A Letter to 3D Swindlers

Dear 3D Swindlers,

Make no mistake. I love 3d. The first time I ever saw anything in 3d was when I was 7 years old. The image had an area of 10 feet. 17 years later I walked into a theater to see Beowulf, and I sat amazed as 3d spears threatened to stab out my bespectacled eyes. The exorbitant price to see such a foul movie was worth it, just for the 3d.

Or it would have been if I hadn't been cursed with something called nearsightedness.

This alien term means I cannot see clearly images that are far away. It means I wear glasses. My fellow farsighted friends are the same. Now imagine how we feel when we see a movie that is offered only in 3d in our local theaters, and we are forced to wear these 3d shades, which by no means can fit over our eyeglasses. We are forced to tilt our heads at an odd angle to keep them in place, adjusting them with our hands every few minutes lest they slip and fall off. This is all because you Swindlers didn't bother to put a lip or a ledge on the 3d frames so they might hook onto our eyeglasses.

Now I've heard several counter-complaints to this, and never have I heard such close-minded views. The first? Contacts. Why not wear contacts? Well, my good Swindlers, think of it this way. Would you wear itchy socks if more comfortable ones were available? Exactly not. Some of us actually like our glasses, or feel uncomfortable shoving things around our eyeballs. Our eyes are sensitive things, if you hadn't noticed.

The other is fashion.

Ha, ha. We glasses-wearing folk would look foolish wearing 3d glasses to hook over our eyeglasses. Well I'll tell you what. We still look stupid wearing glasses not made this way. And here's the thing - do you look around trying to pick out who looks like an idiot in a theater, or are you focused on the movie? Quite. You got it.

Now here's another thing. There are a few unfortunate folk out there who have something called lazy eye. It means when we focus on a picture, we see only with one eye. We literally cannot see out the other. We lose our depth perception. We see exactly what you see when you close one eye when looking through a telescope or aiming with a gun. And our loss of depth perception prevents us from seeing the glory of your fancy 3d movies. And we are still expected to pay the insane prices and wear your ill-fitting glasses to see a movie that probably isn't even that good to begin with.

Not everyone is born with perfect eyesight. We are willing to put up with a lot if you'd only make some goddamn shades to hook on our glasses so our necks don't stiffen during a showing of Saw 3d, which uses 3d for about 3 instances. We don't care if we look like idiots in the darkness of a theater or the privacy of our own homes, which you are planning to invade with your 3d technology. Quit fussing over how well your new 3d shades curve or how many diamonds to put on the frames, and make us something we four-eyed people can wear.

Thank you. Swindlers.

Earthquake Activity [old]

I'm sure that with Haiti, Chile, and other countries - as well as the U.S itself - appearing in the news quite frequently for Earthquakes, you may find yourself asking "Where are all of these coming from?"

And for you skeptics, it's not just the media throwing catastrophe in our faces. There are a tremendous amount of Earthquakes happening, more so than in recent history.

So what is an Earthquake? Why are they happening more frequently now? In it's most simple definition, an Earthquake is the result of a release of energy caused by friction and pressure in the Earth's crust. This release of energy rattles the ground; a large-scale version of pushing (or grinding/pulling) two pieces of paper together.

So what's up with there being more earthquakes? We're likely just experiencing a part of a cycle where the Earth's tectonic plates are shifting more as a whole. Alternative views include a super volcano being due to erupt, or it could even be apart of the world starting to end due to 2012 (If you jump on those theories).

Red: A Review

Release year: 2010

Original title: Red

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence and brief strong language.

Tagline: Killer company man.

Genre: Action, comedy.

The introduction is quaint in its simplicity. We see Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) going around and doing his tough-guy thing. He puts up a few decorations after noticing that his is the only house lacking them and shows us a glimpse into his softer side during a conversation with Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), a customer service worker for the place handling Frank's pension checks.

Due to Sarah's direct involvement, Frank is growing an avocado plant in a jar and has been keeping abreast of a series of romance novels, Sarah being the sole motivation.

Frank's house is visited in the middle of the night by some very well-trained assassins.  Frank is prepared, though, and gets the upper hand very quickly. I won't tell you what he does or how he does it because the movie is an action-comedy. Telling you the action would be the same as ruining the jokes, the two are pretty much the foundation the movie is built on.

So anyway, that happens. Frank predicts that his phone line has been bugged and goes to Kansas City. The interaction between Frank and Sarah is absolutely priceless. I won't go too much into the comedy here, but I will say that their chemistry is strong, and maintains a decent level throughout the entire movie. You end up liking them both individually and as a couple.

Somewhere around this point is a pretty awesome car chase scene.

Next Frank goes to New Orleans to find Joe (Morgan Freeman) his mentor. Joe is currently living in a retirement home and later reveals he's terminally ill, though the casual nature that he does this in suggests that Frank already knows as he rightly should. Following clues left behind by a deceased reporter, whose death they suspect is no accident, the duo find a hit list. One that leads them to track down Marvin (John Malkovich), easily the most likable character in the entire movie.

Now I will say this. I feel that, as of late, it seems that group movies need that one off-kilter character that funny, crazy, but still dangerously skilled. In the A-Team it was Murdock, and here it's Marvin. I wouldn't put it beyond the staff of Red to have done this on purpose as some sort of parody, given how obvious the allusion is, but I think it's just good ol' fashioned character-type casting.

They continue onward, track down someone on the list, and this eventually leads to the next action scene. This one is a doozy, so hold on to your seats and keep your eyes peeled. A lot of stuff happens all at once and you want to make sure you squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of it.

