Thumbs Up to Fiennes

Ralph Finnes has done an excellent job directing and starring in his movie adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Similar to Richard Loncraine's movie production of Richard III, Finnes sets the story in modern times. Many scenes open with CNN-like updates of the war between Rome and its southern neighbor, Volsci. The Roman forces are dressed and armed like typical NATO forces while the Volscians look more like Balkan partisans.

Mashups for the Masses

About a day ago, I started playing with a beta online service #IFTTT, which rhymes with "lift" and is an abbreviation for "If This, Then That."

Its name sums it up nicely. It takes events from approximately 30 popular social media services - Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and etc. - and lets users create actions based on those events.

Descendants Strikes Out

As a movie, The Descendants has wonderful cinematography and that is about it. As long as you ignore the plot or character development you may leave the theater with a warm fuzzy feeling.

The story revolves around the descendants of Hawaii's first families and how they deal with serious family issues. The movie gives the viewer the sense that the social and economic elite are just like everyone else, save not having to worry about day-to-day necessities.

Scorses Does It Again

I walked into Martin Scorses' Hugo without reading any reviews or knowing anything about the Brian Selznick book on which it is based and I'm glad. I found it a wonderful movie for all ages. I doubt that youngsters will appreciate the appearance of James Joyce having coffee with Salvador Dali in one of the early crowd scenes, but this movie is filled with many such things.

Twitter Maps Made Easy

View rob_daly's profile on TweepsMap

I have to admit that I'm an analytics junkie. When I came across #TweepsMap for Twitter, it sucked me in for a bit more time than is probably healthy. It's easy to use and provides a good deal of data. Check it out and have fun.

The Mill and the Cross

The best way to describe Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross is that it is falling into a painting for 90 minutes. The film is an in-depth analysis of Flemish painter Pieter Brugel the Elder's 1564 painting "Way to Calvary."

Hidden New York

I've been trying to drown out the sounds of #OccupyWallStreet and rest of the sounds of my morning commute for the past few weeks listening to a number of The Bowery Boys podcasts. The hosts, Greg and Tom, give fantastic 30- to 60-minute discussions on the people, places and things that went in making New York City the vibrant city that it is today.

My two most recent favorite podcasts are the ones they have done the Police Riots of 1857 and The Great Fire of 1835. Maybe it's the absurdity of one and the proof that the city can come back from almost anything that makes me like them so much.

If you have the time to download a few episodes from iTunes, you won't be disappointed. They've done so many that you'll be sure find something that interests you. My favorite thing to do is simply download a bunch of them and just listen to them back-to-back on long drives.

The Debt

Saying good-bye to summer this afternoon, I caught a matinee of The Debt. This good spy thriller owes a lot to John Ford's classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Instead of following the life and career of an idealistic lawyer in the American Old West, it follows the lives of three Mossad agents who participate in a Cold War era capture an extract mission to bring a Nazi surgeon to justice. This film, however, takes a much grittier and realistic view of when history and mythology collide. It is definitely worth the price of admission.

"Not in front of the American"

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon catching a viewing of The Guard. I have only seen Brendan Gleeson in supporting roles up until now like Ken the experienced hit man in the 2008 In Bruges and Mad-Eye Moody in the various Harry Potter movies. It is good to know that he can carry a leading role. In the film he plays a very independently thinking Connemara police sergeant who winds up in a middle of a multinational drug deal occurring his quiet community in the west of Ireland. Don Cheadle plays an FBI officer sent to help capture the drug dealers and is a great "fish out of water" straight man for Gleeson's Irish wit. If you are looking for a film reflecting a cosmopolitan 21st Century Ireland, this is not for you. But if you are into clever non-PC banter delivered fluidly, check out the movie.

Hacking the Genome

Okay, this year's summer reading definitely has taken a bit of a tech turn. I'm halfway through Marcus Wohlsen's Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life. The 209-page book looks at what happens when amateur bio-engineers band together and embrace to open-source movement.  I'll be writing more once it when I finish it, but so far it's very interesting.

Summer Reading

I just finished Annie Jacobsen's history of the Groom Lake, NV facility known as Area 51 on today's commute into the office. Except for the last chapter, which is definitely a shout-out to the ufologist community, Jacobsen presents a well-researched and documented twin history of post-World War II nuclear testing and  airborne reconnaissance programs.

The Futures

I've been on a financial services reading kick lately and I've just finished reading Emily Lambert's  The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World's Biggest Markets. It's a quick and enjoyable read that gives a good history of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago's financial history. Starting with commodities and futures trading in the 19th Century, Lambert goes into the personalities, the politics and market structure that have created one of the largest financial markets. Her style reminds me a bit of Michael Lewis. If I have one complaint, it's that she does a good job covering  the history up to the late 1970s but once the crash of 1987 occurs, she gallops through the next two decades extremely fast. Aside from that, this is a good book for anyone looking to get a grounding in the futures industry.

Green Hornet Deserves Some Buzz

I have to admit when I went to into the theatre and while watching the coming attractions, I was preparing myself for a for a bad comic-book moving. I'd avoided reading the reviews, but it's hard to keep from hearing the negative buzz about the movie.


I'm happy to say that Seth Rogen did a good job updating the Green Hornet franchise for the 21st Century. Much of the two-hour running time is spent hammering out the inter-dynamics between Britt, Kato and Lenore, Britt's secretary. Rogen really needed to address this in the screen play since the dated dynamic of intelligent publisher and dependent man servant and secretary established from the 30s radio series doesn't hold up, especially when the publisher is played as a boob that brings little to the table.


However, Rogen manages to include a few hat tips to old 60s television series with Van Williams.


Overall it's a fun flick with a surprisingly high body count for a superhero movie.

The Expendables

Just came back from seeing The Expendables. It's a nice way to disengage your brain for close to two hours and  get in touch with your inner 14-year boy. There's a lot of high-speed action -chases, fights and explosions- to keep you from thinking about the plot holes too much. I'm curious if most people will realize that they're witnessing waterboarding in action during one point n the movie.

Samurais, Cars and the Sixties

If you have some free time this summer, you should spend some time up at the northern end of Manhattan’s Museum Mile and visit the Museum of the City of New York located on 103rd St. and Fifth Ave. It’s a small museum compared to the Metropolitan Museum or the Guggenheim, both located about 20 block south. However, it puts on some great exhibits.

I originally went there to view the exhibit on the first Japanese Embassy to visit the United States in 1860. The exhibit takes up the second floor main corridor and is really limited on the number of artifacts on display and focuses on the most popular member of the Embassy - teen heartthrob and junior translator Tateish “Tommy” Onojiro.

The second exhibit-Cars, Culture and the City- is much larger and a must for any auto enthusiast. Not only does it describe how city planners needed to incorporate the explosive growth automobiles in Manhattan and the outer boroughs during the first half of the 20th Century , but covers the number of early automakers based in the city.

The final, and in my opinion the best exhibit is on the two terms of Mayor John V. Lindsey. While the first two exhibits felt a bit on the light on content, the Lindsey exhibit was a great snapshot of what New York City faced in the Sixties - crippling deficits, crime, labor strife and social upheaval. Although you can easily cover the Japanese and car exhibits in about 30 minutes, give yourself and hour or two for Lindsey.

The Happy Isles of Oceania

I came across Paul Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania purely by chance, but I’m glad I did. So far, I’m about the a third of the way through the the book and the miserable  Theroux has paddled his collapsible kayak through Meganesia and Melanesia on his way to Polynesia while giving the reader a detailed, although usually less-than-flattering, portrait of the inhabitants of these islands. It’s a fun and fast read and I recommend it to anyone.