Yesterday’s movie was Solitary Man, and I’m writing about it because it stayed with me all day.  There are some obvious parallels in my life I suppose, but only superficial ones (or are they?).  Michael Douglas plays Ben Kalmen, a former big shot fallen on very hard times.  He’s 60 years old and still has an eye for the younger ladies.  The fact that he used to sell cars tells you that he has the gift of gab and the fact that he looks like Michael Douglas means he still can talk the occasional 18 or 20 year old into bed, even if it may have disastrous results to his life – and it does.

But this is not some Fatal Attraction melodrama, this is in fact a very low key character study that I found consistently entertaining.  It’s written by Brian Koppelman, who has worked a lot with Soderburgh, writing Ocean’s 13 and The Girlfriend Experience.  It’s co-directed by Koppelman and David Levien – the two previously directed Knockaround Guys.  The cast includes Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Jenna Fischer, Mary-Louise Parker, Jesse Eisenberg and some other familiar faces.  And it has some terrific songs on the soundtrack – kicking off with Johnny Cash’s cover of Neil Diamond’s Solitary Man; pay attention to both the lyrics and Cash’s performance – it’s amazing how well that song works with this film.  But Douglas is unquestionably the star.

Unlike many other actors his age, Douglas has not entered his 60s in denial, he’s not still playing the kinds of roles that made him a huge box office star, bigger even than his father.  (Well, okay, Wall Street 2 is coming out next month, there are exceptions to the rule.)  He’s taken a few chances in some smaller character-based films, starting perhaps with Wonder Boys in 2000.  And these chances pay off artistically, even if not at the box office, because Douglas continues to get better as an actor.  He’s no longer attempting to get by on looks and charm; I see a real attention to tiny details in his portrayal of this character.

Solitary Man scored high at Rotten Tomatoes and it scored pretty high with me as well.

The only downside is that with my gf away, I’ve been trying to only watch movies that I think she won’t want to see.  But I think she’s gonna like this one, so I’ll definitely end up watching it again.

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 bought this yesterday.  To be more precise, I pre-ordered it a month ago and picked it up yesterday.

Yes, it’s an Albert Einstein action figure.  Comes with an extra set of hands clenched into fists.

Okay, it’s an Albert Einstein doll.

I know.  But I like it anyway.

I got this in my last order from Amazon.  The Godfather Family Album, published by Taschen.  To give you an idea of how whomping huge this book is, that’s the Blu-Ray set next to it on the right.

It was previously a limited edition of just 1,000 and those now sell for upwards of US $3,000, at least the first 200 in the series, which were autographed and numbered.   Now there’s a “general release” version, listing at $70 and selling for $44 on Amazon.  At that price, I couldn’t resist.

You can guess the impact of this book with such great pictures in such a large format.

There’s a bunch o’ words in there as well.

Most days, if forced to choose, I name Godfather as my all-time favorite film.   So I’m extremely happy to add this book to my library.

First off, the manual that comes with the Sony NEX-5 is practically worthless.

Reason 1: I attach the flash (comes with the camera, not an $$$ extra), try to select auto flash mode, camera says that mode is not available in my current shooting mode, I select every other shooting mode, still seems to be the same, nothing in the manual that covers this.

Reason 2: Panorama mode – For in camera playback, you can either view the entire shot at once or there is an option to “play” it, to scroll across the image. I have not yet worked out how to get this “play” feature over to the computer. I can see a directory that has some very tiny video files in it along with some files with proprietary extensions and am presuming the data I want is here. I’ve installed the software that came with the camera but not in a mood to reboot the PC (sigh) so no chance to see if this is the “missing link” yet. Again, nothing in the manual even remotely addresses it.  (In case you’re wondering, the camera seems to delete the individual jpg shots that make up the final composite.)

I was planning on stopping off somewhere vaguely scenic on the way home to take some test shots but tonight was a “red” rain storm. In fact, driving was even worse than during a recent “black” storm. Visibility during most of the drive was horrendous – which didn’t stop some Einsteins, mostly in Mercedes or Alphards, from doing their usual 80 kph weaving in and out of traffic tricks. A tree came down on Sai Sha Road, blocking half the road and other sections of the road were this close to being flooded out.

