I'm already a woman, it won't work on me.

I caught The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy today before slipping out of town to raft for the weekend.

Unfortunately, it's not that good. It just falls flat as a movie. It's reasonably faithful to the source material, it keeps much of the zaniness of the book, but doesn't trust itself to get completely absorbed by it. It tries to add some semblance of structure to the whole thing, which just feels tacked on. I don't blame them, as I don't think they could have made a good movie on pure whimsy either. I think they might have just been screwed from the outset. I'm a big movie fan, and a big fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide books - and I'm coming up with blanks about how to turn it all into a reasonable movie. The best I can do is suggest more zaniness paired with more naration to hold the whole thing in place.

The visualizations of all the things I've read about were fantastic. They were all slightly wrong to me (since I've visualized them differently while reading) but I was comfortable with all of them - with one exception - the magrathea hovercraft just felt wrong.

As a big fan the only scene I really missed was when the philosophers busted in on deep though revealing the answer. That's my favorite moment in the book, and skipping it in the movie caused a sad twinge inside me.

Overall, fans of the source material might like it. It might be the great whimsical visualization you've been waiting for. Others might use the movie like a gateway drug. After seeing it they might be curious for more and go start reading the books, to be sucked into their irreverant grasp. But I suspect most people will just go "huh? that was silly and not all that funny." I know the theater I was in was three quarters full and there wasn't a lot of laughter.

The one big exception was when they said the line I quoted above. That got lots of laughs. Plus, it had a bonus of being just after the best acting moment of the movie (care of Trillian.) That's probably why it got the laughs, you know, a comedic moment to relieve tension from a serious one...

My recommendation: spend the 10 bucks on the book. After the two hours you would have been watching this in the theater you'll be halfway through (it's a fast read) and will have laughed much more. If not, you can return the book - the theater won't let you return your ticket.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent then dolphins because he has achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever don was much about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of my three favorite books (for reference: the other two are Ender's Game and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.) I always worry a bit about properties I really like getting converted into movies since it's such a hit and miss prospect and even if they do it right it's unlikely that they'll please true fans. Sin City proved it can be done, but the odds aren't good.

I'm especially hesitant because my favorite part of Hitchhiker's Guide is it's whimsical and random wit. This book has no focus and makes asides all the time to talk about off the wall things (the quote above, where all the ball point pens disappear to, the nature of political power in the galaxy, the ravenous bugblatter beast of traal, how to mix a pan-galactic gargle blaster and the award winning fjords of Norway are all good examples.) The problem with a movie format is you just can't take that many turns away from the plot without leaving the audience behind. I've read some Hitchhiker's Guide fans really enjoyed the movie, which gives me hope. Some people have talked about the wicked fast pace, which could be from a ton of asides thrown in. I certainly hope so.

Even though they're sure to leave out tons of stuff, the story itself will still be imbued with whimsy and ridiculousness. As I've talked about before it's tough to sustain a movie on whimsy alone. If you stop and think about the plot, racing around the galaxy in a stolen spaceship powered by a probability manipulation device - which causes improbable things like a pair nuclear warheads turning into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale - with no real purpose or ending, it's hard to get much more whimsical then that.

I find people who enjoy satire, wit, and whimsy enjoy the Hitchhiker's Guide book. I expect that same set of people to enjoy the movie - even if it's in a mediocre effort. Source material this rich just can't get diluted that far. And Douglas Adams (the author) was heavily involved in the pre-production until his untimely death a few years ago - so that lends some legitimacy.

Rereading this whole thing it sounds like I'm just enumerating all the ways this could end up being bad. I think that's a self defense mechanism for me: I am really excited about this movie. I love the book and want badly for the movie to be an excellent alternate way for me to enjoy the Hitchhiker's universe. So all this waffling I'm doing here is just me trying to keep my expectations reasonable. I still expect to be there on Friday night like a good fanboy.

And if nothing else, Alan Rickman doing the voicework for Marvin the super-intelligent permanently depressed robot is a stroke of casting genius.

It's appropriate to invoke the company's name on issues of public policy that directly affect our business and our shareholders, but it's much less clear when it's appropriate to invoke the company's name on broader issues that go far beyond the software industry and on which our employees and shareholders hold widely divergent opinions.

Friends have been asking me about what's going on with Microsoft and Washington House Bill 1515, which would add sexual orientation protection into the state civil rights statute.

