YouTube Thursday: Han Solo, PI

Seriously, this needs no introduction. Han Solo as Magnum PI.



And now the comparison to original.

Last weekend, Sheryl & I took the kids to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Up. In the grand tradition of the Pixar flicks, it is a masterful movie that combines storytelling with film-making to actually make you forget that you’re watching a cartoon, because you become so involved in the story itself.

The movie starts off with a depiction of the life of the main character, Carl, in 10 minutes. He meets the girl of his dreams as a boy, and they marry, planning great adventures with each other. But, as it does, life intervenes, and the plans they made fall by the wayside as they deal with those inevitabilities. The conclusion of that 10 minutes is some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful film making that I’ve seen in a long time.

As a result of life, Carl becomes a fairly standard Hollywood “crusty old man with a heart of gold,” but because of the investment of the first 10 minutes, the culmination of his conversion doesn’t seem Hollywood-ized. It seems like a natural part of his character coming out. He meets up with Russell an 8-10 year old Wilderness scout, Dug a talking dog, a strange chocolate-loving bird-creature, and an adventurer who is darker than he appears.

The voice acting is up to Pixar’s usual high standard with Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer in major roles (I actually would have like to have seen them enact one of their final scenes.) There are some genuinely funny moments and some fairly scary ones. Kinsey loved it, but Connor found some of the scenes with the guard dogs to be pretty scary.

It really is a great movie and yet another one to go into the pantheon that Pixar is developing. On one hand, you wonder when the magic is going to run out, but after so many incredible movies, maybe it never will.

25 Random Things About Myself

There's a thing going around Facebook where you list 25 things about yourself. So I'm double posting it here.

1) I have lived my entire life in Nashville. I was born in the old Saint Thomas hospital and have lived my entire life in the southern and eastern part of Nashville. I love this city, the size, the general feel of the people here, just about everything about it. And as a result I've never really wanted to move. I think I could live in a big city and were I younger, I might give New York City a shot, but as it is, I love living here.

2) I have attended Otter Creek Church of Christ for 31 of my 37 years of life. Except for 6 years where I either didn't attend church or attended Belmont Church, I've gone to Otter Creek the entire time. One of the things that I really love about it is the sense of tradition that I have from going there. My great-grandfather was the first preacher in the Granny White building and my grandparents went there, as well as my parents for a time. I love how we honor tradition while still pushing the envelopes of what it means to be Church of Christ and a Christian.

3) I taught high school English for 6 years at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School for the Health Sciences and Engineering. I loved this job. I got to teach some of the best kids in one of the best schools in the city. We talked about literature, of course, but talking about that led us into discussions of race and life and politics and religion and all that other stuff you're not supposed to talk to your students about, but that's what they want to talk about. I had a great time doing it (except for grading papers) and miss it on occasion.

4) I'm married to my best friend. I know that sounds cliched but the honest truth is that Sheryl is the person that I want to spend most of my time with/person with whom I want to spend most of my time. When something good or bad happens, she's the first one I want to talk with about it. We were friends before we dated and that blossomed into the love we share today. I don't find myself missing the fluttery feelings of first love because as important as those are at the beginning of a relationship, they fade. And if that's what we lock into as love, then we're just fooling ourselves. So I love being married to my best friend.

5) I have a bad temper. When I was a teenager and adolescent, I used to lose my temper all the time. Got into fights, argued, all that stuff. As I got older, that fuse became longer and longer, but I find that it gotten shorter with my kids as I have pretty high expectations for them and their behavior. I'm working on controlling it as much as I can, but some days it's very, very hard.

6) My parents are divorced. When I was 11, my parents got divorced and 6 months later, my mom remarried. Now, my mom and dad's relationship had been over a long time before the divorce was finalized, but that was obviously a difficult time. As a result, my mom was also disfellowshipped from Otter Creek, because the divorce was not Scriptural (because of marital infidelity on my dad's part).

7) After leaving teaching, I was a technical writer. What that really means is that I helped write frequently asked questions for websites, as well as help files and such. It was a great way to get into the business world and honestly it was a place where my experience as a teacher gave me a great amount of credibility. It was also something I didn't like a lot, because it was very formalized in the writing and grammar, things that I really didn't like even when I was teaching.

