2002) 11:30a, may 25, Egyptian Word Premiere. Locally produced. "Bogwood, Wash., is the fictional suburban setting for this tale about the eccentric residents of the 'Garage Sale Capitol of the USA', who try to outmaneuver each other at each sale." The Good Old Naughty Days (France, 2002) 9:30p, May 29, Egyptian A compilation of silent French porn from early in the century. "Every type of coupling known to man woman and dog." Is it prosecutable child porn if the child's dead of old age? Film at 11. The Great Wonder (US, 2003) 11:30a, May 26, Egyptian World Premiere - Locally made. The "Lost Boys" of Sudan, youthful refugees from a civil war, arrive in Seattle. The Hebrew Hammer (US, 2003) Mid, June 6, Egyptian The film’s creators term it "Jewsploitation," and the idea is to use European and American stereotypes of Jewishness to create a satirical, um, ubermensch, along the lines of the 1970’s classic "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song," or Sweetback’s tamer descendant "Shaft." Stars Adam Goldberg of "Saving Private Ryan" and "A Beautiful Mind." King of the Ants (US, 2002) 9:30p, June 13, Egyptian World Premiere Stuart Gordon, director of "Reanimator", leads an adaptation of a novel by Charlie Higson in which a housepainter accepts a repugnant job: dispose of a body. Stuart Gordon is a cult-film legend. That is all. Los Zafiros/The Sapphires: Music from the Edge of Time (US, 2003) 4p, May 23, Broadway Performance Hall A documentary chronicling Los Zafiros, who combined Cuban music with American doo-wop. Success in Cuba and America is followed by the inevitable sad second act. My Architect (US, 2002) 6:30p, May 24, Harvard Exit In 1974, influential architect Louis Kahn was found dead and unidentified in Penn Station. As his family learned the story of his passing, the architect’s secret lives - lives, not life - came to light. This film, by the architect’s son, tells the story. The Naked Proof (US, 2003) 6:30p, May 25, Egyptian World Premiere - Locally made. "An engaging philosophical romantic comedy." The cast includes the celebrated playwright August Wilson, ("The Piano Lesson", "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom," and many more important contemporary plays) as well as The Stranger’s Charles Mudede, a thoughtful local writer if ever there was one. I’m developing a story for Tablet on this film, how it got made, and the director, Jamie Hook. | Nudity Required (US, 2003) Other 1:45p, May 25, Egyptian World Premiere. "Daydreaming" bowling alley employees in Bemerton opt for the production of a porn flick over continuing in the bowling alley line of work. Humina! The One-Armed Swordsman (HK/China, 1967) 11:30a, May 25, Harvard Exit This "revenge thriller" is decribed as "the key transitional film between the old-school wuxia Thanks for clearing that up for us. Overnight (US, 2003) 4p, June 12, Egyptian A documentary about "little-known filmmaker Troy Duffy," the bar that Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein bought for Duffy, and the filmmaker’s project, "The Boondock Saints." Ping Pong (Japan, 2002) 1p, June 9, Pacific Place This film had the most intruiguing of the trailers at the press opening for the festival - featuring improbable and surreal special effects intercut with gritted-teeth intensity table-tennis action, the audience didn’t know what to make of it - especially because of the lack of subtitles. Whether the exhibited film is subtitled or not, the trailer’s vigor and originality of vision intrigued me enough that I really hope to see this film. P.T.U. (HK, 2002) 9:30p, June 13, Cinerama U.S. Premiere Cops v. gangsters in Hong Kong. Mmm, tasty! Return to the 36th Chamber (HK/China, 1980) 7p, June 10, Harvard Exit A "quasi-sequel," the program guide notes that this film popularized "martial arts comedy in 1980s Hong Kong cinema." So Close (HK, 2002) 7p, may 27, Egyptian I incorrectly described this film as missing from the program guide on May 7. The film looked impossibly hot in the trailer. Cute girls, amazing fight scenes, crazy effects: the program guide’s summary of the silly plot in no way conveys the potential impact of the film. Stoked: The Rose and Fall of Gator (US, 2003) 4:45p, June 9, Cinerama Mark "Gator" Rogowski was an early pro skateboader. He’s in prison for the murder of "his friend, Jessica