Dr. Tesseract enters the vivarium. We could imagine that he is Daniel Cockburn, had Daniel never given up cocaine (nor never not started it in the first place), and after 15 further years of apathetic days and earthshaking night terrors. The glass walls are alive with fish. Tangerine on steel on neon blue. Above, birds shriek and shit, fighting the bats for dominance of the pittance of rude mealworms which infest the root-filthy vivarium floor. A baboon leaps, unbidden, to Dr. Tesseract's shoulder. The baboon asks: "Where is the hypercube?"

A couple of martinis after work makes me feel like one of the Mad Men. Whatever those are. I've never watched that show. But if I did, I bet it would be like that. The martinis were celebratory: we are declaring an end to the rough days, the all-or-nothing days, and going forward into the new thing, glad to have survived Workplace Survivor. Monday night, getting home before sundown for the first time since the fall, I sat on the couch in the gloaming and thought about the world, and then my lady came over and we got dim sums and watched Let the Right One In on shiny blu, every gently falling snowflake a distinct entity. The ultimate quiet Monday night movie, and it felt pretty good after all the noisy Monday nights (and every other nights) of the recent past.

Dr. Tesseract frowns. We could imagine that he is Chris MacLean, were Chris confronted once again by aesthetic inequity and the disturbingly imprecise vaguaries of True Chaos. Memory and anger collide in Dr. Tesseract's forelobe, and he smells bacon; being a staunch vegan and living in a tube under the sea, he has no language to articulate what he smells, and begins to become unsettled. He stares into the baboon's ageless, midnight-black eyes. No words are needed. "Well, then," the baboon says, "we're fucked."

Today I am working from home, building up a strategy for the big project that will take me into the fall, contemplating burritos or comic books or any of the other things I normally contemplate. I've got a bit of a cold coming on, but I'm not too fussed about it. The heating system in my apartment is doing its best to keep up with the shifting weather, and I am the same. In March, I only need a few days of sunshine to go back to appreciating how nice the grey ones are. Today will be drizzly, and springtime music, and getting shit done.

Dr. Tesseract panics. We could imagine that he is Jeff Szpirglas, were Jeff limbless (and on fire). In gracelessly attempting to gain the console platform he instead launches himself brain-first into the power supply bay. Arcs of light dance and play; the bats advantage themselves in the momentary distraction and decimate their avian counterparts. In the center of the firestorm, body rigid with current and immobile in the certainty of death, Dr. Tesseract sees with the pure sight for the first time in his life, just before the vivarium walls crack and shard, admitting the Pacific. With the pure sight, Dr. Tesseract sees Life - and it is so unbelievably angry.

Posted by tederick at 7:59 AM in j-o-b & poetical & shinybludisks
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Headache, maybe because it’s so grey today. Is my head “me gulliver?” Anyone know what a gulliver is? Clockworks reading this? Well I’ve got a pain in it, whatever it is.

In times of heightened work activity, I rescind the no-scone rule, and read comic books on my commute, because they are easily digestible (like stomach lining). Quick, tactile pleasure-experiences are more approachable psychologically than long-term storytelling or higher-brain analysis. I get up in the morning or get home at night, and Porno Guy is still watching porno… how did we never notice this? This much porno, this much of the time? though now he has drawn his blinds; they block about 45% of the porno, which still puts a generous 55% porno out into the world. Like a beacon for smutty superheroes, called forth by video images of penises on a screen large enough to make them the size of rotweilers. To the pornomobile! What do porno-superheroes fight – chastity? Or even worse depravity? I guess they could do both. They hold the middle ground.

The headline of today’s Metro (Toronto’s free transit rag) is simply “Math questioned.” I suppose the idea that the entire concept of mathematics was brought into doubt is amusing enough, but I rather prefer the notion that someone did away with Geography, and Math was brought into the station house for interrogation under the hot lights. But they let Math go (there was no motive). Math’s reputation is not what it once was but until Math does it again, Math goes free. This is justice?

Let the right one in… to your home! Last year’s vampire classic (last year’s only vampire classic) comes out on shiny blu today. Own it before that Cloverfield guy remakes it. Me, I’m gonna snap it up after drinks & apps with the work folk at Kelsey’s (yes Kelsey’s), and then go home and watch Yet More Lost, which is the other only thing my brain can handle in times like these.

Posted by tederick at 7:44 AM in 1701 & comix & jedi antics & sex (theoretical) & shinybludisks
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Sitting around in the apartment, doing contract work, whittling down what precious little weekend I have been afforded in between my two mega-work-weeks.

