Signal Watch Watches: Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

It'd been a good long while since I'd seen Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway starring film loosely retelling the story of the very real life depression-era gang that cut a path through the central united states, from Texas to Iowa.

It's a great piece of filmmaking and one of those movies that both said quite a bit about the time of its release and manages to act one of the points of demarcation between filmmaking that had preceded it and what was to come as the 70's roared into cinemas.

I've talked before about how much I love Gun Crazy (1950),* and its not hard to see a bit of mashing of the facts around the Bonnie & Clyde case and the spirit and plotting of Gun Crazy in this movie.  But, of course, unlike the 1950 film, Bonnie and Clyde is one of the earlier adopters of obvious violence on screen, not shying away from putting bullets in the faces of bankers or showing Faye Dunaway getting riddled with bullets (I'd say spoiler, but if you don't know what happens to Bonnie and Clyde, you guys need to seriously start watching more TV).  It's also beautifully shot, well edited and the audio of the film presages a lot of what I think you'll hear in films to come as the mix attempts for naturalism, blending in the wind of the plains, a score that's semi-regional and period.

Signal Watch reads: Mark Waid's "Insufferable"

You guys know I'm in the bag for everything Mark Waid has done for the last...  I dunno.  Ever?

Somehow I completely misunderstood that his new online comic, Insufferable, was completely free online.

No, I have no idea what model Mark Waid is using to turn a profit on this, or if there is a profit to be turned.  But at the moment that's not my issue, nor should it be yours, because more great Mark Waid comics are online, and they're free at his new site, Thrillbent.

Waid has re-teamed with Irredeemable artist Peter Krause to tell the story in Insufferable, his second work in his new format, one that uses the native landscape (16x9ish) format we've become familiar with as computer users, and the fact that he can set pacing to some extent with a mouseclick to manage the storytelling.  Its far less intrusive than the limited animation of prior webbish comics experiments I've seen, and manages to use the page pretty well,  I think.

But I'd rather talk up the actual comic than the experiment, because at the end of the day, its about the content.

Waid turns to the urban vigilante brand of superhero after sort of blowing up the heat-vision-bearing version of superheroes in Irredeemable and Incorruptible, and in just four week's worth of the online book, he's done an astounding job of bringing a story to life that works right out of the gate.

Its a broken up version of Batman and Robin with their own issues that surpass those of Bruce and Dick (or Jason or Tim or Stephanie or Damian or Carrie), and its the kind of thing that I think sort of sucks you in from that last panel of the first installment and makes you click "Next".

And, of course, Krause's illustrative-style of art works terrifically well with the world he and Waid are creating, giving a believable view to the character-driven story and capturing the beats and expressions exceedingly well.

Anyhow, give it a shot and be there as it unfolds!

Signal Watch Reads - Further: Beyond the Threshold

Exploration.

I don't read a tremendous number of science-fiction novels, and I never have.  I know what that looks like, and I appreciate the fandom, but its never been me.  Sure, I went through my Bradbury phase and I glanced off the Robot Novels of Asimov, but even in middle-school I'd pick up paperbacks, read the product description on the back, and only rarely walk out the door with one I felt was worth the while.

I also don't read book series.  Its not that I haven't read, say, books by William Kennedy that share a set of characters and circumstances, but its not episodic in quite the same nature.  When I think about a series of books that numbers more than four, I can't get my head around it.

As you may have heard, I've been enjoying the writing stylings of Chris Roberson for a bit now, so when I heard he had a book coming out, I pulled some strings (asked politely) and got a copy.*

I just finished Further: Beyond the Threshold, a book I assume is intended to start a new series.

This is no-@#$%ing-around science fiction, and I quite enjoyed it.

Captain RJ Stone awakens from hypersleep which he entered aboard a star-faring vessel in the 23rd Century.  He finds himself alive and deeply aged 12,000 years later in a world which has changed over the millenia.  The era of seeking new planets has been conquered and mankind has spread itself out far over the cosmos.  With so much time passed, some of those civilizations have been lost, and the challenges of passing from one world to the next have been solved by way of instantaneous transportation via "thresholds".

