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Flatland: The Movie

on Mon, 01/22/2007 - 08:38

I am very, very happy that Flatland is finally being turned into a movie. And it looks like it will be beautiful.

All People Are Critics. Some Are More Critical Than Others

on Thu, 12/21/2006 - 15:05

Today I wrote my first movie review.

One of the big, ongoing projects at work is development on Spout.com, a movie discovery and discussion website. Several of my friends are regulars, so I finally bowed to peer pressure and created an account for myself. My user name is “Grasshopper”.

The first thing I did was to rate all of the movies I had seen. Simple enough to do…find the movie, and assign it a number between one and five. Before I knew it, I had rated over five hundred movies, and I am now up over a thousand. And that isn’t even counting all of the TV series’ and individual television episodes which can be rated; those would probably push me into the 2000 range.

Normally I try not to shill for the projects I work on, but this time something unexpected happened: I had fun. I went through and found movies I hadn’t thought about in twenty years or more. Some of them were good, many more were mediocre or bad. Some of them made me feel quite nostalgic, accompanied by an odd sense of deja-vu wherein I could remember where I was and what I was doing when I watched the movie. Poltergeist with my brother and step-brother in Louisiana. Robocop with my brother, at home laying on the living room floor. The Crow with friends immediately after I returned from Russia. Star Wars with my Mom and brother in a movie theater in Jackson. The Razor’s Edge, sitting home surrounded by stacks of books.

Martial Arts is the only film genre I watch with a seriously critical eye, and I watch a lot of martial arts films. If I post a review of which I am particularly proud I will announce it here. In the meantime, browse around and see if you rediscover any old favorites.

Me and You and A Dog Named Boo

on Wed, 06/22/2005 - 10:08

Things are kind of slow at Steelcase right now, so I am working from home. I haven’t done this in months; not since the 6-week vacation between jobs back in February and early March. Much to my surprise, I am being fairly productive. So far, I have worked out some of the data structure-and-flow issues in a SAP training game; I have installed TextPattern for one client, and am piecing together the logic for the secure client login for another client.

I find I have a difficult decision ahead of me: Ferris State University wants to hire me to teach a Game User Interface Design class during the Fall semester. On the one hand, HELL YEAH!!! On the other, my plate is already pretty full, and what with the Web Design class at Kendall College taking up most of my (otherwise) free time, I would be so busy that I would never see my girlfriend.

I suppose I could just stop sleeping. Again.

On a lighter note, Paula and I saw Star Wars on Sunday. The special effects were fantastic. So much so, that I occasionally forgot that there were people in the movie, too. Overall, I thought SW3 was better than SW1 or SW2, simply because the dialogue was much improved (but still not “good” by any stretch of the imagination). “Younglings”? Please! What are you, Lucas, a 12-year-old Star Wars fan fiction writer?

After a brief detour through A Game of Thrones, I have picked up Dark Age Ahead again. Check this out:

Cultural xenophobia is a frequent sequel to a society’s decline from cultural vigor. Someone has aptly called self-imposed isolation a fortress mentality. [Karen] Armstrong describes it as a shift from faith in logos, reason, with its future-oriented spirit, “always…seeking to know more and to extend…areas of competence and control of the environment,” to mythos, meaning conservatism that looks backward to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and a worldview.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Har

on Sat, 01/03/2004 - 00:00

Broog, Alien Film Critic is very funny. Read him when you are not gazing in awe at the River Project .

Bleh

on Sun, 11/30/2003 - 00:00

It is my sad duty to inform you, my readers, that Timeline is a steaming pile of poo. Let me ruin it for you:

The surfer and the cute chick live. The professor lives. The French guy dies. The British are being assisted by an evil scientist from the present day. The professor and the Hot Scottish Guy (who also lives, but stays in the past) blow up the English fortress with gunpowder made by the professor as part of a bargain to keep from being run through by the English lord. The sarcophagus with the portrait of a one-eared lord? It has the Hot Scottish Guy and the Cute French Girl in it.

The cliches run rampant like... like... cliches at a college Renaissance festival.

The best actors were the trebuchets.

You have been warned.

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