There's a period in time where something is so novel that it seems funny, then becomes so ubiquitous that no one cares.
I've been using email since I was in college, and that was some 20 years ago. In those days, email was strictly a text application. You didn't have to worry about viruses because you could hardly send a real attachment (though even then, there were ways, say, to send encoded images).
However, email was primarily in the purview of those attending universities, and even then, among the geekier lot.
About ten years ago, email became more prevalent, and it would seem funny when people would say "I'll email you". What? Ordinary people using email? How is that possible? Ho ho ho! Perhaps it goes to show that humor is all about context, and when things are out of context, it can be funny.
Once free email was widely available, from Yahoo, Hotmail, then GMail, it became a necessity rather than a novelty that it once was.
Or how about movies that used to advertise their website. For the first few months, it was hilarious to think a movie would have a website, but now, movies have to have websites. URLs are so ubiquitous, no one think it's even amusing when they see a movie with a website name.
But sometimes the novelty is still interesting, even after all this time, and never had that humor aspect. I remember a few years ago making an order on Amazon, which usually uses UPS to deliver. UPS was the first company to not only track their packages, but make that tracking information available online. People could watch as their package made progress across the country.
And the funny thing? I think, as long as the package makes progress, people don't even mind it taking a few days to arrive. True, UPS and agile companies have made the idea "ready in 6-8 weeks" completely laughable (companies used to do this--hard to imagine a time before instant gratification with packages sent in less than 5 days, they'd make you wait nearly two months to get something).
Even though it's been years since they've had the feature (it hasn't gotten much better alas--ideally, you'd want to be able to track where they are moment to moment, but that would involve GPS, and maybe UPS doesn't want this information available to the public (the UPS truck is driving north at location X).
It took a while before other competitors followed suit, FedEx, and USPS. I presume it was quite an expense for UPS to develop (but something they needed anyway--they just needed to hook it up to a webpage), but others saw the benefit and did likewise.
What "amazing" things will we see in the years upcoming?
Friday, September 22, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Great Black Hope?
Is Donald Young the next great American hope? OK, at this point, it may be ridiculous to say. The American tennis establishment loves it best when there are Americans that are vying for number 1, especially among the men. Connors was up there challenging Borg, and when Connors wasn't nearly the same player he used to be, McEnroe took the mantle of American tennis. Then, there were some years where McEnroe was starting to fade, and people wondered what would become of American tennis.
That lead quickly to a surge of top players, one after another. Tops among them was Pete Sampras, but there was Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Jim Courier, not to mention second tier players like Todd Martin and Malivai Washington.
But since Pete and now Andre have retired, American tennis seems mildly desperate. Federer and Nadal look like they are going to rule the top. Roddick, under new coaching from Connors, is adopting some of strategy that lead Connors to the top, in particular, strong forays to the net off hard hitting groundstrokes.
And there's James Blake as well. The tennis establishment would have loved if Blake was tennis's answer to Tiger Woods. He's one of those guys that's gracious but could be a (and is) a model.
It's questionable whether either can make it all the way to the top. If there's something to be said about tennis, it's that you have to be at the top, or very near it, to stay there any significant amount of time. There are few players who stay, for example, around ten, their whole lives, good, but never quite great. You need someone that's almost inconsistently brilliant, like Ivanisevic or Safin.
Donald Young made the semis of the U.S. Open juniors, the only American that made it further than the second round. Being good at the juniors doesn't always translate to pro success, and if anything, having lots of good players at the same time from the same country help, because they push each other. This was true of Sweden, the US, and Spain. Federer's a bit of an anomaly in that respect. You could hardly name another Swiss player.
It's easy to say that Donald Young will be that next great player, because predictions are just that. Predictions. Make a bad one, and no one much remembers. Make a good one, and everything thinks you're great.
I was just watching an old US Open tape with a friend. They were doing a segment on Venus Williams. I mean, like age 10 Venus Williams. She had been hyped since she was young, so it says something that she lived (partly) up to the hype. It's sad that both she and Serena have faded some. There was always some concern how devoted to tennis they were. It may say something that they have more to their lives than tennis, but somehow we don't expect that of sports stars. Would we like it if Tiger walked away from golf saying there's more to life than golf? Don't we want to seem him break Nicklaus's record?
What was amusing was the segment asking whether there's too much pressure on Venus or not, when clearly the segment was about her, and was contributing to that topic (just like "Are we paying too much attention to JonBenet?" Interesting how that news story faded so quickly, eh?)
I don't know how Donald Young will do, but his showing at the US Open is at least partly hopeful. Maybe he'll always be a middling player. Maybe he'll turn out to be great. These were the kinds of question facing Venus, and she managed to live up to that pressure. So did Tiger. Young has not had that kind of spotlight, which suggests most people think he's decent, but not worthy of hype.
And, in this day and age, maybe that's a good thing.
That lead quickly to a surge of top players, one after another. Tops among them was Pete Sampras, but there was Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Jim Courier, not to mention second tier players like Todd Martin and Malivai Washington.
But since Pete and now Andre have retired, American tennis seems mildly desperate. Federer and Nadal look like they are going to rule the top. Roddick, under new coaching from Connors, is adopting some of strategy that lead Connors to the top, in particular, strong forays to the net off hard hitting groundstrokes.
And there's James Blake as well. The tennis establishment would have loved if Blake was tennis's answer to Tiger Woods. He's one of those guys that's gracious but could be a (and is) a model.
It's questionable whether either can make it all the way to the top. If there's something to be said about tennis, it's that you have to be at the top, or very near it, to stay there any significant amount of time. There are few players who stay, for example, around ten, their whole lives, good, but never quite great. You need someone that's almost inconsistently brilliant, like Ivanisevic or Safin.
Donald Young made the semis of the U.S. Open juniors, the only American that made it further than the second round. Being good at the juniors doesn't always translate to pro success, and if anything, having lots of good players at the same time from the same country help, because they push each other. This was true of Sweden, the US, and Spain. Federer's a bit of an anomaly in that respect. You could hardly name another Swiss player.
It's easy to say that Donald Young will be that next great player, because predictions are just that. Predictions. Make a bad one, and no one much remembers. Make a good one, and everything thinks you're great.
I was just watching an old US Open tape with a friend. They were doing a segment on Venus Williams. I mean, like age 10 Venus Williams. She had been hyped since she was young, so it says something that she lived (partly) up to the hype. It's sad that both she and Serena have faded some. There was always some concern how devoted to tennis they were. It may say something that they have more to their lives than tennis, but somehow we don't expect that of sports stars. Would we like it if Tiger walked away from golf saying there's more to life than golf? Don't we want to seem him break Nicklaus's record?
What was amusing was the segment asking whether there's too much pressure on Venus or not, when clearly the segment was about her, and was contributing to that topic (just like "Are we paying too much attention to JonBenet?" Interesting how that news story faded so quickly, eh?)
I don't know how Donald Young will do, but his showing at the US Open is at least partly hopeful. Maybe he'll always be a middling player. Maybe he'll turn out to be great. These were the kinds of question facing Venus, and she managed to live up to that pressure. So did Tiger. Young has not had that kind of spotlight, which suggests most people think he's decent, but not worthy of hype.
And, in this day and age, maybe that's a good thing.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Parking Meters and User Interfaces
I was listening to NPR, which is something I do rather frequently when I'm on the road. There was a discussion about the modernization of parking meters. Ever look for a parking spot and found there was still some change in the meter? You're happy that you don't have to spend nearly as much money by using that spot. New parking meters will detect cars using sonar (or some similar device). If they notice your car is gone, it will reset the meter to zero, thus forcing the next person to have to pay the full amount. On the other hand, these meters are designed to give you a free five minutes if you need to do something quickly, and come back out.
A representative says that parking meters, which were invented in the 1930s or so (1932, as it turns out) haven't changed much since they first came out. They've had almost no innovation in nearly 90 years.
But software. People always want to innovate, don't they? Look at YouTube. How many times have they tinkered with their interface in the last six months? Like twice? Did the functionality actually change? Not really. YouTube may have innovated the button in the center of the image to start playing, which was round when it first came out. It's square now.
And the controls? There's a splash of red in that now.
I remember when ESPN would change its website design like every six months as well. Fortunately, major news websites only feel a redesign every few years or so. Washington Post and NY Times both redesigned, but I suspect the design will stay around for a year, before they get tired of the way it looks.
No one's done much to move the design away from a smaller sized newspaper. ESPN's site is pretty busy, as are many sites. The thought is the more clicks you make, the less effective the website is (the tradeoff between clean design and clutter).
User interfaces have become video games. Each year, a new version comes out, and you're expected to master the new controls, and figure out new actions, all without any instruction. One day, I think, it will be nearly mandatory to have video lessons associated with user interfaces, and software will be judged by how good these lessons are, rather than how good the software actually is.
Microsoft, in its redesign of Office, has noticed that many features are unused, and so they've put their best user interface folks to rethink how Office should be laid out so more of these features are more obvious.
This is the kind of research software companies really need to do. Open source folks probably suffer the most when it comes to making these design decisions that help out users. Developers add more and more features, but lack the resource to do usability testing, especially on expert tools such as IDEs. They add features which they think will be useful to the power user, but then fail to explain this to the power user, requiring their deep investigation to learn how to use it.
Most user interfaces, at least product-specific interfaces, won't even last a year or two before it's redesigned. We can barely imagine interfaces that last 80 years, like the parking meter. While some ideas may last quite a while--menus, buttons, sliders--the entire user experience is likely to change like the latest version of Madden (though some would quibble about how much innovation Madden really goes under).
This suggests that user interfaces are still in its infancy, but I think we're just dealing with the reality--and fluidity--of user interfaces. There's no going back to a simple interface that's easy to learn because there's no functionality. Everything's packed to the gills with more features than you'll ever have time to learn.
And that's supposed to be a good thing.
A representative says that parking meters, which were invented in the 1930s or so (1932, as it turns out) haven't changed much since they first came out. They've had almost no innovation in nearly 90 years.
But software. People always want to innovate, don't they? Look at YouTube. How many times have they tinkered with their interface in the last six months? Like twice? Did the functionality actually change? Not really. YouTube may have innovated the button in the center of the image to start playing, which was round when it first came out. It's square now.
And the controls? There's a splash of red in that now.
I remember when ESPN would change its website design like every six months as well. Fortunately, major news websites only feel a redesign every few years or so. Washington Post and NY Times both redesigned, but I suspect the design will stay around for a year, before they get tired of the way it looks.
No one's done much to move the design away from a smaller sized newspaper. ESPN's site is pretty busy, as are many sites. The thought is the more clicks you make, the less effective the website is (the tradeoff between clean design and clutter).
User interfaces have become video games. Each year, a new version comes out, and you're expected to master the new controls, and figure out new actions, all without any instruction. One day, I think, it will be nearly mandatory to have video lessons associated with user interfaces, and software will be judged by how good these lessons are, rather than how good the software actually is.
Microsoft, in its redesign of Office, has noticed that many features are unused, and so they've put their best user interface folks to rethink how Office should be laid out so more of these features are more obvious.
This is the kind of research software companies really need to do. Open source folks probably suffer the most when it comes to making these design decisions that help out users. Developers add more and more features, but lack the resource to do usability testing, especially on expert tools such as IDEs. They add features which they think will be useful to the power user, but then fail to explain this to the power user, requiring their deep investigation to learn how to use it.
Most user interfaces, at least product-specific interfaces, won't even last a year or two before it's redesigned. We can barely imagine interfaces that last 80 years, like the parking meter. While some ideas may last quite a while--menus, buttons, sliders--the entire user experience is likely to change like the latest version of Madden (though some would quibble about how much innovation Madden really goes under).
This suggests that user interfaces are still in its infancy, but I think we're just dealing with the reality--and fluidity--of user interfaces. There's no going back to a simple interface that's easy to learn because there's no functionality. Everything's packed to the gills with more features than you'll ever have time to learn.
And that's supposed to be a good thing.