Avengers Assemble! Saluting Jack Kirby and dealing with the complications as a fan

Your Pal, Jack "King" Kirby!

It's hard to underestimate the cultural impact of comics creator Jack Kirby.  He may not carry the cultural cache of a JD Salinger, but he's probably as widely read, and inspired an army of imitators and worshippers.  And, hey, you can't find action figures nor bedsheets of Holden Caulfield.

still a little peeved the movie will have neither Giant Man nor Wasp (nor Subby)

Kirby didn't create Superman or Batman, but he was part of the creation of (an incomplete list to be sure):

• The Incredible Hulk
• Captain America
• The Mighty Thor
• The Avengers
• The X-Men
• The Fantastic Four
• The Silver Surfer
• Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos
• The Black Panther
• Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy
• Mr. Miracle & Big Barda andthe pantheon of The New Gods
• The Newsboy Legion
• Kamandi
• The Demon
• OMAC
• Challengers of the Unknown
• Silver Star
• Captain Victory

and there are some versions of Kirby's bio that suggest he was the guy who originally pitched a "Spider-Man" to Marvel and didn't do the series as he was too busy (not hard to believe).

No matter what you think, you are not ready for this comic

He also did books that he didn't create (Jimmy Olsen, his mind-bending 2001 work), created romance comics, westerns, and a hundred other things that are somewhat forgotten.

Avengers Assemble! Captain America - The First Avenger (2011)

Yup.  I was going to wait and give Jamie some pacing when it came to watching Captain America (2011), but I got the BluRay of this movie a couple weeks back, and I am an impatient fellow.

I was a bit curious as to how well I'd like Captain America as the last time I saw it, there were extenuating circumstances.  Namely: Mark Waid was there and was a hell of a nice guy.  Also, Austin Books was there shooting t-shirts out of a gun, and the place was full of friendly comic nerds.  Also, I'd had a margarita right before the movie.

If you read my review last August, you may recall I sort of freaked out and gushed about the movie.

like a boss...

You know what?  I still find this a very satisfying movie, superhero or otherwise.  I mean, its not exactly Citizen Kane, and it doesn't have either the grandeur or myth-making of Superman: The Movie, nor the "geez, I can relate" feel of the Young American Hard Luck Case that comes part and parcel with Spider-Man.  But its a celebration of what is best about why we fight, and what it means to be the good guy in the old school, unironic way, nor by becoming the anti-hero.

All very strange because I'm not much of a fan of director Joe Johnston, shy of his work on The Rocketeer.

I suppose part of my attraction is still the pacing of the film, and that even more than Iron Man, I feel like we get a complete story that takes place over an extended period of time.  And, Cap's evil opposite makes a lot of sense in the context of this film, at least in my crazy head.

Sure, it would have been nice to have Mark Waid stop by and enjoy the movie with me (you're welcome anytime, Mr. Waid), but even without his presence or any comic geeks who are not my wife or my black lab, its still a decent flick and a solid entry in the superhero genre.

Of course, its a mix of the original tales as told my Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (I am aware that Kirby did leave to go serve in WWII after Cap debuted, but am unaware if Simon did the same).  Of course it harkens to the Avengers work done around 63'-64' when Cap returned to comics thanks to Smilin' Stan and Jack Kirby.  But it also is an interesting mix of both The Ultimates take on things, leaning heavily on the recent work of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting on Captain America (which is highly readable in collected editions).

Special bonus:  I had a moment of clarity not too long ago when some stray neurons fired and I remember trying to impress a girl when I was a freshman in high school by showing her the Captain America poster I'd recently acquired and hung above my dresser.  Yeesh.

I found a picture of that poster online.

also... like a boss

She did still go out with me a couple of times.  That's the power of Cap, I guess.

Dang, man.  What happened to that poster?  Also, my picture of Earth?  And my Michael Jordan poster...

