(The) iPad

So I had the chance to live with an iPad for a while. I'm considered an Apple-hater in certain circles, but I think I was able to evaluate it fairly. I'm a gadget-geek first and foremost, after all.

Let's start with the iPad's primary use case: browsing the internet. There, it is a solid experience. The iPad quickly became my go-to device for basic web-browsing and email, due to the combination touch-screen and the quick turn-on time. The internet-browsing experience is far from flawless, though. I did have Safari crash on me twice in a 1/2 hr browsing session, which is slightly annoying but not unacceptable. And Safari creates the illusion of tabbed browsing while not really fulfilling on the promise. I suspect the "tabs" are just a visual browsing history, because if  you click back and forth between tabs it loads each page anew. Again, annoying, but not a show-stopper.

The show-stopper is the old chestnut: lack of Flash support. I know this has been beaten to death, but I cannot describe how frustrating it is to have access to only part of the internet due to the iPad's lack of support for Flash. It's incredibly annoying to see a link to a video that really captures your interest, clicking, and being met with a blank screen. Sure, Steve may be right that 90% of video is not encoded using Flash, but 90% of that 90% is delivered via Flash, so you can't view it anyway. Oh, and forget browsing most restaurant web sites.

So, after browsing the net on the iPad for a while, it quickly became tradition to walk over to my PC to catch up on the content that the iPad couldn't deliver. Why didn't I start on the PC you ask? Simple: the couch factor is very convenient and is probably the iPad's biggest selling point. Yes, even over the App Store. I find the App Store to be a novelty more than anything. There are really only about 6 applications I use regularly on my Android device, so filling up an iPad with niche apps isn't my thing.

Video-watching was fantastic. I watched several hours on a recent vacation and had an ideal experience. The gain via headphones was great, and video played smoothly.

I also downloaded and tried a lot of games, and generally found them to be of high-quality and engaging. I'm curious to see what gaming innovation is coming our way for a tablet.

I found the iPad to not be particularly effective as an e-book reader. It's too heavy to comfortably hold in long stretches, and forget reading it at the beach. I find the low-glare screen of true e-ink to be much better for reading, and with the latest Kindle price drop you would be better suited to buy a single-purpose device for book reading.

If you have the disposable income, the iPad is a nice toy to have around. You WILL use it, and probably daily. But it's a concept that needs to evolve, and I wouldn't recommend most people invest in a tablet until some other competition hits the market. E.g.,There are display innovations on the horizon that could make tablets more appealing for avid readers. 

Winter's Bone

What the f*ck is up with Missouri?

This question kept popping in to my head as I watched Winter's Bone, starring relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl who has assumed the role of caregiver for her two younger siblings and mentally vacant mother in a backwoods town in the Ozark Mountains. You see, the mother apparently lost her marbles because she was surrounded by some of the most vile, unpredictable, menacing men who dabble in methamphetimine production and really, really, really, don't like to talk to much about it. These guys are just as terrifying as your run-of-the-mill chainsaw-wielding Texan. No joke.

And as bad as the men are, they don't hold a candle to what the women prove they are capable of by the end.

But let me back up. Ree is barely keeping it together for her family. There is no obvious income source and they  usually don't know where their next meal is coming from, most days. They rely on the kindness of strangers (which, believe me, is few and far between) and old-school survival skills to get by.

One cold and miserable day (indistinguishable from every other cold, miserable day), a local lawman drives up to the house and informs Ree that her father has jumped bail and has gone missing. Daddy has gone and put their house up for bond, so if they don't track him down, the house will be taken by the state and Ree and her family will be homeless. The rest of the film is Ree's search for her dad, and her challenges in dealing with the hillbilly underworld of Missouri and the meth-cooking culture. Ree turns over rock after rock in search of her dad, much to the ire of those who would rather keep that information to themselves. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in scene after scene of Ree trying to fake toughness in the face of some pretty intimidating people.

