Hey Internet. Sorry to disturb you, but it's been quite a while, hasn't it. Sorry I haven't written, but there's been a lot keeping me busy.

How about a recap by way of quick reviews of a few of the gadgets I've acquired since last we spoke?

HTC EVO: Pretty nice Android phone, but too darn big for my tastes. The 4.3-inch display made for a device that was just too cumbersome to use as a phone, but not quite large enough to be a tablet. If you have big pockets, it's a nice choice.

Samsung Galaxy S Captivate: really nice hardware, but it's a shame that Samsung screwed up the software so badly. Android 2.3 is just about out and Samsung still hasn't managed to release Android 2.2 for it yet. (It's a good thing some nice Samsung engineer leaked an early build of 2.2 about 3 months ago, or I'd be having serious 'behind-the-curve' withdrawals.) The 4.0-inch screen is a much nicer size than the HTC EVO's, making for a much more comfortable pocket phone, and easily my favorite of the various phone form factors I've used.

Sony Blu-ray GoogleTV box: really nice hardware, but it's a shame that Sony screwed up the software so badly. The Blu-ray player application feels like it was made by a completely different team than the rest of the system, which makes sense, since Google didn't make that part. The one area that this device shines, incidentally, is actually the one everyone made fun of when it was first released: the remote control. People laughed, but I can honestly say it's the single greates remote control I've ever used. I really miss it after returning the whole package to the Sony store. If you don't care about Blu-ray, I say save $100 and get the Logitech.

Logitech GoogleTV box: hardware's cheaper than the Sony, but some of the software is better. The built in Harmony universal remote system is really slick, and being $100 cheaper than the sony is a nice perk. The bundled Bluetooth keyboard is way too big to make for a comfortable control device, but as we've been using a vintage SGI Indy keyboard on our various computer-television-hybrid devices for a number of years (have you ever seen then length of the cord on those SGI Indy keyboards?? Not sure why SGI thought they needed that long of a cord, but I for one am glad they made that decision.) it is a step up. GoogleTV has some pretty neat potential, but it's a real shame Google hasn't released the SDK for it yet, or, at the very least, just allowed access to the existing wealth of Android apps in the Android Market. Apps will be where the platform shines, so it seems kind of crazy that they're trying to sell them prior to that. I guess it has Twitter, so what more could people really want, right? Also, it's a shame all the TV networks have blocked the damn thing.

Samsung Galaxy Tab: really nice hardware, but it's a shame that US carriers have the phone functionality disabled. (The one I've been using is unlocked and has full phone functionality, which is awesome. However, being a prototype, it's also got a really rickety housing that feels very fragile.) Darn fine device; great form factor. Goes great in my cargo pants, and after using it for a few minutes, using an iPad now feels like driving a boat. I'm not, however, completely sold on Android as a tablet OS just yet. This hasn't stopped me from using it all the damn time, I'm suspect that a web-based platform might make for a better experience.

ChromeOS: nice hardware but -- wait. I haven't actually seen hardware yet. But I've been running ChromeOS on one of my netbooks for a few months and really, really like it. I tend to use web-based services unless I absolutely have to use a native application, so a web-based OS is a natural fit for me. Combine that with yesterday's Chrome Webstore launch, and it's now an attractive platform for people who are far, far less nerdy than me. If you're having trouble imagining a web-based OS, take a look at the Chrome Webstore and install a few apps. Then imagine your computer is faster with longer battery life and not encumbered by nonsense like virus checkers and printer drivers; now you can start to imagine what ChromeOS is like.

Apple 13" Macbook Pro: really nice hardware, but it's a shame Apple screwed up the software. OS bitching aside, the Macbook Pro is easily the finest piece of computer hardware I've ever owned, and nearly a year of living with Windows 7 made making the switch to OSX far less painful than it would have been going straight from Linux. I'm not completely sold on OSX, but for my usage, it's pretty shocking how much more productive I am than I was on Windows. Having a real UNIX system under all that shiny bounciness is something I didn't realize I missed until I had it back. I think I may write a post about my (most recent) Mac switch instead of going into detail here, as this quick little post has gotten kind of out of hand.

Hopefully it won't be several months before we speak again. Don't be a stranger.

If, upon learning that there's an R-rated Christian horror film in theaters, you feel that you just HAVE to experience it for yourself, I very strongly suggest you fight the urge.

I didn't, and thus had the extreme displeasure of sitting through what is quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen -- and I saw both MASTER OF DISGUISE and MIMIC while they were in cinemas. The film in question is HOUSE, a low-budget adaptation of Frank Peretti & Ted Dekker's novel that somehow got released to theaters.

I've been trying to write this post for a couple weeks now, intending to summarize the film and give an idea of how truly awful it is, but it's just too awful. The film depicts a couple going through their own personal Hell, but I think the true intent of the film was to put ME through an hour and a half of Hell. I'm still not certain that Hell is a physical place, but I ain't takin' any chances... I almost didn't survive the screening, so an eternity of that is unfathomable. I'm catching up on back-tithings as we speak.

In any case, lest you're curious, this movie in no way deserved an R-rating. There's virtually no blood, no on-screen violence, and it's about as scary as a Very Special Episode of TV's BLOSSOM. The producers purportedly fought with the MPAA over the R-rating, but I find that highly suspect. I think instead that they asked Mabel to give it an R so as to trick hapless heathens into seeing it. Just now, while trying to find a copy of the poster of the film, I stumbled across Ted Dekker himself talking about the film, and I find that what he said completely backs up my impressions regarding the theatrical release of this film:

“This is still essentially the same story from the book. It’s the story of four lost souls entering their own hell, mistaking their one hope of rescue as something evil, and in the end either living or dying.

But the marketing has changed. The message is now going out to the millions who would never be caught dead watching a movie like ‘Left Behind,’ no pun intended. "

Indeed, it appears that some well-intentioned zealot put a lot of money into getting this stinker into theaters in order to turn some people's lives around. I'm all for trying to make people's lives better, but by tricking them into seeing a horrible movie?

It's like the Crusades all over again...

I don't have much to say lately, but I need to say this:

Google's Android mobile phone platform is freakin' AMAZING. T-Mobile's "G1" handset -- which is the first of the commercially available Android phones -- is very nearly as awesome a device as is the underlying platform.

Imagine the offspring resultant from a drunken one-night-stand between a Sidekick/Hiptop and an iPhone. That pretty much describes the G1; it is fully touch-enabled and has a wealth of downloadable applications ala iPhone, but boasts the flip-out keyboard and actual navigation buttons which are the hallmark of a Sidekick for those times you don't feel like looking like a total tool rubbing your fingers all over your phone.

Best yet, you don't need to deal with any of the iTunes bullcrap that every iPhone owner has to admit to disliking dealing with. If you want to put mp3s (or oggs, w00t!) on it, you simply plug a NORMAL USB CABLE into it and it shows up as a removable drive. Copy your music over and you're good to go. Same with photos and videos. Software updates come automatically over the air, so no dealing with the endless cycle of backing up and restoring when iTunes makes a mess of things. (Or, if you're a nerd like me, you can manually download the firmware update and apply it yourself.)

Unlike with iPhone, users can install applications that modify very nearly any aspect of the device, and are not at the whims of Apple as to whether the app will be "allowed" or not. For instance: I have an app installed that can turn on and off features when certain criteria are met. When the GPS finds that I've arrived at home, it automatically enables wifi. When I leave it turns it off again to preserve battery. If my battery drops below a certain point I've got it set to turn off GPS as well to further save battery. Try doing that with iPhone :).

Want to set an mp3, m4a or ogg file as a ringtone? No problem, support for that is built in.

All-in-all, Android has far exceeded my expectations, and is quite the anti-iPhone platform that I'd envisioned. I highly recommend it.

A few days ago, I got my hands on a pre-release copy of Metallica's latest album, "Death Magnetic."

Now, I was once a pretty hardcore Metallica fan; in my youth preferring the "Master of Puppets"-era sound, my taste eventually maturing to find the "Load" sound to be preferable. After that live album they recorded with the SF symphony and Michael Kamen, as well as the all-covers album, I was really excited to hear a new studio album, because the songwriting on the new songs from the symphony show was really fantastic -- and the band had never sounded better on the covers album.

Sadly they kind of lost me with the eventual release of "St. Anger." After a considerable amount of time, I did come to find a couple of the songs on that album tolerable, but my overall disappointment in them not sounding like I expected was kind of a downer.

It was with that disappointment in mind that I hesitantly decided to give "Death Magnetic" listen. I'm really glad I did, because over the last couple days I've found the album to be really fantastic. Nobody is more surprised than me at that fact. Many of the songs have really catchy grooves and riffs, really earworming themselves into my head.

I've picked my three favorite of the songs from the album and popped them into my Opentape installation (which I've been adding features to) for your listening pleasure. It's with hope that other disheartened fans -- and perhaps some newcomers as well -- might give the album the fair chance it really deserves.

(if you can't see the embedded player, click on over to my mixtape via this link)

Oh, and please don't go linking to this. I just want to share some great music with my friends and promote the album -- not get sued by Metallica :) If you like what you hear, the album comes out on Sept. 12th.

M. Night Shyamalan has made a number of good films.  One of which, I'm betting you've never seen.

This unknown film is called Wide Awake, and a quick google search for reviews will turn up a number of people waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful this film is, and how sad it is that no one has ever heard of it, let alone seen it.  The film was made pre-The Sixth Sense, and when that movie exploded, video copies of Wide Awake were re-released with a big blurb about how this film is from the creator of The Sixth Sense, but that didn't really help.  And why didn't it help?  Because this is the cover of said film:

Would you pick that film up off the shelf at your local video shop?  Neither would I.  The trouble is, this cover completely misleads the viewer about the content, tone, and POINT of the movie.  Yes, Rosie O'Donnell is in the film,  (And, I have to admit that she's actually darn good in it as well)  but she is not the focal character of the film.  Yes, there was something in there about baseball, but once again: that has nothing to do with the film.  What looks like a cheeseball Rosie O'Donnell comedy is, in actuality, a remarkably wonderful film about a young boy coming to terms with the things he believes.  It is incredibly touching, and everyone in the film gives stellar performances.  Dennis Leary is particularly good in it.  Sure, there are some funny moments, but to call the film a comedy would be greatly under-selling it.

I think whoever designed that cover did us film viewers a great disservice -- not to mention doing a disservice to M. Night himself; in my opinion this is the best of his films, and it's a shame he hasn't been paid its worth.  In an effort to try to encourage other people to see this fine film, I decided to make a better cover for it.  Now, I'm neither a marketer nor a designer, but seeing this cover on a shelf would make me pick it up.  Hopefully it'll do the same for you:

Bonus points to anyone who prints it out and tapes it onto the disc at their local rental shop.

(This poster contains Creative Commons-licensed material from kadj, frankloohuis, and danwk71 and is licensed under a Creative Commons "do whatever you want as long as it doesn't make money" license, because that's how some of its parts are licensed.)

Remember a while back when I watched the pilot for CBS's <i>The Big Bang Theory</i>? 

Remember how much loathing went into my review of it?

No? Here's a link then: Big Bang Theory: Nothing Intelligent About This Design.

After several months of being told by people that I trust that it's a really funny show, and also several months of me explaining just why the jokes aren't funny (my rebuttals sounded hilarious even to me), I decided that perhaps as a geek myself, I may just be too close to the subject matter to see it objectively.  After all, I DO carry a man-purse, I DO have conversations about fiction as if they were real, I DO have difficulty with OCD things like always sitting in the same spot, and I do exhibit most of the social awkwardness that the characters on the show do.  I began to wonder if it would be possible to:

a) objectively view the show with all those things in mind   and b) find it funny?

It was with this in mind that D and I sat down to once-and-for-all determine whether the show does, in fact, suck ass as much as it seemed to upon viewing the pilot.  We've now watched every episode, and I'm here to report to you that... I was wrong.  I actually like that show quite a bit.  (I stand by my review of the pilot, though, it's still terrible.)

I'm not sure you realize how much it pains me to not only think this way, but to also publish the thoughts on the internet, but it's completely true.  Viewed outside the context of a show that I thought should be trying to APPEAL to geeks, it does an excellent job of making FUN OF geeks in a way that geeks like me can totally appreciate.  It's funny because it's TRUE.  You just have to get past being insulted by it.  One of my biggest complaints was that it doesn't accurately reflect geek culture, but now I see that it actually does.  Sure, some things are exaggerated, but it's very funny, appealing to the primarily non-geek viewers are much as it can to the geek ones.

I hereby have to revoke my completely negative criticism of this show and apologize to the people involved with it.  <i>The Big Bang Theory</i> does have quite a bit of exceptionally funny stuff in it, and would be what I would call a "perfect show" if they'd just get rid of that damned laugh track.  Despite the laugh track, I have to say I like it quite a lot, putting it just a bit under <i>The IT Crowd</i> on my "shows that I actually like" graph.

But you don't have to take MY word for it...

We saw a few movies over the holiday:

I Am Legend was actually pretty darn good, despite all-but abandoning the very core -- dare I say 'point' -- of the story. In its place they wedged a peculiar new type of 'Legend:' namely the Bob Marley album of the same name. Perplexing and stupid. Still it was pretty awesome despite this and the many MANY things I found to complain about. (Seriously, why would he hunt from a Mustang GT? How would he haul the carcass home?) Lots of funny little "future" tidbits like the Batman vs. Superman movie billboard in Times Square. Bottom line: even taking into account the major deviations from the much-loved source, I really liked it.

Sweeney Todd: I need to preface my review with this: as a rule, I dislike Broadway musicals on principle; that goes double for Hollywoodified Broadway musicals. That said, I couldn't have loved Sweeney Todd any more than I did. Simply put: the story is great, the film is visually great, Depp, Rickmann, and Bonham-Carter are great, many of the songs are great -- and, most awesomely, the quantities of blood are VERY great. I don't have much knowledge of the source material, so I can't vouch for its faithfulness (all I knew about the musical I learned from Jersey Girl) but I can say that it was very engaging, and very enjoyable. This is my surprise hit of the year. Oh: this time around Depp apparently decided to pick David Bowie for his character inspiration. What's his deal with rock stars? My biggest complaint with the film? The titular character is a barber who is very handy with a straight-razor, but throughout the film he bangs and scrapes his various razors on the ground and objects, throws them around, etc. As one who actually shaves with a straight-razor, I know that they're very sensitive, fragile things, and that a true master shaver would NEVER treat his instruments even remotely as badly as Todd does.

Alien vs Predator: Colonated Title: The first AvP was so ludicrously bad, both in performance and in critical/internet review, that the mere emergence of a sequel suggested to me that someone had come up with a brilliant-enough concept to sell the fickle studio heads on it and get it green-lit. I was wrong. From the look of things they got 5 different writers to come up with ingenious-yet-different concepts, then smooshed all 5 together into one script. And then removed the ingenious altogether. What was left was a mish-mash of potential heroes, all with hinted-at complicated back-stories and demons for each to overcome. None of these ever goes anywhere. This movie sucked all manner of ass, but not in an even remotely good way.

Juno: I really, really, liked this movie. It has been touted as "this year's Little Miss Sunshine," and I have to say the comparison is somewhat apt. If I had to describe it, I'd say it's like Knocked Up with all of the Superbad sucked out of it. You know, in a good way. With characters out of a funnier, makes-sensier version of Garden State. A really refreshing and interesting look at teenage pregnancy and how it sometimes can go "right."

I hate to keep harping on about TV stuff, but I've been spending a lot of time with it lately. Everything else I have to talk about makes me uncomfortable, sad and irritated, so that means I probably won't talk about it much. So TV it is.

Last night was the premiere of CBS's new geek comedy Big Bang Theory, a show that I thought looked like it'd probably be pretty bad, but might potentially be similar to the truly fantastic Brit comedy The IT Crowd. It was even worse than I had imagined it might possibly be, and nothing at all like The IT Crowd. (I have no idea whether this is good news or bad news for the Amer-remake^TM of The IT Crowd that NBC is planning for an upcoming mid-season replacement. Not that I think that's even a remotely good idea in the first place. But I thought that about the Amer-remake^TM of The Office as well, and after finally caving to the universally positive reviews I've heard from people I trust I've discovered that it's actually as good/better than the original that I loved. Which means that I'm not going to condemn this new one outright. Yet.)

I don't have words to describe how truly awful this show was, so I'll talk about something else instead. The producers of this show seem to be relying upon the standard age-old technique of causing unfunny things to be funny by simply putting a laugh track overtop them, but these guys've kicked it up a notch; they're also now working under the assumption that the LOUDER the laugh track the funnier the thing will be. I have never heard laughter that loud before, which says a lot considering my penchant for Golf-Ball-in-the-Nuts conventions. (Bob Saget himself is headlining GBitN '08!! Can't wait.)

