Lost in Translation
This is a fantastic movie about two people who find each other while both are more or less lost in Tokyo. It’s the movie that re-introduced us to Bill Murray’s hilarity and introduced us to the beauty of Scarlett Johansson’s butt. It’s sweet, it’s well written and directed by Sofia Coppola, it’s a great movie.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Azumi
According to Netflix I enjoy movies that feature a strong female lead, revenge movies, and Japanese movies. Azumi meets all three categories in one film so it’s no wonder that Netflix recommended it. It’s the story of a girl, Azumi, who is orphaned and adopted by a Samurai master and raised, along with a group of other kids, to become the strongest assassins in Japan’s history. The reason? Kill the warlords who are hellbent on taking power and forcing the nation into constant war. Obviously the warlords don’t like this idea and do everything they can to stop Azumi and her fellow assassins. It’s pretty great, especially if you like foreign films featuring stylistic violence. And really, who doesn’t?
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The International
This is a “suspense thriller” about a bank that does very bad things. Strangely, a New York District Attorney and an INTERPOL agent are working together on an international investigation. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but maybe it does to you. The movie tries to be way more suspenseful than it is, even uses the cliché piano music to do so. There is a pretty sweet shootout in the Guggenheim, but really, that’s about all this movie has going for it. The plot is convoluted and silly and the suspense is added by the bucket — if this were a comedy there would have been an old fashioned laugh tracked added. It just comes off silly.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
When Harry Met Sally
Apparently this is a classic movie that everyone’s seen, at least a certain scene from, but I had never seen. It’s cute, it’s got some pretty funny lines, and overall it’s pretty good.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Avatar
The mega-hyped, mega-budgeted James Cameron flick about a completely invented world of giant human-like blue people certainly lives up to the special effects and action hype. Surprisingly, unlike all of the reviews, the storyline is very engrossing and solid as well. It’s nothing new and the major themes are all taken from just about everything else out there, but it’s still a really good movie and a really fun ride. I didn’t see it in IMAX or Digital 3D (what the hell is that anyway?) and am glad I didn’t as I’m almost certain it would have given me a headache.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sherlock Holmes
I submit that Robert Downey Jr. is the best actor working in Hollywood today — especially when it comes to rich, eccentric, recluses. While the storyline for Sherlock Holmes is, at times, a little hard to follow Downey’s portrayal is amazing. It was fun and the directing was pretty awesome. The only thing I didn’t really like was the blatant sequel setup at the end of the movie. Can we have quality movies in Hollywood anymore without thinking about a sequel, at least until a few days after the movie comes out?
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
The Incredibles
The Pixar story about a family of super heros who must actually get along in order to stop an evil mastermind is fun and silly and simply enjoyable. The first bit of the movie, explaining the super hero exile from public life, is basically a kid-friendly version of Watchmen. I found that interesting.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sky High
I like movies about super heroes and usually don’t care for things on the Disney Channel, but this is a movie that I actually enjoyed. It’s unique and cleaver and just plain fun. It’s about a high school for super hero kids that are trying to figure out how to use their powers. There’s a class war between the heroes and sidekicks hero support and, well, a real war. It’s fun. Watch it.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Elf
See November
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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]]>Sunshine Cleaning
This is about two sisters who aren’t really do much with their lives and decide to start a crime scene cleanup business. It’s a quarky movie with some laughs but takes a brief, but very unexpected turn. Wonder what I’m talking about? Just follow the storyline of the youngest sister. There isn’t a lot of character development, or depth for that matter, but it’s entertaining.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Objectified
This is a documentary on industrial design by the same group that created Helvetica. It’s a fascinating look at what makes up good design and why and a conversation with those who are doing it, including Jonathan Ive who is the lead designer at Apple. If you’re a design nerd, you’ll enjoy this.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Space Camp
This is one of the best bad movies to come out of the 80’s. It stars a bunch of people, like Kate Capshaw, Kelly Preston, Lea Thompson and a very young Joaquin Phoenix. The premiss is that a group of kids attending space camp end up being launched into space, for real. Why? Well, basically Phoenix’s character, Max, falls in love with a robot, Jinx, who talks to the NASA computers and figures a way to get him on a real launch. I kid you not. But it’s great. Check it out! It has some pretty great 80’s music as well, including a song that landed on my celebrity playlist last year.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The Blind Side
Going in I thought this was going to be a sappy, tearjerker style movie; I was wrong. It was funny, poignant and an amazing story. If you haven’t seen this yet, go do so. It’s worth the cost to see it in the theater.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Kind of hard to not like a Charlie Kaufman story and this is no exception. What happens when people in a relationship decide to forget each other? A wicked trip to Jim Carrey’s mind is what. Did I mention Charlie Kaufman wrote it? What more do you need to know?
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Star Trek
I was never a Star Trek fan growing up, though I did enjoy watching episodes of The Next Generation. But that doesn’t really count I guess. Either way, I didn’t really know the difference between a Romulan and a Vulcan before putting in JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. This was probably a good thing as all of the characters are re-introduced in a very cool story involving time travel and evil aliens. I really liked this movie and it’s well worth checking out.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Elf
I’m no Will Ferrell fan, but this was actually a funny movie. It’s silly and quirky and has Zooey Deschanel and, get this, was directed by Jon Favreau — yeah, Swingers‘ Jon Favreau. Crazy, right?
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Angels & Demons
While The Da Vinci Code was a horrible adaptation of the book, this was a much better movie. Imagine that, considering this was the better of the two books as well.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dogma
Kevin Smith and the story of two renegade angels trying to get back into heaven. Need I say more?
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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]]>So that’s what this new revision brings. Simplicity. The ‘blog’ link on the right brings you to the most recent blog post and you can continue through older posts from there, if you desire. If not, well, so be it. I write for myself, for the most part anyway. As such, the blog design isn’t perfect. There are some display quarks that I haven’t worked out yet — and might not — because I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to work with my intended look. But for the most part, it works.
There you have it. Simplicity and function.
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]]>Couples Retreat
Four couples go on a trip to an all inclusive resort for fun in the sun but instead find they have to attend couples therapy sessions. If they didn’t sense a problem before the trip, they do once the therapy begins. Typical Vince Vaughn hijinks ensue. Not bad, but not what I was expecting at all.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Love Actually
A number of different love stories are told at the same time and they all intertwine somehow. Some are simple, some are complicated, most are pretty cute. Pretty good film.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Where the Wild Things Are
While the book is for children, the movie is not. It’s more intense than I remember the book being and, well, pretty dark. And someone needs to get Max to therapy because the boy is clearly autistic.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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So Say We All
The destroyed planet Earth that was found at the end of 4.0 really was Earth, the home of the 13th tribe of Cobol and guess what? That thirteenth tribe were Cylons. At least their DNA signature matched that of the Cylon skin jobs. Apparently it’s where the real Final Five came from, some 2000 years ago.
Long story short, the Final Five developed the Cylon race and ended up creating Resurrection technology. So they were the creators of the race… sort of. Anyway, the identity of the final Cylon? Helen Tigh. That’s right, Tigh’s wife has been a Cylon all along. You might be thinking that Tigh killed Helen on New Caprica for helping the Cylons. Well guess what, she woke up on a Cylon Basestar — apparently before Resurrection was destroyed. Anyway, Tigh figures this out through unlocking memories while being on Earth, as do the rest of the Final Five.
Fast forward until the end of the series. Basically the whole thing hinges on Athena and Helo’s baby — remember the whole opera house thing? Anyway, apparently their baby is the key to the future of humanity, but no one really knows why. So Boomer — the bad Number 8 — brings Helen Tigh from the Cylons to the Rebel Cylons in an attempt to make amends for going against her units in the split. The whole thing was basically a sham to steal Athena and Helo’s baby so that they could run tests on it to see how to recreate Resurrection.
Fast forward a bit more and Adama decides to take a volunteer suicide mission to jump Galactica into the Cylon home in a recuse mission for the baby. An epic battle happens that ends with a truce that is broken by Chief Tyrol. In the end Galactica jumps out as the Cylon home blows up. But where did they jump?
Athena and Helo’s baby had been drawing pictures — small dots on a page — for awhile. Starbuck (who by the way found her crashed Viper and her body on Earth so has no idea who she really is) discovered that the pictures she was drawing were really musical notes that just so happened to be the notes for the song that activated the Final Five at the end of season 3.0 (which is an awesome song by the way). Anyway, not knowing what that meant she assigned numbers to the notes trying to see if there was some deeper meaning in them. Well, turns out it was the jump coordinates to… well, Earth. But Earth as we know it, not the destroyed one they found at the end of season 4.0.
