Construction Time Again

The housing crash has apparently not hit everywhere. Apartment construction continues at the UI campus, despite the saturation of new apartment complexes in the last twelve years. The latest is detailed here. And then there is Burnham 310, located at fourth and Springfield. In addition to not meeting their construction deadline, there were mold problems in the drywall! The price for living in this building? $827 for a studio, and $2,043 for a three bedroom unit. Evidently someone figured out that Chicago kids are willing to pay Chicago prices. I'm still trying to figure out what housing is being emptied by the availability of this new housing. It's not like older housing is being destroyed-almost all of the housing remains, except for a few old houses. Even my old abode, the crack house, is still there, though they did flip it a couple years ago.

Taught the Fear of Jesus in a Small Town

Some people are looking at tonight's debate as if Sarah Palin can win over voters with a good performance. As if one debate, where Palin is sure to be well rehearsed on providing non-answers without rambling, is going to make a difference after her embarrassing comments of the last week. I was thinking about adding on to that last sentence in a way to make it Palinesque, but that would be overdoing it. It is clear that Palin is stupid. She could not name a newspaper that she reads. The obvious conclusion is that she doesn't read newspapers. She could not name a Supreme Court decision that she disagreed with. That is because she is not informed. I doubt she has even read Roe v. Wade or understands that the case was decided on a privacy basis. And is it really helping that Palin continues to parade around that baby? Is Palin suddenly going to become more knowledgeable while busy with child care? I am sure we will hear from people after the debate who will say, "see, Palin can handle herself and is competent!" Those are people who would never vote for Obama. It is interesting that intelligence is seen as a liability by many people. Is the Republican Party becoming the party of the stupid? What is really scary is that George W. comes off like a genius when compared to Palin.

It Goes To 11!

One of my new discoveries in the past year is high quality stereo music. I'm not talking about quality in terms of The Beatles versus The Jonas Brothers. I'm talking about the actual production quality of the music, in terms of the mastering/mixing of the music. Mastering involves setting the loudness of music within the limitations of a CD. If the loudness is set too high, the dynamic range of the music is lost. This loudness war has come about for several reasons. The increased loudness can sound like an improvement for those people listening in less than optimal conditions, such as low quality Ipod headphones and car stereos. Unfortunately it makes the music worse, in some cases horrible, for people with high quality sound systems in their home. Listening to this music can be fatiguing. This topic is recently in the news thanks to the new Metallica release, which is a prime example of the loudness mastering. For most new releases people have nothing better to compare them to, but in this case there is a Guitar Hero version of the album that does NOT have the loudness mastering which everyone seems to prefer. Ironically most people are listening to this superior version through illegal downloading. This article provides a great read on the issue. It makes me wonder if Lars has any hearing left after 25 years of touring. Even the mastering engineer is complaining about this release!

Stick That Thumb...

Roeper is leaving Ebert and Roeper. Many movie review shows have been tried over the years. All have failed, except for the ones featuring Roger Ebert. It will be interesting to see what show Roeper ends up on. I don't blame him for leaving. Regardless whether Ebert was coming back, the show really took a turn for the worst when Disney refused to pay Ebert for use of the "thumbs" trademark, thus ending the show's last connection to the Siskel-Ebert period. The rumor is that Disney has been trying to produce the show as cheaply as possible.

I knew it was dark, but I wasn't expecting something this disturbing. The frenetic pacing doesn't allow the audience to relax, as the mayhem continues to ramp up. The Joker keeps Gotham City on edge, and the audience is on edge too, knowing that any character (save Batman) could die at any minute. The fact is, this movie is too extreme for mainstream audiences. There will probably be a big dropoff in box office next weekend, unless the older audience decides this comic book film is worth seeing. As for the two characters who died, one really wasn't part of the comic canon, and the other was a one-trick pony who didn't have much else to offer after this film.

