Tdaxp, one day I will require you to spam all of your friends with a message about my site attaining #1 position in google search of a national news story about Elisabet Sunde. The reason I will do this is that the more sites link it, the higher it goes.
And on that day, you must agree. And you will tell people that they need not pass this on.
In the meantime,
<a href="http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/03/04/elisabet-sunde-slut-bitch-criminal-contact-information.html#c690446">Tdaxp on a sexual predator</a>

Hello, Trumpy Productions Critical Nonsense is now at http://trumpy.blogspirit.com  Screw You Blogdrive!

This time of year I always get fuzzy about what movies came out this year,
but I'll try sometime soon. RobVision demands it. This is my last night of
Texas. Tomorrow morning I fly to Cincinnati... Cinncinnati... Cincin...
yeah, that place. Then to SF. A couple 2 hour flights are better than last
year. 4 hour then 1.5 hour through Minneapolis. Plus I've got my shiny
Laptop to woo the ladies with on the plane *snort*. I'll type on my Apple
while listening to my iPod while reading a Star Wars book. I'll have to beat
'em off with a stick.

Review as follows....

I have followed the progress of 'King Kong' for over a year now, watching
every single video blog posted at kongisking.net. So I felt a special
connection walking into the theater last night. I was concerned because it
was just going to be a 3 hour movie I've seen before, but I had faith in
Peter Jackson's elf magic.

My faith was well-founded. I was hooked from the opening credits. The tone
of the film was very important, they nailed it. There's a classic film feel
to it, without the cheesiness that comes with older films. I thought the
pacing might be rough at 3 hours, but even seeing the 11pm show, I didn't
doze off once. This film had me by the nuts.

There were many scenes that had me gasping at the screen because they were
so intense. The dinosaur scenes are long but done so well that I was tensed
up the whole time. Jackson knows how to wow a crowd.  There's a scene with
T-Rex's and hanging vines where I could feel myself waving my hands around
like Parker, worried for the characters' lives. It amazes me how well so
much green screen cuts together. It looks like an editors nightmare. I have
a discerning eye and was impressed. Over half this film is green screen but
it's awesome. George Lucas just puts stupid things in. Peter Jackson creates
a believable reality through special effects. WETA is proving themselves as
a contender for ILM. WETA also uses miniatures mixed in with their digital
effects, so that sells it a lot more too.

There were only a handful of moments when I saw digital people moving
awkwardly, but that was usually in a wide shot where you're not supposed to
be focused on one person. And the Kong model is top notch. I felt him as a
character from the get go. Way better looking than the latest Yoda, whose
face looks like a video game cutscreen.

Besides the special effects, this film also brings so much character to the
classic story. You were left assuming a lot in the original and everyone
felt hollow. This update gives everybody something to work with. And the
acting made me hapy too. I'm sure I wasn't the only one concerned with Jack
Black taking a serious role. He rocks the part though, proving himself. And
Naomi Watts seems to have mastered the wide-eyed empathy look, beautiful and
sad every time she does it. I hated her in the web logs but couldn't help
loving her in the film.
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All the money and hard work shows up on screen. Jackson lost 70 pounds
shooting this film. In each web log you can see his face getting thinner and
thinner as he wears himself down. Jackson, you're hardcore man. Rock and
roll.

Steven D. Levitt  amazon link

 Imagine a book that helped half the world make more sense.  This really isn't that book.  But it does answer questions that some of us have sitting around half-formed in the back of our minds.  Like "Can I axe why you named Shaniqua?" and "Why is my kid suddenly smart?"
Freakonomics takes on these questions and others very similar and much better worded.  Levitt is a very young economist that has been taking the older economic community by storm.  He doesn't have a theme to his work, he just sits down with a stack of numbers and people shut the fuck up and listen.
The section of this book that stood out for me most dealt with abortion.  Levitt states, and then backs up, that Roe vs. Wade was Americas most effective piece of crime prevention legislature. About 15 years after the legalization of abortion the nation had a huge drop in crime, about 76%.  The states that had the highest rates of abortion had the largest drops in crime.
This is the type of subject material dealt with in this book.  It's not pretty, and it's not politically correct, but it is mind boggling.  I actually plan on reading this book over again, and will read anything that Levitt writes from here on out.  This book is fantastic.

