• OK, three more reviews added today, 2 newer and one older. I hope to keep them coming for a while.
• Bear McCreary continues his impressive posts to his official blog. This time, he’s doing an interview with genius composer Bruce Broughton, relating it to his short experience scoring a brief cartoon sequence in a recent Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles episode.
• Now here’s one insanely impressive cruise ship. Yikes.
• Here’s an interesting bit of history involving the vast tunnels that Hitler and Albert Speer were working on when WWII broke out. It’d be an interesting piece of history to visit.
• Speaking of interesting (and disturbing) pieces of history, here’s one on the ol’ Russian gulags, “then and now.”
• I’m sure I’ve mentioned them before on this site, but if you’ve never checked out writer/producer Chuck Lorre’s web site, where he archives all his “vanity cards” from over his many years producing TV, you’re missing a lot of fun. Having just watched today’s episode of The Big Bang Theory (a very funny show), his vanity card for this one was amusing. It stated that “Tonight’s vanity card is about censorship. It was censored. As always, you know where to look.” Yes, us fans know where to look (his web site, of course), which revealed his amusingly censored card for the week (surely just a joke in being censored). If you’ve never dug through the cards on his site, you can sit there for hours reading them all. Some of them are insanely hilarious. And he semi-recently passed up the 200 mark on his insane collection of them.
• Here’s another excellent collection of HDR photos
• Of course, the big news of today was the $700 billion Wall Street bailout being shot down. I rarely talk politics on this site, but I was in favor of shooting it down. I’m with Ron Paul on this one. And for those who want to deny the length of history to this issue, and simply blame the Bush administration for all of it because that’s the popular thing to do, there’s articles like this.

This is a surprisingly fun romantic comedy, featuring a great cast and a rather good script that somehow manages to put a slight spin on a tried movie formula.

Writing: Writer/director David Koepp tries his hand at the romantic comedy genre, with success. Having written and directed a number of thrillers and action event films, this is definitely a change for him. And true to his typical talent, he manages to pull it off quite well. The interesting thing is that the film actually plays into many of the typical elements of this genre film, borrowing pretty freely from the likes of Ghost, Hearts & Souls and others. However, through the use of distinct character writing and amusing situational writing, he manages to find a unique voice for the film. And the casting didn’t hurt.

Production: The most notable thing for a film of this type is how well the “ghost effects” work. In this case, they are about as perfect as one would hope for. They don’t actually try to go for any kind of ghostly appearance, but rather settle for just having the actors in the scenes and only use effects when they pass through something. While it’s an easy budgetary decision to make, I think using the simple approach like this typically helps the film creatively as well. It’s not needlessly distracting for the audience. The other tech areas of the film are first rate, with no shortcomings to point out.

Cast: Ricky Gervais brings his very British sense of humor to this leading man role, and it works spectacularly. His droll sense of humor is razor sharp and spot on, and he really makes the introverted, jerk of a lead romantic comedy character work from every angle. He also manages to make the transformation of the character seem real and not at all forced, not to mention still feel like the same character, which is often a danger of films like this. Then there’s the perfect casting of Greg Kinnear as the other kind of likable jerk - the one who really is more of an actual jerk. It’s somewhat hard to make a movie that centers around two lead characters that would on paper seem to be very off putting. These two very entertaining actors manage to not only make it work, but elevate it to a higher level. Add in the always-great Tea Leoni, an actress who often doesn’t get the attention or casting she deserves, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic cast. Leoni and Gervais work very well together in the film, which is key to a romantic comedy. Rounding out the cast are plenty of fine actors and actresses, including the likes of Alan Ruck, Billy Campbell and Kristen Wiig.

Music: Composer Geoff Zanelli is seemingly channeling the likes of Rolfe Kent and Rachel Portman, two composers who are very well versed in this kind of film. While it may just be a heavy amount of temp track influence, and not a choice on his part, it does work pretty well for the film. That might not result in the world’s most original score, but it works all the same.

While I’m a fan of writer/director Neil LaBute, this wasn’t my favorite of his films. It’s certainly entertaining enough, I guess, but it falls into a few too many genre trappings to work completely. One other problem this movie had was a trailer I’d seen a bunch of times that was at least twice as long as it needed to be, and gave away far too much of the film.

