be kind rewind

Last night I watched the movie Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def.  I’m not really a fan of Jack Black but I think Mos Def is a really fine actor with a lot of talent.  When I first saw previews of this Michael Gondry directed film I knew I had to see it.  Not only was it being directed by an amazing director and starring a really fine actor, but it also featured the actors remaking scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies, Ghostbusters.

In short, the movie is about a man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend’s video store. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.  It really is much more than that though.  The movie is about friendships, community, and making the most out of what is around you.  It really was a fantastic story that is fun and much more light-hearted than Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine.  Stellar performances from Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow and Jack Black (yes, Jack Black was actually good) made this movie great.  If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you watch it.  You won’t be disappointed.

Download Day 2008

Firefox 3 will be released later today.  There are quite a few improvements in Firefox since version 2 was released.  Memory leaks have been fixed, there’s a new download manager, the introduction of the “awesome bar,” a revamped bookmark organizer, and a look and feel that matches your system.  You can check out the other changes in the release notes.  One of the best things about Firefox 3 is the speed.  The speed has been increased dramatically.  Especially on sites heavy in javascript, such as Gmail.  Do yourself a favor and download it today! (FF3 will be released later today but if you can’t wait, follow these links: Win OS X Linux)

fox_racism

I really don’t understand how the American public is letting Fox news get away with their smearing of Obama.  People on the channel have called him Osama, equated his fist-touch with his wife as a terrorist gesture, said he’s Muslim, and are now being completely racist by calling his wife, yes, wife his baby mama.  This is not only disrespecting her, but also their two children. The slang term baby mama refers to a woman who is the mother of a child by a man who is not married to her and has no intentions of marriage.  That is not the Obama family in the least.  Don Imus didn’t get away with calling basketball players “nappy-headed hoes,” and rightfully so, so why should Fox News (and I use the term news lightly) get away with things like this?  You know that if someone on the left said something about Bush or McCain there would be a demand for an apology and that person would be fired or would resign.  What if the left started putting up images questioning McCain’s mental health (the very thing that Bush did in the 2000 primaries to defeat McCain)?

mccain_crazy

The American public needs to finally speak out against Fox and their propaganda machine.  If they keep going unchecked they will keep making up lie after lie.

Earlier this evening I tried watching a movie called Funny Games. The basic synopsis is as follows:

In this exploration of our violent society and how depictions of violence reflect and shape our culture, a middle-class housewife Anna tells the story of how she and her husband George and their 10-year-old son Georgie submitted both physically and mentally to the torture, violence, and death foisted upon them by two young, unexpected, white-gloved visitors at their weekend vacation retreat near a lake.

Violence has never really bothered me in movies. I’ve watched movies that have been considered incredibly violent. There has only been one movie where the violence actually bothered me. That was in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. That movie was not a horror movie as much as it was violence-porn, meaning they tried to get away with as much as possible and still have it rated R. I started watching this movie tonight and I couldn’t. It was making me sick, and it wasn’t that violent when I turned it off. Maybe it was because the serial killers were incredibly nice but you could tell they had bad things in mind for the family. Something about it just disturbed me. When I started to think about it, the new Rambo film gave me this same feeling. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I was ill as I was watching it but now I wonder if the feeling was due to the violence in the movie. Strangely, movies like The Departed, The Boondock Saints, and Pulp Fiction don’t bother me. Maybe I’m getting too old for such violent movies. I typically am a lover of all movie genres, but this may be one I have to start straying away from.

So, the day that the iPhone 3g comes out, July 11th, I will be having my wisdom teeth removed.  All four of them.  What I need to do is find someone to go stand in line and buy one for me at one of the AT&T stores or the Apple store.  That way when I leave the surgeon, in complete agony, I will have something to do while I rest up and float high on Vicodin.  So, to my lovely sisters and/or brother-in-law, if you would like to volunteer for this tremendous oppourtunity to help out a person in need, I would appreciate it a great deal.  I might even make it worth your while (no, I will not buy you an iPhone).