Evolution of user friendliness

The new attachment warning could mean the end of those “Sorry, I forgot to attach the file” emails. If you try to send an email that contains the word “attachment” (or similar words), but don’t actually attach a file, you will see a helpful warning.

Things I learned today

From CBC’s Test the Nation: The correct spelling of just desserts is actually just deserts:

Deserts, in the sense of ‘things deserved’ has been used in English since at least the 13th century.

From the Quirks and Quarks blog: The Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched over two weeks after Voyager 2. Despite that, Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth, due to differences in trajectory between the two probes. (Also of interest: a playable/viewable version of the Golden Record is online.)

Love for Dear Harvard

Brett Love at TVSquad has posted a review of the Dear Harvard pilot:

[…] there was a nice surprise in Dear Harvard. […] Of the four drama pilots that I saw, this one is the closest to what I would call ready for prime time. It starts with a solid premise. The ‘Dear Harvard’ from the title is a blog kept by the main character, Honor, chronicling her quest to make it to the Ivy League. […] It’s also the best ‘pilot’ of the bunch as it really does a good job setting up what the series would be. […] The production values of Dear Harvard are really high as well. It’s one of the best looking of the pilots I have seen.

(You’ll remember that Dear Harvard is the TV pilot in which Claire Jenkins has a few songs. There’s a trailer online, but it’s being served in such a way that I can’t play it to see if any of Claire’s music appears in it.)

He suggests, as I did, that it’s obvious CW fare, but points out that that mini-network has a similarly-targeted show already scheduled. There’s obviously hope, though, so I’ll keep fingers crossed and an ear to the ground for new developments.

And developments there are…

“Harvard,” a teen drama about a young girl at an elite private school, won three awards, including the TV Guide Audience Award, which is voted by popular choice. The Anne Jarmain-produced pilot also won for best drama, and Ella Rae Peck was named best actress.

By the way, lest any regular folk think from the recent slew of posts about Claire that I’ve forsaken Lenni, fear not! There’s much good news to come from Miss Jabour… just not quite yet.

Gilmour, Sowande and Ellington

A brief followup to Li Robbins’ Radio 2 blog post, mainly for my own future reference: the particular movement of Fela Sowande‘s African Suite that was used as the opening theme song for Gilmour’s Albums is the fifth and last, Akinla. (For some reason the CBC Shop claims it’s the first movement, Joyful Day, but unless it was changed or the song changes substantially from that sample, that ain’t it.) The closing theme is Duke Ellington’s Saturday Night Function.

Ahoy!

Those of you who will be near or in Toronto next Monday night need to find your way to Supermarket for Claire Jenkins Avec Band‘s CD release concerts. I hesitate to call Claire’s music indie rock, because that can refer to an awful lot of stuff that’s nothing at all like what she does; on her MySpace page she says indie / acoustic / pop, which is closer, but your best bet is to head on over to listen to the tracks she’s posted and come up with your own genre.

There’s an early show at 7pm and a late one at 10pm, so no it’s a school night excuses will be accepted. (I’m driving down for the late show, so I’m less than sympathetic to the it’s too far folks either. 🙂 ) And bring cash, because you’ll feel awfully silly not being able to relive the show (through the magic of CD technology) as soon as you get home.

Preview: Be Kind Rewind

I dare you not to laugh when the song plays, and double dare you not to when you see where it goes.

I can definitely see a similar attitude to parts of writer/director Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although I suspect it’s not going to live up to that film (which Gondry co-wrote with Charlie Kaufman). My hesitation also comes from the fact that Be Kind Rewind is being released at the end of January, which can be a sign it’s not going to live up to its trailer; check out the movies in IMDb’s list of historical box office openings to see the sort of stuff that’s released in the dead of winter.

Peter J.’s Top [mumble] Movies Circa Now-ish

Jeez, these guys are organized; I’m not sure I could come up with anything like a top 20 list, especially one that ranks the movies relative to one another. I do have an informal list of films that I’ll re-watch, though, and a fairly representative excerpt follows:

  • Annie Hall
  • The Iron Giant
  • Lola rennt (aka Run Lola Run)
  • Magnolia
  • Citizen Kane
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • La vita è bella (aka Life is Beautiful)
  • Contact
  • Monty Python and The Holy Grail
  • TRON
  • Wag the Dog
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey

I’m a little surprised at the number of flicks listed on the other two lists that I haven’t seen: The African Queen, In the Name of the Father, The Cider House Rules, Fearless, Lone Star, Schindler’s List and Wonder Boys. Apocalypse Now and Young Frankenstein would’ve been on that list until about a month ago; neither cracked the re-watch list per se, although I might check out AN: Redux out of curiosity.

Update: Looks like Kimota94 posted another list while I was writing. Add 12 more movies to my haven’t-seen list and one (The Godfather) to the just-seen.

John Woo’s Once a Thief

  1. Mac: Smart as Einstein, legs to die for…
  2. Victor: …and her own stun grenades.
  3. Mac: The total woman.

Yup, it’s been a decade since John Woo’s Once a Thief was on the air, but thanks to Showcase Action it lives again. Based on the movie of the same name, it’s a likable, campy, funny show that combines noir with martial arts to a Tarantino-esque music soundtrack.

Sandrine Holt and Ivan Sergei play Li Ann and Mac, former thieves/lovers who leave a Chinese “Triad” family known as the Tangs. They’re partnered up with disgraced cop—and Li Ann’s new fiancé—Victor (Nicholas Lea) to form a team that performs white-hat operations for “The Director” (Jennifer Dale) under the aegis of a mysterious, unnamed government agency. Add in the sadistic senior agent Dobrinsky, spoiled society girl Jackie Janczyk and the decidedly odd assassins/cleaners Murphy and Camier and you’ve got a stylish action comedy drama that’s often just plain weird.

Once a Thief only had a single-season run of 22 episodes, but it’s definitely worth checking out. Only the two-part pilot and first episode have aired on Action so far, so it’s not too late to get into it. It’s shown on a somewhat irregular schedule that I believe is supposed to resemble 7am and 6pm every Saturday and Sunday, but set your PVRs to be sure.

London Fringe Festival awards 2007

Since they haven’t appeared on the London (Ontario) Fringe festival site yet, and the forums (where I posted the information previously) have been shut down already, here are the awards as I was able to hear them at Club Fringe on August 6:

Best VisualFringe Artist
Janice Johnston
Most Daring Performance
The Medium
Funniest Show
Fully Insured
Spirit of the Fringe
The Truth According to Morro and Jasp
Producer’s Pick
Stand Up, Monkey Poet
Best Solo Performance
Poofy Du Vey in “Burden of Poof”

There was at least one more award, but I can’t remember it at the moment.

Astute readers will notice the presences of Poofy and Morro and Jasp in the list of award winners, which just happen to be two of the shows I recommended. To that recommendation I now graciously add: told ya so!

One last bit of Fringe-y goodness: Poofy Du Vey (aka Courtney Cunningham) just posted the Edmonton Journal’s four-star (out of four) review, which matches the five-star (out of five) one from the London Free Press.