Bergsten." This documentary takes a look at what happened. As a longtime punk rocker who well remembers the peculiar relationship of punk rock and skaters in the mid-eighties, I’m interested. Surplus (Sweden, 2002) 7p, June 12, Broadway Performance Hall The Swedes take a look at the ideas of Eugene’s John Zerzan, an author whose a controversial anti-consumerist philosophy and ideas have had a formative effect on the development of West Coast anti-globalization activists and protests. Swordswoman of Huangjiang (HK/China, 1930) 1:45p, June 7, Egyptian Long-time readers will not be surprised to hear that if I had to pick just one film to see at the festival, this would be it. A silent film shot in Hong Kong in 1930, it’s described as a precursor to HK sword-and -sorcery films. The film will be accompanied by a live performance by Aono Jikken Ensemble. I love my silent movies! Tribal Journey: Celebrating our Ancestors (US, 2003) 4p, May 25, Egyptian World Premiere. A fleet of handmade canoes voyage from Vancouver Island and down the Pacific Coast of Washington State. The journey is a political and cultural statement on the part of the coastal Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Under Another Sky (Algeria/France, 2002) 7p, June 2, Egyptian A French-Algerian youth is deported to Algeria where his family bears "heavy secrets." All Algerians bear heavy secrets, and it’s a crime that the suffering of ths country - and the brilliance of it’s people - is so little known. Vengeance (HK/China, 1970) 11:30a, June 1, Harvard Exit Blood! Peckinpah’s films influenced Hong Kong, yes they did. Wattstax: 2003 Special Edition (US, 1973/2003) mid, may 23, Egyptian The 1973 concert in Watts, featuring basically everyone who was recording for Stax records at the time, has long been recognized as both the source of one of the great rock films (that would be this one) and a crucial document of a slice of America’s zeitgeist. The Weather Underground (US, 2003) 4p, May 23, Egyptian What do you get when you combine college students and explosives? Try this: an exploded townhouse, bank robberies, and assorted acts of revolutionary mayhem, to no lasting societal effect. So what happened, anyway? I believe the film will set out to answer at least some of these questions. Whale Rider (New Zealand/Germany, 2002) 6:30p, May 31, Egyptian This film sported the most commercially appealing trailer screened at the press launch on May 7, and won Best Film at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival and Audience Favorite at Sundance 2003. A Maori chieftain’s granddaughter insists on inclusion in chiefly training, over his resistance. Hint: there are whales, an unbeleivably cute little girl stars, and - dude - it’s set in New Zealand. I bet they already have property negotiations underway for plush toys and spinoff shows. |
Waxy.org: Daily Log: Search the iTunes Music Store: boom, there it is.
Dang, that took, what, nearly a week? Geez, this LazyWeb thing, it's just, I dunno, lazy!
(ahem. In all seriousness, HATS OFF, Andy!)
Andy's offering hosted access to the search script on his site "until it gets too popular." Meantime you can grab it yourself and install it if you should be so inclined.
I went to the press launch for the Seattle International Fim Festival (SIFF) on May 7, and it was interesting. The festival will be larger than ever, and I believe I heard it described as the largest international film festival in North America this year. There will be 220 features and 75 shorts. Of these, 55 will be U.S. or North American premieres. No special announcement was made regarding world premieres, and I didn’t think to ask.
Of special note are a couple of areas the festival is highlighting: documentaries, and what they are calling "Heroic Grace", Hong Kong action movies. There will be 46 documentaries screened during the festival, and while the SIFF Guide only mentions nine films under the "Heroic Grace" heading, I suspect there are more films than that in the festival that have Hong Kong connections.
Some of the other areas of special interest that the Festival will be highlighting are "Cloud Kingdom", recent films from South Korea; "Women in Cinema", highlighted by the promising Maori film Whale Rider, and "Spawned in Seattle", a two-day series of events focusing on the work of people from the region.
