You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it... I never saved anything for the swim back.

Gattaca is a wonderful science fiction movie. It embodies what I really like about the genre. Bad science fiction just does tired things with new technology or aliens and similar shenanigans. But good science fiction uses the freedom the have in world concept and setting to explore ideas in ways you can't do when you restrict your story to reality.

Here we get to see a visualization of a world where we map the genome and are capable of ultra-fast DNA analysis. This idea is scary when we think of the bad social things that come of it (which this movie focuses on.) But the movie also doesn't speak to all the good things this technology could do. If you were predisposed to heart conditions you could know in advance to watch carefully for problems, and build your exercise habits around strengthening your heart. Medicine already does this today with the importance they place in family histories.

Scientific progress is one of those classic double edged swords. It makes grand new things possible, but not all of those things are good. As a society we tend to be scared of the bad things new technology enables, but forget about the progresses we take for granted. It's a complicated area, but I'm always saddened when I see scientific progress hamstrung by politics and propaganda. Stem cell research is a wonderful example of this. I'm not even sure why some people are so against it, I don't understand what they're afraid of. But I know the amazing medical benefits that could come of it.

In the long run we benefit from scientific progress. As a society we're scared it will be used in bad ways, but that fear combined with our openness tend to keep it being used for good, beneficial things. If you ask me we should not restrict research and understanding, only the eventual uses. You never know what great things an unexpected breakthrough will allow us to accomplish. I'd argue that history shows us that the benefits of the good greatly outweigh the risks of the bad.

Nerd notes about this movie:

1. For a long time I thought Gattaca was a cool name, but didn't realize where it came from. Then one day it just hit me. Gattaca is made entirely of scientific names of the 4 bases all of DNA is built out of: G, A, T, and C. Just like computers represent everything in ones and zeros, our bodies represent our genetic code with incredibly long strings made just from those 4 bases.

2. I was happy to notice another Sports Night cast member. Jayne Brook plays Vincent's mother in this movie. She was also Dan's psychiatrist (Abby) on a few episodes in the second season of Sports Night.

Dances With Wolves. I am Wind In His Hair. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?

The special edition of Dances With Wolves was on sale for $10 at Borders so I bought it Friday. I watched it last night and today (it's long, at 3.5 hours) and was reminded of it's quality.

Watching special editions where they've added scenes into the original cut of the movie is always a bit strange for me. I tend to spend too much time thinking about which scenes are the new ones, how did it change. I do this because I want to compare the two, decide which I like more and why.

But with great movies there's really no need to do that. And this is a great movie. Some would call it slow, and it is, but it's not slow in a bad way. The subject of this movie is a different time and a different people. That time and those people existed at a different pace. I get a glace of this when I visit my family in small town Missouri, but I know the reality of the frontier was very different. The way life worked then is so different then the way life works now, it almost feels like if we were to meet there would be as much of a cultural devide as Jon Dunbar had when meeting the Sioux.

If this story was told in a vacuum it would be a mostly happy one. Yes, bad things happen, but the story of two cultures coming to together and understanding eachother, the story of genuine friendship, those are good stories. Unfortunately, this isn't a vacuum and there's a sad shadow hanging over the whole story.

As the viewer watches you may not know how the small story of this movie will end, be we know what happens in the tragic larger story.

My name is Joel Goodson, I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over $8,000 in one night. Time of your life, huh kid?

I decided to watch Risky Business again after all the talk of how The Girl Next Door was channeling it. I hadn't seen Risky Business in a long time and had forgotten several things about it. It is both more high school and darker then I remembered. A lot of people complained about The Girl Next Door saying it thrust these high school kids into the very dark world of pornography. But I contend that the world Joel delves into in Risky Business is much darker and much more dangerous in the way it's presented. Of course, this movie is also real in a way Girl Next Door is not. Girl really is Risky Business crossed with a teen comedy, while Risky Business has some funny moments but stays much more grounded in reality.

I suspect the passage of time has caused some to forget about this darkness, and they gave Girl a hard time about similar tones. Of course I can't escape the feel of this movie which leads us to believe that this kind of behavior could very easily have serious consequences if not for the main character's luck. Girl never really suggested that very bad things would happen to the lead in the same way.

