AI Artificial Intelligence

A.I. (Absolutely Incredible)

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I really do think that AI is an astounding film. Luckily enough, I’m not the only one. If you’ve got some time to kill and have seen the film, it’s really worth checking out a couple discussions going on over at the HTF, there’s some amazingly intelligent analyses being posted.

Atlantis, AI, Jay and Silent Bob, Say Anything

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While my DVD purchases are nowhere near what they used to be now that I don’t have the extra income and employee discount from Suncoast, I do still occasionally pick one up here and there. I’ve picked up four over the past month (see? Four in a month!) — here’s the scoop….

Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Disney’s most recent animated flick. I thought this one was very under-appreciated when it came out in the theaters, which was a shame — though not entirely surprising. It’s Disney’s first PG-rated animated film since The Black Cauldron, and one of their few non-musicals. It’s also got a much more adult-oriented sense of humor running through it, which I very much enjoyed. Well worth seeing, though — I really like the fact that Disney has finally decided to stray from the standard formula that they held to for so long, and I hope that the fact that A:TLE didn’t perform as well as it could have in the box office doesn’t scare them away from experimenting in the future.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: Hey — it’s Kevin Smith! Sure, there’s not exactly much in the way of a plot, and many of the jokes won’t connect with people who haven’t seen the rest of his films. Being a Kevin Smith fan, though, I think it’s pretty funny. If nothing else, the news bulletin warning people to “stay away from the C.L.I.T” (Campaign for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-dwellers), and watching Ben Affleck and Matt Damon rip on themselves by selling out to make Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season are worth watching. At least…I think so.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence: The single best film Spielberg has done, one of the best movies of last year (if not the best), and certiainly one of the few must-see “thinking person’s” sci-fi films to come out in recent years (the only others I can think off off the top of my head being Gattaca, Contact, and 2001). I watched the movie last night, and will probably be digging into the special features tonight…most likely with a seperate post to follow.

Say Anything: One of my favorite 80’s films, and the one to cement John Cusack in my brain as an actor to keep track of. This is the second in the unofficial ‘Cusack series’ that my friend Royce and I enjoy, where though they’re all seperate and unrelated films, we like to put them in a series simply because they star John Cusack, and he plays roughly the same character in each one. For the curious, here’s the series in full as it stands right now: Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer for his formative High School years, Say Anything for High School graduation, Grosse Pointe Blank for the 10-year reunion, and High Fidelity for the thirty-something years.

Back again!

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Woohoo! We’ve reconfigured a few areas of the network here at Casey’s house, and it seems that things are back up and fully functional for me again. So, as things go here, I’ll do my best to return to updating my pages on a regular basis. I know, I know, something of a shock after about a month of near-nonexistent updates…but I’ll try.

Things for me are still in something of a holding pattern at the moment. I got word from the landlord of my apartment complex that the carpets are scheduled to be installed this Monday, so I should finally be able to get into my place Monday afternoon/evening sometime. I’ve made the requisite calls to the telephone and electric companies and am all set up there, so should be good to go as soon as I get the word from the landlord on Monday. I’ll be sending out the mailing address and phone number to those who need it in the near future.

Internet access options for me are still being investigated. I’m hoping to get set with a DSL line, I just need to get in contact with the local ISP‘s to see if my apartment has that as an option. I’m assuming it does — I’m going to be living right on Capitol Hill, just about 20 blocks or so uphill from downtown Seattle — but I’m not entirely sure yet. In any case, Casey has graciously allowed me to keep my webserver at his place until I have things up and running at my apartment, so the server shouldn’t be going down again at all, however there may be a couple weeks where my online abilities are severely limited until I get my own connection up and running. It’ll all get straightened out eventually — I’m just glad to have friends down here who are able and willing to assist me in all of this

In other news, I’ve been playing a lot with my digital camera since I got it. I took some time recently to stitch together some panoramas I’d taken. The first three were all taken before I left Alaska — from top to bottom, the Inlet as seen from Earthquake Park in Anchorage, a view of the Palmer hayflats where I hit a bonfire with some friends, and Jewel Lake, a popular destination in South Anchorage.

Cook Inlet, Anchorage, AK

Bonfire Panoramic, Mat-Su Valley, AK

Jewel Lake, Anchorage, AK

The fourth shot was taken at Gasworks Park here in Seattle during the 4th of July celebrations, about an hour before the fireworks display. I wanted to try and capture the sheer mass of people — later reports placed it at around 6,000 people just at this park (and it was one of two major fireworks displays within Seattle). I think it came out pretty decently.

4th of July 2001, Gas Works Park, Seattle, WA

I’ve been out to see two movies since I came down here so far — since it’s been a bit since I’ve seen them, I’ll just give brief rundowns of each. First off was Atlantis, Disney’s latest animated flick — another fun one from Disney. Not one of their all-time classics, but very enjoyable, with some absolutely breathtaking animation at times. More recently was A.I., the Spielberg/Kubrick sci-fi collaboration. In brief — I believe it to be an astounding piece of work, quite possibly Spielberg’s best work yet, and a film that, while getting wildy mixed reviews, is very likely to stand the test of time like few other recent films. Very, very impressive filmmaking, and my hat is off to Spielberg, Kubrick, and the rest of the forces behind this film. I’ll most likely post more about it after I’ve had a chance to see it a second time.

That’s the majority of the big news so far. As mentioned earlier, now that things are up and running again, I’ll do my best to return to a more reliable update schedule here. It’s good to be back….