Those RIAA Jackasses......

...are at it again.

Read this.

Without getting into this subject too deeply, years of precedent establishes that what the RIAA is arguing here about personal copies is simply not a winning argument. Those folks need to get more serious about finding a new business model, and they need to stop harassing people who are still buying CDs. I'm not in favor of piracy, but fair use has a long history in this country, and frankly, the RIAA guys are outnumbered by generation iPod.

Just Watch This

http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/video_eng.htm

Amazing.

Salt

So, there's this:


FDA considers salt warning labels

Now, what annoys me about this is the very last sentence: "The question tonight is whether the government should be limiting your salt intake for you."

The idea that the government should have the right to tell me, directly or indirectly, how much salt I consume is anathema. I understand the science of it and the risks, but this just isn't one of those things the government should be concerned with. If I want to eat nothing but salt until I keel over and die, that's my problem.

I'm aware that there's a public health crisis in this country, that we're overweight and that we eat too much, and on and on and on. I'm aware that those things contribute to rising health care costs.

But, having taken the consumer out of the health care equation via what's effectively insurance company price fixing and customer insensitivity to prices, there's no reason to then replace that consumer with Big Brother, who tells me what I can and can't eat, in what quantities, and how often.

Blog Tag

All right, so "tag" as a note to my previous post wasn't just taunting me, I've been tagged.

Here are the rules:

• Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
  
• Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
  
• Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
  
• Let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.
  

My tagger? Am.

Five facts about myself, some random, some weird?

• I learned to read at a very young age. I got caught cheating while reading to my uncle from my copy of The Little Engine That Could. While turning pages, I skipped one. My reading didn't. I'd memorized it. I was probably about three years old.


• My family says that I started talking in complete sentences. The first words I'm alleged to have said are, "There ain't no train on them there tracks. There sure ain't."


• I'm a foodie, but I don't care for most beans and peas.


• I haven't been to Europe yet.


• I don't like going to movies alone.

I'll tag Charlie Girl and Valerie.

The rest of the folks I'd have tagged have, well, already been tagged.

The Return of Movie Night

Movie Night has returned, and it even has its own blog.

http://nutbushmovienight.blogspot.com/

Re: tag, marco, etc. I know, I know, I've been neglectful.

Expect more in this space shortly, as soon as I figure out what it is I want to say.

Old Jobs, New Jobs, etc.

So I've left the job I had since 2003. It's time for me to learn the family business.

Before all that, though, taking a brief break. Making a movie, my first movie. Trying to watch a few movies, too, and reviving an old tradition a friend and I have, Movie Night.

The Netflix movies sit, unwatched, on my shelf for the time being.

So my Queue is static. That's depressing.

Bonditis

So, the world waits in anticipation of Bonds's breaking Hank's record.

It's like time's stopped. Everyone's wondering when it will happen and where they'll be; women are crying in the streets, so overcome are they by the emotion and the anticipation. As at a parade, children want to be lifted up onto their dad's shoulders so that they can see, and everywhere he goes, there's a low solemn chant, as though the rocks and trees themselves are rooting for him. Barry, Barry, Barry!. He's truly a force of nature.

No, wait. I was thinking of Barry Manilow.

Because about Bonds, nobody seems to care. And that's as it should be, really.

I have a malevolent fantasy that Bonds will get hit by a bus, fall into a crevasse, or decide to saw off his own arm, before he makes his next home run and never be heard from again.

I don't often follow sports, and I bear the man no real ill will. I've heard he's a bastard. But he's not been to me.

It's just that, if he never hits that next home run (and especially if he'd never hit that last one), then all will still be right with the world. Hank is still Hank.

In any case, I suppose, Hank is still Hank.

And Bonds is still Bonds, no matter how many steroid-enhanced home runs he hits.

People call Hank by his first name. That's a sign of affection and respect for the man and his accomplishment.

And that'll never be the case with Bonds. Because he's a poser and a pretender. This would be a sad time to care about baseball.

Note to Self

Note to Self: never plan to elaborate on a blogger post. Either elaborate, or don't. Then move on to the next post.

Like this one: Zodiac was one of the better movies I've seen from 2006. Also this week, I watched the first Mutiny on the Bounty--the one with Clark Gable.

What the two have to do with one another, I'm not sure.

