Tag: Movies

Zodiac

Sinister Minister by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bfft2006-04-22.flac16/bfft2006-04-22d2t09_64kb.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/bfft2006-04-22.flac16/bfft2006-04-22d2t10_64kb.mp3]

Zodiac is David Fincher(Fight Club, SE7EN)’s latest film.
First thing you ought to know: it is 158 minutes long. Maybe it is just because I haven’t seen many movies of this length in a long time, but it seemed longer than it needed to be. However, since the story stretches over decades, there is no wasted time.

The movie is good. I liked it, until the end. This is based on a real story, so naturally the ending sucks. I really believe that if they had abandoned truth and gone for the hollywood ending, they would have had a much better story, and film as a whole.

See this movie. Maybe not in theaters (because of the length) but this movie is well worth your two hours and thirty-eight minutes. I’m gonna keep this review simple, and leave it at that.

Inconvenient Quote

You know, there are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair, without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem.

This is a quote by Al Gore from the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
One fun thing to notice about this quote is the logic.
Because even if someone does the intermediate step, the chain goes

        Denial -> Do Something -> Despair

:)

Oh, and some tunes:
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/um2007-01-06.flac16/um2007-01-06d2t03_64kb.mp3]
Dick in a Box as performed by Umphrey’s McGee
Now, I know that Dick in a Box made the rounds a long while ago, but I’m pretty happy to see bands like Umph covering it in their live shows.

Crank

Mental Health by Quiet Riot

For those of you not familliar with this movie, take a gander at the trailer. The premise of this movie is that the main character, Chev Chelios, has been poisoned and needs to keep his adrenaline up to live. Since he only has an hour or so to live, he seeks revenge on the man who poisoned him, and everyone associated with him. And the rest of the movie follows him through this.

This movie kicks incredible amounts of ass, and manages to be funny at the same time. Although its been rated relatively low by most critics, I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to be entertained for 87 minutes.

The movie not only uses some cool camera angles to great effect, but they used images from Google Maps for some of their scene transitions. When we would move from one part of the city to another, the camera zooms out to display an aerial view of the city, and we move to the next scene’s location.

After seeing it, I’m still not sure if I enjoyed it more than Snakes on a Plane. I think that Snakes on a Plane, in a theater full of enthusiastic fans, would be better than Crank. But on its own, Crank is a better movie. One of the best new movies out this year (not that it had very good competition so far).
See it if you can.

Commercial Break

I just bought GTA: Liberty City Stories for PS2, which I have yet to start playing, but I have screwed around with it on the PSP, and its everything thats good about GTA:3 and more.
EDIT: I’ve now played a couple missions, and its awesome. Buy it.

I also placed an order for that Don Hertzfeldt DVD I posted about yesterday. I think I’ve seen most of the shorts which are on the DVD, but I haven’t seen all of them. And above all, what I’ve seen has been amazing. They make it a pretty good deal too. $24 preorder price, minus $4 w/coupon code, plus free mystery gift, plus a year of rolling stone magazine. Sweet.

Also, I hate allergies. And Summer. But more about that later.

Movies ‘06

I got bored tonight, and took a look at the Apple Trailers page. Here are some of the movies that jumped out at me…

Thank You For Smoking
This looks like it will be a genuinely funny movie, something that has been lacking in recent movies. I will be seeing this, whenever it comes out.

V for Vendetta
With much of the crew from The Matrix onboard (Wachowski Bros writing and producing, Joel Silver producing, James McTeigue directing (was First Assistant Director for The Matrix) and starring Hugo Weaving) this movie could be extremely good. One thing that worries me is I have heard that this movie is extremely anti Bush administration. I’m not a big fan of movies making or trying to make specific political statements when that isn’t the sole goal of the film. I’ll end up seeing this as well, March 17th.

The Da Vinci Code
Tom Hanks looks better than I thought he would in this role. I had to see it to convince me. I just hope people will resist the urge to constantly compare it to the book. I’ll see it, but I’m skeptical. May 19th.

The Pink Panther
I don’t know what happened to Steve Martin (cheaper by the dozen 2? c’mon!), but this movie seems like it could be a comeback for him. The trailer looks good. Really good. Also, if you have never seen the original, see it before this one. Just because its amazing. I’ll be seeing this as well. In fact, assume I’ll be seeing just about every movie I link to on here unless I say otherwise.

