Diary of a Network Geek

TheInternational

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The International Friday night.

It was pretty good, but not great.
This movie has been out for a little bit now, but I’m sure it’s still in theaters because it’s a pretty decent movie and, of course, rather timely, considering it’s about a bank. Rumor has it that it was, in fact, based partly on a real story, but I can’t confirm that.
In any case, the basic premise is this; a former Scotland Yard detective who’s moved over to Interpol has been after a giant, huge corrupt, shadowy bank, the International Bank of Credit and Commerce, for many years and finally gets close, but at what cost? The movie stars Clive Owen as the Scotland Yard/Interpol investigator who’s become obsessed with the bank. The movie also stars a totally unconvincing Naomi Watts as a New York Assistant DA who’s going after the bank to try and shut down one way the Mob launders their money.

The movie opens with Owen’s character waiting for a fellow investigator to come back after making contact with one of the bank’s high-ranking officers who’s about to turn on his employers. Before this investigator can cross the street, he’s killed by a very slick professional hitman in the employ of the bank. Before the night is through, the bank official is dead as well. But, the former Scotland Yard man is obsessed and now he’s close enough to smell blood, so he pursues every lead, every possible opportunity to get at the bank, even when it leads him almost to his own destruction.

Again, this movie wasn’t bad, but, frankly, for an action flick it was very slow. It really never took off and barely kept going at all in several places. Oh, there were several assassinations, and chases, one across the rooftops in Turkey, but, outside of an incredible scene in the rotunda of the Guggenheim in New York, there wasn’t anything that really caught fire.
Now, that scene in the Guggenheim was something else. It was ultra realistic, which was actually a bit of a plotting misstep, to be honest. They catch up to the assassin, who they are sure is going to let them crack the bank, but the bank has sent a team of really sloppy hitmen that spray the museum with bullets. It was incredible! And, the exact opposite of everything the bank had been doing up until that point in the movie. A total betrayal of their previous sneaky, hidden moves and completely out of character. There was one point, however, when someone tumbles off the railing and bounces down several flights of the circular balconies, finally braking his back on the lowest rail, that is so realistic it made me and the guys I went to see the movie with all wince. Trust me on this, that is one realistic scene!

All in all, it was okay. Not too many surprises, honestly, and slow for an action movie, but not bad. If you need to see this one, though, try for a matinee and avoid paying full-price. It’s not quite worth that.

Watchmen

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Well, I do, for one.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”, for those of you who don’t know, translates, roughly, to “Who watches the watchmen?” And, yes, it’s been made more famous by popular culture and a little comic book series, later gathered into a graphic novel, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons titled “The Watchmen”

The story, in brief, is about a group of retired heroes. Well, more like masked vigilantes, since only one of them, Dr. Manhattan, really has super-powers, per se. The story opens with a murder. The victim is a brutal man who went by the name The Comedian, though he was far from funny. The rest of the story then is the quest of a fellow “hero”, named Rorschach, to solve this murder. Naturally, he visits The Comedian’s old friends and enemies and gets into quite a bit of trouble himself along the way. And, as he follows his investigation, he stirs up old memories, which we see as flashbacks. One thing I liked about both the comic and the movie is that it took Stan Lee’s idea of showing us a more human superhero to the limit. We see so-called heroes being petty and brutal and sad. We see them love and hate and argue, just like real people would. Except, of course, these people move in a very different circle than we do indeed.
The entire story takes place in an alternate history where Nixon is elected for a third term in office and many other things have been altered or influenced by the addition of masked crusaders, super-science, mad geniuses, and at least one God-like super-being. It’s an interesting world, to say the least.
I won’t ruin either the comic or the movie by telling you how it ends, but, let’s just say that there are twists and turns and global plots involved worth of the best comic books and handled as well as any superior fiction can handle them. Both, I think, are well done.

Now, that being said, I’ll probably be at odds with the fanboys on this, but I liked the movie.
The movie followed the graphic novel quite closely, though there were many things that had to be edited out for time. The running time was fairly close to a full two-hours and forty-five minutes, but my understanding is that there is a giant “director’s cut” version planned for the DVD release that runs a full FIVE hours. I can see how they might manage that if they filmed every scene in the book. It’s quite dense. However, one reason to actually read, or re-read, the graphic novel before seeing the film is that doing so will help fill in the gaps that exist, by necessity, in the film. For instance, there was just a brief mention of Rorschach’s origin and no explanation of how he got his ever-changing ink-blot mask, which confused the person I went to see the movie with who was not a fan of the comic. (Though, I think it’s important to note that he is a comic fanboy, just mainly the Darkknight and more mainstream books.) Also, I think they could have cut some of the sex from the movie. Granted, I’m sure the scene where the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl get their freak on in “Archie”, Nite Owl’s flying car, helped get them their R-rating, they still could have trimmed it down to make room for something else a little more germane to the plot. The attempted rape scene, though it may seem a bit gratuitous, does at least have a central focus to at least one sub-plot, so I can see having it in there, but even that seemed… Well, they seemed to linger a bit longer on some of that than the plot really required. Oh, and as a word of warning, you do see quite a bit of Dr. Manhattan’s giant, blue, glowing penis, so if that sort of thing bothers you, well, you’ve been warned. The violence is, at times, extreme, though no more extreme than what’s pictured in the graphic novel. Of course, seeing it on screen does make quite an impact. My friend is far from squeamish, but I noticed he flinched several times, as did I, at parts of the ultra-violence. As an example, there’s a bit with a meat cleaver that really drives home just how brutal and savage the world, and Rorschach, can be, not to mention another moment with a load of hot oil from a deep fryer that is startling to someone who’s not anticipating it. There are other moments of brutality, also, but many of them seem, well, rather like comic-book violence and have no more impact than any other action-movie violence.
And, I should also add that the soundtrack was wonderful.  Lots and lots of Sixties classics.  It was a wonderful companion to the visual aspects of the movie.

The fanboys will be up in arms, no doubt, about what was cut and the relatively minor change in the ending. I won’t reveal that here for anyone who wants to see the movie, but, personally, I didn’t find it all that distracting or even very noticeable at all. In fact, I had to come home and whip out the graphic novel to check was had been changed!

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and I’ll happily being seeing it again with some other friends, I’m sure. Though, the next time, I’ll definitely pee first. I sat through almost two hours of this movie with a brick-hard bladder so as not to miss a thing. And, I guess that should tell you how good I thought the movie really was. Not quite a Darkknight, but still, one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.
I’m sure Watchmen will prove to be one of the better movies of the year, no matter what the crazed fanboys or the out-of-touch critics think. Well worth seeing.

Uh, the title says it all.

Yeah, this is for all you digital SLR photographers out there. You know white balance can be a big thing. Especially when you’re doing a bunch of shots. So, any way to make it easier for your DSLR to auto-correct white balance is a good thing. Thanks to PhotoJoJo, you can get the white balance lens cap which helps you do just that.

Seriously, I first saw this in a DVD tutorial on lighting techniques at my RitzU classes and I thought it was the slickest thing since sliced bread, but I haven’t been able to find one. Now, that’s been solved. Yea!

Right, so I’m sure a couple of my readers are waiting for me to weigh in on the new Kindle.

Yeah, yesterday, Amazon released the new, very much improved Kindle eBook reader. Lot’s of folks were talking about it; Lifehacker, the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog and, of course, Gizmodo. The most coverage is at Gizmodo, though, as they did a liveblog through the release.
In a nutshell, what they’ve improved is the design itself, the battery life (by 25%), the memory (now two gigabytes, or about 1,500 books), the screen and graphics. So, you know, just about everything on the physical device is better. Also, there’s an experimental feature that reads the books to you, which actually sounds sort of cool. And, now, apparently, you can move books from reader to reader, though they did seem to be only in one place at a time. You know, I’m actually okay with that, if I can transfer the book to someone else’s Kindle, because then it’s no different than a physical book that can only be in one place at a time. If, and that’s a big if at this point, if that’s how it works, I may just have to get me one of these.

The one “downside” to this is that the price is staying the same. Now, I think it may just be worth paying that $359 for this device. I mean, it really seems more worth it to me. Oh, and the cover which came with the older version is now an extra $25, or so. So, that bumps the price up a bit, but, still, I’d probably be looking at a better cover anyway.

The one thing that I haven’t seen any coverage on is adding my own documents to the Kindle. I have a lot of personal documentation of one kind or another that would be really nice to have on a reader like this. PDF files and text files filled with all sorts of custom and personal manuals and instructions and the like. If they made it easier to get that onto the Kindle, then, I may just be sold.

