A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Expurey
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Random Quote
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Capsule Reviews, Almost November 2005
29 Oct 2005
City and Colour
SometimesWhat is it with solo projects and the word "City"? Some time ago I wrote about Robert Nanna (of Braid and Hey Mercedes) and his City on Film solo project, and now Alexisonfire vocalist Dallas Green is releasing his own acoustic-guitar-driven collection, under the moniker City and Colour.
Like Nanna, Green’s efforts sans band are disarming in their quietude. As long as you’re not expecting another though, this collection will not disappoint. "Hello I’m in Delaware" and "Save Your Scissors" are great little tracks.
The Fullblast
Short Controlled Bursts"I’ve always been a sucker for happy endings" croons Fullblast vocalist Ian St. Anger doing his best Ataris impression. The whole album is like the full-length version of The Ataris’ debut EP; it’s a valiant effort but it doesn’t feel like anything you haven’t heard a thousand times over from various other sources. (When you consider that The Ataris themselves have been rehashing "San Dimas High School Football Rocks" for the past 5 years, it seems that that’s a common pitfall for bands like this.) It’s not a bad-sounding collection, but it’s not the most original either.
The Strokes
First Impressions of EarthThe Strokes’ next full-length isn’t due out until January 2006, but there’s already a 5-song sampler floating around. The single "Juicebox" is already getting airplay as well I think. I’ve never been that big a Strokes fan but I liked the whole garage rock movement that they helped popularize back in 2001 (although in that respect, I’d probably choose The Vines over these guys as the garage rock band; the movement came and went almost as fast their careers, so it seemed appropriate that they be the flagbearers … ok, that’s not totally true: the Vines are currently recording their third album as I write this. Forgive the not-totally-accurate soundbite).
Right, so back to The Strokes: I think the reason why I’ve never been very enamored with Casablancas and company is that their music always seems so neutral. In part it’s because of the way he speak-sings everything (although Cake vocalist John McCrea gets away with it all the time), but mostly I think it’s because the music is fairly one-dimensional. Other than being consistent toe-tappers, their songs don’t really say anything. (And I don’t mean say as in lyrics; I mean say as in "evoking an emotion".)
Granted, they do have that toe-tapping thing going for them, and this sampler is no exception. All 5 songs are Strokes-quality, although it’s really up to you how significant that benchmark is.
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Archetypes
29 Oct 2005I was thinking about archetypes today and how pop entertainment is essentially just a different skin over the same set of bones. By way of example, I’ve created the following table:
Archetypes in … Lost X-Men Star Wars Straight-arrow leader guy Jack Cyclops Luke Skywalker Rogue - always at odds with leader guy Sawyer Wolverine Han Solo Conflicted Female - torn between leader and rogue Kate Jean Gray Princess Leia Physically-awkward comic-relief guy (usually hairy) Hurley Beast Chewbacca Wizened old mentor guy
(usually bald it seems)John Locke Professor X Obi-Wan Kenobi There’s actually a fairly deep discussion on archetypes in literature and how we’ve used them through the ages to pass on stories. One of the best ones is Chris Vogler’s which talks about how many of the most popular mainstream movies are based on stories we’ve been retelling for centuries. My little table is just the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully it makes an interesting starting point.
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Logitech Z-5450
28 Oct 2005It’s finally here – a 5.1 Speaker System that doesn’t require you to rearrange your whole den.
The little box at the bottom middle is a wireless transmitter, which means your rear satellites can be positioned or mounted anywhere in the room within 28 feet. At US$500 it’s almost as expensive as an entry-level PC, but the ExtremeTech review does give it pretty high marks, so if you have the available cash, there’s almost no reason not to go with this system over competing products.
