Jarrett House North: Video

DVD Review: Foyle’s War, Series 4

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 03:44:39 GMT

Sixty years after its conclusion, World War II continues to provide an inexhaustible flow of stories. While many follow traditional narratives of Good vs. Evil on the world stage, a set of quiet television dramas from England have told a different story: what does the Last Just War look like from the home front? Foyle’s War explores crime stories in a small village against the backdrop of the war. And Series 4, now available on DVD from Acorn Media, begins at a particular point in the war: what happens when your allies come to stay and fight the war from your soil?

The first episode, “Invasion,” is a case in point. The story opens with a young boy playing in the street, whose eyes widen at the sound of motors coming up the lane. As Jeeps roll by, he runs back to the house shouting, “The Jerries are here!” The boy’s mistake sets the stage for the next 90 minutes, during which a murder mystery plays out against a background of mutual Anglo-American distrust.

This is, in fact, the sort of video that can be challenging to watch without bringing context from current events. One uncomfortable resonance point includes the angry speech from the farmer whose land is requisitioned by the war department, asking whether the Americans have come to help or to stay. Another, the scene of Foyle providing background on British behavior and customs to a schoolroom full of American GIs, only to be confronted by an isolationist private angry at having been dragged from the US to save the British, is an uncomfortable metaphor for American foreign policy.

What the series does best, though, and what episodes 3 and 4 in the set deliver in spades, is show warfare from the perspective of those left behind at the home front: spouses, retirees, war profiteers, and the police themselves. One critique of the series is that the producers spend so much time on getting the historical atmosphere right and exploring these characters that they can lose the thread of the main plot; with each episode featuring some level of murder mystery or other police case, that can be a little frustrating. But overall the show is one of those rare viewing experiences that is quietly compelling. I’ve tried, and failed, to do other things while the program was on (like for instance writing this review), and for an inveterate multitasker like myself to confess that is high praise indeed.

I was just made by the Presbyterian Church!

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 10 May 2007 03:51:53 GMT

Thanks to a Slashdot poster, here’s a magnificent set of mistranslated subtitles for Revenge of the Sith, also known as The Backstroke of the West. Apparently the English to Chinese to English process turned out some fun translations, such as “the Presbyterian Church” for the Jedi Council. Which is, you know, pretty amazing.

As is, “the Presbyterian Church like enjoys you not.” Which, I believe, is how Amendment B was originally worded before it got into committee.

Hacking TiVo -- not for the faint of heart

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:23:31 GMT

Every now and then I realize I’m at the far boundaries of my hacker cred. Such as when I read the directions for hacking a piece of popular hardware and turn pale. Today it looks like extending the TiVo with low level hack functionality like telnet, etc., requires rebuilding the kernel on the machine.

However, TiVo released an official SDK called the TiVo Home Media Engine (HME) last year, which allows developers to extend the platform with third party applications. I was pretty excited about this until I checked out the list of third party applications, which is pretty small even taking into account the additional list of downloadable apps. I’m frankly surprised that there aren’t more developers hopping onto the platform. What’s going on?

Might it be that the original hardware hackers who blazed the trails aren’t excited about playing with the official SDK precisely because it’s official?

Talk hard

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 07:39:08 GMT

I’m in a sketchy Travelodge (well, only as sketchy as the places I’ve stayed outside Tanglewood for our residencies, so not bad, just not the Ritz. Hey, there’s free Wifi.) in Lancaster, PA tonight. Just finished re-watching (for the first time in probably 15 years) Pump Up the Volume, the movie about the deep anxieties of teenage life as expressed through pirate radio that was so, so much better than it deserved to be. And of course in retrospect the parallels to blogging and podcasting are obvious. Got an issue? Seize the air. Talk hard. And your friends and fans will come out in droves to support you.

