Movies:
Jericho – I haven’t seen a western this clean since the 80s. The clothes were clean, the buildings were clean. Even when the characters were dirty, their dirt looked clean. It almost seems like this was meant to be a made for tv movie. The movie itself started out okay but the second half it fell apart. By the end it just wasn’t making much sense at all. He’s waiting for the train and they make him miss it but nothing comes of that. Then he finally meets up with who he needs to meet up with, they look at each other, and that’s it. Not satisfying at all.

Resurrecting the Champ – Good movie, good cast! It tells a good story about what defines you as a person. It doesn’t seem to be the typical Samuel L Jackson role but he’s still great. Why isn’t Josh Hartnett in more movies?

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer – Three generations trying to find their hookup. All three stories are interesting. The grandmother’s story is interesting because it’s almost shown like a silent movie. The mother’s story is an adapting to a changing world story. The daughter’s story is a story of the first time. I liked it and surprisingly it didn’t feel long despite being over two hours.

Obsessed – It’s entertaining despite being fairly predictable and the main character acting really stupid for the first half of the movie. Any number of early conversations to HR and the temp hiring people would have put an end to this movie. Ali Larter is good as the crazy though.

Not Easily Broken – Pretty good marriage drama. Not everything ties together that well surrounding the core drama, but the core drama is well done.

Gospel Hill – This movie is good for the characters and their history. The multiple plot elements don’t all get explained, but that doesn’t really detract from the appreciation of the characters. It’s like there was a good chunk that ended up on the cutting room floor.

100 Feet – A ghost story with an interesting premise and some surprisingly intense scenes. There is one scene towards the end that goes to the gratuitous level of violence and it makes itself apparent pretty quickly if you want to look away; it quickly oes on longer than previous ghostly encounters. The writer/director is responsible for writing The Hitcher and that remains his best movie, but this one is still pretty good.

Traitor – An interesting story about an American moderate muslim getting involved with extremist muslims. Both the military and government response and his conflicts cover a lot of ground.

The Man in the Moon – Reese Witherspoon’s first movie and she’s even good then.

Iris – A joyful and heartbreaking story, and at times, very harsh. Alzheimer’s movies are the biggest horror movies to me.

Always – I finally saw this! It was as good as everyone told me it was. Definitely has Spielberg written all over it, but that’s a good thing.

Whip It – A fairly typical teen rebellion story but set in a roller derby backdrop. It’s pretty much fun from beginning to end and who doesn’t like roller derby? They don’t explain most of the rules as it goes along, but some of the action isn’t edited together as well as it could be. It seems out of sequence at times.

Across the Universe – Beatles songs taken and applied to a more serious story than was originally meant, but it’s still a decent story. Some of the imagery is fantastic. Between this and Titus the director seems to really like militaristic musical numbers and I think those are the strongest parts of the movie. It’s also fun for Beatles fans who like spotting Beatles references and other references to their era.

Good Luck Chuck – Dane Cook one of the weakest leading male characters I’ve ever seen. He’s the romantic one woman type, but he jumps into having sex with hundred of women at the slightest of urgings from his friend. He makes weak protestations and whines and keeps doing it. The penguins are cute too.

Homegrown – Movies with the paranoia of those new to crime are generally entertaining and this one, while not great, is just that. The cast is great. The surprise came at the end when there is a small convoy through town and the town was Felton. Not all of it was filmed in Santa Cruz county but a lot was. I cou;dn’t tell before because it was all woods.

Dou fo sin (Flash Point) – Good action scenes, but otherwise forgettable. The dubbing was distractingly horrible.

Meet the Browns – I’m not understanding why this is a 3/10 in the imdb. Did too many white people see it? I thought it was funny for most of it, It did get a little heavy handed with the end, but that’s hardly a reason for a 3.

Perfect Opposites – The story of a guy who has his head up his ass about relationships until he loses the woman he loves and has to figure things out. I thought the part of them getting settled in LA was good. Most movies show people moving to a new area and everything just works. You don’t often see the troubles people have in new places in movies.

Pathology – Med students gone wrong. I like the idea of it. I mean who would better know how to kill people than people who have studied how the body works? It doesn’t fall apart at the end, but it does stumble shortly before the end. There is an explosion that isn’t explained that conveniently gets rid of some characters. Aside from that it’s a decent thriller.

Scenes of a Sexual Nature – Intertwined relationship conversations in a park in one afternoon. Most of the characters don’t interact between scenes but there are a few that provide the connection. Most of them are fairly amusing but a the same time not very memorable.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – I’ve finally finished up the second Professor Layton game. I liked the setting and feel of this game better than the first one. The animation for the cut-scenes are both increased in amount and in quality. I think there are a few cases of poor wording of the puzzles. It’s probably because I just finished the first game, but for the most part the puzzles felt easier than the first game. Also there are more hint coins in this game so there’s no worry on running out of ways to get hints if you need them. I did run into a problem assembling the camera as it apparently needs to be assembled in a particular order an not just with all the pieces in the right place as the instructions indicated. Also if you miss a certain puzzle you will not be able to complete the tea puzzles. Luckily after the game you can go back and complete anything you missed.

Wii Sports Resort –  I mostly wanted this to try out the gyroscopic attachment to the Wii remote and it works as advertised. It does a great job of 1:1 motion between what you do and what happens on screen. I’ve only tried a few of the games so far but they are all well done. The frisbee game was challenging at first but soon enough I was throwing as I would a regular frisbee. I look forward to the other games and seeing what else will take advantage of this device.

TV:

Alice – I wasn’t that impressed with SyFy’s Tin Man take on The Wizard of Oz, but for some reason I thought Alice looked promising, and for the most part it delivered. Large unpopulated cities, while looking cool don’t really fit with how it should be, but everything else ended up being a fairly interesting take on the Wonderland stories. It makes me wonder how much it has in common with the upcoming Alice in Wonderland which also appears to take place in a future Wonderland, based on the trailer.  

Black in America 2 – More great stories about the subject matter! I didn’t get to see the first Black in America, but I really liked Hispanic in America and this is right up there with it.

Movies:

Another free preview weekend means I get a lot more movies to watch, good and bad. There’s a lot of bad this time so I’ll put the better ones first. I have to start writing these before I have so many piled up.

• The good:

—————————————–

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities – This a documentary about the making of the Herbie Hancock album by the same name. It’s a collaboration with a number of artists and all of them are shown in their collaboration. I learned about several artists I’ll be looking into from this which is better than I was expecting going in.

Bottle Shock – I’m not sure how accurate the portrayal of the characters are but I think the events are probably about how they happened. The characters to make for a fun ride through the rise of Napa though. You dont have to be a wine afficionado to enjoy this movie.

Le Placard – A fine film! I don’t normally expect a straight up comedy to come from France, but this one really delivers.

Black Irish – It’s good, but I wasn’t expecting something this heavy. This movie is pretty heavy on the drama but not in a bad way and doesn’t go down the rode of the morose.

Sweet and Lowdown – Great mockumentary about a fictional guitar player. The music is good and the humor is played perfectly.

CJ7 – A mostly non-kung-fu Stephen Chow movie, but I still like it. File this mostly under heart-warming family film. I look forward to the sequel.

The Anniversary Party – A small group of actors getting together to make their own movie can often go wrong, but in this case it all came out right. I guess there’s nothing else to say other than I really got into the characters.

• The okay:

——————————

The Bachelor –  It’s mostly pretty silly in the premise but the it starts to get fun when Brooke Shields’ character enters the scene. I’m glad it referenced Brewster’s Millions because that’s what I was thinking this was goign to be like early on. Seeing a couple hundred brides running around is pretty fun.

Blood: The Last Vampire – Live action anime! Apparently it isn’t as good as the original anime, but it was still entertaining enough. I probably wouldn’t seek it out, but if you like anime vampire/martial arts/demon movies you’ll probably find this entertaining.

A Wake in Providence – A second tier family reunion type movie. It’s entertaining but not as good as other examples of the genre.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop – I was skeptical that this was a movie worthy of how much money it made. The first 30 minutes weren’t that exciting, but then it turned into a fairly decent comedy version of Die Hard. Yeah it would be better to watch Die Hard, but this wasn’t that bad.

Fired Up! – This stated off with kind of a Ferris Bueller feel. The main characters could improvise a plan and get out of any situation. After the first 15 minutes the only thing left is what you see in the trailer. Their ability to hatch plans and execute them on the fly vanishes, killing the best thing this movie had going.

The International – Thriller and international banking don’t seem like they would go together and really it ends up more of a commentary about the far reaches of the banking system and why it is untouchable.

The Breed – This movie was a little confused. It tried to present a Brazil-like future, but that was completely unrelated to most of the movie both in content and in style. I like the idea behind the movie and it plays well except for about 10 minutes in the last third which seems to come out of nowhere. The movie gets back on track but there’s defeinitely a “what the hell is going on” section.

The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Bullwinkle and the narrator seemed fine, but Rocky seemed a little flat, despite being in 3D. I think the silliness stayed true to the cartoon including a heavy dose of meta-fiction. Overall I think it was a successful live-action version of the cartoon, but I don’t think the public wanted a live-action version of the cartoon. I enjoyed it though.

Bart Got a Room – Good prom flick and William H. Macy is funny as the dad. It made me think this is what would happen if John Hughes were to make a less-funny indie film.

Confessions of a Shopaholic – I give props to this movie for pointing out the difference between cost and value right up front. It also does a good job presenting people’s problems with credit cards. It’s all wrapped in an entertaining film, though I suspect the economic advice will not be applied by most people.

Step Brothers – I’m not really sure why this works, but it does. I think the only part that doesn’t work for me is the school yard bullies, but that’s a small enough part that it doesn’t really detract. 

Sunshine Cleaning – I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d watch it again despite Alan Arkin being in it. I’ll watch him in anything.

Wrongfully Accused – It’s Airplane comedy and it’s pretty close to that original feel. I’ll credit that to the writer/director working with the Zucker/Abrahams team in the past. It’s pretty funny and I might consider it again if I were in the mood for a Fugitive parody.

The Rookie – Yay, I love baseball movies! It doesn’t seem like this story could actually happen, but yet it did. I think it has a little too much of a feel of destiny to it, but it’s still a good story.

Strictly Business – This falls in the average comedy range. It’s interesting watching it now though since the gangster as the dominant black character hadn’t yet emerged.

My Faraway Bride – It’s kind of a middle of the road cross-cultural romantic comedy. It probably would have been better had it not been based on how the writer met the lead actress. The fish out of water/rich-poor/you-us marriage conflict film has been done much better any number of times, but this is an entertaining enough way to pass time. Bonus points for being short.

Happy-Go-Lucky – For the first two thirds I think the main character has to be one of the most irritating characters I’ve seen in a movie. Thankfully events happen to tone it down and as a whole I think the movie ends up being pretty good. I’d rank it about the same level as other Mike Leigh movies.

Standard Time – I like song standards so I was pretty happy with this from that aspect alone. Andrew McCarthy makes any scene he is in better than it would have been otherwise. The ones without him aren’t bad, but his stand out. I have to give it credit for going through with a wedding scene unlike any other I can recall.

The New Guy – Not the fish out of water comedy I was expecting, but a rise of the little guy comedy instead. It’s fairly funny, but not consistently. I like the casting and it all sure beats a flaming marshmallow to your eye.

• Stop reading here:

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Bob the Butler – Tom Greene isn’t as obnoxious as he generally is in this movie which makes this an average entertaining movie. Not the kind you go out and try to see, but the kind where there’s nothing else on tv and this comes on and you feel like being lazy.

Stealing Harvard – A silly premise, which is fine, with a lackluster execution. The movie only really hits where it needs to be right before the end which is just enough to make it okay.

Lucky 13 – In some ways it’s similar to Bart Got a Room in that the main character gets advice from everyone before figuring out what they need to do to be happy, but it’s not nearly as good. I think the ending is appropriate though.

Sugar & Spice – A cheer leading version of The Usual Suspects. It seems like this should be an easy sell but it ends up being fairly forgettable. Maybe if it had gone more along the Point Break lines with multiple robberies that would help, or even more training. Instead it feels mostly like a discussion of heist movies.

Wet Hot American Summer – Could this be the least funny summer camp movie ever? It might be. By the end I don’t even think the actors cared anymore.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua -   The worst movie of the bunch. Good thing I was able to work on code while this played or I might have gone insane. I do have a theory that this actually started out as a script for a rich white girl who gets stuck in Mexico, but that was too generic so they changed the story to be with dogs. Aside from the occasional dog references, and since the dogs talk, there is nothing preventing this from being made with an all human cast. Except then you wouldn’t get people to watch it because there are dogs in it.

