Movie Reviews

I have a confession to make. I love reading movie reviews. I read them before I see a movie, after I see a movie, and, in some cases, while seeing a movie. Netflix stocks some snoozer.

• I read movie reviews to help me decide which movies to see.


• I read movie reviews to validate my opinions about a movie after I have already seen it.


• I read movie reviews to help me appreciate a movie more. Caveat: I also read IMDB for this purpose.

This last point is the one I want to discuss because it is the least obvious.

Movie critics help us decipher between "good" movies and "bad" movies. I understand that rating art is inherently tricky. However the art of movie making has much more structure, and therefore rateable criteria, than... say... painting. If most most critics give a movie a high rating, it is likely a good movie based on the standard set of rating rules which make a movie "good." This doens't mean that the average person won't enjoy the movie. I'm sure a lot of people came out smiling after seeing Kazaam.

This brings me to No Country for Old Men, which I saw Saturday. This movie is good. Really, really good. This is the kind of movie that your unborn child is going to be writing a paper about in their college film class in 20 years.

I am glad I read some reviews of this movie before I saw it. Since I knew I was about to see a good movie I prepared myself to closely watch each scene and look for metaphors, pay special attention to the lighting, and keep my mouth shut so I didn't miss any important lines. It is like getting a very expensive dinner at a posh restaurant. You know a lot of time and effort went into the dish so you eat it slowly and savor it.

After I saw the movie I re-read the movie reviews and liked the movie even more. Critics understand the craft of film-making more that I do and their insight adds to my appreciation.

Go see this movie. I understand I am getting your hopes up. Trust me. It helps.

Bachelor Life - In Excruciating Detail

Ginette and Dayla left for the weekend to hang out with my Mom and sister. I realize I haven't had a weekend all to myself in a very long time. Since I am sure I will get bored very quickly I'm going to write everything I do today and bore everyone else unfortunate enough to read this.

• 8:16am - Woke up. Actually make the bed (sort of).
• 8:18am - Check emails on my Blackberry.
• 8:20am - Read the Internet for a while. Think about what I am going to do today.
• 8:47am - Take a shower. Decide not to shave for the second day in a row. Scrufftastic!
• 9:02am - Get dressed. Grab the first Threadless shirt on top of the pile. It looks cold today so I'm going with the skate shoes instead of the flip flops.
• 9:12am - Grab some iced coffee and toast and head out the door
• 9:20am - Arrive at Vons. Pick up a gallon of milk and some cash back on my purchase
• 9:45am - Check out the Farmer's Market in Scripps Ranch. I'm hoping to find some good looking, locally grown produce. I'm disappointed with the selection and walk away with nothing.
• 10:10am - Arrive at Ranch 99 Asian Market. Pick up some basic I can't get at Vons: curry paste, coconut milk, lime leaves, and sashimi grade fish.
• 10:35am - I'm already bored being by myself. Before leaving Ranch I call Kate and suggest a movie. She's in! We agree to make plans in the late afternoon.
• 10:50am - Get home, unpack my groceries, put on This American Life on iTunes, and start making sushi rice.
• 11:01am - The rice is soaking. Time to play some Metroid 3!
• 12:30pm - Sushi's done. Watching the movie "Lucky You"
• 1:15pm - Uuggghhhh. Tooo much sushi. I put the rest in the fridge for later. However I have to say that a salmon, cream cheese, and red pepper inside-out roll is might tasty.
• 2:45pm - Movie's over. Pretty good. An accurate poker procedural with a tacked on romance. I guess no studio would budget a poker procedural without a romance.
• 2:46pm - Time to play some online poker!
• 2:49pm - Hmmm. It looks like the law stuck. No real money for US players. Bahh. What's the point.
• 4:41pm - 441st place out of 840 players in the Omaha Hi-Lo tournament. I really don't know what I am doing when it comes to that game.
• 5:35pm - Kate's here. Time to make some curry and eat the rest of the sushi.
• 6:40pm - The curry (Masman this time) turned out better than usual if I do say so myself. Kate agrees. However she would probably say nice things even if it tasted terrible. We discuss The Omnivore's Dilemma for awhile which we are both in the middle of reading.
• 7:25pm - We arrive at the movie theater to see Eastern Promises. Seriously, seriously, how many commercials how can they show before the movie. Movie Theater Executive: "We are losing more customers to On Demand movies, Netflix, and Tivo. What can we do to increase our goodwill with the public? I got it, more commercials and higher prices. Brilliant!"
• 9:30pm - Very good movie. 4 out of 5. I would say I like A History of Violence better since it did have the same director and lead. I probably would have given this one a 4.5/5 if I didn't have to see so much of Viggo's wang in the shower knife fight scene.
• 9:40pm - Kate drops me off. I'm pretty tired. One Simpsons rerun than it's off to bed.
• 10:17pm - Good night.
  

Cop-out

I haven't posted anything legitimate in a while. I understand that. I don't want to be that guy you consider removing from your feeds list because he never posts to his lame vanity blog.

That being said, here is a cop-out list that briefly summarizes everything I can think of that is awesome or lame that I have done in the past few months. Looking over the list now things have definitely been more awesome than lame, which is, in itself, awesome.

• New baby - awesome


• diapers - lame


• My high school reunion not happening - lame


• Bioshock (PC version of course) - awesome


• Selling my Xbox on Ebay - awesome


• Silversun Pickups - awesome


• Switching cars with Ginette since babies like Volvos more than Integras - lame


• Crosswords - awesome


• Those nasty, freezer burned vegetable potstickers I shouldn't have eaten becuase they made me sick - lame


• All you can eat sushi (twice!) - awesome


• The Sopranos (seasons 1&2) - awesome


• Harry Potter (books 1, 2, 3, and 1/4 of 4) - awesome


• Reruns on my Tivo - lame


• Upping Netflix to 5-at-a-time - awesome

Worst Possible Way to Spend $152.69

Full House - The Complete Series Collection

Why MySpace is like a Nokia 5190

I have a MySpace Account and a (new) Facebook account. Before setting up Facebook I honestly had lost all hope in social networking. MySpace is such a wasteland of animated gifs, 2000-pixel wide images, and broken sound files. It is unfettered customization run amok. Facebook is the exact opposite. The basic functionality is the same but the interface is so much cleaner.

If you give me the option of "pimping" my MySpace account I will probably do it. However I don't have particularly good taste and I am not a professional CSS designer.

This leads me to why MySpace is like a Nokia 5190. You remember the 5190 right? It was that ubiquitous brick phone that also happens to be my first cell phone. It was one of the earliest phones to offer interchangeable faceplates. The "factory" faceplates were pretty tasteful in a few bright colors. However the market was soon flooded with cheaply made, retina burning designs available at every mall kiosk.



Have you noticed that most new cell phones no longer offer interchangeable faceplates? The closest you can get is one of the limited stock color options. This is a good thing. It's like new cars. They don't let you pick out your new Honda with a shoddily painted 49ers logo in hot pink slapped all over the place.

To make a long story longer, Facebook is rad. It lets you (wisely) customize your content and the location of widgets but it doesn't let you directly customize the primary layout and CSS.

In summary, go sign up for Facebook and look me up. I need more friends.

P.S. Simon... thanks for pushing me to sign up. You win. It is better than MySpace.

Guy Pictures

All couples pose for pictures in a standard way. They lean in close, the guy puts his arm around the girl, and they both shine million dollar smiles at the camera while fake laughing so the smile doesn't look forced.

This is not how guys want to pose.

We do it because we love our wives/girlfriends/mothers and that is how they want us to pose. What guys really want to do is throw out two fists of metal to the camera. The juxtaposition of these two opposing poses has never been caught on film... until today.

Ginette's sister Danielle just brought us these two pictures taken at her wedding rehearsal dinner in Victoria, BC.

The Girl Way


The Guy Way


rock and roll

Nobody Likes Zingers

I work at a large company with almost 1000 people spread across 3 buildings. However we don't have a cafeteria. At lunch time you get to choose between the local fast food restaurants, the sketchy lunch truck, or the vending machines.

With these limited options people take their vending very seriously. I was nuking my coffee this afternoon and saw this typed up plea taped to the front of the candy machine.

Dear Mr. Vending Machine Man,

Only 6 people in the entire Western Hemisphere actually enjoy the pink coconut Zingers. Sadly, none of these 6 people work here.

Sometimes we are willing to waste a dollar just to get them out of the way to get to a package of donuts or something worthwhile hidden behind them. But to have two rows of your limited vending space taken up by pink coconut Zingers is unacceptable.

Kindly remove them and replace with a snack or pastry that would be appealing to the other 3 billion people on this side of the world.

Most Sincerely,
Your Snack Buying Customers

San Diego Fair

3 posts in one week? Sweet sassy molassy!

We went to the San Diego Fair yesterday like we do every year. Our primary reason for visiting was to see our friend Johnny G. and his Johnny Cash tribute band, Cash Kings. They put on a great show as always. We also got to see a few prints in the photography exhibit by our friend Dan.

I tried Fried Coke. It tasted exactly as bad as it sounds.


Click on the bunny to see a small set of pictures.



http://flickr.com/photos/sundins/tags/sandiegofair/

Late Night Gaming

Ginette frequently has the opening shift which means she is up very early by herself and I am up late very by myself. Up until about 6 months ago this meant lots and lots of World of Warcraft. I forced myself to quit because it was just too much of a time sink.

I miss it.

My current replacement game (i.e. nicotine patch) is Titan Quest. Think of it as a poor man's version of Warcraft where you are the only person on the server. In addition, all the quest givers give long winded speeches that end with "kill everything in a linear path... or not... I really don't care". Playing this game is like reading the back of the cereal box at breakfast. It's better than just sitting there with your Golden Grahams but it isn't entertaining for long.

What I really miss is the human interaction that came with Warcraft. I may be sitting alone at my desk staring at a computer screen but I am confident in the knowledge that thousands of others are doing the exact same thing at the same moment. I can even wave to a stranger in the virtual landscape and it is likely he, or sometimes even she, will wave back. When I play Titan Quest I have no such reassurances. I think to myself, "I might be the only person on planet earth who is playing Titan Quest right now."

That's just sad.

Visiting Whittier

Ginette and I visited Whittier for Father's Day this weekend. It was fun seeing my family and my 10 month old nephew James. He has the legs of a sumo wrestler. Click on the picture to see the small set I posted on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sundins/tags/whittier/

Passionate Love

I was at Trader Joe's tonight and I thought to myself "I love you madly Trader Joe's". I then opened my mouth and repeated the same thing. Bad idea.

It got me thinking about what brands I passionately love. These are brands that have built up a masssive savings account of Dainel Goodwill and would need to make some serious missteps to lose it.

They can do no wrong. When they screw up I immediately forgive them, pull them onto my back and give them a super-bouncy piggyback ride around my living room.

It wouldn't do them justice to go into details about why I love them. In fact they would probably get embarassed. I'll just quickly show their logos. You don't mind do you guys?

The Problem with Lists

I love lists. Any website that promises to show "The Top X Best Y of ALL TIME" is alright in my book. However it is frequently an exercise in disappointment. Here are the three biggest problems I see with "All Time Best" lists.

Data Sets
If you asked me to choose the "Top 3 Best Major-Release Comedies of 1995" I could do a fair job at that (1. Tommy Boy, 2. Billy Madison, 3. Judge Dredd). This list has a very limited data set; comedies released in 1995 that I actually liked.

Most lists on the Internet have massive data sets which make them wildly subjective and frequently inaccurate. Here are a few "number ones" I pulled from some Google searches:

Best Album of All Time: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (link)
Best Song of All Time: Like a Rolling Stone (link)
Best Movie of All Time (Tie): The Godfather/The Shawshank Redemption (link)
Best Athlete of All Time: Michael Johnson (link)
Best Car of All Time: McLaren F1 (link)
Best Tech Product of All Time: Netscape Navigator (link)

Many of these lists add explanations (i.e. excuses) why they chose a particular item for number one. The truth is that they could have easily made Imagine (#3) the number one song instead of Like a Rolling Stone with a slick excuse. Personally I am not a fan of any of the songs on this list until you reach #7, Johnny B. Goode.

And how much better is the #1 than the #2 really?

Margins
The inherent problem with large data sets is that the number 1 item is frequently only marginally better than the number 2 item. In fact, the number 1 item might only be marginally better than the number 50 item if there is a huge data set.

For the sake of arguments let's say Rolling Stone had 10,000 albums to choose from for their Top 500 Albums list. The best album would receive the maximum score of 100% and the worst album would receive the minimum score of 0%. If there was an even margin of goodness between each album (.01%) then Like a Rolling Stone is only .06% better than Johnny B. Goode. That is a pretty insignificant difference. In fact, the difference is statistically irrelevant.

What I would really like to see is a list that takes into account the entire data set, assigns a percentage rank to each item, and then shows the best (100%), a pretty good one (80%), an average one (50%), and then the worst one (0%). Then you would see some real differences. I have always wanted to see a full-tackle football game between the Chargers and a local JV high school team.

Good vs. Important
Is a top-ranked list item actually good or is it just important? Ginette and I both watched Blade Runner for a cinematography class at UCSD. While I can appreciate the influences of this movie, the film noir homage, the brilliance of Philip K. Dick's original work, the swaggering charm of Harrison Ford, and the future career of Ridley Scott, I really don't like this movie. It is dull and I feel like have seen the same thing a dozen times. Perhaps if i watched it when it first came out (I was 2 years old) I would feel differently. I also didn't like The Godfather and A Streetcar Named Desire. Sacrilegious I know.

My point.

On my desk I have a copy of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is a daunting 1152 pages. I bought it based on a Top 100 Sci-Fi Books list I Googled the other day. It was the highest ranked book on the list that was written recently (1999) by an author I had heard of (I read Snow Crash). By my logic, this will be a good book, not simply an important one. However, 1152 pages is a much larger commitment than a 3 minute song so I am worried.

I'll start it tomorrow.

Google Maps

So everyone knows Google Maps is the greatest (Tru dat! Double True!). However, they really solidified their position on the top with this new My Maps feature. I am having way too much fun with it.

Stalkers pay attention: Here are a few of the maps I have created.

Upcoming Seattle Trip
Favorite Restaurants in San Diego
Walking Direction to my Apartment
Bike Trail

...

F.E.A.R.

I am having a great time discovering all my PC games again now that I ponied up and bought a decent video card. With my old viseo card Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft always ran pretty well but I had to adjust Oblivion and F.E.A.R. down to 640x480 with all the pretty settings turned down to get any sort of decent frame rate.

This may sound cliché but playing a PC game the way developers intended is really the only way to go. It is truly a different experience. Playing some of these games has more in common with watching a movie than playing OG Super Mario Bros. While Mario was a ton of fun there was no doubt that you were playing a game that existed outside of yourself. The immersive experience of playing F.E.A.R. has the same hypnotic qualities of going to a movie. I find myself playing the same section of the game over and over just to see what it looks like to kill people from different angles and with different weapons. It's like watching the Matrix lobby scene but choosing to have Neo bust through the metal detector with a bucket full of grenades instead of a coat full of guns.

I'm a Star

Back in junior high I had a very small role as a young Tex Watson for a film created by Biola University. My family kept a copy on VHS but I haven't seen it in years. Just today my Dad sent me a link Tex Watson's ministry website, Abounding Love, which posted the movie in its entirety (about 35 minutes). My 30 seconds of screen time appear in the first couple of minutes. Make sure to keep watching past the first interview scene in prison to catch a bonus shot of my Dad as an extra in the church scene wearing a bolo tie. The movie is based on a very interesting story that is worth reading about. However the budget was, clearly, very low. I think they spent all their money on fake mustache rentals. =)

Video Link: http://www.aboundinglove.org/media/index.php

Ascension

I spent a good portion of the weekend liberating myself from CDs and it feels great. I have transcended the physical medium of compact discs and ascended to pure data.

Basically I went through every single CD and matched it up with its cover art. If the CD was in good condition and I had the case it went in my Music Trader pile so I can get sweet sweet credit. If the CD was scratched or missing its case it went into the trash. Every CD that I had a desire to ever listen to again got ripped. I have upwards of 4800 songs in my collection now. The only CDs I kept were a rare Jason and Jane Christmas CD that they made for friends and the Hulk Hogan CD which I couldn't bear to throw away.

"But... but... what about the cover art and the liner notes?" I know. I thought about this. I realized I'm not 16 anymore and really don't read liner notes after I first buy the CD (if at all). If you are reading this Cory, I apologize. I don't mean to disparage your craft.

I feel dirty

Staying up late by yourself with an iTunes gift card and big fat headphones is dangerous. I convinced myself that it was a good idea to purchase the album LOL by Basshunter. After all, it satisfied all my primary criteria for music.

• Relentless Bass - check
  
• Vocals by a dude who is 5 years my junior - check
  
• Swedish Lyrics that translate to praises of Warcraft III and IRC - check

I love it.

Children of Men

I can't say much about this movie that hasn't already been said by the critics but I highly recommend it. I got to see it at the very underrated Hazard theatres in Mission Valley on the wide-release opening day.

Favorite Scene: Walking down the stairwell. I can't say more than that without giving a lot away but you will know the scene when you see it.

Least Favorite Scene: The all too obvious Abu Ghraib references when they are getting off the bus. I get it, don't hit me over the head.

Our movie buddies said they had a "Requiem for a Dream" vibe after leaving. I believe they meant that in a positive, boy-that-was-powerful, way.

I really wish we could have seen more of Julianne Moore. Se la vie.