Coming on November 23rd from Criterion, a 6 disc Blu-Ray boxed set titled America Lost and Found:  The BBS Story.  (Info from here.) (No, I don’t know what BBS stands for.)  The box contains 7 films that were milestones in Hollywood’s transition from the studio era to what many (myself included) see as the second golden age of American cinema – the late 60s and early to mid 70s, when a more personal style of filmmaking reigned.  (Jaws and Star Wars basically killed that age off.)  Here’s what’s in the box:

‘Head‘ (Bob Rafelson, 1968) will feature 1080p video, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, and supplements include: Audio commentary featuring Monkees Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork; New video interview with director Bob Rafelson; New documentary about BBS, featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley; and more!

‘Easy Rider‘ (Dennis Hopper, 1969) comes in 1080p video, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, and supplements include: Audio commentary featuring director Dennis Hopper; Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage, a 1999 documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage; Footage of Hopper and star Peter Fonda at Cannes in 1969; New video interview with BBS’s Steve Blauner; and more!

‘Five Easy Pieces‘ (Bob Rafelson, 1970) features 1080p video, an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and supplements include: Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson; Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces, a 2009 video piece in which Rafelson discusses the film; BBStory, a 2009 documentary; and Excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson at the American Film Institute in 1976.

‘Drive, He Said‘ (Jack Nicholson, 1970) – 1080p video, an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and supplements are: A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom, a 2009 video piece in which director Jack Nicholson discusses the experience of making this film; Theatrical trailer; and more!

‘A Safe Place‘ (Henri Jaglom, 1971) features 1080p video, an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and supplements include: Audio commentary featuring director Henry Jaglom; Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place”, a 2009 video piece in which the director discusses the film; Notes on the New York Film Festival, a 1971 video piece featuring an interview conducted by critic Molly Haskell with directors Peter Bogdanovich and Jaglom about their films The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place; Deleted scene and screen tests; and Theatrical trailer.

‘The Last Picture Show‘ (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971) will be presented in 1080p with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and supplements include: Two audio commentaries: Peter Bogdanovich, and Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall; Picture This, a 1990 documentary by George Hickenlooper; The Last Picture Show: A Look Back, an hour-long 1999 documentary; 2009 interview with Bogdanovich; Screen tests and location footage; Theatrical trailers and more.

And last but not least, ‘The King of Marvin Gardens‘ (Bob Rafelson, 1972) features 1080p video, an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and supplements will consist of: Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson; Reflections of a Philosopher King, a 2009 documentary about the making of the film; Afterthoughts, a short 2002 documentary about the film, produced by Rafelson; and a Theatrical trailer.

Movie time this afternoon and we went with Black Orpheus, newly available on Blu-Ray from Criterion.  This French/Brazilian co-production, shot entirely on location in Rio, was an international sensation when it was released in 1959 and won the Golden Palm at Cannes.  It’s easy to see why – the non-stop music and dancing, the locations, the color of Carnevale and the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, combined with a smart adaptation of a Greek myth, warmth, humor, tragedy, it’s all in this film.

It’s a wonderful digital transfer, very clean with great color.  The Criterion edition comes crammed with bonus features, including a feature length documentary on the film’s roots and impact and an interview with noted jazz critic Gary Giddins talking about the roots of bossa nova music.

There’s also an interview from French TV from the early 60s with the beautiful Maripessa Dawn, who plays Eurydice in the film.

Just 24 years old at the time the film was made, you’d never guess that she’s not Brazilian.  Actually she was born just outside of Pittsburgh and was mixed Filipino/American.  She traveled to Europe as a teenager and decided to stay and for most of her career worked in France.  She died two years ago, coincidentally just 41 days after her Black Orpheus co-star Breno Mello died.

