the study

Last week we went to see Quantum of Solace on opening night, and I now remember why we have been going to movies on Sundays rather than the opening Friday. Three teenage douchebags sat next to us in the theater, and for some reason decided that they needed to continue chattering and texting during the movie (it sounded like one of them was trying to get the attention of a girl). After the third or fourth text I asked the kid next to me if it could wait until after the movie, and he looked at me like I was nuts. “It’s kind of important,” he said. I told him if it was that important, he could just be polite and leave. The rest of the show he spent with his head in his jacket, texting away. Good use of $9 if you ask me.

The movie itself was good, though not as great as Casino Royale. I think we were expecting this to be the Dark Knight to Casino Royale’s Batman Begins but they didn’t delve as much into Bond’s character as I would have liked. Also the villain was pretty pathetic, just a dude who was pretending to be an environmentalist. Oooohhh. But action is really the barometer by which Bond movies are judged, and you can’t fault a film that has a car chase, a foot chase, a motorcycle chase, a boat chase and a plane chase in under two hours. Sign me up for as much Daniel Craig bad-assery as they want to produce.

We’ve been meaning to get a laptop for quite a while now, and about a week ago we finally decided to take the plunge. After quite a bit of research I decided on one of the new 13.3″ aluminum MacBooks, and though it was a bit more expensive than the other notebooks in its class I’d have to say that it was worth it. This was quite a big leap for me, though, considering I have been a PC person since I started using computers in the early 90s. The advancements in the Mac hardware and OS X (and de-evolution of the Windows platform) pushed me towards this choice; it is pretty far from the PowerPC dogs I remember mocking in college. Some software annoyances remain, but I assume that I will find workarounds or just learn to live with them.

The MacBook is fast, quiet, sturdy, light and it looks nice. It runs pretty much everything I need; I was assuming that I would have to install Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows XP for some tasks, but some helpful apps (iWork, Crossover and GIMP) pretty much took care of everything. Crossover is even able to run many Steam games, though I haven’t done much computer gaming in the past couple of years so it is less important. I was dreading the use of such apps as BBEdit, Fetch and StuffIt, which I remembered hating, but luckily there are better alternatives now.

I could go on and on about the features on the MacBook, but the best thing about the laptop is definitely the multi-touch trackpad. The OS has quite a bit of built in support such as using two fingers to scroll and swiping up and down or side to side with multiple fingers to do other functions, but a neat tool called MultiClutch allows you to add more control for specific programs. For instance I use a comic book reader, and it is easy to swipe with three fingers to move to the next issue of a title or zoom in and out with a gesture.

Only a few minor annoyances: I have been wrestling a bit with the dock, there is no true “maximize” function and the finder isn’t quite as nice as the Windows explorer. On the hardware side the screen doesn’t have the best viewing angle (I’ve read online that the MacBook Pro has a much better display) and the trackpad-as-a-button takes some getting used to.

Overall I am very satisfied so far, and cautiously optimistic about future issues with the hardware and OS. I think we made a pretty good choice.

Last week through Netflix I got the Director’s Cut of Dark City, a cult film (and a favorite of mine) from 10 years ago directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, I Robot). The original, if you haven’t seen it, is a very noir-style mystery with heavy sci-fi elements about a man who has lost his memory and is being pursued by the police (and a group of strange pasty-faced bald men) for a murder that he doesn’t remember commiting. From there, as they say, nothing is as it seems.

I have the original on DVD, but this one promised to be closer to the director’s original vision. However as I watched, the only noticeable features were that the opening narration by Kiefer Sutherland was removed and a few minutes of character moments were added in. It really didn’t seem like there was an extra “14 minutes,” as the description promised. There were a couple of special features with interviews of Proyas, the writers and some of the cast as well. This was probably the most interesting portion of the Director’s Cut since it gave some history of the origin of the movie and some of the troubles that Proyas had while trying to sell and then create the film on such a low budget.

