The parasites of the web are hammering the site with comment spam, which I’m deleting in droves. I guess somebody got a spamming company for Christmas. I may need to shut off commenting for a while before I upgrade and take more comprehensive steps to reduce the amount of garbage collecting on this site, with the help of my man.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Dear Spam-bot writers,

I hope you all get cancer of the eyeballs and die.

Sincerely,
Chris

PS: And so does everyone else.

Good people of the internet, the DVD has existed for more than a decade. Yet, the design of DVD menus seems to grow more tyrannical and confused with time. Those responsible are blinded by the insidious vices of pride and greed, tempted into committing one, two, or perhaps all of the Sins of DVD Menu Design.

“...they kill the life of grace and risk eternal damnation unless absolved in the sacrament of confession, or taken away by a perfect contrition.” --Wikipedia.

So let us examine these sins, so that we may know of their folly and be led by the light of Reason, unbesmirched in our own journeys.

Last week, with the hard work of Anne at Mindlabs, the Theatre Alliance’s Philadelphia New Play Festival site went live, introducing the first multi-theatre festival of its kind in the country. We designed the logo, website, and promo materials for the Theatre Alliance to help launch this great project.

Philly’s got a thriving and innovative theatre community, so if you’ve got the time in early February, you should check out the work being produced as part of the festival. Perhaps the best part is the festival pass, which gets you discounts on tickets, food, and parking, so you can end up ahead in the end by buying one for a night out at the theatre.

Believe it or not, I love reading comics. If you look at Current Config’s comics section right now, there are four posts, one of which is about a comic-based movie. I write a lot more about movies here than anything else, which is funny, considering I read comics and play games more than I watch movies. I’ve decided this needs to change. Hopefully (I make a lot of plans on Current Config I can’t keep), from now on I’ll be posting about comics that I believe people interested in this art form should read, and some that everyone should read.

If you don’t have a local comic shop to support, I recommend you check out InStockTrades, which has a decent selection and gives steep discounts to individuals, rather than retailers.

So, rather than bore you with a long ramble about “teh gestalt of sequential art, blah, blah, blah...”, I’ll just say this: Comics have grown up, so you should too. Read comics.

I’m a bit late in posting this, as we rushed out to see it on opening night, but here it is now for posterity: Casino Royale is the best Bond film and is one of the coolest action movies I’ve ever seen. No more crazy supervillains who want to carve their names on the moon or use giant ice lasers to freeze the Bahamas if they don’t get $1 billion or whatever. It’s Bond becoming 007, pushing himself to the limits to find and stop the enemy, because he will never stop. It’s James Bond at his rawest and most driven, and Daniel Craig does a brilliant job giving Bond a perfect blend of cool, arrogance, wit, steel, and poise. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better re-imagining of the Bond character and series than what was delivered in Casino Royale.

Alisa and I saw Children of Men last night. I’d heard someone describe it as the Blade Runner of our generation. When I heard it, I was skeptical of this statement, but now I understand.

What makes Children of Men so powerful is not just Alfonso Cuarón’s excellent directing, but the entire production. Every element is perfectly honed towards creating a bizarre but entirely believeable scenario. A world that’s only a half-step from our own, but full of the same seeds. The world is rich and full of characters who act with a strangeness that communicates verisimilitude. Extreme circumstances push the people populating this fictional Britain away from homogeny and into their states of coping: denial, survival, brutality, commitment, extremism, and blends of all these traits. Little explanation is given for anything beyond the main thrust of the story, and the world of the film thrives on this frigthening confusion. It feels a lot like the chaos of real life.

Go see Children of Men. It will not let you off easily for one moment, but that weight you leave with is the understanding that the choice to change is your own.

MPAA Review: Strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity.
Ad Exec Review: “No children. No future. No hope.”, “The future’s a thing of the past”, “The last one to die please turn out the light”, “The last days of human race”, “No child has been born for 18 years”, “He must protect our only hope”