Unapologetically unlikable characters and intentionally tedious writing, culminating in a main character who speaks like the pompous, overliterate asshole that he is. I’m sure the story has a lot of merit or something, but I’m giving up on page 52.

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Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama

Talk about classics. I used to be rather prejudiced against Clarke, until I read an early draft of the 2001 script and found out that it was actually supposed to be a sci-fi story, and not just the pretty sound-and-light show that Kubrick made out of it. (Did I ever mention I don’t like Kubrick?)

Now, this is geeky science-fiction at its best: unlike Stephenson or Card, Clarke never lectures you about how the whole science of Rama works. He’ll remind you in passing that gravity doesn’t work the same way in a spinning giant spaceship as on Earth, and he’ll definitely use every aspect of that in the story, but he’s not going to give you a physics lesson.

Rama just isn’t targeted at the same audience: while Quicksilver makes literary types feel clever because they learn and understand something scientific (which they’ll unlearn as soon as they close the book, of course), and Ender’s Game tries to explain enough about zero-G disorientation to be accessible to a teenager audience, Clarke’s story is evidently written by an artistically talented scientist (who knew that was possible?) for scientifically-minded people. I don’t think you really have to be a geek, per se, to appreciate the book, but you ought to have been moderately attentive to the science classes in high school.

Like any Clarke story (or so I heard), Rama benefits from scientific accuracy: the book is like a blueprint for an intergalactic ship that could actually work and transport lifeforms for thousands of centuries. What I didn’t expect, though, was how well it would be written, and how vivid the depictions would be — this is pretty much the first time I read a novel that focuses on describing a place rather than a story (and as unfamiliar a place as could be), and I didn’t think it could be quite so successful: the chapters revealing the inside of Rama are really breathtaking.

It may not work quite as well if you’re not a sci-fi geek, and I’ve got a feeling that the sequels aren’t going to be as memorable; but this is a great book (with an appropriately frustrating ending).

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Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

How about a good sci-fi classic now, something’s that I see or hear mentioned just about once a month in blogs and podcasts (in reference to the advancement of modern videogaming)?

Ender’s Game starts out like a silly children’s book, with six-year-old brethren professing everlasting love, and nude, sweaty ten-year-olds trainees wrestling under the showers and… uh, yeah, it’s awkward like that sometimes (not least of all because I was right out of Stephenson’s 17th century, where the word “buggers” has quite another connotation).

But it’s still a pretty good sci-fi story, and it deserves to be a classic. Although it doesn’t look like it in the first chapters, the author doesn’t shy away from addressing the ambiguous morality of isolating and training kids to become great masters of war, or trying to wipe out an alien race in an extension of the concept of self-defense; and while the ending is more than predictable, what really got me was the epilogue — which also happens to be the introduction to the book’s sequels, that I’d already have if I could still rely on mail order.

A quick, easy read, definitely recommended.

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Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

Okay, that’s not quite what I was going for. I enjoyed Snow Crash because of the story and the science-fiction, despite the archeological digressions that grew longer and longer (and drier) as the book progressed; with a title like Quicksilver I expected this one to be an epic fantasy story about alchemists or something, rather than a novelized history of the dawn of science in the 17th century.

Not that’s it’s a bad book; as long and hard it is to read (I can read English sci-fi or contemporary novels without a sweat, but I’m not trained for the vocabulary of period pieces), it managed to keep me interested until the end.

But the thing is, I’ve never been the mathematical kind of geek. I don’t care how algebra was invented, and while this book finally gave me an inkling of what’s so fascinating about the idea of equations describing and defining the world (which had always evaded me precisely because I wasn’t born in the 1650s, and always took math for granted, I guess), there isn’t much of it that’s remaining in my head after I’ve closed the book.

In many ways, the novel feels like a “modern science for dummies” story, using the setting to explain the bases of science to the New York Times readers — but I know how centrifugal forces work (and how they’re not forces), and almost everything else the book touches. And there’s this main character, who’s been witness, and often instrumental, to everything that happened during a whole century, and that somehow the times forgot; that same storytelling device that made me occasionally curse at the Rome TV show. Sure, it works, but I just don’t like it. Not to mention the Lost-style flashbacks that hint at plot points that’ll be explained later — which works better in a TV show, because with Quicksilver I just kept wondering if I’d skipped a paragraph somewhere.

Like I said, it’s not a bad book at all, and I’m not sorry I read it; but I’m not going to order the rest of the trilogy, and I don’t suppose I’ll be too eager to read anything else by Stephenson if he indulges more and more in his nerdiness as he gets more successful.

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» yankodesign.com [via]

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» centripetalnotion.com [via]

A bit sacrilegious for my taste, but pretty.

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» kentrogowski.com [via]

Inside-out bears. Great idea.

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» ohgizmo.com

If you’re not thrilled with the results the wallpaper can be wiped clean with a damp sponge allowing you to start from scratch.

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The Golden Compass

Okay, that wasn’t as bad as I expected; but it wasn’t that much better, either. The script does an interesting job of moving stuff around to help smooth things out, and exposition in general is pretty well handled, but it all moves way too fast, just as could be expected — and as a result becomes pretty much boring… but very nice to watch.

I suppose it’s pointless to start nitpicking on casting choices when you’re viewing a movie adaptation of a book you enjoyed, but I still think there could have been much more interesting casting choices for Mrs. Coulter; I also dislike Pan’s voice, think McKellen doesn’t really work as Iorek (his voice doesn’t really scream of raw, muscular power, does it?), and hate the music.

Just like many adaptations of long, epic books, this could have been made much better by just splitting the story into two movies instead of one. The funny thing is I’m not used to being on this side of the fence, watching a movie after I’ve read the book.

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» saizenmedia.com [via]

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» weareborn.tv [via]

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Neal Stephenson : Snow Crash

Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf pour cent de tout ce qui se passe dans les églises chrétiennes n’a rien à voir avec la religion elle-même. Les gens intelligents finissent tous par s’en apercevoir, et ils concluent que l’intégralité des cent pour cent sont des conneries, ce qui fait que tout le monde relie athéisme et intelligence.

On dirait que j’aurais difficilement pu trouver un meilleur livre à ouvrir après Pullman. Il y a même des daemons (mais le modèle geek) et un couteau qui est à ça de pouvoir couper les atomes en deux. Et c’est aussi l’opposé exact de La boussole d’or, en ce que l’écriture est formidablement drôle et intelligente (au moins dans la première moitié du livre) et que l’histoire est plutôt oubliable.

Le vrai problème est que, si la peinture d’une Amérique en faillite est à la fois comique et terrifiante, et la réalité virtuelle — imaginée en 1992 ! — rappelle étrangement Second Life (ce qui est autant une qualité du livre qu’une condamnation pathétique de Lindeland, qui fait moins bien et moins intéressant quinze ans plus tard), la deuxième moitié de l’histoire avance surtout dans de longs monologues théologiques ou techniques, ou des dialogues avec un bilbiothécaire virtuel ; donc, des pages et des pages d’explications, certes intéressantes, mais dépourvues de l’humour qui rendait les premiers chapitres si géniaux.

Recommandé tout de même — et c’est une des pierres angulaires de la culture geek, de toute façon.

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» dvice.com

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30 jours de nuit

Superbe photographie ; horrible film.

Les décors d’Alaska (reconstitués en Nouvelle-Zélande) sont très bien utilisés — et ont l’avantage d’être originaux — mais j’ai passé tout le film à penser que c’était exactement le genre de film que pond un réalisteur de clips et, surprise, IMDb m’indique que ce type est un réalisateur de clips.

Il y a deux ou trois scènes qui auraient visiblement été puissantes si elles avaient été filmées correctement, et le background bizarre, et complètement inexpliqué dans le film, des vampires est intriguant, donc il y a des chances que le comic qui a donné naissance à cette merde vaille le coup d’oeil.

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Philip Pullman : A la croisée des mondes

Bon… j’ai dévoré les trois livres (Les royaumes du Nord ; La Tour des anges ; Le miroir d’ambre) en 72 heures, et deux jours plus tard je ne sais toujours pas trop ce que je veux en dire.

Dès que j’ai entendu parler des films et de leur univers — une sorte de monde parallèle où on ne porte pas son âme dans son coeur, mais elle se balade à côté de vous sous la forme d’un animal — j’ai voulu en savoir plus, et ne pas me limiter à ce qui pouvait tenir dans un film hollywoodien de deux heures.

J’avais raison de vouloir lire les romans : l’histoire est tellement dense que j’ai du mal à imaginer comment on pourrait réduire chaque livre en un script (je sais que c’est aussi le cas pour Harry Potter ou Le seigneur des anneaux, par exemple, mais on en reviendra toujours au fait que je me fiche des mésaventures d’un geignard d’orphelin-sorcier et d’un geignard de hobbit débile et tiens on dirait que j’ai trouvé le point commun) et, même si le style de l’auteur n’est pas vraiment spectaculaire, il est efficace et va droit au but — très cinématographique, on pourrait dire, si on pouvait imaginer que ce ne soit pas une insulte.

