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Review: Stranger than Fiction

Muse and I watched the Will Ferrell movie Stranger than Fiction last night. Considering it didn’t do very well in theaters even though it had a great cast, I thought I’d put my two cents in for the DVD rental crowd. To sum it up quickly, if you’re looking for an original movie with a wonderful cast and some witty humor as well as some serious thought then you should run out and rent this movie.

For those of you who don’t like the grotesque quantity of Will Ferrell movies dealing with goofy parodies of sports or make-believe psuedo celebrities, this is the movie for you. Ferrell truly acts in this movie and though his quirky nature comes through from time to time, he’s playing a real person in this movie and he’s actually quite good at it. Truthfully, if he would make more movies like this instead of the make-a-quick-buck movies that are basically SNL skits gone wrong, I would have a hell of a lot more respect for him as an actor instead of just a fairly funny guy who does dumb movies.

The odd thing is how poorly this showed in theaters. The critics gave quite favorable reviews. Ferrell plays alongside Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah and Emma Thompson to great effect. And yet it made only a fraction of the box-office dollars that his other bizarre movies made. Don’t take me the wrong way, I enjoyed Talledega Nights and Anchorman but they pale incomparison to Stranger than Fiction now that I’ve seen Will Ferrell in a role that shows that he really can act and not just be loud and stupid.

Like I said, this is a truly original movie, so don’t expect anything typical. And pay attention. It’s not the most complicated plot, but there’s lots of little things you might miss if you don’t sit down and enjoy the movie. I highly recommend it and I hope some of you out there take a chance on it.

CJ7 and Stephen Chow

*Note: I broke this out from the end of yesterday’s post as it was fairly irrelevant to what I was talking about.  Plus I want more people to watch the trailer.  It’s funny.

CJ7 comes out here in Hong Kong on the 31st and I really would like to see that one in the theater. If you aren’t in Hong Kong you probably aren’t familiar with this new movie from Stephen Chow (of Kung Fu Hustle & Shaolin Soccer fame). I can’t understand the trailers at all but it’s partially animated and it looks funny. I checked the theater today and made sure that it will be shown with English subtitles which is good. Here’s a link to the main site so you can see the trailer with subtitles.

Monsters & movies

I’ve been wanting to see Cloverfield but I’m a little hesitant because of the “shaky handycam” style of shooting that the film uses. Comparing the movie to the Blair Witch Project certainly doesn’t help my enthusiasm either since that was one of the worst movies ever made. I’m fairly certain that Plan 9 had better writing and acting that the idiotic Witch movie. But I digress….

I’ve also been hearing that the monster(s) are completely off camera through most of the movie (if not all, I can’t tell from the reviews) and that also disappointed me. At least at first. When I saw the previews, I was thinking Cloverfield was something along the lines of a Godzilla movie which will always appeal to me. Then I realized that this is supposed to be a scary movie and scary movies don’t necessarily show the monsters very much. Some do with varying degrees of success but most good horror movies keep you guessing about the creatures and it’s limits. Maybe then Cloverfield uses the monster minimalism to its advantage. I need to see it to know for sure.

I read this article regarding the success of movies that kept the monsters hidden and was surprised in the choices they made in some cases. Sure Alien and the original The Thing make sense but I would never have thought of Jaws or Rosemary’s Baby as monster movies along those same lines. The theory holds true, I just never thought of movies like that in the same way as something like Alien. Some other classic monster movies that worked well because of keeping the enemy hidden would be the original Amityville Horror (that pig demon outside the window scared the shit out of me when I was little) and the first Nightmare on Elm Street (if you think about it Freddy really wasn’t shown all that much as a whole till fairly late in the movie). If I remember correctly, the monster/spirit in The Entity was never shown at all throughout the whole movie even though Barbara Hershey takes a hell of a beating throughout.

But then I started thinking about Aliens and how great it was in spite of the fact that the Alien creatures were shown practically non-stop. And then I realized that as much of a thriller/horror movie was, the sequel of Aliens was pure balls-to-the-wall action movie. Aliens didn’t try and be scary so it didn’t need to hide the monsters. You need a good cross-over movie like Pitch Black to show the differences as well as how hidden monsters can still be fairly scary even in a action movie if it’s done right. The scene where the guy lights up the dark with the alcohol flame from his mouth like a circus performer captures the mood perfectly in my opinion.

Bottom line is that I want to see Cloverfield because of the potential and I’m hesitant to see it because of the potential. I’ll probably end up waiting for the rental.

Busy day

SO this is all you get: A free monitor cleaner.

Safe for work.

*EDIT* Updated with new link.  The last one stopped working.

Cisco ASA series

I’m looking at possibly getting a Cisco ASA 5510 device for firewall, intrusion detection and small-scale VPN access to a small office.  Does anyone have any advice, warnings or suggestions regarding the ASA series of devices?  I’m not all that savvy on network hardware anymore so I’m feeling a bit out of my league on this one.

Just leave a comment if you have any information at all.

New Batman movie will be postponed

The first thing I see in my e-mail this morning when I wake up?  Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment yesterday.  The same Heath Ledger that starred in Brokeback Mountain and was cast as The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie The Dark Knight.

Filming was already well under way for the Dark Knight as I saw here in Hong Kong and from the insanely long trailer for the new movie I saw at the theater before I Am Legend started.

It’s not too often that a major actor dies in production of a major movie.  A similar loss, only under much different circumstances, would be Brandon Lee who was mortally wounded while filming super/anti-hero movie The Crow.

They’ve yet to announce if Ledger’s death will affect the release of the new movie, but with a July release date, I somehow doubt they had all the footage they would need for the final cut before now.   It’s sad to see anyone die, but it would be even worse for the work that the cast and crew of the two Chris Nolan led Batman movies to be lost because of this tragedy.  I would hope they can finish the movie and honor Heath Ledger in it’s completion.

The time may be close

The time for buying a new computer to replace my outdated and seemingly dying of old age PC may be closer than I had thought.  Based on this article, it seems that the newest king of video cards may be released as early as next month.  And if the projected pricing in this article holds true then that is a freaking bargain compared to the current high end cards.

Based on the newest iteration of DirectX 10.1, this new NVidia 9800GX2 should be more than enough muscle to power all the games I’ve been waiting to buy.  Of course I’ll have to wait and see just how much it actually retails for and how it stacks up against AMD/ATI’s new DX10.1 cards.  Currently the new batch of Radeon cards are good but no match for NVidia’s last iteration of 8800 series cards.

Then all I need to do is research new motherboards and RAM and cases and power supplies and hard drives and….

Sing-a-long

It’s time for a Sing-a-long!!!

The rhythm or cadence goes like this:

buhh-dum-dum-dant
buhh-dum-dum-dant
buhh-dum doo-da-da
buhh-dum-dum-dant

The words are:

The ants in France
Wear underpants
They say “Ooo-lah-lahs”
and put on bras

And now you know what’s been running through my head all morning. Why? How should I know. At least it’s better than when I had the Bangles Go-Go’s stuck in my head singing “Out tits are real” instead of the more popular version of the song about their lips being sealed.

No you will never get the last 45 seconds of your life back. It’s the risk you take coming to this site.

Sharing

This is probably going to be the funniest thing I will see or hear all damn day:

I spent a half hour jumping around my apartment playing air guiter with a broom, which is pretty much the only reason i bought the broom, and quite possibly the only reason why i wanted to live on my own- So i could do such acts without crashing in the floor or pissing off moms or gma with my dreams of playing crazy electro-rock.

Direct quote from Livingdead’s post over at xoxxed.com.

Al this over some new stuff from Bjork. Good times.

Maybe someday

Maybe someday we’ll see a presidential campaign (hell, any campaign) that was fought and won by the merits of each individual candidates strengths and weaknesses, their political track record and the values that they truly believe in. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think so.

But we really know that something like that will never happen.

Poor, poor Mitt Romney gets caught in a lie at a Staples store speech. Oh wait no, that’s not a lie, that a “technicality”. His campaign isn’t “run” by lobbyist Ron Kaufman, it’s run by his campaign manager. The fact that he has a lobbyist at his side at all times just means that… you know… he must be just there for his witty jokes and bartending skills. No I’m sure he has nothing to do with the campaign at all but he most certainly doesn’t “run” the campaign.

Now I do believe Romney when he says that Kaufman is an unpaid advisor. I believe that because politicians do not pay lobbyists money. Lobbyists pay politicians money. So maybe a more realistic statement would be that Romney is a paid advisor of whatever Kaufman supports. I’m sure there’s a technicality to explain away everything though.