Overall I’d say if you haven’t seen the original, definitely watch the Director’s Cut, but if you liked the original there isn’t much more to offer besides the interviews. Get it on Netflix if you have the service, but probably not worth a purchase if you already own the original DVD.

Here is a video trailer that Julia (one of the other actors) shot using interviews and footage from our rehearsals. Check it out!

Looks like our second show came sooner than later. Daphne and I were both lucky enough to be cast in the next Theatre on Main production, Arsenic and Old Lace. This is a fairly simple play with no music and no set changes, which should be a nice switch from the insanity of My Fair Lady. Also it will be a much smaller group with only 12 cast members.

Daphne was cast in the part of Elaine, the fiancee of the main character, so she will have a lot more lines this time around. I have a couple of smaller parts so this one should be considerably easier for me at only 85 lines or so.

The show is a dark comedy about a (literally) crazy family, two members of which are old ladies who poison men and bury them in their basement. Should be fun.

Our town’s water tower has a funny hat (or at least it did this weekend when I took this photo). I have a few theories about its possible purpose.

6) We’ve had so much rain this year that even our water tower needs an umbrella

5) Too many birds were pooping on the water tower, making it difficult to clean

4) To cover up the tower’s baldness, kind of like Ron Howard’s baseball caps

3) To make Dousman’s “frog” water tower look oh-so-last-year

2) Our town is planning to break the world record of largest maypole

1) The tower was trying to outdo Mrs. Eynsford-Hill for the title of “largest hat in Oconomowoc”

Our run of My Fair Lady at Theatre on Main is at an end, and I must say that though the show was an immense amount of work and basically took over my life for almost 3 months, it was extremely rewarding. Not only did I meet a ton of friendly and talented people, Daphne and I got to share our first theatre experience together.

This kind of a thing was something I’d never before attempted and until recently was pretty sure I couldn’t do at all, so it was a great life experience for me and definitely outside my comfort zone. Yesterday when the curtain closed on the last performance I was more emotional than I would have thought; we all worked really hard and I didn’t want it to be over.

Thanks so much to our family, friends, church and community who supported us in the show and especially my parents, who took basically my entire extended family to the theatre over the three weekends of performances.

However, we have definitely caught the theatre bug, so I’m sure this won’t be the last show for either of us at TOM or elsewhere.

Now that the movie The Dark Knight has introduced Joker and Two-Face as Batman villains (and Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow and to a lesser extent Mr. Zsasz in the previous movie), MSNBC wrote an article on who should be the villains in the next film which is surely also to be directed by Christopher Nolan. They note the fact that Nolan has made the series more realistic, so obviously some of the sillier villains and the tone from the 60’s TV show are right out. But as one would expect from a non-comics publication, they have made some glaring omissions.

Among their choices, ranging from best idea to worst, are: Catwoman, Talia al Ghul, Penguin, Killer Croc, Clayface, Black Mask, Man-Bat, Riddler, Scarface, Cluemaster, Penny Plunderer, Chandell (?), and Bat-Mite.

Okay, these guys get an “F” for the mere mention of Bat-Mite. Also Chandell, Penny Plunderer and Cluemaster are such obscure and silly villains, they should have just suggested Orca and let it be over with. Catwoman would be met with jeers, after the awful Halle Berry movie. Riddler was already ruined forever by Jim Carrey. And Scarface is a ventriloquist doll…that may have worked in the cartoon, but not in a Nolan film. Here are my suggestions, and though some of these characters are also obscure they could make a much better (serious) movie.

Careful, there may be some minor spoilers for Batman comic stories herein.