8) My technical writing led to my work now as a usability engineer/user interface designer. One of the things you do as a technical writer is look for problems that people might have with software and anticipate the problems they'll have with it and write solutions around it. What I do now is design the software to not have those problems in the first place. It's a great job that feeds both my creative side and geeky side. Plus, I'm pretty good at it and enjoy it, both of which are nice bonuses.

9) I've been out of the US 3 times. Once to Canada on a brief business trip, and twice to Great Britain. The first time was in 2000 when Sheryl and I decided that we were going to do a trip like this before we had kids and just had a blast doing it. We spent 2 weeks going from London to Dover/Canterbury to Oxford to Edinburgh (Scotland) to Aberdeen (Scotland) to Inverness (Scotland) and back to London. It is literally in the top 5 memories of my entire life, behind our wedding and the births of our kids. The 2nd time to England was on a mission trip to Loughborough in 2004. We took Kinsey with us to go work with a church there, and Connor came along too, but he was in utero. This was also good, but very different in feel obviously. Through it, we came to know many people that are very close friends with us today and who are in our Life group/small group.

10) I love Jesus. Again, I know that's a cliche kind of thing to say, but I really do. Not just because of the salvation aspects in which I firmly believe, but also the example of his life. Too often it's easy for us to focus on the sacrificial atoning nature of his death and resurrection and the cute "golden fleece diapers" aspect of his birth, and forgetting that there was a life of 33 years in between those two where Jesus said some really important things. I love how Jesus tweaked the noses of the established authority while still loving people and still getting frustrated as all heck with them.

11) My favorite Old Testament verse is 1 Samuel 6:7 "But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things human beings look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." I had this one read at my baptism and it was a theme verse for me. I had horrible self-esteem as a child, and so it gave me comfort that God didn't look at my unattractive outside, but what was inside.

12) My favorite New Testament verses are Philippians 2:5-11: 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:

6 Who, being in very nature [a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature [b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

13) Sheryl and I have lived in the same house for the last 12 years. We moved in just before our first anniversary and rented from my parents for the first year, then bought. Several times, I've really wanted to move and get something with just a bit more space, particularly in the master bedroom and master bath area, but it's not too bad right now.

14) I can quote about 90% of the original Star Wars movie and probably 75% of the Princess Bride. My movie-going childhood was defined by Star Wars and the original trilogy. I also had an LP called the Story of Star Wars that had most of the dialogue, music, and sound effects and I listened to that over and over. My quotability of the Princess Bride comes just from loving that movie and loving the complete over the top cheesiness of it being done with complete seriousness. "Let me esplain.... No, there is too much, let me sum up."

15) My ability to hold vast amounts of useless knowledge in my brain makes me very annoying at trivia games. I don't have a photographic memory, but I can hold weird bits of knowledge in my head for a long time. Like, I can remember that John McTiernan was the director of Die Hard 1 & 3 and the directory of Predator, while Renny Harlin directed Die Hard 2, the Long Kiss Goodnight, and Cutthroat Island, the latter two starred his wife Geena Davis with Samuel Jackson and Matthew Modine (respectively). I don't know why I know that. But I do and when I play trivia games, it can be annoying, but my competitive drive makes me want to win every time. Hence, I don't play trivia games that often.

16) I'm a gadget/electronics nut. I love grown up toys. I love the cool iPhones and big screen TVs and the whiz bag things that we can do with gadgets now that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago. I like those things, but that can also get expensive so I try not to indulge that often, but on occasion I'm weak and give in.

17) I love snowboarding. For the last several years, I've gone out to Colorado with my parents and Kinsey to go skiing, but 2 years ago, I was introduced to snowboarding and I don't see myself returning to skiing anytime soon. For one the boots are much more comfortable. Secondly, it's an amazing amount of fun. I was never a skateboarder, but snowboarding is an incredible amount of fun. I never had to take formal lessons. My mom and dad showed me how to heel and toe turns, but beyond that, it's just been really natural for me. And I'm looking forward to going back soon.

