Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Film Review: S.Darko

A while back I had heard that there was going to be a Lost Boys sequel. Everyone knew what was coming. A straight to DVD re-telling of the original story with the obvious cameos by the "two Coreys". When it debuted, I rushed to watch it, and it was about what I expected. Although the producers of the film weren't aiming to make a masterpiece. The end result was a decent vampire movie which almost parodied itself. It wasn't bad!

So how would you go about making a sequel to a strange arty cult classic like Donnie Darko? You wouldn't. At least you wouldn't if you were writer and creator of the original film, Richard Kelly. He apparently wanted nothing to do with this turd. And who could blame him? When you make a confusing film with multiple interpretations, and then don't fully explain the premise, how would you follow that up? Perhaps the better route would have been to make a prequel of sorts and go a new direction.

Using just the characters from the original film really allowed them to go anywhere with the story. But producers knew that they had to capture the same flavor as the original film if they wanted to sell it to that 'cult following' group. The original film felt claustrophobic, paranoid, and creepy. Richard Kelly says that this represented his childhood fear of "the bomb". But the imitation didn't quite hit that same vibe. There were the same long running shots in a party with sped up and slowed down film. There was the whole haunting thing going on with future/past dead people. There was the flowing watery stuff running out of various peoples chests. There was very intentional and awkward dialogue.

This movie is a generic box of cereal. It's cheap, and it looks about the same, but it doesn't quite taste right.

There were so many things duplicated in this movie unnecessarily that it really didn't add up. Why the same soundtrack? Why the same low budget effects? Why find a guy who looked so much like Donnie Darko, and then cast him as some other random character? Why re-insert the whole "they made me do it" nonsense with new characters?

What this film demonstrated, is that nobody does a Richard Kelly film like the man himself. Which at least somehow lets me form a compliment out of an awful and unwatchable disaster such as this.

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Glenn Beck is still a douche!

A few years ago I was surfing through news channels and I came across a fresh new face I hadn't yet seen or heard. He was smug little man sprayed into a tight suit, and he kind of looked a Pee-Wee Herman doll inflated with hot air. He was in the middle of a discussion about what lazy filthy pigs Mexicans are. He went on to berate and disparage the entire culture as a bunch of border jumping job thieves. This rant was played over footage of "Patriots" patrolling the border, guns strapped to their backs. It about made my heart sink to think that there are dumb-fucks out there leaning forward off the recliner and giving Glenn long distance high fives. But then I figured, how long could a douche like this stay on the air? Eventually, someone would raise a stink about the shit coming out of his mouth and it would be all over. It turns out that you can build a fan club and build a career out of stupid (yet faithful) nightly viewers. But who knows right, Don Imus finally got what was coming. It just took far longer than anyone had imagined (including the secretary that he regularly called *the N-word*).

I will spare you my rant about Glenn becks latest comment about the Pittsburgh shooter. But I suggest you take a look at this. Okay, I will give you a short rant. Glenn seems to think that spouting racist remarks, encouraging anti-government, and portraying Obama as a self-proficizing messiah - has no effect on the public. Welcome to real fucking life idiot. This coming from the same guy that blamed television for the doubling of the homicide rate in the 1950's.

What is Glenn up to these days? He's still on the air. And he has a new book coming out. It's called "An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems". Oh, I get it. It's a joke on Al Gore's documentary about how we're melting the planet and sending ourselves to an molten hell. But nevermind that. Let's continue to make jokes about Gore because he claims he invented the Internet.

If you order his book now on Amazon, you can get free gift wrapping!



Might I suggest you wrap it in toilet paper? What's fun about this book, is that Glenn is only half-kidding when he titles the book with "real solutions". This reminds me of those General Electric commercials where they claim that the are going to build a smarter car, or electrical socket, or - whatever. Allow me to play the protagonist here. If you could build that shit - you would have all ready built it, put it in a box, and sold it to me. That hasn't happened yet. So shut the fuck up all ready with these commercials. And fuck you Glenn Beck.

What else is Glenn selling these days? T-shirts! Here's a heart warmer ...



What? Is this a joke? I mean ... obviously it's meant to be funny. But ... he supports drilling in Alaska. I would expect to find this shit on T-Shirt Hell where people would buy this and wear it to offend those on both sides of the issue. I guess this comes down to Glenn's roots as a member of the religious right who don't seem to value the life of anything that wasn't created in God's image. Polar bears don't have souls. So fuck em'!

Here's another one for you ...



I want to congratulate anyone who buys and wears this shirt. I'm going to encourage this one. It will help me identify you in public, so I know not to speak to you.

I have saved the best item for last.



Here is Glenn perpetuating the right-winged talking heads idea that Obama thinks he is Jesus. I really don't know where this whole thing started. Perhaps with Oprah calling him "the one". Or perhaps with the poor bastards who had given up hope after seeing the disaster that our nation is in, and who got excited at the thought of a new outlook for Washington. God forbid we should believe in our president, and not a dead Jewish carpenter from Israel. God forbid ... I made it funny, right?

