Anyway, I had heard a lot about it (as was inevitable with a movie of this size being released) and the general consensus was that it was a visually stunning movie, with a story that you’ve seen before but that was pretty good anyway. I entered the theater with fairly low expectations (I’m big on story) and left feeling…conflicted.

Lets get the good stuff out of the way first. Visually, the movie is amazing. The CGI is great to the point of it not feeling like CGI. They’ve found a way to solve the “creepy dead eyes” look that CG creatures have had in the past. The world was cool, the concept of a race of people able to link up with every living thing in the forest/jungle/whatever was interesting. This movie should win awards for Visual FX, hands down. Sound, music, editing, all that it definitely deserves awards.

Where it breaks down, though…is in everything else. First of all, lets get the story out of the way. When people say it’s fairly generic, believe them. You have seen this movie before. It’s a composite of every “white man integrates with native people and gets the girl” movie ever made. You’ve got the evil earth corporation who knows what’s best for everybody, the simple native people in tune with nature, the white man who integrates with their society and finds his true love, the fight to save the planet against the marauding human horde. There’s nothing at all original in here.

Even worse than the generic story is the generic characters. The biggest offender is the tough as nails older military commander guy, spouting such lines as “I want this high and tight people. I wanna be home for supper” and “My job is to keep you alive. I will not succeed.” The second biggest would be the hard-ass chief scientist lady, who becomes outraged with any interference by the military in her operation. Or the female badass soldier who decides beating up on the natives isn’t morally right. The corporate manager who only cares about profits. I could keep going on and on. EVERY single character is a stereotype, with absolutely no character development at all.

The story doesn’t even make sense! Humans take control of genetically engineered native-life form impersonators. The natives seem to know what these things are and yet in a span of 3 months they teach this one guy their ways and he becomes like a totally native guy. 3 months? That’s it?? Knowing that he’s a human somewhere controlling an empty body??? And then the humans come to take over, they throw this guy out of their society, but he instantly regains their trust by capturing a gigantic bird thing. No questions asked. He just shows up again and instantly becomes the battle commander. His presence, apparently , suddenly means that the native’s bows and arrows can now shoot through the glass cockpit canopies of the human military ships (even though they couldn’t at an earlier point in the movie). Just..arhhghh!

Also: Unobtanium. Seriously? You couldn’t think of a better name???

I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it weren’t for two things: First, all of the people out there saying it’s the best movie ever!! I don’t really understand that viewpoint at all. It’s pretty, but it’s relatively empty. Second, it tried to pretend that it WASN’T empty. If this was billed in the same way as, say…Independence Day was…popcorn movie, lots of action and explosions, fun ride for the whole family sort of thing, I’d be less critical of it. Instead it tried so very hard to portray itself as a serious movie, an idea that is totally undermined by the comical character stereotypes.

I don’t regret seeing it at all. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really enjoy it either.

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This weekend I got to see the new Star Trek movie…and I've gotta say that I'm incredibly surprised at how good of a movie it actually was.

Back when this thing was first announced I had my worries. It sounded like they were trying to do a young original series cast back in the academy and it was going to be horrible. And after they lost all my good will by allowing Nemesis to be made, I was ready to just ignore the new movie.

But then it started getting closer…and it started looking good. And then it came out. And the reviews were amazing. So I went with my friends yesterday to watch it. And dear lord, it was AWESOME.

No spoilers ahead, or very limited unimportant spoilers, just to let you know. The first thing is, yes, this is a reboot of Star Trek. But it's not done in that sort of "just forget about all that old stuff" sort of way. The way they explained why things ended up being different was VERY cool.

The actors they got to play the younger versions of the original series crew were perfect. I especially enjoyed the guy they got to play McCoy. There was a lot of nods to the original material in the sounds and dialog. Lots of fan service, sure, but it was good fan service and was nostalgic rather than lame.

I also must say I'm happy how they did the ship designs and special effects. Instead of taking the Star Wars episode 1-3 approach of making everything look more shiny and high tech, they updated the effects from the TV shows, but they did it in such a way that it looked like it fit. The engine room of the ships is a maze of pipes, wires and other bits of machinery. The bridge is high tech as it should be, but the way the controls work and the viewscreen technology gives the impression of the technology not being all there yet as it was in the era of The Next Generation and beyond.

The story was good as well. But I'm not going to say anything at all about that here.

All in all, I'm VERY impressed by this movie. There were a few little gripes I have with it (especially the misguided Nokia product placement right at the beginning), but overall this is the best Star Trek since First Contact came out. They must do a sequel. Now.