It’s 11:49 PM and I haven’t set foot outside the house all day.  In no small part, that’s because I’ve been ill all week (went to work every day though) and glad to have some time at home to rest.   I’ll tell ya, getting ill is the best diet I’ve found.  Last year when I was really really ill, I dropped close to 30 pounds in a month.  I’ve mostly managed to keep them off, but they’ve been creeping back recently.  So thanks to this bout of stomach flu or whatever I’ve got, I’ve managed to drop 3 pounds in 3 days.  If I can remain ill for 5 more days, I can go out and buy smaller jeans.

I had been thinking about a Shenzhen run today.  I was in the mood for a massage and the whole spa experience.  But not feeling well combined with it being so freaking hot outside, I stayed home.  This turned out to be a lucky choice.   This woman came over, a friend of my helper, and she gives massages in her free time.  And so of course I wanted one.  She was nervous to be left alone in a room with me (she knew about my reputation already?) so my gf sat on the bed, watching, and eventually pitching in, trying to learn to do it herself.  My helper came up to the room to see what was going on and the next thing I knew, there were three women giving me a massage.  Nope, no happy ending (you don’t get that in Shenzhen either) but I’m sure you can imagine, it was pretty damned nice all the same.

Tonight after dinner (home made chicken soup with pasta), movie time.  I settled on Repo Men.  Now I’m wondering if I can repossess the two hours of my life that I spent watching it.

When I first heard about this film, I thought it was a remake or sequel to cult classic Repo Man.   Turns out it has nothing to do with that film, and with a cast including Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schrieber and Alice Braga (Sonia’s niece), I thought it might be worth watching.

Here’s the idea.  20 or so years in the future, everyone drives Volkswagens and artificial organs are being sold for mega bucks by a mega corporation.  A pancreas costs $600k and you can buy it on the installment plan, 19% interest.  Miss 3 payments in a row and someone comes around to repossess it, forcibly and apparently legally.  As you might have guessed, this is an extremely violent film – even more so in the unrated home video edition.

It starts off well enough.  Its production design is an homage to Blade Runner and Jude Law gets me thinking of his performance in of AI.  Other parts steal from The Matrix, Brazil and many other far better films.  About halfway through, the film just goes completely off the rails, throwing logic to the wind in order to have a bunch of sequences that make little sense but look good on screen.   We stuck with it, even though about 10 minutes before the end there was a particularly gory sequence – I rarely flinch from on-screen gore and worship at the altar of Sam Peckinpah but this had me saying out loud, “Oh, this is just sadistic”  - and I didn’t mean what the characters were doing to each other, I meant what the film was doing to its audience.

It’s wretched films like this that send me running away from new films and taking refuge in older ones.  I’ve been meaning to write about Crumb since re-watching it earlier in the week but never got around to it.   I’m a lifelong fan of artist R. Crumb.  I saw Terry Zwigoff’s documentary when it first came out in 1994 and found it unsettling and disturbing.   I watched it again this week now that it’s available on Blu-Ray from Criterion.

Crumb is an intensely private man and he only opened up to Zwigoff because they’d been friends for years.  Shot over a period of several years, the film starts with a portrait of the artist and a retrospective of his “greatest hits” (Keep on Truckin’, Fritz the Cat, the Cheap Thrills album cover).   And you soon realize that someone who draws comix like this might be deeply disturbed and to some extent that is indeed the case – Crumb manages to completely unfetter himself and let everything from the deepest darkest recesses of his mind pour out onto the page.  Perhaps that’s how he is able to deal with life around him, by getting it out in this fashion.

And then, we meet Crumb’s two brothers, Charles and Maxon.   Compared to them, Robert is the normal one.  Crumb’s father was physically and verbally abusive and their mother was a drug addict.  Charles hasn’t held a job in 30 years, lives with his mother, never goes out of the house, subsists on a diet of prescription anti-depressants.   Maxon lives in a flophouse in downtown San Francisco, sits on a board of nails, swallows a ten foot long stretch of cloth to clean out his intestines every week and gets by by begging on the street for a few hours each day.  Crumb’s two sisters refused to be interviewed for the film and the film gives no indication of what they’re like.  (The film was originally supposed to focus equally on all 3 brothers.)

