Archive for October, 2007
when do i get my cut?? »
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Looks like the Book is worth $15 billion. sidenote: that’s the ugliest site you’ve ever seen right? It’s a fucking conglomerate and it’s the equivalent of a construction paper house on the wall of a special needs classroom. No kidding? Do I get any off that luscious pizza pie? Nope. Assholes. And what the fuck? fifteen billion?!?!!
Gotta give the Zuck because that’s what I call him, lay off credit. He turned down Yahoo! last year when they offered a billion. This guy makes Tom look like that pathetically stupid kid from high school that used to kick everyone’s ass and now cleans up any number of bodily excretions at the local I.C.U. And he doesn’t even force himself on any new member like that socially dysfunctional fuckwit. I get it Tom, you want friends it’s the place for friends afterall—as long as you don’t mind a little predation, and who does, but you’re a little over zealous.
Personally, I could give a fuck less. I have both fondly referring to them as the spacebook, and don’t have the faintest clue why. Only friends can see my profile on the space and I basically disappear on the book if you’re not a friend of one of my friends and in one of my networks try it out. But I can’t get rid of them. I’m addicted. My wedding photos will be on there. Announcements of my demise will be sent out in bulletins. Shit, I’m barely past taking snaps of myself in the mirror with my shirt off.
reign over me »
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
So you’ve got Adam Sandler (Punch Drunk Love) and Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda) paired up in a dramatic movie. Considering the subject matter and the talent involved, it couldn’t really be bad, so I gave it a shot. I’m not disappointed, but I’m not screaming from the rooftops either. It was slow, and predictable, but there was a lot of heart to it.
Alan Johnson (Cheadle) runs into his college roomate, Charlie Fineman (Sandler), and tries to catch up with him. His life has become too routine and Charlie is his way of venturing out of the house. Charlie’s family was killed in 9/11 and he’s taken it very hard, blocking most of his memories. He hides from the outside world, keeps out of contact, and tweaks whenever his family is mentioned.
The pace is slow. Not a lot happens. Alan learns from Charlie to appreciate what he’s got. Charlie doesn’t really change much. I think that’s the point. The film is very subtle. The symbolic video game (Shadow of the Colossus), the dialog, and the relationships between the characters all seem to hide much more than they show. It works well. The bond between Alan and Charlie is stronger because so much is left unsaid.
There are some funny bits scattered throughout. Sandler nails his character and Cheadle is spot on. The acting with the rest of the cast is adequate, but no one’s stretching, so that should be expected. Binder did a good job directing. He used focus, or loss thereof, quite a bit. He also kept the timeline moving. The events in the movie are spread out so you’re left filling in the gaps with assumptions.
It’s a good movie, but over-hyped.
*** 1/2
drink it in… »
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
…it always goes down smooth
I don’t buy bottled water. It suffocates the environment and prolongs our dependence on oil reserves. I’m cool with folk that do though, because there’s too heavy a marketing push to ignore. The fact that Coca-Cola rapes foreign lands and depletes their fresh water reserves means little to anyone. They are foreign after all, and thus insignificant. Plus, most of that goes to soda, and folk will kill an indigenous mother with their own hands for a six-pack of Pepsi. Still more people buy filtration pitchers and sink systems to purify their H2O.
Turns out it’s all a waste of time for Minneapolisites Minneapolans, Minneapolisans, Minneapolites; I haven’t a clue. Well, maybe not a waste of time, because maybe your pipes are rusting out, but definitely a study in expense vs. necessity. And I don’t mean to badmouth those that partake in bottled water goodness. Most of the people that aren’t complete assholes reuse or recycle the bottles and that’s almost fourteen percent.
This was just a time for me to gloat about my reuse of the same 32oz Gatorade bottle for the past seven months. Picture me throwing my arms in the air, hooting, bringing my fists together and pretending to churn butter, and doing some awful imitation of someone doing the sprinkler. In other words, boo ya!
That is all, please resume your day. Go out and buy a Dasani to celebrate. It’s local tap water filtered to lower standards than it originally had. I’m sure it’s delicious.
the lookout »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I didn’t know what to expect from this one. The previews were intriguing, but people are paid to make them just that. I liked Brick and think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is solid. Jeff Daniels is solid. Isla Fisher is sexy, but can’t hold up a movie. Scott Frank is new to all this directing stuff. I get into heist movies. There are a lot of factors. Turns out it’s a mediocre movie that I ended up liking. Who knew?
The story centers on Chris Pratt (Gordon-Levitt). He’s the shit in high school and everyone wants to be him or do him. He goes all risky for a second and drives his car into a wreck. Fade to black, cut, caption, and it’s four years later. Now he’s dealing with the aftermath: a brain injury that makes day to day routine difficult and a family that pushes him to be as he was. He works at a bank as the night janitor and lives with a blind fellow he met through the counseling (Daniels).
Enter a new set of friends, Gary (Goode), Luvlee (Fisher), and some other shady cats. They pump him up, telling him he’s better than others see him, and treat him as an equal. Or, he thinks they do, because he becomes aware that they are just using him in order to scope the bank he works for. Surprise.
It’s slow going for a good chunk, but it feels like it’s intentional. It doesn’t hurt it all that much. We see the repetition and strain that comes with all of Pratt’s issues. The characters are decent, but the Daniels and Gordon-Levitt are the only ones that hold any acting cred. The directing is safe, but it works well with the story. The third act is filled with action. Predictable, but entertaining none the less.
It’s as though the action is secondary. Like Frank wanted to go deeper. He does, but I doubt to the level he thinks he does. The movie’s more about a man’s struggle to regain normalcy after a tragic event. Pratt goes through his day constantly thinking of what things were like before. He visits the place he was thrown from his car many times through the film. His family acts as though nothing happened almost to the point of patronizing him. It depicts him fighting this isolation and takes you through his transition into partially accepting it.
…or maybe I read into it a little too far.
** 1/2
photos »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I was posting some photos from this month onto the interweb over at picasa and noticed the “embed slideshow” function. Figured I’d give it a go if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. s’all good either way:
[slideshow disabled]
You can check the larger set [link disabled] here. Photogs include two birthdays or the early celebrations of them at least, a shitton of animals, and a Packer game. If more photos are taken, they’ll be added to the album because that’s how monthly groupings of miscellaneous photos work.