The Planets
by Dava Sobel amazon link

The first thing that hit me about this book was the enormous sense of relief that I had because I had borrowed it from the library.  This book clocks in at an amazingly expensive $25 for about 270 pages of sparse writing.  Each page hold only about 2 1/2 paragraphs on average.  I would be more understanding if there were some color illustrations, or some maps, or something to justify the extra cost, but it seems the printing price was driven up only to make the page number and footer on each page show up in light blue.  Bah.  I notice now that Amazon has knocked the price down to only $12.47, which is a little more reasonable.
Each planet in this book, and also the moon, is given its own chapter with its own style.  Venus is filled with poetry, Uranus is written about in a letter, and Earth has some dumb shit stuff that isn't really needed.  This book isn't meant to be an informative piece of science writing. I kept needing to remind myself of this as I was reading it because a good portion of it is a repeat for anyone with an even passing knowledge of how planets were named, discovered, or thought about.
Sobel is best known for her book 'Longitude' which had rave reviews and I have never read.  If given enough good of a review by someone I knew, I might read it.  But this book just seemed like too much of a waste of time. 

Next update: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman; Something From the Nightside by Simon Green; Dhalgren by Samuel Delany

Mary Roach
Perhaps I am jaded by my previous experience with the writing of Mary Roach.  I loved Stiff.  I could not put that book down until I had read every single page.  I didn't feel the same draw with Spook.It was definately a good book, I can't deny that, but it just didn't have the same appeal. 
Spook is about trying to find scientific proof of an afterlife.  From a class on becoming a medium to being disgusted by the only lasting sample of 'ectoplasm' Roach goes forth with an open mind and an open notebook to try to prove beyond a skeptics doubt that some part of us survives after our death.
I felt that the problem with this book was that it was material that had been previously discussed elsewhere, in one case even in her own work.  Almost everyone has read something about ghost hunters and mediums and psychics being debunked, there isn't a lot of new ground to cover, just a new way of putting it together.  Mary Roach is a wonderful writer, and I look forward to reading whatever subject she chooses to write on next, but if you're looking for the better book, I'm going to have to choose the other one about dead people.

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home

Rupert Sheldrake

I found this book to be very interesting.  I'm actually planning on purchasing this book and giving it to my grandparents for Christmas.  It is great book that I would reccommend to anyone that has ever owned a pet.
The studies presented in this book are actually very similar to those in Spook, not in their target, but in their method.  The presentation is that of a skeptic, seeking to prove something doesn't exist that others believe. 
The book is broken down into three main sections regarding the 'powers' of animals, the first is their ability to know when their owners are coming home, the second is direction, such as birds knowing where to migrate, and pets making their way home over thousands of miles a'la "The Incredible Journey".  The last section of the book is telepathy, communication between animals and pets and animals and animals.
This all sounds completely wacky out of context, so let me give an example.
The current theory is that animals don't just know when their owners are coming home, but when they make the decision to go home.  A camera crew recorded a dog that had a proclivity for waiting for his owner going about his daily business of scratching and sleeping and at the same time they had a seperate camera crew following his owner.  At a random time it was communicated to the owner by a third party that it was time to go home.  At the exact moment she was told this, the dog perked up his ears and went to wait for her in his usual place at the window.  No one in the home with the dog had any way of knowing when the owner was coming home.  Crazy stuff.

Hold on, let me move my vomit pail away before I get into this review. Formulating a review for 'Aeon Flux' made me all queasy-like, but I'll muddle through it for you, the public. All 5 of you. I have never seen an episode of the MTV series this film is based on. I remember commercials for it so I remember the animation style. Other than that, I'm looking at the film as a stand alone film, much like I did with Potter.

The trailer was decent. The studio didn't want to screen the film for critics. Red flag. I still hoped for a brainless romp. So little of my brain was actually activated I nearly fell asleep several times. There's plenty of action but it doesn't work. It would have worked better had the cinematography been better. I needed wide shots of the stunts but there weren't any. Everything was edited to hell. Cut cut cut cut. That's all the fights were. This film was filled with 'elbow shots', which is a term a buddy and I coined. It refers to the half-second shots of random shite that are tossed into fight scenes just to make everything seem faster. You can watch nearly any fight scene in slow motion and you'll know what I'm talking about. Tempo is all that matters, doesn't matter what the shot is of.

So yes, editing is a problem. It cuts to things when it shouldn't and doesn't cut to things when it should. Editing is meant to be invisible. I couldn't pay attention because all I saw were the cuts. Amatuer hour. But enough of that.

The acting was stale. The actors looked bored out of their minds, or stoned. Either way. It's as if the director said, 'Okay, you're from the future...aaaaand go!' Charlize isn't even that hot because she's so bored looking. I tried to stay excited just for her hotness but it didn't work. I wanted her to go away. I saw the film with a friend that used to watch the show and her opinion was pretty similar to mine. We were both uncomfortable watching it. I was embarrassed for everyone involved. This film was devoid of any redeamable qualities, but it's terribleness is different than other terrible films. This was just amateurish. Films like 'Be Cool' are the real stinkers. I never wanted to walk out of 'Aeon Flux', but 'Be Cool' nearly sent me running. I only staid for the gay Rock. Anyway, 'Aeon Flux' = bad.

