Not much to report. Nana came up visit for a couple days to celebrate Catherine's birthday, but I didn't get any pictures of that so this picture from a bit ago will have to hold you over.
So I saw a post by Gaz that reminded me I hadn't put up my thoughts on The Dark Knight. It's the followup to Batman Begins, which itself was a reboot of the Batman franchise and very well done and well received. Since almost all the same players are back for The Dark Knight (with the glaring exception of Katie Holmes' role being recast) it's no big surprise this one comes off very polished and well done also. This movie has received a lot of hype and it's made an absolute ton of cash. Oh yea, and it's got that Heath Ledger fellow in it.
I know most people are going to be surprised this wasn't something I went to see in the theaters. And I admit I would have thought this is exactly the type of movie I that would get me into a theater, but for some reason I never seemed to get around to seeing it. So getting to this on DVD after all the hoopla of the movie in the theaters and how much hype it had received I was expecting to be a bit disappointed. I mean how could it be *that* good. But I ended up being really impressed. I was a bit skeptical at the start of the movie. It starts off with a bank heist, which is your introduction to the Joker. Heath's portrayal of the Joker in this film is force unto itself. Joker's magic pencil trick is probably worth the price of admission alone. Frankly I didn't think there was a way to pull off the whole psychotic clown as an evil arch-nemesis, but he manages to do it in spades. Now having said that, I think you have to ignore the fact that the Joker must have about a 1,000 contingency plans in place, since he always seems to be one step ahead of everything throughout the movie. Now as you're in the moment watching the movie you don't really think about the logic of it the Joker's plans at any given time, so it doesn't really distract from the movie itself.
The movie is a bit on the long side, clocking in at two hours and thirty minutes. I remember I started watching this at close to midnight fully expecting to take a break halfway through and pick it up the next night, but at some point stopping ceased to be an option and I ended up watching the whole thing in that one sitting (which made for a really painful following day at work). For the most part you don't really feel like the movie is too long, right up until close to the end where it starts to feel a bit like things are being dragged out (either that or it was getting really late and I just wanted to go bed, probably some from column A, some from column B if I had to guess). I was a bit disappointed near the end with the technology trick Batman uses. And I know, he's already got the high tech of the car, the suit, the bike, etc, but somehow him using tech at that level felt like a cheat. Plus the introduction of use of that tech is part of what makes the movie a bit longer than I felt it needed to be.
All this and I didn't even mention of the other major plot point of Aaron Eckhart playing the role of Harvey Dent (and anyone who knows the Batman mythos knows what happens to Harvey Dent). I was a bit surprised they felt the need to pull that trigger in this movie though. He gets overshadowed for the most part, but his story is really important to the ending. I don't really want to discuss the stuff at the end of the movie, since that would be spoiling for anyone that hasn't seen it. But I really liked the way it was ended and how things got played out. Overall a really good movie. And I can't wait to see what these guys have in store for the next installment.
One of the newer movies coming out that I'm really looking forward to is The Watchmen. It's based of a 1986 graphic novel (that's fancy terminology for a comic book these days). I read it back when it first came out, and it was really like nothing that had been done in comics up until that time. It really deconstructed the whole idea of what superheroes are and a more realistic view of what would happen were there superheroes in the real world. And it's not always pretty in that most of the characters aren't what you would consider noble nor do they represent "Truth, Justice and the American Way". In fact, when Alan Moore originally wrote the pitch, it was to contain the comic book characters DC had just acquired from Charlton Comics. The problem was that after Moore's story none of the characters would be viable or usable as a property, and since DC had just shelled out some serious cash for these characters they had reservations about where the story would leave them. So Moore changed the characters into analogues of the Charlton characters.
The way Watchmen was written, with it's broad themes and it's jarring transitions, it was the first time I had ever seen the comic book genre producing something that I felt had true literary merit. Now, I'm completely prepared to admit that I was young back then and that probably has done a lot to cloud my ability to objectively look at this work (I mean, I still look back with fondness on such TV shows as Airwolf, Wonder Woman and things like the BJ and The Bear). Even discounting my nostalgia for the title, I still believe it was truly ground breaking.
