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The Adjustment Bureau (2009)

Matt Damon stars as a congressman from Brooklyn whose future is bright. On the eve of his first election bid, though, he stumbles and loses to a stronger opponent. The woman who inspires his offbeat concession speech disappears soon after. He spends years looking for her as he ramps up his next campaign. It turns out that neither their initial meeting nor her subsequent disappearance were determined by fate. They were determined by the Adjustment Bureau. Based on a Philip K. Dick short story (naturally), it posits a world that is steered by extrahuman beings, with the explanation left open as to whether they are angels or Tolkien’s Mayar or something else. Interesting idea relatively well-executed. Damon was good though a bit more subdued than usual and Emily Blunt was a pleasant surprise.

The Town (2010)

Ben Affleck stars in a self-written, self-directed adapted screenplay about a former NHL hopeful turned recovering Oxycontin addict turned bank robber from the precinct of Charlestown in Boston. He falls in love with a temporary hostage who has no idea who really is. Nicely shot and nicely paced and with a standout performance by Jeremy Renner as an unstable childhood friend/fellow bank robber who’s never going to amount to anything. Lots of other good actors and actresses (Blake Lively and Rebecca Hall stood out) fill out a well-tuned and believable cast and a gripping story.

Valkyrie (2008)

Tom Cruise plays Colonel von Stauffenberg, a German soldier involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler and take over Germany before Hitler could destroy both Germany and Europe. Many highly-ranked soldiers were involved—most hoping for release from Hitler’s mad plans for Germany—and the plot almost succeeded (in the film at least—in real life, the plot failed much sooner and was only one of 15 serious attempts on Hitler’s life). A relatively well-made film with a lot of great character actors from both the U.S. and Germany (guys from the Lives of Others and Inglorious Basterds show up in various roles).

The Wicker Man (2006)

Nicolas Cage plays a cop who follows a lead about a missing girl to a creepy island filled with religious cultists who shut themselves off from the world. Cage runs around a lot and gets crazier and crazier, popping pills (prescribed to help him deal with work-related trauma) and generally getting screwed with by all the whacked-out residents of the island. Unsurprisingly, Leelee Sobieski is there to make a bad movie even worse. The movie gets marginally better when everyone stops trying so hard to get along: the whole island takes part in a pagan ritual with strongly sacrificial overtones and Cage just starts taking women out right and left. It’s a remake of what is apparently a much better version from 1973 starring Clint Eastwood. Saw it in German.

Couples Retreat (2009)

An execrable film about eight horrible little people married to one another, each stoking the flame of their own fevered ego and so terribly pained by their nearly hopelessly incurable angst. These people all travel to an almost indescribably lush island and can only whine like children and/or rut like the basest creatures. Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman were wasted in one interminably homophobic and/or misogynistic/misandric scene after another. Spoiler alert: a party reminds them all how much they love each other and they live happily ever after. The end. Saw it in German.

The Queen (2006)

An altogether boring film about people that I don’t care very much about in real life: the British royalty and the war criminal Tony Blair. The plot revolves around how they all handled the death and funeral of another person about whom I cared almost nothing, Princess Diana of Wales. Only watched about half of it and that only with one eye. Review is included only to remind me never, ever to try watching it again—and perhaps to serve as a warning for others of similar mind and bent as I.

Hangover II (2012)

A darker version of the original film, this time with Stu (Ed Helms) as the husband-to-be and his brother-in-law–to-be as the lost person. Zack Gafalniakis is back as Alan but instead of being refreshingly weird he’s just creepy, obnoxious and annoying in this film. Maybe it was just me. Maybe he was creepy, obnoxious and annoying in the last one, too. Bangkok is shown to be way crazier than Vegas—though luckily, everyone who needs to speaks English. Jokes about molesting young boys abound (It’s funny! Get it?) and your admiration for Stu’s bride-to-be’s understanding changes, by the end of the film, to sheer disbelief that she would put up with him. Spoiler alert: Stu’s decision to hide his affair from her—in which he played catcher in an unprotected anal-sex act with a Bangkok transvestite prostitute—was reprehensible.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Still as good as it ever was, including the nearly unpardonable whining by Mark Hamill, who clearly already realized at the time that everyone liked Han better (including Leia). The sets still hold up unbelievably well, besting many CGI efforts of modern-day sci-fi films. The puppet Yoda is so much better than the CGI yoda: from his crawling and snooping in Luke’s stuff to his fighting with Artoo, it’s all just so entertaining.

The Running Man (1987)

A film about a dystopian near-future in which media controls the truth, an oppressive government controls the people with armored police troops and violent reality shows dominate the airwaves to keep the people entertained. More circus than bread, apparently. It was near-future in 1987 and has come to fruition for us today. Schwarzenegger is much better when he’s not talking but the plot is passably interesting and we get to see Jesse Ventura strut his stuff as a retired stalker/sports announcer.

Equilibrium (2002)

Christian Bale in a utopian/dystopian future (depends on your point-of-view) where human emotion has been almost completely suppressed in order to eliminate the danger of war. Picture the plot and society from Fahrenheit 451 with Matrix stylings. People take a daily “interval” (dose) of a drug to suppress their emotions. People who don’t do so are inevitably charges with “sense crimes” and are summarily executed. The film follows the life of Bale, a first-level Grammaton Cleric, charged with enforcing the Nether, a neighborhood where those with unmanaged emotions dwell. The style of the film pays homage to the Matrix with less cable-work. The fight scenes are quite nicely choreographed. It mostly works quite well, with a few notable and jarring exceptions. Spoiler alert: some of the higher-ups are suspiciously gleeful and malevolent and given to shouting when they should be showing no emotion at all. No explanation is given (though one avails itself: the upper levels of any ruling class often don’t follow the same rules establishes for the Proles). Taye Diggs, in particular, is a grinning, smug ass who’s not even so powerful; you would think the officers around him would have turned him in almost immediately. Bale is much better at playing an emotionless automaton and boy does he kick ass. Best part of the flick? The final battle, in which the result is never in doubt. Bale shreds Diggs’s smug ass in two seconds. A welcome relief from action films that feel they need to add tension by making the hero be pummeled nearly to death before miraculously turning the tide. Highly recommended if the above described a movie you might be interested in.

Dorian Gray (2009)

A recent film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about a young man who turns Libertine when he realizes that a portrait that he recently received as a gift has granted him a form of near-eternal youth. Good performances by the actor playing Dorian, Ben Barnes (of whom I’d never heard), and by Colin Firth, who plays his mentor. Rebecca Hall—recently of The Town—also starred.

Star Trek (2009)

Watched it last summer and watched it again. Still a heckuva lotta fun.

Inside Man (2006)

Watched this for the second time and picked up something that I missed the first time through (right at the end). An excellent Spike Lee film starring Denzel Washington as NYPD with too much brains and integrity for the comfort of those around him and Clive Owen as a bank robber. All of the members of the gang that robs the bank are dressed in the same painter’s outfit—and they quickly dress all of their hostages in the same garb. The clever turns don’t stop there and it’s a well-paced, well-shot, well-written and well-acted film. Highly recommended.

Rocky 2 (1979)

Rocky’s life has improved somewhat with his spunky loss at the end of the first film, so he lives in a nice house with his mousy little nice wife, Adrian. She doesn’t want him boxing anymore because he has a brain injury that may be aggravated by further boxing. It doesn’t occur to her to channel her energies into getting him to box better. Or at all. I’ve seen discussions online of what Rocky’s boxing style is, from which school of boxing he stems. I don’t think any school would claim him. He has no defense. His style seems to be to try to hurt the other guy’s hands with his forehead. It’s awful to watch, not because you feel bad for the suffering he’s enduring, but because there are so many better fighting styles to watch. The Fighter springs to mind as a film with halfway-decent boxing in it. Stallone’s writing is more refined than he generally gets credit for (as was evident in a few of the Rambo films as well): the actual content of his films is far more questioning and far less jingoistic than his more fervent supporters portray.

Shrek the Third (2007)

More of the same with the same cast of characters. It had its moments, but the series is definitely in decline. I think that there’s a fourth one as well, but it’s hard to imagine where they’d go from the end of this one. If you’re stuck watching something with kids, there are far worse ways to go…but don’t go there unless you’re in that situation.

Die Wannseekonferenz (1987) (de)

A German film replaying the meeting minutes of a conference that took place in 1924 in a suburb of Berlin. All of the top administrative leaders of different departments in the Nazi party were there, discussing the Jewish problem in the coarsest and most inhumane possible terms. Extremely well-acted in what must have been very difficult for the mostly German actors. The level of indifference and cruelty was, at times, breathtaking. Recommended, but not for the weak.

Logan’s Run (1976)

One of the most oft-cited early science-fiction movies about a future society in which humans are recycled at the age of thirty and life is run in a semi-utopian/semi-dystopian and entirely antiseptic way by a hive-mind computer. The story is reasonably engaging, but the film hasn’t really stood the test of time very well. Interesting only for historical purposes.

Ip Man (2008)

The first of two films about the life of Bruce Lee’s legendary teacher, whose life before he met Bruce was extremely interesting and exciting. He lived through the Japanese invasion of China, an event documented in this film. The fight scenes are much tighter and better than in Ip Man 2, which had a bit too much cable-work for my tastes. As in the second film, Donnie Yen is fantastic in both fighting style and general disposition. He generally “takes it easy” on his opponents because they are so clearly overmatched; the fight in which he does not “take it easy” on ten opponents is a sight to behold. Highly recommended for fans of the form.

