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You know what I hate? Indian givers...no, I take that back.
If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
It should be rock, dynamite-with-a-cuttable-wick, scissors.
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
The other night a homeless man was going through my garbage. Now I hate to see a human being going through someone's garbage, so I made him a real nice racoon costume.

Sugar Is Jesus's Dandruff

I used to get bummed out when it rained. Then I realized that it's God's way of washing off hippies.
I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don't know I'm only using blanks.
Last night I had a dream that all the babies prevented by the pill showed up.
I intend to live forever - so far so good.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.
I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache.
I think they should put pies on the fronts of trains, so that when they hit something it's at least a little bit funny.
The other day I was sitting on the stoop. That's a stupid nick-name. I'm mean my Aunt Bessie.
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, dont put it off.
I was at the Wal-Mart, which is where I think everybody goes evetually. If they die without Christ.
I also don't trust Caribou anymore. They're out there, on the tundra, waiting... Something's going down. I'm right about this.

The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form "www" takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.
If I had a dollar for every time I said that, I'd be making money in a very weird way.
When I was little, my grandfather used to make me stand in a closet for five minutes without moving. He said it was elevator practice.
I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
A while ago I was in Las Vegas at the roulette table having a furious argument over what I considered an odd number.
I bet the one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done"
My school colors were clear. I told everybody I'm not naked, I'm in the band.

On-The-Fly Oscar Ponderings

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OK, let's try updating a post in real time. So, here's my thoughts on the Oscars as they air. The prediction list is fully updated with results.

  • Hmmm, last Barbara Walters pre-Oscar special, huh? Can't say it matters to me. Never really watched it anyway. Now, if E! would just get rid of Joan Rivers...
  • You know, for someone as utterly uninterested in fashion as I am, the whole fashionista aspect to The Oscars is still a bit insufferable.
  • You know, other than suffering through the trailer a dozen or more times, one of the reasons I never saw Precious was the whole "Based on the novel Push by Sapphire" thing in the official title. I think Prince Of Persia should officially retitle itself to "Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time - Based on the Broderbund action-adventure video game franchise by Jordan Mechner."
  • Welp, the ceremony has started. Great to see Neil Patrick Harris kick off the show.
  • Good start to see a number of camera/lighting goofs almost immediately.
  • Martin & Baldwin are off to a flying start. Some great Meryl Streep stuff.
  • Hurray! I'm off to a flying start. Christoph Waltz gives me my first right guess, so I've got a perfect score so far. Granted, this was one of the easiest categories of the list.
  • OK, now I'm two for two. And yeah, Up winning animated feature was another of the obvious ones. I would have been OK losing this guess were Fantastic Mr. Fox to have won.
  • Got best song right, but Mark Boal just screwed up my perfect record by winning for original screenplay. Guess Tarantino wasn't a safe guess.
  • Nice to have the tribute to John Hughes. It is cool that both Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin could both be featured in the clip montage. Awesome to have them assemble an array of cast members from his films to give tribute to him.
  • AAAAAACK! Nick Park actually lost a nomination! And I just got another one wrong. Nice acceptance speech by Nicolas Schmerkin for Logorama. Will have to check that one out. Looks fun.
  • Dang it, I just went from a perfect score to 3 out of 7 in a hurry. The categories I knew almost nothing about are killing me quickly.
  • Ben Stiller's Na'vi presentation was great. Thankfully, the low hanging fruit of Star Trek in the make-up category got me back to a 50% level so far.
  • Uh oh, not only did I get another one wrong with the adapted screenplay category, but I fear the acceptance speeches for any further wins for Precious. Good recovery by Steve Martin.
  • No shortage of audio goofs in the broadcast this year. At least the camera/lighting mistakes from the beginning didn't continue.
  • Robin Williams wastes no time pushing his luck with the censors.
  • Back to 50% with Mo'Nique's win. This was another of the easy picks based on general consensus. Her acceptance speech wasn't as bad as I was expecting.
  • You know, I'd love to see An Education be a huge upset win for Best Picture. No possible way it's going to happen, but it would be great. Carey Mulligan is getting a pretty good amount of camera time, which is cool.
  • I'm getting sick of the Dancing With The Stars promo. Like there's ANY chance of them getting me to watch it, anyway.
  • And Avatar picks up its first win for art direction. Rather cool to have Sigourney Weaver be the presenter.
  • "I don't think the plural of whore is horses." Great stuff.
  • At the moment, I'm 6 for 12. Still holding 50%. I already can't do as well as my 20 for 24 from last year.
  • Boy, Apple's not holding back on the iPad advertising. Definitely one of the devices for which I don't want the first version. I'd definitely wait for the second generation version.
  • The Paranormal Activity bit by Martin & Baldwin was excellent.
  • My role of the dice in the sound categories kinda worked. I figured it was between Avatar & The Hurt Locker, so I predicted one for each. It would either spread the risk (which is what happened), make me really lucky (which it didn't, dang it) or make me really unlucky (which it didn't, thankfully).
  • Like most choreographed dance sequences on Oscar programs, the best original score dance montage was pretty stupid and didn't work. They picked the wrong bit of score material from The Fantastic Mr. Fox to choreograph. At least Up kinda worked for the dance idea. I will say that I loved all the best score nominees this year, which I do believe is a first. Some bad presentation of the award, with mispronounced names and improperly combined names. Awesome to see Michael Giacchino win an Oscar. And to Walt Disney Records, this NOW ACADEMY AWARD WINNING SCORE IS STILL NOT AVAILABLE ON CD! Morons.
  • Go figure. Avatar has won the visual effects award. It has got to be one of the most obvious Oscar wins in this history of the awards. I knew I could count on getting this one right.
  • At the moment, I'm doing 59% with 10 of 17 right. At this rate, I'll be happy to land at 14 right. That would still be better than my usual 50% rate of 12.
  • Fairly impressive cutaway responsiveness at the end of the documentary feature. Got that one right, too.
  • And I got The Hurt Locker right for editing, too. Now I'm 63% at 12 for 19.
  • Congratulations to Jeff Bridges for best actor. I haven't yet seen Crazy Heart, but I really guess I should. I'm a big fan of Bridges and Gyllenhaal. Great acceptance speech, too. And hey, now Disney can advertise Tron Legacy as featuring Academy Award Winner Jeff Bridges...
  • Congrats to the great Sandra Bullock for winning best actress, and for nailing the acceptance speech. I'm now 14 for 21, so not doing too bad.
  • Woo hoo! Kathryn Bigelow did, indeed, take the best director award. Even Jim Cameron said he'd rather see her win it. I was wondering if a consistently gutsy and visionary action director as her would hold it together during the acceptance speech. She was a bit shaky, but did hold it together nicely. Maybe now Strange Days will get the attention it deserves. It's still her best work.
  • Yes! I got best picture right, too. I figured The Hurt Locker would pull out the win, and I'm happy to see it do so.
  • Nice closing by Steve & Alec.

