i had this long ass post written out about uber-conservative figurehead, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but i realized that i have no idea wtf i’m talking about so i deleted it. you know how hard it is to do that? just disregard an hour’s worth or typing and thinking????
anyway, i’ll just leave you with this: Scalia Discusses Constitutional Interpretation. this man’s decisions have infuriated me sometimes, but i could never say that i don’t respect him. he’s a brilliant dude.
is there any way for me to turn off this “posting to Facebook” feature that pops up whenever i submit a new xanga post? i swear to god i have a mini-heart attack whenever that shit pops on screen, 1. because i worry that the post will be linked on my facebook and my secret xanga identity will be revealed and 2. because i’m worried that if i click “cancel” that i will lose the post. my mind starts racing “after all these years of anonymity, what would i do if my fb friends found my xanga life?” it’s like costanza says “worlds are colliding, jerry!!!”
i’m not sure i could handle my worlds colliding, jerry. not anymore than they already have anyway, since to this point the collision of worlds has been managed and controlled pretty well. a fb/xanga world collision would be something on the order of the big bang or at least nuclear fission.
if my worlds collided i wouldn’t be able to confide in you the many xanga crushes i’ve had over these last few years like i’m about to do right now. complete strangers for the most part, who have no idea that i’ve been looking forward to every post and eating up every word, in honest envy of the real people they get to spend their daily lives with. sound creepy? well it is! that’s why worlds cannot collide lest they share information and reveal my vicariously living ways. so without further ado… my xanga crushes: (Scroll down)
ha. you wish!
i actually did have a shout out to a crush-able type person all ready and typed out but i don’t think she reads my xanga unless i comment on hers first and also, i’m a complete stranger so that would be just too weird to be outed as a crush, so i erased it. i will say though that i’ve had at least three genuine crushes on people i know of solely through xanga, and, for good reason, you will never ever know who they are. well for at least two of them anyway. how about you? are you brave enough to admit to crushing on someone you only know through this medium of careful presentation called xanga?
i was going to write up a Summer Movie ’09 list in anticipation of the yearly american shlockfest but i was reading around and found a pretty decent list on cinematical. link here. click on the link for release dates and brief descriptions.
their only requirement was that their staff can’t have seen the movie, which is hard considering they go to many of the big festivals. but anyway, in a nutshell, here’s their list:
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Public Enemies
3. Up
4. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
5. Funny People
6. Star Trek
7. Ponyo
8. Drag Me To Hell
Ponyo is a new Mizayaki film apparently. i never even knew a new one is coming out but now that i know… hell yeah!
the only one on this list i would replace is harry potter. through 47 harry potter movies i’ve still never been really interested enough in any single one of them to actually anticipate seeing it before it came out. *shrug* i am really hot on Inglorious Basterds though even though i’m kind of afraid of Brad Pitt going too over the top and killing it. but then again Tarantino has a long history of getting great performances out of suspect actors (see John Travolta) and maybe over the top is exactly what he’s going for. now that i think about it, over the top might be the only time Brad Pitt has exceled as an actor (see Kalifornia, 12 Monkeys, True Romance).
Public Enemies sounds pretty damn cool, too. that’s the one with christian bale and johnny depp. are you paying attention to me now, women? christian bale and johnny depp! (and the crowd goes wild!) and billy crudup, btw. just thought you should know. directed by michael mann who is back after his long (and hopefully painful) penance following his most recent shit-fest Miami Vice. hit or miss with this guy…
UP wouldn’t normally be on my radar. the trailers didn’t seem all that impressive to me, you know? but i found out it’s opening the Cannes film fest. not just playing in competition but opening. that’s a big deal. clearly they saw something there.
dude, stop what you’re doing and click that Funny People link up there. it’s judd apatow and like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, it looks like a hugely entertaining, and very emotional man-movie that’s probably funny as hell. adam sandler, seth rogen, jonah hill, jason schwartzman, eric bana, leslie mann, apatow’s cute ass kids (those are his daughters, btw, that were also in Knocked Up) (oh yeah Leslie Mann who was in Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin “i want some french toast!” is his wife), yada yada yada. i can’t imagine this film being bad in any way whatsoever. judd apatow for president!
