Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sarah Vowell books, video games, & Dandelion Fall

Neil deGrasse Tyson came to DC to speak on March 11.  I only started following him on twitter a few days earlier, so when he said that he was going to be at the Lisner Auditorium to speak, I was very excited, as was Ms. Albright.  So we trekked down there (mmm, under $3 for a hotdog, chips, and a pink lemonade for easy gulping) and sat through an extremely enjoyable a little over two hours of him blowing our collective minds (although slightly less if you'd been reading his twitter feed for a while, accessible at neiltyson).  He is, without a doubt, my biggest mancrush of all time.  He's so smart, funny, and just plain informative that it's a shame that he's not more famous.  But he is famous enough to get hate mail.  Awesome hate mail.  If you aren't watching NOVAScienceNOW, you are missing out on probably the most informative TV program ever.  I am completely biased, but man, he is as enjoyable in person as he is on TV.  If you want to have an intelligent day, just do a search for Neil on youtube and get some great clips, including the best tale of what happens when you get close to a black hole.

Dandelion Fall is a film by a woman I went on a date with in college.  Yep, I extremely briefly dated a woman who has made a film about a lesbian busker who's basically a kept woman for a fancy lady in New York.  With lots of artfully shot nudity!  Her most recent film, however, has won multiple awards.  This was actually much, much better than the other half a film I sat through on She Likes Girls 3.  Which is not a porn DVD, just a collection of lesbian short films.  I made it through about five minutes of the first movie which was a terrible lesbian vampire crapfest.  Maybe I'm holding it to too high a standard, what with my knowledge of lesbian vampires, but the acting was subpar.  I then realized that I don't usually like film school shorts and that the reviews for the disc as a whole were horrendous and that I only got it because I was friends with a director.  So I can safely say "Don't rent this disc for anything other than seeing Lauren Wolkstein's work.  Which is good."

I also listened (yes, listened, audiobooks are great) to The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation, and The Wordy Shipmates, all by Sarah Vowell.  They're all entertaining and interesting, although Assassination is, by far, the best of the three.  The Party Cloudy Patriot just brings up horrible memories of the 2000 election, and The Wordy Shipmates is all about 17th century American History, which I don't find as interesting as the strange links between Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley's assassinations.  I recommend them all, with the caveats as listed.  And if you listened to the audiobooks of them, you get to hear famous people be other famous people.  My favorite is Conan O'Brien as Robert Todd Lincoln.

One reason for the lack of updates and actual content for the updates is that I beat Fallout 3 last month (woo! First platinum trophy!), a fun look at a post-nuclear DC, made more fun by the geographical inaccuracies, and started to play Final Fantasy XIII this month.  I've put around 20ish hours or so in so far, with a little bit of back-tracking when I screwed something up, and it's a very pretty game.  Not the best story or characters or anything, but Sazh is a lot less questionable from a racial standpoint than Barret "Mr. T" Wallace.  Gameplay is moving towards Progress Quest levels of interactiveness (I'm a Puma Burglar Panda Man!), but the Paradigm Shifting is not only a proactive approach to success in conflicts, it's surprisingly deep.  I still haven't made it to the opening up of the world yet, so it's still linear at this point.  But that isn't really that bad of a complaint.  Fallout 3 was possibly a little too open-world.  If it weren't for getting trophies, I would've been very confused about what to do.

Over the Edge, xXx, Ghost Town, Boycott, & Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks

Over the Edge is Matt Dillon's first film. It's a film about kids rebelling because there's nothing else to do in their planned community. It's not the best film, but it's quite enjoyable, and the soundtrack is great, with lots of Cheap Trick, The Cars, and even a Ramones track. As a portrait of misspent youth, I am very thankful I never spent time with delinquents like these. My delinquent friends were much more sarcastic and much less destructive.

xXx was really, really stupid. I normally would not have watched this film. Because it's a stupid film. But Meatball Surgery decided it would be funny to give me it on DVD. It's now sitting next to my Wong Kar-Wai and Wes Anderson DVDs, keeping them company and occasionally trying to read the backs and failing. I understand why Asia Argento is kinda famous, since her dad is Dario and she's willing to be naked. I wonder why the hell anyone would cast her in a PG-13 film that precludes nudity? She's a horrible actress. I really liked Pitch Black, his voice is great in The Iron Giant, and he was good in Saving Private Ryan, but I don't like Vin Diesel much at all. The Rock at least has a sense of humor. Vin just has a great voice, but can't act.

Ghost Town is another Ricky Gervais Hollywood romantic comedy. It's better than The Invention of Lying, but not by much. It's a little sad seeing Alan Ruck have such a small role.

