Saw the new Star Trek flick, was good and fun, you should go see it. I can’t remember much about the day after, it was that silly at times, but who couldn’t use some more silliness in their life? Mini skirts in the military? Wionna Ryder as Spock’s mom? The universe saved by Abercrombie & Fitch models? It’s what heaven would look like if God was a 16 year old boy with an unlimited budget. Which might explain the shape of the world…

First reaction: that should have been better.

Battlestar Galatica was a good show. It was not a perfect show, but at times it was extraordinarily great. The final hour of it was an exercise in navelgazing fanboy wankery that not only jumped the shark, but turned around and ran the boat over it. That last hour it stopped being a show and became a long rambling love letter by that ex you really, really wanted to stay in a relationship with, but they were just too crazy and you got tired of the rollercoaster. The show stopped being a show and tried to be something more, Something Deep and Meaningful and it failed, while turning into a joke. Then you found out that the past 5 years was just angels mucking around in celestial version of Trading Places and you realize how terrible the joke is.

I had thought that 2 hours wasn’t enough time to wrap everything up. It was actually too much, giving the writers time to pad things out and seeing how much they could screw with the audience.

Second reaction, after sleeping on it: That was really terrible, see previous paragraph.

I had brought my camera and tried a few few shots from my seat in the audience, but my heart wasn’t in it and my hand knew it. It shook badly and the few shoots I took were blurry and out of focus. The sound was too magnificent to concentrate on the visuals.

The Cowboy Junkies were here and doing what they do best, playing music.

It was fantastic. The band is good. Margo, the lead singer has an amazing voice and the Michael, the guitar player is a phenomenal player. They are also the most unpretentious band I’ve ever seen. Margo introduced everyone and thanked their crew and thanked everyone for showing up and as she said that the rest of the band clapped. They literally just walked out on stage (just 10 minutes after they were supposed to start), waved, picked up their instruments and started playing. Margo walked out a minute later, holding a cup of tea and sank into her vocals, getting warmed up, before ripping loose with a fantastic set of pipes for the next hours.

Afterwards, Margo came out into the lobby to make and take with fans, take pictures, etc. Lisa and I got to met her, and I babbled like an insane fan, I just couldn’t believe I was talking to the lead singer in my favorite band, you know? She laughed and we went on our merry way. That was a week ago and I’m still high from that show, it was so fantastically amazing.

We went to see Coraline this afternoon, on a whim, because hey, it’s stop motion animation and by Tim Burton, so what’s not to love?

Well, it was stop motion, but it wasn’t by Tim Burton and man it showed. Visually stunning (and in 3D), the first few minutes were wonderful, as we settled in to something that we just knew was going to be amazing as fantastic graphics flew out from the screen, in beautiful color and gorgeous motion.

But someone forget to get the story, characters, character design, and pacing right. The movie quickly took on a too dark tone, shepherded forwarded by an unlikable lead character and her unlikable parents in a plot that plodded along like a solar powered wheelchair going uphill on a cloud filled day. It had all the elements of a good story, but ultimately it fell down like a tired drunk person: you were glad when they finally shut up and passed out.

The worst part was the 3D glasses. When I was kid, they were cool to keep, they’d turn the world red in one eye, blue in the other. The ones we got were just cheap nerd like frames that made the regular world appear dimmer when you looked through them, which after seeing the movie, makes sense.

Found this in Goodwill today:



Here’s the first paragraph:

The way I see, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens and nothing is expected of you.

I think I’m going to like it.

Saw Valkyrie on Tuesday. The entire premise seems to be “Hitler was so bad, we don’t even have to explain why anyone would kill him! We’ll save a ton on scenery and can concentrate on costumes and special effects. We’ll get Cruise to stare, he needs work, we’ll get’em cheap!”

And that’s the way it went, a movie like a fast food burger, perfectly satisfying, let leaving a bad chemical after taste that makes you realize you could have done better. Worth seeing if you haven’t been in move theatre in a long time and miss the experience, but otherwise, why bother?

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is great, no question.

The story is of Liesel Meminger, a young girl in 1930s and 40s Germany, and the circumstances how she got a new family and grew to love them, while in the midst of the rise of the Nazis and her curious relationship with Death, one sided though it may be. Told in short bursts and featuring a large cast of characters, the book sparkles with youthful energy as it deals with the small triumphs of poor people in a terrible position and the things they do to get them through the day. It’s deeply moving, funny and the sort of book you can’t put down. Check it out!

I’m not a big fan of the summer olympics, but these pictures are gorgeous. There’s not much video on YouTube though. Seems NBC is getting that stuff pulled off the site which is a shame ‘cause the opening ceremonies are usually pretty impressive.

Really funny recap of the first 3 seasons of Battlestar Galatica, in a mere eight minutes, in preparation for the 4th season premiere on April 4th

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-6yL_tMUDps

Cloverfield is, quite simply, a scifi/horror Blair Witch Project, wrapped up in the shell of a Lost episode. Yet as good and entertaining as the movie is , what it says about current American culture is one of the bleakest things I’ve seen in a while and I saw No Country for Old Men, which looks like a Disney musical compared to Cloverfield.

In the movie, New York City is attacked by a giant monster and all hell breaks loose. We see the attack from the vantage point of a group of 20 year old friends, who are filming the attack as they first try to escape the city and then try to rescue one of their own. They don’t know what’s happening or why. No one does, not even the US military as it tries to kill the creature. There are no quick thinking scientists who have a theory where the monster came from or a cool and calm solider who’s determined to defeat menace. One minute people are enjoying a party, the next there’s the chaos and the terror of the unknown. And the characters seem to know it on some level. Though their world is reduced to nothing and they’re thrust into a situation they couldn’t have dreamed of, they take it relatively in stride, perhaps because deep down they know, as we all do, just how close the randomness of life and death can wreak havoc on us.