I've left out a lot at this point, and I've also stopped quite some time before the end of the movie. I do this because the plot is not horribly complex or involving. It, and the characters inside of it, are entertaining and novel but only just enough to carry the movie forward. It is an action-comedy almost to a fault, with the best parts of the movie being the action and the comedy respectively.

The dynamics between the characters, though, are a rich source of characterization and their development is not at all static. The dialogue might be the best part of the movie. The top action shots for involves Willins in one and Malkovich in the other, so keep your eye out for those two.

If you've seen the movie post comments about what you thought, what you liked, and what your best action picks are.

The Legend of 1900: A Review

Release year: 1998

Original title: La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano

Rating: R for language (and NOTHING else)

Tagline: A beautiful story of a man who could do anything... except be ordinary.

Genre: Drama, fantasy, music, romance.

Let me just start off by saying that I love this movie, that it dominated the number 1 spot on my personal top 10 for a good, long while and that it currently contends with some of the greatest movies of all time on said list.

Max (Pruit Taylor Vince) was the trumpet player aboard a ship that ferried illegal immigrants from Europe to America, through New York, about five times a year. His introductory monologue is well-paced, ripe with emotion and vivid in the message it wants to convey. After his introduction, our story continues with Max walking into a pawn shop to sell his trumpet. Begging the owner to let him play his trumpet one last time, the owner recognizes the tune Max plays and pulls out a shoddily stitched together vinyl record. The tunes match up. The frame narrative is set up and the second story begins.

The transition is beautiful, the flashback here executed without the clumsiness that soap operas are known for. Throughout the film, time is toyed with through the use of flashbacks and quick-cuts back to the present but is handled beautifully all throughout.

The story-within-a-story begins with coal stoker Danny Boodman (Bill Nunn) picking through the ground of the upper-class party room after all of the immigrants unload. Here he finds a baby in a hand basket. You read it right. Danny decides to adopt the abandoned baby and raise him as his own. He names the child Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hundred '1900' (Tim Roth).

At this point you might be asking just how much I'm going to give away. Well the answer is, not that much really. So we're going to blur over the finger and coarser details of things here and flash forward in the plot a little bit. 1900 is now grown and, as it turns out, a musical prodigy. He is said never to have stepped foot off the ship in all his years on it.

Introduce Max. Again we're going to gloss over some details, but if you like characterization then you'll love the following scenes. The audience is given a very comprehensive grasp of 1900 as an adult. The thirst for wonder and magic, the ability to make it happen even (figuratively) and the raw, musical genius. We also get a good idea of Max, and more importantly of the bond of friendship between them.

Well, then it happens. What happens exactly? Piano duel. You read it right, and if you've never managed to conceptualize a piano duel before, let the notion detonate in your mind for a little bit.

Ready for more? Well alright then. Jelly Roll Morton (played by Clarence Williams III, Morton's real life persona is credited as a pivotal figurehead in early Jazz and who credits himself as the inventor of Jazz in the movie) hears about 1900 and challenges him to a piano duel. Three rounds, no holds barred. Slow to start, tense middle, and strong finish. Everything you could want in a piano duel, and believe me, that's saying a lot.

There is a lot of tension mixed into this as in the first story, the one with Max and taking place after the events of the ship, Max is in a race against time to convince a crew not to blow up the now defunct ship and save the man he is sure remains inside. And, to add even more punch to the bowl, inside of the second story (where we see 1900 in action), a short-lived but undeniably intense romance is interwoven into the man's legacy.

There's a LOT I've left out and with good reason. The rest of the movie is powerful and might truly inspire you.

Watch it.

Chile Miners...sure hope they bundled up...get it?!

Rob's recent blog about earthquakes got me thinking about the miners in Chile. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/13/chile-second-half-rescues/ Apparently, all 33 of them have been rescued, for those of you who were wondering. While plenty of other sites are getting their news on, I feel the need to take a more personal twist on it.

I first heard about the whole incident from my boss at work. We were eating lunch one day and he mentioned it, I saw it on the news later that day but I remember him (my boss) and correspondents on CNN talking about all the psychological trauma these guys were expected to go through and exactly how long they were going to be stuck down there. While I know it was quite some time, I feel it's very fortunate that the 33 miners made it out alive. I can't imagine it was easy for them, but in a world where we tend to see so much more bad news than good, it's refreshing to see that we (as humans) aren't completely ignorant and incapable of assisting one another.

I dunno, I was pleased to see it all worked out, even if the guys did end up taking some serious blows to their psyche, at least they'll get to go home and see their loved ones again. And if they don't have loved ones, at least they'll get to smell fresh air again and see the clouds and interact with people again. Jack London wrote a short story called "How to Build a Fire." It's about a man who's a part of a transport crew, carrying something (I think it's some guys coffin...I'm sorry if I butchered this summary i haven't read it in ages.) through Alaska or antartica and he stays behind for whatever reason. Everything is going good until a snow storm hits and he starts making not so good time. The man finds it increasingly harder to build a fire, not only for lack of dry wood, but his fingers just aren't working properly any more and he can't strike a match. He's certain he's lost several toes to frost bite and eventually he sits down and resigns himself to his fate. (Here's where i'm going with this) As he slowly freezes to death he marvels at his hands, at the world around him at all he took for granted and would begin to appreciate more once he's saved. (Wanna know how it end? Read it or wiki it!)

I got into a car wreck several years ago, one I probably shouldn't have been able to walk away from, yet I did so unscathed. It changed the way I looked at the world and I can only imagine how these Survivors are looking at it. The man in to build a fire went through a few brief moments where he was certain he was going to die, I had less than a second to comprehend everything...these guys had what? Like a month?

Either way, makes me glad for the little things...(that's what she said--ahthankyou)

-Alex (paradigm)