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As we exited the theater the moon was rising over the wasatch and was redder than I have ever seen it, which is a little eerie after seeing a Shyamalan film. We camped last night and I am exhausted and probably incoherent so I won’t say much other than that anyone bashing The Village doesn’t know what they are talking about. Night said after Signs was released that he was closing a chapter in his life and that his viewers should expect something different from him in his next film. He delivered on that promise and evidently a lot of people have forgotten that he ever made the promise in the first place. The last three films were about the supernatural. This one is not. It has the trademark cameo by the director and the trademark “twist” or sudden revelation ending, but those are just about the only similarities between his previous work and this. I went into the movie knowing what the revelation was and I think my experience, ironically, was better for it. I didn’t have to worry about guessing what the ending would be, I just got to watch it get set up. I won’t reveal the twist here since I don’t know if my approach is the way others should see the movie. If you want to know what the twist is you’ll easily be able to find it on the net. Finally, I really enjoyed the movie. It was much different than his others. It wasn’t better or worse than the others. It ought to stand on its own as an excellent piece of craftsmanship.

I am about to run out of patience. I am a loyal Minolta customer.. I own four Minolta cameras, three single lens reflex cameras spanning the past three decades and one digital. I love my Minoltas. They do everything I want. I have to admit though I have of late been looking extremely covetously at the new Canon Digital Rebel. Why? Because Konica Minolta still refuses to release a real digital SLR. I have a grunt load of maxxum accessories that I want to use with a digital camera and they have nothing for me. It’s not just a dream of convenience either… I’ve got a lot of money invested in equipment that sits unused most of the year because I use digital for everything but a few portrait shoots. Every Minolta user I know is clamoring for a real digital SLR and they keep releasing fixed lens cameras. The fact that the cameras they are releasing are excellent is beside the point. All there is left to say is Grrr.

Is it just me or is every new Shyamalan film greeted by reviews polarized like day and night? I’ve read several reviews of The Village this morning and they all seem to be rated either 5 stars or no stars. If I remember right Unbreakable and Signs were both greeted that way also. Does he just make that kind of movie? Are critics going into the theater with unrealistic expectations? I’ve read a few comments by “just fans” as well and they seem similarly polarized. We’ve got tickets for tomorrow night so I guess I’ll have to record my own impressions on here when we get back.

I was reading Neal Stephenson’s site this morning and came across a link that I hadn’t seen before. Mr. Stephenson and I share a personality trait that makes it difficult in many ways for us to get along in the world, though, ironically, it helps us understand the world and how it works. I’ve never found a more concise and fluid explanation of this character trait than the article Neal linked to, so I’ve reproduced it on my own site here. For the 75% of you out there who don’t understand, please have patience with us.

Volvo Includes Remote Dopeslap Feature on S80

I read Roger Ebert’s review of Touching the Void when the film was released back in February and I started really looking forward to seeing it. It ended up playing in only one theater within 50 miles of me and I tried over and over to get there to see it but never could. I finally added it to our Netflix queue and we watched it last night.

The film tells the story of Simon Yates and Joe Simpson, two British climbers who scaled a previously unclimbed face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. The climb was difficult but successful. On the way down Joe fell and severely broke his leg. The rest of the story deals with how the two made it back to their base camp and I will not give away the details in case the reader doesn’t already know what happens. I haven’t seen such a story of pure courage and determination in a very long time. It was a difficult movie to watch… the gut wrenching emotion made it seem longer than it was. Irrationally, even though I knew that both members of the expedition ultimately survived because they were featured in interview footage shot 17 years later, the movie succeeds in drawing you into the sheer peril experienced on the way down the mountain, making it difficult to imagine how they could possibly both survive. It’s both inspiring to see such courage and sheer dumb determination, but it is also agonizing to witness the pain and humiliation.

I’m glad, in the end, that I didn’t see this movie first in the theater. It would have been even harder to watch on the big screen, though the cinematography would have been impressive. The DVD also includes three featurettes telling the rest of the story and detailing the making of the movie. We watched the one entitled “Return to Siula Grande” last night after finishing the film. Yates and Simpson returned to the mountain with the film crew as advisors and to reconstruct some of the actual events. It was fascinating to see the different reactions the two men had to the place. Simpson was initially very unreactive, though after a little while seemed to be overcome with a flood of emotion, and freely expressed it. Yates denied feeling any different returning to this place than he had returning to other past climbs, and later even went so far as to deny having denied feeling any emotional response. He was obviously trying to block the memories that must have been flooding back to him as they were to Simpson. After the trip back to the mountain, Simpson continued working with the production company and was pleased with the film once it was completed, while Yates decided not to continue his association with the film.

The book that the film was based on and the DVD are both on order for me now at amazon.com. I highly recommend the film to anyone.

The Governator gets personal

Just finished it and once again the only thing I can say to describe the book is brilliant.

That said, however, and while I would love to be able to share this series with my fellows, I know without a doubt that my wife, for example, will never read The Baroque Cycle. “Isn’t it about science?” Well, yes, the same way that Cryptonomicon was about cryptography. Both are laced with their respective “subjects.” Laced is a good word to use in this case because they are laced the way a shoe is laced. The science sort of holds the stories together, but in no means is it the main focus of the book. At its heart, or maybe its liver, I’m not sure, The Confusion is a love story, as in some ways was Quicksilver. Sounds like the kind of book my wife would want to read. It’s also got swashbuckling, intrigues in the houses of the powerful, travel, riches, rollercoaster ups and downs, but its the science aspect that will put many would be readers off. In fact, an insight just came to me… could it be that Neal Stephenson stuffed the first third of Quicksilver with so much scientific background as a bit of a test for the would-be reader? Even if he didn’t, I still feel like I belong to a bit of a club having read 2/3 of the story now.

Finally got our new(er) truck last night. It’s a ‘92 Chevy 1500, Extended Cab, Short Bed (poo). I’ll put up a couple of pictures once I have the time to take some. It’s champagne and maroon, which is decent looking, I think. My sister would say it’s a Grandpa truck, cause of the two tone paint. All I care about is that it runs well for the next several years. It’s got 160,000 miles on it, which is about midlife for these particular engines. With care and a little luck it should be able to get to around 300,000, which is perfectly acceptable. My old truck? Well, we’ll see. Gotta find a place to put it, first off. Then I’ll have to come up with a plan. It’s very likely that nothing is gonna happen in the next year at least, as the big financial goal at this point is still to buy a house and everything else has been forced to grovel before the throne of that one supreme goal. Maybe there’s something I can do with no money and a little elbow grease that will further the cause of my old truck. Maybe some sanding or something….

… but I had to post about it because it is awfully, awfully cool. I was reading Gizmodo and found a link to a site I had never come across before. It’s a blog about what it’s like to be a dad, including some of the little talked about subjects and quite a few reviews of cool daddy gadgets. The site is at daddytypes.com and it comes with my triple-good seal of approval. In fact I think it may get a spot on the right hand column, too.