In a nutshell, I’m pretty happy with the Kindle. I don’t think it replaces using my other ebook enabled devices, such as my iPhone or iPad, but it’s a good way to read ebooks. If you’ve been waiting for a device to make the leap to ebook, I’d say the new generation of Kindles and other current generation e-ink devices are good enough to make that leap. If you already use a smartphone or tablet and are satisfied with reading ebooks on those devices, there’s no necessity of getting a Kindle or similar device, but you may enjoy using it as much or more.

I’m pretty impressed with the Kindle as a whole. The refresh rate on the e-ink screen is fast enough to be tolerable, which I had qualms about on prior generations. The clarity is more than acceptable, and it works pretty well at the essential task of presenting text to be read. Amazon’s Kindle bookstore is also one of the best available and purchasing an ebook directly from the device or from something else and sending it to the device is easy to do.

The flaws of the Kindle are how awkward it is to navigate a list of hundreds of ebooks, and how slow the onscreen keyboard can be. The navigation isn’t slow per se, but it is slow compared to using iBooks or some other app on a tablet or smartphone where you can just scroll through the list quickly. iBooks also allows you to filter the list of ebooks by searching metadata; the Kindle, on the other hand, searches the full text which makes searching through the list of ebooks difficult if you just want to see a certain author or a certain series of works, leaving aside the onscreen keyboard’s comparable awkwardness of use.

To sum up, it’s a nice device, and you can do much worse.

Reaffirmed my general dislike of the directoral efforts of Stanley Kubrick. His cinematography is excellent. But I find his direction and his movies to be cold and lacking from an emotional standpoint. I love the staging of his shots, but there’s rarely a time where I like any of his characters or where the action on screen inspires me to care and feel. His movies just feel cold and distant.

The one real exception is Spartacus. Spartacus is unique in the Kubrick oeuvre in not really being typical of his style. The charisma and the emotion of his stars is visible and it is crudely shot in comparison to Kubrick’s other works. But it is a Kirk Douglas movie. It showcases the machismo and the aura that Kirk Douglas brings to all his roles and more reflects his style than anything else.

Even what should have been a dream pairing of a real life couple in Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise for the movie Eyes Wide Shut was incapable of bringing warmth and emotion to a Kubrickian work. It is cold and distant and there’s no chemistry to the scenes where real¹ spouses interact and work together. Kidman has proven to be a gifted actress over the years, and Cruise, while a limited actor, is good at communicating his charisma and very good at playing himself to the camera. We, as viewers, should watch and be inspired to feel something. Instead, you might enjoy the scenery and the way parts are shot, but the performances and the emotional content isn’t there.

I don’t believe it’s a waste of time to watch Kubrick’s movies, but it’s a shame that his movies fail to inspire me to feel and care. And I’m unlikely to rewatch any of them besides Spartacus. I would watch The Shining if only to see the way things are shot and framed and to see the classic moments people recognize, but it is imbued with Kubrick’s gifts and failings.

I was blown away. I’ve thought Jackie Chan deserves more credit for his acting abilities for a while. His performance in the new Karate Kid¹ movie with Jaden Smith was easily the best part of the movie and displayed a depth of skill and range rarely seen in most of his movies. But his performance in Little Big Soldier was superbly good.

It’s the kind of movie that I would not have associated with Jackie Chan or his range, being more in line with the wuxia movies from Jet Li². There’s a hefty dose of the physical comedy and slapstick that is Jackie Chan’s trademark, but what is more striking is the range and subtlety he brings to the role. I expected something entirely different than what I watched, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and recommend it heartily.

Watch Little Big Soldier.

Watchmen added a bit more violence and was more explicit about depicting the violent events, where the graphics novel rarely shows those events directly. The result is a movie where the impact of the brutality and the damage done to characters is less dramatic than the times where the graphics novel chooses to directly depict the events.

Another example is The Good Shepherd, in which it most directly tells about events during the life of James Jesus Angleton, one of the most powerful figures in the CIA and the national intelligence infrastructure for decades. Most of the events in the movie are reflections of what really happened, real revelations regarding the people the characters represent. The real events were often more disturbing and more interesting than the movie version of the events.

Some movies do work better than the source material. Most of Richard Matheson’s books are better in a film version, from What Dreams May Come to Hell House. His books feel somehow incomplete and the film versions improve them by bringing the visual details to life. Or the Princess Bride, where the movie is the way to experience the story¹. But those movies are the exception rather than the rule.

The role of government is to protect the common good, to prevent the powerful from abusing those weaker than them, and to act as a body making decisions for the whole and not just the noisemakers. Today’s government has been turned away from those goals, and now largely exists to serve and protect those with wealth. The media has abdicated its responsibilities to tell what happened and expose what should be shameful deeds and to tout what is heroic.

We have allowed the wealthy purchase and manipulate the media, to reshape the narrative describing events. The resulting echo chamber of noise and propaganda drags “acceptable” discourse further and further to the right, and creates penalties for people who dare to express views to the contrary. There are almost no media outlets who will reflect the truth about just how crazy and just how far from the center many of the views being expounded by pundits and politicians are. They will not decry the lies that the United States of America was founded as a christian nation¹. They will not refute things that are objectively untrue because the standard of journalism has been pushed from telling what really happened to standing aside and repeating what someone told you, no matter how outrageous and how false it may be. They will not tell us the truth.

We are living in an time of propaganda and lies that serves to hide and distort what is being done to us. I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like knowing our elected leadership is too craven to oppose the lobbies paid for by big industries and do the right thing. I don’t like knowing a small group of extremists keeps getting discriminatory or unconstitutional legislation passed because the narrative is shaped to serve their interests. I don’t like knowing that reasonable and necessary business is prevented because extremists are determined to do nothing but their agenda, no matter the costs.

I don’t like knowing that the mob rules, and the mob is controlled by the moneyed interests who have an active interest in screwing the common man.

Watched Black Dynamite earlier and was amused by the wit and parody it presented of blaxploitation films. Highly recommended to people who enjoy B movies¹ or spoofs. Might be a good drinking game movie as well.