NCAA MMOD

NCAA March Madness On Demand is back. Follow this link to sign in and get your VIP pass now, or else you'll have to wait in the lengthy user queues like a commoner. This thing bailed me out last year when I got stuck in the office on Thursday and Friday of the opening weekend. Your login information is the same as it was last year when we filled out brackets.

Also after a beautiful one year hiatus I am officially announcing my return to NCAA Bracketology. Thanks in advance for your money.

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Idiot Driver

Some people just don't deserve to drive cars.

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Alberto Gilardino

There is diving, and then there is this. I think this should have been a red card, but I still have some left over animosity towards the Italian brand of soccer.

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The Shooting Range

So Friday we went to the firing range and I understood a little better how things needed to work. We had two people per lane, each sharing a gun which meant I needed to rent a gun. We all opted for .40 caliber models so we could easily share bullets. So I tried to find the biggest, most badass looking .40 caliber handgun I could find. Dave and I decided on this Beretta 92FS (or something nearly identical). It had the size, the look and the name appeal. Things went pretty well. I hit the target, which in a roundabout way is what you could say I was aiming for (as opposed to the center of the target), 15 of my first 20 hots. There was less recoil than what I thought there would be and the noise was about what you'd expect from movies and television, but I had a very difficult time seeing if I was hitting what I was aiming at. I needed some better contrast than black and white paper in a gray and white room.

But the real story of the day was my dream gun. The Desert Eagle .50. I saw it in Snatch and used it in the video game Counterstrike. I thought that some day I might be able to handle it. Its a beautiful weapon. There just happened to be two guys at the range shooting one a couple of lanes over from us. But before we get to that, let's review this gun and why I fell in love with it:

Snatch (NSFWish)

Counterstrike Desert Eagle

For some reason there are dozens of these on YouTube.
A Live Desert Eagle:

Of the hundreds of Desert Eagle videos on YouTube this one captures the jarring, disorienting, twitch inducing experience of being in the same room when one is fired. I was terrified then, and I am still a little frightened now just thinking about that gun.

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American Idol Scandal

There is a controversy circulating on this season of American Idol. Remember a few years ago when Frenchie was kicked off after some racy photos surfaced from years before she tried out for the show? Well its about to go that way again, this time with a hot chick. In the last week or so some photos have surfaced of her partying (she's underage), using the bathroom and doing other things such as a topless group photo (NSFW) with friends (she is the right middle) where they are all using their hands to cover up. Supposedly there are more out there, some with wieners and other, more graphic content. As of now I haven't been able to find a quality link. The one provided in the articles, Phillyburbs Blog, doesn't always work but that is probably because its getting crushed by all the traffic.

Is anyone else terrified of having a daughter? Sorry Peter. But this whole digital camera/webcam + broadband internet must be a nightmare for parents of teenagers. Fox is currently ignoring the stories and isn't commenting, but it doesn't seem like that will be able to last much longer. I suppose when they're done The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., where Antonella attends college, will have something to say as well.

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My Science Experiment

Later today my friend Rich, a police officer, is taking me and few guys to the shooting range to shoot guns. This is the Glock 23 (9mm) I believe we'll be shooting. I really want to shoot a Desert Eagle .50, but I have been warned that the recoil would break my wrist.

For me its going to be an interesting social experiment. I have never shot a gun, held a gun or even seen another person fire a gun live. I have however played countless hours of violent video games that use guns. I think Counterstrike is where I developed my first real in-depth knowledge of guns, calibers, their stopping power and all of that. But in addition to that I've played Grand Theft Auto, True Crime: Street of L.A. as well as a host of less realistic gun violence games and I have played a few hours of paintball. Add to that that countless hours of television and movies, the bulk of which is bullsh*t but some of which shows actual shooting range practice, and I think I can go through the motions of actually shooting a gun. I know all about center of mass, taking a deep breath and releasing half of it to calm and steady yourself and I know that you need to squeeze the trigger, not pull it. So the question is, despite what the sensationalist media would have you believe, will my lifetime of violent gaming enhance my killing power? I'll let you know.