Here's what happened last night, and it still confuses and upsets me: at 4 in the morning (new time), I was woken by what I took to be gunshots. I then heard someone engaged in a heated argument. I don't think they were actually gunshots, but they were fucking loud, whatever they were; when they repeated 15 minutes later (four or five quick BANGS! in a row), the entire building seemed to shake. I think someone was breaking through a wall with a sledge hammer. (That's not a joke. That's actually what I think.)

Anyway, here's the confusing and upsetting part: I didn't do a goddamned thing. I was so panic-stricken by my upon-waking assessment of either gunplay and/or murder, that I literally sat in my bed and shivered, convinced that someone was going to try to break into my apartment with whatever the hell they were hitting the walls with. Whatever was going on (I think it was happening in the apartment directly below mine), it continued sporadically until about six in the morning and then it stopped. My fight-or-flight instinct stayed on "flight" i.e. "stay the fuck away from anything to do with this" until about ten a.m. today.

Normally, potential gunshots + angry shouting = call the fucking police, moron, doesn't it? I'm pretty disappointed in myself.

Having now completed the first five extremely enjoyable days of Sarafinapalooza 2009, I am padding about the homestead trying to get through significantly more webworks than I had banked on when receiving the assignment a week ago. The ground remains gritty underfoot. I think one of the principal reasons I identify with the cast of Lost so much is that I, too, live on a beach. Perhaps when Seasons 1 and 2 come out on blu-ray I will import a small sandbox and play in it. I could make a smoke monster out of old socks, and an Egyptian statue out of Zam.

Six hours later, and I'm done.

Posted by tederick at 8:33 PM in 1701 & 4-8-15-16-23-42 & shinybludisks
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Just about to roll the year-end Mamo, so I guess there's no harm in finally publishing this:

What a weird, bad, troubling year it was for movies. Nominally, I assign a top ten list to the films I've seen in a given year - but some years just don't get there. In my head I call these "A.I. years" - because 2001 was the best recent example, a year where the overall offerings were so poor (or at least, the ones that I saw were so poor) that I ended up, not with a top ten or even a top five, but in that case with a top four - a "hopeful" top five list where I left an empty seat at the table for a guest to arrive later. (I ended up filling that fifth slot with A.I., not because the movie is good, but because Chris and I spent the better part of the next 2 years having occasional, enthusiastic discussions about just what in the hell we were supposed to make of that movie. It affected the moviegoing landscape profoundly for the year, which was more than I could say for most of the rest of the flicks out of 2001.)

This year came out about the same. For a year where I saw a handful of films that I pretty much loved as much as any others I've ever seen, 2008 was a film year without a middle class - a few greats, a number of goods, and an almost overwhelming slew of "mehs." You can tell you're in a year like this by examining the reviews of your three favourite critics: I guarantee they will not agree. Two of the critics I greatly admire put Benjamin Button on their Top Ten list; the third thinks the film is profoundly misguided and unsettling. Perhaps this is par for the course, but it felt like the waters were more troubled than usual in 2008; subjectivity ruled. Picking and choosing from among the informed masses was pointless. I returned to the basic set of tools: find out what a film's about (but not too much), who made it and who's in it, and go with your gut. The result, though, was a pretty wobbly year.

As a result, 2008 has a top five instead of a top ten, and even that just barely. I was tempted to leave an "empty seat" again, given that there are a number of films I haven't seen yet which might otherwise have proved list-worthy. Among those are Valkyrie, Man on Wire, Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, Milk and of course Revolutionary Road. In the meantime, though, the films of the year are...

1. The Dark Knight
2. Let the Right One In
3. Wall-E
4. Ché
5. It Might Get Loud

Sure, it's become unseasonably fashionable to skewer The Dark Knight since its release; American culture (and ours by inevitable association) is nothing if not bipolar in its twin barrels of a) insistence upon enormous achievement, and b) resentment of same. Now, six months later, even some of the same people who were singing in the rafters about the newfound strength of the comic book movie in July, are down in the church basement fucking alter-boys a billion dollars later. Everybody hates a winner. But a winner it was, glossy and canny, and between The Dark Knight and Let the Right One In, 2008 continued one of this decade's key filmic movements - the LOTR-inaugurated march towards fully exploiting and expurgating the mythic strengths of archetypal stories. Fantasy is a genre in glorious bloom, unlike almost any other genre in movies right now. For a comic book movie and a Swedish vampire movie, these two films were, also, among the most cunning excisions of American political, moral, and sexual mores that have graced our screens this year. Not bad for "pop."

