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For a movie made by a lot of people I respect, Beowulf is pretty spectacularly bad. I rented it via iTunes last night and watched it with my girlfriend, and about halfway through I turned to her and commented that I hoped whoever wrote the screenplay was never allowed to write again. Imagine my surprise when we reached the end and I discovered the screenplay was written (at least in part) by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors. Party foul, Neil. Major party foul.

Even worse, they decided to do the entire movie in CGI. While I enjoy a CGI movie as much as the next guy, the director and producers apparently decided to pour all of their budget into kickass water, cloth, and hair. Apparently no one thought to remind them that little things like facial expressions are actually way more important than long flowing locks. As a result, the dialogue sequences are like watching wax dolls who are half-asleep. Add that to the terrible script, and you’ve got a recipe for hilarity, but not in a good way.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a movie you can mock the whole way through, or some mindless fantasy violence, then Beowulf might be for you. Just don’t expect the normally high caliber of the actors and writers to mean anything.

Judging by number of books owned, C.J. Cherryh is my favorite science fiction author. Although I had an early love affair with Orson Scott Card, he’s not consistent. Cherryh’s novels are consistently excellent and no one can build an alien culture the way she can.

I’ve recently been reading some of Cherryh’s older books, and as a result picked up Alliance Space which contains the novels Merchanter’s Luck and Forty Thousand in Gehenna.

Merchanter’s Luck is reason enough to buy the book. It’s a classic Cherryh novel (tense action from a close third person perspective in space), and has a nice dash of romance which isn’t something I usually expect from Cherryh. I highly recommend it.

Forty Thousand in Gehenna is unlike any other book that I’ve read. It takes place over 200 years, and in some ways almost feels like an exercise in world building and backstory rather than a traditional novel. It’s fascinating, but is unlikely to appeal to everyone (I’m not sure if I’ll reread it any time in the near future, either). It’s a shame that Cherryh hasn’t published anything using the unique culture that she builds in Gehenna; the two-page epilogue cried out for a sequel.

In any case, Alliance Space is an interesting collection, and certainly worth a read if you enjoy Cherryh (if you’ve never experienced Cherryh before then the Foreigner series might be a better place to start).

Bookends is on sale for 50% off today April 3, 2008 only over at the MacUpdate Promo. Although I haven’t tried Sente in a while, when I was doing my senior thesis Bookends was the best reference software on the market for Macs (Sente had a nicer interface, but didn’t support the social sciences as well; probably more appealing if I were in medicine). If you do research, you really ought to give Bookends a look; it’s an invaluable tool, even if it’s a pretty ugly program at first glance (although maybe version 10 has a more Mac-like interface; I primarily used version 9).

MacUpdate usually runs some level of sale on the software for a few days or weeks after the initial promo, too, so even if you miss the one-day 50% off deal it would probably be worth checking out.

This is why Omni Group is great. Less than a month after they release a full-version paid upgrade for OmniGraffle, they unveil a beta for the previous version to fix some Leopard bugs.

Omni Group may be the classiest software company I know. Kudos to them.

The Sight by David Clement-Davies is a bit of a let-down. I had picked it up at the same time I bought Fire Bringer, and while the plot and idea behind The Sight are interesting (who doesn’t like prescient wolves?), the quality of writing hasn’t improved any since Fire Bringer. Clement-Davies has a really bad habit of using exposition to describe every stupid thing in the book. If a wolf mentions a mystical city, then Clement-Davies instantly goes off into a tangent about how actually the Romans built it back in blah de blah de blah, which pretty much kills the momentum of the story. I like it when authors research their topics, but not when they beat me over the head with their findings.

Add to that the fact that he constantly tells about emotion rather than showing it, and you’ve got a book that feels much longer than it should. I was hoping that these tendencies in Fire Bringer were part of the first book syndrome, but I’m beginning to think that Clement-Davies is simply a mediocre writer. To add insult to injury, every dang myth in the book is a rip-off of some human myth, religion, or story (Little Red Riding-Hood as one of the earliest wolf stories? Shoot me now), making the whole wolf culture feel forced.

If you like anthropomorphic animal stories, then I recommend reading The Sight rather than Fire Bringer (evil psychic wolves are a bit more believable than fascist Hitler deer), but overall Clement-Davies’ work has left me feeling more frustrated than anything else. His creative approach to animal stories has a lot of potential that isn’t quite realized thanks to the quality of the storytelling.

