Wildfiring

2011 Books

2012-02-05T21:46:00.000-05:00

After failing to do so for 4 or 5 years, I finally completed 2 books a month last year. Actually, I read/listened to 29 books total. Most of the books were good, but my favorites were probably Wise Man's Fear and The Art of Fielding.

Here's the full list:

The Wind-up Girl
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Mockingjay
Name of the Wind (*)
Wise Man's Fear
Once a Runner
The City and the City
Play Their Hearts Out
Blood, Bones and Butter
Ship Breaker
Einstien's Dreams
Bossypants - Tina Faye
Game of Thrones (*A)
Clash of Kings (*A)
World War Z
A Visit from the Good Squad
Unbroken
Feast For Crows (*A)
Dance With Dragons (A)
The Rites and Wrongs of Janet Wills
Night Circus
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (A)
Ready Player One
Girl who played with Fire (A)
Forever War
The Art of Fielding
Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (A)

* indicates a re-read

A indicates an audiobook

Top TV from 2011

2012-02-05T21:26:00.000-05:00

Breaking Bad
Parks and Recreation
Justified
Community
Game of Thrones
Homeland
Louie
Men of a Certain Age
Downton Abbey
Archer

I'm working my way through Season 5 of Friday Night Lights now. Season 4 was outstanding and would've been #3 or 4 on this list. I'm also behind on Chuck (would be around #8), 30 Rock (around #9) and Modern Family (#11).

Top Albums of 2011

2012-02-05T21:09:00.002-05:00

I've only found 3 albums from 2011 that I really love. The rest are pretty good (with some great songs), but not in my regular rotation.

Bon Iver - Self-titled
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Adele - 21

Honorable Mentions in alphabetical order:

Cults - Cults

Drake - Take Care

Decemberists - King is Dead

Radiohead - King of Limbs

Telekinesis - 12 Desperate straight lines

Tune-Yards - WHOKILL

Yelle - Safari Disco Club

Top Movies of 2011

2012-02-05T21:01:00.000-05:00

Here are the movies I watched from 2011. What a blah year.

A Separation - 9.0
Moneyball - 8.0
50/50 - 8.0
Source Code - 7.5
Beginners - 7.5
The Artist - 7.5
Bridesmaids - 7.0
Warrior - 7.0
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - 7.0
Super 8 - 7.0
Margin call - 7.0
Descendants - 7.0
Midnight in Paris - 7.0
Win Win - 6.5
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 6.5
War Horse 6.0
Real Steel - 6.0
Ghost Writer - 6.0
Harry Potter 7.2 - 6.0
X-Men: First Class - 6.0
Cedar Rapids - 6.0
Crazy Stupid Love - 6.0 Dolphin Tale - 6.0
Drive - 5.5
Our idiot brother - 5.5
Captain America - 5.5 Contagion - 5.0
Kung Fu Panda 2 - 5.0
Freedom Writers - 5.0
Lincoln Lawyer - 5.0
Kings of Pastry - 5.0
Bad Teacher - 4.0
Terrible Bosses - 3.5
Thor - 3.0
Hangover 2 - 2.5

Sashaism

2010-07-23T12:22:00.000-04:00

"My mind is a village, and my body is a city"

- Municipal planner Sasha (8:00 pm, 7/23/2010)

Inception - 8.5

2010-07-18T23:44:00.004-04:00

Christopher Nolan's new movie is a pretty good approximation of what Memento would look like if a $100 million special effects budget and some of the best actors in the world. This, of course, is a very good thing. Inception isn't flawless --- there are stretches, especially towards the end, that are a bit too talk-y --- but it's damn good, and a whole lot of fun. A relatable sci-fi storyline is paired with solid performances, a good-enough script, breath-taking special effects and some of the best editing/cinematography I've ever seen (it's a lock to win that Oscar), and the result is Nolan's best movie to date.

Along with Memento, Inception is Nolan's 2nd great movie. Add to that 4 very good films (the two Batman movies, the under-rated Insomnia and the over-rated, but still good, Prestige) and it becomes pretty clear that he belongs right up there with the Mexican trio of Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro and Inarritu in the discussion of the the best young directors working today.

Top Albums of 2010 (So Far)

2010-07-08T19:17:00.000-04:00

The National - High Violet
Local Natives - Gorrilla Manor
Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
Future Islands - In Evening Air
The Morning Benders - Big Echo
LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Vampire Weekend - Contra
Sleigh Bells - Treats
Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Menomena - Mines
The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
Hot Chip - One Life Stand
Hold Steady - Heaven is Wherever
Spoon - Transference

Top TV Shows From The Past Year

2010-06-28T00:37:00.001-04:00

Breaking Bad
Party Down
Community
Lost
Treme
Chuck
Modern Family
Better Off Ted
30 Rock
How I Met Your Mother
Glee
The Office

Post

2010-05-07T16:49:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about posting a post that said there would be no more posts here, but instead, I am posting this post just to say I was thinking about writing that post.

In other words, there may be more stuff here eventually, but for now, I am feeling swamped and un-bloggy, so I'm not going to worry about thinking of stuff to (not) put up here for a while.

April Fools?

2010-04-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

New month, new commitment to blogging. Going to take another run at the post a day thing, but failing that, I'll at least try to get back to semi-regular posting. (And if I fail, we can always call this post an April fools joke).

Installing

2010-03-04T15:01:00.000-05:00

I've spent most of my day re-setting up my XP virtual machine that I use for work (The old one died along with my new computer's hard drive). It surprised me that I only really needed 10 things to have a fully functional work computer running on my macbook. Here they are, in order of installation:

VMWare Fusion
Windows XP
Firefox
AdBlock Plus (Firefox plug-in)
XMarks (Firefox plug-in)
Dropbox
Symantec Antivirus
Microsoft Office (unfortunately, this is still a necessity)
F5 Client (To connect to the server at work)
VNC client (To control my machine at work. I'll run SAS, but not much else from there).

I also run R and a few other programming things from the Macbook, but that honestly pretty much covers it.

More rambling

2010-03-03T16:37:00.000-05:00

More rambling today. Maybe some music tomorrow.

Bullets:

Power is back on! We've got internet and phone and running water and everything. Still waiting for gas (and thus hot water) and the elevator, but at this point I'll take it. Plus, not having gas gives us an excuse to put off grocery shopping and eat out one more time, so that is always good.
Big aftershock today. It was a 5.6 or so, and the building shook and creaked, but that's about it. A week ago it would've freaked me out, now it is just an annoying reminder of last weekend.
The hard drive on my 6-month old officially macbook died yesterday. The most annoying thing is that I recently formatted my old macbook, so I didn't have much backed up. In the end, I lost all my music and a bunch of work I'd done on a save the date I was putting together for the wedding. Pretty annoying, but thanks to dropbox (which I highly recommend), I didn't lose anything for work. Anyway, I talked to mac and I'm going to have to send the computer back to the states with my parents for repairs which means I'll be working on the old computer for a month or more. Annoying.

Quick Update

2010-03-02T10:49:00.000-05:00

After yesterday's opus, this will be quick since, really, there is nothing much to report. I'm writing this from Starbucks since we still don't have power (or water or gas or internet) at the apartment. We did get to shower for the first time since the earthquake at a friend's house yesterday, so that was pretty sweet. Alexa is back to work today. My new Macbook decided to die of non-earthquake related causes, so I'm here checking email and researching how one brings a macbook back to life. It has a bunch of stuff I'd rather not lose on it, so I don't really want to format and reinstall, but nothing else has worked so far. Anyway, I'm sitting here downloading some stuff for work that can be done on the netbook without internet. We emptied the fridge yesterday, so I'll probably pick up some lunch and head home in a bit and see if I can bring the mac back to life.Fingers crossed. OK, that's all for now, more tomorrow probably.

The Quake

2010-03-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Hi folks,

First and foremost, we're doing well here. Nothing to worry about.

Second, Thanks for all of your calls and messages over the weekend. We really appreciate it.

So, here's the story. We were in bed when the earthquake hit Friday night. I was just getting to sleep, when the building started rocking gently. We thought it was just another tremor at first, but after 10 seconds or so the shaking got pretty violent, and we decided to get out of our building. We live on the 7th floor of a 30 year old building which is a bit of a mixed blessing since the building survived the previous earthquake in 1985 intact, but it's also, well, old. Anyway, I grabbed the cat and we ran down the stairs barefoot in our pajamas as the building shook. The only sign of damage on the way down was pieces of plaster on the floor, cracks up and down the walls and the sound of breaking glass in people’s apartments. The cat, by the way, provided the worst injuries of this whole affair by creating a nice grid of scratches on my chest and stomach. By the time we got downstairs the shaking had pretty much stopped. The quake itself was scary, but neither of us freaked out too much … Well, Alexa did a little, but not nearly as much as I would’ve predicted beforehand. All told, it was more unpleasant than traumatizing and neither of us seems to be dwelling too much on the quake itself.

We waited downstairs with most of our neighbors for 10 minutes or so (the scientifically proven time to determine if a building is safe) and then went back upstairs to grab our flashlight, shoes, cash and passports. There was some broken stuff that had fallen off the walls and broken glass in the kitchen, but in general our apartment seemed ok. With just the light of the flashlight it was hard to tell. After 10 minutes of packing, we set out to Alexa's grandmother's (Nana) apartment to make sure she was ok.

Nana lives about a mile away, and there were lots of people out both walking and driving way too fast through dead stoplights as we walked. People were freaked out, but there was really no looting or anything scary like that in our area. We heard that the earthquake was an 8.5 or so, so we knew it was big, but other than that we didn’t know much about the details until the next morning. We got to Nana's and went up to her apartment (9th floor – my calves are incredibly sore from all the stairs) to check on her. She was fine if a little freaked out. She told us she had waited out the earthquake in bed with a pillow over her head. There was more broken stuff at Nana's place (due to the fact that there is more breakable stuff). A few vases and light fixtures broke, so there was lots of glass lying around and some bookshelves had fallen over. Her building was in better shape than ours though, with almost no cracks in the walls and only a few of plaster on the floor. We spent the next few hours cleaning up, then I slept for a bit (only to be woken up by the biggest of the constant aftershocks at 6 am). Nana's phone was still working (thank goodness) so we managed to call the states and let our parents know we were ok. Then we cleaned some more (professional carpenter Jeremy rebuilt the bookshelf) and headed back to our place to check out the damage. Back at out apartment, there was still no electricity, water, or gas and we saw that there were pretty significant cracks in the walls, but it looks to me (professional engineer that I am) like it's just the drywall and not anything that would affect structural integrity. We're going to get a real engineer to take a look soon, but I'm not too worried. Clean up at our place took all of 20 minutes and then we slept for a few hours.
The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. I'd say 75% of the buildings in our area have power at this point, but us and Nana are in that unlucky powerless 25% (I'm writing this from a coffee shop filled with people on their way to work). Nana has gas for cooking and water, but our apartment doesn't have either. So we mostly just slept and ate and cleaned and read and cursed the aftershocks and checked up on friends her in Chile and talked on the phone. Alexa and I wandered around a bit while out to buy bottled water and saw lots of broken glass and cracked plaster, but nothing overly dramatic in our neighborhood. In general, things are ok.

