I saw The Dark Knight at the Broadway Theater today. Excellent film, better than the original. Although there are a few "comic book moments" where my suspension of disbelief was strained (I mean strained beyond the acceptance of normal action movie conventions), I was entertained overall. Most likely, anything I can say about it has been said better elsewhere, but one thing in particular that I noticed about the film was its clever use of character archetypes and the way that they reinforced the film's themes.

In my interpretation, the idea behind the film was that there are three types of people in the world (well, the world of DC comics/Gotham City or whatever). There are the innocents, or at least those who do not deserve bad things to happen to them. For instance, even though he bent the rules and deceived his family, Commissioner Gordon was overall a good person, without whom the world would be a darker place.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the Joker. He's inhuman, more like a force of nature. Hence, I suppose, the complete lack of insight regarding his origins and identity. Essentially, he vacillates between being an amoral force of nature and an utterly remorseless, utterly evil monster.

Somewhere in between lie Batman and Two-Face. Neither of them are entirely evil, of course, but for their own reasons they've more or less abandoned morality altogether. Batman won't kill, and Two-Face is determined to be utterly fair and equal. Still, they do things that most folks wouldn't exactly stand for in the name of their own rules.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

P.S. We've finished moving. Might be some pictures of that later if I'm not too lazy.

It's the End Times

I'm a pretty stout person when it comes to disturbing visuals. I can watch all of Children of Men or Saving Private Ryan without feeling ill or unbalanced. But, and I am not making this up, I actually felt physical revulsion when watching this trailer in the theater. It was shown before Wall*E, and the desperation evident in that choice was not lost to me.

Despite my most fervent wishes, this doesn't appear to be a joke. Check out its IMDB page. Or its official website. Edward James Olmos! What are you doing? If you need money I can help you out, man!

Space, that Old Frontier

I had no idea that this miniseries even existed until I read about it in Tom Hanks' foreward to the newest edition of the excellent book The Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin. Apparently, that book was not only one of the chief inspirations for the movie Apollo 13 (on which Chaikin served as technical advisor), but also for the much lesser-known series. It's much less Hollywood than Apollo 13, with a much less broad focus - minor astronauts that nobody's heard of since the late 60s (or administrators that nobody has ever heard of) might have an entire episode dedicated to them. It's kind of refreshing.

The show focuses its attention to historical details of every degree, along with honest and, at times, touching characterizations of not only astronauts and administrators, but normal folks at the periphery of the space program. In particular, epsiode 2: "Apollo One," starting with the fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee on the launch pad in 1967, had a scene where the wives of surviving astronauts went to the houses of the spouses of the deceased. Their reactions were hard to watch, for all their authenticity. It was more touching than I expected.

The show is far from perfect - it's slow at times, and the cinematography leaves a bit to be desired. Scene transitions are awkward, the special effects middling at best, and there's an over-reliance on stock footage (frequently for establishing shots). Oh, and for some reason, despite their intense focus on historical accuracy, they still hug that old chestnut of science fiction movies: a deep, bass rumbling as ships fly past the camera. Not only is there no sound in space (a minor issue I might touch on later), not only are the ships not firing their engines, but the sound is so throbbing and intense you'd expect it was a Star Destroyer flying past. A little weird, to say the least.

In the end, though, to anyone interested in the history of the times it can't be beat. To be honest, I'm not even halfway through the series but I'm addicted. Just based on what I've seen, I have to recommend it to people looking for a thoughtful work. A slightly sad one, as well - seeing what Americans did in the 1960s makes me a little wistful for what we could be doing now.

Moving preparations

I hate the process of moving, but I don't think that I've ever looked forward to the results as much as I do now. The Gretchen Kafoury Commons has served me well enough, in the sense that it's been entirely serviceable, but the place was becoming unsuitable for me alone, never mind with Leah. Hopefully, the Essex House will be a lot better, with AC, washer and dryer, more room, nicer appliances, etc.

I just hope that we can keep it clean. We're going to work out some sort of cleaning schedule, which I'm optimistic about, but it seems like one of those well-intentioned plans that's going to fail. Knowing us,right?

iPhone Apps

I'm playing around with the newly released iPhone apps, and I'm of two feelings about them. On the one hand, in many ways, they're like getting the iPhone brand new all over again - there's a ton of functionality ready to discover and any part of it could revolutionize my daily life. It'd be like 2001 all over again, with spaceships and video phones.

On the other hand, it's quite obvious that most people are not particularly good at designing program user interfaces for the iPhone. There's obviously a trick to it, and failure means that your program, whatever it's good intentions, is just a pieces of unusable mess. I've grown frustrated with and uninstalled several cool-looking programs at this point because they're just impossible to use (as well as poorly documented).

Part of this might also be because I'm trying to do pretty specific things (most of it blog-related) and it's pretty early for specific things that aren't also very common.

My Workspace, pt.2

My Workspace, pt.1

Stand By

Awaiting further instructions.