Diary of a Network Geek

EdgeOfDarkness

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Edge of Darkness Friday night.

You know, as many movies as I see in a year, I still wish I had time to see more. Especially right now when there are so many great films out.  And, this is one of them.
I don’t read thrillers much or mysteries, but I do love a good mystery/thriller movie.  That’s what this is, a thriller.

Edge of Night stars Mel Gibson as, Thomas Craven, a Boston Police detective who is a widower who lives for the job, and his adult daughter.  The movie opens with Gibson’s character picking her up from the train as she’s coming home for a visit.  Before they can enjoy each other, though, she starts to get violently ill, vomiting blood and hemorrhaging blood from her nose.  As they leave out the front door to rush to the hospital, a masked man guns down the young woman.  It’s assumed that he was actually after Craven for some old case, but not everything is what it may seem on the surface.

His daughter worked for a contractor with a government security contract, but she won’t talk about it because of her contract, not even to her father.  So, after she’s killed and things start to point toward something not on the up-and-up, one of the places he goes to try and figure things out is his daughter’s work.  Turns out they make radioactive ordinance, and other things, for the U.S. government.  They also seem to be run by a psychotic megalomaniac who’s so narcissistic and lacking in empathy that Craven is suspicious of him almost on sight.
Before Craven gets too far into his investigation, he’s approached by an unidentified agent who steers him toward key people and gives him insightful advice about how to proceed.  It’s unclear who’s side this man is on, pretty much throughout the movie, even through the very end.  It is clear, however, that he’s dangerous, but still surprisingly moral, considering the other people involved in mystery.

It turns out Craven’s daughter was suspicious that something wasn’t right at her company and, after exhausting all legal avenues open to her, hooks up with a crazy environmental group who try to expose dangerous and illegal goings there.  She helps them sneak into the labs where she works so they can gather the evidence they need to bring her employer to justice.  The only problem is, they don’t survive the attempt.
Naturally, this all comes out during Craven’s investigation and, as a father trying to avenge his deceased daughter, he pulls out all the stops and crosses all barriers to get the answers he needs.  That’s where the action comes in.

Now, to tell you more might ruin the plot, but it’s a living, breathing conspiracy that goes all the way up.  Craven is just a Boston cop with nothing left to lose who goes out looking for answers, and Mel Gibson plays him well.  There is an interesting cast of characters, each with their own agendas, and each played by interesting actors.  The end result is a fast-paced, intriguing and action-packed film.  It does keep you guessing, though not on all the points, and yes, even I was surprised by the ending.  I won’t go into details, so that the film still works for you, but, rest assured, the people who need to be punished are, and justice is served, after a fashion.

The acting is good, solid, no-nonsense stuff and everyone is on their game in this one.  It’s gritty and violent, but it’s about a man seeking justice above all things.  A man driven to solve the murder of his only daughter and the center of his life.  It grips you and doesn’t let you go until the credits roll.
Probably not in the top ten films of the decade, but a good, solid film well worth getting out to see.  Gibson is really good as the hardened cop, even if he seemed to have a bit of a problem maintaining that Boston accent.  I suppose we can forgive an Australian for not being all that great at a very specific American regional accent.  And, really, that’s the weakest part of the film.  Everything else, well, just works.

So, if you’ve got the time, Edge of Night is definitely worth seeing.

Legion

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Legion on Friday.

Wow.
This movie sucked out loud, on ice.
For real, this was one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time.  And, yes, that was a huge disappointment to me because I was really looking forward to a movie about the end times and angels and the powerful, smiting retribution of God.  Well, there were angels in it, anyway.

So, right, here’s the the basic plot; it’s the end times, but not really like we’re used to seeing or hearing about, and only one baby can save us, but his mother isn’t all that into having him and God has sent an army of angels to kill the baby and pretty much anyone along the way who tries to stop them.  Sounds like a winner, right?  Yeah, you’d think.  But, somehow they managed to take that premise, a fairly decent cast and screw it up at every turn.
First of all, Michael, chief of God’s angels, essentially rebels to come to Earth, make himself human, and try to save the mother of the implied second coming of Christ.  Not a bad start, really, except that no one ever cops to the fact that the baby is the reborn Prince of Peace.  Oh, and also?  That whole rebel angel thing.  That’s been done and, uh, Lucifer, the angel of the morning star, already did that and was cast out of heaven.  So, really, that was kind of a hard-sell to me, Michael rebelling.  And, uh, pretty well that’s the entire plot.  Angels coming to kill unborn kid, rebel angel out to stop them and the rag-tag group of human misfits who sort of tag along for the ride and cliched object lessons.  And, since I cannot in all good conscience recommend that anyone waste one, thin dime on this movie, I am totally going to ruin it for you now.  The rebel angel succeeds and the kid is born, humankind is saved, his parents are redeemed and become what seem to be red-neck, Christian Identity, gun-toting survivalists who apparently discover Utah.  And, now, thankfully, you don’t need to see this film.

