Z/Web

I recently caught a replay of this series on the SciFi Channel and I'm glad I did. My recollection of the cheesy 1970s kids show was fuzzy and influenced by my adult standards of acting and special effects. Yes the original show was cheaply made with bad stop motion dinosaurs and horrible green screen effects, but the heart of the show was some quite brilliant science fiction, especially for a Saturday morning kids show. Extremely ambitious and innovative, and not actually that badly done considering the budget and the available technology. So I was looking forward to the film. I pretty much got what I expected. While I'd be interested in seeing a "serious" Land of the Lost film, this one was done as a comedy, and as such it works. It's fun, entertaining, and utterly mindless. I like the way they changed things but kept them the same. For instance, instead of a dad and his two kids being lost, it's a scientist, his colleague, and a stranger: the characters all have the same names as the original ones, giving it a familiar but different vibe. In another terrific move, the producers incorporated the cheesy TV show theme song in the film, but thankfully not as the main score, merely as a comic banjo scene. The film does that with a lot of familiar things from the show: what is old is new again. Of course the dinosaurs and special effects are terrific, and in the end you get what you expect: a silly romp with action set pieces and comic gags. My only real criticism is a minor one: there's some surprisingly adult humor in the film, which I found odd considering the target audience. Many adults who saw the series as a very young children probably assume they could bring their kids and this has some sexual innuendo, a drug scene, gay jokes, and other inappropriate topics. I think the writers could have been more imaginative in their source for humor. But other than that (and the adult stuff is not that bad), I liked the film. It's mindless and silly, but you'll laugh and forget about it.

I have a love-hate relationship with con artist movies. Much of the time they are too clever for their own good, becoming so convoluted they lose any thread of story. Often I'm so aware of being deceived that I give up caring. I feared that in this one, but I'm glad to say that this film, though it treads the line at times, succeeds. The key is what happens at the very beginning, when the younger Bloom brother can't get up the courage to talk to a girl so his older brother invents an elaborate scam and gives him a role to play. With a script, so to speak, the younger Bloom blossoms, and that becomes their life. Unfortunately, by the time he's 35, he feels he's never actually lived, and longs for "an unscripted life." The script is brilliant: for as the brothers go to pull off one last con we are reminded that the best cons are when everyone gets what they want, so how can Bloom get an unscripted life? The object of their con is, of course, a woman: a wonderfully quirky woman, and of course Bloom falls in love, against the script's rules, and that sets up a marvelous adventure. I won't spoil the story with any more details, but if you're a fan of con films, I must conclude that this is the ultimate one. That's because instead of just coning money or even coning bad people for good reasons, this film is all about con artists coning themselves. That's the ultimate con: a con so good even they believe it. Terrific. Strongly recommended.

Interesting grouping of stories surrounding a murder victim. We follow the woman who discovers the dead girl's body, a woman looking for her missing sister, the killer, and the dead girl herself. Nothing much is repeated during the stories, which I liked (the somewhat similar Vantage Point got really old as so much was repeated); instead we just learn about the impact of the dead girl on various lives. It's surprisingly intriguing, though in the end, I'm not sure we're left with much: it's merely a tragedy with no explanation or resolution. Sad. But I guess I should have known that from the title. Impressive cast, though, and well-done. But not for all tastes.

This is a period film about the controversial Spanish painter Goya, during the Inquisition, involving his muse, a young model who is Inquisitioned due to her connection with Goya. Not quite what I expected. There are the salacious aspects of torture you'd expect, but it's both glorified and unrevealed, which is odd -- if they are condemning it, why hide it? The main problem is one of focus: is the film about Goya, the girl, or the strange priest? The girl's the most sympathetic and the one we understand the most, but much of the focus is on the others, and unfortunately those people remain mysteries. The spans a large number of years and by the end I found myself more confused than enlightened. Interesting, but in a limited way, like a historical documentary. I would like to have learned more about Goya, but we are only connected to him via the story of the girl, and he remains a question mark.

