Watched Grave of Fireflies last night. Thank goodness I had some unwatched Azumanga Daioh on hand to cheer me up again - I watched all of disc 3 to compensate.
I've also been watching Bubba Hotep - the two commentaries, the documentaries, everything. I've been looking forward to watching it based solely on the one line summary, "Bruce Campbell as old Elvis in a retirement home with a black JFK fighting an ancient mummy" - but I hadn't realised that instead of just being a comedic horror, it was actually a redemption story, as well as a comment on how we treat old people in our society. I mean, it's got funny bits in it as well, and horror things, but I think that it manages to be a deeper movie than that, whereas, say, Tongan Ninja gives you precisely what it says on the box. I think Tongan Ninja is a fun film, but in the event I ever make a movie, I hope it's closer to Bubba Hotep.
Actually, I hope it's considerably lighter, with less swearing and cancer of the penis. But in terms of unexpected depth, BH isn't a bad thing to aim for.
***
While it's popular to say that exams don't prepare you for the real world, I would say that this is a pack of lies, at least for some aspects of my job. Being told there's something wrong with a system, and trying to puzzle it out, feels exactly like some of the exams that I had at university.
Actually, if you include the corrections that teachers would send out, saying, "Sorry, there's a typo that means it's unsolvable as stated - here's the actual question," and, "Whoops, we forgot to include this essential piece of information, let's put it up on the board now," then the resemblance is even closer.
Anyway, I'm slowly tracking down an interelated series of problems with a piece of software that I am responsible for on the grounds that I was the one that oh-so-foolishly touched it last. I've come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to get rid of some of these things is to break them in a really simple way, say, "Oops, I'm really busy, can you fix that," and then pass it off the next thing that goes wrong to the sucker who picked it up, on the grounds that I'm still busy, and they fixed it last time... which is pretty much how I got into this position in the first place, come to think of it.
Anyway, we're slowly uncovering stuff, and I should try to document it, to make it easier to push the problem onto someone else's plate. Or to deal with it more quickly when it turns up again on mine, which seems more likely.
***
There's occasional speculation about our future at work. The truth of the matter is, we probably won't know what's going on until it's pretty much upon us - that's more or less how it happened with the other two big projects that we got between LotR and King Kong, anyway. It doesn't seem like PJ's next film will require all that much in the way of digital effects, so I've heard some artists worrying about a big down-size; but on the other hand, we're unlikely to just hang around until PJ is ready to start his next film.
Well, both I and my mortgage company jolly well hope it's unlikely, anyway. ;)
***
When reading Hitherby Dragons, someone linked to an essay written by someone whose mother was involved with a serial killer. The essay is very good, but I think the most interesting thing is the comments - it shows me very clearly some of the weird religious politics that go on in the States, on both sides of the fence.
***
There's an email doing the rounds - again - advocating that people boycott certain petrol companies, because we're entitled to cheap petrol. It's originally from California, and seems to make the rounds in a slightly modified form every so often. At least it's not a request for postcards to a dying child, or promises that Bill Gates will send me an ipod if I pass on an email message that he'd have no way of tracking.
Posted by svend at April 18, 2005 4:06 PM