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It’s gorgeous, of course. And in accordance with the international laws of humor, existentialism and cellular service, the very first call I received on my spanking new iPhone…wait for it…dropped.

last weekend, and I gotta say that I really enjoyed the whole series: The Titan’s Curse (book 3), The Battle of the Labyrinth (book 4), and finally The Last Olympian (book 5) were all high 4 stars for me. The later books were better than the earlier books, and the whole series is addictive (I read all 5 books in the span of about a week).

If there’s one thing I have to complain about (this is what kept them out of the 5 star range for me), it’s that sometimes I felt like author Rick Riordan glossed over parts of the story to move between the main plot points faster. I felt like he could have gone into more detail in some not strictly essential scenes to help ratchet up the tension and bring you inside the characters, to bring you deeper into the story. The bottom line is that though I liked Percy a whole lot, I’m not sure if I loved him like I loved Harry.

That said, these books are highly entertaining and I strongly recommend them.

?!?! over iPhone 4, and I kind of am too^†, but I gotta tell ya, what’s really making me go ?!?! is Safari 5. Included:

• Safari reader, a feature that works much like Arc90′s popular Readability bookmarklet by detecting when the currently loaded web page has an article, and allowing the user to reformat the page in an easy-to-read, scrollable view that cuts the obnoxious ads out. What’s more, they actually go through every page of multi-page articles and concatenate them together for one seamless, easy reading experience. Say it with me: ?!?!

  Now, you might be thinking, “How are the content providers going to let this stand, when it could wreak havoc with their ad sales?” Well, grasshopper, its at least partly because when Safari is concatenating the pages’ content, it does a full HTTP request on each page, so the innocent kitten publishers who artificially split up short articles into 3 and 4 and more pages just to maximize ad annoyance views don’t have to worry about losing their accustomed number of ad-frame loads.

• A smarter address field, that no longer requires you to remember exact URLs; it searches within (rather than at the beginning of) the URLs and page titles in your history like Firefox has been doing for months (perhaps years) now. I’ve got two things to say to that: hallelujah, and about damn time.

• Never expected this, but sanctioned, easy to install, secure extensions, that can be developed in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. ?!?! Also, ROCK.

• Then, of course, is the improved HTML5 support and the ever more feature-packed web inspector, the icing and the cherry, respectively, on the sundae.

All in all, pretty ?!?! for me.

^† I gotta tell ya something else. Humble pie tastes terrible. Turns out my new cheapie phone doesn’t have much going for it other than its cheapness. I can at least get calls on it more reliably than the iPhone 2G, but text messages don’t work. At all. Seriously. All my friends have stopped sending me text messages, because literally more than half of their messages to me never get there. Not get there late, which sometimes happens too, but never get to me at all.

Then there are the times when I myself am trying to send a text, and the phone (a $*@#!^% Motorola i465) reports that the message was sent, though it actually wasn’t, and I’ll have no idea that the message never got out the door until I happen to reboot my phone days later, and all the recipients are asking me why they’re getting replies to their messages so late.

In fact, if I had an actual piece of crap the size of my phone, it’d be more useful, because then I could use it as fertilizer. This…thing isn’t worth the plastic it’s made of. So, well, iPhone 4. As much as I loathe and detest the idea of giving AT&T my money again, at least I’ll get a nice phone in the bargain.

Simply stunning. And the first in a series!

It’s a bit past 2009, but not too late for a retrospective on the best movies I saw that year (most of which were foreign). Without further ado:

1. Yang Yang – 5 stars

   This Taiwanese film is the second by virtuoso director and Ang Lee protégé Cheng Yu-Chieh, and is just about perfect. It is a gorgeous and subtle film—far and away the best movie I saw in 2009.

2. Heaven’s Heart – 5 stars

   This was a Swedish movie actually made in 2008 that I saw in SFIFF 2009, and is drama at its finest. Intense and brilliant.

3. His Wedding – 5 stars

   This radiant Korean short film made the best use of split screen I’ve ever seen and was poignant without descending into the melodrama so much of Korean cinema is prone to. I would love to see a feature-length project from this director.

4. Star Trek – 5 stars

   This is the only Hollywood movie to make it onto my list. J.J. Abrams’ adaptation of the classic series is my favorite Star Trek movie of all time (yes, even better than the previous undisputed champion, The Wrath of Khan).

5. All Around Us – 4 stars

   This one is from Japan, and was the clear standout of SFIAAFF 2009. It was distinguished by its smart script and terrific acting. Highly recommended.

Honorable mentions:

• Can Go Through Skin – 4 stars

  This Dutch movie is the art film, done right. Very high production value and an experimental but superbly effective sound design are the hallmarks of this film. Very highly recommended.

• Claustrophobia – 4 stars

  This movie, hailing from Hong Kong, was made by a screenwriter-turned-director, and it shows. The script is terrific. Make sure to see this one if you can.

What were some of your favorites?

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Check out the original video page to see it in HD, which I highly recommend. Just stunning. Unbelievably, it’s almost entirely CG.

My 3.33 GHz, 8 GB friend. No, I am not kidding. !!! It is, for the record, awesome.

of type foundry exljbris, which offers a number of high-quality, beautifully-crafted fonts for free. Designer Jos Buivenga just announced his latest release, a gorgeous serif text face called Calluna. Calluna includes ligatures, old style and lining figures in both proportional and tabular styles, superiors, anteriors, and a number of other goodies, all using OpenType wizardry to take (much of) the guesswork out of typesetting for non-professional typographers. Also make sure to check out iLT, where Buivenga wrote about his inspiration (Museo) and design process for Calluna.