But I am also freaked out by guns. I mean lets face it, tonight will the closest I've ever been to being shot. Not because anyone will be pointing at me or I'll be careless with my gun safety, but because I've never put myself in a situation where an honest accident could end with someone getting shot. I am sure it will be fine, but its one of those things like when you go bungee jumping or skydiving, where part of you realizes you're taking an unnecessary risk (albeit a much different kind of risk in this scenario compared to those).

So in preparation for tonight I am going to go through my 6,000+ song iTunes library and create myself a gun shooting playlist. Any song prominently involving gun shots, has the name of a gun in the title, or talks about shooting will be included. I know what you're thinking you racists. Its not all rap. There's some Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton in there.

Tonight I'll leave here a boy and come Monday I'll return to this blog a man.

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Chris Sligh American Idol

Karen, here is the performance I was talking about. Chris Sligh from Tuesday's episode of American Idol singing "Typical" by Mutemath. That must be a pretty big deal for the band.

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Invisible Doors

Sometimes I believe this is the greatest byproduct of digital video and high speed internet. It used to be that your embarrassment died about the same time your eyes stopped watering and your face stopped stinging. But today it can literally be enjoyed by millions all over the world, just because some college kid with a part time job gets his hands on the security footage at work.

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I saw two more movies

Last night I saw Babel and The Prestige. The best way to sum up Babel is written on the back of the box:

The multinarrative drama completes Alejandro González Iñárritu's "death trilogy," which also consists of Amores Perros and 21 Grams.

So if you've seen 21 Grams you know exactly what to expect. A heavy, somber film that makes you feel terrible about things going on in the world that don't involve you that you couldn't possibly ever have control over. Its like the six degrees of separation (philosophy, not the movie) of human pain.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement from me, but the movie is well done and interesting. I can see why Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza were nominated for Best Supporting Actress. I can see why people would spin this as a some kind of "art of human pain trilogy" in order to get a Best Picture nomination, instead of allowing people to realize this director is a one trick pony. If you look at Alejandro González Iñárritu's IMDB page you can see his directing credits are for "the death trilogy" (Babel, 21 Gram, Amores Perros), an 11 director composite film about 9/11 from the perspective of nations all over the world and an 8 minute short film starring Clive Owen called Powder Keg. I have now seen three (Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, Babel) of the five (Letters Of Iwo Jima, The Queen) Best Picture nominees and I am thus far unimpressed. At this point I am going to predict a split between The Departed and Babel for the Best Picture and Best Director awards. I just can't say for sure which way it will go. Eventually Scorcese has to get a Best Director award, even if it means giving him a faux lifetime achievement Best Director win like Ron Howard got for A Beautiful Mind.

Anyhow the movie is probably a 7.5/10, and could have been higher if they had one thing to leave you remotely happy about at the end of the movie. By the way, does anyone know where I can meet deaf Japanese women?

The Prestige

Look I don't want to ruin anything about this movie. It was really, really good. I think it was slightly better than The Illusionist but I would chalk that up to fact that it had upgrades in several key spots. The story was a little more entertaining, mostly because you got to sort of choose who you were rooting for in the story, and Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman (however you want to determine the second male lead) are better actors than Rufus Sewell (the bad guy from A Knight's Tale). Michael Caine is a draw with Paul Giamatti, but Scarlett Johansson is an upgrade over Jessica Biel. Throw in Andy Serkis and a shocking performance by person I won't name and the movie seems a little more fully developed than The Illusionist. Having seen both I would recommend you do the same. There isn't nearly the type of Deep Impact/Armageddon either/or decision to made with these two movies. Their stories do not compete at all really. I would give this one an 8.25/10.

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Does Our Local News Suck?

Does our local news suck or do I just not watch it enough? How come I never see stuff like this? To be fair though I don't know what else they were expecting, I mean we all know that when it comes to women driving its not a matter of 'if' its 'when'.