Writing: This isn’t a particularly bad script, it just doesn’t avoid some of the obvious trappings of the genre. One of the more interesting aspects to the film is the character played by Sam Jackson, who is an interesting mix of a good guy and a bad guy. He’s VERY gray area. At the start of the film, I was totally on his side, as he constantly corrected the terrible grammar of his kids. As somebody who is also depressed by the total lack of language skills of the up and coming generation, I almost cheered out loud at some of his moments correcting them. All things being equal, he’s a good parent, until his bad traits escalate a situation that causes him to come unglued, then all bets are off. The racial tension of the film is also one of the more uniquely styled parts of the story, and is thankfully one that plays against stereotype, with Jackson being the outright racist.

Production: There’s little to criticize here, as it’s a very solid production. Everything from cinematography to editing and sound design are well done. None of it is standout, overly praise worthy, but it’s all quite well put together. The final act is particularly effective in terms of location and filming technique.

Cast: The real scene stealer in the movie is Sam Jackson, but I guess that shouldn’t come as a major surprise. He plays the conflicting gray areas of the character very well, managing to come off as charming even at the character’s worst. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are adequate as the neighbor couple moving into the neighborhood, and setting off Jackson’s character. I suppose the two of them do lack the chemical spark that the characters needed, but they still manage to pull it off pretty well. The great Ron Glass gets to have a couple scenes, but doesn’t get material of particular importance. Generally speaking, a good cast highlighted by Sam Jackson.

Music: Neil LaBute chose brother composers Mychael & Jeff Danna to score this character thriller, which is an easy choice given their combined experience in scoring movies of the genre. Mychael in particular has done plenty of material previously to make working on this film a walk in the park. The two of them delivered a perfectly functional and well styled score, downplaying the dark nature of the material and giving it that moderately gritty tone. Not the greatest score for either of them, but definitely a solid effort.

I’ve mentioned numerous times during reviews of mindless actions movies starring Jason Statham that I really do like him as an actor, it’s just that he continually picks action movies that are actually dumber than the one before. Crank was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But I’ve always said that when given the right material, Statham can be quite good. Here is one such example - one that was sadly overlooked at the box office.

Writing: While being a rather charming and intriguing crime thriller, rather closely based on a true story, this film is not afraid to embrace its R rating. There is no shortage of pretty much everything that can earn an R rating. It’s an odd combination of said charm and risque material. I’m not sure how much of that comes from the script, let alone the true life event, and what is imbued by the cast and director. The story is quite layered and pretty insane, not to mention British through and through.

Production: Guided by the ever-reliable, solid hand of director Roger Donaldson (well, we won’t hold Cocktail against him), this production is top notch and pretty slick. It isn’t overly slick like a Michael Bay film would be. It’s down and dirty, but very well crafted. Cinematography is very realistic, but adequately stylish. Same goes for the editing and sound design. Overall, a very classy production.

Cast: As I already stated, I actually quite like Jason Statham as an actor, and he is at his absolute best here. His rogue charm is in full force, and he easily drops into the role. Then there’s the constantly under appreciated actress Saffron Burrows, who does a marvelous job as the catalyst for the story. She gets to play multiple angles to the character, and she plays against the rest of the cast very well. The rest of the casting is done with spot on character actors, filling all manner of supporting characters, from scumbags to good ol’ British aristocracy and intelligence operatives. It’s like a veritable who’s who of “hey, I recognize that actor/actress” casting.

Music: J. Peter Robinson gets to have all sorts of fun with his crime caper score, striking a very nice balance between modern film making and 70’s period scoring. This is definitely one of his best career scores. He may not be an a-list composer, or one of my absolute favorites, but he does get some material from time to time that lets him show off his skills.

