Ted, Ted, Ted » Read this to me

The Golden Compass

ted — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:32:22 +0000

…was a blast as expected. Laura was annoyed at the liberties taken with the plot, but I was too busy soaking up the Terry Gilliam silliness to notice. Evil minions in funny hats, fisheye lenses, the whole thing — it reminded my suddenly how long it’s been since Brazil, and what an impact that movie had on the way I watch movies. The bears, which loom large in the physical world of the book, are even more impressive on screen. They are an animation slam-dunk. The animators let a little fuzzy-and-cute slip into the bear characters and if anything it adds to the overall towering monsters effect. The screenwriters mostly dropped the author’s anti-church broadsides, but the usual suspects are getting upset about it, which is all to the good.

Philip Pullman

ted — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:00:49 +0000

Look for us in that long, roped-off line for the opening night of Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass movie. We never do that, but I have a good feeling about this one.

LibriVox

ted — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:10:27 +0000

Now that we’ve moved closer to my work, I don’t get much time to listen to audio in the car. But I still like to strap on the pod whenever I have a long wait in a line or something. I’m bookmarking this site here for the next time I need something to listen to.

Countercurrents

ted — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:46:40 +0000

Usually when I see a site I like I subscribe to its RSS feed and it shows up in the left column here, but this site out of Kerala, India has no feed, so I’m putting it here to remind me to go back and read it sometime.

Organizing your books by color

ted — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:45:31 +0000

The more you think about it, the less crazy it sounds.

Out of Order

ted — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:05:18 +0000

I’m importing a bunch of old entries, and there’s a fair amount of manual work involved, so things will be kind of out of sequence around here for a little while. Bear with me.

Update: Done with 2001. Intervening years to follow as time allows.

Homework

ted — Fri, 21 Dec 2001 14:00:00 +0000

Let us now praise really, really bad books for children. Has anyone seen anything worse than Robert Munsch’s monumental Love You Forever? Forget about books that don’t quite live up their potential (see below). This one has none to live up to. This unbelievable dog, which regularly shows up on the checkout stand racks at Borders-type stores, manages to combine in a single thin book all the simpering sentimentality, reinforcement of conservative cultural norms, bad writing and horrible art work that made children’s literature the publishing backwater it was for so many years. I think it’s the worst children’s book now on the shelves. Tell me I’m wrong. Your homework for the holidays is to come up with the most horrendous children’s book that you know to be currently in print. Painful as the exercise may be. Do it for the community. Do it for closure, or whatever. (The “in print” part is designed to eliminate Struwelpeter, my German grandmother’s favorite cautionary book for kids, because I just don’t like to think about that one. I’m pretty sure it’s out of print.) Note: Munsch’s labor of schlock has been hashed over pretty thoroughly over the years. There may not be much more to say about it. But I don’t know of any actual collections of bad kids’ books. So let’s get started.

Play on

ted — Fri, 21 Dec 2001 14:00:00 +0000

From the Children Now site’s new report on kids and computer games:”The video game industry explains that girls are not interested in gaming and that it would not be economically wise for them to invest in producing games for a female market. The truth, however, is that girls do enjoy playing video games. According to PC Data, 45% of computer and video game players in 2000 were female.”

Optimism kills

ted — Tue, 04 Dec 2001 14:00:00 +0000

Lemony Snicket is flying off the shelves. Now here’s something I can get behind. Says the Post: “Child psychiatrists say that these books, and other works that deal with kids’ deepest and often unspoken fears – of separation, abandonment, loneliness and death – can be therapeutic, far more so than tales that are relentlessly optimistic. Some children’s mental health experts say that darker fiction can help children master the inexplicable and terrifying events they witness in real life.” Has the Attorney General heard about this stuff?

I’m so glad

ted — Fri, 30 Nov 2001 14:00:00 +0000

our first lady agrees with me on the virtues of bilingualism.