Wonder what your neighbors are watching? Wonder about all the various ways your viewing habits are being monitored and tabulated? Or how about if audience stereotypes are true?

Thanks to Netflix and the New York Times, now you know some of the answers. Behold a breakdown of 2009 rentals by zip code:

A Peek Into Netflix Queues – NYTimes.com.

If you ever wondered how safe your personal data is on the internet, here’s a scary object lesson. Sure, it’s anonymized. And even scarier is the conformity among neighborhoods. Play around with the sliders to see which neighborhoods are renting what. The first, biggest, and most embarrassing surprise is the frequency with which everyone in America seems to be renting the terminally tedious Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

Looking at the patterns of Los Angeles rentals, for amusement check out the rental patterns for two Tyler Perry films – The Family That Preys and Madea Goes To Jail. Guess how frequently the residents of Malibu and Beverly Hills requested them?

Even cooler, and more telling (though only in ways that the ACLU would shit kittens over any meaningful attempt to draw conclusions from), is to drag the slider across the top 10-15 movies in an ersatz time-lapse. Watch the rental patterns – not just the intensity, but the areas where people are renting.

First, just about everybody in the Southland is renting The Shiteous Case Of Benjamin Buttass as their top pick, except for about half of the city of Los Angeles, and the good people of Lynwood. [Read more →]

Chances are you’ve heard of The Hurt Locker, but haven’t seen it. You possibly saw a poster somewhere for A Serious Man. And you’d have  to have been detained in Guantanamo, or maybe a cast member of Jersey Shore to have missed the hype surrounding the new Tarantino movie, Inglorious Basterds. You didn’t see Inglorious Basterds, but you heard about it.

The best film of the year that you didn’t hear about (and should have) is Duncan Jones’ sci-fi flick Moon.

There were better films released in 2009 than Moon, but most of those were obscure foreign films that you weren’t going to see anyway, even if every reputable critic in America wrote you a personal letter explaining why you should see it. Those films probably had war-torn orphans, three hour running times, and deep things to say about the ethereal nature of the human soul. So let’s simplify things and pretend those other movies really don’t count for this award. (Really, they don’t. I didn’t see any pretentious three hour foreign films that were any better than Moon, anyway. And since this is my blog, we go by my rules. If you want to nominate something else, feel free to list it in the comments.)

Moon is a tidy little package, clocking in at what feels like a brief 100 minutes. It’s a simple story, free of pretentions, and yet it has plenty to say about the ethereal nature of the soul. [Read more →]

8/365, originally uploaded by Jeffrey723.

Disorientation.

Manohla Dargis offers up one of the best critical arguments for The Hurt Locker yet:

The Oscars – ‘Hurt Locker’ Offers the Work of War at a Fever Pitch – NYTimes.com.

Her critical assessment is top notch – far better than my own breakdown of the film.

Put another way, like Peckinpah, Ms. Bigelow is brilliant at both delivering and dissecting male violence, which is why “The Hurt Locker” is at once so pleasurable and disturbing.

I suppose my own, more coarse assessment that Ms. Bigelow has a very large member and she’s unafraid to use it gets the similar point across, but with far less eloquence. After a second viewing, I left The Hurt Locker in awe of its lean and muscular construction. Working on a relative shoestring on the edge of a war zone, I didn’t see another movie this year that worked more effectively. Even the false notes and missteps in The Hurt Locker are built with an intensity and a precision that few other films of 2009 can match.

Stupid is as stupid does.

I realize that anything in the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section is like shooting fish in a barrel. But sometimes you need to test fire the guns. And on a closer read, it would appear that the New York Times ran this solely to agititate the masses, that’s how dumb an idea this is.

The New Cavemen Lifestyle Has Found a Home in the City – NYTimes.com.

The writer has dug up a small clique of imbeciles who believe they should be eating like our Paleolithic ancestors – gorging on raw meat every 36 hours and eschewing anything involving acutal preparation.

