Friday November 11 2005 Disney, Personal

The Disney Taint

Tonight after work I decided to go see Chicken Little at The The The El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. I’ve been wanting to see the theater for a while now, and I had to do something to make up for not going to Disneyland this trip, and it was showing in Disney Digital 3D! I’m not familiar with the details, but apparently the theater is all historical and shit. It’s not as big as Grauman’s main theater, but they make up for it by making a big production out of everything.

When we went in they gave us all the Chicken Little 3D glasses to keep as a souvenir — and because you don’t want to be wearing the same glasses that some freakshow off Hollywood Boulevard came in and wore before you. As we went into the theater the guy was already playing on his swinging organ on stage. That was really cool — he did a whole Disney medley and they had it somehow hooked up in stereo so it was like being surrounded by organ. Yes I used the same dumb double entendre twice in a row. Then the theater manager came out and welcomed everyone and announced upcoming shows. And then we saw trailers of some movie about snow dogs that get lost in the Arctic, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

So far it sounds like great old-time movie house experience. Well, that was before the cute young singer in a short skirt ran out on stage and started dancing to one of the songs from Chicken Little and she brought out two people dressed as Chicken Little and the Ugly Duckling to dance on stage with her. And then she asked everybody in the audience to stand up and dance with her. Sure, it’s a G-rated kids movie. But it was at 10pm on a Thursday night, too. I didn’t go out to dance, and I didn’t go out to feel curmudgeonly, either, dammit. Luckily, nobody else stood up either. At the end of three minutes of dancing they launched the confetti cannons and started the movie.

And the problem is that that whole attitude of forced commercial whimsy carries on through the whole movie. The movie’s technically very well done, and the 3D is neat without being overdone. But it’s all just kind of flaccid and weird and formulaic and forced. It’s not even Dreamworks bad, like a mean-spirited Shrek movie that’s desperate to show how hip it is. This wasn’t cringingly unfunny; in fact it was pretty clever in some places. But there was no spark to it. Not just because of a lack of imagination; it feels like the imagination was actively supressed to make room for the songs and the commercial tie-ins.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it was, because the movie doesn’t have the usual Disney formula but still feels completely formulaic. I had somewhat high hopes, too. Not because I’m rooting for Disney in the whole Disney vs. Pixar thing, but because I’d like to see more good CGI movies coming out. Pixar can only release a movie every so often, after all, and I can’t say I’ve got high hopes for Cars. I’d even be rooting for a Dreamworks movie to be good if they ever announced one with any potential.

My point, I guess, is that I’ve been a Disney fan for so long that I tend to automatically filter out the stuff that people complain about the company. It’s vaguely unsettling to see it all laid bare.

(I won’t mention the bit about how I don’t know my way around Burbank and Glendale like I thought I did so I ended up driving all over the place for an hour and missed the 7:30 show and had to wait two hours for the 9:45 one so I missed a whole night of writing and I’m feeling all guilty about it).

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Thursday November 10 2005 Disney, Personal, Videogames

Banned from Disneyland

No Disneyland for me this week, since they’re only keeping the park open until 8pm every night. Even I’m not stupid enough to drive at least an hour and a half through Los Angeles rush hour traffic to be able to spend 30 minutes to an hour in the happiest place on earth.

Okay, I am, but not this week. There’s just too much to do. I think we’re making a lot of progress on the project, which means that when I get back to the hotel I’ve got plenty of stuff to write on the design document. That’s good! But I’m so very, very tired. That’s bad. Still, having too many ideas and not enough time and energy to commit them to (virtual) paper is a hell of a lot better than vice-versa.

I did get to tag along on a tour today of the R&D presentation, following a group of Japanese employees of the Oriental Land Company (they run Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea). The demo was really cool; there’s some really neat stuff in development. Plus, as it was all run through a translator, I got the abbreviated version that hit on all the special effects and visual “Wow” stuff. And I’m pretty sure that’s all I’m allowed to say about it.

Even if I didn’t have work, there’d be too much to do for Disneyland. I’m still fighting under the ever-escalating word count deficit. The zen of “it’s okay; I can do this” has gone away since I haven’t really made a dent in my fictional masterwork (fictional in that it’s a work of fiction and it doesn’t exist at this point), and I still have only introduced one character at this point and haven’t even gotten to the main plot.

And of course, yet another distraction. The game The Movies came out this week, and it’s one I’ve been semi-interested in ever since it was announced. It’s getting fair-to-middling reviews, but I’m still intrigued enough to check it out; the only question is finding time to do it. The game sounds like it does a pretty good job of Sims-like emergent behavior, getting results that were completely unexpected. Something as completely unexpected as GameSpy running a genuinely funny article, about one columnist’s attempt to make a western and ending up with Brokeback Mountain.