Mr. Freeze: Yes, Arnold probably wrecked any chance of a serious Mr. Freeze in a Batman movie, but I’m convinced it would still work if a bit more drama was added. He is more of a tragic character, and was done very well in the animated series. (Odds 1000:1)

Deadshot: A cybernetic or gadget-oriented assassin; probably would be better as a secondary villain but may be interesting with a few changes to his character thrown in. (Odds 750:1)

Lady Shiva: Ultra high-end assassin and one of the only people in the DCU who is a better martial artist than Batman. May be interesting if they used her as a love interest / foe, but I’m not sure if people would like the fact that she could beat up Batman. (Odds 500:1)

Poison Ivy: I’m convinced this character could be done in a more serious manner than her treatment in Batman & Robin. Perhaps they could do the eco-terrorist angle a bit more realistically. Elements of her character may be too similar to those of Scarecrow in Batman Begins. (Odds 500:1)

Prometheus: Despite the silly helmet, an interesting concept for a villain: he has the world’s best fighters’ moves programmed into his helmet, making him a threat to Batman and other superheroes. See Grant Morrison’s JLA. (Odds 500:1)

Calculator: A previously very silly villain who now primarily uses his intellect in his nefarious endeavors (see Birds of Prey). May be an interesting intellectual foil for Batman but probably has limited use as a primary villain due to his lack of fighting skills. (Odds 300:1)

Cassandra Cain: Cassandra is the daugher of an assassin and is taught from birth to fight and kill, and is also mute; Batman takes her in and tries to tame her murderous nature, allowing her to become the new Batgirl. She might be a good addition for a redemption story. (Odds 300:1)

Firefly: Basically just a guy in an asbestos suit with wings who sets stuff on fire. Any stories with him would probably echo The Dark Knight because of the “wanton destruction” angle, but he could easily be made more interesting. (Odds 100:1)

Holiday: From the Long Halloween series, Holiday was so named because he murdered all of his victims on holidays and left a trinket representing the holiday at the corpse. They could use this device if they wanted to tell a murder mystery, which would be a welcome switch from having an over-the-top supervillain tearing up the screen in each movie. (Odds 50:1)

Hush: From the Jeph Loeb / Jim Lee arc, Hush is basically a dark mirror of Batman. Adapting the actual story of Hush might be too convoluted for the screen, since it involves almost all of Batman’s rouges’ gallery, but they could bring him in as a solo villain who messes with Batman or hires other people to mess with him. (Odds 50:1)

Bane: Probably the most glaring omission from their list. Although I suppose you can’t do Knightfall in a big budget film (since it would put the star of the movie out of comission for almost the whole thing) you could do a different story or rewrite it so he is gravely wounded instead of paralyzed. Bane is actually an intelligent, multi-layered character unlike how he was portrayed in Batman & Robin as Poison Ivy’s bodyguard. (Odds 20:1)

We’ve had a couple of interesting encounters with nature in the last few weeks. Firstly while walking through our neighborhood we saw several large, strange looking birds with crazy “hair” and long beaks. Originally we had dubbed them the “Hairy-Headed Ugga-Birds” for lack of a better name, but after some searching on the net realized that they must have been young Blue Herons. There is a small lake some distance behind our neighborhood, which may explain their appearance.

On the Fourth we went trail riding on our bikes at Lapham Peak, which was fun but also painful because we’re terribly out of shape and our bikes aren’t really made for the task. We also rode up to the fire tower, which was even tougher but we got a really nice view of Waukesha County and all of the lakes at the top.

Also the mosquitoes have been terrible after all the rain, so it has limited our outdoor activities during the evenings, but it hasn’t stopped us from using our new gas grill. Since it is so much more convenient we have used it more times already this year than we ever used our charcoal grill, and haven’t noticed much of a difference in the taste. Just the fact that the food is grilled makes it taste so much better.

…certainly isn’t as heavy as here. This last month has seen quite a bit in Wisconsin, with flood conditions continuing even through a dryer early July. Daphne’s car was claimed victim last month and needed a new engine, and apparently last night her parents’ house was drenched and is going to need some major repair. Also, someone we know who lives on a lake still has a foot of water in his basement, which can’t be entirely healthy.

I hope things level out soon, or we might be paddling to work before Fall rolls around.