Signal Watch Reads: Green River Killer - A True Detective Story

The name Jeff Jensen didn't immediately ring any bells as a comics writer when I looked at who penned this book, but as a writer for Entertainment Weekly I know the name, indeed, thanks to the fact that I cannot remember a time when Jamie wasn't a subscriber to Entertainment Weekly.

Jensen's own father, Tom Jensen, was a detective in the King County Sheriff's Department who was on the Green River Task Force from the early 1980's until the unit was dissolved in 1990.  He continued work on the case right up through the Green River Killer's conviction around 2003.

Like a lot of morbid kids seeking a cheap thrill, back in high school I checked out books on serial killers from the local library.  In addition to names like Son of Sam and Zodiac, The Green River Killer was always named as one of the greatest hits of serial killers.  He was called out in part thanks to the sheer number of those he was suspected to have killed and in part because he'd never been caught.  Of course doing a little reading quickly dismisses the whole "brilliant mastermind" scenario of the Hannibal Lecter books.  The reality is that it's hard to catch people who kill mostly strangers and with motives that don't stem from personal grudges, and the stories of both victims and killers are often bleak and tragic.

Panem et Circenses: Signal Watch sees "The Hunger Games" (2012)

When Survivor launched in 2001, I don't think Jamie understood my revulsion to the concept.*  But I'd grown up watching Arnie's 1987 blockbuster, The Running Man, based on a Steven King short story, and had internalized a bit of what the somewhat clunky (yet awesome) story had to say about us.

The idea of "bread and circuses" isn't anything new, and clearly The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins (no I did not read the books) was aware of this as she penned her book, naming her nation "Panem".  And, Signal Corps, do not take offense when I say I'm not sure that The Hunger Games (2012) brings anything new to the screen.  I don't think originality is where the film succeeds (and it does succeed), but in its excellent and unflinching execution (pun not intended) as well as the performances of young and mostly unknown talent.

In many ways, the movie carries the same story as everything from Gladiator to bits of John Carter, but in many ways it reminded me most of the unnoticed, entirely forgotten American Dreamz (2006).  American Dreamz played on the insane popularity of American Idol, a flailing leadership, the ties between celebrity and leadership and the machinations behind legitimate government, popularity and the madness of crowds and those who stand to benefit from managing all of it.

Noir Watch: The Killers (1946)

Back in January in San Francisco I watched 1960's version of The Killers starring the lovely Angie Dickinson.

It had been a long time since I'd seen the 1946 version of The Killers, and maybe even longer since I read (and re-read and re-re-read) the Hemingway short story upon which both films are ostensibly based.

I bought the DVD of the film probably around 2004, and I've seen it a couple of times.  I still think large parts of it are phenomenal, even if watching it now, I realize how many amazing coincidences occur to help along Edmond O'Brien's good-natured insurance company gumshoe, Riordan, as he tries to find out what happened to Ole "Swede" Andreson (played by Burt Lancaster).

Signal Watch Watches: Transcendent Man (2009)

I really wish I had seen this movie when it came out, but it was just recommended to me by Co-Worker Ladd this morning.

As much as I like a good, Thunderdomish Dystopian look at the future, from a technology and academic standpoint, I fall much more in the camp of pointing at the shinier spacecraft and rocket pack visions of the future.  Prepping for a time of Robot Shock Troopers tends to make you start stocking ammunition and buying property in Queen Creek, Arizona, and I'm just not ready to cut the sleeves off all my camo jackets yet, and I look terrible in a crazy-man beard.

In fact, I like my job partially because its all about the future where we get flying cars and can download dissertations directly into our noggins.  Digital libraries!  Hoorary!

It seems that technologist and futurist Ray Kurzweil showed up as SXSWi 2012, and Co-Worker Ladd (yes, his name is Ladd) managed to see him speak.  Kurzweil is one of those names I've heard on and off for two decades, not quite the way you hear of Tim Berners-Lee, but he pops up on BoingBoing and is a name that technology hipsters tend to throw around.

