So I recently watched Blue Velvet at the urging of a friend by the name of Jimmy. A classic from 1986, when men were men, women were women, and I was 2.

It was pretty sweet, pretty strange, and had a pretty lady who didn't always have clothes on (Isabella Rossellini). According to my friend, I'm apparently supposed to be Jeffrey, which is all sorts of disturbing. But it could be worse, he has a good heart, a head on his shoulders, and a sense of adventure. Something to shoot for, though I'm not sure getting intimate with young ladies and older ladies at the same time is a good life plan.

Next up - Eraserhead.

Labels: movie review, movies

I watched this at the suggestion of a certain friend with a JD. The verdict (ha!) - quite hilarious, if overly crude, and with a plot and especially ending that steals a bit too much from Revenge of the Nerds for my tastes. Not recommended for an overly Catholic crowd without easy access to sacerdotal absolution.

Labels: movies

Labels: movies

With his new feature documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (opening in theaters April 18), Ben Stein - actor, economist, presidential speechwriter and all around really smart guy - squares off with some of the world's most prominent anti-theist elites as he gets to the heart of the question, "Who are we, and how did we get here?"

Looks like fun.

Labels: movie review, movies, science

I just had an idea for a movie about the IBM System i. We'd set it in a data center and have a bunch of guys from the Free Software Foundation launching an assault to have a cluster of System i boxes replaced with GNU machines.

What would we call it?

What else? 400!

Wow that was really bad, but I thought of it at work and had to post. If anyone wants to put together a script, contact me.

Labels: computers, humor, movies

The film being reviewed was a stark Romanian film "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days," about how a pregnant woman and her friend try to get her an appointment with an illegal abortionist, who terminates the pregnancy, but also rapes them both. Hornaday's long Style review used the "consoling fictions" line:

Although every member of the ensemble cast delivers a tone-perfect performance, the movie belongs to Marinca, who conveys a welter of emotions -- sweetness, anger, shame -- with flawless conviction, often in wordless glance or gesture. American audiences who have been treated to such consoling fictions as "Knocked Up" and "Juno" in recent months here finally have an example of filmmaking that dares to be honest about the high stakes of women's reproductive lives.

Only pro-abortion movies are honest about the lives of women. Women who finish their pregnancies are somehow outside reality, at least at the cineplex. When Hornaday scorns the choose-life movies in the Weekend section, the copy is different:

When he shows the aftermath of the termination (the title refers to the pregnancy's term), the image is at once shocking and courageous, mournful and accusatory of the [anti-abortion communist] regime that made such extremes necessary. The movie stands in stark contrast to an American film culture in a thrall to such cutesy fictions as "Knocked Up" and "Juno." For a real doodle that can't be undid -- and one put in a very real and relevant historical context -- Mungiu has given us the right, real thing.

This is par for the course (coarse?) from Hornaday, who thought "The Passion of the Christ" was unreal (it was "troubling" to rely on the Gospels as history) and yet found "The Last Temptation of Christ" a "devout" masterpiece. A few months later, she found unmistakeable authenticity in the Christian-bashing flop satire "Saved!"

Truth is death, life is fiction?

Labels: movies, prolife

Tonight I saw the movie No Country for Old Men, which I had no desire to see, but surprisingly I found the film extremely interesting and really appreciated it. Artistically speaking it was very well done. I appreciated the minimalism which let the compelling story speak for itself. I thought the acting was great in all roles major and minor. With almost no music and no glitz, this down and dirty movie struck me with its honesty in portraying some very ugly truths. I was worried about seeing this movie for fear of excessive or glamorized violence, but refreshingly my fears were unwarranted in this case. While there is a great deal of violence, I didn't think it was over-the-top, rather it was a necessary component to the story. (This is a story about a drug-deal gone wrong and cold-hearted serial killer after-all.) The humor is dry and dark, but appropriate for a tale such as this and doesn't break with the atmosphere and tension the story casts, but rather enhances it. I won't give away the ending, but I found it very poignant and profound. The ending is actually what tied together the film for me and helped me to fully appreciate the story. (If you have seen it you will maybe find this slightly ironic.) At any rate, that's my two-cents and if you think you can stomach the violence and darkness of this modern-day Western I recommend this film to you.

Labels: art, films, movie review, movies