The Wily Filipino

Weekly Link Roundup.

Not much time for surfing or writing, especially after a near-computer death scare a couple of days ago. (My computer just wouldn't boot into Windows XP, not even in safe mode, and it took a whole sleepless night, faced with the prospect of losing all my data once again, before the computer repair folks managed to fix it.) Note to everyone: when XP automatically downloads one of those updates, make sure you restart like they ask you to.

There is a whole series of interesting posts and threads on euphony: on languagehat, Kieran Healy's Weblog, The Road to Surfdom, and Jonathan Delacour's blog.

Time-wasting fun with City Creator, via Lockergnome (haven't actually played with it yet, but it looks good).

My brother Happy has a post on the best movie I've seen this year so far: Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. It's perhaps a little perverse for a college teacher to admit liking the film -- it can probably be read as a horrible teacher revenge fantasy -- but I ate it up anyway. I wanted to see it again the minute it was over. Part William Golding, part Survivor, the film can be read on different levels: an exploration of the inhumanity of corporate culture, or the militarism of high school education, or... just showing how teenagers would resolve their differences if they had scythes and machine guns. Or one can sit back and watch it as a high engrossing action film. Either way, Battle Royale is fantastic, riveting filmmaking, with great acting on the part of mostly unknowns, if plagued with some logical inconsistencies. And it's certainly not going to be released, or remade, in the U.S. anytime soon -- not in post-Columbine times. (Here's another review, on Midnight Eye.)

And there's a funny discussion -- sorry, you'd have to subscribe to read it -- at the Exotica mailing list on Leni Reifenstahl. Sipping tea with Edward Teller. In Hell. And listening to Barry Manilow on the PA system.

Posted by the wily filipino at September 14, 2003 06:55 PM