Double Take
It's not that uncommon for Americans to "borrow" film ideas from other countries. The Return of Martin Guerre was a well-reviewed foreign film that most people never heard of, and was remade into Sommersby (with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster). Point of No Return was a nearly identical remake of La Femme Nikita. The Ring was a remake of J-Horror film, Ringu. I'm sure there are plenty of films in other countries that draw their inspiration from American films too.
For the most part, you don't imagine the films are going to be that good. Sometimes, you get a weird ping-pong effect of borrowing and borrowing again. Akira Kurosawa often drew inspiration from his films from the West, and made a samurai version of the film. The Seven Samurai could have been inspired by various Westerns, then it, too, was borrowed back in The Magnificent Seven, and then copied in Battle Beyond The Stars.
That's perhaps the most successful of the borrowing, as Kurosawa is considered a master filmmaker, and The Magnificent Seven is reasonably well regarded.
I was watching previews for the latest Martin Scorsese film, The Departed, whose plot line seemed awfully familiar. Indeed, it sounds like the basic plot of Infernal Affairs, which stars Tony Leung and Andy Lau in a rather clever twist. The Triad (presumably--the Hong Kong "mafia") want a mole in the police department, and the police also want a mole in the triad. Neither side knows there is a mole in the other side.
The previews basically suggest this, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, playing the role.
But it is a little odd thinking of Martin Scorsese making a remake of a film (he was reluctant to make Cape Fear thinking it wasn't his kind of film). True, he's set it in an environment that he knows best--New York City, but even so.
Scorsese has been a fan of Chinese cinema (and Japanese, for that matter), though his preferences have usually leaned to mainland China than Hong Kong films, even though Hong Kong films, with its fascination of crime culture, ought to be more in line with films Scorsese had made.
We'll see how this has turned out. (I'm trying to recall the last time Jack Nicholson has done a movie with Scorsese. Honestly, it's hard to recall if this is the first time they've worked together or not. It looks like it is the first time.)
For the most part, you don't imagine the films are going to be that good. Sometimes, you get a weird ping-pong effect of borrowing and borrowing again. Akira Kurosawa often drew inspiration from his films from the West, and made a samurai version of the film. The Seven Samurai could have been inspired by various Westerns, then it, too, was borrowed back in The Magnificent Seven, and then copied in Battle Beyond The Stars.
That's perhaps the most successful of the borrowing, as Kurosawa is considered a master filmmaker, and The Magnificent Seven is reasonably well regarded.
I was watching previews for the latest Martin Scorsese film, The Departed, whose plot line seemed awfully familiar. Indeed, it sounds like the basic plot of Infernal Affairs, which stars Tony Leung and Andy Lau in a rather clever twist. The Triad (presumably--the Hong Kong "mafia") want a mole in the police department, and the police also want a mole in the triad. Neither side knows there is a mole in the other side.
The previews basically suggest this, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, playing the role.
But it is a little odd thinking of Martin Scorsese making a remake of a film (he was reluctant to make Cape Fear thinking it wasn't his kind of film). True, he's set it in an environment that he knows best--New York City, but even so.
Scorsese has been a fan of Chinese cinema (and Japanese, for that matter), though his preferences have usually leaned to mainland China than Hong Kong films, even though Hong Kong films, with its fascination of crime culture, ought to be more in line with films Scorsese had made.
We'll see how this has turned out. (I'm trying to recall the last time Jack Nicholson has done a movie with Scorsese. Honestly, it's hard to recall if this is the first time they've worked together or not. It looks like it is the first time.)
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Roger and Andy
Andy Roddick is the Maria Sharapova of men's tennis. Except, of course, that most sports pundits and commentators, unlike the rest of their news breathern, must note their heterosexuality, and thus comment on the beauty (for those into it) of Maria Sharapova, whose probably about as tall as Roddick.
Americans want a new hero to replace Agassi. I don't think they particularly care if it's James Blake or Andy Roddick. At this point, Blake doesn't seem to have the same kind of imposing game that you expect from a top player. He doesn't have Roddick's serve, nor does he have Federer's all around awesomeness.
Roddick had been slumping lately, until he and Jimmy Connors agreed to work with one another. Most people point to Connors making Roddick more enthusiastic, more pumped up. While that is the most noticeable change, it's not the change that is making the difference (though one should never underestimate how emotional displays can rattle an opponent).
This biggest change is teaching Roddick to use his groundstrokes to come to net, something that Connors did a lot when he was playing. Connors wasn't the best volleyer, but he knew how to pick and choose his time to come to net and cut a point off short. Roddick seems to be playing smarter shots, and he has the one thing Connors didn't have: a good serve.
Although Federer won this match running away in the fourth set, Roddick really did have his chances. He had break points in the third set to get up an early break. Andy lost primarily due to the reason he typically loses. He gets impatient and hits sloppy shots. Top players can hit good shots with few errors.
Oddly, Roddick played many of his shots up the middle. He rarely hit shots near the sidelines. I don't know if he was trying to reduce angles against Federer or not.
Federer, for his part, is able to jump on any weak shot and knock it for a winner. At least, I felt that Roddick didn't feel completely intimidated by Federer, as Agassi often felt frustrated playing Sampras.
Roddick's other weakness was his serve. While he had been serving at quite a high percentage throughout the tournament, he missed lots of first serves. Given the pace of his first serve and the low percentage of points won on his second, you would think Roddick would try to play more percentages on his first serve. Had he done that, he might have put more pressure on Federer to break.
Was it a high quality match? It wasn't too bad. It could have had more exciting points. Overall, play was decent.
But with every win, Federer is getting closer to Sampras's record, which seemed only a scant few years ago, something that wasn't that close. Now it seems like Barry Bonds breaking Mark McGwire's home run record (alas, both tainted with rumors of steroids) or Ron Dayne breaking Ricky Williams record for four years of rushing in college.
Roddick hasn't even been that close to beating Federer. He's much like Courier or Agassi against Sampras. Sampras would dominate the two of them.
I didn't see any of the Sharapova-Henin-Hardenne match. I'm sure the advertisers were happy Sharapova won, and it will mean more dollars for her pocketbook. Will Sharapova become a great player? Who knows? But this is, alas, her first step to that goal.
Americans want a new hero to replace Agassi. I don't think they particularly care if it's James Blake or Andy Roddick. At this point, Blake doesn't seem to have the same kind of imposing game that you expect from a top player. He doesn't have Roddick's serve, nor does he have Federer's all around awesomeness.
Roddick had been slumping lately, until he and Jimmy Connors agreed to work with one another. Most people point to Connors making Roddick more enthusiastic, more pumped up. While that is the most noticeable change, it's not the change that is making the difference (though one should never underestimate how emotional displays can rattle an opponent).
This biggest change is teaching Roddick to use his groundstrokes to come to net, something that Connors did a lot when he was playing. Connors wasn't the best volleyer, but he knew how to pick and choose his time to come to net and cut a point off short. Roddick seems to be playing smarter shots, and he has the one thing Connors didn't have: a good serve.
Although Federer won this match running away in the fourth set, Roddick really did have his chances. He had break points in the third set to get up an early break. Andy lost primarily due to the reason he typically loses. He gets impatient and hits sloppy shots. Top players can hit good shots with few errors.
Oddly, Roddick played many of his shots up the middle. He rarely hit shots near the sidelines. I don't know if he was trying to reduce angles against Federer or not.
Federer, for his part, is able to jump on any weak shot and knock it for a winner. At least, I felt that Roddick didn't feel completely intimidated by Federer, as Agassi often felt frustrated playing Sampras.
Roddick's other weakness was his serve. While he had been serving at quite a high percentage throughout the tournament, he missed lots of first serves. Given the pace of his first serve and the low percentage of points won on his second, you would think Roddick would try to play more percentages on his first serve. Had he done that, he might have put more pressure on Federer to break.
Was it a high quality match? It wasn't too bad. It could have had more exciting points. Overall, play was decent.
But with every win, Federer is getting closer to Sampras's record, which seemed only a scant few years ago, something that wasn't that close. Now it seems like Barry Bonds breaking Mark McGwire's home run record (alas, both tainted with rumors of steroids) or Ron Dayne breaking Ricky Williams record for four years of rushing in college.
Roddick hasn't even been that close to beating Federer. He's much like Courier or Agassi against Sampras. Sampras would dominate the two of them.
I didn't see any of the Sharapova-Henin-Hardenne match. I'm sure the advertisers were happy Sharapova won, and it will mean more dollars for her pocketbook. Will Sharapova become a great player? Who knows? But this is, alas, her first step to that goal.
Music and Reading Books
I'm one of those guys who can listen to music with words while reading a book. I don't listen to the words, so I'm good. It's interesting to listen to music while reading a good book, because the two tie together in odd ways.
I remember reading one of the Ender books while listening to From Senegal to Setesdal, a collaboration of a Norwegian folk singer and West African musicians (the second CD I ever owned, after the soundtrack to Phantom Menace), and thought it would make great music for a film version.
I've been listening to Greg Laswell, and though I didn't read much of Spin with it, I did read the book at roughly the same time I was listening to the CD, and the song Come Undone, one of the highlights of his album, Through Toledo, makes me think strongly of the book. I don't know why, but it creates an unusual effect whenever I listen to that song.
Try listening to some song while you read and see how it feels when you listen to that song, whether it makes you remember key passages of a novel.
I remember reading one of the Ender books while listening to From Senegal to Setesdal, a collaboration of a Norwegian folk singer and West African musicians (the second CD I ever owned, after the soundtrack to Phantom Menace), and thought it would make great music for a film version.
I've been listening to Greg Laswell, and though I didn't read much of Spin with it, I did read the book at roughly the same time I was listening to the CD, and the song Come Undone, one of the highlights of his album, Through Toledo, makes me think strongly of the book. I don't know why, but it creates an unusual effect whenever I listen to that song.
Try listening to some song while you read and see how it feels when you listen to that song, whether it makes you remember key passages of a novel.
Asian vs. Asian-American
I've just caught the trailers for two films: Curse of the Golden Flower and The Hotel. More than likely, the first film will be wildly successful, at least in comparison to the second.
A month or so ago, I attended the monthly DC Movie Guys discussion (alas, I missed it a few weeks ago) with Joel Barber and Bill Henry. The discussion focused on minority representation. However, there was a big issue that I don't think they caught, and that was the distinction between Asian films and Asian-American films. And I don't even mean casting Asian actors in English films (such as Gong Li). I mean films that try to convey the Asian-American experience.
This is something that's rather challenging to do because Asian-Americans didn't come to the US in the same way. African Americans have two key features that make their experience more unified. First, many African Americans have ancestors that came across as slaves (not everyone, obviously) which lead to a second issue: racism. Even as some African Americans are really, say, from the Carribeans (though tracing ancestry back) of more recent years, people discriminate just because of skin color.
Asians have been made fun of as well, to be fair, and there were the Chinese that built the railroads and the Japanese interned during the second war, but many Asians trace their parentage back only one generation when there was a huge influx of Asians entering graduate programs throughout the US.
I use the P.C. phrase "Asian", rather than "Oriental" even if most people mean "Oriental". Asians would, to most people, included Indians (the whole region), Turks, even Russians, because they are in Asia. I suppose I use it in the first way too.
Let's talk about the first film. Zhang Yimou made his reputation as one of the earliest art-house directors from mainland China, once China began making films again. The communist regime didn't care for filmmaking for a long time. In the 80s, however, films set in pre-communist days were making their way to film festivals. Zhang Yimou was perhaps the most famous of these directors.
This is, of course, to be contrasted with directors coming out of Hong Kong, which produced films in a variety of genres: the gangster style pics of John Woo, ghost movies, Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung physical comedy films. The artsiest of the Hong Kong directors is Wong Kar-wai who, with DP, Christopher Doyle, created lush period pieces.
A few years ago, Zhang Yimou has reinvented himself as a director. The last two films were Hero and House of Flying Daggers which uses his trademark eye-searing colors in service of wire-fu action pictures. To me, this is like Merchant/Ivory deciding to do period action pictures after a lifetime of character dramas.
