The Z/Web Archive

I don't like big cities. I've been to San Francisco a handful of times, and usually the only thing going through my mind is "When can I leave?" However, this time I was taking a full day off of work to go to MacWorld Expo, and I had no pressing engagements or schedules to keep. I looked at the day as an adventure, and decided that I'd just enjoy whatever happened. Perhaps that new attitude helped. Whatever the reason, I had a good time, despite the traumas and few negative experiences.

It started out with the difficulties of getting to San Francisco. Even though I was driving through San Jose at 9 a.m., traffic was still bad, which surprised me: I figured everyone would be at work by that time. Driving in the City was even worse, though I tried to relax and tell myself to be calm. Nothing too terrible happened: I almost got run over by a fire truck; a few cars honked at me for not knowing what I was doing; I got stuck behind an armored truck for a bit when it pulled over for a pickup and the traffic going around wouldn't let me out; and I drove the same parts of downtown SF several times, trying to figure out how to get where I needed to go. In the end, I figured out the secret to driving in the big city: there are no left turns. If you can get there by turning right, you're fine, but with no left-hand turn lanes, you're toast if you want to go left. Of course the parking garage I'd selected was to my left, so I ended up having to do a complex loop to my right and then go past the road I was on to end up to that road's left and come back up it with the parking garage on my right. It took me a couple tries, but without a schedule, I didn't have to worry about being late.

MacWorld Expo was very exciting. My entrance badge hadn't arrived in the mail as promised, but they found on the computer in a few seconds and printed me one on the spot. Within ten minutes of arriving, I was inside the Expo. Moscone Center, where it's held every year, is divided into two buildings, North and South (you can move between the buildings via a wide corridor that goes underneath the street that divides them). I started off at the smaller North Hall and was very pleased with all the booths. Everyone was friendly, demonstrations of products were lively and exciting, and I got some free stuff (T-Shirts, CDs, etc.). It had been oh, maybe eight years since I last went to a MacWorld Expo -- I prefer the Seybold show, as it's devoted to Electronic Publishing -- and I was surprised to note that even I could see that the show was smaller than in the past. Curtain partitions had been erected around the perimeter so you wouldn't notice that the booths didn't extend all the way to the edges of the huge room. I don't know if the show wasn't sold out because of the economy or Sept. 11, but either way it was a touch sad. The expo organizers should have given more space to each exhibitor and used up that extra space: it would have felt like it was full. At any rate, the vendors who were there were excellent, and I discovered a number of products I'd never heard about, so that was good. At the REALbasic booth I met several of the REALbasic folks (REALbasic is the programming language I use), people I've talked with for years via email but never met in person. It was gratifying to walk up and not even have to introduce myself -- they recognized my name from my columns and the software I've written. Later, in the South Hall, I ran into Matt Neuburg, author extraordinaire, the guy who introduced me to REALbasic via one of his articles. We had a great chat and he said he was eager to contribute to my REALbasic Developer magazine.

The South Hall was filled with larger exhibitors, including a monster Apple site which contains hundreds of the new flat-panel iMacs. They were impressive, by the way. I'd read the technical specs before coming and knew they're excellent values, but seeing them in person you really get a feel for how fantastic those screens look. In the pictures, the new iMacs usually look like a bizarre kind of desk lamp (I call them iLamps). But in person, you really don't notice the base: the screen takes all your focus, and with it in front of you, it covers up the base. The result is that the computer is the screen. Very cool effect but one that must be experienced in person. Overall, however, the South Hall disappointed me: most of the vendors were big huge companies, like Canon, Olympus, HP, Epson, etc., that are only peripherally Macintosh related. It was good those companies were there, sure, but their offerings are skimpy and not exactly innovative (gee, another scanner, another printer, whoop whoop). I liked the booths of the small vendors best. Here you were often talking with the actual programmer who wrote the software, or the president of the company would be giving you the demo of the product. It was a much more personal atmosphere. Some of the larger places were giving impressive demonstrations, especially the video and 3D software products, but those places were crowded, the demos long and technical (some of that software takes years to master and that assumes you're already a video expert or artist), and the ones with chairs never had a free seat (I suspect most people just wanted to get off their feet). My suggestion to the Expo people would be to encourage more smaller exhitors. One thing I'd love to see, being a shareware author myself, is a shareware arena. Set up a large section with dozens of small booths, and allow several hundred shareware authors to promote their products. Each author wouldn't necessarily get an exclusive booth but perhaps a set few hours each day. The cost would be free or minimal: just travel and living expensives to be at the Expo would be more than many authors could afford, but the benefits would be tremendous. I'd love to be able to demo my software to live people, meet users face to face, and listen to suggestions and problems and ideas for improvements. I'm sure I'd reach a new audience, people that hadn't heard of Z-Write before, or didn't understand it but suddenly do when seeing it demonstrated.

