from the ether

I've spent a lot of time at work listening to WNYC, a New York public radio station. They have a lot of the normal NPR & BBC stuff (morning edition, etc), but they also have a lot of their own programming.

I recently became interested in one show in particular, Radio Lab, which is an absolute marvel unlike any other show I've heard. They take big abstract topics and then find otherwise unexplored angles. Plus their production quality is very different from other shows: they allow for conversational speech and editing. It's hard to explain.

Anyways, you can find all the shows online. I wanted to point you to some of my favorites. I know most of you don't listen to the radio and/or don't have time to sit and listen to the internet for an hour, but I want to point it out to you anyway, just in case.

Look Out...Martians!. This early show is dedicated entirely to what happened with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Gives a lot of the backstory for what happened, plus lots of pieces of the actual broadcast. I've known the story of WotW for a long time, but I don't think I've ever really heard most of it. It's quite...eerie.

Where am I?. All about how the brain interacts with the body to tell you where and how and why you are you. Featuring phantom limbs and magnets and out-of-body air force experiences.

Musical Language. Various topics all related to how the brain deals with music. Includes spoken sentences that turn into music all on their own and the riots that happened with Rites of Spring.

50 films

#10 30 Days of Night
I went into this movie with pretty low expectations. I thought I would see a midling horror film, with gore and violence. In some ways I did see that. In other ways though, I saw a completely unexpected film.

Everything came together to create an overall experience. The colors were skewed towards reds and blacks and overwhelmingly white. The snow was used as a magnificent backdrop for everything else. On top of that was blood. So the colors worked to create an overall feeling throughout the movie...of...almost starkness.

The music worked right along with the color. It was mostly atmospheric, but different than the usual horror movie screeching. Instead, it somehow went with the color palette -- it felt sharp and stark in all the right ways.

Ok, I'm putting this into too many silly words now.

The script has some rough edges, some plot points are a bit too predictable. But really those are minor issues.

The vampires here are pretty different from how they're normally used. These are shown almost as animals, although they do talk and wear clothes. These aren't goth emo sad depressed vampires -- these are fast, furious killers, who get covered in blood and guts.

Anyways, I liked it quite a bit more than I thought I would. It's definitely not a typical horror movie; it's not even scary. You should see it.