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Last night was The Oscars, and as has become a tradition for
me I watched it with Wassy and Jay this year
again. The new part was that instead of watching it long distance as per usual,
I went over to their place and watched it with them, along with a bloomin onion
from Outback and a couple glasses of wine. It was a very enjoyable evening.

There was a little bit of worry involved in this year's ceremony since it was
revealed they would be a little bit different than they had been in the past.
Which was good because there's a ton of fluff built into the ceremony which
caused them to play off the winners very quickly and still run over time. But
it's scary because they could have screwed it up.

Another scary thing was the selection of Hugh Jackman as the host. I saw that
and thought "What the hell???" but as it turned out, it was a VERY
good decision. His opening number was..incredible. I'm trying so very hard to
find a copy of that somewhere and not being successful at it. We were
practically rolling on the floor laughing.

The actual changes to the ceremony were very positive. They got rid of a lot of
the overly pretentious montages that the oscars have become known for, instead
keeping them limited to shorter pieces highlighting the films of the year. Another
winning idea was to not let the Academy president or the MPAA guy or whoever
talk. It's always boring and it always takes FOREVER. Also in the positive
changes department: each original song nominee was played in a medley and they
combined the song from Wall-E and one of the Slumdog Millionaire songs in a
very neat way

They also redid how they talked about the best actress/actor nominees by
bringing out former winners and spending time talking about each nominee and
what they did with their role. It was very classy and really celebrated the
performances that were nominated. Very inclusive.

The one thing I could have done without was the performance number about the
Musicals. It was very schmaltzy and a couple minutes too long…but if that was
the worst of it, I'm a happy camper. the ordering of the awards was very
strange too. They stuck best supporting actress up front and then a bunch of
other stuff and best supporting actor about an hour and a half in.

As far as the actual awards…I'm glad Slumdog didn't sweep entirely. It was
getting a little boring knowing they were going to win as soon as their name
was called for being nominated. I'm a little disappointed at Wall-E not winning
best original screenplay as I really think it was well written, especially
challenging for a movie with so little dialog and characters that, by
definition, have a difficult time expressing emotions via expression. So much
of the movie was in the writing. No surprise they won the animated feature
award though. I like Jack Black's statement as he was presenting on how he
makes more money on his voice work than his live action stuff because he stars
in a single Dreamworks movie and then takes the money he gets from that and
bets it all on Pixar to win an Oscar. Complete with a  "Yeah!!!"
cheer when Wall-E was announced as the winner.

I'm very glad Kate Winslet won an oscar for her performance in The Reader. I
sorta think Revolutionary Road was a hair better but she was so very good in
both of them so I'm glad she got an award for something. I liked her acceptance
speech too…she strikes me as a very genuine individual.

I'm also really glad that Heath Ledger won for his portrayal of The Joker. I
was afraid that the fact that he had died would dissuade people from voting for
him, but his performance was more deserving than anything else in the
supporting actor category by far. I think they should have showed a little clip
of his performance after he won, like on the Golden Globes, but it was a really
cool moment. Of course now we need to deal with people saying "He wouldn't
have won if he was alive" which is absolute bull.

So in conclusion, good ceremony this year, and a good Oscar-watching party to
watch it at.

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This weekend continues the second week of trying to catch all of these good movies that seem to be coming out in January. This week: The Reader. Originally we were going to go see Slumdog Millionaire, however The Reader opened at our local theater, so we decided to go out and watch it instead.

Overall I'd say The Reader was a very good film, but I think I liked Revolutionary Road just a hair better considering it was more personally relevant and I could identify with the characters more. But The Reader was very good. The pacing is a little slow, but necessarily slow. I was getting a little worried while I was going through the first part of it, however that part of the story is important to what happens in the second half and as such, it all came together. I can see why some of the reviewers did not enjoy it though.

I don't want to say much about the plot because that's the whole emphisis in a movie like this. I will say this is the second week in a row where we ended up watching a very dark and depressing sort of movie. Definitely not a feel good sort of film.

Kate Winslet's performance is definitely deserving of the awards she's nominated for. It was really the pin that held the movie together. It's one of those movies where you need to think about it and get into the characters heads in order to understand what's really going on but it was really well done all around.

The only downside is, like last week…we had old people problems. A couple sitting next to us wouldn't shut up and kept having conversations about what was going on in the movie, which during a quieter, dialog driven movie is INCREDIBLY annoying and distracted. It got bad enough to the point where I ended up actually staring at them and saying something so they would be quiet. I don't really mind if you're going to say a few words her and there or make a few comments, but don't freaking have long conversations in the middle of important dialog sequences!!!!

After the movie, I went back to my friends apartment and we hung out for a while, watching season 1 of House and getting some work done. I worked some on my C++ learning efforts and Wassy had to get one of her commission pieces finished. So it was a productive working fun day which was very nice after a long and draining sort of week.

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Friday and Saturday of this week were spent just hanging out with my friends. Some much needed hanging out after this week's longness. Not much in the way of activities to report except for going out to the movies on Saturday to see Revolutionary Road.

In short, it was a really good move although very depressing. Not much of a feel-good type flick at all. But it was very very well done. Leonardo DiCaprio was robbed out of getting a nomination for his performance in this movie as he was REALLY good. As was Kate Winslet. Also, John, one of the supporting characters was AWESOME.

Just a warning as there's some minor spoilers going down in this next paragraph.

I think the thing that most drew me to the movie was how I found I could identify with the position of the characters. Especially the angle of working a job you don't really like because you're afraid to take a chance and see where it gets you. Because that's basically me.  And there was a lot of other stuff in there that reminded me very much of the stuff that my friends are going through right now. It just hit a little close to home.

On the subject of hitting things, we had the most obnoxious audience imaginable. Old people. Lots of them. There were two trouble areas in particular. One, a group of women who wouldn't shut up, making comments like "Is she going to <insert action here>???" over and over as if it was their living room. Also there was one man who was just annoying. First of all, he was SINGING ONE OF THE SONGS in the movie. OUT LOUD. WHY??? I couldn't believe what I was hearing!! Second, during one of the most powerful and climactic parts of the film, he blurts out "SHE'S GOING TO <edited to avoid spoilers>!" which kinda took me out of the moment. Then, just at the climax of the entire movie he gets up and walks out of the theater only to return after he misses the single biggest event that happens in the movie. He then begins to ask loudly about what he missed.

I hate people. But the movie was really good. Highly recommended.

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I mentioned I went out to see The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button last night in my post from earlier, but didn't really give my thoughts on it because I felt the film deserves it's own post.

My friends (Jay and Wassy) went to see it over Christmas and they really enjoyed it, so I wanted to make sure I caught it in the theater as well. I prefer seeing movies in the theater with other people…Wassy wanted to see it again (Jay isn't big on seeing movies twice) so we went last night. Aside from the 300 degree heating going on in the theater itself, the movie was really good.

It's the story of a man who was born an old man and ages backwards, becoming younger as the movie progresses and everyone around him gets older. I don't want to spoil anything specific about the plot beyond that, so I'm not going to go into any more details.

If this movie doesn't win an Oscar, I'm going to be really surprised. It's very good all around. Great performances by the lead roles, especially Brad Pitt as Bejimin who completly sells the unlikely situation of a man aging backwards. The cinematography is excellent as well and really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I was also impressed by the fact that, yes…this is a film with a message to deliver, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it. It makes you think without trying too hard at it and it's really deep. I feel I've only scratched the surface of what is in there in my single viewing and I'm looking forward to hearing the commentary track on the DVD release (hopefully there will be a commentary).

The movie is long (runs about 3 hours with trailers and stuff factored in) but I never really felt that it was too long.

Highly recommended. 

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I was over at my friends apartment last night for our weekly mid-week gathering. Most of the evening was taken up by the watching of The Dark Knight that just came out on DVD. I still can't believe how awesome it is, especially Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker. Every single time I watch the movie I see something new in his performance that I didn't notice before. Truly, he stole the film and I really hope that he wins an Oscar for his performance. It was a supporting character role, but I really don't think there was anyone else who has even come close to his performance.

While we were watching the movie, Wassy was working on some drawing. Specifically a piece for me that I had requested about 4-5 months (I think) ago after she had described the pose to me. It's a pin-up (of the not safe for work variety, although there's nothing really TOO naughty being shown, part of the reason why it's so awesome) piece featuring one of my villains from City of Villains. Dark Frost, specifically. She's the one waving sitting on the wall in my last piece of artwork.

I had told her I didn't want to see it until it was totally finished, but she was over there drawing it and making comments about how good it was turning out so I broke down and looked. I'm extremely excited about it now. Well…I we excited before but now I'm even more excited. She gets the whole pin-up thing very well. VERY well. I can't wait for this one to be finished. The pencils she got done last night were awesome and I've been glancing at them whenever I can. Just has to hold me over for a few more weeks…

We also attempted to play Through The Fire And Flames on Guitar Hero 3 after not having played it for months. That didn't end well. Not well at all. Such a hard song to play, and we were way out of practice. Epic fail!

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It's Monday. So…aside from being back at work, it means it's time for the update on my weekend activities.

Friday evening I found myself over at my parents house where they had invited me over to watch a movie (I Am Legend specifically). Lured by the promise of real, old fashioned popped popcorn, I headed over. After sufficiently tiring out the dog, we started working on the popcorn popping process. Which was…quite an ordeal. I was reading off the instructions on the popcorn, and my mom and dad both had different ways in which they popped popcorn on the stove. Somehow we managed to combine all of these separate methods into something that worked. One quick note about the popcorn: the buttery flavored oil had no actual butter in it. Scary.

I thought the movie was good, but my parents seemed to not enjoy it as much. I didn't think it was awesome, but it was a good mindless sort of fun type movie. I did determine where my lack of bravery comes from as I witnessed my mom nearly covering her eyes at some points and hugging the dog. This proves that the ability to tolerate scary movies is genetic.

Saturday I went over to my friends, Rock Band in tow, as has become the ritual. Wassy had to do some work, so I played a game of Chess with Jay (well…several games of chess…I had forgotten to turn off the 10 minute per game timer so he ended up losing 2 times in a row before I figured it out). It was an…interesting experience. It seems that Jay has a habit of scheming out loud.

Him: How much do you value your knight?
Me: Very much thank you. I have two of them.
Him: Or do you…?
Me: Yes I do!!! They're both right there on the board!!

And so on. This is the first time we've played when we're in the same room, so I didn't know about this before. It seems he does it all the time. From that moment onward "Or do you…?" or variations of that became the catch phrase of the day. Especially during our scrabble game later in the evening. Speaking of scrabble, we watched the Word Wars documentary (about world champion competitive scrabble) using Netflix while we were hanging out during the afternoon. It was good but the people they chose to focus on were some of the biggest losers and jerks on the planet…There was nobody sympathetic, except for one of the guy's parents who said when asked how he was doing during a scrabble tournament: "I'm kicking ass!"

Sunday was my day of cleaning. Since I finished Fallout 3 on Friday, I have to wait for Gamefly to send me a new game which probably won't actually arrive until after Thanksgiving due to how the mail is this week. So I've decided to spend some time doing a really exhaustive cleaning of my apartment. I got my bedroom mostly cleaned up yesterday and did a lot of living room organizing in the evening. I picked up wall-e on DVD and was watching the commentary while cleaning up my living room.

I also attempted a new dish for dinner. Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo to be specific about it. Making everything from scratch including the sauce. It ended up being pretty good, but I need to adjust a few things with the sauce. I let it thicken a bit too much and I need to add a little more cheese to my next attempt (a side effect of the thickening…didn't want to add too much cheese or it would have been WAY too thick). But there will be a next attempt…oh yes…

This week is going to be a long short week. Short because of having only 2 days of work this week. Long because that's followed by 5 days off, Thanksgiving with the family being one of the days. This week is going to be…very strange.

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This weekend was good. Real good. The main thing that happened was I drove out to Rochester (about 2.5 hours away) to go see The Dark Knight at an IMAX theater and also head out to Bugaboo Creek for dinner with some friends.

I'm not going to spoil anything about Dark Knight here since not everyone may have seen it. But I'm going to say that it deserves every single bit of hype it's been getting. I'm not a huge batman fan so I was going into this movie just slightly excited and a little annoyed at how everyone was talking about it. It was starting to feel like I would get tired of the movie before I even saw it. But I forgot all of that about 15 minutes into the movie.

Heath Ledger's Joker also deserves every bit of praise that's being placed upon it. He wasn't a guy playing the joker…he was the joker. End of story. His performance stole the show and I'm still kinda speechless after seeing it. I had no idea he could totally transform himself like that.

Go see it. Even if you are very "eh" about batman. It's just…good.

Dinner after was good too, although the service was very slow and I was threatened with the horror of having somebody tell them it was my birthday and then the waiters would come over and make me kiss this moose puppet thing. The friends in question were Jay and Wassy, along with another individual I met in college and his housemate. It was fun hanging out with them since we don't usually hang out in person like that.

Sunday was spent hanging out and playing City of Heroes for a good portion of time due to a crazy long thing I said I would do that ended up taking about 7 hours. Fun! 

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Didn't want to go with a cliched title like "I am…Iron man!" or something, so you can imagine it yourself. In any case though, I saw the new Iron Man movie last night with my friends.

In a word…awesome.

I would have to say that this is my favorite super hero movie of all time, my close second being Batman Begins. Pretty much everything about Iron Man was perfect.

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