18) I've always wanted to write fiction. Blogging and design work feeds a certain part of my creativity, but from a very early age I wanted to write fiction. The problem again goes back to my self-esteem about what I can do. A lot of the fiction that I've written has felt trite and pedestrian and so I haven't really devoted much time or effort to it. It's a confidence issue, as well as pushing past the crap that I would have to write before I get to something that might be decent.

19) I do tech/audio-visual work at Otter Creek and occasionally for the Zoe Group. About 6 and a half years ago, I started to doing tech work for Otter Creek as a part time job. It's something that I mostly enjoy, but I get a little tired of it sometimes. It can be a little more stressful than I would like it to be, but that's because I hold myself to such a high standard when it comes to mistakes. I coordinate and run both the sound board and the MediaShout (visual) work for Otter Creek. Honestly, while I'm good at both, I enjoy running MediaShout more than sound. Running sound can still occasionally feel like I'm in someone else's shoes, while I feel right at home running MediaShout, behind a computer doing visuals.

20) I've run sound at the Ryman Auditorium. A few years back, the Zoe Group partnered with the Temple Church praise team to do a Thanksgiving service at the Ryman Auditorium and because Brandon Scott Thomas felt comfortable with me, I ended up running the sound for the night. It was a very scary, but really cool experience.

21) My favorite literature writer is William Faulkner. I discovered Faulkner in 10th grade English when we read As I Lay Dying which I didn't understand at all. Stream of consciousness... point of view... perspective... My mother is a fish... None of it made sense. Then we read The Unvanquished in 11th grade and I got him quite a bit more. Then in 12th grade, I read Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom, as well as many of his short stories, and I discovered someone who finally didn't make me feel like an idiot for claiming to be a Southern. He was honest about the racism, and unflinching in his depiction, while also not condone it, but recognized it as a part of the Southern Heritage, never to be re-enacted. As a result, I had my students read him too.

22) I love video games, particularly shooters and driving games, and most especially, music games. When I got my Xbox, I made a pact that I wouldn't play while the kids were awake. I've gotten a little bit away from that and I'll play some driving games with them, and especially Rock Band where Kinsey and Sheryl will play drums and bass as well. It's incredibly fun. Plus we play it when our Life group comes over, after we get done with the Bible study and prayer time.

23) I do the laundry in our household. When Sheryl and I got married, we divided up the household chores. I took the outside of the house (excluding the garden) and she took the inside (excluding the laundry). Now you might think, "Why the laundry, Phil?" Because I can sit on my butt and watch TV while I fold clothes. It was a pretty easy decision. Now, that of course is not to say that I don't help out with cleaning the house, or Sheryl doesn't help with the laundry, but that's where the responsibilities tend to lay.

24) I would like to preach one sermon at Otter Creek. It sounds dumb, but I almost feel this "genetic" imperative to preach a sermon at Otter Creek, because of my great-grandfather preaching there. Now, I of course would like to be asked to speak on my own merits and not as a "pity" preacher, so it's not likely to happen, but I think it would be really neat to do that.

25) I don't know for certain what the afterlife will bring. I'm placing my faith that what Jesus said is true and that my desire to be as much like him as I can will put me in a place to be with him in eternity, saved by his grace. I don't know what that means for everyone else in the world, past, present, and future. But I feel like my calling is to show love to others and allow myself to be loved by them and by God. If I can somehow pull that off here on earth, perhaps God can show a little bit through me to them.

So that's 25 things. If you've lasted this long, I'd buy you a drink (non-alcoholic) but with the economy the way it is... well, you'll just have to be happy with a hearty congratulations.

Bonus YouTube Thursday: 40 Movie Inspirational Speeches in Two Minutes

I was simultaneously inspired to attack the English, defeat the French, pass a law, win one for the Gipper, and run headlong into Mordor.