Movies:
Nochnoy Dozor (Night Watch) – This apparently was supposed to be the pilot for a television series. I’m glad they decided to take it to the big screen because it’s totally worthy. Interesting story and characters.
Dnevnoy Dozor (Day Watch) – This feels like the was the television series that would have been, but all crammed into one movie. Nothing has time to develop which by the end makes you think “Really? That’s it?” Just watch the first one.
The Final Season – Yay! A baseball movie! Actually it’s about small town vs larger interests, with the little guy not being listened to. It manages to avoid being sappy or even too cliche. Don’t go out of your way for it, but it was better than expected.
Couples Retreat – Fairly funny. I was thinking all the funny stuff was in the trailer but such is not the case. It’s almost like an episode of The Love Boat, but set on an island. I’m surprised no one has made a movie version of Fantasy Island yet. How, according to imdb.com there is one in production.
Capricorn One – I think this movie is as relevant today as it was when it was made. Apparently someone else thought so too since it appears to be headed for a remake. If they were to re-shoot the old script with modern props, costumes, and effects I think it would be just fine. I can think of a number of good angles to include and explore in a re-make. I hope they think of them too. Anyway, totally worth seeing.
The Final Cut – Good idea, uninspiring execution. It feels like it’s just slightly off from its target. Is this a criticism of today’s funeral industry? Lack of privacy in society? I think it needs to show more motive for the characters.
Be Cool – I like “Get Shorty.” I was hoping I would like this as well. It’s fully entertaining because each character is entertaining to watch. The structure those characters fit in is pretty boring. I didn’t care too much though because the characters are cool.
Marley & Me – This was better than I expected. The family story is interesting and it isn’t just Marley constantly on the screen destroying their lives. The bond between Marley and the family comes across on screen.
My Name is Bruce – Can a movie about Bruce Campbell be a bad thing? If you have enjoyed any Bruce Campbell movie, you will enjoy this. Heck, if you’ve ever enjoyed a B-movie you will enjoy this. Just see it!
Sherlock Holmes – I don’t remember many details from the stories I read long ago, but I like the movie and look forward to a sequel. I like that Watson is more an equal than a sidekick. I like the thoughts before action. I like the film as a whole.

Nintendo DS:
Professor Layton and the Curious Village – I got this as a gift and dove right in. It’s essentially a series of puzzles of varying types you need to solve to move the story ahead. You don’t really have any control over the story. The story is told mostly with textual dialog and occasional animated scenes. They really blend together well and the story works well as a nice reward for the puzzle solving. The puzzles generally aren’t extremely difficult. Most of the times I had problems it was because I was mis-reading what he puzzle was asking for. I have one more bonus puzzle to go and then I’m on to the sequel.

YouTube
The Receptionist – I just thought I would mention this channel. It’s a channel for short films he makes while at work. Everything in the video aside from himself is made form the office supplies. Good stuff!

Movies
88 Minutes – 16 minutes. The time it takes to be fully convinced it’s going to be pretty dump. Luckily the actors are generally entertaining and it’s pretty short.
The Jane Austen Book Club – I like the parallels between the characters and the books they read. It all ties together well and seems thought out. Of course I’m just basing this on the movie and other Jane Austen movies (not including Jane Austen’s Mafia).
No Country for Old Men – More intense and less violent than I anticipated. Not to say it isn’t violent, just not as much as I was led to believe. The use of silence in the film was great. Everything about it was compelling.
Quarantine – Watch this movie with the best sound system you can. The helicopters and other outside sounds were completely immersive. The single camera shoot works well too and wasn’t a turn-off like in The Blair Witch Project.
Becoming Jane – What made Jane Austen into Jane Austen? I don’t know how accurate this movie is in answering that question but it is pretty entertaining. I’m sure the entertainment value goes down the more you know about her life. Good thing I don’t know!
Snow Dogs – Have you wondered what Cuba Gooding Jr is up to? This is it. It’s a mildly amusing, cheesy, light film. Something that’s completely non-offensive.
WALL-E – Great movie about humanity and is very close to being a modern silent movie. A lot is communicated with an economy of words. Also it’s a more realistic look than your typical Pixar movie which I think is a good thing.
The Truth About Charlie – While I was watching this movie I kept thinking that it felt like an old movie. Sometimes I was able to picture the scene with the exact same dialog. It turns out it’s a remake of Charade. I think it should have been pulled fully into the modern day because it felt out of place in the modern day setting.
Kickin’ it Old Skool – It started off with some funny stuff, but then it went stale.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – I was thinking this was going to be the same joke over and over, but instead there were a good variety as it was able to mine the history of pop music. I probably would have been happy enough with a machete fight an the Beatles in India, but I know I have low standards.
The Foursome – A reunion movie and a golf movie mixed into one. I normally like golf movies but this one is one to avoid. It’s dull, predictable, and poorly delivered.
Bedtime Stories – This movie doesn’t fit too well into categories. Maybe Adam Sandler and fairy tale work. It’s a pretty enjoyable movie unless maybe Adam Sandler bugs the shit out of you.
Gray Matters – An odd love triangle movie that pays homage to old Fred and Ginger type movies. It’s a good bit of fun!
Summer of Sam – After the first hour is settled down and got pretty good. Until then you’re wondering what anything you’re watching has to do with anything else. Overall I’d recommend it, but be prepared for it to take awhile.
First Sunday – It seems like it would be an offshoot of the Friday series, and I think that what they want you to think but they have nothing in common except for Ice Cube. There are some good community building messages among the hit and miss comedy.
This Christmas – Family holiday gathering with all the family comedy that goes with it. It’s probably most similar in feel to The Family Stone. I think it comes off well, but then again I like these kinds of movies. My favorite is still Home for the Holidays.
The Invisible – Most similar to Ghost, but it’s pretty good. I haven’t seen the Dutch film this is based off of but I thought this version was well done.
We Own the Night – I wasn’t expecting much based on the trailer, and it turns out the trailer for this only covers about the first thirty minutes of the movie. There ends up being a fairly good cop-brother drama in there.
Die Mommie Die! – This is a 60s parody. I think it started as a 60s porn parody because there are a lot of scenes that lead right up to getting it on. But it’s also a parody of other films of the era. It’s purposefully bad and it doesn’t carry that off at first like an unintentionally bad film can. I don’t know what changes but the camp starts connecting. I think I have to attribute it to Natasha Lyonne.
Fido – A great boy-and-his-dog movie, but with zombies! It’s not scary and has very little gore so it’s safe for pretty much everyone to watch.
Pineapple Express – Why do I like stoner movies? I don’t know, but this one is pretty good. Maybe it’s the pothead logic? This one has characters aware that they have pothead logic and an over the top ending.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant – The pacing on this kept it pretty entertaining from start to finish. I also like their take on motion blur and I hope it’s used elsewhere.
Head Over Heels – It’s like Zoolander except with female models, and they all live. Freddie Prinze Jr is the love interest and that’s find but he’s not very believable at playing someone in his job… either of them. There’s enough funny to keep it entertaining though.
Capitalism: A Love Story – So far my favorite Micahel Moore movie is still Sicko. It is straight to the point and doesn’t rely on his usual gimmicks. This one shows in general he’s improving, but he still falls back on his gimmicks from time to time. The first hour feels scattered, and while the stories are sad, they have little connection to one another or the point he’s trying to make. Later he finds his focus and that’s great! Except you’re wishing he would have tied those earlier stories in to the now focused narrative to drive the point home.
Trojan War – This movie must ahve been sponsored by Trojan condoms. It’s one of those everything goes wrong in a night kind of movies. In this case the guy is trying to get laid and his quest is to find a Trojan condom. Not the best movie of its type but it’s amusing.
Miracle at St. Anna – Good WWII movie, but it’s about the black soldiers who served. Surprisingly there is a decent amount of humor to keep it from getting too heavy. It’ll still get heavy but it won’t stay there. It doesn’t feel as long as it is.
The Brothers Solomon – This has to fall along the lines of A Night at the Roxbury. Except these two brothers aren’t dumb, just insulated from the world and insanely positive about everything. Nothing escapes their positive spin.
Inkheart – Bringing characters to life in a story can be tricky but this manages it well. Kind of like an inverse Never Ending Story. Unfortunately I don’t think it did well enough for the sequels to be made into movies.
Easy Virtue – Funny period piece about an American woman causing upheaval in an English family. It didn’t have the ending I was expecting, or a lot of events throughout the movie for that matter. Check it out.
Lakeview Terrace – Samuel L Jackson plays the neighbor from hell. The trailer only shows a small portion of what goes on. It’s not like there’s even a transformation, he’s just messed up from the start.
A Christmas Carol (2009) – The level of detail was amazing! The leather, the wood, the buildings, the cloth, the motion! You could even see that the outside of his foot comes down before the inside when he climbs the stairs! On top of it, it was a good telling of the story. It even make use of an absence of sound. How often does that happen in an animated movie?
Factorum – This has the same main character as Barfly. I’ve never seen Barfly, and I’m not sure I want to. The main character is interesting in that he can be repulsive and sympathetic at the same time. It’s listed as a comedy, but the only really funny part I though was when he got crabs.
We Don’t Live Here Anymore – Irritating characters who don’t like one another destroying their relationships. Surprisingly the kids don’t seem too effected by the whole situation despite Laura Dern having some impressive angry yelling and throwing things.

Saw part 1 of Black in America 2 on CNN. Now I wish I had seen the first one.

The Hangover – Pretty funny and well done trace-your-steps movie. All of the characters play well together. Nice setup for a sequel too.
Delirious – It’s kind of quirky and entertaining but Michael Pitt comes off as too wooden for me. Good thing he’s mostly paired with Steve Buscemi!
State and Main – This is a funny big-name ensemble. It feels like it was or could be a stage play. The dialog is clever and everything is fast paced.
I Am Legend – I think this tells the story better than The Omega Man and from what I’ve read it’s closer to the original novel (which I now want to read). The practicalities are seen. The loneliness is felt. The feelings of the others are made known too. Good stuff and I look forward to the prequel.
Keeping Mum – An English comedy that isn’t about celebrating the quirks of a small town. Sometimes it seems like that’s all you get from the English indie comedies. Anyway, it’s enjoyable and you should watch it.
Wedding Daze – This isn’t very memorable; I had to go look up what it’s about. It has some funny parts but most of it I just didn’t care about the characters.
Elegy – An affair between an older man and a younger woman? I thought this would be awkward or cliche. Instead it has some compelling relationship stories and I really felt for the characters.
Righteous Kill – It’s always fun to watch De Niro and Pacino. The story isn’t that great but you almost don’t notice!
Seven Pounds – Sometimes the story seems a little disjointed but it all pulls together and it ends up being a good story of the personal. It ended better than I expected.
Passengers – Kind of another version of The Sixth Sense, but not nearly as good. I just wanted them to get on with it so the movie could end. I don’t think I would think of The Sixth Sense this way if I had seen Passengers first.
Public Enemies – This is good but it felt like there was more cut out to get it to a good theater running length. I guess we’ll find out if there’s director’s cut. The film looks weird at times. It was obviously filmed with digital cameras that at times made things feel too smooth when filming in dark. It was both distracting at times and made things stand out at others. I’m sure that’s just a glimpse of what’s to come.
Swing Vote – It’s both a commentary on the political system and the stereotypical non-voter. Kevin Costner plays close to the type he played in Tin Cup. I say check it out!
The Dukes of Hazard – This might be hard to believe but I think the plot of the average episode was better than the movie. Highlights: They showed off Jessica Simpson’s legs nicely in the beginning, and Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg.
The Midnight Meat Train – I can say I’ve never been that crazy about Clive Barker movies. This is the first one I actually got into. The story was interesting. The gore was over the top so if that turns you off avoid this movie. Or just cover your eyes since you can see it coming.
Funny People – The trailer doesn’t spoil the movie for you and the story told ends up being good. I wasn’t expecting comedy, but a movie about comedians with some funny parts. With that in mind there was a lot more humor than I was expecting. Also I think it’s the first thing I’ve liked Eric Bana in.
Religulous – Bill Maher’s documentary to show how much religious is a big mistake. The best part for me is when he was talking to the Jesus at the Holy Land Experience. He talks to a variety of people but it’s mostly a rehash of ideas I’ve heard about why religion is bad.
Slumdog Millionaire – When I was watching this I was reminded of four movies it borrowed from but right now I can’t remember what they are. Anyway, good movie and I like how it was told with the flashbacks. I don’t think this would be my pick for best movie last year but I don’t think I saw any movies last year that were better.
Julie & Julia – I liked this but I, like many others, wished the movie focused more on Julia than Julie. Good job to the movie makers for making Julie more likable. I went and read some of the Julie & Julia blog entries and she comes across as much more self-centered there.
The Wrestler – This movie was better than I expected and I thought the ending was great (but I seem to like abrupt endings)! I had heard it was like a retelling of Passion of the Christ and I can see what they meant. The stories line up pretty closely.
Death at a Funeral – Funny! But if you haven’t seen this you can wait for the inexplicable remake next year. Remaking a recent English-language film directed by an American director doens’t happen that often but it’s happening here. Actually you should just see this one since you never know how the remake will turn out.
Sicko – Seeing this movie while the current health care debate is raging really drives home all the more that we need this change. I think this probably plays better now than when it originally played in theaters. The usual Michael Moore gimmicks are not as present here and when they are they are short lived; the material stand up on its own.
Michael Clayton – Well played by everyone and an ending I could really enjoy. This movie made me miss John Grisham movies though. What happened to them?
Gabriel – A rebellious teenage bible student watched the Matrix too many times and this is what came out. Why did the end have to go on so long?
Sex Drive – This movie takes awhile to hit its stride. It’s shortly before they get to the Amish. Seth Green cements that as one of the Amish, but what doesn’t Seth Green make better? It never gets great but it’s fairly fun.
Beowulf – I was wondering if I would haev any uncanny valley problems with this movie and I’m happy to report that I didn’t. This movie once again demonstrates that animated doesn’t make it a kids movie. The story is told well and I’m glad I saw it. I think it was perhaps the right way to film it.
Houseboat – Crazy living situation. Italian beauty. Drama behind the scenes according to imdb. It all makes for an entertaining movie. Good for a lazy afternoon or evening when it happens to be on.
District 9 – Really well done. I liked most everything being from the point of view of security, news, or documentary cameras. A main character that doesn’t think clearly and pays the price. I look forward to the sequel.
Video 3000 – A 5 minute foreign short about a universal remote. Kind of like Click but very short.
Porno – An odd Polish short film.
No Bikini – A great short story about a girl’s summer switch to another gender.
Uncle Nino – A well done story of the outsider coming in to show the family what’s important in life.
9 – My favorite movie of the year so far. I liked everything about it! No sequel for this one please. I don’t know how it compares to the short by the same name, but I’m guessing since I’ve seen this one the other probably won’t stand up. It might be the reverse for those who have seen the short.

