grahams' completely normal random rantings

The Movies I Saw in 2012

grahams — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:22:50 +0000

As regular readers know, I keep a list of all of the movies I see each year. For the second year in a row I saw more feature films (160) than I had in the previous year (155), setting a new benchmark.

I’m planning on putting together my “Best Of” list in a few days. As per my recent policy, I’m basing the list on movies I saw in 2012 (as opposed to waiting until The Oscars). This means I’m missing some movies that came out in late 2012 (I still haven’t seen Django Unchained for instance). Oh well… All of the data porno is after the jump

Once again, how I watch film hasn’t really changed over the past few years.. The number of movies I saw in a theatre has increased over the past two years, which is interesting I guess given the increased avenues available.

The percentage of repeat viewings went up by almost 10% this year. I’m not sure if this is accurate, but I did feel as the year was going on that there were more movies I “needed” to see again right away than in the past.

And continuing a trend, the percentage of Documentaries I watched decreased (though it still the majority).

Finally, here is the month-by-month tallies of my consumption

I can’t really explain the spike in February this year, and the May drop off is pretty odd given that part of IFFBoston occurred in May this year.

Finally, here’s the raw list of what I saw. As usual, movies in italics are repeat viewings.

The Princess Bride at 25

grahams — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 03:07:32 +0000

The Princess Bride turns 25 today. Reading about this reminded me of a funny story from when I was a kid.

My father rented The Princess Bride and brought it home, announcing that he thought it would be fun to watch as a family. I protested, saying I didn’t want to watch a girls movie, and stayed in my bedroom. After about 25 minutes of hearing my family thoroughly enjoying the film, I sheepishly joined them in the living room.

I don’t remember if I watched the beginning of the movie immediately after the first viewing ended, or if it waited until later, but I definitely remember when I finally did see the beginning and being completely embarrassed yet amused at how my reaction to the title of the film paralleled the character of Fred Savage in the movie.

If it wasn’t such a perfect story I’d probably still find it embarrassing.

“Surviving IFFBoston” updated

grahams — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:27:07 +0000

I updated the post I wrote a few years ago entitled “Surviving IFFBoston” with some new tips and tweaks for 2012. You can check it out here.

2011 Films in Review

grahams — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:39:54 +0000

Here is my review of the films I which saw in 2011. In a change from the past few years, this does NOT include movies released in 2011 which I saw in 2012. Which is why The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo doesn’t feature prominently on this list. I know that I am missing some great movies by adopting this strategy. Furthermore, movies that were on last year’s “Best Of” list should also be included on this year’s list (using the new rules) but I decided to omit them than recognize them twice.

While I wouldn’t say that 2011 was a bad year for movies, it wasn’t particularly special. Maybe I just chose poorly… Where in years past I would have to whittle down my list of ‘best’ films, this year it felt like work to simply come up with 10. It’s not that there is an abundance of lowlights, but there weren’t many highlights.

Top 10 Films of 2011 (in Alphabetical Order):
Bottom 5 films of 2011 (in Alphabetical Order):
Best Director: Constance Marks and Philip Shane for Being Elmo
Best Actress: Lubna Azabal in Incendies
Best Actor: Michael Fassbender in Shame
Best Supporting Actress: Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin in Incendies
Best Supporting Actor: Shea Whigham in Take Shelter
Best Inanimate Object: Robert in Rubber
Best Original Screenplay: Brit Marling and Mike Cahill for Another Earth
Best Adapted Screenplay: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin for Moneyball
Best Cinematography: El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
Most Alarming Cinematic Trend: Once again, 3D and Fake IMAX.
Most Memorable Lines:
- Moneyball
  - Peter Brand: I wanted you to see these player evaluations that you asked me to do.
  - Billy Beane: I asked you to do three.
  - Peter Brand: Yeah.
  - Billy Beane: To evaluate three players.
  - Peter Brand: Yeah.
  - Billy Beane: How many you’d do?
  - Peter Brand: Forty-seven.
  - Billy Beane: Okay.
  - Peter Brand: Actually, fifty-one. I don’t know why I lied just then.
- The Guard
  - Sergeant Gerry Boyle: Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you’re more used to shooting at unarmed women and children…
  - FBI agent Wendell Everett: Oh, fuck you, Sergeant!
- Rubber
  - Man in wheelchair: Excuse me, I hate to be a bother, but… the way I look at it, this scene makes no sense at all. Not that it was great to begin with, but at least I understood it. Now, this is just uh, totally confusing.
Best Documentary: Last Days Here
Guilty Pleasures:
Films I feel guilty for missing:
- 50/50
- My Week with Marilyn
- Drive
- Beginners
- Martha Marcy May Marlene
Films I don’t feel guilty for missing:
- Midnight in Paris
- War Horse
- The Help