Since I hold this work to be in such high regard, I do admit to being more than a bit worried about what will be done to it in the translation onto the large screen. Part of me just doesn't believe it will work (given how some sequences of the comic had various frames occurring at different time periods juxtaposed to present a message). And the fact that Alan Moore (who I think is probably the premiere comic book writer) doesn't have his name associated with the project isn't filling me with confidence. He had his name removed from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film also, and that movie was so far removed from the actual work it was hard to to see how they had anything to do with one another other than sharing the name and concept. And he had his name removed from V For Vendette also, although in that case I thought it was at least a bit closer to the original work. Given that it's hard for me to tell how this one is going to turn out. Everything I've seen shows Watchmen to be fairly faithful to the original source material. So this could go either way.
And there's currently so much hype for the movie that it's almost unavoidable at this point. I've been literally bombarded with advertising and promotions for this film (in fact, I've seen so many ways to acquire free tickets by purchasing other items I'm wondering how the movie itself is going to make any money from ticket sales). The advertising is everywhere. Commercials are in all the shows I watch. Does it deserve the hype? I don't know. But you can know one thing for sure, I'll be watching the Watchmen soon enough.
With the extra work I've been doing, trying to spend some time with the kids and the sheer amount of television I watch I haven't had a lot of free time lately. And it looks like that won't be changing anytime in the near future. Matt pointed out to me that Quake Live is, well, live. Or at least in the open beta stage. It's Quake3 in a browser (and it's FREE, one of my favorite things). Which is just insane on so many levels since back in the day I remember having to buy all kinds of new hardware in order to get the framerate on Quake3 up to something that was at least playable, and now you can play in a browser. Sadly by the time I got it installed and up and running someone had already registered my normal Quake handle of "Nilrem". So I was forced to go with the l33t version and I'm registered as N1lr3m. If you install add on and try out the game be sure to friend me.
While Ginger took the kids to Richmond on Friday I got a night to watch a movie she has no interest in seeing whatsoever. In this case that would be Hulk Vs. It's a Marvel Entertainment animation movie.
It was actually suppose to be released as two separate DVDs at one point (one Hulk Vs Thor and one Hulk Vs Wolverine), but they decided to package them up together instead. I'm a bit surprised they didn't somehow put Wolverine's name in the title since with his movie coming out soon I would have thought this would have better sales if you tied it somehow to Wolverine's upcoming film. And frankly the Wolverine feature plays as more of a Wolverine Origin story than it does a Hulk story (Hulk just seems to be thrown in for no real reason other than to give Wolverine someone he can unleash against without being able to kill). And the Wolverine feature also features Lady DeathStrike, Sabertooth and Deadpool. Sabertooth and Deadpool (I've mentioned Deadpool before) are both characters in the new Wolverine movie also, so again, I would have thought this should have been a movie tie in. Deadpool plays as comedy relief and is definitely the break out character of the movie. Hulk refers to Deadpool as the "talking man" due to his incessant wisecracks, so you get some good "Hulk smash talking man" lines.
Possibly they combined them because the Wolverine feature is pretty short clocking in at just around 40 minutes. The Thor feature feels a bit longer. And whereas the Wolverine feature is a mini Wolverine origin the Thor feature is all out fisticuffs between Hulk and Thor. To make the match more interesting they remove the Bruce Banner aspect from the Hulk and let him just be a mindless engine of rage and destruction. This means Hulk doesn't really talk at all in the Thor feature and just smashes things (including, but not limited to Thor). I'll give the animation props for making the battle feel epic in nature. This is something that probably would never work as a live action film, but works pretty well in animated form.
The art in both features is very well done. And I'll add that I was really impressed with the soundtrack. It didn't feel cheap and thrown together at all, which is what I would have been expecting for something that was straight to DVD. All in all I liked both features. This isn't something I would let Quinn watch though since during the Wolverine feature there's a couple minor naughty words and lots of implied bloodletting (mostly the Hulks courtesy of Wolverine's claws). It's not a DVD I would necessarily want to own, but it made for a fine rental (provided, that is, you like the subject material, if comic book characters aren't your forte then this probably isn't for you).
We had Ben come over tonight to watch Friday's episode of Dollhouse (after the kids had gone to bed of course). I enjoyed this episode more than the first episode. My guess is that first episode had so much exposition that they had to do they didn't have a lot of time for the smaller character bits. Still not sure where the overall show is going since I'm finding it hard to believe we're suppose to be rooting for this organization. Along those lines I suspect there's going to be a significant change in direction at some point (where the organization's management changes). The good news is this episode seemed to have more of Whedon's touch to it. And even though I can't say I'm a big fan of Dushku's acting, I am enjoying the show. I just wish FOX were showing it sometime other than Friday night which is a ratings wasteland for the most part (I should be careful what I wish for I guess, my luck they'll move it to Saturday which is probably the only time that would be worse than where it's currently at). Ben told us that the pilot episode did really well with online viewing and downloads on iTunes, so hopefully FOX factors that aspect into their decision on whether to keep the show.
