Derik Badman's Journal

After working on it for more than a year, we launched a big project at work yesterday. Oddly, by the time the launch actually came around I wasn't worried about it anymore, despite being very stressed about it for a long time previously. It was a partial launch, in that more and more customers will be brought on over the course of the spring, but so far there weren't any immediate major failures and only a few bugs. Maybe this means I can be a little less stressed about work next week and moving forward.

Criterion Channel has Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina programs (which is to say, two programs, but naturally a lot of overlap) up. For some reason I decided to watch Le Petit Soldat, which is their first collaboration. I'd watched it long ago and didn't think much of it and... I still don't. Should have just watched one of the good ones instead.

Also tried to watch I Walk Alone an old noir starring very young Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as well as Lizabeth Scott, which was the real reason it caught my eye. She's one of those actresses that appears in a bunch of noir movies who always stands out, but I found this one to be pretty unengaging. I didn't finish it.

We've been watching Six Feet Under as our current TV series. Somehow I never got around to watching it before. It's enjoyable, veering between comedy and drama, with a bunch of good actors, but it's also not a really great show, at least as far as we've gotten. Feels like it hit at a kind of inception point for prestige drama series, where it was new and different but not quite yet really there, taking risks but often making missteps. Probably most interesting so far in it, is the depiction of the oldest son who when the series starts is gay and closeted. His struggles with his sexuality and religion and dating and coming out to his family is well done and also feels like a story that doens't often get told in the way it happens in the show.