Wisdom of the IT Crowd

Surreal landscapes of Jacek Yerka

These are so much fun. Inspirational flights of fancy I'd like to visit, if I could.

Check out more of his work here.

Animated Paintings by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro

Interesting choices. All nicely done, but some are truly exceptional.

Check them out.

2013 Movie Roundup

This is a set of entirely subjective ratings, even more subjective than my usual subjective ratings. It's the kind of list that would put The Godfather beside Flash Gordon, if you follow my meaning. It's based purely on whether or not I found the film enjoyable, which sometimes depends more on mood and circumstance than the film itself. So take it in that spirit. I'm not sure I can justify my choices otherwise.

Listed in order of release (for the most part). Asterisks after the most exceptional in the category.

The Enjoyable

Gangster Squad

Jack the Giant Slayer

Room 237

Despicable Me 2

Blue Jasmine

Kick Ass 2*****

The World's End

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

Gravity*****

12 Years a Slave*****

Dallas Buyers Club

Hunger Games: Catching Fire*****

American Hustle

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Painful 

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Hansel and Gretel

John Dies at the End*****

Beautiful Creatures

Dark Skies

Oz the Great and Powerful

Burt Wonderstone*****

Olympus Has Fallen

The Host*****

Wolverine

Europa Report

Mortal Instruments*****

Captain Phillips

The Meh 

Man of Steel

World War Z

Elysium

Mama

Oblivion***** 

This is the End

Monsters University

Pacific Rim

Riddick

The Fifth Estate

Blue is the Warmest Colour

Ender's Game

Thor: The Dark World

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Her

Lone Survivor

As you can see, I have questionable taste, and there are many others out there like me.

Sundae

Sometimes a sundae is just a sundae.

2014 Oscar Picks

It's that time of year again. The Oscars! Didn't do very well with my predictions last year, but that won't stop me. I've dragged out the dart board again. We'll see how closely my opinion (and aim) mirrors The Academy this go around.

12 Years a Slave and Gravity are the must see pictures of the year, and they will likely sweep the major categories. Gravity in particular simply must be experienced in the theatre, in IMAX and 3D if possible, to get the full effect. It's more of a roller coaster ride than movie. This is the only film I'd say that about in the last 10 years, which makes it quite an achievement.

Best Picture:
12 Years a Slave
Hands down. It's that good. I was immersed the whole run time, only taken out of the story briefly when Brad Pitt showed up. His support was important to completing the project though.

Best Actor
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Probably will go to Matthew Mcconaughey. He did a good job with Dallas.

Actress
Cate Blanchett

Supporting Actor
Michael Fassbender
12 Years a Slave
or
Jared Leto
Dallas Buyers Club
Both were very good; I don't want Fassbender to win because he was so odious, but then, that's a testament to how good his performance was.

Supporting  Actress
Lupita Nyong'o
12 Years a Slave

Animated Feature
Despicable Me 2 (my fav, but probably go to Frozen)

Cinematography
Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki

Costume Design
American Hustle
Michael Wilkinson
Ah, the seventies!

Directing
12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen
Second choice (and likely winner): Gravity, for all the technical innovation involved.

Dcoumentary Feature
The Act of Killing
Didn't see it, but sounds heavy.

Documentary Short Subject
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
Like the title and the sentiment. Didn't see any of them.

Film Editing
12 Years a Slave

Foreign Language Film
The Broken Circle Breakdown
Total guess.

Makeup and Hairstyling
Dallas Buyers Club

Music Score
Gravity

Music Song
The Moon Song from Her
Honestly, I thought the songs in Frozen were less than compelling. But my tastes are primitive. I liked the Lego song 'Everything is Awesome', after all.

Production Design
Gravity

Short Film (animated)
Possessions
Feral was also very good, style wise, but the story of Possessions had greater charm.

Short Film (live action)
Helium
Dart board guess. Shorter to type.

Sound Editing
Gravity

Sound Mixing
Gravity

Visual Effects
Gravity

Writing (adapted)
12 Years a Slave

Writing (original)
Dallas Buyers Club
A bit torn here. American Hustle was loose, a bit rambling; Blue Jasmine very good but more predictable. Dallas surprised me.

Tim Kreider: Starving Artists of the Internet, Unite!

This was an interesting article in the NYTimes by the insightful Tim Kreider.

Call to revolution, comrades! We shall have the best placards.

The money quote?

"Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge. I now contribute to some of the most prestigious online publications in the English-speaking world, for which I am paid the same amount as, if not less than, I was paid by my local alternative weekly when I sold my first piece of writing for print in 1989."

Ouch.

I got a kick out of the article.

Check it out.