My favorite part of the episode was when D said "Man... that laugh track laughs at EVERYTHING..."

If you don't get jokes on TV but like to laugh when you hear other people laughing, then this is the show for you. However, if you DO like the jokes you laugh at to actually be JOKES, AND funny, then this is most assuredly not the show for you. Sample "joke": "Well, we sometimes play Klingon Boggle^TM. That's Boggle^TM -- but in Klingon."

UPDATE: Some time has passed, calling for a re-evaluation.

Just got home from Resident Evil: Extinction.

I don't have a lot to say, other than: "a bit suckier than Resident Evil, but nowhere near as sucky as Resident Evil: Apocalypse."

Bonus points for creatively using Marylin Manson's theme from the first one in a multitude of different versions throughout this one. I liked that a lot.

It's amazing to me how everyone who survives apocalypses of a global magnitude always has such perfect skin and teeth and are all hot as hell. I guess those of us with inferior genes are more susceptible to being left to die. I guess it's time to start compensating for that by stockpiling shotguns and ammunition.

[Full disclosure: I am no fan of Apple. I didn't even own an iPod until recently, and only then because I was able to immediately wipe Apple's software off it and use the far-superior (for me) open-source Rockbox firmware on it instead. I did not buy iPhone, and had no reason to hold any bias towards it prior to playing with one. In fact, when I did play with one after finding out that I won mine, I hated it. If anything, my bias is against iPhone, and is most definitely against Apple.]

I've been having the hardest time writing up a full review of the iPhone, partly because even I am sick of hearing about them. The short answer is that for me, iPhone is a lot like Michael Bay's Transformers; sure, there is a lot wrong with it, but I like it anyway. Would I pay $600 for one? Probably not, but everyday I get more value out of it, putting me closer to the point that I would. I'm up to about $350 right now, for those that are curious how much I would pay for one.

If all you want is a phone with email and access to the "real internet," (<--- you should really click that) then I'd say your money is better spent on one of the many other cheaper options (many of which do a better job of those things, some say. I agree with them.) that aren't crippled in such painful ways. One of my favorite examples of iPhone stupidity is the following: if someone sends you a calendar appointment in iCal format, iPhone doesn't know what to do with it. Yes, Apple's email client on Apple's phone can't understand Apple's calendar format. Yes, iPhone actually HAS an Apple calendar app on it, there's just no way to get appointments into it without plugging it into a computer.¹ Stupid. There are many other stupid things that I don't feel I really need to go into here. If you know someone that has one, you've surely asked them about something and been told "no... but maybe in the next update," or heard other people bitching about them. In many ways, iPhone really sucks.

That said, here's why I love mine and cannot get rid of it: because the high-profile lust-worthiness of the device coupled with Apple's non-commitment to releasing a 3rd-party software development kit has resulted in a "hacker" development community that kicks all manner off ass. Within a month of the device being out, people had already written not only UIKit, a sort of cobbled-together SDK, but also a compiler and linker and various other tools to be able to get the code they write with the SDK to run on iPhone. Tomorrow will be 2 months exactly, and already there is a multitude of really awesome apps out there letting me do any number of awesome things, not to mention a full suite of UNIX command-line tools. (Being able to set up cron jobs on your iPhone to, say, have your iPhone rsync all your camera photos to your webhost over the wireless connection at certain times of the day? Yes, that's no problem.) There's a neat voice recorder app (which hopefully will gain MP3 functionality soon, allowing me to email recordings right to my blog. Instant podcast from anywere? Awesome.), DOOM, a couple different NES emulators, a terminal client, a bunch of neat games, a text editor, a couple different file browsers, an ebook reader, etc. I'm just scratching the surface here. One of the neatest apps is called Installer. It works as a sort of package manager, allowing you to install/upgrade/uninstall various applications without ever having to use a computer.

Speaking of having to use a computer: after gaining access to the whole iPhone, the easiest way to manipulate things on it is via ssh. (Yeah, you can ssh into your iPhone. Also available on iPhone: Apache web server, and SAMBA so you can make it show up in your Windows Network Neighborhood.) One neat little trick is that if your OS is smart enough, you can use 'sshfs' to mount your iPhone's filesystem to your local computer over ssh -- without ever plugging anything in. This allows me to manipulate things on it, even loading music and videos all wirelessly. Whenever my iPhone is in range of my wireless router it shows up on my local machine. That is pretty frickin' fantastic.

So, in conclusion, if shiny trendy expensive things aren't really your bag, but being able to use that UNIX knowledge you've got to do UNIXy things anywhere you happen to be, then perhaps iPhone might be for you. It sure is for me. (But then again, mine was free. I'm confident, though, that after some more time with it I might get to the point that I'm willing to pay full price for one. Just not quite yet,)

---

1: the calendar, like pretty much every other source of data on the iPhone, stores its data in sqlite3 databases, meaning that it's fairly trivial to manipulate without iTunes. I've been kind of half-assedly working on some scripts to pull down my google calendar .ics file and inject the events into my calendar db, but thus far my heart hasn't really been much into it. Maybe some day.

Transformers was AWESOME. My treehouse has long been adorned with a "He-Man Michael Bay Haters Club" banner, and I was one of the many naysayers the past year saying how lame it was going to be. Luckily I realized not long ago that it'd be pretty hard even for Michael Bay to ruin a story about a boy and his car saving the world, and that my feelings towards him really shouldn't affect my enjoyment of this movie. It didn't.

Some highlights:

• Hearing Peter Cullen's fantastic voice coming out of Optimus Prime one more time was awesome. I was worried it'd be Bruce Willis or Tom Hanks or something. Score one for "if it ain't broke."
• Bonecrusher skating down the freeway after Optimus Prime like an Olympic speed skater (I used to be a rink rat, and must say that the body language and motion was perfect.)
• The REAL Bumblebee parked next to the new Camaro "Bumblebee 2.0"
• The Camaro severely smashing the bug as a big F U to vee double-u
• Hulk Hogan as Megatron. "Give me The Spark, brother!" (ok, not really. It sure SOUNDED like him though... I had to suppress a giggle every time he was on screen)
• The gag with Bumblebee's broken voice modulator kept getting more endearing rather than cliche
• Autobots debating eliminating the parents due to sheer irritation was pretty good, as was the whole "hiding the robots from the parents" sequence. This is interesting to me because had you asked prior to me seeing it, I would have listed this as something I'd deem "stupid." My preconceived ideas apparently get the better of me more than I know.

Some lowlights:

• Frank Welker was sorely missed. Hugo Weaving is a great voice actor, but in future, please refer to "if it ain't broke."
• D pointed out the mother of-all-plot-holes: that everything after the first act was unnecessary due to the fact that the Decepticons could have just bought the glasses off eBay in the first place, saving all that hassle of chasing things, blowing things up, etc. Though, I suppose then there'd be a bidding war with the Autobots, who clearly must've been aware of the eBay situation as well, having sent Bumblebee to protect Sam in the first place.
• The big city battle was pretty mind-bending. I couldn't keep track of anything. What did Megatron transform into?
• Just what the crap was the POINT of the whole Aussie hacker / videogame nerd storyline? That could have been excised and no one would even have noticed. One unbelievably hot chick is enough for a movie, right?
• Why the crap do the Autobots look all beat up with missing paint and blast marks, only to transform into perfectly spotless vehicles? This makes no sense.

All in all, this is one of the best "Giant robots kick the scrap out of each other / Boy and his car save the world" movies I've ever seen. I could have done without all the backstory and mythology, though, as well as the hot Aussie hacker and her DDR-playing friend -- but those things couldn't sway my opinion either. My childhood was not raped, and I found it to be a very enjoyable movie.

so the iphone came yesterday.

ive got some good stuff to say, and loads of bad stuff as well, but its too damn hard to use punctuation effectively on it.

m gerting pretty good a typing but you have to switch to different screens to use anything but letters.

maddening.

safari is bloody awesome. im going to have a heck of a tie going bck to the crappy sidekick browser whe i cancel thr att accoun. i will miss it greatly, but eagerly await unlocking so i can use it on tmobile.

i spent the last 3 days in bed unable to type, play with my wii, play with my wee, hold a book, play with my clay, play with my rubik cube or aything else remotely interesting. what i could do is weatch bad movies i recoreded off cable and sped up so i didnt have to suffer as llong. thank goodness i had the foresight to think thsat one day i'd need copious amounts of stuff to watch.

war of the worlds - terrible. tom cruise was really good though; i really believed he was a scumball. what a testament to acting abiliyt.

daisy dukes of hazzard - fantastic. i'ts almost as if those boots were /made/ for walkin'. the rest of the movie really sucked, though.

