Constantine

Grade: A+

Die Hard with the Devil.

The hybrid genre of horror/thriller is very rarely done extremely well. It’s usually interesting even when it ends up being incredibly slow, like The Order. But when it’s done extremely well, it’s a lot of fun to watch. This is a gem of the genre.

Constantine is done extremely well, and it’s a ton of fun to watch. I’m a comic book reader, but I’ve never read a Hellblazer book (the source material for this movie). I’ve read some stories that involve John Constantine, but only as a side character, so I didn’t come in as a fanboy but with an open mind. I thought the story was compelling, the effects were great, and even the performances fit the characters. Sure, Keanu is a bit flat in his delivery, but that’s always the case. And here, where the character is facing his own death and the actual knowledge of an afterlife that may not be all it’s cracked up to be, the flat delivery actually works.

Rachel Weisz is also good, as always. Other small parts are done well, with the exception of a bit character played by Shia Labouf or however you spell it. Bad role badly done, but worth overlooking. The rest of the movie is a fun ride through a Los Angeles populated with demons and archaic rituals to get rid of them. A lot of fun if you can accept the core premise.

The Jacket

Grade: A

The Butterfly Effect meets The Time Traveller’s Wife in this surprisingly good flick.

A down-on-his luck veteran is convicted of a crime he doesn’t remember, so he’s sent to an asylum where the treatment involves getting strapped into a straight-jacket, shot with drugs, and shoved into a morgue locker. That’s the normal part of the movie–then our hero is suddenly sent into the future and discovers he’s going to die in a week.

The movie itself is an interesting spin on time travel, and the core story ends up being much sweeter and more uplifting than the style of the movie would suggest. The edits and tones are all dark, grating, very unsettling. But it’s all done to amazing effect. The leads are fantastic–took me a while to even recognize Keira Knightley. And even the presence of the always horrible Jennifer Jason Leigh can’t bring this movie down.

Real gem of a film that slipped under a lot of radars. Go check it out.

Data is fun

So I’m shopping at Target last night when I come across Yoplait Light yogurt. This is the fat-free stuff. I’ve bought a box or two at Sam’s Club where you get 15 cartons divided among 2 flavors: the very good strawberry and the okay rasberry. It’s about 7 dollars for the 15 cartons, so that’s a very good per carton price. Compare that to my neighborhood Randall’s which has 20 flavors or so but the cartons cost 70 cents. So I was surprised to see that Target had cartons for 52 cents. They didn’t have the variety that Randall’s does, but maybe they were just a little low in stock that day.

Anyway, since this is the sort of thing I do on a daily basis, looking for efficiencies and tracking data, I did a little graph. Not very scientific since I estimated the number of flavors for Randall’s and Target, but there’s a definite curve to the price of cartons depending on selection. You can click on the graph to get a larger, easier to read version.

Somewhat interesting the the dramatic decrease in selection and increase in number of required purchases that go along with the far left data point (being a bulk seller) doesn’t give you a dramatic benefit over the Target data point in the middle.

In other words, I won’t be buying yogurt at Sam’s Club anymore. And I have a chart to show you why. So nanny nanny boo boo.

The Grudge

Grade: D

Not that interesting, not that scary.

Since this was on one of the movie channels I get, I TiVoed the movie to see what all the fuss had been about when it was released. Watched it and now I’m still wondering what all the fuss had been about when it was released.

As horror flicks go, it isn’t incredibly scary. All the frightening moments are telegraphed to the point that even a complete novice to the genre would know when the big scare is coming up. And the few bizarre moments are totally inexplicable. Maybe that’s what made this a success in the box office–easy scares coupled with inexplicable gruesome touches leading a bunch of teenagers to think there was something to this piece of horror fluff.

But in the end you’re left with only a few intriguing visuals. Yawn.

Grey’s Anatomy: Super Bowl episode

Grade: A+

Possibly the best hour of television drama this year.

Been a crazy week, but I wanted to review this past weekend’s post-Super Bowl episode of Grey’s Anatomy. This has been a breakout season for the sophomore drama/romantic comedy. It’s been tested a few times with repeat or absent episodes of that other ABC hit, Desperate Housewives, and its ratings have shown it to be a hit on its own. Which is why they decided to boost its appeal with a post-Super Bowl episode.

And they pulled out all the stops. It had some very tense, believable moments as Christina Ricci plays a paramedic who did something rash to save an injured man’s life and ended up putting her own life at risk (if she doesn’t get an Emmy nomination for guest star, it’s a true crime). She does an amazing job. And even though you never really believe the danger will grow to the point of threatening the permanent cast members, it’s still a great scenario and written incredibly well.

There are also some very funny, unexpected moments that have become the show’s staple. What began as a mostly chick-show ala ER meets Felicity has quickly become a force to be reckoned with. I understand they’re airing the show again tonight, so if you have the chance, check it out. Really outstanding hour of television.

Survivor: Exile Island

Grade: A+

Finally, a twist on Survivor that makes the game new again.

I’ve been a huge Survivor fan since the beginning and I still consider it the king of reality shows. So it’s always been a bit depressing to see the game fade into medicrity during the middle episodes when the alliances are formed and you’re just waiting to see which one of two main alliances will stick together long enough to play the endgame. It makes the game a bit boring even if the challenges are fun and the cast is watchable. The producers have tried to spice up the game through tribe switches, random changes, and extra immunity. They’ve also tried to spice up the beginning of the game by immediately dropping 2 people or adding 2 older cast mates (neither of which worked since the beginning never needed spicing up).

But finally the producers have done enough to make the game new again. Back to 16 participants, but in 4 teams of 4. This makes initial alliance forming nearly impossible, meaning everyone will have to truly survive to the merge into 2 tribes before any meaningful alliance can form. The other twist in the form of exiling a tribe member who can then search for an immunity idol is a nice twist–but the better part is that once they find the immunity idol they don’t have to reveal they found it until they’ve been voted out. And then the second-place vote getter is voted out. This is a HUGE advantage. And I like that in the first episode the very first exile realized there’s more of an advantage mentally than in actually having the idol–making the rest of the game THINK you have the idol. Of course, this may backfire over time, but it’s a great multilevel mental game going on here and I look forward to seeing it play out.

SuperBowl ads

Thought the SuperBowl commercials were fairly mediocre this year. Best was actually some of the movie previews–Ultraviolet and Cars looked amazing on high definition. Otherwise, liked the FedEx caveman, hidden Buds in office, the lamb streaker, and the dark amber light beer (the one with the guy tackling the girl, then she tackles him in the bar later)–which did a poor job in that I liked the commercial but can’t remember the product.

Most awkward commercial: Leonard Nimor for Alleve. Are they seriously trying to target the Trekkie-with-arthritis demographic?

Watching football in high definition is fantastic.

A Scanner Darkly

Grade: A

Solid paranoid science fiction from the master.

I’m a big Philip K Dick fan. Back in college I read all of his short stories and even created a web site about them. Sadly, the site was lost when I left school and they didn’t have a procedure for archiving your web sites since the whole personal web site thing was still pretty new. So I lost a lot of content, but not my appreciation for the master of paranoid science fiction.

Knowing that he has a finite body of work, I’ve allowed myself only one of his novels every year or two. Seeing that a movie of A Scanner Darkly is coming out soon, I wanted to read the book before the movie does it injustice.

As a book, it’s raw Dick energy (which isn’t as dirty as it sounds). It’s full of paranoid characters a bit out there. The science fiction part is subtle, and it takes a while to get rolling, but it’s amazing stuff towards the end. A drug addict works as a police mole to make money to fuel his habit. But the drug he’s taking causes some people’s minds to split in two, so eventually our hero doesn’t even realize he’s narcing on himself. There’s a great vibe to the conversations, made more realistic by the fact that Dick wrote this after becoming addicted to drugs himself, and there’s other important elements to the story I’m leaving out on purpose. A difficult read for those who haven’t read PKD before, certainly not as easy to get into as The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Blade Runner), but a great novel nonetheless.

The movie can’t do the book justice, but it will be interesting to see what they leave out.