Author: James McNally

Full Frontal and CQ

Great feature on Apple’s web site about Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Full Frontal, which was filmed and edited on consumer level equipment. Soderbergh continues to be a fascinating director and the film should be an interesting departure for him after his more commercial work lately. It’s nice, too, to see inside the machinery of filmmaking a bit.

In other film news, Roman Coppola’s debut CQ looks like a trip. Boy, those Coppolas!! It also features the inimitable Jason Schwartzman, hopefully atoning for Slackers. The trailer is available here.

Bookwatch

That pb is brilliant. His Bookwatch feature tracks the 10 most popular books being mentioned on weblogs by checking for links to Amazon.com. (via anil)

And now, to help do my part, I’ll mention some books:

  • Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser has changed the way I look at the entire prepared food industry. More than just a critique of fast food, it documents the processes behind the “malling” of America (and the world). Compelling reading.
  • The Global Soul by Pico Iyer looks to be a sort of postmodern travel book in which our author globetrots and then philosophizes about the world. I picked it up mostly because it has a chapter on Toronto called “The Multiculture” which supports the generally-held assertion that my city is one of the most multicultural in the world. The reader reviews on Amazon, however, aren’t too kind, and so I might have to read something else first.

QuickTaxWeb and Macs

Well, this sucks. I just tried to check out Quicken’s online tax service for Canadians, QuickTaxWeb. It tells me it supports Netscape and Internet Explorer for Windows, but only Netscape for Macintosh. As the kids say, WTF? Explorer is the most standards-compliant, and is probably the leading browser among Mac users, as it is among Windows users. What gives? If the web developers for my bank can code for Explorer, why can’t Quicken?