One of the weird things about this experience has been the fact that we've gotten most of our news over the phone from people in the US. The pictures painted in the news ("The Earthquake in Chile was 1000 times larger than the one that killed 200,000 people last month in Haiti") are considerably more grim than what we're experiencing here. In Santiago at least, most of the damage seems to have been to buildings and infrastructure and not to people. Six hours to the south, in Concepcion, things seem considerably worse with over 700 deaths reported, but we're experiencing that in the same way you are all, through the news.

So, that is the story from here. Thank you all again for the messages over the weekend. Alexa and I both really do appreciate it. I'll be checking email sporadically until our power returns, at which point, I should be able to return to life more or less as usual. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything changes. Until then, take care and enjoy your stable ground :)

Sincerely,
Jeremy and Alexa

Crazy Heart - 7.0

2010-02-25T22:13:00.000-05:00

I liked Crazy Heart and would watch it again (mainly because I am a sucker for this formula), but honestly the movie is all Jeff Bridges. As such, in lieu of a real review, here are 5 Reasons this movie wins The Dude an Oscar.

First and foremost, he made a relationship between an old drunk and a Maggie Gyllenhaal seem believable. Hell, that alone gets him a nomination. This is the rough equivalent of me picking up Halle Berry at a bar, and he pulled it off. I am impressed.
He can sing! Who knew?
Biographies (Fictional or non) win Oscars these days (2004 - Ray, 2005 - Capote, 2006 - Last King of Scotland, 2007 - There will Be Blood, 2008 - Milk), and this is most definitely a biography.
Just like last year, it's a mediocre crop of Best Actor nominees and Bridges has to be the sentimental favorite. He did give us The Dude after all.
Bridges carried this movie in a way the other nominee's didn't have to. I thought Clooney was excellent, but the actresses and script in Up In The Air were top notch as well. Renner was great too, but Hurt Locker was the best movie of the year. Invictus sucked (and I didn't think Freeman was that great in it). Haven't seen Single Man, but then again, neither has anyone else, so that knocks that one out. Without Bridges, Crazy Heart would've been a complete disaster - with him it was pretty damn good. That puts him over the top.

Alexa Links

2010-02-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

One and Two. G'night all. More substantial post tomorrow. Promise.

LWOTB

2010-02-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

Alexa's buddy Fritz has a new band called "Long Walks on the Beach". And I can confidently say that I like their entire catalog. Of course that is currently only 2 songs and a ringtone, but still, it's a pretty awesome start. Check out the music here or befriend them on Facebook.

5 Good Things

2010-02-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

This restaurant. Order ceviche and whatever whole fish they're offering.
This book, American Gods by Niel Gaiman
This Roger Ebert profile in Esquire
This Vampire Weekend album which I finally listened to.
This Pitchfork recommendation, which reminds me of a more upbeat Grizzly Bear album.

Random Youtubing

2010-02-19T19:14:00.000-05:00

Come on down

2010-02-17T14:49:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to come visit?

Posty post post

2010-02-16T22:48:00.002-05:00

Oops, just about broke my post-a-day resolution today. Actually, I think I've already broken it with post-midnight posts in Chile. It's still Tuesday in the US though, so I'm going to count it.

So, uhm, content. Here's a song. While I certainly agree with the central sentiment, I can't decide if I like the song ... Anyone have an informed opinion I can steal?

Maps redefined

2010-02-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

Rapture

2010-02-15T14:28:00.000-05:00

Not that rapture, this one:

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

I'm just jealous I didn't come up with it first.

(h/t Anisa)

Invictus - 4.0

2010-02-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

Work to do, so this is going to be short. Luckily this was a movie that doesn't deserve much more than a sentence or two anyways. So here goes nothing:

Sure, the production values were fine, but it takes a special skill to take the excitement out of an event that was as exciting as this must've been, but Eastwood manages to do just that in Invictus. You'll get as much out of looking at the above poster for 2 hours as you will watching the movie.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

2010-02-05T13:40:00.002-05:00

Possible subject lines for an email about viral load in asthmatics:

Good idea - Viral Summary for Steering Committee Meeting
Bad idea - Virus

Guess which one I picked ...

Groundhog Day - 9.5

2010-02-02T11:45:00.001-05:00

Real life is busy today, Alexa is flying off to Mexico (we think) and then to Paris. I've got piles of work to do. We're trying to figure out wedding stuff and plan a trip for when my parents are in Chile. We've got an episode of Chuck to watch and two hours of LOST coming. All of that, however, does not excuse me from my most important commitment of the day, which is playing in the background as I type. I really do love this movie.

Home Cooked Meals (but not really)

2010-01-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

Top 5 Restaurants I Miss from NC
1) Carburritos
2) Q-Shack
3) Fosters
4) Sitar India Palace
5) Chick-Fil-A

As you can see, it's not the fancy restaurants I crave; there is plenty of good quality upscale food in Santiago. It's the quick meals and the ethnic food that are lacking here. OK, I just made myself hungry. Time for breakfast.

Comments

2010-01-27T06:59:00.005-05:00

Bloggy Housekeeping - So the site I was using for comments (Haloscan, blargh) died. I was annoyed with it anyway since ads had magically appeared in recent months, but was too lazy to do anything. Well, now I don't have much choice, and since there is no way (or at least no easy way) to import those comments to Blogger, we're going to lose all the old comments. Annoying, to be sure, but not the end of the world. Anyway, I'm going back to the standard blogger comments, which I still don't love, but are much better than it used to be. If anyone has any problems commenting, let me know.

Oh, and PS, if anyone wants to follow the comments in their RSS feed. Here is the new link.

Sherlock Holmes - 4.0

2010-01-26T07:47:00.003-05:00

Man, what a dud this movie was --- and an unnecessary dud at that. All of the pieces were there for it to be awesome:

The characters were good. It is freakin' Sherlock Holmes after all. Not exactly rocket science there.
The casting, for the leads at least, was perfect, and their acting was solid.
The sets from early industrial London looked pretty sweet as well.

So, you tack on a good villain, a few good action scenes and bada-bing, you've got a hit, right? Wrong.

So, what went wrong? Well, the script just plain sucked. The pacing was terrible, the love interests were poorly developed and basically completely unnecessary. The villains were uniformly ho-hum. Also the best two action scenes, the rather awesome sequences where Holmes mentally previews how he is going incapacitate the guys he is fighting, took place in the first 30 minutes which made the following hour and a half of dullness even harder to bare. Oh, and them there was the worm-infested cherry on top: the two minute there-is-no-way-in-hell-you-could've-known-this-at-the-time-but-this-is-how-he-did-it wrap up at the end of the movie which just royally pissed me off.

So, yeah, my advice, save yourself 2 hours and skip the movie. Just watch this instead:

Or even better yet, watch a fight scene from Ritchie's good movie.

?

2010-01-25T03:17:00.001-05:00

Why is freecell not preinstalled on Macs? Actually installing freecell is just too terrible to consider. It would be taking an proactive interest in my own future demise - like keeping a noose around just in case - but really, what else I am supposed to do when awake at 5:12 am?

Sleep Talking Man

2010-01-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am jacking a link from VSL for the 2nd time this week. No, I don't care, because this dude is hilarious. His wife records stuff he says while he sleeps. Here are my 10 favorite quotes:

"Dogs' scrotums. They stretch."
"Pork chops are most satisfying. Mmmmmmm. Dangle them from the ceiling."
"Oompa loompas don't sing in heaven. They tidy up the clouds."
[yelled upon waking] "COCK HUNTER!"
"I haven't put on weight. Your eyes are fat."
"Elephant trunks should be used for elephant things only. Nothing else."
"Well that's just great. Peanut butter in my crack. Goddamnit."
"Don't leave the duck there. It's totally irresponsible. Put it on the swing, it'll have much more fun."
"Oh, we're going to be late for the pogo ballet, stop it!"
"So this is what it feels like to be a gummy bear... I can't walk though, I have to rock... I think i'll call myself BerNARD. Not BERnard. BerNARD. And I'll be a golden gummy bear."

Listless

2010-01-20T08:19:00.000-05:00

Wednesday is supposed to be list day here on wildfiring, but I'm a little bit annoyed with politics and busy with work and apparently lists are stupid. In short, I am listless. And list-less. If anyone has a good idea for a topic, go ahead and post it in comments (or on reader) and I'll see if I can come up with something before the end of the day.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - 6.0

2010-01-19T10:08:00.000-05:00

This is probably my 2nd favorite Wes Anderson movie (after Rushmore), and even though I really liked the animation, I'm applying my new rewatchability rule* here and giving it a 6.0. It's basically a comedy and there is pretty much no way I would ever watch it again. Hell, it took me 3 tries to get all the way through it the first time. Maybe, it's just that I'm a not-bitter-enough old man now, but the whole too-cool-(and-depressed)-for-school attitude that pervades every one of his movies just bugs me.

*-"If there is no chance I will re-watch a comedy, action or sports movie, it can't score a 7 or higher."

"Do situps until you start crying"

2010-01-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

This article in the NY Times about when to eat and drink for excercise was ok. My summary: "eat something small before you work out, drink during any exercise longer than an hour." That article was followed by 20 boring agreeable comments and then this, which made me laugh:

I eat when I’m hungry. I drink when I’m thirsty. I eat healthy food, and don’t bother dividing things into carbs, noncarbs etc. I exercise strenuously with both cardiovascular and strength training elements seven days a week, 365 days a year. I rarely cramp and have never been seriously injured.

With all due respect to Leslie Bonci and her peers, this “science” they’re marketing is only being bought because weak people can’t face the fact that there is only one way to achieve strength: pain. Muscle burning, lung ripping pain. You want a six pack? Do 5000 sit ups. Do sit ups until you start crying. You want to be fast? Run. Run until you feel like you’re going to puke. Do these things once a day, every single day, and within a year you will be what you want to be.

Sipping versus glupping. My God, you people are a joke.

All I know is that, if he isn't already, this guy most definitely has a future as either a) a personal trainer or b) a drill seargent.

Top 10+1 TV Shows from 2009

2010-01-13T07:36:00.001-05:00

Here's a ranking of the 11 shows I watched regularly last year

Mad Men - The wild swings in pacing and style are a bit much at times, but the quality is never effected. It's still the best around.
Battlestar Galactica - Also uneven (like always), but the high points in the last season (the coup especially) were spectacular.
Chuck - Not at all uneven. Every episode of Chuck is a pleasure.
Lost - The last season was generally really good, but it has gone pretty deep in to science fiction land and has given up whatever small amount of accessibility it had in the process. Of course, I'm a dork, so I'm ok with that.
30 Rock - Enter the sitcoms ... 30 Rock is the show I watch first every Friday and, therefore, the very likely the best comedy around.
Party Down - I watched the entire run of this show in an afternoon last spring or it might be ranked higher. There are only ten (uniformly hilarious) 30 minute episodes. There is no reason you shouldn't have watched every one of them by this time tomorrow.
Modern Family - Best new fall '09 show by an increasingly wide margin.
The Office - Everyone used to talk about feeling like they knew the characters in Cheers, so they kept watching even as the show started to suck in the last few years. Well, the Office doesn't suck, but I'm definitely watching more for the characters than for an overwhelming number of laughs at this point.
How I Met Your Mother - Wildly inconsistent. I love 2 of the cast members (NPH and Jason Segel) and hate all the rest, but the occasional brilliance is enough to keep me coming back.
Community - An amusing 30 minute pop-culture blast.
Damages - The second season was actually pretty dismal, imho. Not sure if we'll watch season 3 or not.

