TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

A sunny Saturday afternoon

by

Just thought I’d drop in and toss a bit up here. I’m sitting at Aurafice, a coffee/internet joint just 2 blocks away from my apartment — nice little place, and while I’m not sure what the music that’s playing right now is, it works quite nicely for me.

Yesterday after work I swung by home just long enough to check (snail) mail and change clothes, then headed back downtown. The movie 2001 has been cleaned up, restored, and is hitting theaters again, and yesterday was the opening night of its run here in Seattle — at the Cinerama, no less. There was no way I was going to miss out on seeing this, and being able to see it in a theater like that on opening night — no ifs, ands, or buts, I was there. Took a bus downtown and made it there 40 minutes before the show started just to make sure I could get in and get a good seat.

What a show it was, too. I’d not yet been to the Cinerama here — though I’d heard it was a theater more than worth going to, I’d not yet seen something playing there that was going to drag me down. I’m very glad I did this time, though. The auditorium is incredible — 800-some seats, and a 30 foot by 90 foot curved screen! Just a huge picture (though, in all honesty, I believe the number one auditorium at Fireweed Theaters is larger), a new near-pristine 70mm print of 2001…very, very, very cool. Definitely the way to see it.

After I walked home from that, I found a call on my voicemail from Alex — apparently his plans changed, and he is in town for one last weekend before heading back up to Alaska. I met up with him, Casey, and Chad at the Bad JuJu Lounge (right next door to The Vogue), and hung out with them for a bit. Went home fairly early, though — this whole 6am wakeup time during the week kinda puts a damper on too much late-night revelry on Friday nights.

Not much has happened so far today, though who knows what the evening might bring. I did put together another new mix…hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I’ll be able to post the .mp3 files. Until then, though….

To boldly go…

by

…where three television series and nine movies have gone before.

Or something like that, right?

But hey — they’re doing it with style. Gotta admit, I thought last nights premiere of Enterprise, “Broken Bow,”, was pretty darn cool. Finally, it really does look like we’ve got a new entry to the Star Trek universe that just might be able to carry on the torch and keep viewers interested. It’s about time.

Things I liked:

The ship — especially the interiors. It really does look something like a cross between a starship and a submarine. Very cramped interiors, walkways going around the various parts of engineering…very nice look. Besides, I’ve always liked the design of the Star Trek universe.

The technology — they seem do be doing a credible job of placing the technology somewhere between what we have today and what was thought the future could look like in the original series, from the sliders on the transporter to T’Pol’s viewer on the science station. With nobody really trusting the transporters yet, it’ll be nice to have extra-vehicular missions using shuttlecraft the majority of the time (one of my favorite TOS episodes was The Galileo Seven, a premise which wouldn’t have worked without a shuttlecraft — sometimes the transporters made things a bit too convenient, I think). The use of an actual grappling hook device rather than a tractor beam was a very nice touch.

The cast — I have to say, I think they just may have done a good job here. I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard that Scott Bakula was going to be the new captain, but I ended up really liking Cpt. Scott Archer. The rest of the regulars came off well too — about my only reservations are with Ensign Hoshi Sato (while the constant nervousness about whether the ship is about to explode around her ears is amusing, the writers will have to tread carefully not to make it just flat-out annoying) and Dr. Phlox (reminds me a bit too much of characters like Neelix [VOY] and the early Ferengi [TNG/DS9] — good ideas that didn’t hold up well over the long run), but as this is solely based on a 2-hour first episode, these characters could become much more than they seem in a season or two. I was also pleasantly surprised with Sub-Commander T’Pol. Considering the jumpsuit they’ve put her in just screams out, “Look at me! I’m the resident token sex object!” she actually ended up with a character much more thought out than I at first expected. She also has that wonderful trick of managing to smile without actually doing it — I think it’s something in the eyes, but it’s something I haven’t really seen an actor pull off with a Vulcan character since Spock and Sarek.

The fact that the show is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen. Very cool — now if only I had a high-def TV and receiver to watch the thing on!

Things i’m iffy on:

Okay, what was the point to the decontamination scene? Or, rather, was there a point beyond titillation? Admittedly, it wasn’t bad as far as prime-time titillation goes, and I have to give them props — not only did they have T’Pol strip down to her skivvies, but they also had Commander Charles Tucker in there (either for the women or the gay men in the audience, or both) — but it seemed out of place, and clumsily done. Either the two of them were just helping each other with the decontamination gel, or they were flirting, but the scene played like a clumsy mix of both. Ah, well — at least it was good eye candy, right?

