Media Review

The Prestige
This is a very good movie, so good in fact that it illustrates my frustration with the Netflix star rating system. I’m always torn with Netflix’s star system. One star clearly means the movie blows. Two stars means it’s not a total loss but not recommendable. Three stars means it’s good. Four means it’s excellent. And five stars means it belongs in the Canon of all time great films which must be seen.

I rate based on percentile, meaning there should be relatively few movies that get four stars and even fewer that make it to five stars. This results in a high number of 3 star movies. But there are quite a few films that fall between three and four stars – especially good movies but not necessarily excellent movies.

But you can’t rate something three and a half stars. This is one of those kinds of movies. So I have given it just three stars on Netflix but I do highly recommend it. The less you know the better, so I won’t give any details.


Casino Royale
I had heard a lot of good things about the relaunch of the James Bond franchise with this film. I was one of the few who thought from the very beginning that Daniel Craig would be good. And he was good. The movie is smart and not outdated or ridiculously cheesy. It was sexy and thrilling.

It does have a flaw that all James Bond movies do in that there’s a significant lag late in the second act. But you could argue that it’s what makes it a James Bond flick. Overall, I’m looking forward to the next one.

"Once" Movie

I don't like cheesy romantic films. I'll only see them when I know they're 4 star films or if my wife insists. But in general I don't dig chick flicks. Not that chick flicks are bad films; Steel Magnolias is a really good movie, Terms of Endearment is a great movie - both chick flicks.

I have a good bud named Geoffrey Pay who is a media-head like me. He and I always talk movies and our tastes rarely diverge. But he would never spam an email list to promote a film unless he was sure about it. Last week he did, it said go see the movie, "Once." So the wife and I did last night, caught it at the Embarcadero in SF.

Best movie I've seen in a theater all year.

It ain't Shakespeare, it won't be compared to Citizen Kane. But it's the most moving film I've seen in a long time. It's honest, it's intimate, it's different... it's a musical. Yes, a musical. But not like West Side Story or Guys and Dolls but more like 8 Mile or Hustle and Flow (not that I've seen either of those films.)

I recommend not knowing anything more about it. Go in blind. Take your significant other. Take a date. Take both! They'll love it and so will you.

I Shouldn't Be Alive... the tv show

I found this show called "I Shouldn't Be Alive" while flipping through cable about a year ago. Discovery has some serious gonads if you ask me. This show is not for the weak. I found it absolutely gripping and intense. Like a car crash that I can't help but rubberneck. And the whole time I'm watching it I'm telling myself "change the channel change the channel turn off the tv run away!"

And they have a similary show now called "Man vs. Wild" also well done but not as harrowing.

Switched from iPod to Sansa

For the longest time I resisted owning an mp3 player. But then a former employer gave all the employees an iPod as a Christmas gift. So I returned to the land of Apple albeit only with iPod use, still use a pc at home. I like iTunes ok, but not a big fan of how it's so proprietary. I love the iPod as a product both in industrial and user interface design. The UI is so simply brilliant; Apple is just so damed disciplined at eliminating EVERYTHING that is unnecessary. Subtracting it to the bare essentials. It's a product conceived by a single design team from software to hardware and it shows. It's a single concept of ingenuity, not a hodge-podge of chefs from different kitchens.

Before iTunes I was a Rhapsody user. I really liked the service but would cancel my subscription on and off again since I wasn't using it very much. Then I started having technical difficulty with my iPod and the battery was dying, so I started to think about switching back to Rhapsody and their Sansa player. I got the kind that plays iTunes-purchased music files, e260 I think.

I still love the Rhapsody service. It's so easy to discover new music, or sample a new band or their new album. I really like having their entire database available at my fingertips. Sure the prescription model is pricey but I think for music consumption it makes a lot of sense.

But the Sansa... I really hate the Sansa player. I think it's because I got used to the simplicity of the iPod's interface. The Sansa is just awkward in comparison. And it's so slow, there's significant delay time to all the operations. All in all I think I'm probably happier now, but navigating the sansa is pretty annoying.

Media Review

The Namesake
I liked the book and the film stayed pretty faithful to the novel. Ultimately, I was a little disappointed. Still 3 stars but a low 3. I think the movie was a little dry, I was expecting the cinematography to be more stunning, especially when you're shooting India which is such a visually intense place. The actors were all excellent. I liked Kal Penn and his mother played by Tabu was also very good, but the standout performance was the father played by Irfan Khan. He was exceptional. I would recommend seeing the movie just based on his understated performance.


Crash
I finally rented this somewhat controversial movie that won Best Picture in 2006. Controversial in that people thought Brokeback Mountain should have won Best Picture. I saw Brokeback first and I thought it was wonderful. People I know either liked or disliked the Crash, so I came in with low expectations. I came away thinking that Crash definitely deserved the Best Picture nod. I liked this movie a lot. Both Brokeback and Crash were Oscar worthy but I don't know which would have deserved it more. I can see why there are Crash-haters out there, but this film really spoke to me. There's a lot of anger in it, and I related to that anger.

Meet the Robinsons
Not horrrible. Not great. Kinda sorta okay, I guess. The visuals were awesome, the animation was also very good. The pace was strange. You could tell that the story was re-worked and patched together. There were some shots that didn't make sense at all. The main villain was very very fun to watch. I'm glad I saw it but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. How's that for a half-assed review.

Spiderman 3
Let me start by saying that I barely liked Spiderman 1, mainly because they totally got the Goblin wrong, missing a grand opportunity with Willem Defoe, and I thought it was a little too violent. I liked Spiderman 2 but thought it could do without a lot of the cheese-factor with Mary Jane, the action sequences were great. Here's what was good about Spiderman 3 - the Sandman visual effects scenes and Venom's visual effects scenes. The rest of this film sucked hard. All the criticism you may have read, I agree with. It was a pretty bad movie all in all.

The Proposition
Great movie. Highly recommend. Australian western. The landscape scenery was stunning. The acting superb. Visually crafted. If you like them brutal westerns I think you'll really like this movie.

The Departed
I saw Infernal Affairs which is the Hong Kong film that Departed is based upon. But they are two very different movies. Which I was glad to see. I thought Departed was great, but I think I would've voted for Babel for best picture instead. Still glad to see Scorsese finally get his oscar nod though.

Capote
Very good but I wasn't completely blown away by film as a whole. The performances were great, I really liked Catherine Keener. Obviously Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man, I always like him in whatever he's in, but the breakout performance for me was Clifton Collins Jr. who played one of the killers, Perry Smith. I thought I had seen him before and indeed, he played the gay Mexican hitman in one of my favorite movies, Traffic.