WALL-E, of course, is pop beyond pop; it is not a film of subtlety in its razing of American consumerism, but doesn't need to be, because it is furthermore such a lovingly enraptured tale of two individuals just plain needing each other - a strength in Let the Right One In, as well - that it's difficult not to be utterly beguiled. Love seemed to return to the movie screens this year after a long absence - real love, love where each partner completes the other and thereby opens the boundaries of the possible, not the grim (and dramatically facile) tragedy of love-of-the-doomed. 2008 held a number of refreshing returns to stories that say that great love does not need to end in poisoning, sinking ships, or Alzheimer's.

Ché gains the list almost by virtue of sheer mass; in essaying a guerrilla movie about guerrilla war (using guerrilla cameras, no less), Soderbergh generates enough electricity in 5 hours of running time to more than overwhelm any 2-hour entry on the list. The distinct halves of Ché, though, are also sharp, entertaining, and thoughtful, refreshing the memory of the landscape of possibilities of a filmmaker, a camera, and a sense of artistic fun. This was true of It Might Get Loud as well, to a surprisingly strong degree; for such a humdrum premise (2 hours on the cultural importance of the electric guitar?) it's stunning how much this film makes you want to run outdoors with a camera(/the artistic tool of your choice) in your hand and just make something beautiful.

Honourable Mentions

In spite of the overall weakness of the formal list, this was the year of Honourable Mentions. The Honourable Mention slot, for me, goes to the film that was quite usefully distinct in the overall viewing, but "missed it by this much" because there's something about it that just doesn't seem inherently list-worthy. Normally, I pick one. This year, I picked four:

• Citron and Flame, the movie Valkyrie wishes it could be
• Ce'st pas moi, je le jure, another meaty and grim essay of troubled boyhood that would make a fine real-world companion piece to Let the Right One In
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one of those rare films which was actually originally included in my top five but slowly dropped as the days since I saw the film passed. Its strengths do not linger, and its weaknesses gain scale after the fact.
• And for whatever reason, I am quite after-the-fact obsessed with Sauna, a movie which everyone (and me) didn't think very much of at the Toronto Film Festival, but which has sort of kicked around the back of my head since then. It would probably earn the "A.I. slot," if one were available. Flawed, disturbing, fearless.

I would also heartily suggest that while Cloverfield might not belong on this list, it belongs on some list, somewhere, because from a purely technical perspective, it is one of the great achievements of the year. Would have loved it if they'd come up with some miraculous solution to the clichés, but it's still film school in a can for anyone who wants to deconstruct the Bourne run-and-gun filmic style. Additionally, obviously, it is a master class in film marketing, and unlikely to be challenged in that regard for years. (Incidentally: if you watch the film with the presumption that at the instant of the attack, Hud goes completely insane and can no longer rationally assess "reality," the movie works significantly better.)

Worst film of the year

There was no clear winner this year for worst film, either, probably because I just didn't end up going to anything that really made me want to skullfuck my eyes out at the Van Helsing level of awfulness. Even Martyrs - certainly the worst filmgoing experience I had this year - is too disreputably vile to be counted against real movies; it is not so much "bad" as "horrid," and as useful to me as rotten salad.

Instead, I am going to name Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in this slot, which is unfair and whiny; it is not a terrible film nor even a terrible disappointment, but certainly ended up being the most negative relationship I had with a movie this year. For such an underwhelming and ultimately unimportant film, Indy 4 sure irritates the fuck out of me, and my empathy for the Phantom Menace haters grew tenfold this year. It's foolish to think that your "childhood" is some sovereign territory that lives for your agency only, but it's also horrible when you willingly allow some piece of it to be despoiled by fallen men. We should all be stronger.

Best technology of the year

Nonsensical made-uppy category, but shinybludisks made a major impact in my film enjoyment this year. It took a while, but I am apparently turning into the sort of loser who would rather be home with his home theatre than out at the Scotiamount with the assholes. (Well, the Scotiamount sucks regardless.)

Other and miscellany

Best original score: The Dark Knight

Best performance: Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

Best sequence of a boat hitting another boat: At the Edge of the World

Better on Blu than at the movies: Encounters at the End of the World

Best Blu-Ray overall: The Dark Knight (picture), WALL-E (features & extras), Lost: The Complete Fourth Season (watchability), Juno (huggability)

Most overrated film of any length: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

You'll never see it, but you really should: Medicine for Melancholy

Biggest disappointment: Hellboy 2

Best karate kick... to my heart!: Jean-Claude Van Damme's soliloquy in JCVD

Best... something: Synechdoche, New York

Unexpected words to live by: "If I run, you run." (Mila Kunis to Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

Posted by tederick at 12:16 PM in batman! & dr. jones & movies & reviews & shinybludisks
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So as it turns out, watching my rock star girlfriend play her rock star songs turns me into a 12-year-old girl and I can only communicate in OMGs and LULZs. Yep, I've tried to write this paragraph fifteen times but every time I finish with "Parkside played the Cameron House on Tuesday night," everything else I could say is just overexcited chipmunkly gibberspeak. Hey! I'm in love with a rock star! Leavemealone.