The opening theme. Y’know, assuming I ever get in a situation where I can watch this show on a weekly basis, I think that song is going to grate on me more and more every time. The visuals during the credit sequence are nice, I like the exploration theme — but did they have to go to some horrid, cheezy, adult-contemporary soft-rock ballad? Ugh. That can go, as far as I’m concerned — and it can go as far away as possible.

Overall

A good, solid B+, I think. I’ll catch more episodes when I can — whenever that may be — we just might finally have another worthy contender to the Star Trek universe here.

Enterprise

by

Ooers, yeah — one more thing. Tonight’s the premiere episode of Enterprise, the new Star Trek series. I’m hoping to be able to catch it, Damon has said I can hang out over at his place tonight to see the show. Hopefully it’ll be worthwhile — I’ve gotta admit, I’m intrigued by what I’ve read so far. Tonight’s episode is Broken Bow, where we get to launch not only the series, but also the first warp capable Enterprise, and Klingon/Human relations. Should be interesting!

Too cool for words

by

Ooers…this is the kind of thing that convinces me that there is still some good stuff going on out there.

I just found a listing on the Corona Coming Attractions movie news/rumor site detailing a film that I will have my skinny lil’ butt planted in the seat for come opening day — HardWired. Alex Proyas (director of The Crow and Dark City) directing a sci-fi murder mystery where the suspects are Artificial Intelligences and/or robots, and it’s going to be the first in a series of films based upon the ideas and concepts from Isaac Asimov‘s I, Robot stories?!?

I am so there.

A good weekend for movies

by

In the midst of more and more news about the continuing aftermath of the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and in a world where it looks more and more like the U.S. may soon be declaring war, I decided it was a good time to take a bit of a vacation and head out to the movies. My reviews for the shows I checked out aren’t the best I’ve ever written, unfortunately — I’m kinda tired and have a light headache that I’m hoping won’t get any worse anytime soon — but I at least got something up.

Thursday night I saw The Crimson Rivers (good thriller), Friday I checked out O (a decent Shakepearean update), and today I watched The Ghosts of Mars (fun brainless sci-fi romp).

Other than that, things have been fairly uneventful for the most part. I’ve been keeping a pretty constant eye out on the news, and am working on collecting at least the first week’s worth of newspapers since Tuesday. So far, Saturday has been the only day I forgot to pick any up. Got together with Chad, Don, and a friend of theirs (whose name I’m spacing on) for breakfast at Jack’s Roadhouse Cafe on Saturday, then we all checked out the Capitol Hill Block Party up on Broadway. Other than that…not a whole lot of major import has gone on.

I’d post more, but I’m just feeling kind of lackadaisacal at the moment. Besides — Dez is behind me watching Braveheart on television, so it’s easy for me to get distracted. Until next time, then….

More about this cruise thing

by

Looks like I’ve got a couple days to catch up on here. Well, let’s see — start with Wednesday. I did call the guy from Carnival Cruise Lines — “JB” — as soon as I could in the morning. He wasn’t available then, but I set up an appointment with his secretary for an 11:30am (2:30pm their time, they’re based out of Florida) call. That was something new for me — nothing really groundbreaking, I realize, but I’ve never had to make an appointment for a call before.

Anyway, work went on from there about the same as the day before. Of course, by the time the tech came by, the machine that had been giving me all the grief the day before was behaving fine. Typical — they can be pretty ornery beasts sometimes.

So 11:30am rolls around and I give JB a call. We talked for about 15 minutes, and while it wasn’t a yes, it certainly wan’t a no, either. Apparently at the moment he’s putting together a list of prospects, and expects to be doing the hiring in a month or two. He did give me the basic rundown on what the situation would be, though.

The cruise lines has 16 ships in operation now, with two more being built. The two things he stressed most about the DJ position is that they need to be able to work from a large variety of music, due to the wide range of customers on the ships, and that they are comfortable relating to people and taking requests. I was sure to let him know that I’ve always been a request-based DJ — finding way to work in what people want has always been a lot more fun for me than just working from a set playlist. That always seemed a bit boring to me.

