Cuppacafe

Movies I’ve seen lately

Well, it has been a while since I went on about movies in this column, and that is not because I Haven’t been watching them, but rather because I have been very busy lately (if you want to check in on what I’ve been watching, and get the extended reviews, you’ll want to go check out my film column, Suspension of Belief).

Some of the films I’ve been to lately have been the new Indiana Jones flick (about which I did post), but last night I went out with my son and we did a doubleheader, that is to say we went to the multiplex and then “theater jumped.” (To be sure, it was really a double-and-a-half-header, as there was more time between the first and second flick than we needed, so we sat in on about 45 minutes of Iron Man, before sliding over into seeing the new Narnia flick. We started the night off with The Strangers, which we both enjoyed. Last week, I checked out Baby Mama with the wife, which was quite cute. Some of the others were Street Kings (staring Keanu Reeves) and the very forgettable, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I really wanted to see The Strangers because of the marketing campaign. The premise is that a young couple were brutalized by a trio of strangers one night at their house out in the woods. the part that hooked me was the line where the girl victim asked the intruders “Why are you doing this to us” and the intruder responds “Because you were home.” The film claims to be based on true events only, when you go to the Wikipedia reference for the site you discover that is something of a stretch.

The movie is inspired by an event from the director’s, Bryan Bertino, childhood, among other things. A stranger came to his home asking for someone. Later, he found out that empty homes in the neighborhood had been robbed. With that memory in mind, Bertino created this, his debut screenplay. The screenplay is also inspired by the events of the Charles Manson murders.

Still, it is a fairly decent genre flick. The fact that it was obviously a small-budget film with only a few actors, and none of them really “A” listers, also helped the film. there is a maximum of suspense and foreshadowing, and a lack of actual blood and gore, which elevates it above much of the dreck that tends to populate this type of flick. Oh yeah, if you want to get a real visceral experience from the flick, either before you go, or after you come back, check out the official site, and then go to the interactive experience room. it is very cool, and an excellent example of what a well-dome web site can do.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was also quite good. A much darker version of the original, which lended itself to making it much more interesting. Here the four kids from the first flick finally get the opportunity to return to Narnia, only while it has been a year for them, it has been almost 4,000 for the mystical world. The wonderful world they left behind is in ruins, and the four of them must lead the Narnians in a quest to reclaim what was theirs.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall wasn’t nearly as funny as it probably should have been, and I chalk that up to the slip-shod way it was put together. I mean,. there were funny bits, but I couldn’t get past the feeling that this would have made a good 15 minute SNL-type sketch, but by padding it out for 111 Minutes made it about 100 minutes too long.

Well, that’s really it for now. I’ve promised the Mrs. that we will go and see Sex and the City tonight, and even though I never really watched the TV show — either on HBO or in syndication, I’m not quite sure what my reaction to it is going to be (although if the three intruders from The Strangers were to show up at the end, and hack the four female stars to death in a bloody display of random violence and splatter-punk gore, I probably wouldn’t mind at all).

The Perfessor

Better than Jesus Phone; the Android could be God Phone

I won’t go so far as to say that this Android Phone of Google’s is the “God” to Apple’s “Jesus” iPhone, but at the end of this video I get all weak in the knees. It’s the application of Google Maps to an intelligent phone that just rouses my geek lust. Right now, I have zero use for all the cool stuff on this phone, but I can tell you without question, I want it.

Come on, Street Map view locked into the phone’s Compass Mode? Oh, I’m so there. Truly this is what I want.

Warning, the video is taken at a developer’s conference Google held this week, so expect the first few minutes of this vid to bore you with developer chatter, but then the phone is demo’d, and you get to see the way a small desktop on a small phone can be utilized…

Your LOST Flash Forwards - Spoiler Free!

It certainly is funny to talk about showing you scenes of what’s GOING to happen in a show that can’t be considered “spoiling” the show. With the show LOST, there’s a story telling trick where instead of foreshadowing future events, they simply show you highly edited versions of what will eventually come to pass. Now called “flash forwards” these slices of what is to come started at the end of what, last season(?) and has gone on occasionally since then.

Problem is, these flash forwards don’t make any sense all by themselves. There’s more questions raised without much in the way of exposition about how the characters came to be where they are and how they came by their future motivations. The first flash forward was a drunken Jack who is desperate to “go back to the island” but the Jack we’re used to is desperate to get off of the island. So, why (and when!) did Jack change his mind? It turns out that particular flash forward, the first presented to the viewers, was the one that chronologically took place last.

Yes, as the episodes progressed, the flash forwards were presented in reverse chronological order for the most part. The movie MEMENTO was presented this way, but I loathe with a burning fire passion that movie. You see, when you put the movie MEMENTO in the proper order, it doesn’t really contain a watchable story. You may try to call it a story, but it’s certainly one I wouldn’t want to watch. All the tension was in the reversal. Not so with these reverse order flash forwards. True, the tension here is the action and motivation that we’re not seeing, but okay, is there still a story if you put all the flash forwards together in chronological order?

Well, here’s nearly nine minutes of LOST’s flash forwards, put together in the order generally agreed upon by the LOST fanatics. Watch it so you can judge for yourself.

Remember LOST viewers, you’ve seen all these scenes before in previous episodes, so in showing you what’s going to happen, it’s not a spoiler. :)

Funnybooks for the Geek on the Go!

That’s right little ones, soon you will be able to get your comics on the go, as Marvel is apparently toying with the possibility of making their line of digital comics available for delivery to your cell phone.

According to a recent post on Gizmodo, this is the new mad-cool app for your phone.

Marvel Comics wants to port their comics to mobile phones. Seems like a perfect thing to read while you’re supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on around you, but sure how you’re going to get through full page spreads while maintaining text readability on 3-inch screens.

Read the rest of this post.

Interestingly enough, the fellow that posted this doesn’t feel that “$5-$10 a month” to subscribe to Marvel’s online digital comics “isn’t something to complain about.” only, there seems to be some dissension on that particular point. Briefly:

why can’t I take smaller bites at the apple? Your monthly subscription model looks fine, it’s one I’ve tried and liked on various music services, but you know what? Sometimes I just want a song, and sometimes I just want a comic. Think about it: Do you think everyone wants to take a $10 bite right out of the gate? Or that everyone wants a full-blown subscription plan, paying yet another monthly fee for yet another service? … Let me access the single issues I want for a quarter or 50 cents. Let Joe High Schooler check out that comic his friend told him about without having to sign up for a full blown plan. Let people get comfortable with paying for digital comics in small, easily-digestible doses.

There’s more, but you can use the link and see for yourself. Personally, while there are way-cool sghts for digital comics on the Web, me personally, I’m still patched into the dead tree versions.

The Perfessor

Indiana Jones, a quick look

Well, I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night and I’m here to say that if you are looking for something new and brilliant, then you might want to go and see something else, but if you are looking for a fun-filled roller-coaster ride akin to the original set of films, (without feeling like a rehash of old stories, plots, and set-ups), then you’ve come to the right place, as this seems to be right were we left off.

To be sure, the previous film (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) occurred in 1938, and it is now 1957, so (technically) the same amount of time has passed between both sets of events in real as well as in movie time. Hence, Indy is now fighting Commies and not Nazis (although it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between the screen versions of these two great bogeymen). At any rate, as stated, the new film manages to evoke not only the look and feel of the original films, but the look and feel of that era as well (after meeting with a pair of government spooks who questions Jones’ loyalty one character comments that they are looking for Commies in their cereal, which naturally connects today’s audience to the story as well).

So,. while there are certainly scenes that are similar to what we have seen before, this sequel does not fall into the trap of simply replaying old scenes with a (slightly) new twist, which is how it manages to not only only retain its own charm, but keep our interest as well. Needless to say, Harrison Ford does look like he’s getting a tad long in the tooth for this role, but he is still very believable in the role, and — oh, what the Hell? — I did like the film and had a good time sitting in the dark watching it, so who really cares about all of that anyway.

Plus there were sly winks at Area 51, the Ark of the Covenant, the Yong Indiana TV show, and…well you’ll see. Plus Shia LaBeouf does quite a good turn as … well you’ll see that too (but keep Marlon Brando in The Wild One) as you watch. Oh yeah, and that catchy John Williams score is always great to hear!

One last thing, however, while it is way better than Temple of Doom, it still doesn’t quite measure up to either Lost Ark or Last Crusade. I think the reason for this is that they were both faith-based quests, while this one seemed more of a Sci-Fi thing (sort of a pre-Columbian X-Files episode If it wasn’t for the fact that it took place some 40 years before he joined the Bureau you would almost expect to see Fox Mulder to have a cameo.

Anyways, my more formal review will come later and (as always) be posted on PopThought in my review column (Suspension of Belief).

The Perfessor

Out of this world!

While I know that this sort of post is more Walt’s interest than mine, he’s been real busy sleeping at the switch lately, so I figured that I’d jump into the fray and post it for him.

Seems that NASA has finaly managed to hit one out of the park (so to speak), and successfully landed a probe in Mars’ most northern polar region, which is believed to hold a reservoir of ice beneath it. Well, instead of crashing yet another billion of our tax dollars on the Red Planet, they seemed to have successfully landed the Phoenix Mars Lander softly in the Martian arctic plains on Sunday. Since then it has apparently dazzled scientists with the first-ever glimpse of the Red Planet’s high northern latitudes.

Yep, we finally got one placed (gently) on the surface of mars (and not coming in at 100 MPH). So I guess that the NASA guys all do have something to celebrate! If you want to read more about the post, you can check out the full post over here. Then you can post a quick note to our Imperious leader, and tell him that while he was on vacation some mad-cool outerspace stuff took place. Boy will he be jeralous, eh?

The Perfessor

The past isn’t as good as I remember it.

They say you can’t go home. Perhaps that is true, as I recently had that experience from a reading level. Back when I was in High School I discovered a series of books by John Norman, entitled “Gor.” (No, they were neither biographies of the future-and-once VP, nor were they slash and hack novels, but a sci-fi epic fantasy loosely done in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ sci-fi series about Barsoom or his John Carter of Mars books.) The Gor series of books revolved around a Earth gent named Tarl Cabot, a teacher in a small New England university.

In the first book Tarl goes camping, is “kidnapped,” and brought to Gor, a planet in a geosynchronous orbit with Earth, only on the far side of the sun. Gor is not only slightly smaller than Earth (resulting in Tarl now being capable of greater feats of strength), but it is also permanently stuck in a “Middle Ages” Meilu. That is to say, the inhabitants of Gor live in a world of warring City-States, where the most advanced weapon is a crossbow. Further, the beasts that cohabitate the world with the men that live there tend to be large lizards, enormous birds that have been tamed to carry men, as would horses on Earth.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There is slavery on this world, however (and this was a big draw for me when I was 15), much of the slavery issues revolve around gender politics. That is to say that — on Gor — men were men and women were, well, pleasure slaves. Yep, you read that right. The Earth, 1950s male opinion that women should be “Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.” Is the rule of law here on Gor — except for the pregnant part, you see, the men give their female pleasure slaves a drink called “slave wine” that prevents them from getting knocked up. Read the rest of this entry »