Deer Park and Netscape

Just a word of warning: the latest nightly builds of Deer Park (Firefox 1.1 alpha build candidates) are extremely unstable. Unless you're a developer, give 'em a pass until a release candidate appears.

Netscape Browser 8 is rubbish. Don't bother with it. I know it's getting decent reviews, but only in comparison tests with Internet Explorer, Opera 8, etc. Netscape 8 is a big, bloated, unwieldy mess of a user interface slapped on top of Firefox 1.0.3. It's sort of like Mozilla Suite, only with a lot less class and a lot more suck. It's much more stable than the Netscape Browser release candidate and follow-up beta, but it seems all those UI issues were actually "features." Thanks anyway, AOL.

I finally got around to renting The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Sideways last week. I really liked Aquatic, it's my favortite Wes Anderson film so far. Just the right amount of originality and accesibility (it's damned hard to get into The Royal Tenenbaums, however brilliant it might be). As for Sideways, I think I appreciated it more than I actually enjoyed watching it. Paul Giamatti is a genious and we all know it, but the movie just wasn't two tons of fun. On the other hand, the rest of the DVD was terrific. The ridiculously well-hidden easter eggs and the Giamatti/Thomas Haden Church commentary are hilarious, and suggest that making the movie was a lot more fun than sitting through it.