Matt Ruff's Blog, page 48
April 17, 2011
Nightmare fuel
Via William Gibson's twitter feed: There's a tumblr called "Chicks With Steve Buscemeyes" devoted to pictures in which actor Steve Buscemi's eyes are Photoshopped onto the heads of female celebrities. Now there's a YouTube version as well:
March 14, 2011
Many Doctorows died to bring us this information
Via BoingBoing, the Instructables website offers a home recipe for Pop Rocks.
March 9, 2011
Want
The
New York Times
reviews
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking,
the 6-volume, 40-pound, $625 labor of love from the lab of Seattle local Nathan Myhrvold:
There's also, apparently, a recipe for making your own Pringles. Sounds like the must-have food porn book of the year.
I will get this out of the way fast. The text, and there is a lot of it, is proficient and as compelling as my high school science textbooks. But artful prose is not the point...the goal was clarity and thoroughness, and the information is indeed clear, sound and, if anything, too thorough. Buried in the verbiage is a treasure of insights, some truly original, some familiar but described from new and compelling angles. Sometimes overly proud of itself, at other times it is recklessly (and admirably) opinionated...
Government suggestions for temperatures at which chicken and pork are safe to eat seem “to have been based not on science but on politics, tradition, and subjective judgment.” There is no single safe temperature that kills salmonella, for instance, but rather times that food must maintain specific temperatures to kill it. The authors provide the time-temperature tables.
Several pages are devoted to how to wash your hands and there is a brief foray into the Timurid dynasty of Central Asia; the book includes the equation required to calculate the radiant heat of a gas grill (which is not nearly as effective as a charcoal grill, it says, explaining why). Not sure how to balance your centrifuge? Look no further. On sous vide equipment, the Pacojet, ultrasonic baths, gelling agents, hydrocolloids and emulsifiers, the text is astonishingly thorough.
There's also, apparently, a recipe for making your own Pringles. Sounds like the must-have food porn book of the year.
The Adjustment Bureau
This was a lot of fun, definitely one of the better Philip K. Dick-inspired films. It's not really an SF film, more like a Dickian take on Heaven Can Wait -- the adjusters of the title are angels in the guise of corporate bureaucrats, working to implement the divine plan laid down by the Chairman.
Matt Damon is a New York politician who is destined to one day become president. When his senatorial bid is derailed by a minor scandal, the Adjustment Bureau steps in and arranges a chance meeting with a beautiful dancer played by Emily Blunt. For reasons that make sense in the film, the meeting inspires Damon to give a kickass speech that revives his political career and puts the Plan back on track. The thing is, he's only supposed to meet Blunt the one time (true love, it seems, would quench the fire driving his political ambitions). But owing to an apparently random screw-up, Damon not only does meet Blunt again, he learns about the existence of the adjusters.
Panic time. The bureau agents grab Damon and drag him to an extradimensional room where adjustment team leader John Slattery lays down the rules that will govern the rest of the movie. Rule one is, of course, you don't talk about the Adjustment Bureau: if Damon tries to tell anyone what he's learned, he'll be given what amounts to a lobotomy. Rule two is, forget about the girl. Here the consequences for disobedience are more vague, but it's clear that the Adjustment Bureau are willing to go to considerable lengths to make sure Damon and Blunt don't become a couple.
That's the set-up, and the rest of the film is Damon trying to break rule two without breaking rule one. As I say, it's a lot of fun -- Lisa and I both loved it. Damon and Blunt have the kind of chemistry that makes you believe that they'd be willing to defy heaven itself to be together. John Slattery is hilarious, and Terence Stamp has a nice turn as a heavy-hitting upper management angel who's brought in after Slattery's more delicate attempts at fixing things don't work. And Anthony Mackie does a nice job as a low-level adjuster who takes pity on Damon and decides to help him out, although he's also the subject of the film's most unintentionally funny line -- that would be where Damon, trying to figure out why Mackie is so nice, asks "What makes you different?" (Here's a hint: It's the same thing that made Will Smith different in The Legend of Bagger Vance.)
The one real flaw in the film, for me, is that Blunt's character is too passive. To a certain extent this is dictated by the set-up: Damon knows about the Adjustment Bureau, Blunt doesn't, and Damon can't tell her. So he's the one making informed decisions, while she's left reacting to his sometimes inexplicable behavior. The thing is -- speaking as a long-time married person here -- it's possible to break rule one without breaking rule one. Lisa and I routinely finish each other's sentences, so if I were in secret communication with angels I would expect her to pick up on that, even if I didn't say a word. Damon and Blunt are at a much earlier point in their relationship, but still, she's smart enough to figure it out, and I think it would made both her character and the story more interesting if she had. This goes in the category of things that would make a good film even better, but it did bug me, given how well everything else worked.
Anyway, good movie, and Lisa and I are both looking forward to seeing what the director George Nolfi does next.
Matt Damon is a New York politician who is destined to one day become president. When his senatorial bid is derailed by a minor scandal, the Adjustment Bureau steps in and arranges a chance meeting with a beautiful dancer played by Emily Blunt. For reasons that make sense in the film, the meeting inspires Damon to give a kickass speech that revives his political career and puts the Plan back on track. The thing is, he's only supposed to meet Blunt the one time (true love, it seems, would quench the fire driving his political ambitions). But owing to an apparently random screw-up, Damon not only does meet Blunt again, he learns about the existence of the adjusters.