Inside Man
This looks great. I have a thing for heist movies, and I think this will suit me just fine. Great actors in it, and Spike Lee directing. I really don’t see how this one can go wrong.

X3
Do I really need to say anything? If you’ve seen the first two, you know the deal. If you haven’t, you’re missing out. May 26th.

Mission Impossible III
I don’t want to see this movie. I really don’t want to see it. The first was ok. The second was god awful. I know I’ll end up seeing this movie. Somebody stop me. May 5th.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s chest
First one was great, I think this one will be as well. Although, watching the trailer, this one gives me the feeling that it is going to be all or nothing. Hit or miss. July 7th.

Apocalypto
I have zero intention of seeing this movie, don’t worry. But I did want to point out one cool little thing about the trailer. Mel Gibson snuck one frame of himself posing next to the dudes covered in white dust into the trailer. You can see it by pausing at the right second (or advancing frame by frame). At the quick montage torwards the end of the trailer, right before you see the people covered in white dust. Props.

Superman Returns
I dunno…I’ve never liked the transition of Superman from comic to live action. It just never works. Maybe this will be different, maybe it won’t. There is a good chance I will never actually see this movie.

So, what do you think? What would you like to see as a SJ Screening?

b’oh!

Alright. I haven’t updated in a little while. Here are some fun stories / excuses why.

On Friday, I had a major, major chem test. I studied. A lot. And I still wasn’t totally prepared. After the test, everyone I spoke to (even the smart kids) thought the test was damn near impossible. And not just the normal after test complaining either. I think that I literally got a 20 on it.

Anyway, Friday night was fun enough. There was java and chilling to be had all around. And mike joined the party too, so that was rather cool. Unfortunately, hanging out behind destinta turned out to be mike’s undoing, and he was pretty sick all saturday.

So saturday, we saw three movies. Jack, Deedee, an me. Thats right. “Me”, not “I”. And I left the punctuation outside of the quotation marks twice. Take that.
Wallace and Gromit, Stay, and Doom. I still don’t exactly know what happened in Stay, but Wallace and Gromit was decent (not as good as the shorts, but still good), and Doom was easily the best of the three. Except for the ending. They should really let me write these things. The first person shots were perfectly done. And thankfully, it doesn’t even try to stay close to the ‘storyline’ of the game. That would have probably ruined it.

Also, The Rock can’t say ‘fuck’, and I don’t know whats up with that. He just can’t. It doesn’t work. Meh

Deedee booked after Stay, and Jack and I hit up Jerry’s after Doom. Now…once we were done with our pizza, we started to wait for our check. It didn’t come, and Jack was dead set on staying until they closed to see if we’d get it. It never came, and we ended up paying at the register. Theres more to that story that would make it funny, but I really don’t feel like explaining it. It’d be too much backstory.

Anyway

Doom is a perfect pump-up movie for laser tag, which we were planning on doing later. Only problem was, Laser Quest wasn’t doing an Iron Man, they were doing an all nighter from 12-6 am. Physically and mentally, I could have done it. My only problem was Monday morning, at 8, I had a chem discussion that I need to show up for to find out what the deal was with that test.
I’ve missed that class on days where I’ve gotten enough sleep, just cause its so damn early and I can’t pull it off. So all nighter was a no go.

For the rest of the night, we just trolled around looking for things to do and finding them all closed.

There was a golf ball in that story somewhere.

huzzah, my weekend.

The Aristocrats

Alright, I saw the aristocrats tonight. The entire movie is about one joke. The joke is fairly simple:

Guy goes into a talent agency to pitch his act.
“What do you do?” asks the agent.
“We come out and crap on the stage.”
“What do you call yourselves?”
“The Aristocrats.”

However, the joke is how each comic tells the “We come out and crap on the stage.” line.
It gets rather ridiculous, but its a very funny movie as long as you aren’t easily offended. Also, it has the best closing credits of any movie I’ve seen this year.

Now, at the end of the credits, it lets you know that you can make your own Aristocrats joke, and send it into them, and if you win, you get $1000 and your version of the joke will be on the DVD. Pretty spiffy.