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Apple's Thoughts On Music

A couple of weeks back Apple posted an online letter from Steve Jobs with his thoughts on music. His focus is on Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection as it exists now and how it should change in the future. As it stands now all digital music players can play music encoded as an mp3 or a few other open formats. This is why we know them as mp3 players. When you buy music online through many of the major music sites you are forced to deal with some level of DRM. For Apple its call FairPlay and the music is encoded as .M4A, Microsoft uses copy protected .WMA for its Zune player called PlaysForSure, Sony has its own small online music service and Yahoo! and Napster have their own methods for restricting music use as well. So here is what Steve Jobs has to say about the fractured existence of DRM that we are all dealing with today:

Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

From there he begins to explain how people feel unfairly trapped into making a lifelong music decision with their mp3 players because once they start buying music online they are investing in the playback of that music for an extended period of time. I equate it to be the difference between paying money towards rent and a money towards a mortgage. If you switch from Zune to iPod or vice versa you will lose all the songs you ever paid for prior to the switch. From there Jobs goes on to explain that their research suggests that only 3% of a given user's music library is actually paid, copy protected content. Jobs believes that if 97% of our music libraries is content we already owned and can change formats with at will, that we are more willing to change formats than any of the major players are willing to admit. I don't buy that. He cites his numbers by taking the averages of the most popular iPods on the market which top out at 1,000 songs. So in his example he estimates 22 songs on your average 4GB iPod are paid, protected files. But that falls apart when you start talking about the bigger versions. I have 6,000 songs in my iTunes for my 30GB iPod video. If you take 3% of that I should have about 180 purchased songs. Thats $180, about 75% of the cost of replacing my iPod. Thats a huge investment. Now I don't have anywhere near $180 of purchased songs on my iPod. Far from it. But to downplay the significance of switching services for what you could arguably call the most dedicated portion of your customer base is a little foolish.
The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.

He goes on to explain that if Sony, Microsoft, Apple and any other major download services decide to collaborate on a universal DRM program you basically come to the point of having to share one secret among hundreds or even thousands of people. The way that all of this works is that the music is encrypted in a specific way for download. The players have a matching encryption that will unlock the music so it can be played once it has verified that everything is legit. So what you're going to end up with is trying to keep the encryption information secret by involving four times as many people. Thats not going to work either.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

You read that correctly. Steve Jobs seems to want to get rid of DRM altogether. He goes on to explain that last year the music industry sold about 2 billion digital, protected music files and about 20 billion songs through physical CD sales. So 90% of the music is DRM free anyways, but the 10% they are trying to legislate with DRM are using up an extraordinary amount of financial resources.

Now here's what I think. There are two ways to look at all this. The first is that Apple is sick of the cost incurred on their part in changing their DRM, updating iTunes and constantly plugging leaks in a faulty dam. I figure with the way that RIAA is, for every $0.99 iTunes purchase Apple is passing along $0.70-$0.80. So on the music sales alone they are making some money, but all of this just helps them with their more important goal of selling tens of millions of iPods. That is where the real money lies. By making this public statement Jobs put Apple into a win-win situation. Either DRM goes away and they free up a ton of resources, or it doesn't but people realize it has nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with the RIAA.

The flip side of this is that Apple may be going for the jugular with all of their competitors. One of the selling points with Yahoo! Music and Napster and a few of the other paid content providers is that they charge a $15/month all you can eat style service. So long as you have an active membership you can download as much music from them as you like and it will play on your mp3 player as long as you are still paying for monthly fees. Of course all of those services offer their music in formates that are presently not compatible with iPods. So if Apple has 80% market share, this is the fortress of the remaining 20%. I think they are using this anti-DRM "campaign" as their trojan horse. I don't believe they are afraid of Zune or Creative or any of their individual competitors, but they aren't immune to their own potential mistakes yet either. Just look at the video game industry. Nintendo was the industry leader for almost a decade before they made a mistake, Sony capitalized and Playstation became the biggest name in the industry. After another 10 years of Sony domination they got cocky, tried to force a $600 PS3 on their loyal consumers and for the time being it appears that the pendulum has swung back the other way. At the very least they left the door wide open for Microsoft or Nintendo to take back an enormous portion of their market share.

