Movies
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I saw the movie, The Outfit
I liked it quite a lot – one review I saw consisted of “A mob movie for people who like mob movies” which sums it up perfectly. High concept, low budget, (taking place in only 3 rooms) all perfect dialogue and character selection.
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Saw Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
It was okay – Mads Mikkelson is great in everything he does – it was worth sitting through, no need to see it again. The production team did a great job on the visuals. Marleigh enjoyed it.
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was an all right movie
Not as good as the first two, but not bad. The cinematic output of Sweden is amazing considering the size of their population.
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Movies everyone should see – Holiday edition
Since I’ve been unswayed by the holidays this year, I’ve watched quite a few movies this year – here’s a partial list
- Anatomy of a murder – Jimmy Stewart at his best
- Dead Reckoning – A Bogart movie I had never seen before – another classic film noir
- Touch of Evil – Charlton Heston as a Mexican Fed (which he pulls off well), and Orson Welles as a fat, sweaty hard drinking cop, which he played well, but wasn’t that much of a jump.
- El Mariachi – a bit dated, but watchable
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All the King’s Men
I recently saw All The King’s Men, and was quite impressed. It joins the ranks of old movies everyone should see. Basically it’s the story of Huey Long, the populist and crooked governor of Louisiana.
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Watchmen Trailer!
It’s out early
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Mongol!
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Saturday rapid fire
- Dean Kamen’s Robot Arm – simply incredible. Why Kamen isn’t America’s most highly regarded public citizen is a mystery.
- The liberal media follows me around an takes notes – I had this conversation with some friends last week, it’s an odd coincidence. I don’t cry at movies but my the movies that come closes are The Virgin Spring and On The Beach.
- More HDR Photography
- Groupware is bad
- Russia’s Hypermortality –
Moreover, a large proportion of the Russian workforce may be too drunk to function. Almost one male death in three is alcohol-related. “The increase of alcohol consumption from 10 to 15 liters and an almost simultaneous increase in mortality suggests the central role played by alcohol to mortality, in average up to 426,000 per year in 1980-2001. Alcohol-related deaths total 29.6 percent of total mortality for men and 17.0 percent for women,” the report says.
- My next project is going to be something like this
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RIP Ingmar Bergman
Tyler Cowen has a short write-up here. He made two of my favorite movies of all time in The Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, both Symphonies in black and white. All very gloomy and subtitled, but magnificently done. His passing leaves the world without one of the best visual storytellers of all time.
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V for Vendetta
I finally saw the V for Vendetta movie and found it soils my memory of the comic. Gone was the grit of Evie, the violent mystery of V, the looming menace of the state. Replacing it was corporate angst, an ocean of improbabilities, and a third rate parody of the Bush Administration. Gone was all the base motivation, the insight into human nature, and a believable origin of the crisis. Instead we got soap opera, pandering nonsense, and an explanation out of a Michael Moore movie.
Somehow they turned a potent story of pure anarchism into a theme of left-wing resentment.
All that being said, it was well acted, especially by Steven Rea, who caught the essence of Finch very well.