Well, maybe not so much that last part… In fact, the one thing in retrospect that was disappointing about that movie was that Mark “Hard Harry” Hunter, when he faced the crowd of high school students, FCC goons, and school administrators in that parking lot as he was being arrested, didn’t have to face his dad. Who, of course, was not the clueless wonder that Mark thought he was the whole time, but you never got to see that except in his slapdown of the principal. Mark never gets to reconcile. Or, more likely, never gets that look of anger fighting with disbelief from his dad. Of course, maybe it’s better that way, and you’re free to hope that, based on the evidence in the last scene, his family will understand him.

But this part, the connection to people you really know you, is probably the hardest part about blogging. I didn’t filter much when I started writing this site, and you can tell, particularly in the fall of 2002 when I hit a hard patch of depression. I put a lot out there. Was that because I felt free to do so while I was on the other side of the continent from my family? I don’t know. Lately though it seems to me that I filter too much on this site because I know so many people who are reading it, and they’re not so far away now. Not the concert reviews or the technical articles, or even the occasional political rant, but what I am thinking and doing at any given time. The site used to be about me. Now it’s about some of what I do. Not sure how I’m going to change that, but I’d like to. Fortunately I don’t have as many bad things going on, but it would be good to share some of the good things too.

I need to shake up my writing style a bit. It’s hard as my time to write becomes increasingly constricted, but I’ll start trying. After all, if Pump Up the Volume was powerful enough to encourage Amanda of the Dresden Dolls to write brilliant meditations about belonging and to try to get the attention of Conor Oberst at the same time, I can at least acknowledge the movie’s power by trying to write more honestly.

Well, speaking of honesty, I should probably acknowledge to myself that I need to sleep. There’s a family reunion tomorrow, along with an early morning church service that I need my voice for. So be it…

—Oh, and by the way. Anyone think the FCC has goons like the ones in the movie, who drive around in yellow vans that say FCC on them and triangulate radio signals and generally act like The Man? Don’t be silly. It’s the RIAA that does that; well, that and the Department of Homeland Security, who for some reason don’t contain the FCC as yet. Which is odd, since it seems to contain every other Federal agency in charge of infringing on the rights of American citizens in the name of the common good.

Sleep tight now.

Snakes on a Plane countdown 4: Cobra Starship

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:38:36 GMT

If you followed any links from Jeff Rowland’s copy Overcompensating that I pointed to yesterday, you may already have seen the music video for the Snakes on a Plane theme. Just in case, here it is:

You can also download “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” as an MP3, thanks to a bunch of MP3 bloggers, including the DIY Rockstar.

Now that this song is permanently embedded in your brain (and retinas!), what’s cool about this band is that, rather than being a b-movie version of the Black Eyed Peas as it might appear from the video, is that it’s essentially an indie supergroup. Featuring Gabe Saporta from Midtown, Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes, William Beckett from Academy Is..., and the incomparable Maja Ivarsson from The Sounds (plus a special appearance from Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy), the whole group comes together with a full on sonic assault that parodies big soaring movie themes while managing to be genuinely thrilling. Not what you’d expect from a bunch of ex-emo folks.

And as you may have noticed, Samuel L. Jackson is in the video, about two minutes in. And you might recognize his attire.

Snakes on a Plane countdown 3: Jeff Rowland

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:13:08 GMT

In our ongoing series of Snakes in a Plane related crap leading up to its opening on Friday (see previous posts on the T-shirt and the TSA alert), I want to touch briefly on the role that Jeffrey Rowland, webcomic author (and owner of TopatoCo and creator of the Snakes Flying a Plane t-shirt), has had on building the hype that is the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon. In fact, one could almost say it’s all his fault. (One would be wrong, but one could say it.) The sequence of events:

September 2005: Jeff brings himself into the SOAP world, confronting an irate Samuel L. Jackson (you can tell it’s Sam cause he has the pimptastic purple lightsaber; see illustration to the right) and reveling in the sheer awesininity of it all...

July 2006. Jeff appears with Samuel L. Jackson at the San Diego Comic-Con to talk about Snakes on a Plane, in July 2006. See the follow-ups about his adventures: decision to go, gets onto the roundtable with Sam, frets about how to talk with Sam and not get shot, mistaking Sam for Laurence Fishburne, coming up with new names for the movie, which leads to...