Panic time. The bureau agents grab Damon and drag him to an extradimensional room where adjustment team leader John Slattery lays down the rules that will govern the rest of the movie. Rule one is, of course, you don't talk about the Adjustment Bureau: if Damon tries to tell anyone what he's learned, he'll be given what amounts to a lobotomy. Rule two is, forget about the girl. Here the consequences for disobedience are more vague, but it's clear that the Adjustment Bureau are willing to go to considerable lengths to make sure Damon and Blunt don't become a couple.
That's the set-up, and the rest of the film is Damon trying to break rule two without breaking rule one. As I say, it's a lot of fun -- Lisa and I both loved it. Damon and Blunt have the kind of chemistry that makes you believe that they'd be willing to defy heaven itself to be together. John Slattery is hilarious, and Terence Stamp has a nice turn as a heavy-hitting upper management angel who's brought in after Slattery's more delicate attempts at fixing things don't work. And Anthony Mackie does a nice job as a low-level adjuster who takes pity on Damon and decides to help him out, although he's also the subject of the film's most unintentionally funny line -- that would be where Damon, trying to figure out why Mackie is so nice, asks "What makes you different?" (Here's a hint: It's the same thing that made Will Smith different in The Legend of Bagger Vance.)
The one real flaw in the film, for me, is that Blunt's character is too passive. To a certain extent this is dictated by the set-up: Damon knows about the Adjustment Bureau, Blunt doesn't, and Damon can't tell her. So he's the one making informed decisions, while she's left reacting to his sometimes inexplicable behavior. The thing is -- speaking as a long-time married person here -- it's possible to break rule one without breaking rule one. Lisa and I routinely finish each other's sentences, so if I were in secret communication with angels I would expect her to pick up on that, even if I didn't say a word. Damon and Blunt are at a much earlier point in their relationship, but still, she's smart enough to figure it out, and I think it would made both her character and the story more interesting if she had. This goes in the category of things that would make a good film even better, but it did bug me, given how well everything else worked.
Anyway, good movie, and Lisa and I are both looking forward to seeing what the director George Nolfi does next.
March 7, 2011
Never Let Me Go
Saw this the other night. It's a well-made, well-acted, utterly depressing SFnal film about clones being raised for organ harvest in alt-world England. Imagine Gattaca if Ethan Hawke's character had chosen to remain a janitor and died alone of heart failure in the last reel, and you'll get some idea of the general mood of the piece.
Once Lisa reminded that Ishiguro is the same Brit who gave us Remains of the Day, it made perfect sense.
Once Lisa reminded that Ishiguro is the same Brit who gave us Remains of the Day, it made perfect sense.
March 3, 2011
March 2, 2011
"Because she was lonely"
Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Caine explains why he made certain career choices:
It's the bit about Mom's friends that really elevates this to level of brilliance, I think.
Given how many great films you’ve made, does it disappoint you when people want to talk about the ones that didn’t do so well?
No, what annoys me is when, as happened today, you’re doing a day’s worth of interviews and the very first question you’re asked is, “Why did you make Jaws: The Revenge?” When things like that happen, the interview becomes very short indeed.Just out of interest, how did you reply?
I just said what I’ve always said – I made it because they paid me a lot of money! It’s like when people ask me why I made The Swarm – I made The Swarm because my mother needed a house to live in. Then I made Jaws 4 because she was lonely and I needed to buy her a bigger house which she could live in with all of her friends. It’s that simple.
It's the bit about Mom's friends that really elevates this to level of brilliance, I think.
March 1, 2011
The Mirage, now with more synchronicity
I finished and delivered the edited manuscript yesterday. Copyediting is next, but all the heavy lifting is essentially done.
It's been a very odd experience working on this final draft with the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East going on in the real world. There's a sequence near the end of The Mirage that reads like a metaphor for the events of the past month and a half, including a bit with Muammar Gaddafi sitting in Tripoli saying "We are next" in response to [spoiler] engulfing Egypt and eastern Libya. What's weird is that I wrote that sequence, including the Gaddafi line, before the January uprising in Tunisia. So I've been feeling kind of like Albert Brooks watching William Hurt on TV in Broadcast News -- I say it here, it comes out there.
I still don't have an exact publication date, but The Mirage will probably be out in January. Reaction to the manuscript inside HarperCollins has been extraordinarily positive, so they want to make sure they have plenty of lead time to promote it.
Meanwhile, here's hoping that the violence in Libya is over soon, and ends with Gaddafi out of power. If you haven't seen it yet, there's an autotuned version of G's latest speech making the rounds on YouTube -- think of it as the Arabic version of Keyboard Cat playing the dictator off:
It's been a very odd experience working on this final draft with the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East going on in the real world. There's a sequence near the end of The Mirage that reads like a metaphor for the events of the past month and a half, including a bit with Muammar Gaddafi sitting in Tripoli saying "We are next" in response to [spoiler] engulfing Egypt and eastern Libya. What's weird is that I wrote that sequence, including the Gaddafi line, before the January uprising in Tunisia. So I've been feeling kind of like Albert Brooks watching William Hurt on TV in Broadcast News -- I say it here, it comes out there.
I still don't have an exact publication date, but The Mirage will probably be out in January. Reaction to the manuscript inside HarperCollins has been extraordinarily positive, so they want to make sure they have plenty of lead time to promote it.
Meanwhile, here's hoping that the violence in Libya is over soon, and ends with Gaddafi out of power. If you haven't seen it yet, there's an autotuned version of G's latest speech making the rounds on YouTube -- think of it as the Arabic version of Keyboard Cat playing the dictator off:
