Fabulous Movie Review©

	Disturbia
	Released: 4/13/2007 Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Length: 1 hr 44 mins Genre: Suspense, Thriller Starring: Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Carrie-Anne Moss, Sarah Roemer, Aaron Yoo Directed by: D.J. Caruso Cinematographer: Rogier Stoffers Editor: Jim Page Producer: Tom Pollock, Ivan Reitman Writer: Christopher B. Landon, Carl Ellsworth
	A mediocre remake of the Hitchcock classic, Rear Window. Maybe, I am biased but in my mind the only legitimate remake of Rear Window is The Simpsons episode, Bart of Darkness. Everything else is just noise. Let me ask you one question though. If a girl caught you spying on her with binoculars while she was in her bedroom and swimming in the pool, what is the likelihood that she would become your friend? I'd like to hear the female perspective on this. I'm guessing highly unlikely.
	6.0 out of 10

Fabulous Movie Review©

	Juno
	Released: 12/14/2207 Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Length: 1 hr 36 mins Genre: Comedy Starring: Jason Bateman, Emily Perkins, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, J.K. Simmons Directed by: Jason Reitman Cinematographer: Eric Steelberg Composer: Matt Messina
	I am going to do something a little different than my regular review, and I use the term review in regards to these silly things that I write loosely, and just write a list of the things I thought about during this movie. I have the song "Papa Don't Preach" stuck in my head, but not the Madonna version, the Weird Al polka version. Michael Cera is so funny. He only does one character, but he does that one character very well. Dude. Is Juno even a girl? She looks like a boy. How would any guy find her attractive? Maybe if they like boys, but aren't totally committed to that lifestyle. Dude. Ok. How could anyone find a pregnant boy attractive? And consider leaving his wife for her/him?? Jennifer Garner is so neurotic in this movie. It drives me crazy every time she is on the screen. I think thats the point though. Well done Alias. I remember on Alias she would always over-act the scenes where she was angry. I would laugh every time she would stick out her chest, jut her chin, and storm off all stiff legged. Weimaraners...the dogs of elite young white people every where. An odd choice for the mom in this movie.
	8.0 out of 10

Fabulous Movie Review©

	Burn After Reading
	Released: 2008 Rating: R (Restricted) Length: 1 hr 36 mins Genre: Action, Comedy Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich Performer: Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand Primary Contributor: Joel and Ethan Coen
	The only good thing about this movie was Brad Pitt (just quit with the gay jokes okay). Other than that Burn After Reading is bad. I wanted to Burn After Viewing but settled for just sending it back to Netflix. From the trailer I was expecting something dark but funny, maybe Wes Anderson-y, or even Fargo-ish. Needless to say it was neither. Hated it.
	3.5 out of 10

Aerating the Lawn

A couple of videos of my 4 year old yesterday.





Man. Time flies.

Fabulous Movie Review©

	The Lives of Others
	Released: 2006 Rating: R (Restricted) Length: 2 hrs 18 mins Genre: Drama Starring: Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
	I always find it harder to review the good movies. I guess thats the way of life. The negative things always get pointed out, but the positive things, because they don't disturb our universe, are usually under our radar. So, anyway, this is a good movie. You might even call it a feel good movie. Well, no actually you wouldn't. Bad things happen. Its set in East Berlin before the wall came down. Essentially, its about a government agent who is spying on an author and he begins to like the author (not like that you perv), I guess, and lets him get away with smuggling an article to West Germany even though it costs the agent his career. Its good stuff. Believe me it is. Its not for illiterate knuckle dragging mouth breathers though (its subtitled).
	9.0 out of 10

Fabulous Movie Review©

	Tropic Thunder
	Released: 2008 Rating: R (Restricted) Length: 1 hr 47 mins Genre: Action, Comedy Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan Directed by: Ben Stiller Producer: Brian Taylor, Eric McLeod, Justin Theroux Writer: Justin Theroux, Etan Cohen
	Tropic Thunder is the kind of movie that will make you smile but not laugh. I can't remember any laugh out loud moments. The "trailers" at the beginning were funny, I may have laughed out loud at those, but I won't admit it to anyone. I fell asleep watching this movie twice, it took me 3 tries to get through this movie. I was pretty disappointed with it. It was supposed to be a spoof of over the top action movies, but at times (most of the time) I felt like I was watching some half-baked 1980s rescue POWs from Vietnam movie. Robert Downy Jr. was awesome. I had a hard time believing that it was really him. And, I don't care if its politically correct or not, the retard movie was fuuuuny. Overall, worth watching, but don't get your hopes up.
	6.5 out of 10

Yeah, so

I finally finished this little Live Writer plugin that I was working on to make doing my Crapulous Movie Reviews easier to do. I started in November. Yeah, I know, thats a long time ago. I rewrote it several times. It was an academic exercise. The intent was to learn a new language, C#.

Enough about that. I grow impatient.

I have a backlog of movies to "review" because I made myself promise that I wouldn't "review" any more movies until I had finished this little plug in. So, in the next few weeks or so, a flood of "reviews" will hit this space. Ignore them as you please.

For those of you who are inclined, I published my source code out at CodePlex for anyone to view or download. Why? I just needed a safe place to keep my code.

Here's a list of comments I expect to here from people looking at my code:

• Dude. How are you still employed?
• I don't see how Thing 1 or Thing 2 could possibly be any worse than you
• You suck
• Maybe the help desk would have been a better long term career option

Merry Christmas to you too.

Sniffle

My boss had a talk with Thing 1 today. I asked how it went, he said okay. That surprised me because I'm pretty sure Thing 1 had been crying when Thing 1 came back to Thing 1's desk. Judging by the number of times Thing 1 sucked air up into Thing 1's nostrils.

