Friday, March 30, 2007

MS Walk


Just a note to plug the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I'm taking part in a 5 mile walk in Cohasset, MA on Saturday April 28. I have a cousin with MS and can tell you what a cruel disease it is. Thanks to friends and family, plus Verizon and my local in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, I raised over $1800 in 2006. Any donations would be much appreciated. You can look up more at http://www.nationalmssociety.org

I finally saw "The Host" this evening, and there were plenty of laughs and scares in the movie, but it was usually one or the other. "Zodiac" does an even better job of combining the two, though it wasn't sold to audiences as a dark comedy. There is a scene where a local celebrity talks on the phone to someone who claims to be the killer. We're wondering if the caller is the real deal, and chuckling at the sametime about how talk-show habits are hard to break (not to mention wondering how 1960's technology could put a man on the moon but couldn't trace a call in under 15 minutes).

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Runciman1903: The Moss Man

http://imdb.com/title/tt0468492

The Moss Man


Here I am with my mossy friend outside an antiques store in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in June 2005. The trailer for that Korean monster movie 'The Host' looks great. I still can remember watching all those Godzilla movies on WLVI TV 56's "Creature Double Feature" as a kid.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Adams & Virgin

I swung by the Boston Public Library after work this week to check out their exhibit on John Adams' library collection. It numbers about 3,800 books, and is well worth seeing in person, even though much of it will be on-line shortly. He liked to write running commentaries in the margins of his books (the blogging of it's time). Each such tome has a gold ribbon. In one volume about ancient Egypt that depicts topless Egyptians carting around the Pharoh(?) in some ceremony or other, he wrote 'This is religion? Good God!' It was noted elsewhere that he called Mary Wollstonecraft a 'blockhead', so I remarked to a passerby "I guess Lucy didn't coin the term". http://www.bpl.org

The Virgin Megastore near the Hynes Convention Center is going out of business, so I hoofed it from Copley to get my 30% off CD's & DVD's. I got the Criterion Collection's "For All Mankind", which pays tribute to the Apollo program by editing the films and TV broadcasts to make it all appear as one single mission. I was shocked, shocked to learn later that the director couldn't find a particular view of the moon in the original footage, so he went to a capsule that's now at the Air & Space Museum, taped a picture of the moon outside the cabin window, filmed it and edited that shot into the movie. On the train ride home, a girl noticed that that I had the soundtracks to Season 1 & 2 of Battlestar Galactica, and mentioned that she was a fan of the show (Starbuck is her favorite character). While were were discussing the series I double checked my receipt, and sure enough the cashier had only charged me for one instead of both. I piped up "Two for the price of one", then had to explain that it wasn't part of the sale. As she got off, I told her I'd make copies & give the CD's to the library.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Gladiator

I decided to dust off my DVD of 'Gladiator' before giving it to the library. Going to the deleted scenes, I saw Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacobi and others talk about the games at the Colliseum. The contests go on for months on end and cost a fortune, but no new taxes are being levied. Where is the money coming from? Then someone admits that the Emperor is selling Rome's grain reserves, and it dawns on the Emperor's sister what that means: "the future". The scene reminded me of a GQ article I read about how Ridley Scott has been good at predicting trands in popular culture. Specifically, how the "If you're not with us you're against us" certitude of 'Gladiator' seems like a foretelling of the Bush administration. I felt like I was looking at another omen right here - W's economic policy of "Enjoy your tax cuts while you can".