This film stars Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li. Chow Yun-Fat also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was noted that he did not have the martial arts skills of Jet Li or even co-star Michelle Yeoh. Jet Li was deemed too young-looking for the role. The choreographers did a simple trick, where Chow Yun-Fat would make very simple moves in slow motion, and it would look masterful because it was simple.
Chow Yun-Fat, a Hong Kong actor, plays the male lead, with wispy beard. He's better able to play these roles than, say, Tony Leung, who, though possibly a superior actor, looks a bit too wiry for the part. This film also reunites Zhang Yimou with Gong Li, whom it was said he had a romantic relationship. Gong Li still looks radiant and authoritative, and is up there with other Chinese leading beauties who can also act, like Maggie Cheung (who starred in Hero).
There are many Americans who don't like the wire-fu, a kind of bias that is similar to the bias I have for saucer-pupils common among anime characters that drives me crazy (not in a good way). They don't like its obvious fakeness. Even so, the brilliant colors, the scheming. This is, so far, the Asian movie to watch this year.
On the other side is a small independent picture, The Hotel, about an Asian-American coming of age story. These are often difficult stories to tell because Asian Americans males tend to have rather gawky coming of ages. I don't know that much about the story, except the kid is a bit overweight, works at his family's hotel (more like a motel), and has a tough time dealing with growing up.
Asian American films are exceedingly rare and it's difficult to point to a historical moment, say, like the civil rights movement or Jackie Robinson, that a film can be based on. Indians have it worse, having only grown to "large" numbers in the US in the last twenty years. As prominent a director as M. Night Shyamalan is, he's not dealt with Indian Americans living in the U.S. and he's the one guy that has the kind of clout to do it too.
But, just as there are hardly any Asian actors of note: Pat Morita (who passed away), George Takei, Lucy Liu, Kelly Hu, Ming Na, Tamylyn Tomita. I mean, these are hardly household names, and none of them have the stature of top African American actors, who you can name by the bucketful: Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson, Don Cheadle, Forrest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Ving Rhames, and on and on. The best Asian actors are from Asia: Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi.
The last Asian-American film of note, to my recollection, was Justin Lin's last picture, Better Luck Tomorrow. There was Saving Face, but I thought that was rather slight. I enjoyed its humor, but it wasn't great filmmaking, even as it addressed two issues that aren't usually dealt with together: Asian-Americans and lesbians. Indeed, it has more to say about being Asian-American then it does about lesbians, and has a side plot that's just a bit too wacky for me to believe, as if they couldn't trust the central story.
I'd like to see Justin Lin do a James Bond like picture with Asian Americans in the lead. That would be something interesting.
A month or so ago, I attended the monthly DC Movie Guys discussion (alas, I missed it a few weeks ago) with Joel Barber and Bill Henry. The discussion focused on minority representation. However, there was a big issue that I don't think they caught, and that was the distinction between Asian films and Asian-American films. And I don't even mean casting Asian actors in English films (such as Gong Li). I mean films that try to convey the Asian-American experience.
This is something that's rather challenging to do because Asian-Americans didn't come to the US in the same way. African Americans have two key features that make their experience more unified. First, many African Americans have ancestors that came across as slaves (not everyone, obviously) which lead to a second issue: racism. Even as some African Americans are really, say, from the Carribeans (though tracing ancestry back) of more recent years, people discriminate just because of skin color.
Asians have been made fun of as well, to be fair, and there were the Chinese that built the railroads and the Japanese interned during the second war, but many Asians trace their parentage back only one generation when there was a huge influx of Asians entering graduate programs throughout the US.
I use the P.C. phrase "Asian", rather than "Oriental" even if most people mean "Oriental". Asians would, to most people, included Indians (the whole region), Turks, even Russians, because they are in Asia. I suppose I use it in the first way too.
Let's talk about the first film. Zhang Yimou made his reputation as one of the earliest art-house directors from mainland China, once China began making films again. The communist regime didn't care for filmmaking for a long time. In the 80s, however, films set in pre-communist days were making their way to film festivals. Zhang Yimou was perhaps the most famous of these directors.
This is, of course, to be contrasted with directors coming out of Hong Kong, which produced films in a variety of genres: the gangster style pics of John Woo, ghost movies, Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung physical comedy films. The artsiest of the Hong Kong directors is Wong Kar-wai who, with DP, Christopher Doyle, created lush period pieces.
A few years ago, Zhang Yimou has reinvented himself as a director. The last two films were Hero and House of Flying Daggers which uses his trademark eye-searing colors in service of wire-fu action pictures. To me, this is like Merchant/Ivory deciding to do period action pictures after a lifetime of character dramas.
This film stars Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li. Chow Yun-Fat also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was noted that he did not have the martial arts skills of Jet Li or even co-star Michelle Yeoh. Jet Li was deemed too young-looking for the role. The choreographers did a simple trick, where Chow Yun-Fat would make very simple moves in slow motion, and it would look masterful because it was simple.
Chow Yun-Fat, a Hong Kong actor, plays the male lead, with wispy beard. He's better able to play these roles than, say, Tony Leung, who, though possibly a superior actor, looks a bit too wiry for the part. This film also reunites Zhang Yimou with Gong Li, whom it was said he had a romantic relationship. Gong Li still looks radiant and authoritative, and is up there with other Chinese leading beauties who can also act, like Maggie Cheung (who starred in Hero).
There are many Americans who don't like the wire-fu, a kind of bias that is similar to the bias I have for saucer-pupils common among anime characters that drives me crazy (not in a good way). They don't like its obvious fakeness. Even so, the brilliant colors, the scheming. This is, so far, the Asian movie to watch this year.
On the other side is a small independent picture, The Hotel, about an Asian-American coming of age story. These are often difficult stories to tell because Asian Americans males tend to have rather gawky coming of ages. I don't know that much about the story, except the kid is a bit overweight, works at his family's hotel (more like a motel), and has a tough time dealing with growing up.
Asian American films are exceedingly rare and it's difficult to point to a historical moment, say, like the civil rights movement or Jackie Robinson, that a film can be based on. Indians have it worse, having only grown to "large" numbers in the US in the last twenty years. As prominent a director as M. Night Shyamalan is, he's not dealt with Indian Americans living in the U.S. and he's the one guy that has the kind of clout to do it too.
But, just as there are hardly any Asian actors of note: Pat Morita (who passed away), George Takei, Lucy Liu, Kelly Hu, Ming Na, Tamylyn Tomita. I mean, these are hardly household names, and none of them have the stature of top African American actors, who you can name by the bucketful: Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson, Don Cheadle, Forrest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Ving Rhames, and on and on. The best Asian actors are from Asia: Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi.
The last Asian-American film of note, to my recollection, was Justin Lin's last picture, Better Luck Tomorrow. There was Saving Face, but I thought that was rather slight. I enjoyed its humor, but it wasn't great filmmaking, even as it addressed two issues that aren't usually dealt with together: Asian-Americans and lesbians. Indeed, it has more to say about being Asian-American then it does about lesbians, and has a side plot that's just a bit too wacky for me to believe, as if they couldn't trust the central story.
I'd like to see Justin Lin do a James Bond like picture with Asian Americans in the lead. That would be something interesting.
49 Up
In 1964, the first of a long series of documentary film was made. It was called 7-Up. Every seven years since then, Michael Apted (an assistant, at the first film) would go back and reinterview the dozen or so kids in the original film.
Not everyone has participated in every film. Indeed, one guy, from a group of three teens, has avoided interviews in the last three films, odd, considering he was a reporter. Another has skipped two of the films.
The biggest innovation to occur since the filming has been DVD and possibly Amazon. For a long, long time, it was hard to see any of these films outside England. Because of the length of time between films, and the lack of VCR/DVD technology, each successive film often needed to go back to early films to remind you of what happened earlier.
Watching these films, you notice things about British culture. For example, class differences are more noticeable (at least, if you're paying attention to it). Also, nearly everyone has gone through divorce, rich or poor. Indeed, those from the upper class seem to have parents that all divorced.
You also notice how much better the cast is at expressing themselves. Their command of the English language, even among the working class, seems far in excess of someone comparable in the US.
It's too bad that the films decided to protect the kids. None of them are interviewed. I suppose the people participating have found it highly intrusive, and don't want to subject their kids to this kind of scrutiny.
There's also a strong sense of the changes in the country, from life and dress in the 70s, to the prevalence of Indians/Pakistanis in the 90s.
We've yet to hit the passing of anyone (I think), although they are getting to an age where it might be of concern. Indeed, one wonders how long Michael Apted can keep this up as well.
It's one of the documentaries I'm looking forward to seeing.
Not everyone has participated in every film. Indeed, one guy, from a group of three teens, has avoided interviews in the last three films, odd, considering he was a reporter. Another has skipped two of the films.
The biggest innovation to occur since the filming has been DVD and possibly Amazon. For a long, long time, it was hard to see any of these films outside England. Because of the length of time between films, and the lack of VCR/DVD technology, each successive film often needed to go back to early films to remind you of what happened earlier.
Watching these films, you notice things about British culture. For example, class differences are more noticeable (at least, if you're paying attention to it). Also, nearly everyone has gone through divorce, rich or poor. Indeed, those from the upper class seem to have parents that all divorced.
You also notice how much better the cast is at expressing themselves. Their command of the English language, even among the working class, seems far in excess of someone comparable in the US.
It's too bad that the films decided to protect the kids. None of them are interviewed. I suppose the people participating have found it highly intrusive, and don't want to subject their kids to this kind of scrutiny.
There's also a strong sense of the changes in the country, from life and dress in the 70s, to the prevalence of Indians/Pakistanis in the 90s.
We've yet to hit the passing of anyone (I think), although they are getting to an age where it might be of concern. Indeed, one wonders how long Michael Apted can keep this up as well.
It's one of the documentaries I'm looking forward to seeing.
Martina On Top
The first week of the US Open was all about Agassi. After twenty years on the tour, Agassi was going to retire. Unlike Sampras, who managed to win the US Open, despite not being a top seed, and not playing good tennis heading in, Agassi came into the US Open with a bad back, and little hope of winning. Even had he been in tip-top shape, closer to last year, he'd have problems with Federer and even a resurgent Roddick.
In the midst of the hoopla, Martina announced that she, too, was ready to retire. Except far fewer people seemed to care. Even when she was critical of the tennis powers that be's inability to regulate tennis racquets, and therefore, making serve and volley tennis seemingly obsolete, it drew far less attention than Agassi's flashier retirement.
After all, Martina had already retired once, over ten years ago in 1994.
And let's face it, ever since McEnroe and Martina were no longer dominating, doubles has lost a lot of interest. Once upon a time, tennis broadcasts would show doubles. But not enough people cared. When players like the Bryan brothers and Paes/Bhupathi are at the top, players most people barely know, then there's no reason for tennis broadcasts to care.
The only way Martina would make a splash was to win. To coax her nearly fifty year old body to make a few volleys and hold her end of the bargain with one of the top American doubles players, Bob Bryan.
They beat unseeded Kueta Peschke and veteran Martin Damm convincingly in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3, making her, I'd imagine, one of the oldest players to win a Grand Slam title in the main event.
Mixed doubles has become practically irrelevant, it seems. They only play best of three, and even then, early rounds (I think) play a weird form of a tiebreak, if they split the first two sets. Something like first to ten points with a lead of two, mostly, I assume, to speed up the game.
It's nice to see Martina playing well as she edges to 50. Although some may dispute whether she's the greatest to ever play (Billie Jean King is happy to crown her thus), especially with Steffi Graf having won a Grand Slam (though Martina did win 6 in a row), she certainly has to be mentioned as among the best ever, and certainly, she's been awfully durable.
She did reasonably well in women's doubles, and won the mixed (though mixed is often predicated on strong play by the male, and a female that won't lose it for you). It's too bad that her endurance mostly came in doubles, because it meant you saw a lot less of her than you could have.
Martina was at least the last great volleyer in women's tennis. You can hardly recall any great serve and volleyers among the women. Pam Shriver had to play serve and volley, her backcourt game hardly suited to rushing the net. There was Jo Durie and Helena Sukova and Hana Mandlikova. But turn the clock to the nineties, and they're mostly gone.
Even the great Steffi Graf, a master on grass, simply couldn't pull the Lendlian task of making herself learn how to serve and volley. She just didn't need to. She felt comfortable playing tennis the way she played, which means even against players she'd beat handily, she wouldn't come over with topspin (yes, her slice was awfully effective, but even so, she should have tried to improve her shots).
Martina, along with Ivan Lendl, made tennis into a sport which you had to train for. Most people kept in tennis shape by playing tennis. Martina got herself ultra-fit, and soon, others did too. It seems like such a silly idea that tennis didn't do this sooner, but people had odd ideas back then (such as muscles decreasing flexibility).
Martina was "Smartina" armed with diet guru Robert Haas, and she used to dominate everyone much like Steffi Graf and Monica Seles dominated in the late eighties and early nineties. Women have always had a huge disparity with the very top and everyone else.
Martina became the second lesbian to come out in tennis (well, it's debatable how out Billie Jean King was in her career). Tennis has had its share of top players that were/are lesbians (Gigi Fernandez, Conchita Martinex, Amelie Mauresmo). Too bad there's not a top male player that's out (back in the day, it was Big Bill Tilden).
While team sports still shun the idea of an out player (no one I know of is out in the WNBA, but I hardly follow the league), at least tennis blazes a trail. Indeed, other than the fact that Mauresmo is a barely known quantity, her sexuality is not even mentioned (as it was when Martina was number one--at least, by casual sports fans).
While this retirement is likely to make a lot less noise than her first, it reminds us of all the accomplishments Martina has made. It may get drowned out with the lack of top American players in the game today, but it shouldn't. Martina may not have been universally liked (though people admired her more as she got older, much as Connors also was more admired as he got older), she did accomplish a lot for tennis, and a lot for women's sports, and a lot for gays and lesbians.
And for that, she should be a more important figure in tennis than Agassi was, even if fans feel the importance of Agassi's retirement more now.
In the midst of the hoopla, Martina announced that she, too, was ready to retire. Except far fewer people seemed to care. Even when she was critical of the tennis powers that be's inability to regulate tennis racquets, and therefore, making serve and volley tennis seemingly obsolete, it drew far less attention than Agassi's flashier retirement.
After all, Martina had already retired once, over ten years ago in 1994.
And let's face it, ever since McEnroe and Martina were no longer dominating, doubles has lost a lot of interest. Once upon a time, tennis broadcasts would show doubles. But not enough people cared. When players like the Bryan brothers and Paes/Bhupathi are at the top, players most people barely know, then there's no reason for tennis broadcasts to care.
The only way Martina would make a splash was to win. To coax her nearly fifty year old body to make a few volleys and hold her end of the bargain with one of the top American doubles players, Bob Bryan.
They beat unseeded Kueta Peschke and veteran Martin Damm convincingly in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3, making her, I'd imagine, one of the oldest players to win a Grand Slam title in the main event.
Mixed doubles has become practically irrelevant, it seems. They only play best of three, and even then, early rounds (I think) play a weird form of a tiebreak, if they split the first two sets. Something like first to ten points with a lead of two, mostly, I assume, to speed up the game.
It's nice to see Martina playing well as she edges to 50. Although some may dispute whether she's the greatest to ever play (Billie Jean King is happy to crown her thus), especially with Steffi Graf having won a Grand Slam (though Martina did win 6 in a row), she certainly has to be mentioned as among the best ever, and certainly, she's been awfully durable.
She did reasonably well in women's doubles, and won the mixed (though mixed is often predicated on strong play by the male, and a female that won't lose it for you). It's too bad that her endurance mostly came in doubles, because it meant you saw a lot less of her than you could have.
Martina was at least the last great volleyer in women's tennis. You can hardly recall any great serve and volleyers among the women. Pam Shriver had to play serve and volley, her backcourt game hardly suited to rushing the net. There was Jo Durie and Helena Sukova and Hana Mandlikova. But turn the clock to the nineties, and they're mostly gone.
Even the great Steffi Graf, a master on grass, simply couldn't pull the Lendlian task of making herself learn how to serve and volley. She just didn't need to. She felt comfortable playing tennis the way she played, which means even against players she'd beat handily, she wouldn't come over with topspin (yes, her slice was awfully effective, but even so, she should have tried to improve her shots).
Martina, along with Ivan Lendl, made tennis into a sport which you had to train for. Most people kept in tennis shape by playing tennis. Martina got herself ultra-fit, and soon, others did too. It seems like such a silly idea that tennis didn't do this sooner, but people had odd ideas back then (such as muscles decreasing flexibility).
Martina was "Smartina" armed with diet guru Robert Haas, and she used to dominate everyone much like Steffi Graf and Monica Seles dominated in the late eighties and early nineties. Women have always had a huge disparity with the very top and everyone else.
Martina became the second lesbian to come out in tennis (well, it's debatable how out Billie Jean King was in her career). Tennis has had its share of top players that were/are lesbians (Gigi Fernandez, Conchita Martinex, Amelie Mauresmo). Too bad there's not a top male player that's out (back in the day, it was Big Bill Tilden).
While team sports still shun the idea of an out player (no one I know of is out in the WNBA, but I hardly follow the league), at least tennis blazes a trail. Indeed, other than the fact that Mauresmo is a barely known quantity, her sexuality is not even mentioned (as it was when Martina was number one--at least, by casual sports fans).
While this retirement is likely to make a lot less noise than her first, it reminds us of all the accomplishments Martina has made. It may get drowned out with the lack of top American players in the game today, but it shouldn't. Martina may not have been universally liked (though people admired her more as she got older, much as Connors also was more admired as he got older), she did accomplish a lot for tennis, and a lot for women's sports, and a lot for gays and lesbians.
And for that, she should be a more important figure in tennis than Agassi was, even if fans feel the importance of Agassi's retirement more now.
Super Thoughts
I was thinking about what made the original (well, 1978 version) Superman so much better, in my mind, than the more recent, Superman Returns.
It's not that the original was great, either, but it really sunk its teeth into the origin story. The film starts off on Krypton, an icy planet with icy intellectuals. It simply looks alien. We're also introduced to Jor-El, plus the three villains that will be featured prominently in the second film.
There are a couple of neat special effects in that sequence alone. The spinning hoops that keep the prisoners inside, the flipping mirror which traps them in the Phantom Zone, and simply how huge and empty the entire place is, while Zod tries to maintain dignity as he insults Jor-El.
Then, the action moves to Earth, at which point the Kents are a stereotypical Midwestern family, full of good values, except the inability to have children. Clark becomes their son, and dad tries him to teach the lessons of humility. He deals with a 50s style high school, where he longs for the women, but doesn't seem capable of having them. It's amazing how well-behaved Clark was.
Then, there's the journey to the North Pole where he becomes a man, learns who he is, and then Superman. Eventually, action proceeds to modern times in Metropolis, and we're given a stereotypical view of New Yawkers.
It's to Christopher Reeve's credit that he builds two credible characters. If anything, his Clark Kent is far more interesting than his Superman, whose full of clunky goodness. Clark is clumsy and shy, turning his teenage gawky persona up to 11 for full effect. It's this personality that ultimately makes you believe that no one would think he's Superman, rather than the "take charge" portrayal of Kent by George Reeves (no relation, as the spelling is ever so slight different).
Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor is not the kind of evil genius portrayed in the comics. He's like Brain, and Otis is his Pinky. Miss Teschmacher (does she even have a first name?) is the vixen that helps out, for what exactly? His motivation? Real estate. He comes up with a completely wacky plan to sink California in the ocean (or at least, parts of it), leaving him with great ocean front property.
Meanwhile, Clark falls a bit for spunky Lois, who herself falls for Superman, and she gets an interview with him. She's more spunk than actual good reporter, but then this film isn't about accurately describing what happens at a real newspaper.
Fast forward to Superman Returns. The key difference is that the original film is about creating a kind of myth, dorky as it may be. It had a complete story arc, from how Clark came to be Superman, how he meets Lois, and so forth.
If you had to focus on what the second film is about, it's the story that Lois "wrote", why the world doesn't need Superman, and ultimately about why she does need Superman. The reaction between the two is far too muted, in my book, for the film.
Indeed, Superman almost comes across more as an idea than as a person in the film. What is his reaction to discovering his homeworld's been destroyed (wasn't this information given to Clark at some point--explaining why he's on Earth, and not on Krypton?)? What does he seek to return? Presumably, because of Lois. However, for the big reveal at the end, he seems awfully passive at the idea of getting together with Lois.
Where Lex had a pivotal role in the first film, at least enough so that Superman's goal was to deal with Lex, in Superman Returns, he's more of a distraction, someone that reminds Superman what his purpose is. He's meant to be some kind of Gandhi, a hero to the masses, that is never meant to settle down and be happy, and yet, that's not clearly conveyed. Why does Superman give up so easily? Why does Lois decide to give up on Superman?
It's this idea that we all grow up and move on and make "adult" decisions, and sometimes these decisions don't allow us to easily go back to the idealism we had as kids.
For a superhero movie, that's a particularly meta idea, that this story is not about Superman, but about the idea of Superman (and perhaps, by extension, and so many analogies--about the idea of Jesus, and the meaning of religion in one's life). And while that idea is far more sophisticated than anything conveyed in the original Superman, it's also far more distancing to the audience.
Heck, despite Kevin Spacey giving us a deliciously more evil Lex Luthor, he too, can't get past the idea that this jock, this school hero is back, and that everyone loves him, and not Lex. But he's not that well fleshed out as a character either. Although he has new cronies in this film, they seem far more boring than Miss Techmacher, and delightfully dorky Otis.
Sometimes you want to see something more operatic, more melodramatic. At least, I did.
It's not that the original was great, either, but it really sunk its teeth into the origin story. The film starts off on Krypton, an icy planet with icy intellectuals. It simply looks alien. We're also introduced to Jor-El, plus the three villains that will be featured prominently in the second film.
There are a couple of neat special effects in that sequence alone. The spinning hoops that keep the prisoners inside, the flipping mirror which traps them in the Phantom Zone, and simply how huge and empty the entire place is, while Zod tries to maintain dignity as he insults Jor-El.
Then, the action moves to Earth, at which point the Kents are a stereotypical Midwestern family, full of good values, except the inability to have children. Clark becomes their son, and dad tries him to teach the lessons of humility. He deals with a 50s style high school, where he longs for the women, but doesn't seem capable of having them. It's amazing how well-behaved Clark was.
Then, there's the journey to the North Pole where he becomes a man, learns who he is, and then Superman. Eventually, action proceeds to modern times in Metropolis, and we're given a stereotypical view of New Yawkers.
It's to Christopher Reeve's credit that he builds two credible characters. If anything, his Clark Kent is far more interesting than his Superman, whose full of clunky goodness. Clark is clumsy and shy, turning his teenage gawky persona up to 11 for full effect. It's this personality that ultimately makes you believe that no one would think he's Superman, rather than the "take charge" portrayal of Kent by George Reeves (no relation, as the spelling is ever so slight different).
Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor is not the kind of evil genius portrayed in the comics. He's like Brain, and Otis is his Pinky. Miss Teschmacher (does she even have a first name?) is the vixen that helps out, for what exactly? His motivation? Real estate. He comes up with a completely wacky plan to sink California in the ocean (or at least, parts of it), leaving him with great ocean front property.
Meanwhile, Clark falls a bit for spunky Lois, who herself falls for Superman, and she gets an interview with him. She's more spunk than actual good reporter, but then this film isn't about accurately describing what happens at a real newspaper.
Fast forward to Superman Returns. The key difference is that the original film is about creating a kind of myth, dorky as it may be. It had a complete story arc, from how Clark came to be Superman, how he meets Lois, and so forth.