Ahead is the review I sent my uncle in response to his raging hatred for the newest Potter film. I will always try to keep my review fairly spoiler free, since I hate spoilers like I hate lettuce.

It's in my opinion that whenever something is made into a movie a new continuity begins. No matter how much the films try to emulate the books, there is no way to capture a book on film. They are different art forms. A book is countless hours provided by an author and maybe a few editors. A film is 2 hours provided by hundreds of people. A film is changed a little with every person that touches it. The more people pulling in different directions, the more you end up in the middle of the road. With that all said, I have not read any of the Harry Potter books. So I enter this review purely from a film review standpoint. Jurassic Park is one of the best books I've ever read. The movie version is very different but fantastic as a movie. Same origin, different media, both good results.

The first Harry Potter film bored me with too many little things happening that took too long. I didn't care about many of the things happening. There didn't seem to be anything the story was working toward. The second film raised the bar by being a little more focused and showing Harry as a character I could root for. The story was still too centralized on their little lives in the school. Solving mysteries in bathrooms doesn't really spark my imagination or get me interested. The first film and 3/4 of the second film felt like trailers for everything that would follow. The third film was another step up. I like the darker tone and the larger scale of the story. There was more at stake to keep me interested in this stale Harry character. He's been established as mostly a whiney push over. Give me Ron or Hermione any day. Harry gets a split vote from me. He's annoying half the time and I root for him the other half. As he matures I root for him more.

The newest film took the series to an even darker place. Big stakes again, and finally getting to Voldemort's return, which I've seen coming since the first film. This was set up as an epic climax. I didn't care that we didn't see the kids travel to school this year, I've seen it 3 times. I didn't care about seeing the quiddage tournament at the beginning because it doesn't service the plot. So cutting that out was a great idea. Set it up, get to the end. The introduction of each team at the school fit very much into the personality of the series. The teams were obviously trying to make an impression with their entrances. The sparks on stone weren't just from striking wood to stone. It was obviously magic to help the level of intimidation the team was trying to establish. It doesn't matter if intimidation wasn't their intention in the book, it works very well here. The entrance of both teams wow the kids. In reality, wouldn't an opposing sports team enter in such a fashion?

As for Dumbledore 'throwing Harry against a wall', I didn't see anything of the sort. He grabs Harry by the shoulders, moves him backward, and raises his voice in concern. He isn't angry with Harry, he fears for Harry's life. At this point in the series of films, it does not seem out of place for Dumbledore to be so concerned. He knows this tournament could cost Harry his life. His conversation with Harry in the bedroom at the end of the film also services the connection between the 2 characters.

Sub-plots? There was barely enough time to cover a large arc, let alone tackle the dozens of little ones that are no doubt in the book. I feel like one of the problems the first film may have had was there were too many little things and not enough focus on a big thing. I don't want to see a sub-plot alluded to if it means sacrificing the larger arc.

The acting in the film is typical of the series. Harry has always used the same expressions and always tends to annoy me, no matter what the expression is. The lesser roles in the film were generic, with no temporary character being memorable. The love interests were forgettable, which makes sense since they leave anyway. I don't care about them, I care about how they make the main characters feel, which is shown. I watched these characters go through a lot of new things.

The film is riveting from start to finish. The slow points were few and far between, each scene servicing the story in some way. The story moves at a brisk pace and doesn't feel forced. Regardless of the book, there's a fairly strong story here. And it all gets me excited for the next installment since everything truly has changed. The story can only get more epic from this point on.

This film is not without its problems. The series has developed a pattern that is annoying. Introduce new character, convince you they are good/bad, reveal they are actually the opposite you thought they were, dispose of them. Madeye is introduced and I expect him to be pivotal in the end, one way or the other, then be disposed of for the next film. Hmm, we're supposed to believe he's good? Then he's probably bad. Another thing that was off putting is the mid-20's looking dude asking Hermione (who is still a couple years underdeveloped) to the dance. Creepiness.

When all is said and done, this is my favorite of the series. I didn't care for the identity confusion or werewolves of the previous film, even though that was my previous favorite. Each film has upstaged the last, as a movie-going experience. The series isn't one of my favorites, but I've become increasingly interested with each one. I'll admit I'm blind to any sacrilege being committed to the books, but that suits me just fine since the films have worked as a saga. The tone is maintained and there is constant progression made with the characters and scope of story. I feel like anything that has been omitted from the films is stuff I don't need to see to make the films work. Bring on the next one.

by Douglas Adams

Amazon

by Barbara Ehrenreich
Amazon