The Dark Knight: Analysis Part 2

So, last night, Adam Ellis and I got out to see The Dark Knight in our local IMAX. First off, if you loved TDK in standard format, you will love it in IMAX. Remember what I said in my first review about the Hong Kong scene being kind of superfluous to the rest of the movie? Ok, NOW I understand why it's in there. When Batman basejumps off the skyscraper into Lao's building, it's simply jaw dropping. The whole film is just gorgeously shot and the director Chris Nolan really uses the IMAX format to the fullest.

So, after seeing the film, I naturally have a few more thoughts on it. Because I wasn't distracted with the ins and outs of the plot this time, I could really focus on the characters themselves and of course the most compelling is the Joker. Adam has read Nietzche and I haven't so I'm going to trust his point on this, but he says that the Joker is the ultimate Nietzche-an agent. An agent of chaos as the Joker refers to himself. What struck me about the Joker this time is that I was wrong about him in my first review. The stuff the Joker does isn't without purpose. It has a purpose. It's to strip away the thin veneer of civilization that he thinks we all put on our interactions with each other. The little barriers that keep us from slipping into barbarism. And he's about exposing our hypocrisy. The Joker was right in the movie that if he'd said a gangbanger was going to get shot or a truckload of soldiers was going to get blown up, we'd all simply accept that as the way of things in the world, because we HAVE accepted them as the way of the world. But when he threatened the Mayor of Gotham, people freaked out.

To me the Joker was about finding for each leader what would drive them past civilization. For Batman, he knew it was killing. And so he constantly tried to goad Batman into killing him. For Dent, he knew that Rachel was his anchor and so he took Rachel out in the most twisted way possible. Driving Dent into madness was also two fold. Not just did it drive Dent into barbarism, threatening Gordon's family, but his plan was for the rest of Gotham to find out about it too, bringing the hero that they'd all looked to down below them. The Joker's chaos had a purpose, but because we all fear chaos, it's hard to see the purpose in it. But again, the entire crux of the movie comes down to the ferries. The Joker has taken his experiment en masse and is trying now to strip the civilization from the people there, and it was there, in the ordinary people of Gotham City that he was proven wrong. In a convicted criminal, who throws the detonator out the window and even in the business man who loses his nerve, civilization and decency cannot be completely stripped away. There are limits that people have and in this case, they were still bound by that decency.

One last point: I'm not sure Dent is dead. We saw a memorial service, but never saw the body, never got a confirmation that he is dead. While the Joker won't be back (I wouldn't think), it's very possible that Dent could.

Once again, great movie. Perhaps the best of the year.

YouTube Thursday: A Minor Movie Based on a Small Series of Books

This is just a little movie clip I found the other day. I think it could be interesting and maybe you'll give it a shot. I'm not overly familiar with the book series it's based on, but who knows? Maybe the author will make something of herself one of these days.



But seriously, I saw on another forum that I frequent that this trailer could have been 15 seconds long. Bring up the music, bring up the title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, then put up the words, "Like you're not going to see it, probably opening weekend." And that's it. (At which point the people who STILL think Harry and Hermione were meant to be together forever and Rowling screwed up her own books would say that the lack of Ginny in the trailer shows the true pure love that Harry and Hermione share. And yes, those people are out there.)

Things I'm Thinking About

• If Jesus went to so many parties, how come so many of his followers go to so few?
• Has my job up the tech booth distanced me from people?
• What are the implications of how we deal with race as Jesus' followers and what does that say to the world outside our walls?
• Why do people insist on boiling down theological issues to mathematical equations?
• There are people that think "seeking to be a disciple of Jesus" is a bad thing? (As opposed to being or not being a disciple)
• Is the Dark Knight the newest expression of a glimmers of God's hope in a nihilistic society or just Christians trying to shoehorn the last soap bubble of pop culture before it pops so we can look cool and relevant?

Just some things I'm thinking.

YouTube Thursday: Darth Vader is a Thriller

I can only imagine how hard it must have been to do those moves in that costume.

The Dark Knight: Review and Analysis

I warn you now. This post will have major and pervasive spoilers for the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, you were apparently one of the few who didn't this weekend. Go fulfill your duty as an American filmgoer and see it. Then come back to this post. And I apologize in advance for the length of this post. As you might imagine, I have a few thoughts.

