Month: December 2004

The Musketeer

Watched a really good PG-13 movie on DVD – “The Musketeer“.

Some people might get confused by the name of Alexandre Dumas pï¿½re mentioned in the credits. Don’t be. This film is not based on any particular novel of his. It has only a vague connection. Some names, places and events look and sound a bit like Dumas’, but they are in fact not. This doesn’t make it a bad movie though.

It has everything I think a good teenage movie should have – action, romance, action, friendship, action, spirit, action, advice. Yes, that’s right, I think that the only way a teenage movie can push anything is by mixing action with all sorts of other stuff. Light romance with a few kisses, good friends and rock-n-roll atmosphere make teenagers feel good. They open up. Or it least I was like this. And the advice part from this film is – Read some books. Preferrably by Dumas, but any will do. You’ll get a lot more action both in action and romance departments. You will probably have more friends too.

Having said that this movie was pretty good I still have something to add. I was suprised. At first, when I saw opening credits I missed it, but it registered in my brain. I knew that I saw something, but I couldn’t have put my finger on it. 3 seconds into the first movie fight, I caught it. Stunt choreographer – Xin Xin Xiong (this page is somewhat better). All of the fights in this film had this Chinese taste to them. At some times it was really obvioius, at others it was very mild. But it was always there – speed, acrobatics, fun and martial arts. Only Chinese know how to do these properly.

I am a bit overaged (not old, but overaged) for this film, but I still liked it. If I was a bit younger, I would love it. If I would have been younger and haven’t read Dumas’ books, I would be crazy about it. 7 out of 10.

Me and bears

Today’s picture of the day was done by Olga. I was sitting there watching a movie with a bunch of bear toys. She saw me like this, grabbed a camera and made this picture. Due to my zoom length being on she had only like one place to shoot and most of the settings were for something different. Anyway, she managed and I somehow like it. Gimped a bit.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-12-28_POTD

lj2mail

With this script I will terrorize my friends from today onwards. What it does is get all the recent posts from some LiveJournal blog and email them as separate messages to a list of recepients. Subject of the blog entry is used as a subject of the email. Body of the message contains of text and the permalink.

In order to use, first configure few simple variables at the beginning of the script, providing LJ credentials, list of recepients, address to use in the From: field and a file to keep the timestamp of the last syncronization.

Changes: in this version I have fixed encoding fo the body and subject. Body can now be recoded with Text::Iconv module to any encoding from the default UTF-8. Subjects are additionally fixed to be base64-encoded.

lj2mail.pl

Continue reading lj2mail

Tequila Sunrise

Watched yet another oldie on DVD – “Tequila Sunrise“. While it is a pretty good film, it could have been a billion times better. Just imagine Mel Gibson playing a drug lord, but a lonely father who tries to quit the business, being the best friends with Kurt Russell who is a sneaky narcotics detective trying to bust Mel’s boss. Both of them are in love with Michelle Pfeiffer, who doesn’t even think about choosing one. Ok, she does, but very much closer to the end of the movie. If that was not enough, Mel’s boss is his other best friend, played by Raul Julia, who tries to pull this huge deal with drugs and lots of money. And, of course, there is a crooked policemen played by J.T. Walsh, who is working together with Russell.

With all these plot twisting and complicated relationships, this movie is best described as romance. No suspense what-so-ever. No action. There are about 3 dead people in the whole film with under 20 pistol shots. The only explanation I can find to this is that all the budget went for salaries. No special effects, no S.W.A.T. teams, no car chases, no gun fights, no martial arts, nothing. That’s a disappointment.

I wish there were more to this movie except for the ancient theme of the love triangle between two best friends and a hot babe. 5 out of 10.

Arizona Dream

Just watched “Arizona Dream” on DVD. Although I haven’t seen many of Emir Kusturica, this is by far the strongest that I’ve seen so far.

The story is interesting and provides for a powerful mix of drama and comedy with a lot of suspense. On top of that great directorship by Emir and outstanding acting by Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway, and Lili Taylor. Excellent music, camera work, and photography make this film to really stand out.

I wish it would have been slightly faster paced, but that might be just me spoiled by plenty of template Hollywood movies.

9 out of 10.