Massive Media Roundup

Time for the long-promised set of massive media reviews, which will mostly be short and sweet. I kept the tickets so that I could actually remember what I saw. The order below is simply the order in which I pick up the ticket.

Hellboy II: Great movie! I approve. The German phastasm was amusing. Was the elven princess in Stardust? (Apparently not, but for some reason she seemed similar to me.)

The Wind in the Willows (theatrical version): I saw this at a small theatre and I enjoyed it very much. Now I finally understand where Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attraction comes from... Highly recommended!

Bugsy Malone: In this play, British teenagers (and sometimes younger) attempt to do gangster noir. It was very good overall, but it definitely didn't work at times.

Get Smart: I had been waiting for this film to come out ever since I first heard about it something like 2.5 years ago, given that I really enjoyed watching reruns of the original series as a kid. The casting was excellent! Steve Carrell was the obvious choice to play Maxwell Smart (Agent 86), although nobody will ever duplicate Don Adams in that roll (not even Inspector Gadget, who was based on Agent 86 and was voiced by a Don Adams sound-alike). Anne Hathaway did well as Agent 99, though the dynamics between Agents 86 and 99 in the movie were a bit different than in the show (where 99 was madly in love with 86, who was completely oblivious to the whole thing---at least at first; by the time of the failed return of the series, I believe the characters were married). Duane Johnson and Alan Arkin were also excellent. The film included several catch phrases (which I appreciated) and in general was quite good, even though I prefer the original series (which was a Mel Brooks creation, by the way, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I like it so much). Also, the shoe phone played a prominent role in the film. That was extremely important.

Hello Dolly (musical): Unfortunately, I was not very impressed, though I admit that it did have its moments. However, once I saw Wall-E, I became happy that I saw the musical given that it played an important role in that film. (The clips being shown in the movie were from Hello Dolly.)

Wall-E: Another excellent Pixar film. I'm shocked. It's amazing how they conveyed such emotion in the characters with so little dialog.

Kung Fu Panda: I really liked it! I tried unsuccessfully to get people to see it with me, but se la vie. They thought it would be silly---their loss. (Or maybe it's more precise to say that they assume that "silly" means not worth watching?)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: I enjoyed it, although I was a bit annoyed that they were hitting harder with the religious overtones in the film than they did in the prequel. The older daughter was a frosh (or "fresher", as it's called here) at Oxford last fall. I forgot which College.

The Pirates of Penzance: This was awesome! I recognized a very high percentage of the songs, which is not surprising given that many of the songs in there show up all over the place. I am the very model of a modern applied mathematician---or something like that. It could have been worse: I've been planning since I saw the musical (for the first time, amazingly enough) to write a parody of a certain song that I plan to call "Condensed Matter". Stay tuned...

The Forbidden Kingdom: I really liked this film as well. I could have done without the token white boy, but it didn't detract too much from what I actually paid to see (so I guess this is sort of like a milder version of AG's opinion on this point).

Oklahoma! (musical): This was a production by Oxford students that I saw at a small stage in Wadham College. I should have blogged about this earlier because then I could have mentioned that I ran into Lloyd alum Joe Jewell '04 (I think that's the right year), who was also in the audience. He will be starting as a grad turkey at Tech in the fall. I think he'll be in aeronautics. Oh, and the musical was really good! There was a recognizable vignette that I didn't realize came from this musical that I had seen parodied in a cartoon (I think in an episode of Bugs Bunny). There was also a very recognizable song ("Oh, what a beautiful morning") that I had no idea came from this musical.

Two Hobbit-Sized Parodies: Harry Potter and the Generic Adventure and Swords & Saucery: The second of these had a Lord of the Rings Theme. These plays were also performed by Oxford students and many audience members knew some or all of the people in the plays, so there was some audience participation at appropriate points. The Harry Potter parody was first. One of my friends played Snape, although I was already planning to go even before I found out about that. The guy who played Valdemort was booed lustily every time he came on "stage" (the performance was in the Wadham Gardens), including when he played a different character (a good guy) in the second parody. That was awesome! There were also lots of private jokes, and I even caught a couple of them. Think of these things as roughly like Lloyd movies, but as live performances. That was the basic ambience, which I liked very much.

