A Quick Note to Christian Bale

Mr. Bale,

Happy Birthday!

Thanks for your work. It is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Jack

New Things

Part of my non-year resolutions is to do more things that involve not staying at home watching movies (though I want to more of that, too, whittling down that list of unwatched DVDs I have not compiled yet).

Last Tuesday, for instance, I had planned to go see Jon McLaughlin in concert at Warehouse Live (he sang the song "So Long" from Enchanted); I have his album Ok Now, which I've listened to three times now, according to Windows Media Player; apparently I like it quite ok now. Ahem. By the end of the day, exhaustion had set in, and I just didn't feel good, so I didn't go. I regret not getting to see him perform, but I don't regret not going.

Today, I got up early, got my oil changed (at 7:01!), then to Sam's to pick up tax forms, then to Wal-Mart for my snack bars and some other stuff; home to do the taxes; a shower, and then off to the next thing I wanted to do. I was determined to do this, this thing. This thing turned out to be MP3 Experiment 1.0 with the Houston Flash Mob. We downloaded a an mp3 we weren't supposed to listen to until the event. Check out Houston Flash Mob web site for more details. The experiment was down at Discovery Green downtown. Everyone participating started the mp3 at the same time, and then we were all instructed what to do as time went on. It was a blast! I waved, danced, played freeze tag, melted, Chariots-of-Fire ran, and clapped. It was so much fun. And I went by myself and had such a blast.

I'm watching Kung Fu Panda tonight, rented from Red Box. It's been quite humorous, and a decent story, too. I'll probably add this to my collection; it's been far more enjoyable than I ever anticipated.

Updated 1/25/2009: corrected link to Houston Flash Mob website; I had reversed two letters. sorry for the confusion

Boys from Brazil

The Boys from Brazil (by the way, there might be spoilers, so be warned. I'll try to be careful, but you never know.)
12:47 PM about 17 minutes into the movie. Paused the movie.
Notes so far:

• Gregory Peck!
  
• Laurence Olivier!
  
• James Mason!
  
• some pretty big names.
• very nice opening music (Jerry Goldsmith)
  
• and look, co-starring Steve Guttenberg! (I find that particularly hilarious.) He's 19 or 20 when the movie comes out.
• opens in Paraguay. not enough movies take place in Paraguay. I wonder why.
• some goose-stepping soldiers. Foreshadowing, perhaps (yes, because I know the movie involves Hitler)
  
• A man at a café goes with passenger of Mercedes that pulled up beside goose-stepping soldiers.
• Barry Kohler (Guttenberg) rushes to his Vanagon(?) to follow them. a bull fight, and some eavesdropping. a meeting at a private plane.
  
• and we're in Vienna.

1:03 PM by the way, I restarted movie somewhere along the way (to check on the van type, which I still couldn't make out). Kohler calls Ezra Lieberman (Olivier) to tell him there are (wait for it)... Nazis.
1:08 PM a plane lands at night on a body of water. Lights! and someone vaguely reminiscent of Hitler appears -- Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck). and a meeting. funny moment: Kohler's eavesdropping device suddenly blares at him.
1:11 PM clicking heels galore, almost a parody of Nazis (but I don't think it's meant to be one). BIG IMPORTANT MEETING. Aryan race! big involved plans: 94 men must die on specific dates over next 2-1/2 years. Yikes! why?
1:18 PM "by killing this old mailman, I will be fulfilling the destiny of the Aryan lace" [race - but it sounded like "lace"] ... ooo they've been found out! hunt the bug! now how did that get there? that crafty Kohler
1:22 PM no, not the kid! you're a pretty stupid, naive guy, Kohler. they're coming to take you away, ha ha; they're coming to take you away, he he.
1:26 PM Eek! double Eek!!!!! and I don't mean just the cat.
1:29 PM stupid DVD has no subtitles; heavy accents can be hard to make out sometimes
1:34 PM death count of the 94 begins.... what the heck! those eyes...
1:40 PM well, Lieberman is definitely the key to stopping the nefarious scheme, whatever it is. Imagine, a world-wide laboratory. How can it possibly result from the deaths of these 94 sixty-five year old men from various nations? There's certainly no resolution yet. And a large tracking chart on display! Also, what would it be like to track all the violent crimes in 10 countries? 10 cities in the U.S. would be job enough, let along then countries.
1:44 PM I've seen that face before. I can guess what he's around for.
1:50 PM I knew it! and creepy, too! and uncalled for and vicious. And totally fitting the story. I wonder if the extra death will affect "the plan". <so hungry, and I have no food>
1:57 PM another impetuous young man, Bennett (John Rubinstein) enters the picture to carry on Kohler's work... a big reunion... questioning orders among the ranks and a reminder to loyalty. "It doesn't have to be Saturday"... Anne Meara!!! ... and the plot thickens more, and a glimmer of understanding crosses Jack's brain.
2:07 PM this is becoming spooky and just plain creepy.
2:14 PM major piece falls into place (as I thought)... Dec. 11? questions answered, but more appear.
2:19 PM I can't believe he said it. It's true, but I can't believe he said it.
<a brief rest stop>
2:29 PM and still I ask, just because we can do something, does that mean we should? Cloning, it's not just for sheep anymore.
2:34 PM sends a chill up my spine just thinking that someone would want to clone Hitler. From a purely technological, amoral point fo view, the idea of cloning is cool. But should we? and who gets to decide who should be cloned? Regenerating body parts is one thing, but a full body. And would it even be the same as the person?
2:43 PM Evil, I tell you, pure evil... why would you go into a house not your own when no one answers your tepid knock on the door? ... great shades of Mike Tyson!
2:56 PM Such hatred. And "similar" is not equivalent to "same".
3:02 PM Evil Evil Evil, all the way around. End of movie.

I declare thee creepy in the highest order.

This was a very good movie. There are some mighty big ideas in this story: cloning, retribution, Hitler and his conspiracy theories (or theories about his survival, cloning, etc.). If you had the chance to go back in time to take out Hitler, would you? Would that be our prerogative?

Upcoming Movies

A quick look at upcoming movies. Note: It's January; studios dump movies in January, but also open wide the Oscar-caliber movies (a la Gran Torino)

releasing Jan 16:

• My Bloody Valentine 3-D I think I'll pass on this. most others will do so in droves.
  
  
• Notorious A bio-pic of Notorious B.I.G. Do you honestly think this will be worthwhile? Any movie that gets touted as "best movie of the year" in January is virtually doomed to failure.
  
  
• Defiance This movie looks quite interesting. It stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell, all three decent actors. Basic plot: a group of Jews during WWII (the second war to end all wars) hide from the Germans in a heavily-wooded area (aka forest).
  
  
• Hotel for Dogs Take the kiddies; at least someone will enjoy it.
  
  
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop I hold no thought this will be good. But it sure looks real entertaining if the funny parts aren't all shown in the trailer.
  

Too tired to continue in this post. Will work on later weeks some other time.

Movies

I haven't posted a lot about movies lately other than to talk about what I'm currently watching (The Boys from Brazil) or what I've recently seen (Ivan the Terrible part 2; Cat Ballou).

Anyway, I'll have to soon come up with a list of upcoming movies I'm looking forward to (quite a few). In the meantime, here's the trailer I ran across that reminded me of doing this (in addition to all the other drivel I write).

Fast and the Furious <-- link to page with trailer.
Don't know about the rest of the movie, but the first 45 seconds of the trailer are pretty intense. Vin Diesel is back, so it might just be fun. I know he's not a great actor or hasn't demonstrated it yet, but he does have a commanding screen presence.

An Experiment

The prospect of writing a book is daunting. Failure seems imminent, so why being, right?

Instead, I'm trying an experiment. Walking through Barnes & Noble looking for journals/notebooks/cards, I stumbled across a green-covered notebook and came up with a swell idea: write a diary for a character in the notebook. And then that expanded into something else.

So, I've written almost one full page front and back in the notebook. Hey, it's a start.

Remember to Witch Mountain

Remember Escape to Witch Mountain? I enjoyed it as a child, especially all the powers the kids seemed to have. I bought a double-feature DVD (shock) of this and it's sequel, Return from Witch Mountain. Haven't re-watched them yet. But someday (maybe this weekend, the reason becoming more apparent after reading further).

Woke up this morning at 2 a.m. and had trouble getting back to sleep, so I thought I would surf a little, read some email, do my typical computer stuff for a bit. One of those daily things I like to do is the daily trivia question on imdb.com. On the main page are links to some trailers of upcoming movies. And today I saw Race to Witch Mountain listed as one of the movies. I wondered if it could at all be related to the aforementioned Escape, so I watched the trailer (what else would one do?)

Disney has done a remake of Escape to Witch Mountain, starring The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson — what a totally ordinary, nerdish name for his persona, something I would never tell him to his face. Just kidding, Mr. Johnson. Friends? At least please don't pummel me, okay?) and two kids (the two kids from the original movies also make appearances here, as a waitress and sheriff). A remake of Escape is not something I would have high on my list of things to do (and probably not even on my list of things to do when I'm desperately trying to think of things to do), but after seeing the trailer, I'm pretty stoked to see it.

This certainly seems to be a decent-enough modernization of the story, though I'm kind of saddened that it appears you know the kids are aliens early on, certainly from the trailer. That was the hook for me in Escape, that these kids had these powers, and then you find out eventually they're aliens. Perhaps I'm misremembering; that's why I might watch this weekend to refresh my memory. Otherwise, it looks pretty rocking, another movie in a long list of releases this year I'm looking forward to plunking down some cash (more like transferring electrons) to see on the big screen.

An update

Did you really think I would/could keep up a daily posting schedule? I certainly did not, nor did I expect to.

Cat Ballou was pretty good, even if it did have the traitor in it. Lee Marvin was pretty good in his dual role, though one of them wasn't much acting. overall, the movie was pretty funny, and it does raise some questions about the nature of justice and such, should one care to think upon such things.

As I type, I'm watching Ivan the Terrible Part II. It's hard to type and follow on a Russian film reading subtitles. Part I was pretty good if incomplete (the presence of "Part I" is a good clue, though not necessarily conclusive — look at The History of the World, Part I; there was no Part II).

In one section of the movie, we see Ivan as a child. This made me think about a story either with a good child king followed by a bad child king (or vice versa), or maybe co-rulers with one being "good" and one being "bad". Like most of my other story ideas, that's about as far as they ever get.

Anyway, the live-blogging will have to be based upon an English-speaking movie, not a foreign-language one. Just typing this is quite difficult. So, I'll close now.

What inspiration

I can't believe I'm making my fourth blog entry for the year already, and it's still January. Last year just really sucked, I suppose, so much that what little inspiration I ever had to write anything just slipped away behind an iron wall. Maybe in 2009, Obama has given me hope to write again. It is to laugh.

(He actually has inspired hope in me, hope that we as normal, hard-working Americans don't get screwed too badly in whatever grandiose schemes he comes up with to "save America".)

Anyway, posting every day is not one of my resolutions for the year. One of my goals, however (remember, semantic games and all), is to write more often on this here blog, at least one post per week on average. I guess I'm all caught up for January now. ;-)

Another of my goals is to write 20 mini-reviews of movies I see throughout the year. One down, nineteen more to go. (I'll write more if so inspired, but this goal is my minimum.)

I also plan to update my list of movies I've never seen (to the actual list, not just a sampling), watch more Netflix movies (three movies Sep-Dec last year!), and post more of whatever I see, at least just a listing and maybe a brief comment. One day, I want to do a live-blogging experiment. I experimented with the mechanics of it in 2007 sometime, but never did anything with it (I also deleted the post since it was just testing). Kind of like the BD-Live thing Warner Bros did with The Dark Knight on Dec 18 (maybe — I didn't participate, so I'm just guessing).

[A few years ago, one of my online friends had never seen Edward Scissorhands. He told me he rented it one night, and we hit on the idea of starting it at the same time, and then he would tell me what he thought afterward. Of course, he loved it. It's a great movie! Too bad we couldn't discuss as we were watching it.]

Tonight, I'm watching Cat Ballou on Netflix watch instantly. The picture's a little blurry, but I get the gist enough. Yeah, downloads, while cool in theory, will still leave a lot to be desired to try to replace hard media like DVD and Blu-Ray. The demise of Blu-Ray is greatly exaggerated.

Oh, I did aerobics tonight. I thought I would die. Some of the steps I couldn't figure out; I know what the people were doing, but somehow the steps didn't make sense to me or seem to fit into a rhythm I could do. My lack of physical coordination strikes again. The next ten pounds are going to be kind of difficult. With God's help, though, I can do it.

A Curious Case

wow! Look, three posts this year!

So, after a trip to Sam's Club and mailing a birthday card to my best friend from college, I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, directed by David Fincher (of Seven, , Fight Club, and Panic Room, oh and Alien³ (I'd include Zodiac, but I haven't seen it yet). I mention David Fincher merely because this movie is so far outside of his traditional fare.

Benjamin Button runs nearly three hours but doesn't really seem that long; the story moves right along. The plot is essentially about a guy who ages backwards through his life. He looks like an old man at birth with associated old-man physical frailties like arthritis, hearing disability, bad vision, etc. As he grows, little by little he begins to de-age (handled pretty well and subtly throughout). Benjamin falls in love with Daisy at first sight as a young boy, a young boy who just happens to look like someone in his 80's.

The story is full of heart. You always root for Benjamin throughout his travails; your heart breaks with his, and in turn swells with his. He's somewhat the innocent like Forest Gump, but not with the mental challenge. Because of his aged appearance, he gets treated much differently than someone who looks his actual age. Daisy, however, appears to be the only one who recognizes him as he truly is, not just what he looks like.

So, how do you see people? Do you see only what's on the outside and go no deeper? And how do you see yourself? One of the other themes addressed is continuing on in the face of failure or setbacks. Is it ever too late to start over? How long can one live in the past? (And these are all good questions for me to ask myself.)

While watching this movie, for the first time in my life, I missed New Orleans (the setting of most of the movie). Growing up there was pretty rotten, and I was oh-so-very-happy to move away. I had no friends, was rejected at both school and church, and was pretty much miserable the whole time. But there were some cool places to go to (field trips). New Orleans is an old city (not ancient-Rome old or anything, but relative to the U.S., it's on up there), and has great architecture and character. And that stuff I kind of miss.

Anyway, I give The Curious Case of Benjamin button an 8.257.25 out of 10. Update 1/5/2009 12:30 a.m.: Dropped rating one point due to moral concerns. Strictly as a story, I give it the 8.25, but with total lack of legitimate consequences and the total humanistic outlook, I had to drop it a notch.

Saturday Mornings

I like animation quite a bit. And for quite a few years, I've enjoyed watching many cartoons on Saturday morning. I was sad when Superman was taken off to be replaced by one of three showings of Pokemon, which I did watch but didn't really enjoy. I could see the appeal of it to younger children, but it wasn't for me.

Not having cable or satellite, my cartoon watching is limited to whatever is shown on broadcast networks. The WB, UPN, the CW, and ABC, all provided cartoons worth watching to some extent or another for the past few years. Beginning this current season, though, there's just nothing on any more that I want to even waste my time with. It's very sad indeed.

While I was at my mom's house for Christmas, I got to watch some Spongebob (he's a sponge, you know), and some other stuff that I don't recall titles for. I did get to see The Brave and the Bold, a cartoon starring Batman and having special guest stars teaming up with him (mega excitement to see Plastic Man) patterned after the comic book of old. My initial perceptions of this show were negative, mostly due to the style of the cartoon, very reminiscent of the 60's TV show, which I enjoyed, but that's over and done, at least in that style. I was pleasantly surprised, though, and maybe next year it will show up on broadcast networks.

Pondering: why don't I have cable or satellite? Well, my cable company has steadily reduced offerings and increased pricing, but they have increased the number of Spanish stations, so what am I complaining for? And satellite I believe would be too restrictive (you can only record what the box is tuned to, and you can't watch other shows (or so I understand)). Either way, I'm not ready to spend money on everything when I only want a few channels.

Welcome, 2009!

I officially welcome 2009 to the world. Not first, not splashy, just ... welcome. 2008 turned out to be a pretty horrific year for me personally. With my father's brain tumors returning leading to his ultimate death, my mom's nearly fatal collapse, and work becoming more and more stressful with little hope economically of being able to change jobs, my apartment being an overwhelming mess, and my own personal health failureschallenges (the onset of high blood pressure and diabetes), I have been truly ready for a new year to come along, accompanied hopefully by new attitudes (my own and others, too), new determination to change what I can, and a hint of an idea of being more selfish and less so at the same time.

I'm neverI've never been good at keeping resolutions in the past, so why set myself up for failure? I can and do fail miserably easily enough on a daily basis. A couple of years ago I came up with the idea of setting goals, but that turned out to be merely a semantic game I did not win.

But, I have to change. Apparently, I've suffered insanity the past few years: I've done the same things I always do, yet nothing seems to be different. And it's frustrating now to the point that I lash out in anger at the silliest of things (and bigger things, too, like apartment management changing the gate entry system to a new code-based rather than apartment-based keypad entry, and failing to put my apartment into the list — along with a friend's — and did I mention that they failed to notify me that they had changed the system? par for their course).

So, anyway, if you think about it, say a prayer for me as I plan subtle changes (because big ones will never be successful at this point) that will add some variety and more importantly improvements to my life.

Thanks, and may 2009 be your Best! Year! Ever!