All the music and equipment would be provided by the club, so I wouldn’t have to worry about bringing any of my stuff along. From what I understand, the clubs are decked out, too — from the pictures on the website, they look to be top of the line. Lots of fun toys, in other words! :D

The clubs run seven nights a week, and all contracts are for six-month stints. The contracts can be renewed, too — he said he’s got one DJ on his seventh contract (three and a half years!). I’d be assigned a cabin, most likely with a roommate — a mild bummer, as I like having my own space, but it would be worth trying, at least. Meals are provided, too, so it’s basically room and board included with the contract. Additionally, the DJ’s get $300 a week in cash. After three months, if things are going well, it can go up to $325/wk, then if things go into a second contract it can go up to $350/wk. I’m not sure if it continues to go up after that or not. There are also occasional private parties that can pay a little extra.

As entertainment staff, the DJ has his days mostly free, and is allowed access to areas of the ship that some of the other shipboard staff apparently don’t. There are spas and fitness clubs to work out at, pools to swim in or lounge by, shows by other entertainers, bars, it’s possible to go ashore when the ship is in port somewhere, and they’re even (according to the website) outfitting their ships with internet access.

Basically, it sounds like a dream job. Get paid to take a 6-month (at least) cruise, spinning in a top-flight dance club every night. The pay is slightly less than what I’m making now, but when you factor in the provided room and board negating the need to pay rent, utilities, and meals, I’d be holding onto a lot more money than I’m able to now. Should this all actually come through, I figure I can just put all my stuff in a storage unit here in Seattle and be good to go until I’m ready to come ashore again.

So at this point, I’m just going to put all but absolutely necessary spending on hold for the next couple months and see if I’m lucky enough to get a spot. If I don’t then I’ve got a decent job and apartment already going here. If I do — I’m going to be on that ship and loving every last little minute of it.

After that call, work was really difficult to pay attention to — I kept daydreaming about opening the door and seeing a sea of water, instead of a sea of office cubicles.

Once work finally ended, I caught the bus out to Casey’s place to check e-mail and type up all my Bumbershoot ramblings and Tuesday’s journal entry for the weblog. Between getting all that typed in (I talk a lot, don’t I?) and getting the pictures sized to post also, I didn’t make it out of there about 11pm. After that it was a half hour wait for the next bus, as I’d missed the previous one by just a matter of minutes, and it was about midnight by the time I made it home. At that point I was very glad I’d decided not to start babbling about the call with JB that night, but to leave it for the next post. Went to bed, and crashed hard.

On the way to work Thursday morning, I got to chatting with the girl that I’ keep seeing every morning on the bus. Turns out her name is Kerry (Kelly? Kate? Ergh…damn my faulty memory), and she and her boyfriend just moved down here from Cold Harbor, Alaska, just a month or two before I came down. Small, small world.

Work was pretty obnoxious again, but I think I finally got caught up with things. It helped that I had another pair of hands, though. XBS keeps a supply of ‘floaters’ trained and available in case a post needs extra help or coverage, so they’d sent Loren over for the day to brush up and make sure he remembered all the procedures. Having him there helped a lot — I don’t think I’d have been able to get through everything myself.

Came home and grabbed a bite to eat, then wandered down to the Temple of Avarice (Pacific Place, an almost ridiculously ostentatious shopping center with a 2-story movie multiplex on the top floor) to catch The Others, a thriller with Nicole Kidman. Very cool ghost story — I’d been wanting to see it for a while, and wasn’t dissapointed in the least.

And that’s it up to Thursday night. Now I just have to “hurry up and wait” for the next couple months to see if this DJ position comes through. Wish me luck — I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, that’s for sure.

A few more movies

by

I added three more DVD’s to the collection over the weekend. Here’s what they were:

The Black Cauldron: Based on a series of books I enjoyed as a child (The Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander), this was one of Disney’s least successful animated films, but it always had something of a cult following, and was one of my favorites. Interestingly enough, the reasons that it failed are most likely the same reasons that I enjoy it — it is one of the few animated Disney adventures that is not a musical, and it’s more intense than most, to the point that it was Disney’s first (and, I believe, is still their only) animated ‘family’ film to earn a PG rating. It’s a good one, though, and this DVD was something of a revelation, as the original aspect ratio of this film is 2.35:1 — the really wide “scope” format. In other words, with the full-frame video that I’d had for years, I was literally only watching half the film! Only a few Disney animated films have been made with this aspect ratio, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this was one.

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover: While not exactly a well-known film, this has been a favorite of mine for a few years now — and goes solidly in that classification of “oddball, screwed-up, disturbing” films that I enjoy so much. Much of the premise of the film can be inferred just from the title, but what that won’t tell you is just how visually stunning this work is. There are five major sets to the story, and each set has its own dominant color scheme to set the mood of the characters and action in that room — to the point that as the characters move from room to room, their costumes will change colors to match the theme of the room they’re in. Fascinating stuff, though not at all a movie for the masses — it was decried as pornography as much as it was hailed as genius when it came out. Ah, well…either way, I enjoy it.