So, overall I did OK. Picked up a little steam near the end in the major categories (I got all the "big 4" right). So ending up with 16 I got exactly 2/3 of them right, which ain't bad.

Ponderings For 2010-03-02

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  • I'm watching the Rifftrax of Transformers 2 as I type this. You know, I was wondering if this movie was truly as awful as I remembered, or if I was thinking of it through 110% black glasses. I'm halfway through it at the moment and can confirm that not only is it as bad as I remember, but it's actually worse, as hard to believe as that may be. However, the Rifftrax boys are making it a whole lot of fun. This is the only way this movie should be viewed. Seriously, this is one incredibly horrendous movie. Michael Bay should be taken out into town square, tortured, drawn, quartered then forced to watch this movie on constant loop with the volume cranked to 11.
  • Woo hoo! Hurray! One of my most wanted series for DVD has been announced - Max Headroom! And it's being licensed to Shout Factory, so it's gonna get nice treatment, too. Woo hoo!
  • One word: AWESOME
  • And if that wasn't awesome enough, then this is.
  • Holy cow, this movie sucks.
  • Wait, Apple hasn't been including HDMI ports on computers? Hasn't every other computer manufacturer on the face of the Earth been doing so for some time now? OK, never mind that, there's a number of other stupidities involved in this situation (Seriously? Phasing out Blu-Ray due to licensing fees? REALLY, APPLE? They who run iTunes?)
  • Great stuff
  • Geez, this movie sucks.
  • Long live The Pirate Bay...
  • Some Tron Legacy details (including a Blu-Ray of the original film - though it also debuts in HD on HDNet tomorrow night). Can't wait to check out the first trailer this weekend.
  • Nice imaging work by the boys at NASA
  • For the love of all that is sane, this movie sucks.
  • Forget the cute kitten pics. How about guinea pigs?
  • no, No, NO, *NO*! Where's the delete button for those memory cells in my brain!?!?!?!
  • Humanity is finished. (those toys are almost as bad as this movie)
  • Jar-Jar Binks has *NOTHING* on Skids and Mudflap.
  • Probably a good thing I don't speak whatever language they're chattering.
  • Easter eggs for Hitler, indeed.
  • Did I mention how much this movie sucks?
  • Dude, this movie sucks.
  • No, really, THIS MOVIE SUCKS!  (thankfully Mike, Bill & Kevin at Rifftrax don't)
  • You know what? Never mind Crank. Never mind Space Jam. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is the worst movie I've ever seen. I'm making that official.

