Inception

If I were a movie executive, I'd push back all my upcoming release dates to distance them from Inception, because this is the yardstick by which all new films will be measured for the next year. If you release a film in 2010, the best reaction you can hope for is, "It was good, but not Inception good."

Alright, I admit I may be overstating things, so I'll back off with the hyperbole and simply put it this way: you may not love this movie as much as I did, but I dare you watch it and not be entertained--both during the movie and for hours of pondering and discussion afterward. And, Dear Reader, keep in mind that although I issue this challenge with no knowledge of who you are and what you like in a movie, whoever you are, you're almost certain to be entertained by one or more of the following:

• mind-bending metaphysical sci-fi (as opposed to mind-numbing Syfy^®)
• well-paced action that's shot by someone who doesn't use ShakyCam^® like a crutch
  
• a love sub-plot that actually has something resembling love, rather than the sappy, overacted, hypersexualized, happy-ending Hollywood version of "love" (which incidentally, thanks to a new deal between the MPAA and Satan, has now been rebranded as Luv^®)
  
• seeing DiCaprio given a chance to act (which he's quite good at) without being forced to fake an accent (which he's not good at)
• having to use your brain in order to keep up with what's going on, rather than simply waiting for the next car chase or fight scene (and then getting some brilliantly trippy car chases and fight scenes anyway)
• immediately wanting to watch the film again as soon as it's over
• being rewarded by getting to the end of a complex sci-fi plot and discovering that the writers DID know what the hell they were doing (thanks for nothing, LOST)

I would be genuinely surprised, Dear Reader, if you found some reason not to like this movie, but if you do, let me know.

IMDb rating: 9.3/10

My rating: 9.8/10

Pay attention, parents

I can't say it any better (or more humorously) than this:

In other news, the semester started yesterday and it's too humid outside.  In further other news, I'm at Radina's planning for tomorrow.  When I'm done I'll go eat lunch with Netty and then... home to play Batman: Arkham Asylum!  Woot!

Wow (the good kind)

The term 'customer service representative,' in theory, refers to an individual who will provide service to the customer. Most of the time, these people provide headaches and frustration to the customer instead. How many times have you had to practically yell into the phone to deal with these people to get them to reading from their prepared scripts that are designed to frustrate/confuse you into giving them more money?

But I'm not here to rant, because I just had the best customer service experience ever. Here's how it went down: Two years ago, I bought a domain and hosting plan from GoDaddy.com. In the last month or so, I've been getting emails telling me the plan was about to expire and that it was set to auto-renew (i.e. automatically debit my account). I didn't want the plan anymore, so I went to the website and turned the auto-renew off, expecting that to take care of the problem. But then today I check my email and there's a receipt for the auto-renewed plan.

Sighing the deep sigh of a guy who hates phones because of things like this, I called GoDaddy. The dude asked how he could help, and I told him what happened. Without missing a beat, he said, "Alright, I'll just go ahead and cancel your plan and get you that refund." No annoying questions about why I didn't like the service, no trying to sell me on the benefits of a hosting plan, no tempting me with a 30-day free trial. Just one 20-second conversation and the problem was solved to the customer's satisfaction. Wow.

The sad part is that I'm amazed by something that should happen all the time.

Three Deceased People I Would Clone...

...and the Ridiculous Jobs I Would Hire Their Clones to Do:



1. Colonel Sanders, whose clone I would hire not as my chef but as a guy to sit on my front porch, shouting chicken recipes and shaking his cane at passers-by.










2. Paul Newman, whose clone I would hire to follow me around everywhere, each day dressing in a different costume based on his Newman's Own products.

3. Buckminster Fuller, whose clone I would hire to say the phrase "bucky balls" whenever I press a button on my Bucky Remote®. In theory, this will help accelerate my new plan to phase out the word "shenanigans." In the future, when you hear a load of crap, you'll say "I call bucky balls on that one."

First Response to "The Dark Knight"

I'll get right to it: this movie beat the bejeezus out of me with an Awesome Stick and I plan to go back for another thrashing because I f-ing loved it.  

Batman Begins did a fantastic job of setting up Nolan's new Caped Crusader as a guy who fights crime for his own reasons--not because he's a self-righteous do-gooder, but because deep down he's just fracking angry.  He doesn't hate crime because he feels sorry for the victims, he hates crime because of the criminals.  Because of the attitude they swagger around with--the "I own this town" crap that Tom Wilkinson portrayed so well as Falcone.  Because he can't stand the notion that the ones with all the guns and all the money can scare everyone else into submission.  