Frankly, I should pay a lot more attention to these sorts of figures, because Kurzweil's personal innovations are incredible, even if that's not really the topic of the documentary, Transcendent Man (2009).  Instead, the doc follows Kurzweil as he moves around the planet as a bit of a Conference Personality, but as he also meets with figures from Colin Powell to William Shatner to an arena full of Church of Christ Conference attendees discussing the concept of The Singularity.*

As we all know, technology is advancing from all angles in ways predicted clumsily by Moore's Law.  What Kurzweil is looking at and discussing is that its not just processing power, but other technologies, falling into three areas of interest:  Genetics (bioinformatics), Nantotechnology and Robotics (or AI).  The Singularity is a point at which those things hit a point on the graph where the nature of humanity will be forced to change by the technologies so profoundly that it will rewrite our definitions of everything from technology to humanity to consciousness.

Basically, we're in a mad race to see if we create a race of super artificial intelligences, if we can rewrite our DNA to beat disease and aging while recreating the human body, or if nanotechnology will be merging us into machines while it has the ability to connect us to the super robot brains while rewriting our bodies into all looking like Fabio in 1994.  Or will we upload our consciousness to Facebook?

Here's the thing:  I think I know just enough about technology and SCIENCE to know I don't know anything, but I also tend to think that Kurzweil, while maybe jumping the gun on the timing, is probably right.

I intended to watch part of the show this evening and then return to it, but instead I watched the entire thing, slack jawed and in awe.  The movie manages to find genius after genius, players at the tops of their fields who all have different reasons to agree or disagree with Kurzweil in whole or in part, and its an absolutely gripping 80 minutes or so.  Especially as the director humanizes and builds a portrait of Kurzweil (a seemingly approachable gentleman, certainly) and digs into the basis for his quest and to see what drives him.

There are a tremendous number of questions occurring in the film, the sorts of things that have the longterm effects of global change, all without the pressure cooker or drive of a Manhattan Project.  Its happening now, and the minds pushing toward the future seem aware of the pitfalls and risks of the world they're creating, and seem to be sure that somebody else is going to deny the dinosaurs their Lysine.  Its absolutely riveting stuff.  And, again, this is a documentary.

The crowd that drifts into this blog is pretty smart and tech savvy, and I'd love to see what you guys have to say, if you've seen it or you get a chance to stream it from Netflix.

Highly, highly recommended.


*see my hilariously uninformed argument with my brother about the concept at his blog post from about a year ago.

Signal Watch Watches: John Carter (of Mars)

Disney won't call the movie by a decent title, so I will.  Let us call it John Carter of Mars, shall we?

As pointed out recently by The Alamo Drafthouse, the Summer of 1982 was an absolutely stunning summer for movies and culturally defining watershed for Gen X.  To celebrate this fact, Summer of 2012, they're having a Summer of 1982 celebration showing a movie per week from that year.

Not all of the movies were a smash at the time (see the final show of the summer, Blade Runner), but this was also the generation of the VCR and HBO.  I didn't see Blade Runner until 1988 or so, but I know when it was released (and you can bet I'll be fighting tooth and nail to be at the screening at the Alamo this summer).

So I'm going to start using Summer of 1982 as a sort of yardmarker for a movie I think could hold a certain distinction.

1.  The movie isn't being loved by critics who are failing to understand it at the time
2.  It likely won't be understood by the mainstream audience at the time
3.  The movie tries to be something grand, really swings for the fences
4.  The movie has the potential to endure in a way that surpasses just the nichey fans you can find anywhere on the internet, but becomes part of the sci-fi geek zeitgeist

Straight up, I @#$%ing loved John Carter (2012).  I believe that it is Summer of 1982 worthy.

You know, this is kind of a terrible poster

The movie is based not just upon the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, A Princess of Mars (1917), but on what I'd guess are a few of the Barsoom/ John Carter novels sort of pulped into a single volume.  That the movie was not just the first book is all right.  The story works well enough and moves at a better pace for the kids that were packed in all around us in the audience at the Alamo.

