Fuzzy's Media Consumption

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

I think the two things that mark this as a Hiaasen book for younger readers is that the cast isn't quite as huge as usual, there's no sex, and the ending is much unabiguously happy.

Funny story -- a couple of years of ago I was involved with an improv show that was based around documentaries. Part of our rehearsal process was to watch regular documentaries. Watching all those docs, I half-remembered one I had heard about and got pretty obsessed about finding it. Two months later, I discovered that a VHS copy had been lying on Erica's coffee table the whole time. I converted the VHS to DVD and then... never watched it. All that effort, and I just... eh.

I had told this story to some friends and then a few days later ran into them again. They had just been to a live This American Life taping and the director of the new TAL TV show, Chris Wilcha, mentioned his first big project... The Target Shoots First.

And then I came across the digital files I had made in the process of creating the DVD. I ran them through Instant Handbrake to make a file that could play on my new video iPod. And, over the course of several train rides, I watched it.

In 1992, Christopher Wilcha was hired by the marketing department at Columbia House (the record club people) largely on the basis, it seems, that he was a Nirvana fan and the music industry giant has no idea how to market to the growing alternative music culture. He took a brand new Hi8 camera with him to work and began taping everything. The 200 hours of footage he shot became this 75 minute documentary. It's an inside look at Columbia House, but certainly not an expose. If anything, it's largely about office culture, and Wilcha's struggle to adapt to his new job. It's great, though, and if you can get your hands on a copy, please do.

Don't Go Where I Can't Follow is a spare and affecting work from Chicago comic book writer and artist Anders Nilsen. It's snapshots of his relationship with his girlfriend Cheryl Weaver, culminating in her sudden illness and death in the winter of 2005. By no means an exhaustive memoir of their life together, instead we get illustrative moments -- postcards they sent each other, a letter to his sister detailing a comically disastrous camping trip, a short list of Anders' faults as a fiancee. And almost before it's begun, the book is over -- returning from France, Cheryl is diagnosed with cancer and then treatments fail and then she dies. To the reader, it's devastating.

Cancer is something of a hot-button topic around our house these days, but I don't think that's a requirement to appreciate this book -- as Anders says in his afterword, "it's just love and loss. And everyone, for better or worse, can relate to that."

"The new graphic memoir, "Don't Go Where I Can't Follow," breaks a great many rules of form, concluding with what might be the most devastating 16 panels of artwork in Anders Nilsen's career." [LA Times]

"It's very difficult to deal with Don't Go Where I Can't Follow from any sort of objective or critical viewpoint: simply put, it's the best graphic novel to be released this year." [Tucker Stone]

I saw this great zombie short -- Birthday Call -- and so when I read that the filmmakers had expanded it into a feature film and that it was going to be shown on SciFi I immediately Tivoed it. And it sat on the Tivo for six months or so, until I got Toast's Tivo2Go working, and then moved it onto my iPod*.

Hide and Creep is a zombie movie that knows about other zombie movies -- the first scene is a great monologue by a video store clerk categorizing the great zombie movies of the past. And as such, I was a little disappointed. The movie never quite seemed to live up to the grand promise it showed in that beginning. There are some great moments, but overall the movie drags. And the one big addition the movie makes to modern zombie lore is revealed too late in the movie to really have any effect on the plot or the characters. A great first effort, but not a great movie.

* I mention these technical details to a) brag that I got all these crazy systems to work together and b) to be honest about the limitations under which I watch some movies. I'm never going to get the full effect of a great special effect on the iPod screen.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

This wasn't the most brilliant movie ever, but it was a pleasant lazy Sunday afternoon's entertainment. And Erica and I both loved the way that nonsensical comic phrases were heard and dealt with.

The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap by Stu Maschwitz

We've made some action movies before, but FuzzyCo has recently decided to film an action movie that takes longer than 24 hours to make -- we'll see if the quality goes up in any proportion to time spent. Reading this book was step 1 in the new process.

In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (Revised 2nd Edition) by Walter Murch

This book was recommended in an aside in the DV Rebel's Guide and since editing is the area of film-making (other than, say, scoring) I'm most insecure about, I thought it'd be worth a read.

The first part of the book is a long essay, adapted from a 1988 lecture, on the nature and philosophy of editing. The second half is a discussion of the difference between analog and digital editing -- Murch knows this terrority well, having won the first editing Oscar for a digitally edited film.

The Atrocity Archives by Charlie Stross

Charlie Stross mixes Cold War spy fiction with "nameless horrors" stories ala HP Lovecraft, with a healthy dose of Douglas Adams' Bureaucracy and modern computer geekiness mixed in, for an engaging read with a surprisingly sympathetic main character.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Mitchell

Erica and I got quite a bit done chose-wise yesterday and wanted to veg out with a movie a bit. She'd never seen a full MST and Mitchell is one that has influenced the way my brother and I both talk (the reciprocal movie for Erica and her brother is Wayne's World) and I persuaded her to give it a try. It lags a bit in the second half, but Erica still enjoyed it.

"Word on the street is you're a jerk."

F.E.A.R. (or rather, F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon, to use its rather histronic full name) is the first first-person-shooter I've played in quite a while, let alone finished. I liked the emphasis on mood and atmosphere over action -- I did my share of firing at shadows in the course of the game. And I certainly didn't miss a crazy final boss battle -- there are plenty of games I've 98% completed, except for some crazy final boss battle. My only complaint was that it seemed a bit short -- I finished it in 5 sessions, none of which was more than 4 hours.

Much has been written about 300, and I almost wish I hadn't read quite so much before I saw it. On a purely guys with swords level, it's pretty awesome.

I was really suprised that I enjoyed Crank as much as I did. The plot is ridiculous -- hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) has been injected with a poison for which the only cure is his own adrenaline (I'm sure the elevator pitch was "it's just like Speed, only his own body is the bus!"). And I'm sure it would be pretty easy to hate the over-abundance of visual effects. But the action is, as Chev requires, non-stop and I came to sympathize with his likeable assholeishness, just trying to survive this terrible day.

We had some friends over last night specifically to watch Jackass - Number Two. It was the first time for them, but the 5th and 3rd times, respecively, for Erica and I. Jackass is such a specialized (which is to say, sophomoric) taste that I'm not sure what to say about this other than if you're a Jackass fan already, you'll love it. If you're not, you'll hate it. I could try to persuade you of its worth with lots of handwaving about 'transgressive humor' and so on, and then Steve-O would throw up or somebody would poop or something and you'd be grossed out and I couldn't blame you at all.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

What a great new children's novel this is (grades 5-9, says the publisher). It's a grand adventure story of four extraordinary children brought together by the mysterious Mr. Benedict to save the world from impending doom. Each of the children has different strengths -- Reynie is a hardworking puzzle solver, Kate is strong and acrobatic, Sticky remembers everything he reads, and Constance Contraire is... contrary. But mixed in are some fairly serious explorations of the notion of family, of how far you can go fighting evil without compromising your ideals, of bravery.

A great review by Jessie at What We're Reading Now.

(Disclosureville: Trenton Lee Stewart is my co-worker Kenner's brother-in-law Trent.)