Where The Wild Things Are - 6.0

2010-01-12T22:56:00.004-05:00

Last review of the day, so factoid bullet review-time:

This movie could never live up to its preview.
I watched this today just after dealing with the aftermath of a stolen wallet. grr.
It took me 15 minutes or so to realize the monster was voiced by James Gandolfini ...
... after which I could only think of Tony Soprano when he spoke.
It was distracting.
I don't think I've ever read the book (Dad?). So minimal sentimentality for me.
I liked the way his imagination (scary) matched his personality (pissed), but ...
... I was surprised by how dark the tone was.
The puppet monster dudes looked neat.
It took me 3 sittings to finish the movie.
The first sitting gave Alexa one of her freaky shaky camera headaches.
Wins the "movie most likely freak your kids the fuck out" superlative.
I cried watching The Sword in the Stone at the theater when I was like 5. We left early.
I've got mixed feelings, but I don't think I'd re-watch WTWTA.
Still, it's a unique movie that some people would probably really like ...
... it just didn't quite work for me for whatever reason.

Man on Wire - 7.0

2010-01-12T22:37:00.000-05:00

I find writing about documentaries to be nearly impossible for a few reasons:

I generally only watch them if they get really good reviews.
I can't criticize a plot that has actually happened. (Otherwise Man On Wire would be borderline unbelievable).
They are generally equal parts education and entertainment. It's like reviewing a text book or an instruction manual or something.

Anyway, that is just a preface to say that a) Man on Wire was a pretty good documentary (duh), but not so good that I would re-watch it, and b) this review is going to be boring and, mercifully, short.

Big Fan - 4.0

2010-01-12T08:47:00.003-05:00

Big Fan was sitting near the top of my unseen 2009 movie list for months, but in retrospect, my enthusiasm was misplaced. Comedian Patton Oswalt plays a thoroughly un-funny NY Giants fan who gets beaten down by his favorite player - not to mention everyone else in his life - and then only has his life get worse from there. I guess the movie is supposed to be a commentary on the overzealous fans in today's world, but I just found it depressing. Even if guys like Oswalt's character exist, they aren't interesting enough to carry a movie. Also, while the twisty ending was definitely tense, it was also a tad manipulative. Boo.

This, by the way, was the third not-very-sporty sports movie I've watched that the Bill Simmons recommended in a recent column. He suggested Big Fan, Sugar, which was good, and The Damned United, which was kind of "meh", as alternatives to Blind Side and Invictus. I haven't seen Invictus, but in my book, Sugar is the only one of the three that approached Blind Side as drama, and none were all that close when it came to the actual depiction of the sport being played. While detailed character profiles of forgotten athletes (Sugar), coaches (Damned) and fans (Big Fan) are well and good, I also come in to a quote-unquote sports movie hoping to see the sport being played. I love the training scenes, the throw-away game footage and talking on the field and in the locker room, and all three of Simmons' picks largely ignored those aspect of the game.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

2010-01-06T07:14:00.002-05:00

Man, what a ho-hum year for music. I very nearly named this list my "10 least not favorite albums of 2009". Anyway, here it is, 3 albums I really liked and 7 more that range from pretty good to just ok.

Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Passion Pit - Manners
Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
Discovery - EP
Thermals - Now We Can See
Florence and the Machine - Lungs
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Girls - Album
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

An Education - 8.0 (And Others)

2010-01-05T18:22:00.001-05:00

OK, it's time for some quick hits after my longish Up In The Air write-up. By the way, check out the comments on that post for a really nice best actor of the decade analysis by Ben. Without further ado:

An Education - 8.0 - A movie that is just chock full of great characters and even better acting. I didn't really like the ending much, but when every single one of the performances in a movie is this good I can forgive an off-key scene or two. Hell, the acting was so good that I didn't see the (painfully obvious in retrospect) twist coming. This would be a top 5 caliber movie in most years, this year it's currently sitting at #6, which is a testament to the strength of 2009.

Sugar - 7.5 - New rule, if there is no chance I will re-watch a comedy, action or sports movie, it can't score a 7 or higher on my scale (I consider a 7 very good). This rule doesn't apply to dramas and documentaries since they can be too depressing to re-watch even when they are awesome (Precious is a good recent example). Now, Sugar. I'm immediately bending my just-created rule and giving it over a 7 even though I would never re-watch it, because, even though there is a sports facade here, this is really a drama pure and simple, and a pretty sad one at that. It's got more in common with Ramin Bahrani's work (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop) than any sports movie I've ever seen. Recommended.

The Invention of Lying - 5.5 - Ricky Gervais comedy that is amusing enough, but rarely laugh out loud funny. It's telling that a drowsy Alexa took a nap for the 2nd hour instead of finishing the movie (Note that she stayed up to finish An Education, which we started after midnight). I liked Ghost Town (Gervais' movie from last year) more.

The Damned United - 5.0 - Freakin' awesome title for a somewhat underwhelming sports movie (this one actually is a sports movie, btw). The acting was good with Frost (from Frost/Nixon) and Wormtail (from Harry Potter) as the leads, but the pacing was off and the 1970s English bromance at the center of the story was, well ... weird.

Up In The Air - 8.5

2010-01-05T09:11:00.007-05:00

So, yeah, Up In The Air is pretty much good as everyone says it is. It's a lock for a boatload of Oscar nominations. I'd say Clooney is a major favorite to win his second Oscar and first as a lead in a weak year for the category, and I wouldn't be at all surprised or disappointed if it won Best Picture as well. It's probably my second or third favorite movie of the year. Funny, timely, a little bit sad, little bit poignant, great ending yadda yadda yadda. Move along. No surprises. Nothing to see here.

What is more surprising is what an impressive actor George Clooney has become. With this performance, I think he edges past Leonardo DiCaprio as the best actor of the 2000s. In fact, since there isn't much more to say about Up in the Air (again, it's great), let's compare Leo and George* head to head, Sports Guy style:

Classic Performances: It's 2 to 2 here. Clooney has Up in the Air and Michael Clayton while Leo has The Departed and The Aviator. Honestly this is damn near a push. I think Clooney's movies are a bit better and he didn't have Scorcese directing him, but the degree of difficulty was so high for Leo in the Aviator that you have to give him an edge here.
Slight Edge: Leo

Other Movies: Clooney had 3 great performances (Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Oh, Brother) and 4 decent blockbusters (Oceans movies, the Perfect Storm). Leo had 1 great (Gangs of New York) and two good (Blood Diamond, Catch Me if You Can) perfomances, plus one well-recieved perfomance in a bad movie (Revolutionary Road). It's Clooney by a mile here.
Big Edge: Clooney.

Film Selection: Clooney seems to pick scripts, while Leo picks directors. I'd say the picking scripts is harder. However, Clooney's been in 2 or 3 bad movies (Leatherheads, Solaris, Oceans 12/13) while Leo has only been in 1 (The Beach), so I'll call it a push.
Edge: Tie.

Previous Work: ER and 3 Kings vs. Titanic. Uhm, yeah.
Big Edge: Leo.

Superstar Status: I don't really follow this much, but my uninformed opinion is that Clooney is the new Carey Grant. Smooth as hell and only getting better with age. A true down-to-earth superstar. Leo seems nice enough, but is a tad reclusive.
Edge: Clooney

Final Verdict: Honestly, I think Leo has more upside. He's more likely to turn in a Daniel Day Lewis-esque** performance down the road (Hell, he already did in The Aviator), but that doesn't change the fact that Clooney has been in more good movies in the 2000s. Hell, I'm as surprised as anyone, but:
Edge: George Clooney.

* - For the record, I would probably put Sean Penn (Milk and Mystic River) a fairly distant 3rd, and I have no idea who would come after that. Pitt peaked in the mid-90s (Se7en, Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Sleepers and Snatch in 2000) and might have an argument in a 15-year time frame I haven't seen a lot of Phillip Seymore Hoffman's latest stuff. Russell Crowe has obviously fallen off the map, but I would've put him up there with Penn if The Insider were made in 2000 instead of 1999. Johnny Depp is good, but can't match up in the "great movie" category.

** - Speaking of DDL, he is probably the most talented actor alive, but doesn't make enough movies to be considered here.

Happy New Year

2009-12-30T07:44:00.000-05:00

With the movies posted, I'm signing off for 2009. It's been quite a year. My first year abroad. First year engaged. First year as a consultant. I learned 2 languages --- Spanish and R --- and probably flew more miles than I ever had before. I turned 30. Wow, and a decade is ending too. I'm not even going to process life 10 years ago and all the changes. Maybe some other time. But I will say this, when we moved to Chile nearly a year and a half ago we had no idea how it would go, now we just have no idea how it's gone so well. We're very happy and very lucky and very happy to be so lucky, and the end of a trip around the sun is a good a time as any to say thanks to everyone for being a part of that. So, Thanks.

I'll be offline for a few days, and then back with album rankings and new year's resolution (at least one of with will be Wildfiring related). Until then, Happy New Years everyone.

Top Movies of 2009 (seen in 2009)

2009-12-30T07:34:00.000-05:00

Here's a list of the 25 new movies I watched in 2009. I've divided them up according to where they fall on the traditional 4 star scale. The movie name is followed by my rating and the original rating in parenthesis if it's different.

4 Stars
1. Avatar - 9.0 - Like I said on my best of the Decade. It's the 2nd coming of Star Wars, for all of the reasons, good and bad.
2. Hurt Locker - 9.0 - My favorite war movie.
3. Up - 8.5 - Yet another great Pixar movie.
4. District 9 - 8.5 - It is best plotted action movie I've seen in some time. A step and a half ahead of Avatar plot-wise, but leagues behind in terms of special effects.

3.5 Stars
5. I Love You, Man - 8.0 (7.5) - The most rewatchable, and therefore the best, of a pretty good batch of 2009 comedies.
6. Goodbye Solo - 8.0 - Yet another great character study from a great young NC filmmaker.
7. Star Trek - 7.5 (8.0) - The Star Trek re-boot completes the the epic space-based trio of 2009.

3 Stars
8. Precious - 7.0 - Heartbreaking, and very hard to watch, which is a testament to it's quality. The first of 3 movies this year that made me cry, or at least sniffle an amount that is not becoming for a 30 year old man. I'll save myself a modicum of dignity and let you guess at the other 2 ...
9. The Hangover - 7.0 - A very funny movie, but it loses something on multiple viewings.

10. Blind Side - 7.0 - This and Precious together probably give a fairly balanced depiction of Foster Care in America.
11. Harry Potter - 7.0 (7.5) - The 2nd best film of the series (behind #3).
12. Zombieland - 6.5 (7.5) - I liked it, but after 2 viewings, I don't think I'll be back again. Would probably watch the sequel though.
13. Funny People - 6.5 (8.0) - I liked it a lot in the theater ... not as much on video. Still solid, but a step down for Apatow.
14. Julie and Julia - 6.5 (7.5) - This (and the next 2 films for that matter) was a perfectly nice movie that I never plan to see again.
15. Moon - 6.5 (7.0)16. Watchmen - 6.5 (7.0)

2.5 Stars
17. Inglorious Basterds - 6.0 (7.0)
18. Adventureland - 6.0 (7.0)
19. Taken - 6.0 (6.5)
20. Humpday - 6.0

2 Stars
21. State of Play - 5.0
22. Bruno - 5.0
23. (500) Days of Summer - 4.0

1.5 Stars
24. Knowing - 3.5 (4.0)
25. Coraline - 2.5 (3.5)

Stuff I still want to watch: Up in the Air, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Invictus, The Informant, Sin Nombre, Tulpan, Public Enemies, Bad Lieutenant, Where the Wild Things Are, A Serious Man, An Education, Big Fan, Nine, The Invention of Lying, Whip it, Los Abrazos Rotos, Ponyo.

