"Long Live the Cinema!"

Recently with the great amount of free time afforded by insomnia, the opportunity to view a great deal of films has magically fallen into reach. In the past few weeks it seems that there has been enough time to watch three or four movies a day. This has proved to temporarily satiate my waxing longing for a return to the seats of the cinema…

In the past few days I have watched:

• ”Children of Men” an Alfonso Cuaron film


• ”Idiocracy” a Mike Judge film


• ”Mr. Death – The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr” an Errol Morris film


• ”Half Nelson” featuring Ryan Gosling


• ”Shortbus” by the director of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”


• ”The Ground Truth After The Killing Ends” a documentary on the effects of the Iraq War on Veterans

As I understand it "Children of Men" is up for best Cinematography and "Half Nelson" has received a Best Actor nod (Ryan Gosling). I have to say, these two films were the most exciting and interesting of the list albeit for entirely different reasons.

Included however are these brief descriptions of a dissenting opinion of each film... Some people have called "Children of Men" a glorified chase movie lacking character development and any semblance of solid plot. Others have called "Half Nelson" a tedious, white washed suburbanite fabrication, and a minimalist (or "poor man's" if you prefer) "Crash" (no, not Cronenberg's film, that horrid Best Picture winner from last year). Are these evaluations justified?

I can at the very least concede partially to the attacks against "Children of Men," but I see very little reason to give credence to the arguments against "Half Nelson." While the cinematography is in no way a personal favorite (shaky handi-cam shots), the minimalist film making is powerfully effective. The dialogue is amazing and sparse, the soundtrack is highly instrumental with a strong presence from the Canadian super group Broken Social Scene - which serve to aid in the illustration of the nearly tangible despair, and even the acting is equally detached though tremendously nuanced. This calculated simplicity allows the audience the opportunity to synthesize the scenes for themselves. There is no hand holding in this film.

I'd rather think about the film than have its message bashed into my head repeatedly for "good measure."

Speaking of which, I really can't wait to see David Lynch's "Inland Empire." Lynch had no script until the morning of each day of shooting. It was on numerous critics top ten films of the year list. Yet, it hasn't materialized... Until it does I must wait, watching older films, catching up on my viewing...

XML and the Enterprise

I have decided to merge the assignment into this already existing (though that might be a generous description) blog. Potentially this should yield some interesting entries on the topic of XML, and related services.

It is actually quite an exciting topic. It doesn't seem like it would be, but it is.

XML is an emerging technology for data delivery across the internet and beyond. It is utilized in most of the "exciting" new websites (AJAX anyone?), used in the innocuous SVG transparently to the user, and it is even used for configuration files of programs and services.

For me, the most exciting of these utilizations are those related to web services. A pillar of the Web 2.0 explosion is inarguably “mashups,” or services which utilize public API’s of other websites to provide something new and useful. Quite often these services provide a great deal of social interaction or are highly customizable (read personalized) by their intended user base. It is for these reasons that I think these web applications are so popular: they quite typically emphasize democratic and highly social interaction among the community of users.

Hopefully with what I learn in this class I can maybe dust off some old projects and breathe in them some new life. Specifically I would love to finish an Xbox Media Center python script I've been writing off and on for about two years (though that might be difficult as my Xbox was stolen). The script utilizes the Upcoming.org API to bring real time concert and event listings for any area to the Xbox. I had hoped to eventually add information from Amazon’s public API in conjunction with the concert information to allow users a quick bio of an artist in the event they were unfamiliar.

Anyway, my primary hope and I guess goal for this term, is to learn a set of skills which will allow me to realize more of the ideas I have.