reviews

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Norwalk cartoonist wins pulitzer

(Click the image to enlarge it.) Matt Davies of The Journal News (White Plains, NY) won the 2004 Pulitzer: 2004 Pulitzer Prize: - EDITORIAL CARTOONING. Though a Brit by birth, Davies now lives here in Norwalk, Connecticut.

I love his stuff. You can see his entries here. Davies, 37, beat out Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame and Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

It's interesting that no award was given for feature writing this year. The Pulitzer board spokesbeing said it's because none of the entries received a majority of votes.

posted by lee on 04/06/04 at 10:09 AM
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Friday, April 02, 2004

worth paying full price - Hellboy

We went to see Hellboy tonight. Though I'd never even heard of the comic book before I saw the previews for the movie, the second I learned it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, I knew I'd want to go see it just as soon as it opened. Del Toro made one of my all-time favorite ghost movies, The Devil's Backbone, as well as another creepy movie I just loved: Cronos. Plus he made Blade II and Mimic, while not the best, were nevertheless movies I liked a lot.

Damn, was Hellboy ever good!

Ron Perlman played Hellboy ... Perlman seems to land in any number of weird movies (City of Lost Children, another weirdly, superbly done, wonderful movie that comes to mind) playing a freak of nature of some kind. Pretty much great at playing slightly over the top characters. (Remember him as Vincent in Beauty and the Beast?) Here he did a good job--kind of a Bruce Willis-esque monster. You know, the wisecracking reluctant hero type ("just doin' my job.") Selma Blair played firestarter Liz Sherman -- loved her scenes of mayhem and destruction!

My favorite character, though, is Abraham Sapien, this kind of man/fish. The voice was David Hyde Pierce, and the rest was Doug Jones. Oh, and I loved Kroenen (played by some Czech guy?) -- his character alone was scarier than any of the monsters.

The movie took off right from the beginning, and somehow deftly managed to fill in the Hellboy tyros among us. John Hurt was, as usual, great as Professor Bruttenholm. Rasputin was suitably seductive and evil. This film was just made right, and I wonder if anyone else BUT Del Toro could've made it this well.

I loved the cities under the cities: the subway tunnels, both used and abandoned, under New York and the other place I won't give away, located in Moscow. The look was very noir, the story very much Dark City, the world beneath the world, and also is very strongly influenced by Metropolis, so much so that it almost seemed to be a "what-if" version of that movie as if it had been made post-WWII instead of in 1929.

As most comic book tales are, it's a tale of good and evil, growing up, making choices -- just damned good fun and beautifully filmed (by Guillermo Navarro, who also filmed The Devil's Backbone and Cronos) instead of all preachy. Del Toro clearly loves his monsters, his freaks, loving them for their defects (as John Myers, Hellboy's guide-in-training -- played very well by Rupert Evans -- phrased it).

Just go see it.

posted by lee on 04/02/04 at 09:00 PM
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Friday, March 19, 2004

silly thesaurus?

Plumb Design came up with what they call their Visual Thesaurus. I played with it a little, but I have to admit: I don't get it. It's very confusing.

First, I hate having stuff float all over the screen while I'm trying to read something. Second, when I'm using a thesaurus, I'm looking for just the right word, with just the right nuance, which this application doesn't seem to provide.

When I put my mouse over a word, I expect to see the definition. But no, I don't get that unless I put my mouse over a red dot--though WHICH word the red dot represents isn't obvious. At all. Clicking on a word changes the display to another set of words, all related somehow. If you see a red dashed line, I think it means "antonym."

The biggest pain is trying to go back up the path to get back to your original word, perhaps because you saw a likely candidate along the way and want to find it again. Using the visual map, at any rate. On the right side of the little screen you can see the text-based path, and read definitions, though it's not at all obvious which definition attaches to which word.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like a toy rather than anything useful. I sure wouldn't shell out $2.95 per month for it unless someone could actually demonstrate that it would be useful to me. And show me how to make the fonts on the right side a LOT bigger -- like big enough to read.

Maybe the reason I don't see any point to this "application" is that I expect a thesaurus to be a thesaurus and this does not appear to be a thesaurus. If it's not really a thesaurus, what is it? Maybe if they named it appropriately?