if you click the cinematical link up there there’s another link to their anticipated small releases coming out this summer too. from that list i’d like to pilfer:
The Brothers Bloom
Moon
500 Days of Summer
The Brothers Bloom is made by Rian Johnson who made the audaciously creative and fun movie Brick (that’s the name, not a description) a few years ago. it also co-stars Rinko Kikuchi of revealed snatch fame in Babel. Moon stars Sam Rockwell, a personal favorite, and 500 Days of Summer stars Joseph Gordon Levitt (from 3rd Rock From the Sun) and Zooey Deschanel, also a personal favorite of sorts.
i’ve gotta say. Transformers and Terminator? *shrug* meh. i’d go see them but not with any kind of enthusiasm. Angels and Demons? Zzzzzzzz…..
let’s see. i’d also like to add:
Big Man Japan – very obscure film that was recommended to me a while ago. japanese film about a giant man that fights monsters but he’s considered a public nuisance. part of the Six Shooter series that included my fave Let The Right One In.
Year One
Away We Go – written by David Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead)
Whatever Works – woddy allen film starring Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood. consider me a lifetime member of the Evan Rachel Wood fanclub. she’s an acting powerhouse and she’s gorgeous to boot. barring a complete personal meltdown, i see multi-oscars in her career.
Taking Woodstock – ang lee. The Ice Storm, his last film about the american ’70s (or late ’60s) was awesome.
The Girlfriend Experience – soberbergh. starring a porn star as a call girl. recipe for awesome.
i tried to be a good little korean, but i am now declaring that under all normal circumstances i will never buy another Samsung A/V product ever again. not another fucking penny.
Samsung 19″ CRT monitor ($190 at the time of purchase) – dead after two years.
Samsung DVD Home Theater in a Box ($300 at the time of purchase) – the dvd player died after one year. i still use the sound components.
Samsung 46″ DLP television ($1,100 at the time of purchase) – after two years there are white spots scattered all over the screen. i lost count after 40 spots. it’s like Starry Night on my screen.
regarding the CRT monitor: considering the fact that most CRT televisions last forever, i find two years to be a fucking joke. since childhood, i’ve never had a CRT tv that didn’t last over ten years. this was my first samsung failure though so i considered it a fluke.
regarding the DVD player: i watch a lot of movies but still…. a year? my current Panasonic player that replaced the samsung has been going strong for over four years now and if anything i watch more movies now than i did back then.
regarding the DLP tv: this is the biggest insult. i spent over $1000 on this thing two years ago and thought i was set for the next ten years or so as far as the tv went. FAIL! it’s slowly dying and is being incredibly annoying to view in the meantime. i did some research and apparently a lot of people that bought my type of tv (DLP version PB02) around the same time i did (Fall ’06/Winter’07), are now developing the same exact problem. a single defective part is dying, as if on schedule, about a year after the warranty expires. samsung is denying any sort of pattern and is only replacing the part, not the labor, and even then only after a complaint is filed with the BBB. the part is $180, btw, which sounds like a nice chunk of change that samsung is paying for until you look at the labor costs: almost $300, including the repair estimate. so after two years, i’d have to pay $300 to fix my television because it is now known –by everyone except samsung– to contain a defective part. that plus the $130 regularly schedule maintenance cost of replacing the lamp every two years or so makes this an extremely costly and high-maintenance television, not to mention unreliable… just like every other Samsung entertainment item i’ve purchased.
Samsung A/V? never again.
personal update
- work is better than it was, which is to say that i don’t contemplate starting a full-on committed addiction to heroin every weekday morning. my manager has thrown me some other work that doesn’t involve working with the aliens. this is a relief for the following reasons:
1. while the aliens are very nice people they are a nightmare to work with because their english is unmanageable. relying on pure context and intuition to decipher wtf they are talking about might work in a social setting, but not in a work setting. working on other shit means i don’t rely on them to complete anything. yay!
2. since i’m working on new projects, that means i am working with new customers. therefore interaction with the manipulative, lazy, dishonest customer bitch is at a mimimum. yay!
3. for some reason my manager loves me now. i swear to God it’s like someone fed him happy cakes one morning and they permanently damaged his brain. yay!
but work is still pretty damn hateable for the following reasons:
1. the nature of the work itself is getting very boring. or maybe it’s just this place? i can’t tell. SOMEthing about what i’ve been doing for the last 12 years is getting boring. i need to figure out if i can really stomach doing this for another 12 years. something tells me, no. and if the answer is indeed no, then everyday here is a waste of time.
2. my company stock price was about $10 when i started. it’s at about $1 now, which is a huge mark up from where it was about two months ago, which was about .30 cents, literally. 401K matching has been eliminated. medical benefits have been costing more and more every year (the out-of-pocket cost doubled last year. doubled!)
