film

Night Nurse, starring Barbara Stanwyck.  Some kind person has uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.

"In a big way, sister."

The Oatmeal's assessment of the Twilight phenomenon is pretty funny:

Beyond that, it's just a romance novel with the occasional vampire teen drama bullshit peppered here and there. It doesn't really break any new ground in the realm of vampire fiction, other than portraying vampires as a family of uncomfortable retards who prance around the woods eating deer and bunny rabbits.

We went to see New Moon on the Friday after it opened.  I thought it would be fun to go with a big crowd (it was) and fun to watch a dumb movie while keeping expectations low (it wasn't).  I hated New Moon, mostly because I hated the main character: she's a superficial, empty-headed asshole who shits all over her friends at every opportunity.  And teenage girls are meant to identify with her.  Yuck.  We're supposed to believe that Edward loves her more than death-life itself, but even he can't provide with any specific reasons why he feels this way.

Also the werewolf special effects were lame.

Also the movie would have been 25% shorter if Kristen Stewart could have delivered her lines in anything but a Shatneresque, halting mumble.

Also the wigs.  Oh, god, the wigs.

There's an interesting article at Wired about about a competitor for the Netflix algorithm prize who is using behavioral economics techniques instead of mathematics-based techniques.  He doesn't reveal many specifics, except that he's using the concept of "anchoring," which is the idea that exposure to numbers will influence how a person makes choices (like whether to buy something, or, in this case, the how to rate a DVD).

The example given in the article is simple: if a person watches three movies in a row and gives them each 4 stars, then watches an even better movie, they would probably give that movie 5 stars, because it's one better, right?  But if they watched 1-star movies in a row, then followed them by the same good movie, they would probably give it a lower score, like a 3 or a 4.

(Also worth reading: a recent article at the New Yorker on the subject of anchoring and why we make systematic irrational decisions.)

Cristy and I finally got around to watching Children of Men over the weekend. When the film was over, we watched all the extras on the DVD. Then we watched the film again.

It's an incredible film. I couldn't stop thinking about it all the next day. I think I can say that it's the best science fiction film I've ever seen. Yes, even better than Starship Troopers.