Short Fuse

Fun Apple ad

Yao Ming vs Verne Troyer (QuickTime)

Possibly the only good thing from yesterday's disappointing Macworld SF keynote.

24 season 2

Thoughts on last night's excellent season premiere of 24:

First scene was set in Seoul, Korea, of all places. The female agent's Korean was shaky, but her male compatriot fared better in accent and authenticity. He yelled "gaesaeki" at the prisoner - almost literally "son of a bitch". Widely used, but definitely too foul for Korean TV.

Was that really Tamlyn Tomita, from Karate Kid 2, briefing President Palmer?

A timely scenario: terrorist group from the Middle East is planning to detonate a nuclear weapon in LA. Equally timely future plot point, as hinted in the episode: government and military insiders may manipulate the situation in order to attack a Middle Eastern country without complete proof of involvement.

The emergency war room's infographics presentation featured animated charts and slide shows, complete with transition effects. Someone at NSA has been learning Flash.

Occasional good use of the multiple small frames, with coordinated camera zooms and pans. I still wish they would really push the style. What if Saul Bass were alive to direct an episode? Oops. Not Saul Bass, but Pablo Ferro. Sample: his polo scene from the original Thomas Crown Affair.

MSCL on DVD

All 19 episodes of My So-Called Life are being released in a special DVD set. MSCL's creators are responsible for other personal favorites like Once and Again and Relativity, all sadly short-lived. They also did thirtysomething, but I can never find time to watch my dubs of the show.

Now if only they would get to work on a DVD set for Moonlighting (warning: MP3 on site).

Chuck Jones on work and love

Chuck Jones, master animation director of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons, discussing One Froggy Evening.

Jones gets a little inarticulate in its vicinity. "I don't know of any way to express it except by saying there are only two things that count. One is the love you have for what you do, and the other is the work you're willing to devote to achieve it." And when it's finished only the love should show. "If the work shows, you're in trouble."

Quoted from Hugh Kenner's Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings.

Henry Jenkins on Donahue

Henry Jenkins explains his severe case of taxi wit in Coming up next: Ambushed on "Donahue"! The article provides an entertaining peek into how the modern talk show is run, plus Henry's familiar thoughts on videogames and other media:

The idea that we are going to get rid of violent entertainment is preposterous. Every storytelling medium in the history of mankind has included violent themes and stories, because we depend on stories to help us sort through our conflicting values and our mixed feelings about aggression. We turn to violent entertainment for the same reason moral reformers turn towards apocalyptic rhetoric -- because it gives us a sense of order in a world which otherwise can seem totally chaotic. We fantasize about a lot of things we'd never want to do in real life, and through fantasy we bring those impulses momentarily under control. What is bad about a lot of games isn't that they are violent but that they trivialize violence. They tell us little about our inner demons because they fall back too quickly on tried-and-true formulas. Without fail, the works that moral reformers cite are not the ones that are formulaic but those that are thematically rich or formally innovative. It is as if the reformers responded to the work's own provocation to think about the meaning of violence but were determined to shut down that process before it ever gets started.

Henry is one of my favorite teachers. I'm taking his class this term.

Joo-Il Lee dead

Korean comedian Joo-Il Lee passed away last week. Unknown outside Korea, he was dubbed "emperor of comedy" in his '80s heyday. He's responsible for several catchphrases in Korean pop culture, such as "I'm sorry I'm ugly" and "I'm gonna show you something", delivered with a trademark half-grin half-grimace. He was also adept at wordless physical comedy: one memorable routine involved an uncooperative Slinky that he tried to coax down along a set of steps. As far as I was concerned while growing up in Korea, he was simply the funniest man alive.

I can't find an obituary online, only related articles on the public mourning and the anti-smoking campaigns that Lee helped lead in his last days.

24 in 24

24 was one of two shows that I watched regularly last TV season; the other was The Daily Show. On Labor Day, Fox will show all 24 episodes on its cable sibling FX channel - "24 episodes for 24 consecutive hours beginning at midnight on Sunday, September 1 and ending at midnight Labor Day, September 2."

That's a lot of cliffhangers for one day.