Up to Date

I just finally made posts (not reviews, just ratings) for all the films I've seen to date; 172 this year (79 new releases) and 26 so far this month. Some of the data I'm tracking (just for curiosity) includes runtime, aspect ratio, pace for the year, and average rating. As of today, the average rating for 2008 is 1.83 (well below 2007) and I plan to see approximately 208 movies before the end of the year, although that always dips slightly just before Christmas.

Runtime and aspect ratio are more complex and will take quite a bit more work to see if I can make anything interesting out of those numbers.

Here are days of the week totals:

SU	MO	TU	WE	TH	FR	SA
25	21	23	26	15	26	36

I can't fully explain these numbers. Specifically, why do I basically never watch movies on Thursdays? I suppose it has to do with programming; it's kind of a throwaway day in terms of rare or old stuff that might play just once or twice. Northwest Film Forum will do weekend-only series and plenty of Tuesday-Wednesday slots. I expected Saturday would be highest, although I can't totally rationalize why I see fewer films on Sundays. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were the days to seem movies on campus at Carleton, though, so maybe I subconsciously ignore the cinema on that day in between and the day after.

Cornucopia

I'm honestly not quite sure how this compares with when I was at KRLX, but it seems this year the avalanche of good new music has gotten out of hand. There's a ton of stuff I haven't gotten my hands on yet, and at least another good month of releases to go, but I'm already forgetting very good stuff that came out earlier this year, simply due to quantity. MP3 blogs became definitely unnecessary several months back.

iTunes is showing about sixty records I've liked enough to keep around so far from 2008.

2562: Aerial
Animal Collective: Water Curses
Antony and the Johnsons: Another World
Atlas Sound: Let the Blind Lead...
Beach House: Devotion
The Black Keys: Attack and Release
Black Mountain: In the Future
Blood on the Wall: Liferz
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Booka Shade: The Sun & The Neon Light
Caribou: She's the One
The Clientele: That Night, A Forest Grew
Cut Copy: In Ghost Colours
Carl Craig: Sessions
The Dodos: Visiter
Ellen Allien: SooL
Fleet Foxes: s/t
Fleet Foxes: Sun Giant
Foals: Antidotes
Four Tet: Ringer EP
Fuck Buttons: Street Horrrsing
Gentleman Jesse: Introducing...
Girl Talk: Feed the Animals
Growing: All the Way
Hercules and Love Affair: s/t
Hot Chip: Made in the Dark
James Pants: Welcome
Jeremy Jay: A Place Where We Could Go
Kelley Polar: I Need You To Hold On...
Lindstrøm: Where You Go I Go Too
Loco Dice: 7 Dunham Place
Los Campesinos!: Hold On Now, Youngster
M83: Saturdays = Youth
Matmos: Supreme Balloon
MRC: Miniatures
Morgan Geist: Double Night Time
My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
No Age: Nouns
Philip Sherburne: Salt & Vinegar
Ricardo Villalobos: Vasco
Sally Shapiro: Remix Romance, Vol. 1
She & Him: Volume One
Shearwater: Rook
Sian Alice Group: 59'59
Sun Kil Moon: April
Syclops: I've Got My Eye on You
These New Puritans: Beat Pyramid
Truckasauras: Tea Parties, Guns 'n Valor
TV on the Radio: Dear Science
Vampire Weekend: s/t
Vivian Girls: s/t
The Walkmen: You & Me
Wolf Parade: At Mount Zoomer
VA: Body Language Six (Junior Boys mix)
VA: Steppas' Delight (Soul Jazz dubstep compilation)
VA: You Are My Mate (Dial compilation)

I know I can only make good use of about a third of this volume, but the trouble is deciding precisely which third.

The Last 17 Books I've Read

Sometimes I find hard to actually glean any information from the visual clutter of Goodreads, so here's a list: the last 17 books I've read, abridged. If I can muster the fortitude I'll throw in some links, comments and maybe some more attractive formatting, but I'm already feeling a bit lazy from the longer, darker nights.

Personal Days
Park, Ed

Then We Came to the End
Ferris, Joshua

It Still Moves
Petrusich, Amanda

The Somnambulist
Barnes, Jonathan

Consider the Lobster
Wallace, David Foster

Tintin in America
Hergé

All the Sad Young Literary Men
Gessen, Keith

Gilead
Robinson, Marilynne

Vile Bodies
Waugh, Evelyn

Love in the Time of Cholera
Márquez, Gabriel García

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Martin, Steve

Black Postcards: A Musical Romance
Wareham, Dean

Shortcomings
Tomine, Adrian

The Extra Man
Ames, Jonathan

Heavy Weather
Wodehouse, P.G.