I am breathless. This is an extraordinary film. The previews hadn't told me much: an old guy attaches balloons to his house and floats away. But in retrospect I love that so much is left out of the previews. Too many films give away all their best material in the trailers. Much of what makes this film great isn't in the individual scenes, but the cumulative story line. The opening five minutes, which is pretty much a montage of 70 years of a man's life, is a complete film in itself. We see a little boy and his fascination for adventuring, his meeting a like-minded girl, their marriage and life together (through both good and bad), her death, and him becoming a grumpy old man. It's beautiful, poignant, funny, heartfelt, and absolutely wonderful. It's also almost entirely wordless, so the story is conveyed via the visuals. If the film had ended right there I could have gone home happy!

But the film continues, with the old man doing the balloon thing and going off on his adventures in South America -- but what makes that significant is entirely due to his relationship with his late wife. Why do we care about an old man going ballooning? Because his wife dreamed of adventuring all her life but they never got around to doing it. This is his making up for a 70-year-old promise to the little girl he met, and your heart just goes out to this wonderful old man. But of course the folks at Pixar are absolute master storytellers (they don't put a foot wrong in this movie) and we see how the old man changes and grows, due to a little boy he meets and the adventures they share. It's magical. If you can watch this without tearing up at least once somewhere, you don't have a heart. That's not to say it's a weepy film: it's mostly comedy, but that lightheartedness just makes the tender scenes that much more powerful and emotional. The adventure itself is wild and wonderful, just the perfect mix of silly humor and real danger (the obstacles the old man faces are not for the faint of heart at all, as this film actually shows death and even blood in a couple places). The bottom line is that this is a story you will fall in love with and you'll watch with bated breath rooting for the old man to succeed. Absolutely an instant classic, a film we'll still be amazed with a hundred years from now.

This is a fascinating documentary about the New York Cosmos soccer team of NASL (North American Soccer League) back in the 1970s. I knew some of the history, but I did not realize how extraordinary it was even at the time. Today we compared soccer in the U.S. to American football here -- but back then American football wasn't nearly as big as it is today (the Superbowl and televised games were just becoming popular), and soccer wasn't even played by kids in the U.S. (kids playing all started because of the Cosmos). The film shows how Warner Communications' head Steve Ross got involved with the team which at that time was really only semi-professional (the players all had separate jobs to make a living) and turned it into one of the best teams in the world, regularly drawing crowds of over 70,000 to Giants Stadium (which was then newly built). Ross did this by luring Pele, the world's greatest footballer (both at the time and all-time), for millions of dollars. I found hilarious the little montage of news reports and various people each throwing out wildly different amounts of how much Pele was supposedly paid, from as low as a million to seven million (the real amount is lost in history, no doubt). This was a multi-year deal, but what shocked me was the comparison to other sports figures at the time: the highest paid baseball player in the world was paid just $200,000 a year -- so Pele getting millions really was extraordinary. Another thing I found telling was the comments that Pele came to play and didn't complain about the conditions (horrible field, etc.) or the fact that the team initially sucked and Pele alone wasn't enough to create a winning team (contrast that with David Beckham's stint in L.A., where he seems unhappy to be on a losing team). To create a winning team Ross repeated the Pele formula bringing in numerous world class players so the Cosmos was essentially an all-star team with 14 nations represented. I was also surprised that this didn't happen all at once -- Pele's Cosmos didn't win the championship until his final year with the team, and when they won it several more times they did it with others. Since Pele is the main name you hear with the team, I had assumed he was part of all the championship teams, but he was not.

Of course the story has its downside, as the league collapsed. I wish the film had more about that (I'd love to see a documentary on the NASL itself), but of course this film is about the Cosmos. Still, some of the reasoning is explained: the league over-expanded (to a whopping 24 teams) too fast (there wasn't enough talent for all the teams and play suffered), many of the team owners couldn't afford losses, the Cosmos' high spending ways created an imbalance compared to other teams with smaller coffers, TV coverage that failed, and ultimately, when Warner Communications started to struggle and the Cosmos faced cutbacks (and eventual dissolution), that signalled the end of the league. In retrospect, Major League Soccer has fixed most of the problems of NASL (MLS has a shared structure, so all owners share in the entire league's profit/loss and no one team can outspend all the others). MLS has it's own issues -- mostly the fact that soccer here is still not as popular as other sports -- but I do appreciate that MLS' chief goal is to built a solid foundation for a league that will be around for hundreds of years, not an ill-conceived flash-in-the-pan like the NASL. Still, MLS -- and American soccer -- would not exist without the Cosmos, who certainly drew world attention and started a soccer foundation here in the United States. Very well done documentary.