When I thought about the film after watching it for the second time, I was filled with admiration for how much information Zwigoff fit into two hours and how naturally it all flowed.  The film works for me on all levels.  I’ve picked up the Criterion DVD of Zwigoff’s first film, Louie Bluie and looking forward to watching it soon.

Here’s some links relevant to the film that you should check out:

Crumb: Minds Are Made to Be Blown – Crumb has been writing autobiographical bits that are getting published to his web site, this one about moving to San Francisco and how LSD influenced his art.

Crumb Reconsidered – a terrific essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum on Criterion’s web site.

And last but far from least, a fantastic interview with Terry Zwigoff at AV Club.  I find it rather depressing that most of the 206 comments on this interview are about Zwigoff’s mustache.  Those are the people who deserve to see Repo Men.

I wish I had time to write about these at greater length but I don’t.  All the same, I do want to mention them to you.

Last week I watched the Criterion blu-ray of The Red Shoes.  Often cited as the best film ever made about dance (or at least ballet), it’s a film that I could have sworn I saw back in film school and yet, watching it now, it was completely new to me.  Except in how I realized how this film is the source of dozens of shots, scenes and situations that subsequently appeared in hundreds of other films.  The recent restoration is remarkable as is the film itself.  Read Roger Ebert’s essay on the film in his The Great Movies series here.

But I have to confess that tonight I watched the blu-ray of Powell and Pressburger’s The Black Narcissus, the film they made a year earlier, and I think it’s an even greater film.  Jack Cardiff won his Oscar for cinematography for this film and it is a far more astonishing film – a group of nuns are sent to northern India to start a school and hospital in a “palace” that formerly housed a harem, 8.000 feet up in the Himalayas.  The isolation, the temptations that are around them, the interior changes they go through, much of it falls into a “read between the lines” or perhaps “listen to the silences between the words.”   This film is really unique in British cinema and will stay with me longer I think.  It is very ambitious on multiple levels and succeeds completely.

We also watched the Millennium trilogy over the weekend – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.  Yes, all three of Stieg Larsson’s books have been made into films in Sweden – with the same cast across all three.

It’s really impossible to discuss much of the plot here beyond telling you that it involves a massive conspiracy.  Larsson’s title for Dragon Tattoo actually translates as Men Who Hate Women and that title fits the story better even if it’s not as catchy.  It’s called the Millennium trilogy because it initially revolves around editor Mikael Blomqvist and his muckraking magazine Millennium.   But the main character is Lisbeth Salander and the performance by Noomi Rapace across all three films is breathtaking.  She deserves international stardom for this.  The crimes depicted in the films are shown very graphically, perhaps too graphically, and Rapace gives a bold and fearless performance of a complex character.  I’ll also mention that the first film can be seen on its own, while film #3 picks up immediately after #2 ends – #s 2 & 3, which share a director, can basically be watched as a single film.

An American remake is set for the first film and Daniel Craig has been signed to play Blomqvist and he’ll probably do a decent job of it but he’s actually too big of a star for this role which makes me fear that too much will be rewritten for the American screen.  I don’t know who else could play Salander the way Rapace does.  The film will be directed by David Fincher and actually I think he can improve upon the original, which is quite okay but more workmanlike than artistic.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has just been announced as the first book to sell a million copies in electronic form and that speaks to its widespread appeal.  Larsson had planned six books in this series but died after completing the third.  There are rumors that he may have been murdered.  And given that he was a reporter, is there a question that the conspiracies he writes of could be based on fact and that someone was afraid that books 4-6 might have gone too far?  Or is that just hype?

Finally figured out how to have a halfway decent lunch at Cyberport.  Leave.