So, I can't really call this a "Best of" list just yet, since there are lots of things I want to see, but it's a start.

Favorite Songs of 2009

2009-12-29T09:57:00.001-05:00

Nate just released a nice list of his favorite songs of the year, so I thought I'd do the same. Here are 10 songs I loved from 2009 for your listening enjoyment:

Top 20 Movies of the 2000s

2009-12-22T17:29:00.003-05:00

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
An unforgettable, genre-busting, heartbreaking, scary, touching and visually-rich movie. It is quite possibly my favorite film.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
It's close, but the third movie is my favorite --- Consider this a placeholder for the whole series.
Finding Nemo (2003)
Wall-E, Ratatouille and Up all have a legitimate claim on this spot (in fact, consider them numbers 3a through 3c), but Nemo is the movie that that moved Pixar from a maker of cartoons to a maker of serious films ... or at least serious cartoons. It is also the funniest and most rewatchable movie in the Pixar canon.
Almost Famous (2000)
The most rewatchable movie on a list of movies I've watched again and again.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The essential love story for my generation.
40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
The funniest comedy in a decade full of very funny movies.
Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
The best action movie is a decade full of very good action.
United 93 (2006)
The most under-appreciated and under-watched American film of my lifetime.
Children of Men (2006)
Almost as scary as Pans Labyrinth, but in a completely different way. A great movie.
Avatar (2009)
Nothing less than the second coming of Star Wars. Spectacular. It would quite probably be ranked higher after repeat viewings.
The Aviator (2004)
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007)
Amelie (2001)
Hurt Locker (2009)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Lost in Translation (2003)
City of God (2003)
Memento (2001)
Iron Man (2008)
Man Push Cart (2005)

Honorable Mentions:
Amorres Perros (2000)
The Pianist (2002)
Sideways (2004)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Crash (2005)
The Lives of Others (2006)
Michael Clayton (2007)
District 9 (2009)

Sashaism

2009-11-10T07:58:00.000-05:00

"It makes me very sad when I can out-drink a full bloodied Latin American male."
- Sasha, who always gets bummed out hanging around bars with defeated Chilean UFC competitors.

Happy 30th, Jonny Cakes

2009-11-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

So, although we are quickly approaching 30, my friends and I have the minds (and the associated sense of humor) of 14 year old boys. In fact, as many of you know, there is a special gift that we pass around the group --- it's a, uhm, rather large, rather black, elongated column of latex --- we'll call it the BBD for short. We've had quite a few surprising moments with our friend the BBD in the past (anyone care to summarize in comments?), but this one, occurring just a few hours ago, on Jon's 30th birthday might take the cake. I'll now turn this post over to Jon, who just sent this email summary of his flight back to the US.

I got on the airplane last night and unpacked the usual items from my carry-on: book, DS, word puzzle mag, travel pillow. Little did I know I was also unpacking an unwelcomed guest that flopped into my lap after unrolling my pillow. I'm not sure if the slackjawed Chilean man in 23B next to me noticed. Next time I think my pillow is a little heavier and thicker than normal you can be sure I will certainly take additional precautions when opening it. The latex smell next to my face all night was a nice bonus.

It doesn't stop there. I wasn't about to leave the [bbd] behind (how else to exact my revenge?) so I packed it back in my bag (while the cabin was dark and Mr. 23B went to the bathroom). Being preoccupied with the customs/immigration process the next morning (where I was spared a bag search thankfully) I forgot to put it in my checked bag before going through security for my flight to Durham so it stayed in my carry-on. Oops. At security, the x-ray machine attendant proceeded to call over two other security personnel, point to the screen, and yell, "Bag check!" before saying more quietly, and with a grin (but not so quietly that I couldn't hear), "If that's what I think it is... I gotta find out."

Thankfully, the woman who checked my bag had little interest in pursuing the matter after I said, "It is what he thinks it is. My friends got me good this time." She did a quick chemical test and spared me the indignity of 'whipping it out'. Her only comment was about her coworker, "He's such a child..."

A tip of the hat to our hosts. I never saw it coming and they got me fucking good. I had completely forgotten I'd mailed it to them with a bow on top as part of a recent care package.

Happy Birthday, Buddy.

Sashaisms

2009-10-18T21:59:00.000-04:00

"Ah! Four wheels driving!"
-Sasha, not on a tricyle.

"What are you talking about? Hasta la vista?"
-Sasha just after ignoring the conversation about Jeremy's sub par tour guide skills.

"My phone is my cell phone. No wait. My watch is my cell phone."
-Sasha on the finer points of Chilean technology.

"Be Sigmund or Freud."
-Sasha on dancing/tiger training.

"Nadav and I have the complexion of gymnasts."
- Sasha who always has his Clarisil handy in case of an unexpected Olympic tryout.

Top 10 minus 3

2009-10-14T08:47:00.000-04:00

Nate D's tweet got me thinking about my favorite albums of the year. I must say the cupboard is a little bit barren so far. In no particular order*, here are the albums I like enough to think about putting on a top 10 list. Is it a bad sign that there are only 7 of them?

We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
Volcano Choir - Unmap
The Thermals - Now We Can See
Sunset Rubdown - Dragon Slayer
Passion Pit - Manners
Florence and the Machines - Lungs
Discovery - LP

* - Actually it's reverse alphabetical order, but you know what I mean.

Knowing - 4.0

2009-10-08T09:56:00.001-04:00

I'd never heard of "Knowing", a Nicolas Cage science fiction movie from earlier this year, when I read Ebert's 4 star review last week. Ebert led off his review by saying, "'Knowing' is among the best science-fiction films I've seen" and I generally agree with his opinion, so I thought I would watch. After finishing the movie (somewhat confused by Ebert's quote), I checked Rotten Tomatoes and discovered why I had never heard of the movie. It was roundly panned, and only had 33% positive reviews.

While I see what Ebert liked about the movie, I'm going to have to go with the consensus on this one. The problem was that, even though there were some interesting ideas and some really cool scenes (the final sequence in particular), the movie as a whole was just such a mess of ideas and themes that I was fairly bewildered by the end. The first 3rd of the movie (horror-tinged mystery) is completely different from the middle section (paranoid detective story) which, in turn, is completely different from the final third (hard-core scifi). Put it all together and the movie is a mess. A sometimes interesting mess, but a mess.

Oh and Nicolas Cage plays an MIT astrophysics professor. A drunk MIT astrophysics professor, but still ... really?

Schools you want to make sure you include.

2009-10-06T07:55:00.000-04:00

If you ever need to rekindle the fire of Duke hatred that lives in side of you ... I present, this.

The Duke people are so much fun. There’s just some schools you want to make sure you include.

I just threw up in my mouth. Oh wait ...

“I have high standards. I’ve met people who are really smart but don’t have it together socially, and people who are fun but may not offer more mentally.” The total package, he explained, is tough to find.

(Via Anisa)

Top Movies of the 2000s - The Contenders

2009-10-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a little bit about my favorite movies of the decade, but after the top 2, the list blurs in to a bunch of stuff I really really like, but don't necessarily love. At any rate, here is a list of movies that I am considering for the top 10 (or 20 or whatever). Let me know if you think I left anything obvious off.

Almost Famous (2000)
Amores Perros (2000)
LOTR Trilogy (2001-2003)
Amelie (2001)
Memento (2001)
Pianist (2002)
City of God (2003)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Sideways (2004)
Aviator (2004)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Man Push Cart (2005)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Crash (2005)
40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Children of Men (2006)
United 93 (2006)
Lives of Others (2006)
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Knocked up (2007)
Diving Bell and Butterfly (2007)
Ratatouille (2007)
Michael Clayton (2007)
Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Wall-E (2008)
Iron Man (2008)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
District 9 (2009)
Hurt Locker (2009)

Top Albums of the 1990s

2009-09-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

James asked about my top albums of the 90s. I haven't thought about it much, but here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list for you to berate. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to keep my 1 album per band rule in place, but if there are other really good albums I'll put them in parenthesis.

Top Albums of the 1990s

Radiohead - OK Computer (The Bends)
Pearl Jam - Vs. (Ten, Vitalogy, No Code)
Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Fugees - The Score)
Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On (Keep it Like a Secret, There's Nothing Wrong with Love)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane ... (On Avery Island)
Dismemberment Plan - Emergency and I
Elliot Smith - XO (Either/Or)
Archers of Loaf - Vee Vee (All other albums as well)
Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk (If You're Feeling Sinister)
Weezer - Pinkerton (Blue Album)
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
REM - Automatic for the People
Counting Crows - August and Everything After (Recovering the Satellites)
Wilco - Summerteeth
The Pixies - Tromp le Monde (Bossanova, Doolittle - '89)
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted (Wowee Zowee, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders (Low End Theory)
Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Stone Temple Pilots - Purple (Core)

Albums I didn't listen to until after 2000: 3, 4, 6, 12 and 15.
Would've been higher in 2000: 5, 7, 8, 9, 17 and 20.
Would've been lower in 2000: 11, 14, 19 and 20.

Mmm.

2009-09-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

Mmmmmmmeat

Uploaded some pictures from our celebration of 199 years of Chilean independence. Click here for more.

Almost Famous - 9.0

2009-09-23T23:30:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I'll get around to making a top movies of the 2000s list, but if I do, Almost Famous will most certainly be on it. I do know that I definitely won't be making a list of the top scenes of the decade, but if I did, this would have to be near the top:

Top 20 Albums of the 2000s

2009-09-23T09:36:00.000-04:00

1) National - The Boxer
2) Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
3) Dismemberment Plan - Change
4) Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
5) Postal Service - S/T
6) Notwist - Neon Golden
7) Decemberists - Crane Wife
8) Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
9) Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
10) Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
11) Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
12) Radiohead - In Rainbows
13) Mountain Goats - Tallahassee
14) Outkast - Stankonia
15) Jay-Z + Dangermouse - Grey Album
16) The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
17) Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
18) Bishop Allen - Monthly EPs
20) Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová - Once Soundtrack

(500) Days of Summer - 4.0

2009-09-21T10:17:00.001-04:00

From the parenthesis in the title and the skinny-tie wearing protagonist to the indie tour 2009 soundtrack and witty omniscient narrator, this movie was just too damn cool for school. Of course that isn't always a bad thing*. For the record, I liked the time jumpiness and the split screeniness and the sound track(iness)**, and hell, I'd probably wear a skinny tie if I were at all skinny, but those things just weren't enough to carry the thin plot, a couple that lacked chemistry and a truly ill-conceived supporting cast. In the end, you need some meat (plot) to go with the potatoes (indie movie magic). Like lots of movies in this genre (Eternal Sunshine comes to mind), if you strip away all of the effects, put everything in order and take out the soundtrack, then there's really nothing much left. It certainly wasn't capital-B Bad, but in the end, there just wasn't much movie to this movie.

