RaaD Technology, Movies & News

I don’t buy DVDs very often, but when I do, I usually end up getting a whole lot at one time, because of this, I have amassed around 200 DVDs.

I just finished sifting through a big columbiahouse sale and ended up ordering the most movies at one time ever up to this point… I ended up ordering 20 DVDs!

A few of the movies I ended up ordering were: Total Recall, Annie Hall, Black Snake Moan (a movie I have not seen it yet, but heard good things about), The Goonies, Closer, Transformers (2007), Pan’s Labyrinth (if you haven’t seen this film, just stop reading this and go see it right NOW), Flash Gordon (one of, if not THE best camp movie of all time), Singin’ in the Rain and Serenity.

Thanks to Cinema Blend for the sweet DVD cover.

Dany

Not being someone who read the trade paperback that 30 Days of Night originated from, I only really knew the most basic of story premise for this film, the idea that the vampires swarmed into a small town in Alaska during a period of nightfall lasting 30 consecutive nights. What I got was a movie I was not expecting, a vampire film that was fairly original, but mixed in with some of the best parts of classic vampire stories.

There was no explanation as to the origins of vampires, not a virus, not an act of God, not descendants of Dracula, nothing. The idea that the vampires were just… there, was refreshing, since most movie explanations usually ring hollow and take me out of the current story. The group of vampires had a plan and a pretty good one too, isolate the townspeople by preventing them from contacting the outside world… well, I should say that the vampire leader had a good plan, since he was pretty much the only vampire with any dialogue (most others just screeched to gather other vampires to their location). I also enjoyed the way the vampire leader talked about history (in an original vampire language as well, which was a nice touch). They even used a Renfield style character to accomplish some of these goals, which is a small role, but played extremely well by Ben Foster (a second good performance this year from Foster).

My worry going into this film was about the performance Josh Hartnett, I haven’t really seen him in any films thus far where I thought he was very good. I don’t think he knocked this performance out of the park or anything, but I thought he played very well in this film and in the last ten minutes of the film, he was great.

If you like vampire movies, this is definitely a film to watch, but this is not a movie to take people who don’t like this genre, especially since there are some annoying things about this movie. I don’t know if this detail came from the original writings or not, but I really hated the screeching sounds that most of the vampires made.

I don’t actively try and figure out movies while I’m watching them in theaters, but I can usually follow them pretty well, but what I’ve learned about the Saw movies is that each movie gets more and more intricate and complex and Saw IV is no exception… actually it isn’t even meant to be figured out while watching it the first time through, it is a complex origins story about what made Jigsaw do what he’s best at for the past 3 movies and you are supposed to marvel at it. This movie (which is a great example of torture porn) has so many plot twists and turns mixed together, it is pure entertainment to watch, but there just aren’t any clues to try and figure it out (not that you need to, since everything eventually gets explained). Visually, the film is engrossing (sometimes what’s on screen is quite gross as well), but beyond the gore, the scene transitions are also markedly creative, sometimes scenes literally break into the succeeding shot. A lot of care was taken in creating this world and even though the series has gone on since 2004, in Jigsawland, only about half a year has passed.

This isn’t the first origins story in the middle of a long series of successful movie sequels this year. Since 2004, every Halloween season has brought us a new installment in the Saw series and the way this film’s plot unfolds, there is every reason to believe that the series will continue until it stops making tons of money.

If you enjoy a good 100 minutes or so of torture porn, get to the theaters, if not, do I really need to tell you to stay clear of this movie?

Thanks to imdb for the first picture and bagelsncheesey for the second pic.

Dany

For all you with at least slight OCD, as well as the legions of mysophobes and
anyone else who has been freaking out with the over the top news coverage of staff infection, you should probably start pining for this bit of chic Euro tech.

Most of us are already pretty familiar with seeing touch-less faucets in public restrooms, but all they allow, is for you to turn on the water. This touch-less sink allows you to turn on the water, control its temperature (it even has a temp indicator), you can also dispense soap and disinfectant as well without laying a hand on a lever.

All that’s missing now is a way to open the bathroom door without having to touch anything and the whole experience leaving the bathroom will be completely touch-free.

Thanks to geekologie for their post as well as the product’s homepage Miscea for the pics and brochure.

Dany

I had been hearing all summer from a lot of different people about how good the Michael Bay Transformers movie was, but I decided to wait… I KNEW they would release this film as an IMAX experience. The film was touted as having absolutely AMAZING special fx, so waiting for it on IMAX was an easy decision.

After getting to see it this afternoon, it was well worth the wait. Up to this point, I thought Michael Bay’s best film was The Rock, but Transformers, with its seamless special fx, entertainingly fast talking Shia LaBeouf and smokin’ hot Megan Fox was a great way to revive a franchise I loved as a child. Even though the story outside of the Transformers themselves and anything involving LaBeouf/Fox wasn’t terribly compelling (mainly because those elements made up at least 85% of scenes), I loved the experience that was this movie.

Thanks to MSNBC and Golden Screen Cinemas for the top and bottom pics.

Dany

I’ve heard of people eliminating chairs from their office at work, in an attempt to speed up meetings, but the idea of combining the computer table with the treadmill is something I never thought of… maybe because most people think of multitasking on the computer by running a spreadsheet and listening to music, not simulating running up a mountain while sending that email to all the minions you control under you at work.

Most people spend at least 40 hours a week at work and for a good number of people, spending hours in front of their computer during that time isn’t unheard of. How tired are people going to be at the end of the day from this? Wouldn’t most people just use this for the first week or so, get bored/tired and in the end, pulling up a chair to this and never use it again?

Thanks to Geekologie for the article and the new Time blog for the pic.

Dany

Lions for Lambs looks like a much more interesting take on US national security policy and the war on terrorism than Rendition was.

The film stars Tom Cruise (a tough as nails senator who is pushing a new policy for the war on terror), Meryl Streep (a reporter seemingly assigned to interview the senator) and Robert Redford (who looks to be a college professor who looks to be a mentor for the two soon to be soldiers for up the B-story). Redford has also directed the movie.

You can watch the HD trailer from Apple, or just watch the regular version here.

Dany

This movie has a wonderful cast, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin. It is really too bad though that none of these actors really plays a big role in the film, essentially, each is given only one major scene to shine in. Also, I didn’t even think Streep gave a strong performance either (sorry Tara, please don’t kill me for saying that), which was disappointing.

The movie deals with time in an interesting way, but it’s too bad that the story itself, especially the B-story with the two arabic speaking teens isn’t terribly interesting.

I really don’t recommend that anyone see this film, just avoid it and forget it existed in the first place. I just hope Streep’s next film, Lions for Lambs turns out better… oh, I just looked up the director of this film, Gavin Hood and at this point it looks like he’s set to direct the upcoming X-Men Wolverine movie set for 2009, hopefully he does better with that, especially since Wolverine has always been my favorite superhero characters.

Thanks to Boston News for the picture.

Dany

I don’t know what made me go out to see this film, I didn’t think the trailer was all that enticing, but since I usually like Robert Duvall and Joaquin Phoenix.

I’m glad I did, though. This film does something that The Darjeeling Limited tried to do, but failed, the first half of the movie was almost an entirely different movie from the second half. I won’t reveal what happened, you’re going to have to find that out for yourself, but with We Own the Night, the turning point and the second half of the film were completely engaging.

The film takes place in 1988 Brooklyn, NY and has an interesting (and surprising) cameo from former NYC mayor Ed Koch (who WAS mayor of NYC in 1988)! It was interesting seeing this film after Eastern Promises, since that film revealed to me the importance of tatoos for the Russian mafia.

After the first 10 minutes though, I realized that this film has many deep rooted connections to The Godfather (my co-favorite film, with the other co-favorite being Casablanca). Robert Duvall is in both films, but this time, instead of consigliere to the boss, he IS the boss… well, police chief, instead of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), you get Bobby Green (no, not Moe Greene, Joaquin Phoenix) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) is replaced with Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg). The twist is that instead of the prodigal son growing up in a mob family and going off and joining the military, Bobby has the opposite experience, he changes his last name, hides who his family is from everyone he knows and becomes a successful night club manager. Also, both in both films, the families of their wayward main character (Pacino/Phoenix) are suspicious of and don’t like their love interest (Diane Keaton/Eva Mendes), to the point where the families rejected them for not being the same religion/race (Keaton not being Catholic and Mendes being Puerto Rican). There are actually many more similarities between these two movies, but I don’t want to give anything else away, the film is so entertaining to watch that I don’t want to spoil the experience. I am glad that I decided to see it.

This film is worth checking out, it’s no Godfather, but it was surprisingly solid, although there were a couple of scenarios that were a bit unbelievable.

Thanks to /Film for the pic.

Dany

I remember watching the live action promotions for this film at the beginning of the year, but after seeing the Bee Movie ad campaign plastered all over NYC telling me that Honey Just Got Funny (thanks slashfilm) over the past few weeks, it made me not want to see this film, also, the film was created by Dreamworks Animation and I’ve had mixed results with their animated movies. I loved ANTZ (How could I not enjoy a Woody Allen movie… just with the entire cast playing ants?), thought Madagascar (which also starred Chris Rock) was pretty funny and heard good things about Over the Headge (but never got around to seeing it), yet I HATED Shrek and never wanted to watch the rest of the Shrek trilogy. In the end, I decided to watch the trailer on Yahoo! trailers. I was reluctant, but with Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock in the film, I HAD to give Bee Movie a look.

I loved that they used the song Brazil as the opening theme to the trailer (a very good sign) and I must say, the trailer had me laughing , maybe honey DID just get funny! Hearing Jerry reminded me just how much I missed Seinfeld.

If you want to see the HD trailer, you can get it here, otherwise, just give the SD trailer a look below. You can also see the other clips I was talking about here too.

Dany

About a week ago I found a hilarious podcast with a group of comedians, hosted by Jimmy Pardo. Pardo named the show Never Not Funny and the name fits quite well. The show isn’t about anything in particular, but I’ve listened to 9 episodes thus far and at times it had me on the floor laughing or even walking down the street cracking up with people staring at me. The show comes out weekly and runs about 70 minutes.

If you use iTunes to manage your subscriptions, you can subscribe here.

Dany

Are you a Trekkie? How about a life-long dork? Need to prove it for all eternity? Then you need to line up to be the first to get one of these funeral vessels. Eternal Image will be offering a Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn style casket as well as a Star Trek inspired urn here.

Thanks to Geekologie for the heads up.

Dany

Now that we have completely solved world hunger, achieved world peace and are all healthy, wealthy and wise, UK researchers at the University of Leicester have moved on to much more pressing issues: space spending!

Even though Virgin Galactic isn’t going to be sending up any commercial space flights until at least 2009, ever since John Glenn orbited the Earth over 45 years ago, he (as well as every astronaut since) has complained about not being able to shop at the Space Mall because of flaws with our current currency in space, all those pesky space vendors just won’t accept our money! Space BASTARDS!!! How dare they leave us in the cold like that.

Well, those researchers have created an innovative solution: SPACE MONEY! They wouldn’t dare be so bold as to call it that though, they decided on Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination or QUID.

Didn’t you wish your money looked more like a candy colored yo-yo? It’s perfect, create a currency that consists of gigantic discs that are solid and are unfoldable!

I bet you’re asking how much this new money will cost you… well, it can all be your at the low low price of £6.25, 12.5 dollars or 8.68 Euros, who wouldn’t want to pass that up?

Thanks to Geekologie for their story as well as Engadget for their post.

Dany

iwatchstuff continually unearths interesting tidbits and this is no exception. It seems that as a midseason replacement, scifi channel will be premiering a new show based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

With this new iteration of a classic story, it looks like they have tried to make the story fit the generation with the shortest attention span, with quick cuts, striking visuals and turning the classic and well known themes from the original story on their heads, calling OZ the Outer Zone and having characters abbreviate it as The O-Z (like the show, The OC).

The show looks interesting (maybe even creepy, with Richard Dreyfuss as the Wizard… er the Mystic Man), Alan Cumming is always fun to watch and I loved Zooey Deschanel in Elf. Watch and see for yourself though.

Dany

Also, if you wanted to listen to the audiobook of the original story, you can get it through iTunes over here or you can just get it here.

I have been exposed to their ad campaign for a few weeks now, mainly because their posters have been plastered all over the NYC subway system, but those ads never really grabbed me, so I put 30 Days Night out of my mind. After enjoying 3:10 to Yuma and finding out that Ben Foster will also be in 30 Days Night, I saw that iwatchstuff was talking about an exclusive clip from the film being displayed from the film’s official website. After watching that, I knew I had to find the trailer, which I found the HD version of on Yahoo! trailers. The movie is based on a graphic novel and sounds like an interesting concept in the vampire movie genre.

You can watch the clips below too.

Dany

At this point, the number 1 online music store is iTunes. It looks like Amazon has started to try and take a byte (get it, instead of bite, (mega)byte… I’m such a tech geek, sigh) out of Apple’s market share. The way they are trying it though, is by offering not only drm free mp3 music, but they are offering it for less money. On iTunes, all individual songs are $0.99, but if you want to get them drm free (when available), they are $1.29, no questions asked, while with the Amazon mp3 store, most songs are $0.89, while others are $0.99 and for those prices, ALL are drm free! Not to mention that most albums cost anywhere from $7.99 - $12+ in iTunes, while in Amazon’s new store, these albums range from $4 and up. There even some albums that are anywhere from $1-4 cheaper when purchased through Amazon’s mp3 store (after looking at albums from AC/DC, Nirvana and Pink Floyd).

This is an important step because the idea of having cheaper music, people can use on any music device is the first step toward people being willing to pay for downloadable music in larger numbers.

Thanks to Engadget for the initial post about this.

