I just watched Maid In Manhattan. It was actually quite refreshing. Almost everyone is a wholesome character, and the movie stays on a feel good path the whole time. They don't take too many cheap humor shots (with the notable exception of two women excercising in their room) and while the story is certainly a stretch it is believable in the fantasy world it lives in.

Other things that came to my mind about this one:

• I watched about the first half of the movie trying to place Ralph Fiennes. He had that feel of an actor that I'd watched a whole lot. Then it finally hit me that he played Lenny in Strange Days. For those of you that haven't seen that one it is my favorite cyberpunk movie. Cyberpunk is actually one of my favorite genres and it's unfortunate that Hollywood has butchered most of their attempts to film it. I'm having trouble finding a decent webpage to talk about what cyberpunk is, but if you want to know you can ask me or go read Snow Crash and Nueromancer.
  
• You gotta love a movie with lines like this - JLo: "I just came here tonight to tell you that tonight is the last night for us", Ralph: "Then you should have worn a different dress."
  
• They had great music! Simon and Garfunkle, big Grammy winner Nora Jones, and even Eva Cassidy (doing a Paul Simon cover no less.) If you haven't listened to Eva Cassidy and you like slower music you should give her a try. My favorite albumn is Time After Time which incidentally has a wonderful cover of the Cindy Lauper song. Also, Eva's rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow is great as well.
  
• I guess the staff that works on the suite floor of a 5 star Manhattan Hotel might be as well off as these characters, but most of them aren't. I've done some activism work with hotel workers (the Hotel Workers Organizing Committee in Portland, Oregon) and they really get screwed around. I don't feel like getting on my soapbox about this tonight, which is probably better for you.
  
• My favorite character in the movie was the floor butler, he was sweet and is the kind of character that makes me want to meet someone like him in real life.

The bottom line is this was a fun, feel good, Cinderella movie. It won't change your life, but it will entertain you for 105 minutes.

Also thinking about music I forgot to mention something in my musings about The River Wild. Their theme music was an orchestrated version of The River is Wide. While it's neat that they do the whole river thing, this song is a slow and kind of sad song and they played it as background music for some of the action sequences. This really annoyed me since this is a song I really like it kept conflicting with the mood of the movie for me. Then during the closing credits they finally played a version with lyrics.

That's it. I should get to bet soon since I have to leave to raft again in about six hours...

With all my recent excitement over rafting I decided I needed to watch The River Wild again. I had some fond memories from the first time I saw it (I remember watching it on video at home, I figure I was in High School.) It turns out it really isn't all that good. This is a total formula movie, but I can handle that, I was mostly watching because I wanted to see the river. But most of the good river scenes weren't filmed the way I wanted them to be filmed. There were very few wide angle shots where I got to see what was going on, it was mostly just shots of the boat hitting a wave and lots of water coming over the side. And the big suspense stuff didn't work either, why do they have to run the big, deadly rapid when it seems like they could have portaged around it. Granted, it would be a hard portage - but that seems better then something they all feel is likely to kill them. Though I will give it credit for having some good feminist, strong woman, spirit.

Speaking of feminist, strong woman, spirit; Survivor last night had that in spades (yes, Survivor is one of my two TV guilty pleasures, along with Real World/Road Rules series.) It was great, the tribes merged and the guy that got voted out had no clue his support had just vaporized under him. It was almost as good as last season when they got down to five people and the woman that got voted out (with four votes!) thought there were going to be four votes for someone else. Although this tends to be where I stop paying attention to the show. For me the most interesting parts are when they have two teams competing against eachother. Once it drops down to the individual competetion and they've figured out how to live in the new, harsh environment I lose interest.

Sweet! I think I have comments working. I broke up a mind-numbing work day with a tour through the blog world. Somehow I managed to happen upon a comments system that was actually accepting users! So I signed up and the comments appear to be working. I'll have to give the guy a donation as a show of thanks.

For the record it's enetation. This makes me happy.

I love the water. To the point that friends used to joke about me being a fish. I like Oceans, I like lakes, but I really like rivers. I grew up by the Williamette and swam in it all the time in the summer. And there aren't many rivers in Western Oregon that I haven't been in. When I lived in California I really missed not having rivers close by (even though the ocean was right around the corner.) So when I moved up to Seattle I figured I'd go back to spending time on, around, and in rivers. But I really didn't and by the end of last summer wasn't happy about that - so I decided to fix it...

I just got back from my first weekend of training to be a whitewater rafting guide. It was awesome and I can't wait for next weekend (and three more after that!) Then if all goes well I'll spend a bunch of my summer out on the river being a guide. I will get paid, which is cool, but that's not really why I'm doing it - it's more so that I can go out and raft a lot without paying for it. Plus, being on the back of the boat is more fun then just being a customer. But it's a lot more work too.

I'll post more later when I actually become a guide, including how you can go on one of my trips!

Lastly, to keep this somewhat on topic: I just saw a Bulletproof Monk TV trailer. The whole thing focused on Sean William Scott and the female costar, with Chow Yun-Fat in two shots (in trailer time that's about 1/2 second.) I guess it was on during The Man Show so they were probably just adjusting for their target audience. But I'm scared, which is painful because I love Chow Yun-Fat.

Now it's time for me to go to bed. This is the earliest I've gone to bed in a long time, I guess that's what happens after two full days on the river. And wow was it cold...

I got over most of my issues with the war. I'm thinking I just needed to let them soak for a bit. Now I'm going to try to stay away from that stuff since it seems like everyone is writing about it (I can see why - it's on everyone's minds) and I don't really feel like adding too much to that trend.

So last night I was on my way to bed and I decided I should watch something as I went to sleep. I made the poor choice of choosing The Green Mile. This movie was way underrated and I forgot how good it is. Yes, it's slow and meandering, but I like that in films about both the depression. Those were slow and meandering times. Not to mention the film takes place in the South which I hear is a slow and meandering place (regrettably I've never been to the Southern US to experience this myself - it's on my list.)

The film is very pretty and the acting is excellent. Most importantly it gripped me. This lead to my watching almost all of it (it's more then three hours long, I watched about two and half) and staying up quite past my bedtime. Also the film deals with some pretty intense issues to have kicking around your head while you try to go to sleep. Death row is always a tough issue, but this film really humanizes the prisoners and is quite graphic in showing their executions.

The one thing I find distracting is they have this thing that one of the guards is a really big guy. But then one of the prisoners is a straight up giant. I know that David Morse and Michael Clarke Duncan are not small people (especially the latter), but to make them look even bigger they play lots of tricks with the camera and the sets. This is very similar to the way they make the hobbits look small in the Lord of the Rings movies. This never looks quite right and my brain gets distracted either trying to figure out why it doesn't look quite right or trying to figure out how they did it.

Like I said above, I was reminded how much I like this movie. I doubt that I'll forget about it again for a long while.

I can't really focus. I have some personal things to work though, and I certainly have plenty to do at work. But I keep coming back to the situation in Iraq. This morning I got up all ready to come into work, then instead of going to get ready I turned on the news. I got completely sucked in and an hour and a half went by before I knew it. Now I'm in at work and I have to restrain myself from going out and reading all about it. This is one of those times when the information age feels like it's working against me. I'm not saying I'd like to give up 24 hour news networks and the massive amount of current news on the internet, but they are certainly detracting from my daily duties today (and I suspect this will continue for at least the rest of this week.)

This leads me to something I was tossing around this morning. I took a different bus in today and ended up walking though most of Belltown (a vibrant yuppie area of Seattle.) It felt weird that outside of a few "No Iraq War" signs in store windows you couldn't tell that our country is on the eve of war. This is the first war of my adult life and I'm having some issues with it (totally outside of whether we should be there, since it's pretty obvious it's going to happen at this point.) My brain knows that we should continue with our day to day lives. I still have to go to work, along with millions of other people, or the real cost of this thing will make the current $100 Billion estimate look like pocket change. But then I feel like I'm trivializing the war. I take war incredibly seriously and I view it as an innate failure of the human race. So us being at war really messes with my head, especially a preemptive war that doesn't seem to have the support of the rest of the world.

I said before that I don't fully support this war and I still feel that way. The key is that for me to fully support a war (given my opinions on war expressed above), I have to be absolutely sure that it's the right thing to do. I'm very far from that stance today. But I recognize that it could be the right thing to do, and since we're doing it I hope that turns out to be the case. If it isn't the consequences could be truly disasterous.

To give you an idea of how hard it is for me to focus, I watched Igby Goes Down over the last two nights. I can tell you it was entertaining, but the only really interesting thing I can find to say about it is it was cool watching a teenage kid get to nail both Amanda Peet and Claire Danes. Out of the scope of normalcy, yes, but that's where the whole movie exists.

We're now less then five hours from the deadline. I still think they will wait until nightfall in Iraq before the full onslaught happens, but the sense I've gotten (admittedly, all filtered through news sources) is that they're itching to go. Either way, we'll be at war within 24 hours. When I figure out how to deal with that I'll let you know.

Well, the President addressed the nation today pretty much affirming that we'll be going to war very soon. For the record my guess is it will start mid-morning on Thusday, pacific time (~10 am.)

While I don't fully support this war I do fully support the men and women of our armed forces. Everyone risking their safety for international security both in the US and abroad has my deepest support and gratitude. I wish every one of you a safe return to your families and friends.

Well, I went to see The Hunted over the weekend. While I don't think it's 3.5 stars good, I also don't believe it's 24% bad...

The key is it is a 100% chase movie. The whole start in Serbia sorta has to be there from a storytelling standpoint, but it was forgetably done. Then the scene where the hunters get killed is so-so. But once you get through that stuff (and Tommy Lee Jones' introduction) it really picks up. From there it's one big chase, and there are things about it I really like. The hand to hand combat was great. For people who haven't really done any of this before normal fighting does not work like you tend to see in the movies. It works like you see in this movie. It's slow, everyone gets hit, and everyone makes mistakes. They do a great job of working distance during the fights as well.

Also, I don't really know anything about tracking or evading but I felt like the tracking and evading in this movie was believable. And it was especially interesting when they did it in an urban environment. My definite favorite was the slow speed car chase...

It was also cool because they actually filmed a lot of that in Western Oregon (where I grew up.) Also they did take some liberties. For example, there are not huge rapids right below Portland on the Columbia river. For reference, I'm thinking the large rapid they show is on the Rogue down in Southern Oregon - I guess I could rent The River Wild to be sure since it was filmed entirely on the Rogue.

If you want to see a movie that is purely one long chase (with some crappy stuff at the start) go see this one.

I'm all confused.

The Hunted, which is out in theaters today is tracking at only 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars. I guess I'll just have to go and see it for myself...

My guess is that many of the reviewers getting used for the Rotten Tomato rating made the mistake of reviewing the type of movie that was made (a chase movie) instead of reviewing how well the movie delivered on what it tried to be. This is an important distinction for me when I read reviews. In the end I don't really care if the reviewer had a good time, I care if I'm going to have a good time. So what I want from a film review is: This is what the movie is about, this is what the movie tried to be, and finally, how well the movie executed on those two things. Roger Ebert does this better then any other reviewer I've read, which is the simple reason he's my favorite reviewer.

The Rules of Attraction is a fucked up movie.

I guess Ebert put it best when he said this "is a skillfully made movie about reprehensible people." It really is skillful. There are some great shots, including several very intruiging ones where they play the film backwards. Also in the vain of Pulp Fiction they jump all over in the timeline and it's really hard to figure out what is actually going on. And my favorite was the excellent music, including wonderful use of some classic 80's songs.

But all this art and skill are used to tell a story that is, well, fucked up. Imagine MTV's Undressed on a major bender. If you understand that reference you know what you're getting into. If you don't understand that reference you probably should stay away from this one.

As planned I saw Tears Of The Sun on the way home from work today. I'd actually been looking forward to this because it's an action movie with good credentials (Bruce Willis typically does well and the director did both Training Day and The Replacement Killers) and it got two thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper. This typically means that the movie was at least made well - whether you like it is your own business. But since I like action movies, I look forward to those that are done well.

This one is. But you have to ignore the politics of what's going on, especially in the final act. This is really a movie about some Navy SEALs that are really good at what they do, which is kick ass. It also tries to be a big message movie about interventionism and the atrocities of ethnic cleansing. The problem is those issues are too big for this movie, so they don't really reasonate. This makes the film feel preachy as it tries way too hard to pull on your heartstrings. They really needed to leave the character conflict where it belonged - with Bruce Willis' character. He has lots of tough choices to make, and does a reasonable acting job showing them. But the film is muddled with everyone else's drama - losing the potency of Willis' conflicts. At the very least they should include the doctor and the other SEALs, but only as devices for the main character's issues.