I am still waiting for the "detective" Batman film. After all, Batman started out in Detective Comics. Sherlock Holmes is as popular as ever, with two films just announced for pre-production, so a Holmes-tinged Batman film would be an easy choice. And this would allow for a lighter, more deliberate story without moving backwards to the old mindless action standbys. Possibly the toned-down Riddler (in the form of a Moriarty) would work for this kind of film, although a heretofore unseen in the movies villain would also be welcome.

Joker Joker Joker

The Dark Knight is receiving great reviews, making it perhaps the best reviewed comic book movie ever. It will be interesting to see how well it does at the box office. I have previously speculated that the death of Heath Ledger might dampen the average moviegoer's urge to see this movie. That factor would be overwhelmed by an outstanding movie that leaves audiences awestruck by what they have seen. That could be the case here. Another factor is how dark the movie is. Audiences don't generally flock to dark movies. Anyone remember Batman Returns? This is allegedly by far the darkest adaptation of the Caped Crusader on celluloid. Too dark to refer to Bruce Wayne as the Caped Crusader. At least the movie should live up to its title.

Ebertfest 2008

The number of blogs about the festival seems to have increased greatly over the years, though that is probably more connected to the increased popularity of blogging rather than the increased popularity of the festival. The worst blog is the "official" blog at the Ebertfest site. Not only does she not attend every film (as happened last year), she also fails to make timely posts about the festival (as happened last year). Better and more comprehensive blogging can be found elsewhere like at David Bordwell's blog, which also links to several other blogs. Missing from his list is Mark Pfeiffer's blog, David Poland's blog, and the Daily Illini blogging.

While I did very much enjoy Hamlet, it did not have the impact of some of the other 70mm films I have viewed. This was the sixth 70mm film I have seen at the festival (having missed Oklahoma!), and it is likely that the 70mm format just doesn't wow me as much as it used to. One technical problem did mar the presentation. The sound during the ghost scenes was very distorted, making the dialogue difficult to understand. It sounded like the subwoofers were being overpowered during these scenes. The problem did not reoccur during the other films, so I suspect an adjustment was made.

I sat in the balcony for every showing. Only once did I notice sound coming from the rear speakers behind me, and that was during The Cell.

The after-film questions started out very good, but they tended to deteriorate in quality as the night wore on. People should really limit their questions to 15 seconds. I understand that a comment is sometimes necessary to lay background for a question, but sometimes it is obvious that the questioners just like to hear themselves talk, much to the chagrin of the rest of the rapidly shrinking audience.

I do not know that Roeper was at the festival after Thursday. Considering that this was his first festival, moderating one film and appearing on one panel, I wonder if he really wanted to be there, or if his attendance was out of a sense of obligation.

Underworld was underwhelming, thanks to a lousy story. No wonder Ben Hecht wanted his name removed from the credits. Normally the silent film is the highlight of the festival, but not this time. A better crime/gangster silent film is Tod Browning's Outside the Law.

This was my first viewing of Hulk. My main criticism of the film concerns Banner's father. In the comic book, there was a villain character called The Absorbing Man. Dumb name, but it was actually a cool power. Banner's father took on this power, but the use of this power was skimmed over in the rush to end the film.

Tarsem Singh, the director of The Cell, was surprisingly straitforward and forthright. He used the words "eye candy" in describing his film, with a story that was pieced together in service of that eye candy. He also admitted that the opening scene didn't make a whole lot of sense, as the design in that sequence was actually intended for his second film. Before the film I observed a girl who was evidently stood up by a friend. She ended up belatedly sitting in my row, by herself. Loners are not very common at the festival, and young loners are even rarer, so they stand out.

Considering this was my eighth Ebertfest, it is unfortunate that I do not know more of the attendees. I found it interesting that three high schoolers attended Hamlet, though I did not see them at any of the other films. It was probably a mistake that I sat in the balcony for all of the films.