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Some Kinda Monkey: Thoughts on Doom the Movie
26 Oct 2005
If you’re in your mid-20’s, it’s likely that the movie Doom will need no introduction. You’ll already be pretty familiar with the computer game it’s based on — one of those with the pentagrams and lava pits and demonoid monsters and you run around and shoot things. You may even be vaguely aware that the game was a hit in a way that very few games are; it was so hugely popular that it spawned an entire genre of like-minded software, collectively known as First-Person Shooters.Everything from Counterstrike to Thief to Far Cry has its roots in Doom — some games literally so. Counterstrike, for example, is a modification of Halflife, which is in turn, built on top of Quake 1, the follow-up game to Doom and Doom 2. Games like Call of Duty and Return to Castle Wolfenstein were similarly built on top of the game engine of Quake 3. Doom is more or less where it all began, and I say this not because I enjoy being pedantic, but to give you a sense of just how archetypal this game is.
When I first learned that they were making a Doom movie, I was not very excited. Hollywood’s track record for making video-game-based movies is fairly abysmal and I expected the worst. I mean, let’s face it: important and groundbreaking as they were, the Doom games were not revered for their story quality. Rather: they were the first games that demonstrated how uniquely immersive a game experience can be, and how giving a player full freedom of movement can be the single most effective way of achieving this. This wasn’t, I believed, the sort of thing you could accurately portray within the film medium and for the most part, I was correct.
Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy Doom the movie immensely. It’s cliché- and stereotype-ridden, sure. There’s not a single plot twist that you don’t see coming a mile away, certainly. And there’s very little in the way of originality, or even mild inventiveness. But I can honestly say that I watched all 100 minutes of it with a half-smile on my face and my eyes glued to the screen. I’m a fan, what can I say.
But being a fan I do have a number of gripes as well. The first is that I dislike the genetic-experimentation-gone-wrong plot. That’s Resident Evil territory. The source of Doom’s antagonists have always been a portal to Hell, the resulting iconic symbolism of which is a big part of what makes Doom Doom. This was the big flaw for me, in that I didn’t want to see a crappier Aliens. I wanted to see a better Event Horizon.
Unfortunately, a crappier Aliens was what we got, although seeing The Rock carefully enunciate his way through Doom’s awkwardly-stilted dialogue was truly a sight to behold.
My second gripe is related to Karl Urban, who I dislike almost as much as I dislike genetic-experimentation-gone-wrong. In Doom’s killer scene, Karl Urban’s character wakes up and discovers that he’s become superhuman, and we’re treated to the world’s first cinematic First-Person-Shooter sequence as he guns down mutant after mutant after mutant. I totally loved/hated this scene … I’m still a bit conflicted about it as I write this.
For one thing, I loved how, for 2 whole minutes, it was like playing Doom 3 on a 50-foot screen. But at the same time I hated how it pandered so shamelessly to the fanboys. And I think I hated myself a little bit for enjoying it so much as well.
I think the lesson with movies like Doom is that it’s possible to make a film with no redeeming social value whatsoever (and very little to offer in terms of an engaging story), and yet still be convincingly entertaining for most of its running time. It connected with its audience on a level way below rational thought, and tapped something deep down in our gut instead. In that sense, this is the single most apt game-adaptation ever produced, because the Doom games did exactly the same thing.
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Videomate U900
20 Oct 2005
This is probably gonna sound weird coming from someone who works in (new) media, but I don’t watch TV. I watch less than an hour of TV every week, and that includes those moments when you just turn it on for background noise. I have been known to use the TV as a viewer for stuff I’ve pulled off the P2P, which is why this tiny credit-card-sized TV Box from ComPro looks mighty tasty. The fact that it’ll fit in your pocket and leave enough space for a big ol’ chunk o’ change is the kicker here I think. According to the press release, this thing has everything you need from a TV Box – MPEG-1/2/4 formats scheduled recording, timeshifting, channel surfing, still frame capture, S-Video, composite video and stereo audio capturing, remote control and supports universal TV system broadcasting reception (NTSC, PAL, and SECAM) and NICAM stereo — all without having to carry around an extra power adapter. Not sure exactly how much it’s going for, but its brother the U800 costs about 2880 Taiwan dollars (an educated guess, so don’t quote me on that) or US$85.
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Kiss Me Deadly - Misty Medley
20 Oct 2005
Fucking unbelievable, these Canadians.When I first heard Kiss Me Deadly’s Dance 1 (from their debut EP, Amoreaux Cosmique) early this year, I was blown away by the swirling electronics and crazy, seemingly-drug-soaked vocals. Their new album, Misty Medley, is everything that their EP promised, and more.
