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Showing posts from August, 2010

Just Watched: Repo Men

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Repo Men I so wanted to like this movie.  Forest Whitaker is one of my favorite actors and the premise of human organ repossession seems like something meaty enough to build a good movie around.  I don't know what happened but the end result isn't good. The first 30 minutes of the movie are promising.  It's basically a montage of cold-blooded organ repossessions performed with a steely detachment by repo partners Whitaker and Law, justified with the oft repeated "A job is just a job".   It seemed like the perfect setup for exploring the dark side of our profit driven corporate culture and the timely issue of  predatory lending practices. For some damn reason though they chose to ignore any of the more interesting political implications of their setup and decided to just make a chase movie.  This starts when  Law's character has an accident that requires he get an artificial heart and, when he is no longer able to afford it, the evil corporation sends h

Just Watched: Death at a Funeral

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Death at a Funeral (2010) Not very funny.  I chucked at the drugged out white guy and when Tracy Morgan got poop on himself and a little whenever Peter Dinklage was on screen but considering the talent of this ensemble that's not much.  Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, two very funny people,  kill (as in make dead and lifeless) any scene they are in.  If I hadn't seen this film I would never have guessed these guys could be so unfunny.  It was like watching Eddy Murphy in The Adventures of Pluto Nash.  How could people so talented have fallen so far?  Unless you're really bored, skip this film.

Just Say Now

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I support this cause.

Just Watched: Kick Ass

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Kick Ass This was not the movie I expected.  All I knew was what I saw on the TV commercials where it appeared to be a comedy about nerdy kids who want to be super heroes.  Replace 'comedy' with 'hyper violent revenge flick' and you start to get the real picture. There's nothing wrong with that either, it was actually kind of a nice surprise.  It is 'Kill Bill' meets Spiderman meets Heidi. Not much more to say about this one.  I liked it.

Groove Shark

This is neat.  You can create public playlists on Grooveshark.  I've created an account but not uploaded any of my music.  I actually own all these but they don't know that.  How is this even legal? Updated: Not sure if I stumbled onto something I wasn't supposed to have or what the story is, but the embedded widget is no longer displaying.  It was cool while it lasted. Update #2: It's back.

Just Listened To #1

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Surfer Blood Astro Coast Hooky, Indie pop with a definite classic surf rock sound.  The songs are perhaps too derivative though since I keep hearing other songs in my head when the hook first appears.  Caspian Tertia  Caspian is a band out of Beverly MA that plays all instrumental rock.  While seeking more long jams I discovered this genre.  It's a bit too down-beat and repetitive for my tastes but makes for good background programming music. Godspeed You Black Emperor! Yanqui U.X.O. Another all instrumental album.  This music should have been the soundtrack to my years at IBM.  After listening to it for 15 minutes I want to vote Democrat.  All dirge all the time.   Not for casual consumption but interesting.

Just Read: The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch

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The Green Knight Her most emotionally gripping novel yet... built around Manichaean juxtapositions of good and evil, love and power, celebration and passion, light and dark. - Michiko Kaluntani, The New York Times Did you get that? This novel isn't just built around juxtapositions of good and evil, etc..., it's built around Manichaean juxtapositions. I had to look that up so I'll save you the trouble. (From wikipedia ) Manichaean theology taught a dualistic view of good and evil. A key belief in Manichaeism is that the powerful, though not omnipotent good power (God) was opposed by the semi-eternal evil power (Satan). This addresses a theoretical part of the problem of evil by denying the omnipotence of God and postulating two opposite powers. Humanity, the world and the soul are seen as the byproduct of the battle between God's proxy, Primal Man, and Satan. The human person is seen as a battleground for these powers: the soul defines the person, but it is

Just Watched: Cop Out

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Cop Out Rotten Tomatoes gives this film a whopping 19% and offers this as its consensus: Cop Out is a cliched buddy action/comedy that suffers from stale gags and slack pacing. If you spend even a few minutes looking around it's easy to see that  most people didn't like this film.  I however am not most people.  I found it fun and kind of charming.  Tracy Morgan is a hoot and the plot and direction was only stale and slack if you'd say the same about a Judd Aptow comedy.  If you go in thinking this is a normal run-of-the-mill buddy cop action/comedy I could see why you would be disappointed.  There's nothing normal about this film.  The world this film lives in is a world where Tracy Morgan could be a police officer and that's a fucked up place.  Cop Out lives on the absurdity that is Tracy Morgan.  In that respect this film is closer to Bad Boys than Lethal Weapon and in my opinion funnier than either of them. I like Bruce Willis but he does seem unc

A Universe From Nothing

This talk by super cosmologist Lawrence Krauss is understandable yet chock full of interesting information and thankfully light on fluff. It's well worth the hour you'll spend watching it.