There is a scene about halfway through the movie where Ree visits a military recruitment center, having her eye on the $40,000 dollar signing "bonus" for new recruits. She has a brief conversation with the recruiting officer, who calmly explains her options and gives her real advice on what to do next. At this point in the movie, Ree has been met with so much adversity from every man around her, including her family, that the kindness and respect shown by this character comes off as if delivered by an angel from heaven. She thanks him at the end of the meeting, not because he gives her the answers she wants, but because she, however briefly, was treated with respect.

This is a powerful and beautiful film. As much as I loved the city of cards that Chris Nolan built with Inception, this movie is nudging it out on my list of best of the year, so far. Tonally, the film reminded me of Wendy and Lucy, another film that relies on the beauty and harsh reality of everyday life to create genuine tension and empathy for the lead character. Sometimes you have to blow up an asteroid hurling toward Earth. Sometimes, you just need a quarter to make a phone call. Ree could use that quarter.

For fans of: slow-burning indie dramas, quiet thrillers

Rating: A

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo / The Girl Who Played With Fire

I can't boast that I hopped on the Larsson "Girl" bandwagon at the beginning, but I picked up the book about 3 months after it started having dedicated real estate at Borders. I slogged through the first 20 pages describing, in great detail, the corporate workings of the Wennerstrom dynasty and thinking "how the HELL is this book so popular?"

When Miss Marple  Mikael Blomkvist arrived on Hedeby island, the defined number and cast of characters introduced, the dark crime described, and the (metaphorical) storm clouds rolled in, I proceeded to read in 50 page chunks. The book is nearly as ubiquitous as The Da Vinci code at this point, so I'm saying nothing new when I say that Larsson created a classic mystery with at least one of the most memorable and fully realized characters ever committed to pop fiction in Lisbeth Salander.

Noomi Rapace, a.k.a. "The Girl"

So, the book is great. I then went to see the Swedish film adaptation, and was equally impressed. Of course the movie can never capture everything in the book, but I felt that the decisions that the screenwriters made around what to include and what to abandon were pretty spot-on. For example, I don't think that the philandering that was so prevalent in the book would have necessarily translated to the screen, it would have added bloat, and it would not have had a cultural impact here in the US (we don't as openly fess up to our wife-swapping). And being able to visualize what was in the mind's eye while reading the novel is always interesting (Martin's basement was much more sterile than I pictured).

So, as is often the case, I had a big case of the Diminishing Returns when I read The Girl Who Played With Fire. I didn't find the story nearly as compelling, and for a while after I closed the book I literally had a hard time remembering anything high-level about the plot. With the exception of a couple of memorable moments involving a large blonde man who can feel no pain, it felt like a sub-standard thriller riding on the purchase of the amazing characterization of Lisbeth.

The film version of Fire is quite apparently an inferior interpretation of an inferior sophomore novel. The actors seem to be going through the motions this time around, and seeing the villains has a weird dual let-down: on one hand, seeing them in the flesh takes the supernaturally evil quality away, but at the same time, some of their qualities are so broad-stroke and exaggerated that you don't really buy-in to the reality.

I've elected to not read the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and to experience the story wrap-up in the theater when the third film is released in a few months. I have hope: I hear the third book is great, but there may be issues translating the tech-heavy aspects to the screen. We shall see.

The Iron Giant

I saw The Iron Giant in the summer of '99, by myself. I don't really remember what drew me to the film beyond the high praise it was getting from critics; maybe I was just bored on a Saturday. I remember not being terribly impressed with the opening 15 minutes of the film, lynch-pinned on a slapstick scene involving a squirrel. But by the time the lead character, Hogarth, settles down in front of his black-and-white TV to watch a 50s-era sci-fi film involving a living, man-eating brain on the loose, I knew I was hooked. The scene puts the film in a specific place in time - early in the Cold War - and foreshadows the humor and tone for the rest of the movie.