The cinematography was great. Lots of wonderful shots of the jungle, and lots of very dark scenes. If you're interested in this movie you need to go see it in the theater, since the darkness in all those scenes will not work well on all but the best calibrated TV sets. All I noticed about the music was that it was overbearing, always overdoing it when they show the bad guys.

There were several military inconsistencies, but none of them were terrible. The big thing is I would have liked is to see the SEALs do more evasion. Make it more of a cat and mouse game in the jungle. That combined with the character changes above would have really elevated this film to a new level.

Bottom line: If you like action movies, don't mind having your emotions played with, and can deal with some really nasty ethnic cleansing stuff (you've been warned, it's ugly) - then you should go check this one out.

Well, I didn't make it to Tears of the Sun this weekend. I'm now thinking I'll see it on the way home from work on Wednesday.

But after Old School last week I did pop Made into the DVD player yesterday. I swear, Vince Vaughn plays the most annoying person ever in that movie. There have certainly been more annoying characters in movies, but this one actually seemed like it could be a real person (granted, an exagerrated person) as opposed to total fabrications like the guys in Dumb and Dumber. It's painful to watch since he's totally out of his league and completely ignores the instructions he's given - although I'm sure he thinks he's "improving" on them. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and Puffy does a good job as well (suprisingly.)

I expect to watch a bunch of movies over the next week or two since the networks aren't showing new content now. Sweeps week ends and they all just shut down, it's terrible. They really should use some more intelligent means of calculating viewership then just a one week sample, it's not like they don't collect the data all the time anyway. It always seemed weird to me that networks get to brag about their sweeps ratings when a lot of the stuff they show isn't even their regular programming. They bust out all the specials and big movies, giving a totally inaccurate look at how many people actually watch their programming on a weekly basis. But I guess it doesn't matter that much in the end. It was just something I was thinking about today.

Lastly, I have to thank Gizmodo.com for a link to this bad boy. Absolute and total ridiculousness - but I can't say it wouldn't be on my list if I had unlimited funds for toys.

I spent some time doing research for the site today. I added in some tracking stuff (Site Meter) to see how many people actually come here - I suspect this will be a humbling experience. Then I also looked into comments quite a bit. I looked through some pre-built comment systems and even spec'd out a custom solution but didn't really like any of those options. Right now I'm thinking I'll go with a message board system. I even found a few that look good but I need to get PHP up and running here first. Fortunately my host allows this but they have to turn it on. I made the request and given my past experience with them they should have it up within a day or so.

So I guess the feedback loop will have to wait for a few more days...

Off topic warning...

Last week the 9th Circuit Court of appeals refused to hear an appeal of last summers ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance. It's getting a lot of press now because the ruling will go into effect on Monday. I've been reading some articles about it I and am continually depressed by the quality of public debate in this country.

But, I did read Roger Eberts column about it and was impressed. It's the first time I've read something that actually makes some sense and doesn't sound like propoganda and war-mongering. Go read it here. There are a couple places where he seems to go off the deep end, but overall it's the first thing I've read that sounds intellignet. Of course it's also the first thing I've read that I agree with, so I know that has something to do with it.

I've also read several things that furstrate me, and I'm not sure which is scarier:

(Warning about number 1, I am not a lawyer and have only a loose understanding of constitutional law.)
1. The case in question specifically involves the Elk Grove schoold district, who will honor the ruling unless it is stayed by the US Supreme Court (this is good, they would be in contempt otherwise.) However, the ruling applies to the 9 western states in the 9th circuit. This means that starting Monday until the ruling is stayed or overturned by the Supreme Court it is unconstitutional for schools in those states to have students recite the pledge of allegiance as long as it includes the phrase "under God." But there are some school districts that plan on continuing on because they're sure that the ruling will be overturned (read about it here.) Think about that, these are public officials in charge of our schools willfully and knowingly doing something unconstitional. Why? Because they don't agree with it...