Stuff at the Montreal film festival: I'm now wishing I could have gotten tickets for the new Woody Allen film (they sold out, so my debate whether I should go to that one versus having dinner at a normal time ended rather quickly) because I really want to see it and the UK is not presently listed in its IMDB entry as somewhere it's being released. Damnit! Satellites & Meteorites was an excellent Gondrey-esque film was an Irish director, who was there to answer our questions after the film ended. (A short film called The Ranger was shown before the main film. This was meh.) It was a bit rough around the edges and in a couple of situations could have been more subtle, but it is definitely on the short list of my favorite films of the year.) The Japanese film One Million Yen Girl was enjoyable, but it was merely good. Lissi and the Wild Emperor was a very funny German cartoon (with very high animation quality) which would probably get a PG-13 rating in the US. It made fun of Emperor Ferdinand. (For what it's worth, I picked the order randomly except for the ones at this film festival. I did these last on purpose.)

Alright, now I've finally caught up on one of the entries I had been meaning to write for a while.

2007: The Year in Theatre

I think I've figured out the way to get me to finish blog entries that I have been meaning to do for a while---I'm supposed to be grading right now and I've finished checking e-mail, so I need to do something else that doesn't involve marking papers. (In principle, I could work on my next book instead, but I find it hard to do much of that when I am working this hard on real work. Somehow if the number of actual work hours gets above a certain threshold, then working on my book fades into the background for another week. I have several e-mails from a few months ago with people who are supposed to give us information for stories...)

Anyway, let me talk about some of the plays, musicals, and operas (well, there was only one opera) that I saw in 2007.

The opera in question was Carmen, which I saw in December at the New Theatre in Oxford. It's actually quite a nice venue and I enjoyed the show quite a bit (and couldn't get "The Torreador Song" out of my head for several days after I attended).

The big disappointment of the year (in terms of musicals... "Leave my personal life out of this!") was Chess, which played for one night only in Hollywood and which I had been looking forward to seeing for over a decade. The problem is the acoustics were lousy and they screwed up the song "One Night in Bangkok" completely, so I need to see this musical properly at some point.

Avenue Q was extremely fun! I'm glad I finally had a chance to see that!

Along with Caltech's CPA theatre group---hey, does anyone here want to go to theatre together? I'm still trying to figure out who is into what.---I saw two Shakespeare plays (Richard III and MacBeth) in a park in Hollywood. (The plays were produced by a small indie Shakespeare company and were quite well-done. Plus, it was a relaxed atmosphere, so I dug it.) The latter was a good reminder that a particular line of Tom Lehrer's that I like ('full of words and phrases, and signifying nothing!') actually comes from Shakespeare. Then again, so do a lot of lines that I take for granted. (Did you know, for example, that Shakespeare actually invented the term "metric fuck ton"?)

With the CPA group (and Lemming), I saw All About Waalken at a small theatre in Hollywood. It gave me quite a fever, which I couldn't find even close to enough cowbell to cure. I also saw some other stuff with the CPI theatre group, such as a small play whose name escapes me. There might have been something else of note, but I can't think of it at the moment, so this will have to be it tomorrow.

I'll be seeing my first play of 2008 on Saturday: Sheridan's The Rivals, which I read back in the day in 10th grade English.

By the way, I just noticed that I have a slight redundancy problem in parts of this entry. (I think that's the story of my life...) CPA stands for "Caltech postdoc association," so "Caltech's CPA" is a bit awkward. (And I can no longer ask, "Who's the CPA now?" Do any of the Lloydies reading this remember that one? It was classy.)

On a completely different note, does anybody have any bright ideas for ancient Somerville (or Oxford) traditions that I should introduce in the near future? I was going to get my math minions to do something on pi day but then I was reminded that we list the day and then the month around here, which foiled my plans entirely. (I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those kids! And their stupid dog, too!)

Alright, I better go do some more marking. Oh what fun we have!