This is a remarkable book. The author is a former advertising executive who examines media at an unusual level, exploring how it shapes society and religious faith. As a technologist and a Christian (and amateur sociologist), I found this fascinating. The basic premise is the concept of "the medium is the message," a phrase you've heard but probably not understood. Shane breaks it down to reveal things like how printing (and phonetic language) change the way people think. For example, printed material by its nature encourages linear thinking, and it creates a different culture than an oral society. Today we're awash with new communication methods, from radio to TV to the Internet, email, blogs, podcasts, cell phones, instant messaging, Twitter, and who knows what to come. If the medium is the message, what is the message? And how does technology influence your faith? Great questions.

For answers, Shane shows how technology has influenced things in the past. For instance, the telegraph dramatically changed the speed of information, but that itself changed the value of it: instead of information's value coming from its quality or depth, its timeliness became the most important thing. (You can see similar things happening today with blogs being valued over well-researched books.) There are profound lessons there.

I want to point out that while this is a book about the religious aspects of media, it's not overly religious: I really appreciate that the author doesn't come across as preachy. Instead he merely tells great stories and provides examples and information about his perspective. I would recommend this to anyone, even skeptics, because it's all about how the medium influences your thinking and the lessons learned can be applied to anything in life.

My great-uncle sent this book to me and I started reading it the moment I got home from the post office this afternoon -- I couldn't put it down. I read it cover to cover in one sitting! I can't remember the last time I've done that with a book (not since childhood, that's for sure).

This is a breezy read, a thriller about a President who might have committed several murders. While there's not much depth here, and nothing truly surprising happens, it's still quite compelling and very pleasant. The author, while not a master, is competent and puts together characters and scenes and action in such a way that you speed from one chapter to the next, eager to confirm what you think is going to happen. There are some twists, but nothing that dramatic, and though the book deals with grave topics, it doesn't feel at all series. Fun.

I haven't seen this classic since the 1980s and I'd forgotten how good it is. Especially in light of the recent financial meltdown of Wall Street, this film takes on a new meaning (we haven't yet learned our lesson). It's somewhat predictable -- young guy gets his big Wall Street break but must sacrifice his ethics to do so -- but the setup and excecution is excellent, as is some of the dialog. The film has got too much of an anti-corporate message to be balanced, but some of the film's most important lessons are even more relevant today (such as the bit about Gekko, the corporate raider villain of the film, not making anything but gaining incredible wealth through owning and selling). Worth a rewatch if you haven't seen it in ages. Some of the stuff is very 80s, though, especially the hilariously primitive computers used by millionaire stockbrokers.

This is a kids film about a kid who's always telling stories (lies) when he uncovers a plot to kidnap the president's daughter (who is scheduled to visit his school) but of course no one will believe him, so he has to stop the plot himself. It's got some surprisingly good stuff -- the main kid cast is excellent (it includes the girl from Bridge to Terabithia who is awesome) -- and could have been terrific except that there are several adult characters overacted so badly that they come across as cheesy and childish. I'm not sure why aspects had to be dumbed down like that: I guess it's adults who think that kids need to be talked down to, and it's very odd in this since the main kid characters are quite adult-like (the boy is smarter than most of the adults). The bottom line is that the film is silly fun and very family friendly, but unfortunately to uneven to be great.

I was surprised at how much I liked this. The first one was fun but I wasn't sure where they could go for a sequel, but this one succeeds by moving most of the action to a different museum so there are fresh characters brought to life and a bigger stage. It's still absurd but has a pleasant heart. A few places are surprisingly slow with odd exchanges of dialog that doesn't quite work, but for the most part this is quickly paced with non-stop fun. Amy Adams is delightful as Amelia Earhart who joins our hero in his quest to save his friends. There's nothing brilliant here (though the special effects are effective and pervasive) -- you certainly won't strain your intellect, but it's fun and harmless.

