Tag: HAL

This evening after work Ariesna and I headed up to the World Theater in Cedar Rapids to attend an early Halloween Party.

Err… that’s not strictly true. We’d heard from AWelkin about said party being a mascarade and that it would start off by showing Shaun of the Dead. This is a British horror/zombie flick that was released here in the US not all that long ago and it had looked mighty funny, going by the trailers. Having now seen the movie, I can safely …. but that’s getting a head of myself.

We were running a bit behind schedule when we left (movie scheduled to start at 5:30, left house at 5:10, drive is ~30minutes) but we hurried along as best we could. Narrowly avoiding getting lost in downtown CR, I had to drive around the block a couple of times to find a place to park. We hurry inside –the time is now 6:00– and there’s no sign of a movie screen or a movie playing. We stumble around a bit confused when AWelkin waves us over. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones running behind schedule. *shrug* So we sit and chat1 until nearly 7 o’clock!

Finally the movie started and it was flippin’ fan-tas-tic! Sure, some bits had crude langauge and there was a bit of excessive gore but overall; 4.95 stars out of 5. Definitely, a must see and leaps & bounds better than the last movie we saw together.

1 Well, we tried to anyway but they were blasting annoying music at a near deafening level at us.

I’ve seen this meme in several different places. I finally decided to heck with it and that I’d do it myself. The items in bold are the ones I’ve done and the rest are viewable after the jump.

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula.
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
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Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go and see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Wow was that ever a mistake!

I went in knowing that most of the reviewers out there had said it was bad and about half of the geeks were saying the same1. However the trailers for the movie looked just gorgeous with an impressive style that felt very much like one would expect a 1940’s pulp sci-fi movie to look2, from the giant robots to the cars down to the ray pistol. The one interesting thing about the movie that one should remember is that the entire thing was shot in front of a green screen and there were no locations. All the background stuff was computer-rendered. Then it appears that they pushed the film of the actors through some filters to add a bit of noise & distortion into the film, giving a feeling of being from the 40’s. These computerized specials effects were unfortunately the only good thing about the movie. The writing of the movie was wretched. The acting was sub-par at best. If you wish to know more details, following the (more) link but be warned that there are some spoilers mixed in there.
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This afternoon Ariesna and I went out to see The Bourne Supremacy. As I expected it was mostly a fast paced action movie with just a hint of drama tossed in to spice things up. Was it good? Well… it would have been better if they didn’t use such jerky camera work for the action sequences, particularly the car chases. I have a fairly strong stomach for such things but even I was starting to feel a touch of motion sickness by the end of the movie. Poor Ariesna was downing some Dramamine to try calming her stomach and fight off the severe motion sickness that she was feeling. Still if you can get past the motion sickness issue; there are some other disappointments in store for you:

  • Matt Daemon isn’t playing the role of Jason Bourne as well as he did back in The Bourne Identity.
  • Figuring out the real bad guy in this film takes no effort and that ruins the suspensefulness of the film.
  • The portion of the movie where Bourne goes to Russia, feels tacked on like it really belongs in another movie1.
  • The way Bourne dealt with the Russian assassin didn’t make any sense.

So am I saying that I hated the movie? No, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a fun film that allowed me to have some mindless entertainment for an hour & 48 minutes. Given I woke up exhausted and was in a sleepy haze all day that was probably for the best. I give the movie 3 and a half out of 5 cups of coffee. It’s worth seeing if you can catch it at a matinee or at a cheap-seats movie theater.

1 Though I have to admit, I did admire Bourne’s character for locating the girl and apologizing to her for what he’d done in the past.

I’ve been back in the States for a few days now and I’ve been meaning to1 write a little something reflecting back on the trip; however with jet lag and what not2, I’ve been a bit too tired to write anything up. Since I received a friendly reminder about it from AWelkin; I figure I better hurry up and write something. First off, let’s get the gushy fan-boyishness out of the way. Going to Japan was an amazing experience and something that I am very glad that I had the opportunity to do. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are some of the impressions that I’m left with from my visit to Japan.
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