And Batman's fierce pissed-offedness, his desire to bash the snot out of bad men, which was set up so well in Batman Begins, makes The Dark Knight's introduction of the Joker all the more fun to watch.  This is a guy whose only agenda is to be bad.  He's not after money or control.  He's just out of his mind, and the best part is we never find out why.  The film never explains him, and although he gives us a couple of pseudo-origin stories, we're not given to believe any of them--although they are fantastically creepy as hell.  He's a bad guy without a reason to be a bad guy, a schizo-elemental, and Ledger takes that idea to a level that is scarily real.  His last scene is absolutely brilliant.  Ledger can freaking act.  I seriously don't know how he got that look in his eyes--a mix of child-like wonder and Krueger-like sadism that actually freaked me out for half a second when he combined it with that laugh.  You do not see Heath Ledger in this movie.  You see the Joker.

Ledger's Joker takes the Batman of the last film and turns him onto one mean S.O.B., and for me, that's the best element of the movie.  He's still technically on the right side, and there's still a line he won't cross, but in this movie he'll walk right up to that line and groin-punch it and spit on its grandma if he thinks it'll help clean up Gotham.  This is a morally gray Batman.  He's willing to hurt people.  He's willing to use all of the resources at Bruce Wayne's disposal, even when he has to strain the bounds of morality to do it.  And the best part is that it works...and at the same time, it doesn't.  You'll have to see the end to know what I mean.

I can't go without mentioning the supporting cast.  Gary Oldman takes Gordon to places I honestly didn't expect the character to go, and it just works.  Aaron Eckhart, an actor that hasn't impressed me up to now, makes Harvey Dent/Tw0-Face into a character I wish we could have seen more of.  Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes was a vast improvement over Katie Holmes' weak performance (I mean, seriously.  Who actually found that Scientologically-brainwashed twelve-year-old believable as an assistant D.A. in a town like Gotham?  No one, that's who.)  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles as Batman's moral compass and moral compass/gadget man, respectively, and both do a fine job of developing their characters both as Batman's support team, and as interesting people in their own right. (Hunting jewel thieves in southeast Asia?  Who knew Alfred was such a deep well?)

If I haven't made it clear up to now, this is a great film and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Whether you saw the first one or not.  Whether you like Batman or not.  Whether you trust my judgement of film quality or not.  After all the hype, I actually lowered my expectations a bit before going in to this one, just to avoid the kind of disappointment I experienced with Indy 4.  Turns out I didn't need to do that.  Like I said, I plan to see it at least once more, and I'll let you know if my opinion changes dramatically, but I suspect that I'll only enjoy it more the second time.

IMDb rating: 9.6/10
My rating: 9.8/10

Two things

Ahoy, internets.  I bring you  two (2) Items of Interest:

1. Hellboy 2 is a lot of fun.  Quite different from the first one, and better, I think.  Less Nazi occultism, which is kind of a shame, but more fairy tale-ness and steampunkery, which is spiffy.  I could probably watch the Troll Market scenes eight times and still not catch all the spiff.  If you like the first movie go see this one.  If you didn't like the first movie, go see this one.

IMDb rating: 8.5/10
My rating: 9.0/10

[And remember, this weekend was Hellboy 2, next weekend is Dark Knight, and the next is X-Files 2.  Try to keep up.]

2.  I just finished playing Portal, and the song during the end credits is, without question, the best song I've ever heard in a video game.  It's freaking brilliant.  It might not be that great if you haven't played the game (I'm actually curious about its non-Portal-player appeal), but here's the link if you want to give it a listen.  Note that there are a few minor spoilers in the song, so don't listen if you think you might want to play the game sometime--which you should.

The simulated 3rd dimension can be cooler than the real one

We drove to KC on Friday to see Beowulf in IMAX 3D. I'd been looking forward to it for months, and after seeing the Harry Potter wizard's duel in 3d (which rocked), I wanted to see if they put the 3d to good use or not. Overall, they totally did.