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Tuesday November 8 2005 Personal

Behind

I haven’t done the actual calculations, but I reckon I’m around 5,000 words behind in my creative masterpiece. And that’s what’s finally convinced me that the NaNoWriMo thing is a good idea. Before, whenever I told myself I would write my Great American Novel or Life-Altering Screenplay or Subtly Disguised Semi-Autobiographical Erotic Escapade*, I would get about 10 pages in and then give up and start procrastinating and let myself get behind. So no new surprises there. And I would realize how stupid it was to even try it, and just give up there. But, having a deadline looming hasn’t made me all frustrated and depressed, but resolved to make up the slack. And knowing that it’s something that’s only important to me makes it a “I can do this!” deadline instead of “Oh crap I’m going to get so fired I’m just going to lie down and close my eyes until the panic goes away” deadline.

I’m also behind in my sleepin’. Not because of the writing, but because of… not sure what, exactly. I’ve been averaging four hours of sleep the past couple of nights, and yet still somehow kind of halfway functioning. Glendale is taking on a semi-magical fever dream quality. I guess if I’m going to be stuck in a hotel in Burbank for a week with no access to my media, might as well throw insomnia into the mix.

One thing I’m not behind on is my work. I was dreading having to spend a whole week in LA, but it turns out to have been the best thing. We’re making progress, and for the first time in a few weeks it doesn’t feel like the whole world is collapsing around me. I think when this Disney gig’s over I’m going to have to go back to a real job, instead of working by myself from home. Turns out I ain’t so good with self-schedules and writer’s block.

*Just kidding. I’ve never attempted to write such a thing. I swear to God.

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Monday November 7 2005 Arts & Entertainment, Television

I Ache With Embarrasment!

An hour of “Arrested Development” and the eternal shame that comes from coming in too late to fandom over a television series.

Any other show would’ve settled with just the jet pants instructional video and left that as high comedy. But they just keep going. My favorite gag is when they suspected some kind of listening device in the board room, and had a shot with the boom mic in the frame. Or the Pretty Woman bit where Rita grabs for the star. Or how Dave Thomas’ “fags” gets bleeped out when he’s talking about his cigarettes. Or how he knows how to read Rita’s hand turkey drawing.

Now I’m going to get a corndog cross with all the crucifixins.

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Friday November 4 2005 Arts & Entertainment, Movies

Are not all of us, in a sense, merely aspects of Jar-Jar?

Jackson West’s post on SFist mentions this article on Slate which calls the Star Wars series a masterwork of post-modern cinema, and one very angry blogger’s rebuttal.

Okay, simmer down, Poindexters. Yes, the Slate article is a bunch of ridiculous garbage. But calling it the silliest thing they’ve ever published is just ridiculous over-the-top hyperbole. It’s Slate, the poor man’s Salon. And yes, the article is astoundingly pompous and pretentious. But then, so is writing a blog post that uses the word “pomo” about a thousand times, mixed in with liberal use of the f-bomb.

(And while I’m thinking of it: screw you, Kevin Smith! Since you came along, you’ve given a million nerdy white guy imitators free license to write this same type of garbage all over the internets. Suddenly it’s okay to pontificate about the most inane of topics using the most pompous and over-blown speech imaginable, as long as you throw in enough swears to make it clear that you’re down. Stupid topic + a thesaurus + expletives = insightful pop culture commentary.)

So the article — apparently written by a teacher at my alma mater, as if I didn’t need enough shame in my past — is ludicrous, even for cinema studies. But so is the rebuttal; for once it’d be nice to see some self-proclaimed intellectual talk about Star Wars without feeling the need to completely dismiss it. Bitch about summer blockbusters and space operas and Joseph Campbell and The Hidden Fortress and Muppets and bad dialogue and acting all you want; that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot the series does exactly right.

Like directly paying homage to the old serials without turning them into camp or parody. And creating a huge world that’s both alien and accessible without having read 10,000 pages of the history of the Freemen, or The Simarillion. And taking a space action story and giving it all a sense of grandeur and history just by making everything look old and using the right music. And, at least at the beginning, telling a classic fantasy story about good vs. evil, when everyone else was going for realism — they’re the ones that seem dated now, while Star Wars, even with the haircuts, still has a timeless quality about it.

And the bit about how the shaky-zoom camera thing in Attack of the Clones was just an attempt to outdo Firefly? Please.

Four of the six Star Wars movies are still pretty damn good, and two of them are still brilliant. They don’t deserve the reverence that a lot of the fans give them, but that’s what sci-fans do. It’s their thing. They don’t deserve to be completely dismissed, either. You can still keep whatever cinematic legitimacy is important to you while acknowledging that they’re good movies. You don’t have to compare them to Prospero’s Books or anything. For starters, the Star Wars movies have the definite advantage of not featuring a naked John Gielgud.

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Friday November 4 2005 SFist, Videogames

Won't someone think of the children?!?

There’s another post up at SFist, which I mention only because that’s the only way they show up in the sidebar down below to your right.

Speaking of belated responses to basically inconsequential news: A couple of weeks ago there was a big stink all over the videogame section of the internets about this “lawyer” named Jack Thompson and his run-in with the guys from the webcomic “Penny Arcade.” In brief: he wrote something claiming that he’d donate $10,000 to charity if any videogame company would make a game based on his premise, which was a ridiculous story about a father whose child was killed as a result of game-inspired violence and went on a killing spree murdering game developers, publishers, and retailers. The Penny Arcade guys, to their credit, handled it reasonably well: they pointed out to the guy that they ran a charity which raises money and supplies games for sick kids, and they made a $10,000 donation to that charity in Thompson’s name. He responded with legal threats and various letters to the FBI, several webcomics and hundreds of blog articles resulted. (And when somebody did actually make the game, he responded by saying that his claim had all been “satire,” and then with a couple more threats of legal action.)

In short, everybody got what they wanted. The sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer got the attention he wanted and kept his name in the press. The Penny Arcade guys drew more attention to their charity, which could be seen as self-serving, but was basically a potent way of getting their message across, that most of the people who play videogames are not hyper-violent, semi-autistic selfish children.

I don’t even like mentioning Thompson, because it just adds one more internet reference to him, however insignificant, to make it seem like the guy’s having more impact than he really is. He’s laughably incompetent, and his agenda is completely transparent, even if you’re not aware (as I wasn’t) of his history of grandstanding and dementia. One of the Penny Arcade guys had an unexpectedly mature take on it: he said that they were aware they should just ignore the guy instead of giving him more attention, but that it was essentially a good thing he was at the forefront of the debate. Because if they ever had anyone competent taking all the credit as leader of the anti-videogame crusade, game fans and companies would be screwed.

(Senator Joe Lieberman and SF Assemblyman Leland Yee also make occasional headlines in videogame censorship news, but usually only when it’s around election time. And when they do, it becomes apparent they have no real expertise in the issue other than knowing enough to mention Grand Theft Auto and Postal).

The problem is that there’s nobody particularly competent on the pro-videogame side of the issue, either. All we’ve got is the insistence that there’s no evidence linking game-playing to violent behavior, and the First Amendment. Which means that as soon as someone releases a study showing that there is a correlation between GTA and Columbine, then all you’ve got left is the ACLU and “I know my rights” and an argument that has parents responding, “Well yeah, but…”
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Thursday November 3 2005 Personal

I am a fashion god.

When I was looking around SFGate’s tech news section to cannibalize it for that column I’m supposed to be writing, I found this article about an e-mail exchange between the former FEMA director and his staff. Remember all that stuff I was saying about “never assume evil when incompetence will suffice?” Yeah, scratch that. There’s a reason they don’t ask me to do political analysis on “Week in Review.” I’ll just stick to thinking about videogames and TV shows.

There’s also this really unpleasant story on SFGate’s gossip blog, which I wish I hadn’t read. What that post doesn’t mention is that to get access to it, you have to first find Chloe Sevigny.

Nothing like the internet to make you really hate humanity. The fact that I’ve pretty much completely switched over to vampire hours doesn’t help, either. I’m hoping this is just a phase, and next week in LA will get me over the hump and back on schedule.

And in NaNo news: my word count is only 2901, making me 2100 words behind schedule. It’s okay; I relish adversity! And they’re all bad words. Not swear words, just boring descriptions and trite and cliched dialogue and situations completely devoid of any inspiration or interest. But the philosophy of the whole exercise is still in place: turn off the editor, write just for the sake of writing, and see what grows from that.

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Tuesday November 1 2005 The Internet

"Fun" with Flickr

This is kind of neat: I wrote this little web application as a tag browser for Flickr photos. It works kind of like an advent calendar; you click on a tag to see a random picture from that tag pop up. You can click on my name at the top of the page to bring up a list of my contacts, then click on one of those names to see their tags. I only tested it under Safari and Firefox for mac, so it may not work on other browsers. And be aware that on a dialup connection, it’s going to be intolerably slow.

The app itself isn’t all that spectacular, but the potential is really neat. I mentioned that Flickr made its programming interface available to the public, so you can write your own front-ends and websites to get access to all the data stored on flickr. It’s a great idea, and I’m finally starting to get why people are so excited about the whole “Web 2.0″ business.

It was also my first stab at doing something with AJAX, which is apparently the big buzzword for web programmers. It just means that you can interact with a page without forcing a reload of the entire thing; Flickr does it a lot, as does Netflix. It’s pretty cool.

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Tuesday November 1 2005 Personal

naDevvo' yIghoS!*

I just went outside for my just-before-bed cigarette to find a Klingon passed out on my front steps.

He was moaning and occasionally mumbling phrases (in English) like “got to get…” and “no man don’t do that…” before rolling over. He was on his side, so I don’t think he was in danger of doing a Jimi Hendrix. I’d like to help the guy, but I don’t know whether to call a cab or a transporter.

No teddy bears were involved.

*Go away!

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