The Girlfriend Experience – Looking back on it I can see some of the points it was trying to make and, but while I was watching it I really didn’t care. It was all kind of an uninvolved jumbled mess.

Casino Royale – Lots of fun action sequences here. I liked the introduction being done in black and white and a nice way to show history. I also liked the impression of insecurity in Bond underneath his cocky, in-control presentation to everyone.

The Bucket List – This one surprised me. I thought it was going to be all about them going out and doing trivial crap. That’s all the trailer and reviews really mentioned. Instead that was just a backdrop for quality of life at the end and learning what’s important.

I Could Never Be Your Woman – Entertaining movie about age issues with people in the tv and movie industry both on screen and in their relationships. I thought the relationships were well played throughout and the casting for Michelle Pfeiffer’s daughter was great!

Pittsburgh – I’d watch Jeff Goldblum in the Music Man; that’s what I learned from watching this. Aside from that it’s kind of an odd pseudo-documentary. It feels partly real and partly fiction and that makes it feel almost invasive at times.

The Nanny Diaries – The opening and closing visual presentations in this movie were very clever. The rest of the movie is entertaining but it’s not too special, except where you get to spot the Mary Poppins references littered throughout the film. They are musical (not sung), visual, and scattered throughout the story.

Shutter – A Japanese ghost/horror movie but centered around Americans. It’s fairly suspenseful at times and the story told is pretty good. The story of the ghost and how it acts are the main reason to see this.

300 – Well it looked pretty cool. And since it’s all told as a story being told, the embellishments told are well represented and that was entertaining, but it all just seemed so ridiculous.

The Accidental Husband – This was less believable than most romantic comedies. For being out for revenge, the male lead didn’t seem so vengeful. In fact he seemed to like her pretty much from the get go. Uma Thurman’s drunk scene was pretty funny though.

Untraceable – I think this movies wins for most realistic use of technical jargon. Not to say that it’s all correct, but the sentences made some sense and weren’t far off the marl. It kind of falls down towards the end to make it all work out, but I still think it’s pretty decent.

Jump! – I know jumping rope is hard, but these kids make so much of it look easy. The things they try to attempt and how far they push themselves is great to watch. I join them in hoping to see jump rope as an Olympic sport some day.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno – So much fun and pretty much what I expect from Kevin Smith. Great dialog and entertaining characters. It’s also a good look at making low budget films, probably inspired from his making of Clerks. Yay for seeing Jeff Anderson not as Randal and Jason Mewes not as Jay!

I should try to do these once a month so the list isn’t so large.

YouTube

Three channels I enjoy on youtube right now are:

spricket24

ponceman

TheReceptionist

TV

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – I’m sorry this got cancelled. I really liked where it was going and the character growth and one more season to finish it off would have been nice. Also it would have been nice if some of the elements int eh series were carried over to Terminator Salvation.

Chuck – I thought the season finale of one of my favorite shows was great so it might seem a little odd that I’m disappointed that it was renewed for another 1/2 season. They wrote the end of the second season like it was the end of the series and in doing so they brought it to the problem point in The Greatest American Hero. The problem being that in The Greatest American Hero at some point he no longer needed his FBI partner to do things as he mastered the suit and so the FBI partner was in the show less because there was less for him to do. Without that interplay the show then became generic. The writers of Chuck have skillfully walked that line until the final episode where it’s clear that the government agents are no longer needed. That wasn’t the only line they crossed though, they crossed the same point that caused Cheers to lose a big portion of its audience when Sam and Diane hooked up. Chuck and Sarah connected and now that tension is gone and hard to put back. I’ll give it a shot but I’m pretty sure this last half season is really the end.

Time Warp –  This is a newish show on Discover that I like most of the time. They take high speed camera that can record up to about 40,000 frames per second and slow down everyday things to see what’s happening in detail. A lot of the time it also just focuses on things getting squished.

Movies

College Road Trip – Why is a movie about picking out a college and visiting it rated G? Would this even be interesting to young kids? I think I G-movies like this are useful in showing more adult things in a way kids can accept, assuming they were interested enough to watch it. Bonus points for the genius super-pig, but as a whole not too interesting.

Wind Chill – This was a pretty good creepy story until the end. What kind of ending was that? Turn it off five minutes before the end and you will be more satisfied.

Knowing – Overall this was entertaining, but I was surprised at the heavy religious messages throughout.  The ending went on forever, but that might just have been because I really had to go to the bathroom at that point. Also I take issue with the GPS coordinates in the movie, having recently worked with GPS coordinates. Those given in the movie would only be accurate to a diameter of about 3000 meters.

Outlander – You see a movie with vikings and aliens and you think that you’ve got something worth watching. It’s true, this movie is a lot of fun. Don’t think about it though or you’ll spoil the illusion. I think it would have been better had it been set in the times when the Norse gods were still running around. Playing into that would have been a lot of fun.

The Secret Life of Bees –  I’m starting to think that rural semi-mystical stories might be saying something about how humans work. The fact that they’re always good to watch probably reinforces whatever that message is. Anyway, I liked it.

Being There – I think this is the most subtle, low-key, comedy I’ve ever seen. When the credits start stop watching so you can avoid the bloopers. They really detract from the film. Also I’ve found a lot of good arguments on a number of viewpoints on the final scene. I might have to watch it a few more times before I really decide what I think though.

WarGames – I watched this because I recently watched the sequel and this one holds up better than I expected. Partially because WOPR is a great looking movie computer and actually has personality on screen. I think Professor Falken’s portrayal when in NORAD is not right though. Still enjoyable!

Mutant Chronicles – Avoid this movie. Yeah it has Ron Perlman and John Malkovich but I’m pretty sure they want you to avoid it too. It tries to be kind of an Art-Deco/WWI/WWII style but it can’t really make up its mind. People have to be brought to the machine to be converted which should make it spreading different than what it is. It gets worse from there.

Next -Nicholas Cage must be having a thing for knowing the future between this and Knowing. I liked it. I thought it was pretty smart in how a person like the main character would have to hide himself. Maybe that was covered in the book, I don’t know, but it came across well on the screen.

Star Trek – Such a fun movie. Tons of nods to the old series but they didn’t get in the way. At the same time they didn’t wimp out in the end. Pushing the boundaries of too much lens flare though.

Fred Claus – I’m a fan of Christmas movies. This one I wasn’t looking forward to so much because the trailer looked pretty dumb. It turned out to be pretty funny and even had a touching spirit of Christmas type moment in it.

The Godfather: Part II – Finally I get to see parts two and three.  Part II is two movies in one spliced together showing what led up to and came after the first one. I think the early story of Vito is more interesting than Michael’s ongoing quest for legitimacy for the family but both are good.

The Godfather: Part III – I think this one is looked upon unfavorably because it seems more fantastical than the other two. It’s taken to such a high level of corruption that shows the quest for legitimacy is futile and shows it all to be a tragic cycle. I like the whole series.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall – It’s kind of like a Love Boat episode but more raunchy and not on a boat. It is pretty funny though. I liked it.

Step Up 2 the Streets – Yay dance movies! The best dancing isn’t in the finale and they didn’t use any of the character’s super powers specialties but I still liked it. It has the feel of guilty pleasure when watching it.

The Incredible Hulk – The on-foot chase through the dwellings in Brazil was great. The rest of it was like the tv show but bigger and faster. They referenced the theme music, the hulk is of constant size. It was still entertaining but it just kept making me feel like I was watching a version of the tv show with more action and bigger effects. I liked it but I also liked Hulk.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising – I liked this series of book a lot as a kid so I was looking forward to this movie. Unfortunately I don’t htink this movie would make much sense to anyone who hadn’t read the books. It’s just not very good. Nothing is explained it’s just a string of events. I think the acting of the main character was pretty good though despite the rest of the writing.

Leatherheads – I wonder how much of this fictionalized account of the beginnings of pro football are true; not enough to look it up though. It’s light-hearted and fun but some of the music doesn’t match the period.

The Game Plan – Dwayne Johnson is almost always entertaining to watch so I gave this one a shot. He doesn’t really disappoint here either. His co-starts make him look small by comparison in some scenes too. It was predictable but it still sucked me in.

The Great Buck Howard – I had no idea what to expect. Unlike Mutant Chronicles, John Malkovich wants you to see this one. Good story based on the director working for The Amazing Kreskin.

In the Valley of Elah – I didn’t intend to but I watched this on Memorial Day. That seemed to make the film more heavy and made me think about Memorial Day more in general that day. I cried a little while watching it and in light of the recent killing soldier turning on his own troops I wonder again how much damage is being done in Iraq.

Terminator Salvation – I liked the choice of time periods to cover in John Connor’s life but I wish it incorporated some characters and elements from the television series. Maybe that will come in the inevitable sequel but I doubt it. The characters of Marcus and Kyle Reese were the more interesting characters in the movie.

Big Trouble – This movie had me laughing out loud quite a bit. I think perhaps more than any other movie I’ve seen in the last year.

License to Wed – The first half is fairly funny and then then it turns to not caring a whole lot. I also thought the groom was just not right. Mandy Moore and Robin Williams hold it together though/

Lady in the Water – I liked this more than The Happening and Signs, also by M. Night Shyamalan. It wasn’t the normal structure his stories take which made it a nice change up. All of the characters were entertaining!

Be Kind Rewind – An overlooked low budget movie about low budget film making! I think you should give this movie a chance. yeah it’s a little weird but it works. I wonder of anyone has Sweded this movie.

The Simpsons Movie – Simpsons humor but in a much longer episode. I saw it for spider-pig but the rest was funny too.

The Gathering – A creepy English church-based horror film that has a good amount of creepy. Like the kind of creepy you get from 70s English church-based horror films. The ending is a little weak but it works.

Convoy – This movie clearly wou;dn’t have come about if Smokey and the Bandit hadn’t happened a year earlier but it is fully its own movie and the climax is great! I swear some of the road music had to be the inspiration for the Knight Rider music.

Australia – It’s two movies in one. The first half is a comedy an the second half is a love story. However people usually like their movies to be single movies or at least integrated and not sequential. Each half was good on its own and wouldn’t have made sense without the other but the feel of them didn’t feel right together.

Land of the Lost – This movie isn’t for kids yet a number of kids were in the audience. I thought it was fun, but I think if I thought it was going to be like the show I’d be disappointed. Everything about it is cartoony from the cg creatures to how everything acts. So I guess entertaining but don’t expect the tv show.

Saving Silverman – It could have been funny but mostly something is off and the jokes don’t work. If it wasn’t for the nipple fire scene and Neil Diamond at the end it would be a total loss.

Calendar Girls – This was nice in that it wasn’t the typical British comedy. It wasn’t the underdog working towards a minor goal in a small town. It had that going on but it was more about the effect of that on the relationships of those going through it.

RV – Started out funny and then it degenerated to random odd events. The annoying family that kept following them was more interesting than the RV trip.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan – I thought this was skillfully rediculous and it’s Mariah Carey’s best film role, playing herself. I think it’s my favorite Adam Sandler film since Happy Gilmore.

The Rules of Attraction – This is sort of a follow up to American Psycho since it follows the younger brother of thae main character there, but I really didn’t care about any of the characters and wanted them all to go away so the movie would be over.

Bride Wars – There were some funny bits here but I think it needed to focus more heavily on Anne hathaway’s character. It seemed to indicate that it was going to in the narration but then it split the time pretty evenly which I think made things worse for the telling.

Mirrors – I thought this was well done overall. There was good tension, there was good creepiness, there was a good ending. A few inconsistencies don’t really detract from the whole experiance.

Revolutionary Road – I really liked this, but if it wasn’t for the crazy son of the realtor this probably would have been too heavy. That’s even more remarkable because he’s the only character that tells you the truth of what’s going on in the movie. I want to read the book.

Mamma Mia! – I liked the overall idea of it, but I think the overall execution didn’t work so well. The greek chorus was under used. The times the movie truly shines are when Meryl Streep is on the screen. When she leaves it shows the rest to be kind of flat.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown – Awesome documentary about the band behind all the Motown hits. They didn’t get credit to the end but they were all amazing musicians. It also has several songs from a reunion concert with the last remaining members and a variety of vocalists, proving it was the band that made the sound.

