Hero Inc.

I’ll leave this review short since I’m so late to seeing this movie (over a month old).

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was probably one of my least favorite books so I was skeptical of how I would receive the movie.  However, I think the Potter movies are continuing to get better.  This could be due to the acting skills getting better for the kids that have grown up on screen for us or that the subject of each book/movie has allowed the presentation to age for the better.

David Yates is the man at the helm for the final chapters of the Potter saga and I believe he gets it.  He allows a good collection of the elements that made the books so entertaining:  humor, awkward situations as the kids grow, fear, action, etc.  Here’s hoping that he can also make the final chapter (my true least favorite book) come alive on the big screen.

The one drawback to this movie for me was that I felt more emotional connection during the chase scene within the fields than I did at the final climax of the movie.  This is odd for those that know what happened.  It should have been the reverse but I just didn’t feel it like I should have.

[Rating: 4/5]

As a side note, I was able to see this movie at the Chinese Mann Theater in LA.  Sure, it wasn’t the main screen where all of the premiers take place, but it was still cool to attend.  It’s amazing how great a screen can look and sound with the right technology behind it.  This theater also had the new D-BOX seats.  I didn’t try them (not for $20 at least), but my seats were close enough to “feel” the experience.  I’d say overall it seems more like a novelty than a great way to see a movie.

Wow. I went into this moving thinking it would be pretty good, but I walked out thinking it was simply amazing.

For those that somehow don’t know anything about this movie, it is produced by Peter Jackson and could be well on its way to being one of the best Sci-Fi movies.  I pulled the following synopsis from Imdb:

Thirty years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa’s District 9 as the world’s nations argued over what to do with them. Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens’ welfare – they will receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens’ awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA. The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable – he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Ostracized and friendless, there is only one place left for him to hide: District 9.

For a relatively newcomer in terms of directing, Neill Blomkamp delivers a great movie that mixes action, comedy, and drama.  With a documentary style (interviews, non-steadycam), Neill makes the audience feel as if the events are unfolding before them or have already happened in the current world.  Along with newbie Blomkamp, we are also introduced to another somewhat first timer in our “hero” Sharlto Copley who plays Wikus Van De Merwe.  Copley’s character easily morphs from the laughable failure to the man fighting to do the right thing.  Apparently Copley had no previous acting experience and was only given the role after Blomkamp tossed him into the mix while filming Alive in Joburg, which is the short film that inspired District 9.

Just as a warning to those who are squeamish, this movie is filled with gore.  I don’t believe it is gore for the sake of gore (i.e. what you mind find in most modern horror movies).  It’s more of a gore that you might see if you combined Saving Private Ryan’s opening season, Aliens, and some really cool futuristic weapons.  It is interesting to see an audience flinch when a man pulls his fingernails off but a soldier’s body exploding is normal.

With the great detail Blomkamp offered in terms of action and technology, I say give the man Halo.  Give him Iron Man.  Give him anything he wants.  With Halo he could actually end the curse of bad movies based on video games.  Those weapons.  That mech warrior.  The aliens.  All of it looked amazing.

Most of you know how I hate to over hype a movie, but this is probably the best movie I have seen since The Dark Knight.

[Rating: 5/5]

It seems like many moons ago I was writing about my latest foray into the world of Linux thanks to my new netbook toy.  Before that I attempted to chronicle my journey into learning about the free OS.  I guess then that it is time for an update on my progress.

After enjoying Mandriva for well over a year, I decided it was time for a change.  Still fighting off that which is popular, I chose to go with Linux Mint.  Built on top of Ubuntu but with a flare for elegance, it seemed like a great choice.  It’s been about a month since the move to Mint and I’d say my reaction has been mixed thus far.

