Others with a much stronger writing pedigree than my own (such as Roger Ebert) have written many a tirade on the arbirtrary ratings put on motion pictures released under the auspices of the MPAA. The Ratings Board is a secret group of alleged "normal parents" that watch every movie that wants to participate in the MPAA's 40-year-old ratings system. This system is described as "voluntary", but that's not quite true, as any film that really wants to get a decent release in this country pretty much has to submit to an MPAA rating.

This movie goes into the history of the ratings, highlights lots of anomolies that have popped up over the years, and visits with several directors of films that have been given the dreaded "X" or "NC-17" ratings. Films that receive these ratings can appeal the decision, or they can be re-cut for another submission.

This is a fascinating film that is also occasionally hilarious. Which is good, because the humor leavens the sober realities depicted. The director, Kirby Dick, hires a private investigator to "out" the secret board members, and then there's a great coda where the director submits the very film we're watching for review (and it receives NC-17).

Apart from a couple of digressions that don't really add to the proceedings, this is a terrific, if mostly troubling, documentary. Add it to your Netflix queue, I don't think this flick is showing in too many theaters (as it came out unrated). It's only showing in one place in Seattle for one week.

It's unlikely that you'll see a film with more imagination any time soon. While I wouldn't put it on par with ESOTSM, it's beautiful and funny and sad, and in the end it's wonderful. Gondry has a knack for scratching the itch I have for melancholy tinged with hope, and I knew as I watched the movie that I'd be going back to the theater to watch it multiple times - the last film I did that for was: ESOTSM. I can't wait to see it again.

Over the last year the iTunes store has made first-run episodes of television series available for purchase and download. I picked up a video iPod to replace my older model (lots more storage space), and in advance of some plane rides, I downloaded the first 8 or 9 episodes of Lost Season 2 (which was then in its first-run on network TV) to watch. While I found the experience completely satisfactory, as the video files I got from iTunes were high-quality, there's still the issue of watching TV on a tiny screen to deal with. I re-watched the Lost episodes I'd already seen this weekend on DVD, and there were all sorts of details I noticed watching on my larger TV that I had missed. The best way to watch good TV is watching season DVD sets on the biggest screen possible: no commercial breaks, no bad reception, great sound and picture, and no waiting for reruns for the next episodes. The only problem with this paradigm is you have to wait a year after the season has ended to see it out on DVD.

So what someone like me really needs is an alternative way to watch new TV shows during their first run, without being forced to get cable, and with the ability to watch them on our regular TV's instead of on a handheld device. Oh, and it would be nice if the sound and picture would be just as good as the DVDs to be released in a year.

I'm not asking that much, am I?

Wouldn't you know it, we're getting closer to my idea of TV Utopia. Interestingly, last week's update from Apple about their newest gizmos, and even Microsoft's preview of their new Zune device, show that things are beginning to swing in the direction of people like me who want to pick and choose our televised entertainment - or, really, ANY sort of entertainment.

Later this year, Apple is releasing a gadget that you can hook up to your TV, that will allow you to stream video content you buy on iTunes to your regular television. The only thing that keeps me from not jumping up and down for joy is concerns about quality - the Lost episodes I downloaded from iTunes look and sound great on my iPod, but I have to wonder how they're going to hold up when I watch them on my TV. Are they going to look all compressed and artifacty? Will it be like going back to the wild world of VHS tapes? For me, that's a Thanks-But-No-Thanks situation.

At some point though, the technology will catch up. When the stuff I can download looks and sounds as good as DVDs do, then there's no more reason for me to buy DVD's. I happily look forward to that day.

And as for those Microsoft Zune players - if that thing is an "iPod Killer" then my name is Mohandes K. Ghandi. They're ugly and depend on Microsoft's WMA audio format for the music you can buy from their store. Yeah, I think I'll be keeping my iPod, thanks.