Plays, Musicals, and Concerts for the new year

I found various early 2008 schedules for plays, musicals, and concerts in Oxford. Here is my slate of events thus far:


1/26/08: The Rivals

2/2/08: Alice - Through the Looking Glass

2/9/08: A Trip to Scarborough (by Sheridan, just like The Rivals --- this is apparently a modernized version that has iPods in it)

2/10/08: Alison Moyet

2/22/08: Nouvelle Vague

5/3/08: Fiddler on the Roof

5/24/08: The Pirates of Penzance

5/31/08: Hello, Dolly!



I'm hoping to see Van Morrison in March, but I haven't bought tickets yet because I want to keep that open in case I am coming back to the US at that time for Jing's wedding. (Once I find out when her wedding will be, I'll be able to figure out if I can make the Van Morrison concert.)

There weren't that many musicals, plays, or concerts I wanted to see this fall (and the only one I was actually able to make was Carmen), but thankfully there is a lot more stuff that I want to see in the spring. Time to immerse myself in culture! Additionally, the only one with a walk of more than 10 minutes from my home is the Nouvelle Vague concert! Having all this stuff so close to me is incredibly awesome!

Cambridge's applied math group: Gilbert & Sullivan style

I really ought to be looking over materials for interviewing students tomorrow (or, at the very least, doing something that is somehow more productive than following potentially-interesting links on the internet), but I found another thing I want to mention here because I think my OCIAM colleagues will find it amusing. Namely, it is about Cambridge, which I am trying to learn to pronounce with the dismissive tone that I believe is expected of me.

Anyway, the object of interest can be found on a recent blog entry at Asymptotia, which is maintained by a theoretical particle physicist at USC (he used to write for Cosmic Variance).

It was penned by Oliver Rosten and appeared here.

So, without further ado, here is Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan:


The DAMTP

(To be sung to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan's `I am a Very Model of a Modern Major General'.)

When naming a department,
The shorthand's not academical,
Particularly when the work
Is mostly theoretical;
Noble and Perspicuous,
Yet positively memorable,
And at the very least,
It should be certainly pronounceable.


When said out-loud,
It should inspire feelings operatical,
Befitting of a subject
Both applied and mathematical;
Noble and Perspicuous,
Yet positively memorable,
And at the very least,
It should be certainly pronounceable.


To start it's clear that we should state
The matters operational,
Achieved in such a way that all
Agree is democratical.
The Department of Applied Mathematics,
That is surely optimal,
But looming right in front of us
Is something reprehensible!


For now we find we can't proceed
In manner purely logical,
For if we do then what we have
Is not remotely lyrical;
Above all else we must avoid:
An acronym tongue-twistable,
The only way to end is therefore,
Physics, Theoretical.




So, does anybody out there want to write an OCIAM song? Maybe to the tune of The Spam Song?

A show with everything but Gary Coleman

Back when I was still living in the United States --- you know, a few weeks ago --- I finally got a chance to see the musical Avenue Q, which I had really wanted to see ever since I first heard about.

Here is part of wikipedia's description of the musical:

The show is largely inspired by (and is in the style of) Sesame Street: Most of the characters in the show are puppets (operated by actors onstage), the set depicts several tenements on a rundown street in an "outer borough" of New York City, both the live characters and puppet characters sing, and short animated video clips are played as part of the story. Also, several characters are recognizably parodies of classic Muppet characters: for example, the roommates Rod and Nicky are versions of Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie, and Trekkie Monster is based on Cookie Monster. However, the characters are in their twenties and thirties and face adult problems instead of those faced by pre-schoolers. The characters use profanity, and the songs concern adult themes

I enjoyed the show very much! The show-stealer was quite clearly the rendition of "The internet is for porn" by Trekkie Monster (with help from some normal people). It was slightly different than the recorded version, and the differences were pretty cool. Trekkie Monster is my favorite character, though it's really too bad that they didn't have a "Do you know what else starts with 'P'?" line... Or maybe a bit of a play on a certain line from The Music Man...

One thing I found out after going to the show was that the "Gary" of the 'normal people' is actually Gary Coleman. This, of course, makes the line about Gary selling all his stuff on eBay even funnier than I thought it was before; in fact, it makes it bloody hilarious! As far as I can tell, the real Gary Coleman has never actually appeared in Avenue Q (which is a shame, because that would be awesome).