As much as I hate Glenn Beck, I really want to own one of these for my car. This is sort of like his t-shirts. If I have this on my dash and I still have a "BUSH/CHENEY 2004" sticker on my car, a gun rack, an American flag window sticker, and a NASCAR number (with autograph), I am obviously making fun of Obama. If I have one of these on my dash, and an Obama sticker on my bumper - I am making fun of people who still think a dashboard Jesus is a good idea.

While I am on this serious Blog roll here - let me take a moment to talk to another member of my community.

Dear stupid bitch in the Lexus who gave me a dirty look today for my Obama and "COEXIST" stickers ...
As you were leaving your -excuse me- MY parking spot on your way out of church, I was coming home to get cleaned up. While you were sitting your fat ass in church praying for society, I was cleaning up all the trash at your local park. While you were headed home to sit on the coach, eat ice cream, and watch Glenn Beck, I was leaving to go out and help build a house for a family in need. But go ahead and continue to judge me. I just wish in the end, there was a big set of pearly gates, and some douche standing there to judge YOU. So good ol' Saint Peter could give you a kick in the cunt for wasting all of your good years on your knees - instead of getting the fuck up and doing something useful with your time.

Speaking of doing something useful with your time ... why am I still sitting here ranting?

Fuck.

Infomercial Time

Informercials are really stupid. Also stupid: artists who sing everything through a vocalizer. But when you combine the two, something magical happens.

Film Review: Wolverine X-Men Origins

Since the first X-Men movie, and especially after the third one we have all been waiting anxiously for Hollywood to crank out a Wolverine movie. The last X-Men film alluded to a side story when at its end when Wolverine leaves the mutant compound in search of his past. But that storyline might as well have been null and void, since this movie is a prequel to the others.

Which reminds me ...

I have read several reviews for this film, and none of them have been good. But critics these days are like journalists. They have been raised in a copy and paste world, given community college degrees, and aren't at all familiar with the term "investigative journalism". So when they trash a film, they generally miss the whole purpose of the review. I for one would like to stand over them like a third grade teacher and say "that's very good Lisa, now tell us why you think it sucks". Which brings me to this. Three of the reviews I have read went on to trash the film for being a prequel and not a fourth film in the franchise. This might me one interesting point in a film review, but should not be the filling of it.

So I am going to give it to you straight. This film would have been *great* had it been directed by someone more experienced. Short sighted direction has a certain flavour to it. When watching the film you get certain vibes. Those are: a) bad line delivery, b) unnecessary actions or dialogue, c) giving the viewer unnecessary clues, d) and an unnatural flow to the whole thing. This is why this film has not reviewed well. The cast was great. The story line was pretty good. The special effects were awesome. The direction ... not so good. Some are more forgiving than others when it comes to poor directing. I have seen some critics give this film a B+ while most of the others give it a C- or worse.

Another strange vibe was the extreme violence, and then the lack thereof. At times there are events which seem out of place and extreme. In other portions of the film the violence takes a back seat to bad line delivery. Is this another example of bad direction? Or rather, was the studio battling with the rating system? We won't know until the DVD of the directors cut lands in stores.

Wrapping up ... likely, you are going to go out and see this film regardless of what the critics said. But just understand that you are probably not going to be satisfied with it's delivery.

My final score? Somewhere between a B- and a C+.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Tuck in your shirt!

A while back I started getting e-mail from Wyndham (the hotel chain). At first I was marking it as SPAM because it looked like that form of SPAM where it tries to legitimize itself by making you take a second look. But now I can see that they just have someone's email address recorded incorrectly. In the mean time I am getting an interesting look at the inner workings of Wyndham. And now, you will too!

Here is a recent one I got about how safe drops are performed. Normally this is probably privileged information.



And here is a another recent message to let everyone know that you are expected to clock out for lunch. Also - tuck in your shirt.



Wyndham: Right now would be a good time to consider getting inter-company e-mail like a normal company. Perhaps you should not rely on Yahoo and G-Mail accounts for your employees.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Updates to your eee PC - In Chinese!

My good friend "Discount Man" came over this weekend and he brought his dads new eee PC. He bought the 900A model which has some advantages over my old 4G surf. Both models have the same processor, and 512MB of RAM. But the 900A has a larger screen, and a nice pearly smooth finish. The downsides were: he didn't get the one with the webcam, so there was a vacant hole in the top center of his lid with a sticker covering it. Lame! Also, while the pearly finish is nice ... it had all ready been scratched up a little bit under practically no use. Also - his dad had managed to bork the sucker after only a few hours of use. He had borked it so badly, that the F9 restore wasn't even an option any more. Hence, why it came to me.

I was able to use the restore CD to build a thumb drive re-installer, and transfer a fresh new linux install to the laptop. But I was more than a little upset when I could see that he had much newer software than I did. In all my experimenting, reinstalling, and general "fucking around" with my eee PC, all I have really wanted is the default OS with a newer version of Firefox. If I use my restore CD, I end up with Firefox 2.0.x. And after updating, I still have Firefox 2.0! What a crock!