YEAH! PARKDALE!

I took the day off yesterday and Sarafina and I watched, get ready for it, the entire fourth season of Lost. All of it. For a long time I've presumed that such a thing was theoretically possible but I never had the wherewithal, or the enabler, to support such an action. Well now I've done it, with the only person I'd ever want to have done it with, done it with Swiss Chalet and couch-bed and deliciousness and general decadence, and I'm willing to call it the best day ever. Oh, what naughty schoolchildren we.

I have to day off, too. I haven't even turned on my phone, I wonder what's going on. I may start a "communications down" approach to my life, to compliment "slow down. Maybe the problem is just that all our communication is just too fast. I was reading my own auto-responder this morning and it occurred to me that we are now officially way too immediately communicative: we have machines to communicate for us even when we're not there to communicate. This is, of course, one step away from robots ruling the world. If I deleted my entire inbox, and left my cell phone off, what would people do? ...slow down.

I can't write worth shit today. Let's play, "what's it got in its pocketses?"

• Wallet (empty)
• $2.87 in loose change
• 1983 mail-away Emperor action figure
• Mini-DV tape case (empty)
• iPod
• pocket knife
• Notebook and collapsible pen.

Remember all that in case you need to identify me someday.

In case you were worried, The Dark Knight is the Blu-ray you're gonna be showing all your friends when they come over to your house, for pretty much the rest of time. I watched about half of it on Tuesday night before the show and it actually stuns the mind, it's so goddamned pretty. It's worrisome in some ways that we are now (well, have been for a while) at the point where the potentiality of home display actually outpaces the quality of the average film print. Print stock is cheap as shit these days, and I'd swear there are colours and dimensions in that Blu-ray (which, admittedly, has been digitally enhanced and all that jive) which I never saw on no big screen, IMAX-included. I was gonna go off on a rant the other night after seeing Ballast at the Carlton, because I was once again in one of those closet-sized theatres and wondering why I didn't just watch a movie at home, but I will admit there was still something useful to the theatrical experience on that one. I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet. But I suspect these days are fading.

Right: I must now get to my toy sourcing.

Posted by tederick at 10:46 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & batman! & jedi antics & shinybludisks
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Dear friends,

After great consideration, I have decided to buy the 4th season of Lost on Blu-ray instead of traditional DVD. This is not because I don't like you, and not because I have not enjoyed lending my first three seasons of Lost to literally every person I know over the course of the past 3 years. It is only because I believe in mouth-wateringly brilliant picture and sound, and in the ecstatic visible pleasures of the Lost series itself. I have faith in all of you that someday soon, you too will own a Blu-ray player, and at that time, can enjoy my Lost DVDs again.

In case you had not heard, Batman Be Blu-ray again today, as well. To commemorate the occasion, the Academy has reversed its lunkheaded decision to exclude the Dark Knight score from contention for this year's Academy Awards.

Cheers, etc.,

Posted by tederick at 9:07 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & batman! & shinybludisks
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I wasn't entirely sure what I was gonna get when I popped in the Firefly blu-rays, but holy damn am I glad I did. It's a bit like watching the show for the first time. I even (and I never do this because it is generally a disappointing practice) side-by-sided the sucker with the old version and the difference is mouth-watering. Worse things than popping in "Serenity" for a few minutes of pretty before you go to work on a grey and tiresome Thursday.

Meanwhile, the other Serenity hits shinyblu on the last day of the year. Which might time out right with me re-watching the show right now. I realized in viewing these disks that I don't think I've watched more than a handful of these episodes since about a year before the movie came out. Which feels about right - enough time to be surprised again.

Hey, here's a tall piece of crazy: the score for The Dark Knight is ineligible for the Academy Award. So was Batman Begins, probably the score that did the most work for its host movie of anything in the last five or ten years. The Academy is, once again, miles behind where it needs to be.

Posted by tederick at 7:41 AM in batman! & joss & shinybludisks
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The long, long, long, (long) delayed Mamo where we recap our summer has finally been posted here, and I presume it will be amusing. Hey, now would be a great time for you to join our Facebook group if you haven't already. Just Facebook for "Mamo" and I presume the rest takes care of itself.

Nuit Blanche 2008? = teh suck. Proved an apt opportunity, however, for me to watch Sarafina and Demetre free-associate alternate art pieces which would have been wholesale more enjoyable than anything on display last night. Dancing fat guys factor frequently, at least to Demetre, in terms of rescuing existing exhibits from their suckness. Me, I just keep drifting back to Plo Wars, even though I don't entirely "own" the idea. Does anyone have a couple hundred Plo Koons lying around?