While I’m not as enamored with the tracks on which Mathieu du Montier sings, the songs featuring Emily Elizabeth (particularly the "Dance" series) are outstanding. I already uploaded "Dance 1" here months ago, so check out its sibling Dance 3, which is my favorite of the new tracks.
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Sony-Ericsson Walkman W900
20 Oct 2005
Haven’t really decided if I like Sony-Ericsson’s Walkman series yet, although they sure do look nice.
This latest one, the W900, picks up where the W800 left off, the most obvious upgrade being the half-a-gig of built-in memory that the newer model is packing. With an additional Memory Stick, you have a theoretical capacity of about 2.5gb on your phone, which is smaller than Samsung’s recently-released 3gb phone but is still pretty decent for any phone outside of Korea.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that the W900 seems to come installed with Macromedia Flash Lite – the first phone in recent memory that has ever come with this player pre-installed. Macromedia has long been dancing around the periphery of the mobile market (Flash 8 Professional comes with a ton of small mobile-device-related enhancements) and I wonder if this isn’t the first step that will allow them to finally penetrate the industry.
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Insane Comes in 3’s
19 Oct 2005So I’m back to work after cooling my heels in heffalump-land for most of last week. Obviously, I had to put a number of projects on hold for a couple of days, which as you can expect meant I had a buttload of work waiting for me when I got back.
One gig, my favorite of the 5 ongoing, is a wonderful example of "not knowing when you are in over your head." (Mind you, it’s my favorite because it’s so retarded, not because I enjoy working on it in any way, shape or form.)
Here’s the situation:
The client is joining a tradeshow for which they want to prepare a giveaway CD-ROM, highlighting their various services and pimping their partner firms.This trade show is happening in the US, although the client is local.
Insanity #1:
The tradeshow is in early November. They contact me about it in early October, because it never occurred to them that they might need a slightly longer lead time than that. I say, "3-4 weeks is tight but doable."After they’ve agreed to my quote, they say, "BTW,the company that’s pressing the CDs says they need at least 2 1/2 weeks to produce 2,500 copies."
I say, "Ah. You need to get a different CD supplier because those guys obviously suck very much."
They say, "We’re already committed to them."
I say, "Ah. This is bad."
Insanity #2:
Monday afternoon they’re riding my ass to design a print ad for said tradeshow because it never occurred to them that they needed it until that morning. I say, "Ok, I’ll have a study by tomorrow."They say, "We’re transmitting it to the US tonight."
I say, "Ah. This is bad."
Two hours later, I send them a draft.
They call me up and say, "Sorry, we read the dimensions wrong, the print ad is horizontal, not vertical."
I say, "Ah."
30 minutes later, after having sent them the corrected ad, they’re back on the phone with me. "Sorry, we read the specifications wrong, the printad is supposed to be black & white, not full-color."
I say, "Ah."
15 minutes later, they say, "Ok! We’ve sent it to the printers in the US! We beat our deadline, thanks so much!"
I say, "YOU SENT THE FUCKING DRAFT FOR PRINTING?!"
Insanity #3:
Tuesday afternoon they’re riding my ass to design the inlay and traycard for the CD’s jewel case, because it didn’t occur to them that they needed it until that morning.I say, "I guess you need this within the next couple of hours huh?"
They say, "You’re so professional! How did you know?"
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Time’s 100 Best Novels
17 Oct 2005![poster-watchmen[1].jpg](/img/pics/poster-watchmen%5B1%5D.jpg "poster-watchmen[1].jpg")
Seeing Alan Moore’s Watchmen on Time’s 100 Best Novels list, the only comic book to have made it, makes me very happy, and affirms what I’ve been saying ever since I first read that book years ago: Watchmen isn’t just the best graphic novel ever written, it’s also one of the best novels.The poster on the left is a fan-made rendering of their dream cast for the upcoming Watchmen movie. I’ve already made up my mind that the movie will never, ever surpass the book (because then it’d be, well, the best movie of all time, wouldn’t it?) but I can’t help but be excited nonetheless. If for nothing else than it’ll convince more people to read this masterpiece.
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