Archive for December, 2006

Movie Review: V for Vendetta - 5/5

Published
by
Austen
on December 31, 2006
in Movies and Reviews
. 3 Comments

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I know this film has been out since forever. I really wanted to see it in theaters, but I never got around to it. Now, I have finally recieved the DVD from Netflix…

The film is set in a future in a very-nazi like society - Britain, something like 20 years from now. The government has total power, and it really is a fascinating cross of Nazi Germany and the near future. Anyway, in all societies there are rebels, and in this particular one Codename “V” is our rebel. He wears the mask of Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder plot. V is inspired by Fawkes, and sets out to do what Fawkes could never achieve: Blowing up the British Parliment. This presents a perplexing moral question: Is terrorism ever right, and if so, when?

Anyway, the story consists of Natalie Portman’s character (Evey Hammond) getting involved with V. (Hugo Weaving) We are very much looking at the film and V’s character through Evey’s eyes.

I won’t spoil the rest for you, but be rest assured that this is NOT your typical summer action film. It’s really an entertaining movie that makes you think about things. It packs so much into just one film: Historical influence, totalistic societies, terrorism, fear, persecution of minorities.
The acting is very good throughout. Portman dows a great job with Evey’s initial fear of the situation at hand to her eventual “loss of fear” and joining with V. Hugo Weaving as V is a bit hard to analyze as an actor, seeing as he wears a mask for the entire movie. Still, his voice is a terrific one. The other supporting actors are nothing special. They aren’t bad, but they aren’t given as much room to shine as the main characters.

I have to say that I enjoyed this just as I enjoyed the Matirx - they both make you THINK, and then you get to see people fight awesomely. It makes sense, seeing as V for Vendetta (the movie, not the comic book) was written by the Wachowski brothers, who also wrote and directed the Matrix.

I will admit that I expected this movie to be more violent then it actually was. There wasn’t that much violence, and it didn’t repeatedly throw it at you throughout. The scenes with violence - yes, they were violent and sometimes graphic, perhaps unnessicarily so - but it was used to make a point, to show the cruelty of the person causing it.

I can’t stop THINKING about this movie. It seriously makes you think about the parallels to today’s events and conflicts. This movie should seriously be shown on the first day of high school all over the world. Seriously.

Still, V for Vendetta isn’t perfect. It has similar problems to Casino Royale: Plot order. It’s just that the beginning and end are eventful and good, but the majority of the middle is boring in comparison. And it does drag on for a while. the entire movie is almost 2 and a half hours, and even though it’s all good stuff, it could have been cut down to 2 hours without feeling too rushed.

So all in all, V for Vendetta is exactly what I expected, and more. You always feel unsure of things - V is supposed to be the good guy, but he does some pretty horrible things. Is it right? That’s for the viewer to decide.

My english teacher says that she prefers books to movies because books are open to interpretation and you can make your own decisions about what you see. Well that’s the beauty of this movie: It makes you think more than Shakespeare ever could make you think (and it’s voluntary thinking, too.)

5/5 stars

MY Top 10 Firefox Extensions

Published
by
Austen
on December 31, 2006
in Technology
. 4 Comments

All of these extensions can be easily Flock’d, so this applies to Flock too.

There are SOOOOO many top 10 Firefox Extensions lists out there. So I’m now going to make MY OWN Top 10 Firefox (and Flock) Extensions list just because I feel like it.

1. IE Tab

An essential extension for just about anyone. Even though most websites now work in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, this can really help when you need to see how a site looks in different browsers - while still in Firefox! Basically, IE Tab lets you open websites in a new tab, and that new tab is like a portal to IE, but inside the Firefox interface!!!

2. FireFTP

Not essential for everyone, but this is a very useful FTP program inside of Firefox. It saves you the extra hassle of buying one that turns out it’s only a demo after 30 days, and then you can’t do anything anymore (this is completely free.)

3. StumbleUpon

This isn’t really a tool, it’s actually more of a website and toolbar. Discover new websites as rated by users like you, choose your categories and all of the sudden 2 hours have past. Whoops. (It’s a HUGE time waster.)

4. Gmail Manager

Gmail Manager sits on your toolbar and notifies you when you have new mail, at a predescribed time frame. There are a lot of different Gmail extensions for Firefox. Personally, I like Gmail Manager because it allows you to manage multiple accounts at once.

5. MeasureIt

I couldn’t live without this simple extension. It sits in your browser, and when you click on it’s little icon, it allows you to measure the pixels of anything on the current page. So if you need to know what the width of the page is, you just click and measure. It’s sort of like using a ruler digitally - only it’s more fun.

6. Highlighter

I find this especially useful on long boring pages about the conflict over water in the Middle East. It lets you (digitally) highlight (and choose the color) any text on the page. One problem is you can’t easily un-highlight stuff. Still, it’s a great tool.

7. FoxyTunes

Allows you to control almost any and every media player in existence from the comfor of the lower-bar-thing. Very customizalbe and easy to use, although a bit slow.

8. Screen grab!

Simple screenshot taker. Right-click > Screen grab > Save. And you’re done.

9. Greasemonkey

Allows you to customize scripts, doing all sorts of fun stuff. Even allows you to take the ads out of Google.

10. Non-existent

One of the reasons why I switched back to Flock is because I couldn’t find a one-click-bookmark extension for Firefox, like what Flock has with the star. You just click it, it turns from blue to orange, and you’re done. It’s so easy. No title and description, and putting it in a folder - just one click. If someone knows of an extension that does this, please tell me although I’m not gonna swith back just because of that.

