10 Reasons I Hated Nine

My whole family has seen Nine on Broadway. When my sister was dying to go to the new movie, hoping for a dancing, singing spectacular of at least Chicago (also directed by Rob Marshall) caliber, I had thought to myself "Huh. I wonder if the story is fleshed out."

The Broadway play itself hangs loosely together, and has always essentially reminded me of a Vegas cabaret; one by one the ladies come out and do their big, sexy number -- with a few extremely lovely ballads interspersed. Antonio Banderas carried the lead when I saw it, but that lead is a heavy load; a character with virtually no redeeming qualities save for charisma and a talent that is talked about but never seen: making movies.

The new movie Nine features Fergie, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Day Lewis, among others, and every single aforementioned person is worse than the last. I normally like several of those actors, but the only artists who shone through what is the slowest screenplay and most horribly directed catastrophe I've seen in years -- and that includes a lot of really weird theater -- were Dame Judi Dench (of course) and Marion Cotillard (who you may remember as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose). Their performances were beautiful, but didn't even sort of save the movie; it's still not worth seeing. Adding insult to injury, one of Cotillard's major songs was cut.

I enjoyed two things at Nine: my Diet Coke and the joy I felt when I leaned over to my dad and whispered "I HATE this movie!" and he said "Me, too!"

With no further ado, 10 Reasons I Hated Nine (and so did the rest of my family and my boyfriend):

1. The Story.

Nine is a story about an egomaniacal movie director with whom everyone is in love. Women throw themselves at him, and he, because he is helplessly only nine years old in his mind, has sex with all of them (make sense of THAT, Freud), cheats, lies, and breaks their hearts because, apparently, he doesn't know how to love. He's like Tiger Woods, only even more boring, particularly because the first hour and a half of the movie is spent simply establishing what a jerk he is with absolutely no build or interest. Then, at the very end, he has a hallucination -- SPOILER, unless you've ever read a book, seen a movie, or been told a story, in which case you know how this is gonna go -- with his mother (a breathtaking, yet wooden Sophia Loren) which inspires him to ... I don't know ... cry about how he hurts everybody. Then, he decides to make a different movie about how to get his wife back. In his mind, all the women he's allegedly "done" show up to watch the filming of it. The End.

2. The Lighting.

Just in case the storyline wasn't already offensive enough to women in its poor-bad-things-just-can't-help-loving-this-rich-married-guy-ness, Rob Marshall took special pains to make every single one of them look TERRIBLE. Bad skin, bad hair and makeup, and absolutely unmistakably deliberate horrible lighting. Some stills: 

Penelope Cruz 

Kate Hudson

Fergie  

Nicole Kidman 

3. Nicole Kidman's Rendition of "Unusual Way."

Don't let Hollywood fool you; Nicole Kidman is a robot. "Unusual Way" is one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex songs ever written for the stage. She sings it about an octave lower than it's written, poorly, and with a face presumably paralyzed with botox. The song is also cut up into pieces which make it seem to be part of a longer conversation, which not only slows down the film (which at this point is practically reversing), but is incredibly offensive, again, to women. 

4. Daniel Day Lewis Never Smiles and I Wanted Him to Die.

He was so terrible, so completely unlovable. Was that the point? That's not a very good point. I loud-whispered "kill yourself" during a sensitive moment. I couldn't help myself. If you identify with this protagonist in the least, you are probably a bad person. Good luck.


5. The "MOVIE."

The stakes attached to DDL's moral transformation are that if he doesn't learn how to love, he can never make another good movie (I think). The trouble is, we don't give a flying fox about his movie. We don't know that he's a genius, only that he's kind of a jerkstore who's got everyone around him making apologies for him so he can have lots of sex and not write a script. I hoped "Guido" would never make another movie as long as he lived by about ten minutes in. Possible suggestion for improvement: attach stakes to the movie itself; like, if Guido doesn't make a good movie, a puppy dies. 

6. The Moral.

The moral of this movie, from what I gather, is that if you're a possible sex addict, a terrible businessman, and a frustrated artist, and you feel bad, it's your fault. More succinctly: "If you shoot yourself in the foot, it hurts." Thanks, Captain Obvious. 

7. The Sex.

The first hour and a half, or "Chapter One: Guido is a Jerk," (prior to "Chapter Two: Guido Feels Sad") has a series of oversexed songs by each female, as I mentioned. It is so gratuitous it's practically soft porn. The women look so terrible, it's practically an act of violence.