• OK, I think I’ve got the server issue squared away (fingers crossed)
• RIP: Paul Newman
• Well deserved congratulations go out to the many folks involved in SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket and its successful launch as the first privately developed rocket into orbit. After three disheartening previous failed attempt, it’s wonderful to see them finally pull it off. If anyone thinks that’s a bad track record, they should go back and research the success rate of the early NASA rockets. It’s anything but easy to design and make rockets of this magnitude work. So to the SpaceX crews, congratulations. Welcome to the ranks of civilian space exploration.
• Congratulations also go out to The Simpsons, for beginning their record-tying 20th season on the air.
• Nice. Google’s error page for their error page.
• Would that the USA could have nearly the broadband service that Japan does. Let alone what they are about to get.
• Nice time lapse of a Boeing 720b getting taken apart
• As you may have noticed, I finally got a couple movie reviews posted. I’m gonna try to do them in sets of a recent review and one from earlier in the year for which I hadn’t yet posted the review. Also, the 2008 Films and the 2008 Film Scores lists have been brought up to date. The order of the top half dozen entries in the films list is not yet final. I haven’t decided quite how to rank those as yet.

This is one of those movies that manages to remain entertaining enough, despite a completely implausible and ridiculous script. I’d probably give this a 6 out of 10 were it not for Michelle Monaghan (one of my favorite actresses) being one of the stars, which helps me justify bumping it up to a 7 out of 10.

Writing: While I must admit that this story went in a direction that I honestly wasn’t expecting, and the fact that it actually does contain some interesting ideas, most of the material is insanely unrealistic. Now, a movie can be great without being even remotely realistic. I happen to love many such films. The key is to not be trying to play into a realistic framework. And that is the first mistake of this film - trying to be real. Granted, there are some amusing bits of dialog here and there that poke fun at the ridiculous nature of what’s going on, but it doesn’t do enough to undercut the insanity. On top of the core ridiculous aspects of the script, there’s a complete lack of common sense and logic throughout the film. This is like those overly-complicated plans that Bond villains would make to kill James, when they should have simply shot him between the eyes. You know, the kind of stuff for which Scott Evil would make fun of his father, Dr. Evil. This story could have been over in 30 minutes if the ultimate goal would have been accomplished by one of a thousand simple methods, avoiding the whole cat-and-mouse material. But then you wouldn’t have a movie, would you?

Production: Having said all that about the writing, the production goes the extra mile to compensate. This is a first rate production. It features dynamic cinematography and editing, a wild sound mix, aggressive scoring and a nice attention to detail. Those who say that a production or cast can’t make up for a bad script are often right, but in this case I think it was pulled off. It’s hard for it to make it a great film, but it can certainly make it entertaining enough, as it did for this film. Director DJ Caruso (who’s previous film was Disturbia with LaBeouf) manages to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Or at least a well nourished chipmunk. Having also shared many production elements and people as Transformers, I will say that I enjoyed this movie more than Transformers.

Cast: Shia LaBeouf is one of those hot button actors these days, with many people either loving or hating his work. I’m not a huge fan, but I do enjoy most of his performances. This movie got one of his better performances (certainly better than Transformers - though the stuff he got to play in Transformers was much worse than what he gets in this film). As I said earlier, Michelle Monaghan is a favorite actress of mine, so my opinion is considerably biased. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), I thought she was great. Then there’s the rest of the cast, which is filled in by such a roster of quality, known actors, I was surprisingly impressed. From Michael Chiklis’ nice performances as the Secretary of Defense to Billy Bob Thornton’s intelligent pursuer, this is a well cast film. Rosario Dawson feels just a tiny bit out of place in her role, but she still does a good enough job to make it work. She at least plays off Thornton nicely. The great William Sadler gets a small role as the father to LaBeouf’s character, and of course he does a great job. The under appreciated Ethan Embry gets a small role as Thornton’s partner. The rest of the cast is well rounded out.

Music: Like his great score for AvP2, Brian Tyler swings for the fences with this score. Full of rich, dynamic orchestration and pacing, it succeeds in the struggle to keep up with the material on screen. He also manages to sneak in some nice thematic character material from time to time, particularly in the first act of the film. While the script may be overly ridiculous, it does give ample opportunity to dynamic music scoring.

This is one of those odd and charming indie films that moderately breaks through into the main stream. In this case, I think it’s primarily for the cast involved, and the somewhat easily marketable story.