Anywhow I found it a very interesting read and I thought anyone that owns an mp3 player or purchases music online might be interested in reading it.

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Wow. Horses Are Fast

Lance Armstrong is nice and all, but this is awesome... and scary. I am guessing they chalked this one up to natural instinct.

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The New Britney

I wasn't sure what to make of the trainwreck we're seeing unfold before our eyes. So I let it build for a couple of days and collected an array of photos from Fark for what I am going to call my Britney Spears photo essay. "When the Federline is dead Britney will eat his heart. Before he dies, Britney will put his children under the knife, so the Federline will know his seed is wiped out forever."

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Virtual Console

This weekend I finally dove into the Nintendo Virtual Console download service on the Wii. Basically you can buy your favorite, perfectly working Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx-16 and Nintendo 64 games for $5-$10 each. No more fellating your game cartridge and your Nintendo just for 10 minutes of Super Mario Brothers. I spent $29 on the virtual console this weekend, and for my money I wound up with Bomberman '93 (above, Turbo Grafx), Altered Beast (Sega), Ice Hockey (NES) and MarioKart 64 (N64). And just like that I am addicted to the Virtual Console. Its like iTunes, only if iTunes were selling nostalgia from your childhood. This is clearly something that should be forced upon gaming children of today. They shouldn't be allowed a direct jump to Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. They need to appreciate good, simple, entertaining games first before they get the $40 million budget Lost Planet HD eye candy games of today.

Anyhow every Monday Nintendo adds 2-4 more games for the virtual console. So what I am going to do is list all the games currently available and let you make suggestions as to what I should buy next. Also for the people we had over on Saturday night, I figured out 5 player Bomberman '93. You need to hold down the R (shoulder) button on each Gamecube controller that is going to be in use. That loads the game into controller configuration mode where it auto-detects and verifies the controller assignments prior to game play. Also I am not providing links to the games listed. If you can't remember them from the names alone then it probably isn't worth downloading.

NES ($5)
Donkey Kong
The Legend of Zelda
Mario Bros.
Pinball
Soccer
Solomon's Key
Wario's Woods
Donkey Kong Jr.
Ice Hockey
Tennis
Super Mario Bros.
Baseball
Urban Champion
Gradius
Xevious
Ice Climber
Kid Icarus
Kirby's Adventure
The Legend of Kage

SNES ($8)
F-Zero
SimCity
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Super Castlevania IV
R-Type III: The Third Lightning
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Contra III: The Alien Wars
Super Mario World
Donkey Kong Country

Nintendo 64 ($10)
Super Mario 64
Mario Kart 64

Sega Genesis ($8)
Altered Beast
Sonic The Hedgehog
Ecco the Dolphin
Golden Axe
Columns
Ristar
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Gunstar Heroes
Space Harrier II
ToeJam & Earl
Bonanza Bros.
Comix Zone
Gain Ground
Streets of Rage

Turbo Grafx-16 ($6)
Bomberman '93
Bonk's Adventure
Super Star Soldier
Victory Run
Alien Crush
Military Madness
R-Type
Dungeon Explorer
Soldier Blade
Moto Roader
Vigilante
New Adventure Island

So let's hear it. What should I buy next?

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Chris Cornell Quits Audioslave

In the last week or so I have really gotten into Audioslave for some reason. I think its the whole Miami Vice thing and the fact that I had three albums in my Itunes. Anyhow I woke up this morning to see that Chris Cornell is leaving the band over artistic differences. Evidently Cornell is releasing a solo album this May and feels like the band is cramping his style. In case you know nothing about them Chris Cornell is formerly of Soundgarden and the three band members are formerly of Rage Against The Machine, which is why people sometimes refer to Audioslave as a "super group".

