July 30, 2004
Spiraling into Mediocrity
How does one fall from the dizzying heights of the almost universally beloved Sixth Sense to make a film that scores a 39 on MetaCritic. M. Night, what happened to you?
A sampling of the criticism:
- A sense of humor might have helped "The Village." It couldn't have hurt. The truth is, nothing could have hurt. -- SFGate
- To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. -- Roger Ebert
- If you long to hear dialogue like "You needn't be scared. We have the magic rocks. They will keep us safe," then M. Night Shyamalan's nubby woolen sock of a thriller "The Village" is the movie for you. -- Stephanie Zacharek
- The ubiquitous advertisements for "The Village," which opens today nationwide, promise that "nothing can prepare you." Nothing, that is, except M. Night Shyamalan's last three movies and a passing acquaintance with "The Twilight Zone." -- A.O. Scott
Nubby woolen sock, y'all.
July 26, 2004
The Free Software Experiment
On my old computer, I had a ton of software I'd acquired during college on education licenses and ... by ... er ... other means. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Cool Edit, and assorted other programs. My new computer was built by a coworker for about $350, and I'm currently trying to populate it with good software. But I'm staying on the up-and-up this time. I'm sticking to all software I can afford. Thanks to the $20 copy of Win XP my coworker got me when he visited Microsoft, I didn't get Linux, although I considered it. Here's what I've found so far in my foraging for software, all free:
- Expressions 3: My drawing program. MS took over the company that had made this software, and has for some reason made it free. I've been quite happy with it so far, although there's a bit of a high learning curve, especially if you're used to doing all your illustration in Photoshop.
- Star Office 7: My office suite. Sun's slightly gussied-up version of the open-source OpenOffice project, which I have maligned in these very pages. I haven't had to do any hardcore word processing at home yet, and I don't know if I will, but I think if I do, this should be fine.
- The GIMP: My photo-editing program. Pretty capable, although I'm so used to Photoshop that I haven't had the patience to really get down and learn it. I could not deal with the interface until I got this plugin, though.
- RagTime Solo: My page layout program. A beauty from a German software company. The version of the software for personal use is free, and is exactly the same as the commercial-use version, which costs Њ845.
- Audacity: My audio-editing program. Decent, although I'm considering trying ProTools Free again now that I have a computer than can handle it.
- Picasa: My photo organizer. Why I need a photo organizer, considering Win XP's photo display features are perfectly satisfactory, I don't know, but it's free. Whatever.
Other sundry free excellent software:
- Blender: 3d graphics program. Just check out the image gallery.
- Sea3d: An amazing open-source 3d Settlers of Catan application.
- Notepad++: An HTML text editor that's oddly comforting.
Any others?
July 25, 2004
Trinity
When I was seven, I saw "Transformers: The Movie" on the big screen and, it's true, I cried a little when Optimus Prime, brave leader of the Autobots, died.
Now The Hollywood Reporter says Spielberg is producing a live-action Transformers movie!
And look at this--also posted on hollywoodreporter.com the same day, news of a movie version of "Watchmen," the greatest graphic novel ever published.
And! "All the King's Men"! My god!
These are three of the seminal literary experiences of my life, Snarketeers: tales of a valiant robot, a fallible superhero, and a wayward journalist. I can't wait.
(Thanks to Kevin for the Transformers link.)
BTW: Required viewing for Transformers nerds.
July 23, 2004
Filtering Distributive Intelligence, and More!
I'll make my return to the Snahkmahkit with this paean to the beauty of distributive intelligence.
We've all heard of Google Answers, where anyone can slap a dollar amount on a question and buy the answer, and anyone else can see it.
Welcome to the Best of Google Answers :), which, were it updated more frequently, would be fearsome indeed. (via The Red Ferret Journal)
Other cool things on the Web today:
(mostly from that craaaaazy Red Ferret)
- BookMachine - You're in the bookstore, looking for a book, but helas!, it's not in stock or out of print. Zip on over to the BookMachine, which will find your book in its online database, let you peruse through the first few pages, and print out the soft-cover, perfect-bound masterwork for you in five minutes. (thanks, TRFJ!)
- Croquet - You're working on a project with some geographically remote friends. Y'all hop on Croquet together, and your cyber-avatars interact with each other and each other's software in a 3D MMORPG-like environment. (See screenshots to mimic understanding. Thanks, Emergic!)
- Open-Source Web Design - Self-explanatory. Making the Web pretty. (I kees you, Red Ferret!)
- Odyssee - Turn every movie into the Back to the Future ride at Universal. And if you've never been on the BttF ride, you poor, deprived child. Basically, imagine watching Lord of the Rings in seats engineered to move along with the action onscreen. Yeah. (You can't do it for every movie, only the ones for which they have codes available -- everything from Big Fish to LOTR. BFF TRFJ!)
July 21, 2004
Deep Summer Doldrums
Robin says,
Holy crud! Where did Snarkmarket go??
Don't worry, Snarketeers. We're still here. Coming soon: David Brooks, "Grand Strategy," and the essence of education.
July 12, 2004
Policy and Polemic
Kevin Drum gives The New York Times' new temp columnist Barbara Ehrenreich a backhanded defense, saying basically that she's sound and fury, signifying nothing, but eh, sometimes we need that:
At the same time, a simple (and frustrating) truth is that it is not people like Brad or me who change the world, it is people like Barbara Ehrenreich. Policy wonks then sigh, pick up the pieces, and try to convert the Ehrenreichian emotion of the moment into lasting programs. But without that emotion, we never get the chance.
From where I sit, policy wonks can do Ehrenreichian emotion pretty darn well sometimes. Am I the only who remembers the Declaration of Independence? (A quick refresher: that's the one that accused the King of England of sending "swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Oh, and also: "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.")
Ehrenreich recognizes that sweeping rhetoric used to be a big part of official policy, and she also uses the Declaration to make that point.
Drum's contention that good architects of policy are just tremble and reserve gets at what I think is one of the biggest problems with our policy-makers today -- no boldness. It's partially because the country's split on a partisan razor-edge, and any lurches left or right could be disastrous for a party. But the effect is that politicians make their trade in these sly, sneaky little slivers of policy to which the public pays no attention, but corporations love. FDR's New Deal could never survive in this climate.
Historian H.W. Brands has made this argument much better than I could:
But Franklin would be dismayed by the popular denigration of politics, and exceedingly impatient with us for acting helpless in the face of problems that the Founders would have tackled at once. To take one example, arguments over the Second Amendment, with its almost certainly inadvertent ambiguity about the relation of militia service to gun ownership, would largely cease if we simply rewrote it. Gun advocates already treat the militia clause as a nullity; let them erase the clause