By four-thirty I was exhausted. I'd wandered through the entire show, seen just about everything I wanted to see, and I was lugging around my big bag of Expo goodies and my digital camera. I decided to call it quits and get some food. It felt great to sit and relax for a while. I ate a leisurely meal and started reading the new programming book I got at the Developer's Depot booth. After dinner (I took an hour), I wandered over to the Yerba Buena Gardens area that's on the back of the Moscone Center. It was surprisingly pleasant. There's a nice fountain and a neat waterfalls and a little park. There's a museum or something, too, but I didn't go inside. I went over to the Sony Metreon building, which I'd heard about but never seen, and I wasn't that impressed. It's basically just a mall with restaurants, a multiscreen movie theatre, and a few Sony stores (there's a Playstation store and Sony Style, which sells Sony electronics and DVDs). One thing was cool: a series of kiosks which would beam a Metreon map and movie timetable to your Palm handheld. I had my Handspring Visor with me and was tempted to try it, but I didn't really need the info, and it just seemed unbelievably geeky, so I didn't bother to try it. I'm sure it works as advertised. In the Sony Style store I got a neat demo of a hardware/software package for the Mac that lets you control your entire Sony stereo system, in particular, Sony CD changers. You can connect up to 12 changers and the software automatically gets the ablum and song titles from the Internet for you, and then it can control the changers and play the correct CD/song when told to do so. You can even mix CDs and MP3s together in your playlist! It was very impressive, with some features that I really like. For instance, you can tell the randomizer to only play songs you've haven't heard in the last week (or month or 3 months)! There were also a zillion methods of organizing or searching the songs. It was very powerful, but the setup's expensive: $300 and that doesn't include the CD changer or the stereo system!

Finally, it was time to go to the REALbasic user group meeting. There was about a dozen of us there, and we got to share our concerns and suggestions with the REAlbasic team, and they gave us some hints and details at what improvements we can expect in the future. It was a great session: I was impressed at how open the RB guys were. They were honest and frank and willing to admit there were flaws in the product, and eager to hear from us users at what they could do to make it better.

It was ten o'clock by the time I got home. My parking garage bill was for $18, I got occosted by a begger wanting money for something I couldn't understand (he mumbled terribly), and I discovered a huge blister on my left heel from all the walking. Next time, better shoes. But overall, a good day. A pleasant change from the ordinary. I wouldn't want to do that every day, and I certainly wouldn't want to live in the City, but I'm glad I went. I've put up some pictures of MacWorld Expo, if you're interested.

This week was the big Expo, and I went every day to promote my magazine. I got to go to the Steve Jobs' keynote address, which was amazing, as usual. Apple introduced a lot of new software and some new PowerBooks. Plus, everyone at the keynote got a free copy of Apple's new Keynote presentation software (which is excellent). I had quite an adventure driving in San Francisco in the dark in the rain, including getting stuck on a steep hill. I think I'll take cabs from now on. Overall, though, it was a good show and a good week.

For some reason I'd never seen this film, the first of the series. Terrific! Much smaller and better than the sequels, this has fast action and good shoot-em-up style, but with some thoughtful story-telling. Max is a cop who's out for revenge after hoodlums murder his wife and child. Similar to Mel Gibson's recent Payback, but not as clever.

What's shocking about this film is that it's based on reality. It tells the story of a group of girls in Ireland in the 1960's (not so long ago) who are deemed sinners by society (i.e., they've had sex out of wedlock) and locked away in a convent laundry facility. Here the girls do penance with back-breaking labor, eat modest food, and have no privacy or rights of any kind. The nuns rule with the rod and the girls are not permitted to leave. They are scarcely permitted to talk! No one may visit them, not even family. Society is ashamed of them and wants to pretend they don't exist. While supposedly they're here for a finite length of time, the truth is they're here forever, and it's basically a slave camp. The film tells the story of three girls sent to Magnalene (we also get to know a fourth), and how they handle being there. They want to escape, but are afraid: the penalty could be severe. One girl is rescued by her brother, another locked up in a mental hospital, but the others must fight back to survive. It's a terrific story, a bit one-dimensional (not much complexity here), but well-told. The Catholic Church is upset by this film, and for good reason: we see priests taking advantage of the girls, nuns abusing them, and other horrors. It is possible that things were not as bad as depicted in the film, and I'm sure most nuns are not as evil as the one portrayed here. But considering that the girls did nothing to deserve their fate (no actual crime), it's criminal that they could be locked up like this with no rights to stop it. The scariest thing of all is that the last Magdalene laundress closed in 1996 -- just a few years ago!

One of the more successful episodic films I've seen, this movie blends the stories of multiple semi-related characters into one. Starts off excellently, but unfortunately, the build-up is for naught, as the film peters out without much of an ending (or explanation or revelation). Very long, but I didn't really notice as the characters and situations were interesting, especially the bits about the "quiz kid" boy being forced to compete on the game show to win his dad money. Excellent subtle performances. Only thing that felt odd was the excessive profanity -- every character seemed obsessed with using the F-word as many times as possible in every sentence. Do real people talk that way? I didn't think so until I watched the behind-the-scenes "diary" on the DVD (very good, btw), and it showed that writer/director Anderson talks just like that. I guess he's a genius. Whatever.

Simple little Cinderella remake about a maid in a fancy New York hotel who's mistaken for a guest by a wealthy senatorial candidate. A romance blossoms, but when the secret's revealed, will the fantasy end? Yeah right. Completely predictable, but still done with charm. At least with this kind of movie you know exactly what you're getting.

Terrific story about a hostage situation, with typical Deaver twists (though these are mostly predictable). A group of escape criminals take over a schoolbus with two teachers and eight girls of various ages -- the children and one of the teachers are deaf, all out on an outing. The main character's an FBI hostage negotiater who is older and wise but not perfect. We really get into the head of the deaf teacher, learning what it's like to be deaf, and the whole novel is filled with tension and hard to put down. Excellent.

Silly semi-parody movie about a white boy who wants to be a rapper and talks "black" -- but when that potentially threatens his father's campaign for governor, his dad hires black actors to pretend to carjack the boy and "scare the black out of him." Amusing premise and the film has a few funny moments, but it's generally too loud, too predictable, and too inconsistent. Mildly fun, but don't go out of your way for it.

