Two years ago I wrote a critique of a trailer for a movie called 'Dirty', a movie I called a clear rip-off of Training Day. So, if you were a director wanting to rip-off Training Day again, who would you pick to be the bad-ass rouge cop? ... How about Keanu Reeves? ... Well, neither would I, but David Ayer, the Director of the new movie 'Street Kings' has done just that. This trailer even says "from the makers of Training Day"... it's a bad rip-off by the people who made the original (which means, the same studio).
This movie looks terrible. It looks worse than 'Dirty' did. I know I haven't written a review of a trailer in a long time, but this was worth coming out of the woodwork to criticize.
Final Rating: 2 out of 10 (stars). Looks like after all our hoping and dreaming, Neo is not actually the one.
Street Kings
E-2... HIT!
One of my favorite games as a kid (back when I use to like games) was Battleship. There's just something really satisfying for a young boy to hear the words "You sunk my battleship!" (sometimes followed by the words "butt head!"). Anyhow, here's the footage from the Navy of their shot at the spy satellite during the eclipse last night.
Pretty cool eh?
Happy Monday
Okay, so there usually isn't much to be happy about on Mondays. The beginning of another work-week (or school week), snow swirling around outside, people walking past saying stupid things like "hi, how's it going?" or "guess what I did this weekend?"... anyway, thanks to John Alberson, this should hold us over for another week.
Vampire Weekend - A Punk*
*I don't know which one is the name of the song and which is the name of the band.
Can I Live
Thanks to Kim for posting this. I was gonna comment about how this isn't rap, it's Hip-Hop (or maybe even R&B), but the song is too powerful to downplay. Everyone, take a listen and share with a friend.
3:10 to Yuma
Back in September of last year Peter wrote about 3:10 to Yuma, the Christian Bale, Russel Crow western. Peter talked about how it wasn't a great "western" but was a good movie in a western setting.
Michal and I just watched Yuma last night and my reaction was a little harsher. I thought it sucked. Sure the acting was good, the camera work was good. the story was even good, but the one thing that ruined the movie for me were the "holes". Now, I understand that when watching a movie the audience is expected to resign themselves to a suspension of reality. We can enjoy Star Wars (the real ones) not because we think they really happened (like Star Trek), but because our imagination is engaged and reality is suspended. I did find myself drawn into the film, and I thought there were many good paths to explore (the Apache, the leg injury, Christian Bale's marksmanship), but these were all (minus the leg wound) left unexplored and unresolved. I kept thinking "why won't Bale pick-off that guy? He has a gun in his hand, he was a sharpshooter, that guys isn't that far away!" The only explanation I could come up with was that eventually, by the end of the movie you would see Bale unravel as the bad-ass you wanted him to be. He never did. Also, the Apache... super dangerous, really bad way to go, we shouldn't go that way... and there were three of them? The Apple Dumpling Gang could have taken care of three indians!
My statement to Michal after the movie was "why do people spend millions of dollars to make disappointing movies?" If you were gonna have Bale being chased through a town by 30 or 40 bad guys, don't tell me he's a sharpshooter and that he can "hit a jackrabbit at 100 yards". He missed that stone-wall-jackson /queer-eye-for-the-strait-guy / backwards-pistol-pulling-moron like a million times! There was even a bad-guy sharpshooter who he could have shot (through the scope), but never killed. Maybe if there was a directors cut with new footage and an alternate ending I would watch it again, but my final reaction to Yuma,
Three Thumbs Down!
Pandora's Jar
This may look like a normal window from Pandora, the slick online music hub. But it's not. This is actually a view of Pandora's Jar, an app that lets Pandora users listen to Pandora while simultaneously downloading the music they are hearing.
Pandora's Jar allows users to listen to their favorite discovery music over and over again. The setup is quite difficult (I installed four different versions before I found one that works well), but once it is up and running it is great. Here are the tracks I have captured so far:
Like James Blunt
For any of you out there who like James Blunt (Thomas, I know you're out there somewhere), you may want to check this out. The Flight of the Conchords (props to Jon) have a song that pretty much sums up all of Blunts music in one 4 minute song.
Jon, you get the credit for introducing me to FotC, but I will take the responsibility for this song offending anyone... however, we do not endorse or recommend anything else by this band... exempt for Albi!