The 2009-2010 Late-Season TV Score Card

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I figured I'd do a write-up on all the various TV series I watch once the mid-season winter break had ended and most shows had launched into their final half of the season. Sadly, the post sat unpublished and about 2/3 finished for a couple months. So now it's less of a mid-season write-up and more of a 2/3 season write-up. This list will be in the order of my liking. It will not include any shows that have been cancelled (such as Eastwick or Dollhouse) or have already wrapped up their run (such as Monk). I'm also not going to include shows I like/watch, but am too far behind on to include in the list (such as Supernatural, Smallville, 24, Desperate Housewives and probably a few others). I'm also not including newer shows that I either know I'd like and haven't gotten around to, or ones for which I have not seen enough of the episodes (such as Mental, The Middle, Mercy, The Good Wife and probably a few others). Oh, and I'm gonna leave non-American shows off this list (such as Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood). With all that said, let's get on to the list (each series title links to the Wikipedia page for the show):

Predictions For The 82nd Annual Academy Awards

OK, here's my usual set of predictions for the Oscars. A little later than usual, but still more than a week ahead of the awards. Any title that is highlighted in yellow is one that I've seen. The first column of marks after the titles is for who I think will win. The second is who I'd pick from the Academy's nominations. The last column is a write-in of what I'd pick for the category given no limitation of choice (my full list of picks for the year can be found here). The ones in bold are the winners. The full prediction list is published at the bottom of this full post.

Ponderings For 2010-02-21

  • You know how some music artists intentionally try to recapture their original magic while staging a return, and fail miserably? Well, Harold Faltermeyer is not one of those people. Over the last couple days I've been constantly listening to an online leaked copy of his new score to Kevin Smith's retro buddy-cop comedy, Cop Out (don't worry, my purchased, physical copy of the score is due to arrive from Amazon on Tuesday). This score is instantly one of my favorites of the year. Faltermeyer flawlessly slips right back into the groove of his action/comedy scores of the 80's and early 90's. I forgot just how much I missed his scores. They have a sense of bounce and style, not to mention truly catchy melodic work, that nearly all composers since have failed to match. John Powell is one of the few I can think of that comes close to being able to tap into the same vein with any repeatable consistency. For Cop Out, Faltermeyer intentionally brings back some of that retro electronic instrumentation, and he makes it work in a way that has a fun retro feel without sounding awkwardly dated. It must have been quite the fine line to walk.
  • Ladies and gents, here is the very definition of the word, AWESOME
  • Holy *!%#: "Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!"
  • For all of you fellow King Of Kong fans: Way to go, Steve!
  • Eeeeek, the first promo for the new season of Doctor Who. Can't wait to see what the new cast and crew get up to. I do like the gleeful energy of the goofball promo.
  • More great Colbert goodness. The ending is particularly great.
  • Sure the only VW Beetle to ever be intimidating.
  • While certainly not somebody I would have thought of for the role of Nikita, I approve.
  • The Oscars have just improved the ceremony by axing the worst part of the show: the best song nominee performances.
  • CubeStormer. Too cool.
  • Talk about a clever security system...
  • Gotta love the work of a true artist
  • A great infographic
  • The rare example of a great commercial
  • A classic photo, indeed.
  • No kidding
  • Spent the last day or two nuking my main machine at the house. It had the soon-to-expire Windows 7 Release Candidate still running on it. So my machine got to have a nice, fresh install of the final Windows 7. Thankfully, things went pretty smoothly. I'm actually gonna be posting a write-up soon (along with 4 others that are partially complete) detailing a number of my favorite applications (I took some notes during the rebuild to be able to use it as a list for people to use as recommended apps).