I don't have any information that's not in the public domain. Also, I didn't even know this whole thing was happening until Steve Balmer (MS CEO) sent a company wide email about it on Friday evening. Today I did some reading (including tons of blog posts) to try to piece it all together.

First of all, I mostly agree with the above quote from the memo. It's unclear whether it's appropriate from a business standpoint for Microsoft to take an official corporate stand on things like this. That's not really the purpose of the company, which is to make money. That said, I think we all would like to see our corporations acting like responsible citizens, standing up for the things they believe in. Trying to make the world a better place, instead of just trying to get some it's the world's money. Of course, we supported it in the past and a few other big name companies continue to support it including Boeing, Coors, Nike, HP, Vulcan and Washington Mutual. It doesn't seem like too radical of a thing in the corporate world.

I also really want to believe Steve. He's a good guy, and a good corporate leader. But some of the articles I've read (New York Times, Seattle times, and especially The Stranger) don't really corroborate Steve's story. Where I stand is this: if Microsoft wants to change it's public policy profile that's fine, there are good business reasons to do so. But if they make those changes they have to own them, and the email I got on Friday makes me think they're trying to spin this thing a little too hard. That said, I don't have enough information to really know what's going on and I hope the dust settles a little over the next week and we can see more clearly. For now, I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what happened.

This whole issue reminds me of my work a decade ago to try to get similar legislation added to Oregon's civil rights statute. I don't see why things like this are so threatening to people. No one wants to be discriminated against because of things unrelated to their job performance, or ability to take care of an apartment they're renting. But I guess if you can't identify with the group being discriminated against it's easier to watch it happen (or encourage it in too many cases.)

I always wished I was really loaded so I could pull a PR stunt. I'd buy some blue collar style company with 50-100 employees. First order of business after I get into the new office is to interview every employee. It's a one question interview: "are you gay or straight?" Anyone who responds that they're straight gets fired on the spot. Does that sound unfair to you? Under current Washington State law this is 100% legal, and all this bill was doing is trying to make that discrimination illegal.

And for those of you that complain that this will lead to people being paralyzed for fear of discrimination lawsuits, I'm not worried. My Dad spent most of his career being an employment discrimination attorney. I heard stories about people that were very clearly screwed over, and they had a really tough time winning those cases. Discriminateion cases are tough: the burden of proof is on the victim and you have to show the motive behind the firing was race, sex, age, etc. It's usually not that clear cut. Besides, would we all like to live in a society where you couldn't be summarily fired, or denied housing, or insurance, just because of who you find attractive?

Explain one thing to me. What kind of desperate and pathetic emotional cripple would actually buy that as an ending?

After all those dark and tragic movies I needed something a bit lighter. I found it in the very enjoyable Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. This movie was fun, witty and sweet - which is really all you can ask for in a romantic comedy like this.

I've heard some people complain that it's formulaic. Sure, so what? There's a reason we have formulas in our popular entertainment, they work. Sometimes people want to see real life, in all it's grittiness and darkness. But sometimes they just want to pop some popcorn, have some fun, and watch a fairy tale. There's nothing wrong with formula movies, there's just lots wrong with badly made formula movies. Fortunately this isn't one of those.

Both Tohper Grace and Kate Bosworth were wonderful, have good chemistry, and a great screen presense. Sure, the movie sometimes strayed into humor that didn't fit (the montage as Rosalee goes to LA is the most striking example) but it's not too distracting. Overall the whole thing does what it's supposed to: shows the audience a good time and reinstates your faith in romance. What more could you ask?


Notes:
1. The ending was both cute and clever. I was impressed and didn't even see it coming until it happened.
2. Another favorite quote:
Sometimes it happens that way. Sometimes Goliath kicks the shit out of David - but nobody bothers to tell that story.

we guard against risks that are most likely to occur and that, if they do occur, will cost the company the most money... I've been wondering ? as I watch spending on national security continue to skyrocket, with diminishing marginal returns ? why we as a nation can't apply this same logic to national security spending.

Bruce Schneier, one of my favorite bloggers who writes about security concerns and issues, pointed me to an article written by an anonymous CSO (Chief Security Officer) about our National Security Priorities. He proposes that if we take a pragmatic approach to our spending we could be much more effective in keeping our population safe.

Read the article here.

