Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Movies 2012

6/24 Brave
6/20 Snow White and the Huntsman

5/11 Dark Shadows
5/9 The Avengers x4
5/6 Safe


It's been a very light month for me for reading and seeing movies as we've been on the road: seven weeks, over seven thousand miles. We did see The Avengers four times: opening weekend in El Paso in 2-D, in Denver for a friend's birthday in Imax 3-D (WOW!), in Omaha in normal 3-D, and in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2-D. The Imax 3-D is absolutely amazing, highly recommended. I've been wanting to see an Imax 3-D for a long time, and this was a great film to experience it for the first time in. One very cool thing about seeing the same movie four times in a month is the nuances that you pick up, for example, I finally spotted the shwarma sign.

But let's talk about the others.

Safe had a lot more story than I expected. It stars Jason Statham who encounters a very young Chinese girl who has, chasing after her, Chinese mob, Russian mob, and crooked NYPD cops. Statham lost his wife and unborn child to events best not explained in a review, and he has no love for this particular group of cops, so you got fast fists of fury very quickly. Like I said, there was a lot more story than I had been expecting, and I think they carried it off very well. Obviously it had excellent fight sequences, and I loved the ending.

The Avengers, if you hadn't gathered, I quite liked. It was an excellent culmination of the preceding movies: Iron Man 1 & 2, The Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. They had to substitute out the actor in The Hulk, but that worked ok and he did a good job in that role. I think the studio did an excellent job of bringing in Joss Whedon: it's a very good script with tight dialog. I'll bet he had a blast making it, and I'm really looking forward to the DVD and his commentary. And my wife is also happy because she can now not give money to Penn State's alumni fund as Joss can float them for a while (he was a year before her, but their paths never crossed).

Dark Shadows. Well, what can you say. Another Tim Burton/Johnny Dep flick. It was OK, not much better. Kind of fun, of course it set up a sequel, but not much repeat value for me. I enjoyed the 1970's tributes, though I believe it had more than a few anachronisms. Decent enough for a discount theater price.

Snow White and the Huntsman. We saw this in Ohio and were rather disappointed. The special effects were fantastic, but the story basically sucked. I won't bother learning her name, but the girl who headlined the Twilight movie series plays Snow White, and in my ever so humble opinion, I don't see how she could be called The Fairest In All The Land. Charlize Theron plays an amazing wicked queen and her magics are very well animated. So, great for the effects but kinda lousy for the story. My wife doesn't like Snow White's seeming permanent sneer.

Brave. Caught this in Chicago with friends and it was fun. It was unusual for a Disney movie in that BOTH PARENTS WERE ALIVE AT THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE MOVIE! Maybe that was Pixar's influence. As typical with Pixar movies, the animation was very impressive. It was a good story with good effects, a coming of age and coping with responsibility story. Definitely recommended, and a good buy when it comes out on digital.


Books 2012

6/14 John Scalzi: Redshirts
6/10 Ernest Cline: Ready Player One

I've had a few books that I started and stopped that I'm in the process of finishing, so these are the only two that I completed during our trip.

Ready Player One is an interesting romp in a very economically-depressed America, near-future science fiction. It's based around a video game called Oasis, which is pervasive around the world. It is used for everything: ecommerce, education, entertainment, etc. It's technically part of the internet, but it's so pervasive that no one thinks about the internet per se anymore. The co-founder of Oasis died, and broadcast his will to every member of the Oasis community. In brief, it presented a challenge that the first person to win through three challenges, collecting three keys, and going through three gates, would win the ownership of Oasis and the company behind it. The competition gets fierce, with the world's largest ISP who wants to own OASIS actually committing murder to further its advancement. But, in my opinion, as good as a plot as that is, the cool thing about it is the recapturing of 80's movie, music, and gaming nostalgia. I really enjoyed this book, it was definitely a page-turner for me, and I heartily recommend it.

Redshirts, by John Scalzi, was fun. It involves the crew of a spaceship, out on its mission of exploration. Several new members of the crew begin noticing certain odd things, such as all of the senior members of their department disappear whenever a member of the command crew visit. Or the fact that if they're on an away mission with one command member, no one will die. But if there's more than one crew member, the odds of a minor crew member dying go up considerably. Obviously Scalzi is running amuck with the red shirt trope in Star Trek (which gets a passing nod) and having a lot of fun with it. I liked the book overall, but I'm not sure what I thought of the three epilogues at the end. They wrapped the book up nicely, I think maybe they would have worked better if they'd been woven in to the narrative rather than just tacked on at the end in standalone chapters. Still, lots of fun and a quick read.