Anyhow this got me thinking about the staying power of recent musical acts. If you look at the bands touring and reuniting and making a big splash in concert venues the list looks like this: The Rolling Stones, U2, The Police (maybe), The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac... I am not even sure about The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, but every so often they seem to get together for a performance or two and everyone makes a big deal out of it. More importantly, if you look at the musical acts of the 70's and 80's you can see a dozen or more examples of a group like Genesis starting out with Peter Gabriel, moving to Phil Collins and then breaking up when both of those guys want to move to a solo career. The Eagles had Joe Walsh, Don Henley and Glenn Frey all move on to varying levels of solo success, Fleetwood Mac had a whole host of "eras" before Stevie Nix finally went her own way (yeah thats a pun, booyah!). Sting left The Police and ultimately had a decent amount of solo fame. I am sure there are others I have missed, but at any point in the next 5-10 years if any of those acts (some of whom haven't released an original album in 20 years) go on tour, the shows are a guaranteed sellout.

So I was thinking about the musicians we have seen since about 1990 when I was 10 years old and actually started listening to music. I could see the Dave Matthews Band going the way of The Rolling Stones, albeit less popular, but releasing albums nobody cares about for the next 20 years, getting some faux-airplay from MTV, VH1 and radio stations but sticking around
because everyone just wants to see them play their early hits. Kurt Cobain offed himself and ended Nirvana's existence. You could possibly count the Foo Fighters as a super group type band, but I don't see people having a whole lot of interest in seeing them live too far in the future. Aside from that I see nothing. Sure the Smashing Pumpkins could reunite somewhere down the road but I think it will take a huge shift in popular music for it to be a really big deal. The rest of the popular bands of the last 15 years or so seem to be hellbent on performing as part of a lineup at music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza.

I think Chris Cornell could be one of those acts. I don't know who has rights to all of the sings he has sung, but if this solo career works out for him I could honestly imagine paying to see him somewhere down the line playing a medley of Soundgarden, Audioslave and solo material. He's got a great voice and musical style that really stand out, and his music doesn't seem to date itself like some a lot of the acts today. Maybe this is a just a personal fad and I'll feel a little different in a couple of weeks, but I thought I should share.

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Giuliani For President, 2008

That about sums it up for me. Actually that in no way sums it up, but it is interesting nonetheless. Official Announcement Link.

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Dads

Perhaps I should have saved this for Father's Day, but I suddenly realized how crazy the news has been getting. This is crazy wrestling dad. I am disappointed we don't have audio of what he was saying to the camera, but he looks like the Ultimate Warrior or the "Macho Man" Randy Savage back in their heyday in a tag team match.
Hockey Dad

Football Dad

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French Military Might

These brave soldiers (believed to be Quebecois) demonstrate the awesome new power of a state-of-the-art French Anti-Tank missile. Le sh*t.

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Tiger Talkboy

I wanted one of these things so bad when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I am not even sure why this popped into my head today. But oh well, YouTube had it.

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The Departed

I saw The Departed last night and have to say I was pretty impressed by the movie. I'd give it an 8.5/10, maybe a little more. Okay, now here's your **Spoiler Alert**. Click continue only if you've already seen it or you like to ruin good movies.

The accents and the performances were all top notch. Nicholson was awesome as were Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. Mark Wahlberg was really good, and they managed to steer away from that "Mark Wahlberg face" stare at the camera that you see in some of his other movies. Despite his awesome performance in Boogie Nights, or maybe because of it, for some reason I can potentially have a bigger problem with buying into Mark Wahlberg as some of the characters he plays more than almost any other male actor.

Anyhow, the movie is centered Dam and DiCaprio playing what amount to undercover informants on opposite sides of major police operation. Damon is a detective in with the bad guys, selling out the cops at every turn and trying to lead them into dead end cases. DiCaprio is a cop on the inside, gathering information and trying to set the table for a major bust. In the end they are playing a cat and mouse game trying to ID each other so their operation can actually succeed. Its a really well written, acted and directed storyline. But here is where I give three standard, half point deductions in the movie's execution:

Music
"Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones was one of the big songs in the trailers and commercials for this movie. It opens the film and fits perfectly with what they're doing in introducing the characters. A lot of Scorcese film have a marquee song, used as a table setting for a montage or narrated section of character progression. In Goodfellas it was the Derek & The Dominoes version of "Layla", in Casino it was The Animals' "House Of The Rising Sun", in Bringing Out The Dead it was was Van Morrison's "T.B. Sheets" (I think) and because of the time settings, Gangs Of New York and The Aviator steered away from popular music altogether. Anyhow, he used "Gimme Shelter" twice about 45 minutes apart and he used another Irish folk/rock song twice for two different but similar scenes during the movie. I am not really sure why this bothers me, but I just can't stand when one song is used twice in the same movie. I know there had to be other options, backup songs and such that could have been used. But why they weren't is a mystery. Actually now that I think about it, the character development song in this one was actually "Comfortably Numb" by Van Morrison, Roger Waters and The Band featuring Rick DiFonzo and Snowy White. But my "using Gimme Shelter" twice point remains.

Casting
Why they decided to involve Anthony Anderson in the movie is beyond me. He usually does a good job with his parts and I like him, but he is hardly the first image you think of when think Massachusetts State Police. Luckily his role is pretty limited. They also cast Bogs from Shawshank (Mark Rolston) in a minor role. I'll blame myself on that one, for recognizing people a little easier than most. He didn't really look all Bogsy so it wasn't even something I thought about until afterwards. Anthony Anderson though, that was weird.

The Ending More than either of the other two, this is a big issue I had with the movie. In fact of the -1.5 I gave the movie, I would say this is about 1.25 and the other two are a combined -0.25. So here are the issues:

1. After Queenan bites it, it seems obvious that DiCaprio and Damon have figured each other out. In fact they have that silent phone call, which is after Queenan was tailed to his meeting with DiCaprio and DiCaprio suspected it. The fact that Dignam wasn't the first person to reach out to him should have made DiCaprio suspicious about who he was talking to and why. I think he was to some degree, but not to the point that they had built up to during the previous 2 hours of the movie. I can't really say how I would have done it, but there was something a little off in the recognition between DiCaprio and Damon in that shakeup after Queenan died.

2. Everyone died. Every so often I wonder why movies don't end a little more logically, and unfortunately last night I found out why. The problem with this part of the ending I thought was Costello's (Nicholson) death. So after this whole sting and buildup by the police Costello and Damon have this whole showdown in a broken drug bust which starts with DiCaprio warning Nicholson who blows it off because what he doesn't know is that Damon is starting to turn on him. DiCaprio escapes out the back before the shooting ever starts and Damon ends up getting Nicholson to admit that in order to save his own ass from the FBI he has been giving people up for years. Damon feels betrayed and kills him. The problem here is that I thought DiCaprio would have used that opportunity to hideout, watch the showdown and ID the mole inside the police operation. For some reason he didn't, and suddenly the story was left wide open with the main bad guy dead and the two leads still alive and confused about each other's identities. So what did they do? I felt like the writers/director panicked after realizing that the movie couldn't have DiCaprio sniff out Damon and take him down without being 3 hours long or feeling insanely rushed. So they concocted this weird situation in which they discover each other because of an envelope on Damon's desk that DiCaprio recognized from his undercover work (having been brought in because the target, Nicholson, was now dead). So they organize that rooftop meeting between Damon and DiCaprio, and in the span of about 90 seconds DiCaprio takes Damon hostage, Anthony Anderson shows up, 24's Chase Edmunds shows up, DiCaprio gets killed, Anthony Anderson gets killed, and then Chase Edmunds gets killed and Damon skates, having tied up every lose end that could prove his involvement with Nicholson. Now to be fair the Chase Edmunds thing was quite a bit less random than I made it sound. He was shown to be Damon's detective colleague friend at two points earlier in the movie. But he was in no way a character you were thinking about during that last scene. So they have the funeral, Damon goes home and walks into his apartment to find a disgruntled, angry Mark Wahlberg waiting with a gun. Damon's dead, show a rat on the balcony in the background, roll credits.

