TRON: Legacy

Yeah, the original was rather campy, but it did have some moments of coolness (i.e. the light-cycles), and the trailer for the sequel looks wicked-awesome!

www.apple.com/trailers/di.../tronlegacy/

Emergency Landing

Saw this on the BA flight from London last month:

step 1: remove release latch cover
step 2: dispose of latch cover
step 3: pull release latch
step 4: dislodge emergency hatch
step 5: pummel self in head with hatch

Travel Report: Poland, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin

With apologies to Ms. Smart for the delay in my reporting, here are my reflections on this summer's big trip.


DESTINATIONS: Warsaw and Lublin, Poland ... Stockholm, Sweden ... Copenhagen, Denmark ... Berlin, Germany

FAVORITE CITY: Stockholm

LEAST FAVORITE: Copenhagen (REALLY expensive)

BEST MUSEUM: Majdanek Concentration Camp outside Lublin (very rough to tour)

WORST MUSEUM: the Swedish Treasury Museum (we were the ONLY ones there!)

BEST PARK: the cemetery where Søren Kirkegaard is buried in Copenhagen

BEST FOOD: Banja Luka, a Serbian joint in Warsaw

WORST: Shanghai Gate, a Chinese joint in Copenhagen

BEST DRINK: Danish beer

WORST: Polish water ("Mmmm ... you can really taste the cadmium.")

NICEST PEOPLE: the Swedes

MOST ATTRACTIVE WOMEN: tie between the Poles and the Swedes

MOST TRANSCENDENT MOMENT: tie between the open air Chopin concert in Warsaw, and just sitting on a bench under a tree at twilight in Stockholm's old city

BIGGEST WTF?: they call it "Roosters", but Poland has Hooters!

"COOLEST" PLACE: the Absolut Ice Bar in Stockholm (the whole bar is made of ice!)

FUNNIEST EURO-SIGN: "no breakdancing" on the Berlin metro

GREATEST MOMENT OF ENVY: tie between Sweden's trains and Copenhagen's vast bike culture

MOST ANNOYING PART OF TRIP: my friend Brad ALWAYS asking for ice!

BIGGEST A-HA!: Berlin IS New York; they feel exactly the same

BIGGEST "OOPS": a guy on the train from Warsaw to Gdansk yelled at me for putting my feet on the seat

BIGGEST "YES!": my bottle of absinthe cleared through customs with no problem

BEST LAUGH: finding an anti-Bush, anti-war rally advert from '03 still posted in Warsaw

BIGGEST REGRET: I didn't ride a bike in Copenhagen, and I didn't appear in a fetish porno movie in Berlin


That's it! I had a blast-and-a-half, and am already looking forward to the next adventure ... which looks to be Geneva, Zurich, Munich, and Stuttgart next Spring. After that it's got to be Japan and Vietnam.

Photo: yours truly in the rebuilt portion of Warsaw's old city

Moon

Finally! A thoughtful summer movie (like I'm being FORCED to go see Transformers and Terminator!).

Moon was a great movie! Maybe not as emotionally powerful as I was hoping for, but still a very good exploration of isolation and identity. Sam Rockwell was brilliantly cast in this role, and he does a fantastic job of portraying a really wide range of psychological and emotional states.

All-in-all, a nice break from the summer blockbusters; a pleasant moment of quiet and introspection.

Final grade: B+

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Ugh. Why waste the time?

Spectacular CGI + absolutely NO story or logic = mediocre movie.

Final grade: C

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Well then ... what to say about the sixth film ...

It film as a whole was certainly watchable, and the end was really brilliant, but all-in-all the latest Potter film falls a bit flat.

This one just lacked the kind of punch that the last three have had, and the story lacked any real highs and lows. Until the final 15 minutes or so, the entire film just kind of puttered along on a flat line. No spikes of excitement or anything really. Rupert Grint completely phoned in his performance, and even Daniel Radcliffe seems to be going through the motions. Only Emma Watson really seems to still be invested in her acting.

Better than TRANSFORMERS, but still a bit of a let-down.

Final grade: B -

Bon Voyage!

Leaving tomorrow for three weeks in Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

I'll try to post "from the road", but if I don't, I'll be back online once I'm home.

Wish me luck getting through U.S. customs with two bottles of absinthe in my bag! ; )

Doodles by Joe, 5 of 5: "Enterprise uniform"

The other thing that I hated about ENTERPRISE was the cruddy uniforms. Here's what I would have done.

Doodles by Joe, 4 of 5: "Phase Pistol"

One of the things I hated most about ENTERPRISE were the ridiculous phase pistols that looked like something made by Wham-O. So here's a really simple sketch of the sidearm that I would have given to Archer and crew.

Terminator: Salvation

Just a momentary interruption in my self-aggrandizing artistic promotion ... : )

Saw the new Terminator flick today. Not great, but not too bad either.

The end is actually quite spectacular, but it's a shame that the road getting there couldn't have been a bit more plausible. My main complaints are:

1. The soundtrack! It was HORRIBLE. The score almost never kept pace with the action on screen, and in many cases actually detracted from what I was watching. Whomever composed this drivel ought to have been sacked on day one.

2. Skynet is really freakin' stupid! For a sentient "super"-computer, it makes some pretty stupid mistake. The resistance fighters waltz into the main Skynet compound like its fraternity pledge party. I mean, it's apparently harder getting into a Kohl's after-Christmas sale!

3. Sam Worthington -- as Marcus Wright -- completely steals the movie from Christian Bale. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I'd really have been happier with a deeper look into the mind of man who is trying to escape -- and live up to -- his destiny as mankind's savior.

There's a fantastic cameo by a CGI-generated "you know who" in the penultimate act of the film, and the scenes that follow are really, really great.

If it wasn't for the atrocity that was T3, and the recent "Sarah Connor Chronicles" snooze-fest on Fox, this film would rate a B minus, but given the reputation that it has to live up to, I'll give it a B. Actually, let's make it a B+ ... just for the cameo by Ah-nuld.