Slumdog Millionare
See my write up from April.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Fanboys
Staring a whole bunch of nobodies and Kristen Bell, Fanboys is the story of a group of friends who attempt to break into the Skywalker Ranch in order to see Episode I before it’s released. The reason? One of the friends is dying and wont make the release date. Despite the underlaying reason for the adventure, the movie is downright hilarious and throws a nice nod to Star Wars fans. There are cameos from just about everyone working in Hollywood including Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher. It’s a great movie well worth your hour and a half.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Wrestler
If you’re looking for a feel-good movie about a broken down old man who finds redemption upon reaching out to his estranged daughter and stripper girlfriend, this isn’t your movie. Mickey Rourke deserved all the awards and nominations, but the ending of the film (though justified) left a bitter taste on the whole thing. It’s alright, but not worth a repeat viewing — unless you’re a glutton for punishment.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
From Premiere’s Robert Calvert:

It is unapologetic about delivering what it promises. Bigger battles. Massive explosions. Megan Fox looking hot.

If that’s all you’re looking for then Transformers 2 delivers. Though if you’re looking for something a bit more, something with an actual story that makes sense, then Transformers 2 is not a movie for you. Thing is the movie isn’t bad, it’s just not good. Just about everything that takes place in the film is pointless and, at times, ridiculous. Cinematical has a nice list of seven absurdities and it’s a pretty good evaluation of the film as a whole. Though I’d add two more absurdities to the list: The hot college girl who’s really a violent Decepticon with a crazy tail and tongue and the fact that everything in the film left a “why didn’t they do that before” question in my head. If all you’re looking for is a popcorn movie, or the chance to see Megan Fox on a giant screen, then go see the film. If you actually want to be able to tell the different Transformers apart, or actually see what they’re doing, you might want to skip it.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Megan Fox's 'acting' was good enough to merit $387 million dollars at the worldwide box office over opening weekend.

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If you have an iPhone 3G or 3GS you can very easily geotag photos in iPhoto. Make sure you have “Location Services” turned on (iPhone settings under “general”) and then, while you’re out taking pictures, just take one with your iPhone camera. Using the built in GPS, the picture you take will be properly geotagged.

Just two simple steps. No extra software needed.

When you get back to your computer and are uploading everything into iPhoto, ⌘-click on the picture taken with your iPhone and select “Copy.” Then, select all of the picture you took with your other, non-GPS camera, and then ⌘-click and select “Paste Location.” All of your photos will be automatically geotagged and be available on the “Places” map in iPhoto.

It’s that simple.

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Claro is the cell provider in Nicaragua and, surprisingly, has excellent coverage all across the country (at lest the 60 or so KM I traveled). This was the second foreign country I took my iPhone to, and the first that greeted me upon arrival. What a cool thing. It made me very happy to be in Nicaragua. Then a few moments later I received this text:

Thanks, AT&T, for proving you’re an evil conglomerate corporation that cares nothing more than making a dollar. I had turned all the data features on my phone off prior to traveling because I knew that the bill could rise in a hurry, but $19.97 a megabyte? Really? I was floored.

And in case you had any questions, AT&T did not welcome me back to the States with a friendly text message. I bet Claro wouldn’t have any problems with iPhone tethering…

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It all started when Serious Lunch made the allegation that Conan O’Brien’s new backdrop was inspired by Super Mario Bros. It was then picked up by Gizmodo (where I saw it) and eventually, within hours, made it’s way to The Tonight Show.

This. Is. Awesome.

Was it done on purpose or is Conan’s backdrop one massive coincidence? You be the judge.

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When my youth group decided to go to Nicaragua and the organization we ended up working with told me they do work in La Chureca, I knew God was pointing us where we all needed to be. Right to the dump. Amongst the trash. With the people who live there.

We went in with World Missions Outreach and washed kids feet and then gave them new shoes, probably for the first time. Some four or five groups of sixteen kids at a time. Picture seeing a kid’s face getting brand new shoes that light up for the first time. It’s difficult to explain just what this meant and the experience there, but just know that it was amazing.

Next door to the school in La Chureca is a church that is completely run by the children who live there. They give the messages, lead the prayers, everything. In a dump. Children run a church. It’s amazing.

These measly words on this screen and the few pictures I’m going to attach throughout won’t do life in La Chureca or our experience any justice but just know it was incredible and, despite the circumstances, God is really working there.

(Pictures are very large.)

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The answer: I don’t rightly know. Well, the second part of that I don’t. I know where I am. I mean, I have an idea of what we’ll be doing, but until I actually get down there, I won’t know for sure. This is going to read very awkwardly. Oh well.

Ok, so I’m currently on the Western Pacific coast of Nicaragua working with an organization called World Missions Outreach. Their main purpose is feeding children, some 20,000 a day, in the country. So I presume we’ll be doing that. I’ll be splitting time between the coast and the capital city of Managua.