This is one of the fun parts of having a compuslive problem with buying DVDs. When I feel like watching somethng there's always lots of choices and classics like this one are lined up waiting for me on the shelf.

- This is it Joel, it's going to be gone soon.
- I know
- What do we do?
- Enjoy it

My Dad's been bugging me about it for a few months, so I finally saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tonight. It was still playing in a couple of theaters, but I figured tonight was my last chance before the Memorial Day movies open tomorrow and push it out of the theaters for good. I was confident I would like it, and Dad's recommendation added to that. I wasn't disappointed.

I have to agree with Orson Scott Card that this movie is Science Fiction. I think Sci-Fi is really misunderstood by a lot of people. They think it's just a fun ride, like an action movie set in the future. Sure, a lot of Sci-Fi is like that, but really good Sci-Fi is more. It's a genre that allows the author to break the rules. You can make up outlandish premises and are not bound to our current world or our current technology. This allows us to ask questions about the human condition in a way that isn't really possible if we stay within traditional bounds.

This movie did that excellently. I know there was a big love story in here, and there's a lot about if people are right for eachother and fate and second chances. But for me the big thing I'm thinking about is what makes us who we are? My answer is we're a composite of our experiences. So the idea of haphazardly erasing those experiences is destructive to who we are, it would change us. That's what I've been thinking about for the last few hours.

It helps that it was written, directed, and acted extraordinarily well. This story as told is incredibly complicated (but could be simply summed up in a 5 minute version,) Yet through this complexity we're not confused. We know what's going on, we watch confusing and complex ideas presented to us in a way that's easy to understand. It takes real talent to make that happen.

This just continues to solidify my respect for Charlie Kaufman.

It's my party
And I'll cry if I want to.

I've been pretty irritable at work all week which made me a little worried because yesterday was my birthday and I wanted to be sure to enjoy it. Fortunately I have great friends who took me out and showed me a good time. Too add to the fun Lisa's birthday (one of my best friends) was also yesterday. We joined forces and went out to dinner and spent the rest of the night at Kells (one of my favorite bars) with a bunch of our mutual friends.

A big thanks to Mike, Colleen, Stacey, Richie, Bubba, Dan, Sharalee and Kate for coming out last night and getting me to drink way more then I should on a school night. Nothing like a night of fun to forget the troubles of work. Special thanks go to Bubba for extending his trip one night to be there, he was feeling that decision this morning as he left for the airport at 6:15.

All I ever really want for my birthday is to go out and have a good time with my friends, and last night was perfect. Thanks guys!

- You WILL go out there.
- I won't and nothing you say will make me.
- The show must go on.
...Damn you.

Galaxy Quest was a cheap impulse buy for me last week. And it's served as great low brow entertainment for me. I forgot how much fun this movie is. They have a great ability to pick at the Star Trek plot and story conventions, while still acting them out on another level. It's just cool.

I think you have to be a fan of Star Trek (especially the original season) to enjoy this movie to the fullest. But it's both fun and funny even without the inside jokes.

Who ever said I wanted to be a part of your family?
You did! When you said "I do."
Well there's some fine print for you.

Shrek 2 was spectacular. I haven't had that much fun watching a movie in a long time. In addition to lots of more standard comedy fair there was a super high density of movie and culture references, which I love. The jokes came fast and were very funny. And it just kept getting better: the "cops" sequence, Mission Impossible spoof, and final action sequence were amazing. I'l definitely watch this one many more times.

It's Puss and Donkey time y'all.

Principal Skinner: It offends me as a veteran of the only war the United States has ever lost.
Homer: So Far

The Simpsons took some digs at the current culture of hyper-patriotism tonight. My favorite line is above, and went by so fast it was easy to miss. I guess that's why I liked it so much - quick paced, understated humor does well by me.

My love of Satire is well known, so I've always been a Simpsons fan. But I find I haven't been watching it these days as much as I used to. I think it just got tired for me. And even tonight's episode with the good digs at establishment feels like an act that has run it's course and is just going through the motions now. Although my second favorite line was what caused me to tune in tonight, it was on radio advertisements today:

(The Simpsons are escaping from Alcatraz.)
Lisa: We'll swim to San Fransisco
Homer: What do you think I'm Mr Moneybags? We're swimming for Oakland!

[You shoot] like an American: fire lots of bullets and hope one of them hits the target.

One of the great advantages of Netflix is the marginal cost for watching a movie is zero. So I'm not afraid to rent movies I expect to be terrible. Now, I don't just go and rent any bad movie - it has to have another draw. Typically they're the ones from genre's I try to support, like Science Fiction or Comic Book movies.

In this spirit I got The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen today. Wow, what a bad movie. The biggest problem for me is they were just making things up as they go along. I don't mind fantastical premises, but if you're going to do fantastical things you have to set up your premises and stick with them. This movie just kind of does stuff because it thinks it will be cool. I guess there are times I can deal with that too, but the movie has to be good and engaging to make me ignore that stuff. Let's just say I had no interest in suspending disbelief for this one.

Of course I could have missed some things, as I made liberal use of the fast forward button in the second half of the movie.

Many a native will deny that there are any rules, insisting that everyone drinks what they like in Britain and that he drinks pints of lager only because it is thirst-quenching and he happens to like the taste (just as teenagers claim that they wear the latest street-fashion item because it is comfortable)

Sort of an off topic post today. Other blogs pointed me to two very cool sites yesterday that I thought I'd share.

The first is Passport to the Pub: A Guide to British Pub Etiquette written by some anthropologists at Britain's Social Issues Research Centre. I lived in London for a few months and spent quite a bit of time in British pubs - a lot of this resonated with me. Plus, much of it works well for bars in this part of the world too. My favorite thing about it is the writing style - it's written by anthropologists as a real anthropology paper.

The second is a very cool music site. Music Plasma will take a musical artist and graphically show you what other artists are related (in musical style terms) and their relative popularity. I'm not sure how useful it is, but it's a slick interface and fun to play with. Go over there, type in some of your favorite artists, and see what comes out.

You're stepping off of concrete ground and into an element that is always changing and moving and surrounding you - and it feels good.

There's really no reasonable measure that would call me a "real" surfer. I'm more of a fish. I love being in the water, and in the end surfing is great, but I'm also happy in rivers, lakes, and even, if I'm desperate - pools. I do really miss surfing though. There are surf spots you can get to from Seattle, but they're only for the hard core. It's about a two hour drive, and the water is exceptionally cold. It's clear that I miss it though, when I was in LA for the World Cup in the fall I was in the water every day.

All this nostalgia happened because I just watched Step Into Liquid. This is a spectacular surfing documentary, and for someone like me who just a casual surfer it makes me want to quit my job, move to San Diego, buy a surf board, and figure out the rest as I go along. But then I remember that I have other outlets for the surfer inside of me. That's really what rafting is for, which is a good fit for me since I've always had a greater connection with rivers then oceans.

But rafting and surfing are very different. Surfing is a personal thing, where you have this intimate connection with the water. In rafting you're perched on top of this big raft, typically with a group of people. I always want to jump off the raft and just be in the water, swim the rapids myself. I might get into kayaking for that connection, but there you have half your body locked into a shell. That doesn't seem too appealing to me, since I'm the guy who likes body-surfing over any other form since it's just me and the water, I don't even like having a board along. I think the right answer is to tag along on raft trips and swim a LOT.

Clearly, this was a good movie. I can't get surfing out of my head. But this movie goes beyond reinvigorating my inner surfer. It presents the core of surfing, and tries to combat the surf bumb stereotype. The thesis is that surfing makes people happy, so it's a good thing. In addition to various "real" surfers, we get to see the happiness that surfing brings to young kids in Vietnam, or how it can help to bring together Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. There's a great dichotomy between these uplifting human stories and the terrifying shots of huge wave surfing. And it's all filmed with incredible beauty.

I skipped rafting today to get some rest, and now I wish I hadn't - I want to be in the water...

That's why when I have kids, every time we drive by a fast food place I'm going to punch my kid in the face.

I've been working over the last year or so to improve my diet. I used to eat a fair amount of fast food, and I continue to have fast food cravings from time to time. One of my goals in watching Super Size Me was to curb those cravings for a long, long time. I'm pretty sure it was successful (only time will tell for sure.)