3. even though my immediate company has improved slightly, this place is still filled to the head with people i despise or am completely ambivalent about.
4. the bathroom. good lord, man. it’s a toxic wasteland health hazard in there. everyday i literally see puddles of piss underneath the urinals and it fucking STINKS. some filthy motherfucker is pissing directly onto the floor and i can almost tell it’s deliberate by the smooth edges of the puddle indicating that it wasn’t just a stray trickle here and there. it’s like someone poured the piss onto the floor. i actually think i might have caught the bastard doing it one day but i’m not 100% sure. couple that with the hugely overweight (350-400 pounds?) daytime shitters that just make the place stink like rotting prunes. i imagine it’s not that easy for them to clean their buttcracks since their asses are like four miles from the tips of their fingers and all so when they drop their pants…. HOOO-EEY! *gag*
5. i might be rotated back onto the nightmare team with the aliens and the dishonest customer bitch, albeit this time with considerably more responsibility. the thought of jumping back into that pool of shit makes me want to quit and fry french fries for the rest of my life.
6. some general — but very real — instability specific to my work place that i can’t get into.
- i am not dating and have not dated anyone in a long while. not a single date. not even a single “let’s have dinner (but it’s actually kind of a date)” date. i think this well has run dry. and quite frankly, i’m convinced that any date right now would result in disaster anyway, so maybe this is for the best. i’m just a cantankerous bastard.
- i’m working on a script! a very short one, but a script nonetheless. thinking about movies from this perspective is giving me new appreciation for what a big project filmmaking really is. you’re literally creating something from nothing. and it requires the full participation and coordination of an army of people. if i ever get around to making my short, it will definitely be: 1. very personal and 2. full of cursing and 3. very boring. hopefully my announcing it here quasi-publically will motivate me to actually see this through to the end.
- i’ve been watching a shit ton of movies lately including a few korean ones worth nothing. My Dear Enemy (Mutjin Haroo) and Going By The Book (BaReuGae SalJa). both excellent.
check this shit out from AngryAsianMan.
“Some Googling reveals that there’s another East High School in Akron, Ohio — also known as the home of the Orientals. I’m not making this up! Believe it or not, their mascot is Chang the Dragon. Seriously. To top it all off, the school’s website is wonderfully adorned with our favorite faux Asian font. They’ve apparently been the Orientals for many, many years… and everybody’s cool with it. I love America.”
you stay classy, Ohio!
i think most signs point to now being an ideal time to buy my first house. prices are dropping, mortgage rates are low, plenty of tax incentives, especially since i would be a first-time borrower, etc. it’s a practical financial decision to make, a prudent investment assuming i can get approved for a loan. i fucking hate the idea of throwing money away on rent instead of building up equity with it, and the tax break on mortgage interest is incredibly appealing. all signs point to “buy”, nay?
it’s so simple but this decision is sending my mind in all sorts of weird places, almost as a necessity to decide whether to buy or not. i have to resolve certain questions first like do i really want to live here for the next ten or so years? away from my family and most of my closest friends? i reckon i could live without them nearby if i had a legitimate shot at getting married to a girl here and starting a family of my own.
(this is a great area to raise a family, btw. stable metro area, with a nice suburb and an excellent school system. i can’t tell you where “here” is though.)
but let’s get real here. there’s no girl on the radar here and therefore no family. i know it doesn’t work like this but if i look at meeting the right girl as a progressive development, i’d be at square one with no accumulated progress. no dating. no potentials. barely even anyone of interest, to be honest. and i can’t really count on The One just appearing in my life and being readily available and noticed as such by me. which leaves me with pretty much nothing but waiting to win the girlfriend lottery.
so i guess the next possible alternative is to move to another area altogether. but is it too late to move? i’m pretty old and picking up and spreading new roots right now seems kind of desperate and very much like an effort to try to fool myself into thinking that the grass actually is a little greener on the other side. i’m pretty dug in here. and would it actually be better in a new place or are all places inherently similar thereby making me the incompatible piece in this equation? there’s really no guarantee that i am not the source of my problems, and moving to another city might just be a risky, expensive and ultimately futile attempt to run away from me and my head.
hey, LA! should i move there? i know very few people there, but my family kind of lives around there, and my parents are getting older. i really should try to be around them more. and i do love the ridiculously awesome korean food there. how much happier would i actually be there though, if at all? i’ll tell you what though, LA. your system of state government scares the shit out of me. voting on propositions is no way to run a government, and i wouldn’t be surprised if the whole state of california turns into a giant civil war zone or a ward of the federal government in ten years.
and what say you, NJ? the state of my youth. should i run back to you? even though everything tells me that a new life there would in no way resemble the life i had there back then? NYC? nick and norah’s infinite playlist made you look pretty cool, NYC, but i’m too fucking old to slum it out like some poor waiter/actor waiting for a break and i don’t make nearly enough money to live like a baller.
so anyways, yeah. renting sucks.
previous reviews here.