So, if you’re still with me, here’s a theological issue I had with the movie.
Michael, the newest rebel angel, repeats several times that he’s giving God what He needs, not what He’s asking for.
Uh, hello?  What?  Are you implying that God doesn’t know what He wants?  That some angel with an English lisp and Enochian tattoos actually know better than God what God’s mind is and His needs are?  Seriously?  Because, then, God pretty well couldn’t be God, since that’s sort of defined by being all-powerful and all-seeing and all-knowing and if one of His creations knows better than He does then He can’t be those things.  Right?  And, really, that was just the most obvious and egregious theological failing, but it wasn’t the only one.  It’s just that one distracted me so, so much from the rest of the film that the rest of them aren’t worth mentioning.

And, really, the potential good parts of the film were bad, too.  Like the action and the manifestation of angels and all the ways that subtle morality lessons that never actually manifested.  Oh, and the crappy dialog.  And, the the bad acting by pretty much everyone except the baby, who I’m fairly certain was special effects.
And, did I mention that the movie was filled with badly failed cliches?  Because it was.  I mean it was clogged with them like an overflowing cinematic toilet.  It was bad, bad, bad.

Honestly, this movie was so bad I cannot believe it actually got made.
If you were thinking about going to see this film, slap yourself, have a stiff drink and go see The Book of Eli instead.  You’ll be happy you avoided this one.  And, I would say, don’t even bother to rent this stinker.  Truly.  It was bad in more ways than even I can list.
Do NOT waste two hours of your life going to see this movie.

BookOfEli

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The Book of Eli Friday night.

Wow, this was not what I was expecting! I went in expecting this to be a straight-forward post-apocalyptic action movie, but it was a whole lot more than that.
The basic plot is pretty simple, actually.  A wanderer by the name of Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is traveling West.  He’s carrying a book, along with his sword, a bow and arrow, a gun and, in a master stroke of product placement, an iPod.  He’s a righteous man in a savage world of radiation, destruction and desperate people.  And, those most desperate of people come after him, to try and take whatever they can from him, perhaps even to take him for their stew pot.  After all, in a world where everything is scarce, meat is meat.

Eli meets several groups of people, from the barely organized savages who try to lure him in with a woman in distress to the much more dangerous roving gangs of bikers.  The savages he slices and dices, but the bike gangs turn out to be a “road crew”, of sorts, for  a much more organized nasty by the name of Carnegie, played by Gary Oldham.  Turns out, he’s looking for a book, a very special book, that he thinks can unite all the locals into a city-state of sorts.  A city-state he can franchise over and over and over again.
Eli wanders into this little dictator’s town looking to get his iPod charged up, because, you know, a war ravaged and devistated landscape is no place for a day hike without some portable tunes.  The local engineer sets him up, for a pretty good trade in pre-war goods, obviously salvaged, and sends him to the only bar in town for a drink while the iPod charges up.  That’s where things get a little dangerous and Eli takes out the road crew who he’d seen on the road.  That draws the attention of Carnegie, who “invites” Eli to stay on.  When Eli declines, Carnegie insists he stay the night to think about the offer, he sends in Solara, played by Mila Kunis, to try and convince Eli to stay.  Of course, in the end, she ends up convincing him to take her with when he leaves.

I won’t give away more of the plot, so as not to ruin the film, but you’ll quickly learn that the mysterious book that Eli carries and Carnegie wants is a Bible.  Seems after the war, they were all destroyed.  All save this one.  And Eli is the last righteous man on Earth, following God’s calling to take the book to the West where he’ll mysteriously know what to do with it and who to give it to.
And, yes, that is where the spirituality of the whole thing ties in.  Eli is the most just and upright man in a very savage and essentially Godless world, trying to follow the teachings in the Bible he carries, even as he fights for his own survival.  Carnegie represent all that is wrong and venal in a world ruled by baser politics and power and controlling the masses.  The dichotomy of these two men make most of the product placement shots rather more ironic than I think may have been intended, but, regardless, it’s a great morality story.  And, a great story for modern Christians to consider.
We, too, are in a world that is often far from “God centered” and ruled by baser ideals.  Are we going to keep God’s ways?  Are we even going to try?  Or is our religion just something we do once a week?  How faithful are we to what we believe is God’s way?  When we hear God’s voice, do we listen?
No, I don’t have the answers, nor does this movie, necessarily, but it does ask the right questions.  Or, at least, it provoked them in me.  And, yes, it was great to see a spiritual hero who was far from perfect and far from a pushover do his best in a particularly difficult place.  There comes a time, when the world is so banal and corrupt that no one else has anything more than base survival on their mind that even the smallest attempt as spirituality is huge.

