Human Again, Again

Today's reading on the scale came to 296.5 pounds--the first time in over 2 years I'm below 300 pounds. I am, for the moment at least, human again. Let's see how well I can build on this.

Momentous Occasion

It happened just short while ago, in my kitchen. As I walked past the open window, I caught the first distinct whiff of that certain flavor in the air that always says "Fall" to me. I don't know what it is exactly, what constitutes that scent and distinguishes the air of autumn from any other time of the year, but I've always been able to smell it, distinctly, and this evening proved to be the first time this year I met that welcome omen. Bring on the football, falling leaves, holidays, and crisp weather!

Cinema, verité

I just got around to watching Avatar last week. I was pleasantly surprised, finding a better movie than I was expecting, with some decent character development and a story that was perhaps somewhat obvious, but not really "eye-roll" worthy. Then I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds tonight, and again I was pleasantly surprised. Tarantino delivered a tight, entertaining movie (even considering its running time [around 2:30]), not the sprawling mess of a film I thought I recognized at first glance. And just that quickly, Inglourious Basterds moved up the ladder, knocking Avatar down a peg on the list of best movies of last year.

That judgment led me to consider the long plight of special-effects-laden sci-fi epics--a class of film long on success and influence, but short on critical respect. Ever since Star Wars--you know the one I'm talking about; episode numbers be damned--changed movies in America (and around the world, really), received a Best Picture nomination, and then lost to Annie Hall, a string of wildly popular, commercially successful, and visually innovative films have come and gone without receiving much respect come awards season beyond some statues for their technical merits. Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Dark Knight spring to mind as examples of special effects spectaculars that hit the theaters as blockbusters, bringing new dimensions to movie-making that, taken with their financial successes and widespread cultural impacts, would have made any one of them arguably the film of the year at their respective times of release. Yet only The Return of the King actually won the Best Picture award. All the others came up short--some as nominees, others out the running entirely. Avatar is just the latest to join that list of big movies that couldn't.

This track record has always seemed unfair. Many of these films far outpaced their contemporary competition in any number of facets. One can certainly argue, for instance, that Jurassic Park, for all its flaws, was destined to have a far greater cultural impact than that other 1993 Spielberg film, the one that actually did win the Best Picture Oscar: Schindler's List. That Schindler's List is a fine movie and influential in its own right is undeniable. But by many a metric, one would be hard pressed to argue that Schindler's List had a greater impact than Jurassic Park. The latter represented a quantum leap forward in the art of special effects, bringing new technologies to the art of filmmaking that continue to evolve and change movies to this day. (Avatar is almost a direct descendant of Jurassic Park, in this sense.) And that comparison, between Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, is one of the narrower battles. Few people today would rank Gandhi ahead of E.T. on their list of favorite movies. And while Annie Hall is a fine movie and fondly remembered, any argument that its impact on movies and our culture outweighed Star Wars would be laughable.

Given these examples, the temptation may be great to view Avatar in a more favorable light than Inglourious Basterds. Its long term impact on film will likely be greater, given its advanced special effects and (perhaps) its 3D presentation. (I'm not sold on 3D as yet.) It is likely that sequels will be forthcoming, and future directors will be taking its cues when making big, blockbuster special effects entertainments. Inglourious Basterds will not have a similar impact. (The odds of it inspiring a string of violent, highly cinema-literate war movies are, shall we say, unlikely.) So why, then, do I rate Inglourious Basterds as a better movie than Avatar, having just watched them back to back?

Two reasons. One, Inglourious Basterds is simply a better overall movie. Better dialogue, better characters, better story. Avatar was fun to watch, but just not up to that snuff. Two--and here's the meat of the matter--Avatar's impact almost certainly will be bigger in the long term, for the reasons previously stated. Yet, taking the long view, that influence is not automatically destined to be positive. As with Star Wars, Avatar is likely to spawn a host of imitators and descendants, most if not all of which will be something much less than the original. (In the case of Star Wars, included among those poor imitators would be its own prequels.) The new technologies and techniques created by James Cameron will be bequeathed to a host of unworthy followers, whose ill-conceived offspring will assault our cinemas for years to come. How many bad movies will waste our viewing hours, annoy us with their saturation advertising, and clutter the shelves (or disk space) of our libraries in the future, all because someone tried to make the next Avatar? As likely as not, we'll suffer no such indignities thanks to Inglourious Basterds.

That, then, is the problem with special effects sci-fi spectaculars. The very thing they hang their hats on, the engine which drives their ascent from the middling ranks of genre up to the heights of movie-making, is the same thing that ultimately sullies their environment. Their very own innovations are what eventually drags the level of their genre back down into the abyss from whence it came--and thus makes the future climb that much steeper. In that way, what appears at first glance to be an unfair lack of respect may in fact be nothing more than justice served ahead of its time. And so, any filmmaker who wishes to rise to the top through the ranks of the sci-fi genre may find the effort leads to an ending which is ultimately--if you'll forgive me for indulging in le mot juste--inglorious.

A New Equation

In response to this story, I'd like to propose a new equation:

E > mc^2s

Should be read as:

Einstein (is greater than) motherfucking conservative squares

Really, that about says it all.

crApple

I have an iPod. Two of them in fact. And I have long been an Apple partisan, having been the owner of a series of Macintosh desktop systems. But I'm getting fed up.

My iPod Touch is--or rather, was--a delightful piece of technology. But then it took a swan dive into the toilet, and this unscheduled dip had, shall we say, a negative effect on it. The screen turned dopey, and no longer displays everything in clear, sharp, vibrant tones. But it's still readable, for the most part. And the speaker/headphone interface wound up screwed up; the music being played would come out of the speaker even when the headphones were plugged in, thus decreasing the volume going into the ears and rendering the volume control non-operable. Not great, but the machine retained some measure of its functionality. Apps still worked, info kept being stored, the music would play, albeit in a crippled state.

Then Apple released an update to the system software. And ever since that update installed on the Touch, there have been issues. The music volume, already problematic, now has developed a habit of going schizo right in the middle of playing, with the usual result being the iPod stops playback by itself. This renders listening to the sounds frustrating, at best.

So I tried to perform a restore on my Touch. The panel in iTunes clearly says, if you're having problems with your iPod, try to restore it. So I did. Except, when I did, the computer informed me that "there was a problem." The upshot being, it couldn't restore my iPod to its last known settings. Hence, some of my personal info--app content and settings, mostly--got lost in the process. (Oddly, not all; just most of it.) Boom. Gone. Several months worth of checklists, high scores, bookmarks, etc. down the drain.

You may ask, well, what do you expect? You're Touch is broken. Yes, it is, but it was not functionally broken. It still worked, and showed no sign of not working before the software update. Being dinged up should not be a death sentence for a piece of tech. My old iPod mini--the one I now use for music listening--has gone through many a hell of knocks and drops, and it survives quite nicely and does what it always has done. And I've heard stories of other pieces of equipment that have been through a lot--some even through the washing machine--and still came out working. What's up with the Touch that it's so fragile?

Plus, remember, it wasn't the brief toilet swim that knocked it out of semi-working condition. It was limping along, but usable, before the update. It's a software issue, not a hardware issue. And it's further complicated by another software issue: those backups iTunes runs every time you link up your iPod apparently aren't worth shit. Because when the time comes to restore...oops, can't do it.

This episode--along with other recent news--only increases my sense that Apple more and more doesn't give a shit about the quality of its products. It only cares about getting them publicity and selling them.

And that has me thinking about the future. At some point, I may need to seriously reconsider my choice for a computer. And a personal music player. And whatever else the future has to offer. Because Apple is not making the grade. And now, for the first time ever, I'd have to say that if I were asked by someone on the fence, someone looking to buy a first computer or phone or whatever, I would not automatically recommend anything Steve Jobs has had his hands on.

Think different indeed.