The Great CD Re-Rip

grahams — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:17:23 +0000

Back around 2002, I sat down and began ripping all of my CDs to MP3. I worked on it during my downtime, on nights and weekends when nothing better was going on. It took me about a month to plow through several hundred discs, but I eventually finished. When I temporarily moved from Boston to NJ during my unemployment back in 2003, my CDs were boxed up for the move. They stayed that way. In fact, the boxes were in my parents basement until Corinna and I moved to our house in Watertown back in 2007. Since then they have remained in boxes in our basement.

For many years I continued to buy physical discs, immediately ripping them and placing them on a shelf or in a box. In the past year or two, I have effectively stopped buying CDs, instead opting to use download services such as iTunes, Bleep, Beatport and Amazon’s MP3 store (as well as directly from artists).

Back in 2002, MP3 files of 192Kbps seemed like a pretty reasonable compromise between audio quality and file size. But fast forwarding ten years, hearing the muted high and low end of those 192Kbps files, especially when I have several terabytes of storage in my house, was frustrating. I had thought about re-ripping all of my discs to a higher bit rate, but the task always seemed daunting. My collection of physical discs had ballooned to ~500 discs and it simply felt like it would take forever.

Back in September I was at the All Tomorrow’s Parties “I’ll Be Your Mirror” festival at Asbury Park with some friends. During some between-band chit-chat, I mentioned my regret of choosing 192Kbps and that I was considering finding a service that would re-rip all of them for me. DQ mentioned TaskRabbit, a service which pairs up people willing to do odd jobs (a.k.a. “Rabbits”) with people looking for help. This idea stuck in my head, and a few weekends ago when Corinna and I were doing some basement purging I decided that I would just do it. Some of my CDs were more than 20 years old, and waiting would only increase the chances of bit rot.

I posted my task on TaskRabbit, being as specific as possible. I decided to skip worrying about what the ‘right’ bitrate was and chose Apple Lossless format. A lossless codec cuts the file size in about half without losing any fidelity at all. I figured if I had 500 CDs each around 600MB, than the total size of the re-ripped CDs would be about 150GB, which really isn’t all that much these days. My existing music archive (with my old 192K rips in addition to any music I’ve bought digitally) totaled around 205GB at the time I started this project.

The hardest part of posting this task was trying to pick an upper cost. TaskRabbit asks you what your upper cost is, and then Rabbits bid on the task, TaskRabbit assigning you the one who came in lowest within some time constraints. I figured a reasonable price was $300 plus a maximum of $100 for expenses (I was asking the rabbit to not only rip my CDs, but also discard jewel cases and place them in sleeves that would be purchased by the rabbit).

In almost no time, TaskRabbit mailed me saying that a rabbit successfully bid on my job, and they came in at $255 (+ expenses). I was thrilled, as not only was someone interested in the job, but the whole shebang was going to cost me about 50 cents a disc!

Adam, the rabbit who won the bid, scheduled a time to come by my house to pick up the CDs. He guessed he would be done in about 3 weeks, which seemed reasonable. He swung by on 12/17 to pick everything up and was very professional. After a day or two he sent me a sample ripped file to make sure I was happy with the rip, metadata and file naming. Everything looked great, and so he started up full-steam.