They found Earth and then spread out severing all ties with each other. Makes sense.
So, in the end, the fleet found Earth after all. But here’s the kicker: it was earth 150,000 years ago at the dawn of civilization. So they all decided to spread out around the world and create population centers. They got rid of their technology and decided to start from scratch. But here’s what I don’t get: after spending a few years trying to build a new community when they finally get a place to call home they split up and live in seclusion? I mean, Adama took the president off to bury her and then lived on a hill by himself. His son decided to go off and explore the planet alone. Tyrol wanted to be alone. Helo, Athena and their child presumably went off by themselves. Even stranger, Dr. Cottle volunteers for the suicide mission, but Adama won’t let him participate because “the fleet can’t afford to loose a doctor.” Um, they why spread people all over the world once the mission is complete? Why the sudden break in community? I didn’t get it.
Fast forward another 150,000 years to present day Earth. Apparently the vision of 6 that Giaus had been seeing the whole time — and the vision of Giaus 6 had been seeing — were really angels sent to help guide their way. The remains of Helo and Athena’s baby were just discovered and she was being called the mother of civilization. But why? It never explained why she was important. And speaking of angels, apparently that’s what Starbuck has been since returning from Earth, seemingly out of nowhere.
After offloading everyone on Earth, the ships were sent to fly into the sun. See ya' Galactica!
Overall the series was pretty great, but it seemed to be pretty downhill from the amazing finale to season 3.0. After the shocking discovery of Earth at the end of 4.0, everything seemed very forced — almost as if the writers had written themselves into a corner they couldn’t quite figure out how to get out of. There were a lot of leaps made in season 4.5 that, given the pace of the series to that point, seemed to be very out of place. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but how could they not end with some sort of awesome Adama led “so say we all” speech about creating the new humanity? Again, spreading out all over the world? Come on…
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]]>Watchmen
Having read the book this film was almost identical to every frame in the pages. It takes a cue from Sin City in that regard. But Watchmen was pretty great and the musical selections were awesome. The only oddity: the ending was changed. I didn’t care for that too much.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Up
This movie is fantastic. Sad in the right places, hilarious in others. Best movie I’ve seen in a while. If you haven’t seen it, you need to go do so right now. Do it. Go.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
This movie is so messed up it’s not even funny. It’s part one in Chan-wook Park’s ‘revenge trilogy’ where Old Boy is part two. Given that Old Boy is amazing — all but extremely twisted — I should have known what I was getting myself into. Unlike part two in his series, Park waited about 100 minutes to get to the exciting part and instead focused on building the story and making everyone want to tear their eyes out. That’s all I got.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Ong-Bak
Brutally violent muay Tai action yet somewhat comical dialogue. Worth your time.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Valkyrie
Pretty good story about how some Nazi’s tried to kill Hitler. Tom Cruise was still Tom Cruise though.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
9
Pretty cool little story about creatures created to save the world, after mankind destroys it. I liked the twins the best.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Across the Universe
Someone made a movie based on the music of the Beatles. How amazing is that? And to top it off, the movie is awesome.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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]]>After three calls into AT&T I finally got to talk to a technical support specialist who figured out the problem. Apparently if you had an original 1st Gen iPhone on an original 2G plan and have since upgraded to a 3G or 3GS, like I did, then AT&T (most likely) didn’t actually update your account. In my case, the original IMEI settings for the first iPhone were still listed in my account. So on AT&T’s end it figured I wasn’t capable of handling MMS and shut everything down before it passed to/from my phone. Once he corrected that setting for the 3GS, everything sent to me so far today started flying through. Looks like if you’re having issues, you have to call AT&T and have them fix the IMEI settings on your account.
Note that the customer service representative who first answers the call will not have the ability to correct these settings. You’ll need to ask for a Technical Support Specialist who can make these correction. It’s also advised that you call from a different phone then the iPhone in question as my agent had me reset the phone to make sure the new settings took and then sent me a message to make sure it was actually working.
It was a bit of a hassle, but now it’s working. Hopefully this saves some people some frustration.
