The name of the book, “House of Leaves,” seemed familiar to me but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then I noticed on the back the word “Poe” and it looked like the same logo the singer Poe uses but I thought it was a coincidence. Then I noticed the word “Haunted” in quotes above the logo, and that’s a song by Poe that I love (and to which I am currently listening) and thought “okay, there’s got to be a connection here.” Then when I started reading the book and saw the phrase “five and a half minute hallway” I just had to check into it. I’d never heard that phrase before except on Poe’s album “Haunted”: there’s a song titled 5 ½ Minute Hallway. Turns out the author, Mark Danielewski, is Poe’s brother and her album “Haunted” is meant to parallel the book House of Leaves. Neato.

Now I had the album “Haunted” back in high school and loved it but, like a dork, gave it away to a friend and all I have left are crappy MP3 rips. Even worse, several of the tracks on the album are dialogue and I didn’t care about them at the time so I didn’t rip them from the CD. Well, I’m thinking those tracks might be interesting now that I’m reading the book, and I wanted better quality audio than 128K, so I re-bought the album on Amazon MP3 just now. It’s nice to be rehearing it. As usual, I debated between getting it off iTunes or Amazon MP3. Both had the 18-track album with the extra Hey Pretty remix, but Amazon offered it for $8.99 while iTunes had it for $9.99. I’ve written about this before, but iTunes often loses out to Amazon for me when it comes to buying MP3s, all due to price.

I got P.S. I Love You in on Netflix yesterday and, for the life of me, I don’t know why. I mean, I intentionally put it on my Netflix queue, but I dunno why. I don’t normally go for romance movies and now poor old Jon’s going to sit through it with me, haha. Speaking of movies he’ll have to sit through, I’ve already told him that he may have avoided seeing New Moon in theaters with me, but he won’t get out of watching it when it comes out on DVD. It’s already in my Netflix queue, in fact. Listen at me, saying I don’t go for romance movies and then saying I’ll inflict New Moon upon my boyfriend! Let me clarify: I enjoy the Twilight movie series because I like the book series, even though the movies are really pretty terrible. Anyway, I’ll now discontinue this line of discussion since your opinion of my Twilight-liking intellect has sunk through the floor… In other news, the next movie on my Netflix queue is The Machinist!

My dad and I watched Up yesterday which was a treat for me because I loved that movie when I first saw it in the theater with Jon. My dad enjoyed it, too, and pointed out something I hadn’t considered. Erm, spoiler alert! Right, so in the movie, the bad guy falls off a zeppelin while holding a few helium balloons. He plummets through the clouds and I had always assumed he died, which was surprising because Disney never lets the bad guys die. Even the bad dogs in the movie were shown floating safely down so you can guess they live. Well, my dad noted that the bad guy fell from a high altitude but would be falling into denser air, which could help slow his descent with those balloons. The way Pixar did it, you can choose to believe whichever ending you like: the bad guy died by going squish! against the earth, or he lived thanks to those few balloons he held.

We also tried to watch Watchmen, along with my mom, but couldn’t get past the first twenty minutes or so. We had first watched Tales of the Black Freighter, a twenty-minute animated short that comes with Watchmen, and it was terrible. It’s like some teenage boy with bad animation skills made a short movie to show off how gory he could be. My dad and I were cracking up, but not at points where we were supposed to laugh. For example, this shipwrecked guy is on an island and he builds a boat out of his shipmates’ corpses because they’re full of gas and thus buoyant. My dad pointed to all the palm trees shown in the background and said “See those palm trees? Coconuts float.” He also commented on how it was a really bad idea to build a ship for the ocean out of dead bodies because there are plenty of carrion eaters in the ocean. Sure enough, the guy got attacked by sharks that were coming after his dead-body boat. Ugh. The narration throughout was like really bad poetry written by some melodramatic emo kid who thought he was being deep.

So we finished Tales of the Black Freighter and moved on to Watchmen, which wasn’t much better. The movie starts out focusing on this smiley-face button that gets a splatter of blood on it, like that was sooo poignant. It moves on to following the character Rorschach around, and he keeps talking in the same overly dramatic style as the narrator from Tales of the Black Freighter. One of his lines was something about “screams like an abattoir filled with retarded children”, and that’s the line that got me. Really? A slaughterhouse full of retarded kids? My dad said he couldn’t take another hour and a half of that crap, and that was just the first disc.