Well, it was fun to play with. I must admit I had neither the time nor the patience to read the 13-page explanation of what it is and how to use it. I figure if something is billed as a visual tool, I shouldn't need to read 13 pages of explanation.

I'd rather just read the dictionary -- much more interesting and much less frustrating.

posted by lee on 03/19/04 at 04:13 PM
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Google AdSense—a scam?

Today, I received this message from Google:

Hello Lee,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/terms
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Like I have any control over how visitors click on my ads? Like I even have that much traffic, or even make much money off of them: I never got paid monthly - and Google only pays monthly if your take exceeds $100 per. I don't know how to program automatic clicking robots or whatever else they're accusing me of doing. At any rate, I wrote this to the "AdSense Team:"

You sent the message quoted below [quoted from the message above], but did not tell me what, exactly, happened. I have never violated any of the terms, etc. and if a visitor to my site has done something such as repeated clicks, how can I prevent this? This suspension is extremely unfair especially as you provide no way to appeal it or dispute it or even figure out what is going on. Please let me know what is going on and how my account can be restored -- especially since your ads are still showing up on my websites even after disabling my account--this is not right.

They sent this non-reply:

Hello Lee,

By disabling your account, we feel that we have taken the necessary measures to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your site.

We understand that you wish to receive specific information regarding the invalid clicks we have observed. Due to the proprietary nature of our monitoring system, we cannot disclose any specific details of these clicks. We would like to reassure you, however, that we have thoroughly re-reviewed your account data upon receipt of your response and have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site. According to our policy on this matter, we have disabled your account in order to protect our advertisers.

With regards to your question about the ads still serving on your site, there may be a delay of up to 48 hours before all of our servers are informed of the change.

As outlined in our program Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to terminate any publisher's participation at any time.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Hmm, so ordinary rules of business don't apply, huh? I sent this reply:

You did not answer my question. You gave a generalized statement about invalid clicks, but never made a specific charge. I'm not asking you to reveal who or from what ISP the invalid clicks came, only to tell me what,
in this instance, actually happened. You disabled my account, yet you continue to serve ads on my sites, without telling me how I'm going to be compensated for displaying your ads on space I own. Nor have you told me whether or not you are going to compensate me for the clicks that were valid -- I am assuming most, and probably all but one, of them were. You also have not told me how I can appeal this decision -- what is my recourse? You also have not told me what I can do about visitors to my site who, for example, may click the same ad more than once -- how can I control this? Don't you have controls in place to handle this -- even my ten-year-old weblog program has controls not to double-count the same visitor ... Am I to assume that businesses should NOT advertise on Google because Google lacks the controls to protect advertisers against fraud? I certainly will let my clients know if this is the case, and that they should either cease advertising on Google or greatly limit their Google AdWords campaigns.

When will I get paid for the January and February clicks?

I'm assuming that Google will screw me over for the bucks they owe me for running all those ads.

If Google can't protect its advertisers from fraudulent clicks, why the hell would anybody run campaigns on the AdSense network? What a waste of money.

What really bothers me about this is that Google has zero accountability. That's not even ethical. And you know, I bet they don't give the advertisers their money back for these allegedly fraudulent clicks. Advertisers are probably told Google can't release their proprietary secret algorithms etc. so "ya gotta pay what we say ya gotta pay." When I ran an AdWords campaign, their click claims never even came close to what my log files were showing me (like they claimed 25 clicks and my log files show only 5 or 6 visitors -- something is just not right!), so I became convinced that the program was laced with too much bullshit non-accountability to waste any more money on.

I wonder how long it will take until Google screws over a critical mass of micro publishers who retaliate by sabotaging the AdSense program. I'm not advocating this, mind you, but I bet it won't take long before this starts happening.

posted by lee on 02/18/04 at 09:17 PM
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Saturday, January 24, 2004

An absurd Conspiracy Club (Kellerman’s latest novel)

Last night, or rather, early this morning, I finished The Conspiracy Club, Jonathan Kellerman's latest novel. It was not one of those start-it-and-read-until-your-eyes-fall-out books. But then, Kellerman's books over the last five years or so haven't been, either.

