Alice in Wonderland

Links for December 16th through January 4th

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Sometime between December 16th and January 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Why Is JJ Abrams Obsessed With Alice in Wonderland?: "Abrams has been mining the Alice mythos for years -Alias, Lost, and yes, even Felicity are all filled to the brim with Into the Looking Glass subtext and, as is the case with Fringe, actual context. For the sake of brevity, topicality and to spare you the pain of many, many white rabbit-related metaphors we'll keep the focus on Fringe with a bit of Abrams' back catalog to support the theory."
  • Population of the Dead: "How many people have ever lived? While doing research about populations for my last piece, I began to wonder just how many people had ever walked the face of the earth. The articles I found [here and here] were intriguing so I decided to visualize them as well."
  • The Weekly World News on Google Books: Heh. Awesome. My favorite of the trash news rags. Sad that it doesn't exist in print anymore.
  • This Dumb Decade: The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech, 2000-2009: "If ever a decade began dumb, it was this one. When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don't know what the heck they're talking about."
  • 20 Greatest SF Movies of the Past Decade: "The past decade has seen a lot of bloated special-effects brain-sucks… but it's also seen some of the best science-fiction films ever. Superhero films came of age, apocalypses ruled, and interstellar adventures came back. Here are the decade's 20 greatest."

AMC Theaters OKs Bringing In Drinks and Snacks

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Well, no, they don’t. However, they sure seem to be encouraging it, even if that’s not their intent.

This morning, Prairie and I went to see a matinee showing of The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest traditionally animated film. The film itself was a lot of fun, and we both loved being able to go out and see real animation on the big screen, something that happens all too rarely in these days of CGI and 3D gimmickry.

Unfortunately, as much as we enjoyed the film itself, we’re running out of reasons to bother with actual theaters, rather than waiting for video. The latest eye-rolling bit of obnoxiousness? It seems that AMC Theatres has discontinued all “small” sizes of drinks and candy.

When I went to the snack bar, planning on getting a small soda, the menu board had a blank spot under the “small” column for both drinks and candy. Scoping out the sales stations, I noticed that while they all had spaces for three sizes of cups by their soda fountains, only two were stocked. Asking the soda jockey behind the counter confirmed it: AMC is “reconfiguring” their snack bar options, and there are now only two sizes of drinks, medium and large.

While even the small drinks weren’t all that small before hand, it appears that now, the smallest size fountain soda you can get is a 32oz bucket, for $4.25. I have no real idea what they’ve done with their candy lineup, but I’m betting they just re-labeled all the “small” boxes to “mediums”, and knocked the larger “medium” boxes up to “large”.

Just one more reason (along with the barrage of ads euphemistically described as “pre-show entertainment,” the crappy customer service provided by the staff of most theaters, and the absolute lack of public decorum from the majority of other moviegoers) why my theater-going experience is going to be ever more rare. On those rare occasions when I do go — both Prairie and I are thinking that we want to see the 3D version of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which will be our first modern theatrical 3D experience (no, I’m not planning on seeing Avatar in 3D…at this point, I’m not planning on seeing it until it’s out on DVD) — I’ll be taking advantage of Prairie’s largest purse and bringing in my own snacks and drinks.

12/21/09 Update: According to this Get Satisfaction customer support thread, small sizes of soda and popcorn do still exist, bundled together into a “Cameo Combo”. A combo doesn’t thrill me, as I’m not big on popcorn and would only want the drink, but the representative did say that it should be possible to buy the small drink on its own. I’m still not entirely thrilled by this (it seems ridiculous that this is the only way to get a reasonably sized drink), but at least it’s an option (assuming that the kids at the snack bar know about the option).

Links for January 14th through January 15th

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Sometime between January 14th and January 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The Year in Pictures: Mystery Solved!: Tracking down the source image for Shepard Fairey's iconic block-print style 'HOPE' Obama poster.
  • Klingon Language Keyboard: Expensive (about $65 plus shipping) and uses a PS/2 connector instead of USB…but still! Klingon keyboard! How cool is that?
  • Am I on MySpace.com?: No. It appears you are not on MySpace.com. You're safe at the moment, but at any point you could accidentally follow the wrong link and end up stuck inside the sweaty armpit of the Internet. But with our helpful Firefox plugin you can browse in peace again. Any visit to MySpace will cause it to jump in and save you with a large prompt offering to take you back to sanity.
  • Mark your calendars: January 27th is Rabbit Hole Day: January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carrol, author of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore. I say, let's do the same: January 27th, 2005 should be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics. Are your pets talking back at you now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat? Let's have a day where nobody's life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let's all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what's there. It will be beautiful.
  • Twitter Author List!: By NO MEANS is this comprehensive, I’m just filtering it through my own knowledge base and the info I was forwarded (Clearly my tastes go towards Urban Fantasy, Sci-Fi etc) so feel free to post in comments with more info.

High Fidelity Imposters Dream of Hallmark

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I’d actually managed to go through a couple release days without anything catching my eye enough to spend money on — miracles never cease, eh? I’d thought about picking up Hollow Man, but I think I’ll leave that one firmly in the ‘renter’ category. The effects are great, and the first half of the movie is very promising…unfortunately, the second half blows. A lot. It has, however, prompted a very interesting discussion over on the Home Theater Forum, where I hang out from time to time.

After work today I had to go by Suncoast to figure out when I work this weekend, and discovered that I had a paycheck waiting for me. Rock on…but funny, I didn’t have it when I walked out. Instead, here’s what I ended up with:

High Fidelity: John Cusack‘s recent romantic comedy. A good friend of mine and I have had a vague theory for a while that John Cusack is assembling a loose series of films all revolving around the same character (so far, the only stumbling block we’ve found is that the character has different names in each of these films…still, logic has never stopped us before), and we think that High Fidelity just may be the most recent chapter. So far, we’ve got One Crazy Summer (high school), Better Off Dead (high school), Say Anything (high school graduation), Grosse Pointe Blank (10-year reunion), and now High Fidelity (life in the real world post-school).

The Impostors: I saw this one on a whim when it was in the theaters a while back, and walked out thinking that they just don’t make movies like this anymore. It’s a really silly little comedy, and the best word I can come up for it is delightful — which isn’t a word I apply to movies very much these days. Reminds me a lot of classic Marx Brothers type situation comedys…fluff, but thoroughly enjoyable fluff.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: I’ve been something of an amateur Shakespeare buff for a few years now (ever since Kenneth Branagh released Henry V to the theaters), and this is the latest addition to my so far woefully incomplete collection of Shakespearian adaptations. I’ve counted this among my favorites of Shakespeare’s comedies since I first saw it performed live (in an outdoor theater in Berlin, translated into German, and accompanied by a bevy of attractive young German ladies…ah, the memories…), and this is a beautiful production. Plus, with Kevin Kline, who I find to be an incredible actor, Stanley Tucci, who I’d just seen in The Imposters, and both Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockheart, who are just fun to drool over…can’t go too wrong here!

In any case, that’s it for this batch…was just in a mood to get some slightly lighter fare after the oh-so-comedic batches of discs I’d picked up the last couple times.

Oh, I’d forgotten to mention this — my roommate got me a very cool Christmas present this year: The Hallmark TV Classics Collection, a collection of five made-for-television films. Included in the set are Alice in Wonderland, Cleopatra, Gulliver’s Travels, Merlin, and Noah’s Ark. Of these, I’ve only ever seen half of Merlin, and hadn’t even heard about Noah’s Ark, so I’m really looking forward to diving into this set. So…that’s it for tonight….