I’m excited and, by the time your read this, will have been to some amazing places that God has laid out. One of the places, the Managua dump town, is a place I think God has been calling me since I first heard about it back in January. It’s going to be an amazing experience and, well, at this point already has been an awesome experience.

I’ll be back on Sunday and, if you guys are extra nice, I might actually show some pictures and give a run down. One thing is for sure, I will not be jumping off any cliffs this year.

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Enough rambling. Since I won’t be here I’m going to make my predicitons and you can read them and then leave a comment telling me how far off I am. That way, I don’t have to go anywhere but here to figure out what happened. If no one comments, I’ll be a sad panda. Though, to prevent this, I instituted a backup plan. Mwhahaha.

So, bold predictions. I’m going to start boldless and get bolder as I go until the end when they’ll be really, really bold. The boldest if you will.

• iPhone OS 3.0 will be available immediately following the keynote and will be free for 3G users, $9.99 for iPod touch and original iPhone owners. It will also be may more awesome than previously thought and include some unannounced features:
  • Way better way to manage apps on the phone. Maybe a better home screen.
  • Some sort of background process allowance. Maybe not for all apps, but for a certain number. These apps will have special permission from Apple. So you will not be able to run iFart in the background.
  • The ability to not have all the default Apple apps on the phone all the time. Contacts, I’m looking at you.
• To coincide with iPhone OS 3.0, the iPhone Nano will be averrable directly following the ‘note. Smaller capacity, cheep, less a lot of features (like GPS). Basically an iPhone for the cheapskates and an economy-friendly model. Also as a means to stifle the price of the:
• 3rd Gen iPhone (perhaps called iPhone Video) to be available sometime in July. This will be the all black super-phone that has been showing up on rumor sites lately and will have the 600 mhz processor and 256 MB RAM and up to 32 GB of hard drive space. It’ll have a way better camera and all that it entails. This will be more expensive than the 3G model, more in line with the original iPhone pricing. May not have a special contract price.
• OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will be heavily demoed and it will be revealed that while most of the stuff is under the hood, a new, unified look across all applications will be implemented — think iLife ‘09. The release date will also be announced as sometime in late August or early September. Price: in the $50 to $75 dollar range. It will also come with a free year of MobileMe or, even bolder prediction, bundled with iLife ‘10 (which would obviously be announced).
• MacBooks will see speed bumps across the board, with the high-end 13″ MacBook turning into a MacBook Pro. The 15″ MacBook Pro will be redesigned ala the 17″ model, and will feature the same built-in 8-hour battery. People will obliviously complain about this.
• One more thing: Steve Jobs will come out and introduce the iTablet/NetBook/small computer that people think they want. It won’t be what people think it will be, but it will be awesome and instantly dominate the market. It won’t be available until late in the summer, presumably with the Snow Leopard release. It will be more expensive than a netbook but less than a MacBook. People will cheer and some will faint. The Apple stock will soar through the roof and fanboys will cry.
• Jobs’ appearance will cause the crush of all fanboy and critic dreams for a few minutes and then they will realize that the wasn’t announced and begin to cry and curse Jobs’ name. Apple stock will then fall citing that the product announcements weren’t good enough. True Apple fans will tell these people to get a life, and Twitter will lag 25 minutes behind all day.

Bold enough for you? These come from a mixture of things I’ve read across the internet over the last few weeks and some from my own crazy head. Namely the later stuff. I won’t really care if I’m completely wrong, though I will be surprised if the new super-iPhone isn’t somewhat accurate. After all, it is time for me to upgrade.

So, how’d I do? Was I right? Wrong? What’d I miss? Let me know below.

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BSG Season 3

Starbuck is being held “prisoner” in a fully furnished apartment where she’s forced to live with the manipulating Cylon whom she interrogated earlier in the series. Apparently he loves her and wants her to do the same. Instead, she finds ways to kill him, yet he still comes back in a new body. Creepy. At one point in the season, he even brings in a child and convinces Starbuck it’s hers, created from the ovary stolen when she was on Caprica. The kids turns out to not be hers but the whole notion basically destroys her (more on this in a minute).

Long story short, despite it being nearly four months later Galactica had not given up on New Caprica. They had just been planing and trying to find a way to get through the Cylon-blocked radio space. They do and a rescue plan is put into place. The solution: using Galactica’s very own Cylon-pilot Boomer Athena. She can walk right into the Cylon HQ without even drawing any attention, steal all the keys to the grounded ships and initiate the escape. This is where things started to get awesome.

