This is an amazing movie in so many ways. About a recovering drug addict (Blanchett) trying to have a go at a successful life.
The biggest deal about this movie is how utterly believable the cast and acting are. They are so absolutely spot on that I was amazed all the way through.
It took the extra features on the DVD to convince me, as I didn't really enjoy the film, but after seeing the extra features, re-examined my thoughts on the movie and realized how convincing everything was.
The reason that I didn't like it certainly had nothing to do with the acting, directing and writing, which were beyond reproach, but that the movie has so much about drug culture in it. Drug movies always turn me off, since it's so far from my current life that I never understand it. I say "drug movie", but realize that it isn't about drugs, so much as about the people around drugs. Still, there is a fair share of dealing, doing and being strung out on drugs throughout to turn me off.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Movie: Ghost World (3/5 stars) 2001
This is a quirky, enjoyable film with lots of good in it.
Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi are all fantastic in this - the acting is excellent and completely believable.
Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson) get to the end of highschool and slowly grow apart as Rebecca wants to start her life, and Enid still feels the need to rebel against the norm and does things because they are different. This slowly grates on their friendship and makes their time together more and more of Rebecca rolling her eyes at Enid's antics and becoming embarrassed to be her.
Enid meets Seymore (Buscemi) through a cruel practical joke, but gradually realizes that he's a little off and represents off-beat and off-norm, so gradually gets closer until real life and age differences intrude on their unusual friendship.
This is an unusual movie, but has enough solid laughs for me to like it quite a lot. Still, there were significant weaknesses, mostly with the writing that made me resist a higher rating.
Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi are all fantastic in this - the acting is excellent and completely believable.
Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson) get to the end of highschool and slowly grow apart as Rebecca wants to start her life, and Enid still feels the need to rebel against the norm and does things because they are different. This slowly grates on their friendship and makes their time together more and more of Rebecca rolling her eyes at Enid's antics and becoming embarrassed to be her.
Enid meets Seymore (Buscemi) through a cruel practical joke, but gradually realizes that he's a little off and represents off-beat and off-norm, so gradually gets closer until real life and age differences intrude on their unusual friendship.
This is an unusual movie, but has enough solid laughs for me to like it quite a lot. Still, there were significant weaknesses, mostly with the writing that made me resist a higher rating.
Movie: Johnny Mnemonic (1/5 stars) 1995
I watched this years ago, and my wife was really asking me not to get it again at the video store. I remembered it as good, so got it anyway.
She was so, SO right!
I can't tell you all the things wrong with this. Firstly, Johnny, the courier who carries data in his head, in 2020 has 80 Gigs of storage capacity, and gets a memory double which brings him to 160 Gigs. Considering how easy it is to figure out the data storage in the future (it's following a simple curve), you'd think a courier who gave up his childhood memories would have something bigger than what we can get for $100 at the computer store in 2007 - it's silly. I heard that the short story was even sillier, and the movie "improved" it somewhat.
Still, I knew all of that before I saw the movie. It's such a large target that I had to mention it. If I were the film maker, I would have invented a new word for storage size and just made it sounds REALLY big and impressive, and not dated the film so badly.
This is the least of the film transgressions. The acting, directing, storyline etc... are all sub-standard. It's really, really hard to watch Keanu Reeves at this point in his career. He was truly flat and cardboard actor. AND the man can't look at the camera, he's looking everywhere else. I know he still has that problem, but it's even worse here and his eyes wander everywhere. As bad as people make him out to be now, this was much worse - hard to watch.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not just a Keanu basher, I like lots of his stuff, "Speed", "The Matrix" (even #2), "Constantine" and several more. If you are thinking of taking a trip down memory lane and getting a 90's movie, steer clear of this one - it tells you how bad some of the mainstream films were in that time.
She was so, SO right!
I can't tell you all the things wrong with this. Firstly, Johnny, the courier who carries data in his head, in 2020 has 80 Gigs of storage capacity, and gets a memory double which brings him to 160 Gigs. Considering how easy it is to figure out the data storage in the future (it's following a simple curve), you'd think a courier who gave up his childhood memories would have something bigger than what we can get for $100 at the computer store in 2007 - it's silly. I heard that the short story was even sillier, and the movie "improved" it somewhat.
Still, I knew all of that before I saw the movie. It's such a large target that I had to mention it. If I were the film maker, I would have invented a new word for storage size and just made it sounds REALLY big and impressive, and not dated the film so badly.
This is the least of the film transgressions. The acting, directing, storyline etc... are all sub-standard. It's really, really hard to watch Keanu Reeves at this point in his career. He was truly flat and cardboard actor. AND the man can't look at the camera, he's looking everywhere else. I know he still has that problem, but it's even worse here and his eyes wander everywhere. As bad as people make him out to be now, this was much worse - hard to watch.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not just a Keanu basher, I like lots of his stuff, "Speed", "The Matrix" (even #2), "Constantine" and several more. If you are thinking of taking a trip down memory lane and getting a 90's movie, steer clear of this one - it tells you how bad some of the mainstream films were in that time.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Book: "Freakanomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (3/5 stars)
In many ways, a brilliant book. If the 2nd half was as good as the first half, I'd have given it a 5 star rating.
Steven Levitt knows how to look at data, and better than that, he knows how to find interesting results in the data that anyone can access. He asks the right questions, he finds the best way to get the answers that he wants, and fortunately for the rest of us, the facts he finds interesting are interesting for the rest of us.
His big revelation was the effect abortion was having on the crime rate, but there are lots of other things that he looked at that were immensely cool and interesting. How do you know if sumo wrestlers are cheating? We've got all this data to look at, what would a sumo wrestler cheating look like? How about teachers cheating on standardized exams? How about real estate agents selling their own houses? How are crack organizations like McDonald's franchises?
Levitt knows exactly how to look at his data sideways, and how to eliminate irrelevant factors that might confuse anyone else. It really is a remarkable display of setting up an experiment, even if it is with events that have already happened.
Unfortunately, by the middle of the book, it felt like Levitt had hit a limit and didn't have anything quite so interesting to say. Sure it was pretty cool - but not nearly as mind blowing as the first half. After the 1/2 way point, he simply took lots of data and did correlation analysis of the results and how one variable was related to another (do the names people get affect their success in life for example). Still - the ultimate causes to the effects remained unknown, and we're left with Levitt's speculation. As insightful as his speculation is, it's still just speculation.
Still - well worth your time, especially for the first half. A truly original book.
Steven Levitt knows how to look at data, and better than that, he knows how to find interesting results in the data that anyone can access. He asks the right questions, he finds the best way to get the answers that he wants, and fortunately for the rest of us, the facts he finds interesting are interesting for the rest of us.
His big revelation was the effect abortion was having on the crime rate, but there are lots of other things that he looked at that were immensely cool and interesting. How do you know if sumo wrestlers are cheating? We've got all this data to look at, what would a sumo wrestler cheating look like? How about teachers cheating on standardized exams? How about real estate agents selling their own houses? How are crack organizations like McDonald's franchises?
Levitt knows exactly how to look at his data sideways, and how to eliminate irrelevant factors that might confuse anyone else. It really is a remarkable display of setting up an experiment, even if it is with events that have already happened.
Unfortunately, by the middle of the book, it felt like Levitt had hit a limit and didn't have anything quite so interesting to say. Sure it was pretty cool - but not nearly as mind blowing as the first half. After the 1/2 way point, he simply took lots of data and did correlation analysis of the results and how one variable was related to another (do the names people get affect their success in life for example). Still - the ultimate causes to the effects remained unknown, and we're left with Levitt's speculation. As insightful as his speculation is, it's still just speculation.
Still - well worth your time, especially for the first half. A truly original book.
Book: "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman (3.5/5 stars)
A creepy children's fantasy novel about a precocious girl who finds a door that opens into an alternate bizarro world, where all the people she knows exist in parody, including her mother, father and neighbors.
Fresh and enjoyable, the novel/novelette is paced well, has a great main character and cast of quirky, fun, side characters and their strange and disturbing other-selves that made this an easy, quick read that I can recommend to almost anyone.
Despite being a children's story, it's worth a read for any fan of fantasy, or even just interesting fiction.
If you've read "Neverwhere" or "American Gods" and want more of Gaiman's work, you won't go wrong with this. Unfortunately, you'll be done in no time and probably wanting more.
The reason that I don't give it more stars is that it is so short, and I'd love it to be a full novel, rather than just a side project for Gaiman. I didn't think he gave it the attention it deserved. Still, it's well worth your time.
Fresh and enjoyable, the novel/novelette is paced well, has a great main character and cast of quirky, fun, side characters and their strange and disturbing other-selves that made this an easy, quick read that I can recommend to almost anyone.
Despite being a children's story, it's worth a read for any fan of fantasy, or even just interesting fiction.
If you've read "Neverwhere" or "American Gods" and want more of Gaiman's work, you won't go wrong with this. Unfortunately, you'll be done in no time and probably wanting more.
The reason that I don't give it more stars is that it is so short, and I'd love it to be a full novel, rather than just a side project for Gaiman. I didn't think he gave it the attention it deserved. Still, it's well worth your time.
Book: "A Talent For War" by Jack McDevitt (2/5 stars)
"A Talent for War" is a science fiction novel, almost, but not quite a space opera.
200 years before the events of this novel, there was a great war with an alien race colloquially known as "the mutes", and the hero, the human hero, is Christopher Sim. He's the household name, the subject of novelizations, of operas, of plays, and speculative histories. Everyone in this world knows him and the basic roll he played in the war.
McDevitt mentions more than one of these novels and operas. He goes into great detail about stories done about each and every character in the war, the lieutenants, the Benedict Arnold, the love interest, the side stories and so on. While I realize that it's necessary to show just how ingrained the roll of Christopher Sim is in this fictional society, it just isn't that interesting. The main story is, but the many, many sidelines in a novel just 300 pages long don't hold my interest. I found myself counting the pages and struggling to get back to the novel when I'd put it down. I almost gave it up a couple of times, but managed to finish.
I won't be reading any more McDevitt without a solid recommendation from someone I trust.
200 years before the events of this novel, there was a great war with an alien race colloquially known as "the mutes", and the hero, the human hero, is Christopher Sim. He's the household name, the subject of novelizations, of operas, of plays, and speculative histories. Everyone in this world knows him and the basic roll he played in the war.
McDevitt mentions more than one of these novels and operas. He goes into great detail about stories done about each and every character in the war, the lieutenants, the Benedict Arnold, the love interest, the side stories and so on. While I realize that it's necessary to show just how ingrained the roll of Christopher Sim is in this fictional society, it just isn't that interesting. The main story is, but the many, many sidelines in a novel just 300 pages long don't hold my interest. I found myself counting the pages and struggling to get back to the novel when I'd put it down. I almost gave it up a couple of times, but managed to finish.
I won't be reading any more McDevitt without a solid recommendation from someone I trust.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Book: "The Code Book" by Simon Singh (5/5 stars)
This is a history of code making and code breaking from its inception (Caesar shift cypher) to modern public key encryption and beyond (he has a section on quantum cryptography at the end).
The stories are amazing, more than interesting, and Singh has an exceptional talent in making complex concepts simple to understand.
Not only does Singh tell interesting stories, but exactly when you want it, there is a photo of the machine he's talking about, or the person making the amazing discovery or cracking a difficult code.
My absolute favorite stories in this book of exceptions stories are the story of Rejewski breaking enigma, and of Clifford Cocks inventing public key encryption.
I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in code making and code breaking.
The stories are amazing, more than interesting, and Singh has an exceptional talent in making complex concepts simple to understand.
Not only does Singh tell interesting stories, but exactly when you want it, there is a photo of the machine he's talking about, or the person making the amazing discovery or cracking a difficult code.
My absolute favorite stories in this book of exceptions stories are the story of Rejewski breaking enigma, and of Clifford Cocks inventing public key encryption.
I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in code making and code breaking.
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