2. One guy in an editorial complained that the minority population was restricting his right to say "under god." Seriously, everyone in the country continues to be free to say whatever they want. This is about how when a teacher leads a class in an activity it is not a strictly voluntary activity. Have people been out of school that long that they don't remember how this stuff really functions (or maybe I just remember it especially well since there were many places where I disagreed with the majority.)

3. There are many who claim that this whole thing is unpatriotic. It is no less patriotic to recite the pledge without the words "under God." This is not about patriotism, it's about kids in public schools being institutionaly encouraged to participate in an activity that directly opposes their religious beliefs. There are many, many kids in our schools that either don't believe a god exists or believe in many gods. We are either socially excluding them or forcing them to act against their beliefs every day the current pledge is read aloud in school.

Ug, I've vented now and feel better. As always I welcome your opinions.

I watched Old School the other night. Now, it certainly isn't what you would typically consider a high quality move. The jokes are low brow, and you won't learn anything about the world by watching it. But if you're like me you'll laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more after that.

This movie is frickin hilarious...

I'm a fan of Vince Vaughn and as far as I'm concerned he stole the show. Will Farrell was also quite funny but I'm not into his style of comedy as much. I really feel like going and watching Swingers and Made again just to see Vaughn crack more jokes. If you like low brow humor and aren't easily offended go see this when you want a laugh.

And for all you Seinfeld fans out there. The 1995 episode involving the phrase "Spongeworthy" has been getting a lot of press recently due to the Today Sponge coming back on the market. I've been getting a kick out of all the news surrounding that, and thought you might too.

I'm going to try to make it to Tears of the Sun this weekend. I've read mixed things about it, but overall it seems like I'll enjoy the action and cinematography, which is enough to make it worth the trip.

I had another friend put in a request for comments tonight. I guess that means I'll have to actually sit down and put some work into making them happen. Maybe I'll have some time for that on Sunday...

That said I have a lot to talk about. So I'll just dive right in:

I saw The Life of David Gale last week. I went in without too many expectations since Roger Ebert gave it zero stars. Normally he doesn't give stuff zero stars unless it's really, really bad. But this time he broke form and got all riled up by personal stuff (being a journalist and his political views on the death penalty.) Anyway, the end is a bit ridiculous but I'd been warned so I didn't treat the rest of it too seriously. This meant I didn't enjoy the first two thirds of the movie as much as I could have (Kevin Spacey really is good) but I also wasn't really angry at the film for tanking in the last third.

Then because I'm a die hard Jet Li fan I had to go see another bad movie. Yes, I saw Cradle 2 the Grave (what that title has to do with the movie is beyond me...) For some reason Li hasn't really been able to do much in Hollywood. He did good work in Lethal Weapon 4 (side note: at the end when Mel and Danny decide to go try to beat up on Jet Li, I stop the movie and make up my own ending) and Romeo Must Die was actually pretty good. But his other efforts have been quite sad. Unfortunately, this latest one doesn't break that trend - It's absolutely ridiculous and silly. I was really just there for the Jet Li fights and those were at least passable (outside of the silly cage fight.) He did try a new gimmick in this one and kept his left hand in his pocket for the first half of the movie, fighting everyone with just his right hand - it was kind of cool. Bottom line: If you're that desperate for Jet Li action go find one of his Hong Kong movies you haven't seen yet.

Cradle 2 the Grave did have a fun San Luis Obispo moment. Once of the cage fighters (the guy losing the fight when they first walk in) is Chuck Liddell who runs SLO Kickboxing. He's also done some Ultimate Fighting Championship stuff and is kind of a scary guy.

Then last night I watched Road To Perdition, which was a MUCH better film. I actually think it's going to make it into my library when it drops in price (used copies.) The story wasn't anything remarkable or new, but not all stories have to be. The key is it was told excellently and I was in complete awe of the cinematography. This film is flat out gorgeous - and gets my seal of approval.

Lastly I have my rant of the evening. I watched the first half of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (the one with Kevin Costner) on DVD. This DVD is horrid. It feels like some guys put it together on their home PC or something. It would be a bit nerdy to really go into all the reasons it sucked, just know that it's bad. Of course, the movie being bad is a whole different subject (I have fun with it, but I know many don't.)

Have a good one.

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