Watching Movies With...

There was this great series of article in the Times a couple of years back where a movie person would sit down with reporter Rick Lyman and go through one of their favorite films in detail. The articles aren't in the free part of the site anymore, but they seem to have opened them up through a link from the page with all of their Brando articles. Here are a few good ones or ones I want to read:

• Barry Levinson on On The Waterfront
• Barry Sonnenfeld on Dr. Strangelove
• Nicole Kidman on The Shining
• Wes Andersen on Small Change
• Woody Allen on Shane
• Julianne Moore on Rosemary's Baby
• Michael Bay on West Side Story
• Quentin Tarantino on The Golden Stallion

I'm too lazy to link to all of them, but from this one you can access the rest through the Related Articles box. Hopefully these links will keep working. Oh, and Sideways is awesome; go see it.

UPDATE: The direct links don't seem to work anymore, but going to the Brando page and then clicking through to the On The Waterfront article works, and gives working links to the other articles.

Disaster Relief

Check out this page if you'd like to donate to the American Red Cross to help with disaster relief for yesterday's tsunamis. It looks like they'll need all the help they can get.

Cool Directions Site

I randomly ran into Map24 yesterday. It gives you this cool scrollable and zoomable map when you look up an address. The UI is a little confusing at first, but it's really fun to play with. I hope everyone is having a good holiday (or at least those who have holidays now).

Life in the Peace Corps

Check out an insider's (ie., my brother's) view of his life's hardships. There are some jokes that I imagine only make sense to other El Salvador Peace Corps volunteers, but it's still pretty funny. Actually, I'm curious as to whether others find it funny, or whether I just laugh harder at it because my brother wrote it.

Free

My crazy travelling and semester obligations are finally past, and it feels great. I really should get back to research soon, but for now I don't want to think about it. Tannhäuser was performed really well; I had forgotten just how amazing the Metropolitan Opera was, or maybe I had just never realized it before. Too bad the opera is so damn boring after the singing contest in the second act. Oh, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is an awesome, awesome movie; see it if you haven't already. Finally, if you're looking to burn some money on CDs, Alex Ross posted some top 10 lists for 2004. I was tempted to buy the Lieberson Handel arias CD, but went for the earlier Bach cantatas disc instead; incredible stuff. I would buy the just-released SF Symphony Mahler 2 recording for her rendition of the 4th movement alone, but the price is a bit steep.