Thursday, June 19, 2008

Contrails

As I turned east today on my late-night walk, I saw three long contrails painted across the sky. All three of them were brighter than any I'd seen at night before. But the weird thing was their angle - they were spread high and far apart in the north and converged near the horizon at their southern end. I couldn't see where exactly because of the houses.

I walked, then ran, through dark residential blocks, searching for a good vantage point to see where they intersected. I was kind of curious why three planes would fly that way. Soon I came to a spot where I could almost see their meeting place, through a gap between two houses. There was a bright glow seeping out from behind the left house, apparently from right where the contrails joined. It was the moon.

I ran back home to grab my camera, then headed out again. This time I went farther south and east, to where the ground starts sloping downhill, so I could get a clearer view. There it was! The moon, and two of the contrails. The topmost, most-angled one had faded by now, and the other two were a lot fainter (and shorter) as well - ah well. I quickly turned on my camera - argh, the battery's almost gone! I quickly snapped two pictures, then looked around for something rest the camera on for steadiness. There wasn't anything tall enough.

I ran down the hill a block and found a great spot, but again without any kind of steadying capabilities available. I took two more pictures, but they weren't as good. As I was was doing this, standing in the middle of the street, a man in a suit emerged from the shadows, walking along the sidewalk.

"Taking pictures of the moon?"

"Yeah... and the contrails."

"I saw them. Nice night."

It was. It was actually kind of awe-inspiring. I just wish I had a decent picture of it. But maybe you can imagine what it looked like.


Monday, June 2, 2008

The Golden Compass (Movie)

Remember how, at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, there was this narrative voiceover, and then there were happy kids frolicking in absurdly well-lit green grassy fields and playing pranks and stuff? Well, the beginning of The Golden Compass is an exact copy of that, except with a much less compelling voiceover. It then continues to copy the worst parts of the Lord of the Rings movies - the cliched script and unrealistic dialog - and combines that with a sort of sparkly-magic-plus-talking-animals vibe. Well, it did for the first 15 minutes at least. I couldn't watch more than that. Actually, I only held out that long because I wanted to see if Nicole Kidman fit her part well. She was OK. Overall the movie was really, really bad - the worst movie I have intentionally started watching.

For context, I think The Lord of the Rings books were great, the Lord of the Rings movies were excellent, the Harry Potter books were excellent, the Harry Potter movies were mediocre to good, and the Golden Compass books were excellent.

You should avoid this movie. I'm worried that if you haven't read the book, which you should, it will ruin it for you; and if you have read the book, watching the movie will make you feel extremely depressed. Like I do now. Yeah, I realize my reaction may be a bit abnormal, but you're really not missing anything by skipping this one.

Cost: 3/5 (+1 if you've read the book. Another +1 if you're me.)
Payoff: 2/5 (-1 if you've read the book. Also, -2 to your future enjoyment of the book if you haven't read it.)
(Rating explanation.)

Die die die die die!