Ok. This is basically the best movie of the year. Hands down. People are going to be very tempted to write it off as a comic book movie. And it is, but it's much, much deeper than that. Yeah, I know that people always say that about comic book movies, but for this one it's really true. It's an examination of the human response to chaos and self-preservation and it's absolutely outstanding. Make no mistake, this movie is a tragedy in the Greek sense of it. The heroes have flaws which ultimately bring them down. And that's part of the brilliance of the film.

So, what was good.

Well, of course, Heath Ledger as the Joker was outstanding. It's interesting to watch a movie like Knight's Tale and then this one and recognize the masterful acting that he was capable of. Ledger's Joker is an all consuming vortex of chaos. And it's without purpose. In my mind, he's really only a criminal because that's how society views someone who sows chaos in the way he does. He's scary, because he's so unpredictable. You don't know what he's got up his sleeve, each time he comes on screen and that's what takes your breath away each time he does. You almost hold your breath waiting to see what he does.

I loved the shooting of this film compared to Batman Begins. I watched the first one just prior to seeing The Dark Knight and it was interesting to see how much was CGI in the first one and how the Gotham of this movie is basically Chicago. I liked how much they tried to make everything as realistic possible. The city itself almost became a character in the movie, and especially the citizens.

I thought the casting of Aaron Eckhart has Harvey Dent was terrific. He really did the White Knight very well and it made his transformation into Two-Face that much more tragic.

The overall story was good, if a bit convoluted. I'm definitely going to have to see it again (IMAX, anyone?) because I want to try and follow the Joker's plots. How much relied on coincidence? How much could he have known was going to happen or how people would react to certain situations? Could he have known that Gordon would fake his own death or did his plans just ooze around that bump in the roadmap?

Maggie Gyllenhal was a suitable replacement to Katie Holmes, but Rachel Dawes was still a pawn in the whole game. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were stellar in their supporting roles, as usual. Nice to hear some of Alfred's non-butler-y background stories.

Not so good? Well, unfortunately, like the Burton Batman movies (who? Joel Schumacher? Never heard of him...), Batman himself can almost fade into the background on these. I think they did a good job over all of trying to counterbalance the seething serenity of Batman with the chaos of the Joker, but in the face of a whirlwind like that character, it's tough to be as memorable.

And while I liked the cameo by Dr. Crane/Scarecrow, it did make me wonder how they solved the issue of the escaped criminals in the Narrows and the fear toxin, but not too much. And the whole Hong Kong sequence was kind of pointless to me, even though the director might have been making a subtle commentary on American intervention in sovereign nations. He definitely made a not-at-all subtle commentary on technological eavesdropping.

However, one of my absolute favorite parts of the movie didn't involve any of the main characters. It was with the two ferries. On one, many of the regular citizens of Gotham; on the other, criminals being transported away from Gotham. The Joker has rigged both of them with explosives, but put the trigger for each boat on the other boat. And if one boat doesn't blow up the other in 15 minutes, he'll blow up both of them. There's a tense time where the civilian boat votes to blow up the prison boat and the prison boat is seeing this as a chance to escape. I was sure that they were going to give into the temptation of self-preservation, but at the last minute, one of the prisoners stands up and says that he'll do what needs to be done, since none of the rest seems to be willing to destroy the other boat. He takes the trigger... and tosses it out the window. And I'm might have been the only one in my theater who did, but I applauded that moment in the movie, because I knew that this was the fulfillment of the words that Harvey Dent spoke earlier in the movie: "The night is darkest before the dawn, but the dawn is coming." And when that prisoner (played by Tiny Lister) threw the trigger out the window, I knew that was the dawn that Chris Nolan (writer and director) was going for. The decision on the part of the people on each boat to not take lives, but be willing to sacrifice themselves. It was a beautiful moment in a dark, dark film. (For more analysis, check out this link: http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/07/20/assessing-the-themes-of-the-dark-knight/ )

This is a movie that's going to be thought about and analyzed for years. This might be the pinnacle of comic book movie making and what pushes the genre out of the niche mindset and fully into the mainstream. This movie is Godfather II to Batman Begins' Godfather. The Dark Knight takes a larger scope on the whole thing and tells a deeper story than just Batman vs. the Joker. And that was the unexpected pleasure that came from it.