Writing: There no doubting the low key, indie mentality of the script, featuring a number of screwed up and quirky characters. It’s the kind of stuff that actors spend their careers trolling for.  While the writing may not be perfect, it definitely has a unique voice and an interesting set of characters and interactions.

Production: Like the writing, the production of the film works to find a balance between low key, normal kinds of production and oddly unique levels of design and environment. Most everything is designed to allow the cast to cut loose and play around with the fun material.

Cast: Here’s the real shining highlight of the film. Anton Yelchin (the soon-to-be Pavel Chekov in Star Trek) delivers a fantastically charming and slightly off-center performance as the titular Charlie Bartlett. He manages to play both the naive and the wise aspects of the character equally well. And he plays off the rest of the cast spectacularly. Robert Downey Jr, who’s long been a favorite actor of mine, is spot on with his downplayed character. Him and Yelchin in particular are great together in their scenes. Kat Dennings, who stars in the upcoming Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (a movie that seems to appeal to many of the characteristics of this film), is a refreshingly unique foil for Charlie, and an effortless romantic interest. Then there’s the perfectly odd Hope Davis playing Charlie’s very off-balance mother. Davis is an under appreciated actress, one who can play odd and complex roles like this to perfection.

Music: Christophe Beck, a very talented composer, comes through with an appropriately odd and downplayed score. It’s nothing that’ll grab attention as the best score of the year or anything, but it drops into the film with ease.

• This site may continue to be a bit flaky for a little while. I’m having problems with the server that hosts this site, with it crashing once every day or two. I’m trying to narrow down the issue, but until then, there may be some random times where you can’t get at the site. This is the primary reason I haven’t started to get the movie reviews posted that I was intending to finally get started on.
• As if Dubai needed even more extravagance when it comes to hotels, there’s no denying that this is some pretty impressive stuff.
• Google has a nice 10th Anniversary web site setup. The time line is quite cool.
• Congrats to MiniNova.org for not only crossing that 6 billionth download mark, but doing 10 million of them in one day (both of which set new records).
• Anyway, very short post for today. Back soon with more. And if I figure out the server problems, hopefully some movie reviews as well (finally).

• You’ve gotta check out this hilarious (and very impressive) editing work to create Robocop vs The Terminator…  Here’s episode 1, then episode 2, then the trailer for episode 3.
• Looks like my new AT&T U-Verse service will be making a jump from 2 to 3 simultaneous HD streams.
• An interesting collection of WWII security posters
• Great. Crank 2 is described by Statham himself as “Most Offensive.” If it truly is Crank 1 times 1000, as he says, this sequel will be the worst piece of narrative ever made, of any kind. Surely no worst book, song, movie, painting or sand castles built by a 2 year old could be combined together to be even 1/10 as bad as “Crank 1 times 1000.”
• Another collection of excellent HDR photos
• “Kitten Of War” - great photo
• Here’s a very cool panoramic shot wrapping all the way around from the top of Everest
• Here’s a cool photo of the shuttle breaking the sound barrier
• And speaking of cool shuttle pictures, I took a high res version of Atlantis & Endeavour on their neighboring launch pads, amazingly accompanied by a rainbow, and made a 1920×1200 resolution widescreen wallpaper from it:

So, just finished watching the Emmy Awards a bit ago. Overall, a decent enough show. I didn’t get a chance to put together my list of predictions this year (I started to, but didn’t get very far). The major failure of the show was in the chosen hosts. Their panel of 5 reality TV hosts (nominees in their category) was a miserable failure on stage. Heidi Klum managed to hold out as the best of the group, and even she was only abundantly average. When you have presenters like Steve Martin and Ricky Gervais come out and effortlessly upstage the main hosts, it becomes clear just how bad those hosts are doing. Then there’s Don Rickles, who amusingly refused to stay on script. While he may not seem physically top notch, he’s still as quick on the joke as he ever was. By coincidence, I was just watching his Get Smart appearance earlier this week on DVD. Barry Sonnenfeld won a much deserved award for directing the Pie-Lette of Pushing Daisies - the best broadcast network show on the air (which is my way of ruling out Battlestar Galactica in the comparison). And while I think Alec Baldwin is fantastic on 30 Rock, it was still sad to not see Lee Pace get an upset win a leading actor in a comedy award for Pushing Daisies (not that I expected such a long shot possibility). I would have at least loved to see Tony Shalhoub win another for playing Adrian Monk, but I guess 3 wins in a row is good enough. Steven Colbert & John Stewart had a great night at the awards, yet again. It was nice to see Greg Yataines win his best director in a drama award for his excellent work on House’s great season 4 finale. And as much as I truly hate reality TV shows (100%, absolutely), I did like Jimmy Kimmel’s presentation of the best host for a reality TV series award, where they went to commercial before revealing the winner. But the real winner of the night, and deservedly so, was Tiny Fey and 30 Rock. When did Mary Tyler Moore turn into a walking skeleton? Amazingly, though, Betty White still somehow manages to look nearly the same as she did back on the Mary Tyler Moore show. While 30 Rock was one I was very happy to see win the best comedy category, I was sad to see fantastic shows like House and Boston Legal lose to Mad Men for the best drama series. And if there’s one series I’m gonna have to hunt down and check out after seeing the Emmy Awards broadcast, it’s AMC’s Breaking Bad. I hadn’t actually even heard of it previously, but it looks great, and it’s writen/created by the great Vince Gilligan. Lastly, how is it the show ran long? I mean, there were more winners that weren’t there than usual, leaving the presenters to accept. And it seemed like they were getting extra aggressive in playing people off stage. Where did they waste so much time that they didn’t find in rehearsal? As a closing through, I must emphise how much they need to find a real host for the event next year.

• So, did you enjoy International Talk Like A Pirate Day today?
• After being introduced to the horrible new title song for Quantum Of Solace that I mentioned in yesterday’s post, here’s a refreshingly amusing comedy title song for the film. The video is from a couple months ago, but I had just stumbled upon it today.
• NASA is ready for disaster with an ultra-rare situation of having a second shuttle on the pad and waiting should the the repair mission for Hubble run into trouble. Kind cool picture to see two of the shuttles waiting at the pad simultaneously.
• Speaking of rare space shuttle photos, here’s a collection of shots during lesser known parts of the shuttle’s preparations.
• Google is adding extension/script support to Chrome, which is the primary reason I would have continued to use Firefox over Chrome. Now, if we start to see an excellent collection of extensions like Firefox currently has, I may become a Chrome user at some point.
• While it comes as no surprise, it’s still great to see the announcement of a season 4 score CD release for Doctor Who. Murray Gold continued his fantastic work on season 4, and I look forward to the release.
• Here’s a photo to make the soulless killing machine look cute.
• The future of anti-virus software? An interesting approach, anyway.
• A great article from our friends at The Onion
• Hmmm, a Greatest American Hero feature film? Could be fun.

• I guess I should congratulate Alicia Keys and Jack White for coming through with the worst title song for a Bond film in the history of the franchise. At this point in the life of the venerable film series, it takes a good amount of effort to be the single best or worst for any aspect of the franchise.
• Congratulations go out to Doctor Who Magazine for reaching issue #400. DWM is by far the best genre fan magazine ever published, with a long and proud history. It’s one of my favorite magazines to read month after month, and I look forward to 400 more (assuming I live that long).
• I mentioned Pushing Daisies winning a creative arts Emmy for composer Jim Dooley’s excellent score yesterday, but I forgot to mention that Varese Sarabande is going to be releasing a CD of his wonderful score on October 21.
• For years, I suffered through watching Heathers on crappy quality pan & scan VHS. It was the best there was for quite some time. Then came the widescreen laserdisc, and I was very happy. Later there were quite a few DVD releases, all of which were quite nice. They didn’t add much when they kept re-releasing it to DVD, but it was still nice to have some quality releases of the film out there. Now we get another big step in the video release history of this film, as it is being released in high def to Blu-Ray. I know that given the source material that this will hardly be any kind of reference quality demo material. Still, I would have never dreamed of ever getting my grubby little paws on Heathers in such quality back in the days of watching the horrid quality VHS. How very.
• Cool, there’s going to be another 3D Blu-Ray release - Journey To The Center Of The Earth. It’s a surprisingly fun movie, and I hope they can get the excellent 3D production quality well represented in the home video format.
• Looks like Fox is going to get it right with some very nice sounding Blu-Ray releases of the recent X-Files: I Want To Believe as well as the first X-Files: Fight The Future film. I’m very happy to see them including an isolated score (on I Want To Believe, anyway).
• Greatest news clip. Ever.
• MediaDefender - one year after the e-mail leak.
• And if you think MediaDefender was evil, try these dudes.
• GMail has added one of the cooler and more useful little features to their Labs list - forgotten attachment detector.
• As a new U-Verse customer, I’ve been keeping a close eye on news items about them. After Comcast’s bandwidth cap idiocy, people are misinterpreting and reacting wrong to news like this. That minor adjustment in their service statement is nothing like throttling. They’re just giving better definition to the way they divide your connection between data and video.
• Now this is my kind of humor
• I’ll get the many pending movie reviews started tomorrow. Gotta end my posting for today with this. I’m busy doing some rewiring of stuff, to best include the new U-Verse DVR unit.