3. There was this whole subplot with the police psychiatrist that was dating Damon but unofficially counseling DiCaprio, believing that she was assigned to him because of the probation that was a part of his ex-convict, disgraced cop undercover story. Towards the end of the film, when DiCaprio knows there is nobody he can trust he gives her an envelope that and tells her to open it only if something happens to him or he is killed. So hides this away in her desk, and Damon never really even knows they have met and DiCaprio never knows it is Damon she is dating. So the movie ends with DiCaprio dead, and we never see what was in this envelope of his. I suppose I should assume it was a bunch of evidence about Damon with a "give this to Mark Wahlberg if something bad happens" note attached, which is why he shows up to kill Damon. We just never see the envelope again or see any indication that she has done anything with it. At this point I'd prefer to believe that the envelope contained evidence that was only useful in a more drawn out, less deadly ending for the movie.

Still despite all of that I think it was an excellent film. However, if it doesn't win Best Picture I think the ending will be the reason.

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School For Scoundrels

Alright so I just finished School For Scoundrels, which as far as I know came out on DVD today. The basic premise of the movie is similar to that of the movie Hitch. Jon Heder is a lonely nerdy with no self confidence and a dead end job. Through word of mouth he finds out about a guy that can help him fix whatever his problems are. So he finds himself in a class with a bunch of other guys all in a similar situation, that get pushed around in the jobs and relationships and need to turn it around. Billy Bob Thornton is the teacher and his sidekick is Michael Clarke Duncan.

So amongst the other class members are Horatio Sanz, Todd Luiso (left), Matt Walsh (Dog Bites Man), Paul Scheer (VH1 Best Week Ever) with some help from David Cross, Sarah Silverman and Ben Stiller as well. What you have in the cast is basically the Ocean's Eleven of quirky, not really mainstream, nerd comedy. The problem is that the movie ends up being more like Ocean's Twelve. I was sort of left wondering "why did they go to the trouble of getting all these people if that is what they were going to do with them?". I couldn't help but think either they all hated each other and shooting the movie was a task by itself, or there is an R-rated movie somewhere on the cutting room floor. I am not talking about "unrated" version either. All that unrated means is that the movie wasn't pre-screened and rated by a panel of bureaucratic douchebags in Los Angeles.

Anyhow, more important than that was that the movie didn't have a second act, or at least not a fully developed one. Here is a line graph representation of the plot of the movie.

I don't have to explain how these movies typically go. If you've seen a few of them you know within reason what you can expect from the major plot points. I just didn't think the movie took off. I would give it 6/10, mostly because I thought it had the potential to deliver a much funnier movie which meant it was ultimately a bit more disappointing.

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Fergie/Cake Mashup

One the one hand I consider this to be high treason against my own ears. But on the other hand this is the only way of making that stupid "London Bridge" song even remotely palatable. I don't know what to think. This mashup uses the unedited version of "London Bridge", which features some NSFW language.

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Richard Simmons

Its Richard Simmons so in a way you have been warned. The second clip is more funny, less gross.

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Hot Cops

Some people have no sense. I believe we now have to rewrite the definition for 'desperate'.

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Jack Cafferty Punks Wolf Blitzer

What happened to Wolf anyways? He used to be White House correspondent Wolf Blitzer. Oh and Ashton Kutcher sucks for changing the collective understanding of the verb definition of the word "punk" to mean "practical joke capture on candid camera". Well much like Randall Graves, I am taking it back.

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I Saw A Few More Movies

As a part of my February quest to not be cold, I watched a few more movies this weekend. So here are my thoughts (by the way, the clip above is very, very NSFW, but hilarious).

Lucky Number Slevin - Absolutely awesome movie. If you haven't seen it, make it your next rental. An easy 9.5/10. I should probably give it a 9.0, but if you are fan of Lucy Liu, she is worth an extra 0.5. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't even go into details. Put it this way: if you don't like the movie I'll buy you a beer and we can sit down face to face as you explain to me why.

Clerks II - As you might imagine if you have seen the first one, this movie was pretty crass. But if you have liked any of the other Kevin Smith/View Askew movies (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back), this one is definitely worth seeing. 7.5/10 if you enjoy the View Askew-niverse, 5.5 otherwise.

Snakes On A Plane - Not as good the second time, but still on track for cable television superstardom.