This resonates with me quite a bit. I think it's reasonable to define the purpose of government as an organization that provides societal infrastructure and services that we feel to be universal. The key is how do we measure our progress against those goals? In the corporate security world the goal is to save the company money. In this essay the CSO suggests that the way we should measure out defense spending is by reducing the number of American deaths. This leads him to suggest a large scale moving of resources from anti-terrorism spending to health care improvements - since nine of the ten top ten causes of death in the US are health related.

He slips up a little here though. The problem with reducing health related deaths as a goal is that as people grow older they have health problems. At some point everyone will die, and most of the time it will be health related. The key focus should be prolonging life. That's why things like homicide, terrorism and automobile accidents are such great targets for prevention. Those are people who die far before their time. By reducing those causes of death you get a great return on your efforts.

Other leaders like heart disease, cancer and stroke might require some statistical analysis. Overall it's not that hard a problem though. Make our national priorities two fold: rise the average lifespan and intensely target reasons why people fall significantly short of that average. [1] This is something the government can do, it's just a matter of deciding what our real spending priorities are.

Regardless, the selection of priorities is a little more complicated then suggested in the article. But the idea is sound. Sometimes you need a leader to step back and take a holistic view of priorities and spending. Without that kind of broad scale vision organizational inertia takes over.

I think one of the reasons the country is so divided these days is that President Bush is the kind of leader that is taking a broad scale look at the government and re-organizing it to fit his vision. The problem is his vision is radically different from what many of us would like to see over here on the left end of the spectrum.

It's funny, I used to hate organizational inertia. I thought it was a big impediment to true progress. But now that I'm watching Bush remold the government with remarkable effectiveness and speed I'm wishing we had more of it. That's really the whole point right? Big organizations are supposed to move slowly, that's how we stick to the right path. There are lots of different ideas about the way things should be run, and I hold no illusions that mine are absolutely correct and large parts of the country are absolutely wrong. I just have to remember these times when the whole thing is moving away from me and I want to slow it down - that way in the future when we swing it around I can be ok with the other side slowing it all down.

Notes:
1. Related to this, I think the most insulting thing Bush has done while trying to sell social security changes is to suggest that Black Americans should be for social security reforms since the system as it stands is unfair to them. Why is it unfair? The black demographic has a significantly shorter lifespan so they get less payout from the system. It's an extra special level of insulting to say we'll fix that problem by allowing people to leave some money to their heirs then to say we're going to work on upping your expected lifespan a bit. Which do you think that population would like more? I'm guess they'll vote for the extra years of life.

2. My favorite statistic from the last week is that the 56 Republicans in the US Senate, who are viciously complaining that the democrats are halting their ability to legislate and thwarting the will of the people, have fewer constituents then the 44 Senate Democrats.

- What's the title?
- The Day After Yesterday
- Oh, you mean today?

That was a surprisingly disarming moment in Sideways. Sometimes an outsider with a clear head can quickly and easily simplify a big problem you've created for yourself. It's a disarming moment, that typically make my feel like an idiot.

There's a lot going on in Sideways, but the best part was those moments where the characters were taught something new by an outsider. The two main characters are both ultra tragic. Myles acts sort of like a hunch-backed troll, while Jack can't stop perpetually womanizing. Neither has figured out how to be a balanced adult. This is sort of hard to watch, because the movie continually presents these characters with situations where their flaws cause them to make bad choices, and those bad choices cause them pain. It's like watching a horror movie and yelling at the characters for splitting up to cover more ground, but here the pain is more personal since the characters are more real (that's why the violence in Sin City is less obscene then the violence in, say, Reservoir Dogs.)

But the really interesting thing about this movie is seeing the passion and interest that Myles and Maya have for wine. It's more then just a hobby for them, it's a filter they view the world through. An allegory for what they experience in life. It's much the same way that movies and sports are for me. I relate most of my life experience to things I've seen in movies or experienced in sports. Myles and Maya relate their life experiences to their experiences with wine. This really shows in by far the best scenes of the movie when they are telling eachother why they like wines. Myles talks about why he likes Pinot and Maya talks about why she's so into wine. In those times their true selves are exposed, the superficial layers are peeled back. And true to form what they say about those wines is an allegory for how they view their place in the world.

The thing I really disliked about this movie is I never really got the friendship between Jack and Myles. The two are terrible for eachother, and I can imagine them being acquaintances left over from fun college days - but not the close friends they're supposed to be here. Their friendship just didn't jive with me and that kept me from being really engrossed by this movie.

Still, it was excellent with superb writing and acting. But Paul Giomotti deserves special not for so completely becoming Myles it was easy to forget he was acting.

Notes:
1. This was filmed and took place on the central coast of California where I went to school. It was fun to see a lot of familiar sights and terrain.

2. It feels like I've been watching a lot of dark and tragic movies recently. I think I need a feel good movie to brighten my mood, but unfortunately Netflix just sent me Monster. I think for my sanity I'm going to have to hold off watching that one.

Screw you guys, I'm going home

I'm a big computer nerd. I use computers all day long. I learn all kinds of new software just for fun. In general if I can solve a problem on a computer instead of away from a computer I choose the computer. I did my taxes by hand this year.

I started out trying to use e-file. I think the concept is great. Punch in some numbers, have the whole thing be automated. My tax dollars don't have to pay someone in the IRS office to transcribe my bad handwriting into their computer system. But after more then 20 minutes of slow page loads and asinine questions I didn't care about I gave up. I knew I could finish faster just filling out the 1040 form by hand and cut my losses. 20 minutes later (the same time it took me to get through the first third of the online thing) I was sealing an envelope and affixing a stamp.

It's not that computers aren't good way to solve the problem of doing taxes. It's just that all the solutions I've seen offered are terrible. I suppose there's a business opportunity in there, but it has the feel of a ugly area filled with regulation and liability risk. But I think the key problem are my requirements. Since my taxes only take me 20 minutes to do by hand and cost me 37 cents for a stamp any computer solution has to offer my a better value proposition. That means they either can't charge more then 37 cents, or have to offer me improvements on the current system to make it worth me spending money. But there's not a lot of room to improve upon a relitively painless 20 minute process, so it's a tough sell.

The result is for one more year I did my taxes the old fashioned way. Next year I'll see if the software has gotten any better, but I doubt it. Maybe in five years they'll get it right.

It's no longer the world of fantasy. You know, we've been living in this world where we all trusted it was going to happen and, you know, we were wrong.

I watched Left of the Dial this week, which was a great documentary look at the creation of the national liberal talk radio network, Air America. Air America is an interesting idea. Talk radio is dominated by right wing sources, so a group of liberals banded together to create their own radio station. They wanted to energize the liberal base and help defeat President Bush.

The whole thing was fascinating to me. I've done a fair amount of activism work and the same problems I've seen show up here. You have a large number of very passionate people who still have to deal with the realities of business and cash flow. Unfortunately it appears that some of the people running the show at Air America weren't very good at running business, or more accurately they played chicken with bad circumstances and lost, badly. This sent the company into a free fall where they were literally operating day to day. It's quite amazing they survived until this day.

There are two key areas of interest here. First is the insanity of a start up of this magnitude. They tried to start a national radio network, on day one. That's insane and the first quarter of the movie deals with the hectic environment that actually got them on the air. It's a reminder to all of us that new endeavors are best started small, with a manageable goal.

Second was watching these people that believe so heavily that what they are doing is truth. They believe the republicans are just plain wrong, and can't believe that smart people don't agree. Seeing their reactions when Bush won the election was an insight into humanity. A truth they held to be infallible was crumbling before them (not that republicans are wrong, I'm with them on that one, but that smart people can believe in them. For the record, I think democrats are mostly wrong too.)

Air America is still running today, and you can listen to it whenever you like at their website. Overall it was well made and interesting to watch. I think it's a must see for you liberals out there, not so sure about the people on the other side of the fence.

This had better be important or one of us is in trouble.

CJ and I tried to go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow when it was in the theaters in September, but we never managed to make it. Netflix recently sent it to me, so CJ came over and we watched it tonight.

All I can say is it's a strange movie where Angelina Jolie out acts Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Giovinni Ribisi. This movie was strictly camp, and only Jolie nailed that. The others were campy, but didn't set the right tone.

This movie has a pretty impressive visual style. It's made in a way to evoke old time movies. The color palatte is soft and everything is oversaturated. Even when they're in crazy swamps or things are exploding it still feels soft. It still feels like there are no brigjt colors. I expect that a week ago I would have been much more impressed by all this. But after watching Sin City on Friday it just doesn't rate.

That's too bad, because outside of the visual look this movie is terrible. The dialog and acting are bad, the plot is worse, and there's really not much of a reason to watch it. I guess the flying platform airships were kind of cool, but that's about it. We decided it needed some help and broke out some wine about 30 minutes in. That made it better, but certainly not good.

If you're looking for a showcase of unique visual style skip this and go see Sin City instead. It's that easy.

Her: How, how does it work. How do you do this to someone?
Him: < Shrug >
Her: Not good enough.
Him: I fell in love with her.
Her: Oh, as if you had no choice?

I've seen ads floating around that claim Closer is "finally a love story for adults." That's crap. I couldn't think of a worse way to market this film. I thought it was great, but it's certainly not a love story. This movie is not about love, only about hurt.

The truthes and lies the characters tell each other are not told from a real place, they're told to manipulate, or absolve guilt, or to destroy. There is no real building in this movie, no honesty. It's a tour of the darker sides of our nature. But this darkness isn't the darkness we often see. These characters are not dark because they are evil, they are dark because they are weak and scared. Larry puts it best:

She doesn't want to be happy.
- Everybody wants to be happy.
Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they are depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live.

Oddly enough, I thought the scene in the back room of a strip club was where the characters were most truthful. It was a place where they were intending to tell lies, but instead ended up with the truth. One was purely carnal, which was the overriding nature of his character. The other one trying to be coy, but trapped into the truth.

About halfway through the movie these characters made me think "how can we so brutally deceive the ones we love?" By the end I wasn't thinking about that, because they don't really love eachother. The question stands though. People do brutally deceive the ones they love all the time. How do they do that? Why do we put up with it?

I saw two excellent movies this weekend that were both about the dark parts of humanity, but they couldn't have been more different. Sin City was about dark, carnal, bleak, evil, strong people. Closer was about deceiving, hurtful, manipulative, weak people. Both are portrayed excellently - and it's enough to lose faith in humanity. I think I need to go watch something more uplifting.

At least the movie ends on an artistic note. The final shot of Natalie Portman walking down a busy street is a thing of beauty. The speed, extras, crowd, and music all work together wonderfully.

It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes that means killing a whole lot of people.

Sin City is depraved, disturbing, and ultra-stylized. This isn't a comic book movie, it's more like a live action comic book. Seriously, when I think back on it I feel like I watched a cartoon, except I know real people were in it.

Before I talk about how great I thought this movie was, I'll cover some ground rules. This movie has zero moral redeeming values and it ultra violent. You'll witness gunshots, blood splatters, cannibalism, and lots of creative ways to remove body parts (amputations, decapitations and castrations - yes, plural on all of those.) And you're not really dealing with nice people. The women in the movie are: a parole officer who spends most of her screen time naked, a flirty barmaid, a stripper, a whole load of prostitutes with guns, and one woman with an unknown background who is quickly killed by a hitman. I guess there's a judge, but she doesn't actually have any dialog. The men's side is only slightly better - probably because they're the protagonists. One of them is a cop who is actually a good guy. The other two almost manage to convince you they're good and not ex-con murderous torturers. After you move away from the protagonists things get really ugly: hit men, gang thugs, cannibals, murderers, crooked cops, psychotic serial killers, and child rapists - you know, the kind of people you'd like to have over for dinner.

But if you don't mind the violence and depravity you're in for a treat. Frank Miller's Sin City graphic novels have a fantastic and original visual look. The gritty, vicious content is paired with a stark black and white style full of strong lines and extreme contrast. The film completely embodies this style. You have never seen a movie that looks like this. It's just amazing. The way the whole movie just feels like someone took the books and didn't reimage them into a movie, they just mutated them. It's unreal.

The last two paragraphs work together very well for the movie. The visual style paired with extreme archetypes for characters means none of them actually feel real. So when they do crazy violent things, those don't feel real. There's no real connection to the people bad things are happening to, which makes those bad things not quite so horrifying.

I'm a big fan of the Sin City books. Their uncompromising style and content is just fun. Sure, it's vacuous - but there's something to the storyline. It's all tragic, flawed figures who find themselves in bad situations, pick a path to get out of it, and head straight down that path killing anyone who gets in the way. This movie isn't for everyone, but it's brilliant.


Note:
As you can imagine this movie has a lot of geek appeal. I went to see it at The Cinerama on opening night and you could really tell this wasn't your typical movie audience. For example, there was much cheering for a Star Wars trailer (only the hard core geeks still cheer for those, most of us have forsaken Lucas by now.) But that paled in comparison to the roar let out for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer (which was excellent and makes me really look forward to it's opening later this month.) It was good to be back with my own kind - a theater packed with movie geeks!

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