Four movies and a musical

I am going to get some reviews out of the way.

8/19/07: The Simpsons Movie: This movie was really good. (The mugging on the way home from it sucked, however.) I was going to write a review of the movie on the night I watched it, which I tend to do for many of the really good movies I see, but that got superceded (as all of you know). The movie redoes several jokes from the tv series (which I haven't watched regularly for close to 15 years, though I catch an occasional episode now and then), but it does them very well and I appreciated the chance to see The Simpsons on the big screen. Plus, the meta- jokes were really great! Anyway, I highly recommend this movie.

9/14/07: I want someone to eat cheese with: This movie was pretty good but not great. It was written and directed by Jeff Garlin, who was also the main star, and it contained a lot of members (and former members, I guess) of the Second City comedy club. In fact, I recognized many of the people in the movie as people who were really good actors but not necessarily huge stars. There were some good moments (and some high-quality one-liners), but as Lemming writes, there was tedium in between these moments. The protagonist's best friend was fantastic, Sarah Silverman played a crazy young women (umm.. she's getting kind of typecast now, although it seems at least partially by choice), and Richard Kind was awesome in his bit role. Anyway, the movie's worth seeing, but it's not great.

9/17/07: Chess: I had been waiting to see this musical for something like 15 years, and after seeing it, I feel like I am still waiting to see a proper version of it. Don't get me wrong --- I enjoyed what I saw because the music was catchy, so the overall night was decent. However, the acoustics were horrible in the first act and only marginally better in the second act. (I missed nearly all the lyrics in all but a few songs. It was very frustrating!) One could hear clipping from the mikes on multiple occasions! Oh, and they butchered One Night in Bangkok, which is only one of the very best songs of all time. They did the opening part of the song well, but the singer really didn't capture the flavor of the song and one particular lyrical change was a complete failure. (The line "Thank God I'm only watching the game" got changed to "Thank God I'm in the game." The reason that is broken is that the game being referenced at this point is not chess the board game but rather the political machinations going on, with which this character is not involved at all whereas his opponent and former manager are. So, in addition to a stylistic change I don't like, it completely fails in the context of the play itself. Whose idea was this? And, yes, I can go all Comic Book Guy when it comes to a song I like as much as this one!) The visual that went with the line, "I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine!" was, however, fantastic. Apparently, the musical Chess has massively different incarnations depending on the London performance, the Broadway performance, and many others, so I'm going to have to see another version of this (with reasonable acoustics, damnit!). I'm glad I saw the musical, but I still need to see it for real.

9/18/07: Balls of Fury: As Lemming wrote on his blog, this is what is known as a fun/entertaining movie rather than one that is "good" per se. I expected that the movie would be like this, and it didn't disappoint. That's what I wanted from it. Christopher Waalken was fantastic, by the way! And there is a comment about women in ping pong that I have the urge to use as a reference to this movie, though more likely than not I'd get a swift kick in the butt if I actually bothered. I should note that LA Weekly's review of this movie was in the form of a multiple choice quiz, which gives you an idea of what the reviewer thought of the film. It was about the most scathing review of a film I've read in LA Weekly, although I have since read the short synopsis of their review of Dragon Wars, which suggests that the reviewer was even harsher there. (One of the lines in the synopsis states that Dragon Wars was made for people who make it a point to go to premier showings of Uwe Boll movies. Ouch!) The Maggie Q question in LA Weekly that Lemming mentioned proceeded as follows:

"What role does Maggie Q play in this movie?

A. A pair of breasts.
B. A pair of breasts that knows kung fu.
C. Who's Maggie Q?"


Anyway, Balls of Fury is a fun movie that doesn't even remotely take itself seriously. One can see Caltech table tennis coach Wei Wang (the film's technical consultant) very briefly as a ping pong-playing nun (though practically the entire shot is shown in the trailers). I didn't see her name in the credits, though I zoned out during part of it, so it's probably just my fault. Indeed, Wei is listed under 'other crew' in the IMDB page, so she now has her own IMDB page. (I'll let you know if I get one from the Eddie Murphy flick on which I consulted.)