Casanova – I wasn’t sure, but watching it made me feel like I was watching all sorts of historical inaccuracies. Like I even felt like the costumes were probably wrong. And why is it that whenever we want someone foreign and not low class we always give them English accents in movies?

King Arthur – I liked this movie a lot and I really didn’t expect to. Also based on the trailers I expected a lot more Keira Knightly, but really she’s barely in it. Anyway, I thought the  historical context for the Arthurian legends was believable and a welcome change from the sword and sorcery aspect usually told.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans – I think this might be my favorite Underworld movie; it’s certainly better than the first one. The werewolf effects are starting to get close to the level they were at in the 80s, but really computer generated werewolves still don’t cut it.

Gangs of New York – It’s strange to think that New York could have ever been the way it is portrayed in this movie, especially considering how quickly it went from that to the metropolis we normally see it as. I really want to read some New York history now, especially the book the movie is based upon. At the very least it shows the problem of private and competing fire companies.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – When I saw this I knew it had the whole Forest Gump thing going for it, and if it wasn’t for Slumdog Millionaire it would have won a lot more awards. The makeup was amazing and the adaptation was a good one. The original short story can be found on-line easily enough and is worth a read; it’s only about 20 pages.

Under the Tuscan Sun – It kind of meanders and is nice to watch while you’re watching it, but now I don’t have a strong memory of the movie. So I guess for me it was enertaining but not overly memorable.

Coraline – This was a really well done horror movie for kids. Judging by the reaction of the kids in the audience it was effective that way too. The style and animation were amazing too!

The Guru – Not to be confused with the recent Mike Meyers movie, this was actually a fairly funny romantic-ish comedy.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People – We rented it for Simon Pegg and it was a fun enough movie, but the special features were interestng. No one wants to say it but they indicate that the movie is more sympathetic to the main character than the book and is a better story as a result. The book is true and is about the author, Toby Young, which if you’ve seen Top Chef season 5 you know his as the substitute asshole judge. Basically he is famous for being an asshole and the movie makes him a nicer person.

Valentino – This movie is played seriously but it’s so bad that it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. In fact inthe imdb trivia it says that the founder of the Razzies ranks it as the 26th most laughably bad movie of all time and I agree with that.

Wargames: The Dead Code – It’s been a long time since I saw the original but I thought this made a mostly decent sequel. Sure you have to ignore the computer technology, but not as much as I expected to and I thought the basic premise was updated well to modern threats. I need to watch the original agin to see how well it really holds up.

Beauty Shop – The cast line up for this movie is fantastic, but mostly it’s just flat in the delivery. The only exception is Kevin Bacon as the over-the-top fake-European hair stylist.

What Happens in Vegas – A romantic comedy with very little romance and that’s nice for a change. In some ways it’s similar to Just Married, which also starred Ashton Kutcher, but the premise underlying the antagonism is totally different and it’s more entertaining. I actually watched it twice because when I told Nicole about it she wanted to watch it.

The Happening – This is pretty dumb. If something is removing the self-preservation instinct from people I don’t expect everyone to commit suicide, I’d expect them to engage in more risky behavior. Not caring whether they smash into someone during lane changes, thing like that. Everyone committing suicide imples that everyone just wants to commit suicide. Good job on making wind blowing through trees seem creepy though.

Smokey and the Bandit – Awesome driving, great stunts, and just a whole lot of fun. I never managed to see this before now but I’m glad I finally did.

Smokey and the Bandit II – Unfortunately I thought this movie would be more of the same that made the first one great. This one has slow driving, very few stunts, and a whole lot of who cares. The finale was pretty cool to watch but it was more cartoony than the first one even though the scale was greater. It was too long to wait to get there too. At least the makers of Operation Dumbo Drop thought the plot was good enough to borrow for their film.

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause – I’ve enjoyed the first two Santa Clause movies because Tim Allen makes a good Santa Claus. This one is likewise as fun and even though it isn’t as good I think I enjoyed it more than the second one. Maybe it was the extra time travel elements involved. It was fun seeing Juliette from Lost too as Mrs. Claus.

Twilight – When I watched it I thought it was a pretty good vampire story but it also seemed pretty light while maintaining a nice tone. On second thought, it’s nice that it’s not all over the top vampire action all the time that a lot of vampire movies seem to feel like they need to do.

21 – Framing the whole story with a med school interview was kind of silly but it doesn’t hurt the movie. Come to think of it, that makes the movie a lot like Risky Business with the business school interview. I wish they had gone over the techniques used in the movie, but I hear that’s on the special features of the dvd.

College Road Trip – I wasn’t expecting a G-rated movie and really there was nothing that couldn’t be shown to someone of any age, but I really don’t think little kids would find of lot of it interesting. Anyway, Albert the genius pig and the little boy were funny and the rest just kind of gets you there.

Wind Chill – The whole thing was a nice atmospheric ghost story and then the end came and was just kind of there. That’s it? Turn it off when she walks into the woods and you’ll be happier with the ending.

Sunday in New York – Jane Fonda in a good comedy about pre-marital sex. It’s based on a broadway play and it shows in the staging. And here I didn’t know Jane Fonda was in any good movies.

The recently were free preview weekends for HBO and Starz and now I’m making my way through the backlog on the dvr.

The Reaping – This is the best religious horror movie I’ve seen in a long time. No stigmata, too many candles, or arcane church lore necessary. It has a similar kind of satisfaction as I get when watching something like The Omen (haven’t seen the remake).

Dudley Do-Right – I wanted to see this because I like Brendan Fraser and George of the Jungle was great. This wasn’t great, but it still had a lot of fun. Unfortunately most of the fun came from the announcer. I think perhaps they should have borrowed the writers and director from George of the Jungle. The casting was fine.

The Devil Wears Prada – Great movie about a hell job and what it takes to get what you want.

Epic Movie –  There was just enough entertaining to keep watching and a few funny parts. If it didn’t haev the cast that it did (and how did it get that cast?) then it wouldn’t even have that. But hey, Stiffler’s mom.

Les Triplettes de Belleville –  Making a movie with no dialog that keeps you focused and doesn’t put you to sleep is a challenge but this movie is just that. It’s an odd story, and it’s funny, and it totally sucks you in.

Run Fatboy Run –  Despite Simon Pegg, based on the trailer and how long it lasted in theaters I didn’t expect this movie to be nearly as funny as it is. Not only that but it also manages to represent a good portion of what makes Rocky the movie it is in its own way.

Flushed Away – Most of this movie is pretty good except for the parts with the slugs. The slugs are awesome! See this for the slugs!

Babylon A.D. – The action is good but the plot seemed like a jumbled mess in the end. Apparently that’s because 70 minutes was cut out when the completion guarantee forced it to market. At least it comes out better than Highlander II did in that case. The action carries the day.

The Invasion – I think in 20 years there will be more remakes of this movie than any other movie, if it doesn’t already have that status. Surprisingly for a remake, it has a lot of good tension and it’s well done! I’m not so sure about the very end but I don’t think it really detracts from the rest of the movie.

Tropic Thunder – The funniest movie I’ve seen in awhile and the best Ben Stiller movie since Zoolander. Everything just plays right in this and Robert Downey Jr. has a role that I think only he could pull off.

The Bunny House – The trailer was funny and the movie held up to what the trailer showed. Shortly after I started thinking that the message in the movie was pretty bad it reversed direction which caused more relief than I anticipated.

Smart People – Like watching geeks flail in their personal relationships but tired of it being the same geeks? Then this movie is for you. There are familiar elements to it and it’s much better than I made it sound in the first sentence.

The Scorpion King – I decided to try out hulu.com with this movie because there was no way I was going to pay for it. It’s actually a fairly fun action adventure flick even if I can’t figure out how it relates in any way to the second Mummy movie. Maybe the straight to video sequel that just came out will clear that up. Seeing as how that doesn’t have the benefit of The Rock being in it I’ll probably skip it though.

THX 1138 – Finally! It’s true, I haven’t seen it until now. The start is fairly disorienting, like it’s tuning your brain into the story. There are a number of great elements in it that I’d like to see explored in other movies like the endless prison room or the micro-accounting during the chase. I don’t think that has been done since then in any form. Also the car chase in it stands up to any car chase scene today. Thumbs up!

Bright Lights, Big City – Michael J Fox as a coke-head? Hey, it works! This movie, dealing with loss, works as well today as I imagine it did in the 80s.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay – This is a pretty disappointing sequel. Maybe it had too mcuh to live up to? There were parts that were great but there were even more parts where I was left wondering where the fun went.

The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave –  I loved the Super Dave shorts when I was a kid so when this came on I had to watch it. The original cast is all still there and the stunts are rediculous, but the parts that work keep it flowing enough. I’d just like to add that Super Dave has a herd of mimes.

Kung Fu Panda –  The art style is great, the fu is good. It ends up being similar to Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon and I don’t consider that a bad thing.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria – The description was just that a village tries to hide their wine from the Nazis. It has that but it also brings the small Italian town and it’s residents to life.  I suppose I should mention that it’s mostly comedicthough there are heavy moments.

Darkon –  A documentary on LARPers in Maryland. Darkon is the land that all the LARPing nations inhabit and war in. You get to see alliances and conflict and people trying to come out on top in and out of Darkon. It doesn’t tend to get too uncomfortable with the level of involvement they have. At least they’re being social instead of sitting at home alone.

The Man From Earth – A thought experiment portrayed as a thought experiment in a movie. I don’t always understand the reactions of some of the characters in the movie but the story holds up fairly well I think.

Enchanted – Crossovers between the cartoon and real world are usually to the cartoon world or a small managable space. I guess it’s not so much a crossover as it is a parallel universe story. Anyway, the end result really came out well from the fish out of water moments to the songs!

Kinky Boots – In a depressed town, a few people decide to take a risk that make people think they are crazy or get looked down upon before the town rallies behind them to success. This fits that English film class and like most of the others it does it well and is very entertaining.

Hancock – This definitely didn’t go where I was expecting it to based on trailers or even the first part of the movie. There are hero rehabilitation stories, but not many about super heroes. This manages that well and throws on an interesting and fairly unique back-story.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army –  Nice art style in the opening story. This movie is all about enjoying the characters from the first movie. It works as that though I would have shortened one of the fight scenes.

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D – I wanted to see this fow two reasons, Brendan Fraser, and new 3D technology. Brendan Fraser was fun and the 3D was really good! There were some 3D trailers and if you have a chance to see “Fly Me to the Moon” in 3D, skip it. They were forcing the effect enough to hurt your eyes. This uses a new radial polarization technique so you can rotate your head and not lose the effect as you do with traditional polarized lenses. The 3D at times made you feel like you were in the middle of it and at other times looking at something with wonderful depth. It starts with a few things flying at you that every 3D movie has to do to make you flinch. The worst 3D effect was the last one in the movie. All that stuff you just watched and then you wonder how that scene could have made it into the movie. The movie itself is a fun modern tour through Vernes’ center of the earth.

The Mummy & The Mummy Returns – Nicole hadn’t seen these and since the third one was coming up we deciced to see them. The Mummy holds up well, effects and all. The Mummy Returns doesn;t look as good effects-wise, maybe they were trying too much? Also it’s not consistent with the fist movie. They say he won’t be as powerful and isn’t at full power yet even though he is doing more than he did in the first movie.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor – The first third or half of this movie irritated me. I really didn’t see Evelyn’s character ending up where it was or their son’s conflict with them as fitting. Once all the action started it settled into a comfortable groove and hey, there are yetis! I think I have to rank it about even with The Mummy Returns. The high are higher but the lows are lower.

China’s First Emperor –  This was a documentary on tv recently and it was interesting because it it showed me where various stories surrounding that period were based on fact and where liberties were taken for the story. I knew he unified the language. I didn’t know he unified currency and weights and measures but that makes sense. I didn’t know about his early life or how he ended up. Also seeing the scale of his burial city was very impressing. All those terracotta soldiers only come from a small part of the entire site. There was an indication that they are not going to explore that until preservation can be done. Apparently there are rivers and an ocean made of mercury in the scale-model china inside. Since there is evidence that mercury is leaking out slowly, it is thought that the description of the inside is accurate.

Mongol – This is a look at what led Ghengis Kahn to become what he was. The movie feels like it’s missing quite a bit, like it was cut down to be about 2 hours when it really wanted to be 2.5. I hope that extra time is on the DVD version when that comes out, but considering it’s a foreign film there’s probably not much chance of that. I’ll still ok forward to picking it up when it comes out.

Starman –  An alien comes down to play the fish out of water game and offer insights into humanity. I think this probably played better in the 80s though I think with a few minor changes it would work just as well today were it to be remade. That’s not a suggestion that it should be remade. Jeff Bridges plays the star man well, and Karen Allen is good as usual.

Kaw –  Killer ravens are attacking a small town! Since you probably aren’t going to see it I’ll just say that it’s because they ate some cow that died from mad cow disease and now they’re going to take out all the people. Despite being obviously low budget, they actually had a number of trained ravens and decent production value. Worth seeing? Maybe if you’re bored or want a background movie.

The Neanderthal Man – I had seen this before. A scientist believes that the larger brain case in neanderthals would have made the neanderthal more intelligent. The other scientists laugh at him so he continues his work on a serum to revert things back to their older genes. The cat turns into a sabre-tooth tiger (looks just like a regular tiger!) and the scientist and his maid get sent to their neanderthal roots where they look more like the wolfman and attack people in the woods.