In short, I loved this movie.
Sure it was pretty violent for the younger folks, but I’d encourage everyone to go see this one, even if you don’t like violence.  The themes, especially for Christians, that are brought up and snuck into your thoughts under the cover of an action film are well worth the price of admission.  Incidentally, the movie is based on a graphic novel with which I’m only vaguely familiar, and there are some fight scenes that really show the influence of that in their beauty and artistry and coreography. It’s a really well done film with top-shelf actors in it.
It’s a rarity for me, but I would see this again.  Hell, I’d even pay full price to see this one again.  It was that good.
Really, it may not have the visual impact of Avatar in IMAX 3D, but, I assure you, this is a fantastic film.

Daybreakers

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Daybreakers on Friday.

I’ve been looking forward to this one since I heard about it for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a vampire movie, but for adults, not romance-starved, middle-aged women and their daughters. Secondly, because it seemed to deal with a problem I thought would have come up if vampirism actually existed, namely, an overabundance of blood-suckers and not enough blood to go around.

So, right, on the first thing, here’s the deal. Vampires are monsters, right? Not walking sexual fantasies. They should be monsters, not the homo-erotic metro-sexuals that Anne Rice made them into. And, in this movie, they are, in fact, monsters. Really, in a way, they maybe more monstrous because they’ve become the mainstream. They’ve become the giant corporation literally bleeding people dry to make a profit! And, because of the rating, we see the blood. No sparkly chests here, just blood-suckers. In fact, since so many humans have turned and become vampires, they’re starving themselves to death, as a society. And, as vampires starve, they become even more horrible. In their hunger, they even turn on their own kind.

And, that’s the second part…
So, being a vampire is pretty attractive, right? I mean, virtually eternal life, strong, disease free and the ultimate predator. Pretty cool. Sure, there are some drawbacks, like bursting into flames in direct sunlight and having to drink human blood, but, still, pretty awesome. With all that going on, I always figured most people would want to be turned. So does this movie.
The problem is, in less than ten years, since the vampirism “disease” first showed up, almost all the humans have turned, and that means there’s not enough blood to go around.
Enter, Ethan Hawke’s character. He’s a hemotologist working for the company who farms the existing humans out for vampire food. And, he’s working on an artificial blood “substitute” so that vampires won’t have to feed on humans any more. He thinks he’s looking for a cure, but his boss, played by Sam Neil, figures he’s just looking for a product to sell to the poorer vampires who are starving.

Well, through a car accident, he meets some “free range” humans, who have been hiding from the vampire army out to find them and farm them. Because, he’s a reluctant vampire, he helps them hide from the vampire police. They get away, but come back to his house in a few days and try to get him to help them find a cure. When he agrees, he meets Wilem Defoe’s character who is a vampire that somehow, spontaneously cheats death by sunlight to become human again.
They work together and find a cure, of sorts, which allows Hawke’s character to revert to being human. Then, they go about changing the world.
But, to tell you more would ruin the film,so I’ll stop giving away any plot here.

Mostly, this was a good film.
It was a kind of ironic action film with a horror flavor to it, but not over-the-top gory. Yes, there were the exploding vampires, and, yes, it does start with what seems to be a teen-aged girl vampire committing suicide in the sun, but, really, for all that, it wasn’t all that gory. It was pretty non-stop, though, for at least the first two thirds of the movie. It picks up again near the end, but it ends really, really poorly.
Actually, if not for the incredibly weak-ass ending, I’d have given this a fantastic review, but, well, as it is, the ending damn near ruins the film. Unless you’re a huge fan of vampire movies, or someone in the film, I’d recommend waiting until this one was on DVD before seeing it. Really.

It was a clever premise and a pretty cool cast, but the ending was so weak that I just can’t suggest that you all see this movie in the theaters. It’s good, but, honestly, it’s only worth, maybe, seeing at a matinee. That really is how weak and disappointing the ending was for me. It’s sad, really, because until the ending, it really was a pretty clever little film.

So, way, way back a couple of weeks ago, I saw the surprisingly good Ninja Assassin.