The basic plot of TIG is horribly derivative, and is nearly a clone of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. What differentiates The Iron Giant is its deadpan sense of humor and the the way it uses Cold War paranoia to enhance the fish-out-of-water device. It was a masterstroke of Brad Bird (an unknown to this point) to set his story here, and allows him to pull in other pop culture devices (e.g. Superman's appearance in Action Comics) - not just to add era credibility, but to integrate those elements in to the story thematically. It would be as if Hot Tub Time Machine had actually used 80s excess to make a point or to drive a plot device, rather than to wink at the audience and move on. Another example are the shots and numerous mentions of Sputnik to comment on the fact that the "enemy" came from space.

Other than the endearing appeal of Studio Ghibli, I think of The Iron Giant as the last in the era of hand-drawn animation (which made a short-lived comeback with The Princess and the Frog). In fact, TIG wasn't strictly hand-drawn, and boasts the first-ever fully CGI character in a feature-length film (take that, Jar Jar). The CGI animators, incidentally, wrote a program that would add a slight "squiggle" to the outline of the Giant so it better integrated with the hand-drawn bits. The CGI effect is subtle, but really gives the Giant mass and a "space-age" feel.

My frequency of viewings of the film have increased from once a year to twice a week since I exposed the film to my 3-year-old son. And I have to admit, it gets me every time. ("You can fly!). No wise-cracking sidekick. No spontaneous music numbers. No jokes about body functions (ok, there is half a joke). Just classic story telling backed up by a mix of classic and new-age animation. Love it.

Amazon: The Iron Giant (Special Edition)

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

I've seen all film incarnations of Jack Finney's book The Body Snatchers, and this is my favorite version and one of my favorite films. The body-snatching concept is as thematically fill-in-the-blank as are zombie films. It's been used to comment on xenophobia, communism, conformity, social upheaval, and political ideology. For me, it's the core concept - being betrayed by the person or people closest to you - that strikes a nerve, and Finney is brilliant for inventing a foundation from which writers and directors can develop their own spin.

Philip Kaufman is not a prolific director, and like Terrance Malick, he tends to make diverse films that explore differing genres and tones. (Kaufman is rumored to be developing the script for Indiana Jones 5, so god help us we may recover from Jones 4 after all) His approach to this Invasion was to build on the 1956 original narrative and characters, add a bit to the alien back story, and use 70s effects to show more of the snatching process on screen. He also brought a masterstroke to the Snatchers mythology: the piercing scream that the aliens emit when they identify a human in their midsts. (Used to excellent effect here, but bested by Meg Tilly's scream in Abel Ferrara's 1993 remake-of-a-remake Body Snatchers)

Another Kaufman trick is to use background or incidental imagery to unsettled the audience. Each time I watch the film I pick up on a visual clue in the background that totally creeps me out. Often it's just a handful of extras standing with blank stares; in one instance there is a man looking through a clouded glass window, staring at the main characters and tracking their movements. They only last a second or two, but it definitely creates a sense of overwhelming conspiracy. I was reminded of the way that Polanski uses sound to unsettle the audience in Chinatown, and, more recently, the way that Scorsese plays with the language of film editing and continuity in Shutter Island. I am always impressed when a director goes to lengths to add another layer to the experience.

If you haven't seen the film, it's a no-brainer to rent it immediately. Hell, I would recommend all versions of this basic story, even the Nicole Kidman movie The Invasion, just to see how each writer/director interprets the material.

Cropsey

For me, tales of true crime scratch the same emotional itch as horror films. I like getting to the brink of the seedy, taboo, and horrific from the safety of my couch. Cropsey is a fine example of both, and an excellent sleeper documentary that everyone should seek out.

Cropsey is directed by the duo of Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zemen, and is based on an urban legend from, of all places, Staten Island. Since the late 70s, children have been telling tales of Cropsey: an ex-mental patient from the now-closed Willowbrook State School, a home for children with mental retardation. Cropsey was your run-of-the-mill boogeyman who lived in the abandon tunnels of Willowbrook and crept out at night to snatch children who were never seen or heard from again.

The urban legend became real in 1987 when Jennifer Schweiger, a 13-year-old with Down's Syndrom, went missing. Over the next several years, a series of missing-children cases plagued the island, and it wasn't too long before the residents found their boogeyman: a man by the name of Andre Rand, an ex-orderly from the Willowbrook State School.