I’d highly encourage you guys to go wild on this one, since I know you can. Its too late for me to post some examples from the movie, but perhaps someone else can, or maybe I’ll do it in the morning.

Watch the trailer, and you’ll get the idea.

Or just go see the movie, its totally worth it…but probably not with the family…

Transporter 2

Ah, gotta blog about tonight, because tonight was a good night.

I’m back home for the weekend, so I can visit with family and go to a music festival (most of saturday). I’ll also be asked over two dozen times how college is.
The answer is that it isn’t all that different. I don’t know, maybe its just me, but college doesn’t phase me much. I sleep, eat, and live in a new place now. k.
It would probably be a lot different if I didn’t know so many people there, but I do, so why not make the most of it?

So, tonight I get back home, the dog and family are all happy to see me. After dinner (Fong’s) its straight to Java. I talked to a bunch of folks earlier in the week, to see who’d be around. We had quite a crowd, considering people were leaving for school left and right.

I arrive, and I’m the first one there. I grab my XTREME CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE and go to sit with robbie taylor, who has randomly been at java the last couple times I have. He’s playing chess against some girl. He introduced her to me, but I didn’t catch her name. It was loud, and I was waiting on my milkshake a couple feet away. They play chess, I help each side not make crappy moves. Some time later, Jack shows up, and we move to the back of java.

Jack has his laptop with him, in an uber case which seems incomplete without handcuffs. I think its bulletproof. We’ll need to test that sometime.
Anywise, we play around on the javapalooza wireless network, which was just as sketchy if not more than the time I brought Cassidy there.
We manage to get online for a few seconds, but without internet we just use it for Pinball and Minesweeper.

Morello, Scott, Dave Carta, Craig Dennis, and Rob (after that girl left, I assume) all join our table in turn. Java randomness ensues. I see a bunch of folk I know from MHS (who are seniors now, I guess). I guess they’ll be replacing us as the regulars. Maybe not, whatever. At some point I ask Rob who that girl was, and he tells me its joanna. I was kinda pissed by this, but I’m not really sure why. So I guess I’ve technically met her, but I totally didn’t know I met her. Bah. Also, deedee never showed up. I thought she would, but apparently theres something going on between her and scott. I dunno, I haven’t seen deedee in a long time, and she’s even gone on a road trip in the time that I haven’t seen her. Not a Juan Way scale trip, but its still a road trip. Oh well, those were the only two things that bummed me out tonight.

At some point I mention that Transporter 2 is out today, and that I had meant to go see it. I hadn’t seen the first one, but had heard good things. Jack has the DVD at his house, and he has a laptop with a DVD drive with him. We run back to his house, grab the DVD, head back to java, and watch as much as we can before we need to take off for the movie. Only Jack, Rob, and I actually watch the movie, but thats probably for the better. I don’t know if we could have fit anyone else on that bench.
We turn the subtitles on, because we can’t really hear the laptop’s speakers over the music and people in java. People start to leave while we’re watching it, which kinda sucks, but the movie is good, so I guess that cancels out?
I dunno how that works.

In the end its just Jack and I left, and his battery starts to die about 5 minutes before we were going to leave for the theater. We knew we weren’t going to finish the movie, but we were planning to watch what we could on the walk down to Destinta, and even as we were buying our tickets. It would have been fun to explain that we were watching the first one as we got in line to see the second.

Transporter 2 was loaded with ridiculousness. If there was one word to describe this movie, it would be ‘awesome.’ But more in the 80s teenager sense of the word, instead of the dictionary definition. We determined that the main character has to do a certain amount of stunts to keep his ridiculous card, such as riding on the top of an elevator instead of inside it. There are obviously lots of other examples, but that is most of the movie.
The Ridiculous Card reminded me of the Crazy Test for some reason. More on that another time, I think.

Alright, its getting close to 2 and I think I’m going to go to bed.
Dig it

SJ Screening

Would something like this be feasible?

Getting SJers together to see a movie opening day or soon after. War of the Worlds is released today, which is why I had been thinking about this. Obviously, its much much too short of notice for this movie, but would something like this be possible for future movies?

How many people would be interested in something like this?