Now, I recognize that not many of my regular readers are likely to be into martial arts films of any kind as much as I probably am, much less the somewhat specific sub-genre of ninja films.  But, somehow, I did manage to talk one of my friends into going to see this one with me.  And, you know what?  When it was all over, he thanked me for it!  Yeah, that’s how good a film this little sleeper was!  I mean, really, this is the best ninja movie I’ve seen since Sho Kosugi did Enter The Ninja back in the early 80’s, practically launching the ninja craze in America.  In fact, the Great Master himself was in this movie as the old master who teaches Raizo, the main heroic ninja assassin of the title, played by the Korean pop-star, Rain.

The plot is a ninja film classic; the hero suffers through a brutal and very thourough training as a child to become the ultimate silent assassin only to be betrayed by his clan, who hunt him even as he seeks to bring them to justice.  No, really, this is a pretty common theme in these kinds of movies.  Honest.
So, the hero, Raizo, has help in the form of an international police researcher and her partner, though, he ends up not being as much help as you’d think at first.  She, however, gets in over her head by getting a file, of sorts, from a former Soviet intelligence agent who died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, who had been researching the ninja.  Mika, the researcher, played by Naomie Harris, had also been researching the connection between the ninja and several high-profile, virtually impossible assassinations.  The only problem is, no one else believes her.  No one, that is, except the ninja themselves and they come to kill her.
That’s where Raizo comes in.  He intervenes and saves her, then takes Mika on the run.  Not so much out of choice as neccessity.  They run from both the clan and Mika’s organization, who both come after the pair.  And, really, that’s pretty much the entire movie, right there.  It is, in the truest sense of the word, an action movie, but it’s a bit more than that, too.  It’s a kind of archetypal ninja action movie, with all the “required” elements, including honor, justice, a really good training sequence flash-back, a skilled master, a beautiful girl, and, of course, a love story.  That, along with the most amazing martial arts action you’ve ever seen in your life, make this a winner.

Now, you may think I’m exaggerating on this, but consider for a moment who made this film.  This bad boy was produced by the Wachowski’s of The Matrix fame and the script rewrites were done by J. Michael Straczynski, the guy who wrote Babylon 5.   These folks are geniuses in their field and have done truly revolutionary things for science-fiction, movies and television.  Really.
I mean, you’ve got the guys who reinvented action and, essentially, set an entirely new standard for action movies.  Then, you combine them with the guy who changed the face of episodic television science-fiction.  Mash them together with a ninja theme and think about where this might go.  And, yes, it really goes there.  Honest.  It was a visually stunning film.  Not in the same way that Avatar was, but, again, as an action movie, it took filmed martial arts to a whole new place.  It was fantastic.
Also, while it was paying homage to the ninja films of the 80’s, it included the guy who started it all, in a kind of ultimate homage; Sho Kosugi.  I’m pretty much convinced that any really great ninja film has got to include Kosugi or at least reference his work, so, you know, they score on that point.

So, yeah, this is kind of a special sub-genre of film, but if it’s your thing, you have got to rent this one.  I’m sure it’s not in the theater any more, but this should absolutely be in your Netflix queue.  If you love acttion, martial arts movies, or ninjas, you need to see this one.  Really.

And, there you have it.  Three movie reviews in three days.  A pretty good start to the new year, I think, even if I am reviewing movies from last year!

Avatar3D-IMAX

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

This was a fantastic movie!

No, really, Avatar was quite possibly the most important movie of the past several years.  Certainly, I think it was the most visually stunning and will launch us into an entirely new world of digital animation that will get better and cheaper as time goes on.  In fact, this movie was so fantastic, that when I saw it in a regular, non-3D, non-IMAX theater, I knew I would eventually see it in the full, 3D IMAX version.  So, instead of this just being the second of two slightly stale reviews, I’ll be combining in the review of the 3D version, too.

Right, so, this has been one of the most anticipated science-fiction movies ever.  People have been talking about this for months, at least.  In fact, it’s been around so long that when we first started hearing rumors about it, no one quite knew what it was really going to be about at all.  Just that it was going to be big, that James Cameron was behind it, and it had something to do with people taking over bodies via some science-fiction thing-a-ma-bob.
I purposely avoided reading about it as long and as much as I could.  Early on, people were tossing around terms like “revolutionary” and “ground-breaking” and that sort of thing always makes me nervous.  So often, that just sets up consumers like us for a movie that, frankly, can’t possibly live up to expectations.
Well, this one did.