A few days later I was on the train down to NJ for the holidays and wouldn’t be back until New Year’s Eve. While I was off relaxing with my family, Adam was keeping me posted with status updates or questions every few days. He asked what to do with the few live bootlegs that were in my collection. I told him to just set them aside and that I would handle them myself (since no metadata was available for them on CDDB). Soon after I returned to Boston, I heard from Adam that he was almost done and we scheduled a time on 1/8 for him to drop off the finished product. I was thrilled that it only took him 3 weeks, and when he arrived I saw that he took excellent care of everything, and seemingly had no trouble with my pretty specific requirements.

I decided it would be a good idea to do a bit of an inventory, to make sure no discs/rips slipped through the cracks. In doing so I found a 20 or so CDs that I couldn’t find rips for (even though they were organized and put into sleeves). I talked with Adam and he wasn’t sure what happened, but he offered to swing by and pick them up (even though I had already closed out the task and paid him).

Overall, this was a great experience. I now have all of my CDs ripped in a lossless format, and my CDs are organized and taking up much less space than they were before. Surprisingly, only one track on one CD wouldn’t rip due to damage. I guess I take pretty good care of my things. My new music collection is approximately 345GB. Furthermore, using TaskRabbit successfully on a huge task such as this one gives me confidence to use the service in the future for more odd jobs around the house.

Right now I’m trying to find a more permanent storage solution for my CDs, most of which are in sleeves but some of which are still in their original cases. I tried Snap-N-Store cases but they were pretty lousy. The compartments for discs weren’t wide enough, even for my discs with sleeves. I’m currently in the market for a solution to this problem, so if you have any ideas please let me know. I’m looking for something with a lid to keep the dust out.

Random Album Mixes

grahams — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:38:23 +0000

I have a big post coming up in the next week or so about the re-ripping of all 500 or so of my CDs, but I wanted to share something i found in the process. Back towards the end of my college career I took two trips to the Hooray Area. One was a business trip to NASA Ames’ Research for a team meeting on SOFIA. The other was for a job interview at Be, Inc.

At the time, I owned an early MP3 player which was a portable CD player which could read data CDs filled with MP3s (in addition to old-fashioned CDs). I created two Album-Mix CDs for these trips, and I thought that some of you might get a kick out of the contents…

NASA Lovin’ (embarrassingly, this was actually the title of the mix)

Be Interview

The Movies I Saw in 2011

grahams — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:02:10 +0000

As regular readers know, I keep a list of all of the movies I see each year. I saw more movies this year (160) than each of the past two (147).. I did include a handful of shorts on the list this year, though. This was also the first year I kept track of the date on which I saw each movie, which will allow me to see trends in years moving forward.

My “Best of 2011″ list will hopefully be done in the next few days. Unlike the past few years, I’ve decided to do the list now instead of waiting until the Oscars. I found waiting to actually be more stressful, for some reason. Anyway, all the gory details are after the jump…

The formats in which I consume movies hasn’t changed drastically from last year.. Some more movies in the theater, some fewer movies on disc.

I watched more movies for the first time this year (83%) vs last year (80%)

And while documentaries continue to be a favorite of mine, they took more of a back seat to other genres this year

Finally, here is the month-by-month tallies of my consumption

You can see a big jump in April.. It is no coincidence that the 2011 Independent Film Festival of Boston straddled these months.

Enough data porn, here’s the list. As usual, movies in Italics are repeat viewings.

Remembering James Izzo

grahams — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 18:01:14 +0000

My friend, James Izzo, took a nap yesterday from which he did not wake up. I met James at Hopatcong Middle School where we bonded early on via our love of computers. James was one of the few people I knew who also had an Amiga, and we would share software and knowledge regularly. As we grew into young adults and started discovering film and music, our friendship grew stronger.

James and I (along with other friends, of course) exhausted the local video store’s supply of horror films. Once we ran out of those we moved on to more “indie” and “foreign” films. If it wasn’t for my friendship with James there would have been no Fucked Up Movie Night. If it wasn’t for my friendship with James I don’t think I would have become involved with the Sunday Night Film Club. If it wasn’t for my friendship with James I doubt my interest in independent cinema would have been piqued enough to go full-degen at the Independent Film Festival of Boston every year.