Ponderings For 2010-02-14

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Ponderings For 2010-02-09

Ponderings For 2010-02-04

  • I've been compiling a blu-ray compilation of the criminally under appreciated 2006 TV series Standoff recently. While looking up the episode information online I noticed that series stars Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt actually got married in November of 2009. Standoff was an excellent series, and much of that was thanks to Livingston & DeWitt. I had noticed in passing a while back that the two of them were dating after starring together on the series, but that's not an unprecedented thing. It's kinda cool that a few years later they actually tied the knot. The two of them had that on-screen spark of chemistry with seemingly effortless ease, so I guess it wasn't entirely an act.
  • Incidentally, it's worth mentioning just how far digital video technology has come in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, you were lucky to pull off VHS quality in a digital format (via SVCD, for instance). And CD-R's were the best you were going to do for media, and it wasn't gonna be comparatively cheap. Today, one can make a BD-R compilation on a single layer 25gb disc containing extremely nice quality 720p video and 5.1 audio comfortably holding 750 or more minutes for less than a buck and a half.
  • Tuesday's Lost episode was great (well, technically it was 2 episodes). It's cool to finally have the final year of the series under way. Amusingly, ABC just announced the date that the series finale will air - May 23. That's amusing because it just happens to be my mother's 75th birthday.
  • Speaking of the Lost series finale, here's an amusing video.
  • Now THIS is a great paint job.
  • A very fun vid for your Star Wars or Star Trek fans.
  • A great write-up for those of you wishing to harness the power of GMail's interface & functionality. Particularly you keyboard reliant users out there.
  • For you less-than-butch soldiers
  • The can make Transformers 3 in 3D, with magical holigram technology, rumble-rama, and sensurround for all I care. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING they can do with Transformers 3 that will get me to see it. It could star my favorite actors and actresses, with a score by Bruce Broughton or John Williams, and there wouldn't be a whelk's chance in a supernova of my seeing it.
  • Groovy
  • And RIP: Justin Mentell. He was good during his brief starring run on the late, great Boston Legal.
  • I'll be getting a couple specialty posts online over the next couple days. One will be a write-up on the Oscar nomination list (which I'm very happy with this year), including my yearly predictions. Another will finally be my follow-up on the iPhone now that I've been using it for a few months. And within a week or so, I should have some Doctor Who fun posted. I just got my Complete Specials blu-ray set today and am going through extras on it. I must say that David Tennant's video diaries are some of the greatest special features on any home video releases ever. Plenty more of them on this set. On, and I've also got a general TV related post mostly put together that I have to put the finishing touches upon. Should be posted by the weekend.

Ponderings For 2010-01-27

  • By Grabthar's Hammer, What A Movie! I received my blu-ray copy of Galaxy Quest today from Amazon and just finished watching it. This is one of those movies that's just as entertaining with every single viewing. It's one of the rarest comedies in that it's both a parody and a genuine representation of what it parodies. It's the best of both worlds. It's one of the all-time great comedies, and it's great to have a nice, great quality release of it with the recent blu-ray release. I think the funniest thing is that the legendary Michael & Denise Okuda did the trivia/information system for the Galaxy Quest (for you non-Trek fans, the Okuda's have done many trivia tracks, written tech books and were art and tech advisors on a number of Trek series). Another cool thing is that 10 years later the visual effects in Galaxy Quest still hold up remarkably well. And the story is still as brilliant yet elegantly simple as ever. And of course the cast is perfect. The film also feature one of the single most obvious dialog replacement moments to achieve a lower rating in film history (for those who've somehow never noticed it, pay attention to Sigourney Weaver when the come upon the "chomper" metal compressor obstacle course. This new 10th anniversary edition features a nice, new retrospective documentary as well. At any rate, if you haven't seen it, you must. If you have, then you should see it again. Never give up! Never surrender!
  • Hurray! Looks like ABC has ordered up an additional 2 episodes of Castle, and the series may be finding the traction to survive a long life.
  • Try this piece of weirdness on - the great Weird Al is going to direct his first feature film, for Cartoon Network, and it's going to be live action. Well, I guess "weird" is the watch word.
  • Best of luck to Mars rover, Spirit. Hopefully it can survive the Martian winter. It's amazing that they're still getting use from Spirit & Opportunity after this many years.
  • La Femme Nikita gets yet another iteration. As a fan of all three previous forms (yes, even Point Of No Return), I'll give the new one a chance.
  • 25 classic dialog scenes performed in "typography." It's really quite nifty work.
  • And in closing, ladies and gents, I give you this piece of utterly, gobsmackingly, insanely unbelievable piece of stupidity. I swear I thought I was reading an article from The Onion at first. This bit of lunacy is not much better (though it's at least slightly understandable).

