Well, it’s that time of year, where good little boys and girls have gotten their first iPods. The first thing you’ll want to do is immediately order an iSkin — you’d be amazed at how easily the metal finish and screen of an iPod can get scratched.
Next, you’ll want some content for it. Wired has a nice article on free quality content that’s not pornographic. (It turns out there’s lots of free porn on the Internet, including for the iPod. Who knew?)
It’s been a year since I got my iPod from my family (most prescient joke ever: “What’s going on? Do I have cancer or something?”), and I use mine daily.
Tomorrow: What’s a podcast, how do I get them, and what’s good? (Yeah, I’m being lazy. I’m on my first almost-week vacation since I got this job.)
- Even the president loves his iPod, although it seems like he might be borrowing it from one of his girls. (Well, given the playlist, maybe not. But “Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle?”)
At their best, Terry Gilliam’s films have a magical quality that transports the viewer to another world, one they may not entirely understand, but which has its own crazy through-the-looking-glass sort of logic. Time Bandits, the Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the Fisher King all have a fever-dream quality to them, where the viewer is swept along through strange, even sometimes nonsensical paths.
The Brothers Grimm
could have used more of this. There are nods in that direction, but ultimately, the film feels like a Hollywood action adventure. It’s not quite as bloodless as Van Helsing, but it’s cut from the same cloth. To get a film like this from Terry Gilliam is almost shocking.
There’s still plenty of whimsy and strangeness in the film — the Italian torturer who shadows the Brothers Grimm or the involved 19th century special effects equipment used to create many of their tricks — but it all feels very much like the film any other Hollywood creator would make. Maybe that’s what Gilliam had to do for his career, after Don Quixote went off the rails as badly as it did. Even so, this film feels like an opportunity wasted.
The world can use more of Gilliam’s madness and whimsy. The Brothers Grimm, although it can be fun, doesn’t answer much of that need.
A recommended rental for fans of Terry Gilliam’s work or adult fairy tale fans.
It’s that time of year again: The Society of Professional Journalists is taking entries through February 3rd for the 2005 awards. By my count, there’s approximately 15 categories in which I could theoretically enter one or more stories, and Peter has probably closer to 20 categories (given that he writes editorials and takes award-worthy photos).
If there’s any Hesperia Star stories from 2005 that you found particularly memorable, let me know, and I’ll make sure they’re among those we send in.
Thanks.
Wired has an article up on how to do your own podcast. I see many more people having podcasts before this trend subsides down to mostly being professional radio stations using the Internet as a cheap way to distribute their shows beyond their broadcasting range. (And that’s a trend I see accelerating, if anything.)
Once again, getting stories together at this time of the year is tricky. The last Hesperia City Council meeting clocked in at just under an hour, and very little happened that could be reported on for the next issue — the biggest story will require reaching people for comment who will be out of town for the holidays, possibly until January.
And so, naturally, next week’s issue of the Hesperia Star is a full 16 pages anyway. Without the ability to drop in stories from the Associated Press like other papers do this time of year, Peter and I are in the position of spinning straw into gold.
Check back Tuesday to see how we did.
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