Yep, a friend and I jumped on the number 58 minibus, HK$5 and 10 minutes later we were in Kennedy Town, walking around and found a place called The Clay Oven, Indian place with a $45 set lunch that was not bad at all.  I’ll be going back to K-Town often to try some of the other places there.

A couple of doors down was this place named Al Basrah Cow Pampa.  As in “Middle Eastern Cuisine – Argentinean Grill Steak.”  I suppose that’s as fusion as one can get.  A sign there proclaims that they have the best steaks in “twon.”  I got a photo but I’m unable to sync my iPhone at the moment.

Which is really weird.  iPad syncs fine.  iPod syncs fine.  Then I plug in the iPhone – nothing, nada, zilch, the phone doesn’t register that it’s plugged in or charging, let alone start to sync.   So one might think that the problem is the sync cable or the dock connector on the phone, except if I take that exact same cable and plug it into a charger, the phone starts to charge right away.  (I’ve tried two different USB hubs; have not tried the USB ports directly on the computer because it’s a pain to get back there and anyway, as I said, everything else is syncing normally.)  Anyone have any thoughts?

Around 5:35 PM, the Black Rain signal went up with just 10 minutes advance notice.  Yeah, one is supposed to stay indoors when this happens, but I took this as a cue to get out of the office and try to maybe beat some traffic home.  As if.  Actually, things were quite okay on the HK side, but once I came out of the Western Tunnel, the rain was coming down as heavily as I’ve ever seen it.  And this being Hong Kong, people were continuing to drive as poorly as ever – lights not turned on, not signaling lane changes, speeding, etc.

So I get to the place near Shatin where Route 8 merges into Route 9 – 4 lanes going down into 1 and even with the rain, a bunch of brainiacs decide to create a 5th lane to cut through traffic more, further backing things up – and then at the bottom of the hill a huge flood.   Then a mile or two down the road, where I get off the highway, there must have been an accident, traffic on the cross street wasn’t moving and had all but completely blocked the intersection.  I sat there waiting for the light to change while another group of brainiacs figured it was a good time to run through the red light and try to squeeze through the small opening in that intersection – I kid you not.  Sai Sha Road had a spot that was flooded completely across.  And then at the traffic circle in Sai Kung town, a taxi driver who didn’t seem to care that there were other cars (including me) already in that circle, he was a TAXI! and he demanded his right of way.  Ah well, just another day on Hong Kong’s roads.

Anyway, before I head to sleep, let me just alert you that Barnes & Nobles is having a 50% off sale on ALL Criterion DVDs – including boxed sets and blu-rays.  Criterion is the “gold standard” for this stuff – great films, lots of time and care spent on the digital transfers, amazing bonus features.  I’d like to own everything they put out but it’s beyond my budget.  So this sale gave me a chance to get caught up on some of the stuff on my want list.  I counted about 30 things I wanted and then cut the list down to these:

• 3 Films by Louis Malle – boxed set featuring Murmur of the Heart, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir Les Enfants – each one a classic
• Burden of Dreams – Les Blank’s documentary shot while Werner Herzog shot the astonishing Fitzcarraldo
• Complete Monterey Pop Festival – one of my favorite festival films, finally getting the blu-ray
• Fanny and Alexander boxed set – featuring the over-5-hour version of Bergman’s final film
• Eric Rohmer’s 6 Moral Tales – My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, Chloe in the Afternoon and more, more goodness in one box than I can stand!
• Night on Earth – hard to realize I didn’t already have this splendid Jim Jarmusch compendium
• Yi Yi – I love this Taiwanese family drama, again stunned that I didn’t already have it

So 50% off each of the above and I picked the “slow boat to China” shipping option which was just US$20 – after saving around $200 on the above stuff.  The sale runs for another 10 days so you have plenty of time to check it out and I have time to go back and order a few more – Burmese Harp, Berlin Alexanderplatz and the Olivier’s Shakespeare boxed set are looking very tempting.