Looks like Warner is indeed reading a Lord of the Rings trilogy blu-ray for release next year, which seems about right in terms of my mounting desire to watch the flicks again (and here's the dancing fat guy!). Would be nice, what with the Hobbit imminent and Lovely Bones finally seeing release next fall; I miss me the Peej. In the meantime, I am in a fine swiss pickle over the Godfather blu-ray series. This is a classic example of what not to do in a format upgrade quandary: classic films that I love but watch infrequently, that look "all right" on standard DVD but not great, and fuck me if that new box set ain't expensive. Criminy.

Posted by tederick at 9:33 AM in miscellaneous crap & pj's playground & podcastery & shinybludisks
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If they ever make portable cell phone jammers with even a 30m active range (as opposed to ten), I am buying one. Good god damn, to be able to block BlackBerries in movie theatres. I'd be like the Batman of irritation.

Speaking of the Batman of irritation, the goddamned fucking Dark Knight blu-ray is gonna flip-flop between IMAX framing and letterbox framing after all. HOW FUCKING ANNOYING IS THAT. On the whole I am stupendously unimpressed with all this IMAX crap and consider it Nolan's single major mis-step on the entire project. It was distracting enough in theatres; the idea of watching my aspect ratio pop around the screen like a crack-addled episode of 24 is almost too much to bear.

(Can you believe I made that segue work? I'm like the Batman of... something. Point is, I'm Batman.)

P.S., Bill Hunt, your site design was archaic in 1999. The rest of the planet knows how to allow a direct-link into a dated post. Why can't you?

I've only read the first chapter of Orson Randall and the Death Queen of California, but so far, I pronounce it "excellent." Not bad for an issue I almost didn't buy.

Posted by tederick at 2:56 PM in batman! & comix & shinybludisks
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For my birthday, I would like:

• Anything Mola Ram-related
• Anything Lando-related
• Blu-ray DVDs, as outlined on my wishlist
• This book
• Liquors
• Blaxploitation movies
• And as you probably already know, I am fond of Batman.

Don't buy me this book, though, cuz I bought it for myself today. Pretty! If I have any really rich friends that I don't know about, though: this would look pretty cool on my desk.

I have been to Montreal and back, in class for three days, and have walked from the pits to College Park, twice, all in the past 7 days. Also saw Hamlet 2 (sucked!), had an entirely home-cooked meal at Christys' place (fab-u-lous!), went to the Silver Snail (but not for midnight!) and watched Superman Returns on blu-ray. Tonight is our soccer final: we are playing for first. I never sit down, and I am rapidly running out of things to sit down on, even if I were to find time to do so. Time is getting short. Every last thing into its box, and here we go...

Posted by tederick at 4:40 PM in 3QF & batman! & books & miscellaneous crap & shinybludisks
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There's almost no describing how much better the Blu-Ray Batman Begins is than the regular disk. This is the one where the real geeks will keep their standard DVD and their Blu-Ray side by side, so they can show performance comparisons.

The depth, the dimensionality... Required a firmware upgrade like you wouldn't believe, but it's some sweet candy now. Good lord, I can see into Christian Bale's soul...

Posted by tederick at 3:39 PM in batman! & shinybludisks
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Yattah. Next?

Unrelated: D-Wars couldn't possibly be even a shade higher than absolutely godfuck awful, could it?

Posted by tederick at 10:53 PM in movies & shinybludisks
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IT IS IT IS IT REALLY IS

Other flicks they really oughta get off their asses and release in BD PDQ (I'm all about the block caps today, both acronymical and N.O.T.):

• There Will Be Blood (c'mon!!! I'll be your friend...)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (why? will this in any way impact my viewing of the film? Zuh? I dunno. Wantee.)
• Kill Bills, the vol. 1, and the vol. 2
• Fight motherfuckin' Club
• The Lord of the Rings (obviously)
• The Matrix (the first one only. Wouldn't that be a hoot?)

This concludes a list that got progressively obviouser with each subsequent bullet.

Posted by tederick at 6:52 PM in joss & shinybludisks
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I think I am going to start signing all of my emails with "I am not a lady." Not my personal emails mind you; my work emails. I think this will let me "go places."

I'm reading Ultimate Spider-Man vol. 17 yes SEVEN FRICKING TEEN, and it is the last one I will need to read to have actually gone through the entirety of the Bendis run to date on this thing. Believe me, if I'd known when I picked up vol. 1 waythehellbackintheday that I'd be into the late teens before I was done, I would not have started trying to back-fill at all. The current issues are just as good as the old issues. Still, in case I haven't made it clear, this is one hell of a comic book. This volume (Clone Saga) rocks, the Carnage arc was tremendous, and on the whole the entire deal just tickles me pink and makes me like Spider-Man. So that is, without being "cool" in the traditional sense, at least worthwhile.