I saw it first in 2D and I was impressed.
For most of the movie, you forget that it’s almost all computer generated graphics.  The backgrounds and sets that are digital just look real.  In the best CGI films, like this one, the effects are forgotten, mostly, and just, well, part of the background.  The movie, the story, is what you see, not the effects.  And, this is just what happens in Avatar.  As spectacular as the CGI is, at no point did I feel that the story took a backseat to the graphics.  The Navi, the indigenous aliens, are all computer graphics, but they’re so well done that you never really think of them as anything but real.  Truly fantastic.
And, that’s the story, really.  There’s a planet that has a very valuable mineral on it and we’re there mining that mineral.  The problem is, the Navi, those native aliens are sort of in the way.  In fact, there’s a big tribe of them right on the richest deposit of that very valuable mineral.  Enter Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, who, due to a quirk in genetics, timing, circumstances, ends up “riding” a genetically engineered “avatar” which looks just like a local.  He replaces his twin brother, who was a scientist, on the mission and ends up getting into a bit of trouble early on which separates him from the rest of his team and lost in the very alien woods.  That’s where he meets one of the local girls, who reluctantly takes him under her wing.  Turns out, she’s the chief’s daughter and her mother is the local tribal shaman.  Mommie dearest is the one who insists that Neytiri, the little local girl, played by Zoe Saldana, teach Sully their alien tribal ways.  And so it goes until the fateful day that the miners show up to destroy the tribe’s home camp so they can get at the huge mineral deposit.  And really, that’s the the plot, in a nutshell.
Now, I won’t tell you who wins, but I asure you it’s the good guys.  All you have to do is figure out which they are.

So, the thing is, it’s not a revolutionary plot.  The characters, while fully fleshed out, aren’t anything overly special.  The music is mostly good, though there are a couple of times that the songs aren’t particularly great.  The acting is solid, which is sort of remarkable, considering that much of it’s done through motion-capture CGI.
But, somehow, it all comes together.
I think that’s the genius of James Cameron.  Somehow, he can make the magic work.  And, in this movie he really does make the magic happen.  He takes these disparate elements, none of which are particularly interesting on their own, and marries them to the best and most advanced CGI anyone has ever spent the money to make.  It’s at that point that things get really interesting.  That, in a nutshell, is what makes this film something new and special.
People have compared it to Star Wars in its import.
I’m not sure it’s quite that, but it certainly is a bit of a game-changer.

Now, this may not be quite obvious if you see this in 2D, but when you see Avatar in 3D you will see a miracle on screen.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not.  The 3D is so good, so seamless, so real that you will flinch when things fly at you.  You will believe that you are seeing documentary footage of an alien planet with an alien landscape filled with alien flora and fauna.  You will forget to blink.  Seriously, I had to remind myself to blink.  That’s really how good it is.  It really is the most remarkable thing I’ve seen on screen since, well, I think since Star Wars.
The level of detail is incredible.  The insects fly off the screen at you like something actually alive.  The glowing plants are so realistic that you feel like you could order them off the damn internet.  All the crazy stories about all the bullheaded determination that Cameron pours into his movies and with which he tortures his crew must be true because his end product is like being immersed in an entirely different world.  And, that, of course, is what you’re paying to see.

And that, in the end, is my reccomendation to you.
GO SEE THIS MOVIE!
What’s more, go see it in IMAX 3D.  It may cost you a bit extra, but it is worth every penny you pay to see this film as Cameron intended you to see it.  Also, waiting until you see it on home video will not be the same.  I promise you, it will be a good movie no matter what the format, but the way to see this film, the way that will make sure you don’t feel like you’re missing something big and important, is to get yourself to an IMAX theater and slap those goofy 3D glasses on your face.
Trust me.  You will love it.

So, I’ve seen a couple of movies in the past several weeks that I have been too busy to review.  Here’s one of those.

I’m doing this in reverse order, by the way, and reviewing the most recent movie first.  On Christmas Day, I saw Sherlock Holmes with a friend, like we have for the past three years now.  In fact, when we started that shortly after I got out of cancer treatment, that was the start of my massive spree of hitting in the theaters.  In any case, I’ve seen a lot of movies in the past two years, but I try not to get jaded and all snooty about it like the professional critics do.  I tried to set aside any preconceived notions about what this film should be and just tried to be open to the experience.