If you had to focus on what the second film is about, it's the story that Lois "wrote", why the world doesn't need Superman, and ultimately about why she does need Superman. The reaction between the two is far too muted, in my book, for the film.
Indeed, Superman almost comes across more as an idea than as a person in the film. What is his reaction to discovering his homeworld's been destroyed (wasn't this information given to Clark at some point--explaining why he's on Earth, and not on Krypton?)? What does he seek to return? Presumably, because of Lois. However, for the big reveal at the end, he seems awfully passive at the idea of getting together with Lois.
Where Lex had a pivotal role in the first film, at least enough so that Superman's goal was to deal with Lex, in Superman Returns, he's more of a distraction, someone that reminds Superman what his purpose is. He's meant to be some kind of Gandhi, a hero to the masses, that is never meant to settle down and be happy, and yet, that's not clearly conveyed. Why does Superman give up so easily? Why does Lois decide to give up on Superman?
It's this idea that we all grow up and move on and make "adult" decisions, and sometimes these decisions don't allow us to easily go back to the idealism we had as kids.
For a superhero movie, that's a particularly meta idea, that this story is not about Superman, but about the idea of Superman (and perhaps, by extension, and so many analogies--about the idea of Jesus, and the meaning of religion in one's life). And while that idea is far more sophisticated than anything conveyed in the original Superman, it's also far more distancing to the audience.
Heck, despite Kevin Spacey giving us a deliciously more evil Lex Luthor, he too, can't get past the idea that this jock, this school hero is back, and that everyone loves him, and not Lex. But he's not that well fleshed out as a character either. Although he has new cronies in this film, they seem far more boring than Miss Techmacher, and delightfully dorky Otis.
Sometimes you want to see something more operatic, more melodramatic. At least, I did.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Eternal Sunshine
I think I have to write reviews two or three times before I get it to where I sorta want it. I don't find myself getting particularly good at writing them, even after a year or so of doing this. I still find myself summarizing rather than evaluating.
Let's try again.
Ostensibly a film about a dysfunctional family--dad's into personal self help, but isn't particular good at the job, goth-ish son reads Nietzche, hates everyone, and won't talk to his family. Daughter, thankfully not smugly cute, wants to win a beauty contest. Granddad's is foul-mouthed, complains about living with the kids, but still cares for the family. Brother is suicidal since grant money went to "second best" Proust author (guess who's first).
Really a film about how we deal with ambition, why we set goals in our life, and what happens when those goals are not met. Ultimately, the message is rather simple: it's the striving that matters, and it's family that matters.
Admittedly, like many films about beauty pageants, it makes fun of beauty pageants, especially those for kids, where the other kids are gaudy and artificial (being painted on as if they were stock cars for display), but it isn't purely a screed against beauty pageants, otherwise, we'd have a plot about overbearing parents.
For a comedy, it's moderately dark, a serious comedy, if you will, marked by observance to detail, such as the VW van that has to be pushed until it gets to third gear. Although the family ends up learning about each other (using the tried and true formula of a road trip to put people together in confined spaces over periods of time, as they learn to like and dislike one another), it's hard to imagine how their lives will be much better afterwards.
But its ability to raise questions about why we value success, why we feel the need to be a winner, makes the film intriguing, even if it never fully answers these questions. Also remarkable for avoiding standard stereotypes (the son, in particular, is strange--not the kind of guy you think would join the military and fly planes). Acting is uniformly good, except Kinnear seems to be on auto-pilot, his character seemingly like many he plays elsewhere. Nice to see Carrell in a modestly serious role, and perhaps ends up being most sympathetic/pathetic of the lot, and the one who gains the most from the trip.
Let's try again.
Ostensibly a film about a dysfunctional family--dad's into personal self help, but isn't particular good at the job, goth-ish son reads Nietzche, hates everyone, and won't talk to his family. Daughter, thankfully not smugly cute, wants to win a beauty contest. Granddad's is foul-mouthed, complains about living with the kids, but still cares for the family. Brother is suicidal since grant money went to "second best" Proust author (guess who's first).
Really a film about how we deal with ambition, why we set goals in our life, and what happens when those goals are not met. Ultimately, the message is rather simple: it's the striving that matters, and it's family that matters.
Admittedly, like many films about beauty pageants, it makes fun of beauty pageants, especially those for kids, where the other kids are gaudy and artificial (being painted on as if they were stock cars for display), but it isn't purely a screed against beauty pageants, otherwise, we'd have a plot about overbearing parents.
For a comedy, it's moderately dark, a serious comedy, if you will, marked by observance to detail, such as the VW van that has to be pushed until it gets to third gear. Although the family ends up learning about each other (using the tried and true formula of a road trip to put people together in confined spaces over periods of time, as they learn to like and dislike one another), it's hard to imagine how their lives will be much better afterwards.
But its ability to raise questions about why we value success, why we feel the need to be a winner, makes the film intriguing, even if it never fully answers these questions. Also remarkable for avoiding standard stereotypes (the son, in particular, is strange--not the kind of guy you think would join the military and fly planes). Acting is uniformly good, except Kinnear seems to be on auto-pilot, his character seemingly like many he plays elsewhere. Nice to see Carrell in a modestly serious role, and perhaps ends up being most sympathetic/pathetic of the lot, and the one who gains the most from the trip.
Sunshine State
I had intended to watch Half Nelson today. But, must like United 93, the filmmakers decided that a handheld treatment would provide that queasy immediacy. A little too queasy for me. So I left after about ten minutes.
That left me wondering what to do next. I thought about getting my money back or watching another film. I opted for the second. I decided on Little Miss Sunshine, a title I would have ordinarily skipped because, well, with a title like that. But, a former coworker had recommended it, and I didn't have much to do at the time.
I had expected, since the recommendation came from a new parent, that it might be something heartwarming about a little kid.
And while it was somewhat heartwarming, it's not a film you'd see with your kid.
This film tackles a much bigger theme than what it seem on the surface, which is dealing with a dysfunctional family's journey to have their daughter entered in a beauty pageant for little kids.
By the way, is there a more maligned profession in movies than beauty pageants? Surely, the competition must be filled with vacuous eight year old kids. But, wait, they are eight years old.
For some odd reason, this reminded me of a film I had seen with Justin a while back called Smile, which dealt with the adult pageants. It took a more serious stance about the people who are into pageants, the former beauty queen whose yearly highlight is managing a beauty contest. It's important to her, if not to her husband.
Indeed, the beauty contest almost seems secondary to this film, which is about ambition. How many of our lives are filled with the desire to be the best? Look at advice on how to get a good job, and it's all about selling yourself. I find it interesting how employer-centric many articles are seeking to find the best talent, and trying to root out the ineffective. What if you happen to be the ineffective one? What do you do with your life?
Admittedly, this being something of a comedy, situations feel exaggerated for effect. Greg Kinnear plays a father whose trying to make money based on a nine step program. The power of positive thinking. What winners think. What losers think. How to be a winner. His is the purest in terms of "ambition", in that he believes success derives from positive thought.
The daughter wants to be a beauty queen. The grandfather regrets his life, feeling he never strived for anything. He trains his granddaughter in her dance routine. The son, a goth-ish type who reads Nietzche and seems anti-establishment, has taken a vow of silence, until he can become an Air Force pilot, even if his credentials don't exactly fit the military type. Steve Carrell plays the mother's brother, a gay professor who tried to kill himself when he finds a rival Proust scholar not only dates his ex boyfriend, a vacuous grad student, but has been given a genius fellowship as the premier Proust scholar.
The mother, strangely enough, has no ambitions of her own. She doesn't exactly live precariously through her kids nor her husband, but seems to be the only sensible person in the family, despite serving family dinners of take-out chicken on paper plates with Sprite on the side.
It's true the film underlines the point when the son, who finally speaks, says "All our lives is one beauty contest after another", and this makes you wonder what will happen to the beauty contest. If the little girl wins, it seems to be like those anti-war films that have glamourous war footage. If she loses and is humiliated, it would be a bit too much pathos for this film. What happens seems just about right, and in the end, the film's message is simple. No matter how dysfunctional a family is, they're still family.
Think of this as a darker, less sacchrine version of Parenthood.
The acting is overall quite good. Greg Kinnear is somewhat on autopilot, since he's playing a role that he seems to have played a lot, but he does invest some emotional core for a man who otherwise appears to have a meaningless life as a motivator. Alan Arkin is good as the acerbic grandpa, who likes porn, but seems to care for his granddaughter's dance lessons.
Steve Carrell does, as so many comedians do well, play a semi-serious role as the brother who finds something to be happy about after an attempted suicide. I didn't recognize Paul Dano, whose grown quite a bit since his lead role with Brian Cox in L.I.E.. He's also good for a guy who doesn't have lines until most of the way through the film.
You can tell, with one small bit, that the film, despite its quirks, wants to keep to a weirdly consistent logic. In particular, the VW van that only starts in 3rd gear, must be pushed to 10-15 mph, is repeatedly pushed to start, and while that ought to be humorous, or at the very least, repetitive, it made me think that the screenwriter didn't get so lazy as to offer a simple solution for this problem they created.
So even as it perhaps exaggerated the faults, it avoids making everyone into stereotypes, and even downplays some of the beauty pageant (for example, the rival parents are not at all mentioned, with the former beauty queen as judge being their stand-in).
Good, better than expected, if not quite great.
That left me wondering what to do next. I thought about getting my money back or watching another film. I opted for the second. I decided on Little Miss Sunshine, a title I would have ordinarily skipped because, well, with a title like that. But, a former coworker had recommended it, and I didn't have much to do at the time.
I had expected, since the recommendation came from a new parent, that it might be something heartwarming about a little kid.
And while it was somewhat heartwarming, it's not a film you'd see with your kid.
This film tackles a much bigger theme than what it seem on the surface, which is dealing with a dysfunctional family's journey to have their daughter entered in a beauty pageant for little kids.
By the way, is there a more maligned profession in movies than beauty pageants? Surely, the competition must be filled with vacuous eight year old kids. But, wait, they are eight years old.
For some odd reason, this reminded me of a film I had seen with Justin a while back called Smile, which dealt with the adult pageants. It took a more serious stance about the people who are into pageants, the former beauty queen whose yearly highlight is managing a beauty contest. It's important to her, if not to her husband.
Indeed, the beauty contest almost seems secondary to this film, which is about ambition. How many of our lives are filled with the desire to be the best? Look at advice on how to get a good job, and it's all about selling yourself. I find it interesting how employer-centric many articles are seeking to find the best talent, and trying to root out the ineffective. What if you happen to be the ineffective one? What do you do with your life?
Admittedly, this being something of a comedy, situations feel exaggerated for effect. Greg Kinnear plays a father whose trying to make money based on a nine step program. The power of positive thinking. What winners think. What losers think. How to be a winner. His is the purest in terms of "ambition", in that he believes success derives from positive thought.
The daughter wants to be a beauty queen. The grandfather regrets his life, feeling he never strived for anything. He trains his granddaughter in her dance routine. The son, a goth-ish type who reads Nietzche and seems anti-establishment, has taken a vow of silence, until he can become an Air Force pilot, even if his credentials don't exactly fit the military type. Steve Carrell plays the mother's brother, a gay professor who tried to kill himself when he finds a rival Proust scholar not only dates his ex boyfriend, a vacuous grad student, but has been given a genius fellowship as the premier Proust scholar.
The mother, strangely enough, has no ambitions of her own. She doesn't exactly live precariously through her kids nor her husband, but seems to be the only sensible person in the family, despite serving family dinners of take-out chicken on paper plates with Sprite on the side.
It's true the film underlines the point when the son, who finally speaks, says "All our lives is one beauty contest after another", and this makes you wonder what will happen to the beauty contest. If the little girl wins, it seems to be like those anti-war films that have glamourous war footage. If she loses and is humiliated, it would be a bit too much pathos for this film. What happens seems just about right, and in the end, the film's message is simple. No matter how dysfunctional a family is, they're still family.
Think of this as a darker, less sacchrine version of Parenthood.