Octaman – 70s Environmental horror. In Mexico a scientist discovers a half-man/half-octopus. It gets pretty pissed when they start studying the babies and it attacks the scientist camp, mostly at night. Once nice thing about these movies is that the action parts can be watched on fast forward and it generally increases the quality. This movie has a lot of “action” which often means octaman is staring at people from the reeds in the swamp. My two favorite moments in the movie were octaman stabbing a guy with a suddenly rigid tentacle, and when octaman jumps out of the RV at the scientists because it made me laugh out loud.

Eight on the Lam – Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller. Phyllis Diller is fun whenever she’s on screen but this is pretty uninteresting otherwise. Bob Hope has 8 kids and is that casual? Not buying it.

Alienator – An android bounty hunter is sent to Earth to catch an alien criminal. This movie was made in 1989 but all the effects were from the 70s. Speaking of that, I’d like to see movie effects and editing software offer the ability to apply 70s effects. How hard can rotoscoping with a bright border be? Anyway, female bodybuilder is the android and the body armor she wears is pretty horrible. The dialog is pretty fun though so don’t fast-forward through that.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls – Saw this Thursday night before the crowds got crazy. Liked it quite a bit and thought it fit very well with the previous movies in feel and in style. I was also very glad Karen Allen was back in her role from the first movie.

The Vampire – A doctor takes some addictive pills that wirn him into a vampire at night. The makeup looks more like a werewolf, but that’s easily overlooked. This movie is more about drug addiction turning you into a monster that destroys yourself, your family, and loved ones around you with a thin layer of vampire on top. It’s actually pretty good.

Blood Simple – I finally got a chance to see this and I definitely liked it. All the twists were great and I thought the use of kecak music for Frances McDormand’s character’s pivotal points was well done. If this didn’t have background music it might almost be a David Lynch film.
Vicious Lips – This movie was made in 1987 but it feels like it was written in 1983 and had to wait for what budget it had. A rock band gets signed and has to go play on another planet. This is a USA: Up All Night kind of movie all the way. At some point it switches to weird dream sequence and feels like the Wizard of Oz in a strange way. You probably want a few drinks for this one.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark – Having seen the new Indiana Jones movie we decided to watch the previous ones. The DVD is from a nicely cleaned up print and visible effects have been made invisible. Aside from that it’s still the same classic.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – I didn’t remember many details except that it is my least favorite. That’s still true and I think the movie could be much better and very little changed if Kate Capshaw’s character, Winnie, would have been cut from the script.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade –  This one builds on what made the first one good and solidifies that which is good because it allowed the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls to come out as well as it did. The interplay between Indy and his father is great throughout and really amke the movie.

Iron Man – I think this is my new favorite comic book movie, but Hellboy is still close. Everything about it is just right. I’m looking forward to the sequel already.

Sunshine – This movie is heavy but it’s a great story and it draws you in to the family’s story. If there is any movie that it is similar to I think it is To Live, which I also feel similarly about. I got the impression that there is more to the story which usually indicates the kind of details you get in a novel as being the source material, but it’s written by the director; I’m guessing a good bit is based on his own family and experiences to give it that feel.

Flawless – The 60s appear to be a hot time frame for movies and tv right now. This heist movie takes place in the 60s and it’s a pretty good heist. Michael Caine is great and Demi Moore is surprising, mostly because I don’t think of her in this kind of role so I didn’t recognize her at first. Unfortunately the end is a little weak and forgettable but it’s still good overall.

Speed Racer – I didn’t see it and I don’t want to. I just want to express my happiness that it’s doing so horribly at the box office. When I first saw the trailer I thought I didn’t want to see it but I might check it out for the effects. As the number of times I saw trailers and still for it increased so did my dislike for it and the certainty that it would suck. It seems that happened to a lot of other people too, the reviews and the box office are horrible for a film that expensive. Yay!

Scrubs – It’s been confirmed that the 8th ad final season of Scrubs will be 18 episodes long and will be on ABC. More Yay!

1408 – I wasn’t expecting much from this and I got a good bit more. John Cusack is very good which is essential since it’s often a solo performance. When things are starting to get going there is some good tension build up but then it transitions to the abstract. If Rod Serling were making long Twilight Zone episodes today, I think this would be among them.

The Apartment – This movie matches a lot of what you see in Mad Men about the 60s. Shirley MacClaine and Jack Lemmon both portray complex characters and make them feel real, especially MacClaine. The whole movie still plays well today and it seems that you could drop the whole thing in a modern setting barely changing a thing. I wonder if that’s why it hasn’t been remade yet.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith – Such an entertaining backdrop to look at relationship issues. Doug Liman has a skill with showing action that I enjoy greatly. And while the action was great, I thought the re-exploration of their relationship in that context to be probably my favorite part.

DCI 2008 Countdown – Since I’m a band geek I tend to go for these drum & bugle corps shows. This was a theater event showing the best shows of recent years and some things to look forward to from this year’s shows.  Unfortunately it was filmed in standard definition and then blown up so it was fairly blurry. It was still mostly good enough and I am looking forward to the upcoming season (The Blue Devils are putting together marching mini-taiko drums!).

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium –  This movie was fun and afterwards I learned that the writer/director, Zach Helm, also wrote Stranger Than Fiction. Knowing that you start seeing similarities between the two: an accountant that is being troubled by the super-natural, Dustin Hoffman, and a slender woman with short dark hair.

Lars and the Real Girl –  This was good but it wasn’t the comedy that the trailers made it out to be. Sure there are humorous bits, but most of it is a fairly serious journey.

A Love Song For Bobby Long –  I could watch these characters in a movie five times this long and I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching this one again several times as soon as I get a copy.

Brigadoon –  I’m converting old video tapes to DVD for my parents and this one was recording while I was doing other stuff so I finally got to see it. I like musicals, but I wasn’t crazy about the songs in Brigadoon. The dancing I liked, the sets and characters I liked. So it’s not my favorite musical, but the story is fun. I really liked how they portrayed triggered memories in the movie.

Janis –  Another conversion for my parents… I liked Janis Joplin, but I haven’t really appreciated her work; this documentary changed that for me. I think the difference is all the live performance footage whereas before I had only heard studio recordings.  It all feels more raw and potent.

The Other Boleyn Girl – This movie is entertaining but somewhat confusing for someone who knows absolutely nothing about the history. The confusing part is that there is almost no notion of time passing in this movie. On the bright side, that got me to go look up the history. The basic story is right, but a large number of details are changed.

M*A*S*H – I’ve probably seen most of the television series but never before had I seen the movie.  Did you know the title theme is called “Suicide is Painless”? I didn’t until I watched it until I flashed back on a memory from high school band playing the M*A*S*H Theme (Suicide is Painless). It’s weird the things that get pulled up. Anyway, there’s more fast-talking and talking over one another in the movie. In the tv show you’re given more time to digest various jokes. The humor is darker in the movie and there is more sex and blood, but not much more. I think it’s worth watching for the suicide alone.

Last Holiday – Queen Latifah version. I haven’t seen the original with Alec Guiness, but I imaging it’s better. This one isn’t bad, in fact it’s a good bit of fun. Not the kind you should run out to rent, but the kind you start watching because it’s on and don’t really mind.

The Wedding Date – At a certain point in this movie you’ll be thinking “This is like a gender reversal of ‘Pretty Woman’”. There’s a lot of I didn’t care too much about and it really just served to get me to more of the best friend and the father characters. If they weren’t in it this would have been a waste of time.

TMNT –  I liked the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. The second was horrible and the third was ok. This can be considered the fourth movie except it’s all computer generated. It ranks well with the first one, not as good, but definitely better than 2 or 3. Everything in the movie is cartoony except the turtles which are given by far the most detail in their structure and their animation. Some body language was copied from the actors in the live-action films. If you like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie you will probably like this.

Zombie Honeymoon –  Every relationship has it’s tests, this one is evident from the title. It’s not as funny as it could have been, but it was fairly decent. I probably would have cut out a little more in some spots to keep the pace going, but then the moviedoesn’t even make it to an hour and a half as it is. If you’re up late and it’s on it an enjoyable watch.

Rambo – Unlike some of the Rambo movies, this one isn’t a glorification of war. It’s a lot more gritty, like opening of Saving Private Ryan style, but more so. Yeah rediculous things happen, but the wounds and deaths from the feel more real. I think it’s a good end to the series.

Jumper – This one is a good idea fairly well thought out with good action scenes, exactly what I expect from Doug Liman. It’s almost more like the pilot of a tv-show though. The conversion to a show should be relatively easy and I expect it within a few years.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -  Visually it was great throughout. As a story it starts off a bit slow but it still doesn’t take too long to drag you in. I don’t have experience with the stage production to compare it against and from talking to those that do I think it comes off better for it. It’s clear there is much pride in the mechanism. By the end I was taking great enjoyment from the dropping bodies.

Snatch -  A bunch of quirky characters that have occasional moments but they don’t really shine until they are all brought together in the last quarter. That’s enough to make it all worthwhile.

Carefree -  I hadn’t seen the Fred & Ginger movie before and I was delighted to see familiar sets from past movies used again. This is one of their later films and the chemistry on screen shows for it. Goo dhumor, good dancing, and I love Ginger Roger’s slow laugh.

I’ve watched the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and so far I’m surprised at how well it holds up. After the pilot I thought I’d give it a chance and aside from one thing I thought didn’t fit I think it’s well thought out and it seems like there is a notion that this is going on a planned path. I like how the characters are protrayed and I like the story so far.  wherever it’s going.

RoboCop – I re-watched this in HD recently. It’s nice to not have every movie with machines be man vs machine. A lot of the technology and fashion looks very dated, I guess those go together. It’s funny for such a gritty future to have all the uniforms always perfectly spotless, the story is worth it though!

Drive Thru – Slasher flick about a drive-thru clown offing people. It borrows heavily in styling, story, and even dialog from other movies to make a moderately entertaining movie. I found the microwave death scene pretty creative and out of character for this movie. I think they just wanted it in there as a personal favorite.

Jurassic Park & The Lost World: Jurassic Park – The effects on these still hold up, which is more surprising in the case of Jurassic Park. Continuity errors don’t detract from the fun dialog and dinosaur attacks. I’ll have to revisit these when I get a powered sub-woofer.

A Daily Show and Colbert Report – I’m glad these are back on the air. They make use of a lot of archived footage and are rambling more to fill time but it still works.

Zone Troopers – A Full Moon video starring Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth in the Trancers movies) as a WWII sergeant helping his squad trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually the aliens help out. It’s not great, but I’ve seen less entertaining movies certainly.

Hitman – Another movie based on a game. I’ve never played this game, but these movie adaptations are getting better in general. It has some fun action and gun action, but if you really want a fun action/gun movie I think you should check out Shoot ‘Em Up.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – A lot of stereotypes here but it’s still pretty funny and handled fairly well. It stops making much sense towards the end but there was enough laughing throughout so I didn’t care too much.

Atonement – WWII period piece with great costumes and sets. Why is this rated over 8/10 on IMDB? I think people are desperate for war stories or something. Yes it’s all well done but I’ve been better told stories.

Bad Santa – Finally this years I saw this movie, and I’ve seen it twice now. It genuinely is a good spirit of x-mas movie, though it takes awhile to see how it might get there. According to the IMDb the “badder” version has about 20% more swearing.

Juno – This one was just good from start to finish. See this one!

Poltergeist III – Hey, it was on. I saw it long ago and didn’t think it was that great then but now I see the best part about this movie is the mirror effects. The movie revolves around them so it should, but almost every time they are pulled off perfectly. Watch it to learn mirror effects.

Loser – Hey, this was on too! This movie isn’t inherently bad, but there is absolutely no chemistry between Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. It seems like this should have been an easy one to get right but something fell apart along the way.

HD Notes:
The Wizard of Oz in HD doesn’t just give you better colors, you get to see things like the burlap texture on the scarecrow’s face!

Flash Gordon in HD let me see that the shiny costumes weren’t just shiny fabrics, many of them were multitudes of beads sewn on.

Man of the Century – A black and white semi-period piece. For awhile it seemed like it was going wear out the novelty but it managed to stay good to the end. I would like to have seen the silent movie title cards from the beginning breaking up the scenes.

The World’s Fastest Indian – It’s always nice to see what inspirational obsession can get you and this movie shows it well. I’m not sure why this one went away so quickly, it’s really good.

Blade: Trinity – I think I have to put this one above the second one. The directing isn’t as good, but you also don’t have a silly 15-minute CGI vampire professional wrestling match like at the end of the second one. Also Jessica Biel plays well opposite Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds shows me what Dane Cook whishes his movie career was, and Parker Posey as a vampire!

Rocky II – I’d seen every Rocky movie but this one. I liked it! I liked that it started right where the first one left off. I liked the money (what little there was) going to his head and buying everything. I liked the unfurnished house. I liked the story.

 Never Too Young To Die – This is one of those movies that knows it is bad. It’s mostly really bad, but the last 15 minutes are something I think people should see. Gene Simmons as the she-male/transvestite, John Stamos, Vanity, Robert Englund.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – This movie is all over the place. At times it’s fantastic, at times the acting is horrible, the fight scene isn’t very good. But those good moments far outweigh the bad and every scene with Walter Huston was movie stealing awesome. While I was watching it I was thinking about how much it reminded me of Tresspass and looking up the Trespass trivia I found that Treasure is what it was loosely based on.