Zodiac was interesting because it didn't end conventionally, and it's not about (really) what it at first seems to be concerned with. The killer's the point, up to a point. And then it's about the investigators. And that's a neat turn of events. Beyond that, I don't want to say much, because the movie's worth seeing if you haven't seen it. I wasn't as blown away by it as I was by Se7en (because of the latter's always raining, always dark, any-city, bombed-out noir look), but I have a feeling that it wold grow on me with repeated viewings. I think this is one for the library, once the two-disc expanded edition comes out.

Mutiny on the Bounty. About this flick, I have similar thoughts to movies like Lawrence of Arabia. How'd they do that without computerized special effects? Rain, wind, sailing ships, high places, and danger. And a script that pops with energy. I'm not sure it hangs together all that well toward the end--the love interest feels forced--but Clark Gable made one hell of a Fletcher Christian.

The Muppet Show

So I bought Season One of The Muppet Show.

It's different than I remembered, but then I'm only three episodes in.

A good deal of it is corny, and there's a lot -- a lot -- of music. The band is really pretty darn good -- as you might imagine.

It's not as laugh-out-loud funny as I expected.

But I have some other, slightly more depressing thoughts about it. I'll post those as soon as I've had a chance to watch a few more episodes to make sure my working hypothesis holds water.

I still love The Muppet Show. And I miss Jim Henson.

Back, After a Long Absence

I'm back.

I'm not sure why, exactly.

I've been so busy with the real world that posting hasn't been much of a concern lately.

Earlier in the year, I finally opened a Netflix acount. And I thought I'd review the movies I was watching as I was watching them.

But then I got a work-related promotion, and I haven't had a chance to take full advantage of the Netflix account.

Anyway, here's a very quick rundown.

Directors: Martin Scorsese. Made around the time of the release of Casino, if I recall correctly. Interesting, not particularly relevatory. I suspect I'd sen this at some point in the past. Video quality was subpar.

Idiocracy. Hilarious. See it.

The Illusionist. Or was that The Prestige?

The Prestige. Or was that The Illusionist?

Seriously, both of these were decent flicks. But they've run together in my mind so that I can't distinguish them. And it wasn't that long ago that I saw them.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Great flick; the Roger Ebert review of this one says more than I'm capable of saying about this film. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I did keep thinking, how is it that this guy's last name is so much like Lecter? That was disturbing.

The Island. Better than I expected it to be. Not quite as good as it should have been. But still, it was striving not to suck.

Babel. Maybe it's just me, but I hated this movie. It was boring. And no movie ha a right to bore me.

Grizzly Man. Excellent. Creepy. I wanted more depth, though. That guy was seriously deranged.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Maybe I didn't get it. And I generally like Robert Altman. But this movie was kind of dull. Of course, it didn't help that it looked prefectly dreadful on DVD -- this one clearly needs a good cleaning.

Vernon, Florida. A meandering, strange, and invigorating look at a bunch of really strange people in a really small town. This one has to be seen to be believed. And I saw it, and I'm not sure I believe it. Its tone is such that it's difficult to tell whether Morris likes these folks or has contempt for them. Or both. This one is worth seeing for the voices alone. Those folks can tell some stories, now.

World Trade Center. Better than I expected. Not as moving as I wanted it to be. Too much structure. Should have been more raw.

Vanya on 42nd Street. Louis Malle's last film. David Mamet did the adaptation. It's an odd movie. I think it's a pretty good one. But it seems now to be dated. And I can't remember where I've seen the lead actor before; his presence was jarring because I knew who he was from some other move but couldn't quite remember where. An whatever the other movie was, it was definitely not Vanya-like. (N.b. I was thinking about Wallace Shawn, and I was thinking of his part in The Incredibles, which is, by the way, incredible.)

The Last King of Scotland. Forrest Whitaker deserved his Oscar. This one mostly made me want to see the documentary about the real Idi Amin. I'm not sure that the movie did enough to convey the real horror there. It seemed kind of sanitized.

The Good Shepherd. Too long. Too contrived. Too much didn't earn its story; by that statement, I mean that the movie makes reference to events like the Bay of Pigs and expects you to fill in the blanks with your own conspiratorial thoughts about them all. I know (more or less) what happened at the Bay of Pigs. But the movie, for all its length, felt like it didn't really deal with what it was trying to deal with. I think I admire it for what it was trying to do, story-wise, but the main characters weren't sympathetic, or even especially likable. And if you're going to make a movie about the CIA, you'd better have a great plot twist. This one didn't.

Next up: the original Mutiny on the Bounty.