BilmBlog500

Wherein I will do a wrap on movies I've seen in recent months without blogging about. Pinky:  Pride & Glory,  seen Saturday afternoon Nov. 8, 2008 at the AMC Courthouse 8, Aud. #7.  1.5 slithy toads.  This is the kind of movie I've been going to less as I cut back some from 5 or 10 years ago on the number of movies I make time to see.  It had gotten mediocre reviews, and it has been awaiting release for a year, but I decided I should nonetheless see it because (a) it stars Edward Norton, whose generally impressed from Primal Fear on thru and usually makes good choices in the movies he makes and if not good ones then interesting and (b) co-stars Colin Farrell, another actor who is often interesting in his choices if not always good.  Alas, this was not an interesting choice for either of them.  Raise your hands if you've seen as movie about corrupt cop, loving wife, conflicted family, father figure on force, etc. etc. etc.  This is that movie.  I'm not sure why these...

The Washington Post Book World section is being shuttered, with book reviews to be spread into the Style and Outlook sections on Sunday for a net 25% reduction in coverage. Since the Washington Post Book World covered genre fiction on a regular basis which the NY Times does not (well, mysteries up the gazoo but not sf/fantasy) this is not a happy making time. In fact, overall page for page Book World had far more reviews of interest than the NY Times Book Review, which I often flip through without finding a single review of interest to me.  This is not a new thing, by the way.  It's been that way for all 30 years I've been reading the Times Book Review. So to me, for all practical purposes, the US is now left with 0 stand-alone book sections I'd care to read.  The SF Chronicle still hangs on with one, but the SF Chronicle is otherwise a rag like most papers in the US have become in recent years, so who cares about that. Further, the Washington Post "made" Elizabet...

Sometimes even smart people can sound very dumb.  Last night during the Tennis Channel's coverage of the Australian Open, Martina Navratilova was bemoaning "oh why do they do it this way" that the winners of the women's quarters being played one day would have to come back out on one day's rest for a next match while some of the men got an extra day of rest, implying some sinister sexism at work.  Well, there might be be lots of sexism in the world, but can you let Martina know that this isn't it.  A Grand Slam tennis tourney lasts 14 days.   The women play their final in Day 13.  The men on Day 14.  And the start of play is broken for both over Day 1 and Day 2.  So if you start on day 2, you play on day 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, so of course at the end the women in that part of the draw will have to not get 2 days rest, and a man who started on day 1 would get an extra day off.  If you played both finals on Day 14, that would be disrespectful of the women.  If you...

So the Post Office quietly raised its prices for what it calls "Shipping Services" on the 18th, Express & Priority Mail and the like, but not for first class mail which will go up in May.  And I do mean "quietly."  I mean, I'm in the Post Office three days a week and don't think I saw a sign or notice or anything anyplace. I hate the fact that they do it in stealth mode.  That's just plain wrong to me. Aside from that, because real world wise most businesses don't make a big deal about raising prices, shrinking your half gallon of ice cream or your Skippy peanut butter jar to a few ounces less, it gets more and more transactionally expensive to market books by clients in the foreign and translation markets.  Now, the costs of these foreign mailings are charged to clients as a disbursement, so at the end of the day on a lot of this I don't care.  But I'm a nice guy and very conscientous of the fiduciary obligation I have to my clients not ...

Role Models.  Seen Sunday afternoon November 9, 2008 at the AMC Hoffman Center 22, Auditorium #2, 3 slithy toads This film ... well, it might come as a surprise to hear somebody say this, but it should probably take its place in the science fiction pantheon with Galaxy Quest, and I'm rather tempted to give it a spot on my Hugo nominating ballot.  Certainly, if you're a friend of the science fiction community you'd danged well better find your way to this on video when it's released on March 10.  Just like Galaxy Quest, it's oft times hilarious.  In the same way that Galaxy Quest kind of made it OK to be a Trekkie, kind of mainstreamed the whole idea of worshiping science fiction on TV, Role Models mainstreams Live Action Role Playing, or LARP, which is at least as marginalized to those like me who are strong literary sf fans but is still very much a part of the sci-fi continuum.  I'd like our community to recognize, acknowledge, appreciate. In its bare outlines,...

So my  Kindle died completely after being taken out in the cold last week.  I'm not sure the Sony Reader would be any better.  They are honest in their documentation (i.e., honest in that "buried in the PDF owner guide you get only after you've purchased it" kind of way that Amazon also is) in giving the operational temp for the PS 700 as forty-one degrees, which is more in line with when I started to see my Kindle start to misbehave, so I'm not sure their screen will do any better if it's in your briefcase while you wait ten minutes for a cab at the airport on a cold day.  I'm pasting below the letter I am mailing today to the heads of Amazon and the E Ink corporation in Cambridge that makes the electronic ink "guts" for the Kindle and Sony Reader. The bottom line on all of this is that if you are thinking of buying one of these things you need to be aware that your outdoor use -- i.e., the whole "portable" thing -- might be limited fo...

I spent this past weekend at the bar mitzvah of nephew #4, who is named after my uncle, Matthew Suffness .   It was a bittersweet occasion for me.  My only niece is named for my maternal grandmother, whom we loved very much but who passed when I was only a child, not so young as to have no memories of her at all but certainly when I was young enough that the memories are just childhood ones.  My uncle Matt, on the other hand, died when I was an adult, and died far too early in life at the age of 52.  He and his wife Rita didn't have a family of their own, but he loved his nieces and nephews very very much, and we were all so happy when he was able to join us for a family occasion.  He was so much fun to be around that it's almost embarrassing to say it was really only after he passed that I came to realize how accomplished he was professionally, to the extent that the American Society of Pharmacognosy came to name one of their awards after him.  He was known particularly for ...