Lewis Black has a new concert out, Stark Raving Black, available on both CD and DVD.  It is, as always, filled with eminently quotable bits.  Here’s what he has to say about the state of American politics today:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but our two party system is a bowl of shit looking in the mirror at itself.  Why would I be excited that a Democrat won?  Seriously, over the past 8 years, the Democrats didn’t do shit.  Basically the last 8 years, I feel, the Republicans stood around farting and the Democrats went, “Oooo, let me smell it.”

I find it astonishing that anyone is still a loyal Democrat or a loyal Republican.  What are you basing this on?  How is it possible?  What is it that you see?  I don’t see what you’re seeing.  What is it that the Democrats or the Republicans have done for any of you in the past 30 years that has made any difference in your life?  And yet people hang in, which makes me wonder, what the fuck?  I believe you’re delusional.  I believe you’re seeing something that isn’t there and we call that, “hallucinating.”

I know about hallucinations because I took LSD when I was young just to prepare me for this moment in time.  I saw my refrigerator turn into a puma and run away.  I tracked that son of a bitch for three days, mostly wondering, “What am I gonna tell my parents?”  And when I finally caught up with it in the middle of the woods and I was cutting open its stomach in order to get  a beer out, as crazy as I was at that point, I was less crazy than anybody in this room who’s still a Democrat or a Republican.

This has been an unusually active period for notable new music releases, especially if like me you’re an old guy who likes the old stuff, since lots of folks who have sat out most of the decade (or more) have new releases.  Here’s a quick round-up of some recent releases, in random order.

Homeland is Laurie Anderson’s first new album in I don’t know how many years.  The work has evolved over two years of touring and the album is co-produced by her husband, Lou Reed.  It is musically very compelling even if on closer inspection the lyrics aren’t saying a lot.  It comes with a thick booklet and a DVD featuring the 41 minute short film, Homeland: The Story of the Lark.  I’m told the whole thing made a lot more sense on stage with the accompanying visuals so perhaps the DVD, which I haven’t had a chance to watch yet, will bring this together.

Mojo is the first studio album from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in about 8 years.  It was all recorded live in the studio with no overdubs.  And it’s a damned entertaining album.  Touted as a blues album, that’s only true for about half the tracks and Petty’s nasal whine doesn’t put him in Howlin’ Wolf territory.  This is no Damn the Torpedoes but I’ve been enjoying this a helluva lot more than their last one.  I especially like “First Flash of Freedom,” which sounds very San Francisco 1960s Grateful Dead/Quicksiler Messenger Service to me.

Steve Miller is also back after Buddha knows how many years with Bingo!, an album of blues covers.  Probably few people know that Miller got his start in blues bands in Chicago before moving to San Francisco and going all psychedelic so this is a return to his roots.  But so far I’ve played it once and didn’t get all the way through it before falling asleep.

Devo is back after about 20 years with Something For Everybody. Haven’t had a chance to spin this one yet.

The rise and fall of Oasis is charted through the new compilation Time Flies.  The two CD set contains the A side of every single they released before the Gallagher brothers imploded.  There’s also a boxed set that adds an extra disc (their final concert) plus a DVD with the videos for all their singles.

Crowded House returns with Intriguer, their second album since reforming.  After one listen I think that like the last album, they’ve failed to recapture the magic of their older stuff.

Cowboy Junkies’ new Renmin Park is, as you might have guessed, inspired by a recent visit to China.  Haven’t played it yet.

Divine Comedy’s seventh album, Bang Goes the Knighthood, finds Neil Hannon in continued excellent form.

John Mellencamp has a new boxed set, On the Rural Route 7609.  Four discs, 54 songs, 17 previously unreleased.  The tracks are arranged thematically rather than chronologically and completely ignore the John Cougar era.  The 72 page booklet seems to be a major reason to pick this up if you’re a Mellencamp fan and I noted that the boxed set costs $80 on Amazon while a digital download on iTunes is $35 and includes a PDF of that booklet.

