ANWR

    What a shock.
    The mideast declares an oil embargo on us, and guess what our administration’s solution is — drilling in Alaska! Who’d’a thunk it?! Drilling in Alaska. That old song and dance Dubya’s been working on since we first heard of him. I swear, Bush has been gunning to violate Alaska so badly that I wouldn’t be surprised that he was on the phone asking for the embargo. At last, at last, GWB has the excuse he’s been waiting for. It’s taken months and months of patient waiting, but finally he can drive his derrick in that sweet unspoiled countryside.
    Hear that slapping sound, don’t you? …Well, actually it’s Cheney and Dubya high-fiving each other.
    Hear that other sound? It’s the roar of traffic as an indifferent America shrugs and starts its commute to work. After all, Alaska is too far away to be of consideration and we’d rather buy the biggest SUVs we can find with the worst mileage. Who cares that our emissions and pollutants have screwed up our ecology so bad that we now get rain for Christmas and snow for Easter.
    Let’s not consider conserving, let’s not consider developing alternate energy sources. Energy secretary Spence Abraham has to be right. After all, his face is a quarter-scale miniature of Alaska itself. It’s only forests; they’re only animals. If you want trees, you can see them on the expressway median. It’s just, I thought it might be nice simply to know there was some stretch of land somewhere that we hadn’t violated, that we hadn’t screwed up. Some green part of the Earth untouched by mankind. But I know that’s impossible. We’re men; and we love to destroy stuff. Besides, it’s not recognizable as land unless there are yellow lines painted on it and a Blockbuster or a CVS drug store near it, right? And everyone knows a Republican’s idea of preserving the environment is planting saplings in front of a factory.
    Yeah, I know. A cheap shot.
    I should actually be happy for Dubya. He’s close to getting what he’s always wanted. Good things come to he who waits, as they say. I’m still waiting for stuff to start making sense.
    Update: I just read Bush’s plan was voted down in the Senate, 54-46. Congratulations and thank you to Senators Daschle, Kerry, Lieberman, and McCain in particular.
    Now let’s get to work on alternative energy sources.
Posted in News | Leave a comment

A.I. on PPV

    Could this be a new director’s cut?
    According to next month’s PPV listings, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is listed as a “Martial Arts Event”.
Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

The Two Towers

    Newsgroups have (has?) failed me. I’ve been searching for a file of The Two Towers preview, so I could relive seeing it last Friday. But it turns out I was looking in the wrong place. It’s available here, and has been for a day or two.
    Update: The preview can also be found here along with peripheral downloads. Still looking for a good version of it though.
    Update: The One Ring.net announced a new link, saying it was complete and much better than before. I added it here, but it turns out to be the same dark, flickery QuickTime movie as before. Evidently they’re confused, so I’ve since removed this third link.
Posted in Links, LOTR, Video | Leave a comment

Happy Easter

    A nice quote this morning from the priest at St Joe’s:
    “Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”
    Happy Easter.
Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

Comments are back

    Hey, lookee! The Comments link is back and my page is loading normally.
    The [YACCS] host site said they were down from 12:00PM to 7:30PM.
    Huzzah!
Posted in Blog | Leave a comment

Where oh where have my co-omments gone?

    Looks like this page is taking forever to load up. I think it’s due to the Comments link [the old YACCS comments, that is]; the server that hosts the comments appears to be down right now. My apologies for the inconvenience (especially since I haven’t updated anything since yesterday, so there’s no real point in visiting yet!).
Posted in Blog | Leave a comment

LOTR on DVD

    Aw, what the heck, let’s update the page anyway. This news is already widespread, but it’s so cool I can’t resist mentioning it here too. In a big party at the WB Studio lot, New Line announced the specs for the DVD releases of The Fellowship of the Ring. The set looks fantastic! I’ve got drool all over my shirt. You can read the release details here:
The Digital Bits: One ring to rule them all…

And DVDFile.com has an excellent drool-inducing large-format image of the DVD case:
DVD front cover

    [Note: The LOTR article has since been archived here. Look for the entry titled “(EARLY UPDATE – 3/27/02 – 12:01 AM PST)”. After reading, check out the “(LATE UPDATE – 3/27/02 – 11:45 AM PST)” entry above it.]
Posted in LOTR, Movies | Leave a comment

And More Oscars

    Two things I forgot to mention in yesterday’s big Oscar round-up:
  • What was the deal with those stupid and obvious factoid captions in ABC’s pre-Oscar show. The producers must’ve done about five seconds of research for them.
  • I’ve seen several articles about Woody Allen’s appearance, about how he described the plot of his next film as a foot fetishist who falls in love with a professor’s footnotes. People are actually taking this seriously. I mean, it was a setup for a joke, wasn’t it?
Posted in Movies, TV | Leave a comment

More Movie Music

    Speaking of movie music, congratulations to Howard Shore for winning the Oscar for his score to Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. New Line and Reprise are considering releasing CDs of the complete score…but, with the release of the second movie in the works, plus the release of an expanded DVD edition of the first movie, they have the awkward task of trying to figure out when to release it.
    Check the second half of this article for the details.

Posted in LOTR, Music | Leave a comment

Attack of the Digital Clones

    Behold the power of the Internet. I was able to download MP3s of the new John Williams Attack of the Clones soundtrack today, a month before it’s released. This CD reminds me a great deal of the CD for Phantom Menace. When that album came out there were complaints that Williams used mainly underscore (music from dialogue scenes) and left off most of the action cues. The same seems to be true here (at least the ¾s I heard before having to go to work).
    A few notes: I was surprised I got so far into the album without hearing references to the old familiar themes, even a track about Yoda refrains from recalling his Empire Strikes Back motif. Stuff from Phantom Menace (the Tattooine fanfare and “Duel of the Fates” do show up in later tracks). The new love theme is interesting since it’s obviously a variation on Leia’s theme from A New Hope, descending instead of rising. I wonder if Williams is having fun altering his old motives. I was startled to hear actual electric guitar during the chase music in track three, along with lots of percussion. (Perhaps Williams enjoyed toying with modern sounds during his work on A.I..) There’s also some electric piano used on the love theme, plus some atmospheric synth work similar to the colorations in Harry Potter.
    So far the music is good, but nothing especially stands out. Of course I’ll buy it anyway, just because it’s Star Wars; and like any Williams music I’m sure I’ll grow to like it a lot.
    Update: Actually, the Yoda theme *does* appear in the “Yoda and the Younglings” track. And I think the music I referred to as a Tattooine fanfare is actually for Coruscant.
    I guess I should’ve listened to the album fully before reporting, but I was pressed for time and was typing as the music played.
Posted in Movies, Music | Leave a comment