6WH: Week 3 - No Discernable Theme Week
As we reach the halfway point of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon (See Week 1 | Week 2), it seems I've run out of thematically similar movies and have moved into more of a hodgepodge. But nevertheless, this week's lineup is pretty darn good. I seem to have gotten a bit ahead of schedule here, so a couple of these were actually watched a couple weeks ago:

• The Call of Cthulhu By H.P. Lovecraft (short story)
• Hellraiser (trailer)
• Jacob's Ladder (trailer)
• The Signal: A strange, hypnotic pattern mysteriously appears on all the TVs in the world, and after watching it for a while, people seem to go on a murderous rampage. It's clear from the taut opening (which unfortunatly turns out to be a red herring) that first time directors David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, and Dan Bush have a love for the horror genre and know what makes it tick. Each director took on a third of this movie... but unfortunately, this leads to some serious pacing and tone issues, as the story ping-pongs from gorey realism to apocalyptic dystopia to outright camp and comedy (including an attempt at parody and even some slapstick) with no real rhyme or reason. Part of the problem is that the story follows a single plotline, but each segment of the film is drastically different from the other in tone and style. In theory, I suppose this could work, but it doesn't work that well here. Still, each segment taken by itself is pretty good. The second segment stood out the most in my mind because it really nailed the comedic and surrealistic undertone of the film, while the other two segments went for more of a realism that is harder to pull off. The performances by the three main leads in that act (AJ Bowen, Cheri Christian and Scott Poythress) are also the best in the film, as well as a hilariously perverted bit part played by Chad McKnight. I found the film entertaining and well made, but it had trouble transitioning from one segment (and one director) to another. The ending also turns out to be a little more conventional than I expected. All in all, it was worth a watch, but not especially brilliant. **1/2
  
  
  
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning
• Shining (fake trailer)
• The Shining (trailer)
• The Others: A seemingly standard ghost story set in 1945 at a desolate mansion in Britain. Nicole Kidman plays the lead, and her two children have a rare allergy to bright lights, so all the rooms in the house must have their drapes drawn shut and those walking around the house must be sure to close the door behind them, least stray sunlight get in the room. The servants of the house have mysteriously taken off, and the movie opens with three new housekeepers arriving to help out Kidman, whose husband has been off in the war. This is one of the few films that have really creeped me out so far this year, and it achieves most of that more through restraint than anything else. There are no horrific deaths in the film, no gore, and very little violence. The scares here are all based on atmosphere and style. Director Alejandro Amenabar makes great use of shadows and especially sound to impart the dread that saturates this film. One scene involving a piano was particularly spooky, as was the infamous "Are you mad? I am your daughter!" scene. Kidman carries the movie on her shoulders, and puts in a good performance in what must have been a difficult role. Fionnula Flanagan also has an interesting performance as one of the new housekeepers. The film's climax is not as scary as I would have expected, but it does have a satisfying twist (I suspect even guessing the twist would not ruin the movie). The film does have some issues with pacing (it's a little slow), but it's ultimately quite effective and possibly the best of the 6WH so far. I wish more films would rely on atmosphere and style to provide the scares, but films like this seem pretty rare (I was reminded a bit of the excellent 2007 film, The Orphanage). ***
• Twilight at the Towers, by Clive Barker (Short Story from Cabal)
• Dark City (trailer)
• After Dark Horrorfest 2007 (trailer)
• The Deaths of Ian Stone: Part of the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest, this film is often described as the horror version of Groundhog Day. That doesn't exactly fit the premise of this movie but it works well enough. Basically, Ian Stone wakes up in a new life every day, only to be hunted down and killed by shadowy pursuers. He's haunted by memories of his past lives, and is anchored by one other person who keeps showing up in his life. The more he remembers, the more dangerous he becomes. It's an interesting and entertaining movie despite all of its derivative elements. Unfortunately it's not very scary, and its various twists aren't all that surprising. The movie does much better when the happenings are mysterious... once we start to get answers, it falters a bit. However, it manages to overcome its deficiencies (or at least, it clears the hurdle) and I did enjoy it. The direction and performances are rather standard, but the film also looks pretty good when you consider its low-budget origins. The shadowy monsters are appropriately menacing and the main villain, played by Jaime Murray (essentially reprising her "Pardon my tits" role from Dexter), is devious and ruthless enough that we're rooting against her. It's an enjoyable movie if you take it for what it is, and it's well worth a watch. **1/2

