Freyburg

From the BBC vaults and the good graces of Youtube comes a documentary about the crafty Delia Derbyshire and how she created one of the finest themes ever to appear on television. Second, of course, only to this one.

After a week’s delay due to illness on the part of both myself and Steven, we’re back in fighting form with the first part of a retrospective of Christopher Eccleston’s lone season as the good Doctor. His reign was the beginning of Who’s new era, and we ponder our anticipation prior to the premiere of “Rose,” how things have changed for the series as we hurtle towards the premiere of Season 3 (12 days, w00t w00t!), and the usual digressions and balderdash, including a taunting of Podshock and flaunting of our (quite) tenuous connection to the writer of “Dalek.” (feed, web, direct download)

A big part of being a word-class city is measuring your cosmopolitan genitalia against other world-class cities. So it goes with New York, which is currently feeling the heat from London, where plenty of financial services are moving to and cultural street cred is building (and let’s not forget the greatest television show ever made originates from there.)

Personally, I think most of these comparisons are an interesting but ultimately pointless exercise in vanity, though it’s fun to see cities lower down the totem pole (like my current hometown) proclaim themselves to be in the big leagues.
Of course, everyone knows the only true high-end town is Edmonton. Heh.

Carbon credits are all the rage amongst the environmentally conscious, but this column in Time.com points out that while carbon credits might be well meaning, they’re essentially a way for liberals to assuage their guilt while still just firing as many pollutants as everyone else into the atmosphere. Sounds like the indulgences one could pay the church in medieval times in order to absolve oneself of sin. Still, buying carbon credits is better than nothing, I suppose. Meh. Meh, I say!

As we’ve discussed previously, going to the movie theatre ain’t what it used to be. But that’s true not only for the patrons of the cinema but the people distributing films. Turns out that straight to video, which is usually synonymous with terrible action films, is also being used for artier festival fare. And then there’s the online option, where you can order what you want, when you want. (And the ever popular torrent option, which does the same for free. ) The NYT frets and ponders these developments in an article by film critic A.O. Scott.

FROM THE WEBMASTER:

We’ve enabled authentication in the comment section as the latest measure in our seemingly never ending war against spam in the comments on this site.

(That’s right, you’ll have to use Google to find out how to buy Soma now; sorry ’bout that.)

Hopefully registering once won’t be too much of a pain; make sure your browser is saving cookies once you’ve registered so you don’t have to log in every time you comment.

Direct any nastiness regarding this change at me, not Freyburg… but we’re sticking with our guns until we can change this blog over to WordPress.

-from Cam

300 has been hyped up since the first images from the film hit the net about a year ago. It also cleared about $70 million in its first weekend, and it’s from Zack Snyder, who did a pretty credible remake of Dawn of the Dead (no easy task) and adapted the movie from the funnybook work of Frank Miller (of Dark Knight fame.)

So I was looking forward to seeing some Spartans take on the Persian hordes in a suitably bloody fashion when I finally got around to seeing the film this Monday. Unfortunately, though 300 looks spectacular and isn’t without neat moments, in total it’s pretty mediocre.

For a start, the Spartans are flat out dull. They don’t do much besides fight and shout and then fight some more, all the while mentioning how bad-ass they are, or alternatively flexing their abs. The Persians, by contrast, have a surfeit of cool costumes, masks, creatures and weaponry that they lob at the Spartans, as well as a 7 foot tall drag queen for a god/king. It’s like the toughest mofos ever to march in a Pride parade took on a bunch of hillbillies, and we’re supposed to root for the hillbillies. Frankly, I wanted the Persians to whup the Spartans but good, if only to stop all the damned shouting.

But the bigger crime of the film is that for all the posturing and cool visuals and killy-killy…it’s sort of dull. I can appreciate the technical accomplishment of translating a pile of blue-screen footage into a reasonable facsimile of Mller’s graphic novel, but that didn’t make it any more interesting to watch.

Rolling Stone gathered up a panel of experts to pontificate on what will happen in Iraq and the surrounding region once the U.S> (inevitably) withdraws. The verdict? Nothing good, that’s for sure.

Yes, your beloved hosts have been simultaneously felled by the flu (Steven) and some viral infection (Warren). Steven’s too weak to reach for his headphones, and I sound like I’ve been gargling motor oil, so we’ll have to wait a few days until we’re both back at full capacity before we can record the next podcast.

Daily KOS is usually chock full of rantiness from the American left that I can’t say is all that pleasant to read. But a recent post connecting the death of historian Arthur Schlesinger and the short span back to the beginnings of human history is well worth your time. Makes you realize that not only are you a blip on the universe’s radar, but that everyone else who ever lived did so quite recently, from a certain perspective.