Okay, one thing I have not figured out yet, how to insert just a thumbnail of an image into a post, allowing someone to click on it to see the full sized image.  So for now, large images embedded in posts!   Also, for those who have complained about the white-on-black text, while I like it myself, I’ve been looking at new themes (in part because I want 3 columns instead of the current two) so patience puh-lease!

Now …. round-up of great t-shirts for photographers here.

T-shirts for photogs

And over here, a BoingBoing thing about Michael Wolf’s series of photos of residents of HK’s oldest public housing estate.  Wolf’s page isn’t loading, possibly overloaded due to traffic thanks to the BoingBoing link, give it time.

Michael Wolf's photos of HK public housing residents

Last but not least for now, 12 Offbeat Resources for Landing a Tech Job.  This may prove useful for me if my current plans don’t work out.

Anyway, yesterday we watched Funny People.   I can’t recall a single funny movie about stand-up comics.  As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a single good movie about stand-up comics.  (Yeah, some of you might bring up Lenny and I can see your point though personally I always had a problem with it because I saw the original Broadway (or was it off-Broadway?) production and never liked the changes Fosse made for the screen version).   Mostly, films have portrayed the people who are in the business of making us laugh as deeply unhappy and neurotic people, and Funny People is no exception.

The film is written and directed by Judd Apatow, who graduated from stand-up to TV writing to directing films like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and also writing or producing dozens of films in just the past few years.  (Year One, Pineapple Express, Step Brothers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Anchorman, the list goes on and on.)  His films have rarely been “art” but they also succeed at entertaining more often than not.  Funny People is clearly his bid to be taken more seriously, but it fails.

It stars Adam Sandler, and this is not Sandler’s first attempt to stretch beyond the comedy roles that have made him one of the richest men in Hollywood, even though he is still just borderline-passable as a serious actor.  It co-stars Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana, Aziz Ansari.  And appearing as some approximation of themselves – Eminem, Ray Romano, James Taylor, Andy Dick, Charles Fleischer, Bud Friedman, Carol Leifer, Paul Reiser, George Wallace, Norm MacDonald, Dave Attell, Sarah Silverman and so on.

You’d think from the cast that the film would be about the life of stand-up comics, both struggling and successful.  And that’s what the first half of the film is about.  Sandler is a mega-successful comic-turned film star, appearing in high concept crap like a film about a man’s head on a baby.   A man with infinite wealth but no friends, after finding out he may be dying from a rare disease, he hires the first struggling comic he meets (Rogen) to write jokes for him, be his personal assistant and be his best friend.

So fine, we get some insight into those two lifestyles.  There isn’t much we haven’t seen before, but there is a touching Thanksgiving dinner scene. (Actually, the scene with Eminem cursing at Ray Romano is kind of funny, too. “I thought everybody loved him!”)

Then, about half way through, the film essentially abandons everything it built up, to focus on Sandler’s attempt to win back his old girlfriend, “the only woman he ever really loved,” who is now married with children.   From this point forward, almost everything that happens will make you cringe and the film never regains its footing.

Why does the film abandon its premise to go this route?  I don’t know.  And what does it say when the unattainable woman is played by Apatow’s wife and her kids are Apatow’s kids?  It’s just bizarre. I suppose Apatow realized he had nowhere to go with the story he’d built up.  Successful movie star finds happiness.  Struggling comic finds success, or not.  So he had to come up with a new plot arc, rather than going back and reworking what he’d already written.  8-1/2 this ain’t.

Apatow does show some restraint in this film.  One of his trademarks seems to be always managing to get at least one penis shot into each of his films; here the characters all talk about their dicks but never show them.  But stretching this story out to 146 minutes (153 in the unrated DVD version) shows an almost total lack of restraint.  The film meanders, it wanders all over the place.  Trimmed back to 120 minutes, this might have been better.  (The listing on Rotten Tomatoes says that the film runs 4 hours, 59 minutes and sometimes it feels that way.)

I still think Apatow’s a talent to be reckoned with.  And maybe someday he’ll find some way to strike a balance between his comedic and serious sides.   But he needs to find new themes because almost all of his films are about boys in mens’ bodies who find a way to grow up and these multiple variations on a single theme are growing tiresome.