Mais la grosse déception, c’était de ne pas trouver ce que je m’attendais à avoir dans le livre et qui ne serait pas bien passé dans le film : une explication cohérente, une vraie théorie de pourquoi ces gens ont leur âme en-dehors et comment ça fonctionne. Cette histoire de daemons est loin d’être un gadget — elle est centrale au premier volume, et très bien exploitée dans les deux suivants — mais je n’ai jamais pu oublier complètement que ça n’a, au fond, aucun sens ; et, surtout, qu’il n’y a pas de définition claire de la limite entre les aspects de la personnalité qui résident dans le coeur/cerveau et dans le daemon/âme. Dans l’un des tomes, certains personnages se retrouvent séparés de leurs daemons, et pourtant leur comportement et leurs pensées ne semblent pas changer ; si l’âme ne contient ni les émotions ni la conscience ni, je ne sais pas, le centre de la pensée rationnelle, alors qu’est-ce qu’un daemon, vraiment, si ce n’est une peluche parlante avec un don d’empathie étonnant (et une paire d’yeux supplémentaires pour pouvoir surveiller derrière soi) ?

Mais ce n’est pas bien grave ; l’histoire est suffisamment forte pour continuer à lire, même si je ne peux m’empêcher de toujours chercher la faille. Ce qui est grave, en revanche, et dessert l’histoire, c’est l’anti-cléricalisme de l’auteur – si vous pensiez que les associations chrétiennes n’avaient aucun droit de se plaindre de l’adaptation cinématographique, eh bien… disons ça comme ça : je suis agnostique, élevé comme athée, et l’auteur attaque la religion chrétienne si violemment que j’y réfléchirais à deux fois avant de stocker ces bouquins dans une bibliothèque scolaire. Dépeindre le Vatican d’une réalité parallèle comme une dictature mondiale, c’est une chose (on pourrait dire que c’est une vérité historique) ; mais ce que Pullman décrit dans son troisième volume est franchement insultant pour quiconque croit en un Dieu, et ça fait du monde. Je ne dis pas que c’est une mauvaise histoire, ou qu’elle ne devrait pas être racontée, mais juste que c’est… franchement malpoli, et que je suis choqué par solidarité avec mes camarades croyants (alors que je ne suis pas sûr d’en avoir). Ou peut-être que c’est moins l’histoire que la façon de la raconter.

Ce qui m’amène au fait que je suis content d’avoir lu les livres sans les avoir achetés (merci rhino75) : je crois que je n’aime pas très beaucoup ce M. Pullman. Passons sur le fait d’écrire une trilogie entière contre la religion (et qu’elle repose sur le destin et la religion, juste façon païenne et new-age) ; ce qui m’a vraiment stoppé, c’est de lire que les gens inintéressants ont des daemons inintéressants, et que tous les daemons des domestiques sont des chiens et ceux des bonnes sont des poules (si je ne me trompe — les chiens sont mentionnés deux fois au moins, mais je ne suis plus sûr pour les poules). Euh… désolé, mais ce n’est pas quelque chose que j’aimerais écrire, ou lire, et encore moins dans un roman qui est censé cibler les “enfants et jeunes adultes.” Yeurk.

Et pourtant, je le disais, je suis vraiment content d’avoir lu les livres. Parce que l’histoire est intéressante, l’univers est original, et les développements sont… enfin, disons que vous devriez vraiment lire la trilogie avant que la promotion du troisième film ne commence, pour conserver la surprise de ce qui se passe vraiment dans cette histoire — au passage, je me demande bien comment ils comptent gérer l’adaptation, s’ils ont supprimé toute référence à la religion dans le premier film. (Et toute la trilogie ferait une bien bonne minisérie télé de deux ou trois saisons, s’il n’était pas totalement inenvisageable de produire une série télé avec un sujet pareil.)

A lire, donc, pas parce que c’est un chef d’oeuvre, mais parce que c’est une perspective originale, et ça change un peu de ces orphelins-sorciers geignards.

Illustration : AeroMartin.

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» yankodesign.com [via]

Clever — but, really, how long could you resist breaking your piggy bank if you knew it’s filled with cute plastic guts?