The acting is overall quite good. Greg Kinnear is somewhat on autopilot, since he's playing a role that he seems to have played a lot, but he does invest some emotional core for a man who otherwise appears to have a meaningless life as a motivator. Alan Arkin is good as the acerbic grandpa, who likes porn, but seems to care for his granddaughter's dance lessons.
Steve Carrell does, as so many comedians do well, play a semi-serious role as the brother who finds something to be happy about after an attempted suicide. I didn't recognize Paul Dano, whose grown quite a bit since his lead role with Brian Cox in L.I.E.. He's also good for a guy who doesn't have lines until most of the way through the film.
You can tell, with one small bit, that the film, despite its quirks, wants to keep to a weirdly consistent logic. In particular, the VW van that only starts in 3rd gear, must be pushed to 10-15 mph, is repeatedly pushed to start, and while that ought to be humorous, or at the very least, repetitive, it made me think that the screenwriter didn't get so lazy as to offer a simple solution for this problem they created.
So even as it perhaps exaggerated the faults, it avoids making everyone into stereotypes, and even downplays some of the beauty pageant (for example, the rival parents are not at all mentioned, with the former beauty queen as judge being their stand-in).
Good, better than expected, if not quite great.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
As Days Go By
How much have you changed in the last three years? Or the last six?
These two videos were making the viral video rounds. They both are by folks who have taken a photo of themselves in the past several years.
Both share taken in similar, yet odd ways. Notice how both took pictures where the eyes are located at pretty much the exact same position. Thus, while the backgrounds change, they hardly do, except for the changes in clothes. The expressions remain nearly identical in every single picture.
For the girl, you see her glasses change, her hair get longer or shorter. At one period, she seemed to have been undecided on which glasses to wear. For the guy, he almost looks the same every picture. The background seems to change, as he aims the camera side to side, and then eventually moves to a new location. Most days he wears a shirt, some days not. He's basically clean shaven. The frizz of his hair changes daily but not in an overall rhythm.
It's odd that both these people picked the same idea, and almost executed in exactly the same way, and the music overlay sounds pretty similar too. It almost seems like it's a clever hoax, except what's the point?
But there's still some metaphor for life. In some ways, both these videos suggest that there is some constancy in our lives, mainly us. As things change, we stay the same.
The funny thing is the constancy may not be that constant. The original video for the girl was on YouTube, but it was removed. I used a Google version instead, which was still available.
By the way, I'm listening to Greg Laswell, and this is odd how that happened. As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, I was waiting for my car to be attended to. One advantage of being at a dealership in Bethesda is that I can walk across the street to the Barnes and Noble. Normally, I don't listen to the music blaring in the building, but for some reason I did, and it seemed catchy.
I figured it wasn't the radio, since there was no ads of any sort. I asked the folks at the food place where the music came from and they said it was a preset selection that corporate tells them to play. I went downstairs two stories, and asked the guy in the music section what was playing. He handed over the CD. I bought it.
It turns out Greg Laswell wrote this album when after his wife decided to leave him. He said his songs would have been more angry or bitter had he not been still in love with her. What is interesting about the album is that he plays every part, and put the arrangements together, since he was his own engineer. This kind of arrangement is now possible because of technology. Once upon a time, you had to hire several people, and you were limited to how many tracks you could overlay. Now you can do as much or as little as you want.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the CD. His voice seems very much like many other voices. Even so, it's not offensive, and is overall a pretty good CD.
Oh Say Can You Agassi
Andre Agassi had announced the US Open would be his last tournament. Afterwards, he'd head into retirement. It was only fitting his last match would be against B. Becker.
Well, not that B. Becker. This Becker was Benjamin Becker, no relation to Boris, never even met the guy. Indeed, at a ripe old age of 25, this Becker didn't burst on the scene by winning Wimbledon at 17. However, he did do one thing that neither Becker nor Agassi did.
Benjamin Becker shares a distinction with Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Mikael Pernfors. He's won the NCAA Championships in tennis. In 2004, he won it all. Becker is indeed German, and presumably was an older student (he would have been 23 when he won it, possibly 22).
The college route is not a typical route for top American champions. Prodigies in tennis mature early, often in high school, and skip college. John McEnroe only stayed at Stanford one year. Connors, if memory serves, only stayed three years. Unlike college basketball, college tennis attracts the non-prodigies, the anti-Agassis. Those, like fine wine, that take longer to develop. Alas, this route usually means lack of success. Aside from a player like Thomas Muster, there are only a handful of players who player really well in their elder years from nowhere. Most talented players show their talent early.
This includes the crop of good American players that ended with Agassi. Sampras, Chang, Courier, Wheaton. Some players did the college thing. Malivai Washington. Todd Martin. It's not awful to go that route, and one can still do quite well on the tour, provided your goal is not to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
When all is said and done, people may look back at Agassi's stellar career and wonder if he could have done more. At least twice in his career, he let his skills decline so badly, that his rankings dipped, and people wondered what happened to him. His summer has been lackluster, primarily due to a back injury. He had been losing early in tournaments throughout the summer, saving himself up for one last glorious stand at the Open.
While Agassi's name and the US Open aren't as inextricably linked as Connors and the Open, fans have embraced Agassi. If anything, he's hung in there an awfully long time. I remember watching him play in 1988, a match against Lendl, at the time, perhaps the hardest hitting player this side of Becker and Connors, and this punk kid, dressed in neon, like some reject from a glam metal big hair band was clocking the ball.
In hindsight, those images show a kind of grooming for the public that's honestly never been seen since. Sure, people had hoped Tiger Woods would do as well as he's done. Nike spent major dollars to sign Tiger, when the only significant blip on his resume was three time NCAA golf champion--nothing to sneeze at, but no guarantee of a career that might leave Niklaus, and the rest of the golf field in the dust. Yet, Tiger is only flashy with his game. He's not Muhammad Ali. He's not out protesting. He plays his game and wins. No wild hair. No flashy lifestyle.
Not so with Agassi. Agassi brought a new face to tennis. His dad was an Olympic boxer from Iran. Like many tennis parents, he wanted success for his son, and like many tennis parents, this relationship wasn't always smooth. Imagine less than ten years after the hostages, when those with Iranian blood would call themselves Persians, distancing themselves from the regime and from home grown prejudice.
Oh but Agassi could claim another heritage, for he's not Iranian, but Armenian. You see, it's not Agassi, but Agassian. For those unfamiliar with Armenian surnames, practically every Armenian's last name ends in "ian" or "yan".
No matter. Most people didn't flinch with Agassi's unusual last name. People who didn't care about tennis at least heard of Agassi. Even as a youth, he was as polished in front of the camera as he is today. Listen to his interviews, and they sound far better than star du jour, Rafael Nadal, whose "for sures" echo reticent Swede, Bjorn Borg.
He started, much like Connors, as the brash kid, but when he stripped off his neon, his longish hair, for the plainer, shaved look he sports now, people liked him more. In tennis, where there are no teams, it's the players that win for years that people want to follow, and Agassi's been around nearly twenty years.
In a sense, Agassi's win over Baghdatis was his US Open. Baghdatis was eighth seed, and given Agassi's health, he should have been too much. Even with Agassi up two sets to none, Baghdatis clawed back, and Agassi found himself in a place he didn't want to be. In a fifth set. He dug in and pulled out a win. And due to a rain delay that washed out most of the Saturday schedule, Agassi had one more day's rest.
Alas, it was not enough. Agassi's serve was inconsistent. At one point, Becker was slashing returns for winners, with Agassi watching the balls go by, the pain too great to track down. Still, he managed to squeak out a second set win, and had chances to win the third set. Even had that happened, it was doubtful he could pull off another set. If it weren't for Becker also playing unevenly, missing points, almost as if he didn't want to crush Agassi, the match wouldn't have been as close as it ended up being.
Agassi can look at the career of his rivals. Courier surged for about three years, and then faded, his power game seemingly too predictable. Sampras seemed to defeat Agassi whenever they met, no matter how hot Agassi was playing, or how poorly Sampras had been playing. He'd come into a US Open without much of a prayer, with Agassi playing as well as he'd played, and come out a winner, and then retire on top. Chang also retired, injuries plaguing him as well.
Agassi stayed around, still playing good enough tennis last year to make semifinals of Grand Slam events, but unable to deal with the best of the best. He wasn't ready to beat Federer, and Nadal had made things tough for the rest.
Agassi, much like Connors, had a game that was fit for the new millenium. He hit as hard as the best players, but the rest of the field had caught up. Watching the Chang-Edberg fourth round match, you feel the play is in slow motion. Chang and Edberg would trade shots down the middle, while current players not only hit harder, but deeper.
Agassi's retirement coincides with the second retirement of Navratilova. Long since irrelevant in singles play, Navratilova keeps hanging in there, playing doubles and mixed, still seeking another Wimbledon win, still seeking another Grand Slam title. She used the US Open as a forum to complain about modern racquets which have made serve and volley nearly obsolete. Even the best players, like Federer, don't want to come to net given how good everyone passes these days.
People may conclude Sampras was the better player, or maybe even Becker, but perhaps no one exudes as much charisma as Agassi, partly because he, more than any other player of his generation, knew how to talk to the media. He was grateful to the fans. He was friendly. Yeah, some people say that it was something of a show, and possibly less than honest, but tennis personalities don't have the kind of drama that basketball and football stars have. People can remember Agassi as that brash kid, son of an immigrant, heir to the legacy of Lendl, and a player that stuck it out for nearly twenty years.
Now he can be daddy, and husband to Steffi, and look at the next step in his life. He can hope players like Roddick and Blake are ready to take the mantle of tennis greatness, though perhaps we'll have to wait a bit, much like tennis was wondering where the next great Americans were coming from in the mid 80s.
So Andre Agassi, here's to retirement. It's too bad that it had to end in pain, in a loss to Becker, but you fought, handled it with class, and left the game as beloved as anyone whose ever played.
Well, not that B. Becker. This Becker was Benjamin Becker, no relation to Boris, never even met the guy. Indeed, at a ripe old age of 25, this Becker didn't burst on the scene by winning Wimbledon at 17. However, he did do one thing that neither Becker nor Agassi did.
Benjamin Becker shares a distinction with Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Mikael Pernfors. He's won the NCAA Championships in tennis. In 2004, he won it all. Becker is indeed German, and presumably was an older student (he would have been 23 when he won it, possibly 22).
The college route is not a typical route for top American champions. Prodigies in tennis mature early, often in high school, and skip college. John McEnroe only stayed at Stanford one year. Connors, if memory serves, only stayed three years. Unlike college basketball, college tennis attracts the non-prodigies, the anti-Agassis. Those, like fine wine, that take longer to develop. Alas, this route usually means lack of success. Aside from a player like Thomas Muster, there are only a handful of players who player really well in their elder years from nowhere. Most talented players show their talent early.
This includes the crop of good American players that ended with Agassi. Sampras, Chang, Courier, Wheaton. Some players did the college thing. Malivai Washington. Todd Martin. It's not awful to go that route, and one can still do quite well on the tour, provided your goal is not to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
When all is said and done, people may look back at Agassi's stellar career and wonder if he could have done more. At least twice in his career, he let his skills decline so badly, that his rankings dipped, and people wondered what happened to him. His summer has been lackluster, primarily due to a back injury. He had been losing early in tournaments throughout the summer, saving himself up for one last glorious stand at the Open.
While Agassi's name and the US Open aren't as inextricably linked as Connors and the Open, fans have embraced Agassi. If anything, he's hung in there an awfully long time. I remember watching him play in 1988, a match against Lendl, at the time, perhaps the hardest hitting player this side of Becker and Connors, and this punk kid, dressed in neon, like some reject from a glam metal big hair band was clocking the ball.
In hindsight, those images show a kind of grooming for the public that's honestly never been seen since. Sure, people had hoped Tiger Woods would do as well as he's done. Nike spent major dollars to sign Tiger, when the only significant blip on his resume was three time NCAA golf champion--nothing to sneeze at, but no guarantee of a career that might leave Niklaus, and the rest of the golf field in the dust. Yet, Tiger is only flashy with his game. He's not Muhammad Ali. He's not out protesting. He plays his game and wins. No wild hair. No flashy lifestyle.