16 blocks - this was actually a really good movie. i didnt laugh, but i did cry. and not just cuz my arm hurts. mos def is 'mos def'inately good in it. winky face.

dead men walking - zombies in prisn seems really good on paper. on the scifi channel, howeverm, not so good. please stop naming characters in zombie movies 'raimi.'

the chumscrubber - fantastic. fidfteen stars. kind of like donnie darko and jawbreaker and thumbsucker all mixed into one. bonus; the kid from thumbsucker is in this, making his imdb page just that much more interesting in the strangelt titled moive department. kinda depressing and uplifting ast the same time, plus mind-bendy.

earthstorm - space mission to the moon to keep it from splitting in half. midway though the voyage, stewphen baldwin unhooks his seatbelt and runs to the cargo bay, completely oblivious to the fact that therer shoulnd't be any gravity. also he gets over thje loss of his 3years dead wife.

i know i watched a few more, i just cant remember what they wree.

i have refrained from saying 'one thumb up' or 'one thumb down' for your benefit, as you know that's all i can do. thyumb number 2 is off-limits.

If, like me, you found Grindhouse to be a bit lackluster in the "mocking a genre lovingly" department, then perhaps Hot Fuzz will be a bit more to your liking. I know it was to mine.

Hot Fuzz is excellent at both making fun of the Michael-Bay-dual-guns-diving-sideways-in-slow-motion genre of films, and actually being a great Michael-Bay-dual-guns-diving-sideways-in-slow-motion film.

Like with Shaun of the Dead, I went into Hot Fuzz completely sure I was going to like it. Like with Shaun, I didn't just like it, I loved it. Usually for me, expecting to love a movie is the most sure-fire way to ensure that I don't, so the fact that these two films held up to my lofty expectations really says something about their quality.

In short, best film I've seen all year. The only problem? Now I really want to watch Point Break and Bad Boys II.

Attached to the film was a trailer for 28 Weeks Later, which I had been planning to avoid due to its violation of my "no remakes, sequels, remakes of sequels, or sequels to remakes" policy. Unfortunately I'm going to have to consider modifying that policy somewhat, because Weeks looks really awesome.

My adherence to this policy has been on somewhat shaky grounds recently anyway, since Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite films in a long, long time, remake policy notwithstanding. What I've heard Zack saying about where he wants to take his zombie world next has me pretty amped up, so I had considered changing my policy to "no remakes, sequels, remakes of sequels, sequels to remakes -- unless Zack Snyder is to blame," but with 28 Weeks Later on the horizon, that's not going to work either. I could make it "unless zombies are involved," but then some lunatic might let George Romero make another Land of the Dead and I'll just want to hurt someone.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll figure something out.

In the words of both Calvin and cakeandmilque, "My beanie came!!!!"

Yesterday marked the arrival of my first two Geek Monthly magazines, completely confirming the corporeal existence I so wished this magazine to have. No more does it sit along with zombies and vampires in my list of things I think are awesome and desperately wish existed.

And how is it?

Fantastic.

For my money, Geek Monthly is by far the most appealing magazine I have ever read, and if it didn't take so long for me to get my hands on copies, I'd suspect that it was created for my benefit alone. Even the ads are interesting to me, whether they be products I'm interested in, clever campaigns (the Dungeons and Dragons ads are particularly amusing) -- or just so utterly perplexing that I haven't the vaguest idea what they're for.

I haven't had a chance to sit down and read through a whole issue yet, but I've had a very difficult time "flipping through" them because every time I try, I keep landing on things I want to actually read and have to stop flipping.

I can't recommend this magazine any more highly, and even though I've not made it though the two I have, I can't wait for the next one.

If you want great magazines from the Los Angeles underground, and if you can find them, maybe you can buy Geek Monthly.