22-28May2011 :: This Week

29May2011 [weekly]

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This week was The Pink Panther 2, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a couple of abandoned miniseries, and a swathe of articles read through Instapaper.

• Watched The Pink Panther 2 (imdb); all very silly, but entertaining, even if it is as much a spoof of itself as anything else, with lots of fun had trying to see just how culturally inappropriate it can be.
• Watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (imdb); a delightful film, with Robin Wright Penn playing a middle-aged woman "having a very quiet nervous breakdown", and looking back on her past as it seems to collapse in on itself, with a nice mix of flashback and dream-world; it manages to focus on a few core characters that keep it nicely coherent too; it's beautifully shot, full of light and colour, and has a great cast, across many superb female roles and a few strong supporting male roles.
• Tried but abandoned a couple of miniseries; The Kennedys (imdb), which only in its opening hour jumps around between stories without paying off on any of them, and is chock-full of cringe-inducing moments that seem solely political; and Cloudstreet (imdb), whose opening is slow and awkwardly jingoistic, with no explanation of where it's going.
• Read through my Instaper queue this week, taking the chance to get through a few (excellent) longer articles; Jamais Cascio's Listening to Foresight over at Open the Future has a nice exploration of futurism and people's reactions, and especially, how to ease people to uncomfortable scenarios; Jane Mayer's The Secret Sharer at The New Yorker is a fascinating — and terrifying — look at the crackdown on leaks going on under Obama's administration, and it's written like a great spy story too; Maria Bustillos' Wikipedia and the Death of the Expert over at The Awl bounces from the seemingly-simple premise about Wikipedia and the contemporary state of knowledge into a wide-ranging and incredibly detailed review of communications, education, and authority; Burkhard Bilger's The Possibilian at The New Yorker is a profile of neuroscientist David Eagleman, an amazing character who won't limit himself to any one field or activity, allowing the story the opportunity to explore science and humanity; Aaron Straup Cope's (Dog-Eared) Airport Cities meanders about and dives deep into technology and literature and sustainability, riffing from the idea that airports bring us closer together, and noting the environmental problems, Aaron points out: "I want to live in a world where airplanes are a good idea that still need to be done properly."