James became an electronic musician, starting the band Thread as well as side projects such as The Boy Without Hands. He worked with musicians such as Neotropic and Jarboe. But before all of that James and I discovered electronic music together. My love for artists (electronic and otherwise) such as The Magnetic Fields, Coil, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin, Autechre and Squarepusher were all kindled in one way or another in his basement in Hopatcong. Some of those artists I discovered, some he discovered, but we were always very excited to share a ‘new find’ with each other.

Over the past decade I had grown distant from James for a number of reasons. We remained in contact, but it became much more infrequent. The impact of our friendship on my life, however, is immeasurable. I learned to think critically about film and music through discussing it with James. I learned to explore new artists with James. I learned to dig deeper with James. My world just got a little smaller…

Labeling Insanity in the Fenway Bleachers

grahams — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 05:11:13 +0000

The way rows are labeled at Fenway Park makes no sense. Every game I attend in the bleachers, the first few innings are constantly interrupted by people who either mis-read the row number when they sat down and now need to move when the proper occupants arrive, or by people who think they are working their way down to their seat and find people sitting in them, only to find that they are in the wrong row.

This is always caused by the way the rows are labeled. Look at the picture below. As you can see, the side of the chair on the aisle is labeled “13″, but when people see the other “13″ on the step riser, which is far more visible as you are walking up the aisle, they assume that the “13″ refers to the level above it.

A much better way to label the rows is below:

As you can see, it is very clear which row is which. This would eliminate so much confusion and reduce the number of interruptions for bleacher fans. Please fix this.

2010 Films in Review

grahams — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 03:05:33 +0000

Even later than last year!

Top 10 Films of 2010 (in Alphabetical Order):
- The Fighter
- Inception
- Jackass 3D
- Kick-ass
- The King’s Speech
- Micmacs
- Perrier’s Bounty
- The Social Network
- True Grit
- Winter’s Bone
Bottom 6 films of 2010:
- Clash of the Titans
- The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street
- Predators
- Salt
- Splice
Best Remake/Reworking: The Crazies
Most Unnecessary Remake/Reworking: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Best Director: Christopher Nolan for Inception
Best Actress: Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit
Best Actor: Colin Firth in The King’s Speech
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo in The Fighter
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale n The Fighter
- Honorable mention for John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone
Best Ensemble: Jackass 3D
Best Original Screenplay: Inception
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network
Best Cinematography: Inception
Best Soundtrack: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Best Score: Inception
Most Alarming Cinematic Trend: Second Year for both 3D and Fake IMAX
Most Memorable Lines:
- Hot Tub Time Machine
  - Lou: Here’s a question. Was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for personal financial gain? Perhaps. Here’s another question. Do I give a fuck?
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
  - Stacey Pilgrim: I mean, did you really see a future with this girl?
  - Scott Pilgrim: Like… with jetpacks?
- Kick-Ass
  - Big Daddy: Good job. I’m so proud of you, baby doll. Are you okay?
  - Hit Girl: Mhmm… but getting shot, Daddy… it hurt a lot more than when you did it.
  - Big Daddy: That’s because I used low velocity rounds, child… he… he…
  - Hit Girl: You’re the kindest Daddy in the whole world.
  - Big Daddy: No, I just… I love you…
  - Hit Girl: I love you, too, Daddy… I love you, too, Daddy. Sleep tight.
- Jackass 3D
  - Steve-O: How many stings do you think we can take?
  - Manny Puig: I think it takes about 100 to kill a man.
  - Dave England: Are you serious? Did you just make that number up? There’s 50,000 bees and it takes 100 to kill a man?
  - Manny Puig: I think it takes 100.
  - Loomis Fall: Then what are we doing here?
  - Manny Puig: Making a hit movie.
Best Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Guilty Pleasures:
- MacGruber
- Tron: Legacy
Films I feel guilty for missing:
- OSS 117: Lost in Rio
Films I don’t feel guilty for missing:
- Edge of Darkness
- Repo Men
- Babies
- Robin Hood
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice