parakkum

A feature that would be cool at least once on a super-special collector's edition DVD would be the option of playing the movie in the order it was shot. It would be fascinating to see just how much this jumbled the movie's order, and whether any trends in unintentional continuity were visible from one shot to the next.

When I'm wealthy, I'll have that done for some of my favorite movies. Maybe.

Plotting in the Star Wars movies -

The last post had me thinking about how the Star Wars movies are plotted, especially whether the last one (Episode II) was far more arbitrary than the rest in how it progressed. Taking them in filming order, in the extended:

I noticed the movie Spartan is playing at my local AMC theatres. I've heard nothing about this. Turns out it's Mamet's latest.

I was kind of hoping it would be about the three hundred, but it's a contemporary piece.

Go see Spartan.

I saw this movie last night at a local AMC (not a lot of people there for nine o'clock showings of any movie on a Tuesday night). There were things in this movie I didn't like, and more that I did. I recommend it. Don't check out a trailer, or a review -- just see it. The less you know in advance, the better it will be.

There were also trailers for two more movies I want to see, and one I don't: Troy, Man on Fire, and for the downcheck, The Whole Ten Yards (and I liked its predecessor...tsch).

I'm not a terribly big anime fan, so take it with a grain of something that Black Magic M-66 is my favorite OAV. I was thinking back today that, given that the army knew the capabilities of its rogue robots, this should have been a key part of their briefing:

"One more thing. In the event that we happen to actually immobilize one of these things, like we're planning, it's going to explode in a hail of rifle darts."

"Just something to keep in mind."

"Before you, you know, throw an electrified net over one to capture it, or anything like that."

Would've saved a lot of PBI.

I've been watching Return of the Jedi lately, and something occurred to me (again) that's a nice connection between Attack of the Clones and RotJ.

In RotJ, it always bugged me that out-for-cash mercenary Boba Fett risked his life for no profit at all by jetting over to take Luke on. This especially bugged me since he does, indeed, get knocked off in the process.

But AotC explains why Boba has such a mad-on for Jedi.

Nifty. Small, but Nifty.

A thought from The Empire Strikes Back...

Why do the Rebel snowspeeder pilots keep attacking the AT-ATs from the front? Wouldn't it work much better to zoom in from either flank, letting you make a crossing approach that never puts you in front of the walker's guns?

No wonder they lost on Hoth.

I've been thinking recently, as we approach the release of Episode III, which I am told will be "pretty" and not much else, about how I might rewrite the prequel trilogy to make a better overall story. Now, I actually liked Phantom Menace overall, and I might have liked Attack of the Clones had Lucas not been directing. It's not meant to be a random, mean-spirited jab at the guy, but problematic direction seems like the simplest explanation for competent actors such as Samuel Jackson and Ewan McGregor coming off as stilted and uncomfortable. That said, the stories also could have been different in ways that I would have appreciated.

Plus it's just a fun exercise in story tweaking. More in the extended.

For much of today I've been attempting to create a personal edit of something I currently have on DVD.

My starting equipment:

G4 iBook with iMovie from iLife '04

I ripped the DVD using MacTheRipper.

This left me with a bunch of .VOB files, which I then needed to convert to DV so I could edit it in iMovie. I first tried this conversion using ffmpegX, which made a nice, solid DV file that was over the size limit on iMovie '04.

...so I decided to work around that problem by going to a different app to convert from .VOB to DV. Unfortunately, while DropDV gave me an editable video, it recorded the commentary track rather than one of the main audio tracks.

I went back to the DV produced by ffmpegX and attempted to cut it into workable bits with Clip Creator. Unfortunately, this output was unreadable by iMovie and Quicktime.

I'm aware that iMovie HD, which comes with iLife '05, has a much larger file size limit (12 gigs), but as honeyfields pointed out, I might as well wait until an iBook G5 comes out and she shifts over to that.

In the mean time, does anyone else have any suggestions?

...and just in case anyone missed it: parakkum

If you read a bit about contemporary "police action" situations, you'll frequently read the reminder that soldiers are not cops. In fact, there are notable differences between how you train a soldier and how you train a police officer, and these differences are important in letting each do their job well.

The corollary, of course, is that cops aren't soldiers. You wouldn't want them to lead units, fight in pitched warfare, and so forth.

So it's not surprising that the Jedi lose so badly at the end of Attack of the Clones. It's obvious they aren't soldiers -- they don't organize, they lack an efficient hierarchy or anyone giving orders. The smartest thing in that situation would probably be to make for an exit, fight your way into a more defendable position, then plan an escape or wait for reinforcements. It definitely isn't fighting individually with melee weapons in an open space against a numerically superior foe with ranged weapons.

But, perhaps if you're the Republic's equivalent of a Federal Marshall or FBI agent and you're used to working alone or in pairs most of the time, then you don't know what to do in that situation. That's reasonable enough. I would imagine needing a special "Jedi SWAT team" to deal with larger problems from time to time, but it's understandable that they aren't good at small unit tactics (though see my closing remark).

Why, then, do they take the lead of particularly large units once the clone army arrives? On top of that, they become strategic-level leaders during the subsequent Clone Wars (though they continue to lead tactical actions as well). They've already demonstrated that they don't know even basic tactical thinking...do you really want them in charge of your military?

(Perhaps you do, if you're Palpatine and you're trying to maximize chaos prior to taking power.)

Still, the Arena fight in AotC has started to bug me. I have no small unit training, only martial arts. Yet, when I went with a group of similarly untrained friends to play paintball, we knew to (1) not stand in the open while being shot at, (2) grab cover and (3) work together. It's pesky that the Jedi make a worse showing than we did.

It's good.

Glad I went to the midnight show.

But now I must sleep.

I've threatened folks with the possibility of a Star Wars marathon once all the movies are out on DVD. As that looms closer, here's a rundown of possible marathon options, from basic to extreme:

The Movies

This marathon is just the six movies, shown in order:

Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Episode IV - A New Hope
Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

The Canon

This version adds the canonical Clone Wars series to the mix. We did this bit for the midnight premier, watching Clone Wars prior to going to see Revenge of the Sith.

Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Clone Wars (season two should be out on DVD when Revenge of the Sith is....)
Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Episode IV - A New Hope
Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

Wackiness

This (possibly deadly) version adds in quite a few noncanonical television specials and shows.

Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Clone Wars
Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Droids
Episode IV - A New Hope
The Star Wars Holiday Special
Ewoks
Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
The Ewok Adventure
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

I saw Revenge of the Sith for the second time last Saturday, at the 10am show (I didn't even know any place opened movies that early). The opening scene worked much better for me the second time around, serving both as a solid Star Wars action sequence and to set up a positive relationship between Anakin and Obiwan. I'll leave general critiques aside for additional viewings, but this is a good offering.

Some IMDB trivia for Revenge of the Sith, not corroborated with any outside sources:

Francis Ford Coppola suggested Christopher Neil to George Lucas to be the dialogue coach. Lucas said that given the emotional intensity of Revenge of the Sith, and the fact that he rarely has time to converse with the actors, it would be ideal for someone else to be there to get the strongest performances possible.

George Lucas allowed his friend Steven Spielberg to design some of the action sequences, including Yoda's duel with Darth Sidious, and Obi-Wan's fight with General Grievous. Spielberg also consulted on other scenes, such as the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Interesting.

An advert for The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D promises "Shark Boy glasses for the boys and Lava Girl glasses for the girls."

At first, I was imagining something cool like each set being tuned to show off 3-D effects associated with the character in question, but now I'm thinking it'll just mean one is blue and the other is magenta. Ah, well.

The one review I read on IMDB amounted to "not as good as Spy Kids 3-D, but it kept my kid quiet."

While watching the rather amateurish "music of Star Wars" DVD that comes (for free, thankfully) with the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack, I pondered one basic problem of the Jedi order:

Being strong in the Force is at least somewhat biological, depending as it does on magical mitochondria. We know strength in the Force can be passed to children (e.g. Anakin to Luke). So if the Jedi recruit those who are strong in the Force and then prohibit their having children, doesn't that mean they're in danger of breeding out Force aptitude?

m suggests that this is intentional.

The Republic wants to keep the Jedi down. After all, if Jedi just started hooking up left and right, they'd have super-kids in no time and it would be all over for the normal folks. The "no love" provision means that they're forever stuck with the baseline incidence of Force sensitivity as found in the general populace. It's a sort of preventative eugenics program.

Two of my fellow moviegoers have already posted good summaries of our experience watching Batman Begins last night on IMAX at the San Jose Tech Museum:

The IMAX Experience

Batman Begins in IMAX

I generally agree with m's assessment of the movie. Overall, I liked it, but I have to see it again in a regular format, be it a normal movie theater or on DVD. As it stands, I left the theater last night feeling as if I'd had a particularly vivid dream about Batman.

I definitely appreciated the tack they took on Batman, giving him more of a hard-to-track, supernatural quality. That's how Batman should be, a forceful shadow.

Has anyone not seen Revenge of the Sith yet? If so, skip this post.

I've read at least one review where someone is miffed that the Obiwan-Anakin confrontation ends with Obiwan telling Anakin that he [Obiwan] has the high ground. One reviewer asked "When has this ever mattered before?" There are two things I like a lot about this ending, after a little consideration:

1) Symbolism. Anakin replies to Obiwan's statement by saying that Obiwan has no idea of his [Anakin's] power. In other words, it's Anakin's final denial of the wisdom, experience and goodwill of his old friend (who knows what will happen should Anakin try for the jump). It's Anakin's last chance to do the right thing to save himself, and his hubris wins out.

2) Pragmatism. It has mattered before. Let us return to Obiwan's youth, when he fought a Sith apprentice named Maul. How does that fight end? Obiwan uses the force, leaps, grabs Qui-gon's lightsaber, vaults over Maul. Maul watches stupidly, is cut in half. You can be darn sure Obiwan learned something important in that fight -- when your opponent jumps over you, cut him while he's airborne.

So that's why I like the end of that fight.

I saw Serenity today. It was very good, with the typical mix of solid writing and acting that I expect from a Joss Whedon production. The world is rich and interesting, the cinematography is good and the story is engaging. I recommend it, with one caveat -- it's on the intense side for a PG-13 movie. Without giving it away, keep in mind that it's a PG-13 movie with basically no bad language and very, very little sexual content.

But yes, good stuff. Now I'm curious about the upcoming Wonder Woman movie.

(Incidentally, we were sitting behind eight or so die-hard Firefly/Serenity fans. They gave us a flier for the Browncoats (Firefly fan organization) online:

www.sfbrowncoats.com
www.silicongulchbrowncoats.org

We watched the director's cut of King Arthur yesterday. You can read m's review of it here. Overall, I liked a lot of the concepts, but the pacing was quite odd, with a lot of sudden starts and stops. It felt as if Antoine Fuqua added one idea too many and just ran out of time. I can only imagine how confusing the theatrical version was with half an hour less movie.

On the upside, Pict women are hot:

Thanks to www.keirapictures.com for screencapping the entire movie. Geez.

Honeyfields and I just watched Down With Love, written by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, directed by Peyton Reed and starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.

I was interested in seeing this movie when it was in the theater, but we didn't get around to it then. After seeing it today, we both loved it. The movie has clever writing, solid acting and develops an amazing world. As the director says in the special features, the movie portrays New York as it was seen in the movies of the sixties -- it cuts a fine line between reality and camp and pulls it all off. The clothes are beautiful and the sets are amazing. It's particularly telling that several of the people involved in the production, notably the costume designer, Daniel Orlandi, and Michael Shaiman, who wrote the score, said something like, "This was the movie I was born to work on."

Good movie.

We watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night. You can read M's review of it here.

I was a huge HHGttG fan back in my youth; I listened to the original radio drama, had the later BBC audio version, watched the television series, read the books, own the scriptbook for the radio series and dressed up as a galactic hitchhiker for Halloween in sixth grade. That said, I wasn't dreading this adaptation (heck, Starship Troopers is my favorite book and I enjoyed the non-adaptation movie that bears its name).

Before seeing the movie, I was wondering how casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect would work out, but I think he did a solid job.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. In some points it felt a little slow, and there was a minor involuntary protest when they added things, but really, there's no canonical version of the HHGttG, so no worries. The original radio drama has some things I loved that Adams chose not to put in the books (the shoe event horizon, Lintilla and the Allintils) and the books added many things that weren't in the radio drama. A quick run through the trivia at IMDB tells me that all new ideas in the movie were added by Adams, with other writers just there to make sure the screenplay was coherent. So, indeed, this is another in the line of HHGttG versions.

My main complaint matches littlestar's -- movie Arthur was just too spineless. Arthur in the books and radio show is clueless and generally overwhelmed, but not quite as cowardly as portrayed in the movie. The feeling I like for Arthur is not that he's afraid, just that he's overwhelmed.

A fun rental, and I do like how they handled the Guide itself.

...and I just added this to my Amazon wishlist.

Because numbers do, indeed, fascinate me (let's boost that A.Q. now...), this caught my eye while looking up HHGttG on IMDB. The current top movies:

1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) $20.5M $230M ($140M)
2. Aeon Flux (2005) $13.1M $13.1M ($55M)
3. Walk the Line (2005) $10M $68.8M ($29M)
4. Yours, Mine and Ours (2005) $8.4M $34.6M ($45M)
5. Just Friends (2005) $5.9M $21.4M (None available)
6. Pride & Prejudice (2005) $4.62M $22.6M ($28M)
7. Rent (2005) $4.6M $23.9M ($40M)
8. Chicken Little (2005) $4.51M $124M ($60M)
9. Derailed (2005/I) $2.42M $32.8M ($22M)
10. In the Mix (2005/I) $1.9M $8.66M (None available)

Aeon Flux hasn't opened well, being beaten by a movie that's been out for a while now. Note that the numbers I've added in parentheses are the estimated budgets for each movie. So far, three of the eight movies for which budget estimates were available have made a profit. It's also interesting to see that Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, was the director on Rent.

If you happen to be a girl aged 13-16 from the UK or Ireland and can be in London this Saturday afternoon, you could be Luna Lovegood in the next Harry Potter movie.

The BBC story

Phil Brown, whose acting CV included the role of Luke's uncle Owen in Star Wars died on the ninth.

The CNN story
His IMDB page
His Wikipedia page

Phil began his acting career in the States but moved to the UK after being blacklisted based on his founding association with the Actor's Laboratory.

Not news to any rabid Whedon fans, but Joss is writing and directing a movie titled Goners sometime after he finishes Wonder Woman. Here's an article about it.

Before the release of Revenge of the Sith I was pondering which movie would be tops once everything was done. In the past, I, like many others, have tended to lean toward Empire Strikes Back as my top choice. Now that all the movies are out and I've watched them all repeatedly (yup, fanboy), I realize that I can't really pick one. By and large, they all have something to recommend them. Unfortunately, I do have a least favorite -- Attack of the Clones. But otherwise, there's something to recommend each movie, and perhaps things that detract, as described in the extended.

We just watched the original, 1924 version of The Thief of Bagdad, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Perhaps because it's a silent movie and such an early production, we couldn't help but notice how successfully Raoul Walsh pulled off an epic feel, with some excellent visuals.

Also, it's notable for being the breakout role for Anna May Wong, a Los Angeles-born Asian American actress who went on to star in many movies up through the thirties and early forties:

From starwars.com:

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

Does this mean New Hope won't identify itself as "Episode IV?"

This is a Disney-style limited release, between September and December of this year.

Efforts to keep The Da Vinci Code from airing are on, worldwide. My favorite is the Thai Christian group that wants the movie's final 15 minutes cut.

"If they are going to screen this, we asked that they cut out the conclusion of the movie that Jesus still has heirs alive today," said spokesman Manoch Jangmook, of the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand.

'cause that wouldn't damage the movie-watching experience, or anything.

The CNN story

On the plus side, I don't think any large, influential Christian group is likely to declare a Fatwa against Dan Brown or Tom Hanks.

I just stumbled on the IMDB entry for Telepathy, an upcoming Stephen Volk/Lesley Manning movie. I read the plot outline:

A pair of identical twins are separated by Russian scientists to determine if they can communicate with each other while one is kept on earth and the other is launched into space.

...and was instantly reminded of the classic Heinlein Novel, Time for the Stars, which bears this plot summary:

A young man with a telepathic bond with his twin signs on as crew, leaving his twin behind on Earth.

No mention of the Heinlein novel on the IMDB page, though.

Apparently, there are plans for three live-action movies based on the excellent animated series Avatar: the Last Airbender.

I am a huge fan of this show. It's literally the only television program I actually keep up with.

I'm not really thrilled about live-action movies.

I'm less thrilled by the idea that M. Night Shyamalan is going to direct them.

The big Hollywood news, though, is that James Cameron also has an SF/F movie titled "Avatar," and Fox is not planning on let anyone other than him touch that title.

We were doing a compare-and-contrast on Sunday evening between Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men (along the lines of "which one was bleaker?"). Since meta went ahead and told us all to go see Children of Men, I'll say that El Laberinto del Fauno (which should translate as The Faun's Labyrinth, but I guess they thought that wasn't snappy enough) was a very good movie.

Also, quite traumatizing. It is the oft-quoted "fairy tale for adults," but not the nice kind of fairy tale. The story also moves back and forth between the sometimes quite creepy world of magic and imagination, and the horrifying real world of 1944 fascist Spain.

This just might be required viewing for all these fools who think that anything's okay as long as it "keeps us safe." Guillermo del Toro is exploring the fascist past of Spain in this movie, but it resonates strongly with a dangerous set of attitudes that never goes away.

Now I want to track down and watch del Toro's movie set in the Spanish civil war, El Espinazo del Diablo.

The entirely wonderful movie Little Miss Sunshine was awarded Best Picture by the Producers Guild of America. As this BBC article points out, eleven of the last seventeen PGA Best Picture awardees also won the Oscar for Best Picture -- although the winners haven't matched for the last two years.

Little Miss Sunshine is an excellent movie. I'm glad to see it recognized as such.

Since I'm going to end up disagreeing with everyone I know.

I thought it was a decent movie. Too many concepts compressed into it, leading to a handful of ugly kludges to make that "work." It also overplayed some of the sections that were intended to be funny.

Spider-Man 2 is still the best of the movies.

I wasn't with the audience here. They definitely detracted from the movie, to the extent that I wasn't simply tuning them out. I think I'm done with people who can't put down the defensive shield of being ironic for a couple hours.

A quick thought on why the second movie is so much better than the first or third:

Spider-man: Written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible)
Spider-man 2: Written by Alfred Gough (Shanghai Noon), Miles Millar (likewise), Alvin Sargent (Unfaithful) and Michael Chabon
Spider-man 3: Written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Alvin Sargent

So, good superhero movie? Michael Chabon.

[Spoilers, by the way]

I've seen Infernal Affairs before, and liked it. We rewatched it yesterday, then watched Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake, The Departed.

Overall, The Departed had stronger backstory and characterization, and we were really appreciating it right up until that massive buzzkill of an ending. You see, in Infernal Affairs, the mole in the police department clearly makes a choice to kill his crimelord boss and choose to become the thing he's been pretending to be -- a good cop. As m pointed out, in The Departed, the mole in the police department never makes any decisions. His killing of the crimelord is in self defense, and then he basically just keeps himself safe right up until he's killed at the end.

As littlestar says, "How did they miss the whole point of Infernal Affairs?" I'm inclined to agree. The ending of The Departed even felt like the mainland China alternate ending of Infernal Affairs, in which the mole is caught and it all ends like, well, a bad cop movie.

The Oscars thrown at Scorsese for this one were definitely "We're sorry we didn't give you Oscars earlier in your career," rather than for the quality of this overall effort. It's too bad, really, because the movie is really, really good up until the last half hour or so, when Scorsese goes soft and wanders into rote drama territory.

littlestar, m, and I attended a free showing of 3:10 to Yuma. I went on the strength of the movie being based on an Elmore Leonard short story. I've enjoyed his contemporary novels, and I'd read that westerns were his first love, so the chance to see an Elmore Leonard western sounded good.

Unfortunately, 3:10 to Yuma was not a good movie. Really, it came across as a pastiche of prior westerns, full of things that people think ought to be in westerns. Although the acting was solid across the board, character motivation often made little to no sense at all. littlestar's planning on tracking down the original Elmore Leonard short story to see which parts were taken from it and which were added for the screen. m suspects that the original story mostly takes place in the town while waiting for the train. This suspicion is supported by the summary for the original, 1957 version of the movie:

After outlaw leader Ben Wade is captured in a small town, his gang continue to threaten. Small-time rancher Dan Evans is persuaded to take Wade in secret to the nearest town with a railway station to await the train to the court at Yuma. Once the two are holed up in the hotel to wait it becomes apparent the secret is out, and a battle of wills starts.

Also supporting this concept is the fact that the remake is a full 25 minutes longer than the original.

I can't say I recommend this movie. It feels as if someone took a good set of actors, threw every western concept they could think of into a bucket, and came out with a sort of indistinct, unsatisfying western casserole.

On the plus side, I do want to go watch some westerns from the 50s, 60s, and 70s now.

We saw I Am Legend earlier today. Very good movie.

I don't feel like spoiling anything about the actual movie by discussing it, but if you can stand a bit of tension, I recommend seeing it. Will Smith did a great acting job in this one; I continue to be impressed by his work. Director Francis Lawrence did a great job as well.

This is, perhaps, a cryptic recommendation, but go see I Am Legend. Great movie.

All three of these movies, at some point, have been marketed as "romantic comedies" to one degree or another -- as you can tell just by looking at the posters. Of the three, Waitress and Wimbledon receive the explicit "romantic comedy" genre tag on BoxOfficeMojo, whereas Knight's Tale earns the more appropriate "Period Action" tag.

The trick is that none of them are actually romantic comedies, as much as the covers above (and the text on the back of each DVD case!) might mislead you otherwise. Instead, each movie is about finding yourself, about figuring out your direction in life and, in each case, following that direction. Sure, there's a relationship in each movie, but to quote Nathan Fillion from an interview on the Waitress DVD, "I am not integral to this movie."

Sure doesn't seem like that from the poster, though, does it?

The defining characteristic of each of these movies is that the main character makes choices that center on their own lives. They may have friends, they may do things for other people, they may have important relationships, but fundamentally, when it comes down to it, they have to choose the path that is right for them. It's not about true love, but rather, life choices. I know I have several friends who somewhat incomprehensibly batched Knight's Tale into the "romantic comedy" camp by calling it a "chick flick", but consider the key moment of decision in that movie:

Jocelyn: Run and I will run with you.
William: I cannot run!

William clearly chooses his life, and his goals in life, over the woman. Kind of unromantic, no? Similarly, Waitress isn't about some happy love between the two people pictured on the box. In fact, even more so than Wimbledon or Knight's Tale, Waitress has many clearly wrenching, terrible moments that would surely suck the life out of a dating couple expecting most anything that properly fits in the "romantic comedy" box.

All good movies feature character development, so perhaps it's hard to market a movie solely on the back of that trait. When a movie lacks other obvious genre features, I imagine that the person tasked with selling it to a movie-going audience takes a look at the content, sees that some kind of relationship exists in there, and goes with "romantic comedy" because people are comfortable with that label, and will go see the movie. It's certainly more concise to sell Waitress as "romantic comedy" than to try and sell it as "a beautiful, quirky, funny, wrenching, but ultimately satisfying and uplifting movie about changing your life."

That said, I'd much rather see the second movie.

Of the three movies, I recommend Knight's Tale and Waitress without reservation. Both are amazing movies, and I suspect both have not yet reached the kind of wide audience they deserve. Wimbledon is not in their league, as the writing is at times clunky, but it is beautiful, and fun, and probably a better pick than a generic romantic comedy any day of the week.

As a sad endpoint to all this, both Knight's Tale and Waitress suffered tragic losses after their completion. Heath Ledger died this year, and the incredibly talented writer, director, and actress Adrienne Shelly was murdered in 2006, before her masterful work on Waitress was ever screened.

Remember all those V masks given out at Comic Con to promote V for Vendetta? I know some of you still have yours.

Well, check out this anti-Scientology protest for where some of the others have turned up:

Littlestar and I just watched Across the Universe.

It's a terrible, terrible film.

Visually beautiful, yet terrible. Our consensus description is "A poor man's Forrest Gump done through the filter of High School Musical."

You can read an interesting, pre-release view of the mess that led to this cinematic disaster in this LA Weekly piece.

It's as if the point of the movie were to take each Beatles song individually out into a field and kill it. It's bizarre.

So yeah, we weren't fond of it.

Opening this weekend, starring the talented Jimmy Tsai, and directed by the talented Jessica Yu.

Interview with Jessica Yu

Interview with Jimmy

I first met Jimmy back in college, as part of the UC Martial Arts Program. I'm not at all surprised to see him showing up as a writer and actor on such a cool-looking movie.