Rogue for "Beer"
Last week my lovely wife and I took in our second movie in a short time, the decidedly different "Pan's Labyrinth." It is a Spanish movie, with English subtitled. Oddly enough it makes the dystopian science fiction "Children of Men" look downright cheerful. That might be an overstatement, but not by much. It is a very good movie, though. It is an haunting fairy tale set in the midst of Nazi-controlled Spain. The juxtaposition of fantasy monsters and the very real fascist monsters is chilling. Parts of it are more tense and creepy than nearly all horror movies I have seen. I highly recommend it as just a good movie, but be prepared.
Supposedly "Foster's" is Australian for beer. But the Fosters I have here is actually brewed and bottled in Canada. It is a pretty good if unremarkable lager. I would still prefer the more hoppy Samuel Adams myself, for a good lager.
So far I give the new SciFi Channel series "The Dresden Files" my approval. It is an odd mix of Buffy, The X-Files, and an hard-boiled noir detective story. It is both dark and has a sense of humor. The General Manager at my store described the novels on which the series is based as "grown-up Harry Potter." I think I described it fairly well, though, as a noir detective story with magic, but also with a sense of humor on occassion. Dresden though is definitely the noir kind of hero, the flawed anti-hero. We have also finally begun watching Battlestar Galactica, with the second season. I have not been disappointed in what I expected for that series. I have a feeling it will end up being by favorite sci-fi series ever. It has element of the hit "24", in that many scenes have a purposefully shaky camera and it is full of dramatic tension. One thing that I thought of, though, is that when the majority of humanity have been apparently wiped out, shouldn't it bring people together? Instead it seems like people are still every bit as likely to get mired in political and personal differences even in the face of annihilation.
I today also finally purchased the Gnarls Barkley album "St. Elsewhere." Like everyone else I was blown away by the single "Crazy" and also like the next one, "Gone Daddy Gone", with its bizarre bug spray commercial video. I wait for Target, Best Buy, or Circuit City to run a CD I want on sale and then I pounce.
I am reading a review for the movie "Norbit". It sounds every bit as utterly horrible as it looks. It is like the movie "Little Man." Sometimes I see the trailer for a movie, and wonder if it is some sort of joke. Stephen Colbert's show started out as just a Daily Show joke. Sometimes you really wonder what anyone was thinking in making a movie. "Hannibal Rising?" Does that need to be made? The Star Wars prequels are the same way for me. The only thing they accomplished was to diminish the original trilogy in my eyes. What an incredible narcissicist is George Lucas. What horrible movies are all three of the prequels. "Revenge of the Sith", the best of the prequels, only aspires to be "Return of the Jedi", the least of the originals. I'll admit that a big part of the appeal of the original is nostalgia and naivety. But still. "Basic Instinct 2" was another great idea. Who didn't think that sounded like a sketch comedy skit?
Supposedly "Foster's" is Australian for beer. But the Fosters I have here is actually brewed and bottled in Canada. It is a pretty good if unremarkable lager. I would still prefer the more hoppy Samuel Adams myself, for a good lager.
So far I give the new SciFi Channel series "The Dresden Files" my approval. It is an odd mix of Buffy, The X-Files, and an hard-boiled noir detective story. It is both dark and has a sense of humor. The General Manager at my store described the novels on which the series is based as "grown-up Harry Potter." I think I described it fairly well, though, as a noir detective story with magic, but also with a sense of humor on occassion. Dresden though is definitely the noir kind of hero, the flawed anti-hero. We have also finally begun watching Battlestar Galactica, with the second season. I have not been disappointed in what I expected for that series. I have a feeling it will end up being by favorite sci-fi series ever. It has element of the hit "24", in that many scenes have a purposefully shaky camera and it is full of dramatic tension. One thing that I thought of, though, is that when the majority of humanity have been apparently wiped out, shouldn't it bring people together? Instead it seems like people are still every bit as likely to get mired in political and personal differences even in the face of annihilation.
I today also finally purchased the Gnarls Barkley album "St. Elsewhere." Like everyone else I was blown away by the single "Crazy" and also like the next one, "Gone Daddy Gone", with its bizarre bug spray commercial video. I wait for Target, Best Buy, or Circuit City to run a CD I want on sale and then I pounce.
I am reading a review for the movie "Norbit". It sounds every bit as utterly horrible as it looks. It is like the movie "Little Man." Sometimes I see the trailer for a movie, and wonder if it is some sort of joke. Stephen Colbert's show started out as just a Daily Show joke. Sometimes you really wonder what anyone was thinking in making a movie. "Hannibal Rising?" Does that need to be made? The Star Wars prequels are the same way for me. The only thing they accomplished was to diminish the original trilogy in my eyes. What an incredible narcissicist is George Lucas. What horrible movies are all three of the prequels. "Revenge of the Sith", the best of the prequels, only aspires to be "Return of the Jedi", the least of the originals. I'll admit that a big part of the appeal of the original is nostalgia and naivety. But still. "Basic Instinct 2" was another great idea. Who didn't think that sounded like a sketch comedy skit?