 The Great New Wonderful – An odd collection of post-911 stories. Some of them work and some you just wait for the more interesting ones to return. Stephen Colbert has the best line which I’m putting in here because it’s cool and you probably won’t see the movie: “No, actually he’s a selfish, incorrigible monster with a heart made of shit and splinters.”

Balls of Fury – I’m not sure I’d want to own a copy of this but it’s the kind of movie that I’d watch whenever I happened across it on cable. On second thought maybe I do want to own a copy; I certainly want to see it again.

I’ve watched some first episodes of  shows and here’s what we’ve found that we might pursue further:

•  Californication – The first thing that’s made me not think of David Duchovny in an X-Files kind of way. It’s entertaining so far.
• Chuck – An odd spy comedy with occasional good action. It has a Greatest American Hero feel to it and I can’t see it lasting long.
• Pushing Daisies – An Addams Family level of dark comedy that’s a lot of fun. I hope this manages to stay around.
• Lipstick Jungle – The stories of three driven career women and how they deal written by Candace Bushnell. I don’t think it’s quite found its rhythm yet. Nicole liked it but doesn’t think it’ll last long.
• The Big Bang Theory – The first sit-com I’ve watched in forever. It’s about two two ultra-nerdy physicists trying to make friends with the new (female) neighbor.  I don’t think this constant level of nerdiness has been shown before and while it was pretty funny, I don’t know how long it’ll continue to be on tv.

The only series we’re currently watching is Mad Men, about Maddison Avenue ad men in the early 1960s. I originally saw part of an episode at Jeanne’s house and decided to give it a shot. At first the misogynistic sentiments and level of cigarette smoke set the stage for the time well but are hard to get past. Once you accept that as the environment for the show you can start appreciating the story going on.

Finally, since we now have a region-free DVD player Nicole was able to bring me back the Spaced  definitive collectors’ edition box set from her UK visit complete with homage-o-meter for seeing all the references in a given scene.

Happy Gilmore – It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but it’s still great. Also I think the deleted scenes from when his grandma’s house is being packed up should have been left in.

The Shaolin Drunken Monk (Shao Lin zui ba quan) – This film is capitalizing on Gordon Liu’s popularity from Master Killer/36th Chamber. The action is good, the drunken training is good, the voice overs are so bad they’re good.

The Bourne Ultimatum – The first movie was great, the second movie was fun but didn’t really have direction, this one was back to the feeling of the first one. It mirrored the first one in the action and look, had good suspense, good action, and was a good wrap to the series. I’d even see this one a few more times.

Poison Ivy: The New Seduction – Another movie where the third was better than the second. Not to say it wasn’t rediculous, but it’s entertaining similar to how the first one was.

Bandidas – Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz wanted to make a western/comedy and this is what came out. It’s a fun movie!

The Legend of Zorro – The string of good sequels ends here. Not that it was a horrible movie, just missing some things to make it flow together and when you see the deleted scenes you’ll see why. This is the first movie I’ve seen where I think all the deleted scenes should have been included. It’s clear that they were cutting to get the time down, but when you’re already at 130 minutes those extra bits don’t make much of a difference and the resulting movie would have been MUCH better. The only scenes not cut for time were the original beginning and ending. The studio cut those because they wanted to option for more sequels with the same stars, but seeing how long this one took to make that clearly isn’t going to happen. The framing from the original beginning and end would have improved the movie as well.

Stomp the Yard – I like movies about breakdancing and this is kind of one so I had to see it. Fairly predictable plot to hold the dance/stomp stuff; the dancing isn’t as good as You Got Served, but the acting is oscar-worthy by comparison.

Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) – Another awesome movie from Yimou Zhang! The sets are amazing, the colors are amazing, the cleavage is costumes are amazing! Really though, you can’t go wrong with Yimou Zhang directing Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat in a period piece.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – I hadn’t seen any Russ Meyers movies so I decided it was time to change that with three well known ones. The dialogue is awesome, the acting and action is laughable but it doesn’t matter. Generally low budget movies like this don’t look this good. I thought the guy who played the old man was great. Thumbs up.

Motor Psycho – Again, great dialogue and look and with better acting this time. Unfortunately even though it was only 75 minutes it started to drag towards the end

Supervixens – This one is in color and I think I liked Russ Meyers’ look in black and white better. This movie has more comedy in it and by the end it gets pretty strange. I thought the barn sex scene was really funny. After these three movies I have a good idea what to expect from his movies:

• Women with large breasts (but I knew that going in)
• Car chases and/or long shots of driving
• Fight scenes
• Maybe a rattlesnake bite/suck out the poison scene
• Lots of fight/death scenes
• Sex scenes
• People being blown up

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – I thought this was a good ending to the series, while touching on corporate influence on government and focusing on how corporations try to stomp on the rights of individuals. The final battle is also something I hadn’t seen before.

Night at the Museum – I thought this was going to be fairly light, but it ended up being solid fun all the way through. Dick van Dyke is over 80 and he can still dance!

Knocked Up – This movie had a lot more depth than I was expecting, and it was a lot longer than I was expecting from a comedy. It’s at its best when it’s playing for pure comedy or for the serious moments, when it can’t decide which one to choose it seems to be at its weakest.

Idiocracy – Have you ever feared for the future of society when you look at all the dumb-asses out there? This movie shows you a potential path things might take. I have to recommend this to everyone. It’s funny too, which sometimes makes you wonder if you’re one of the dumb-asses.

Transformers – Who doesn’t like giant robots?!

Anastasia – We watched this again just to make sure everything was hooked up again in the tv-room. It’s still has good songs, is well animated, has good voice talent, and is a good story.

Rocky Balboa – The finale to the Rocky series and it’s right up there with the first one. It gives a good feeling of his loneliness in his search and has been popping into my head in the days since I’ve watched it. If you liked the Rocky movies, or even just the first one, see this.

The Painted Veil – A relationship in the midst of a cholera epidemic. It starts in a broken place and the changes are smooth and subtle. It doesn’t seem like things have changed until you think back to where they were and that makes this one worth watching.

The Pursuit of Happyness – Everyone like nothing to something stories. This one avoids sap and forceful attempts at manipulating the viewer and ends up being very enjoyable.

The Holiday – It’s like two movies in one and neither could have stood on its own. Kate Winslet’s story is the more interesting of the two but that’s mostly because of Arthur, played by Eli Wallach.

The Queen – I’m not big on royals. I barely know who is who and I didn’t pay much attention when Princess Diana died except to feel sorry for her sons. That said, I really enjoyed this movie for showing some of how they have had to adapt to society changing over time. I’d like to see a movie that just focused on that.

Film Geek – The story of someone really, really obsessed with film. He can’t really talk about anything else. It has moments that are really funny and never ventures into the slow boring area. I also think following the early 80s John Hughes model for the story gives it an extra boost.

She’s the Man – Twelfth Night set in a high school. It’s a good adaptation and it’s funny all the way through. This is definitely one to see if you haven’t yet.

Thank You For Smoking – There’s probably not any movie that explains the lobbying system we have currently better than this movie. At the same time it pushes a message of personal responsibility and manages to be funny.

Hollywoodland – I’m not really sure where this one went wrong. I thought the acting is fine by all involved, the pacing seems ok, but all through the movie I just didn’t care about anyone in it. Maybe it’s because I was flying to Atlanta.

Music and Lyrics – I wasn’t really expecting anything from this but it ended up being really cute and fun. Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant surprisingly work well on the screen together and the pokes at the 80s are a lot of fun.

Disturbia – The movie that is supposedly like Rear Window. It’s kind of like that, but I think a closer match for movie comparisons is The Hitcher. I like how all the characters are played.

Hot Fuzz – Best comedy of the year right here! It starts out more like Spaced and then gets more Shawn of the Dead in feel. The early tag-line of “from the guys who watched every action movie ever made” makes a lot more sense now.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Anything with Robert Downey Jr. is alright by me. The next day the movie was still in my head and I wanted to watch it again. Just writing this is reminding me how much I want to watch it again. You should watch it again too, even if it’s the first time.

Children of Men – It started well. I bought into the vision of how humanity would behave without a hope for the future. But then when the waring factions started doing dumb things and all the interesting characters got killed I discovered that I really didn’t care what happened to the main characters which made the last 30 minutes or so really bleah. I kept going to the end hoping for an improvement but no reprieve for me.

28 Weeks Later – This one had potential to be good. It doesn’t have to ask you to buy the dumb mechanics of the Rage virus since that is established in the first film. It starts well in how it shows clean-up and containment working and then it just gets dumb. It stayed visually interesting to the end but there was no chance of being scared. People in the theater were laughing by the end and it wasn’t being played for laughs.

The moment where it completely lost it for me is when, seeing that she needed to consult someone about premonitions, goes to the local priest. He happens to have a book of premonitions (and other psychic phenomenon?) handy with all the premonition stories and how they ended bookmarked. Then you get the out of place speech about faith. I’m guessing there used to be a lot more with that character, really they should have cut that out completely. While they were at it they could have jumped right to the end.

After seeing how much I was enjoying playing Excite Truck at Julie & Fish’s house Nicole got me a copy. It’s a fun arcade racer with a good feeling of speed like you get in the Burnout series, but it doesn’t have good crashes and it’s all off-road. It lets you go fairly far off-track before you are told you’re going the wrong way or hitting a boundary which lets you do things like fall a hundred feet off a cliff and climb the 70 degree incline back into the race.

It makes you take 5 minutes to run through a very basic tutorial before racing which is probably a good thing but for the impatient it might be a little frustrating. With the basics down you pick up the rest pretty quickly while racing. After 20 minutes of play I picked up everything that was in the later lessons except for the mid-air truck spins. Why do you want to do truck spins? For points. Everything has points associated with it and in head to head races it’s points that determine the winner. Finishing first gives you a bigger bonus though so there’s still incentive to race better. Anyway, totally fun arcade racer!

The Number 23 I wanted to see because 23 is my favorite number, but not for any connection to the movie. The efforts the main character goes through to come up with the number 23 get more rediculous as the movie goes on and I wasn’t caring about any of the characters by the time the end came around. I liked the visual separation of the story within the story, and I liked Virginia Madsen, but overall it was disappointing.

Black Snake Moan we saw even though it isn’t a horror movie because Tami likes Samuel L Jackson. The music was good and the scene with title song that the movie was built around was a joy to watch. The Aside from that the movie kind of meanders but stays entertaining all the way though.

Zodiac was easily the best movie we saw all week. We say a 9:30 showing and even though it is 2 hours 40 minutes is was engaging until the end. Definitely see this one.

Dead Silence was the only real horror movie we saw but I didn’t find it scary or tense. It’s a pretty decent ghost story and the effects were good. I really enjoyed the travelling scene changes and Donnie Wahlberg as the detective. The ending was well done too I thought. The scares for me at least weren’t there. The jump scares were in predictable places.

Nicole and I wanted to see Wild Hogs because the trailer was funny. The movie was funny too except for the sappy buddy buddy part towards the end, but I saw it coming so it wasn’t so bad. John Travolta lots some weight and is looking pretty good again too.

I just finished reading To Infinity and Beyond – A Cultural History of the Infinite by my favorite math historian, Eli Maor. You don’t need a strong math background to enjoy the book, but it probably helps. It covers the various struggles people have had over time with the infinite and how they approached it, starting with the greeks and moving up to current day (though astronomy of the last 20 years makes it look a little dated). I think it provides a good overview of infinity (hehe) and I’m sure there is something new for just about anyone who reads it.

Over the weekend I finally saw another movie by Marc Forster (the director of Stay), Stranger Than Fiction. I really wanted to see this from the first time I saw the trailer and the movie is way better than the trailer in every way. The movie just keeps on giving and I think it’s time for another comedy to win best picture.

Yay! Scrubs season 6 starts Thursday!

I watched The Santa Clause again because I was in the mood for a Christmas movie and Nicole had never seen it. I think it holds up well and still makes a good X-Mas movie. Nicole liked it enough to want to see the second movie, as do I and since it’s rated about the same I hope to like it as much. I’m frightened by the third one though with a viewer rating of 2.8 on imdb, but I’ll probably eventually see it for completeness.

First up is Many of the Year. It was entertaining overall but as a whole it was uneven in just about every way. The story had awkward subplots, the humor was a rehash of a lot of old jokes with some new stuff in there. The supporting characters were generally far more interesting than the main ones with Jeff Goldblum’s character being my favorite. The overall message against electronic voting machines is a good one but why did they use the dumbest computer bug ever created? What code would be looking for double letters in names let alone sorting on them?

That night we sat down for Munich and then two days later we watched Munich since I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the first attempt. It’s not a slow or boring movie, I was just really tired. When I actually got to see it I thought it was very good. It didn’t just present a pro-Israeli viewpoint and didn’t have any pronouncements over what is right and wrong. I want to read the book it is based on now.