Super Size Me is getting a lot of press for the stunt part of the movie; a guy eats nothing but McDonalds foods for a month. But it's actually a whole documentary about obesity, our diet as Americans, and fast food with the stunt part intertwined in it. This works really well, because while the documentary parts are good (if unremarkable) the stunt parts are the really powerful parts of this movie. But the stunt parts couldn't survive on their own, they need to be broken up, and the documentary works really well for that.

It was amazing to see what McDonalds food did to this guy's health (in fairness it wasn't just McDonalds, he also completely stopped exercising.) He had a hard time climbing stairs, his mood was terrible except when he was eating, his girlfriend complained about their sex life (fairly graphically on screen too, she was brave) and his doctors couldn't believe what was happening. His doctors actually started to seriously worry about his health and strongly suggested he stop the experiment after about 20 days, when he refused he just got a list of symptoms that would warrant an immediate trip to the nearest ER. Scary stuff.

What is perhaps more scary is while I was watching this whole thing and getting utterly disgusted with fast food I got a couple of fast food cravings. Those high sugar, high sodium foods are wired into my brain deeply enough that while my conscious is repulsed by them and the idea of what they mean to my body, my subconscious is doing a Homer Simpson style "hmmmmm, cheeseburger..." We train ourselves on this food, and it triggers the right parts of our brains to build a bit of an addiction. They talk about this in the movie and I agree with a lot of it.

Things get a little too disgusting in a few places. We see Spurlock (the guy eating all the McDonalds) throw up early on in a pretty graphic way after trying to eat an entire super sized double quarter pounder with cheese meal. Then later on we're treated to more of a gastric bypass surgery then I'd care to see. Aside from those two though the repulsing things in this film aren't visual, they're thinking about the awful treatment this guy is giving his body.

My favorite stat: he gained 17 pounds in his first 12 days. The first time he got weighed the fitness people who had just weighed him six days earlier couldn't believe what they saw and recalibrated the scale to be sure they were getting real results. It was crazy.

If you're interested in removing fast food from your diet, or just want to focus on being healthier, Super Size Me should definitely help to scare you onto the right track. I'm tempted to buy this on DVD when it comes out and just watch it whenever I get a fast food craving. Let's change my associations with fast food from pleasure to repulsion.

Look in my eyes, I am the only mirror you're ever gonna need.

I thought The Cooler was going to be a fun character ride. It starts out with William H. Macy having supernatually bad luck, but the premise is he falls in love and his luck goes from terrible to great. This poses problems at work though, since his job is to be around people who are winning so his bad luck rubs off and they start losing.

Early on this fun ride theory was affirmed. The colors are bright, the style of the shots when he first shows his bad luck in action fit as well. But it doesn't take too long for the movie to turn dark. Pretty soon while the colors are still light and some of the moments are light, this ends up being a dark, dark Vegas movie. Alec Baldwin (who was deservedly nominated for a Supporting Actor Acedemy Award ) gets some emotional sympathy for his character by longing for the old school ways before the camp took over Vegas. But then we see that he's also a fan of the old school ways of dealing with people who owe debts.

The three main characters (Macy, Baldwin, and the girl) are all fundamentally depressing. They're lonely, and don't really have lives I envy. This leads to part of the darkness, especially since Macy and the girl's romantic love seems to mostly be built on a basis of the two of them being the first people in a long time to treat the other like a decent person. It's sad when that is dramitic improvement from the usual.

But as a dark movie about Vegas and this wierd guy as a cooler, it's excellent. Just don't expect it to be uplifting.

Side note: I also had some trouble watching Ron Livingston in this role. He's so ingrained in my head as his character from Office Space that I have a hard time watching him in anything else now. I've been working through Band Of Brothers where I've had the same problem (I TiVo'd the series when the History Channel played them a few weeks ago and have been slowly watching them.)

This is bad, you don't know. The chain reaction of calls this is going to set off. New York, Long Island, Florida... It's like the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately, nobody ever disappears.

Well, it's been almost a month since I went to New York. I've been meaning to write it up ever since, but it always seemed like such a big job, and that was intimidating. It turns out my fears were well founded, this write up took about five hours. But I'm glad I did it.