* - See Garden State, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.
** - In fact, here's a video:

Spring Cleaning

2009-09-15T21:48:00.003-04:00

Just like real life, I was doing a lousy job keeping things tidy around here, so just like real life, I got some help. In real life, Leo is cleaning the apartment once a week, and it is *wonderful*, if slightly awkward. Definitely makes me feel guilty for a) being so messy and b) for having to pay so little. But mostly, it's great and a decent way to practice my spanish.

In blogger world, I (finally) changed over to the new blogger layout and must say, I was silly to wait. After an hour or so of messing about, I'm reasonably happy with the way things look. I got all of our haloscan comments imported and pretty much my whole sidebar back up and running. Now if only I had a decent logo instead of the all caps WILDFIRING at the top ...

Update: With a little help from Alexa (who took the above picture) and some world class photo editing equipment (read: microsoft word) I now have a logo. It doesn't scale to widescreen views very well, but that is blogger's doing, not mine. I'll look for a workaround at some point. My idea is to change the photo occasionally, but we all know how likely that is.

Quick Reviews

2009-09-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - 8.5 - I avoided this one because of the subject matter, but I figured if I wanted to be thorough about a best of the 2000s list, I should probably check it out, and wow, what a beautiful surreal movie. Amazingly upbeat and hopeful despite the subject matter. I'm not sure where it will/would rank on a best of the decade list, but it definitely deserves the praise it has gotten. Highly recommended.

Bruno - 4.5 - I watched this is 2 sittings and hated the first, but liked the second. It is what it is, and basically, it's Borat, so you need to be in the right frame of mind to watch. Proceed accordingly.

Unbreakable - 6.0 - Ben was crowing about how amazing this movie is, so I re-watched it. Honestly though, just like the first time I saw it, it just didn't quite work for me. It was definitely anice looking movie featuring two good lead performances, but the way the movie ends is just so jarring, that for me it really takes away from the great atmospheric build up.

2009 movies, so far

2009-09-09T11:01:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, all 11 movies I've seen from 2009 have been pretty good. Here's a quick list:

1. Hurt Locker
2. District 9
3. Goodbye Solo
4. Star Trek
5. Funny People
6. Harry Potter
7. I Love You, Man
8. The Hangover
9. Adventureland
10. Watchmen
11. Taken

I gave all of these movies 6.5/10 or higher, and although I'm probably getting a little soft in my old age, I'd say those are pretty fair rankings. Of course, it's pretty early in the year movie-wise, but that is a pretty damn solid crop of spring/summer movies.

That said, I watched the first 30 minutes of Bruno yesterday, and although, it's not so bad that I won't finish it, I'm pretty sure it's going to knock the bottom out of the list.

District 9 - 8.5

2009-09-09T10:32:00.004-04:00

Man, I'm not as shocked as I was after watching Iron Man*, but for some reason, despite all the positive reviews, my expectations for District 9 were not that high. I was expecting a good, but generic action movie. Well, as my ranking indicates, that was pretty foolish. This movie was awesome.

Although the effects were uniformly great, the technical proficiency of the movie really isn't what impressed me, the script was. This movie deftly dodged so many monster/action movie cliches**, that I couldn't help but be impressed. Here is a partial list of all the things the movie did right:

They showed the aliens right away. The aliens looked pretty good, but not good enough to warrant a show-y "oh-shit" reveal 30 minutes in to the movie.
They went for 1 great action scene instead of 5 decent ones.
They set up the action. The action really didn't start until an hour or more in to the movie, but when it did it was perfectly integrated in to the established plot.
No catch phrases.
Villains evil enough to want dead.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but that's enough to give you the idea. After years of Mission Impossible and bad action movies with Arnold and Sly, District 9 takes its place along side the Bourne films, Iron Man and Batman in what has been an truly impressive action movie revival in the second half of this decade. This was a well made movie. Not a monster movie, or an alien movie, or an action movie. Just a well concieved, well written, well executed no-descriptor-necessary movie.

* - Iron Man, which I rewatched recently, is a great point of comparison to District 9 (and not just because of the guys in robot suits). Iron Man was funnier and better-acted, but District 9 was better written and had slightly better effects. All told, it's a near wash. Both are great.
** - Hell, the aliens were pretty much the closest thing to good guys in District 9. Can't get too much less cliched than that.

Movie Clearinghouse

2009-08-25T08:55:00.004-04:00

I've watched bunches of movies during my recent travels, but haven't had the time/inclination to write bunches of reviews, so here is a sentence or so about each, although, the first movie on this list deserves more.

Hurt Locker - 9.0 - Hands down the best film I've seen this year. Edge-of-your-seat fails to do the atmosphere justice. A must see.

Funny People - 8.0 - Each of his movie's has gotten a little more serious (40 Year Old Virgin < Knocked Up < Funny People), but really, it's standard Apatow, and by standard, I mean really good.

I Love You, Man - 7.5 - I wasn't really expecting to like this as much as I did, but damn, Segel and Rudd are funny dudes. I've actually already re-watched this, which says a ton, I think.

Harry Potter #6 - 7.0 - One of the better movies in a series that will live on for a long looooong time.

Adventureland - 6.0 - And to finish off the stuff I've seen this year, we have a nice 80s coming of age story. It's mostly a comedy, but sometimes the acidic humor is too much acid and not enough humor. Still worth watching though.

Remains of the Day - 5.0 - Not quite as boring as Days of Heaven, but boring. Thompson, Hopkins and Reeve were all stellar, but, yeah, boring.

Sense and Sensibility - 8.0 - Kate Winslet was even scary as a kid. The movie was good though.

Brick - 4.0 - Jumping from Victorian England to present day Noir Los Angeles. This movie didn't do much for me. Too noir-y for it's own good really.

Let the Right One In - 4.0 - Our final stop in the review hodgepodge is in the foreign horror movies section. We have one not so great Vampire love story from Sweden ...

The Host - 7.5 - ... and one pretty damn good Mutant/epidemic action flick from Korea.

Spray

2009-08-17T00:35:00.002-04:00

Top Albums of the 2000s - #8

2009-08-16T10:46:00.003-04:00

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

I regularly skip songs on pretty much all of the albums I've listed so far, but I honestly don't think I've ever even considered doing so with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. While none of the songs are quite as perfect as something like Chicago, they are all pretty damn close. From the anti-ballad opener (I Am Trying To Break Your Heart), to the perfect pop songs strewn throughout (Kamera, Heavy Metal Drummer), to the sad 9/11 tribue (Ashes of American Flags), to the dreary near-pleading closer (Reservations), there is no filler, no distractions, no throwaway songs, just really good music. This is an album.

Wilco also gets bonus points in a two areas. First, as good as this album is, it's not my favorite by them; that would be Summerteeth (1999). And secondly, I've seen them live twice and the first of those shows was amongst the best I've ever been to.

Top Albums of the 2000s - #9

2009-08-14T02:00:00.010-04:00

#9 - Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (2005)

With this album we are officially entering the all-of-these-albums-are-great-so-what-is-the-freaking-difference zone. Honestly, if I were making this list tomorrow, I might put this higher, but then something else would have to be lower ... so, well, here we are. I docked Sujfan a few thousandths of a point because, while amazing, the album is the slightest bit uneven. Although, I'll listen to it all the way through on occasion, more often I'll just listen to my favorite songs (of which there are many) and skip the rest. At 22 songs and 80 minutes Sufjan comes across as an emo Outkast sometimes, which isn't all bad, but with lots of little instrumentals and half-finished songs scattered between the fully-realized epics I tend to lose the thread sometimes. On the bright side, at least he hasn't discovered skits yet ...

That minor gripe aside, the good songs here are as good as anything made this decade, or any other. Chicago is the clear standout and I have a hard time imagining it ever leaving the top few spots of my most played songs on iTunes. It is one of those wonderful upbeat happy-sad songs that just couldn't get any better. On the other hand, there is nothing even remotely happy about Casimir Pulaski Day. It is just wonderfully sad.

Sufjan's other state album, Michigan, also deserves a mention. It's been a bit overshadowed by this album, but the highlights there, Vitto's Ordination Song in particular, are every bit as good as the songs mentioned above.

Top Albums of the 2000s - #10 (and 11)

2009-08-13T17:25:00.005-04:00

#11 - Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight (2008)

#10 - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (2008)

Yeahyeahyeah, I said Top 10. I lied. I couldn't make myself kick one of these albums off of the list so I'm doing a Top 11. These are my far and away my favorite albums from 2008, and probably of the last 2 or 3 years. Once I have some more time with them, I expect they could move up even further.

Top Albums of the 2000s - Honorable Mentions

2009-08-12T23:34:00.004-04:00

I just fiddled with my top 10 albums of the 2000s for an hour, and have a list, but I don't know if it is in the right order, so I'm going to drag this out and count this puppy down one or 2 albums at a time, but first, here are a bunch of honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions
Modest Mouse - Moon and Antarctica (2000)
I am not unbiased. How I feel about a group today influences how I'm ranking albums here, and today, I don't like Modest Mouse much at all. But I can't deny that I loved this album when it came out back in 2000. I've started listening to it again recently, and it's still pretty damn good.

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it People (2002)
I decided to only allow one album per band, so a band like Iron and Wine or the Decemberists with 3 or 4 albums that I loved gets bumped up a few spots, while Modest Mouse who only had the one album and then sucked a lot, loses a few spots and ends up in the honorable mentions. Broken Social Scene has two albums that I really like and listen to pretty much interchangeably (this and the self-titled album from 2005). I'm not sure either one of them alone warrants an honorable mention, but as a band they warrant a mention, so here they are.

The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
This album was right up there with Moon and Antarctica on the initial impression scale. Five years ago, I'm pretty sure I would've given it a 10 out of 10 and put it right at the top of the list for the first half of the decade, but the long awaited follow-up album (Wincing the Night Away in 2007) was just so damn painful that it's taken some of the shine off of this album as well.

John Vanderslice - Time Travel is Lonely (2001)
Mountain Goats - Talahassee (2002)
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha (2007)
I consider these guys to be amongst my favorite artists and listen to absolutely everything they put out, but no single album is strong enough to reach the top 10. Talahassee is damn close though. You can call it #11 if you're so inclined.

The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004)
Jay-Z vs Dangermouse - The Grey Album (2004)
Aesop Rock - Labor Days (2001)
Blackalicious - Nia (2000)
Jurrasic 5 - Quality Control (2000)
Kanye West - Late Registration (2005)
As you can see, my hiphop knowledge has faded in recent years, but these albums were a big part of my rotation for the first half of the decade (and beyond for The Streets), and I still listen to at least a few tracks from each regularly.

Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer (2009)
I didn't care for their first few albums, but Dragonslayer has come out of nowhere to become my favorite album of 2009 (so far). No idea how it will hold up down the road, but I still thought I'd give it a quick mention.

OK, I think that is more than enough mentioning honorably. Tomorrow, we head to last year for #10.

The Hangover - 6.0

2009-08-04T10:03:00.004-04:00

Ah, silly comedy. The Hangover was a perfectly pleasant, usually amusing and occasionally hilarious dumb comedy. I definitely thought the first half of the movie worked better than the second half, which was just silly and dragged on a bit. So, although I did like the movie, the real laugh-out-loud moments were too few and far between to warrant anything more than the good-but-not-quite-great review that you're reading. The fact that I've seen two superior comedies in the month since I watched The Hangover probably has something to do with that as well, but we'll get to those in the coming days ...

