Monthly Archives: August 2012

Business, News

Can You Search Netflix by Actor or Director? It Depends!

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UPDATE MAY 2013: The search situation on Netflix is still terrible — most of all on the TV interface itself, less so on their mobile apps. But it’s Flixster‘s Rotten Tomatoes that can help you out with ease if you want to search Netflix by actor or director. They’ve even introduced a Netflix Streaming category (under DVDs, oddly, on the desktop version; under Menu on the app) that you can search by either movie title, or actor or director. Presently, they list 3,643 films available for streaming.

 

One of the strangest things about Netflix has long been how difficult it is to both browse or use to find that movie you want to see with that one actor in it.

Browsing is still surfacing off-kilter categories that feel translated from another language — “Exciting Foreign Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead,” anyone? Sure, but don’t think you know me, HAL! On the desktop, though, you can search by actor or director, and now that’s true of Netflix on Xbox 360 (and PS3), too. You can’t save a search, or pin it to your home screen, that I can tell.

People search is not yet in Netflix’s app for the iPhone (just checked) or iPad, or Roku, so the ecosystem of third-party Netflix apps that have sprouted up would seem still to have a lease on life — depending on how you read Netflix’s new terms for its API program.

In any event, Netflix people search is still a blunt instrument that recognizes names only if they are spelled correctly. Say you type in “Kristin Bell” for instance. (Obviously you are a terrible person and not a real fan, because you don’t know it’s “Kristen” with an “e.”) Up to “Krist-” you get 10 suggestions that don’t contain Bell. Once you type “Kristi-” she’ll never appear. In that case, you get these results:

 

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

99 Layoffs at ACT Gets “Contract Extension”

When I stopped in last weekend to see 99 Layoffs, playing down in ACT’s Eulalie Scandiuzzi Space, I discovered I was not the only one with that idea. I was there half an hour early, and still ended up tenth in a stand-by line. Luckily, a last, single open seat meant two couples before me gave up rather than split up, and I swooped in.

The popularity has continued unabated, and the 99 Layoffs run has been extended, with extra performances remaining from August 23 to August 26. Tickets are $30, which makes a good reason to get an ACT Pass (the $25-per-month membership that gets you in to most shows at ACT, three-month-minimum purchase). Check the calendar–if you’re going to see more than two shows, it’s well worth it.

99 Layoffs is another Radial Theater project, the first being the promisingly hilarious Karaoke Suicide is Painless featuring Terri Weagant. For this outing, the local playwright tapped was Vincent Delaney, whose workshop of another new play, Foreclosure, is coming up in September.

Despite the title and the times, 99 Layoffs is a comedy about two sadsacks who–it’s been noted by others–would not need a recession to find themselves unemployed. K. Brian Neel plays Orson (and other characters, including a frightening, devil-spawn four-year-old) and Aimée Bruneau, Louella (and others, including an HR manager with a heart and Sprinkles, a sidewalk doughnut).

Orson and Louella are stuck in job-interview hell, trying to be “hirable” and competitive, and only succeeding in bonding over Orson’s flutophone, carried in a holster on his belt. By nights, Orson anonymously life-coaches Louella via Skype, the sort of coincidence that you sigh a little at and go with.

Neel is a rubbery-jointed character whose comedic exertions leave him drenched in sweat, and, ultimately, less funny, since he’s visibly working so hard at it. Bruneau–my god, she’s full of stars. Even if 99 Layoffs wasn’t agreeably entertaining in its sketchy-comedy way, it’d be worth seeing for Bruneau’s portrayals, which seem etched with laser-precision. (To give Delaney his due, he struck gold with Sprinkles, in line after line that feel true, wounding, and hilarious.) If they ever bring back Almost Live!, they can outsource the complete cast to Bruneau.

Production design includes costumes (doughnut and doughnut-hole outfits, outstanding) by Julia Evanovich, lighting by Dani Prados, set (with cunning use of projections) by Montana Tippett, and sound by Robertson Witmer.

David Gassner directs, and his work with Bruneau is highlight-reel worthy–I’m of two minds about the interpolated interviews with real people about their worst jobs. It brings the screwball antics back down to earth, affecting the play’s momentum, but they’re also oddly compelling, and when Louella pops up, her response makes the whole set-up worthwhile.