This film has a lot of problems, but the main one is that there's no action for the first hour. For an action film, that's lame, but for an action film starring Vin Disel, that's terrible, because it means he must pretend to act for that first hour. Tip for Vin: take a hint from Stallone and don't take roles which require you to talk in complete sentences. Vin would be great in a film like Rambo: First Blood, but in a film like this where he's supposed to be emotional because his wife was killed by a drug cartel, it's just pathetic. The guy has a single expression on his face the whole movie and he utters lines as though he's struggling to read. Aside from Vin's weak performance, there just isn't enough action in this film. The plot is weak as well (though it has potential). Mostly these flaws are magnified by the film's glacier pace. I'd say run the film at 2x and trim the first hour to ten minutes and you'd have a decent little action piece.

I thought this was supposed to be a lame modernization of a classic novel, one of those films where they cast a lot of big name stars and the whole thing stinks. It turned out to be a serious, well-done movie. The writing was good, most of the acting was spot on (the casting was excellent), and the story terrific. But there were portions that confused me, either because I don't know that much about the characters or their time period; I found certain scenes to be rather staged and overdramatic as a result. (Like the ending, where the bad guys suddenly change sides. Their motivation was not well explained.) Cool flick. Might get old on a second viewing (once you know the plot); have to wait and see.

This is fine concept -- a political comic gets elected president of the United States -- but the film is too uneven and can't even follow it's own humor advice getting much too serious at times and even turning into a spy thriller at times. It's got some great stuff -- funny lines, Robin Williams, fake news segments, a SNL appearance -- but then it has awkward scenes that don't work and storylines that aren't connected (What did the manager's hospital stay have to do with anything?). in the end, while it's got some political bite, it needs to go much further (like Wag the Dog did). Not as bad as I expected, but you won't be laughing that much.

This is a strange and uncomfortable movie. It's two different movies in one and doesn't make a lot of sense. The script definitely needed another rewrite. It's about a troubled man with a mysterious past who takes on a job in Mexico as the bodyguard for a little girl. When she's kidnapped and killed, the guy takes it on himself to track down the kidnappers and kill them one by one. In the first half we meet the guy and see his relationship develop with the little girl. At first he wants to be cold and doesn't want to be her friend, but she gradually wins him over. It's touching and sweet, innocent and tender. But after the kidnapping suddenly the movie is explosions, blood splatter, and violent torture. It's an uncomfortable switch. The first half feels like a light-hearted family comedy; suddenly it's a dour, grim action movie. In his quest for revenge the guy has no scrupples whatsoever and it seems a deliberate tact on the part of the filmmakers to make us question if the guy's a good guy or not. That's not a good tact because the film should be telling us that, not forcing us to decide without giving us all the information. It makes watching the action uncomfortable. In Kill Bill: Volume One, another revenge flick, the attitude of the film tells us to root for the heroine even if we don't know why she's killing or if it's justified. I enjoyed the action in that movie, but not in this one.

Another problem is the ending, whch is bizarre and doesn't make much sense. I guess their's some "justice" to it, but I was expecting more. (Spoiler alert: stop here if you don't want the ending revealed.) In the film the bodyguard trades himself for the girl. That's weird because the guy already has the kidnapper's brother -- wouldn't he trade his brother for the girl? Yet he wants his brother and the bodyguard -- weird. Finally, I was expecting -- especially after earlier seeing the bodyguard's expertise with explosives -- that he would blow himself up with all the bad guys. But that didn't happen. Instead he was apparently killed but the film tacked on some text to reveal that the kidnapper was later caught by the authorities. What kind of wimpy ending is that? Lame lame lame. At least let him take out 30 bad guys in a bang, making his trading of himself make some sense. As it was he just let himself be slaughtered and it was just dumb.

Overall, a lame and poor excuse for a film. Not worth your time. If you want, rent it and watch the pleasant first half, but stop when the girl's kidnapped. Or just start it there and see it as a mediocre action film. But both parts together just don't fit and the ending is just pitiful.

Recommendation: learn something about Andy Kaufmann before you see this movie; you'll enjoy it more. I watched an Andy biography prior to seeing the movie and I'm really glad I did. Andy was a complex man -- by the time the movie explains enough of him to make sense to you, the film's nearly over. That said, this is an great film. Carrey's performance is fantastic -- he not only does Andy, but all of Andy's alter-egos (Andy was a man of a thousand faces). I never watched Taxi or really even heard of Andy before this movie, but I can tell he was a performer I would have liked. He basically enjoyed fooling people by pretending to be things he wasn't. He was the ultimate "boy who cried wolf." The film plays up the ironies inherent with such a character, showing us how the tabloid newspapers refused to run stories of Andy having cancer, when he really did, because they didn't want to be fooled by another Andy prank. This movie is a real mind-trip into the head of Andy Kaufmann. He's such a fascinating man I'm going to keep an eye out for him; I'd like to see more.

Terrific, awesome, fantastic film. This is filmmaking as it was meant to be. Great story, great acting, great moody black-and-white cinematography, great everything. I love the black humor. The story's about Ed, a barber who fell into the trade and doesn't think of himself as one. He's played by Billy Bob Thornton and I think it's Billy's best role and performance ever. Just awesome. He hardly talks and Billy's got to convey his character through subtle facial expressions, posture, and gestures. Anyway, it's 1949 and Ed hears about an investment in a new thing called dry cleaning, so he decides to blackmail his wife's boss to get the $10,000 he needs to invest. His wife's having an affair with her boss and he (anonymously) threatens to expose the affair unless he gets the money. This starts a complex chain of wild events. Eventually the boss is killed and Ed's wife is jailed for the murder. From there it just gets more wild! I won't say more because I don't want to give all the twists and turns away. Let's just say that nothing turns out the way you'd expect. Brilliant film.

