This past Friday night, I decided to ignore the pile of work on my desk and veg out to the two sci-fi DVDs that Netflix conveniently delivered to my mailbox earlier that day. Here are my thoughts:

Battle for Terra

I had already seen this in the theater and really liked it. It was the first animated 3D I had seen, and I still have not seen a movie with more impressive use of 3D action, animated or not (Yes, I am looking at you Avatar) Oh, and speaking of Avatar, this movie is basically the same plot, but came out well before Avatar. The difference is that instead of the humans arriving at the alien planet out of pure greed to mine the ridiculously named MacGuffin, unobtainium, in Avatar, they arrive in Terra because Earth had been destroyed. After traveling for several generations to find a new home they arrive at Terra with only a few months time left to survive on their ship. So the impatient military general takes control and decides to take Terra by force and kill off the inconvenient natives. Sound familiar? Anyways, very solid sci-fi flick. Nothing groundbreaking, just well done.

Daybreakers

It’s not often a genre film like a vampire flick can get A-list acting talent like Ethan Hawke, Williem Dafoe and Sam Neill. Apparently, all three were so impressed with the unique twist to the vampire tale in Daybreakers that they signed up. The twist, is the premise that basically everyone on earth is a vampire and live seemingly normal modern lives – of course being vampires there are differences such as not going out in the sun and getting a nice shot of blood in your Starbucks coffee. And of course, the remaining human holdouts are captured and farmed for their blood, but they are going extinct and the vampire society will no longer have the blood they need to keep from devolving into savage ghoulish monsters. So anyways its a very enjoyable vampire flick with a unique world – noticeably different from the typical post-apocalyptic or gothic settings.

Obnoxious Sidenote of My Insanity
Even though I liked Daybreakers, I am the type of guy that can let one little thing bug me through a whole movie. So, just 5 minutes into the film there is a few seconds were you can see Ethan Hawk’s character in his car, but when they pan to the side-view mirror you see an empty suit, because of course the legend that vampires don’t have reflections. Well this drove me crazy the whole next two hours, because it just did not fit the world the Spierig brothers had created, nor the ultimate plot of the tale. Did the mirror shot have anything to do with the movie? No, but it drove me crazy nonetheless, because if you are going to create a fantastical world and ask me to buy into it, be consistent in your logic. Of course, this happens in regular movies too, if a single thing just seems stupid in its logic, I am done. I remember watching a movie with Erin once and in the opening scene a newly married young man surprises his bride with the news that he bought them a house – well that ruined the movie for me, because I know that would not fly. Unless your so rich you can buy lots of houses, it is not a decision one spouse does on their own. And if they do, the wife will not be pleased – but instead quite irate. Of course I had to stop the movie and talk this over with Erin to see if I was correct or crazy, she confirmed that I was both correct but also crazy. Did it have anything to do with the movie – no. But little things can either add to or subtract from a films believability. Ok, i’ll get off my soapbox. Daybreakers is a fun genre flick, and I also really enjoyed the special features documentary on the making of the film too.

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Ella has been watching Jungle Book lately, and while she clearly hasn’t learned all the words yet, she still enjoys singing the hit song, Bare Necessities.

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No, that’s not the worst named law firm ever. I have been on a movie binge lately and vowed that I would try to write at least a little about each film I see. So here are my thoughts on three extremely different movies I saw this week:

Lovely Bones

I am torn about this film. Cinematically it was compelling and visually beautiful at times. But the story bothers me. The violent rape and murder of a young girl is a grisly topic, and being a father of girls scares me to death. And Lovely Bones seems to treat it a little too lightly in this film. Also, I am unsure how to feel about the purgatory of sorts the character is stuck in – why are her only companions the other victims of this guy? Roger Ebert had such a problem with this he called the film deplorable – read his review here. I won’t go that far, but remain unsure how to feel. Stanley Tucci played a creepy murderer – but I swear he was doing a Dustin Hoffman impression at times!

Iron Man 2

What can I say? It was action on top of action, with a bunch of movie stars (Samuel Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow) and some great actors (Robert Downey, Sam Rockwell, Don Cheadle and Mickey Rourke) and an upcoming director Jon Favreau. How could it fail to entertain? To me Rockwell and Rourke really stole the show – they were great. Downey was his typical entertaining self and the others were all a bonus. A very solid sequel to a meaninglessly, but entertaining franchise.

Greenburg

What a great film, thank goodness we have an art house cinema here that picks up these off-the-radar gems. I love simple movies with complex characters. Movies that don’t follow a usual Hollywood script or rely on plot twists or special effects. A movie that just explorers the human condition. The director and co-writer Noah Baumbach continues his string of great films. Ben Stiller took the role after Mark Ruffalo pulled out due to his brother’s death. Ruffalo is one of my favorite actors and I would love to see how he would have performed in the role. But Stiller was great – he delivered humor, rage, vulnerability, and the list goes on. I highly recommend it to Cinephiles. Despite what Roger Greenburg says, life is not wasted on people.

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I bet you thought there was just one way to lace up your shoes, didn’t you? Well, Ian’s Shoelace Site says that mathematically there are in fact over 2 trillion ways to feed your laces through the normal 12 eyelets on a shoe. I am guessing most are pretty ridiculous, but since you are never too old to shake things up and try something new:

Click here to see a 33 different ways to tie your sneakers

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I watched Fourth Kind last night and found it disturbing. I have mentioned before my penchant for “true” stories and this one claims to be based on true studies by a psychologist in Alaska that basically prove alien abductions. Yeah, I know what your thinking. But the film has Milla Jovovich (who I love!) state very clearly in the beginning (and end) that the events were true and the film will be using real audio and video recordings along with the dramatized events. However, these “real” clips are mind boggling – and just too out there to believe. I really need to spend some time researching this online to see what the deal is, it feels like a hoax, sort of like Blair Witch Project.

Please stay tuned… and prepare for SPOILERS ahead

Ok, it appears the movie is total fiction and if anything is only loosely based on some events. I am even assuming at this point that the so called “real” audio and video were fake as well, which they would have to be for this to not be the most amazing discovery of our lifetime.

Whew, I will sleep better now. Still a fun movie to watch, especially when you are unsure if the “real” videos/audio are really real or not. Which of course, I have now ruined for you – so by the way Bruce Willis’s character is a ghost in Sixth Sense. 😛

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I bought a new computer this week. (hold for applause) For a guy like me, that equates to a 6-year-old waking for Christmas morning.

I have been using computers all my life. I learned to write Basic programming language in elementary school. Basic is old school, and well … basic. But I remember amazing my teachers with Basic programs I wrote that played like actual games and told jokes – one was a driving game where the road was made of wavy asterisks and you had to dodge rocks also made of keyboard characters. Another, was an ASCII picture of then president Ronald Reagan and you could ask him a question and it would result in a joke with a “Well” in it.

I never had the Commodore 64, but spent lots of time on various friends’ systems. I still remember my dad and I going to buy the first computer to call my very own – an Apple IIe purchased used from a newspaper classified ad. Years later I became friends with the seller – thanks again Brit!

That computer served me well the rest of my years at home. Funny how content you can be with green type on a black screen. I recall upgrading the RAM to 1MB!! (That was a lot back then – by the way my new machine has 8GB of RAM, so it has 8,192 times as much memory! Lets not even talk about hard drive space or internet speeds.)

I have had many computers since then, I even hand-built several machines – which adds a sense of accomplishment to the already exciting time of a getting a new computer!

My garage at times looks like a computer graveyard with the old cases, hard drives and random computer parts. In fact, I let a friend raid my computer leftovers once and he found enough parts to piece together a whole system.

And today, as many of you know, I spend most my waking hours seated at a computer in my office or on one of my laptops I have stashed strategically around the house – its a good thing I love them so.

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