Just be careful as you venture in to read it all. It's quite long. So without further ado:

My New York trip report.

Don't worry, there's nothing to distract you. Not one of those Marymount boys is cute.

Mean Girls is another one of those high school comedies where all the characters aren't just regular cliche's, they're extra special, super strong, cliche's. This is a well established trend, and anyone coming who has a problem with movies that start with this premise need to stay far, far away and have no business commenting on the quality of this movie (you aren't the target audience.)

Me, I don't have issues with this. Granted, movies with these kinds of cliche's sort of put a glass ceiling on their potential quality. But the ceiling is high enough that if they're done well, as this one is, they're still fun. The weird part about this movie is it mostly exists in the realm of dialog comedy, but a couple of time delves into gag physical quality. Those times just feel a little out of place and don't really work within the rest of the framework. I felt like the movie was trying too hard to get a couple extra laughs, but it didn't need them - I was laughing enough as it was.

I went with Lisa on recommendation from a big group of gay guys she'd been hanging out with over the weekend who said the movie was spectacular. I wouldn't go quite that far, although the theater was pretty empty when we saw it and I suspect this is a movie that would get bolstered by a crowd. I felt a little self conscious laughing at some of the less tasteful jokes, I always feel better about that if there's a lot of other people laughing at them too.

I also liked the movie for some offbeat and dark comic moments. This one isn't afraid of much, and some of the jokes are pretty harsh. As and example, one of my favorite lines was:

And on the third day God created the Remington Bolt Action Rifle so man could fight the dinosaurs, and homosexuals.

Also, one of the characters wears a shirt that "I See Ugly People" - they don't show more then that but if we continue out the rest of the movie quote it would read: "they walk around just like everyone else, they don't even know they're ugly." Classic. Other solid scenes are the scream when Regina realizes she's been had, and then a moment later her standing at the top of the stairs surveying the chaos she's caused.

If nothing else Lindsey Lohan got to show some talent. She's got some chops and should be a fixture in the movies for a while, especially if she can get and deliver on a solid meaty role soon (instead of teen comedies.)

Tweeder, you think you'll enjoy prison?

Varisty Blues has made it to the cheapo bin at the local Fred Meyer, so I picked up a copy today. Then, because I was tired from playing football this morning I vegged out and watched it this afternoon.

Pure ridiculousness, but lots of fun. The best part is how it exists inside a constrictive genre and formula, but still stays somewhat original. That's impressive on it's own. Plus, it has good eccentric characters with Tweeder being my clear favorite.

But this movie also has some historical significance. It was the first mainstream movie produced by MTV Films that got some traction with mainstream moviegoers. MTV Films has since gone on to release some important movies (Election and Better Luck Tomorrow) along with some fun movies (Save the Last Dance and The Wood.)

He (Charlie) had only two ways home: death or victory.

That quote is really the best explanation of why invaders don't do so well. You just can't get that kind of dedication out of a visiting army. People have a whole different level of commitment when they're defending their home. In Apocolypse Now Redux they talk about this a bit in relation to the war in Vietnam. But I couldn't help thinking about our current situation in Iraq.

I'd never actually watched all of Apocalypse Now befoere. I'd seen bits and pieces, but not from start to finish. I didn't really do that this time. The Redux version is so long (3 hours, 20 minutes) and dark I didn't really have the heart ot watch it all at once. Instead I did it in parts all week.

My favorite part about this war movie is it's a journey (literatively and figuratively.) It helps that it's based on a literary classic (I'm even tempted to reread Heart of Darkness now.) The journey is such a great way to expose character development, especially in film. It's easy to have the new environments the characters travel to parallel their development (this is also used extensively in one of my favorite books: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintennance.) The Redux version does tend to drag a bit, especially around the scenes with the French, but overall this is a masterpiece that really needs to be watched.

It's also fun to watch some actors we know well in much younger roles. Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburn, and Dennis Hopper. IMDB tells me Harrison Ford was in it too, but I missed him. The strangest for me was Martin Sheen, both because I see him a lot on The West Wing these days and Charlie Sheen looks a whole lot like his dad did when he was younger.

The difference in feel between the early scenes (the helicopter calvarly attack) and later scenes (around Kurtz) are shocking - and truly a masterpiece of film.

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