Scorsese's new concert film on The Rolling Stones is about thirty years too late. That is how long it has been since the geriatric group has been relevant in music. Never acclaimed for the greatness of their albums, their singles ability dried up around 1981. Since that year, their music has been about as successful as Mick Jagger's solo efforts. Not very, in other words. Some would say that John Lennon's musical efforts have not been very successful since 1981 either. Oh wait a second, John Lennon has been dead for that entire span of time.

Thanks to the pathetic baby boom generation, we continue to be subjected to their sustained mediocrity.

Ghosts

The New York Times has a story about the surprise release. Here is footage of a young Reznor, no more than two years before the debut of Pretty Hate Machine, playing second fiddle (actually keyboard) in a band called Slam Bamboo. The 1987 hair is astonishing. For some reason I have it in my head that bad hair was mostly confined to the early eighties, but the bad hair stayed around well into the nineties.

Home of Mold

I happened upon a brief reference to Grog's Pizza today. Grog's was a pizza place at UI on Green Street, in that plaza by Locust that contains the Jimmy John's. Grog's was most notable for the price of its pizza-two small cheese pizzas for $3.99. That's right, $3.99 (the price did go up by my senior year). Mediums and Larges were comparably priced, as long as they were purchased in twos. This was cheaper than Gumby's and Pizza World, who also specialized in cutrate pizza. I thought Gumby's and Pizza World had absolutely awful pizza. On the other hand I actually liked Grog's. It was thick crust pizza, with sweet crust, and a little on the greasy side. We would get barbecue sauce all the time, because the barbecue sauce was good and the regular pizza sauce was nothing to write home about. The thought of a small pepperoni pizza with barbecue sauce has my mouth watering right now. I was turned onto Grog's by the Marmion bunch on my floor at Bromley my freshman year (the same guys who would be my roommates in the crack house two years later). Ian ordered Grog's so much that he had a corner of his room devoted to the Grog's graveyard, which consisted of two (maybe more) stacks of old Grog's boxes, all the way to the ceiling. His plan was to take the boxes into Grog's and demand a free pizza from them for being such a good customer. I don't remember if he ever followed through on that plan. Anyway, Grog's closed down in 1995-I don't remember if it closed down before I graduated, but a new pizza place was already there by September of that year (Dewey's Pizza, which only lasted two years or so). Meanwhile, a Grog's in Normal remained open until 1998-which of course was the year when I moved to Normal, so I just missed it. Here are two paragraphs I found when googling Grog's, and I wish I had a picture of that pizza box to show you!
"A now-defunct local pizza delivery business, noted for being very inexpensive and for being the only establishment that offered pizza topped with barbecue sauce. It got its name when the founder, a regular Plato user, asked the readers of a notesfile what he should name his new restaurant; inexplicably, this joke entry became the winner. Grog’s was the pizza of choice among the sysops at CERL 165, who ordered with such regularity that the restaurant had been known to call them back after an orderwas placed to let them know that they hadn’t ordered their “usual”, wondering if this was perhaps an oversight. Officially, the restaurant’s name was simply “Grog’s,” but the “Home of Chow” portion was used as an advertising tag line on its pizza boxes. Regular eaters, however, quickly noticed a quirk in the lettering of this tag line: the word “CHOW” was written in such a way that, when turned upside down, read “MOLD”. A popular dorm room door decoration for many years was a Grog’s box with “Chow” carefully cut out and inverted, so that the box now read, “Grog’s Home of Mold.”

The Killing Joke

The ramifications of Heath Ledger's death in regards to the new Batman movie are unknown at this time, but it certainly doesn't look good for the movie. Even though primary shooting has been completed, this makes reshoots difficult, though presumably they could pass off someone else as the character when in full makeup. If this movie wasn't already going to be dark, it had better be now. Light popcorn fare is not a good combination with a recently deceased, twentysomething actor. Marketing is another problem. Will the new trailers contain any shots of Ledger?