A Scanner Darkly - I am totally confused by this movie. I'll say this: At the end of the movie you definitely realize there was more going on than you initially were aware of. But the first 70 minutes of the movie I found it phenomenally difficult to get past the rotoscoping (the stylized look of the movie) and actually engage myself in the plot. I think they might have been better off mixing in the rotoscoping filter with normal live-action sequences to emphasize the effects of substance D. I couldn't shake the feeling that the movie drops you into a story that is already 30% complete and expects that you'll be able to figure out what you've missed. I really felt like it would have made much more sense if I had previously read the book. But the end really seems to salvage the rest, and thats why I think perhaps I missed quite a few subtleties in the plot from the start because I was too distracted by the rotoscoping. So at this point I would say the movie is about a 6.5/10. I may watch it again at some point in the future and reevaluate all of this.

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PC/Mac Take On Vista

I know I promised that Justin Long was going to leave this ad campaign, but I don't know what happened to that story. Anyhow this is an ad I can appreciate. It attacks a specific, undeniable issue with the new Windows Vista Operating System. I thought the previous ads all sucked because they made fun relatively insignificant differences between using Macs and PCs, like the magnetic power cord. Nice? Sure, but hardly a deal breaker for most consumers.

So yeah, Windows Vista has a few issues with its permissions settings that essentially require you to confirm or deny the relatively simple actions of programs you install on your computer. This is why just as with almost every product on the market, you hold off on version 1.0 and wait for them to polish everything a little bit more. I'll check out Vista when it makes it to Service Pack 1.

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Miami Vice

I stayed in last night and watched Miami Vice. I was pleasantly surprised. After I got past Colin Farrell's ridiculous mustache, it was a lot easier to just watch it as "Michael Mann's undercover cop movie starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell".

Here is where I thought they screwed up:

1. The relationship happened way too quickly between Sonny and Isabella. In all the other aspects of the movie they respected the natural skepticism of the inner circle of crime rings. But for some reason this lady, arguably the #2 in command, just threw caution to the wind and decided that she and Sonny should spend a weekend together.

2. The script failed to show the usefulness of Isabella's multi-national background. She looked to be Korean, but her name was Isabella, she grew up in Havana, Cuba mentioned living in Angola for a while and spoke crappy English and Spanish. I think they were aiming for high powered businesswoman/white collar international trade power broker, but she spoke exactly zero languages well enough to really pull that off. Had they shown that the cartel was dealing most with dealers native to a language she was fluent in, I would have let it slide. Instead she seemed completely out of place and half developed, like a less hot version of Estella Warren in that awful remake of Planet Of The Apes.

3. The use of a remade/remixed "In The Air Tonight" was unforgiveable. They mixed the song in towards the end of the movie but kept the audio levels high enough that you basically hear the whole crappy thing. I know there was probably some homage to Phil Collins aspect of why they did that, but an instrumental would have been fine.

Aside from that I really dug the movie. There was this weird Chris Cornell fetish that Debbie warned me about that was a little odd, but the songs they used were really good so it was more funny than bad. What I found to be really cool was the way they miked the final shootout scene. It was less Hollywood and sounded a lot more like the rapid fire "pops" you sometimes here from field reporters on the news. They didn't go for any unrealistic vehicle explosions or exploding car windows, and at times the camera swiveled from shooter to shooter like a documentary/reality show. So it seemed a little more chaotic and realistic than normal movies. It still doesn't hold a candle to the shootout scene Michael Mann did for Heat, but it was really, really cool. There was also something about the shotguns. I think it was you could see but not hear them get racked between shots, which seemed a lot more plausible than in other movies.

The other thing I really liked about the movie was the Crockett and Tubbs operated with impunity, so there weren't a whole lot of red tape/arguing with superiors scenes, and they even offed a few bad guys at the drop of a hat just to prove they were in charge. Its the sort of thing you'd like to see from Jack Bauer on 24, and probably would if you weren't fully aware the season needs to last for twenty-four one hour episodes.

Overall I am going to say its about a 7/10. Worth renting for sure and certainly one of the best television to movie adaptations that has come out in recent years, which probably isn't saying much. I would watch it again for sure. I sort of hope they make a sequel.

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