Taken

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Taken Friday night with a group of friends for a “guys night out”.

First of all, let me say that this was a pretty simple, straight-forward movie in terms of plot and message. Of course, that was one of the things I liked about the movie. The bad guys were undeniably bad and the good guy was, well, a little bad, too, but considering that he was a father saving his daughter from a white slavery ring, I think that’s understandable.
Okay, so this movie is probably not going to win any awards or be very acclaimed by the critics, but I liked it a lot. It stars Liam Neeson as a former CIA agent who sacrificed his family and home-life in his dedication to the job. As a result, he’s become estranged from his now teenaged daughter. In an attempt to fix that, he’s given up his work and moved to L.A. to be near his daughter and his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s very rich new husband. Neeson plays a pretty sympathetic character, I think. At least, he’s sympathetic to anyone who’s ever been a father. He’s quite protective of his daughter, which is understandable both because of the world we live in and the job that his character used to do.
The plot, as much as I can say without revealing anything important, revolves around his daughter going on a trip to Europe. A trip about which she is not quite entirely honest with her father. It’s a classic plot launcher for simple, straight-forward movies like this that the dishonest must pay. And, she does. To start with, things aren’t quite as she’s been led to believe and she’s alone with another girl in Paris. That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but they run afoul of Albanian white slavers. Man, there’s nothing I hate more than Albanian white slavers. (Yes, I’m poking a bit of fun at how often they emphasized the fact that these guys were, in fact, Albanians. I guess someone had an axe to grind.)
In any case, Neeson’s character gets a panicked phone call from his daughter as she’s being taken. He warns the men to let her go or they’ll be sorry, but they don’t listen. Basically, they have no idea just what kind of damage Neeson’s character is capable of dishing out, or that they’re about to feel the full effect of that skill at hurting people.

And, again, without revealing too much, for about an hour and thirty minutes, what you have is Liam Neeson chasing bad guys all over Paris. Chasing them on foot, in cars and on a boat. Chasing them down alleys, hallways, stairways, through rooms filled with parties and criminals. Often, shooting them when he finally catches them. Occasionally cutting them or stabbing them. At least once, hitting them with a pipe and hooking one up to electricity. But, I assure you, he only does that to the bad guys. Oh, well, except for the one time he wings the wife of an old colleague who’s gotten corrupt. Other than that, though, he’s only shooting, stabbing, punching and torturing the bad guys. Honest.

I won’t tell you how it ends, but Taken is a very good action movie indeed. Edited down to a PG-13 here in the States, it was even more violent in other places, so I really look forward to a Director’s Cut DVD. It’s no surprise to me that this is at the top of the box office returns this weekend. It was a great movie and I recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who digs action without gratuitous explosions. Again, it’s a simple, straight-forward movie, but it delivers on every promise it makes in the trailers, ads and reviews.
Well worth seeing in the theaters on the big screen!

Do you remember me talking about Firebug for Firefox a year ago?

Okay, I’ll grant you, that was some time back, so let me just refresh your memory.  Firebug is an add-on for Firefox that lets you do web/HTML/CSS design and editing from within the browser.  It’s pretty slick, really, and it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already.  Well, now WebMonkey, the best damn HTML/web development resource since the HTTP protocol, has a list of the Five Best Firebug Extensions .

So, now, an extension has extensions. Cool.
Hey, I know I wander pretty far afield, but this is still the Diary of a Network Geek!

No, this is not a plea.

Really, I have a giant stack of books to read, so all I need to do is reach randomly into the stack and pull out something miraculous. No, this is to help you, dear reader, pick out something new to read.
As a computer geek, I love anything that programatically generates something new based on previous information. Markov Chains, for instance, are fascinating to me, even if I barely understand them. So, when I saw this website, What should I read next?, I had to share it with you. To use it, go, enter the last good book you read and its author, then clikc the big button. In a few seconds, the page will refresh with a link to what it thinks you meant, which will hopefully be the book you had in mind. Then, click on that link and you’ll be taken to a list of suggestions for what you should read next.

I’m not sure I entirely trust it, though, since when I used Choke by Chuck Palahnuik, it returned a bunch of Photoshop books. Still, it’s a fun way to get shoved out of your little reading rut! So, go ahead and try it!