Additionally, the Screenings for Students offers FREE TICKETS to selected screenings for students – run, don’t walk, to the SIFF Box Office in Pacific Place, mm'kay? It's a floor or two down from the theaters. The box office also will host an exhibition of Polish cinema posters that runs for the duration of the Festival.
The complete listing of SIFF Events is quite extensive.
After the Festival people spoke we were shown a half-hour of trailers. As SIFF Director Darrel McDonald took care to note, most of the films that appear at SIFF are the works of independent filmmakers that lack the resources to produce trailers, let alone get them rated. Keeping that in mind, there were some appealing possibilities.
One of the two most conventionally appealing trailers was for the previously-mentioned Whale Rider, which appears to be the story of a Maori girl who struggles to take up her family's traditional role in Maori culture as chieftains, crossing a gender boundary to do so. Whales! Cute little girls learning staff fighting! Cool Maori tattoos! The auditorium sighed with desire.
Director Niki Caro's 2002 film won the 2002 Toronto Film Festival Best Film and the Sundance 2003 Audience Award, Best Film. It will only have two festival showings, but with awards like that it's no surprise to hear that Whale Rider already has a distribution agreement with Newmarket Films.
The other trailer that garnered positive reaction for it's fluid, flashy screen presence is the Hong Kong action flick So Close, which combined impossibly stylish, stylized action scenes of balletic grace and strikingly commercial high-fashion costume design with digital effects – something like The Matrix meets Crouching Tiger, but in present-day Asia (possibly Hong Kong). The (ahem) kicker? The film's lead action heroines are two beauties, who act as assassins in "the high-stakes–world of corporate intrigue" (or something like that).
Frustratingly, the film does not appear in the festival guide.
Finally, the single most astonishing trailer is for a film whose name did not appear on screen in a script that I can read. The film's trailer presented what appeared to be a buddy story about two young athletes, devoted to the challenging sport – of high-powered table tennis.
The American audience chuckled at the novelty of such a thing, and then the trailer began to present a rapid-fire avalanche of surreal images, the originality of the visuals heightened by the fact that we could only make four words in the entire trailer: "I can flyy," echoing in heavily accented English as a young man leaps from an urban bridge toward the water below, his flight arrested by the camera as it orbits his frozen fall. A man, facing away, slouchingly hunched in a locker room, butterfly wings flexing from his back, suffused with light. Just after, less than a second of a person emerging from a vat of ping-pong balls. The juxtaposition of the butterfly wings and the egg-like ping-pong balls evoked birth and transformation.
All of this was intercut with frenetic table-tennis action. Taken together, it was by far the most powerful of the trailers. Certainly part of the power stemmed from the mystery of the experience, as the trailer was not subtitled in any way.
The film, it turns out, is called (duh) Ping Pong!
Also shown were trailers for the upcoming Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle, Owning Mahowny, in which a nebbish who works at a bank leads a double life as a high-rolling gambler; I Capture the Castle, a leading candidate for a date flick at SIFF for me personally, and Double Vision, which ambitiously seeks to combine the supernatural horror thriller with the detective film and sets it squarely in Hong Kong.
China loomed large in the trailer presence, with about half, it seemed to me, of the trailers flacking films that originated either in HK or the mainland itself.
Following the trailers, the Fesitval's premiere film, Argentina's Valentin was shown, which I regrettably had to miss (my dear wife was home sick in bed).
Films that were not discussed or previewed in which I have an interest include a screening of all nine Animatrix shorts (as I type this sentence, SIFF's website has just gone down) – just one showing, though, kids! It's on May 31 at the Egyptian.
Speaking of genre animation, The Tortoise and the Hare, a long unfinished but recently completed film from stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen will be shown along with the maestro's Jason and the Argonauts. But wait! That's not all!
Harryhausen himself will be present for the screening, and will talk about his career. Mmmm, inn-ter-view. Cross your fingers.
Jeff Goldblum is the other onsite high-profile guest – no word on an Apple Store walkthrough yet ;) .