Not so with Agassi. Agassi brought a new face to tennis. His dad was an Olympic boxer from Iran. Like many tennis parents, he wanted success for his son, and like many tennis parents, this relationship wasn't always smooth. Imagine less than ten years after the hostages, when those with Iranian blood would call themselves Persians, distancing themselves from the regime and from home grown prejudice.
Oh but Agassi could claim another heritage, for he's not Iranian, but Armenian. You see, it's not Agassi, but Agassian. For those unfamiliar with Armenian surnames, practically every Armenian's last name ends in "ian" or "yan".
No matter. Most people didn't flinch with Agassi's unusual last name. People who didn't care about tennis at least heard of Agassi. Even as a youth, he was as polished in front of the camera as he is today. Listen to his interviews, and they sound far better than star du jour, Rafael Nadal, whose "for sures" echo reticent Swede, Bjorn Borg.
He started, much like Connors, as the brash kid, but when he stripped off his neon, his longish hair, for the plainer, shaved look he sports now, people liked him more. In tennis, where there are no teams, it's the players that win for years that people want to follow, and Agassi's been around nearly twenty years.
In a sense, Agassi's win over Baghdatis was his US Open. Baghdatis was eighth seed, and given Agassi's health, he should have been too much. Even with Agassi up two sets to none, Baghdatis clawed back, and Agassi found himself in a place he didn't want to be. In a fifth set. He dug in and pulled out a win. And due to a rain delay that washed out most of the Saturday schedule, Agassi had one more day's rest.
Alas, it was not enough. Agassi's serve was inconsistent. At one point, Becker was slashing returns for winners, with Agassi watching the balls go by, the pain too great to track down. Still, he managed to squeak out a second set win, and had chances to win the third set. Even had that happened, it was doubtful he could pull off another set. If it weren't for Becker also playing unevenly, missing points, almost as if he didn't want to crush Agassi, the match wouldn't have been as close as it ended up being.
Agassi can look at the career of his rivals. Courier surged for about three years, and then faded, his power game seemingly too predictable. Sampras seemed to defeat Agassi whenever they met, no matter how hot Agassi was playing, or how poorly Sampras had been playing. He'd come into a US Open without much of a prayer, with Agassi playing as well as he'd played, and come out a winner, and then retire on top. Chang also retired, injuries plaguing him as well.
Agassi stayed around, still playing good enough tennis last year to make semifinals of Grand Slam events, but unable to deal with the best of the best. He wasn't ready to beat Federer, and Nadal had made things tough for the rest.
Agassi, much like Connors, had a game that was fit for the new millenium. He hit as hard as the best players, but the rest of the field had caught up. Watching the Chang-Edberg fourth round match, you feel the play is in slow motion. Chang and Edberg would trade shots down the middle, while current players not only hit harder, but deeper.
Agassi's retirement coincides with the second retirement of Navratilova. Long since irrelevant in singles play, Navratilova keeps hanging in there, playing doubles and mixed, still seeking another Wimbledon win, still seeking another Grand Slam title. She used the US Open as a forum to complain about modern racquets which have made serve and volley nearly obsolete. Even the best players, like Federer, don't want to come to net given how good everyone passes these days.
People may conclude Sampras was the better player, or maybe even Becker, but perhaps no one exudes as much charisma as Agassi, partly because he, more than any other player of his generation, knew how to talk to the media. He was grateful to the fans. He was friendly. Yeah, some people say that it was something of a show, and possibly less than honest, but tennis personalities don't have the kind of drama that basketball and football stars have. People can remember Agassi as that brash kid, son of an immigrant, heir to the legacy of Lendl, and a player that stuck it out for nearly twenty years.
Now he can be daddy, and husband to Steffi, and look at the next step in his life. He can hope players like Roddick and Blake are ready to take the mantle of tennis greatness, though perhaps we'll have to wait a bit, much like tennis was wondering where the next great Americans were coming from in the mid 80s.
So Andre Agassi, here's to retirement. It's too bad that it had to end in pain, in a loss to Becker, but you fought, handled it with class, and left the game as beloved as anyone whose ever played.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Cool Spin
Bill Gasarch has often repeated the whine of many a professor who state "I can't believe they don't require topic X to graduate" where X happens to be the subject of their research. Whether this be AI or algorithms or compiler technology (the professors in question are computer science professors), these professors feel their subject is indispensible knowledge which a good computer science student can not do without.
This topic can be generalized to all sorts of things, from knowledge of how financial markets work (how do stock options work? what does it mean for something to vest?) to the machinations of politics to the ever-changing interconnected world of the Internet.
For me, the one topic I feel everyone should know about (because I wish I knew more about it) is cars. Most of us (alas, not Senor Gasarch) drive cars, either out of pleasure or some necessity. I know, I know. There's a small movement of people who have decided that cars are a waste of time, and with judicious planning, one can use a combination of bike and public transportation to get you where you want.
I'm a creature of habit, so I can't say I'm willing to change my lifestyle now and adopt this new mode of transportation. But I'm also a car neophyte, so I'm not about to be a used-car guy who fixes his own car. Indeed, I think every company should have a resident mechanic either part-time or full-time (depending on who it is) that fixes car as part of the benefits of the company. They would offset those crooked mechanics who prey on the naivete of customers who will pay anything to get a car fixed.
Which returns me to my current story.
My car has this temperature gauge thing on the left. Normally, I don't notice it. Normally, it has a pointer that points just a little short of halfway, as if I had 1/3 tank full of gas all the time.
Lately, the temperature gauge has been acting up. That is, in the last week. That worried me. Years ago, I was driving on 193, and steam burst out of my car. The car was making gurgling noises. It had, I was later to learn, overheated.
One mechanic wanted to do expensive repairs, on the order of a thousand dollars or more. You know this kind of mechanic. You can live with a little ding, but he wants to redo everything. Rather than repair the damage or find someway to make it manageable, if not perfect, he wants you to spend lots of money replacing it with something new. This is akin to getting a new computer because your power cord is a bit frayed. Buy a new power cord.
Though there are crooked people in every profession, it seems mechanics are known to fit in the category of those who can be crooked and you have no idea. I often imagine that city governments should be involved. You can ask some representative to help you out and diagnose what's wrong with the car, and then take it to a mechanic and see what he says. If it's completely out of line, the city can sue the mechanic.
Fear of bad servicing would root out incompetence and scamming.
To be honest, though, that's not a great solution. It simply puts the decision in someone else's hand. Instead, several things should happen. First, cars should be better at self-diagnosing. I should be able to hook my computer to my car, and it should tell me all sorts of things. Mileage is a little low. Battery power. Whatever.
Second, car manufacturers should learn how to put mechanics out of business. I know it seems awful to put a class of workers out of business, but we all want to run our lives as effortlessly as possible. I don't want to have to go to the store for my computer twice a year. I want something utterly reliable. This makes me happy. Companies should be seeking ways to make our lives more worry-free.
But since that's fantasy, and I have to deal with reality, and I have to deal with ignorance, then I have to deal with this issue.
So, bright and early (for me), Saturday morning, I drive my car to the dealer. This is some 20 miles away. As usual, the car started to heat up very quickly. Within five minutes, the needle edged over "H" (meaning "HOT") and I was concerned it might overheat, except, so far, it hadn't. I can only trust that wonderful Japanese engineers have found a way to keep vital parts modestly cool even in such stressful situations.
The woman (Vietnamese, judging by her name) asked if I had put coolant in the car. Coolant, eh? I've vaguely heard of that. What am I supposed to do with this "coolant" thing?
Like I said, I know little about cars. The basic knowledge I know is, replace the oil frequently. While it may seem expensive (say forty bucks), it's merely two tanks of gas (well, back when gas was two bucks a gallon), and you only do it twice a year. You pump gas far more often than that.
But coolant. That's something I've never added to my car, and therefore something I never knew ran out. Besides, I just drop one K on my car for routine maintenance (and tires, which jacked the price way up, as well as other expensive repairs). Couldn't they have checked the coolant too?
I didn't think it was the coolant, because, well, I don't know why. The guy I talked on the phone had thought it was a thermostat problem. But then he probably thought I was only half an idiot, and would have checked the coolant on my own.
But you see, this is just the basic kind of knowledge that people should know. Driver's license tests should test not just knowledge of driving, but basic knowledge of cars, because driving a car is only part of the story. Make everyone know how to replace a tire on a car. Yes, even women. If the equipment is too difficult for frail women to do, that's wrong. Everyone should be able to do it. Just these basic skills would make people far less idiotic with the tool, outside the computer, that they depend on most.
Due to my last experience at the dealer, which left me there for hours and hours and hours, I decided to bring a book. Foolishy, I did not bring my laptop, which would have kept me entertained as well.
What book did I bring? I had wanted to read a science fiction book after re-reading Ender's Game for maybe the fourth time since I first read it, nearly fifteen years ago. As usual, I figured the best way to pick up a new book was to see which book had won either the Hugo or Nebula award.
That book turned out to be Spin by one Robert Charles Wilson. I had never heard of him before, but then I don't keep up with the latest in SF, and besides, like any field, there are always new authors cropping up.
Books are fascinating in an intriguing way. I watch movies. These days, I watch lots of them. I'll probably see some thirty films in a year at a theater. To a critic, who will watch five to ten movies a week (or more) and thus two to three hundred (or more!) films a year, thirty seems paltry. But it's more than most people watch, and it's an eclectic brew. I'd rather watch Half Nelson than the sequel to Pirates of the Carribean (though to be fair, I have seen the sequel, and not Half Nelson).
As many movies that come out, and as talented as filmmakers are, there are a gazillion more books that come out. Because films are so expensive to make, they require a collaborative effort, and so it's difficult to make films that are completely the vision of one person. Thus, studios and producers weigh in on their vision of what a film should be.
Films have so much more in it. Forget about special effects even. There's musicians, and fundamentally, actors.
On the other hand, writers craft words, and while they may have the service of a good editor, they do most of the writing themselves.
Now you'd think that this would be a confining medium. Words. Some people say words can't capture the awe of, say, the moon eclipsing the Sun in 2001: A Space Odyssey with strains of Strauss (Richard, not Johann) above it, but you'd be surprised.
Let's contrast Spin with, say, Ender's Game. Card has often been accused of being less than literary. When it comes to the pantheon of great writers, Card's name is unlikely to be there. Card doesn't fret. He's a man who respects the likes of Asimov, who also was never accused of being highly literary, and Asimov did quite all right as an author, thank you very much.
I'm not saying Wilson is up there either, but he does what he does incredible well.
I'm only about a quarter way through the story, which chronicles the events of Earth in the near future. The main characters are Jason and his sister Diane, who are both considered bright individuals, geniuses even, and Tyler, the son of the "maid" for the wealthy Lawton family of whom Jason and Diane are the fraternal twins of father E.D.
Wilson is fantastic with hooks, many that end chapters. The opening hook is fantastic: Everyone falls, and we all land somewhere.
Throughout the story, of which I won't reveal many more details, he'll end sections with sentences that awe, like mini cliff-hangers, that television writers often aspire to before commerical breaks.
The imagery of his language is vivid, with phrase like: The near leg of the Arch gleamed like a burnished red nail pinning sky to sea. Let's consider this one sentence that occurs only a page or two into the book. "Gleamed", "burnished" are two verbs that aren't in the lexicon of the average person, though perhaps part and parcel of skilled wordsmiths. They're the kind of verbs you want to use when writing, but resort to something more mundane, more ordinary, because the brain cells refuse to relinquish something more eloquent.
Then, he refers to a "red nail pinning sky to sea" as if the sky and sea were two disparate entities threatening to fly apart, if not for this nail.
It's time like this when I despair as a blogger. I can't begin to come up with phrasing or metaphors like this. But it's also times like this that I delight in reading such phrasing.