The Muppets (2011)

Overall a disappointment, as Jason Segel’s script infuses his penchant for maudlin sappiness into every nook and cranny of the film. As if that weren’t bad enough, he imbues every other scene with his insufferable simper. Is this what he thinks kids want to watch? Is this how he remembers the Muppets? The Muppets kicked a lot more ass than that. They were cutting and insightful, not sappy and maudlin. Segel can be quite good (see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he’s often quite good, even though you can see the sap lying barely repressed just beneath the surface) so it’s not that I dislike him, but, unlike the other reviews I’ve read that lauded him for his tribute to the Muppets, I think that he’s kind of phoning it in now.

Here’s an interview of Diane Keaton by Stephen Colbert. It’s hard to describe, but it’s very entertaining[1], in a very nonsensical and silly and non-goal-oriented way. Just pure improv; it’s hard to imagine that they rehearsed it.

Diane Keaton Interview by Stephen Colbert on 30.04.2012 (Colbert Nation)

I recently received a request to post an info-graphic (included below) detailing the results of a recent study published by UC Berkeley, called Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior by Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancatoa, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). The original infographic is hosted at a site called Accounting Degree Online, for some strange reason. At any rate, the findings are kind of interesting.

The URL to the graphic includes the text “Rich people are unethical” but it could more accurately be called “Rich people are unethical (so are the poor, but to a lesser degree)” or “Some people are unethical, but the rich are disproportionately so” or “Rich people are not as nice as poor people, even though they more easily could be”. Some of the results are that the poor give a higher percentage of their income to charity, or that the rich were more likely to take candy that was clearly marked as being for children. They cheat on their wives more, default on mortgages more often and cheat to win more often. Given the dominant form of capitalism today, where cheating is encouraged and actively rewarded, it’s hardly surprising that the winners of the game are also those who are willing to cheat more. It would have been strange had the results shown the contrary.

The reason the study is interesting is that, though it provides support for the rational hypothesis—in a system that rewards cheating, those who cheat more will win—and belies the oft-promulgated maxim that the poor are no-good scoundrels trying to suck the system dry. In fact, the poor are poor because they’re worse at cheating; the study shows that this is not from a dearth of ability (the likely next defense that would result) but from a surfeit of morality.

Google has recently begun more aggressively trying to get people to stop using the Opera browser. There are not many of us (less than 2% of the worldwide market), but Opera isn’t exactly so difficult to support. Google products do support the following browsers:

“Google Flight Search has not been optimized for your browser. For best results, please try Chrome, Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 8+, Safari 4+.”

So, browsers that are around 3 years old—Firefox 3.5 and Internet Explorer 8—are considered more modern—I was exhorted to “upgrade [my] browser” by the Google+ page—than my cutting-edge Opera 12 late alpha/early beta version. Surely, if a site runs on one of those browsers, poor little red-headed stepchild Opera can run it too?

It’s hard to know what the problem actually is, though. Opera is quite a modern browser, supporting myriad modern standards and really requiring little to no additional work. At worst, a cutting-edge transformation or gradient might not work, but support for that kind of effect shouldn’t make or break a user’s experience anyway. The browser market has gotten much easier to support (as evidenced by the long list of browsers that Google does support) because their basic functionality has gotten so standardized. If a site works on a WebKit-based browser (Chrome and Safari) and any Gecko-based browser (Firefox) and even Internet Explorer, then there’s a very good chance that it will just work on Opera as well.

Or maybe it’s the switch to a 64-bit executable that’s throwing off the browser-detection algorithms of the mighty Google? That would be a bit sad: earthli’s browser detector doesn’t seem to have a problem with it—and it hasn’t been updated for years.

It’s strange that Google hasn’t switched to a capability-based browser-detection mechanism, blocking browsers that can’t prove that they support certain features rather than just blocking by make and model. Google Flight’s approach is also a good deal more friendly than that of Google+: at least I could use the site (which worked flawlessly, by the way). The little banner let me know that, should I have run into trouble, it might be due to the browser’s not having been tested and supported by the site. Fair warning. Just blocking me, as Google+ does, is a bit strict. I told Opera to spoof as Firefox for that site and saw the same old site I’d seen the day before[1] but soon left because I felt like a trespasser, unwanted.

As for the wonderful suggestion to just “upgrade my browser”: you can stick it. Do I enjoy your site so much that I will switch away from my browser? I do not. Do I enjoy it enough to start another browser just to check your site? I do not. Does Google care about my visit? It does not. There are millions of other visitors—or in the case of Google+, at least hundreds—who use supported browsers with which it can concern itself. We seem to have arrived at an impasse: I use a not uncommon and very modern browser with a plethora of features on which I have come to rely and have not yet been compelled to change…and Google still has some hard-coded if (browserIsOpera) return; statements that it doesn’t want to remove.[2]