Quick Reviews

Up - 8.5 - What a great, fun, devastatingly sad movie. I watched it twice in the first week I had it. It's a bit too formulaic to be considered "The Best", but it's right there with Wall-E, Nemo and Ratatouille towards the top of the Pixar canon.

Zombieland - 7.5 - I didn't love Shaun of the Dead, but this more earnest approach to zombies as comedy worked a lot better for me. Zombieland didn't quite have as much meat on the bone as something like District 9, but it was still lots of fun. Zombieland adds to what has already been a great year for mainstream movies: Star Trek, District 9, Harry Potter, Watchmen, The Hangover, I Love You Man and Funny People have all really been quite good. If the artsy-fartsy films this fall and winter come through - and it looks like they might - it could be a great year for movies in general.

Moon - 7.0 - The first hour was a tad too slow to let me give Moon more than a "standard seven", but I really did like the movie. It's the smartest, best-scripted science fiction movie I've seen in some time and a strong ending makes up for the slow start. Sam Rockwell gives a performance that is worthy of an Oscar nomination, but probably won't get one. 

*** Brace yourselves - Dorky statistical aside coming at you;

So far, I've seen 18 movies from 2009 and 13 (72%) of them have gotten a seven or higher. I'm probably getting soft in my old age, but that still compares favorably to last year when only 13 out of 28 (46%) got at least a seven. In fact, that's a Chi-squared of 2.97 and a p-value of 0.085 --- two more good movies and this year will officially be statistically superior to last. Exciting. Heh.

*** End of Stat Dork Blogging;

I also want to throw a book and album recommendation out there. The book is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. If you run at all, it is an absolute must read. If you don't run, it's just a run-of-the-mill great book well worth reading. It's hands down the best thing I've read this year.

The album is "I and Love and You" by the Avett Brothers. The Avetts are a NC band that my friends have been talking about (and I have been ignoring) for years. Well, per usual*, they were right and I was dumb. The album is absolutely great and is making a late surge in my album of the year rankings. Here's a video for the wonderfully melancholy title song:


* - This doesn't apply to Animal Collective, which shall always remain noise pollution.