Pretty good spy flick about an American Muslim who goes deep undercover to stop some terrorists, so deep his own government doesn't know he's a double and is trying to stop him. Unfortunately, that double agent aspect is clear from the title (I expected it) yet the film sets everything up as though that's a surprise somehow. That weakens things, but it's still a good film even though there aren't many surprises. Excellently written and acted, and there are hints at the debate on faith though the film doesn't get as deep as it could. It's a little too serious overall, quite somber, but has a good ending.

I wasn't going in with the highest expectations, but I really enjoyed this film. It's non-stop action from start to finish, with the rebel heroes continually getting out of the most incredible jams when it seems the odds are totally against them. The story isn't too complicated, but complicated enough: it's in the future during the war against the machines and John Connor is trying to find and save the man who will be his father (in the first movie). What I really liked is that the film tells the story of several groups of people and it does it in a non-rushed manner (most films give short shrift to secondary storylines). Another positive is the wide variety of machines we get to see: underwater snake-like machines, motorcycle-bots, giant multistory Transformer-like robots, and of course, a number of Terminator models. With such variety, the action sequences feel fresh and different, and the ways the humans escape death come out of the situation and tools at hand and don't feel forced like in some flicks. There's definitely a ton of explosions here: they must have spent half the budget on dynamite, though there are some other excellent special effects. All this is not to say the film's perfect: in a couple places the acting/writing/editing felt off, just awkward, but that's minor. For the most part the cast is great (though unknown) and the story fits in well within the Terminator lore. I wouldn't describe this film as being innovative the way the original and sequel were, but that's a tall order and this one is certainly better than the third film, maybe even better than the first. Definitely a great summer action movie. Go see it!

Fantastic novel, very different from Kurt's humor stuff. This one is the story of a purported Nazi criminal from WWII told first person from his prison cell in Israel where he awaits trial and execution. As his story unfolds, we learn new pieces of information about the guy that make him sympathetic (i.e. he might have been a double agent working for U.S.). We learn about the good things he did as well as the bad, and he's quite willing to accept the blame for his faults. There are a number of little twists in the story, which keeps it moving, but the main thing that makes it work is the personality of the narrator. It's a remarkable story. It gets a little convoluted toward the end, but the ending itself is thought-provoking and makes you wonder question absolutism.

This is a strangely claustrophobic film. A fat Jared Leto stars as Mark David Chapman in the days before he killed John Lennon, and the film is mostly him muttering insanely to himself and acting bizarre. I knew little of the story other than knowing that Chapman killed Lennon, so I was curious about the film, but I sadly did not come out knowing much more. The most enlightening aspect was Chapman's apparent reluctance to kill Lennon: he was a fan and was arguing with himself over the killing, apparently unsure he wanted to do it but hearing voices and urges to do it. Of course I take that info with skepticism as I'm not sure how accurate this bio-film is, but if it's true, it is something I didn't know. We also get a glimmer of insight into Chapman's reasoning: he felt betrayed by Lennon, someone he worshipped. Unfortunately, too much of the film feels overindulgent and self-important, with weighted words and dramatic pauses, as though we're supposed to feel the profoundness of the thoughts and comments. Perhaps ironically that is the same mistake as Chapman himself, who mutters nonsense that is supposed to be profound; the film falls into the same trap. Ultimately, just read an article about the crime: you'll save yourself 85 minutes and learn more.

This is another Lincoln Rhyme detective novel, with Rhyme up against perhaps his most formidable foe yet. This time he's going against an information guru, a guy who knows everything. He's an identity thief who uses computerized info about people to commit crimes and set up the perfect fall guys who are convicted of the crimes so he's never caught. Since he knows everything about people, his frame-ups are amazingly air-tight, but in this book he makes the mistake of setting up Lincoln's cousin, which brings Lincoln into the investigation and of course that sets up his downfall. The book is quite thick and long, as Deaver's books usually are -- this one moves pretty well but feels too long and it should have been about 75% of its length. For the most part I enjoyed the action, and the computer/tech stuff was, except for a few odd errors, pretty accurate and interesting. A large part of the novel centers around the debate over consumer privacy, and the book raises a lot of good concerns (not the least of which is the killer's ability to know everything). Unfortunately I was not as big of a fan of the ending of the book, which has too much of Deaver's typical manipulation (just tell us the story and stop trying to be clever and screw with our minds), and the climax is pretty much a big fight which is anticlimactic. I would have preferred a more tech-oriented ending, something more worthy of the intelligence of the opponent than a mere fight. But all that said, this is an above average Lincoln Rhyme novel, and worth the read if you're a fan.