Incidentally, this Horrorfest thing sounds pretty interesting, except for the fact that it seems to happen months after Halloween instead of the weeks preceding it (where you'd think it would make more sense). I do remember hearing about it towards the tail end of the 2007 fest, but the only film that really interested me was The Deaths of Ian Stone, and it was no longer playing... Still the 2009 fest is coming in January (again, January? Why then!?), so maybe I'll take a gander when it happens this year. That's all for this week. Next week will mark a return to the 80s slasher movie as well as a movie that I've seen described as a modern silent film (a concept that intrigues me).

In other news, Kernunrex continues his 6WH, which includes several mentions of Kaedrin favorite Phantasm (including a comic book I've never heard of but now want to read and the DVD commentary track). Kaedrin compatriot Roy posted his tentative schedule as well. NeedCoffee has started their 32 days of Halloween (it's kicked off by none other than Bugs Bunny!). Quint over at AiCN has been doing a movie a day, and for the month of October, he's doing a horror movie a day, starting with The Dunwich Horror (I didn't even know they made a movie out of that excellent H.P. Lovecraft story). Some other folks doing the marathon thing: The Metal Misfit, Random Acts of Geekery, Cal's Media of the Month and I'm sure lots of others. And of course, there's also Horror Movie a Day, who eschews the whole Halloween thing and just does horror all year round. Is anyone else doing a horror marathon?



John Dies at the End: The Movie
Not sure how I missed this, but the movie rights for David Wong's horror comedy novel John Dies at the End have been purchased by Kaedrin favorite Don Coscarelli (of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-tep fame). Wong used to write at a website called Pointless Waste of Time, but he has since been hired to edit Cracked.com, and all his articles are there now (including the particularly brilliant Ultimate War Simulation Game article). He originally published John Dies at the End online (unfortunately no longer available), but it got picked up by an indie horror publisher (unfortunately, that edition is now sold out) and is now set to be re-released sometime in 2009.

IMDB doesn't have it listed yet, but Coscarelli seems excited:

The story follows two goofballs who get caught up in a freaky fight against (deep breath…) mutated victims of a strange drug that allows them to drift across time and dimensions and the horrific invasion that may be taking place on Earth because of them. Coscarelli compares JOHN DIES to his previous popular adaptation: “My feelings for JOHN are similar to how they were for Joe R. Lansdale's BUBBA HO-TEP,” he says. “Prior to filming that movie, I’d reread the Lansdale novella and absolutely knew it would make a terrific movie. I feel the same way about JOHN. David Wong is a terrific new talent. He effortlessly blends genres and creates genuine dread. I’m thrilled to be working on a project that’s firmly planted in the genre, yet different and highly original.”

AICN has some more info:

"I was greatly impressed by David Wong's crazed originality and impressive imagination," revealed Coscarelli. "He's like a mash-up of Douglass Adams and Stephen King, both smart and goofy, scary and funny -- it really spoke to me. JDatE is as addictive as the 'Soy Sauce' street drug that kicks the plot into gear."

I have no idea how long this will take to make it to the screen, but I imagine it would be a while (this is what sucks about keeping track of movies in production - you always find out about the movies years before they're made). In any case, I'm really looking forward to this. Coscarelli is a great director and would be a good match for Wong's style. After all, this is the director who made a movie about an aging Elvis (with a black JFK sidekick) battling a mummy in a Texas old folks home. It's a perfect match.