Debunking Cracked's Debunking of the Dark Ages

In debunking a number of myths about the Dark Ages, Cracked breathlessly perpetuates a whole new slew of them.

Well played, Cracked!

Following in lock step with cutting edge academic fads (okay, this one is getting a bit long in the tooth), they set up straw men and then proceed to bash the heck out of them with snark. It's a remarkable performance.

Now, Cracked is a humour site, so you can't expect serious scholarship. Heavens, no. This is the internets. Glib and irreverent is what you'll get; and Cracked is about 'truthiness', not truth.

One glib turn deserves another, don't you think?

"If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws."
--Edward Gibbon

Now that's hyperbole; he's rhapsodizing, but there is a grain of truth to it. It's currently fashionable in academic circles to poo poo the very idea of the Dark Ages, disparage Rome, and hail barbarians as misunderstood illiterate philanthropists. That also has a grain of truth, but it's not the whole picture.

The Roman Empire was a highly extractive state, the city itself a great parasite sucking up wealth from all over the Mediterranean like a gigantic tick. Less inclusive than the Roman Republic, it was doomed in the long term. It's foundation laid the seeds for its ultimate destruction.

The empire's collapse brought about a painful transitional period known in popular culture as The Dark Ages. Academics sometimes refer to the period as Late Antiquity (200 to 800 AD), or the Migration Period (400 and 800 AD). This covers the fall of the Roman Empire up to the time of Charlemagne. But let's stick to the period between 400 and 800 AD.

Quick question: if the United States government were to collapse under the pressure of multiple invasions by rapacious foreign powers, while simultaneously being hit by plague (killing tens of millions) and total economic collapse which resulted in the abandonment of almost every major city, do you believe it would improve American living standards, or do you think it would be a time of hardship? Even, dare I say, darkness?

Just a question.

Think about it.

Cracked breaks things down into five myths and then seeks to debunk each in turn.

The first of their myths, that 'Society was Cruel and the Standard of Living Sucked' sets up the traditional view of the period with a sneer: "Look, they were called the goddamned Dark Ages for a reason. Society was barely a thing, and infrastructure was practically nonexistent. Warlords and barbarians roamed the land, every surface was covered by a layer of filth, and the general populace had the life expectancy of a three-legged gazelle in a lion's den. Meanwhile, the church was going around torturing people until they converted, and then probably kept torturing them anyway. Honestly, go find a movie or book about the era and we guarantee it's not going to have a bunch of smiling children on the cover."

They exaggerate their opponents argument and present it with disapproval. This invites readers to disassociate themselves for fear of ridicule. D'aw!

'It was a period of intellectual and economic darkness where everyone was either a brutal warrior or a filth-encrusted victim.'

An absurd a generalization as to be false on its face. Obviously not everyone was a warrior or a victim. Some were warrior victims. Cracked likes to set up easy breezy targets.

We're quickly whisked on to 'The Reality'. No lack of certainty here. Set hyperbole to maximum: 'The standard of living was pretty decent, even if you were poor as hell. In fact, humanity managed to hit new highs in charity, health care, and innovative philanthropy almost on a daily basis.'

Sweeping claims. The kind you'd expect from a drunk in a bar. Arguing is obviously folly, but let's take a look anyway.

Geronimo!

First, when the rockin' Roman Empire collapsed, the Imperial City lost its grain supply in Sicily and North Africa (Egypt was busy feeding Constantinople). Wouldn't be a big deal except they provided the grain dole for 200,000 people living in Rome. That's right: the Emperor fed hundreds of thousands of poor Romans, for free, for centuries. All part of the Bread and Circuses regimen to keep the people pacified (and keep the Emperor's head on his shoulders).

Without it, the population of Rome fell from upwards of one million inhabitants (this is still a disputed figure, some place the apex at 250,000) to less than twenty thousand, living in squalid villages amidst marble ruins. At least until they turned them into lime kilns. The Roman Forum itself became a cow pasture.

What happened to all those poor sods when the grain shipments stopped? Don't worry: the slack was taken up by Christian charities, says Cracked. Never mind that the Pope himself was hard pressed to put together enough resources to feed a few hundred. Happy fun time! And if you dare disagree, you're ignorant and your mom looks funny.

That's just how Cracked rolls.

As far as living standard goes, decent compared to what?

Peasants covered in shit

Standards of living are generally higher when there is urbanization, specialization, and surpluses. Yet many cities were abandoned after the fall of Rome. All shrank in size. Those still inhabited became walled. Trade dried up and population collapsed by more than twenty per cent. Some eight million people died in the chaos. Scaled as a percentage of today's population, that'd be 105,000,000. Aqueducts, monuments, and temples were torn down. Coins were no longer minted, so people had to resort to the barter system. Wouldn't that be awesome? Roads were no longer safe, deterring trade further.