It took a few minutes to get used to the extra dimension, which makes sense if you think about it. They're trying to simulate depth in two very different ways: with CG and with the 3d trick. So at first, characters kinda looked like cardboard cutouts, each at different distances from the screen, and each with a CG body painted on it. But if you let yourself get used to it, it can be quite an immersive experience. There were a couple of times where I flinched or dodged out of the way of something on-screen. I felt kinda stupid the first time, but the the second time made me realize that in a normal movie, there's usually only one kind of physical reflex--the jump (as in, "I actually jumped out of my seat a little when that zombie popped out"). And while there were plenty of "jump" moments in Beowulf, this was the first time I've instinctively tried to dodge an axe that was thrown at the screen.

It may not seem like that big a deal if you haven't seen it, but I think it's another great immersive tool that I hope filmmakers start using more. Some people probably still see it as "gimmicky," but I imagine that's how people saw surround sound when it was first introduced. I mean, think about it: how much sense does it make to surround us with sound when the movie's only in front of us? The answer: it makes perfect sense. You wouldn't think of building a theater today without surround sound, because now it's seen as such a useful tool, allowing the filmmaker to overcome one of the limitations of a non-interactive medium. 3d can do the same thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling for a 3d Revolution. Just as there are plenty of movies that don't need surround sound, there are plenty that don't need 3d. Star Wars, however, most certainly does need it, and I can't wait to see how that turns out. In general, I'm glad the technology is coming along, because I don't see holodecks coming out in my lifetime.

As for the movie itself (which is showing in non-3d theaters, as well), I found it thoroughly entertaining. My last encounter with the story of Beowulf was a year and a half ago, translating pieces of it from the Old English, so I particularly enjoyed the fact that Grendel spoke only in Old English, and that a bard in Heorot recites from the actual poem at one point. The plot followed what I remember of the story, with some creative licence taken with the origins of both Grendel and the dragon. I suppose a true Beowulf scholar might not approve of the adaptation, but I do.

IMDb rating: 7.0/10
My rating: 8.7/10

A different kind of blogging

A couple of thoughts about this: 1) Netty, you should try Sketchcasting some dreams, since Audioblogger is dead; 2) This has some cool potential for teaching; and 3) This weekend is the 1-year anniversary of my comic book depiction of our adventures in Colorado. Maybe this year I'll do a sketchcast version. (Although I'm hoping we can avoid those kinds of "adventures" this time around.)

Holy Food, Holy Quest

Question: what's the one flavor that makes (or would make, if you were daring enough to try those wilder ideas) any food better? Obviously, I refer to that holiest of holies: bacon. When salted, cured, and smoked to the peak of artery-clogging deliciousness, bacon has the potential to transform even the most mundane food into so much more. In short, bacon can turn a lesser food into a culinary experience.

Do I exaggerate? Certainly not. Name me a sandwich, a burger, a cheese fry that is not improved by bacon. Name me a grilled meat, be it chicken, pork, or shrimp, that is not brought closer to the Divine by wrapping it and/or stuffing it with bacon. You cannot name such a food, and indeed, to even try would be to blaspheme, for Most Revered Bacon sits at the head of the Holy Trinity of Food, with noble Bread at its left and mighty Cheese at its right.

My message today concerns the crusade of two brave young men who wish to spread the gospel of Most Revered Bacon with the flick of a wrist and the shake of a bottle. Brother Justin and Brother Dave are on a holy quest to "make everything taste like bacon." The miraculous product they've created to achieve this goal? Bacon Salt. I don't know what arcane rituals they had to perform in order to capture the essence of bacon in a bottle, but they seem to have done it. Visit their website. Read the testimony of other Bacon Disciples. And support this noble crusade by purchasing each of Bacon Salt's three flavors: Original, Hickory, and Peppered. I'm going to try it; won't you? Bacon can one day rule the world, if we all do our part.

[Update: I just ordered the 3-pack! Bacon!]

Game Nut

I don't have much to say here, but I just wanted to plug Game Nut for anyone in or around Lawrence, KS who's a gamer--especially a PC gamer. I thought the days of buying used PC games were more or less over. Game Guy stopped selling them long ago, and they're becoming more and more rare in the EB/Game Stop realm, as well. But Game Nut...oh, Game Nut. There are stacks and stacks of PC games there, along with a very respectable selection of console games, and some DVDs to boot.

It's a great store and I highly recommend it. Oh, and they're thinking of opening a store here in Manhattan. Maybe I should get on that...