One of my favorite Steve Martin movies. I was surprised none of my cousins had seen it -- I guess it's an Eighties movie. We laughed throughout, so either it was funny, or it was just because it was one in the morning. (My other Martin favorites are Roxanne and L.A. Story.)

I wasn't that crazy about the original, but then by the time I saw it I'd seen the same plot about fifty times in various TV shows. This film is decently done -- it's not a frame-for-frame remake but modernized and made relevant -- but there's no heart. I didn't really care about the characters: they were all stereotypes. There are some excellent performances and the direction is good, but at the end I was asking "Why?" Why did they bother to do that? Why did I bother to see it? Is the problem of mind-controlled politicians really something I need worry about? The bottom line: well done but not worth the bother.

This is von Trier's followup to the incredible Dogville; it picks up where there first left off, with the girl and her father leaving Dogville. (This time the girl is played by Bryce Dallas Howard instead of Nicole Kidman; I didn't think that would work, but it was fine.) The family travel into the south and happen upon a plantation called Mandelay where Blanche discovers that slavery is still very much in force. She is shocked and horrified and vows to free the slaves -- yet like all good intentions, the results are not as she expected. Are the slaves better off free? Without any assets or education, are the slaves actually free? Many such questions are asked as the film explores racism from many angles. I found this fascinating, especially in light of what's happening today in Iraq where we get similar adverse reactions from those freed from oppression. Unfortunately, while this film has some of the elements that made Dogville so astonishing, it lacks drama and punch. There are a few twists, and it tries hard to be shocking, but doesn't live up to the first film. It's not bad, exactly; I suppose if you hadn't seen Dogville you'd find it remarkable. Unfortunately most people who see this would have seen the first and in comparison this one pales. It's still interesting and worth seeing if you liked Dogville; just don't expect the same magic a second time.

Good film adaptation of the book. Faithful. The ending's a little weak, descending into a stereotypical action shoot-out thing, but overall classy and well done. This is the film that first brought Hannibal Lector to the big screen and though he doesn't have much screen time, he's well done by Brian Cox. Some of the best psychological stuff from the book doesn't get translated to the screen as well as I'd have liked, and the film seems mild compared to Silence of the Lambs, but it's certainly worth seeing.

What a neat DVD! In Dolby surround sound, the music is incredible. I love Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas music, and what's better than their classic tunes set to motion on ice? Here we've got a simple children's story, narrated by Olivia Newton-John, and the story acted by world-famous ice skaters like Dorothy Hamill, Elvis Stojko, and others. It's great. Children and adults will both love it. (I got mine at Costco, but Amazon doesn't appear to sell it yet.)

Excellent little gem of a film. It's about two sisters, 15 and 11, who are on their own when the oldest, Lo, discovers she's pregnant. Realizing she's in over her head, she and her little sister Manny kidnap a maternity store clerk to help her deliver the baby. Funny as a black comedy, with oddly touching performances (a very young Scarlet Johansson steals the show and makes the film work), it's a fun, quirky little adventure. Though nothing too unexpected happpens, I liked it a lot.

Shameless self-plug: I'm mentioned in a Wired News article that was posted today.

Well, I've finally gotten around to doing it. I've posted a list of the DVD movies I own. There's a permanent link at the top of my main news page, so you can check it any time to see if I've bought anything new. DVDs have become my new drug: I can't stop buying them. I have nearly 250 now. Keep in mind I only bought my first DVD player in August 1999! (I technically have three DVD players now, but two of them are DVD ROM drives in my computers, so I don't know if those count.)

My DVD page is pretty cool: you can view the list by Title, Genre, Director, Marc Rating, etc. I put the whole thing into a custom database I made so I can easily update it as needed. I'll be adding more categories and information as time passes. For now I just wanted to get the main thing up. Let me know of any suggestions you have to make it better and I'll try to accommodate you.

Today I leave on my big trip. Grandpa's still at Oakwood but will be discharged next week -- my mother will stay with him at my house until I get back on April 4. Meantime, I'm heading to Austin, Texas, for the REAL World 2006 conference, then on to Houston to see my cousin Tami, on to Nashville where I'll rent a car and drive to Maryville, Tennesee to see my aunt and Alabama where I've got some cousins and an uncle. I fly back next Thursday via San Jose where I'll spend the weekend and come back home the following Monday. Whew! It makes me tired just thinking of it! But flying beats last year's driving expedition.

I wasn't super excited about this documentary. Though I wanted to see it, my attitude was more like the way one views health food. I mean, how interesting can penguins be? To my surprise I was gripped by this amazing drama! It tells the story of how penguins -- the only creatures that can survive Antarctic winters -- travel many miles across the frozen desert to the nesting grounds where they were born. There they mate and the female eventually lays an egg. Then, exhausted by her ordeal, she makes the long trek back to the ocean while the male sits on the egg. Two months later she's back with regurgitated food for the newly hatched baby. The fathers have gone without food for four months and now they get to trek to the ocean to swim and find food. This cycle of swapping off parenting duties continues through summer, until the chick is big enough to survive on its own. It's just amazing that anything can survive such fierce winters. Many don't, of course; chicks die, parents die (and if a parent dies, the chick dies as well, since it cannot be left alone). It's a brutal, cold world, yet the beauty of these creatures is evident in their play. They joy they express at finding their mate or their chick is heart-warming. This is an amazing film, one you will definitely learn from. I found myself wondering for the first time why I'd never considered becoming a marine biologist. It really sounds like an interesting field (I had no idea we knew so little about penguins). Great film.

Really good film about a pregnant seventeen-year-old Columbian girl who is desperate for money and becomes a drug mule. She has to swallow over 60 thumb-sized rubber-coated pellets of drugs, fly to New York, and give them to those waiting for them. If a pellet leaks, she's dead. It's a harrowing tale, realistically done, revealing the horrors of such a life. But I liked that the film did this in an in-depth, personal way, showing us the anquish and challenge via close-ups of the girl's face instead of images of blood and other gruesome details. For example, in one crucial scene, while on the airplane to New York, the girl isn't feeling well. She has a bowel movement in the tiny airplane bathroom and is horrified to find one of the pellets in the toilet. She cannot be caught with it on her person, and yet she cannot lose it: the drug dealers know exactly how many pellets she has swallowed and if she loses even one, they will hurt her family in Columbia. So she's forced to re-swallow the pellet she just evaculated. It's a scene that could have been filmed to titilate, shock, or repulse a viewer, yet it's not filmed in any of those ways. Instead it's done in a cold, gritty, realistic fashion, where the girl just does what she has to do. We see the distaste and nervousness on her face, but the scene is not at all graphic or distateful. The power of the scene comes from the restrained emotions of the actress, where we sense her desperation and determination by what she's willing to do, not gory detail or gruesome special effects. Excellent film, surprisingly tame considering its serious subject matter. I loved the ending.

This is one of those films where the trailer's better than the movie. The trailer is brilliant: fun, funky, exciting, sexy, with a heavy rock beat. The film has some of that fun, but only on occasion -- much of the time the film's much too serious, with boring scenes of 18th century French court formality. There are some nice moments of humor -- the scene where a chilly naked Marie has to impatiently wait while women of various nobility are privileged to help her dress is hilarious in mocking royal ridiculousness -- but unfortunately those are few and far between. But the film's biggest flaw is that at the end we still don't know much more than we started about the characters: Marie seems to have had her life dictated for her, and other than a little partying and a couple tender moments with her daughter, we don't learn much of what makes her tick. And she's the deepest character we explore -- the rest are mere mysteries or shallow stereotypes. Though I liked Kirsten Dunst in the role of Marie, the whole thing was so mild and tragic I was terribly disappointed not to see her get her head chopped off at the end. Conclusion? Mildly entertaining.

The premise appealed to the guy in me -- a marine's wife is kidnapped by jewel thieves on the run so he goes after them, one man against many -- but the film didn't deliver much more than what you see in the trailer. It did have a few great lines and scenes (the black robber character was hilarious) but those were unfortunately well outweighed by mediocre action and an illogical script.

Story about a 17-year-old vampire. Unusual, well-done, but slow-moving, and for some reason, not really my taste. I found it rather boring.

I've been wanting to see this film for ages, though I really didn't know what it was about. I knew it won Oscars for best film, director, and actor (Ernest Borgnine). The story is great: very low key, about a humble butcher (Borgnine) who at 34 lives with his mother and isn't married. The film seems predictable -- Marty finds a humble school teacher and they develop a relationship -- yet some how it is fascinating. I watched for about twenty minutes and then realized I'd really been watching for forty-five; I hadn't even noticed. Very sweet, simple, and elegant, with humor, gentleness, and some valuable life lessons. Well worth your time.

This is one of Dick's rare mainstream novels, which are among his best works. This one tells the story of a unique young lady in 1950's Northern California as she struggles with existential issues and a disatisfied life. It's remarkable in many ways, though the story's simple and elegant, and it really captures life in the 50's. I liked it a lot, but I'm a PKD fan -- it might leave some people wanting more.

This was a made-for-USA movie I missed the first time around. I rarely pay attention to scandals, but this story was interesting, mostly because Mary didn't think she'd done anything wrong as the sex had been consensual. Oddly, she was treated as a rapist, which shows us the silliness of our judicial system. Well done TV movie, with good (if lurid) performances from the boy, Penelope Ann Miller (who played Mary), and the boy's mother (who was the best).

I wasn't too excited about this film, but when I heard the promos compare it to Gladiator I knew I didn't want to see it (I hated Gladiator -- it's one of the worst movies of all time). However, it was supposed to be good, and I decided it was my duty to see it. You know what? Unlike the pawning Gladiator, this one gives us a more subdued Russell Crowe. Sure, he's the ship's captain, but he's not perfect, and we sometimes see the doubt in his eyes, and we definitely see the tremendous burdens he carries (the lives of his crew, the fate of Britain, etc.). The story is unusual in that it's about the cat-and-mouse game between two ships off the coast of South America in the Napoleonic era. Crowe is the British captain and he faces a phantom ship, a French privateer that is larger and more powerful and seems to sneak up on them like a ghost. In the film we get an amazing look at what life was like in those days: how extraordinarily difficult even the simplest things were, and what primitive weapons and medicine were like. The film strives for authenticity and does an excellent job; however, the frentic battle scenes at the end are so realistically chaotic it's impossible to tell what's going on. You just basically hear explosions and see wood splintering and swords slashing and musket's flashing and people screaming and have to wait until the end to figure out what happened (you can't tell which side is which in the battle). The film's too long, but the story's different and interesting, and the visit to the Galapagos Islands was neat (though I wish they'd left out the superfluous and unrealistic hints about Darwinism). Overall I liked the film. It's not great or wonderful (not hugely original), but well-done, and the fact that we haven't seen a film like this in a long time makes it appealing. But it feels a little more educational and than entertaining.