Galactica jumped into atmospheric orbit of New Caprica and, while falling toward the surface, launched all it’s alert Vipers. Just before the point of impact, it jumped away. This was one incredibly awesome moment in TV. I’m talking wicked awesome. The Vipers laid easy waste to the unsuspecting Raders in the air. While the Vipers, and marines on the ground, were helping clear the way for the escapees, Galactica jumped back into New Caprica orbit to distract the Cylon Basestars. They were taking a heavy beating when the Pegasus jumped into help. They had left all their Vipers defending the Fleet, and came into basically run a kamikaze strike on the Basestars. This gave the escapees enough time to jump to safety.

An eye-less Tigh watches Galactica fall from the sky.

After the dust settled, the Fleet had jumped to safety though the Pegasus was a total loss. Giaus, not having been rescued, left with Caprica-6 to join the Cylons. He ended up spending a good deal of time with them and became convinced he was a Cylon. Towards the end of his stay, he cut ties with Caprica-6 in favor of Lucy Lawless-bot. They were conducting their own mission trying to discover the Final Five. To this point only seven of the twelve Cylon models were known. Giaus learns from Lawless-bot that the Final Five are something very special, and not even known to the other models. Her pursuit of this knowledge ends up having her model “boxed” by the other Cylons. We won’t be seeing her anymore.

Halfway through the season the Fleet, running out of food, finds a planet where they can harvest algae that can be used as food. After two weeks on the “Algae Planet” the Cylons show up. Instead of killing everyone, they want to talk. Apparently the “Eye of Jupiter” is on the planet and that Eye is the next marker on the road to Earth. Chief Tyrol, in another of his “awakening” moments, is drawn to a cave formation that holds a temple supposedly housing the Eye of Jupiter.

Meanwhile a nearby star is preparing to go supernova and destroy everything in the area. This, it turns out, is the actual Eye. At the moment of evacuation from Algae Planet, the Final Five are revealed to Lucy Lawless-bot — right before she’s boxed. In the exchange, Giaus is captured by the Chief and returned to Galactica.

It turns out Giaus is not a Cylon, he just wanted to be. In actuality Giaus just wants to belong to something, to be important. Instead he’s just pathetic. He spends the second half of the season in a jail cell awaiting his trial (more on that to come).

While the Cylons were hanging out near the Algae Planet, Helo killed Sharon/Athena so that she could wake up on the Basestar and get her kid back. During the evacuation of New Caprica, Lawless-bot found the half-Cylon kid and took it. The rightful mother wanted it back. So, with the help of Caprica-6, Sharon/Athena took the kid back to Galactica.

Look familiar?

During the exploration of the temple devoted to the Eye of Jupiter, Helo noticed the “eye” depicted looked a lot like a painting he saw on Starbuck’s apartment wall back on Caprica. Turns out little miss Thrace was really “special” after all. Come to find out, she’d been doodling the Eye since she was a child, all the while her mother telling her she is special. Tie this up with her fake Cylon husband, whom she might have actually loved, telling her she has a destiny and mix in being devastated that her kid wasn’t hers, Starbuck officially hit the edge. She broke. She started seeing things: the girl, the Cylon, all kinds of things. It all culminated towards the end of the season when, flying over a huge electrical storm (that looked a lot like the Eye of Jupiter) Starbuck’s Viper exploded in front of Apollo. Yeah. Game over.

In the following weeks a lot of things happened: Anders got stupid drunk in grief, broke his leg, and decided to become a Viper pilot while fraking the President’s assistant. Giaus started writing a manifesto and had it smuggled throughout the Fleet inciting a union strike, lead by Chief Tyrol. We learned that back on New Caprica Apollo and Starbuck hooked up, decided to leave their significant others for each-other, and instead Starbuck married Anders the next morning. Cold. Also back on New Caprica, President Roslin and Admiral Adama shared “a moment.” A lot happened.

Fast-forward to the end of the season: everything was culminating with the trial of Giaus Baltar. Apollo quits Galactica to defend Giaus and, in an eloquent defense, actually gets Giaus off. What he said made a lot of sense but it should would have been more fun to see him thrown out the airlock. That was all well and good but the big events of the finale had nothing to do with Giaus at all, it had to do with the Final Five.

The Fleet jumped into the orbit of a nebula, another marker on the trail to Earth. At the moment they entered orbit, a very large number of Cylons jumped into orbit and power was lost across the entire Fleet. While most people were scrambling to get it up and running again, four instead were trying to figure out the source of music there were hearing. The four were Colonel Tigh, Chief Tyrol, Samuel Anders, and Tory Foster (President Roslin’s assistant). Evidently the power outage and the music were connected and somehow activated all of them. An entire season had gone by without revealing any Cylons and in the last five minutes four become known. Tigh tells all of them that finding out he’s a Cylon doesn’t change the last forty years of his life that he spent in service to Adama and that none of them should give up on their friends now. So instead of brooding, or trying to figure out what it all means, they all run to action stations just as power is restored to the Fleet.