Linux Mint does offer certain areas of improvement over Mandriva, mainly the user base for help.  I can use either the Ubuntu crowd or Mint specific users.  I’ve also noticed better performance in my VirtualBox from when it was run on Mandriva.  However, I’ve also run into the normal “this didn’t work out of the box” items that plague many new installations, such as issues with the video driver that prevent me from utilizing the accelerated graphics card functions.  I certainly don’t need the cool visual affects, but they were always nice to have within Mandriva.  I’m certain I can get them working if I take the time to update with the correct driver, but so far I haven’t really taken the time.  It also seems that I’m learning to like Gnome or not even notice a true difference with KDE. Gasp!  Don’t tell the geeks or I’ll be thrown out, if I haven’t been already.

I’ve also noticed an annoying item related to my use of Pidgin.  It seems that when my computer is left alone for a period of time, Pidgin always seems to hog my resources when I try to use it again.  I’ve googled it but didn’t find many results.  I even tried to post to a forum, but you know you have to reply to those.  Oops.

With the OS change, requires a few application changes.  Not many mind you.  The biggest and most important change for me is the media manager application.  Previously with Mandriva I was using Amarok.  Amarok is still to this day the best music software I have used but I’m not liking the new path it is heading with the major changes made for version 2.  It was my all inclusive software (music, tagging, media transfer to Creative Zen).  Linux Mint came with RhythmBox oob, but it fell short.  I then tried Songbird (still not understanding the need to combine the media manager with a browser).  So No luck there either.  Now it seems I’m using a mixture of Banshee and Listen.  These are great for listening to my tunes but not so much for transferring files to my Creative Zen.  I’ve tried using Gnomad 2 for transferring files, but my artwork is lost and that’s a kill switch for me.

Now that’s the desktop.  On to the netbook.

Since my netbook post, I’ve been using eebuntu netbook remix, which was based on Ubuntu 8.10.  It was slick and really tried to utiize the smaller netbook screen and give you ease of navigation.  I loved it and thought I’d keep it forever, but updates put an end to that.  When I tried to upgrade to the 9.04, I saw an exterme performance drop in the graphical department.  At this point, I realized that I was not really using the netbook remix as it was intended and decided to change by installing Ubuntu 9.04 without the netbook remix addon.

Well, I must say that I’m impressed.  Everything I need has worked OOB with Ubuntu (wifi works, yay).  I’ve spent the past day or two customizing it to my somewhat liking.  As you can see, I still need to remove the wonderful gnome footprint start button icon.  Maybe I can get Will to make me a simple Black Adam lightining icon in reference to my netbook’s name (blackatom).

With the Hydoxygen iconse, a customized Dust theme, and the AWN dock bar (I found this one to be less process intensive than the Gnome-Do Docky theme), I think I’m ready to go enjoy my netbook again. I might even come to like Ubuntu enough to put in on my desktop.  Apple lovers, please don’t begin to tell me my desktop is very similar to Apple’s setup.  Similarities just mean that something is working for a larger population.

I also tried a live boot of Moblin, which was impressive but confusing.  Here’s hoping they can continue to improve it.

Based on the reaction I’ve heard from people when I told them I wanted to see this movie, it doesn’t seem to be one that is on many people’s radar even though it is heralded as a “near perfect war film“. The Hurt Locker follows 3 soldiers in Iraq as they perform their duties as a bomb disposal unit. The trailer has a wonderful visualization that is seen in the poster above.

The Hurt Locker is a very good film but it is slow which will bother many people.  The two hour plus timespan does feel like it but you find yourself wanting to finish to see how these characters turn out, particularly Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner). Of course, it’s also fun to see who might pop up next in the movie if you want a few name droppers:  Lord Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Leonard from Memento (Guy Pearce), or Cmdr Adam Beck from The Negotiator (David Morse).

As the movie begins, the presented quote that “war is a drug” really sets the statge for wanting to discover what makes Staff Sergeant James, pardon the pun, tick. Renner doesn’t have long dramatic dialogue but he does have everything he needs to make you understand what is possibly going on in his head.  Why does he face his life ending job with such disregard?  Why does he seem a half a step away from really losing it and making his unit hating the fact that they ever were assigned to each other? So far this has been the best character I’ve seen this year (that’s not saying much) but here’s hoping at least a nomination is in his future.

[Rating: 4/5]