The Zunes DO have ONE cool feature that I'm a little envious of, though, and that's the whole "wireless sharing" angle. I don't know the details, but apparently two Zune users can "beam" songs between their players. Once you've gotten a song in this manner, you can listen to the track a couple of times, and then you're offered the chance to pay for it. This is sort of like the Weed paradigm (also unfortunately tied to WMA), and I think that as a concept, it's great. How cool would it be if somebody had some new song/album I wanted but hadn't had a chance to download/go shopping for myself - I could get it from my friend, and then legally license it for my own uses! Everybody wins in that scenario: I get the music I want, I don't have to go to a physical or online store, the copyright holders get paid. Like I said, I don't know the exact particulars, but I would love to see Apple get some similar feature happening for iPod users.

The faster we can get to a universe of a la carte media consumption, the better.

I liked how the movie looked a lot. It's a period piece, so of course there's horses and chariots and costumes and stuff, but they also made the movie look like old photographs from 100 years ago, how they tend to be fuzzy on the edges. Very effective.

In fact the movie looked so cool that for a while I didn't notice all the problems in the story - actually, the movie does quite well before being nearly completely undermined by a tacked-on twist ending (HA! GOTCHA!) that makes no. Sense. Whatsoever.

I was mad at that ending.

2006 is turning out to be a good year for new music. I like a lot of the new albums I've picked up this year. Yesterday I picked up the new Audioslave disc, Revelations. Not because I thought it was going to be really good or anything, but because it's new work from Chris Cornell, who remains one of my favorite rock songwriters of all time. The fact that the last Audioslave album was so bland and boring that I put it away after hearing it twice didn't stop me. I love CC, and I always hope for the best. Favorite artists always get this treatment from me, even if it's obvious that their best work may be behind them. It's why I bought every Van Halen CD, even the godawful Gary Cherone one. It's why I buy every King's X side project (the new Ty Tabor is pretty darned sweet, by the way - his best solo work since Naomi's Solar Pumpkin in 1997). If nothing else, Revelations sounds like I'll want to hear it more than twice.

Depending on your browser, you may have noticed that I've managed to make this blog RSS-enabled. If you like to read blog content with an RSS feed aggregator, you're in luck. Get on with your bad self, as it were.

If that last paragraph looked like a lot of gobbledy-gook to you (hi, Mom!), pretend you didn't read it. No harm will come to you.

I'm listening to Beck's Mutations right now. Great record, Beck deserves the hype. Although his recent interview in Wired magazine left a lot to be desired. It's not so much that he wasn't interesting, it's that the writer was trying to steer him in a certain direction (THE DEATH OF THE ALBUM!), and he wasn't really biting. So having him be the cover boy for their big story (THE DEATH OF THE ALBUM!) didn't really make much sense. Of course, they talked about how awesome he is, and all that stuff was true.

All I know is, this new ALBUM I'm making may be the DEATH of ME if I don't finish it soon. Sheesh.

A simple story - a group of six women, longtime friends, go off to America for an "all-girls" spelunking trip in some caves in the Appalachian Mountains. All have their own motivations for going on the trip. Some of them are near-expert cavers, some are complete novices. It's supposed to be a fun time for all, a bonding experience.

And then... bad things happen.

It's best for you if you don't know much more about what happens. I found the flick very effective in the way it made you feel like you were down in those caves with the characters. The movie is lit primarily by the light sources the women have with them, like flashlights, flares, light sticks, etc. There's an ingenious use of a video camera that has infra-red capability. It's PITCH DARK down there, and we as an audience can't see much more than the women do.

The story turns the screws you might expect - playing on our claustrophobia, and fear of things that go bump in the dark.

If you like scary movies, this one's for you.

I went to The Wicker Man because I'm a fan of director/playwright Neil LaBute, who hadn't made a bad film yet.

Until this one, that is. What a mess. I'm not even going to bother writing about it. I hear the 1973 original is pretty good, so I've added it to my Netflix queue.