Frost

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Frost/Nixon Friday night.

It’s funny, really, because I almost didn’t see this movie at all. I’d just gotten some less than stellar news while driving with a friend to see the movie. In fact, I took the call on my cell in his car. Actually, that turned out to be a good thing because I was able to check with him afterward to see how I’d handled the news, since I tend to blank out when under that kind of stress. According to him, I did really well. Not over-reacting or saying anything stupid or inappropriate. (And, no, it wasn’t a job interview, but, as per usual, a girl.)

So, in any case, I was a little numb and disappointed and mildly depressed. And, since my friend is a kind soul, I had the offer to see something else, like, for instance, a comedy. But, frankly, none of the comedies still playing at this theater were appealing to me, so we went ahead and saw Frost/Nixon. I expected a rather slow documentary style of movie. I was pleasantly surprised to be quite wrong!
The story, of course, is that of the David Frost and Richard M. Nixon interviews which took place in 1977, after Nixon had left office in disgrace and been pardoned. Now, you may be asking yourself how a movie about a series of interviews between an Australian talkshow host and a disgraced former president could possibly be all that captivating. Certainly, that’s what I thought when I heard about the movie. So, I went in braced for being bored out of my mind. It seemed a marginally better time than going home alone, though, so I went anyway. I’m so, so glad I did! At first, I found myself identifying with David Frost who risked everything, his career and all of his personal funds, to make the interviews happen because he was betting that it would put him back on top after being relegated to work that he thought was beneath his career. I completely understood taking that kind of giant risk even though no one believed in him anymore because he knew, deep in his heart, that it was only by taking such a huge risk that he could reap the rewards he desired. As my friend reminded me, if there was nothing to lose, then there was no risk. But, oddly enough, by the end of the movie, I found myself feeling a little sorry for Nixon! By this time, he’d become a broken man. His entire life was based around his political career and when he got caught in the Watergate scandal which forced him to resign, it destroyed him. That’s the Nixon that Frank Langella recreates for the screen. And, I have to tell you, he does it amazingly well. I tend to think of Langella as the B-movie vampire actor, but at one point in this movie I was shocked to see Frank Langella on the screen and not Nixon. I had gotten so sucked into his performance that I’d forgotten he wasn’t Nixon! Remember, Langella looks nothing like Nixon at all, so this is quite an impressive feat.

There’s not much in the way of a complicated plot for this movie and it’s hardly worth going into here. Simply put, it’s about getting Nixon and Frost together, getting the interviews taped, getting them paid for by sponsors and then getting them on the air. But, the movie is also about getting Nixon to admit wrong-doing in the Watergate burglary and associated scandal. And, it’s about the two men and how they verbally wrestled with each other throughout the interviews. Finally, it’s about the two men individually, about how they fought their own inner demons, about the choices they made and how that worked out.

I have to say, I loved this movie. I know, partly it was due to me being in the place mentally, emotionally and spiritually that I was, but part of it was just how surprisingly good the film was! I mean, I really was not expecting anyone to be able to make something as boring as interviews interesting, but it was a totally engaging film that moved along so quickly it was a surprise that it was suddenly over.
Brilliant film and I highly recommend it!

YesMan

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Yes Man on Christmas Day.

Being away from family on Christmas, and being single so, therefore, not entangled with someone else’s family, I’m often and odds with what to do. Last year, and now, this year, too, I connected with a friend who’s also away from family and single to see a movie. This year, we went to a Thai buffet, which was one of the few things open on Christmas Day, before heading out to the theater.
This year, we were both in the mood for a comedy, so, after looking at the possibilities, we opted for the Jim Carrey vehicle, Yes Man. The premise is nothing new, really. A lonely, single man, who’s nursing a hurt over his divorce, four years prior, Jim Carrey’s character has withdrawn from the world. He’s shut his life down to the bare minimum of going to work, renting videos and ignoring his cell phone so that he can avoid going out and doing more with his friends. Also, he’s avoiding the possibility of running into his ex-wife. Naturally, when his best friend finally drags him out to a bar for a few drinks, and to announce his engagement, the first person he runs into is his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Naturally, he’s mortified and scuttles off back to his apartment. His friends check on him later and brow-beat him into promising to attend his best friend’s engagement party.
Unfortunately, after getting some bad news about being passed over for a promotion at work, his depression gets worse. Seeing an old acquaintance who’s somehow managed to change his life, for the better, via a self-help seminar that’s all about embracing the power of “yes”. Things reach a peak, or rather a bottom, when his depression leads him to miss his best friend’s party.
So, at his wit’s end, ready to try anything to change, he goes to the “yes” seminar that he heard about. The leader/guru focuses in on this poor soul who agrees to give into the power of “yes” and say “yes” to all of life’s opportunities.