As I think I've mentioned previously, I also rather enjoy The Prestige. This morning I amused myself once again by envisioning an alterna-version of The Prestige where the third act reveal is that there's actually a character named the Prestige, who has been manipulating the entire series of events from behind the scenes. In this morning's musings, the action of the film then shifted to the 22nd century where Batman and Wolverine fought each other to the death in magical robot suits. There's really no end to the potential imaginative real estate of The Prestige.

Anyways, I just found out that the 8-10 week ship time for those free blu-ray disks was woefully optimistic; I'm not expecting my gratis copy of shiny blu Prestige until around about the first of May. Motherfuckers win the format war, and suddenly we're all expendable! Dang. The good news (nay, best news ever) is that Batman Be Blu-Ray come July 8, in many different fancy packages. What I don't get is, why doesn't the blu-ray special edition come with the Batman flash drive that the regular-def special edition comes with? Them's monkey dealin's.

Anthony Minghella is dead? WTF? It's been a long time since I've seen The English Patient and I never saw Ripley, but the man wrote every single episode of The Storyteller and that makes him a god among insects. Bow!

Posted by tederick at 1:41 PM in batman! & comix & j-o-b & movies & shinybludisks & tv
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Last night Sarafina and I made ratatouille and watched Ratatouille. You know, the one with the rat who wants to be a stand-up comedian. Brad Bird continues to be the best shooter in Hollywood who never shoots anything - the "camera"work in that flick is pretty damn terrific. I found the fact that certain of the animated elements (the water, the book pages) were photorealistic while others (the rats, the city) were not fairly interesting; there's the beginnings of a good idea there. But poor Remy still lived in the valley for me. I will happily grant, though, that this is goddamned adorable and makes me actually want to see that flick. I never learn.

Meh, I'll believe this when I have my Blu-Ray monkey kong. Until then, I will say that Disney makes the worst Blu-Ray disks ever. Not because they are lower quality than any of the others, but because of the 45 minutes of trailers and bullshit that inevitably start every single disk and can only be skipped one at a time on players that need to think about the entire skipping process, at length, for several minutes before deciding to do anything about it.

I know, I know. Early adoption. Now that the war's over I'm about to be shown a chump for my player choice, aren't I?

Posted by tederick at 10:17 AM in movies & shinybludisks
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Apparently, being in class all day makes me hungry, with "hungry" in this case being substituted for something else. This certainly explains the entirety of teen boy culture, anyway. Thank goodness for text messages.

I've come to a rather startling decision, and that decision is: off coffee!! Or at least, hella less coffee. I have been feeling increasing quantities of crappy for the past couple of weeks while downing my perennial Starbuckses; and as per back in the fourth year at York, they're not so much waking me up as putting me in a coma. It's time for a change. It's time for large, flavoursome mint teas. Mmmmm. Sure, I slept through the afternoon, but at least my insides don't hurt.

I got Banacek in the mail today. I am particularly looking forward to episode 8, "The Two Million Clams of Captain Jack." (Jack: so many clams!) I also got Oldboy on Blu-Ray, which leads to today's nicest phrase (and current Facebook status): Blu-Ray hammer fight. Sure, I can't buy Zodiac (yet). But who cares?

Strongly suspecting I need to locate a Rubik's Magic and figure out what the deal was with that thing. There could be e.learning implications.

Posted by tederick at 5:53 PM in foodin' & j-o-b & shinybludisks & toys! & tv
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Last night Sarafina and I ordered a metric fuckload of sushi, and played Nintendo. Guess what? I actually still have some game on a classic Nintendo controller. This reverses last week's disappointment when I tried to play Super Mario 3 on the Wii and failed utterly. Turns out, the Wiimote is just a really, really shitty approximation of the classic controller. All the sense memory was gone. Back on the original system, my fingers knew what they were doing long before my brain even had to get involved. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm too tired and stinky to figure it out right now. I feel like Han Solo, what with the boots and sense of malcontent. I could do with a long, hot shower.

Three days after the Warner Brothers announcement, I have to work actively hard not to refer to the other side of the war as "chumps." That's the problem with this dog-ugly war: it has turned home theatre enthusiasts into a bunch of smug pricks on par with, or possibly even smugly prickier, than Mac addicts. I do not want this! The Digital Bits is largely unreadable now, what with Bill Hunt having turned into such a miserable, conceited fascist. I just want some nice programming and a hot cup of cocoa. I want Serenity and King Kong in Blu-Ray. I don't want a fucking subculture to grow out of this thing. If you're all into home theatre now, are you even a movie fan at all? Is it just technophilia in a demi-aesthetic cloak? If you had a really pretty Blu-Ray test pattern would you be just as happy as if you had Star Wars?