This book is not an Alex Delaware novel, for which I was glad because I've grown increasingly bored with Delaware, his lady friend Robin, the dog, but not Milo Sturgis, the detective. No, instead, this book is about psychologist Jeremy Carrier (what an awkward name) and is set at a municipal hospital somewhere in the Midwest, in a city located on a lake. The city didn't really evoke Chicago--more evocative of Pittsburgh or Detroit though they don't fit the criteria (the unknown city was very disorienting because it forced a focus on it which detracted greatly from the plot).

The story opens with Jeremy going through the motions of life after his girlfriend, a nurse, was murdered. I almost wrote, "brutally murdered," but realized that all murders are brutal and I'm lately hyper-aware of clichs -- mainly from watching the evening news.

Back to the story. Jeremy, of course, was considered a suspect by the loutish-but-sharp detectives (Kellerman's male cops are all loutish, stoutish, on the crude side, but sharp). When more women are murdered and carved up in the same manner as Jeremy's girlfiend, the cops focus on him even more. But, naturally, Our Hero is innocent, it seems. And for someone who is the focus of a serial killer investigation, his life sure wasn't hell. More like chance encounters with Det. Lout.

Then, the mysterious retired pathologist, Dr. Chess, takes an interest in Jeremy and begins dropping clues about the girlfriend's murder. Chess takes him to a fancy dinner at some kind of club, where Jeremy meets other mysterious people such as a judge, a retired diplomat, a brilliant scientist, etc. The whole dinner scene was quite unbelievable and rather pointless. A lot of this book is rather pointless. The premise is extraordinarily weak -- if Chess knew who the frelling killer was, why did several more women have to die, why didn't he just work with the cops instead of feeding Jeremy these abstruse clues and hoping the shrink would get a clue? This wasn't exactly one of those dinner and a mystery evenings -- women were being sliced and diced for real.

Anyway, the Good Shrink Carrier gets involved with another woman, a resident name of Angela, and of course he's all reticent and guarded with her and so forth. Problem is, I never believed Carrier gave a rat's ass about Angela as much as I believed his was just going with the flow. So the romance didn't work for me.

Finally, at long last and after many, many, many digressions and a singular lack of what could pass as a clue about how to use the Internet to find out information about people, Jeremy figures out Chess' clues. Or does he?

The ending is one of those ultra-convenient "Smedley Saves the Day In the Nick of Time" devices and the whole thing is not, repeat NOT, worth the time invested in reading it. The book is hackwork. There are theories by Amazon reviewers that this is one of Kellerman's very early works dusted off and offered as an antidote to recent Delaware novels. I can buy that. This book certainly is amateur enough to be an early attempt. One of those books that gets published only because the author has enough clout, and is enough of a rainmaker, to get the publisher to go along with it. Either that, or there's some serious slippage going on here.

It's not nearly as awful as my all-time nomination for worst book ever by a normally good writer, Patricia Cornwell's Hornet's Nest. Not by a long shot. But compared with Kellerman's best, it's bad enough that it will make me think twice before investing much time (let alone money) in his next book.

posted by lee on 01/24/04 at 10:45 AM
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Wednesday, December 31, 2003

the evil eye, the bowling ball, and the great big spider

We celebrated the end, at long last, of 2003 by finally going to see LOTR: Return of the King. And I gotta say this--it was great. My favorite character was Eowyn, a warrior woman who actually does something besides look all wistful and pretty (like Liv Tyler's elf). She should've gotten the guy--doesn't seem fair somehow that she didn't. (I don't remember if I had an issue with this when I read the book as it's been so long since I read it, I don't even know if she was actually featured this prominently. Like, it was thirty years ago that I read it, jeez.)

There were some things that didn't quite work, like Orlando Bloom's acrobatics on that elephant thing. And I grew deadly tired of Elijah's (Frodo's) tortured expression. I think his earnest big blue bug eyes will give me nightmares. But I liked just about everything else except the length of time it took to complete things like saving what's-his-name from being burned by his daddy, and the fight with that spider (that really gave me the creeps, especially since I was bitten by a spider a couple of weeks ago, which hurt like hell), and the ending, which lasted, oh, about 45 minutes.

The Orcs and the other creatures in the bad army were extremely interesting. But the beginning of this movie (ROTK, I mean) was pretty confusing--I didn't know what the hell was going on, or where they were or what. A year is too long for me to remember the last scene of a movie (the second one, I mean, whatever that one was called)--I needed a review (though I suspect Stanley did not). I guess I should take more gingko.