Cartoon Kong

Published
by
Austen
on December 31, 2006
in Life
. 0 Comments

I did this using Photoshop. I know, Kong looks sorta weird. Oh well.

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Original, and my cartoon version. (Click both for larger versions)

Christmas 2006 and more photos

Published
by
Austen
on December 30, 2006
in Photos
. 0 Comments

Click here for a bunch of unrelated photos that I took over the past month, some having to deal with Christmas, some having to deal with very, very tall cranes.
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Saddam Hussein hanged

Published
by
Austen
on December 30, 2006
in Life
. 1 Comment

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I have mixed feelings about Saddam Hussein’s recent hanging and death. Yes, he killed a lot of people. But I guess that I just always assumed he would rot in jail for the rest of his life, not sentenced to death. But what surprised me the most was the nature of his death:

They hanged him! Aren’t we as human beings passed that? Is it not the 21st century? We can’t give a person a decent way to die? Isn’t it possible to just give someone some painless drugs - like they did with Timothy McVeigh?

I mean - I know it’s the Iraqi’s that are doing this - they’re government, THEY sentenced him but seriously - if Saddam had escaped or something would we have seriously not stepped into try to find him? I’m not saying the Iraqi’s who put him on trial were our puppets - but they were more our pets. (We didn’t control them, we just chose them and watched over them)

Anyway, back to the point - I think that the whole hanging this is really wrong. What is this, the middle ages? It’s not I that I don’t think he’s a horrible man, I just think they could of killed him a little more dignity.

NY Times | Wikipedia | Al Jazeera

Movie Review: Casino Royale - 4.5/5

Published
by
Austen
on December 30, 2006
in Movies and Reviews
. 2 Comments
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I will admit, this is my first full Bond movie, (I’ve seen some of the original) but I am not immune to the Bond series and the classic Bond figure. Anyway, here goes my review…

The basic plot is slightly confusing (making the movie always a step ahead of the audience) but the basic idea is this: The bad guy, LeChiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) is evil and James Bond has to stop him. After a couple of action scenes that set up the character of Bond (Daniel Craig)the main plot is revealed that through a series of events, Bond has toplay at a (very rich people’s) poker game and beat Le Chiffre, or else”our government will have directly financed terrorism.” A good portion of the movie is actually the boring game itself. But the game is anything but boring. I know very little beyond the basics of poker, which I have probably already forgotten - but still the game is easy to follow and surprisingly fascinating.

Of course, there are several heart-pounding (and I mean that literally) interruptions of the game, which I will keep disclosed as they are major plot points. But be rest assured, it is not a boring movie. Anyway, it ends and the last half hour consists of Bond getting together with the girl and resigning. Yeah, right.

What makes this movie so great is of course newcomer to the Bondrole Daniel Craig. People have been hailing him as the “best Bond ever,” etc. And I have to say that he is a terrific actor. He plays the role very well. He’s cool, clever, funny, and also scary. His disregard for human life is an issue brought up many times throughout the movie.The other characters are also amazingly acted, Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre is a mysterious and haunting bad guy.

It’s really the acting that seperates this movie from what it could have been: A nonstop hollywood action movie. Okay, well - that’s actually what it is - but it’s a good one! The locations (and there are a lot of them) are amazing and the acting is superb.

Also superb is the music. It comes in when it should and leaves when it should. It’s fitting and good. That’s all there is to say about it - it’s like that classic Bond spy theme.

The movie is a fantastic action packed, thrilling movie. But there’s one problem with the plot: All the action happens in the first half hour. Okay, not all of it - but 2 out of the 3 big action scenes in the movie literally happen in the first 45 minutes (the movie is over 2 hours long altogether.) And the ending action scene isn’t nearly as good as the other two. Is this a bad thing - sort of. I can’t argue about the bad action scenes, but their placement within the movie could have been much better.

So overall, the newest James Bond movie is a great movie - much better than most action films coming out today, especially with some awesome acting. It has a few flaws, but in truth everyone should be happy that it’s not a complete flop.

4.5/5 stars

More about Flock

Published
by
Austen
on December 30, 2006
in Technology
. 4 Comments

Flock: The Social Web Browser.

As some of you already know I used to use the web browser Flock which is based on the Firefox code. It’s basically Firefox with a new look and a whole lotta new features.

First, there’s a built in RSS feed reader which, I’ll admit isn’t as good as Google Reader, but it does have this awesome thing that makes the different feeds be in different columns so it looks more like a (very good looking) website.

Second, it’s got great Flickr integration - you can browse photos within the browser (not on the Flickr site) and even upload photos with tags, descriptions, titles, and it even gives you the abilility to resize, crop, and rotate your pictures.

In addition, most major Firefox extensions have been “Flock’d” which means that they’ve been converted so they can work with Flock including FireFTP, Gmail Notifier, Del.icio.us, and much more.

There are a bunch of other little cool features that the developers added on like a better favorites manager and a digital “clipboard” to store multiple snippets of text or images (like copy and paste, but for dozens of things.)

And finally, the best part (besides how good it looks) is it’s blogging feature, which I am using to write this post right now. It’s fast(er than Wordpress’s default) and much better looking. So check Flock out at Flock.com and see for yourself why it is SOOO awesome, and why I have now switched back to it.

Christmas!

Published
by
Austen
on December 25, 2006
in Life
. 1 Comment

Merry Christmas!!!!

(And Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and all Buddhist and Hindu equivalents)

But today IS Christmas, so yay! But nobodies coming over this year - because Warren’s in Vietnam and everyone is busy so the family is probably going to get together sometime during January.