The movie of John Carter follows Carter (played more than ably by Friday Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch) as a Virginia gentleman who, more than a decade after the Civil War, makes a hasty call for his nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs, to come to him.  By the time Burrows arrives, Carter is dead, sealed in a tomb which can only be opened... from the inside.

Signal Watch Reads - "Donald Duck - Lost in the Andes"

Wow.  You can tell a lot of love went into this book just by picking it up, looking at the binding, the reprint quality, the paper stock and the supplementary material.

I finally finished Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes from Fantagraphics Books over the weekend, and I am busting.  Not just about the actual comics, which were thoroughly enjoyable, but the whole package of the volume.

As I'm learning, you may be a fan of your favorite comic characters, but few American comics characters draw the kind of devotion that you see from Disney Duck fans, especially when it comes to the works of Carl Barks and Don Rosa.  And its not just been here in North America that you see that kind of enthusiasm.  The Ducks are a global phenomena, and I've come to really enjoy some of the work you see originating from Scandanavia as well.

The collection isn't a chronological reprinting of Carl Barks' work, but a sort of greatest hits package from the period with feature length stories such as "The Golden Christmas Tree" and a lot of shorts as well as one page gags, all circa 1948 or so.

I still love "The Fantastic Voyage"

On Saturday morning Simon, his ladyfriend Leta and I will made our way down to the Alamo South Lamar for a screening of The Fantastic Voyage (1966).  The Alamo South hosts Kids' Club, about once a month, and I've seen some classics like War of the Worlds as part of the series.  Frankly, its a testament to both the laziness of Austinites and the lack of interest in anything not involving beer that a free screening (FREE) starting at 11:00 AM of one of the sci-fi all-time classics wasn't better attended.

Their loss.

Signal Watch Watches: Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Before turning it on, I knew literally nothing about the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).  I didn't even know it was literally about hunting treasure in the Sierra Madres, just that it featured Humphrey Bogart, and it was not High Sierra.

By the time this movie got made by director John Huston, Bogart was a huge name and draw, and I think you see a bit of Bogart you don't normally get.  Sure, I've seen a desperate Bogart in Dark Passage and the end of High Sierra, but his character here never starts as the cool, collected sort he normally plays.  He's down on his luck from the start, and seems to spiral as the movie goes on.  It's an interesting turn.

Bogart plays Dobbs, an American unemployed in Tampico in 1925.  After a bad experience with what he'd believed to be honest work, Dobbs and fellow bum Curtin (Tim Holt) are sinking low when Dobbs gets his hands on some money through luck and teams up with fellow Americans Howard (Walter Huston), an aging prospector looking to strike it rich.

The Comics Canon Question

PaulT (aka: @placeslost) forwarded me a very interesting article.  Its a discussion of how a canon of known, quality comics is sort of percolating with folks during urbane drawing room conversations (I guess.  This has never happened to me.).  Whether or not there's an agreed-upon core group of classics in comics at this time is an interesting question, especially in a medium so young that seems to change tastes and values about every 10 years.

I'm going to risk some flames here and say the following:

Dear former Lit Major, 

I am so glad you read Ghost World that one time, and that thanks to the movie and profile you read somewhere, you're passingly familiar with Marjani Sartapi.  Because its now "hip", you'd like to talk comics and you know I read comics.  While I appreciate your background as a reader of Jane Austen and The Canterbury Tales, reading two or three comics and having a former boyfriend who was "really into Batman" makes you an interested tourist, and I welcome you, but please be patient (and, yes, we're all already aware of the homosexual undertones of Batman and Robin, so, thanks).   Also, please stop correcting me.  It's rude and weird and that person writing the article you keep referring to about "important comics" was also clearly new to comics to those of us not new to comics.  I am sad to say that what you saw there was a lot of enthusiasm, not the voice of experience.  Pop culture writers suddenly compiling lists online - especially about comics - doesn't actually mean anything.   

Trust me.