Terrific film! Nicholas Cage stars as a con artist struggling with reality: he's obsessive compulsive to the max (he cleans his house constantly), and he begins seeing a shrink to help him cope with life. He learns he's got a daughter he's never met from an ancient relationship, and she wants to meet him. The fourteen-year-old girl is the antithesis of him -- wild, uncontrolled, impulsive, sloppy -- and when she has an argument with her mother, she moves in for a week. The daughter is played by Alison Lohman (White Oleander) and she's astonishly awesome. Like a real teenage girl, one second she's happily giggling, the next she's sobbing as her life is over. The result throws Cage over the edge, completely into unfamiliar territory. The girl wants to learn how to grift, and after some tears and persuasion, Cage teaches her how to con. It's obvious that the daughter's presence in his life is tremendously healing, and Cage talks about them becoming a family (he's going to file for joint custody). But then, of course, disaster. A big con goes bad, there's death and mayhem, and a big (but not completely unforeseen) twist. The twist is gimmicky and tends to erode much of what we thought we knew about the film, but it still works, mostly because of Cage's unexpected reaction to betrayal: it turns out to be the thing that kicks him out of his nest and into real life. The final scenes are charged with emotion and drama and finishes nicely, offering us a pat-yet-not-so-pat ending. I really liked this film, mostly because of the dramatic performances by Cage and Lohman. In retrospect you realize there's not as much depth as you thought while watching it, but the film still works. It may not be the most profound movie of the year, but it's fun, has great characters, a twisty plot, excellent direction, and is definitely worth seeing.

Frankly, I was disappointed by this movie. I'd heard lots of good things about it -- mostly that the story was really good (as in, it wasn't just a special effects movie). The story didn't do much for me. It was completely predictable. This might just be because I've been working on my own (unfinished) virtual reality novel and I threw out this plot about five years ago as being too cliche. Basically, the plot has Keanu Reaves as a guy who finds out his whole life is an illusion and it's up to him to save humanity from the machines that enslave them. (The whole bit about machines taking over the earth was ludicrous.) Still, the movie was well done, the special effects interesting (thought not great -- the "fast" fights were strangely slow), and some of the characters were pretty cool (Laurence Fishburne was great as Morpheus). But it certainly was not the spiritually moving, thought-provoking movie I'd come to expect based on the reviews. I got it on DVD with lots of extras and I haven't even bothered looking through them -- who really wants to study this limp movie like a religion?

In preparation for the sequel coming out, I decided to watch the original film again. As you may remember, I hated the original -- the depth of my hatred was proportional to the amount that most people loved it. While I still agree with my original assessment, I did like it much better on second viewing. For one, I knew I should ignore the silly spirituality hocus-pocus and just enjoy the movie as an action film. In that regard, it's really pretty good. Note that my perspective is tattered a little because I saw it first on DVD and by that time I'd seen the "unique" special effects mimicked in TV commercials and other films, so they didn't have the "wow" factor they must have for original movie-goers. I still think the film has too many logic flaws to make any sense at all (why in heck is a software agent harmed by virtual bullets???) -- but then I'm a computer programmers so I probably think of this stuff at a lower level than most people, who just enjoy the action. The arbitrariness of what's "real" and what's not real makes me feel I'm just being manipulated by the authors, who can change whatever rules they want in control of their plot (whereas good writers allow the plot to come to them and don't force scenarios). But if I ignore that and the meaningless "The One" psychobabble, I can enjoy this movie on a pure entertainment level. I am looking forward to the sequels, though I'm purposely keeping my expectations low. That way I won't be disappointed.

I can scarcely believe it myself: not only did I like this movie, I liked it better than the original. This time the action is so over-the-top it's almost into parody, yet the seriousness of the situation (Zion is in peril) keeps things on a level keel. The video game music during the key action sequences (very Tekken-like) personifies the film which feels like an elaborate video game. Those action sequences are like video clips in games -- the cool payoff to slower expositional scenes, which are like game puzzles you must solve before you can advance. The story is complex and overlong and unresolved (the film ends with "To be concluded"), but it does pay out new details about the Matrix, the machines that run it, and the human world of Zion. The biggest revelation -- major spoiler alert! -- is that the Oracle and all her prophecies were fake, controlled by the machines in order to manipulate Neo in doing exactly what they wanted. I liked that. However, there are still many questions, and the film continues to toy with its own rules to reality. For instance, it's implied that a software agent (Smith) somehow transfers himself to reality (out of the Matrix) and controls a traitorous human. That makes no sense at all. Still, this isn't a thinking person's film, despite the fancy pseudo-philosophical dialogue. It's an action flick. It's well done, with several impressive climaxes that drew gasps from the audience. The fights are often too long and repetitive, but generally do build appropriately. Overall, a good fun ride. The bummer is that we have to wait until November for Matrix Revolutions.

Not as bad as I expected. A bit long, and the all-digital special effects war gets a little old after a while, but a decent conclusion to the trilogy. Nothing too new in the story: it ends the way you'd expect, with Keanu "The One" saving the day. How he does this is a bit unclear and probably frustrating to true Matrix fans, but frankly I'm not one of those who finds much intelligence in the "philosophy" of the Matrix, so I really couldn't care less: I'm just glad it's over.

Disappointing, lackluster film. I loved the concept -- a fictional look at Hitler's life before his rise to power, while he was a struggling artist -- but unfortunately the film doesn't get much beyond the idea. It's slow moving (i.e. boring) and Hitler's odd rantings aren't particularly interesting. It's a nice try, but it fails.