I personally thought the creepiest stuff was seeing Katie get up and stand around for hours at a time, just because they sped up the clock and she waved back and forth. The footprints in the powder I thought was a bit unnecessary; did they really have to show three-pronged footprints? The shadows on the door I thought were a good addition, and the ruffling sheets were creepy because I get weirded out about my feet sticking out from under the covers anyway.

Jon was amazed they didn’t do more with the attic, since everything seemed to come from there and he thought there was real opportunity to do something creepier with it. Consider:

1. The loud THUMPs when no furniture was moved around could have been the demon jumping out of the attic onto the second floor.
2. The footprints seemed to originate from the attic, and that’s of course where Micah found the photo.
3. The chandelier swinging might have stemmed from the demon jumping from the attic onto the second floor and shaking the ceiling.

I was expecting Micah to come down the ladder from the attic looking all horrified or with something wrong, but instead he just found the burned photo. They left it at that, and never did anything more with the attic.

The psychic’s suggestion that leaving the house wouldn’t help seemed silly. Obviously it took a while for stuff to ramp up again after Katie’s house burned down, so maybe if they had left things would have calmed down for a while. Also, when Katie suddenly got all pacified and told Micah she wanted to stay, that should have been a major clue that things weren’t okay and that he should get her out of there, regardless of what she said. And what was with the cross squeezing? If I found someone doing that to the point of cutting herself, and she’s obviously whacked out and overstressed too, I would haul them to the hospital right then. He just carried her up to bed and then listened to her like she was a reasonable, healthy person later when she asked to stay. Not believable.

The ending was lacking to both of us; it felt anti-climactic. I think it would have been more disturbing if there had been less screaming. Katie goes downstairs, it’s quiet for a bit, and then she starts screaming bloody murder. What I think would have been eerier is if she had gone away for a bit, come back with a knife or something maybe less cliché, and attacked Micah right there in bed where the audience could see, with Katie still being all comatose and calm and methodical and obviously not in control of herself. The biggest part, like right when the movie should have been scariest, is what the audience was deprived of seeing and when the movie ended. It was creepy when she threw Micah and when she flew at the camera, but why couldn’t we see the part that happened downstairs? I find it believable that Micah didn’t grab the camera then, but I think it was also meant as a convenience to the director that they didn’t have to dream up the scary stuff that went on downstairs, like why the screaming and why the bloody circle on Katie’s stomach and why it suddenly got quiet. The final written note, too, about Katie’s whereabouts being unknown seemed silly to me, to the point of being cheesy.

Reading on IMDB’s forums earlier, after we got home, pissed me off because I found one guy asking what exactly was scary about this film, and I totally agree. It was like a really slow-to-take-off suspense film, and I found movies like The Shining, 28 Days Later, and Psycho much scarier. Hell, even The Ring with its typical horror-movie gimmicks was scarier, and The Blair Witch Project was too, though I admit it’s been a few years since I last saw that so it might not be scary to me at this point. Aliens was definitely a scary movie. Now I’ll have to think through and remember other movies that have scared the bejeezus out of me, but Paranormal Activity definitely wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, back to IMDB’s forums. This guy is just rude, writing “The reason you weren’t scared is because your a simpleton. You need to be shown what your supposed to be scared of, because your small brain doesn’t possess the imagination to scare yourself.” I dunno, I don’t think I’m a simpleton… And if some of my dreams are to be considered, I’d say I have a fairly active and capable imagination. Maybe kellenm-563-72160 is right, though, and you have to have a genius far surpassing mine to be afraid of this movie. *roll eyes*

Alternate Ending

Edit: I just saw the alternate ending and it was much better than the theatrical ending. Someone on IMDB said that “douchebag Steven Spielberg” wanted the theatrical ending, and while I have no proof other than that one guy’s comment, I can totally believe that because the theatrical ending was incongruous with the rest of the movie. It was more cheesy typical horror movie, with the evil grin and sniffing Micah’s body, whereas the alternate ending fit with everything else we had seen so far. More spoilers!

