Recently enjoyed
Wow, it's summer and my brain is in a pickle jar. Here are some things I've enjoyed lately. Your mileage may vary, though hopefully not by much.
My son Noah, for whom Spongebob is the yard stick for all entertainment, was sucked into The Cat Returns in under three minutes. That's a record. Just for reference, he refused to watch Finding Nemo, and wouldn't sit through the Incredibles the first time through. The Cat Returns is a Studio Ghibli film, though not directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Saw Batman Begins last week. At one point I asked myself "... but when does Batman end?" The new movie does a great job with the dark knight's origins, but then turns into ordinary superhero fare (i.e., the fight scenes could have been from Daredevil). Good fun, though.
Christian Bale beefed up for Batman, but slimmed down for The Machinist. A lot--he's positively biafran. Still, one of the best films I've seen in a while. Except for...
Primer. Brilliant. I could've easily watched it three more times. (On the other hand, I had to ask myself: why does intricate plotting so often involve time travel/shifting? Isn't a bit a too easy to construct a paradoxical time-travel plot?)
On some level, I suspect, Keith Ferrazzi is kind of a knob. But I enjoyed Never Eat Alone, his book on networking. I'm developing on my own awkward, self-conscious version of the deep bump.
Noah and I have been playing Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker together. One more tri-force shard to go, and then we're off to save Hyrule. It's a video game bonding experience--he even gave me a hand-made Zelda Father's Day card.
In lieu of blogging here, I added a couple of posts to Tagsonomy over the last few weeks. If you're into that whole tagging thing you might want to check out The Death of Hierarchy? and Tom Coates on filing vs. annotative tagging.
Lastly, I'm going to be hiking the Brazeau Loop in Jasper National Park in July. It's about 80 km over three high passes. The pictures look pretty good.