Steve Winwood’s latest 4 disc boxed set, Revolutions, is selling for just $25.  Which makes me wonder, does a 72 page booklet make Mellencamp’s boxed set worth $55 more?  At any rate, this is another Winwood’s greatest hits collection, this time out he’s “personally” chosen all the tracks.  There’s also a single disc version.

Over on the video front, there’s a new DVD and Blu-Ray of London Calling, the complete Bruce Springsteen concert at London’s Hyde Park last summer.  It’s Springsteen.  A complete concert.  On Blu-Ray.  What more can I say?

There’s also U2 – 360 Degrees at the Rosebowl, their concert from last year that was streamed live on the internet; it also includes a feature-length documentary.  There’s the standard DVD or Blu-Ray and also a super deluxe edition selling for over $100 that includes the DVDs, the Blu-Ray and a bunch of crap like a 7 inch vinyl single and “3 Plectrums in embossed wallet” that I decided I didn’t need.

Last but not least, Neil Young’s concept album Greendale has been turned into a graphic novel and I haven’t seen it but the reviews I’ve read have all been quite positive.

(Please note that if you like this blog and are considering buying any of the above via Amazon, it helps me out if you click on the links here.)

Announcement from Criterion’s blog that the following titles are all going out of print on June 30th.

Billy Liar
Bob le flambeur
Diary of A Chambermaid
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Man Who Fell to Earth (DVD and Blu-ray editions)
The Milky Way
The Phantom of Liberty
That Obscure Object of Desire
Touchez pas au grisbi
A Woman Is a Woman

The links above all point to full descriptions at the Criterion site but of course you can find these on Amazon or the usual sources.  For those whose tastes in film run beyond Iron Man or Sex in the City, Criterion is the gold standard for DVD distributors – consistently the best transfers and the most interesting bonus features.   Of the 11 films listed above, there’s only two I don’t have.  All of others I strongly recommend – in particular Luis Bunuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.  And Alec Guinness playing 8 different roles in Kind Hearts and Coronets.  And Nicolas Roeg’s Man Who Fell to Earth starring David Bowie.  Sure, someone else will license these and they’ll be available again.  But the odds are strong that the future editions won’t be comparable to these Criterion releases.   I’m doing an Amazon order this week to get the ones I’m missing.

It’s taking me days to catch up with the backlog in my RSS and I’ve skipped over tons of stuff in Twitter.  Clearly once I start working again I’m going to have to figure out a better way to manage the tidal waves of information coming in my direction.  Anyway, some stuff that’s caught my eye.

Neil Innes is touring the US.  An interview and a career retrospective as Innes talks about the Bonzo’s relationship with the Beatles, his work with Monty Python, the Rutles and more.

M.I.A.’s new video was yanked from Youtube (by Youtube, apparently) but you can see it here.

From the SCMP a couple of days ago, some guy goes to Thailand from HK.  He gets an offer from 3 for unlimited data roaming on his iPhone for “only” HK$138 per day.  He accepts that offer.  He comes home 3 days later and gets a HK$29,000 bill for data roaming.  For 3 days.  Seems 3 neglected to tell him it was only $138 if he stuck with a specific carrier and of course every time he stepped out of an elevator his phone switched carriers.

PhotoPad – a photo editing app for the iPad that allows you to adjust color, tint, contrast, saturation, chromaticity, plus crop, filter, lots more.  All with one finger.  I knew stuff like this would be coming and expect to be seeing a whole lot more.   Almost forgot to mention, this is a free app.  I’ve got the iPad camera connection kit now and looking forward to using this app.  I also have the official Apple iPad case and it’s kind of nice and kind of sucks at the same time.