August 2006, when Jeff gets to go to the movie’s premiere. Which is where he’s heading pretty much right now, to walk the red carpet and record bonus material for the DVD of the movie. Who says there are no rags to riches stories on teh Intarweb?

Snakes on a Plane countdown 2: TSA???

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:31:05 GMT

Boing Boing: As with gels, liquids: TSA bans mother})(^!#$ snakes from planes. Heh. I give Hollywood a lot of credit, but surely they didn’t arrange a major international terror alert just to promote the movie, did they? Hmm?

Best not to ask. Besides, if they had, the movie would probably be called something else.

From the semi-official advisory:

Protecting the Aviation System. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will be implementing a series of security measures—some visible and some not visible—to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation's transportation system. TSA is immediately implementing following changes to airport screening procedures:

NO SNAKES OF ANY KIND WILL BE PERMITTED ON A PLANE. SNAKES ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED IN CHECKED BAGGAGE. This includes all pythons, boas, rattlesnakes, vipers, mambas, adders, and other known species of snakes.
Exception: some limited amounts of snakes may be allowed if Samuel L. Jackson is traveling; licensed snake charmers are allowed to have snakes in their check in baggage only if the name on the snake charming license matches the one passenger’s ticket; people whose name is Snake will be allowed on board but only after full body cavity search.

Snakes on a Plane countdown 1: The T-Shirt

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:37:18 GMT

A story that I didn’t get to tell from the Mozart residency at Tanglewood: I walk into the Pittsfield Subway store, having less than 30 minutes to get lunch before a conference call for work. I’m waiting for one clerk to finish my order. The other one, who looks a little like a burgeoning hipster but is probably still in high school, is ringing me up. She looks up, then does a double take.

“Hey, is that Snakes on a Plane??” she asks, pointing at my t-shirt.

I pause for a minute; I’ve just come out of a morning’s orchestra rehearsal at Tanglewood where no one noticed what I was wearing. Then I remember. “Well, technically,” I said, “it’s snakes flying a plane. You know… copyright. But yeah, Samuel L. Jackson wears this shirt in the video for the movie’s theme song.”

“Cool,” she said. I told her where to get the t-shirt (TopatoCo, home of discriminating Snakes Flying a Plane merchandise) and went on my way, marveling. I may be getting older than dirt, but I’m hip enough to have an inside secret that proto-hipsters in Pittsfield, MA want in on. Thanks, TopatoCo!

—Seriously, if SOAP turns out to be a lousy movie, it will still be memorable for having spawned snarky hipster knock-off merchandise and other leading indicators of cool even before it hits the silver screen. I’ll spend a few more posts this week hitting some of the other high points. (And, yes, therefore feeding the viral star-making machinery. Oh well.)

President Bail Organa

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 15 May 2006 03:21:04 GMT

Just as well the West Wing is over. I’m not sure I believe Jimmy Smits as a president any more than I believe him as Princess Leia’s adoptive father.

Oh, hell. I’m too young to be that grouchy an old fart. I’ll miss the show.

It’s a Tivo world

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 08 May 2006 04:11:32 GMT

We haven’t had access to a DVR since we got the HD TV, since Comcast doesn’t offer a cable box + HDTV DVR. In fact, we’ve hardly used the main TV setup since we got the HDTV. That’s about to change: we just picked up a Tivo + DVD burner combo from Circuit City, who were offering $150 rebates. The plan is to pass standard-def signals to the Tivo from the HD box and pass hi-def directly to the TV.

This plan meant that I had to free up some space in the stereo rack. That’s OK, though: last weekend when I replaced my old cheap Technics turntable with the Denon, I pulled out my 50-disc Sony CD changer. In addition to the fact that almost all my CDs have been ripped, and our DVD changer can play any that I still want to hold onto, the CD changer was the last piece of Sony tech in the rack, and I really want it gone.

I’m looking forward to hopping onto the Tivo bandwagon. One of the other frustrating things about the Comcast unit was the inability to get programs off of it. The DVD burner, plus the ability to network the Tivo, should open some new frontiers.