Watchmen - 6.0

2009-08-03T12:55:00.003-04:00

I saw this on a plane ride recently, and kind of liked it. I've never read the comic, so I can't speak to how accurate the movie was, and I really don't like this pseudo-animation-with-highly-stylized-violence genre. That said, I thought Watchmen was much better than either 300 or Sin City --- mainly that's because the violence was much less over-the-top. Or maybe the it was just the somewhat edited plane version that I watched. At any rate, I was glad for the censoring, because a) animated violence creeps me out and b) watching sex and violence on a plane is awkward. It's kind of like whipping out a Penthouse and reading it in the Dentist's waiting room. I still remember having to fast forward through parts of (really, most of) Sweeny Todd when I watched it on a flight a few years back. So, yeah, not my favorite movie ever, but a step in the right direction for the genre, and for the next movie, I highly recommend they hire LAN airline's censors to do some edition right off the top.

Persistence

2009-08-02T20:48:00.002-04:00

I crossed something off of my (still theoretical) list of things to do before I die today. I waterskiied. I've now succeeded in 2 out of my 273 attempts, about 0.3 seconds per attempt.

In other news, I'm going to start posting here again. Movie reviews coming in the next few days.

Tagged (or Procrastination)

2009-07-13T12:36:00.002-04:00

Joanna tagged me, so ...

1. What is your current obsession?
Clementine oranges, plural, always plural. Clean inboxes. Gmail and the checking and organizing thereof. Properly formatted word documents.

2. What is your weirdest obsession?
Uhm, clementine oranges? Watching my cat climb curtains?

3. What do you see outside your window?
Plazuela Elisabeth Mason and Manolo, selling clementines. The virgin up on Cerro San Cristobal.

4. What is your favourite color?
No opinion. I do like the spelling of favourite-with-a-u though.

5. What is your weakness?
Book stores. McFlurries. Indian food. My dad's Italian food.

6. What animal would you be?
I'm going to stick with human here. Or if that is cheating, a fictional animal that can both fly and check email.

7. What would you like to learn how to do?
Play the office theme song on Piano. Understand complicated interaction terms.

8. What do you want to never happen in life?
Sheesh, where to begin ...

9. What is on your bedside table?
Lamp, emptyish Nalgene, my watch, Kindle, 2 books (Clan of the Cave Bear and Plainsong). I'm holding tryouts for my next book, Plainsong is in the lead.

10. What's the last thing you bought?
Clementines. I also bought dreamy headphones this morning.

11. What do you think about the person that tagged you?
Brother: Still tops the friend-most-likely-to-be-world-famous list. Whether it's for creating terrible reality TV show or writing the an epic young-adult poem about a medical Harry Potter remains to be seen.

12. What was your favorite children's book?
Hardy Boys. Especially the ones where they teamed up with Nancy Drew and Joe and Nancy Drew always almost got it on ... oooh baby. uhm yeah. Lots of others too. The Hobbit. Narnia.

13. Who do you want to meet in person?
I think hanging out with Obama when he's 80 would be awesome.

14. What did you want to be as a child?
Never really played the "what do you want to be when you grow up" game much. Teacher was the default for a long time though (until I actually became a teacher that is.)

15. What did you dream about last night?
Crazy-scaryish dream where I made my grandmother mad at me for playing Zelda and then went and hid in the forest while everyone looked for me, and then I eventually strolled casually past the searchers and noone noticed. And then I was woken up by someone playing the drums (rather well) on our wall (or something) at 4:45 am. Odd night.

16. Which do you prefer, day or night?
This changes periodically. Right now, I am on a college work schedule (midnight to 3am as the prime time) that I like ok.

17. What's your favorite piece of clothing in your closet?
Hm, maybe my accidentally-bleached Ivory Orphans T-shirt from the animal preserve in Kenya.

18. What's your plan for tomorrow?
Work ... really.

19. What would you like to get your hands on right now?
New (free) Macbook Pro. A decent chocolate chip cookie.

20. What is your must-have of the moment?
BBQ. Carburritos. A completed analysis on the efficacy of this intervention and another about poly-sensitization in inner-city kids.

21. What's your favourite tea flavour?
Green, I suppose. Not a big tea drinker. Hot Chocolate to the max.

22. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
Since I'm going home soon enough, I'd probably to hang out with Nala (my cat who I haven't seen in a year) in DC. Or maybe Chicago. Chicago in the summer is pretty great. Or somewhere exotic like the Angkor Wat, but only if I don't have to fly. Otherwise going to lunch at Bar Liguria with Alexa would be pretty sweet as well.

Avoidance

2009-07-04T15:22:00.003-04:00

Four things that I am pretty sure I would enjoy, that I avoid out of self-preservation.
1) Uppers.
2) Baking.
3) Playing World of Warcraft.
4) Learning to like beer.

No Reservations - 2.0

2009-06-10T13:01:00.003-04:00

Alexa and I caught the last hour of this Catherine Zeta-Jones gem over the weekend. It was pretty bad. Worse than bad actually - It was cliched. I guess sometimes it's good to watch a movie that just doesn't work out at all, if only to remind yourself that making movies is really hard and sometimes, even with decent actors and an ok director (he made Shine and Snow Falling on Cedars), things just fall apart.

5 little things

2009-06-04T09:59:00.004-04:00

The Top 5 Things in LOTR that Make Me Rewind Every Time

After the trees break the dam to flood Isengard, the burning ent dips his head down in to the flood to extinguish himself.
The massive tracking shot of the watchtowers being lit in Return of the King.
"If you want him, come and claim him."
Legolas fighting --- Mounting his Horse near the beginning of Two Towers and riding his shield down the stairs at the end. And the elephant scene* ... oh, the elephant scene.
The shot of Theodin's face de-aging right after Gandalf un-curses him.

Alexa and I stumbled across the beginning Fellowship of the Ring on TV this weekend and now, 10 hours later, we've finished watching the all 3 movies (the last two as Extended Editions). I just praised the movies yesterday as the most likely from this decade to survive beyond our generation. Beyond the obvious fact that they're really well made, there are a few main reasons why the trilogy will have a long shelf-life. The most important factor is the books; kids will keep reading them (mine sure will) which will keep the stories fresh**. So the audience will be there, but the fact that the movies are so much damn fun to watch is what will keep people coming back***. Part of the thrill of these movies comes from watching good film-making (#2 in the above list) and effects (#5), but many others came about because they didn't take themselves too seriously and were able to have fun with the movie (#1 and 4)****. These things***** each take only seconds, but they seem to happen every 10 minutes for 10 damn hours, and when you combine all of the moments, you've got what I consider the only truly epic movies of my generation******.

* - Yes, I know elephant is supposed spelled all wacky, and, no, I don't care.
** - This point alone puts Harry Potter at Number 2 on my list from yesterday.
*** - The reason no one is going to watch those Narnia movies again, isn't because they weren't well made (the effects were often great), it's because they weren't any fun. Star Wars on the other hand is still so popular largely because light sabers are awesome.
**** - #3 was just a good old-fashioned dose of awesome (says Devin).
***** - I've left off ton's by the way: Gandalf vs. the Demon. (And Gandalf vs. the Demon, redux.) Gandalf arriving at the end of Two Towers. Boromir's Death. The Eagles, everytime they appear. Sauron's Tower exploding. Aragon's first scene. Bilbo disappearing from his party. The ring going in to the fire. etc. etc. etc.
****** - Apologies to "Braveheart", but it's true.

2000 -----> 2050

2009-06-02T18:09:00.003-04:00

Had a long discussion with Compton, Denny and Liles on Reader today about what the great movies of the decade are. Defining "great" is always tricky, but in honor of that thread I hereby present:

The 5* Movies from this Decade Most Likely to be Seen by our Grandkids
1) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
2) The Harry Potter Series
3) The Pixar Collection (WALL-E, Up, Finding Nemo and Ratatouille)
4) Gladiator
5) Dark Knight

* - Yes, by 5 I mean 17.

My top 20 ... or not.

2009-06-02T11:11:00.002-04:00

After 15 minutes and 150 rankings on this site, here is what it thinks my top 20 movies are:

Saving Private Ryan
The Godfather
Rain Man
Dead Poets Society
Adaptation
The Sixth Sense
Run Lola Run
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Big Lebowski
Groundhog Day
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Sting
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Ratatouille
Fight Club
The Pursuit of Happyness
Interview With a Vampire
Twister
Contact
Annie Hall

Not completely absurd, but nowhere close to reality either. The site is better than this email ranker site anyways.

Nick and Nora's Infinte Playlist - 5.5

2009-06-01T18:23:00.005-04:00

I was sick at my parents house and had to choose between this and "Zac and Miri make a porno"* I'm like 72%** sure I choose correctly. I really liked the leads here***, and thought they had great chemistry, but everyone else in this movie really annoyed me, but hey I was sick, and this was available, and my parents weren't going to walk in on me watching porn**** in thier living room at like 9 pm on a Tuesday with this choice, so I can't complain too much*****.

* - Miri? Is that right? The useless Hobbit from Lord of the Rings was making the Porno with Zac? Was it even Zac? Zack? Where am I? Where are my slippers? Who turned off my humidifier? Damn kids ...
** - I made a survey for work today and allowed people to use a 100 point scale (0=Bad, 100=Good) for answers, and I got yelled at for it. It was just like Ted (et al) bitching about me rating things 7.2 out of 10 on the old website. I've clearly learned nothing. The yellers were right both times.
*** - Isn't Michael Cera like 27 or something? The dude is almost older than I am, and he still pulls off this role. Amazing. How does he keep being all indie cool while I type confusedly about movie names at a computer screen?
**** - Well, meta-porn, but still.
***** - My dad did walk in while the annoying girl was pulling her gum out of the barf filled toilet, which was pretty choice as well.

Star Trek - 8.0

2009-06-01T18:15:00.005-04:00

Not that I really have anything new to say here, but for completeness sake --- I watched Star Trek way back when it first came out, and it was good. Nice action and funnier than I expected. It fully deserves the half zillion dollars it's already made. In fact, I'd put it right up there with the last 2 Bourne Movies, Iron Man and Dark Knight as one of my favorite Action/Adventure-y movies in recent years. Then again, Alexa and I are 2/3rds of the way through re-watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy which makes the movies in that list seem kind of, well ... small.

Yikes

2009-05-26T11:41:00.002-04:00

Just noticed the time between posts here. Month long absences are bad. Sorry reader(s?), I'll try to post more. If only I could think of stuff to say ...

Wherein I make people mad ...

2009-05-26T11:17:00.003-04:00

So, I've been in the states for about a week and a half now, but being busy with work, I didn't get to spend much time in Chapel Hill until last Saturday, when I was there for a wedding (Congrats Matt and Molly!!) and was out and about from 4 pm until 3:30 am. I had a great time, but I'll be a monkey's third cousin twice removed if I didn't get berated by complete strangers for absolutely no good reason on 4 (four!) separate occasions during that time.

1) At 4:30 p.m., as Alexa and I were walking down Franklin Street, a guy driving a Prius, with a roof rack full of surfboards, leaned over in to the passenger seat looked directly at Alexa and I and flicked us off as he drove away.