(Addendum 8/27) For further thoughts after seeing the movie a second time, click here.

YouTube Thursday: The Dark Knight

Ok, seriously. What else was I going to post here on the day before the sequel to one of the best comic book movies ever, Batman Begins, comes out?



According to Box Office Mojo, Spider-Man 3 had the biggest opening weekend with $151 million back in 2007. My prediction: The Dark Knight will hit $200 million. This one is going to be huge and I can't wait to see it. More than Prince Caspian, more than Indiana Jones, more than Iron Man, this is the movie that I've wanted to see this summer more than any other.

WALL-E

This weekend, Sheryl, their kids, Uncle Paul, Aunt Sarah and I got out to see WALL-E. I've read the reviews, of course, and it's apparently the greatest Pixar movie ever, which is saying something.

I really enjoyed it. Naturally, anytime you see something with a 2 year old in tow, you're going to miss some details (a dropped passy can take your attention away for a bit), but I thought it was really quite good. I loved the opening part where there was only sound, but no dialogue. I thought that the film makers did a great job establishing WALL-E as a character and his idiosyncrasies. It was a bit weird to show human emotion between two robots, especially some of the conventions of the romantic comedies, but all the work the film makers did in the first part of the movie to establish WALL-E paid off for that part.

The "environmental" message of it was about as subtle as getting hit over the head with a skyscraper girder, but it was well done too. More subtle was the message about the tendency toward inactivity that humans have. I don't think most kids will see themselves in the human characters in the movies, but I know I did.

So, was it the best Pixar movie ever? I didn't think so. I think Toy Story was groundbreaking; A Bug's Life was good, but not outstanding. Toy Story 2 was Godfather 2 to Toy Story's Godfather, an incredible improvement on the original; Monsters, Inc had heart and a concept that was almost the most creative thing I've seen on film (and had the best final shot of all the films). Finding Nemo captured the parent-child relationship in an amazing way (and works as an interesting allegory for Christianity). The Incredibles was simply... incredible. Cars was off the pace of some of the others. Ratatouille shouldn't have been the success that it was but was a pretty outstanding film.

If I had to put the Pixar films in order of preference.

1. The Incredibles
2. Toy Story 2
3. Wall-E
4. Toy Story
5. Monsters Inc.
6. Ratatouille
7. Finding Nemo
8. A Bug's Life
9. Cars

A Couple of Brief Movie Reviews

Last weekend, Sheryl and I were able to get out and see Get Smart, starring Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway, and Dwayne Johnson (no longer The Rock, I suppose). We enjoyed it quite a bit and had fun. It was nice that it took the storyline somewhat seriously but still had fun with some of the conventions of the Get Smart TV show. I liked that they didn't try to shoehorn cameos by the original actors into it and let it stand on its own. Carrell and Hathaway had great chemistry with each other. Fun movie. Good for a date night. 3.5 out of 5.

This weekend, Sheryl went shopping with her mom and I got to spend some time with the kids. In the morning, we went to see Kung Fu Panda. I was a little leery of it, because I know that some kids' movies can lean toward some light potty humor, which honestly, I don't need Kinsey running around the house making fart jokes. That's my job. (rimshot) At any rate, thankfully, Kung Fu Panda didn't really do that. We all enjoyed it, including Connor who stayed mainly involved in it, except when he dropped his Sprite (sorry to the guy in front of us). If you've seen just about any martial arts and/or underdog type movie, you can see the plotlines coming like a semi down a dirt road. Good kids movie. 3 out of 5

YouTube Thursday: 80's Teen Movie Ending

I forget who sent this to me the other day, but it's a parody of the ending of every 80's teen movie. Ever. And it's hysterical. It's a bit long, but worth it.

Movies...

