serialdeviant.org(y)

This is great:

So I’ll rant instead about how no one in power will give a shit about Liu Xiaobo beyond making a few noises — if at all — and it’ll be business as usual with China. Happy Christmas!

AAAAuuuugggggHHHHH!!! Flash Forward is real!!!

(Oh, wait. This is a print of the right hand. Haha. Silly me. It’s really just science fiction. What was I thinking?)

Hm. All I can say is it’s generally those who deal with rights the first time round (you know who you are) who have an issue with giving away ebooks for free. As far as I’m aware, anyway.

Over the weekend, we saw π (Pi) on DVD. Hmm. I’m not too sure why it’s classified as sci-fi when there should be a genre for weird instead. It’s about a mathematician who seems to suffer from extreme migraine while searching for patterns in the stock market. I’m not exactly sure why it’s titled Pi except that 3.142 (etc) is an irrational number and the main character’s computer is nicknamed Euclid.

And I saw Where the Wild Things Are on Sunday night with my friend Rebecca. I’ve never read the book or known anything about it, so I’m not sure how to talk about the film. I can see that it was made by someone who loves the book, so perhaps this is a movie for the adults who loved the book as children. My favourite character was Douglas — anyone who’s seen it will know why!

It may be good old Rage Against the Machine this year (haha!), but this is the song that seriously needs to be re-appreciated by the yoof of today:

I finished my proof of Country Driving last night. This is a great book. It delves into the lives of ordinary Chinese who aren’t the pink-cheeked, chubby and adorable poster children for modern China.

Peter Hessler knows what he’s talking about. Neil dipped into the book here and there and was highly impressed with every excerpt. Anyone who’s lived in China will completely understand every experience he describes. The Self-Important Brigade will sniff in a superior manner and tell their friends they could have written the book if they’d wanted to, and they’d have done it better.

Read this book, especially if you’ve spent any time in China. It’s good.

I think Fluffy is one of the best things to happen to I Can Has Cheezburger — I constantly make the faces.

I finished A Special Providence on the weekend. It’s quite different to Revolutionary Road and Cold Spring Harbour. It’s the story of Robert Prentice and his mother Alice. Robert is a soldier who is sent to the front late in the Second World War, and Alice is a sculptor with completely unrealistic dreams and expectations. Once again, it’s about the choices we make in life and Yates makes it poignant and beautiful, but it’s different because a lot of the story takes place in the battlefield as we follow Robert during his short time in combat. Recommended.

I’m now halfway through Country Driving as well, which I’m really enjoying.

I was all set for a frightfest with The Devil’s Backbone, but it turned out to be a pretty decent story and no just-for-effect shocks. Overall, good special effects supporting a poignant tale of mostly-forgotten children and their carers during the Spanish civil war.

Then we watched We Own The Night, which (according to the director in the bonus behind-the-scenes featurette) was supposed to be a ‘different’ sort of cop movie. Sadly, he has failed in this regard. It’s shot well and the story isn’t bad, but I felt I’d seen it all before (the language, the lighting, the tension…). It naturally gets compared to The Departed — but even that was a remake of Infernal Affairs, something we finally got to see not too long ago. So basically I would compare We Own The Night to Infernal Affairs, and I prefer the latter.

Blockbuster is my friend.

Last night I only managed one more chapter of A Special Providence before going to bed — I am trying to finish it this week so I can return it to the library in exchange for Electric by Chad Taylor.

We went to see my colleague Francis’ artsy-fartsy monthly show, Kin, at the Voodoo Rooms last night, which explains the paucity of chapter coverage. While I’m not terribly into the arts, it’s always nice to see that there are people who are being all creative and stuff with music and writing. Without them we’d be much more boring as a species.

We re-watched Suspect Zero last night. I vaguely remembered it was about remote viewing and psyops and serial killing. We got it because it starred Ben Kingsley, I think. As Neil likes to say about films he chooses, it had a good concept but suffered from poor execution. I found Aaron Eckhart not very good, the chemistry between him and Carrie Anne Moss non-existent, and the plot a bit hard to believe (I wasn’t convinced enough to suspend my disbelief).

Verdict? Watch The Men Who Stare at Goats instead.

(Neil does not feel as harshly as I do about Suspect Zero.)

How I know that Scottish media (at the very least) has its head so far up its own arse: why in Deity’s name are Christmas cards sent by politicians worthy of news headlines?

For that matter, why are politicians wasting taxpayer-funded time in worrying about the ‘message’ sent by their cards? Can’t they just go and buy cards from charity shops?

Which reminds me, Neil mentioned Band Aid’s Do They Know it’s Christmas, because Mount Kilimanjaro is located in Africa, and there’s snow on it. Plus, why would the starving Africans in the 80s have wanted snow in order to ‘know’ it’s Christmastime? They were suffering from famine — hypothermia would’ve just killed more of them!

Yup. Bah humbug.

My copy of Country Driving is a proof from work. It’s the story of (as the marketing copy on the back notes) Peter Hessler’s look at China and its progress (and change) via its roads — he got his Chinese driver’s licence in 2001 and spent quite a bit of time on the road.

Clearly I have some vested or specific interest in the topic. I really appreciate someone who had the balls to do it. It’s always great to get the view from someone who has really made an effort to get to know China rather than some business person who’s spent a few weeks there and thinks they know it all.

The other book I’ve started is another Richard Yates, titled A Special Providence. At the moment I’m reading about Robert Prentice’s service in the Army. As with the other two novels I’ve read, I’m really drawn into the plot and I may have to start a personal Yates library rather than borrowing copies from the Edinburgh library.

I love popcorn.

How cool is David Strathairn in Good Night, and Good Luck? This is a great film and totally worth watching and re-watching. Mainstream television today is really only about entertainment and people here care more about Jedward (there was a long queue outside Campus two Sundays ago because they were appearing) than the country’s virtual bankruptcy.

The Cameo was screening a double feature by the Coen brothers (we saw A Serious Man last week). I think they’ve lost their mojo, these early films are so much better. The double feature started with Fargo and everyone predictably laughed loads at the frequent “Yahs”. It’s a goodie.

But really, I went to see The Man Who Wasn’t There, by far my favourite Coen brothers film. One thing I love about neo noir (not that I’m an aficionado) is that fairly dramatic things are going on, but it’s monochromatic and the narration is usually rather flat. Ed Crane is a brilliant character.