1982.  It is the weekend of my senior class trip, and on Friday we go off to Great Adventure theme park in New Jersey.  We get back very late at night, and on Saturday morning I am woken up all too early to join my younger brother and parents in driving down to Paramus to see Star Trek 2:  The Wrath of Khan. We went to see it at the RKO Stanley Warner Route 4 Paramus Quad .  If you really want to know more about the history of the theatre click the link, but at that point in time it had a huge huge huge huge main downstairs screen in its original building, which was added on to before then added on to later and then the original main screens cut up a bit, but even at its death a couple years ago as a tenplex the main screen at 2/3 of its original size was awfully danged big.  We would drive down, 1:15 in good traffic which rarely there was, to see big new movies on that big screen in glorious 70mm.  The Empire Strikes Back and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan were the two best of them, a...

I go down to Washington DC fairly often, often doing the same things over and over again though trying at some level to always experience something new on each trip, even if it's walking down a different block. On my latest visit I decided I wanted to try very very hard to do some things recommended to me by the Washington Post . So I went to get cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcake .  Now, this whole cupcake craze has me a little befuddled.  Illogically, because I think it's crazy to pay in the neighborhood of $3 for a little cupcake.  Why do I say that's illogical?  Because we all have things we're willing to indulge in.  I pay $6.50 every so often for a slice of Juniors Cheesecake , so why not pay $3 for a cupcake.  But logically, because Juniors is really good stuff (I think so, most people I've introduced it to think so, or have sent as a gift).   But most of these cupcakes are pretty dreary, and paying so much money for a bad cupcake?  Like this little place in Sunn...

So I did a little reading on the Sony Reader we got for Eddie. With the Calibre software that Charles Stross suggested to me way back when , we are as yet experiencing no problems in putting files on to the Sony Reader for Eddie to read.  However, I'm told it prefers to eat RTF, and since most people send Word, Eddie has to convert the .doc to .rtf and then Calibre along to the Sony Reader. With the touch screen atop of it, I am finding a lot more of a glare problem with the Sony Reader than I do with the Kindle.  Eddie doesn't seem to be bothered by this, but it bothers me a lot. You run your finger along the touch screen either left to right or right to left to turn the pages back or forward, and then at the bottom there are two small buttons to do the same.  Reading on the Kindle, you have to teach yourself not to press down on the sides because there is too much forward/backward button.  If you don't put your Kindle to sleep while putting the case on or other things l...

Gran Turino, seen Saturday evening January 3, 2009 at the Regal Gallery Place, Washington DC, Aud. #14, 2.5 slithy toads Frost/Nixon, seen Sunday afternoon January 2, 2009 at the AMC Uptown (single screen), Washington DC, 3 sllithy toads Fifteen years ago for the holiday season a fine movie called A Perfect World, starring Kevin Costner and directed by  Clint Eastwood came upon this world.  It followed Unforgiven.  The critical reception was at the time rather unforgiving.  I haven't seen it in a long long time.  Here in NYC, Film Forum has done its umpteenth Sturges revival since I moved to NYC so we can all see Morgan Creek once more, yet nobody wants to show us A Perfect World.  Well, why not try and find that on video instead of seeing Eastwood's somewhat overrated Gran Turino. Gran Turino isn't bad. 2.5 toads is a mild recommendation, and I enjoyed seeing it, and I didn't fall asleep even though I was seeing it at the end of a long day when I'd walked around te...

When I first started going to the Washington, DC area on a regular basis in 1993/94, (and I've been at least once a year and often twice or more during the 15 years since, often on a long weekend visiting 30 or more bookstores).  the DC area was a major, major market for B. Dalton.  Union Station, Shops @ National in downtown, a Scribner in the Fashion Center mall, 2 in Crystal City, one in the Springfield Mall, the Montgomery Mall, the Ballston Commons, the Chevy Chase Pavilion, 18th & K St., Lake Forest, and more.  Within another week or two, not a single one of those original B. Dalton locations will remain.  The sole surviving Dalton outlet will be in Union Station, and that store wasn't there in 1993.  The current light-filled large space is a kind of Cadillac of B. Dalton stores that replaced a very very small shoebox in the center of the mall.  The last of those Dalton locations from 1993 to close its doors is the Ballston Commons location, which is having a going ou...

I recommended in the spring that Borders give the boot to CEO George L. Jones.  Well, today, after a dismal holiday season that saw same store sales plummet, it finally happened .  I wish it had happened sooner.  I've always tried to give Jones credit for some of the good things he did on his watch, like actively trying to fix the mall stores and pulling the plug on the costly store remodels that weren't accomplishing much.  The new concept store he rolled out is an interesting vision in some ways but it will be hard to get a read on its success.  And in the fall, Borders was much better positioned with Sookie Stackhouse books than B&N.  But...  you can't surprise the world as he did in March with the news that your company is running out of cash.  His efforts to streamline inventory have been a disaster.  Right now for all of the Charlaine Harris books they are selling a signification fraction of stores aren't slotted to carry the entire Lily Bard series.  The com...