I have had an opportunity to flag the films I hope to see or catch press screenings of and will dash off that list as well… Hopefully I can link to the SIFF site, but the web gods are in charge of that now.
Generally speaking I will be focused on genre flicks and local work. I hope to be able to pick one or more of the local pieces to work up a feature for Tablet in addition to whatever Cinescape assignments I might put out.
Idle Words invites you to see that your blog site is included in a blog-data gathering project.
On the page where one submits or checks tht one's blog is in place is a simple summary graph of poular blog-stylie publishing tools. As of this writing, 1, 2, 3, and 4 are blogspot, blog.pl (a data spike, the maintainer notes), movable type, and blogger.
What's the difference between blogspot and blogger? No, really, I don't know.
Just finished a decent cut at an article for a regional travel mag: cross your fingers for me.
Now, where can I place a piece about fan-produced retro Star Trek episodes? There's some amazing stuff out there...
foreword.com | danelope has a few (very few) words on a subject that grows ever dearer to K-Donk, day by day.
The contradiction! Can diplomacy resolve things? Is regime change in the offing?
Where is Raed ?: UPDATED. Woo-hoo! I look forward to reading this, surely the most anticipated post by any blogger ever, anywhere.
Since I find myself sporting the silly cat's-tongue goatee again, and Jake laughed and pointed at the song when he saw it in a tracklisting, and a little bird tells me that a Gizmos/Dow Jones and the Industrials reunion is imminently impending (well, Memorial Day) in Indy, may I present a silly, silly button that John Barge and Eric White (I believe) went to the trouble of making, oncet upon a time.
It features the mug of Indiana's own Dale Lawrence, as he found himself in what was described to me as "a serious Dennis Wilson phase." A click will enlarge the image, and you too can sport your own button.
(The Gizmos and Dow Jones were two of Indiana's earliest punk/new wave outfits, back in the late seventies - and regulars here already know that Dale is the bandleader for Indy's own Vulgar Boatmen.)
HAIR ON MY FACE
(Gizmos: Lawrence/Nightshade? maybe just Nightshade)
(transcription by ear and very likely contains errors)
I got hair growin' out of my face I swear
It just started to curl and gave me quite a scare
I can't do my wash, I can't go to shows
It's all over my teeth and all under my nose
I'm a total disgrace - I got hair on my face
Well my friends don't wanna know me and what's even worse
my girlfriend tells me that she thinks it's a curse
she says baby baby baby don't you be untrue
cuz it's only the hair and I'm under to you (?)
I gotta find a good lawyer who can see my case
hair on my face
(chorus:)
Well how'm I s'posed to do my rockin' when I got a big beard
I can see down the years and it feels pretty wierd (?)
It's a phenomenal case and I don't know what to do
If you can tell me baby baby I'd be indebted to you
I talked to my priest yeah I talked to my 'fess
I told him I'd buy a new car if he told me it's bad
He told me quite a lot baby against you
We talked a lot about facial hair - achoo
I'm a disgrace to my race - I got hair on my face
OH LET'S GO!
(lead break)
chorus
I got hair growin' out of my face I swear
It just started to grow and gave me quite a scare
I can't do my wash, I can't go to shows
It's all over my teeth and all under my nose
I'm a total disgrace - I got hair on my face
I'm a total disgrace - I got hair on my face
I gotta find a good lawyer who can see my case
Hair on my face
The Illuminated Donkey gets an unexpected passenger, courtesy sneaky sneaky me.
Click here, and hit "reload"; then enjoy the new improved look of the "Donk".
Shouldn't we really be calling him "K-Donk," and not the threadbare moniker, "K-Dog"?
May I call your attention to the most recently posted comment under my Blimp Week chestnut, The Wreck of the Shenandoah: a genuine eye-witness account from one Robert McCoy.
Man, this internet thing just might work out.
Feedback like this is the obverse of this site's magical ability to attract those it discusses into discourse. See also the recent comment under my Bob's Java Jive entry, in which a The Seamonkees promote their appearance there on May 3, as well as some of the other comments under that entry.