6WH: Week 2 - The Lycanthropic Edition
The Six Weeks of Halloween continues this week with a trio of movies featuring Werewolves, along with the usual spat of movie trailers and comedic shorts. Enjoy:

• An American Werewolf in London (trailer)
• The Wolf Man (1941) (trailer)
• Futurama Episode: The Honking (sorry, vid not online)
• The Howling: Director Joe Dante's tribute to the werewolf movie isn't the finest example of the genre (heck, it isn't even the finest werewolf movie of 1981, which is a distinction that belongs to An American Werewolf in London), but his obvious enthusiasm comes through during the proceedings, and it's hard to dislike the results. The story follows a TV reporter who takes a trip into the countryside after she has a disturbing experience with a serial killer. Werewolf-laden hijinks ensue. Again, it's quite entertaining, and the werwolf movie staple of the transformation scene is handled well by makeup expert Rob Bottin. Lots of references and visual puns, and the gorgeous Elisabeth Brooks make the film nice to look at, despite the low budget (Dante was a graduate of Roger Corman's low-budget school of filmmaking, so he knew how to stretch a buck). A solid, entertaining werewolf movie, but not fine cinema. What did I learn from this movie? When your vegetarian boyfriend starts tearing into some ribs with glee, he has most likely become a werewolf. ***
• How to Make Yourself a Pinhead
• Dracula (teaser)
• Young Frankenstein (trailer)
• The Monster Squad: A bunch of kids battle the classic Universal monsters in the suburbs. So this one is kinda cheating, as it's not primarily a werewolf movie, but it does feature a werewolf along with several other iconic monsters. Lead by Dracula, the monsters include the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Frankenstein monster, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. If The Howling was a tribute to werewolf movies, this is a tribute to the whole stable of Universal monster movies. This time, the filmmakers embrace their B-movie roots and the result is a fun and charming movie. This is a movie that sorta mixes 80s horror-comedy (stuff like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, etc...) with the kiddie adventure genre (Goonies, Explorers, Space Camp, etc...) to reasonable success (not sure why the kiddie adventure genre doesn't get more love these days - perhaps because the movies are so very unrealistic). It's great fun, if a little silly. What did I learn from this movie? Indeed, the most famous thing about the movie is the werewolf anatomy lesson. ***
• The Wolf Man (1999) (cartoon short by Tim Hope)
• Grindhouse: Werewolf Women Of The S.S. (fake trailer)
• Teen Wolf (trailer)
• The Company of Wolves: Neil Jordan's nightmare about wolves and deep, dark forests that evokes and explores the Little Red Riding Hood story. The film is stylish, dark and moody, with a rather strange narrative structure. The film is literally the dream of a modern-day girl, but within the dream, it features several stories centering around wolves (most of the stories are told by Granny in an apparent attempt to scare our heroine away from men). This winds up seeming a bit hokey, but the creepy atmosphere is undeniable and Jordan is a talented director. The werewolves in the film are interesting (and the transformations handled well) in that when the transformation is complete, the wolf looks like, well, a regular wolf (not a man-like wolf creature). The film does feature one of the most interesting werewolf moments that I've seen. The father character heads out into the woods with a mob to hunt down a wolf that's been terrorizing the village. Successful, the father cuts off one of the wolf's paws as a trophy... but when he returns home, the paw has transformed into a human hand. Spooky. A little more artistic than the other movies this week, but ultimately, this movie could have used a bit more focus. What did I learn from this movie? Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle (because, you know, he's probably a werewolf). **1/2

All in all, a pretty entertaining week. Perhaps sometime in the next four weeks, I can pull together a group large enough to play the Werewolf mind game. I'm not sure what next week's schedule will hold in store, but it will probably be more of a mixed bag, rather than the themed weeks I've been doing.

In an effort to further steal from kernunrex, I picked up a pack of Halloween Jones Soda this week... I chose the not-so-adventurous Blood Orange flavor, which I really liked a lot (though it's a pretty standard orange soda style flavor, it's still tasty). Up next will be the Candy Corn flavor.



The Moon
A few years ago, The Onion put out a book called Our Dumb Century. It was comprised of a series of newspaper front pages, one from each year. It was an interesting book, in part because of the events they chose to represent each year and also because The Onion writers are hilarious. The most brilliant entry in the book was from the 1969 edition of the paper:


Utterly brilliant. You can't read it on that small copy, but there's a whole profanity-laden exchange between Houston and Tranquility Base that's also hysterically funny. As it turns out, The Onion folks went ahead and made a video, complete with archival footage and authentic sounding voices, beeps, static, etc... Incredibly funny. [video via Need Coffee]

Update: Weird, I tried to embed the video in this post, but when you click play it says it's no longer available... but if you go directly to youtube, you can get the video. I'm taking out the embedded video and putting in the link for now.



Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 1 - The Friday the 13th Edition
I stumbled upon Kernunrex's annual six weeks of Halloween posts a bit late last year, so I only did four weeks myself. This year, I'm prepared. This is my favorite time of the year, and like Kernunrex, I think it's a great excuse to explore one of my favorite genres.

When else can you impersonate another person all day and not be arrested? On what other day would it be socially acceptable to decorate your yard with imitation corpses? Only during Halloween do hollow, burning fruit look good on your porch. Most of all, Halloween somehow makes most everyone in the country a fan of my favorite genre. One day just isn't enough for this type of fun; I make it six weeks.

Excellent. To start things off, I watched some Friday the 13th movies. I've seen most of them before, but mostly only in pieces. Last year, I revisted the original, this year, I've revisted the next three installments.

• Friday the 13th (trailer)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (trailer)
• Freddy vs. Jason (trailer)
• Friday the 13th Part 2: Though he makes a surprise appearance in the original film, this film is the first to feature Jason Voorhees as the primary villain. Alas, he has not yet donned his trademark hockey mask, instead sticking with a pillowcase with an eye hole cut out (this is rather less menacing, but it works I guess). Years after the first movie, a new campground is set up as a camp counselor training school and a group of teens arrives to learn... and DIE! The movie features some nice bits, including the trademark POV shots, creepy music, a nice campfire story about the "legend" of Jason Voorhees, and many ominous shots of someone's legs as they approach. There's a little more T&A here, but the kills became a bit stale (perhaps because they were running out of things to steal from Mario Bava's Bay of Blood). Strangely, a lot of people seem to survive this film, never to be mentioned again in the series. Other plot holes abound as well, a rather neat trick considering the simple plot. I know, I know, what should I expect? Not much, and this film obliges. Still, it's reasonable fun if you're into this sort of thing. **
• Halloween (trailer)
• Grindhouse: Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• Scourge of the Undead (fake trailer)
• Friday the 13th Part III: Yet another group of kids vacationing at Crystal Lake run afowl of Jason Vorhees (in 3-D!). This film takes place right after the second film. Lots of news reports about the murders from the night before, and more people keep piling up. This film marks the first appearance of Jason's iconic hockey mask as well as Jason's uncanny ability with a spear-gun (I mean, he hit her right in the eye!) I watched the film in 2-D, but you can obviously see the bits that were meant to be 3-D, many of which are just plain stupid (i.e. a shot of a kid holding a baseball bat, awkwardly pointed directly at the camera). There are a couple of shots that would probably have worked well (the aformentioned spear-gun thingy was pretty cool, as was a nice eye-popping incident). Structurally, the film resembles the original in most ways, right up to the crazy old man giving warnings and the "surprise" ending (which just begs for a sequel). Altogether a better film than the second, but not much and still a little sloppy. **
  
  
  Jason Voorhees
  
• Jason Vorhees cameo on Family Guy
• A Scooby Friday (Robot Chicken)
• Horror Movie Big Brother (Robot Chicken)
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: The fourth film in the series is far from the titular "final" chapter, but it's also perhaps the most enjoyable and best produced installment since the original. This one picks up right after the third film, with the police carting off all the bodies, including the supposedly dead Jason. Obviously, havoc is wreaked at the morgue and Jason makes his way back to camp Crystal Lake, just in time for a new group of kids to arrive at their rented house for fun... and death! Unlike the no-name actors in the first three films (not counting Kevin Bacon), this one features two (count 'em) bona-fide C-list stars: a young Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover (just before his breakout role as George McFly - I don't know how I didn't put this together before now)! Visually, this film seemed to be more polished and less sloppy than the others. Of course, the film basically covers the same ground as the others. Lotsa dead kids, mostly dispatched in unimaginitive ways, and all the standard horror cliches. Oh, I guess the "shadow-death" (where a stabbing is shown with shadows thrown by lightning) is pretty cool, and it also has the scariest moment of the series so far: Crispin Glover dancing to some horrible 80s song (it's too insane to describe - watch the video)! Also worth noting is the truly epic amount of damage Jason sustains during the proceedings. Weasello recaps:

  Jason actually dies twice in this movie. Well, to be more precise, he begins dead as the last movie (sorta) ended. He comes alive in the morgue, however, and proceeds to: Get his hand sliced three times by a machette, get his hand cut nearly in half (between the fingers) by a machette, a machette slash/embedded into his chest under the left armpit, 16 hammer bashes to the head, 1 hammer claw embedded in the back of the neck, a computer monitor bashed onto head (and as a result, a few seconds of electrocution, even though the monitor wasn't plugged in), then... to trump all other injuries.. the trusty machette nearly cleaves Jason's head in twain, horizontally. It enters the left side of his head, stopping at about the nose, cutting right through the eyeball. Jason then collapses to the ground, and the knife gets pushed slowly through his head as it hits the floor. Jason then twitches a few times before being hacked at an additional 15 times with the machette. I fear he has finally "died."

  Of course, despite the title of this movie, the ending screams sequel. Ok, so not fine cincema, but one of the better installments of this series so far. **1/2

One of the most interesting things about the series so far is the surprising restraint that has been shown. Sure, the series is more violent and gory than, say, the original Halloween, but Jason barely appears in the first 30-40 minutes of most installments (and thus the kill count is surprisingly low), and you often don't see his mask or face until even later in the movie (in part IV, you don't see the mast until 1 hour and 9 minutes into the movie). Another interesting bit: there don't appear to be much in the way of guns in these movies. There are some projectile weapons, but it's mostly bladed stuff. Of course, later installments have lots of guns, but I'm surprised by the lack of guns in the first few installments. I've quite enjoyed revisiting the series so far, though I think I'll take a break to get some variety into the SWoH. Or maybe I'll just check out Sleepaway Camp. Heh. In any case, if you're a fan of the series, I highly recommend Weasello's fun writeups on E2. Well, that about wraps up week 1. Stay tuned next weekend for some Werewolf fuelled fun.

Also, since we're pretty early in the season, feel free to leave some recommendations in the comments. I have a bunch of movies in my queue, but nothing I consider very essential, so recommendations are welcome.



Probing Video Games
Clive Thompson's latest video game article is about how players of online video games collaborate, analyze and develop strategies for beating difficult bosses. One example he gives is a game called Lineage, where groups of 150 players stage assaults on fiendishly difficult enemies. Constance Steinkuehler, a game academic at the University of Wisconsin, was fascinated with the game and how the players were able to quickly identify and exploit weanesses in the bosses. She eventually figured out how her teenage compatriots were accomplishing the feat:

A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they’d dump all the information they’d gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they’d develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked — and to predict how to beat it.

Often, the first model wouldn’t work very well, so the group would argue about how to strengthen it. Some would offer up new data they’d collected, and suggest tweaks to the model.

Sound familiar? I've often mentioned Steven Berlin Johnson's book, Everything Bad is Good For You on this blog, with particular focus on the concepts of probing, telescoping and decision-making. The process of probing a game (or in this case, an enemy), developing a hypothesis, reprobing, and then rethinking the hypothesis is essentially the same thing as the scientific method or the hermenutic circle.

Steinkuehler also studied a popular World of Warcraft message board to see what the folks there were talking about. It turns out that people there are mostly doing science!

Only a minority of the postings were “banter” or idle chat. In contrast, a majority — 86 percent — were aimed specifically at analyzing the hidden ruleset of games.

More than half the gamers used “systems-based reasoning” — analyzing the game as a complex, dynamic system. And one-tenth actually constructed specific models to explain the behavior of a monster or situation; they would often use their model to generate predictions. Meanwhile, one-quarter of the commentors would build on someone else’s previous argument, and another quarter would issue rebuttals of previous arguments and models.