Right, so about now you’re picturing Jim Carrey and all the comedic places that not being able to say “no” can take him. And, you’d probably be about right, too! The movie goes to all those socially uncomfortable places that you’d expect it to go. Saying yes to spam e-mail, the needy neighbor, the street person asking for a ride, the guy on the corner handing out fliers, and so on. And, yes, the movie is as funny as you would think Jim Carrey could be with this situation. In fact, this is the funniest Carrey has been for quite some time.
The other thing about this movie is that it’s actually romantic, too. The main character is the typical “lonely guy”, so it’s not a big surprise that he finds romance when he starts saying “yes” to everything life has to offer. And, yes, he gets into some trouble, too. Trouble enough that you’re not sure it’s going to be a happy ending. But, trust me, it is. I won’t say how it’s happy, because you should go see for yourself, but it is a happy ending.

In short, this is a funny movie that includes some romance, a good story, a moral lesson, and a happy ending. I loved this movie. It had me laughing all the way through. I’m not a huge Jim Carrey fan, but this is a great vehicle for him. It’s funny, crazy and unpredictable. Oh, and all the stuff that seems random and unconnected at first? It all ties together eventually, if you just stick with it. Uh, there is one slightly uncomfortable scene with dentures and oral sex off camera, but that’s how they got their PG-13 rating, I think. It’s in context and funny. Wrong, but funny.

It’s a good movie, so go see it.

DayTheEarthStood

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The Day The Earth Stood Still Friday night, for my birthday.

Okay, now, it’s probably important to know that the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of my all-time favorite science-fiction films. It’s regarded by most film scholars as a classic, and not just of science-fiction. So, I did my best to set aside any preconceived notions of how this film should run or the ways that it could go wrong and just enjoy it for what it is.

The movie stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. I’m not a big fan of Keanu Reeves, even though he starred in the Matrix, but I do adore Jennifer Connelly. In any case, Reeves stars as the alien who’s deciding whether or not to eradicate all life on Earth, to let it restart, basically. To remove all of humanity’s damage so that the Earth can restore herself to her natural, pristine state. Jennifer Connelly plays a scientist who is called in to study Klaatu, played by Reeves. She and Klaatu form an uneasy alliance as he explores the world he’s come to destroy and the people he’s come to erase.
Naturally, the plot runs about the way you think it would. Klaatu starts off remorseless and determined to fulfill his mission. Connelly’s character uses every means at her disposal to convince him to do otherwise. She uses her son, who’s really the son of the man she was married to before he died. That’s one of many departures from the original film. Connelly’s character is really several characters from the original film all in one. She also takes Klaatu to see a genius friend of hers to try to convince him that humanity can change and the Earth isn’t lost. The genius is played by John Cleese, who is a real genius and actually plays a serious role here.

Now, normally, I try not to spoil films and books by not giving too much away. But, I’m going to deviate from that a bit here and just warn you that I’m totally going to fill the rest of this paragraph with spoilers. If you don’t want to “ruin” the movie for yourself, skip to the next section. Ready? Still with me? Okay, so the movie was okay, but it seemed like it was building towards something then, suddenly, with the Earth saved, the movie just ends. So, there’s all this huge build up and then… Poof! Nothing. Fade to black and roll the credits. That’s it. A mediocre film with great effects that just never quite pays off in the end.

So, yeah, it was okay, I suppose. Most of the film was decent enough, except for the part I described in the “spoiler paragraph” above. It’s a shame, really, since Reeve and Connelly do a good job otherwise and have decent roles going right to the end. The movie just never seems to get to its point, we never get the pay-off that we’re expecting. Worse yet, I don’t ever remember Keanu uttering the famous words from the 1951 original: “Klaatu barada nikto! ”

I recommend that you see this on the big screen, but at a matinee. This remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still isn’t as good as the original, but the effects make it worth seeing on the big screen, just not at full price.