From Dusk ’til Dawn: Just an absolute blast of a film. I’ll leave arguments as to whether it’s really “good” out of this — it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s all I want sometimes. Besides, the first time I saw this (in the theater), I went in not having seen any previews for it, so the sudden change in tone halfway throught the flick caught me completely unawares…made for a very cool show. This edition of the disc is nice, too, as it is a two-disc set that includes a full-length documentary on the making of the film called “Full Tilt Boogie”. FTB’s just packed with fascinating stuff — as it’s an actual documentary, rather than just a 20-minute promotional fluff piece, it gives you a ton of detail on what it takes to make a film like this. Very, very cool.

Pie, ghosties, scots, and naked girls (kinda)

by

Sunday rolls around, and another week has done and gone. Been a good week, though.

The work week was pretty uneventful, for the most part. It seems that the opinion is that I’m catching on to things rather quickly there, however. John (the person I’m replacing) has decided that this week he’ll only be working half-days, and will make this Friday his last day…then I’ll have the shop to myself. Pretty cool. I also talked with Shelley (my boss within Xerox), and the impression I got is that while I’m not using my DocuTech training at this position, there are good possibilities for that in the future. This was great to hear, as it makes it sound even more possible that I will be getting hired on by Xerox on a permanent basis at some point in the future. It may be a while before that happens — as I understand it, they’re currently in the midst of a hiring freeze right now — but with any luck, I might be officially part of Xerox sometime after the first of the year.

Earlier this week I went out to see American Pie 2. I’m not entirely sure why that ended up being my choice, as I am no great fan of the first one, but that was where I ended up. Pleasantly enough, it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t label it a classic by any stretch, nor will it be a ‘keeper’ for me when it comes out on DVD, however it was surprisingly funny in spots, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I did the first installment. Much of it was a rehash of the original, but it felt to me like it held together better this time around…more of a real story connecting the characters, rather than merely placing a bunch of misfits in screwball (and often disgusting) circumstances one after the other. And, I gotta say, Alyson Hannigan (as Michelle, the ‘band geek girl’), was great — stealing the film, in my eyes, at least. So, all in all, not as bad a film as I thought it might be.

I also went out Friday night for the midnight show of Poltergeist. Very cool…it had been years since I’d seen this film, and along with many other horror films that were beat to death with sequels, it’s always pleasant to revisit the original and see just how good it actually is. Probably very much due to the production (and uncredited co-direction) of Steven Spielberg, the film is much more along the lines of what I like to see in a horror film — a slow build that allows you to make some connection with the characters before things start getting freaky, followed by truly innovative ideas as these unexeplained events start affecting the family. Quite nice.

I’ll try and get around to at least moving these mini-reviews into the Movies section of my messageboard soon…kind of tired now, as I’ll explain in the moment, so didn’t do that part yet.

Saturday, I headed out with a full crew of people (Casey, Dez, Chad, Don, Karl, Tim, Jenny, and Wendy) to go see the Barenaked Ladies in concert out at the Gorge (a gorgeous [no pun intended] outdoor amphitheater by George, Washington). Casey had bought me the ticket before I had even made it down to Seattle as a ‘welcome to Washington’ present, which I thought was all sorts of cool. We all loaded into three cars Saturday afternoon, and undertook the roughly 3-hour drive to the Gorge. We eventually made it out to the campsite at Potholes State Park — apparently, it was the closest one available, even though it took us another 45 minutes or so after passing the Gorge to get to it — and set up camp there. Admittedly, it was a very pretty little campground.

After getting everything set up at the campsite, we packed ourselves into two cars, and headed down a quicker route back to the Gorge for the show. The way there was fascinating — currently, huge amounts of the state of Washington are on fire, and there were amazing clouds of smoke from the fires just 40 miles away or so in the sky. The smoke turned an otherwise clear night to a completely opaque murk. Just fascinating to see — and the smell of burning pine in the air was an added reminder that all this stuff wasn’t that far away.

Wildfire smoke, Barenaked Ladies trip, WA

We got to the Gorge during the first opening act (who, unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of), found a spot and got settled during her last couple songs. The second opening spot was The Proclaimers! All sorts of cool…though I’ve only ever picked up one of their albums (Sunshine on Leith), I’ve enjoyed their music since I first heard “1000 Miles” in the movie Benny & Joon. They played a short (or so it seemed to me) but very clean set, with a nice mix of songs, some that I recognized, and some that I didn’t. After a short break while the stage was slightly rearranged, BNL came on.