Extremely uneven film. Had a few good moments, some amazing performances by Jim Carey, but the story was too fragmented and much of the comedy just didn't work. Some of the humor was just crude bathroom humor that even Carey seemed uncomfortable with, and other scenes just weren't funny, like the business with the cow that wouldn't die. Weak.

Interesting film that didn't seem at all controversial to me; I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. The film has a low-key plot: a group of teens go to pull a mean prank on a jerk for revenge, but things don't go as planned and the kid dies, leaving the survivors to face their guilt. What makes the film work is the realistic teen dialog, terrific performances from a young cast, an appressive atmosphere of doom throughout, and the way the script incorporates and demonstrates interaction between three age groups of kids (remember, for teens and pre-teens, just a couple years is like a decade, so even slight differences in age puts people in different groups). Unfortunately, the whole of the film didn't quite live up to the sum of its parts for me. I was left a little empty, wanting more and not getting it. The film really needed an extra twist at the end, something to hammer home a moral or modify the simple story we'd already seen. It's still a solid story and good movie, but it just misses being great by a hair. I also found the guilt by the main group to be a little unrealistic. For some of the characters it makes a lot of sense (they are sensitive and guilt is natural), but for the older brother, for instance, I thought it was overdone. That's in part because the death is partially accidental (one could argue almost completely accidental), so all the guilt is questionable. However, the reality is that these kids were feeling guilty before anything happened -- they were feeling guilty about what they were going to do. Unfortunately the audience doesn't feel that as much as the guilt later one, making the latter guilt have more importance than it should. Overall, an interesting film, but it doesn't break new ground in teen behavior or anything. If the kids hadn't shown any guilt -- like in River's Edge -- that would be more significant. That these kids are actually repentent is what's remarkable.

This was excellent; the plot's predicatable to an extent -- new girl has trouble fitting into school and figuring out who her real friends are and screws up but succeeds in the end -- but the perspective is fresh, coming from a female writer. High school cliques are mocked, girls obssession with fashion and appearance, etc. It's a bit like Clueless crossed with The Breakfast Club. Not particularly deep, but fun and funny, and well-directed and acted.

This is a remake of The Longest Yard (which I've never seen), except that instead of American football in an American prison, this is soccer (real football) in an English prison. Basically, the former English team captain gets drunk and assaults an officer and gets thrown in jail. There, he's recruited by the warden to coach the guards' football team. Instead, he proposes to coach a team of inmates against the guards' team. Of course others don't like this, and he must earn the respect of his fellow inmates before they'll trust him. All this leads to a climatic soccer match. Decently done, but unfortunately the premise makes it predictable, and the whole "will he throw the match" suspense at the end was pointless, since we knew he wouldn't (audiences would never have forgiven the filmmakers for doing that). I liked the soccer references, though I suppose some Americans wouldn't get them (like one of the guards telling a group of prisoners they'd just gotten a "yellow card" -- in soccer, that's a caution, or warning). Though the DVD does include American and British versions on it (I watched the British). At least I understood this one: if The Longest Yard included a lot of American football strategy and jargon, I probably wouldn't have understood it.

I'd heard this was a poor Jackie Chan film, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Sure many of the special effects were digital, but they needed to be with this kind of plot. The idea is that there's this ancient medallion and it can bring you back to life after death and give you supernatural abilities, and so those abilities had to be done digitally. The bigger problem with the movie is that it doesn't get to the main plot point until nearly half-way through (that's when Jackie dies) which makes the first half seem rather pointless. (Why not just get to him dying right away?) The tone of the film is also odd: one of the minor characters at the beginning, an overplayed idiot, turns out to be a major character and one of the good guys (I never would have guessed from the initial scenes). Since he's the only person in the whole movie playing for slapstick comedy, his scenes, while funny on their own, really clash with the rest of the "serious" film. The movie's got a few fun moments, a few neat effects, but is generally quiet forgettable, but that's not unlike most Jackie Chan movies.

Wow, what a wickedly perverse, freaked out film! If this had been done with human actors it would have been extreme, but not this extreme. This is the equivalent of finding your favorite children's cartoon character in a bar, swearing, drunk, and high on crack while raping a woman.

Australia director Jackson (who's now filming Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy) brilliantly satires everything under the sun by doing the film with puppets. Watching puppets behave like disgusting humans (complete with foul language, vomiting, bowel movements, crude sex, drug abuse, and violence) really shows you the insanity of society. Trust me -- watching various animal muppets get their heads blown off by a submachine gun will change your perspective on life (either for the better or the worse). Not for the faint of heart, but hilarious for those who can handle it. It's like a cross between a perverted Alice in Wonderland and South Park (there are several wicked songs, though I didn't find this film as offensive as South Park, because here there's a satirical purpose).

Excellent movie! Just the perfect mix of realism and exaggeration. The plot's simple: Ben Stiller plays a young man ready to marry his girlfriend, only first he must meet her parents. The parents are cautiously welcoming, but everything goes hilariously wrong. What I liked was that no one goes out of their way to make Stiller feel uncomfortable; what happens is a matter of clumsiness, bad luck, and Stiller's own push to appear the perfect son-in-law. Classic example: in a "friendly" water volleyball match, Stiller's team is criticizing his repeated mistakes. Finally Stiller has had enough. He rears up and hammers home a terrific spike -- and gives his girlfriend's sister a facial, on the eve of her wedding. Suddenly everyone's acting like Stiller's a serial killer. You feel tremendous sympathy for poor Stiller -- no one does the hapless-but-likable victim better. Hilarious, well-acted, well-written. A bit silly in places, but doesn't really hurt the film overall.