The costumes were stunning. Of course, I am partial to Celtic imagery and symbols, so I really liked the clothing and banners. But I especially like the helmets of the good guys. And the swords were very pretty.

I wonder if anyone else thought there were some subplots that could've been dispensed with. I mean, the whole Steward of Gondor thing and the above-mentioned roasting of Son #2. Didn't add anything and it sure didn't explain anything. Or if it did, I missed it. And why did Liv Tyler have to prod Agent Smith into giving Viggio that elf sword, anyway? Would he have let them all perish? And what became of Eowyn? Did she settle for the mad steward's son instead of Viggio? And why did the orb thing have to look like a bowling ball--that kinda wrecked that whole thing for me. I expected to see three holes in it as it rolled across the floor.

It was worth the time to see this movie (nearly 3.5 hours!) And since we saw it at a matine, it worked out to be about less than $2.00 per hour each to be hugely entertained. I'm just very glad I stopped drinking coffee early enough for it not to have been a problem that it was sooo looong. So, before you go, be warned: review at least the ending of Part II so you know what the hell is going on at the beginning, and don't drink anything that will make you need to pee because there really is no good time to take a break.

posted by lee on 12/31/03 at 06:38 PM
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Saturday, November 08, 2003

matrix revolutions—oh my

At the end of Matrix Revolutions, Stanley said, "There's $300 million down the tubes." Which pretty much sums it up.

Though we were both somewhat disappointed with Reloaded, we thought, nay hoped, maybe the best stuff was being saved for this one, so paid our $9.00 per ticket to see it.

If you haven't seen Reloaded, don't spend big bucks to see Revolutions, because you won't understand a thing.

Here's my question. If the "real world" is dirty and dingy and beset with danger and nasty machines and you have to live in this big underground bubble and where ratty looking sweaters (that all look the same), why would you ever take the red pill? Gimme the blue pill, thank you very much.

If you're hoping for answers, forget it. There are no answers, mainly because the questions keep changing. Neo isn't even in half the movie, and the fight for Zion goes on and on and on and on ... and gee whiz, Sarge, I can do it, golly gee I can. The gruff captain part that serves no purpose, The Kid that serves no purpose, the council questioning that serves no purpose, the "Neo trapped in between" that is never explained and serves no purpose. The stuff that could be intensely interesting given very short shrift: the Trainman, the Ghost, the Machine World. But not the Frenchman, played by a very shitty actor.

Why are the Zionists and the Machines at war? No answer to be found here.

Not much time spent in the world above the world--which is what made Mx1 so interesting to begin with. The whole point of the Matrix was the Matrix.

The Wachowski Brothers should have spent some of that money on good writers. They should've waited until Reloaded played before starting on Revolutions--they probably would've made a much better movie. What Revolutions reveals is how shallow and sophomoronic the Wachowski Brothers really are--they're comic- book- movie creators, not philosophers, fer cryin' out loud.

The silliest things in the movie were the battlebots. What moron designed these? Any soldier strapping in to one of these would be dead of internal hemorrhaging after just "walking" a few steps.

And Agent Smith--good grief. I could never figure out why he developed into such a threat, especially to the machines--what, exactly, was the problem, anyway? This is not a trivial question, as the resolution of the whole trilogy hinges on dealing with the threat Agent Smith has become. His lines were among the stupidest of the movie (in a movie with many, many stupid lines).

And what about all the people in the Matrix? I thought Neo was supposed to "save" them. Maybe the WBs finally figured out that there was no way the planetary infrastructure that they'd set up could support a billion or so pod people if they finally woke up and demanded some dinner.

All in all, Revolutions is a huge disappointment. Definitely do not pay full price to see it--even matine prices are a little on the steep side for what you get.

posted by lee on 11/08/03 at 11:43 AM
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Friday, October 31, 2003

Not a BRIMBORION, definitely

World Wide Words is a huge website written and maintained by Michael Quinion, a British writer of books about words (one of his many hats).

The entire site is "about English words and phraseswhat they mean, where they came from, how they have evolved, and the ways in which people sometimes misuse them." I love words; I love this site, which I just discovered today while reading a Webdesign-L posting about line lengths.

