“A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.”

(Seen on a photography discussion list I follow.)

“What about the concrete block? It was the cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the building world. It lived mostly in the architectural gutter as an imitation of rock-faced stone. Why not see what could be done with that gutter rat? Steel rods cast inside the joints of the blocks themselves and the whole brought into some broad, practical scheme of general treatment, why would it not be fit for a new phase of our modern architecture? It might be permanent, noble beautiful.”

—Frank Lloyd Wright

How many five year-olds could you take on at once?

As a parent of a four-year-old and a six-year-old, I’m forced to think about this sort of thing occasionally.

From the linked discussion (which contains complete rules for the battle):

Are you allowed to use one the kids to wield at other kids ala a sword?

It is not hard at all to swing them around and if so then i have a feeling you could just swing around in a little circle and knock them all out as they get close to you.

“Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?”

— Brian Kernighan

The Incredibles will be released on DVD in the U.S. on Tuesday. It’s the sixth movie from the great-every-time Pixar and the second film to be directed by Brad Bird.

Most reviews have been extremely favorable to it. It’s generated more discussion than any other animated film in my memory. Some of the interpretations are a bit odd, like one at Free Republic that sees the film as an allegory for the American so-called “War on Terror.”

The set of keywords at the bottom of that article should prompt a moment of Zen:

KEYWORDS: AMERICA; CRAIGTNELSON; EDITHHEAD; EVIL; FRANCE; GOOD; INCREDIBLES; ISLAM; KERRY; MOVIEREVIEW; NIXON; WARONTERROR; WOT

Ummmmm, yeah.

Anyway, Incredibles is good, as everybody expected it to be. It’s become cliché in Pixar reviews because it’s true: it’s the kind of movie parents might actually look forward to taking their kids to.

And like many widely-marketed films, The Incredibles is known in the public consciousness for grossing hundreds of millions of dollars in addition to being a quality work of artistry and entertainment. Before directing it, Bird did a film for Warner Bros. that apparently will be remembered for being critically acclaimed but a box office failure: The Iron Giant.

Using a seamless mixture of traditional and computer-rendered animation in a 1950s New England style, The Iron Giant is visually captivating. All of its characters are well-developed and it’s a tribute to the film’s creative success that the Giant evokes as much emotion from the audience as any of the human characters do.

The Iron Giant is striking for being a film which strongly respects its audience despite that audience being composed largely of children. It’s not just that it doesn’t rely on bathroom jokes or extreme action for filler, it’s that it unapologetically and (mostly) unflinchingly works seriously with themes like violence, self-sacrifice, death and loss, and the difference between patriotism and zealotry.

Giant is a pervasively gentle movie. Unlike Kubrick’s similarly non-human HAL 9000, the Giant is humane; it’s the movie’s human characters that are bound to an inescapable and ultimately destructive logic. There’s a duality-of-man theme in The Iron Giant but it’s optimistically weighted toward the peaceful: Bird sees the ability to choose as being more powerful than one’s inbuilt nature.

Even though most of the movie doesn’t move at the frenetic pace of many of its peers, kids are captivated by The Iron Giant and will happily watch it repeatedly. I’m happy for my own to do so and I find it to be fresh and relevant each time I sit down with them while they’re watching. It’s the only “kid’s movie” that I occasionally put in even when the kids have already gone to bed.

The Incredibles is entirely worth picking up on Tuesday—especially if you have kids—but it’s unfortunate that the same amount of attention will never be paid to Bird’s superior work.

With regard to Star Wars Episode III (from a MetaFilter discussion about the upcoming film):

“Please don’t forget, it was never really the light sabers or the special effects (with some exceptions) that were the problem with these prequels: it was the script and the acting and this one giant over-inflated bearded head hovering above a flannel shirt that kept getting in the way of all the good bits.”

Also, from a list in that thread of alternate titles for the last prequel:

“Episode III: Mark Hamill Comes Out Of Natalie Portman’s Vagina”

Do you want to watch videos of shredding equipment shredding couches, washing machines, concrete-filled steel drums, refrigerators, and boats?

This picture caught my eye while reading an otherwise bland New York Times article on the Chipotle burrito shop chain.

The photographer is Mitchell Feinberg. You can see more of his clever and beautiful work at the unfortunately annoyingly Flash-based website of the Apostrophe photo agency. (Popup blocker must be turned off.)