The Conscience of a Liberal
Krugman, Paul

Fox Bunny Funny
Hartzell, Andy

Vancouver: Thoughts

I made a smart decision going to bed fairly early (thus missing A Christmas Tale) and sleeping in as long as made sense. It was the only way to survive the unending, thrice-delayed train journey home, finally opening my door after 2:30am.

Either I dropped a Canadian ten-dollar bill on the street, I will find it in my next load of laundry, or I accidentally left a 125% tip for a bowl of ramen.

It rained a lot.

I did not sightsee all that much, since I watched 9 festival films in about 50 hours. Mostly I just tried to walk a lot of different blocks downtown and looked out over Burrard Inlet for a while.

The pizza all seemed to have sesame seeds in the crust, and was at least passable. Thankfully nobody involved in making the pizza seemed to have unfounded delusions of "New York-style" thin-crust pies like too many places in Seattle. It's actually fiendishly difficult to get that style right, and there are so many other satisfying ways to make a pizza. The Japadog was as tasty as advertised.

I think what really makes the density in downtown Vancouver work is the attention to the pedestrian. None of the streets were overly wide, and all had excellent sidewalks, outward-facing street-level shops seemed mandatory, and mountain views were still nicely preserved in the midst of it all. Kind of sad to wander again through downtown Seattle and witness the parking lots, recessed towers, and uninviting malls. Admittedly the flat terrain was also a bonus.

I appreciated the fact that most of the films were screened inside a single multiplex, particularly one very much in the thick of things commercially. Traveling around the city is nice, but having to do so in a short time between films does not necessarily make for a pleasant experience.

Summer Hours was an uncommonly pleasant movie. I will certainly try to see Wendy and Lucy again when it plays in Seattle, but it's an emotionally draining experience. The Juche Idea is probably better the more seriously you take it; I was not really in on the joke until the end credits. Perhaps "serious" isn't the right word. Chelsea on the Rocks bored me a bit at the beginning, and I started to wonder if it was really just going to be a succession of talking heads, but it gained a lot through the unexpected dramatizations and some of the more jarring transitions.

What with the rain, time, and my general disinclination to photograph things that have already been endlessly re-captured, I didn't take any pictures. But I saw basically everything in this photo set. Throw in a shot of the Empire Granville 7 marquee, this view across False Creek toward downtown, and one high above Canada Place toward the mountains, and we're pretty much set.

Macroeconomics

I've been shocked by the number of bizarre and dubious-to-completely false comments I've heard people making about the bailout plan over the past week. I guess if the media repeat "$700 billion" enough times it's bound to get everyone's attention. It would be nice if a few elementary macroeconomics lessons were included as well.

Today on the bus I heard two people spewing out alternate schemes, each of which seemed off by factors of 10, 100, or more. Getting the arithmetic right is pretty important at this scale. The underlying assumption seemed to be that $700 billion of taxpayer money would be going down a black hole while we hoped for the best. This same assumption is also what I think causes people to wonder what it would be like if we spent the same amount on worthwhile stuff like education, etc. In reality this is more of a risky financial move that won't likely earn a lot of money but won't probably lose it all either.

What this really suggests to me is that most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about where the government spends money in the first place. The widening income gap and continually skyrocketing CEO compensation have been reported for years, if rarely on the front page in screaming type. Fiscal irresponsibility should not be shocking to anyone at this point, although at the least it ought to still be somewhere from frustrating to outrageous.

Then there's the simple fact that generally half of the discretionary portion of the federal budget is spent on defense each year, for FY 2009 about $650 billion total. From GlobalIssues.org via Wikipedia: "The 2005 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined [6] and is over eight times larger than the official military budget of China."

If you are able to contemplate the scale of this factoid, and then recall precisely what the US military has done for us and the world in recent years (ie making the world rather less safe and US citizens much less welcome around the globe), and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are paid for with other money (around a trillion dollars for those two with more spending to come), with that money frequently paid out via exorbitant no-bid contracts to completely ineffective and ruthless companies, I honestly don't understand how you can even be fazed by recent financial news. Compared to where we normally spend our money, I'll be delighted to throw a few hundred billion dollars at the credit market for a change.

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From Paul Krugman: "I’d rather see Dodd-Frank-Paulson, which is much better than the original plan, pass than not. The true cost to taxpayers will probably be close to zero, and it would buy some time. But I’m not passionate about this. The real financial rescue still lies in the future, probably under the Obama administration."