Ship wrecks are often looked to by archeologists as an indicator of trade as well. During the reign of Augustus, a height of 180 ships was reached. By 500 AD, it falls to 20. Long distance trade was drying up, and it would not return to Roman levels until the 19th century.

Greenland's ice can also be used to track economic activity. Levels of lead, silver, and copper in the ice cores declines after the first century AD, and Roman levels of mining intensity aren't seen again until the late 13th century.

The only trade centers of significance in Western Europe in 700 AD were Toledo (under the Umayyad Caliphate) and Salonika (under the Byzantines, ie. the Eastern Roman Empire). All other trading centres, from Londinium to Lutetia (Paris) to Rome were no longer of any consequence. There was not a single city in all of Europe with a population over 15,000.

None of these things are signs of prosperity.

Of course, Cracked notes, correctly, that slavery disappeared in Europe during the Dark Ages. Cracked claims this is because 'improvements in farming technology and better-bred draft animals made forced human labour less necessary as time progressed.'

While there were improvements in farming technology in the form of harnesses and the like (Jared Diamond talks about this in Guns, Germs, and Steel), that was not the reason slavery was abandoned.

Nor was this an era of endless technological innovation. Slave and serf based societies are notoriously non-innovative; people lack incentives and the elites are afraid of the economic disruption innovation brings.

What's the real story?

Slaves flooded into Rome with every military conquest, undermining Roman labour and small land holders. Why pay a Roman citizen when you can get slave labour for free?

With Rome's collapse, there were no new conquests, and therefore no large injections of fresh slaves. No new sources of free labour. Slaves were typically The Other, brought from foreign lands. The term slave is derived from Slav, for example.

Without long distance trade and travel, aspiring overlords were left only with locals to exploit, and they were already serfs. No need for both.

But wait! Cracked says serfdom was AWESOME (did you see what I did there? It's a straw man. I learned that from Cracked). Cracked says 'the classes that would probably have found themselves in slavery were mostly either free workers or, at worst, serfs. The latter were still technically not free (they couldn't leave the land without their lord's permission), but enjoyed a much greater freedom than slaves.'

Let's look at that little treat of truthiness.

Almost everyone in the rural areas was a serf. Cities had been mostly abandoned (Londinium wouldn't be reoccupied until 886). There were few 'free workers'. Trade had collapsed so there was no merchant class. 

In fact, serfdom was already well underway before the final collapse of the Empire in the form of Coloni, agriculture workers who became tied to the land and were at the mercy of the land owner. This proto-serfdom began under Diocletian, who also forced children to take up the vocation of their parents, partly in order to help create a reliable supply system for the army.

The Roman middle class withered away, squeezed to bits by the rich elites on one side (who paid no taxes at all) and slavery on the other. Unable to compete with vast slave plantations, Roman farmers fell into debt, had their land confiscated, and either became Coloni, or fled to Rome to live on the dole. Post-collapse, they'd all wind up as serfs.

There's a warning in that for us.

Note the violence inherit in the system

In addition to taxing and fining serfs, lords also required free labour from them. The amount of time varied depending on where you were in Europe, and how big a dick they were, but ranged from two to four days a week.

Natch, serfs lived at subsistence level, the same as slaves did, and their lords had absolute authority over them: they were judge, jury, and executioner. They set the taxes and fines, and provided the police force.

Do you see a lot of rights here for serfs?

(Eventually the back of serfdom was broken by the Bubonic Plague; the silver lining of mass death is that labour became more valuable. In England, aristocrats and merchants managed to gain power at the expense of the crown (think Runnymede in 1215, The Glorious Revolution 1688), restricting the King's power. Over time this led to more pluralistic political institutions, which made a middle class, and ultimately the industrial revolution, possible.)

Now lets look at the claims about new heights of charity, health care, and philanthropy.

First, medieval medicine was more likely to weaken and kill you than help, so the less medical care you got the better. 

Second, there were reasons why Christian philanthropy appeared: widespread poverty, starvation, and rampant disease. The Plague of Justinian (likely a pre-Black Death trial run of the Bubonic Plague), for example, ravaged Europe from 500 AD to 800 AD, killing tens of millions. The population loss is estimated by some to be between 50 and 60 per cent of the European population between 541 and 750, which coincides quite nicely with the they-never-happened Dark Ages.

It likely arrived in Constantinople from Egypt on a grain ship. Rats then spread it through the city to devastating effect. Bodies were stacked six to ten high. Farmers avoided towns and cities, leading to hunger. Half the population of Constantinople, almost 250,000 people, died.