The alternate ending is fitting because it had Katie go into one of her states again where she’s non-responsive and she just rocks, which is believable within the world of the movie because she has already done that a couple of times before. It was also creepy how when a friend came, Katie stops rocking for a minute, her friend screams and then it’s silent, then Katie resumes rocking. Was that the demon leaving her to take out their friend, then returning to Katie? Also, with Katie finally snapping out of it when the cops come and her getting shot, that seems much more believable than the stupid cliché monster-Katie in the theatrical end.

Something Jon just pointed out was that Micah swiping the knife through the air in the beginning was foreshadowing for the alternate/real/better ending when Katie comes in the bedroom holding a knife. Damnit, why wasn’t that the official/theatrical ending? It fits, and makes the movie about 100% less cheesy. All the cheesiness comes in at the end when you get the demonic grin and the body sniffing and the crouching and the general sudden-motion techniques. Seriously, throwing Micah at the camera and then lunging at it? The script for that ending was cut-and-pasted in from another, dumber horror movie.

Edit again: I just read one guy’s comment on the IMDB forums and I think he nailed the reason why this movie is creepy, but not scary:

Like when a friend pops out behind a corner unexpectedly trying to scare you, you might get scared the first time, but if he tries the same exact thing 5 minutes later it’s completely lame. And that’s exactly how this movie is, it tries to scare you the exact same way like 15 times in a row within minutes of each other.
— griffmailz

They were two girls that sat right next to me, which was annoying to begin with because they could have left an empty seat, but whatever. Apparently they preferred to sit next to me rather than the lady three seats down. They whispered once every couple of minutes, and I’m not exaggerating the frequency. I really began to take notice when one of them started coughing about as often; it was a hoarse, hacking cough that did not stop. Honestly, if you can’t help but cough that often, why would you go to a movie theater, especially for a movie that’s so popular and thus packed? So that was annoying enough, and she was inconsiderate for coming, especially with her rustley bag of cough drops, but I could still get over that… Except for the talking. Because every time she coughed, she whispered to her friend. Half the time, they weren’t even particularly quiet whispers. I was pretty incredulous, because usually people are a bit sheepish about whispering in a packed theater because it pisses everyone around them off and they know it. Not these girls. I overheard, clearly, the majority of what they said, and what I couldn’t make out was no less annoying because it was a distracting hissing sound right beside me.

After becoming aware of their chatter and coughing, I couldn’t not notice it, so the rest of the movie I was halfway distracted because of those two dimwits. I leaned forward and gave them pointed looks but didn’t say anything to them, which I probably should have. Argh, I never confront strangers that are blatantly rude or inconsiderate. I know they were aware of me staring, though, because I caught the cougher staring back at me a couple of times. Not that that dissuaded her from talking so much, though, nor did it stop her friend from whipping out her slider cell phone every ten minutes or so to text something. “OMG im in harry poter right now!” And each time she’d finish typing and blinding the people beside and behind her, she’d snap her phone shut with a nice click.

Okay, so on to the actual movie content. I’m a big fan of the books and don’t understand why directors feel the need to muck with an obviously good thing. Rowling did it right, that’s why the books sold so damn much and she got the big bucks; you don’t need to come along and alter major things just for the heck of it. For example, they threw in a fight that never existed in the books, and took out a major one. What was that cornfield scene? Besides being a boring non-fight, that is. And what happened to the big fight scene at Hogwarts at the end? The Death Eaters strolled through the castle unhindered, which is the opposite of what happened in the book. It was such an awesome and exciting read, I figured the director would jump on the chance to put that in the movie. Nope, instead he wiped it out completely, and from what I read online, it’s because there’s another fight at Hogwarts in book 7, and he didn’t want two fight scenes at Hogwarts. Jon commented that he noticed toward the end that nothing had really happened in the movie, like no big exciting fights, and I had to explain that Rowling had built up to a big exciting fight but the director saw fit to cut it.

It’s just bizarre, because it felt like the movie dragged on, filled with too many long, silent stares and dramatic looks. The comedy also felt exaggerated to me, especially Ron’s dopey love potion scene. The characters felt like they weren’t responding as they should, like when Katie Bell finally hit the ground after the locket bit and Hermione, etc. just stood by, staring. Even when Hagrid came up to help her, he didn’t seem particularly panicked. Snape didn’t have enough anger and unhingedness at the end when Harry called him a coward, he was all “yep, that’s me, I’m him” and walked off. And what was with the alteration where, when Harry’s in the tower with Dumbledore, he’s free to move? He was supposed to have Petrificus totalus cast on him such that he can’t move to help Dumbledore, and he’s all panicked and going crazy with the urge to do something, while in the movie he was just wandering around like he was stoned, perfectly able to help but choosing not to.