Feast of Love should really have been called “Sex and Sadness”. My girlfriend rented it from iTunes and told me it was like Love Actually but more realistic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Love Actually, but the cover of Feast of Love made it look like a romantic comedy and after a weekend otherwise filled with realistic, tactical shooter violence I was in the mood for a light comedy or romance so I grabbed my girlfriend’s computer and watched it.

Oops. Now I am sad and shall need to eat ice cream. Feast of Love is a bit of a downer, even if it overall has a happy message. If you like montage-style movies that are very true to real life, then you’ll probably enjoy it. It doesn’t really have anything earth-shattering to say about the human condition, but it is a surprisingly realistic portrayal of life for something with big-name actors in it. Overall feeling: meh. Not a bad movie, but not great. And like I said, now I’m sad. Watch it if you’re feeling bittersweet; I recommend renting over buying.

Via Daring Fireball:

A decade ago, Wired was my favorite magazine. Today, they print mind-numbing tripe like Leander Kahney’s 3,500-word cover story, “How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong”.

Nothing special (just another of John Gruber’s brutal tear-downs of an illogical article about Apple), but I completely agree that Wired has gone downhill (I’ve pointed it out before). Although I still sometimes find a good article in Wired, most of the articles I’ve read recently have made me wonder if there is an editorial staff, and if so why they don’t appear to have any idea what good journalism is.

You know it’s bad when a guy whose primary interest throughout school was printing lies is able to spot a publication that has lost its sense of what makes good journalism good.

Shoot ‘em Up is a movie that is in all ways gratuitous. Gratuitous sex (only one scene, but it’s really gratuitous). Gratuitous gore (lots). Gratuitous violence (lots doesn’t cover it; “constant” comes closer). No real character motivation, plot, or relationship with physics unless you’re willing to take your disbelief out back and shoot it.

I had mixed emotions about this movie. On the one hand, really over-the-top violence is sometimes hilarious (Kung Fu Hustle is possibly the greatest action movie ever). On the other hand, I’m often very uncomfortable with realistic violence (trying to watch Braveheart was a disaster). I probably won’t watch Shoot ‘em Up again because it was a little too violent/graphic for me, but I did laugh most of the way through. Your mileage will vary; rent first.

Objectively, it’s a really bad movie. But bad intentionally, and pretty hilariously.

I’m just going to step right up and admit that I love Scribbles. The simplicity of the program and the beauty of its interface make it a joy to use; takes me straight back to my KidPix days, but so much more elegant.

Now Scribbles 1.2 is out and it adds the only two things I was sorely missing: an eyedropper tool (that lets you pick colors from anywhere on screen, not just in Scribbles) and the ability to move, rotate, and scale single layers (instead of only being able to move the whole document). Here’s the best bit: the addition of layer-specific moving/scaling/rotating necessitated the addition of a single tool and a contextual interface element. Hey Adobe, Pixelmator, and even Acorn: are you watching? You could learn something about how necessary all those buttons and menu commands are.

The update also adds the ability to hold down shift to draw straight lines, automatic Sparkle updating, an optional grid, and several welcome interface tweaks (more details in the Scribbles blog). If you haven’t tried Scribbles, you’re missing out on a great little app. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes to occasionally scribble something on-screen.

I just watched the most original movie I’ve seen all year, and it was a Japanese animated movie called Paprika. Paprika was a fantastic movie with stunning animation, an original plot, and just enough reality intermingled with the dreaming to keep the action coherent and you on your toes. This is one of those movies where you’ll want to watch it twice to make sure that you didn’t miss anything.

My favorite scene is where two characters are driving in a car in the rain. As one of the characters talks about how several dreams have merged into a collective dream the camera focuses on a water droplet slide down the windshield, growing bigger as it subsumes other droplets and finally flying off with its own momentum.

It’s a beautiful piece of visual metaphor, and pretty much encapsulates the detail and design that made me fall in love with this movie. Keep in mind that although animated, this isn’t necessarily a kid-friendly film, mainly thanks to a couple scenes that could turn into nightmare material (and some female nudity). Other than that, though, I recommend Paprika without reservations.