There's a lot that's going to go into a comics discussion that will, likely seem befuddling and not necessarily make sense.  Especially when we start talking about the relative merits of Jimmy Olsen comics or talk about Scrooge McDuck as a major literary character.

Comics are not books anymore than oil paintings are sculptures or a photograph of a horse is a horse.  I beg your patience.  Things are going to get weird.

The writer of this article seems like a semi-serious reader and lists his top 5 - seemingly off the top of his head - picks, and its an interesting assortment.

• Maus: A Survivor's Tale
• Preacher
• The Sandman
• Transmetropolitan
• Watchmen

I'm not sure I'm in agreement, but what the list did do was get me to think a bit.

Signal Watch (Finally) Watches: Some Like It Hot (1959)

While your faithful blogger has seen many, many movies and some movies many, many times, we also have huge holes in our mental inventory of flicks.  Not the least of these areas I need to take care of is pretty much everything directed by Billy Wilder.  No, I don't know why.

I especially don't know how I missed something starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.  Anyhoo, I finally watched Wilder's Some Like it Hot.

Yes, this is the one where Lemmon and Curtis (in terms of the film) successfully pass as women for an extended amount of time, and which spawned a million knock-offs like Bosom Buddies or Tootsie.

The pair play down on their luck musicians in 1929 Chicago who become accidental witnesses to (spoiler alert) the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (/spoiler alert).  Fleeing Chicago to avoid the mob, the two find work in disguise in an all-girl band.

Of course Monroe is the ukulele player/ vocalist in the band, and that's just going to be a problem when you're trying to keep anyone from figuring out that you're a dude.

The movie more than earns its reputation, and I can see why its a favorite.  I suspect that when this hit, it pushed as many buttons and was as "edgy" as current comedies like The Hangover that play with social mores and steps just enough outside of the expectations of an audience that the laughs come from the sheer surprise.  Of course, some of that's dated now (there's a bit about "why would a man want to marry a man?"), but actually very little, which is part of why I think the movie holds up well.  Its also plenty risque.

I suspect most of you have seen the movie, but I said I'd talk about every movie I watched in 2012.   I won't go on too long, but if you haven't seen it, I recommend.  Lots of great performances, and an oddball of a happy ending.  Frankly, Tony Curtis isn't someone whose work I know terribly well, mostly just a few viewings of Spartacus, so it was great to see him in top form here, and I'll be trying to learn his accent (you know the one) just to annoy Jamie.  And special props to Joe E. Brown.  He is terrific in this movie.

Monroe is particularly hilarious in this movie, and you can see how (aside from the visual cues) she was at the top of her game in this movie.  But, man, some of the dresses...  I don't know how they pulled that off.  Billy Wilder, you mad, mad genius.

Great movie.

Late edit:  San Diego's famous Coronado hotel does exteriors for a good part of the film, doubling for Florida.  J__Swift reminded me of this.  If in San Diego, I highly recommend a visit out there. 

Achewood seems to have actually returned

Its only hitting when Chris Onstad has energy and time to do a strip, but the results have been worth it.  I am glad to see multiple successive Achewood strips have been published.

Return to Achewood here.

I have a few questions for Mark Waid on "Irredeemable"

edit:  I have recently been informed that my comics conversations have gone way "inside baseball".  I suspect this is one of those.  I apologize in advance.


Also, this thing was riddled with type-o's.  Thanks for not pointing that out.

I just finished Irredeemable Volume 8.

Some thoughts:

As much as Kingdom Come was a commentary on the state of superhero comics in the mad, mad 90's, I have to look at Irredeemable in whole, if not in individual parts, as another bit of Waid's commentary, but (for me) its a bit like trying to hold mercury.  The Plutonian is not exactly a Superman analog, even when he clearly is.  There are hints of Squadron Supreme here and there, which was exactly a commentary on the Justice League, but maybe less so when JMS rebooted the Squadron a decade ago.  Hints of Wildstorm, bits of reflections of reflections of the JLA and DC line of books in Authority or a few dozen other replicas that mistook gloss for edge and grim violence for "realism".  But maybe this book is a reflection of that dark reflection.

