Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

A mediocre version of Juno, this was more of a paean to the NYC hip scene with a Jewish aftertaste. Occasionally funny, mildly philosophical but mostly just routine. Worth renting/streaming if you're bored.

B-

The Auteur

A rather depressing story about a porn director, I never really sympathized with the main character or even found the film that amusing. There where some funny portions but it was maybe 10 minutes of funny for an hour of dull story line about a self destructive guy.

C

Young Frankenstien

Not a bad film, this black and white comedy showcases some fantastic acting but some meh scenes. The original version was something like 4 hours long and you can still feel that it's not quite coheisive. Written as a homage to the original (with some of the same set hardware, like the lab!), it's more of a fun film with a side point that if people had been nicer maybe the original wouldn't have gone beserk.

I'd say a B+

YPF

So this is a film about people having sex. It's the greatest Canadian film ever, which I guess says something about the Canadian film industry. Not a bad film and something that a teenager could watch and learn from (the sex scenes where mostly realistic, people enjoying themselves but the inevitable awkwardness was real too). But no real plot or enlightenment so I'd say a B+ at most. Interesting but not something to really talk about later. I did like the bit about the Exes where he left his wine glass. Good stuff.

Dyson vacuum cleaners

Not a movie but good stuff none the less, I tried one of these a week ago for the first time and now I'm a true beliver. It's amazing to use a vacum cleaner that's made by an engineering company. It does not make your rug cleaner, it makes it clean. Good stuff.

Lois McMaster Bujold's "The Sharing Knife" series

Looks like there will be 4 books, although only the first 3 have been published so far, this series is both an excellent high fantasy story and one that presents some good examples of how to form healthy relationships, both stressing to never lie to your SO and the fact that if you can solve a problem generally you can dig down and solve what's causing the problem to be a problem. Very well done most of the time although I think at times you can tell the author gets bored and pays less attention to certain aspects of the book then she could.

Excellent series across the board, if you're looking for realistic high fantasy I really recommend it.

American History X

Good acting and an ok script, where at first the film does a good job of portraying a how people are lured into radical racisim it eventually devolves into sterotypes. Not a bad story but it's not hard to make Skinheads look bad. Reasonably interesting though, maybe a B

Crimes and Misdemenors

Ok, probably spelled that wrong. This is another "typical" Woody Allen movie where he pretty much just catalogs the lives of people he's known. The topic here is morality and if you don't get caught who cares what you did. I think it's a pretty bleak point of view but insteresting to watch. Not a bad film, interestingish story and interesting ideas. A-

Media Center Setup!

So I finally set up a Home Theatre PC. Probably will re-build it from scratch now that I know what I'm doing, but I don't have the redo the time consuming part (ripping movies from DVD and transcoding them to H.264 (MPEG4).

So...if you want the fun and joy I've had you'll want:

• A TV Tuner Card (Hauppauge is a common one)
• Vista Premium Home or Ultimate
• Lots of free time to insert DVDs
• A DVD ripper (I use DVDFab, lots of people prefer AnyDVD, DVDDecrypter is free but does not support new formats)
• Assorted cables etc to plug everything in - most video cards have an adapter that will let you do S-Video out. My Geforce 7800 GT does
• TV Pack 2008 (Note this might not be legal, I doubt MS cares but it's OEM only
• Latest CCCP Codec pack (yes, I know you're too cool for Codec Packs, so am I. Get it, alternatively the latests FFDshow tryouts will work)
• Handbrake or Ripbot (Ripbot is probably better since you can update your H.264 encoder with out waiting for a new version of Ripbot, but it takes frigging forever to open your VOB files
• Understanding of what things are (i.e. VOBs are simply mpeg2 encoded video and an AAC audio stream, you'll have to demux them (break them into video and audio seperately) then put them back together (the two utilities listed above do  this for you)
• A MCE compadible remote
• http://www.mediabrowser.tv/ (a godly plugin for VMC)
  
• Lots of hard drive space (even in h.264 format a single movie takes about 2 gig of space).

Some tweaks:

LIVE TV Quality Trouble:
1)
Change BitRate:
First of all check the key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\DVR] and find the KEY DefAvgBitRate
Change it to somewhere between: 20000000 and 90000000
Select DECIMAL VALUE when changing.

DISABLE YOUR DIGITAL AUDIO IF THAT"S NOT WHAT YOU ARE USING - it will cause stuttering.

Download this registry patch and apply it:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~rock2002/Blog/v7-WMP11-MKV-MKA.reg

Tada, you're done!

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

I am still smiling. If you like stupid stuff, fart jokes and a bunch of stoners talking about shit this is a film for you. Essentially it's a paen to the friendship of the guys who play the people in real life. If you've seen any of the Evening with Kevin Smith features then you'll know what I am talking about. Essentially they're married to each other and there you have it.

Anyways, I thought it was funny, there are about 100,000,000 cameos in the film and while not provoking any deep thoughts it does show how a pair of friends can make an excellent team.

A-

Into the Wild

A sad movie that may have worked better if they had (as was done in the book) let you know the ending from the start, I really enjoyed this. As a kid this was my greatest fantasy, although 1) I would have not gone to Alaska, it's too freaking cold and 2) I think I could have managed to feed myself next to a river in the wilderness. I mean, it's not that hard to find bug as a last ditch effort to feed yourself, even if that's more protien than energy. Ah well

Beautifuly filmed and asks some hard questions, like do we need other people to be happy, why do we accept the "expected" path for our lives and why are people so mean to each other. Decent acting, although sometimes the main person was a bit too angelic. Overall this was an excellent film with some great ideas and quite entertaining for something as thought provoking as it was.

A-

Spawn

The acting kind of sucked, aside from the insane clown, but it was not a bad story at all. A B

Live Free or Die Hard

Stuff blows up. Old people beat up young women. Computers are everywhere. Stuff blows up some more.

B+

Monster

This was a painful film that portrays the life of a prostitue turned seiral killer from an empathetic point of view. Excellent acting but I am not sure I enjoyed it at all. No rating since the film was well done but not fun.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

I got this because both I'd heard it was good and I really liked Almost Famous. It was not as good as Almost Famous in my opinion, but if you like remenicing about the early 80's more then I do then you'd probably dig it. This film was aimed at the folks 10 years older then I.

Some funny parts and decent acting. Very interesting to see Sean Penn at that age.
This was a B+ movie, entertaining but almost entierly forgetable (except for Jennifer Jason Leigh's portrial of a girl who knows what she does not know, decides to do something about it and pays the consequences 

The Italian Job

So no deep people in this film and some bad acting (an unfortunate flubbing of a line I knew was going to be repeated eventually early is my main gripe) this film is interesting and has some great action sequences. Certainly worth a watch and it's actually pretty tame for a PG-13, I let me 9 year old watch it. Would have been a bit better if it had a twist at the end but oh well.

A-

Waiting...

Not a bad film and certainly an accurate look at the life of the 20-something interested in partying more then advancing their career or starting a family. This reminded me of several of the places I've worked, although a touch more corporate.

There where some reasonably funny scenes. I'd give it a B

Big Nothing

A movie about a guy who gets involved with some loser criminals, this is a pretty predictable movie. There are twists and turns to the plot but somehow you end up in exactly the place you expected when the opening credits rolled.

Simon Pegg kicks ass, the rest of the movie is moderately entertaining but not great.

B

The Bucket List

A super typical Hollywood buddy film that relentlessly pushes all your emotional buttons, the fantastic acting is the only thing that makes it not totally grating. Overall it was a decent movie but it faded at the ending.

B+ and that's only because of the kick ass combo for lead acting.

The Last Kiss

So this is a chick flick. But I liked it, and I'll probably try and get my kids to watch it when they are in their mid dating days. It's got a lot of good thoughts on how we have relationships and some very good examples of what to do and a great example of what not to do. Oh and Rachel Bilson is smoking hot.

B+

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

I'm going to go against the grain and argue that this is as good as the original. I watched the Unrated version which obviously had some stuff in it that the theatrical release couldn't swing. Probably made it better, but watching them smoke a J with GWB was priceless. A solid B+, I was pleasantly suprised.

Hellboy II

Better then the first but still likely to leave folks who don't know who the hell the giant red guy is guessing. An A- movie, somewhat disapointing, I was hoping for a more Pan's Labyrinth type film. My main gripe is the ending seemed unfinished.

Tropic Thunder

I don't like Ben Stiller movies much (Something About Mary was good, as was Flirting with Disaster, the rest- yech) but this was ok. Not great, but ok. A lot of self congradulations for the Hollywoood crowd (and making fun of them at the same time), so homages to the Vietnam movies of the past and some ludicrious action sequances with Jack Black's fat ass flopping around in the tropical wind.

Anyways, it was entertaining but not good. B+ I expected better.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4

Wow this is depressing. I am still working my way through this but so far I think it would be more enjoyable to watch someone drowned kittens.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 3.5

Hrmph. Not a bad season, although not as good as 2-2.5. They need to find Earth already. Sorry, that's about all there is to say, I'd give it a B

Battlestar Galactica: Season 3

Not a bad season but not as good as 2/2.5. Lots of development but I think they need to find Earth soon (or at least get close to it) to keep fresh. Otherwise they are in a race against lack of ideas.

Detonator

What a generic movie. It's like a John Woo film but with out the deep character development and intracate plotting ;)

Shows that decent actors can't make a limp script stand up, don't waste your time.

C-

Manhattan

Yeah, another Woody Allen movie, this time he does not quite look like he's about to lay down and die, but he's still old. I liked this film, it's very similar in tone as Deconstructing Harry and just shows how people are people. The folks in this film are reasonably mature about some difficult situations and he does a great job showing the tension between people. The very last scene was touching to me as well.

An A film, I really enjoyed it in a sad sort of way.

Deconstructing Harry

A narcassistic look at the life that Woody Allen has chosen for himself, this movie is intertaining, if somewhat depressing. I haven't seen a Woody Allen movie since I was a teenager (A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy or something similar) and I didn't know exactly what to expect, but it turned out to be interesting and as I said before entertaining. Can't ask for much more, althoguh it seems the central theme to the film could be summed up as "woe is me'. Life's good and bad, but the main thing is to live it, something I figured out apparently much earlier then Woody Allen. Poor guy.

I give it an A-

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

A great film about a guy who wants to be a writer. It's humerous enough but not really a comedy, it's certainly not a light hearted look at life, but it's great at portraying real people and a great sense of timing by the director. A suprise A.

Totally Baked: Unrated

Not a bad film. This is really just a pro-pot propaganda piece with a few nods to being even handed (they interview a couple of folks who don't enjoy smoking). Mostly it's what a bunch of stoners could make if they where really motivated, had a decent set of AV equipment and a small budget. In fact, they did. It's not likely to change anyone's mind about marijuana legalization, but it's still funny. I give it a B+

Remember the Daze

Pretty standard coming of age/teen movie stuff...with a lot of pot thrown in. It's almost a propaganda peice for the marijuana movment where alchohol drinkers are all shown as boobs but pot makes you a philosopher.  Not that I disagree with that but it's not exaclty the basis for a movie, at least it didn't work for this one. Still some smart stuff about step 1 being that you have to figure out What you want to do with your life and step 2 is everything else. It was amusing if nothing else, I'd say it deserves a B.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5

Not as good but still pretty solid, although the last episode or two where a bit too soap-opera-y for my taste. Still a solid B.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2

This was better then season 1, I really enjoyed it. A definate A

Grand Turino

Well, this was a pretty good movie, you certainly will laugh if you find an old man shouting racial epiphets humerous. I did. Decent acting (Clint was excellent, the supporting cast a mixed bag) and a reasonably decent story. I just wish he had not become Jesus at the end. B+

War, Inc.

Good stuff, prime Cusack. An A, even if it is a bit of an implausable stretch at times. Great take on modern culture.

The Office (US Version)

Don't get it, didnt care for it at all.

Donnie Brasco

This was a really good movie, another take on the life of a man in the mob, this is a trueish story about a deep cover agent. Good stuff, and he has a really hot wife so's a retard.

Right inbetween an A and an A-, would be an A if it was less real :)Publish Post

The Village

So I thought this was a horror movie, but it's more of a creepy story then anything else. I liked it. Unfortunately the way the characters talk is so stilted it continually breaks you out of your suspension of disbelief, otherwise this was a great film with some strong performances (although I was really disappointed by Signorney Weaver, she seemed like a robot). 

This film is more or less about XTREME AMISH, kind of cool in a way.

B+, would have been an A- if the dialogue was not so awkward.

Signs

This is my 2nd favorite Shamanalamanalan movie. It's very much true to his form (car wreck, tv, strong roles for kids, in Pennsilvania) but was well done and I enjoyed it. Was kind of creepy, I wouldn't chase aliens in corn so high I couldn't see them, but I was tramatized as a kid by Children In the Corn.

B+

The Kentucky Fried Movie

This was a film I'd heard a lot about as a kid. I didn't expect much, but that was because I didn't realize this was a Zuker & Abrams film with Landis directing to boot. This was a great lampoon on the TV and Movie industry and had a lot of nice boobs to boot. Nothing that makes you think (unless how formulaic some genres - action in specific - are)  but still entertaining.

I'd give it a B.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

This film made my head hurt, but in a good way. It rambles a bit and is certainly open to interpretation. It's not really a comedy, although I guess it was intended to be one, it's more of a look at the absurd way we all live according to a script. I enjoyed it, but it's not as enjoyable as I had hoped, maybe because the last time I read Hamlet was 20 years ago and I missed clever little things I should have caught.

Anyways, it was well done and very nice cinematography, but still just a B for enjoyability.