I don't have much sympathy for Thing 1.

The Day the Music Died

I've long (well, as long as the commercials have been on the air) been fascinated with the ShamWow guy. You know who I am talking about. The fast talking, brooklyn accented, appliance tossing, fake headset wearing purveyor of such items as absorbent towels, vegetable choppers and cheese graters. In my opinion he deserves an Emmy for best late night commercial. If they had such a thing. Get this, I even saw him doing the ShamWow commercial on the Spanish channel. It wasn't subtitled or dubbed. It was him. Speaking spanish!

THAT is talent.

But, alas, in this day and age, its dangerous to have heroes. They just break your heart with alleged prostitute solicitation and domestic violence, just like Roger Clemens. I swore I would never make that mistake twice. Damn you, ShamWow guy, damn you.

Fabulous Movie Review©

	Halloween
	Released: 8/31/2007 Rating: Unrated Length: 1 hr 49 mins Genre: Horror Starring: Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Daeg Faerch, Sheri Moon Zombie Directed by: Rob Zombie Writer: Rob Zombie Producer: Andrew G. La Marca, Andy Gould, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein Writer: Debra Hill, John Carpenter
	I honestly don't know why I watch crap like this. Specifically, Rob Zombie's crap. Bad acting, bad dialogue and bad plot. I did like the back story on Michael Myers that he added to this Halloween that the original didn't have. Let me rephrase that, I liked the idea of coming up with a back story, however, I don't think it was well done in this case. Do me a favor, if I ever think about watching a Rob Zombie movie again could you please smack me in the nose or kick me in the jimmies? You will have my undying loyalty. Thanks.
	4.5 out of 10

Fabulous Movie Review®

	Hancock
	Released: 2008 Rating: Unrated Length: 1 hr 32 mins Genre: Action, Comic Book Starring: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Elizabeth Dennehy, Eddie Fernandez, Johnny Galecki Directed by: Peter Berg Cinematographer: Tobias Schliessler Composer: John Powell
	Yeesh. Good job taking an interesting idea and using it to wipe your bum with. Hancock started out promising, but quickly morphed into something written by a 3rd grader. The plot had more holes in it than a pair of my MILs socks and it made no sense. It was dumb. The only thing worse was the ending. I won't give it away, in case you haven't seen it, but here, let me break it down for you. Dude doesn't like peanuts, but he used to love peanuts. He'll still eat them occasionally, but only in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with extra jelly. He doesn't remember that he used to love peanuts, and would eat them in any form, dry roasted, from the shell, boiled, candy bar, peanut butter cup, fudge, with green eggs and ham. One day he remembers that he used to love them, and now, because he remembered he becomes allergic to them and can't eat them at all anymore, not even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The only thing good about this movie were the first 20 minutes and the special effects. I would kinda like to watch it again with my new speakers, but I won't.
	5.0 out of 10

I Lost My Voice

I just can't think of anything to say anymore. Whether its posting here, leaving comments on other blogs, writing on people's walls. I got nothing, but I hope it comes back.

It was like Special Olympics, or something

So, I'm doing a code review with Thing 1 yesterday, that is, I'm reviewing Thing 1's code and not vice versa, and I came across a few issues. Now, in case you don't know what a code review is, I'll tell you. It's when you and one of your peers go over the stuff you just worked on and hopefully catch any potential bugs or violation of best practices or just plain stupidity. I managed to catch all three.

Example 1: Potential Bug

A CAPTCHA was implemented for the first time in one of our projects. Each time the page loads a new image is generated. Thing 1 was generating one image, saving it to disk, and overwriting it every time. Now, maybe I am just being hysterical, but what would happen if say, I don't know, two people hit the page at the same time? Three? Fifty? I told Thing 1 a better option would be to stream the image to the browser. I could tell by Thing 1's blank stare that Thing 1 had no idea what I was talking about.

Example 2: Violation of Best Practices

A button is clicked and a datagrid is loaded. Think of a datagrid as a spreadsheet. Tabular data displayed on a web page. Simple enough. Ah, but open the hood. Thing 1 retrieves the data into a dataset, then checks whether there are more than 0 rows. If there are 1 or more rows, a bunch of functions are executed. In one of those functions, the EXACT same data is retrieved into ANOTHER dataset. I said, why are you retrieving your data twice? Blank stare (I am getting really sick of the blank stare). Thing 1 had no answer. At minumum, I said, you should pass the dataset into the function, but the better solution would be to create a CLASS...

Example 3: Plain Stupidity

"How do I do that? Create a class?"

 

If you heard a loud noise in Shockoe Bottom yesterday, that was my head exploding.

Yip Yip

My two illustrious coworkers, Thing 1 and Thing 2, will sometimes discuss problems they are having at Thing 1's desk which just happens to be right behind mine. For months I've been trying to figure out who or what they remind me of when they are jabbering away. Finally, today, I had an epiphany or maybe it was a moment of clarity brought on by the injury sustained to my nads whilst bike riding. Either way, I got it.

Sound Surround

So, I got my surround sound system completed on Saturday. The final piece being the front and left speakers, which are a set of Polk R50s I bought from Frys.com. They aren't a perfect match to the Polk Monitor center and rear speakers, those being black and the R50s being cherry, but whatever. They sound great.

The first movie we watched was Ironman. Its pretty good. But. What I really have been dying to watch is the gun fight scene from Heat. You know what I am talking about. It was AWESOME. It felt like the battle was going on in my living room. Bullets flying everywhere. Be forewarned, if you come to my house, and I know you probably won't, I am going to make you watch that scene.

I don't have a subwoofer yet, but at this point I'm not entirely convinced that I need one.