One of the first documentaries that I ever saw and really enjoyed was Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills. (My love of that film prompted me to check out an earlier film of theirs, Brother's Keeper, which is equally excellent). There are similar themes present here: namely, a society's tendency to catch, package, and brand someone who looks or acts "different" as a much more monstrous being than they really may be. But Brancaccio and Zemen don't stop there; there are twists that make you rethink everything you've just seen, and the film had me guessing for the entire 84 minute runtime (short, but a perfect length for this material).

I haven't said much about the horror elements, and I will leave them to be experienced for yourself. All I will say is that I have a new found respect for Geraldo Rivera, who makes a cameo in some of the most disturbing footage I have seen, and the grainy, 70s-era film stock makes it all that much creepier.

Ps: I've been a New Yorker now for 15 years, and I have no idea how I didn't hear about this case and the trial of Andre Rand. Sadly I think this kind of stuff happens more often than we think.

Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter

A video game came out recently called "Green Day: Rock Band." I haven't played it, but it strikes me as a game made specifically for fans of, um, Green Day. That's how I feel about recommending The Bedwetter.

Many people know that I will happily debate you on such important topics as The Best TV Finale Of All Time (The Shield, duh) and The Best M. Night Film Of All Time (Signs, duh). But I would never debate someone on the humor of Sarah Silverman... you either get it like it or you don't.

I'm a fan, so I enjoyed the The Bedwetter. I often find myself bored by biographies and biopics; it takes a special life to be more interesting than the best fiction out there. But I like the lightness of the autobiographical chapters here, nicely interspersed with personal anecdotes about her public persona and her TV show (recently cancelled, boo).

One highlight is how she describes a coworker's penchant for exposing himself in the writer's room. Apparently professional comics are so jaded that they resort to the most crude and shocking things to get a laugh out of their peers. One day this person found a hairclip in the break room, clipped it to his penis, took a picture, and posted it in the break room with the note: "Did anyone lose a hairclip?"

If you don't find this funny, steer clear of The Bedwetter.

Red Dead Redemption

I've invested many hours in to Rock Star's Grand Theft Auto games, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't bring myself to be a fan. The concept is very seductive: a living, breathing open world ready for exploration, and a million ways to approach things and make it feel customized to your play style. On paper, I'm on board.

In reality, they are just too bogged down in traversal issues and minor design flaws that roll up in to a pretty frustrating experience over time. All the popular trappings: no in-mission save system, TONS of time spent getting from point A to point B, cut scenes that are inconsistent with the player's previous in-game choices, etc. I finally wised-up after plopping down 40 bucks for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS and turning it off, forever, after about 3 hours of play time. I got hit by a lot of bricks, but now I don't even consider stepping back in to that world.

Now, after putting in about 30 hours in Rock Star's Red Dead Redemption, I think I've come to realize that it's not so much the genre as the world it creates. Red Dead is definitely a second cousin to Grand Theft Auto, no doubt. But a turn-of-the-century western setting feels much more appropriate for an open-world game than a modern-day urban environment. The vast open spaces with pockets of civilization are more in-line with what the technology is capable of delivering.

For as much as I loved Oblivion (until I realized the monsters level up along with you) and Fallout 3, I couldn't get over the lack of life. I get that Fallout 3 takes place post-apocalypse, but, come on, who built Megaton? Certainly not the 6 derelicts that live there. How does the doctor make a living treating the same handful of people?

I won't do an IGN-style review of Red Dead, but I will say it is certainly worth spending some time with, especially if you're interested in Rock Star's other properties. It still suffers from some of the annoying design flaws that plague the GTA games (really? a 10 second animation every time I find loot?), but the diegesis provides a much better foundation for a game and encourages me to overlook this kind of stuff.

More on Red Dead when I finish it.

Is this thing on?

Much of my life is spent in front of glowing rectangles -- my TV, the movie screen, my Droid, my Kindle (ok, no backlight there yet), my PC. Why not add to the billions of folks sharing their opinions on all things consumable? Let's do this.