I saw these three movies in the last 48 hours or so.

Duplex: it's dumb, dark, and the end cheats.

Something's gotta give: If I were Diane Keaton, I would have taken Keanu. If I were Jack Nicholson, I wouldn't have dumped the daughter. However, the concept is cool, and Diane looks damn good.

Now, the sight of Jack Nicholson's butt was completely unnecessary. Now I am so self-conscious I am going to buy a robe. I never imagined anyone could look so bad, and I need to make a habit of hiding my body before it all falls down.

Lost in translation: I want to marry Scarlet Johansson's character. I doubt Mrs. Johansson herself would be half as much fun, although she is obviously just as pretty.

On the other hand, I want to say, make it Suntory time. Now, to the right, with intensity. More Roger Moore!

If you have not seen it, the above paragraph makes no sense. If you did: I want to be him, too. Only younger. And married to her.

I quite liked the movie, even if my date didn't (she says, and she is right, nothing happens in it). Had the movie had a plot, it would be amazing. What is there is good enough it even survives the plotlessness as good.

I suggest Jerry Bruckheimer hires Sofia Coppola. Although he has the worst imaginable taste in directors (the wrong Scott brother! Michael Bay!), he requires all his movies to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending, and that the ending be different from the beginning.

So, if Jerry wants to become a Weinstein-like fellow, and he keeps those requirements, eases up on the explosions, and forces Sofia to hire a writer (if at all possible, the one who wrote "Action!" with Jay Mohr?), man, that is going to be an actual movie, instead of just 2 hours of film.

Oh, you may say, Roberto is crazy! Sofia Coppola is artsy! Bruckheimer is crass!. There is such a thing as too artsy, and definitely, there is such a thing as too crass, but, surprise! There is such a thing as not artsy enough, and, worse of all, not crass enough.

Nowadays, movies fall either on one side or the other, except for some films, very few, vanishingly few. I propose exogamy, because the inbreeding of the artsy and the crass tribes is killing them.

Coming soon (not really): why Kiarostami should direct a Tarantino script.

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Topics: movies

I am a fast reader. Not that I read specially fast, but I read hours and hours, and that way books pile around my bed, under the bathroom's sink, into closets, and on tables, and I have read them.

I hve read the Dune series in a week. The whole works of Heinlein in 20 days. The Lord Of the Rings (and The Hobbit) in a long weekend.

I have been reading Quicksilver for a week now. I am not even 30% done.

Quicksilver is almost 1000 pages long. And they are not the easiest pages, either. I feel like I'm drowning in it, I am being slapped by it, my mind is being raped by a book.

I like it.

My university experience was studying maths, so I am more likely to enjoy this book than most, though.

When you are surrounded by science, if you have even a little of historic sense, you have to wonder: how can it be that I, a reasonably intelligent 20th century guy, have been getting an education for 20 years, and still am quite ignorant, even though I am concentrating on a single field?

Well, after that, if you ever try to do any original scientific work, you have to imagine that those who created modern science were much better than you. Their lifes were shorter, uglier, and they didn't have the books, yet they figured out a huge amount of stuff.

Usually, there's a mitigating factor in that the science they made is simpler than the science to be made now. That doesn't work for one guy. Maybe two.

That one guy is, of course, Newton. And the other is Leibnitz.

If someone invented Leibnitz for a novel, it would be silly. Inventing Newton would be preposterous. So, how come almost noone bothered making them into fictional characters before?

In taking that step, Stephenson shows genius.

I would write all this book brings to mind, but this blog is too small to contain it.

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