The ping pong quality in the movie didn't seem very good, and I remember Wei mentioning that they didn't even use real balls but rather video effects. (Also, the number of points it took to figure out that Christopher Waalken didn't have a backhand was far more than it would have taken in a real game. One doesn't learn all of forehand first before learning any backhand --- that's preposterous. Also, anybody playing me who doesn't have a backhand won't be able to return my serve at all...)

Flaws aside, the film is very fun and I definitely recommend it. It might also be a good movie to use with a drinking game.


9/21/07: King of California: On my third solo "date" with Lemming in a span of 8 days --- I guess we're going back to our old patterns --- we saw this movie, which I enjoyed very much. I recommend it highly! A certain part of the ending is really sweet! In the spirit of tv's best dramedies, the movie includes a mixture of light-heartedness and seriousness that was executed extremely well. The main actors (Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Woods) both gave really good performances (I've heard rumors of a possible Oscar nomination for Douglas). As for what this movie is about, I'd say it's mostly about the relationship and bonding between an out-of-touch (in this case, literally) parent and their child, although there is certainly some adventure thrown in. Anyway, I hope that the rest of you get a chance to see this film at some point.

Upcoming Musical

I saw an advertisement in the LA Weekly today for a musical called Alice in One-Hit Wonderland. I am so going to see this! (I'm currently trying to convince the CPA theatre crowd to go with me. We'll see how well that works.)

Dude, this is going to be so awesome!

(Recent) Movies, Plays, and Musicals

OK, so this isn't exactly lawyers, guns, and money; but I'll take what I can get.


Let's start with 300, which is an extremely good movie. Here's Lemming's review. I don't think I liked it quite as much as he did, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and recommend it wholeheartedly. Lemming's review sums things up nicely, but let me add explicitly that the line "I don't see why we can't be civil about this." is (1) the best line in the film and (2) much better than the second best line. The delivery on that line was fantastic and both Lemming and I laughed hysterically when it was uttered. The rest of the dialog was hit-or-miss, but the storytelling and ambiance were the highlights here.

The other movie I saw recently in the theatre was Ghost Rider, which was exactly what was advertised. The movie was both good and fun (though I suspect others might call it "fun" but perhaps not good) but not excellent. The whole thing about pointing at someone and going "You -- guilty!" or "You -- innocent!" reminded me of recent discussions with colleagues about interviewing students and seeing clearly who was a scientist at heart and who was an engineer (despite the fact that --for the most part -- the students in question didn't really know). For what it's worth, "engineer" = "guilty" in terms of my recruitment of SURF students. (Note that an engineering major can be a scientist. I'm referring to the research mentality of the student.) Also, I was looking through some pictures recently and I found a really cool one from DragonCon that shows someone dressed up as Ghost Rider next to someone else dressed up as Beaker. Awesome!

There was also a recent string of movies that we saw on DVD. Crank got the wtf award. Who needs a plot when you can just have fun? (The movie was fun to watch but it wasn't exactly deep stuff.) Idiocracy was decent but not great. Watching it, however, did remind me that a pimp always goes after his hos. No exceptions. The Departed was awesome and Mark Wahlberg played a badass, which is probably the biggest compliment that one guy can give to another. (Technically, saying that someone is a badass is said biggest compliment.)

The play I saw recently was David Mamet's Oleanna. (There's a film version with William H. Macy that I have never seen.) I have enjoyed some of David Mamet's other work immensely (especially the film State and Main) and this one was decent, but it wasn't great. This one was basically pure drama; none of Mamet's hallmark witty dialog was present. While there was good stuff, the ending was extremely abrupt, and I left feeling that the play ended before the action did. By the way, I saw this play at the Hollywood Fight Club, whose stage has occasionally been graced by the wondrous presence of one Joshua Hime.

The musical I recently saw was My Fair Lady. I read Pygmalian in 10th grade but had never actually seen My Fair Lady before. A couple of the songs were familiar, and naturally I had seen a version of the story before. One of the CPA people with whom I went is from Great Britain and she claimed the accents were done well, so that's a good sign. And cockney is just fucking awesome as a general principle!

That's about it for recent media (aside from video games). I'm seeing another play on Friday and I'm playing lots of Zelda.