Basically this tells the mythical story of the Loch Ness monster's origin, about a little boy in Scotland who finds an egg which hatches into a "water horse." It's a decent film, beautifully photographed and acted, and I loved that it's set in the past (the events happen during World War II) as that adds unusual elements. The digital creature effects are also remarkable. Unfortunately, the story itself is nothing surprising -- boy befriends creature, creature is threatened, boy tries to protect creature, boy's life threatened, creature saves boy, etc. It's the same plot as E.T. and dozens of other movies. Decent, fun, harmless, but nothing classic.

I will begin by saying that this film is not as bad as the book, and it's much better than the first film. Of course, those were so bad that is not saying much. Still, this has some compelling action, and the science-versus-God debate is kept at a neutral-but-still-interesting level. It still has many of the flaws of the book, but they are not as noticeable in the film. It follows the book's plot pretty well, as near as I can remember, with terrorists planning on blowing up Vatican City while a new pope is being elected. Robert Langdon, the professor character from other book, must decipher ancient clues to figure out where the bomb is located and stop it. The puzzles he solves go by at such a pace they are almost irrelevant, which is fine, but director Howard generates surprisingly decent action from such expository material. It does start to feel long toward the end, however, and just like in the book, the ending is one twist too many and unravels everything built up so far. Still, it's fun, and too dumb to warrant any controversy.

This is a modern fable about a rich girl cursed to look like a pig until she can find a blueblood like herself to love her unconditionally. It's a fun premise and I remember fleetingly seeing something about this film when it came out, but it sure disappeared fast. I thought it must have been awful, but it's not at all: it's quite well-done and a lot of fun. The twist with the cure for the curse is brilliant, and there are other surprises. The problem is the make-up job is too good. Christina Ricci is one of my favorite actresses and she just looks breathtakingly adorable in this, even with a pig's snout! That's a problem because the main premise of the film is that she's supposed to be so hideous that she can find no suitor. Basically the first half of the film doesn't really work because it's unbelievable that so many men can't see that she's gorgeous (the pig's nose is so well-done and natural it's hardly noticeable). Later, when the world finds out she exists (she's lived in seclusion her whole life), the world loves her, which makes the first half even more of a puzzle. But beyond that little flaw, the film's fun and quite delightful. It's not quite a classic, and there are some odd scenes that don't quite work, but it's got a wonderful cast and the story is quite pleasant. Recommended.

Quirky little Stephen Chow action-comedy. Like all of his stuff, this is best described as a live-action cartoon. This is one is a bit more magical than some of his films, with much less martial arts (he, in fact, doesn't do any). Instead the film focuses around a young boy (Chow plays his father). The boy's dad is incredibly poor but sacrifices everything to send his kid to private school where he is mocked for not being wealthy. The boy and the dad don't always get along, which is done in a surprisingly realistic fashion (considering other aspects of the film are a bit fantastic). One day the boy's dad finds a strange rubber ball at a junkyard and brings it home for his son. It turns out this "ball" is really an alien creature left by a spaceship and it morphs into a sort of alien dog that is able to do magic. Or is it? The boy wants to use the "dog" (which he names CJ7) to help him out at school (cheat on a test, win at sports, etc.) but things don't quite work the way he expected. I won't spoil the ending but let's just say it's very good. The alien dog is CGI, of course, with clever and fun digital animation tricks as typical Chow. My favorite was in a school fight scene when a bully gets beat up a fat girl -- she punches him and he goes flying like 100 yards and when he lands and screeches to a halt, his shoes leave rubber tire marks! Overall this is a fun and quite wonderful and touching film. It's not E.T., as it's got silly cartoony elements, but I liked it a lot. The most delightful thing was when the characters didn't act stereotypical as you'd expect, but did surprising things instead. That's very unusual for this kind of film. Fun!