William Gibson: V for Vendetta 'superb'

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 18:08:00 GMT

William Gibson’s all too infrequently updated blog updated this morning with a quick review of the new movie adaptation of V for Vendetta: “More thumbs up than a Chernobyl pianist.” With a recommendation like that, how can it miss? Gotta get out to see this one.

Of course, I may have difficulty watching Natalie Portman’s character without seeing this in my head.

It’s time for the Muppet Wiki

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:35:34 GMT

Nice database of all things Henson related shaping up at the Muppet Wiki. There are already some pretty comprehensive Muppet sites out there, so it will be interesting to see if the wiki format adds anything new. But you have to be impressed with a format that includes a full biography of Mahna Mahna and a listing of every appearance of the Swedish Chef.

Not such a bad little tree

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:26:49 GMT

Courtesy Boing Boing, the Urban Outfitters version of Charlie Brown’s pathetic Christmas Tree. Someone could bring this to my house at Christmas if they were inclined (hint hint). UO has done a remarkable job of reproducing the pathos of the original animated version, though you have to supply your own security blanket:

However, there is some irony here: the point of Charlie Brown’s tree was that, as scrawny and pathetic it was, it was real. Urban Outfitter’s tree is “made of wire branches and plastic needles.”

No more Maynard G. Krebs

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 23:31:47 GMT

Bloomberg: Bob Denver, Star of TV's “Gilligan's Island,” Dies at Age 70. Alas, Maynard G. Krebs; I knew him, Horatio. When will we ever find a TV actor who knows who Thelonious Monk is, much less one who name-drops him in character? Like, I’m getting all misty.

Oh yeah, Denver played another guy, too, as his home page will remind you. Wonder if Dave has seen the bad news yet?

Only true Tolkien-heads need apply

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 02:00:18 GMT

Tin Man points to the free Lord of the Rings Trilogy slipcase that’s available if you purchased all three extended editions separately. Free, that is, with $3 shipping.

It’s handsome enough, I suppose, but I don’t really know that I need an additional slipcase. The individual DVD sets are packaged elaborately enough as it is.

Review: The Frank Sinatra Show with Ella Fitzgerald

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 17:58:58 GMT

In the late 1950s, at arguably the apogee of his cultural influence and artistic powers, the fates (in the form of Timex’s sponsorship) rewarded Frank Sinatra with a set of network television specials. The shows, classic variety shows of the old mode, featured Ol’ Blue Eyes and a variety of musical guests. In December 1959, Sinatra’s show played host to another jazz singer at the height of her career: Ella Fitzgerald.

Both singers had benefitted immeasurably from the skills of Nelson Riddle, who had spearheaded Sinatra’s return to popularity upon his transition to Capitol Records after a career slump and had arranged and conducted Sinatra’s famous “concept” albums In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning and Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, as well as dozens of singles. Riddle had also been the musical genius behind Ella’s series of explorations of American popular songs, the Songbooks. With Riddle in the orchestral pit, the show sounds like one of those Capitol recordings. This is as good as pop music got in the middle of the century.

The format of the show was simple: a little introductory song and dance—here in the form of complaints for the bad weather in Palm Springs, where the show was being shot—followed by dialog between Sinatra and Peter Lawford (who attempts to slip in a comment about his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy but is quickly cut off by Sinatra so that they don’t have to give equal time to Nixon!), a song from Sinatra, and then a commercial break. One of the genius points of this DVD is that it includes all the John Cameron Swayze Timex commercials!

After the break follow guest vocals from the a cappella quartet the Hi-Los, a comic interlude with Hermione Gingold, and finally the divine Ella. The rest of the show proceeds in much the same fashion, with additional appearances from Red Norvo, with whose quintet Sinatra frequently toured in the late 50s, and from Sinatra’s then-paramour Juliet Prowse.