While we were watching the show Quinn called me up to his room and when I got there I discovered that the boy had lost yet another tooth (we didn't even know one was loose). He apparently just knocked it out when he went to take a swig from his drink cup.
While I was searching old pictures for ones of Catherine for the last post, I came across this. I can't even remember what was going on, but it looks amusing.
So a while back I think I mentioned that we switched to digital cable. It was actually cheaper than the package we had before and had more channels. The only downside was that because we have a TiVo as our DVR it was unable to get the SDV channels. Well, last month Ginger found some posting on the interwebs where they explained that due to the use of SDV Cox was required to provide it's users with a method of getting those SDV channels for those that weren't using making use of the Cox DVR. Here's the interesting thing though, the cable company isn't advertising this. You have to specifically ask for one of the tuning adapters. It's free, but you have to ask and they won't mention that it's available unless you ask. And I'll tell you right now, there are a lot of bugs that still need to be worked out. The adapter works, but I wouldn't call it reliable by any stretch of the imagination. What I've noticed is that it works better the longer it's on. We had the Cox techs come out multiple times and none of them were able to get it to work completely correctly after installation. Eventually we just gave up and decided the few SDV channels it did provide were good enough.
One of the whole reasons I wanted the adapter was the new cartoon Wolverine and the X-Men is playing on Nicktoons. And wouldn't you know it, but Nicktoons is one of the SDV channels. Now when you first boot the TiVo after plugging in the tuning adapter (or powering off and on the tuning adapter) it doesn't seem to find the channel as all the Cox technicians have found out. I've since decided this is probably because one of our cable cards is faulty (and of course I think it's the primary one, not the secondary card). Now, I have no proof of this, but like I said, initially it won't get the channel at all. But after a day or two of trying to record on the channel it will suddenly start to work. I think it's because eventually something is already recording on the primary cable card and it is forced to use the second cable card to access the channel. This works and then the channel is available from that point on (and it seems like TiVo knows this when scheduling as it allocates resources in such a way to insure that the requested shows will get recorded subsequently). So if you have your own cable card, you may be able to ask your cable company for a tuning adapter.
Ginger and the kids returned from Richmond tonight. Catherine had some more birthday presents in tow. One was this Hello Kitty backpack. At some point when I wasn't paying attention my little girl grew up a bit out outgrew Disney princesses and now likes Hello Kitty. I suppose there are worse ways it could have gone. Anyway, when I asked why exactly she needed a rolling suitcase / backpack with Hello Kitty I got informed that Catherine picked it out and declared she could use it for high school. When I pointed out that was many years away she decided she needed it to transport her stuff back and forth between here and Richmond. At least she's thinking ahead I suppose. Not sure I can really see her using it in high school (although who knows, it might be "in" by then).
Ginger and Quinn left to head down to Richmond on Sunday. Left alone to my own devices I decided to watch Burn After Reading. This is another quirky movie from the Coen brothers. I liked this one a lot more than I did No Country For Old Men (which I thought was an exceptionally well shot and crafted movie that just didn't have a proper ending). Burn After Reading gets away from the the dramatic seriousness of No Country and returns to some of the more comedic elements of some of the Coen brother's other films. That's not to say this pure comedy like Raising Arizona. It's a nice blend I think. The story sort of meanders along with at times no apparent destination, and yet the characters managed to keep you entertained anyway. The movie deals somewhat with how pieces of the spy community interact with the regular population. It's hard to give the normal Hollywood one line description of this film though. I enjoyed it a lot, if for no other reason than to see Brad Pitt playing a complete idiot and George Clooney playing a complete dirtbag. The whole movie ends up seeming like a complete setup for the punch line of the last scene (which I might add had me laughing for a good while).
It was a very low key Valentine's Day here. The kids got some stuff, Catherine got some jelly beans and Quinn got a can of Pringles. Ginger and I agreed beforehand that we weren't going to be exchanging gifts though, so I didn't get anything for her. Of course, after we agreed on this she called me up on Friday "just to let me know" that Wegman's had a lot of flowers for sale if I was so inclined to pick some up (so Ginger ended up getting a small batch of flowers). 