2) Fast forward 10 hours and at least as many drinks to 2:30 a.m., when having blown a single spit ball* at my cousin at Linda's the bar tender lays in to me about how he has to clean it up and yadda yadda ...

3) 3:10 a.m., again walking down Franklin St. I'm still in my suit from the wedding, so as I walk by, someone says, "Nigga, you ain't got no swag. You ain't getting no play** tonight." And etc. He went on for a while ...

4) 3:30 a.m., sitting in Gumby's with Duba and Jon, waiting for our Pokey Sticks. A very drunk, very loud, girl, age 21 years, 3.5 hours, walks in and orders some food. She's talking to some guy and says something like, "You know ... you've got to have dreams, and dreams are great, but really, you know, a dream ... it can't just be a dream. you've got to make it happen. like for real. not a dream, you know." We laugh (it was funny). So she turns to us, exposing a neck tatoo saying "Don't let a dream stay a dream" and some associated butterflys, and proceeds to yell at us about how we shouldn't laugh because that is written on her body for ever, which of course only makes us laugh more ... and makes her yell more ... and makes us laugh more ... and ...

* - well maybe that was a good reason ... but still, come one, it was Linda's, it wasn't like I was going to damage a chandelier or something.
** - he actually used a different p word, but this is a family friendly blog. (Hi Family!)

Sashaism #156

2009-04-29T17:50:00.001-04:00

"[A]s a former Non-American, I welcome you to the land of Obama. If you really want to celebrate your new-found heritage, get yourself a gun and go shoot a bold eagle. I get red and blue all over just thinking about it."

-Sasha, who really doesn't like pushy eagles.

Quick Reviews

2009-04-28T14:08:00.009-04:00

Alexa's out of town, so I've watched movies! Which I will now review oh so quickly!

Godfather 1/2 - 10.0/9.5 - I've flipflopped and decided the first one is better. So there.

Man Push Cart/Chop Shop - 8.5/8 - Ramin Bahrani's movies about the lives of immigrants in America are quietly brilliant films. Beautifully shot, they're sad, poignant, funny and in the end, I think, hopeful. They deserve a longer, more thoughtful review than this, which Ebert has kindly provided here. Highly recommended.

The Visitor - 7 - To continue my movies about immigrants spree, I watched this one. Richard Jenkins (the dead 6 Feet Under dad) deserved the Oscar nomination, but a win would've been a major stretch. I liked the movie, but it pales a bit in comparison to the aforementioned Bahrani movies (not to mention the Godfather). Also, I thought the last half hour was just a tad off.

King of Kong - 5.5 - King of Kong is about 2 dudes who play waaaaaay too much Donkey Kong. And a bunch of other dudes who care way too much about 2 dudes who play way too much Donkey Kong. It's officially filmed in America, but the video game culture portrayed certainly seems like a foriegn country (even to a huge dork like me), so I am comforatable lumping it in with my immigration review clearing house. It's an interesting story, told in standard (read: boring) documentary fashion. At 79 minutes, it still felt like it was at least 20 minutes too long.

Taken - 6.5

2009-04-18T16:14:00.007-04:00

I'd never heard of Taken before Alexa brought it home from Blockbuster, but it came out last year and got decent reviews, and guess what, it was, in fact, pretty decent. Taken is a Bourne-like action movie where Liam Neason is trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter from being sold in to prostitution.

I watched it with Alexa, and I must say, it didn't take me long to realize that she *really* doesn't care much for child prostitution rings. I can definitively say that I have never before seen her so pleased while watching graphic violence. She was cheering for decapitations, shootings, people set on fire --- the worse the damage the happier she was. I think she actually jumped off the couch in excitement when Liam rather mercilessly electrocuted the head of the gang. Of course, the downside of her enthusiasm is that I had to evade questions like, "Would you do that for our daughter?" with answers like, "Yeeeeeah ... right after I finish up my 30 years of CIA training."

So, Liam is pretty cold blooded and the movie is a decent little action flick that even your girlfriend will like. All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

Tournament Challenge #2

2009-03-18T10:47:00.003-04:00

Ryan and I are working in parallel. He also created a group called "UNC Grudge Match" same password as below. You can join multiple groups, so no harm in joining both if you want a bigger crowd.

Revolutionary Road - 3.0

2009-03-02T09:21:00.003-05:00

Ugh!

I came in to this one thinking it might be under-rated. It's not. In fact, I think it's so under-rated that it's actually over-rated ... or something. Basically, it's bad.
Bad, and depressing. In fact, just in case people don't get to the end of my ranting, let's get this out of the way now: Don't watch this movie. Two thumbs down. Booo. Hisss.
OK, so why was it so bad? Well, the acting was bad. It was an emotional movie that lacked any emotional connection between the characters (so the direction was bad). The dialouge was flat and unbelievable (so the script was bad). It looked like it was set in 1995 instead of the '50s (so whoever is responsible for that was bad).
More generally, it was just a straight up depression-fest. American Beauty worked because it was depressing and funny. I don't think I remembered what the sound of laughter was after this movie.
I'm really glad Winslet won her Oscar for The Reader, because she was terrible here. Like the movie in general, her performance was overwrought and unbelievable.
Speaking of which, Winslet was waaaaay too intense. Has Simmon's coined the Kate Winslet face yet? Basically, it's the super-emotional-but-also-full-of-loathing look I'd imagine an insect might have before consuming her mate. I think all women come equipped with this look, but most have the decency only to use it occasionally. Not so for Kate here, she just busts it out for the world to see for 2 hours straight. Even when she's supposedly happy you know you are one false move away from a full-frontal ultra-emotial I-am-going-to-rip-your-heart-out-Indiana-Jones-cultists-style blast from the KW face. Terrifying, and also bad, bad acting.
Winslet was bad, but at least she did something in this movie. Leo on the other had was just kind of occupied pixels. After such great performances in his last few movies, I was shocked at how flat he fell. Just terrible.
Even the Oscar nominated, crazy-guy cameo was crappy. Kathy Bates was ok, I guess.
How many people made the "At least, now Titanic has a happy ending. I'd much rather drown than end up in that family" joke? 10,000? 100,000? How many people saw this? I'm going with about 60% of the total viewership.
Did I mention the movie is bad?

Rachel Getting Married - 7.0

2009-02-26T19:21:00.004-05:00

Bullets!!

This puppy was cringe-tastic. Steve Carell has nothing on Anne Hathaway. I was in look-away-look-back-look-away-again mode for at least 5 or 10% of the movie.
I wish I had musical friends, but ...
... I'm really glad I don't have a million random super-hipster friends.
A wedding at home could be cool ...
... as long as it isn't very much like this random-ass wedding.
Good acting all around. I might actually have liked Hathaway here more than Winslet ... or maybe not, definitely closer that I thought though.
Reminds me of In The Bedroom or The Hours or The Movie Where Javier Bardiem Kills Himself.
Long Summary: It's a good, but not fun. Have it in the back of your mind for when you're wandering Blockbuster (or the internet) with nothing to watch, but don't rush out to rent it or anything.
Shorter Summary: It's a 7 if I've ever seen one.

Oscar Picks

2009-02-20T20:21:00.003-05:00

Update: Crap! Why did I pick the song?! I didn't even know which Slumdog song was which. Oh well, 9 out of 10 ain't bad.

Everything about these Oscars is dull. How dare they nominate good movies?! How dare they actually consider letting them win?!!?! At any rate, here are my dull picks sitting there in all of their dull glory like that room of golden cups at the end of the last good Indiana Jones movie.

Bold - My Pick (This will win)
Green - My Choice (This should win)
Grey - Didn't see it.

Best Picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Director
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant, Milk

Best Actor
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Actress
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader

Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

Best Original Screenplay
Frozen River
In Bruges
Happy-Go-Lucky
Milk
Wall-E

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Animated Feature
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E

Original Song
"Down to Earth," Peter Gabriel, Wall-E
"Jai Ho," A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
"O Saya," A.R. Rahman and M.I.A., Slumdog Millionaire

If by some act of God you're still awake after looking through all of those, feel free to leave your own picks in the comments. You can then mock me mercilessly when you inevitably do better than I do. Also, feel free to stop by Sunday night for some live-blogging, or at least some twittering, for the 12 minutes of the show I manage to watch before gently slipping in to a coma.

Two New Blogs

2009-02-19T09:29:00.002-05:00

OK, since I am a useless non-posting dash-using son of a gun these days, here are two friends who have recently started blogs that are a) better than this one and b) updated more than once a week.

Joanna is writing a "Joanna Blog" in her usual wry, self-effacing*, NY-times-published, kind of way, and of course, it's great. I just spend an hour reading all of her posts, and highly recommend you doing the same.

Roni is a gringo friend from Santiago, who is now, I think, locked in a Bolivian prison. His blog is sometimes about his travels and sometimes about politics, but there is always, always a strong under-current regarding his ungodly love of the O.C.

(* - Joanna makes me strive to use terms like self-effacing, even though I only have the vaguest notion of thier meaning)

Quick Reviews

2009-02-15T07:47:00.004-05:00

Ghost Town - 4.5 - Saving the worst for first ... Ghost Town was a decent, but not especially memorable, comedy from last year starring Rick Gervais from the British version of The Office and Extras. More chuckle-occasionally funny than laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Searching for Bobby Fisher - 8.5 - I love this movie, but realize that it isn't fully rational. I'm just glad it didn't succumb to the dreaded Goonies effect when I rewatched it last week. I didn't realized it had such a deep supporting cast until this viewing (Laura Linney, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsly, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy). Unfortunately, it still stars Joe Mantegna though.

In The Heat of the Night - 8.0 - This was a pretty awesome mystery (although it wasn't exactly ideal Valentine's Day fare). Excellent performances from Poitier and the evil general from Mars Attacks. I just wish they had set up the resolution a tad bit more.

Jean De Florette + Manon des Sources - 9.0 - Remember how I hated Days of Heaven? That's because it wasn't this. The two films share a similar style, but this is how a slow, scenic movie should be made. Agustin pointed me at this pair of French films from the 80s. They are definitely deliberate, but they also have the story and the acting to back up the four hour run time. The movies really are a pair; you can't, or at least shouldn't,watch them separately, but together, they are definitely worth checking out. Highly recommended.

Vicky, Christina, Barcelona - 4.5

2009-01-31T13:50:00.005-05:00

We watched Woody Allen's Vicky, Christina, Barcelona last night. I'm feeling bullet point-y, so here goes:

Penelope Cruz really makes the movie. She playes the crazy ex-wife who injects herself in to the theretofore lifeless love triangle making it a much more interesting quadralateral of some sort.
I've seen all of the Supporting Actress nominees now, and Cruz should win hands down. I'd have Marisa Tomei and Viola Davis a distant 2nd and 3rd and Amy Adams and the Mom from Ben Button bringing up the rear.
Alexa and I watched the movie without subtitles the first time, which was fine. Most of it was in English and, except for a few scenes where Cruz goes nuts, the Spanish was pretty straight-forward. After we were done, I went back and re-watched Penelope's freakouts with the subtitles on just so that I could understand more than 25% of what she said. Pretty great stuff. The term "niete mierda" is definitely going to become a focal point of my Spanish vocabulary.
Besides Penelope Cruz, the acting was abrasively bad. Scarlett Johansen played one of the title characters (Christina) and annoyed me a lot, and she couldn't hold a crap-scented candle to Rebecca Hall's Vicky. Just terrible.
And the acting wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the arrogant-sounding narrarator that WOULD NOT SHUT THE HELL UP. Seriously, the jerk kept describing the completely mundane things that were happening on screen. "Now Vicky is eating lunch. Later she sits in a chair, reading a book, before standing up and going to bed." Completely pointless, Woody Allen should seriously get his head out of his ass if he thought the narrator was A) neccesary or B) a good idea.
Final word: Watch this one on HBO just for Cruz. In fact, just skip the first 45 minutes, and watch the last hour of the movie. It's not a great , or even a very good, movie, but Cruz's manic performance really is marvelous.