Here’s why this really irks me. They’re just dumb hipsters in their 20’s, so it goes without saying that they’re dumb. And everyone’s allowed to be dumb somewhere. It’s human, and it happens. But the worship of ignorance is something else entirely.

As soon as someone puts a stupid idea on a pedestal and organizes their life around stupidity, it’s time to step in. Take the topic sentence that summarizes the caveman ‘lifestyle’:

Mr. Durant, 26, who works in online advertising, is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.

This isn’t a diet involving the basic principles of science, or with any concept of organic chemistry. This is a glib ethos, lifted from Fight Club with some fifth grade social studies theory as justification. Just like people who believe Obama isn’t a citizen or that vaccines cause autism, this is pseudo-science for suckers.

[Read more →]

The New York Times just ran a story about the push to make 3D televisions, and how that’s going to change the whole television and consumer electronics industry.

Television Begins Push Into the 3rd Dimension – NYTimes.com

To this, I say bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. 3D is no closer to being a viable home technology than smell-o-round

Many people are skeptical that consumers will suddenly pull their LCD and plasma televisions off the wall. … But programmers and technology companies are betting that consumers are almost ready to fall in love with television in the third dimension.

You’ll note that the article doesn’t quote any of the skeptics. Nor does it quote any actual consumers or people who might be willing to pay over $2,000 for the privilege of being a 3D television guinea pig.

In fact, the bulk of the article is little more than a pro-industry press release, cheerleading the greatness of 3D television. Well, I’ve got some advice for you, little buddy… nobody in the near future is going to trade up. Certainly not in the numbers these executives are salivating over.

This is my favorite quote in the whole article:

“I think 90 percent of the males in this country would be dying to watch the Super Bowl and be immersed in it,” said Riddhi Patel, an analyst at the research firm iSuppli.

Nimrod. This guy, like most analysts, doesn’t have a clue. On paper, perhaps, you could find a bunch of dudes who would say that watching football in 3D would be cool. On paper you’ll also find that 90 percent of guys want a Ferrarri and a supermodel. In practice, though, 90 percent of guys also know that Ferrarris and supermodels are way too high maintenance to be worth the cash they’ll have to lay out. [Read more →]

The English language has two known masters of dialogue. William Shakespeare, and the Coen brothers. Adam Bertocci has now bravely combined the two, creating a full length text called “Two Gentlemen Of Lebowski”. His text opens with a softly strumming lute, and the chorus chanting:

In wayfarer’s worlds out west was once a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise.
His name was Geoffrey Lebowski called, yet
Not called, excepting by his kin.
That which we call a knave by any other name
Might bowl just as sweet. Lebowski, then,
Did call himself ‘the Knave’, a name that I,
Your humble chorus, would not self-apply

You can almost hear Sam Shepard scratching himself in his tights as he reads this. Bertocci is an aspiring writer, and the project began as a string of Facebook updates. Once the clever idea took hold, the project came together surprisingly quickly.

LEBOWSKI
Make me to understand, sir, for you are slow of speech as I of step, and I am unsatisfied in motive. When any rug is micturated upon within these city walls, must I stand accountable? Or are you as one of a thousand rogues, fishing for sixpence betwixt another man’s pursestrings?

The vast majority of the film is incredibly well presented in Shakespearean meter. Bertocci’s translation is meticulously detailed, finding the nuances of a joke in one idiom and expertly representing it in another. The whole piece is hilarious, and like the actual film The Big Lebowski, once you start reading, you just get sucked in, finding one new favorite line after another.

WALTER
On our most holy Sabbath I am sworn
To keep tradition, form and ceremony.
The seventh and the last day rests the Jew;
I labour not, nor ride in chariot,
Nor handle gold, nor even play the cook,
And sure as Providence I do not roll.
Hath not a Jew rights? Hath not a Jew hands,
Organs, bowling-balls, Pomeranians?
If you schedule us, must you not do right?
If we step o’er the line, do we not mark it nought?
The Sabbath; I’ll roll not, God-a-mercy. [Read more →]