I've never actually played WoW, but I find this behavior fascinating. Towards the end of the article, Thompson talks about education:

And here’s the thing: The (mostly) young people engaging in these sciencelike conversations are precisely the same ones who are, more and more, tuning out of science in the classroom. Every study shows science literacy in school is plummeting, with barely one-fifth of students graduating with any sort of sense of how the scientific method works. The situation is far worse for boys than girls.

Steinkuehler thinks videogames are the way to reverse this sorry trend. She argues that schools ought to be embracing games as places to show kids the value of scientific scrutiny — the way it helps us make sense of the world.

That would certainly make for an interesting class. As I've noted before, it should be interesting to see if video games ever really catch on as learning tools. There have been a lot of attempts at this sort of thing, but they're often stifled by the reputation of video games being a "colossal waste of time" (in recent years, the benefits of gaming are being acknowledged more and more, though not usually as dramatically as Johnson does in his book).



Clone Wars & Context
Not too long ago, I mentioned that George Lucas' involvement in a project usually does not bode well for that project. I admit to a certain amount of bandwagon-jumping there, but at the same time, I think it's justified. Jeff Jenson at EW thinks otherwise:

But the haters got it wrong — about The Clone Wars, about Lucas (''Sellout''? What does that even mean these days?), and about the current state of Star Wars in general. Missing from much of the overheated bashing of The Clone Wars was the crucial point that it was made for kids, not the grown-ups for whom the original trilogy remains (ridiculously) sacred. Several reviews simply revisited and rehashed the bitter disdain many adult Star Wars fans have for the prequel trilogy. I get that bitterness. But my young Star Wars-loving children don't, nor do the kids who were raised on the prequels and (heresy!) actually liked them.

Now, I was one of the few who plunked down their $10 to see the latest Clone Wars movie, and I do think that hyperbolic response of movie critics was unjustified. The movie is nothing special, but it does not deserve to be among the worst movies of the year. For all its failings, it's still well made and it contains a coherent story (albeit, not much of one). So why the disproportionate response? I think the answer is context.

First, everyone heard the story behind the release of this film. Namely that Lucasfilm was putting together a TV series for Cartoon Network, and that after producing the Pilot episode, they decided to put it in the theaters to see if they could rake in some more cash from mopes like myself. Jenson wonders in his article what "sellout" even means these days, and it's a fair point I guess, but it's pretty obvious that this is a pure money grab on Lucasfilms' part. I'm reminded once again of David Foster Wallace's¹ brilliant essay, F/X Porn, where he discusses some of the business decisions that drove the plot of T2:

The studio backing for "T2'''s wildly sophisticated and digital F/X therefore depends on Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to reprise his Terminator role. Now the ironies start to stack, though, because it turns out that Schwarzenegger -- or perhaps more accurately "Schwarzenegger, Inc.," or "Ahnodyne" -- has decided that playing any more malevolent cyborgs would compromise the Leading Man image his elite and bankable record of ROI entails. He will do the film only if "T2"'s script is somehow engineered to make the Terminator the Good Guy. Not only is this vain and stupid and shockingly ungrateful [12], it is also common popular knowledge, duly reported in both the trade and the popular entertainment media before "T2" even goes into production. There's consequently a weird postmodern tension to the way we watch the film; we're aware of what the bankable star's demands were, and we're also aware of how much the movie cost and how important bankable stars are to a big-budget movie; and so one of the few things that keeps us on the edge of our seats during the movie is our suspense about whether James Cameron can possibly weave a plausible, non-cheesy narrative that meets Schwarzenegger's career needs without betraying "T1"'s precedent.

(emphasis mine) Like T2, the production and financial situation of The Clone Wars was duly reported and common knowledge among the public before the film's release. We know what we're watching is simply an episode in a TV series, which automatically knocks it down a peg due to the negative connotations of TV. Add on the perceived greed of releasing it in theaters and marketing it to the traditional Star Wars fanbase (while it may certainly be more suitable for children, as Jenson notes, I don't remember it being marketed that way), and it goes down another peg or two.

Second, the stakes of the film are rather low. This is most likely the result of its TV heritage, as it would have been fine as a pilot episode for a series that will most likely continue to develop the various strands that were introduced in the movie. But when you put it in the theaters, you're begging to compare it to the other 6 films. While the prequels tend to be a bit muddled in terms of plot, the stakes are clearly high. And the original trilogy has even higher stakes. Furthermore, the movie can't even approach the stakes of the first Clone Wars series (more on this later).

Third, the tension is non-existent because the film takes place between Episode II and Episode III. In addition, the grand majority of the characters in the movie are also in Episode III, so, for instance, we know that the duel between Anakin and Count Dooku will result in a draw. Ah, but how can I say that when I also like the original Clone Wars series? It's easy. That series came out before Episode III. Furthermore, while that series featured many of the same characters as the movies, it also featured a whole slew of Jedi who were not main characters in the movies. So when these normally peripheral Jedi are placed in the spotlight and cornered by General Grievous, there is a genuine feeling of suspense (incidentally, Grievous was a great, menacing character in the series - making him a total letdown in Episode III, where he turned out to be an incompetent, cowardly weenie).

Yes, many of these complaints have very little to do with the craft or skill that went into the movie, but context matters. Whether it's expectations, innovation or the crowd you saw a film with, it's clear that context makes a big difference. For a movie that takes place in a beloved SF universe with a grand tradition, context matters even more, which is why I think you can see a lot of exaggerated complaints in reviews. To be sure, it's not a great film, but it's not one of the year's worst either.

¹ - Surprisingly, it seems that David Foster Wallace was found dead recently. I guess I should dust off my unread copy of Infinite Jest and give it a read sometime. Perhaps after I finish Anathem.



Goodbye, Trackbacks
So while I am able to write a post now, the problem of the mysterious core dumps is still apparently not solved. I logged into my account last night to find that I had a nice 2 gb of core dumps in my movable type directory. These files must have accumulated during the past few weeks, and it's obvious that my original posting problem wasn't the only malfunction that was creating core dumps. In any case, I checked the system again tonight and found about 600 mb of files in my account. Great. At least that narrows it down a little, as I haven't logged in to MT since last night. So if it's not something I'm doing in MT, it's got to be something that is accessible to everyone, like comments or trackbacks. After some halfassed troubleshooting, I was able to cause a core dump by sending a legitimate trackback to my site. Somehow I doubt that's the only thing causing a problem, but clearly, it needs to go.

Trackbacks were a nice idea, but in reality, they've gone down as something of a debacle. The general concept is to provide a way for one blogger to notify another blogger when they've linked to their blog. So I write a post that links to another blog, and I can "ping" that blog to let the author of that blog know that I've linked to them. In addition, a link back to my post appears on their post. Sounds nice, right? And it is... when it works. The problem is that the system is completely open, so the spammers had a field day. And the trackback management functionality (including anti-spam measures) has always lagged behind comment functionality, so there always seemed to be problems. In other words, trackbacks basically became useless, and a maintenance nightmare. Also, the implementations of the trackback protocol on different blogging engines tended to be a bit strange (Wordpress blogs can never seem to ping my blog successfully.)

The general concept still exists in other forms. Aggregators like Technorati are partially driven by Pings. They deal with spam too (among other issues), but again, the concept remains valid. Six Apart and others are attempting to rework the concept, at which point it might prove useful again.

Alas, it will not exist on this blog anymore. Of course it's not a big loss. During the 8 year tenure of this blog, I've received exactly 11 legitimate trackbacks. I have no idea how many spam trackbacks I've received, but it's somewhere around way too fucking many.

All of which is to say that I'm mucking around with my blog's templates, so things might appear wonky for a bit. If you're having problems, feel free to email me (or post a comment, as that seems to work fine).

Update: Author comments. It's funny, I really should have removed trackbacks a long time ago. I guess I'm just lazy. Let's just call it blog template inertia. Oh, and there was also at least 2 occasions where I thought to myself, I should remove trackbacks! They're useless!, at which point I would receive a few trackbacks in the next couple days. But the last one was well over a year, and the core dumps provided a convenient excuse. Incidentally, only 160 mb of core dumps in the past day since I removed trackbacks. Hurm.



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