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]]>The Collector
This sucks, don’t see it. I don’t even know what it’s about. I walked out after 15 minutes and ended up seeing:
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
The Hangover
This is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s hilarious. A group of friends go on a bachelor party in Vegas and wake up without a single memory from the night before. All they know is their friend is missing, there’s a random baby in the closet, and a tiger in the bathroom. It’s awesome. You just might want to close your eyes during the credits. I’m just saying.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The Soloist
What’s with all these movies starting with ‘the’? Anyway, this is one man’s exquisite attempt to find friendship and meaning in a post-9/11 world. In the process, he meets a man who will soon change his life. Ok, this isn’t what the movie is about, but it could be based on the box art. This movie was good. I mean, I think it was. I don’t really remember.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Push
Evidently there are people who live among the rest of us who happen to have special abilities. They choose to hide these abilities in order to hide from the government, who wants to round everyone up and turn them into weapons. Sound familiar? Probably since there’s a pretty bad tv show with a similar story. Anyway, this movie was alright and the climax was pretty unique — yeah, I just said climax, deal with it. Anyway, it’s a solid movie and stars Dijmon Hounsou, so you can’t really go too far wrong. I don’t even know what that means…
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Wall-E
If there is a better commentary on the state of our society, I haven’t seen it. So until I do, Wall-E will have to do. There’s very little dialog, but the point comes across loud and clear. We’re fat, we’re lazy, and we are massive consumers. But if we take a few minutes to actually look at the world around us, we just might like what we have to see (or not). Either way, we might get pushed to do something about it. It was a sweet movie. Was it worthy of all the Best Picture controversy it stirred up? I don’t know, but Wall-E is worth seeing.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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]]>I went to this site and inserted this tweet:
I’ve learned many things having this hole in my back, one of which is that showering at night is more relaxing then doing so in the morning.
I hit find equilibrium and that’s when the magic happened. What’s equilibrium, you ask? Equilibrium is achieved when the English text is translated into Japanese and then back into English without any of the words changing.
Enjoy a few gems complete with wittyless commentary:
I have behind me a lot, but this hole is a learned one, for a shower to relax more at night and morning.
I do have a lot behind me, but I usually don’t tweet about that. The hole, however, is a learned one. In the short month it’s been hanging out on my back, the hole has picked up a complete Masters of Economics. Impressive, I know.
I’m more relaxed, a lot of showers in the evening and the morning has a hole in the back of this research.
I’m not really sure where the research came into play, but I am much more relaxed after doing some. Or it. I’m not really sure what the proper pronoun is there. Taking a lot of shower in the evening and the morning tends to do that to you. Regardless, I’ve got a whole in the back of this research I need to attend to. Or is it too? I think I need to take another shower.
After 21 translation steps, equilibrium was found.
I have a hole in the back of this study, the number of showers in the evening, this morning, is to relax.
Apparently, the hole in my back has completed it’s Doctoral Thesis and determined that after taking many showers in the evening, the purpose of this morning is to relax. Or something like that. I really have no idea. All I do know is translating things back in forth makes for some really hilarious results and something worth putting here. So, yeah. There you go.
Thanks to Oh My Seven for the link.
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]]>Balls of Fury
Looking at the Netflix page for this movie, I find is extremely surprising that Roger Ebert gave this film three out of five stars. It was pretty much horrible. The plot was mindless, the acting poor, and the jokes unfunny. Which is exactly what I needed in my post-surgery, pain induced state. Still, the movie merits the worst rating in Year in Movies history. Don’t bother with it.
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
The Rocketeer
Even though I haven’t seen this movie in about fifteen years, as soon as those hanger doors open all those awesome memories came flooding back. It’s the story of a fly-boy who comes across an Howard Hughes prototype rocket pack that is being hunted by the FBI, mafia and an undercover Nazi spy. Other than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade there is no greater plot involving beating up Nazi’s in the history of cinema! This movie is great. Jennifer Connelly is beautiful and Terry O’Quinn plays a way better Howard Hughes than the guy in that crappy Scorsese flick.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Payback: Straight Up: The Director’s Cut
Payback is about a guy who gets screwed out of $70,000 and he decided to kill everyone until he gets it back. Yeah, just $70,000. I know it’s not that much. It’s kind of the point. I really enjoyed the original version of this film so I figured I’d give the director’s cut a spin. Unlike most director cuts, Payback brings massive changes to the movie. Most noticeably? The black and white presentation is thrown out for a washed out color print. The ending also changes dramatically from the original. Despite the massive changes, I still like the cut. It brings a slightly different look at Porter’s quest to be paid back. Yeah, I went there.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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