Kick-Ass

Yes it is. Do you need to know any more than that? Yes? Well, let’s see. This is the story of a looser, as most comic book stories are, and this looser has a crush on a girl. But this looser gets mugged one too many times and decides to become a super hero. He dresses up like a schmuck and goes to stop muggers, but gets his butt kicked. Anyway, he doesn’t stop, the girl gets interested in the hero, but thinks the kid is gay. Then the hero gets mixed up in the Mob and things go really sour.

I am trying to be vague because it’s a really good movie and I think you should see it. Provided you are an adult that is okay with a lot of foul language (like an 11 year old saying the C word), and a lot of blood. the blood is on par with Kill Bill so it’s mostly comic. The language could be a stickler for most people though.

Anyway, I loved this movie, and I will probably buy it and buy the sequel when it comes out.

The Jone$es

Working in advertising I sometimes wonder if what we sell products to people that don’t really need the product. Stupid idea I know, who needs anything really right? Well this movie takes the idea of advertising to the next level: Real Life Social Marketing

The Joneses is just as you’d expect, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” They are a perfect family, living in a perfect (rich) neighborhood, and have all of the latest stuff. The Joneses are different though because they are employees of a large company that pays them to convince all their new acquaintances to purchase all the hot new stuff that they are schlepping. Their performance is rated on how much product sales increase. This performance is rated using the usual metrics of as a team, per individual, and per category. Really impressive job if you think about it, but what happens when you befriend the neighbor who is just struggling to get by, but still wants to keep up with the Joneses?

You aren’t going to learn any life altering lessons in this movie, and the biggest outcome of the main character’s activities isn’t even fully resolved. That very obvious loose end really put me off, but I’d watch it again, and if they made a sequel (which I doubt they’ll do) I’d probably watch it.

End review is this, if you’re looking for some good entertainment with your typical moral dilemmas and life lessons this movie will be good entertainment for 2 hours. 

Caprica

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a huge SciFi fan. 7 years ago Ronald D. Moore and David Eick made a spectacular production of a reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. This reimagining was an origin story that was shown as a mini series and played on SciFi. It was amazing and fans immediately begged for more. Mr. Moore and Mr. Eick granted the fans wish with 5 years of television that made my Friday nights something to really look forward to. Like all good stories though, it needed to end. It was getting long in the tooth and the characters were developed as far as they could go. So, they gave the series a proper ending that I personally was satisfied with.

Now here we are a year later and Ronald D. Moore and David Eick were probably sitting around Ronald’s house in Berkeley smoking something that isn’t legal without a prescription and the thought hit them, “Who created the Cylons, and why are the sentient?” This is the basis of the new TV show Caprica.

The pilot for Caprica is an 84 minute wonder that leaves the watcher begging for more. The NSFW version has been available since April 2009 on DVD and online includes visions of people being bludgeoned to death and mass orgies in a virtual world created by kids hacking around. The “appropriate for television” version of the pilot premiered on 22 January 2010 to a fairly small audience.

The world itself is 58 years before the fall of New Caprica in Battlestar Galactica. It all revolves around a terrorist organization that worships one God blowing up a train and the aftermath and grief this caused.

The world and the characters are quiet a bit darker than in BSG (Battlestar Galactica). This makes for some more interesting story lines than were possible in BSG.

There have only been a few episodes shown, but every week there are fewer and fewer viewers. Some experts are saying that puts Caprica “on the bubble.” This term means that it is likely to get canceled. I’m really saddened by that and I hope that everyone reading this blog goes out and watches at least one episode. It is a far better show than all of the SciFi currently shown on TV (like FlashForward, V, and yes even Lost).

Surrogates

Bruce Willis leads a cast of characters including James Cromwell and Ving Rhames in this Sci-Fi action/murder mystery. Written by Michael Ferris who also penned such wonderful movies like Catwoman, the Net, and the Net 2.0, you should probably take the hint that this may not be the best movie out there.

The movie has some interesting subtexts about humans living in a world where their surrogates (a robot avatar that lives life for them) take risks the human operators probably wouldn’t take. The lead character never really finds out where the mysterious weapon that kills surrogates and their controller came from, but the electronic bong hits that some surrogates were taking at one part of the movie was incredibly similar.

The whole thing was a bad attempt at looking at the future through Steven Spielberg’s human disapproving eyes. For more on that, one should refer to the movie Artificial Intelligence: AI. We are all self destructive and technology will destroy us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look I have an online persona as much as anyone else, but there just is no chance that the future will come out so black and white that civilized society will live in Surrogates with hosts that lay in bed all day popping pills, while the people against Surrogates are the outsiders living in trailer parks.

It’s not enough to say “be civil” anymore, and “don’t worry, be happy” doesn’t convey the right meaning. From now on, just be pragmatic you loser.

If you have an hour and a half to kill and you need some Sci-Fi watch this, but honestly I didn’t think that it was worth the cost of plastic the DVD was pressed into.

Moon

Last year was a good year for movies. I however, haven’t had a chance to see all the really good ones (or any of the really bad ones either). So, I’m playing catch up here. So, this week’s movie is called “Moon” written and directed by Duncan Jones.

Moon is the story of Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) who signed up for a three year mission to mine the moon for the LUNAR corporation. The moon has valuable minerals that will solve the Earth’s energy problems. In his final weeks on the moon he starts to talk to himself and see strange things. It’s a cerebral movie and if you can’t sit and absorb into it for an hour an a half you probably shouldn’t watch it. Otherwise you should see it. This movie is well written, well acted, and beautifully filmed. I don’t think the award shows have given it enough credit though.

Now, the rest of this entry is filled with spoilers. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the movie.

So it’s the future and you have an evil corporation called LUNAR. LUNAR has been using clones recycling them every three years to continuously mine the moon. So far I can totally believe that a company would do this. Why spend the time and money to train and ship people back and forth between the Earth and the moon when they can just use a supply of clones on the moon? Also they pre-tape video’s from Sam’s wife and young child. This is supposed to give him frackin hope of a future. Ha! Turns out the wife is cheating on him and dumps him just weeks before the end of his three year term. A story arc probably concocted by the evil LUNAR corporation to make the Sam on the moon commit suicide.

LUNAR is blocking live transmissions to Earth and stopping all of Sam’s outgoing videos from reaching their target. Sam eventually figures this out and goes beyond the transmission jamming stations far enough to contact home. Turns out his wife died recently and his daughter is now a teenager. Bummer. But, if you listen carefully in the background when his daughter is telling her dad that there’s someone on the phone asking about mom, the dad’s voice is the same as Sam. I wonder if the real Sam ever reached the moon to begin with.

Interesting. Again, I highly recommend this movie. The twists and story were really good.

Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball

There are times when you want to be entertained. You want to sit down and watch a 90 minute movie and not think about cinematography or blocking or direction etc. You just want to watch a movie. Some of my friend don’t get that. They laughed at me when I said that I liked watching Smokin’ Aces 1. Then they went through a point by point explanation of why it was a terrible movie… technically. They failed to realize that when I watched it, I wanted to just sit back and watch a fun shoot ‘em up movie and not think about technical aspects of movies. Smokin’ Aces 2 is the same way.

Smokin' Aces 2 is a prequel to the original. Christopher Michael Holley from the original reprises his role in the prequel and even mentioned Buddy Israel in this movie (Buddy Israel is Jeremy Pivon’s character in the original). This movie lacks a bit of the finesse that would come from a film that didn’t go straight to video. In that I mean the speed up and slow down of time is a bit too jarring, and some of the character introductions are a bit out of context. Although introducing Autumn Reeser’s character the way they did was great and possibly the best part of the movie, but that’s just the gutter part of my mind talking.

Overall, this is a good movie if you liked the first one and you’ve seen all the other movies in this genre. If you are looking for this type of movie, but want more polish go for “Shoot ‘Em Up” or “Crank”.

Analog Hole

Yep, there sure have been a lot of people over the past decade or two complaining about Digital Rights Management. For the most part I’ve been a complacent monkey in the whole thing just accepting it as a necessary evil of living in the digital age.

For those uninitiated, Digital Rights Management (called DRM) is code embedded in digital media (like digital audio and digital video files) that somehow ensure that the files are only played on the hardware that the owner of the media allows.

There’s a lot of blogs, and lawsuits, and such out there that have covered all of this. I don’t want to cover it again.

So why am I writing this blog then? Well, last night I ordered a movie from Amazon on my TiVo. Somehow, though, my TiVo in the bedroom decided it would download the movie, and not the one in the living room. After the movie downloaded, TiVo wouldn’t let me transfer the recording from one to the other. DRM strikes again.

Well, now for the ultimate analog hole. I physically picked up my bedroom TiVo and moved it to the living room to watch the movie. Screw you DRM.

DRM is simply something that makes life inconvenient at best for those of us that are honest. The thieves have ways around DRM.

In the end though I think this is a small piece in the bigger problem. TiVo has jumped the shark. The future of DVR is not in TiVo. hopefully we’ll see a re-emergence of Windows Media Center this year as the DVR to have.

Ubik is Coming Soon

Philip K. Dick is undeniably my favorite Sci-Fi author. His stories have been turned into such great movies as Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Paycheck among others.

One of my least favorite books of his is about to be made into a movie. This book is called Ubik. Ubik is one of those stories that I consider to be daydream Sci-Fi. It begins in a really cool setting and then just starts going out of control. The story is set in 1992 where parapsychology is an accepted practice but it isn't legal so there's a company that goes around and blocks telepaths. This company goes to the moon and that's where all hell breaks loose, and time begins to go the other way.

As with all of Dick's stories, there are some really interesting aspects. For instance the main character has to pay to get out of his apartment, but he's so broke he doesn't have enough change for the door. Also, every chapter begins with an ad for a product called Ubik. Telling you what Ubik is would spoil the ending, but the products are everyday things that you'd recognize only the product name is Ubik. As time continues to roll backwards the products get more classic. This could be an interesting advertising mechanism for the movie, or even a nice diversion within the movie much in the way that Starship Troopers used the "Would you like to know more?" ads within the movie.

We'll see what happens when it comes out. My bet is that it will make me appreciate the book more. In fact just writing this blog entry has made me think about going back to re-read the book.

More info about the movie can be found here:
Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' Is Heading to the Big Screen

Donnie Darko

Out of nowhere a movie started popping up. There was a director's cut and a lot of people I know were telling me how great it was. That movie was Donnie Darko. I had it on my Netflix queue for a while, but I never bumped it to the top. As a result I deleted it one day when I was cleaning up my queue.

This morning I was in bed trying to get my daughter to sleep when I noticed that it was playing on the Sundance channel. I put it on and now I understand why so many people liked it.

First, any movie that has a clip of "Evil Dead" in it must be good.

Second, the case is amazing. From Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who many would argue would make for a bad movie but I disagree, to Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore (also an Executive Producer on the movie) and Noah Wyle. They all did a super job.

Donnie is a fairly dark boy with a horrifying past. He's seeing a shrink and is on medication. One day he starts to see this deranged bunny who tells him that the world will end in 28 days. The next 28 days are a whirlwind of tragedy and horror. I won't spoil the ending but it is a good one.

This movie isn't a horror movie although it has some elements of horror. This movie isn't Sci-Fi, but you could argue any movie with time travel as a theme is Sci-Fi. This is a thriller and a really good one. I'd recommend it to anyone.

High Definition and Director's Intent

DJ and I just had a brief discussion about the visual quality of movies that have been transferred to HD-DVD. Specifically he was asking about movies that were filmed in 16mm that have a lot of film grain. He said he read some reviews that pointed out how poor these movies looked when re-mastered for HD-DVD.

My opinion on the matter is that many of the reviewers that I've read online do not take into account what was the director's intent (or cinematographer's intent, or director or photography, but I'm just going to jumble them all into the director category because it's one word). Please do not get me wrong. online reviewers like the ones at High-Def Digest does a phenomenal job of reviewing all HD-DVD's that are released. They even admit that they "make pains to not detract" based on film makers stylistic choices, but they are reviewing the quality of HD-DVD and that means that they don't want to see film grain or over exposed film.

I think that the director's intent is the most important thing in the movie. If you look at the movie Serenity on HD-DVD you can clearly see the film grain in the live action shots, but the space CG shots are clean and pristine. I believe that if I were to ask Joss Whedon (writer/director of Serenity) he would agree that this was a style choice to contrast between the (forgive the expression) spaghetti-western-ness of the live action portions and the hard-core Sci-Fi of the computer graphics section. Granted I don't personally know Mr. Whedon, but this is the way I interpret what I see on the screen. It invoked a feeling and set a mood that I think enhanced the movie.

This "invoking of feelings" and "setting of moods" is something that I find hard to get across when I am reviewing a movie. However, because I think that film grain is a conscious choice that the director makes when building a story, I will never detract someone from the HD-DVD version of a movie because of it. I may comment on it, but that is because I find it fascinating that with a high definition medium we can now forgo the movie going experience and have that experience in our own living rooms.