Taken as a fringe-style production, 99 Layoffs rates above average, but it is uneven and lumpy at the seams (as written, Orson and Louella are less people than walking worst-case scenarios), and it doesn’t provide much to chew on besides its laughs, save the reminder that sadsacks always do exist and that for them, life under capitalism can seem one long recession. I wouldn’t carp about it, except that Delaney does have things to say: Though they arrive intermittently here, they leave a mark when they land.

News, Transportation

Boeing on 777X Timeline: New Jets are Hard!

An Emirates 777 (Image: Boeing)

Speaking as a passenger, it is difficult to get too exercised by Dominic Gates’s story in the Seattle Times: “Boeing slows the pace on 777X.” No one wants to fly on a rush-job.

When Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Ray Conner– former commercial airplanes head Jim Albaugh parachuted out of Boeing suddenly over the summer–says, “When we get the airplane right, that’s when we’ll go forward,” it sounds like a lesson learned from 787 Dreamliner delays, often blamed on a too-market-driven timeline.

On the other hand, you do flash back to this February, when Boeing swapped the heads of the 787 and 777 programs. Larry Loftis, given lead on getting 787s out the hangar door, had increased the 777 production rate from five to seven per month in 2011, said Reuters at the time, adding: “In his new role, Fancher, who took over as head of the 787 program in December 2008, will help define the next variant of the 777 widebody.”

It is not that there’s no 777X developments to report; Aspire Aviation’s omnibus article from the end of July reported on a supersized wingspan of just over 233 feet, the possible elimination of an overwing exit door, and the competition to deliver a new engine.

But as Gates mentions, Boeing’s work on a re-engined 737 model and a 787-10 is taking up a great deal of “new jet” resources, when the company is very busy meeting existing orders. And Boeing, still just starting to enjoy the satisfaction of handing out 787s, can be in no great hurry to be the subject of more Boeing-loses-its-engineering-mojo stories, no matter how antsy Tim Clark gets.

It’s hard not to see a slowdown as prudence, as the 787 is also generating reams of data now that it has entered the workforce, and it’s clear that ongoing tweaks and fixes will keep coming for a while. Major improvements in the production process have brought the unit cost down by as much as 40 to 50 percent (Seattle producing the jets more efficiently than Charleston).

It’s the sort of thing that prompts “buy” buzz around the Lazy B, as airlines take over the work of promoting 787 advances to their customers: tinted windows, better air quality, quieter air conditioning and fans. The 787 is even slightly exceeding fuel efficiency predictions. All of this is good news, after an incredibly trying several years.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Freaky Saturday: The Esoterics Join Foreigner at Tulalip

Obviously, this story needs to begin with The Esoterics founder Eric Banks taking an urgent phone call. He wasn’t called in the middle of the night, but it was urgent. Just maybe not an emergency per se. The rock group Foreigner wanted to know if his chorus would like to sing “I Want to Know What Love Is” with them at Tulalip Amphitheatre this Saturday, August 25.

Banks is not sure how his group’s name up in this context–The Esoterics pride themselves on a repertoire of “contemporary a cappella choral settings of poetry, philosophy, and spiritual writings from around the world.”

He’d just gotten back into town from work on three chamber operas for Seattle Opera, and is preparing for CAGE (September 7, 8 & 9; tickets: $15), a three-night celebration of John Cage. The Esoterics will present “42 of the 92 entries from Cage’s Songbook, including every single solo vocal work and theatrical piece that does not require electronics,” along with Four2, Four6, and Five.

On the other hand, Banks has always believed his singers can conquer any musical challenge, and the chart-topping 1984 power ballad did not faze them. In fact, he had to regretfully tell some Esoterics members that they already had enough people for the Tulalip appearance (there was room onstage for just 30).

It turns out that Esoterics of all generations (the song recently popped up on the soundtrack of Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel) have been dying to sing Foreigner–plus, the singers have been invited to enjoy the whole concert. As you–and they–no doubt know, this is the Kelly Hansen-fronted Foreigner, reformed by Mick Jones in 2004. (Former lead singer Lou Gramm has his own solo career now.)

It’ll be a different kind of night than at CAGE, which is being performed in churches: All Pilgrim’s (500 Broadway East), Queen Anne (1316 3rd Avenue West), and Holy Rosary (4152 42nd Avenue SW, West Seattle). There, The Esoterics will surround the audience, singing short solo pieces “in the round,” interspersed with ensemble works, the tying and untying of shoelaces, maybe some solitaire. This is John Cage, after all. A mere hundred years isn’t going to soften his work up that much.

Here are The Esoterics throwing down an earlier jukebox hero, Richard Strauss.