Another defamatory, anti-Dark Ages painting by a silly artist bitching about The Plague or something stupid like that.

By 700 AD repeated outbreaks of the disease had claimed between 25 and 100 million people worldwide. This at a time when the population of the entire planet was under 300 million. Ouch! The Bubonic Plague sauntered back to book end the Middle Ages in 1345, killing another third of Europe's population in short order.

No darkness anywhere at all to be seen. 

In case of criticism, Cracked deploys this whopper: "Don't get us wrong -- if you went back to the medieval era in a time machine, you would hate it for all of the five minutes it took the locals to murder you for witchcraft."

So, it's ridiculous to call it a Dark Age, but if you went, you'd be murdered for witchcraft in five minutes. Mmmmm. Tasty logic pretzel.

"The rise of Christianity, while admittedly resulting in a lot of people being set on fire, also saw a dramatic increase in charities." Just to be picky, during the rise of Christianity, it was an outlawed cult that was frequently persecuted by Roman authorities, and it wasn't burning anyone.

Satan chowing down

Next it's on to debunk medieval tournaments and jousting. Cracked says that the Dark Ages were 'all about harmless family fun.' 

Nice one. The mild pastimes of the Dark Ages mean they were more civilized than the Romans or the peons of the High Middle Ages. They watched more violent forms of entertainment, after all. Cracked posits, 'So which age deserves the "dark" moniker?'

Huh? Huh, punk? Which?

Huh, indeed, Clint. Forget Clio! The large scale games of the Romans and the jousting matches of the High Middle Ages are signs of prosperity as well as depravity. The Empire could afford to mount expensive games to entertain the masses, import animals from lands thousands of miles away, and support gladiators, not to mention constructing stadiums of stone and concrete that could hold up to 50,000 spectators. In the Dark Ages the biggest buildings in Europe were piddly halls made of wood.

People had an inexplicable, unhealthy fixation on Hell, sin, punishment, and damnation.

Further, that these pageants happened in Roman times and then came back in the High Middle Ages suggests the appetite for such spectacle never disappeared, nor was it avoided due to superior morality; human nature hadn't changed, it just lay latent because of a cash shortage. They did enjoy burning cats alive for entertainment. Such great family fun! And sometimes towns would buy a convict from an adjacent city so they could stage a public execution. You know, for fun. Today we watch people hack and blast each other to pieces at the cinema. At least the violence isn't real.

Cracked then attacks the idea that the Dark Ages was a period of 'constant, brutal warfare'. While 'Rome was the tits when it came to large-scale warrin',' fighting during the Dark Ages was on a miniscule level and therefore of little consequence.

In truth, not truthiness, societies engaged in perpetual, low level warfare experience death rates from violence that are significantly higher than those of state societies. The Leviathan generally puts a stop to a lot of internal violence by monopolizing force. Stephen Pinker goes into this at some length in 'The Better Angels of our Nature'. Feudal lords and barons, on the other hand, frequently attacked each other. Their target? Serfs. Peasants would be killed and crops burned in order to cripple the rival lord economically. It was a zero sum system in which you only prospered by taking what your neighbour had.

Vivid example of small scale warfare

Next Cracked makes claims about the Roman military: 'Over the course of the second Carthaginian War, Rome suffered nearly 400,000 casualties without batting an eye. The Roman Empire wasn't really interested in outwitting its opponents -- it just outlasted them. If Rome had a problem, it kept throwing troops at it until it stopped causing trouble.'

This twists a truth (that Rome didn't give up and did lose many armies) to give a false impression (that they were stupid and ham fisted militarily). Roman armies were no disorganized mobs of untrained slobs casually tossed into battle, nor did Rome take losses without concern ('Varus, give me back my legions!'). Rome had a highly sophisticated and flexible military system that led to it dominating the Mediterranean. Legions defeated the Carthaginians, outclassed Greek phalanxes, beat the Gauls, the Egyptians, and more, precisely because they used advanced tactics and were militarily sophisticated for their time. 

True, they fell behind eventually. The foot soldier was outclassed by the mounted archer, and Rome found itself unable to adapt. Being an agrarian based society, they couldn't field large numbers of horsemen. That's were feudalism came in: serfs supported a mounted warrior class better able to withstand assault from nomadic raiders. 

The Age of Cavalry began.

Finally, during the fifth century, war did rage across the dying remnants of the empire. German raiders were piercing the Empire's frontiers, and the cash strapped army was often unable to stop them. Stilicho, one of the last successful Roman generals, stripped the gold from The Temple of Jupiter in Rome in order to pay his troops. 

The Visigoths invaded around the turn of the century, and were followed by an Ostrogth invasion in 405 AD, while the Quadi and Asding Vandals invaded from the north. To repel them, the Rhine was stripped of men. So the Marcommanni and Quadi, along with the Vandals, invaded undefended Gaul, which they pillaged at their leisure. Franks, Burgundians, and Alemanni followed. Spain was looted. Britain abandoned. Rome was sacked in 410 AD by Alaric, King of the Visigoths. 

By 450 AD, barbarians had carved their own kingdoms out of Rome's carcass. Visigoths in Gaul, Suevi in Spain, and Vandals in North Africa. In northern europe, Attila the Hun arrived, conquering all the barbarian kingdoms in his path. He was repulsed at great cost by a coalition of Romans and barbarians at Campus Mauriacus on the Seine, but fighting continued.

In 626 AD the Avar Khanate flooded into the Balkans and seized Greece. Meanwhile Anglo-Saxons were busily conquering England and the Umayyad's seized Spain.

Charlemagne himself spent his entire reign fighting wars of aggression.

As Cracked notes, 'When the Roman Empire fractured, Europe's economy became increasingly localized. Without an intercontinental tax base and a healthy division of labor, giant standing armies became artifacts of a bygone era. This sudden lack of fiscal infrastructure also left the scores of kings and princes who filled the Roman power vacuum strapped for cash.'

Gee, that sounds like a painful period of economic collapse, doesn't it? They don't seem to be able to support a standing army for some reason, yet the people are no worse off.

Weird!

One of the greatest dangers of the Dark Ages: killer rabbits!

They go on to claim there were 'no campaigns, no decade-long struggles, no hellish living in a war torn land'. There weren't? In fact, Italy was a war zone for decades as Byzantium sought to retake it during the 6th and 7th century, leaving cities and countryside devastated.

Then it's on to the myth that the Dark Ages were 'an intellectual abyss.' Cracked expresses outrage at the writing off of an entire period of history 'as a giant brain fart'. They admit that literacy had fallen, but then claim that 'that has been the case with every single era until recent history'. Yet literacy in the Roman empire was significantly higher than it was during the Middle Ages. You can't write graffiti everywhere if you're illiterate.

And while Carolingian miniscule is hailed as a shattering innovation, there were far fewer scribes in the Dark Ages than there were in antiquity. And at the other end, once the printing press was invented, books became far more common.

Finally, Cracked seeks to eliminate the entire concept of the Dark Ages. The article poses the question: Were the Dark Ages a real thing at all? 'Ha, of course not! In a shocking twist, historians never had anything to do with "the Dark Ages," although some were fooled into adopting the term. As we mentioned earlier, these days, medieval historians tend to avoid it, preferring more neutral terms such as "Migration Period," "Early Middle Ages," or just "Middle Ages," depending on which of the hundred different meanings of the "Dark Ages" they're referring to.'

Their verdict? 'The entire concept is complete and utter horseshit cobbled together by a deluded writer.' 

Cracked's crack historian blames Petrarch, who allegedly based his defamatory anti-Middle Age bigotry on nothing in particular. Just, you know, feelings and stuff. How DARE he?

Now, Petrarch looked back to the Roman Empire as a lost ideal. There's no question he exaggerated and his view of Rome was coloured by nostalgia and romantic ideals of a lost Golden Age. But Cracked goes on, as is typical, to overstate their case and talk of the 'countless achievements of the 'age of darkness' he was so gleefully villifying.'

That Petrarch. Such a meanie! So cavalier with the truth, with accuracy. Just like, oh, I don't know… Cracked.

They add, 'all it takes is some asshole with a catchy term and an audience to defile an entire era.'

Wow. Breathtakingly obnoxious stuff.

Petrarch existed in an Italy broken into dozens of city states. It was a period marked by frequent, small scale warfare. There are legitimate reasons why Petrarch, and many other Italian writers, might reasonably look back to the unity of Rome as a positive thing.

Just don't expect that to be understood by a nasty little piece of work like J. Wisniewski.

Ultimately, Cracked wants to tell you that it's illegitimate, ridiculous even, to refer to a period in which half of Europe died of starvation or disease, and ninety-nine per cent of the survivors fell into serfdom, as a Dark Age. Never mind that cities were abandoned by the dozen, trade collapsed, literacy dropped, money fell out of use, centralized government vanished, and law and order went into abeyance. 

I wonder what would qualify as a Dark Age in their books? 

