I have been a zombie the last couple of days. Mostly still trying to catch up on a crapload of books and DVDs, when not trying to cram in/finish due articles. During a few days I was actually able to finish Takeshi Kitano’s Yakuza trilogy, George Romero’s Trilogy of the Dead, and managed to squeeze in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. All quite brilliant, thankfully. Not a bad one in the bunch. As for movies that are out right now, my favorite parts of Shark Tale were the ones referring to other films, but Sky Captain is fun and a half! They really got to cram in all these genre staples of old pulps, and the Spielberg influence is unashamedly on display. And House of Flying Daggers is out, go see it. Open Water was alright, but nothing unmissable. I finally finished McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales! It really does take me longer to finish anthologies. Anyway, an excellent collection, more hits than misses, and damn can Chabon entice. I am actually having a quasi-difficult time deciding what to read next...

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People who passed away recently:
Jacques Derrida
Christopher Reeve
Janet Leigh
Rodney Dangerfield

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The other week I gave a talk to some kids about comics, which was fun, even though I didn’t have much time to prepare and thus was going along on the fly. Still, I was happily surprised that they were Asterix readers, which definitely did half the work for me already as I just had to address certain things like suggested movement and exaggeration of expression.

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Photobucket have inevitably set a ceiling for their service: 25 MB. Otherwise you have to start paying. Oh well, here we go again...

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Make with the click-click: The Ring 2 teaser (new story, and original director Hideo Nakata), and the long-awaited new Jean-Pierre Jeunet, A Very Long Engagement (Alexis said he saw this trailer attached to House of Flying Daggers, a very good sign indeed).

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The new REM (Around the Sun) didn’t impress me. But the posthumous new Elliott Smith (From a Basement on the Hill) has been on repeat in my room. The first time I heard it I almost felt like crying, wondering if these would be the last "new" songs I ever hear from one of my favorite songwriters. :(