I subscribed to his newsletter, which I look forward to receiving as much as I love getting my Word-a-Day newsletter each morning.

posted by lee on 10/31/03 at 09:53 AM
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Sunday, September 07, 2003

3 quick reviews

Spy Kids: Game Over sucks. I mean it REALLY sucks. It's not even bad enough to be interesting. Mercifully, it was short. The 3-D stuff is horrible -- makes it an ugly, nasty little movie. The only part of this movie I liked were the outtakes during the ending credits. I don't even think the kids in the audience liked it since there was none of the twittering and giggling that accompanied the two earlier movies. Avoid it.

Open Range was about 30 minutes longer than it should have been (it lasts 2 hours 15 minutes), but was a pretty decent movie with a kickass gunfight at the OK Stable. It managed to suck in every cliche ever to arise from the genre -- including Sweet Sue, the doctor's sister. But the scenery was gorgeous, the villains villainous, the heroes were heroic. There are no surprises in this movie. And it doesn't hold a candle to to Unforgiven. It's too bad Michael Jeeter died--he always plays such interesting characters. And it was nice to finally see Annette Benning in a role where she actually acted. So, I found Open Range corny, contrived, cliched, but put together well enough so that it didn't drag on too long. My main problem with it is that there were three endings, sorta like the dreadful AI. The first one would have sufficed.

Speaking of Michael Jeeter, we also watched Welcome to Collinswood (I think that's how it was spelled). It is a very funny, quirky movie: Band of Losers pulling off a heist. Bill Macy was really good in this movie. As was George Clooney. We'd never heard of, or noticed this movie, until we spotted it in the video store. It definitely worth watching--it has us laughing out loud and it ended just the way it should have.

posted by lee on 09/07/03 at 09:27 AM
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Saturday, August 02, 2003

Dead Like Me & Lara Crap Tomb Raider etc. etc. etc.

We managed to remember to watch the premier of Dead Like Me in June, and have been watching it ever since. A very odd show, but excellent. It's NOT a ripoff, in any way shape or form, of Six Feet Under [snore]. It's very funny, and develops characters carefully, featuring characters who are like people you actually know. It's not religious like that horrible Touched in the Head by an Angel -- not at all. Being a Grim Reaper is a job, like being a draftee in the Army, not a calling or a mission. As I said, a very odd show, but wicked funny.

And we went to see Lara Crap 2 yesterday. It was better than the first one, and fun, but about as substantive as a puddle. Less believable than James Bond's unbelievable stunts, but cool to watch, nevertheless, especially the jump off some ionospherescraper in TaiPei or Shanghai or maybe it was Hong Kong. That was cool. I like the Kenya segment the best--the scenery was spectacular and the characters were interesting. It would be just as interesting, I think, for Lara to go off tomb raiding and puzzle solving without having to have all that drekky bad guy crap going on. The subplot was weak. But then, I keep forgetting that this is based on a videogame designed for boys. So, given that, it was pretty good. At matine prices, though.

The Hoyts Cinema in Wilton WAS our favorite place to go. Not any more. It's been heading straight to the toilet lately, disorganized, dirty, stuff broken, no adults present. Ticket prices went up, which is bad enough. The commercials got longer, which is worse. But yesterday, I had to shout to get someone to actually show up and take my money.

Then, because I'm very deaf, I tried to get a set of headphones ("assisted listening devices"). The kid behind the counter said I had to give her my driver's license to get a set. Huh? I'm going to hand over my identity for two hours to some teenager? I don't think so. So I asked for the manager, who reiterated that a driver's license was required. The last time, mind you, my library card sufficed. Not any more -- I guess there's a hot market for those crappy headsets that don't even work half the time. All the other theaters around here just hand 'em to me, or ask for my name and phone number in case I forget to turn them in. Nobody requires a driver's license, except this place. So I didn't get them, and as a result, missed some dialog. For this movie, it didn't particularly matter. But for most, it does.

And yes, I will be filing complaints -- especially since the manager, or whatever she was, was pretty rude. I THINK Hoyts is owned by Regal now, but I'll have to call them to be sure. And I have to finish figuring out where I file a complaint about their lack of compliance for accommodating the handicapped. Since when does anyone need ID to go see a movie?

posted by lee on 08/02/03 at 10:24 AM
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