It was, um, interesting.
I don’t really think of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero, but, that’s sure what Robert Downey Jr. and Guy Ritchie made him.  And, you know what?  It worked.  Yeah, it really did.  Now, I’m sure purists will get bent out of shape with Holmes boxing, or doing savate, or whatever it was supposed to be, but, really, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to me.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The plot is typical Victorian era adventure stuff.  The opening scene starts with an attempted occult murder, a sacrifice, that is thwarted by Holmes, played by Downey, and his faithful companion, Dr. Watson, played by Jude Law.  The erstwhile occultist, and thwarted murderer, is Lord Blackwood, a nobleman and, quite obviously, the villain.  And, yeah, if his name didn’t give it away, his theme music did.  A little heavy handed, but, still all in the spirit of a good adventure.
Then, we quickly fast forward through Blackwood’s trial and right to the day before his execution.  Watson is set to attend the execution as both one of his accusers and as a physician, to certify his death.  However, it’s Holmes that Blackwood calls for before his execution so that he may deliver a prediction about his return from the grave and other, more dire, predictions about deaths that Holmes won’t be able to prevent.

Naturally, these things come to pass, in spite of Holmes and Watson’s best efforts to stop them.  We also discover the person Holmes always referred to as “The Woman”, in the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ms. Irene Adler.  In the movie, however, she’s a much more active and adventuresome woman, at least in the athletic sense, and played by Rachel McAdams.  And, she’s quite troublesome to the pair of friends.  At first, she seems to be working against the two men and, possibly, is in league with Blackwood.  But, it’s not long before we discover that she’s actually working for someone else entirely and is only partially at cross-purposes to Holmes and Watson.

There is also at least one subplot here; Watson’s engagement.
He takes his fiance to meet Holmes for dinner, though he’s obviously been avoiding it.  It seems he’s not all that keen on losing his best, and oldest, friend to marriage.  The meeting is a disaster as Holmes only partially deduces her story and essentially accuses her of being a gold-digger out to marry a wealthy doctor.  In fact, her previous fiance died and she is quite in love with Watson, who already was aware of all the things which Holmes correctly detected.  And this will prove a key relationship as she is quite helpful to Watson several times during the ensuing adventure.

The prophecies that Blackwood made all start coming true, of course, much to Holmes and Watson’s growing discomfort.  And, naturally, Holmes obsession with trying to prevent these events, as well as trying to track down Blackwood, leads the two men on a twisting journey through a slightly anachronistic Victorian, really almost Edwardian, London.  Along the way, they run afoul of Ms. Adler and her mysterious employer until she and Holmes eventually agree to work together, though, she never really stops working for the other man.
Blackwood’s predictions, incidentally, all seem to be centered around some sort of occult plot to take over the world, naturally.  Blackwood is trying to gain control over a quasi-Masonic occult secret society with roots in England, but branches as far as America.  As is usual in the Sherlock Holmes stories, he uses cutting edge science to make what seems to be magical events occur under his control.  The superstitious members of the society assume that he’s managed to achieve a higher level of occult competency and, therefore, out of fear, or greed, follow him.  But, of course, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are there to fight for justice, etc., etc.

Now, I won’t ruin the movie by revealing more of the plot and I certainly won’t tell you how it ends, except to say that they do leave things open for a sequel.
Okay, let me make it clear here, I liked this movie, even though it does present a somewhat non-traditional Holmes.  I didn’t mind the boxing or savate or whatever it was Holmes was doing.  It made for fantastic action sequences.  I didn’t even mind that Downey couldn’t seem to maintain a consistent English accent.  Honestly, the action was so good and the rest of the acting was so good that the minor slip of accent was barely noticeable.
I was somewhat less thrilled about the heavy-handed occult references and the entire secret society subplot.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am a Freemason, so I see the attempts to mimic the Fraternity in these occult societies and, frankly, I know just how wrong they are.  Also, frankly, the older I get the more hokey I find the average supernatural stories in the movies and such.  Maybe it’s just that I’m getting more spiritual and therefore less superstitious, but it just seems less and less believable.
And, the one anachronism that was just too huge to ignore was a reference to radio waves.  At the time the story takes place, if “radio waves” had even been discovered, which I’m almost certain they had not been, they certainly wouldn’t have been called radio waves.  If anything, they might have been called Hertzian waves.  But, Nikola Tesla, the first patent holder of a true, working radio device, had either not been born yet, or was less than ten years old, depending on precisely when the story in the movie was to have taken place.  But, honestly, that was a relatively small thing and didn’t get in the way of my general enjoyment of the film at all.

I know this film will be eclipsed by Avatar, but I really enjoyed it and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who likes action movies, or even Sherlock Holmes.  It was thoroughly enjoyable and well worth seeing.
I think I may even look forward to seeing a sequel!

ParanormalActivities

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Paranormal Activity Friday.