I watched the movie Hero today with Jon because my dad told us, although apparently sarcastically, that we had to see it. He and my mom just hated it because of the flying around and lack of realism when they expected a historical drama. I liked it pretty well, though I would have preferred the version with sub-titles instead of overdubbing since the voice acting was a bit hokey. It was a gorgeous movie, and it makes me want to rewatch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which I don’t remember much of at this point.

It turned out to be one of the best films I’ve seen all year (it would be the best, but I’ve also seen Wall-E and The Incredible Hulk, and it’s a toss-up), and I enjoyed it so much that I went back to see it a second time with Jessica. I found out when buying tickets with her that she hasn’t seen Batman Begins, so now that’s next in line on our Netflix queue. She thoroughly enjoyed the movie as well, and we both agreed that Heath Ledger makes a surprisingly good Joker. He was my favorite character in the film because he was like sadistic-charismatic, however that works. I remember when I first heard Ledger had died that I was surprised and thought it was sucky, of course, but I wasn’t too upset about it. I hadn’t seen enough of his movies to be a big fan of him at the time. However, after seeing his performance in The Dark Knight, I got to feeling glum about the fact that, in subsequent Batman movies, he’ll never be the Joker again. He was so ridiculously good at being creepy, seeming unhinged, and doing evil things but still somehow making me laugh. I loved the part when the gangsters first meet with the Joker, and he does his “disappearing pencil” trick; I laughed my ass off, along with the rest of the theater, at that.

The other day, I ended up part of a very funny and impromptu mailing list. I got to work and checked my Gmail, as always, and saw I had a message about a Ruby on Rails position from a Pradipta Archiputra. I’ve gotten word about RoR job offerings before, most likely due to my Working with Rails profile, but this was something else, because in addition to the initial email (which simply said “I have a couple of Ruby on Rails position, wanted to know if you are interested?”), there were hundreds of responses. Wondering what the devil was going on, I checked the email headers and, sure enough, the “To” field was massive, and many people who had received the email had hit Reply All to give a response. One Mark Coates said “this is fun. it’s like a message thread i did not subscribe to. please no more ‘reply all’s. thanks,” and David Gibbons said “Mr Pradipa needs to learn how to BCC,” and Anders Combere said “Please KEEP ME ON THIS CRAZY LIST!!!”. I read through many of the responses and got a kick out of them. So many people responded, introducing themselves and joking about the craziness of a social network starting because of some nerdy recruiter copy-pasting to “To” instead of “Bcc”.

This craziness extended so far as to inspire the creation of a Google Group titled Pradipta’s Rolodex. I got another email from ol’ Pradipta, this time issuing an apology:

First of all I just wanted to say I apologize for the emails I sent. As of today I promise to stop the Email marketing campaigns. And I do believe it was a very…very..stupid mistake, this is the result of working late.

Also, I am deeply amazed of how talented you guys are. I mean seriously all this happened in less than 24 hours. I hope this mishap would create a benefit for all of us.

…

P.S: this time I used BCC. :)

1. First you need to get the audio from the DVD into a WAV file:
   mplayer -vo null -ao pcm -aofile FILE_TO_CREATE.wav dvd://
   This step will take a while.
2. Next you need to convert that huge WAV file (around 1Gb for 1.5 hours) into a format that’s more compact. I prefer OGG myself:
   sox -t wav THE_WAV_FILE.wav -t ogg FILE_TO_CREATE.ogg
   This step will also take a while.
3. Now all that’s left is breaking that long .ogg file into separate songs. I recommend Audacity for this, as it has a GUI and has some useful features, such as being able to amplify sounds that are too soft. However, you can also use the command-line tool split, as follows:
   split -b SIZE THE_OGG_FILE.ogg NAME_TO_BEGIN_EACH_CHUNK_WITH

   This method is much less convenient as it only breaks your .ogg into separate files of size SIZE, ignoring the content. With Audacity, you can use your mouse to select sections and then export them to their own files.

I’m using Mplayer 1.0pre5-3.3.4, Audacity 1.2.3, sox 12.17.7, and split 5.2.1.