Not bad. At times I was worried this was drifting into typical recent-Disney crap where the story's just a loose excuse for lame jokes, but fortunately this came back around with a solid story at the heart. The story's about an orphan boy who is into inventing. Since he's too geeky to get adopted, he decides to invent a memory machine that will help him find his mother who abandonned him as a baby. Then we've got an over-the-top villain (complete with melodramatic black cape, pencil mustache, and yellow-toothed evil grin) who's traveled back in time to sabotage the memory machine, and a young boy time traveler who takes the inventor to the future where he meets the boy's wacky family. Some of the characters, like the toothless Grandpa, seem like excuses for those lame jokes I was talking about, but in the end the inventor boy has to learn a lesson, save the future, and find a family. Not quite up to Pixar standards, but better than recent Disney animations.

Wow, what a fantastic film! This, by far, is the best movie of 2001. It really pushes the film-making envelope. I was hesitant seeing it. I'd heard it was good, and also heard it was a little weird. Sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it makes for an "arty" film that's pretentious and boring. This was neither. It's a fascinating film noir where how the story is told is just as important as the story.

The concept is simple: the main character's a former insurance investigator who's searching for the man who raped and killed his wife. He wants to kill the murderer. There's one key problem, however: the man's brain injury has left him no short term memory. It's not amnesia: he knows who he is and where he came from, but he can't make new memories. So if he meets you, in five minutes he's forgotten it and he's introducing himself again. This makes criminal investigation a challenge, to say the least.

The guy has a solution to his problem: he takes instant pictures and writes notes to himself. The "my car" picture tells him which car in the parking lot is his. A photograph of a motel reminds him where he's staying. He can't use the telephone because he'll forget who he's talking to without a face in front of him. It's a bizarre life.

Director Nolan gets us into this life with an unusual gimmick: we experience the film in reverse. I mean the entire film is backwards! We see the end, where he kills the man who murdered his wife, first. Then we go backwards through his investigation, step by step. The film is entirely made up of flashbacks!

This no doubt sounds confusing. But astonishingly, it isn't. Everything is extremely clear (more than in many films). Normally we know the past and the future is unknown. In this case, we know the future -- he kills the murderer -- but we don't know the past. Just like him. But unlike him, we've seen the future and can remember it, so when we're seeing something from his past, we can put the two together.

The result is incredible: as we put the pieces together, we're constantly reevaluating our assumptions. For at each event, we assume that what we are seeing is reality. And it is, to an extent. The problem is that it's reality based on the guy's notes: he makes decisions based on what his previous self told him. This is the ultimate "blind-leading-the-blind" scenario! So a friend in one scene is an enemy, or maybe-enemy, in the next (previous). But since the guy can't remember what happened earlier, he can't tell when he's being played. A good example of this is how the motel clerk rents him a second room, just to see if he'd notice. He doesn't, and is paying for two rooms. And the scummy clerk openly admits this, knowing he'll have forgotten by the next time they meet!

I won't give away all the twists and turns of the plot: just go rent this film and watch it. It's amazing. You'll never think of reality in the same way again. It reminds me a great deal of the mind-bending stories of Philip K. Dick (especially A Scanner Darkly) and of the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys (which toys with time in a similar manner).

This is the kind of film you can see again and again: I can't wait to watch it another time and see all I missed in the first pass. Deep, complex, with fascinating kaleidoscopic characters that are always shifting. Excellent acting, by the way. Superior all the way around.

Today we had the Memorial Service for Grandpa. I had an invasion of relatives (about a dozen stayed at my house), which was nice and kept me distracted. First we stopped by the cemetary and watched a short presentation as Grandpa's ashes were placed in a crypt next to Grandma. That was very difficult for me. I couldn't watch but had to look away. During the Service I was to give a eulogy, which I wasn't sure how to do. Though I was close to Grandpa, I really only knew him for a fraction of his life. It's rather a challenge to summarize 91 years on the planet! I thought I was going to go later in the service, but apparently things were switched around and I was told, seconds before the thing started, that I would go on right after the opening prayer. That didn't give me time to reread and practice, which meant I was more unpolished than I preferred, but I was more worried at being overcome with emotion and being unable to finish (we had a backup reader if I couldn't make it). Fortunately, except for a minor flub or two, it went okay, and the main thing was that people really appreciated my unique perspective of Grandpa. My eulogy told stories about what I learned from him and thus at least wasn't dry and boring (which was what my aunt had wanted). I think Grandpa would have liked it.

After the Service we had a pot-luck dinner at the church, which was neat, as I was able to see some people I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. Grandpa had been one of the people who'd started the monthly pot-luck tradition at that church and they still do it today, though the church has had different leadership for many years now. Funny the way things like that stick.

I have created a Memorial Page for Grandpa on my website. It contains links to all my "Adventures with Grandpa" newsletters, pictures and audio/video clips, as well as audio files of the entire Memorial Service. I also broke out just my Eulogy, in case you just want to listen to that (it's much shorter than the entire service). It's all MP3 and MPEG, so it should work on any computer platform.

Disappointing sequel. Sure, it was fun, and there were some good gags, but most of it was a retread, and while I thought the premise of agent J recruiting agent K in this film (the reverse of the first) had some hilarious potential, it turned out to be a minor affair (K had his memory restored and that was that). The original picture had a great plot with multiple things happening and multiple tasks for the heroes to accomplish: this one was far too linear, and the film over too soon. Good for video, but don't bother with the theatre.