8. The Abuse of Judi Dench.

Dame Judi Dench is one of the finest actresses of our time. Here are some things she could have been doing instead of this movie: making tea, writing a children's book, gardening, skiing, having a glass of wine, or making a movie that didn't suck. 

9. The Editing.

As if the ingredients weren't already mostly rotten, Marshall cooked them in a microwave on defrost for twelve days. Every cut seems to slow the movie down, nothing builds, the song "Simple" is gone, and it's as though each take was chosen for its lack of warmth.

10. The Two Hours I Can Never Have Back.

Rob Marshall, your next project should be a time machine. You owe it to society now.  

The one creative moment: During Fergie's lusty-busty "Be Italian," there's a dance involving tambourines and sand. It's not worth seeing the movie for, though. Don't even Netflix it. YouTube it. Here, you don't even have to leave this page.

You're welcome.

All I Want for Hannukah

CBS done lost their minds.

Pap smears are totally more of an anniversary thing.

Roomba Pac-Man! Yes!

Know what I'm into? Roomba Pac-Man. I am overwhelmed with pleasure. Watch the amazingly geeky video below, and check out the pics here, too.

Boys, all my crushes are belong to you.

Madonna Rocks.

So, my friend @misterjaded asked me today what my favorite Madonna songs are, and it inspired me to poke through some of my faves. Here are a few of them:

Do I want the new Madonna CD for Christmas? Yes. Thank you.

Karl Lagerfeld vs. Kanye West

Here's a fun game:

Who said it? Kanye West or Karl Lagerfeld?

It's tougher than you might think, and full of strange wisdom. I got 8 out of 10 and this tidbit courtesy of Kanye:

"When your message resonates with the people, then you know your message is from God, and we are building this movement in the interest of all God's people."

Here's something Kanye never said:

"I'mma let you finish Karl Lagerfeld, but Michael Jackson was the best possible celebrity robot of all time."

Too soon? Nah. Too late, if anything.

[via GFY (and God)]

The 12 Wows of Google Wave

Google Wave lives up to the hype.

In the words of Lars Rassmussen, Google Wave approaches e-mail by imagining "what might e-mail look like if it [were] invented today?" There would be way more features, combining all the social stuff we do online like blogging, social media, instant messaging, photo sharing and more, and rather than sending messages, you would be editing conversations which exist online. The time-saving potential of this is astronomical. You'll see how if you read on.

The above video is an hour and twenty minutes long, so I've decided to capture the ten biggest "wow" moments to create a sort of Cliff Notes guide. Here are what I believe to be the highlights.

The 12 Wows of Google Wave

1. 0:09:38. Watch other people type messages.
Personally, I don't love this feature. I frequently edit over and over while typing. Fortunately, you can check a box to return to the days of "ScottBlogs is typing..."

One thing that does strike me about this, though, is that you could have a whole conversation without ever hitting SEND (or DONE, in this case). In an age of bugging telephones and file hacking, that's super off-the-record.

Another good thing about this is that you can begin to formulate your response while the person is typing to you. There is no wait time, so "you are always reading or writing." Hot.

2. 0:15:25 Photo magic.
Skipping over the ability to (finally) clearly reply to different parts of an e-mail (and to individual recipients in the case of a group e-mail) and "Playback" the steps it took to get to your current conversation (rather than going through old messages or scrolling up through the thread), because those aren't that amazing, we come to the photo sharing. It's really, really easy. You even can edit your photo captions in the conversation (skip ahead to 0:27:10 to see).

Not only that, but you can search for photos online and drag and drop them into the conversation. And then caption them. If you happen to be live-publishing your conversation to Blogger (which you can do, BTW), it works there, too.

Furthermore, if you're uploading a photo to your Wave conversation, the thumbs appear and load in real time as you upload them. You never hit "SEND." Again, major time saver. Same thing if you are putting the conversation live into Blogger.

side notes
a. so glad I've stuck to Blogger and not gone to WordPress
b. with conversations existing online and even posted straight to blogs, and the ease of pulling photos from the net, watch for changes in image copyright laws.

3. 0:20:09 The Wave Dance.
Because if you're jumping around the video, I can't let you skip this.