Ponderings For 2010-01-21

  • Excellent - details on the upcoming Battlestar Galactica: The Plan / Razor score CD release. I can't wait to check out some of the stuff on this album. The "Husker In Combat" stuff is of particular interest, though there's plenty of other great materials in the two scores to be had on this album. The "Apocalypse" cues in The Plan were also particularly awesome.
  • Here's an awesome fan vid editing together all the various plot lines during the crash of Oceanic 815 from Lost. If you haven't seen all 5 aired seasons of Lost to date, then for goodness sake don't watch this as it's entirely spoiler laden.
  • And here's a cool 23 minutes behind-the-scenes video for the making of Avatar. It's got too much EPK kinda stuff in the first part, but most of it is cool behind-the-scenes material. The virtual camera and simul-cam stuff is SO incredibly cool. When you watch the controlled chaos of shooting the film, it's easy to understand some of the safe choices that were made in terms of story.
  • Google Wave has added access permissions to waves. Definitely a step in the right direction. Also nice of them to add rollback/restore functionality.
  • Google has also rolled out an experimental, opt-in feature for YouTube to play back videos via the HTML5 embedded tag rather than flash. It has very limited browser support as yet, but worked great for me in Chrome (which is my default browser now, btw).
  • This editorial on Google's mobile strategy potential is right on the mark. I think it's likely to play out as this write-up predicts.
  • And this write-up is spot on as well. The pricing models in the music trade are quite goofy in many cases, and often drives me nuts. I'm a much bigger fan of Amazon than iTunes, to be sure (and will always support the CD version as much as possible - at least until lossless or better become more available in digital downloads).
  • NBC continues to scramble to figure out their schedule, and it has a definite upside: more episodes of shows I love (like Community, 30 Rock, etc). Frankly, I'm just as happy to have a late night talk show die in order to get more episodes of shows I actually watch. I rarely watch any of the late night talk shows.

Click the title or image for full review page. Check out the full list of 2009 films.

Valentine's Day

One Sheet
5

Is it surprising that this feels like little more than a lamer knock off of recent rom-com films like (the vastly superior) He's Just Not That Into You? No, particularly since this film gives story credit to the writers of He's Just Not That Into You. Overall, this film isn't horrible, and is harmless enough to entertain. But the plot is spread too thin, amongst characters that aren't well enough defined nor given time for the talented cast to really sink their teeth into. In particular, Bradley Cooper & Julia Roberts get almost nothing to work with. Emma Roberts gets the best chance to shine.

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The Crazies

Teaser One Sheet
8

One of those very rare examples of a horror film remake that's better than the original. To be fair, the low budget original 1973 film isn't exactly the greatest horror film ever made. This remake is a very slick production, with a great cast and an effective enough genre script. With well paced editing, it really moves along nicely, too. Olyphant & Mitchel are two of my favorite actors, and they do a great job with this film. Overall, certainly one of the best horror films in recent years.

Cop Out

One Sheet
5

A disappointing Kevin Smith directed movie. I get the idea of doing a throw-back buddy cop film, and like certain elements that they did pull off. But for each joke or scene that does work, there is at least one that is awkward at best. Add to the fact that Tracy Morgan is an actor that only works in small doses (and quickly grows tiresome on screen in a full feature length film), and you've got a comedy with problems. Even the great Adam Brody can't save things. At least Harold Faltermeyer's perfectly retro buddy-cop score hits the mark very well.

Shutter Island

One Sheet
9

Beautifully shot, wonderfully edited and brilliantly performed. I've never hid the fact that I'm not much of a Scorsese fan, but this is a great thriller. It's certainly my favorite Scorsese film to date (The Aviator's the only previous film of his I particularly liked). DiCaprio, clearly a favorite actor of Scorsese with this being their fourth consecutive project together, comes through with a spot-on performance. And the script comes through in interesting ways. Overall, fantastic flick.

Extraordinary Measures

One Sheet
6

The cast certainly elevates this beyond the obvious movie-of-the-week that it likely would have been (heck, the movie is produced by CBS Films). While it has some of the flaws you would expect from the genre (including a way-too-saccharine finale and a couldn't-be-more-generic-if-it-tried score from Andrea Guerra), it turned out to be better than I was expecting. This ain't no fantastic film or the like, but it's certainly engaging and entertaining enough to work.

