Al Franken interview

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16157

Nifty little interview with Franken, as he talks about the influence of Fuck Snooze and the rest of the right-wing media on our society. I'm very much looking forward to his book.

Yet another celebrity

This time, it was Larry Doby.

If you said, "who?" then you're probably not a huge baseball fan.

Larry was the American League's Jackie Robinson. The first black man to play baseball for any American League team (Bill Veeck's Cleveland Indians), making his debut just a few months after Robinson. And a damned fine baseball player. Not that I've seen him play anywhere but on ESPN Classic, but he had a sweet swing -- think Jon Olerud, if you only follow the game today. He was as much a pioneer as Jackie, but he's so often forgotten.

He's a Hall of Famer, of course, although he only got there a few years ago (let's hear it for the Veteran's Committee). I'm glad that happened before he died.

Anchor Bay makes me happy.

Anchor Bay has announced a whole buncha DVDs (this according to DVDfile.com). They include:

Xena: Season 2. My favorite season, featuring "Warrior, Princess, Tramp," the first Meg episode (with Lucy Lawless playing three different characters), "A Day in the Life," which was not only the first episode I ever watched, but featured the infamous Hot Tub Scene, the nifty "A Necessary Evil," with my two favorite villains (Callisto and Velasca), "For Him the Bell Tolls," Featuring Joxur The Mighty, and "The Quest," with Xena in Bruce Campbell's body. Not that Season Three is anything to complain about either, but Season Two was just damned near perfect.

The Hills Have Eyes: A two-disc set for one of the great low-budget '70s horror flicks. This is still my favorite Wes Craven work to date. Brutal, nasty, and completes the awkward city/country horror trilogy of that decade (along with Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). The disc is supposed to have commentary by Craven, during which I hope he intends to explain what the fuck he was smoking when he made the sequel.

and

Neon Maniacs, a truly terrible '80s horror movie (about monsters who melt in water living inside the Golden Gate Bridge), which, for some reason, I really like (okay, the reason is that I like pretty much any cheesy monster movie). It had a decent soundtrack, too.

The first two are ones I'll definitely own. The last, if I can find it dirt cheap used, might also make its way into my library.

Things to do before I leave on Saturday:

Get travel alarm clock.

Get deodorant.

Pack laptop.

Remember to bring ethernet cable and power supply!

Finish Bookslut column on Robert Bloch.

Start second Bookslut column (or possibly feature) on whether the Stoker Awards have outlived their usefulness.

Pack clothes!

Find my business cards.

Set Amazon Seller Account to "On Vacation."

Finish Westfield Order.

Call Mom, let her know I'll be out of town.

Call a cab.

Download new IF games for laptop, since I may be slightly bored for five days. :-)

Finish PowerPoint presentation (like that'll happen before Monday).

Finding Nemo

shadesong and I decided to catch this yesterday afternoon.

I'm still blown away by it.

This is the movie that Pixar has been building towards all these years. The Toy Story films are fun, but far from perfect. Monsters Inc, although something I adored, just never managed to work on the adult level for me. It's a great kid's film, but it just lacked a little bit. But this was fucking perfect, on every level.

I'm a sucker for any sort of fatherhood movie, of course. Both as a father, and as someone who grew up without one, it's a theme that can get to me in almost any film. But that's not all that makes this a good flick.

It's perfectly cast. From Albert Brooks as Marlin, all the way down to minor appearances by John Ratzenberger (as a manta ray) and Erik Per Sullivan (as a squid with a mild ink problem), every fucking voice is perfect. The lobsters have New England accents. The turtles are all surfer dudes stright out of a Keanu Reeves festival. There are characters played by Erik Bana, Willem Dafoe, Vicki Lewis, and Allison Janney, all doing a great job.

And the characters! This the most realized ensemble ever put together in an animated picture. Sure, the leads (neurotic Marlin, ditzy Dory, and cute Nemo) are wonderful, and given a huge amount of depth (amazingly so, given how easy it would be to leave them all as the one-note characters, especially Ellen DeGeneres's Dory, whose memory-challenged character becomes so much more touching than the typical comic relief sidekick). But the minor characters are every bit as realized. The father-figure feelings of Dafoe's Gil towards Nemo; the love that Coral and Marlin feel towards each other; the love Crush feels towards his kids. It's all there.

You don't just get that with good voice actors. You don't even get there with a great screenplay and direction. You also need great animation. And this film has it. In spades. This is a truly gorgeous film. But never overwhelmingly so -- you're never forced sit up and take notice of how detailed the animation is at the expense of the plot. Instead, this movie immerses you in the undersea world, and for two hours, you're under the water, just like Marlin himself.

The jokes work for everyone, from the usual slapstick for the kids, to little references that only adults could possibly get (without ever making the movie inaccessible for the young ones). They're perfectly woven into the plot, too.

The highest praise I could give this movie? It's as good as a Miyazaki film.

I need some good Nemo icons.

Anyway, off to a meeting and then lunch, then I'll stop posting and start responding to comments.

Dear ESPN

( cut if you're one of the folks who doesn't give a damn about Baseball for some reason )