Archive for September, 2007

October Road

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

believe.jpgEdited 11:30 p.m. to add.

The air at Citizen’s Bank Park was thick today. Thick with excitement. Thick with anticipation.

Thick with lint.

A full house waved their rally towels nearly to the point of disintegration today as the hometown Phillies completed the most breathtaking comeback in franchise – and dare I say, league – history, climbing out of a 7 game hole with 17 to play and overtaking the New York Mets as champions of the National League East. The Phillies are going to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years, and I was there to see it happen.

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Posted in Sports | 3 Comments »

Home Improvement (Sort Of)

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

As someone who is part of a team working to reimagine an outdated Web site, I’ve grown an eye for practical, eye-catching web design. Throughout the years, philly.com, “the region’s homepage,” has sported a host of terrible design iterations. And while this week’s most recent graphics update is far from award-winning, it’s a marked improvement over anything the site has done to date.

The content is still crippled by too many ads – and it’s still a shame that the Inquirer has become more of a wire service aggregate than an original paper – but the page’s use of tabs has separated the news into user-friendly, easy-to-digest bits of similar information. The new catchphrase, “anything and everything Philly,” still seems to overreach itself, especially in the face of sites like goPhila.com, but it’s a start.

Posted in Web | 2 Comments »

Jolly Ranchers

Monday, September 24th, 2007

yuma.jpgLong live the Western.

Historically regarded as one of the purest forms of cinema, the American Western has gathered dust on the shelves of Hollywood recently, occasionally reimagined (as present-day treatment in Deadwood and futuristically as Star Trek and Firefly, for example) but rarely retold with any great fidelity. In James Mangold’s recreation of the 1957 film 3:10 to Yuma, fans of the genre get a faithful story framed in the honest-to-goodness Old West with the aesthetic benefit of modern filmmaking.

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Posted in Film Reviews | 1 Comment »

Piercings, A Buck an Ear

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

Avast, mateys! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Celebrate by walking around with one eye closed and a parrot on ye shoulder. Also refuse to take in any vitamin C and you might soon get the adjective “scurvy” attached to your name.

Incidentally, is anyone sailing these seas? I know I’ve been inactive lately, but if I actually get into the theater and see a few movies, is there anyone left to read?

Posted in World Matters | 3 Comments »

Lock, Stock, and 800 Smoking Barrels

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

shootem.jpgViewers familiar with the works of Quentin Tarantino (especially Kill Bill) and John Woo (notably Hard-Boiled, I’ve discovered in my research) should be unsurprised by the gratuitous nature of Michael Davis’ epically gruesome Shoot ‘em Up. In the span of 87 minutes, Clive Owen’s mysterious Mr. Smith character kills scores of villains and delivers dozens of terribly cliché one-liners. The violence and humor does little to glaze over the stunted acting and a plot thinner than a filleted tomato skin, but coherence seems to matter little in this quick, gloriously gory romp.

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Posted in Film Reviews | No Comments »