Now, were the Dark Ages as bad as they are sometimes depicted? No. Not everyone was covered in shit all the time. There were bright spots. People kept living, loving, being born. Life went on, as it always does. It's always been harsh. That's the kernel of truth buried under the article's mountain of hyperbole. Things really didn't begin to change until the beginning of the 19th century when British standards of living started to arc upward at an ever increasing rate. We can thank technological innovation, the Civilizing Process, Gentle Commerce, Creative Destruction, and inclusive political and economic institutions for that.

Was the Roman Empire as wonderful as Gibbons would have us believe? Nope. There was great inequity, and it got worse as the Empire aged. But Cracked goes so far with its revisionism as to create a new, and false, impression. All while claiming, tongue half in cheek, to set the record straight. 

Check out their article and make up your own mind. 

Alan Moore loves Grant Morrison. Not.

In this epic interview with Alan Moore by Pádraig Ó Méalóid, Moore addresses attempts to label him as a rape-happy racist, unleashes the smack on Morrison, and apologizes to the bipolar for labeling Gordon Brown a 'bipolar cyclops'.

The man certainly has a way with words.

Landscapes of yum.

More from the folks at Colossal. These dioramas, mixing miniature figures with ordinary items, make me smile. I just like the juxtaposition, I suppose.

These sorts of pics have been booting around the internets for awhile. There was a show at the AGO by Kim Adams last year, who used model railway sets in his work.

The top photo echoes a famous photograph, by Charles Ebbets, of New York construction workers, sitting on a beam and eating their lunch.

Would give me Vertigo.

Which is a good movie.

As the Buddhists say, everything is connected.

Check out the collection.

Elect Puppets!

Some days it feels like this. Especially after watching House of Cards with Kevin Spacey.

Check out these marvellous ornate insects by Alex Konahin

Colossal, a great, hip web blog run by Christopher Jobson from Chicago, has a collection of Alex's work up, and it's worth a look.

The insects look like they're made out of Baroque architectural motifs.

See the whole collection.

The Precise Genius of Ian Miller

Ian Miller is awesome.

How would you describe his work? Think H.R. Giger merged with Edward Gorey, with a sprinkle of Dali.

Born in 1947 in England, he's illustrated everything from H.P. Lovecraft to Lord of the Rings; he's worked on films such as Wizards, Shrek, and MirrorMask.

Evokes De Chirico, Dali, and Ralph Steadman

His work, frequently flat and two dimensional (he calls it his 'Tight Pen Style'), is atmospheric, distinct, and wonderfully imaginative. He indulges in an absolutely insane level of detail that makes me think of obsessive compulsion. Dense texture is achieved with patterns that become almost abstract.

It never fails to draw me in.

Multilevel city

Cthulhu

From The Tolkien Bestiary

His work is pen and ink, for the most part, but they look like etchings. The battle above reminds me of medieval battle scenes, where perspective is played with fast and loose, and helmets become a pattern, a sea of bobbing heads and spears.

No idea what this is, but it'd be a great demon

Kingdom of the Dwarves from LOTR

Miller takes the flying behemoth to the limit.

Not sure where his flying beasts come from, or what they were for, but this sort of thing is exactly what I wanted to have flitting above the ledges of Hell. I have one that's a basically a big, winged Grouper fish, but it's got nothing on this. They'd be perfect transports for demons.

I look at them and think, damn it, why didn't I think of that? Why!?

There's an otherworldly horror, a debauched elegance to his designs that I find compelling. It's the sort of thing I wanted to do with Rebel Angels, but I didn't go far enough.

Utterly unique chess set. I'd buy it.

This piece (above) reminds me of a chess set gone mad. You can see knights, pawns, and even a bearded King. Trees, insects, metal armour, men, and birds merge to create macabre warriors.

It's something out of an ornate, meticulously designed nightmare.

Check out his website. If you can get your hands on The Tolkien Bestiary, do yourself a favour and buy it.

According to Miller, his "images are the stuff of dreams and apparitions, the tremors that touch the skirt of day. Unspoken thoughts, stored memories, drawn up to be aired and then twisted by fancy."

He's illustrated sci-fi on occasion, and while I prefer his ornate fantasy work, there is one franchise I'd like to see him tackle.  He's a self-professed fan of Flash Gordon. Now that's an interpretation I'd love to see. 

Snow Dog

You talkin' to me?

The Trilogy Meter

Apparently this has been tooling around the internets for awhile now, and there are oodles of variants. The original was by Dan Meth and can be seen here. I've included it below as well for reference:

Great stuff, but as you can see, some of the ratings are a bit off. So I've done up my own version below, 'correcting' the errors. Personal opinion: everyone has one, along with a butt hole.

My version is mostly sympatico with the original, only more so.