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» logolounge.com [via]

As unoriginal as the topic is, this writeup is intelligent. I suck at designing logos, so I avoid them altogether, but if I had to do one during the course of 2008 I’d come back to this article for inspiration.

(I’d be happy enough to produce a logo that doesn’t look like crap — I couldn’t care less if it was outdated by one year. Those things are supposed to stand the test of time somewhat, aren’t they?)

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» cgsphere.com [via]

A nice CG artist showcase: how original can you be when you’re asked to produce a sphere in the center of a tiled background?

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Dexter 2.10–2.12

That was shaping up to be an intense season finale if only it had focused on the confrontation with Doakes. Dexter has way too many guardian angels in this show — didn’t something comparably fortuitous and silly happen in season one?

Obviously there was a very cathartic scene for the audience somewhere in there, though.

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» iunewind.com [via]

Pretty wallpapers. Too bad the older images are not available in modern sizes.

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Pushing Daisies 1.09

Most poorly structured episode so far (which is weird, considering that there wasn’t much happening of interest). But saved by the ending.

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Now it’s been two days since I found out what The Golden Compass is about, and the book joined the Mass Effect novel at the top of my private Amazon wishlist (which I might make public for Christmas just in case, because that paperback costs as much as six ramen meals! outlandish!).

I used to wonder if I was more prejudiced that I thought about kids’ books, but that proves I’m not. For some reason I just don’t seem to care about a school for magic, and a goddamn persecuted orphan out to save the world with his friends; whereas a parallel universe where you have talking animals for soulmates… now that’s fucking awesome. Even if the story seems to be centered around another dickensian orphan — I can feel in my bones that she’s not going to be as much of a pathetic whiny victim as that annoying egomaniac wuss.

So I’m gonna have to avoid the movie. Which is a shame, considering: talking animal soulmates.

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» gizmodo.com

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» smashingmagazine.com

When I grow up I wanna be Google.

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The Bourne Ultimatum

Well done, and not particularly interesting. It doesn’t really work to have a whole trilogy dedicated to shooting chase sequence after chase sequence, and only deliver such a lame payoff at the end. (Although I guess it makes sense to downplay the plot itself considering that it’s based on ancient novels that have already been adapted before.)

I’d heard conflicting opinions about the big Tangiers fight, but I thought it was very efficient — while it’s insanely frustrating in a Transformers fight scene to have the camera struggling to keep up with the action and show anything significant on screen, it’s actually quite a good way to express the intensity of a bare-handed fight between two trained assassins, both acutely aware that only one will come out alive.

Although it may quite possibly work better on the small screen than in a theater.

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Stardust

Oh, imagine that — a Neil Gaiman story about a gateway to a magical parallel universe. But, even if it’s not very original, and the twists are too predictable, and the ending is a little too easy (you’d better have an insanely clever reply if one of your characters is going to end up asking “Why didn’t you do that earlier?”), and the director was rather uninspired… a Gaiman story still makes for a very sweet movie.

I think I preferred ‘Mother.’

Did Claire Danes butcher her poor eyebrows by herself, or was it for the movie?

P.S. Disclaimer: I watched this movie at 10am. (For some reason I couldn’t sleep anymore.)

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As if the eternal victim shtick wasn’t unpleasant enough to watch episode after episode, the Harry Potter series needed a creepy fascist-regime plot now. And here I thought those things were called entertainment.

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It’s hard to justify making a movie from a show that’s still going — a canceled show, like Futurama, can afford to release so-so episodes bundled together as a DVD, but when it comes to the Simpsons (which has to be the most popular comedy show currently on air, as low as it’s sunk) it’s much harder to provide something worth your time and money.

Oh my god her first word!

So let’s cut them some slack and say this long episode had the best jokes the Simpsons had in a decade. Which isn’t saying that much, but still. I wouldn’t be pissed if I’d been to a theater to see it, and it’s more than certainly worth buying the DVD. Even though there’s a definite lack of fresh ideas (and jokes, for that matter) in the second half of the show.

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I never really share everyone’s enthusiasm for Pixar movies — there’s always something missing or something too much that screams of design by committee.

In this case, the rats are amazing and there are some excellent scenes, but it’s all wasted by way too much of the irritating humans. Plus those stupid morals about how stealing is wrong. They’re rats, for crying out loud.

And I wish I hadn’t watched the English version. Listening to actors fake diverse levels of outlandish French accents for a hundred minutes is really painful.

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God. Awful.

Is Maya’s accent real or faked, by the way? It’s been so annoying from the start.

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