It’s difficult to pick out high points in the material—it’s all pretty darned good—but to my ears Sinatra’s guest appearance with the Hi-Los on “I’ll Never Smile Again,” a reprise of his 1940 performance of the tune with the Pied Pipers and the Tommy Dorsey band, is up there. Low point? While the vocal performance of Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me” is faultless, watching Sinatra sing it in “duet” with the mooning, silent Prowse is painful.

A word about the DVD itself. The image transfer is fuzzy, with lots of visual noise, with some ghosting and edge artifacts. There are also minor sound problems, particularly a level issue at the beginning and during Frank and Ella’s “Can’t We Be Friends.” The extras, including biographies and (where applicable) discographies of all the participants in the television broadcast, are comprehensive. In particular Ella’s discography is lengthy and annotated, though the formatting of the text seems to have disappeared. Similar quality problems plague the ads at the end of the disc for other material on the Quantum Leap imprint, including misspellings. In the end, the quality of the source material far outweighs these concerns.

This review was originally posted at BlogCritics.

Star Wars DVD notes

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:54:18 GMT

After two prequels and several years away from the original movies, it’s interesting to come back to the original (albeit in a twice-revised form; see these notes on changes to key scenes). It’s interesting that there are some things that I remembered in radically different form, to wit:

C-3PO’s dialog. The femme half of science fiction’s first gay robot duo was pretty damn bitchy in the first film. He was also inaudible a lot of the time, at least to my ears—though that may be an artifact of listening to the DVD in stereo rather than 5.1 surround. But I think there was a whole lot of snotto voce goin’ on.

The first Millennium Falcon vs. TIE Fighter battle. You know, after waiting 27 years since this movie came out, and going through two digital revisions, you’d think that they’d fix the big rectangles around the TIE fighters where they were superimposed for this sequence. Look at this picture and tell me I’m not seeing things:

But it’s a lot of fun anyway. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some documentary features to watch.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:49:16 GMT

...I placed a pre-order for the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. On Tuesday, the trilogy was released. Today, my pre-order was delivered.

Expect blogging to be light. For at least the next couple of days, since I don’t have six or seven contiguous hours where Lisa and I can watch it together any time tonight.

—Incidentally, am I the only one that had the Star Wars storybook with record as a kid? I remember playing that record to death. It was one of those ones where the record made a sound effect for you to turn the page—the effect was an R2-D2 sound, in this case. I mention it because Google searches on the only thing I can remember from the intro, “the hope of freedom was kept alive… but the Rebel forces were pitifully small compared to the might of the evil Galactic Empire,” turn up nothing.

Erm, geek off.

Diversion: Donnie Darko Cliff’s Notes

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 22:01:35 GMT

Salon: Everything you were afraid to ask about “Donnie Darko.” I guess with the director’s cut out, I’m glad I’ve held out on renting or buying this on DVD. It stil begs the question of when I’m going to find the time to actually watch this movie, though. Anyway, the Cliffs Notes version in Salon is kind of entertaining.

Harry Potter y tu mamá también ... otra vez

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 04:43:54 GMT

Or, man am I cheesed I used the best title last time, when I first wrote about Alfonso Cuarón’s taking on the directorship of the new Harry Potter movie. Don’t let anyone tell you that …and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a kid’s film. It’s actually two films in one. One, despite everyone’s worst fears, is remarkably respectful of the book, in a way that the slavishly faithful first two films couldn’t be. One can’t respect a book when translating it into film if one doesn’t respect cinema at the same time. And the first two films, though page for page follow the first two books very closely, are so leaden-footed (and sore-ass-inducing) that they are a shambles as cinema.

The new film is actually cinema. Not only is it watchable, it’s suspenseful (I actually felt a chill down my spine when I watched Harry save himself at the end with his patronus), and in moments it approaches poetry. That’s largely due to the second film inside the first, which is an art-house hommage to the passage of time and the maturing of a lovely young girl.

Yep, HPATPOA is Hermione’s movie. Not only does it put her in her rightful place as an ass-kicking young witch who can confidently stand beside Harry and Ron; not only does it show, as Lisa said after the film, “who’s really in charge: the girl!” in the three’s friendship; it also shows her growing up. Without dwelling on it excessively, certainly without wrecking the main story, little details show her starting to deal with her feelings for her friends, especially Ron: grasping for Ron’s hand while watching Harry deal with Buckbeak, crying on his shoulder at Bucky’s apparent execution, taking in stride Sirius Black’s compliment that she is indeed the greatest witch of her age.

The few places that Cuarón lets his directorial hand show through underscore Hermione’s passage into adulthood. He indulges (thankfully for us) in some gorgeous visual poetry as the seasons change at the school and foregrounds the passing of time with the magnificent clock with the three-story pendulum and transparent face, through which Harry gazes wistfully as his friends have pivotal growing experiences without him (and don’t imagine that the trips to Hogsmeade are anything but pivotal growth experiences, even if they have little to do with the story and nothing to do with classrooms. Where else can the kids learn how to live on their own without the adults?).

Harry, of course, is already alone without adults, having lost his parents (which this movie dwells on far more than the first two), and time moves differently for him. Witness his lessons in invoking the patronus, in the middle of a giant orrery that maps the movement of the planets, or his glimpse of the wheeling galaxies as he learns he’s in (apparent) danger.

But back to Hermione. The brilliant bit that Cuarón teases out of J K Rowling’s book is that Hermione is the key to the story. As she fishes the time turner out of the front of her sweater (there’s that subtext again!), she literally takes time in her own hands in a profoundly creative act that puts time aside. It’s the only place where the momentum of the movie pauses for a bit, as key pieces of the action happen again. But it’s also a place where Cuarón can give Hermione and Harry some peaceful time alone together. And it feels ultimately like a sweet breath in the middle of the building tension.

Good on you, Hermione. I think the boys will have a lot of growing up to do to catch up with you.

Ktaabaa taab hwaa meneyh

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 01:50:59 GMT

From The Guardian, a list of potentially useful Aramaic phrases for those going to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Funny, mostly, especially “Aamar naa laak dlaa yaada' naa haw gavraa. B-aynaa feelmaa hwaa?” (I tell you I do not know the man. What’s he been in?) and the title of this post, which apparently translates as, “It’s not as good as the book.”

That, incidentally, is the family joke about the movie. My grandmother once went to see The Ten Commandments with my grandfather, but came back early, saying she had already read the book. I pretty much feel the same way about Gibson’s effort, which is why I haven’t seen it yet.

A long, long time in coming: Star Wars on DVD

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:02:07 GMT

In my inbox: the original Star Wars trilogy coming to DVD on September 21, 2004 as a four-disc set (with bonus disc including documentaries). No word about whether this is the original version of the films, the 1997 Special Editions, or some other variant. It almost doesn’t matter, though; I might as well pre-order now...

Longer than 4 hours 50 minutes? Oh my aching keister

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 28 Dec 2003 19:47:44 GMT

A thread on Plastic collects pointers to news about Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, including a tip about the running length of the extended cut: “the DVD version of Return of the King will be longer than 4 hours and 50 minutes.”

Say what? I already had to split my viewing of the extended versions of the previous films over several nights. Looks like I’ll have to have a long weekend to actually watch the last one in a single sitting.

Who needs history?

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:15:09 GMT

I’ve done my share of bashing the movie Cold Mountain (before it ever came out), but I do have to raise a point (without having seen the movie) with Stephanie Zacharek’s review in Salon. The review turns on the complaint that there are only “about 12 African-Americans” in the movie.

Not to be confused with a reactionary conservative, but I must point out that there weren’t a lot of African Americans in the part of North Carolina’s Appalachian mountains where the book and movie are set. Primarily because there isn’t a lot of anything there. The economic elite owned slaves, to be sure, but the farmers who worked the land weren’t slave owning planters; for the most part, they were poor farmers working poorer land. (My father, who grew up in Madison County, recalls plowing pasture land and watching the clods raised by the plow roll straight down hill—that is, when he wasn’t digging rocks out of the soil.)

I’m not saying that Minghella’s movie isn’t flawed. But there was always more to the South than plantations, and one of the book’s strengths to me was how it illuminated the lives of these farmers and mountain folk, who were drawn into the conflict more by geography than by economics. To argue that the movie should have focused on slavery shows an astonishing ignorance about the history of the Appalachians.

Harry Potter y tu mamá también

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:10:03 GMT

The preview trailer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has been released. This is the first movie not to be directed by Chris “let’s face it, I direct children’s movies” Columbus, and the trailer shows hints of Alfonso Cuarón’s approach: the choir of children singing “something wicked this way comes,” Snape and Draco Malfoy not looking like pure villains, the generally darker cinematography, the dread hand of the Dementor… The question is, how much of it is due to the new director, and how much to the generally darker tone of the third book? Hard to tell from just a trailer, but I like the note of dark humor that I detect in the choir.

The Matrix Revolutions

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 06 Nov 2003 03:07:37 GMT

A bunch of us had a “morale event” at the local cinema this afternoon to catch The Matrix Revolutions. Bottom line #1: In classic trilogy conclusion form, it attempts to pay off a lot of the set up of the first two movies, plotwise. Bottom line #2: It leaves a lot of the deep philosophy of the second movie behind in the process. Those who like a little talking with their action may think of this as an improvement; I was disappointed that so much of the deep matter of the movie was left dangling.

Cold Mountain

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 14:13:20 GMT

The trailer for Cold Mountain, based on the Charles Frazier book and starring, improbably, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, is up. It looks pretty but sounds terrible. Question to Miramax: How much would it have cost you to send someone to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee and find out what the authentic mountain accent sounded like? Or even searched the web for references? Clue: It’s not the accent you tried to teach your English and Australian leads.

As someone whose family grew up a few hollers over from Bear Creek, near the supposed action of the movie, I’m sadly disappointed. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be hearing cousin Bascom’s “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” which featured prominently in the book, in the movie either.

Love thy neighbor

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 27 Feb 2003 15:28:54 GMT

Washington Post: Mister Rogers Dies of Cancer at 74. Moment of silence.

Chopping out character: Clones outtakes

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 06 Jan 2003 02:45:12 GMT

Yes, I finally got around to watching Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones on DVD. Including the second disc material. Including all the material cut from the film. Which turns out to be, in large part, dialog that establishes character. Discussions between Padmé and Anakin that brings out her past life choices, between Padmé and her parents(!) that establish that she is a person with a family and a history, and parents who think she should have been married a long time ago. In other words, scenes that establish the Queen/Senator as a person.

“It’s emotionally touching, it gives her a lot of character, but in terms of moving the story along it isn’t necessary.” —George Lucas

Any surprise that all these scenes died? This is where the missing heart of the film is, for me, the stuff that makes the awkward adolescent fawning between Padmé and Anakin bearable. And of course they got cut out. Because the target audience—kids who will buy the action figures—won’t care.

I’m not sure whether this makes me feel better or worse about Star Wars as a universe. I know how it makes me feel about Lucas’s skills as a moviemaker.

X-Men 2 Trailer is Up

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 22 Aug 2002 14:21:52 GMT

Just watched the X-Men 2 trailer. I think it looks already like the sequel will do a much better job of capturing the gripping paranoia that underlaid so much of the brilliant storytelling in the best days of the comic (“Days of Future Past,” for instance).

Now, the question is: Will the creators cop out and not make the connection between raiding Xavier’s School for a mutant round-up and the holding of Arab Americans without charges under the Patriot Act?

...and only two more days til I have broadband

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 20:23:42 GMT

Trailer for The Two Towers is available online at Apple. I’m pleased to see it’s available as a direct download and not just as a stream. Of course, downloading is going to be slow in any format until the broadband guy shows up…

A long-awaited (and long!) movie

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 20 Dec 2001 05:34:14 GMT

The Fellowship of the Ring was good. Long, but good. There were a few tupping liberties with the plot, though I doubt any but the most hard hearted Tolkien fan will mind. Unexpected development: Legolas got actual applause during the fight scene in the screening I was in. Must be all that long blond hair.