Via CNNGo, S. Pellegrino’s annual list of the world’s 100 best restaurants.  Top restaurant in Asia is in Japan of course.  HK has 5 restaurants on the list, but the highest placed is Robuchon at 53.  El Bulli drops to #2, some place in Denmark is now #1.  Denmark?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation publishes a brief timeline of Facebook’s rapidly eroding privacy policy.  This is scary stuff.

If you’re a Nikon DSLR user (like me), Thom Hogan’s seriously definitive guide to when you should use VR – and, more importantly, when you shouldn’t.

Jon Stewart takes on Apple and the whole Gizmodo 4G iphone thing.  ”You guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes.  What the fuck is going on?”

As you may have seen elsewhere, HP has just purchased Palm for US$1.2 billion.  I think if they waited another six months they could have picked it up for $20 at a garage sale.  How many years ago was it that the Treo was the cutting edge of smartphones?  I can’t remember, but I had one and loved it.  And then followed a series of egregious failures as they squandered all sorts of opportunities to build on its success.  Books will be written how the world was knocking on Palm’s door but they were passed out on the sofa in front of the TV and couldn’t be arsed to open the door and let the world in.

Avatar is now the best selling Blu-Ray disc ever in the U.S.  This despite the fact that the disc contains no extras, not even a trailer and it’s been widely publicized that a four disc deluxe edition will be out in November.  And also despite the fact that the heavy DRM on the disc is rendering it unplayable on many Blu-Ray players (hello Samsung!).

I’ve been to the Hong Kong Rugby 7′s twice in my 12 years in Hong Kong.  As an American, rugby means nothing to me and I’m not much of a drinker.  But it did occur to me this week that going to the 7′s is a great photo opportunity.  If you go to Doghouse in Wanchai you’ve probably seen some of Graham Uden’s great pictures from the 7s and the folks from BC go nuts taking pictures there every year.  So I’d like to join in on that aspect of the fun this year.  If any readers have extra tix or know of someone who does, please let me know!

I think the some of the best Nikon analysis and reviews comes from Thom Hogan’s web site ByThom.  The unfortunate thing is that his almost-daily updates are unlinkable and he doesn’t publish an RSS feed (though Google Reader now tracks changes to sites without RSS – it works!).  If you’re into Nikon cameras and lenses, his site is a must read.   His latest post looks at Nikon’s new 24mm f1.4 lens and how Nikon now has 10 lenses (prime and zoom) with a 24mm focal length and which ones he likes and which ones he doesn’t.

I mention the above simply because if I do end up getting 7s tickets, I’m going to need a bigger telephoto or telephoto zoom lens than I already have, and this is the main site that I’ll be looking at in order to make my choice.  Nikon makes a 300mm f4 (which would effectively be a 450mm on my D300) and Hogan says that lens has stellar optics “even with a teleconverter on.”  It also weighs almost 51 ounces.  Nikon’s also got a 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 zoom with VR – Hogan says the optics are only first rate up to the 300mm point and then fall off after that (“it’s a very serviceable 400mm lens, just not exceptionally sharp”).

I’ve also been thinking about adding GPS to my camera.  It would have been quite useful in Macau and I’m sure would come in handy many times in the future.  Nikon makes one unit and I blanched a bit when I saw it was selling for around HK$2300 at Tin Cheung but saw it today on Stanley Street for a slightly more reasonable $1850.  That Stanley Street shop (I forget which one) also sells a GPS that works with Nikon from a company called Phottix for $1280.  I definitely want one that plugs into the Nikon and embeds the GPS data into the metadata of the photo.  Over at Nikonians, I’ve had a few other brands recommended to me, including one from a company called Columbus that sells for US$110 – so with shipping roughly the same price as the Phottix.  Any of my readers have experience using GPS with their cameras and care to comment?