So, you might have noticed that I haven’t reviewed many movies in the past couple weeks. Well, I’ve been busy. Stop laughing!
Anyway, I wanted to hit a movie and even though it’s not my kind of film normally, a friend convinced me to go see Paranormal Activity. Now, I didn’t find it scary. That’s not why I don’t generally care for these kinds of movies. No, rather, it’s because I’m generally two or three steps ahead in the plot. So, when most people are getting scared, I’m nodding, or adjusting my internal predictions of how things are going to go. And, yes, I do keep that all inside so that I’m not ruining the movie for anyone else with me. I’m not rude. But, I’m also not often wrong when it comes to the plots of movies like this.

I will say this, I actually liked this film.
I liked that it was made on a shoestring budget and still had some pretty decent effects that the actors sold really well. I liked the little tricks they did by filming with a single camera from the point of view of footage recorded by the participants in the film. Sure, it limited them in both scope and certain aspects of cinematography, but as a concept it worked well, especially in this particular scenario.
The basic plot is simple; a couple are being “haunted” and they try to get to the bottom of it with a video camera. As it turns out, she is the one being haunted, not the house or land. The “ghost” follows her and becomes more and more aggressive as she and her fiance try to capture it on film and then also try to enlist a medium to get rid of it. Those attempts fail, incidentally, but that’s only early on in the film. After that, things get much, much worse.

Now, as per usual, I won’t give away too much of the plot here, but eventually we do see a ouija board, sleep walking, and footprints made by an invisible creature. Not to mention all the strange sounds and odd, little camera effects that go on. The director does a fantastic job building up the suspense until the final confrontation with the angry spirit.
There were, for me, few surprises. All I can say is go see the movie and pay close attention to all the hints and you’ll see most of this coming, too. But, I promise you’ll still get a surprise at the end, just like I did.

If you like scary movies, or even if you’re just not scared by them and want to check one out, hit this movie. This really is the sleeper hit of the season. It’s not gory and really not overly violent, though there is violence in the film. It does drag a little in the early stages, but once the momentum starts to build, it just keeps building until things explode!.
Well worth seeing before it gets squeezed out of the theaters by the more “feel good” holiday films. Paranormal Activity is certainly one of the best films of the year.
Go see it!

No, not a movie review, but a book review.

So, I’ve been reading more lately, which is great.  And, I’ve been doing my best to read fiction and non-fiction.
Sadly, I haven’t been quite able to review it all, thanks to a brutal personal schedule that often has me out late several days in a row, just to try and squeeze in all the work and personal things to make me feel less alone.  So, while I intended to review this over the weekend, I’m just getting to it now.

In any case, I got The Dip by Seth Godin some time ago and read it just recently.  I got it because I wanted to read a book by the famous Seth Godin and, frankly, this one was the shortest.  No, seriously, I wanted to get one of his books, because I’d read about him, but I didn’t want a huge investment in either money or time.  This book fit the bill.
But, also, it turned out to be good timing for me.  In a way, The Dip is an inspirational book, a book about the power of positive thinking.  It’s certainly a motivational book and would fall under the broad category of “self-help books”, in my opinion.

The premise is simple, really.  Godin says that effort in any worth endeavor, espcially those in the business world, has a curve.  Sort of like a learning curve, but it goes deeper than that.  The curve, which he calls the Dip, is what separates those who are successful and those who aren’t.
When we start something new, whether it’s a new business or a new hobby, we throw a bit of effort into it and we see some small results.  At first, a very little effort produces significant improvements and results.  But, eventually every endeavor hits a point where added efforts produce fewer or no apparent changes in skill or improvement of any kind.  This is the Dip.  Many people quit here and don’t push through the Dip to get to the rest of the curve where additional efforts produce increasing results and result in mastery, eventually getting to a very high-level of performance.  The problem is, we start many, many things and can’t possibly pursue them all through the Dip and on to mastery.  Also, we don’t always have the skill, resources or simple ability to follow through sometimes, but we chase after these things anyway, thus wasting precious time and effort on things that won’t pan out, leaving us not enough time and resources to pour into the few things we might truly follow through the Dip into mastery.