Anyway, here’s a panorama shot that I took in the office today:

As always, click on the image to see the full-size version.  I’d like to emphasize that this was shot handheld.

Now a couple of other random shots of little consequence.  This cropped image of a tree at Cyberport I think shows how nice and sharp the NEX-5 and 16mm lens are.

And just one of those things, in this case a bit of street art, that I passed every day in Quarry Bay for 8 years and mostly took for granted but actually quite like:

The jpeg is unretouched except for cropping.

And now a photo of a completely different sort, one I didn’t shoot myself but took from here:

This is “young model forerunner” Vonnie Lui Hoi Yan at a press conference for an upcoming film, (ahem) 3D Sex and Zen.  It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what they’re using the 3D for.  Ms. Lui commented that she “was chosen as the Hong Kong bust goddess” at some event in Taiwan.

Which then brings to mind Taiwan actress Shu Qi.

Image taken from here, a report in which Aaron Kwok says, “Previously her Cantonese was not so fluent, so she always made words sound dirty.”  Yep.

Another recent item about Shu Qi caught my eye, one in which she was asked her opinion of pseudo-models such as Chrissie Chau.  (She approves.)  And someone asked her if she would shoot a “sexy photo album” and she responded she would “in my next life.”  It seems she hopes that everyone has forgotten that she first came to fame by posing fully nude at the age of 17 for a series of albums initially published in Taiwan (and still available on some newsstands in HK after dark).  And then did a few soft-core Cat III films before becoming one of the very few actresses in the region to cross over to more legit productions from this kind of start.

No point to any of the above, just felt like running a picture of Ms. Shu.

And here’s Mavis Pan Shuangshuang (yes, one can make at least one or two jokes about her name); she’s been tagged “Little Shu Qi” by the press although I don’t see anything little about her.  (Pic taken from here.)

So as I mentioned, we went to see Inception tonight.  I liked it, I admired it for its ambition and, lets face it, there are precious few science fiction films that are targeted at an adult audience these days, even fewer that are big budget “non-franchise” productions from major Hollywood studios.  But on the whole, I felt let down.

There are going to be some spoilers in this review.

For the past 20 or 30 years, it seems as if almost every science fiction film targeted at adults labors under the massive shadow cast by my all-time favorite writer, Philip K. Dick.  And as you probably know, one of Dick’s recurrent themes in his work and, as he got older and possibly more insane, his life was questioning what we all accept as reality.  (PKD, in case you don’t know, claimed to have been hit by a bolt of pink light from the sky and for the rest of his life variously believed it was still the year 70 AD and it was still the Roman Empire, although sometimes Nixon remained president, and sometimes that bolt of light came from space aliens and other times from Russia.  That’s an oversimplification, he wrote thousands of pages around these theories.)  It’s a great plot device for films because directors love to try to turn the tables on you; some do it better than others.  And Nolan has shown he can be really great in providing those WTF kinds of endings – both in Memento and Prestige.

I was hoping for a similar ending here but it didn’t come.  Yes, I will give Nolan props for managing to credibly explain his somewhat silly premise and the way in which this world operates.  The final 30 minutes, in which he is cross-cutting between 3 (or 4)(or 5) levels of dreams is handled in a clear manner that would have given lesser directors the fits.

But the thing is, if you watch this film and you can’t predict the WTF whiz-bang ending he’s going to provide, you’re just not paying attention.  And it’s precisely because it’s so predictable that I was waiting for Nolan to pull the rug out under me, to play with my expectations and to have something that went against them and left me shocked and stunned.  And he didn’t do that.  He gave me exactly the ending that I had been expecting for 2-1/2 hours.  And so, color me disappointed.  I wanted to find out that one of the “middle” levels was the real one or that none of them are (and perhaps you could read the ending that way but I didn’t).  I wanted a surprise and I didn’t get one.