In this issue, Irredeemable fights the ghost robot from space!*

Signal Watch Reads: Feynman

A few months ago Jim Ottaviani visited Austin during the promotional tour of his graphic novel, Feynman, a biographical sketch of famed physicist Richard Feynman.  It turns out that Jim's day job is in the field of digital libraries, and he had a sort of informal chat at the library, where it turned out he knew two of my colleagues from graduate school.

Its a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.*

A few things:  

1)  I struggled mightily in high school physics and stuck with geology as much as possible in college when asked to to take science (rocks!).  My investigations into modern physics (stuff they were not teaching at my high school) have been mostly catch-as-catch can through television specials, reading articles online and this, my third comic book on physics in any way, shape or form.  I know some basic principles, I know some names, I understand that light behaves like a wave and a particle, and aside from that, I sort of stop and start with what everyone who has ever owned more than one Pink Floyd album knows about Schroedinger's Cat.  And, as I understand it, what we consider the point of the experiment is incorrect.

2)  I don't pretend like I had ever heard of Richard Feynman before this book hit the shelves.  The pop-culture aspect of science also eludes me, and so I had not read any of Mr. Feynman's books or sat about urbanely quoting the man over coffee served in a small and delicate cup.  

3)  I have a hard time remembering the basic fundamentals of physics.  Every time I return to the material, that part of my brain re-engages, and neurons re-fire, but its not something I think about very often.  Its sort of how I wrote down what the Higgs-Boson is just so I had a place to go look it up every time I needed to know while reading an article on the LHC.

My hat if off to Jim Ottaviani for his handling and structure of a book that could have been an horrendous mess.  The book is really 85% biography, 15% physics lesson in order to explain why Feynman matters to Sally Q. Reader.  As he states in the afterword, I had no doubt that Ottaviani had done his research enough to both understand and not judge the man particularly one way or another, and to internalize what Feynman was on about enough to share it with an audience as clueless about physics as myself.

Signal Watch Watches: The Artist

Yes, The Artist is a silent movie.  Shot in black and white.  A period piece (it takes place during and immediately following Hollywood's silent era).  You will not recognize the two leads.

It comes to Austin on the heels of Hugo, an excellent handshake of a film to The Artist, the two acting as a sort of before-and-after look at the silent era of film, one looking at the earliest days of small film producers and this movie examining life for the stars within the studios as the transition to sound became a reality.

The territory will feel at least a bit familiar to the millions of us who love Singin' in the Rain,  and, indeed, our lead reminds me a bit of a love child of Gene Kelley and Douglas Fairbanks.  To catch you up: while sound revolutionized film, it also meant the end of many careers for working actors and actresses.  In Singin' in the Rain, Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont has a terribly annoying voice that doesn't match her aristocratic screen persona.

Signal Watch watches: Tintin

As I understand it, Tintin is a global phenomena that somehow never exploded in the US the way the character has entertained generations across good chunks of the rest of the globe.  Its telling that the release of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn came to the US months later than the rest of the world.  Because it is not "ours", this has meant low-flying expectations for the boy reporter here in the states and a welcome not unlike how we treat foreign exchange students when they arrive at our high schools in clothes not bought at Foley's.

We're talking about the movie here for a number of reasons.  1)  It is based upon the comics by Belgian comics-smith Hergé.  2)  It is a high-flying adventure movie.  3)  Its the creation of a wide-range of geek friendly folks from Steven Spielberg to Steven Moffat.

At the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin, the pre-show rightfully showed clips of adventure serials, Indiana Jones homages, etc...  before the movie.  The comic strips in which Tintin appears actually pre-date Indiana Jones by about fifty years, so I want to make this clear to the legions of Americans who believe that action stars come in either Sylvester Stallone or Jason Statham models and find the idea of a Belgian action hero hilarious:
A)  Van Damme  B) this is the most pure adventure movie to hit the screens in the US in a decade.  And that sort of worries me about American movie-making.