Boycott is directed by Clark Johnson, aka Meldrick Lewis, aka Gus Haynes, aka director of many good TV shows.  He takes a decidedly post-modern approach to the story of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, with shots in black and white, breaking the fourth wall, having it be a documentary in some shots of scenes and not in others, and just in general bringing a cinematic approach to the material.  Jeffrey Wrights is quite good as MLK, Jr, as is the rest of the cast in their roles, but I just can't see Terrence Howard without thinking about how he doesn't use toilet paper, but baby wipes, when he goes to the bathroom.  He probably has a silky smooth anus.  And that is an extremely weird thing to know about a person.

Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks is produced by Reggie Miller.  Of course, it's a huge lovefest for him, although with some humanism brought in by focusing a little on his history of being second fiddle in his family to his sister.  As someone who watched the NBA throughout the Jordan years (and with some love for the Kings that got screwed by the refs in the playoffs in the late 90s and early 2000s), I was pretty familiar with the Pacers-Knicks rivalry.  I think the city-hick aspects were played up a bit, but there was definitely genuine bad blood between the teams.  It's also surprisingly funny for a documentary on two basketball playoff series.  Spike Lee was great, and while some might fault him for framing the covers of the NY Post that lambasted him after Miller went off in the 1994 series, if I were on the front cover of a "major" newspaper, I would also frame them.  Unless it were because I was in jail.  Probably wouldn't do it then.  If you watched NBA basketball at the time, you'll love this.  If you like trash-talking, you'll love this.  An extremely enjoyable film.

Renaissance, Into the Wild, & In the Loop

Renaissance is an animated film about a future Paris, where a large company controls everything, and a cop starts to investigate a kidnapping of a researcher, and eventually gets involved in crazy genetic experiments and weirdness. The animation is very stylish, but the plot is nonsensical. It's kind of like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: occasionally pretty, but mostly not worth the money spent on it. How they got Daniel Craig, Ian Holm, Romola Garai, Catherine McCormack, Jonathan Pryce, and Sean Pertwee in it, I have to imagine it was only about the money.

Into the Wild is a pretty film, and depressing as hell. I somehow never knew Christopher McCandless's story, so I really didn't expect the ending, at least, not until I started to pick up on the foreshadowing. Also, Kristen Stewart may be the least expressive actress in years. Just a terrible actress. Emile Hirsch, however, helps anchor the film.

In the Loop is a gloriously profane and awesome film. I wish that The Thick of It were available on DVD in the US. Because I want to spend much more time with Malcolm Tucker. Another depressing film, although in a much bigger fashion than Into the Wild, a personal tragedy rather than the destruction of American moral superiority that was the completely trumped up war. See this film.

Jet Li's Fearless, Women of the Night, Street of Shame, & The Panic in Needle Park

Jet Li's Fearless has a couple good fight scenes, but overall, it's a terribly nationalistic film. Which is to be expected from an accepted Chinese government funded film.

Women of the Night and Street of Shame are the last two films in Kenzo Mizoguchi's fallen women series of DVDs from Eclipse. It's interesting looking at these two films after the other ones, the slight difference in approach to prostitution both before and after the war. Not to mention the fact that Street of Shame is widely cited for having caused if not significantly influenced the criminalization of prostitution in Japan. I don't entirely see how this film, amidst what has to be many stories of the problems with prostitution, could have done that. It's more about the problems that occur due to the changing post-war society. I do not object to prostitution (depending on the reasons for entering into it, see below), although the completely unequal approach to gender in post-war Japan is far more disturbing to me. The films themselves are blatant, telling what could be shown. None of his films are as good as Kurosawa or Ozu, and they're a little frustrating.

The Panic in Needle Park is Al Pacino as a heroin addict. And the thing about the film is that it's clearly set up to make it seem like Pacino's character is in the worst shape of anyone in the film. But all I could think about was my 6th grade social studies teacher who had me read The Jungle for extra credit and then give an oral report. During it, she asked who I thought had it worst in the book, and I picked the main character, but she pointed out that his cousin went through some similar degradations and then went farther down, due to going into prostitution. It was one of the first times I can remember having my male privilege questioned, and one of the many things that have made me a proud feminist. And this movie is set up the same way. I felt bad for Pacino, but Kitty Winn's Helen goes through much worse, including prostitution and being beaten by her abusive boyfriend. Seriously, Helen's time is much worse than Bobby's. Also, Pacino's decline as an actor is obvious even from this early film. He's clearly going to overact in the future.