YellowHandMan

The Wrestler, The Spirit & The President

Finally watched THE WRESTLER today. The hype from mainstream critics and the wrestling press probably had my expectations too high, but I found it rather trite and predictable. Still, the performances from Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei were fantastic, especially Rourke who is completely believable as The Ram. I think the bit that brought it down for me was the storyline with the Ram's daughter - Evan Rachel Wood was whiny and unlikeable, and there was never really any depth to their relationship (although that was perhaps understandable in the context of the story, since he'd walked out on her at a young age).

Also started watching THE SPIRIT, but couldn't get past the first ten minutes - looks like Miller directing is the same as Miller doing comic books nowadays, i.e. rubbish. He can't decide whether to be hard-boiled, or a parody of hard-boiled. Perhaps I'd appreciate it more if I was familiar with the Eisner originals (as some have said it is actually quite faithful to those).

Finally, watched the first ten minutes of the original FROST/NIXON interviews. Nixon comes across as completely delusional, in thinking he can actually explain his way out of Watergate.

Oh, and watched the complete pilot of GLEE (previously had only seen the musical numbers). Good stuff, but it seems strangely remote, as if it doesn't dare to take itself seriously for fear of being too schmaltzy. So it's knowingly schmaltzy, which sort of defeats the purpose.

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Had a nice lunch at Brewerks @ SIS. Sophie slept through it peacefully, while Ryan had fun cycling and running around as usual, and also stuffed himself with spaghetti and pizza. Two happy kids = two happy parents.

Yesterday's YellowHandTweets after the cut, posted by LoudTwitter.

Must-see TV

TIME's 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time

In alphabetical order, which at least avoids the "why is x ahead of y?" debates. No glaring omissions, although I find it odd that this list isn't restricted to series - one-off specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas and the 1983 nuclear war TV movie The Day After (that scared the hell out of America) also qualify.

Chow Yun Fat rules!

Spent a couple of hours trawling YouTube for Chow Yun Fat clips, including this classic from my childhood.

The rest of the clips I found - including other great stuff from CYF's TV soaps and his John Woo classics - are compiled in this playlist. Enjoy!

"Eat the rice!"

Universal : A New Word for 'Stupid'

Why are companies named Universal so stupid?
(Link courtesy of Daring Fireball)

First, Universal Music (owned by Vivendi) decide to sell non-DRMed tracks on also-ran services, but not on iTunes. Then, the boss of Universal Studios (owned by NBC, which is owned by GE) says that the format war is "the very best thing that ever happened for consumers, retailers (and) studios".

Now, NBC-Universal pull their TV shows off iTunes because Apple won't agree to sell individual episodes for US$4.99. That's US$100 for a 20-episode season, for not-even-DVD quality. Or you can just get the episodes free off BitTorrent. Idiots.

It's almost as if these people don't want to succeed at selling content online, so that they can keep selling digital content for higher prices in physical packages.