Two Star Wars refs in a single post. I'm backsliding. That's it: I'm going home and throwing out all my toys.

Incidentally, there is a small piece of my soul missing, and it is in a very good place. Otherwise, I am finding the season physically challenging as per the usual. My chest is tight. I haven't been to yoga in a damn long time. It's going to be fifteen degrees or thereabouts in Toronto tomorrow and if so, I am certainly going for a bike ride even if I have to do so after dark. In the meantime I've gotta do something to break out of the crusty shell of scar tissue and stale air that currently surrounds me. I could do with a nice breeze.

"It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." - The Rum Diary

Posted by tederick at 4:09 PM in galaxy far & i hate mac & shinybludisks & wii
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Warner,

and New Line,

and 70%,

aaaaaaaand we're out.

Posted by tederick at 10:55 AM in shinybludisks
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Ugh. Real life sucks sometimes.

I have a tiny but deep cut on my left middle finger. The result is that there is a really gorgeous blood stain on the "e" key of my nice white keyboard at home, along with a supporting horizontal smear along the top of my screen where I use my middle finger to push it open in the morning. OK, to everyone else, this seems gross. To me, it's proof I exist.

Matty Price and I recorded the year-in-review Mamo last night; you may enlisten by enclicking this enlink. Large tracts of it will come as very little surprise to anyone who is, oh I don't know, reading this blog right now, but I do find it entertaining that my partner and I have ended up on opposite sides of this divisive format war dealie. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a man on my own in the cold lately: Chris went HD-DVD, and so did my uncle. I am the Sole Blu.

I am going to have to start re-cracking Snapdragon tonight or tomorrow. I've let it - and everything - slide for a really, really long time. (Have you seen Extreme Steve lately? No, neither have I.) I also have a new funnybook in mind that I might try to draft out for Sasha to draw, and at least one script idea that it is officially well past time I got started on. Let's make it a productive January, rather than an oh-god-I-wish-I-was-dead January like usual.

On a more meat-and-potatoes-and-bedroom-windows level, there is a very wide gulf between the things I am doing, and the things I would like to be doing. But I can see the other side from here.

Posted by tederick at 1:00 PM in blood & podcastery & shinybludisks & the process
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OK I know I'm the last man to the party on this thing, but holy fucking CHRIST this is the funniest thing I've seen in a year:

Me and Bex just watched H-Pot 5 in Blu-Ray. She showed me this video. It's snowing. I have a party to go to. And I have a Johnny Depp hand.

Posted by tederick at 7:43 PM in h-pot & shinybludisks & youtubery
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The events of the weekend did one thing rather brilliantly: they completely erased my memory of seeing The Golden Compass. Like, on Monday morning I saw the poster on the way to work and was like, "oh yeah, that movie." Now I'm (finally) reading Lyra's Oxford again, which is a dessert course that should not have been preceeded by the stew, but whatever, it's still lovely, if far too short. You know, someday someone should do all of these things film-wise. Three features, and however many shorts Pullman ends up writing (there's one about Lee and Iorek coming out in the spring), plus the apocrypha and the lantern slides. That would make one hell of a DVD.

(At this point I'm presuming that New Line will never in a million years bankroll Knife and Spyglass after the pantsing Compass took at the box office this weekend. If we ever get around to a Mamo, I might explain more. Meantime, here's a good bit about the scripts, including the Hollywood bullshit line of the year: “The aim is to put in the elements we need to make this movie a hit, so that we can be much less compromising in how the second and third books are shot" - way to go Chris!)

There is now a floating theory that I am in fact from a parallel reality. This replaces the previous theory that Daniel is the central hub of a web of alternate worlds that only he can interact with, because now not only does Daniel not remember seeing Antenna with me, but I have no memory of seeing Spider-Man 2 with Chris. Since I am clearly the common element in these divergent histories, I must be the one who tumbled in from an alterna-cosmos. Which is fine, but I do miss our old morning ritual of eating cake before breakfast while wearing knit caps. It's the little things that make a home a home, y'know?

It is dead terrific to be out of DVD bankruptcy, internets. Still feels a bit strange though, like I was doing something naughty yesterday when I bought Lost. I also picked up some shiny blu Harry Potter 5, which looks fan-frickin'-tastic. Looking forward to watching that again and seeing whether I actually liked it, or just liked it because it wasn't as godawful as Goblet.