Hogan also says that with no new DSLR announcement this month, any further announcements coming from Nikon would be at least a month or two out.  Which leaves me still hanging waiting for them to announce a D700 replacement.  I’m not seeing used D700′s any cheaper than $15k at DC Fever (and even more expensive in used shops) and meanwhile I saw it today new, with full warranty, for $17.5k – that’s US$2,275, which compares favorably with the US$2400 on Amazon.  But I suppose I’ll wait a while longer on this.

Back when I was a film student in college (or “university”), Andrew Sarris was my favorite film critic.  He was the first to champion French critics’ theory of the auteur director in the U.S.  Way back when, Sarris wrote that Max Ophul’s Lola Montes was the greatest film ever made.  As it too often happens, the film’s producers drastically recut the film after its original release and Ophuls’ vision was lost to the world for decades – which may explain why I never saw the film.  Following a full digital restoration in 2008 – color and sound as well as getting as close to the original cut as possible, next week Criterion will release this in standard def and blu-ray.   I’ve only had a chance to do a quick preview of the Blu-Ray and the first words that came to mind were sumptuous and lavish.  Hope to have time to watch this over the weekend.

Actually I’ve got a stack of so-far-unwatched Criterion Blu-Rays sitting by the TV at the moment – including Che Part 2, Kagemusha, Paris Texas,  Revanche, Hunger.  With my gf headed off to the Philippines for two weeks right after Chinese New Year, I should have plenty of time to get caught up on this stuff.

For many years, I’ve done my annual physical exam at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok.  Great service and great prices.  I haven’t been to Bangkok in two years (!!!) and am tempted to do a quick run down there.  (I also want another tattoo, and know what I want, but don’t know where I want to put it and not sure who I want to have do it.)  But I just found out via a friend that Bumrungrad has established a partnership with the Asian Hospital and Medical Center, located in the Alabang section of Manila.  The web site looks pretty good and I just received an email listing the various packages and prices, which I’ll compare to the Thai offerings.  So I could join my gf out there for a bit – but a trip out there means at least one day spent with her family and I’m most definitely not a family guy.  And I don’t know any tattoo artists in Manila.  But I suppose it’s a possibility.  Don’t get me wrong, her family’s super nice, I just get bored about 5 minutes after I get there and that leaves me with just 7 hours and 55 minutes to go before I’m allowed to leave.  Yeesh.

Oh, last thing, nothing major … just tonight, my gf thought we should take our maid out for dinner for her birthday.  I finally gave in because I figured I’d make it one of the just 2 or 3 times a year that we hit the sea food joints along the Sai Kung waterfront – with one extra person could order some extra dishes, no?  So of course once we get there and are standing in front of the fish tanks, both women announce that they’re not big time hungry.  We got some mantis shrimp (fried with chili and garlic powder), scallops (steamed with glass noodles, garlic and spring onions), razor clams (black bean sauce) and some fried rice.  Sorry, I forget which one we went to, I think it’s the one that rates a mention in Michelin.   Anyway, it was all damned tasty, and even with tourist prices, if you steer clear of lobster or a big fish, it’s not all that expensive.

Then we walked over to Honeymoon Dessert and split three diffferent things there (now that place is a bargain, HK$64 for 3 desserts).  And then walked over to the town’s Lunar New Year market, which takes over the basketball court in the center of town each year.  No need to deal with the madness in Victoria Park when I’ve got this practically in my back yard!

As we walked back to the car, I was struck once again by how much I love Sai Kung.  In my 12 years in Hong Kong, I’ve lived in 7 different places – and the others don’t even come close to this.  I’m a little jealous of a friend who lives closer to town, so he can quickly and easily walk to the town center from his house.  But then, he doesn’t have a view that comes anywhere close to what we’ve got.

Ah well, time for me to stop rambling and get to bed.   Friday I’ll be going to Shek Kee to fill up the freezer for the long holiday weekend.  Plan on staying close to home and even though it’s not looking good for barbecue weather, I’m still planning on eating well.  With the meats from Shek Kee and my gf’s kitchen skills, it’s guaranteed.