That being said, despite the fact that the climax of the film is really well handled – you know exactly where you are and where everyone else is in all three “levels” at any given moment – I grew tired of it, I wanted him to hurry it along and, I confess, I started wondering what all of it might have looked like in the hands of Brian De Palma (the absolute master of taking 30 seconds and stretching them out to 30 minutes).

I also have to wonder if this was a wise career move for DiCaprio, coming right on the heels of Shutter Island in which he plays a character who ends up pretty much the way he ends up here.  It’s obvious that he was anxious to work with Nolan and probably vice versa, but perhaps he should have waited.

To be fair, I never once looked at my watch.  Nolan kept it moving.  But if I entered the theater hoping for an experience on a par with Blade Runner, Dark City or the first Matrix film (or even Duncan Jones’ under-rated “Moon”), I didn’t get it here.   Nolan is a master story teller and yet, I always get the feeling with him that the whole is less than the sum of its parts, that so far his reach extends just ever-so-slightly beyond his grasp.  As much as I enjoyed his two Batman movies, I don’t rate them as highly as others do.  I need to go back and watch Prestige again, and perhaps Memento as well.   At any rate, I’m glad I saw it and it’s the closest thing to adult entertainment you’re going to get from a major Hollywood studio these days.

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.

Actually, I was intending to go to Shenzhen Saturday, but the friend who was gonna go with me backed out and I couldn’t find anyone else to go at such short notice.  Could have gone on my own but one of my reasons for going was to hit a couple of favorite restaurants, neither of which make sense if I was going to be there alone.

And so I stayed home and … sigh … installed the 64 bit version of Windows 7 and a couple of dozen apps.  I figured it was time.   I’d installed Win7 before and was dual-booting but I’d never gotten around to installing most of the apps I use on it.   Lightroom 3 64 bit is noticeably faster than 32 bit under WinXP – not sure if that’s a fair point of comparison or not but what the hell.

Migrating iTunes with all my settings and playlists seems to have as well as can be expected.  I’m syncing my iPad now and it’s an hour so far and not even halfway through the back-up.   And that reminds me – I’m running Open Office here instead of MS Office, except that I’m still using Outlook to manage my contacts.   I don’t want to go the bloat-ware route and install Outlook here so I need another strategy for a contact list that syncs to iPhone – any suggestions?

Win7 may be the fastest selling version of Windows ever, or whatever it is that they’re claiming, and I can see some improvements but also, one day into this, I can see a lot of the same old errors and crap that’s been carried over from older versions.  Minor annoyances such as how File Manager still shows directories on tree on the left even after that directory has been moved or deleted and even after I’ve hit the refresh button several times.  You’d think they could at least get the simple stuff right.

So I’ll leave you with a link to Wired’s list of “cerebral sci-fi films.”  Actually it’s rather disappointing – no Forbidden Planet or Fantastic Planet, let alone Silent Running or Dark City.

And another movie list by Julie Gray at Huffington Post, she says this is an evolving list from GASP (without saying what GASP is) of films you should have seen if you plan on working in the entertainment industry.

Although it is simply not possible (or advisable) to have seen every movie ever made, the criteria for this list is that these are movies that have seminal, iconic or culturally significant performances, writing, direction, or premises. These are the movies that set the bar, raised the standard or innovated something new and oft-imitated.

I counted 156 films on the list and I’ve seen them all but I find the list rather distressing.  I counted a total of 3 non-English language films on the list and those are Amelie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and La Dolce Vita.  No Kurosawa, no Bergman, no Truffaut or Godard or Antonioni or Rosselini or Satyajit Ray.  And the sad thing is, this list is the set of cultural touch points for Hollywood today, which is probably one reason why most American commercial film making is so unambitious.

I could probably sit down and do blogs that collect essential film and music lists – well essays more than just lists, perhaps group blogs with several trusted contributors.  The only problem is that I have this little thing called a job.  Could I jettison the job and do these?  Yeah.  Could I jettison the job and do these and earn a decent living from it?  Maybe not so much.