For my next trick, I shall write an entire instructional design plan in just north of 150 minutes. SHAZAAAM!!!

Posted by tederick at 9:06 AM in books & h-pot & movies & shinybludisks & shinydisks
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Today I took the ducklings to Pickering and the Shwa to conduct store visits, and then just sat merrily back with AC and had a day-long connection meeting. I can pretty much live like this. I was driving a freakin' Lincoln the size of my apartment (I even checked the trunk to make sure Billy Batts wasn't in there) and it was cold and pretty in the wildlands outside T.O., and it was nice to see all the planning planning planning of the last few weeks finally hone down into a single achievable "YES. And... DONE." I've got a few more days of the crazy, capped off by the hilarity that is the Christmas party on Saturday night, and then I am officially taking a nice long nap.

Pirates 3 on Blu-Ray. I would mainline that shit.

Posted by tederick at 9:27 PM in j-o-b & pirates & shinybludisks
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SPIDER-MAN 3 IS THE BEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE. I mean oh my god, Internet. This is a miracle of spectacular awfulness! This is the crowning kingpin of "so bad it's good!" It's REALLY good! It's so artistically coherent in its fundamental pursuit of complete and irrevocable awfulness that it is among the highest achievements in the art form of human creation that has ever been undertaken! HOLY GOD I MUST OWN THIS MOVIE ON BLU RAY DVD SO THAT I MAY WATCH IT REPEATEDLY AD NAUSEUM WITH EVER WIDENING CIRCLES OF DRUNKENED FRIENDS AND ALSO THE USE OF DRUGS WOULD BE GOOD!!! I mean you have no idea how superior picture quality and sound improve your experience of the moment where Peter Parker comes out of the clothing store and starts doing some blaxploitation strut, live in the streets! Or later when he begs Harry to team up with him in his fight against evil AND HARRY DOES IT!! Or like how everyone in the movie gives great advice - like Dylan Baker saying "don't get any of that stuff on your skin" or the crazy old Eastern European dude giving Peter advice about girls! OR WHEN THE BUTLER SHOWS UP! And also: YES! Oh I am very, very impressed. If you have the means I highly recommend getting a blu-ray player and getting drunk and getting Spider-Man 3, maybe not in that order but in something like that order and FUCKING ENJOY, INTERNET. The God Raimi made this for your pleasure. Why do you mock the God Raimi? You are mere bitchhumans in the glow of his superior awesomeness. Only the God Raimi would see Superman 3 and declare unto the world, "we can do better." And he did. Oh sweet glorious creation, he did.

Do not mock the God Raimi. He has blessed us with his many potent gifts.

Posted by tederick at 10:44 PM in movies & shinybludisks
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The tower is broken, DVD bankruptcy is over, I have a blu-ray player in my house, I have replaced my last VHS tape, and Pirates 3 comes out on Tuesday. I ran into Brandy on the street while carrying the blu-ray box and she said "it's the end of the world!" to which I replied "IT'S THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD!!"

Yeah, I caved to the Sony. Got fucking sick to death of waiting for the Panasonic, and the Sony came down in price and I just don't care enough about the new profile to wait a single day more when it's right there in front of me in the store. The player itself reminds me powerfully of the first VCR my family ever owned, the old iron war-horse. It's big and ugly and slow and dumb. But the pictures are so pretty. Me and the kids are going to watch Spiderman 3 and get drunk. (You know: Spiderman 3. The one with the Spidermans, the Solomons, and the Berkowitzes.)

What else happened? Well, I finished His Dark Materials this morning; that was significant. I feel like I sort of got to know a little more about Phillip Pullman this time around than I had before; when I was gorked out of my mind on Friday night and quasi-stoned with fatigue I was making all kinds of weird connections between him and Mary and the Mulefa and everything. And there's a particular challenge question in the Amber Spyglass Lantern Slides that made me feel like a foolish kid on the first day of school. Just a marvelous experience from top to bottom.

I finished the book over coffee and then went down on this particularly yucky weather day; hung out at the Snail for a while because I hadn't talked to Sheila in for ever, and then I grabbed a burrito and hit the Cinematheque for a screening of Bunny Lake is Missing - which was pretty damn good, except that "Keir Dullea is a psychopath" isn't really as surprising a turnaround as the filmmakers obviously thought it was, because yeah, that guy ain't right.

When the movie was done the weather nasties were really in full force so I jogged over to the Best Buy, made the crisis-support phone call to Matty Price re: the Blu Ray, and made my decision. Now I'm all wound up in HDMI cables and sippin' on rum.

Yup. That went well.

Posted by tederick at 7:43 PM in books & movies & shinybludisks
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