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Thursday, December 13th, 2007
Tonight's family movie was Pippi Longstocking, poorly dubbed into English, a Hannukah gift from Sylvia's aunt Miriam, whose favorite movie it was in her youth. It is a (mostly) beautiful film visually which looks like it was made on a shoestring budget. The colors were enough to blow my mind, and to make me think of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. (Also the candy-store scene helped bring that association to mind.) It was hard to tell how well anybody was acting (besides Nilsson, who very obviously stole the show) because of the horrendous dubbing -- I would be trying to focus on an actor's face and see what they were doing when all of a sudden somebody else would start speaking. I haven't watched a dubbed movie in a really long time,* I don't think I've ever noticed this kind of thing before; I wonder whether this particular dubbing is just done really poorly or if this is a common attribute of dubbed films which I have not been perceptive enough to pick up on in the past. Here is a 7-minute clip of Pippi and her friends and her father, from near the end of the movie, in Swedish. One thing I get from that clip that I did not really get from the dubbed movie, is that the girl playing Annika seems to have a real gift for acting -- I see from IMDB that she did not play any other roles after this, which is a shame.
 *Oh wait no, that's wrong; I watched Lamorisse's White Mane not long ago, dubbed into English, and did not have this complaint. But there was also very little dialog in that movie: most of the dubbing was of narration, where it's not a problem in this way.
posted evening of December 13th, 2007: 2 responses
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Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
So I have a letter in the in-box this morning from Network Solutions, letting me know that my domain name is expiring in a year. This seems like a good time to ask: what's the story with other domain name registries besides NS? I understand there are some, and that they are cheaper -- do they do the same thing? NS is charging $100 for a 5-year registration which seems a little steep -- seems like it was less than that last time I renewed. I'll pay it if switching is a big hassle; but I reckon it's probably not a hassle. If you have any experience with this please let me know.
posted afternoon of December 11th, 2007: 2 responses
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...but this story, linked by Matthew Yglesias, is the kind of thing I just can't pass over in silence. I've been outraged about the situation in Iraq since before there was a "situation in Iraq" -- by the Administration's many-tentacled approach to starting a war, and to keeping the war going, and to generally running America's foreign policy into the dirt -- but for an American company to enable its male employees to rape their co-worker without facing sanction, and to threaten the victim with termination, and to hold her prisoner -- it just takes my breath away. Not sure what I can do beyond telling other people to read the story, so I'll do that. Kudos to Ms. Jones for the way she is handling this, fighting KBR, telling her story, attempting to help other victimized women.
Update: MoveOn has created a petition calling on Congress to hold KBR accountable for this. You can sign it here.
posted afternoon of December 11th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, December 10th, 2007
The first time I watched this movie, I thought it was the best Almodóvar film I had seen. But after a couple of viewings, I am revising that -- I love the film but not as much as All About My Mother or Volver. (It has things in common with both of those films.) What I really like about the movie is the layering of different levels of meta-story -- this layering is more complex than in All About My Mother but not, I think, ultimately as successful. I mean the first time I watched it, the story told by Fr. Manolo at the end just blew me away. But on the second or third time, that seems a little forced. And the identity confusion is great, but again: it is more complicated than in Volver, but when you're watching a second or third time so you have the elements of the story more firmly in mind, you just don't (I just don't) buy that Angel can trick Enrique into thinking he's Ignacio, or that Enrique won't confront him once he figures it out; and no reason is given for Angel to turn on Manolo. Still, an excellent movie -- these are very minor quibbles.
posted afternoon of December 10th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Martha comments a few posts down that the media players are starting up automatically when she loads the page. This is not what I was wanting to have happen -- does anybody know what I should change? I have <PARAM NAME="autoStart" VALUE="false"> inside the <OBJECT> definition for each of them. They do not autostart when I load the page. Is anybody else seeing this behavior?
posted afternoon of December 9th, 2007: 2 responses
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...because I am cooking bacon soup. (Except the store had no fennel and only dinky parsnips, so I am using celery root and turnips instead. It's good, makes it seem a little more wintry. And the store had these enormous organic carrots -- so I cut some of those up into biggish chunks.) We are meeting Jim and Joyce and Anna this afternoon to watch Meet Me In St. Louis in Millburn, and then having them over for soup.
posted afternoon of December 9th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, December 8th, 2007
We watched this movie tonight and I gotta say, I'm starting to think biopics based on the lives of musicians are not the genre for me. I mean the music was great and all; but no dramatic structure was to be found. Characters came and went without contributing anything to the movie, and ultimately no character (with the arguable exception of Piaf herself) was developed with any real depth. Beautiful actors and scenery.
posted evening of December 8th, 2007: Respond
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Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making, by Dr. Gabriel Solis -- ordered back in June -- has been printed and just now arrived on my doorstep!
posted evening of December 8th, 2007: Respond
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So I've decided to post working versions of songs I am learning and/or writing here. It will give me a point of reference, which is a handy thing to have. So far I have been recording with Windows Sound Recorder and my laptop's microphone. Ideally I would have a good microphone and a more usable piece of software -- I don't really know what software there is, but will look into it. Short of buying a microphone, Mike suggested that I could plug in my violin's pick-up into the computer -- all I need for this is a ¼"-to-⅛" jack converter.
posted morning of December 8th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, December 7th, 2007
So here's how I came up with the new color scheme for this site, of which I am kind of proud -- I think it looks really pleasant, and might even potentially cause someone to remember the site who would otherwise not. To start with, the blog had no colors specified, so it used the client's Windows (or whatever operating system) colors. Usually this means black text on white background. Now I have my Windows colors set to a little different, so the background is a very light shade of gray and the text is a dark violet color -- I find it easier to read that way. I was reluctant though to specify colors because I did on the old READIN web site and came to regret having done it. But, well, I think this combination is good enough to use. Light yellow color for the background, deep violet text in the main portion of the window. Here, links are purple and bold if unvisited, dark gray and normal-weight if visited. If the mouse is over them, they are the horrible iridescent color unknown to man which is represented by #009900. (This is true for all links in the document.) In the sidebars, a lighter color background* and charcoal text, with the links a brighter sort of aquamarine color if unvisited and teal if visited. The links on the right-hand side (which is practically nothing but links) are not bold but the color should be light enough to draw attention to them -- the text around them is sparse. The links on the left-hand sidebar are the only ones that do not change appearance when visited, because they are small and easy to miss. (Note: Firefox renders this site better than Explorer. I am not sure why and I don't think it matters much because I think most of the visits to this site are with Firefox or such like. But MSIE does funky things with the borders and the positions of table elements.)
*The two are actually slightly different light colors, the one on the right a little blue or green, the one on the left a little orange or brown. I'm not sure why or what is the use of this.
posted evening of December 7th, 2007: Respond
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