• OK, time to resume the ponderings posts. I’ve got a ton of backlogged stuff to mention, so I’ll try to space it out for the rest of the week. Some of this stuff will be from over the last month or two (during my connectivity blackouts at the house).
• First, I must wish Battlestar Galactica a happy 30th birthday today. I was a Galactica fan as a little kid. I adore the original series, and I’m a rabid fan of the current remake - one of the greatest series in television history. Darth Mojo also posted a nice history of the cylons.
• Speaking of Battlestar, here’s a very cool look at the impressive book that was given to the cast and crew of the series when the series wrapped.
• Here’s an awesome bit of news from way back at Comic-Con: The character of Mary Ann Marie Beetle from Wonderfalls (one of the greatest TV series of all time) will be making an appearance on Pushing Daisies this season. Since that was also a Bryan Fuller show, it’s cool to see him cross over some characters. His mention of wanting the lead character of Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls to appear would be SO awesome if he could pull it off. There’s plenty of quirky characters from Wonderfalls that could easily drop into Pushing Daisies (which, btw, is the best show on network TV - which is a convenient way of ruling out Battlestar Galactica, being a cable series).
• Speaking of Pushing Daisies, congratulations are in order for their two creative arts Emmy wins last weekend. Both are well deserved, but I’m particularly proud of Jim Dooley winning a best score Emmy for the show. He does fantastic work on the series.
• And just to prove that I can’t get off the subject of Battlestar, I must also congratulate them on winning two creative arts Emmy awards as well. And like last year, Galactica took home a VERY much deserved visual effects award. No other TV series comes anywhere close to the fantastic vfx work that Battlestar cranks out. Most feature films should be jealous of the show. How they pull off the stuff they do on a TV budget and schedule is a mystery, but boy do they ever.
• While it’s fantastic news to hear via yesterday’s online chat with Warner Home Video that Night Court will be seeing another season set on DVD, as will Everwood (hopefully they’ll get this one right, too), and that Moonlight will be getting a release, it’s downright frustrating news that the brilliant folks at Warner really aren’t going to release the 4th and final volume of Animaniacs. It’s a darn good thing that Pinky & The Brain fit onto 3 sets, so it didn’t suffer the same retarded fate. Come on WB, finish what you started. Seriously, how stupid and annoying could it be to release 3 out of 4 sets for an entire series run then stop? For this one colossal screw-up alone, Warner gets the spot of worst studio for video releases in 2008. This completely negates all the amazing work you did with Blade Runner.
• Mr. & Mrs. Vader
• You think you’ve got dialing skills…
• An actual feral girl - and a sad story.
• Coolness. A TARDIS cabinet for MAME play.
• How to protect your car in a hurricane
• The awesome ninja cat
• The Dream Hamster, indeed.
• That’ll do for today. Much more will be on the way, including some movie reviews. I’m going to try and start doing at least a movie review a day. If I’ll actually manage that will be another matter entirely.

OK, ladies and gents, I think I’m back on the net for good now. As of this afternoon, I’m an active AT&T U-Verse customer. The rest of the story has been added to the Comcast Sucks page.