The Bad Sleep Well (1960) – kurosawa and mifune. the executives involved in a shady deal are finding themselves targets. decent kurosawa. not ground-breaking from what i can sense, but still decent entertainment. toshiro mifune looks so different without a samurai sword! he could play a japanese clark kent! 3 stars.
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) – brit film about an eternally positive and optimistic school teacher and how her constant good cheer affects the people around her. this movie stands or falls based on how you like this girl. her perpetual chirpy and bubbly personality kind of grated on me after a while because i got the sense that she was so happy because she was actually a little brain damaged. i gather that most people will find her charming or at least entertaining though, since overall it wasn’t a bad movie. watch Amy Adams in Junebug for a better example of the same thing. 3 stars.
Synecdoche, NY (2008) – philip seymour hoffman, michelle williams, catherine keener. charlie kaufman’s bleak bleak bleak film about… i’m not exactly sure. the brilliant charlie kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine) wrote another excessively creative film about a playwrite who got a grant to write his masterpiece play, except it’s literally taking his whole life to write it — at least that’s what it’s about on the surface anyway. i won’t get into a full-on discussion here about what actually happens in the film mainly because i don’t think i ever really grasped what was happening despite the nagging feeling that it was on the tip of my tongue. it’s complicated. it’s about the one person in the world that fully embraces the fact that he will die one day and doesn’t delude himself into forgetting the fact of his mortality. i think that’s what it was about at one point. it’s complicated. and i don’t know what i’m talking about. but it was fascinating to watch. 3.5 stars.
The 400 Blows (1959) – francois truffaut. thank God! finally a french new wave filmmaker that doesn’t make me want to punch french people in their gobs. after watching 2 or 3 Godard films that i fucking hated, i had very low expectations of this Truffaut film but i ended up pleasantly surprised. it’s about this middle school punk kid who basically acts like a child while all the adults around him do the same, making him look very mature in comparison. it’s a film about youth, but also a critique of the “adult” society that condescends to govern these kids. the title is actually a portion of a french phrase that basically means something akin to our english phrase “raise hell”. 4 stars.
Tell No One (2006) – french mystery, thriller. an aspiring doctor is assaulted and his wife is murdered. eight years later he still mourns her death, but is haunted by mysterious emails that direct him to images of a woman that look like his dead wife. most of this film is a great build up and mystery, set with great music and tempo. like any good mystery, it really got me interested in what was going on, salivating for the endgame. that part is a lot of fun to watch. fun, that is, until the film succumbs to formula and becomes an unbearable gab-fest. but actually, like i said, if we’re talking about in sheer volume here, most of the film was actually really good and fun. 3.5 stars.
Timecrimes (2008) – spanish science fiction thriller. a regular, middle-aged spanish guy is thrown into a mind-bending and loopy chase through time. this one involved time travel so you have to pay attention, and that wasn’t painful or strenuous to do so, which is a plus for me. there are nice little surprises along the way, like a trail of gumdrops, that keep you coming. there are also some plotholes though and the initial set up was painfully awkward making it pretty obvious that this filmmaker’s strength is in the fast-tempo and quick plot movement, not so much in introductions or development. 3.5 stars.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008) – michael cera, kat dennings, aaron yoo. michael cera plays his usual self. in this case, that means he’s a high school moper that just got dumped by his debutante girlfriend and is very depressed about it on the night of his band’s show. kat dennings is his secret-semi-admirer, a loner high school chick music hipster who happens to get thrown in michael cera’s orbit for a night. i wonder what’s going to happen? whatever you think is going to happen, it does. very predictably (and annoyingly) so. this movie isn’t really original, funny or that well-made. but as it turns out, i seem to have a kat dennings’ bra-sized soft spot in my heart for this brand of young-acting-young type movie like Can’t Hardly Wait and Dazed and Confused, and i also happen to enjoy michael cera’s usual routine, and kat dennings’ pretty, pale skin. this movie, with its many club settings and excellent music selection, is also clearly the filmmakers’ proclamation of love for the NYC hipster music culture and that was all pretty cool to watch too. for about thirty seconds, it made me wish i lived there to take advantage of all that cool stuff. so, as a movie, it’s kind of crap. but as entertainment, i can’t say i didn’t have fun watching. 3 stars.