Speaking of Tacoma, they have a heck of a scandal brewing; the Chief of Police shot and killed himself seconds after shooting his estranged wife in the head earlier this week. The reaction by city department heads was initially to circle the wagons and praise the dead man as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. Things are continuing to develop.
Here's a P-I search on the name of the unfortunate woman, Crystal Brame. Oh, it's, I don't know, the sort of thing that Seattle media loves to report about Tacoma, I'd say.
Go to www.jasonwebley.com for more information.
See you there - say "hi" if you see me!
NSLog(); - itms:// Links - intrepid persons have sussed out the URLs in use by iTunes under the Music Store, now canonically called ITMS after the URL schema Apple's using.
I assume, therefore, that someone will be buildng my requested in-browser review interface to the goods available.
It's worth noting that there's a discussion on the site concerning the eMusic/iMusic comparison I blogged a day or two ago. Unfortunately, the discussion doesn't appear to shed much light on anything. It's more a 'Apple rox0rs! you suck, indie losers!' vs. 'no we don't!' kinda thing. Albeit more politely expressed than my summary.
So let's see, now:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Wolf
Does indeed return an XML doc that incudes the material from Howlin' Wolf I was wondering about.
So, iTunes to plug holes in the collection takes a step toward viability.
Moon Song from the Veitches of rathergood.com. [via Rebecca of the ever-alarming taxidermy-and-disease blog sweat flavored gummi]
Turn your speakers down, and get ready to tap yer toes.
(hmm-hmm-hmm... not as high as maybe drigibles or zeppelins or maybe lightbulbs... hmmm-hmm-hmmm... we like tha moon... la-la-la...)
Take that, Apple Music!
X-Men 2 opened this morning and both Danelope and Zannah went at midnight and enjoyed it.
I thought perhaps some of my site visitors might enjoy a peek at the Cinescape piece I had a couple months back, reflecting my set visit. The link above starts you with the cover of the mag, and as with all Gallery-hosted material, a click will enlarge the image to the point that you can actually read the type.
Er, mostly read the type, considering the interesting layout choices made by the staff at the magazine.
Why EMusic gets it: side-by-side of the older, subscription-based online music service and Apple's just-out approach. [via Mark at Boing Boing. Cory also notes today that Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is kicking up some dust in the ring at bookfilter]
I've been silent this week on the matter as I've become a late adopter on my machines (Apple's updates have a track record of unfortunate side effects and each system update makes my aging hardware slower). Despite that, because Apple's chosen to work with the majors (at first, at any rate) I'm profoundly not interested, as the music I like and care about is generally not available via the majors.
I want to browse a listing of Apple's available material before I update my software. Additionally, I'm profoundly suspicious of any service that attaches a siphon directly to my wallet. Wouldn't be prudent, as some have said.
(Yeah, yeah, I know: it's not subscription-based. In my book, application-embedded purchasing opportunities count as siphons, siphons spawned by Satan!)
I'm still not a consumer of tracks based on the EMusic model, though. I am a big user of digital music but my use and consumption pattern appears to be different from that which the industry is gearing up to serve. Nothing new there for me, and I suppose if my needs were met it would make me uneasy and I'd change them to avoid being served.
So, I have three unanswered questions concerning Apple Music:
1. Where can I browse a list of titles offerred outside iTunes, preferably in my browser?
2. To what extent are indie and obscure releases available? Is there any rumbling that Apple may make an API available such that third-party material can be added so that iTunes becomes an open distribution system? Please note, I am not holding my breath on this.
3. Given what we know about the chosen compression media and DRM (downloaded 3-machine-use AAC's that can be burned to disc), does the DRM end-run that immediately springs to mind (download, burn to CD, rip to MP3, dump the AAC) actually work? It's such an obvious end-run I have a hard time imagining that Apple would design it to work that way.
Finally, as I was talking about this with Eric, I conceded that the service might be a useful tool for certain specific kinds of music, primarily releases that are dirt-common but for whatever reason I don't have, such as any Beatles record.
To which Eric pointed out that the Fab Four are AWOL from Apple, which, honestly, may tell us all that we need to know about this service.