But beyond his florid imagery, Wilson tells a mature story. For as engrossing as Card's writing is, his ability to relate mature relationships is lacking. Ender, Valentine, and Peter verge to cartoonish proportions. Ender is good, but doubting of his goodness. Peter is evil, though he has something of a heart underneath, and Val is sweet and trusting, but knows the kind of person Peter is. Even in his many books in the Ender series, Card doesn't come close to the kind of observances Wilson makes with Tyler's longing for Diane, for their troubled relation with their wealthy parents, for the nuanced yet muted descriptions of daily ritual as Jason prepares coffee at the family's summer house.
Wilson also does his best Tarantino. Tarantino hardly invented non-linear story telling. The idea is plenty old. But he made it hip, fashionable (unlike the adjectives I've used to describe it), even as it confused viewers who wondered "didn't Travolta just die?".
The storyline criss-crosses several timelines, mostly set in the "present", then recalling details in the past in a semi-chronological way, yet, foretelling events, still in the past, to whet our appetites.
For example, suppose I tell you about an event, twenty years ago, and in the meanwhile, hint of some stuff just five years ago. You can follow the story as I tell it to you in historical chronology, but I want you to be intrigued by something that will happen in the future (future, relative to where I am in my story), thought that future is in the past.
Science fiction has often been strong on ideas, but weak in characterizations. People with a great sense of what the future is like are often full of neat ideas, but when it comes to describing people, they seem false, in some way, or inadequate, at least compared to their breathern of fiction writers that must rely more on characterization and literary devices to get attention.
Card's characters are seen in broad strokes: the conflicted genius. Good versus evil. Smart versus stupid. In Card's world, there are geniuses, and there are idiots who don't recognize genius. In Wilson's world, the geniuses and the ordinary hang out together, and they don't dwell on their differences, but deal with what they share in common.
So I knew that I might be stuck at the dealership for hours, and rather than spend the time wondering what to do, I figured I could read. Reading is something I think I ought to do more often, rather than surfing the Internet, finding sites and articles recommended by reddit.
And as much as I despise going to get my car repaired, because it invariably takes far longer than I want to, this time it gave me an opportunity to make headway in a book. Although I'm only a quarter into Spin, it's quickly becoming one of the better books I've read in a while.
And for some reason, no movie, as of late, has been able to match the sense I get while reading the words of this book.
This topic can be generalized to all sorts of things, from knowledge of how financial markets work (how do stock options work? what does it mean for something to vest?) to the machinations of politics to the ever-changing interconnected world of the Internet.
For me, the one topic I feel everyone should know about (because I wish I knew more about it) is cars. Most of us (alas, not Senor Gasarch) drive cars, either out of pleasure or some necessity. I know, I know. There's a small movement of people who have decided that cars are a waste of time, and with judicious planning, one can use a combination of bike and public transportation to get you where you want.
I'm a creature of habit, so I can't say I'm willing to change my lifestyle now and adopt this new mode of transportation. But I'm also a car neophyte, so I'm not about to be a used-car guy who fixes his own car. Indeed, I think every company should have a resident mechanic either part-time or full-time (depending on who it is) that fixes car as part of the benefits of the company. They would offset those crooked mechanics who prey on the naivete of customers who will pay anything to get a car fixed.
Which returns me to my current story.
My car has this temperature gauge thing on the left. Normally, I don't notice it. Normally, it has a pointer that points just a little short of halfway, as if I had 1/3 tank full of gas all the time.
Lately, the temperature gauge has been acting up. That is, in the last week. That worried me. Years ago, I was driving on 193, and steam burst out of my car. The car was making gurgling noises. It had, I was later to learn, overheated.
One mechanic wanted to do expensive repairs, on the order of a thousand dollars or more. You know this kind of mechanic. You can live with a little ding, but he wants to redo everything. Rather than repair the damage or find someway to make it manageable, if not perfect, he wants you to spend lots of money replacing it with something new. This is akin to getting a new computer because your power cord is a bit frayed. Buy a new power cord.
Though there are crooked people in every profession, it seems mechanics are known to fit in the category of those who can be crooked and you have no idea. I often imagine that city governments should be involved. You can ask some representative to help you out and diagnose what's wrong with the car, and then take it to a mechanic and see what he says. If it's completely out of line, the city can sue the mechanic.
Fear of bad servicing would root out incompetence and scamming.
To be honest, though, that's not a great solution. It simply puts the decision in someone else's hand. Instead, several things should happen. First, cars should be better at self-diagnosing. I should be able to hook my computer to my car, and it should tell me all sorts of things. Mileage is a little low. Battery power. Whatever.
Second, car manufacturers should learn how to put mechanics out of business. I know it seems awful to put a class of workers out of business, but we all want to run our lives as effortlessly as possible. I don't want to have to go to the store for my computer twice a year. I want something utterly reliable. This makes me happy. Companies should be seeking ways to make our lives more worry-free.
But since that's fantasy, and I have to deal with reality, and I have to deal with ignorance, then I have to deal with this issue.
So, bright and early (for me), Saturday morning, I drive my car to the dealer. This is some 20 miles away. As usual, the car started to heat up very quickly. Within five minutes, the needle edged over "H" (meaning "HOT") and I was concerned it might overheat, except, so far, it hadn't. I can only trust that wonderful Japanese engineers have found a way to keep vital parts modestly cool even in such stressful situations.
The woman (Vietnamese, judging by her name) asked if I had put coolant in the car. Coolant, eh? I've vaguely heard of that. What am I supposed to do with this "coolant" thing?
Like I said, I know little about cars. The basic knowledge I know is, replace the oil frequently. While it may seem expensive (say forty bucks), it's merely two tanks of gas (well, back when gas was two bucks a gallon), and you only do it twice a year. You pump gas far more often than that.
But coolant. That's something I've never added to my car, and therefore something I never knew ran out. Besides, I just drop one K on my car for routine maintenance (and tires, which jacked the price way up, as well as other expensive repairs). Couldn't they have checked the coolant too?
I didn't think it was the coolant, because, well, I don't know why. The guy I talked on the phone had thought it was a thermostat problem. But then he probably thought I was only half an idiot, and would have checked the coolant on my own.
But you see, this is just the basic kind of knowledge that people should know. Driver's license tests should test not just knowledge of driving, but basic knowledge of cars, because driving a car is only part of the story. Make everyone know how to replace a tire on a car. Yes, even women. If the equipment is too difficult for frail women to do, that's wrong. Everyone should be able to do it. Just these basic skills would make people far less idiotic with the tool, outside the computer, that they depend on most.
Due to my last experience at the dealer, which left me there for hours and hours and hours, I decided to bring a book. Foolishy, I did not bring my laptop, which would have kept me entertained as well.
What book did I bring? I had wanted to read a science fiction book after re-reading Ender's Game for maybe the fourth time since I first read it, nearly fifteen years ago. As usual, I figured the best way to pick up a new book was to see which book had won either the Hugo or Nebula award.
That book turned out to be Spin by one Robert Charles Wilson. I had never heard of him before, but then I don't keep up with the latest in SF, and besides, like any field, there are always new authors cropping up.
Books are fascinating in an intriguing way. I watch movies. These days, I watch lots of them. I'll probably see some thirty films in a year at a theater. To a critic, who will watch five to ten movies a week (or more) and thus two to three hundred (or more!) films a year, thirty seems paltry. But it's more than most people watch, and it's an eclectic brew. I'd rather watch Half Nelson than the sequel to Pirates of the Carribean (though to be fair, I have seen the sequel, and not Half Nelson).
As many movies that come out, and as talented as filmmakers are, there are a gazillion more books that come out. Because films are so expensive to make, they require a collaborative effort, and so it's difficult to make films that are completely the vision of one person. Thus, studios and producers weigh in on their vision of what a film should be.
Films have so much more in it. Forget about special effects even. There's musicians, and fundamentally, actors.
On the other hand, writers craft words, and while they may have the service of a good editor, they do most of the writing themselves.
Now you'd think that this would be a confining medium. Words. Some people say words can't capture the awe of, say, the moon eclipsing the Sun in 2001: A Space Odyssey with strains of Strauss (Richard, not Johann) above it, but you'd be surprised.
Let's contrast Spin with, say, Ender's Game. Card has often been accused of being less than literary. When it comes to the pantheon of great writers, Card's name is unlikely to be there. Card doesn't fret. He's a man who respects the likes of Asimov, who also was never accused of being highly literary, and Asimov did quite all right as an author, thank you very much.
I'm not saying Wilson is up there either, but he does what he does incredible well.
I'm only about a quarter way through the story, which chronicles the events of Earth in the near future. The main characters are Jason and his sister Diane, who are both considered bright individuals, geniuses even, and Tyler, the son of the "maid" for the wealthy Lawton family of whom Jason and Diane are the fraternal twins of father E.D.
Wilson is fantastic with hooks, many that end chapters. The opening hook is fantastic: Everyone falls, and we all land somewhere.
Throughout the story, of which I won't reveal many more details, he'll end sections with sentences that awe, like mini cliff-hangers, that television writers often aspire to before commerical breaks.
The imagery of his language is vivid, with phrase like: The near leg of the Arch gleamed like a burnished red nail pinning sky to sea. Let's consider this one sentence that occurs only a page or two into the book. "Gleamed", "burnished" are two verbs that aren't in the lexicon of the average person, though perhaps part and parcel of skilled wordsmiths. They're the kind of verbs you want to use when writing, but resort to something more mundane, more ordinary, because the brain cells refuse to relinquish something more eloquent.
Then, he refers to a "red nail pinning sky to sea" as if the sky and sea were two disparate entities threatening to fly apart, if not for this nail.
It's time like this when I despair as a blogger. I can't begin to come up with phrasing or metaphors like this. But it's also times like this that I delight in reading such phrasing.
But beyond his florid imagery, Wilson tells a mature story. For as engrossing as Card's writing is, his ability to relate mature relationships is lacking. Ender, Valentine, and Peter verge to cartoonish proportions. Ender is good, but doubting of his goodness. Peter is evil, though he has something of a heart underneath, and Val is sweet and trusting, but knows the kind of person Peter is. Even in his many books in the Ender series, Card doesn't come close to the kind of observances Wilson makes with Tyler's longing for Diane, for their troubled relation with their wealthy parents, for the nuanced yet muted descriptions of daily ritual as Jason prepares coffee at the family's summer house.
Wilson also does his best Tarantino. Tarantino hardly invented non-linear story telling. The idea is plenty old. But he made it hip, fashionable (unlike the adjectives I've used to describe it), even as it confused viewers who wondered "didn't Travolta just die?".
The storyline criss-crosses several timelines, mostly set in the "present", then recalling details in the past in a semi-chronological way, yet, foretelling events, still in the past, to whet our appetites.
For example, suppose I tell you about an event, twenty years ago, and in the meanwhile, hint of some stuff just five years ago. You can follow the story as I tell it to you in historical chronology, but I want you to be intrigued by something that will happen in the future (future, relative to where I am in my story), thought that future is in the past.
Science fiction has often been strong on ideas, but weak in characterizations. People with a great sense of what the future is like are often full of neat ideas, but when it comes to describing people, they seem false, in some way, or inadequate, at least compared to their breathern of fiction writers that must rely more on characterization and literary devices to get attention.
Card's characters are seen in broad strokes: the conflicted genius. Good versus evil. Smart versus stupid. In Card's world, there are geniuses, and there are idiots who don't recognize genius. In Wilson's world, the geniuses and the ordinary hang out together, and they don't dwell on their differences, but deal with what they share in common.
So I knew that I might be stuck at the dealership for hours, and rather than spend the time wondering what to do, I figured I could read. Reading is something I think I ought to do more often, rather than surfing the Internet, finding sites and articles recommended by reddit.
And as much as I despise going to get my car repaired, because it invariably takes far longer than I want to, this time it gave me an opportunity to make headway in a book. Although I'm only a quarter into Spin, it's quickly becoming one of the better books I've read in a while.
And for some reason, no movie, as of late, has been able to match the sense I get while reading the words of this book.
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