I've seen a few movies recent that I thought I would offer my thoughts on. Spoiler ahead if you haven't seen them.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I've got to admit that I was a bit disappointed by this one. I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or what, but this movie didn't thrill me. I enjoyed it well enough and having Indy back on the screen was really cool, but something about the whole thing just felt off to me. Maybe it was was the whole alien storyline, but honestly, I think one of the biggest things that disappointed me was the obvious CGI that they used for the special effects. I'm of course not naive enough to think that they wouldn't use CGI, but the difference between the feel of the "normal" shots and the CGI ones was starkly different. The rest of it was fine, but I wasn't put into dumb grin at any point during it. Three stars out of five.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I will caveat this by saying that we saw this in Kansas City after a long day of travel and with Connor in the theater. I loved this movie. I thought is was at least as good, if not better than the first one. And it was little things that really made this movie for me. Peter having trouble adjusting back to the "real" world from Narnia where he was not only a grownup, but also the High King. I loved Edmund's more mature and slightly snarky nature. I LOVED the scene in the cave where the White Witch was brought back for just a moment. I knew how that turned out, of course, but even during it, it was well done. This was a really good movie and I can't wait to see it again when it comes out on DVD. 4 stars out of 5

The Godfather

Somehow, my movie education has missed out on watching this movie completely through. I'm not sure how that happened. I feel like I've seen a lot if not all of it through broken bits watched in various forms on TV. I've enjoyed it and Sheryl said I needed to see it, so to the Netflix queue! I finished watching it last night and I really liked it a lot. I thought that the characters in the movie were well portrayed, both from a writing standpoint as well as acting. The scope of it seemed so constrained and almost quiet, minus the multiple murders. I started Part II last night as well and am only about 30 minutes into it, but I can already tell that it seems more ambitious than the first, which I like, but I'm also curious about how it gets pulled off. I'm looking forward to it. 4.5 stars out of 5

Caption This Picture!

Caption this picture! Be funny!


For more humor, read this letter denying tenure to Dr. Henry Jones, Junior.

Iron Man

Sheryl and I got out to see Iron Man Friday night and let me give the non-spoiler review first and then I'll get detailed and spoiler-filled.

It was great. Absolutely terrific. I'm a comics fan just in general, and really enjoyed Spider-Man 1 & 2 (not so much with 3) and Batman Begins. I've also seen the comics done fairly poorly in movies like The Hulk and the Fantastic Four. Thankfully, Iron Man didn't fall into the latter category. Beyond the visual effects, what really, really made this movie was the acting. All four of the major characters in this movie were portrayed by Oscar-nominated or -winning actors: Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and most notably, Robert Downey Jr. Beyond all the effects and CGI, it was the acting that really, really made this movie. If you haven't seen it, go see it. If you have seen it, scroll down for my more spoiler-filled review.

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Ok, first of all the effects were great. There are moments the movie like when Downey/Stark is being put into the suit by his robots where you know there's green screen work going on, but it looked so seamless that it's difficult to tell where it is.

But here's the great thing about the movie. It's really Robert Downey Jr's movie. Director Jon Favreau realized this and I think made a concerted effort to NOT make Iron Man the main character. He made Stark the main character. Iron Man never became a persona of Stark the way that Batman is a persona of Bruce Wayne, almost another personality. Iron Man is simply Tony Stark in a suit. And I credit both Downey and Favreau with this. Downey for being a great actor, especially vocally when his face isn't on screen, and Favreau for shots like Downey's face inside the Iron Man mask with all of the displays reflecting on him. It's a great directorial trick to help us maintain a connection with the Stark character. It's very effective.

The other part that really works is the story. Having Stark kidnapped in Afghanistan brings a real immediacy to the story. Even the idea that we've got a guy here that's a genius that can do all of the things that he does works in a similar way to how Batman Begins works. It's naturalistic, at least as naturalistic as a story about a guy in a suit can be. You find it reasonable that a normal guy with enough motivation could pull off the stuff that Stark does.

I really, really liked this movie a whole lot and so did Sheryl. She didn't like me keeping her afterwards as much to watch the scene after the credits, but hey. Sometimes you got to sit through the credits...

