Micro-mini-pico-nano review: The DaVinci Code

Got the book to see what all the fuss was about, and have come to the conclusion that the Great Unwashed are also the Great Un-clued. After reading the first six chapters or so, I have the following to offer:

1. It's designed to be read by people with ADD
• no chapter I have read so far is longer than a few pages.
2. The book is definitely fiction
   • written in a classic "whodunit" style
3. It is not great writing. It is not even good writing.
   • but it is Good Enough For a Detective Thriller™
     

Halftime

Drove to work today with the bike on the carrier, rode about 4 miles at lunchtime, down to the dump, behind it just shy of Twin Creeks where I took an access road out to Carribean, and then Moffett Pk Blvd to Crossman, where I had lunch at La Mélange and then biked back to work.

It's been very quiet, only a couple of calls, two of them Not My Problem™.

Been trying to call Mom at her new digs all day, but no answer. Phoned the main desk & got the floor nurse, who said she was either out schmoozing with the other captives inmates residents or in rehab. This time of day it's probable that Dad is there, so no use calling him at home.

Review: Chronicles of Narnia

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was dead boring. I rarely do this, but about halfway through I shut off the DVD player and did Other Things and did not return to finish the movie till two nights later.

I had read one of the Aslan book about 20 years ago, but not this one. I know, it's weird to not start with the first book, but I bought it at a used bookstore because I liked the cover art, and it was the only CS Lewis tome on the shelf. He's a tough read. First of all because his writing is stilted, and secondly because of his strong Jesus message, which he beats his readers over the head with while never coming right out and actually naming Jesus.

What was good:
Costumes were superb.
So was set dressing.
There were some clever special effects done with CG cherry blossoms.
Cinematography had its moments.

What wasn't:
The acting. The children were not particularly talented, had trouble enunciating, had limited facial expressions and were downright unattractive. Tunmus (whom I thought was named Thomas until I turned on the subtitles) couldn't decide how gay he was, and he mumbled. The White Witch had one facial expression and it was (appropriately, I guess) frozen in place. Her neck looked like it had a metal rod up the back, at a slight angle from the rest of her body. It hurt to look at her.
Using live "talking" animals did not work for me. I would have preferred animated characters, especially for Aslan.
The film was way too violent for the G audience it targeted. Especially the Aslan sacrifice scene. I cringed at that myself.
Audio engineering was horrific. I couldn't hear the dialog over the music most of the time, they played games with the sound by cranking it way too high for the scenes without dialog, and then hit the mute button for the slow-mo snippets. Amateur. Juvenile.

WTF?
Won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup. I don't see why, there was little in the way of makeup as far as I can tell. Masks all over the place, but that's costuming, not makeup. The humans looked pasty-faced all through the movie - nothing to give a statue for there. It was also nominated for sound mixing, which makes no sense either.

Baycon2006 Part III - Sunday

It was a late night Saturday so I got there a little late Sunday, missed the 10 am Mission to Mars panel but by 11:30 it was panel madness. I started out at Evidence of Temporal Engineering, with Ctien, Michael Flynn, Brad Lyau and Larry Niven. It was pretty interesting, lots of discussions of the paradoxes - if history was being engineered by people from the future, how would we know? We wouldn't. Flynn is very enjoyable to listen to in these panels, I saw him on several, his knowledge of statistical analysis combined with a flair for the quick clever pun is highly entertaining.


Niven-Flynn

The moderator never called on me, so I didn't get a chance to turn the tables and point out that we are temporally engineered from the past. Books like The Bible, Koran and Stranger in a Strange Land carry their message into the future, way past the lives of their authors, and if that ain't temporal engineering, nothing is.
( More words, and lots more pix.... )

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Leftover anecdote from Saturday night:
After Masq, I was coming off the patio through the sliding glass doors into the Con Suite, wearing my plantation white suit & cowboy hat, and squeezing through in the opposite direction was Jerry Pournelle, who looked at me and exclaimed "Why, it's Colonel Sanders!".


photo by rmjwell with some photoshopping by moi.

BayCon 2006 - Part IV - Monday

A short day, arrived just in time to run into scendan and _oy_ on their way out, with poor ol' seamoose pointing out that they started leaving 20 minutes ago.

I was going to scoot upstairs to Jerry Pournelle's talk on Inventing The Future, but, since it was open, got in line to buy a 2007 membership. The line was short, but it still took 20 minutes for them to process the three people ahead of me. farmount was a couple of people behind me, and may have reached the desk by lunchtime. Maybe.
( More text & photos behind the cut )