Doubt (2008) – philip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, amy adams. 1950′s Boston (?) set in a catholic grade school. possible inappropriate behavior between the priest and the school’s lone black student is the focus of a battle of wills between the priest and the head nun. i enjoyed this one a lot. first of all, there’s massive acting talent popping off here. i think this film was nominated for three or four of the four acting categories at the Oscars. secondly, the film competently goes into the morality of following your heart versus being fair versus being pragmatic, all while doing an excellent job of re-creating a 1950s america where this goes down. this movie gives you a lot to chew on mainly because i think it was so well-written. 4 stars.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) – seth rogen, elizabeth banks. this is kevin smith’s best attempt at making a judd apatow film. not bad. smith seems to have given up his signature habit of writing pages of unwieldy dialogue and replaced them with the snarky jabs, a la Apatow, which is a blessing to me. zack and miri are old childhood friends that live a poor, hand-to-mouth life together in a shitty ass apartment. when they are about to be evicted they come up with the idea to make a porn film together to raise money for themselves. will they make enough money to save themselves? will they be able to have sex and stay friends? who knows! this movie had a much more comfortable (and conventional) feel to it than smith’s previous films, which should make this more accessible. it also has one of the most affecting and touching sex scenes i might have ever seen. most sex scenes seem gratuitous to me (though i still enjoy them obviously!) but in this film, i really get the feeling that something is happening, while it’s happening. you know? and i’m giving away a little bit by saying that, i know, but i think it’s pretty obvious that sex is going to happen, especially since they pretty decide to have sex pretty early on in the film. anyway. so yeah. good banter. a touching sex scene (reminds me of Atonement in that sense). some porn star actresses. not a bad movie. it didn’t shake the earth but i enjoyed it. 3.1 stars.
Be Kind Rewind (2008) – mos def, jack black, danny glover. a run down video store clerk and his nutjob friend decide to re-create every film they can to replace the existing video library got accidentally erased. it’s a michel gondry film (eternal sunshine) so you know it’s going to look creative. but will it have substance? i say, yes! it’s not a deep movie at all, but the film’s cooky yet vibrantly good nature shines through. you keep expecting bad things to happen and for the roof to cave in but instead you get attacked by these really cute and sometimes hilarious moments. i literally laughed out loud through at least two scenes. it’s great, light humor, presented to you by a creative master. and it has a big heart. 4 stars.
sue_shi mentioned something about not really needing HBO anymore so that got me thinking… do i need HBO in my life?
except for my stint in college when i lived in a dorm and didn’t have a tv at all, HBO has been a constant in my life. i had it so long ago that when we first got it, it only programmed starting at about 5pm. i would turn the tv on during the afternoon and just see some text about what was coming on later that night. this was before MTV existed. channel M that would later become the home of MTV, was just some local crap. i remember this because at my pre-school one day they kept telling us to watch channel M that night to see our class visit a fire station, a visit that was apparently taped for local access cable tv. i went home and started freaking out because i put it on channel M to see that we weren’t on tv, as if channel M should be playing some endless loop of four year olds banging on the firehouse bell.
so anyway, what does HBO offer?
movies, obviously. usually one or two popular blockbusters like the Harry Potter series, a few other big names every month, but i’d say like 9 out of 10 times i scan through what’s on the several HBO channels and i skip the movies completely. they just never seem that interesting, especially since i have Encore which usually shows something older but far more entertaining. this movie-watching is also confounded by my insistence on only watching new movies from their beginning. i will not jump in the middle of a movie that i’d been wanting to see, and unless i plan ahead, which i don’t, it’s very rare to catch a movie i want to watchjust as it’s about to start.
made for HBO movies: some second-rate movie about some social issue starring A-list actors. boring. this was never an appealing side of HBO, imo. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
documentary specials: these were especially entertaining to me during the Bush years, since HBO was so clearly anti-Bush and they produced and played a few revealing and/or fun docs about how the Republicans were criminals that need to be locked up in prison. good for a belly laugh (until i start crying.) (or do i cry first then start laughing from insane resignation?)