YouTube Thursday: Marvel/DC

I think tomorrow night, Sheryl and I are going to be able to get out and see Iron Man, which I'm particularly looking forward to and was before it got all the good buzz it's been getting.

In my online browsing, I came across a guy on YouTube who has done something kind of interesting. He's taken the Mac/PC meme and moved it over to the comic book world, using action figures. He did a bunch a couple of years ago with Spider-man and Superman and this year, he's done Batman and Iron Man and it's a riot.



Now, as I was looking through this guy's other work, I discovered that he actually did a series called "Marvel/DC: After Hours." It's a seven-part series, and this is the highest compliment that I can give something: at the end, I had to remind myself that it was just a guy manipulating action figures. The story is that good. If you're not a comic fan, you might not enjoy it like I did, but I'm also not as big a comic fan as some other people are, so you might give it a shot.


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6 #1


Part 6 #2


Part 7 #1


Part 7 #2

YouTube Thursday: Movies I'm Looking Forward To

As you might have figured out at some point, I love movies. Sheryl and I used to go and see a movie almost every weekend back when we dated and first got married. Now? Not so much. A movie has to look really good for us to go see it. But here are two that I'm really looking forward to this summer.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull


Of course I'm looking forward to this one. I BEGGED my parents to let me see Raiders when it first came out. It had Han Solo in it and ALL my friends had seen it. They finally relented and I got to see it in all its face-melting gory... er, glory.

Things that make me excited for this one:

• Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood.
• The action
• Harrison Ford
• That music

Things that make me leery:

• The title. I mean seriously, what does that even mean?
• The humor. I liked some of the humor in the Last Crusade, but some of it got too slapstick. And I thought the way that Marcus Brody was so different from his character in the first one was the worst example of it.
• Roswell?!?

Iron Man


I also love superhero movies. Loved Spider-Man. Loved Batman Begins. Loved the original Superman, but I had a lot of experience with those characters going in. I knew their origins and their alter-egos. With this one, I know almost nothing that I haven't seen in the trailers and what I've seen makes me really look forward to it. Plus with The Dark Knight coming out as well, it's going to be a great summer.

Now all we need is a babysitter...

Oscars and a Biblical Rumination

Yeah, I didn't see many of the movies this year so I didn't really care that much. I watched it when I got back from the prison around 9, mainly for Jon Stewart, who I liked and always do.

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In our Sunday School class, we looked at the story of Melchizedek, the priest king of Salem in Genesis 14. The specific verses say,

18 Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, 19 and he blessed Abram, saying,
"Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.

20 And blessed be God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand."
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

What was interesting to me was an NIV text note that said that the terms "God Most High" and "Creator of heaven and earth" were used to refer to the chief Cannanite god. Now, the assumption that we make in reading this passage is that Melchizedek was worshiping the God that we call God, or the Hebrews would have referred to as YHWH. The question I wondered about was whether or not Melchizedek knew he was worshiping and serving that God, and what would it mean if he thought he was serving another one, if the chief Cannanite god and the God of Abraham were perceived as being different.

CS Lewis didn't seem to think it mattered what the name of the God you were serving was, as long as you were doing good, as evinced in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle. The Calormene Emeth has served Tash, the enemy of Aslan, but in the restored Narnia, encounters Aslan. And the following exchange occurs:

But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he had truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.

And that's not to say that CS Lewis has the final word here, but it is an interesting perspective.

Any other thoughts?

Tag Response

So I got tagged by Scott Freeman and I don't always do these, but it interested me so here goes.

Pick up the nearest book of at least 123 pages

Find page 123

Find the first 5 sentences

Post the next 3 sentences

Tag 5 people

The nearest book was The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film, which is awesome btw. There's only pictures on page 123, so here's page 122.

"When George saw the locations, the roads were much narrower than he would have wished," Barry adds. So we had to find the smallest vehicle there was and make it half as small again. There's a little thing called a 'Bomb Bug,' which is a trike; it has three wheels."

Extra nerd points if you can guess what vehicle they're talking about building.

My tags: Justin, Judy, Adam, Thomas+ and Malia and/or David.