OK Go: “Here It Goes Again”

I know I’m late to the party with this, but hey, we didn’t have cable until recently. And hey, that’s one cool-as-hell video. I can’t imagine the time spent choreographing that.

Material Issue on iTunes

After languishing in the black hole of “not releasing any songs in the iTunes era,” Material Issue now has albums available via iTunes.

Go download “What Girls Want” now. I command it!

Survivor and game design theory

Wired has a neat article about how Survivor is a well-designed videogame played with living characters and a real world environment:

“Nobody talks about it on this level, but that’s what I do,” said Burnett, nattily dressed in a tieless pinstriped suit. I met him at Trump International Hotel when he came through town to talk about Gold Rush.

While tweaking Survivor, he closely studied John Nash’s game theory in order to better engineer the hysteria and emotional blowouts of each season’s finale.

The 13th season of Survivor debuts on September 14.

Inside Man

This fourth Spike Lee/Denzel Washington collaboration in many ways is the most conventional and the one that has the least to do with Spike’s own voice — he’s operating off a thriller script he did not create — but there are still signs that “Inside Man” is still a Spike Lee Joint.

There’s the signature shot of a protagonist moving down the street on a rolling cart instead of walking, an off-hand discussion of the damage done by videogames that glamorize the gangsta lifestyle and, as always, a lot of Spike’s signature camera work and camera shots. For big Spike Lee fans, this might not be as much Spike as they want, but the film is still definitely worth watching.

It’s a smart thriller, not so much a “whodunnit” as a “what, exactly, did they do?” Clive Owen appears at the very beginning of the film, laying out what’s happened in the film, with an implicit challenge to the viewers to figure out exactly what they’re about to see. The bank robbery that follows is mysterious and more clever than it at first appears to be and the entire affair takes on extra realism thanks to an extremely good cast, including a number of lower-tier character actors putting in solid work, and especially Christopher Plummer and a surprisingly disquieting Jodie Foster, playing against type.

The final resolution doesn’t have quite the emotional pop that may have been intended, but it’s an intellectually satisfying one.

“Inside Man” could have used more of Spike Lee’s signature style to spice things up, but it’s still a very solid little caper movie and well worth seeing for fans of such films or Spike Lee Joints.

The Adventure Window

Here’s a terrifying little story: Marketers (and, later, a scientist) have figured out the formula on when people stop having a sense of adventure, whether it’s about music, food or body-piercing.

Robert Sapolsky, a distinguished neuroscientist in his 40s, had a young assistant who played different music every day, from Sonic Youth to Minnie Pearl. That made Sapolsky crazy — and curious about why his aging ears still crave the music he loved in college. Is there a certain age when the typical American passes from the novelty stage to utter predictability?

Getting my iPod actually spurred me to break out of my comfortable nest of music that I listened to in college and willfully seek out new music and experiences. The realization that I was about to fill an iPod with music 5-15 years old was a chilling one, as though I should be buying myself a spot in an assisted living community.

Hmm, I guess this means I need to try sushi at some point.