This show was great. While I’ve never known much of BNL before this (most of my exposure has been their radio tracks — ‘If I Had A Million Dollars’, ‘One Week’, and ‘Pinch Me’, all of which I’ve liked), so didn’t know many of the songs, these guys put on an incredible show. They obviously have a lot of fun with their music and their concerts, and spent a good amount of time between songs joking around and generally having a lot of fun (from the lead singer while relating a story: “We were celebrating Christmas. Sure, I’m Jewish, but we’re big fans of presents…we’re not big fans of a kind, benevolent God. We like the Old Testaments wrathful, vengeful God. So now we celebrate Easter, too.”) Bouncing back and forth between their songs, with frequent jaunts into random snippets of other music, plus three encores, the show was an absolute blast.

After the show ended at about 11:30pm, we all went back to the campsite, and ended up sitting up and talking until sometime after 2 in the morning. We started out just sitting and talking, still pretty jazzed from the show, then Karl, Casey, Tim and I got into a discussion covering everything from Economics to Politics to whether or not the human race is breeding itself into extinction, and didn’t realize how long we talked until someone actually thought to look at a watch. The night was absolutely beautiful, too — I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Milky Way as visible as it was last night.

This morning we all got up, slowly got ourselves ready to go, packed up, and headed back into town. Now I’m back at Casey’s just long enough to put this post up, then it’ll be time for me to head back to my apartment and crash out before it’s time for me to work tomorrow morning. Very good weekend, though…was a whole lot of fun, and a nice change from kicking around my apartment. So, this is it for now…until later….

A good view, a picnic, and naked women running up and down staircases

by

Okay – back to the weekend, and I made it back here to the ‘puters.

Most of the week has been pretty uneventful — amazingly uneventful, in fact. John — my trainer at work — was gone this week, training for his new position in Xerox, so there was a floater who’d worked in the Anderson XBS office before to help, since I’m not fully trained yet. As it turns out, I probably could have handled the week by myself, as the workload was slow to the point of being almost nonexistant. While it was pretty relaxing, and Loren (the floater) and I were able to chat a lot, it made for a really long, slow, boring week. Maybe a good thing, as I’m still learning the ropes, but not exactly very stimulating.

View from the Columbia Tower, Seattle, WA

During my lunch break on Friday, though, I hiked up a couple blocks to the Bank of America tower on 5th and Columbia. Seattle’s tallest building, at 1,049 feet above sea level it’s roughly twice the hight of the Space Needle, and is the tallest building (by number of stories) west of the Mississippi. 76 stories high, it has an observation deck on the 73rd story, and I decided to wander up and check out the view for my lunch. I’ve got to admit, it’s quite a view — especially on days like we’ve been having (more unusually gorgeous weather, Seattle is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures topping out yesterday at 87 degrees). I took a few shots, two of which are posted in today’s update.

View from the Columbia Tower, Seattle, WA

During the day Friday, I’d gotten a call from Shelley (my supervisor at Xerox) letting me know that there was a Xerox get together on the campus out in Tukwilla that evening that I was welcome to come to — even though I’m a temp — if I could show up. I figured I might as well…my schedule isn’t exactly full to bursting these days, and it could be good to meet some more people within Xerox. As it turns out, while I did meet a couple people, I also ran into Chris and Donna Bennet, who I knew from Anchorage. I’d worked with both of them at Kinko’s and at TimeFrame over the years — they were working at Kinko’s when I started there, each of them moved to TimeFrame before I did, then they left TimeFrame not long after I showed up there. They spent some time up in Fairbanks, then came down to Washington a while ago, and are both now working for Xerox. So the picnic ended up being a much more entertaining experience than I’d expected it to be.

That lasted until 9pm, then I grabbed the next bus back to Seattle, and got home around 10-ish. I spent the next couple hours working on a new mixsession, which came out pretty good. I can’t post it to my DJ propaganda page yet — rather than running my equipment into my computer, as I had before, I recorded directly to my MiniDisc recorder — but as soon as I can get it .mp3‘d, I’ll get it up. Anyway, just a bit before midnight, I headed out to the only movie I treated myself to this week — the midnight showing of Showgirls. Had a blast watching that…it’s a horrid film, but that’s a lot of the fun.

And that pretty much covers things for this week. Until next time….