Dany

This is a film, from first time director and established writer Tony Gilroy, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack. The film makes me wonder why Tilda Swinton isn’t a bigger star, she is one of the most interesting actors to watch in our time (Gilroy gives her so little to work with to create her role, yet she knocks it out of the park anyway) and Tom Wilkinson gives a great performance as an A-list trial lawyer with bipolar disorder. Oh and all you Dexter fans will enjoy seeing David Zayas in the film, now playing a NYC detective.

This is a tight, well paced, suspenseful film. After seeing the trailers where Clooney is portrayed as a superstar in his field as a fixer who could solve any problem, it was great to see that his character was robust, complex and had real problems, which made him seem vulnerable, human and more enthralling to watch.

This was a great film to see, I really enjoyed it and recommend that you rush out to see it, but I don’t want to reveal any of the story, since it is a joy to watch and it is better to go in knowing as little as possible about the story, to get the most out of this movie.

The one thing I have to say that surprised me though, there was one scene in this movie, when Clooney was alone in a loft, that made me jump so far out of my skin, maybe more so than in any film I have ever seen, this was the type of moment that any horror film production would have paid top money for, but almost never is able to deliver, yet this film did it seamlessly.

Thanks to The Hollywood News for the above pic.

Dany

The Darjeeling Limited is a film whose viewing experience should begin with seeing Hotel Chevalier, the free 13 minute prologue. Without seeing this prologue, there are at least two scenes in the film that become insider jokes that you will not be a part of.

Watching this movie, it is obvious just how much of a stamp Wes Anderson puts on his movies stylistically. The music for this movie, even with the Indian theme, felt exactly like Anderson’s other films, he maintained long takes by utilizing extremely deliberate camera pans, zooms and long pauses, which makes the film both look and sound beautiful. The dialogue in this film is also a joy to behold, there are some very quick and witty moments to enjoy.

The movie features Wes Anderson regulars: Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, with Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston playing small but memorable roles and anyone familiar with a Wes Anderson film, will be able to spot Kumar Pallana. Adrien Brody plays the part, normally reserved for Luke Wilson and does a great job (just as he did in both Dummy and King Kong), probably better than Luke would have done (to my surprise).

The film follows three lost brothers, trying to go on a spiritual journey a year after the death of their father. On the way toward this (meticulously itineraried) journey, the movie has some hilarious moments, some are cute, while others cause an outburst from the audience.

This movie has three distinct sections. In the first part, the brothers have an itinerary to take them on a spiritual journey. The second part is them stumbling on a completely different spiritual journey (a spiritual journey that seems to be in the wrong film), bringing the film to a grinding halt and it took me completely out of this film. The last part of the movie, with the brothers completely devastated tries to return to the itinerary, but it doesn’t quite work.

The problem is that the middle section of the movie doesn’t seem to fit with anything that came before it, because it was far too serious for the funny events that preceded it.

I ended up loving seeing the entire train revealed in the end, but even with that, the ending felt flat and unresolved. The other problem I had with this film is that unlike all of Wes Anderson’s other films, I don’t want to rewatch this film over and over again (I can’t remember how many times I’ve rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore).

Oh, one last thing, Jason Schwartzman should win an award from Apple for funniest and best timed use of an iPod throughout this film.

Thanks to The Hindu for the above pic.

Dany

This is one of the better SNL Digital Shorts that have been made thus far, but when I first saw it, I had no idea what the inspiration was for it, yet it had me cracking up anyway.

It was only a couple of weeks later when my friend, Seán, showed me the season finale of The OC, which was the inspiration for SNL’s parody. You don’t need to see the original material, but if you want a more robust comedic experience, watch the below clip first.

Dany

This is the end of day #2 of my jury duty service, thankfully, I didn’t follow Pauly Shore’s footsteps and actually get picked for a jury (and yes, sadly I HAVE seen the absolutely terrible film Jury Duty, at least I only caught it on tape and not in theaters).

At least today we didn’t sit around and do nothing. We actually had some suspense throughout the day, we had lawyers come down who needed jurors for their case, so there was a long roll call to see who would end up being put in the potential juror pool for vetting by the case lawyers. They called out 25 people, but mine wasn’t one of them, so I was able to relax… until later after lunch, they said they still needed more people and ended up calling up 5 more people, but again I was not a part of this secondary pool.

The biggest difference though between today and yesterday was that I actually found an interesting person to talk with during the day. He worked as a finance guy at a marketing company. We had an entertaining conversation about the politics, until a very annoying woman shushed us.

Thankfully this was my last day of jury service. This means it’s back to work for me on Monday. My two days of jury service now gets me out of further jury duty burdens for the next 2-4 years.
Thanks to It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Blog to Cry for the idea for the pic.

Dany

I just finished watching the newest Revision3 produced show and I am pretty excited with its concept.

The show: Web Drifter

The Premise: Martin Sargent visits all the craziest places and people he’s found over the years on the internet.

Watch and enjoy

Dany