Month: March 2008

Casino Royale

If you walk into a DVD rental, pick up four movies without much consideration for your choice, and the worst one is the James Bond movie, you know you are out of touch with cinema.  Have things changed so much?

Seriously.  I am not a big fan of Bond movies.  I like a good action and a good spy movie, but I don’t like extensive advertising and propaganda in my entertainment.  Also, I think if the actor isn’t very good at holding dramatic pauses, then he shouldn’t be forced to do so.  There are enough evil guys to kill for any James Bond.  There are enough ways to kill them with.  And there are enough camera angles to show it from.  That’s all there is to it.  Run, shoot, drive, shoot, kick, shoot, cut.  Done.  Add a little bit of style, a few gorgeous women, and some gadgets – and you got yourself a nice James Bond movie.

“Casino Royale” failed at that. Daniel Craig is a good guy, but he isn’t a James Bond kind of good.  Even Matt Damon taken directly out of his Bourne trilogy would have made a better James Bond. Craig is a better substitute for John Rambo. Here, insert a lot of gadgets.  Didn’t happen in this film.  Guns with silences, a couple of bugs, and a CD-player like electric shock.  At least the ladies should have saved the situation…. But not for me.  All the women which were featured in the film, aren’t my types.

The best scene of the film is in the beginning.  Chasing the parkour guy down to the embassy and then a huge gun fight.  After that it was all downhill.  Almost like they were out of budget.  But I doubt that they were, because then they wouldn’t have made a film 144 minutes long.  Two and a half hours is just too much for what was going on in this movie.

6 out of 10.

Lucky Number Slevin

Before I had a long break in movie watching, one of my biggest complains about movies was regarding the stories. It seemed back then that there were three of four main story lines, which all films were aligned along.  That was very sad and boring.  Now that I got back to movie watching, I am glad to report that there are many films with original stories.  Twists, surprises, and more twists. I have troubles guessing how the movie will end every other time.  So, it’s either the movies got a little better, or I got so much worse.

I watched “Lucky Number Slevin“, which I expected to be yet another action, considering there were pictures of Bruce Willis with a gun all over the place.  I thought that it would also probably be funny, since Bruce Willis was pictured in a hat.  And that’s about as much as I expected from the film.

But I was wrong.  It was a really twisted story.  With lots of action.  Lots of really great photography.  And fast paced.  Bruce Willis was accompanied by Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, and Ben Kingsley.  There are some really great background characters too.

This film provides good, albeit not family safe,  entertainment, with plenty of good humor and details to look for while watching it for the second, third, or fourth time.  A must see, and a recommend DVD buy.  8 out of 10.

Deja Vu

When I am looking for a movie to rent or watch in the cinema, I usually check a few things about the title – IMDB rating, cast, director, genres, awards, etc.  I try not to read any reviews or plot descriptions, but everything else I usually do.  Why am I doing this?  Because there are so many crap movies out there that are not worse spending any time or money on.  However, there are a few actors, who are like good brands.  If I see that actor on a DVD cover, I will rent the movie without any other additional information. I might not even check the title of the film, or try to remember if I saw it before or not.

Denzel Washington is one of such actors. So, when I saw his face on a box of “Deja Vu“, I rented it right away.  And, once again, I was right.  The film is excellent. It has all to it – excellent story with a lot of twists, excellent acting, suspense, action, great photography, humor, food for thought, and so on and so forth.  An extra point goes to those people who picked the cast.  Everyone was good.  But Paula Patton was really beautiful. Really.

If you are sensitive to spoilers, then don’t read this paragraph.  There was a scene in the movie, where an FBI surveillance team is spying on this lady.  They are watching her on a huge screen.  She is at home, getting dressed or something.  But the way she moves around, the way she looks, the way she smiles, it’s so beautiful that they are all stunned.  They are watching her in silence for a few moments.  Almost without blinking.  Well, when the scene is over, I realized that it was like I was there, together with them, watching her.  Truly amazing.  It was a long time since I watched someone like that in the movie.

Anyway.  The film is really good and if you like other Denzel Washington movies with action, drama, and crime, “Deja Vu” is truly recommended.  9 out of 10. Solid.

The Departed

How many celebrities can you imagine involved in a single movie?  Try the cast of “The Departed“.  Directed by Martin Scorsese.  Main roles played by Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, and more.  Even one of the co-producers was Brad Pitt himself. There was practically no way to spoil this film.  So, no wonder it won 4 oscars plus a whole bunch of other awards and nominations.

Did I like this film?  Yes.  It was very good.  I liked the story and the way it was told.  I liked acting a lot.  Leonardo did especially well.  And Baldwin.  And Nicholson of course.  And the other ones too.

But.  Something is missing in this film. I can’t put my finger on it though.  I’d rate this film as a solid 8.5, or maybe even 9 out of 10.  But, it was so very close to 10, to a perfect movie, but it’s not.  If you have any idea of what is missing, please share in the comments.  I’d really like to know.  Because the rest of it is so good…

Catching up

Once again, so many things and so little time… Here is a catch up post with a few highlights:

  • Olga and Maxim are still in Russia.  I miss them a lot, but, considering the circumstances, they should rather be there than here.  Still, miss them a lot.
  • Our cat Cappa has been sterilized. I know it’s for the better and all, but I’m still filled with guilt.  It’s not right to do this, even if it is for the better.  That was the first and last time that I did it.
  • I am still going to the gym.  Lost a bit of weight (about 3 kilos) in the last couple of weeks. Exercises are still boring and painful, as they always were.
  • I am doing a lot of training at work.  At least 2 hours per week in group sessions, and at least another 4 hours in individual ones.  Topics cover everything from how computers work, through PHP/CSS/MySQL/HTML, to SEO and web promotion.  It’s nice to see some sparks.  Not fires yet, but we aren’t finished yet.
  • I still write plenty of code.  In the last week there was a huge leap from WordPress and home made systems to CakePHP framework. This framework is truly wonderful, but I have a lot to learn about programming MVC-kind. Including some of the terminology.
  • I am watching a lot of movies. There happen to be a DVD rental right next to our office. I am so out of touch with movies world that I can grab a handful of movies, that I haven’t heard anything behind, in less than a minute.  I’ll post some short reviews right after this post is online.
  • I have totally abandoned photography, which I am truly sad of. I need to get back to it one of these days.  Especially now that I got invited as an official photographer to one of the upcoming events.  More on that a bit later.

That’s my life in a nutshell.