Month: August 2007

The Perfect Cup of Coffee?

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When I was down in La-La-Land last week I picked up a bag of David Lynch coffee. I don’t have a coffee maker, but dammit, I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to try Lynch’s own blend. So I have decided to actually get a proper coffee maker. Trouble is: all the other times I’ve had a drip coffee maker the resulting brew has sucked big time. And I had washing up just for one cup. AAAAAAannnnnnnd my place is small, with no counter space. So what can I get? I came across this Metafilter discussion on coffee. I love the ‘net! Now I have lots of options.
French press or Moka Express (Stainless Steel only, never aluminum!) or–my favorite by the looks of it–the Aerobie Aeropress.
Other tips: use a burr grinder, not a blade grinder. (Damn! That’s what I have!)
Correct brewing temp is 195-205 degrees. (What am I supposed to do, take the water’s temperature?)
Kona coffee is really good and the real thing is real expensive.
But why not roast your own beans? Hmm, this is starting to get complicated…

Hot Rod

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hot_rod.jpg
USA, 2007
Dir. Akiva Schaffer
Not perfect, but if you like the Lonely Island vids, then you could certainly do worse than this Adam Sandberg comedy, in which he plays a wannabe stuntman who plans to jump 15 school buses to raise money for his step-father’s heart transplant…so he can kick the old man’s ass. That’s the kicker in this film that’s half surreal and half an affectionate riff on late-80s teen flicks like Karate Kid. For goodness’ sake, 90% of the songs in this film are by Europe! And the rest are by John Farnham!
To be honest I wanted to laugh at this more than I did, what with Will Arnett in it and lots of slapstick goodness. I was reminded of the anything-goes attitude of early Stephen Chow (compare this to Chow’s Love on Delivery and tell me I’m wrong), and there’s one line by a newscaster that had me howling in the theater along with the three other people who had paid to see it.
A lot of the humor is undone by either: bad directing (Schaffer not knowing where to point the camera), bad editing (cutting too soon and not letting things hang just a little bit longer), or bad producing (leaning on both director and editor to cut the time down). Who knows? Check the riot scene and see what I mean.
Worth owning on DVD–lots of quotables. Hopefully they’ll be able to let rip next time, because this still feels very restrained.

The Stupidest Thing Camille Paglia has said, ever

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jarjarbinks.jpg
I’m used to Paglia writing things I disagree with, but this is boneheaded to the extreme.

On the culture front, fabled film directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was certainly a cold douche for my narcissistic generation of the 1960s. We who revered those great artists, we who sat stunned and spellbound before their masterpieces — what have we achieved? Aside from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, is there a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” or “Persona”? Perhaps only George Lucas’ multilayered, six-film “Star Wars” epic can genuinely claim classic status, and it descends not from Bergman or Antonioni but from Stanley Kubrick and his pop antecedents in Hollywood science fiction.

If by “multi-layered” she means “multiple layers of poo, each new layer stinkier than the last” well yes.
And to answer her question: The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Mulholland Dr., Rosetta and/or The Son, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, The Wind Will Carry Us, Nostalghia, etc.
Jumping Kee-rist, that’s a stupid rhetorical question.