HBO series: ah haaaa. this is what makes things very complicated. HBO shows kick serious ass. the good ones become downright legendary and the bad ones disappear so quickly they might as well not exist. not every HBO series will be The Sopranos or a SATC, but even a less iconic show like The Wire is better than pretty much everything else on tv. i’m now a huge fan of Big Love, a fandom that was slowly nurtured and cultivated over several years. Flight of the Conchords? brilliant. Entourage… fun, but not something i would go out of my way to watch anymore really. i can wait for the dvd on that one. Generation Kill? i enjoyed that. True Blood? meh. i stopped watching in the middle. however disappointing i thought it was i will always love two things about that show: 1. the opening titles sequence with the collage of weird ass shots of the dirty south interspersed with erotic imagery and accompanied by that ominously evil-sounding song “i wanna do bad things with you”. i love love love that sequence. and 2. anna paquin’s momentous nude scene. you gotta love cable tv. for the boobs. even if there’s nothing on the level of The Sopranos on HBO right now, what’s to say that their next series won’t be it? i mean this is the network of Band of Brothers after all. any HBO show has that potential to be something worth buying, not just renting, on dvd. which brings me to another point…
which of these awesome shows do i really need to watch as it’s happening? everything eventually comes out on dvd that i can rent at no extra cost. so which of these shows can i simply not put off for a year? i have done very well at ignoring Lost, despite everyone proclaiming its genius. i have no desire to see that at all. could i do the same thing with the next The Wire? or maybe i could just turn the HBO back on when that next show does come out.
is it worth the $15 per month? that’s not a lot in the long run but if i cancel a bunch of shits that cost around the same range, they can add up to real money, no?
do you have HBO? do you need it?
about my disappointment with Obama: yes, disappointed, but only at his tendency to be a big pussy. the stimulus bill which was everything the republicans said it was: a shameful, opportunistic grab trying to exploit the current crisis to pilfer a Democratic agenda, was written by that schoolyard bully, Pelosi. and whether there was some behind the scenes horse-trading going on between Congress and the White House or not, i don’t care, Obama should start punching her in her nose. i thought that was the whole point of hiring the pit-fighting Rahm Emanuel as the chief of staff! to reel in this power-drunk Democratic leadership. guess not. and this omni-bus spending bill that’s loaded with earmarks that was just passed? Obama should have vetoed that, too. he has not once stood up to this out of control Democratic Congressional Leadership and this bothers me. as a Democrat i’d fully support Obama in any move he’d make to chill those fuckers out.
and now with this very loud AIG mess, he looks like a big pussy when dealing with the public too. he’s not only jumping in, but initiating some finger-pointing when he professes to be a practical, focused and results-oriented guy. maybe it’s political theater trying to divert us away from other things, but still, i am worried that he’s bending too much with the wind. i want to see him throw a punch and bloody someone’s face. metaphorically speaking, of course.
what i am NOT disappointed with however are his policies. you say it’s socialism. i say it’s needed progress. there’s no way a system where someone who is considered comfortable or well-off could be bankrupted by an illness — something that happens very often in our country — can be considered functioning properly. the government needs to take the lead and work something out with industry to make things work. imo, this is a systemic problem that threatens growth, business and competitiveness. same goes for education or lack thereof. the moment we lose the innovation edge — a direct result of a strong education system, is the moment we lose our top spot. school vouchers are not the answer. ditto for alternative energy. as if The End of The World weren’t enough reason to pursue alternative energy, there’s another very practical reason. this is the new arms race. the first to find and implement a marketable, sustainable source of alternative energy will have the rest of the world funding its comfort for decades. can you imagine what the world would be like if America had to submit to every Russian demand because America depended on Russia for energy? that’s unacceptable to me.
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in other news, maybe you shouldn’t rent Let The Right One In on dvd. check this out. apparently the US dvd distributor cheaped out on the subtitles and they are incredibly dumbed down now. the distributor later said that they’ll re-release the dvds with the superior Theatrical subtitles later.
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and how steep is this nosedive Watchmen is suffering? it went from $55M on its first weekend to $17M to $6M. dude, wow! i guess some people really didn’t like it. personally i am contemplating seeing it again. to me it’s at least good, as long as you’re prepared for some campiness, maybe really good. i thought the story of the comic source material really shone through and that’s the best part! great characters with depth, a very mature and interesting plot and some great production design. it’s a fun movie. if you haven’t already, watch it in the theater since it is one of those big movies that probably look better on the big screen.
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