Towards the end of last week we watched Click which was much better than I anticipated. I thought it would be all wackiness, but all that stuff in the trailer is like the first 15 minutes. Then it turns towards the “It’s a Wonderful Life” realm but it keeps it funny along the way. *flap*flap*flap*

Finally a Jewish film that only played in New York and LA last Passover, When Do We Eat?. We missed it during the visit to my parent’s hosue for Passover but it’s on video now so, yay! It’s a comedy about a Passover seder in a family with problems. It had a good amount of funny and a good amount of Jewish but it never really found a consistent groove. I enjoyed it but not as much as Keeping Up With The Steins.

Then this weekend I was in need of a movie and Jet Li’s Fearless (Huo Yuan Jia) was exactly what I needed. It was fantastic in every way and I think it’s a fine film to be Jet Li’s last martial arts flick. The sets, the costumes, the pacing, the action, the story. Just go see it. Why are you still here?

The first was the mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong. It’s about a DJ who goes deaf and tries to find a way to do what he loves. It isn’t consistently funny but that doesn’t matter since it’s all just really well done. It actually pulled me in as a story and I appreciated that. I loved watching his battles with cocaine. That’s probably one of the few times that sentence has existed.

The other was The Aristocrats. Which is probably the most concentrated verbal description about bodily fluids and sex acts I’ve ever experienced, all in the telling of a joke. My the end there is little that’s disgusting about it because you’re brain starts looking for the variations and how they approach the joke on your mental check list. This film must have been a nightmare to edit. Deciding on order and what to keep had to be difficult. Phyllis Diller has the best laugh. It was worth seeing her and Bob Saget in the special features for their full recorded bits. The mime in the special features did an act that made me feel sad, and not because I was watching a mime, it was just a strong performance. And then I also realized that we as people must get a lot of our cues from other people through hands since that’s most of what you get from the mime.

Finally, here’s Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager (Episode 1). There are three episodes so far, but I’m just linking to the first one.

In America has been on loan to me for probably close to a year so I figured it was time I watched it. It’s a modern-day immigrant’s tale which is refreshing because I think we have a good idea how immigrants dealt in the 30s. The movie has a deeper feel, like it is based on a book, but that isn’t the case.

Another borrowed movie (same time) that I just finished watching is Crash. What a fantastic movie on all levels. I cared about every character and every story. It reminded me of Grand Canyon but more coherent and involving. I wanted it to keep going. Why isn’t there some 3-hour director’s cut for this?

And because it makes me laugh whenever I watch it, Denis Leary ripping into Mel Gibson

While hiking in Big Basin with Tammy this weekend I told her about some news bloopers I found on youtube. We discussed how hard it can be to find things on youtube so I thought I would include them here:

First up is a reporter covering a drug burn…

Next is a newscaster totally embarrassing herself and the subject of the report…

And finally a music video from Gym Class Heroes because it’s a lot of fun!

Clerks – I watched this again this past weekend with someone who had never seen that. I’m not sure how they came to be in that situation but it was still great watching the movie again. I was more aware of nervousness of the one-scene actors this time.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – This movie was just fun from beginning to end. Good humor, good action, and fun characters to watch. I’m looking forward to the third one in May 2007.

Clerks II – I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time and after seeing it I am very satisfied. Kevin Smith has a talent for dialog and for making you laugh at things you wouldn’t laugh at otherwise. It seems like Kevin Smith has fully let go of making the actors say the dialog in the rhythmic pattern he has in mind which is probably for the best. Also, Jason Mewes no longer seems wooden in front of the camera like he would in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.

Elizabethtown – It started off slow and a little awkward and I didn’t much care what was going on. After a little while though I felt myself sucked in by the characters and they held me there until the very end.

Vanilla Sky – I wasn’t trying for a Cameron Crowe fest but I’m not complaining. Again, great characters, and a fun story for them to run around in. The imdb lists 4 theories about what is going on and I think I have to go with the basic explanation that the movie presents out front.

The Greatest Game Ever Played – Why do I like golf movies when I don’t like golf? I don’t know but this is another golf movie that I really like. One thing I have to say though is that the CG ladybug is just wrong! I think it’s one of the worst examples of bad gratuitous CG ever. The CG ball and flying effects didn’t distract from the movie and helped make the game seem more action oriented. Oh yeah, based on a true story.

Nacho Libre – Nachooooooooooooooooooo! It’s fun. It’s rediculous. It seems like it wanders aimlessly from time to time like every idea was thrown in and not enough of them were taken out again, but I don’t care. It was fun!

Scary Movie 3 – The first of the Zucker style Scary Movie movies. Why aren’t the Wayans brothers on this anymore? Their versions tend to push a little more while the Zuckers fall into their groove. Their groove is still funny, but I liked the change. If you like Airplane/Naked Gun style humor you’ll like this. It’s not as consistently funny as those and I think that could have been helped a great deeal by losing the 8-Mile parody. That was just boring.

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – This is now my second favorite Wallace & Gromit after The Wrong Trousers. I loved all the small visual jokes, and that the rabbits say “whee!” a lot, and the general silliness. Definitely one to check out if you haven’t yet.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – This goes high on the list of good adaptations of books to movies. The look was great, the characters came out very well, and nothing was left out. One thing I would have added was a little more of Edmund being a snot and being a slave to the Turkish Delight. It wouldn’t even take much more film… a line or two to try and convince them to head towards the witch’s palace, some more agitation shown in the beaver’s den, some complaining to himself and saying how he’s going to get some more Turkish Delight when he gets to the witch.

Keeping Up With The Steins – A Bar Mitzvah comedy movie! I think it’s good for people who haven’t been through one as well since Nicole liked it, but if you were there you’ll enjoy it more.

The Omen (the original) – I haven’t seen the new one yet, but I wanted to refresh on the old one first. It was the first time I had seen it in widescreen and it’s very wide screen. The cinematography felt like a more modern film and it still manages to be a good creepy film.

Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip – The is a cool documentary about the automobile drive across the country. 1903, no coast to coast roads (let alone paved), and cars averaged 20 miles before a breakdown. It seems like a fantastic and nightmare trip all at once.

Over the Hedge – This was a fun movie overall. There was never a moment that I felt was dragging, but the finale made the earlier parts seem not as good. Like there wasn’t a steady building but more of a slow up hill with the end being a huge increase in slope.

Watermarks – Another documentary about the women’s swim team at the Hakoah sports club in Austria before and through Hitler’s takeover. A lot of it focused on reuniting the remaining members that are still alive and I think it would have been better with less of their daily lives.

X-Men 3 I saw on Monday with Nicole and Julie and Fish. We also ran into , , , , and Stacy. Yay for happenstance! Anyway, it felt like an X-Men movie. Just enough plot, good action and effects and good overall entertainment. I think I like it about as much as I liked the previous X-Men movies and it’s probably because I’ve never read the comics.

An American Haunting – This is the movie version of a theory explaining a well documented haunting in the early 1800s. The movie works well while you’re watching it and it builds good tension and all seems to fit together. But then awhile after you’re done your brain starts noticing all these holes in the theory and makes you want to see other film versions or go read about it. I like it when movies get me interested in a subject so thumbs up.

Mission: Impossible III – I went into this with low expectations after Mission: Impossible II. It turns out I didn’t need to. It easily surpassed the second one and I think it’s even better than the first Mission: Impossible movie. The action is good, there isn’t too much reliance on gadgets (though they are there), and it manages to not take itself too seriously.

Poseidon – This movie gets right to the action. The effects are good, the sets are great, and Wolfgang Petersen can still direct some good claustrophobia. It falls down on the characters though. I think there was a lot more filmed about them which would have made the movie about 3 hours long. Then I think the studio wanted it shorter and if you cut some of that then it all had to go. It is easy to make up your own but it would have been nice to have.

(Sorta Spoiler)

Everything in the movie makes sense if Ashley is having George’s baby.

First up is Club Dread. It’s a slasher flick parody without going overboard on jokes. That’s good in that you aren’t overwhelmed in wackiness, but bad in that it makes it just entertaining enough to not bother doing something else.

Some worthwhile things in the movie:

• Bill Paxton
• Life-sized Pac-Man game where power pellets are gourds filled with alcohol and people dressed in large foam fruits run around the maze. Also the ghosts are women in bikinis.
• Pretzel having sex with Watermelon
• Disembodied legs from the unstoppable killer kicking after the boat in the water at the end.

Grandma’s Boy – Half geek comedy, half stoner comedy. Not great, but it has enough funny throughout. Mostly made up of normally background people in Adam Sandler movies it has a similar feel. Must be fun working on these movies goofing around with friends in front of a camera.

Underworld: Evolution – I thought the first one was kinda boring which I guess lowered my expectations enough to enjoy this one which is funny because I think this one was more rediculous as far as what happens story wise.

Hellboy – I’m halfway through this right now and it’s fully entertaining. Already I’m hoping for a sequel.

Avoid groups of children. They’ll jack you up for money or candy.
Avoid hot women buying offering you drinks.
Avoid creepy old men, who knows what they want?
Avoid young men, they just have work on their mind.
There are no old women to avoid.
I learned what “sneep” is.

The Family Stone
I just wanted to say that I enjoyed this movie and that Sarah Jessica Parker does a good job of playing the most uptight woman on the planet. The entire cast is fun to watch.

Hostel
This movie easily splits into three parts. College student sex romp through Europe, uncomfortable torture scenes, and Troma style humorous fake violence. Afetr 30 minutes you’re thinking “Is this movie related to what I saw in the trailer?” Then you get to the torture and you’re glad it’s over. By the end most of the audience is laughing at how rediculous it all is. The transitions work between the three sections so it ends up being entertaining overall.

You’ll probably want a few beers before you see this.

It’s an entertaining enough movie to watch while you’re doing something else.

Since I’m talking about theatre-ish stuff, Nicole and I saw “Romance” by David Mamet for our anniversary. My dad was sick so my parents gave us their tickets. It was a short comedy about 75 minutes not including the intermission. The second act was fantastic, pretty much non-stop laughter. The first half popped the clutch on the starting line and was in danger of stalling. It started with rapid fire dialog without any context so it took awhile to catch up and it never really fully hit.

And not related to anything, here’s a song of the day.

The rap battles were a lot of fun and I wished there were more of them, but then it wouldn’t have been like “Rocky” but with rap.

Dungeons & Dragons 2 – This one felt more like a campaign being run than the first D&D movie. I think that makes it a better D&D story and a worse movie. Entertaining if you like D&D.

Around the World in 80 Days – The modern version – It was pretty funny and silly and didn’t try to be like the original. In fact it’s more like it was in very entertaining parallel universe where the academy of science hates science and makes deals with Chinese warlords named Fang. What’s not to like?

I also saw the Wedding Crashers again and I still think it’s the funniest movie of the year.

Spoilers coming below:

What’s bad about it?
The CG effects look unfinished. I’m guessing they ran out of money (even though they filmed in the Czech Republic) and finally decided to just put what they had in theaters. Everything has a shiny untextured look, sometimes it has a bad frame-rate, and it’s some of the worst compositing I’ve seen in a movie since it was all done by hand before we had computers.I don’t even think tv shows had CG effects this bad.

The time-wave idea is pretty lame, especially the physically throwing you around part.

That apparently no one lives in this huge city. People would be all over the place trying to get out of there. There would be crashed cars, huge messes, which would make plenty for the babboon lizards to eat. Instead the poor things must have been starving!

You have guns that can bust up a statue but can’t hurt the babboon lizards?

Of course you have a chair sitting in your linear accelerator.

Who cares about Jenny? Travis is supposed to be looking out for her. Why? How does that change the movie at all?

Don’t see this movie, rent Jurassic Park and watch that again. Or maybe even Carnosaur so you get some campiness.

I was right, this was a must-see movie for me. I enjoyed it from beginning to end and there characters give you a great ride in getting there. It wasn’t consistent laughs from start to finish but it’s not too far between them. I’ve enjoyed watching Seth Rogen in everything I’ve seen him in. I look forward to seeing Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart in the Get Smart remake next year.

If you haven’t seen it you should.

Requires QuickTime 7 or QuickTime7 Public Preview 3 (or newer) if you are using Windows.

Saw II is apparently coming out shortly. One of the same writers but a different director. I don’t think it can or will hold up to this one and my predictions are that the antagonist will be shown a lot more, thus ruining the feeling of the movie. I also think that if the series goes on it will get increasingly abstract and less personal in the violence and turn into a generic slasher flick.

Last Tuesday we had a meet-up to go over everything and we learned that all our first names started with D so our team name became D4, and also is a D&D reference.

Saturday we met in downtown San Jose to get the ingredients that we had to include in our film. They ended up being:

1. Something yellow gets eaten.
2. A howl in the distance
3. A case of mistaken identity

We went to breakfast at Il Fornaio and wrote ideas down on index cards as a way to brainstorm. After we came up with a loose idea of what to do we went to the Apple campus to do our filming in a freight elevator. After we nailed down more details and a sequence of events we determined what costumes and props we would need so a few of us went to Long’s while crisper started on the script.

When we returned I made David’s name tags (one to wear, one to eat (yellow)) for his costume. Dan started working on dialog. Dallas started blocking out shots. David started making labels for the elevator buttons (all prepositions).

When the props were completed and the script done, we started working through the dialog so it would sound natural and so the rhythm would be the same when we filmed from different angles making editing easier.