On the one hand, it’s inspirational to realize that if I manage to stay faithful to the things I really find enjoyable and worth pursueing to their end, I might make it through that inevitable slump that everyone always hits.  If I can maintain my enthusiasm when things seem to be all working against me or keeping me from moving from dabbling hobbiest to skilled practitioner.  For instance, it gives me hope that my photography will hit that level where I suddenly start getting it and start seeing better and better photographs.  Sometimes, I feel like I’m on the cusp of that already.  An example of how the Dip works, for instance, is the 365 Days project on Flickr.  The goal is to take a self-portrait every day for one year.  Most people hit a creativity wall at three months or less.  Many bail out at that point, and, in fact, I almost did myself.  But some carry on through the slump, fighting the urge to just throw in the towel, waiting for the creativity to spark again.  Even then, some of us never get that creative spark back and our photographs never improve or we drop out later, midway into the Dip itself.  Quitting in the middle of the Dip, incidentally, is something Godin warns about.  Better to quit sooner, and not waste the resources to get further along only to quite later.  Or, better still, to perservere and make it through the Dip to the other side, thus achieving a new level of skill and competence.  I haven’t given up on my 365 Days Project yet, so I’m hoping I’m not the only one who’s seen improvements in my photographs.
And, The Dip also helped me realize that I need to waste less time on things that I know I won’t follow through on and drain my resources, thusly preventing me from pouring more effort into the things I really want to do well.  Now, I’m having to look at what I’m going to “quit” to make room for more effort for my photography and my writing.  I’m a little afraid that it will be sleep I give up to make room!  But, no matter, this book pointed out some deficiencies in how and where I spend my effort.
That needs to change.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about the hype associated with Seth Godin.  I mean, how good and brilliant can one man be, especially when it comes to sounding off about business and management?  But, this book really helped me see some of what’s been going wrong in my life much more clearly.
It’s already motivated me to workout more and more regularly, in an effort to improve my over-all health and appearance.  And, it’s provided considerable encouragement to keep working at my photography.  So, for those two things alone, it was worth getting.
I recommend The Dip for anyone who feels “stuck” or frustrated that they’re not moving ahead in their personal projects.  I’m sure it’s great for business, too, but I got plenty out of it for myself.
I think you will, too.  Trust me, it really is worth the read.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"There is no pit so deep that Jesus is not deeper still."
   --Corrie Ten Boom

LawAbidingCitizen

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Law Abiding Citizen Friday night.

This was a fantastic movie.
No, really, I think this may have been one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen.  I was actually surprised at several points in the movie, which, frankly, is unusual for me, especially when it comes to action-thrillers.  The movie stars Gerard Butler as a father who watches his wife raped and murdered in front of his face and hears his five or six-year-old daughter murdered, while he lies stunned, helpless and potentially bleeding to death.  Only, he survives and lives to see the Assistant District Attorney, played by Jamie Foxx, make a deal with the worst of the killers to plead to a lesser charge to testify against his partner, who gets the death penalty.  Obviously, Bulter’s character is less than pleased  about this deal and he vows revenge.

The movie flashes forward ten years, to the day of the execution.  What was supposed to be a painless, humane solution to a violent problem turns into a very violent solution, much to the surprise of the audience of witnesses which include the Assistant District Attorney team who put him there.
Then, while they’re still trying to figure out what happened and why, someone goes after the second killer, the one who made the deal and put the other killer on death row, even though he was, in fact, the more evil of the two men.  The vigilante turns out to be Butler’s character, who incapacitates the killer and dismembers him in the most gruesome ways imaginable, videoing the whole thing.
And that’s just the first thirty minutes or so of the movie.  Yeah.  That was kind of my reaction, too. Damn.

So, here’s the thing, if you can make it through the amazingly brutal, psychologically damaging first half-hour of this movie, the pay-offs are fantastic.  Explosions, high-level plotting and scheming, spies, remote-controled weaponized bomb disposal robots, you name it, it’s in this movie.
Butler’s character is a military genius, inventor, and engine of destruction who references Carl von Clausewitz, if you can wrap your head around that.  And, he’s in amazing physical condition, too.  He fights a war of brutally personal scope, announcing that he will take revenge for what he lost, who he lost, by destroying the system which allowed a deal to be made giving any kind of leniency to the killers of women and children.  He claims that he’s fighting “total war, like Clausewitz describes.  He’s unrelenting and you find yourself rooting for him, even though, at best, he’s the darkest of dark heroes.

And, of course, I’ll stop giving away the plot now, but trust me when I tell you; see this movie.
If you’re a fan of Gerard Butler or Jamie Foxx, they both play great parts in this movie.  Both play complicated, multi-layered characters with deep backgrounds and are finely detailed.  The scripting is good for everyone, but they have the best dialog between the two of them.
The cinematography is pretty impressive, too.  The close-up shots of a very intense Foxx and equally firey Butler fill the screen and capture your attention in a way that’s hard to describe.  It’s very well done and in a style unlike anything I recall seeing before.  The rest of the movie is just as visually stunning, each shot highlighting the action in that scene.  Brilliantly done.

I won’t tell you how it ends, or even if the ending is happy.  It is, I promise, satisfying.
And, I assure you, this is a movie well worth seeing.  Go.  Now.