Now here is where it gets fun. Let’s go back to my vary first BSG post. Here’s what I said:

My other guess for a Cylon is Colonel Tigh just because I don’t like him very much.

Well look at that. A bold prediction I made was actually true. Crazy. The revelation of the four out of the Final Five wasn’t the only big moment at the end of season 3, there were actually two more.

Apollo, despite having quit, decides to take a Viper and get back in the game. While heading toward targets, an unidentified bogy appears on DRADUS so Apollo goes to investigate. The bogy is a better pilot than Apollo and turns out to be Starbuck. Is she the fifth of the Final Five? I mean, Apollo saw the Viper explode in the storm. Starbuck, seeing Apollo’s (and my) confusion, simply says this:

Don’t freak out, it really is me. It’s going to be ok. I’ve been to Earth. I know where it is and I will lead us there.

Excuse me, what? I think this means Starbuck is a Cylon for one reason, and it’s not that she has seemingly come back from the dead — though that is a good indication: Lucy Lawless-bot’s secret mission involved having her unit killed time and time again with the purpose of being reborn. In this process she discovered that there was “something beautiful between life and death.” This place, it turns out, was the opera house that Giaus had visions of in season one. When the Final Five were revealed to Lawless-bot, she was also in the opera house, seemingly the place between life and death. She walked up to one of the Five and said “I didn’t realize it was you, I’m sorry I mistreated you.” Now if Starbuck is a Cylon, then it’s probably a safe bet that opera house is on Earth and that she saw it between life and death. Either that or somehow she didn’t die when her Viper exploded. I have no idea. It was pretty crazy.

The final big reveal at the end of season 3 took place in the final seconds: we’re shown that the fleet is eerily close to Earth. Like the real one. Like, we’re shown the United States from orbit. Looks like the myths were true afterall and they really are on the right path. Crazy awesome.

The last five minutes of the season was so awesome I went and found it on YouTube. Unfortunately the moron who posted it disabled embedding so you have to actually click a link to see it. It’s pretty awesome and contains everything I’ve been talking about for the last five minutes and is set to one hell of an awesome rendition of All Along the Watchtower. Speaking of, if you happen to know where to find said song, let me know. It’s not on Amazon MP3 or iTunes.

So the cliffhangers left to ponder before Battlestar Galactica: Razor are seemingly few:

• Is Starbuck the final of the Final Five Cylons? If she’s not, how did she survive? And where did she come from? Vipers don’t have FTL, do they?
• Now that the Final Five have been activated, what’s their purpose? Are they special because they were born, much like Sharon and Helo’s baby? And what does that mean for Tyrol and Cally’s baby?
• What is the Cylon endgame? It’s become clear over the last season that the Cylons don’t seem to be hell-bent on destroying they human race anymore. They do want to find Earth as well, but it seems that the humans have almost bored the Cylons. Strange.

That’s about all I can think of. If Starbuck isn’t a Cylon then there better be some sort of LOST style flashback showing exactly what happened after her fraking Viper blew up.

After almost two thousand words, that’s all I’ve got.

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Update: Thanks to TV Squad for taking my tip. I’m still looking for the video.

I’m watching the Magic game and at halftime there is a new version of the ABC House commercials they’ve been running (which are brilliant by the way) and it shows Dominic Monaghan, Charlie from LOST, playing foosball with Courtney Cox, who has a new show this fall. At one point in the commercial someone says to Monaghan “Aren’t you dead?” to which he replies “I was.” After seeing the video again, I realize that my recollection was slightly off. Towards the end Patrick Dempsey, challenging Dominic Monaghan, says “you’re so dead” to which Monaghan replies “actually, I was.”

Ok, what?

We all watched Charlie drown at the end of season three. It was horrible. He sacrificed himself to destroy the Looking Glass so the Freighter could be contacted. But what’s with this tease? “I was.” Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have been critical of ABC for creating LOST promotions and commercials in the past that tend to offer more information then they like, could this be an example?

We’re at the beginning of nine very long months before the final season of LOST begins and almost zero hints were dropped in the finale as to what could potentially happen. But Charlie coming back? It would explain why Hurley has been carrying around the guitar case since returning to the Island. Does that mean setting off the bomb really did reset things? Oh man this is going to drive me nuts.

What do you think?

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This behemoth is made up of eight scoops of ice cream, every topping in the house and “a whole can of whipped cream.” Yes, a whole can. It’s a gluttons dream and a parent’s nightmare but on that day it was our treasure, our triumph, our mountain to conquer. And conquer we did.

You, too, can attempt to tackle this lactose nightmare if you ever visit the Beach Club Resort at Walt Disney World. Find Beaches and Cream and prepare yourself for the fury that will soon be unleashed.

Want to know what bounty lies inside the silver sink’s belly? Watch this video:

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