We filmed 4 takes per dialog segment and dumped the results to the powerbook where David started editing becuase it was getting late. Meanwhile we continued filming a few other parts of non-speaking action. Got to use the fake blood for that and I found that today’s fake blood is far more convincing than when I was a kid.

After filming was done, the rest was dumped to the powerbook and Dan went off to throw together some techno and some droning background while Dallas and I cleaned up and helped David with the editing (he pushed all the buttons, we just offered input). We started nearign the 7:30PM deadline to turn in the movie so we hurridly packed up everything else while it dumped the movie to tape and then Dan and Dallas rushed off to take it in while David and I drove more leisurely.

We arrived and found great parking, paid our admission (reduced for participants) and at 8PM (showtime) we went in. Then we sat and sat and sat because they didn’t bother to check that they had things set up to play video correctly. It was also > 80 degrees F (26.7 degrees C for you metric types) and the chairs were uncomfortable and it turned out the sound was really bad in there. Also the camera they used to play the movies ran out of battery power half-way through all the films.

Anyway, there were some really good films and I like ours, but I’m not impartial about that. My favorite one was about a cat that was on a murderous rampage. It was a tiring day, but given the opportunity, I’d do it again.

Anyway, Skeleton Key is a sorta thriller movie. It won’t scare you unless you are prone to reacting to jump-scares easily. There are a number of good ones in there, but aside from that it’s just an interesting story, not one that will scare you. I found myself wanting to know more and more as it went on which I take as a good sign. Check it out, but don’t be expecting to get scared.

Anyway, spoilers and stuff ahead so stop reading if you’re the kind of person who gets spoiled.

There was a pretty good version of the future presented, not good as in idyllic, but good as in believable. That goes for both the sanctuary and the outer world. The outer world had some fantastic looking future transportation and some of the best car destruction I’ve seen on the screen in a long time and this movie also has the most obvious product placement that I’ve seen in a long time. Why would clones care about all these brands? They’ll never have to buy anything and would probably end up asking for Aquafine instead of water. The sanctuary was more like the older 70s version of the future, right down to the costumes and set design.

I found the religious aspect of the movie pretty interesting as well. You have a doctor playing god who creates (grows) all these people. Then some start getting wise and escape or are made to leave the garden of eden (their sanctuary). Finally man returns and kills their god.

Check this out, but be warned it’s about two and a quarter hours.

The Cider House Rules (VHS)
Collateral (DVD) – Haven’t seen it yet
The Bourne Supremacy (DVD) – Not as good as the first one but still good
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (DVD) – Brilliant movie
Eight Crazy Night (DVD) – There are a lot of things that make you think “That’s just wrong,” but there’s a lot right with it too!
Die Mommie Die (DVD) – Haven’t seen this but it looks funny so we’ll give it a shot.!

The odd family characters are fun and not over the top as in something like Eulogy, just kind of your normal large family crazy. There are references to age throughout which makes me think that age plays a more important role in the book. Definitely not as funny as Hitch but a more even level of good witty dialog throughout. It’s light and fun, check it out.

It’s intense. It’s not like your typical horror movie where you have some super-human bad guy that gets vanquished in the end. You have psycho killers who prey on people wandering through and mutilating them for their experiments. They will kill anyone who tries to interfere and it all has a more real feel than most horror movies. The story isn’t the greatest, it’s wrapped in a House of Wax wrapper of kids going to see the freak show and in the end finding out the exhibits are the previous visitors. Most of the movie is the torture and torment of the kids though and it’s certainly more than you get from your average horror flick. It had that I can’t look away from the car accident feel to it.

If horror movies aren’t doing it for you anymore and you want something to push some more of those boundaries, then this is the movie for you.

Anyway, “Eulogy” is a darkish comedy about a messed up family coming home for their father’s funeral. If you like movies like say “Home For The Holidays” I think you’ll like this one.

I think I like this batman more than the previous ones. I liked his back story and how it was told and I would have even liked some more. I liked how his teacher became his enemy. I liked the look of Gotham and how it looked old and modern at the same time. I liked Christian Bale as batman and I think he’s ok as Bruce Wayne but in general his character isn’t very good at Bruce Wayne yet so that’s ok. I also like that they built a real batmobile that could do all its own stunts. No computer graphics or models!

If you like dark batman then see this movie.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book. Longer than it has been since I saw the older version of this movie. There is more story in this one than the original movie at the very least because you only have oompa loompa songs (which are great). I loved the look, I loved the characters. I was wondering how they would modernize Mike Teavey and I think they did a great job of that too.

With all that though I felt like there was stuff that was cut out due to time constraints. It was pushing two hours and it’s not usually good to rely on kids staying still for that long, although they seemed to in the showing we saw. Anyway, I hope those extra bits are there for me to see on DVD.

I don’t recall everythign in the book to know how well it is true to that so someone else will have to fill me in on that or I’ll haev to read it again after I finish “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.”

I wanted to see this because I like Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn and I wasn’t disappointed. It starts out at a frantic pace and most of the wedding crashing happens in the first 15 minutes, after which they get tangled up in one family with really funny results. Not every joke works, but most do and they come fast enough that you forget about the ones that don’t. It often went in directions I wasn’t expecting and I recommend it.

That’s a pretty good sign. Yeah, I like movies a lot, but I was doing something else and it pulled me in. The acting was good, the characters were good, and it wasn’t just a light fluffy movie. I wish 3 of the 4 deleted scenes had been left in because it would have made the secondary stories stronger, they were probably cut for time because tehy definitely weren’t weak scenes. The male lead, Derek, played by Sean Patrick Thomass was great and I hope to see him in more things. I see that he will be playing Louis Armstrong later this year in St. Louis Blues!

Not the high school flick I thought. Check it out!

Anyway, Nicole hadn’t seen the original and that made me want to see it again so we rented it. It’s still good and holds up well for a movie 72 years old! Nicole wasn’t crazy about how the level of violence in the film which is fairly high, and the ending made her sad. It is violent and sad, but she liked the movie anyway.

Oh yeah. I had a Blockbuster gift card that I tried to use to rent this, but it turns out that Blockbuster’s system for determining inventory is to dump anything that hasn’t been rented in a month. So you will never be able to rent an old movie there. There isn’t even a classics section to try and have any interest in it. Family, Comedy, Action, Drama. Those are the only categories you get.

Now the sequel, 200 years in the future, we’re taken apart and studied their machines, we’ve learned about their biology. We learn about their homeworld from their machines. It’s time for revenge and we build a battle fleet to go kick their ass. If you want the series to go on, we get there and find they’ve already been wiped out by another species, or after we defeat them another species shows up to wipe them out only to find us there.

I say check it out.

The other things that’s unique to this novelization is that none of the action scenes are the same as in the movie. It’s like he was given a script and some story boards for ideas about what the action would be but then over time the action went to its final form and you can’t change a book as easily.

The author, Matthew Stover what chosen because of his other Star Wars books and his handling of the light/dark conflict among Force users. That continues here and I recommend his other Star Wars books as well.

So how did it hold up? I still thought it was funny and I enjoyed it.

One down side is that we rented it when we already have it here, well it’s Darlene’s but all our DVDs are mixed together.

It’s just over an hour long, check it out!

Ok, there three gross/distuirbing moments that might make you cringe that have to do with injuries but those are quickly forgotten.

And Paris’ death? I could not imagine a more satisfying death for her. I was expecting some quick non-lingering death scene. She dies quickly but you get to enjoy it for a little while. Heck, the killer enjoys it for awhile! That makes it the feel-good movie of spring.

You should definitely rent this for nifty wax effects and the Paris death.

If you haven’t seen it you should! It’s a better story than Kung-Fu Hustle but now as stylish.

Check it out for the theme song alone. FUCK YEAH!

I saw it at the 12:01AM show, and the 5 regular shows the next day starting at 9AM. The first show was pretty good, but felt lacking in a number of areas. When I saw it the next morning with the small non-rowdy audience it was a MUCH better movie! The rowdy crowds distract enough to make it not so good. That was confiirmed later in the day when it was a large rowdy audience again (7PM show).

I liked how the movie led the way to episode 4. At the same time it finally showed how sad Anakin’s character is. He’s so powerful but he will remain under the emperor’s thumb with the promise of the power he wants always in front of him to keep him doing the emperor’s bidding.

And then him telling Padme that love can’t save her when that’s exactly what would have saved her. Fear of losing her drove him to seek power and that’s what led to her death.

I liked Obi-Wan picking up Anakin’s lightsaber which would later be given to Luke. I liked Captain Antilles flying his ship that we would see in episode 4.

I liked it a lot! I want to see it again in digital so I can see what extra scenes were done.

A number of people were laughing all the way through and I laughed a good bit, I’m just saying that I didn’t find it as funny as the books. I hope they continue with the series and keep the cast.

Thankfully, unlike Shaolin Soccer, this appears to be intact. Are studios finally learning to leave the goodness of Hong Kong films alone? I hope so!

If you like kung-fu movies, if you like comedies, if you liked the Matrix, if you liked Shaoline Soccer, go see this movie!

Anyway, not I just need to work out why sound isn’t being recorded (I think I have a cable hooked up to the wrong hole) and I’ll be set to move forward on Star Wars!

Premiere is complicated enough that it comes with a little tutorial video. So I watched that and learned how I need to cut up the pieces of of video clips and put them together. I try it with Hero (not the kung-fu movie but the one with Duston Hoffman and Geena Davis) and get it all edited the way I want. Why edit a recording of a laser disc? Well there’s the part before the movie starts to cut off, the side transition to cut out of the middle, and the end after the credits to eliminate.

Anyway, it’s all together and I tell it to export it to MPEG2-DVD format. It starts and after a short while tells me there isn’t enough memory. Not enough memory? I know I only have a gigabyte but it should be swapping out to disk as necessary and I have about 180GB free. WTF?!

I think I might need a different program. Any suggestions?

And… It can be watched without all the lights out in the room!

Some attraction I think this had for people was that it was occasionally funny since it came out in a traditional comedy dought at the end of the year and people were up for any comedy. I think the real attraction is because it seems to be a showcase for hot babes.

Oh yeah. I remember while watching it that I thought they were trying to be like Beavis and Butthead and then I checked the imdb and found that the movie was based on a rejected idea for the Beavis & Butthead movie.

You’re probably wondering why I have movie talk as a category for this. Well A number of laser discs I had waiting to be recorded to DVD were on the floor (including the Star Wars ones) and the jackets of them got pretty wet! I haven’t looked inside yet but they have plastic-lined sleeves so I think they are ok, but this is interfering with the Star Wars project.

The only source for that could be the water heater. So I went outside in the rain to access the water heater closet which is on the same slab as the computer room but divided but some dry wall. In the closet the concrete was wet but that could be from the rain. Then after a few minutes I saw a drip from the temperature and pressure relieve valve. After putting a pot under the outlet fo rthat valve and watching during Nicole’s shower I saw the drip rate increase.

The next morning the concrete was dry but the pot was completely full. Since the pipe from the valve extended in to the pot some got sloshed on to the concrete in the process of dumping it out. From this little bit on the dry slab I could see the water running in the direction of the computer room.

We went to OSH and got a new valve, waited until everyone showered, and then shut off the hot water, turned down the burner on it, and drained some water out of it so it wouldn’t spew hot water out of the side when I pulled the valve off.

I then took off the outlet pipe (easy), and put the pipe wrench on the valve and foun dit was stuck. Then I saw there was putty stuff that was used to seal it in place. I called my parents to ask for advice (since I sisn’t want to bust the whole water heater). My mom answered and she said it sounded like I wanted to talk to my dad, and I agreed, but she was disappointed that she wasn’t getting asked, so I asked her first. I explained it was stuck and had putty stuff and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. She suggested a bigger wrench (I only have a 10 inch pipe wrench).

Then she passed me off to my dad who pretty much suggested the same thing except also suggested cutting away the putty with a utility knife and putting a pipe on the end of the wrench for more leverage. He recommended against whacking the wrench with a hammer to break it free because the wrench is springy and would fly off and cause damage.

The cutting away the putty suggestion reminded me that I have some nice picks for doing that sort of thing and using them the putty came off pretty easily. The valve was still stuck without the putty so I wrapped my hands around the wrench, hunched up, and slowly too kthe weight off my feet. That did it and the valve moved!

I put the teflon tape on the new valve and installed it and then I put some on teh drain pipe and put that in.

Still to do is to change the drainage to it goes to the outside instead of straight down since there is no drain except for the computer room. Also is to find a way to channel water to the outside in case something else fails (like the whole heater tank.

Not the smartest movie, but it sure was a lot of fun!

The Pianist was quite good and quite sad at the same time. From my reading and my education about the Holocaust growing up I feel it brought those teachings to life which made it feel more real and more personal. At first I thought it was going to end in the Warsaw ghetto uprising and make that the whole movie, but instead it had room to go and brought about one tragedy after another. Yet the spirit of the main character going on kept the film from getting too overwhelming on the down side.

Anyway, check it out, quite entertaining.

It was entertaining and I liked it. I give it extra points for keeping a non-contradictory time line.

I don’t entirely agree with others about the Morgan Freeman role being completely unnecessary. He had to be there as the constant reminder of the past and that couldn’t have happened with something like a picture on a desk.

Definitely an entertaining and good film and an extra bonus of a buff Hilary Swank (as opposed to Hilary Swank in the buff).