AvP was pretty good, considering the lineage of Alien movies. I even liked Alien Rez. The Predator movies are good on their own too. But this one!? Nevermind. Not even worth downloading.

Seom was awesome and even after all these years, is still on my top 10 movies of all time. Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom was ok. Weird and mystical, but ok. Hwal is just weird and slow. Visually stunning? Sure …but the story? Nevermind.

The copy that I started with stopped working. Tonight I’m picking up where I left off and hope to finish this interesting little indie gem.

Initial impressions on a movie I’ve wanted to see ever since I heard the first stirrings about it:

You don’t ever turn your back on someone wearing handcuffs.
You don’t go back to the scene of a heinous crime, even if you don’t have anything to do with the crime in the first place.

Not twenty minutes into No Country for Old Men and I feel my heart stirring. Ten some years ago in a random film class I was introduced to the Coen brothers’ style and vision via Blood Simple, and to this day this film still ranks as a strong favorite.

It must be powerful cinematography then, to evoke the same strong feeling in me and it’s only been a few minutes into No Country. The sweeping desert vista, the stark lonely beauty of wilderness punctuated by spots of brush and the odd tree here and there. The rush of (fear?) even before the first hinting of violence is shown. This is some great movie – and it hasn’t even been half an hour. I best get back to it now, I feel it’s only going to get better.

The first half hour vacillates between tongue-in-cheek clever and outright droll. Jude Law’s accomplice to Michael Caine’s architecture engages the viewer, oh, and the excellent surveillance system the latter has in place is a delight to the tech-minded. Now onto the rest of the movie, please.

I don’t like Steve Carell, but this movie turned out all right.

Steen and peacechicken (who wrote the previous two entries) are right. I have only this to add: Tom Cruise is at his slimy best in this flick. And by best I mean worst. His character was utterly loathsome.

Powerful, evocative, absolutely heartbreaking. James Nachtwey’s spirit of compassion shows in his work. This film deserves the most serious consideration.

As an image editor, the original Picasa was a little too simple and tended to eat up resources like crazy. Ok for something that cost you $0. Still free for download, Picasa2 (now Google’s) offers features for basic editing plus web-ready functionality. I like to use P2 for organising photosets, basic color corrections, maybe the odd filter (warmtone? no problem!) and then prep the sets for upload onto the internet. This can all be done within the app. Sure there’s Photoshop – but if you don’t need to do any serious postprocessing (and when has iPhoto ever worked like you wanted it to?), Picasa2 is for you.

Bodrov’s epic drama Mongol is gorgeous scenery, a hint of mysticism, and slow in progression. Don’t be surprised with the cliffhanger ending – this is just the first of three movies about the Great Khan. Still, a few careful edits could’ve prevented the 100+ minutes from seeming like 300. Try to keep from yawning and pay attention to the more serious parts if you can, and you might enjoy this one.