So I did what any good hacker would do. I installed the 900A series restore image to my 701 model to see what would happen. Amazingly, it installed without any problems and booted just fine. As expected, neither wired nor wireless worked at all. Also the touchpad was almost impossible to control since the one on the 900A was much larger in size. Then I started brainstorming about how I could get the source code for the 701, and transfer pieces of it to a new installation of the 900A's image. But this was really complicated, and I kept thinking that I shouldn't have to do this. Why didn't ASUS do this for me? Where are my updates damnitt?

Then I stumbled upon an interesting web site which I haven't seen before. http://www.xepc.org/en/ It seems to be run by some eee enthusiasts and not the Asus company itself. Yet there are screenshots there of "what they are working on" so I can only assume that this is the blog of an employee. This site is also really hard to follow because it's written in Chinese, and then translated by Google (and they are rough translations). But I found what I was really looking for ... a NEW restore image for my eee PC which featured (amongst other perks) a Firefox 3.0.4 browser!

The bad news is ... the image is in Chinese and it's just an ISO. I was able to burn and install from the CD using an external CD-ROM I rigged together. But ... everything is in Chinese.

This makes things really interesting. I struggled through the installer, usually guessing at what I was being asked for based on experience with the English installer. After booting up, the interface seemed familiar but all the labels were in Chinese lettering. Thanks to some well written documentation in an EEE wiki, I was able to get things to show up in English.

Now, some obligatory "screenies" ...

Check this out - newer Firefox, updated Skype, and some extra stuff! Web Storage? Don't get too excited. This is for 900-1000 users only. And that eee Download feature is stupid.



How about the crappy MS Word clone? What's this? It's Sun Star Office! Nice touch. This is a nice application and it loads really fast. And, it's in English!



Some other tabs ...





And now the bad news ... configuring your wireless in Chinese dialogue is pretty tough. Where there would be Chinese glyphs, you see squares.



What does the file manager look like? Oh no!



It seems that most of the applications can be switched to whatever dialect you throw at it. But the OS itself has it's mind made up when you install it. The outcome is ... I can tolerate a spot of Chinese now and then until Asus can get off their dad ass and release this to the eee loyal in English!

And the surprises keep on coming. There are Firefox updates, updates to your updates, Web Storage update (for those who qualify), and more!



Updates aside, the applications you can add are nothing to write home about. But then those have always kind of sucked. The most interesting update I suppose is the ability to exchange your native Antivirus client (ClamAV) with something called NOD32. This is a commercial client you would normally have to purchase. Not that you really need an AV client for Linux but ... it might be useful to scan Windows PC's remotely, or to disinfect your friends thumb drives. I'll give it a shot.



And now back to exploring. See you later.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Stupid Linux Tricks : Create Puppy USB Stick without a CD-ROM

These past two days I have been experimenting with Puppy and entertaining the thought of using it as a primary OS for a "kiosk" machine that belongs to a buddy of mine. I downloaded it and went right to work trying to find a way to put the ISO onto a USB stick, but all the instructions I found lead to burning a CD-ROM first. Well I didn't want to do that. For one, I was trying to work off of my eee PC which obviously has no CD-ROM. Secondly, this is a disc I would never use again. And I have a LOT of discs stored away like that.

Not really finding any good answers online, I opted to experiment using an old trick that I have used for various Ubuntu releases.

Step #1 - Download puppy.
It doesn't matter which one. If you want something flashy, try the famed MacPup release. You will end up with an ISO image.

Step #2 - Mount the ISO.
Open up a Terminal and browse to the directory where the ISO file is located. First create a directory for the ISO to mount to: "sudo mkdir /mnt/iso". Then: "sudo mount -o loop nameofisofile.iso /mnt/iso".

Step #3 - Copy everything to the USB stick.
Go ahead and insert your USB stick now. It should be partitioned and formatted as a FAT file system. You should do this in Linux, since there is quite a difference in the way that Linux creates a Windows file system! Also make sure that when you create your partition (probably using fdisk) that you mark it as bootable. Now, simply copy everything from /mnt/iso to /media/disk (or whatever your USB stick is mounted as).

Step #4 - Syslinux your USB stick
Don't have syslinux? Do a: "sudo apt-get install syslinux" if you are running an Ubuntu/Debian release. Or if you are doing this from Windows, you can use the Win32 equivalent. Just do a "syslinux /dev/sdc1" where sdc1 is your USB stick. Make sure you know what your drive name is. Do a "dmesg" in terminal if you are unsure.

Step #5 - Perform magic.
If there is indeed a "trick" to doing all this, here it is. The trick is to go into your USB stick and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. Now it will boot, and you can install Puppy FROM a USB stick.

DISCLAIMER:
This will not likely help you install from a USB stick TO a USB stick. It will also probably not help you install from a USB stick to an SD card or similar removable storage. The reason being that grub will have different drive labels from the time you are installing, to the time you try to boot with your new OS. While I have been successful in repairing a broken system that is in this predicament, I would never try to walk someone through the process. If you should end up in that situation, do yourself a favor and find someone who has an external CD/DVD drive. It will save you hours of hair pulling.