The Reader - 6.5

2009-01-26T22:01:00.011-05:00

[Note: There are some medium-strength spoilers in this review. You might want to wait to read it if you are planning to watch the movie.]

"Everyone knew Kate would get a best-actress nod, and as a five-time loser, she still seems likely to win the category. But it somehow besmirches her honor to be recognized for the execrable Reader (aka Boohoo, I Bonked an Illiterate Nazi)."
-Slate Critic Dana Stevens, discussing the Oscar Nominations

"I believe the movie may be demonstrating a fact of human nature: Most people, most of the time, all over the world, choose to go along. We vote with tribe."
-Roger Ebert, in his review of The Reader.

Wow, so those are two really different opinions from two critics that I generally really like. The Reader was a pretty divisive movie, and while I basically come down with Ebert and the pro-Reader crowd, I can definitely see where the haters are coming from. (I might add that I also very much appreciate Stevens turning her angry parenthetical "aka" in to an acronym (BIBAIN) for use in the remainder of her article. Bravo.)

Most of the negative reviews I read focus almost exclusively on the aspects of the movie related to the War and the Holocaust. While Kate Winslet masterfully plays the aforementioned "Bonked Illiterate Nazi", to me, The Reader really isn't about the war. At its core the movie is about, as Ebert says much more eloquently than I ever could, what happens when people "go along." I'd have to spoil a lot of the plot to go in to more detail, so I'll just say that I thought they did a great job addressing that theme.

Now, in my humble opinion, they could have presented the same message without playing the Nazi card, and I think the movie would've been much better off. In fact, if Kate Winslet had been an illiterate communist or an illiterate Iraq veteran or, for that matter, an illiterate pig farmer the story would've been just as strong, and all of powerful emotions rightfully elicited by the mere mention of WWII wouldn't have been there to muddy the waters. I can completely understand that a rather philosophical movie with a mostly-sympathetic (and often-naked) ex-internment camp guard as the main character isn't some people's cup of tea. I didn't consider the WWII references central to the movie's overall message, but 5 second shots of the piles of shoes at Auschwitz clearly alter the tone of the movie. The final scene especially was too much, and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor.

So, I liked --- or maybe liked isn't the right word --- I appreciated The Reader, and although it's hardly the best movie she's been in, Kate Winslet gave one heck of an impresive performance, so I won't begrudge her the Oscar that she will almost surely win in a few weeks. If anyone is curious, I'd slide this in to my 2009 list just ahead of Benjamin Button at number 9, but even though it's in my top 10 for the year, I have a hard time recommending The Reader. It certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, so I'd suggest reading Ebert's review and if you're still interested after that, go ahead and give the movie a shot.

Doubt - 5.5

2009-01-23T16:45:00.004-05:00

Four actors from Doubt got Oscar nominations, but (as my dorky brother informs me) it's only the fourth time in history that a movie with that many acting nominations didn't get a best picture nomination. I don't know what that says, but it seemed like a decent way to start a review for a movie that left me feeling ... well, not too much.

Doubt was fine. Of those Oscar nominations, one performance was really good (Viola Davis), two were solid (Amy Adams, Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and the last one (Meryl Streep) was a bit over the top and not at all Oscar-worthy, but still decent enough. The problem is that performance quality seems to have an inverse relationship with screen time --- Viola Davis awesome, but was only on the screen for 5 or 10 minutes.

There is definitely a reason it didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Other than the acting, there was really noteworthy going on. The movie was pretty slow and dull, and frankly, unless your a big dork like me, there are probably better movies out there right about now.

Top Movies of 2008

2009-01-18T14:02:00.005-05:00

I'm taking a day off from pictures (Tomorrow, the Andes). Instead, here is a ranking of all the movies I saw from 2008. I think there are some clear divisions here, so I'm breaking it up in to tiers.

Tier 1 - Really Freakin' Good
1) Slumdog Millionaire
2) Wall-E
Tier 2 - Really Good
3) The Wrestler
4) Frost/Nixon
5) Milk
Tier 3 - Good!
6) The Dark Knight
7) Iron Man
8) Happy Go Lucky
Tier 4 - Alright
9) Benjamin Button
10) Forgetting Sarah Marshall
11) Baby Mama
12) Tropic Thunder
13) Bank Job
14) In Bruges
Tier 5 - Bad
15) Bond: Quantum of Solace
16) 27 Dresses
17) Pineapple Express
18) Harold and Kumar 2
19) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
20) Jumper

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 6.0

2009-01-15T16:53:00.006-05:00

So, as I twittered my way through Benjamin Button yesterday (a failed experiment that I won't be repeating), I compared the movie to Forrest Gump, only to be informed through the magic of the internet that they have the same screenwriter. I said then that the tone and feel of the two movies were similar, but in retrospect, that tweet was off the mark. The two movies share lots of surface characteristics (largely set in the deep south, boats, on-off-on love story, lots of voice over narration, unique protagonists, etc), but Button lacks that certain something that always makes me stop and watch, at least for a minute or 2, when I see Forrest Gump on TV.

Benjamin Button is a pretty movie. It's more or less a well acted movie. In a lot of ways, it's even a unique movie. But one thing it isn't is fun. Button is as silent as Gump is talkative. Hell, everyone in the movie is quiet. I guess if no one talks then no one has to talk about why the hell Brad Pitt is aging backwards. Combine the generally sparse dialogue with David Fincher's Se7en-like lighting and you've got a pretty dark and somber love story. It's like they thought that no one would buy in to the whole reverse aging thing unless they made the movie serious enough to cancel out the silliness of it's central conceit.

The last 30 minutes of Button were great and even moving, but I'm not convinced the payoff was worth sitting through the pretty, but mundane, set up. A tragic love story is fine and good, but that could have been done in the hour and a half that Pitt and Blanchett were on screen together. It's the other 90 minutes that didn't do ... well, they didn't do much of anything. There were none of the little moments (the silly quotes, the music, the ping pong, the fake historical footage) that made Gump fun to watch, and the few set pieces they tried fell flat (Daisy getting hit by the car, the war scene, the "miracle" first steps).

In he end, Button is a bit too serious and a bit too sloppy, and not even fine performances and amazing special effects could quite overcome the fact that, at it's core, Button was a great love story buried within a dull character study.

Twit

2009-01-12T22:32:00.001-05:00

I've posted twice (!!) recently in Twitter, so I'm adding it to my sidebar. I'll drop it if I have another 300 day period of silence.

Worst Movies I saw in 2008

2009-01-06T06:51:00.004-05:00

When there are 4 movies I like less than 27 Dresses, you know there was some crap. Here's my list of my 5 least favorite movies from the 19 I watched last year, worst movies first.

1) Jumper - 2.0 - Watched as much as I could stand on a plane. It was truly oh-my-god-how-did-this-get-made bad, but it wasn't offensively-bad like my 1 out of 10 prototype, The Cell.
2) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 2.0 - For the first 30 minutes, I kept waiting for a big joke where they would reveal that Indiana Jones had become an actor, and we were watching a (really bad) movie within a movie. That revelation never came ... and the movie only got worse from there.
3) Harold and Kumar 2 - 2.0 - I didn't finish it, so maybe it got better once Neal Patrick Harris showed up, but the first hour was as horribly unfunny as the first movie was hilarious.
4) Pinapple Express - 3.0 - More disappointing than point-blank terrible. It was a good idea that just didn't work.
5) 27 Dresses - 4.0 - It's on a worst movie list, but a 4.0 for a unabashed chick flick is a pretty good score coming from me, so this one goes down as a success in my book. Like I said when I reviewed it, Katherine Heigl is really a pretty good actress.

Movie Reviews Catch up

2009-01-05T17:13:00.006-05:00

I'm hopelessly behind in my fake movie reviewing career, so it's catch up time. Here are a bunch ratings with 1 or 2 line comments. Note that many of these movies are really freaking good and deserve a lot more attention than I gave say, this hunk of poo, but whatareyagonnado.

I want to watch Benjamin Button and Doubt (and maybe Revolutionary Road) before I do my best of 2008 movie list, but if you remember that I gave Wall-E a 18.6 out of 10 and I liked Dark Knight and Iron Man a good deal, you can extrapolate a lot of said list from here if you are so inclined.

At any rate, here are my blurbified reviews (stuff from this year first):
Slumdog Millionaire - 9.0 - Pretty easily the best movie of 2008, and probably the my favorite movie since Pan's Labyrinth, which is maybe my proper-noun Favorite Movie. Two Thumbs up. Four stars. A must see. Etc Etc.

Frost/Nixon - 8.0 - Nice character study with great performances. It was surprisingly exciting considering not a ton happens.

The Wrestler - 8.0 - It's a completely different kind of movie, but the comment for Frost/Nixon applies again. Mickey Rourke should probably win Best Actor.

Milk - 7.5 - See comment for Frost/Nixon one more time. This gets docked half a point since they didn't manage to get it out before prop 8.

Happy Go Lucky - 7.0 - Frost/Nixon, Version 4.0. Happy Go Lucky is a straight up character study, and thus is pretty much free from the burden of a plot. Amazing performance from the crazy brit lady though.

Tropic Thunder - 6.0 - This was pretty funny! It was made even funnier by the fact that I watched it right after watching ...

Pineapple Express - 3.0 - How the hell did this work out so badly. It seemed like an ok idea, but I don't think I laughed once. Seriously.

And a few older things ...

Cronos - 7.0 - Guillermo Del Toro's first movie. It was pretty good, but honestly, I would just watch Pan's Labyrinth for the 20th time before rewatching this puppy.

Guess Who is Coming to Dinner - 8.5 - Really great movie that has aged surprisingly well.

The Hustler - 6.0 - Pretty good movie that hasn't aged too well.

Feliz Navidad

2008-12-23T22:33:00.004-05:00

I was hoping to have some real content up for Christmas, but that is looking less and less likely.
Instead, I offer this video that is gauranteed to make your Christmas happier (via Andrew Sullivan, btw). Merry Christmas everybody.

Hey Jude (Asian Baby Version)

The Day the Earth didn't Stand Still

2008-12-19T06:06:00.004-05:00

We've been feeling the medium-sized Valparaiso earthquakes here in Santiago for the last 24 hours. They are 150 miles away, so it's only like a 2.0 or something here so nothing much happens really --- the room shakes a little, hanging light fixtures swing --- but for an east coast American, it's still pretty freaky.

3 Things

2008-12-18T10:39:00.002-05:00

If I'm having a crappy day, there are 3 things that are gauranteed to cheer me up. They are:

1) The Tao of Pooh
2) 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields

3) 80s Cartoons Theme Songs (extra points for foreign languages)