The Wolfman

One Sheet
8

A great cast and highly experienced crew bring a decent script to life. It's actually kinda hard to believe this movie finally got released, as trailers for it have been playing for a LONG time. I may not always love Hopkins as an actor, but when he's playing older, wealthy characters, he's always great, as he is here. Del Toro and Blunt may not have perfect chemistry, but they do a good job. Weaving is his usually dry self, and it works very well. The visual effects aren't perfect, but they are certainly good enough. Overall, it was very enjoyable, and better than I was expecting (given the studio's constant delays).

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

One Sheet
2

Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, Uma Thurman, etc, etc, etc. How in the world do you get such a cool roster of co-stars and drop the ball so completely? This movie was such a generic bore that I was very happy once it finally came to an end. Were I to have had somewhere I needed to get to, I probably would have walked out near the end.

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From Paris With Love

One Sheet
8

An utterly ridiculous action movie, but it's darn fun. With two lead cast members who have no interest in reality, but rather try and have as much fun as possible chewing up the scenery and dialog, I couldn't help but have a great time watching the destruction and mayhem. Director Pierre Morel did a surprisingly great job with Taken, which helped make up for District B-13. This might not be quite as great as Taken, but it's still a fun action flick.

Frozen

One Sheet
9

A highly effective "what if" thriller. From the beautiful cinematography to the surprisingly realistic production, this is one of those modest budget films that in no way feels low budget. With nearly the full film centered around just three characters, it's a good thing they got a great, and relatively unknown, cast. I was familiar with Shawn Ashmore (Veronica Mars, The Ruins, The X-Men films, etc), but not the other two main cast members. They all did a nice job. This is definitely a highly recommend little undiscovered gem of a film

Legion

One Sheet
6

A somewhat silly apocalyptic thriller that works somewhat thanks largely to a great cast and a pretty good production. When you put Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid into the mix, it's hard to completely fail. Those two will lend gravitas to pretty much anything. Heck, Quaid even managed to make Jaws 3D entertaining (well, sort of). Not a great end-of-the-world movie, but far from the worst.

When In Rome

One Sheet
6

As a major fan of Kristen Bell, I naturally had to see this one no matter what. Frankly, it's the cast that makes this cast movie work at all. The script is every kind of silly and predictable. The direction is pedestrian at best. The production at least pulled off some nice Guggenheim Museum footage (then again, The International did it to a much more impressive degree). But it's the cast who rose to the challenge to try and make it work. Bell & Duhamel do a nice job with the lead roles, and the supporting cast really hams it up and makes their roles fun. Hardly a great romantic comedy, but it works well enough to be adequately entertaining.

Edge Of Darkness

One Sheet
9

You know, I could watch Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone in their respective characters for an entire film. The two of them are fantastic individually, but absolute magic together. The low keyed menace and respect between the two is spot-on perfect. Solid production lends a lot to the film, such as Martin Campbell's steady direction and Stuart Baird's experienced editing. Not an absolutely perfect script, but a very good genre story. And for the record, I've not seen the series this is based on, so I've got no basis of comparison. One thing is for sure, it's great to have the return of Mel Gibson. Hurray!

The Spy Next Door

One Sheet
6

A thoroughly predictable and genre generic film, but somehow still entertaining enough to be enjoyable. Most of that is surely thanks to the great Jackie Chan. Yeah, his stunts are a bit watered down (as is typical for American productions that he's in), but it's still great when you give him a ladder or refrigerator to play with. Bonus points for using footage from his earlier films as a character background opening title sequence. Sure, the plot and production is rather silly and juvenile, but what would you expect from a film that's essentially a Jackie Chan version of The Pacifier...

The Book Of Eli

One Sheet
9

After a long feature directorial break since their fantastic 2001 film From Hell, the Hughes Brothers return with this gorgeously directed post-apocalyptic tale. The script may be slightly simplistic (though it does achieve some nice unexpected twists) and perhaps overshoots a bit on some lofty ideals, but the imperfections are more than easily overlooked for all that is done right. The direction is rock solid. The cinematography is breathtaking and the sound design is spectacular. The brilliant cast certainly doesn't hurt, either. Mila Kunis & Denzel Washington play off each other remarkably well.

Leap Year

One Sheet
7

OK, so this movie might be 100% predictable from start to finish, and is about as typical as one would expect for a film of its genre. But talented director Anand Tucker (Shopgirl) and solid enough dialog and character writing from the typically great Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont (Can't Hardly Wait, Josie & The Pussycats) gives the nice cast enough to work with. The location shooting also helps immensely.

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