Easily readable charts of pop culture phenomena are a lot of fun. We've all seen the films. This is one meme that took off and can be found all over the internet. Some even expanded it to include entire series.

I'm with mainstream opinion on several of the franchises, particularly Die Hard (first the best), Superman (second the best), The Godfather (the third stinks), and The Matrix (first, natch). Some things are just obvious.

The original Star Wars trumps Empire though. New Hope has a great ending, one of the most climactic in cinema history. That's what sets it above Empire, which, while a great film, lacks a really satisfying conclusion. It's a middle chapter and suffers for it. Jedi, on the other hand, is generally overrated, even as a mediocrity. The film is a mess. Luke's 'plan' is nonsensical, the Ewoks are preposterous, and the Death Star Mark II repetitive. Only Ian's cackling Emperor stands out. It's fun, but not on the same level as the first two.

Raiders of the Lost Arc is the perfect adventure flick, the best ever, and miles ahead of the two sequels. Spielberg skirted the edge of believability with the first, and  felt he had to stage even more outrageous stunts in the sequels. This bursts the bubble of disbelief and the series descends into slapstick. Temple of Doom is bad that way, but the third is even worse. It's flat out parody. Sean Connery and Ford mug for the camera and do an imitation Abbott and Costello comedy routine. The whole thing is embarrassing.

The Matrix sequels I enjoyed; I may be the only one who did. There are a lot of ideas packed into these films, which make the overlong fight sequences bearable. The cinematography and staging are excellent. They're fascinating thematically and can be viewed on multiple levels, delving into philosophical issues that the mass audience found off putting. Understandably so, I suppose. The first, of course, is miles ahead of the two sequels (as is so often the case). It was a genre expanding experience that only happens once or twice a decade. 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a slow paced, majestic bore. The fabulous Wrath of Khan more than makes up for it. I don't even remember the third.

The first two X-Men movies are remarkable. The second is the best; the underlying themes, exploring conformity and persecution, work even better here than in the first. It's one of my favourite superhero films, after The Incredibles.

Spiderman I've never been able to get excited about. Just doesn't interest me. Pretty much same for Blade, which I've left as is because I can't remember the series well.

All of the Lord of the Rings movies were enjoyable, but the first was particularly strong.

Jaws is the only one worth watching for my money, but it's a tremendous treat. Made me afraid to swim in the pond when I was little.

Back to the Future is a fun filled banana split sci-fi/comedy sundae. The sequel is the cherry on top. The third film, in which Michael J. Fox plays everyone in the past, is a spill on the floor.

Die Hard is the urban version of Raiders: the perfect action flick.

Beneath Planet of the Apes is underrated and widely derided, but I like it. The contrast of telepathic, pacifist mutants who worship an atom bomb with the aggressive, militaristic, primal ape society is a wonderful juxtaposition. Intellect vs. instinct, and neither comes out looking good. The sets of depicting the ruins of New York are great, at least to my nostalgic eye. After this film, however, they really had to stretch (for reasons that the ending makes obvious) to get a third entry, and that's when the series really fell flat. The continually diminishing budgets didn't help either.

The first two Terminator films are tremendous. I'd rate the first one higher than the second, in all honesty. It was so refreshing at the time.

Films you can't go wrong with: Star Wars, Empire, Raiders, Matrix, Khan, Superman II (granted it has not aged terribly well), X-Men 2, Fellowship, Road Warrior, Jaws, Back to the Future, Die Hard, Planet of the Apes, Godfather I & II, Rocky, Terminator I & II.

The rest? Watch at your own risk.

Bitstrips expands

Bitstrips is an app that lets users create their own custom comics from some 30 million avatars. It  was bound to happen. They've just gotten more funding.

Who knows?

Maybe it will make comics more popular.

There are already a number of sites that allow you to make customized animations from pre-built parts, such as GoAnimate, Xtranormal, and Zimmer Twins.

And they keep getting better.

Neat!

Death of Print?

The discussion continues over at Bloomberg, where Megan McArdle talks about Baumol's cost disease.

"New York magazine is very successful. Its editor is very well regarded, and it wins lots of awards. It gets scads of Web traffic. It publishes magazine features that win the admiration of fellow journalists and has also become practically ubiquitous on social media. And, apparently, it still can’t pay the bills as a weekly publication. Hearing that New York magazine can’t make it as a weekly is, for a professional journalist, rather like being told that your teddy bear has cancer. How is that possible?"

Indeed.

Japanese Drums

Tricky Dicky's Realpolitick Playing Card Deck

I've always loved playing cards. They're derived from the Tarot deck, just without the Major Arcana. Fascinating history to them. I've done a Tarot deck, but at some point I'd like to tackle it again.