The picture above is from last night. John was in town and came out for a brief visit. I would have posted the picture yesterday, but it didn't fit with the Birthday party theme, so I held on to it. And besides, otherwise I wouldn't have had a picture to post today.
Catherine headed off for Richmond today. Ginger and the kids drove down to meet Grammy and Pop Pop halfway in Fredricksburg. Catherine is going down since it's time for her yearly birthday present of getting to go the ballet in Richmond. So Grammy will be taking her to the ballet tomorrow I believe. Then on Sunday Ginger and Quinn will drive down to Richmond to spend a couple days there (since the kids don't go back to school until Wednesday it seemed like a good time for a visit). In theory Ginger will hopefully be able to help her Mom some so it will ease some of the burden of constantly having to deal with Grandmaw and her broken neck.
So all that hard work over the past couple of weeks has been paying off. At work our customer is in this week viewing the progress of the system we're building for them and from responses I've seen everything's going pretty well. That also means this week I'm not having to kill myself at work since there's only so much we can test at this point since the hardware is in use for the demo.
And that's good, because there's so much other stuff going on this week I'm not sure I would have been able to accomplish everything had I needed to work the hours I've been putting in for the past couple of weeks. Like I've had to bake cupcakes in preparation for Catherine's birthday party coming up this Thursday (baking the kids cupcakes on their birthday is a semi tradition that I do). Sadly a lot of them got burned since I had to go help put the kids to bed while they were cooking. Luckily there was one batch that turned out good.
I got to watch Wanted last night. You know how some movies are more style than substance? This is probably one of those movies. But the interesting thing is the style really keeps you entertained for the most part. If you haven't seen the movie it's the one with the league of assassins that can curve bullets. I know, it sounds crazy, but that's not even the worst part. I found it's better to just not think about the logic behind any of this and go with the flow in this one. Now this movie is not one for the kids since the F word gets dropped in about every other line. And the movie I think qualifies as the definition of gratuitous violence (and there's the whole killing people for no reason other than some linens told you to). All that said it was a lot of fun to watch. Make no mistake though, this might be the movie that in the future is used to define "a guy movie." I mean don't forget it also has Angelina Jolie in it shooting weapons. And how could you forget since they plastered her all over the poster even though she's not the main protagonist of the show. And there are so many "Oh $#!+" moments in the movie. Things get really ridiculously over the top near the end, but with the way the movie was escalating the violence you almost have to expect it by that point.
So we've been doing what we can to try and promote Quinn's interest in reading. Basically trying to find things that he'll read on his own. That worked some with comics, but a lot of the other chapter books we've bought him for his age just haven't clicked. That's all changed. He's discovered Captain Underpants. He loves these books. In fact, he'll read a whole book in day if he has the time (which means it won't be too long before he's done with the whole series at the rate he's going since there are only about 8 books in the series). And the books aren't exactly short, for grins I read the first one and it took me maybe under and hour or so. I think a large part of why he likes it is the two main characters are trouble makers and prank players. And then there's the obvious potty humor involved too. And in case you're wondering about the post title, that's Captain Underpant's catchphrase when he shows up to battle evildoers. Whatever the reason we're just glad that he's found something that really makes him want to read. We're still looking for other books / series, so if anyone out there has suggestions we would love to hear them.
I'm sure some really important stuff happened today. But I've been working long hours preparing for a demo to our customer next week. So while I know Quinn had ice skating today, I don't know how it went (he's still alive and appears to have no broken bones, so I'm going to have to assume everything went okay for the most part). So in lieu of having anything else, I'm just going to post another picture back from when we had the snow and ice.
I got to watch Eagle Eye a while ago. It's popcorn action flick to the extreme. And it's yet another movie starring this Shia LaBeouf guy (this guy's in like everything these days it seems). And like many other movies that star LaBeouf it has him running around and yelling a lot. You know how Keanu Reeves is known for saying "Whoa" in a lot of his movies? I think LaBeouf's signature line is yelling "No No No No No No No" while running (actually given the speed he says it all the time maybe it's "NoNoNoNoNoNoNo"). I don't want to give anything away about the movie, but while most of the events that occur with technology in the movie are possible in theory, the extent to which the idea is stretched in the movie borders on science fiction. It is a shame that it gets so far removed from the concept as you get closer to the end because I was enjoying the exploration of the idea presented initially. Most of the movie seems at least plausible right until you get near the end at which point they decide to turn up the crazy. Overall even taking into account the craziness at the end it was an entertaining movie.
