"The Demon Haunted World" - The title makes it sound like a book of ghost stories, or some bad science fiction, but it's actually Carl Sagan's treatise on the scientific method, and how it interacts with nature, religion, ethics, politics, sex, education, economics, and everything else. In my opinion, this is the dissertation that Carl Sagan's entire life's work led up to, and his best gift to future generations. I can't recommend it enough. I give it two thumbs way up. There's an abridged version floating around too - try tackling that first, then the full version in pieces later on. There's a lot to absorb.
"A Marketplace Special Report: What Enron Says About America" - An amusing, easily digestable production explaining the Enron collapse, and how it effects our current and future economy. It starts out in 'Economics For Dummies' mode, but builds steadily on that, and gets very interesting - and disturbing - later on. I give it two dollar signs up.
"Terry Pratchett: The Carpet People" - Cute kid's story. Miniature thumbs up.
"Irreversible" - Gaspar NoƩ's crazy reverse-order flick. A fairly punishing film. I was expecting something really clever near the end, to make up for the hell it put me through in the first two thirds. Nope. Wasn't worth it. Interesting visual stylization, but not that interesting. Thumbs down.
"Jello Biafra - The Machine Gun In The Clown's Hand" - I used to really enjoy Jello's lampooning of the very worst politics in this country, but I think I'm getting too old to appreciate the guilty pleasure. When he veers off course, and gets into personal anecdotes and general comedy, he's great though. Thumbs halfway up.
Heh heh. On the list: 'The Core', which the Onion sums up like so: "Lacking a giant set of jumper cables, the government employs a ragtag team of physicists and astronauts to plunge underground in a jerry-rigged $50 billion phallus built by Delroy Lindo."
"A Marketplace Special Report: What Enron Says About America" - An amusing, easily digestable production explaining the Enron collapse, and how it effects our current and future economy. It starts out in 'Economics For Dummies' mode, but builds steadily on that, and gets very interesting - and disturbing - later on. I give it two dollar signs up.
"Terry Pratchett: The Carpet People" - Cute kid's story. Miniature thumbs up.
"Irreversible" - Gaspar NoƩ's crazy reverse-order flick. A fairly punishing film. I was expecting something really clever near the end, to make up for the hell it put me through in the first two thirds. Nope. Wasn't worth it. Interesting visual stylization, but not that interesting. Thumbs down.
"Jello Biafra - The Machine Gun In The Clown's Hand" - I used to really enjoy Jello's lampooning of the very worst politics in this country, but I think I'm getting too old to appreciate the guilty pleasure. When he veers off course, and gets into personal anecdotes and general comedy, he's great though. Thumbs halfway up.
Heh heh. On the list: 'The Core', which the Onion sums up like so: "Lacking a giant set of jumper cables, the government employs a ragtag team of physicists and astronauts to plunge underground in a jerry-rigged $50 billion phallus built by Delroy Lindo."