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Aside from the acoustic Bowie covers sung in Portugese, the best thing about Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou has got to be the set.  The two scenes that make the rounds of the ship – the tour and then the argument – left me speechless.  In each of his films Anderson gets more adventurous with the fourth wall; his characters aren’t talking directly to the audience, but the set, the Bowie covers and the highly stylized animated fish are each reminders that You’re Watching A Movie.

Banana Republic is doing something very interesting with their dotcom this holiday season: the entire site has been turned over to gift giving. They cut the product line down to gift items, they swapped in a gift look and feel, and, most drastically, revamped the nav. Product-based nav is out (shirts, sweaters, outerwear, etc.), price-based nav is in (under $50, $50 to $100, above $100, etc.).

I’d love to see the planning that went into this, and the analysis that will come out of it…

A few from-the-hip reactions to Microsoft’s new desktop search client…  First, the good:

• It’s fast.  I don’t have the largest library of docs and email, but I also don’t have the fastest processor / hard drive, and I was done indexing in about fifteen minutes.  And results are returned very quickly as well.
• The search results UI is rich.  This is my primary complaint with the Google desktop search – returning local results in a web page limits options for sorting, filtering, etc.  Microsoft’s integrates into Explorer, and lets you filter by documents, messages, contacts, etc., and then sort by date, author, etc.
• Deskbar incremental search.  It exists, it’s responsive, returns likely results, and stores your search history.

But in my humble opinion, the UI needs work…

• Generally they’ve limited the power-user’s ability to customize the look and feel of the toolbars, the app, etc.
• The Outlook toolbar doesn’t let you customize its buttons – you can’t remove the butterfly – and won’t let you drag and drop the toolbar (like any other) to different areas of the app.
• Similar complaint with the deskbar – you can’t remove the butterfly, and it doesn’t behave terribly well when you have your taskbar set to auto-hide, or if you have your taskbar docked to anywhere else except the bottom of your screen.
• The search result UI is rich, but could use some information design.  The titles of the documents or subject lines of the emails are only distinguished by color, and not by font weight or size. 
• There are no options for configuring the search results UI.  I’d love, for instance, to limit or eliminate the preview in order to show more results per screen.
• Related to that, the chrome is out of control.  More blue pixels, and more butterflies.  I get the need for branding; but this just screams “our branding is more important than your search results.”  Bleh.

Unfortuntely, it’s the UI things that are driving me to uninstall.  I live in Windows about 12 hours a day, and have spent plenty of time customizing the way its UI looks, feels and works.  I’m not ready for butterflies everywhere.  It makes me wonder else they’re planning on pushing the MSN brand into the Windows user experience…

You heard it hear first:  Natalie Portman is the next Hugh Grant.

When you hear “Hugh Grant movie” you think romantic comedy, starring a charming and slightly disheveled bloke who will stumble all over himself before finally landing the girl and apologizing for not recognizing how much of an ass he’s been the entire film.  Audiences smile, chuckle, marvel at the black taxicabs of London, and want to reach up on to the silver screen to muss up his hair.  And then maybe strangle him for that whole Elizabeth Hurley / Hollywood hooker thing.

Five years from now, when you hear “Natalie Portman movie,” you’ll think of a slightly arty yet accessible film that stars a charming, disarming, naive-on-the-outside, knowing-on-the-inside young woman that seduces the leading man and by the end of the film holds all the cards.  Think The Professional.  Think Beautiful Girls.  Think Garden State.  Think Closer.

Closer could have been a good movie.  I’m not sure that Nichols could have made a great movie from the original play, but he could have at least made a good one.  He almost succeeded.  Jude Law is reasonably convincing as the puppy dog obit writer; you think Julia Roberts is phoning it in until you realize that that’s her character (how convenient!); and Clive Owen chews up the scenery with his “I’m an ACTOR!!” portrayal of the victim-turned-aggressor dermatologist.  But Natalie Portman wasn’t right for this movie.  She seemed in over her head, and compensated by trying to mold the tough, streetwise Alice character into yet another Natalie Portman Role. 

There’s a line near the beginning of the film, when Dan (Jude Law) is explaining to Anna (Julia Roberts) why he prefers her character over Alice (Portman):  “because you’re a woman, and she’s a girl.”  I fear that Portman, even when she’s trying to play the woman, will still be reprising her role as Marty from Beautiful Girls -- the precocious girl next door.  I’m just waiting for the movie where that girl lives next door to Hugh Grant, and then we’ll know exactly what we’re in for.

If I’m a publisher of an RSS 2.0 feed that includes items with enclosure elements that point to audio files, with the intent that these are sync-ed to an iPod or other portable audio player, I’m commonly referred to as a “podcaster.”

If I’m a subscriber to / consumer of said feed, what am I?

Now here’s an interesting product placement matchup:  Aflac and Lemony Snicket.  Not only will Aflac ads contain scenes from the “Series of Unfortunate Events,” (get it?) but movie will actually have a scene with the quacking duck…though he won’t be squawking the brand name.  Here’s Laura Kane, Aflac’s veep of corp comm:

“We think it’s the first time an insurance company’s done product placement,” Kane said. “We don’t have an actual product; we’re selling a promise. We think this takes product placement to a whole new level.”

Indeed, IMDB has the movie’s entry correctly listing Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of the Aflac duck.

Fascinating piece in the NYTimes about people building new homes that are designed to look like they’ve been converted from industrial uses.

Mr. Binkley predicts that factory chic will become more popular, partly for nostalgic reasons: these designs will remind Baby Boomers of architecture they loved - though not necessarily lived in - from a time gone by.

I’m imagining an entire neighborhood of these.  The faux-converted firehouse next to the faux-converted cannery next to the faux-converted warehouse next to the faux-converted barn.  All with exposed beams, exposed brick walls and exposed duct work.  All containing piles of newly purchased, artfully stacked coffee table books filled with images of actual firehouses, canneries, warehouses and barns that have been converted to residential use.

Update:  a kind reader sends a link to this glorious MetropolisMag.com piece, “I am the Uncool Hunter,” complete with photos of a Frederick, Colorado development filled with faux-conversions.

I’m an avid reader of Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, a weblog about Getting Things Done (and getting things done) with an OS X bent.  The accompanying Google Group is also entertaining, if only for the endless discussion of the wide variety of personal productivity tools for the Mac (Entourage or Life Balance?  Omni Outliner or VoodooPad?). 

The most refreshing gem posted to the list, though, has to be this Flickr photoset: documentation on Getting Things Done with Index Cards.  Marvel in its 3x5-ness.  Gaze in awe at the clever use of coin envelopes.  Lust after the Brother label printer, the egg timer and the set of Copic colored markers.

And then, when you’re done, task-switch back to your time-sucking RSS reader or your overloaded inbox or your miles-long list of things that have to get done Real Soon Now or the entire existence you’ve built for yourself will come crashing down on your head like a load of bricks, and thank the good Lord above that you’re not anywhere near this organized.  You just wouldn’t know what to do with the time…