4. 0:23:15 Orkut can use Wave.
I know, right? Another social networking site for you to join. However, with Wave behind it, Orkut strikes me as the most likely "next big thing" in social media. I will be signing up immediately after finishing this article. Not just because I want to get in early, but because you can use Orkut within Wave, and Wave from within Orkut. Ever searched for an e-mail for ages and then realized the reason you couldn't find it was that it was on Facebook? I have. There are a lot of good reasons to integrate e-mail and social networking. This one is good, because it doesn't go too far (it's not like every person you e-mail can immediately see your Orkut profile; I've never given much information to my e-mail clients because I don't want my contacts to be able to know stuff about me. That's a lot of PR folks knowin' too much.).

There's also TWave, or Tweety. You can Tweet from within Wave. Skip to 0:59:17 to see.

side notes
c. As Lars mentions at the beginning of the demo, sometimes it's hard to remember that you're still working from your browser window. This isn't software. You can do all this on any computer with a compatible browser; not just your home or work computer.

5. 0:28:40 Edit someone else's message. In real time.
The real "wow" here comes at 0:29:00 when you see the markups, which are like Wave's version of a blackline or redline document (or like what happens in Word if you hit "Track Changes"). Watch the entire 29th minute. There's a lot of "wow" to be had -- it just keeps getting better. Playback, which didn't seem that amazing at first ... is now amazing.

6. 0:36:33 Four people editing at the same time.
This is just plain astounding to watch. Four people honing the same document at the same time like ants or worker bees. It kind of gives me the chills. It's also really well done; you can clearly see who's who and who's where.

Clearly this is going to lead to games. If you're into that, skip ahead to 51:40 to watch competitive Sudoku.

7. 0:41:15 Drop waves into a new wave.
This is a feature I didn't know I'd been missing. So many times, I've had to search and re-forward an old conversation to someone. Now, you can cite an old conversation by drag and drop -- and both parties will be able to see if anyone made any changes to it (and tried to rewrite history).

8. 0:42:22 Party trick with search.
This shows just how aggressive and instantaneous the search feature is -- it's practically a party trick. Watch to the end of minute 42.

9. 0:44:35 Smart spellcheck.
The spell checker, or Spelly, as they call it ("We have a really clever naming system. Add 'Y,'" says Stephanie Hannon.), looks not just the dictionary, but at the context of the word, comparing it to usage all over the internet. The best "wow" moment of this is at 0:45:15 when Lars types "Icland is an icland" and Spelly corrects it to "Iceland is an island."

Spelly also doesn't autoreplace unless it's really confident; if Spelly isn't totally sure it knows you meant to type something else; it just underlines. That is one seriously smart spellchek.

Another "wow" comes right up at 0:47:10; "Searchy." The Yes-No-Maybe gadget at 0:50:32 is also worth a look.

10. 0:53:05 Edit a map on someone else's screen.
This is really cool. You can zoom, edit, draw and write, whatever, all over a map on someone else's screen. I don't think there's currently any way to do anything like this, other than sending someone a series of screenshots.

side notes
d. Google Wave was developed by the same team who developed Google Maps.

11. 1:09:15 Privacy.
Google Wave is available for any and all companies to adopt and brand as their own, as they show with examples by ACME and Inotech. These may appear to be just "skins," but coders can go in and make a lot of cool, need-specific gadgets and more. All the Wave platforms can talk to each other, of course -- but the nice thing is that if you're in a Wave conversation with another company and you "Private Reply" to someone at your own company, the reply never actually leaves your server. This is great for security (and talking about people behind their backs).

12. 1:12:42 Real time translator.
A sparkling jewel in the Google Wave crown is this robot gadget named Rosy, who can instantly translate 40 language. It's just unbelievable. Just as Spelly sources grammatical information from the web, Rosy continuously rearranges each phrase to make sense in the language to which she's (fine, it's) translating.

side notes
e. To whoever developed Rosy: THANK YOU.

That about sums it up. Google Wave is going to change everything. Everything will soon be Wavy.

Google Wave Logo - Design Fail?

I am currently majorly geeking out over Google Wave. I am writing a whole big blog about it to help people understand what the deal with it is; people who like me who accessed the demo and went "the video is an hour and twenty minutes! Shut up."

I am greatly reminded of the Henry Ford quote regarding the creation of automobiles:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

However, here's the Google Wave logo:
Seriously, guys? As a Mac user, I honestly looked at that and thought it was probably the logo for the next Windows Vista. I was quite wrong; check out the Windows Vista logo:
Still, the idea's kinda the same, right? Wavy, and the exact same color scheme.

Google Wave is a totally amazing new communication tool, but I kinda want give the design team a smack upside the head.