This deck is 60s themed. The Jokers are Woodward and Bernstein, the suits Atoms, Diamonds, Eyes, and Bombs.

The Day of the Doctor Review (SPOILERS)

Fun. Enormously clever fun, worthy of an anniversary. Great lines for all the major players, including 'Rose'. The Zygon threat is a bit perfunctory, but that's a quibble. There's lots going on here, mostly about The Doctor and his choice to end the time war (which is echoed in the Zygon subplot).

It's all about choice, baby!

The episode starts with a scene of what passes for domestic bliss in the TARDIS between The Doc and Clara, planning a vacation romp together, but quickly segues to The National Gallery in London, complete with the a bit of Harold Lloyd style comedy schtick along the way, where trouble is brewing. It works, it fits, it's fun.

A freaky creepy otherworldly threat (this is Doctor Who) is presented in the form of devilish but unidentified creatures that have escaped from paintings, which were serving as stasis prisons. Clever idea, nicely realized, and tied in to the ultimate conclusion.

Moffat is laying his trail of breadcrumbs with aplomb here, and for once I think he's set just the right number. Not so many you feel buried in foreshadowing, but enough  that the ending makes perfect sense. At least as much sense as an episode about a man who travels in a police box, one that's bigger on the inside to boot, through time and space can make sense.

John Hurt is delightful as the missing doctor and he gets some great comebacks to throw at his bickering, older yet younger selves. The banter is bang on. Not vicious or mean spirited, but playful and witty. Just what is needed, and it flows naturally, like bullets. It's not stilted or forced, which can sometimes be the case with Moffat.

Tenant and Smith are roped in to John Hurt's apocalyptic mission by the sentient interface of the powerful doomsday weapon, which choses the visage of Rose Tyler to represent its conscience. I'd have gone with Donna, but it's a doomsday weapon, so what can you expect. In so doing, she/it actually allows the Doctor to transcend the moral hell he had cast himself into the first time around.

There's much fez tossing and running around throughout, mostly played for laughs, but not so broadly as to become completely farcical. There's still a hint of drama, and the pace is relentless. The episode never drags, the dialogue never grates. Tenant kissing a giant sucker covered fetus disguised as the Queen of England is another highlight.

When the Doctors figure out a way to escape from their dank prison in the Tower of London, it's not only a clever solution, but it too figures in the climax. It reminds me of City of Death, and that movie with Dennis Quaid about a radio that can talk to the past.

The comedy cherry on top here is that after coming up with this fabulous solution, Clara just walks in on them. The door wasn't even locked. Brilliant. Funny but not stupidly so, for Queen Elizabeth has plans for her dear Doctor and husband.

"Our future depends on one single moment of one impossible day, the day I've been running from all my life. The day of the Doctor."

The Daleks figure only peripherally. Nothing wrong with that. They orbit the narrative, beyond the edge of the screen, driving the Doctor to his seemingly inevitable, terrible decision.

The moral dilemma the show posits is put forward quite bluntly: is it just to sacrifice millions to save billions? Is it even a real choice? The humans are posed the same dilemma, albeit on a smaller scale, byt the Zygon invasion.

Rather than running or turning away in shame at the horror of it, all three Doctors join together, as one. Hurt does not have to face the burden of genocide alone. But wait! There's another switch and a sharp injection of hope: having decided to bring an end to their own people, Matt Smith has a spark of inspiration (helped along by 'Rose').

That's what The Doctor does. That's what we want him to do.

And so a new plan is born, one which creates a wonderful excuse to throw all the Doctors fleetingly together. Not just Matt Smith, Tenant and Hurt, but all the classic Doctors, plus Eccleston. They're only seen on monitors, blurred, briefly, but its yet another fun 50th nod. Having the lot prancing about the stage would have been a Herculean challenge to manage narratively. This is more than enough. But it gets better.

After the danger is passed and Gallifrey has been (possibly) saved, we have the final cherry on top: Tom Baker strides on stage to exchange a few words with his young ward. Baker is his usual irreverent self, and it's a pleasure to see him in the role once again. Always been my favourite.

The show ends with the Doctor set on a new mission, this time one of hope rather than despair and destruction, in search of his home planet, Gallifrey, now lost, rather than destroyed.

It's a fun switch, and well handled. Bringing Gallifrey back immediately would have been too easy. This will give the show narrative thrust for seasons to come, and a purpose to his new adventures.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Doctor Who.

May you have another fifty.

The review at The Guardian is entertaining.

And if you're looking for a ranking of the ten best classic episodes, here's my take. Just to be controversial, a ranking of doctors by ability. An overview of the show can be found here.