The other movie we got this weekend was Seven Pounds with Will Smith and Rosario Dawson.

I wasn't always the biggest fan of Will Smith until I got married. I thought he was too cocky and arrogant in Independence Day and that impression stuck with me for a really long time. And then I saw both Hitch and Jersey Girl and it totally changed my opinion of him.

Rosario Dawson is a different story. I have always liked every movie that I have seen her in. She left an indelible impression on me in 25th Hour and brought the necessary humanity to Clerks II, but at the same time could "roll with the boys".

This movie while told out of sequence still had that spark of interest for me. I unfortunately figured out the main twist at the very early part of the movie. Maybe I remember something from the trailer, but the whole medical thing was just way too transparent.

I am always a fan of redemption stories though. This one didn't disappoint. I was worried about the "Happy Hollywood Ending" in the last 20 minutes, but the people behind the film had the courage enough to not change it so everyone lives happily ever after.

It was a good weekend for movie watching. Along with Sunshine, I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. I'd watch it again.

Tonight I watched the movie Sunshine (2007). I picked it up because I like Cillian Murphy in a couple other movies.

The basic plot is that the sun is dying and a group of 7 astronauts have to lob a nuclear weapon the size of Manhattan into the sun to re-ignite it to full brightness. Preposterous sounding I know, but after watching the movie, there is some back story that isn't presented in the movie. Apparently there is a Q-ball in the sun, that must be destroyed. The nuclear device is an experimental weapon where the mass of the moon is contained in the size of Manhattan. It is still a rather preposterous concept, but at least they tried.

The ship was named Icarus II and is a character itself in the movie. The first Icarus was also tasked with the same mission, but was mysteriously lost 7 years earlier. Why I think the ship is a character as well is because I was trying to figure out the ship's form and what things did on the structure. As things get worse throughout the movie, the ship also gets worse.

The movie itself was pretty interesting and gripping. I thought it was going to go to the hackneyed places that most modern sci-fi movies try to go, but it didn't really do that.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I'd watch it again.

I have been in a Depeche Mode mood for most of the day.

It started when I fired up iTunes to organize some audio books this morning. Usually when I start iTunes I go straight to my "Top Rated" playlist and bounce around to songs that I haven't heard by sorting the list by Last Played. It usually finds some stuff I haven't heard in a few months. Today I just so happened to have two Depeche Mode songs play back to back and caused me to switch over to my Depeche Mode-only playlist. I pretty much have every CD before Violator, so my playlist goes on for hours.

I still remember the first time that I heard Violator when I was in college. My freshman year roommate, Greg, was a huge Depeche Mode fan. Interestingly, I really thought it was crap music at first. The early 90s was all about Guns N' Roses and Nirvana for me. And then one night, Greg and I had some drinks and the music really started clicking for me. I first bought Violator, and then 101, and then just continued working my way back.

While their newer stuff doesn't seem to have the same edge as it did almost 20 years ago, I still have a listen. DMs new album comes out April 21st, so I'll have to check it out.

I was pretty skeptical that it would work, but Skype runs pretty great on the iPhone.

Today when we were out and about we went to a mall that had a Barnes and Noble / Starbucks. We jumped on their wi-fi connection, logged into Skype and my wife was able to have about a 10 minute conversation with her Mom in Europe. All free.

The app looks great too. Calling looks just like making a call on the phone. It is a real nice UI.

I am a couple days late with this one, but on Sunday we watched Australia.

It was a long movie. My wife made it about an hour before she got bored, but I made it all the way to the end, fast-forwarding a couple of times through some of the slow parts.

I thought Hugh Jackman was good in it, but I am really not so sure about Nicole Kidman. She doesn't seem to have the same fire as she did in her earlier films like Dead Calm. Maybe I wrongly hold up actresses to a different standard than men, but it almost felt like she dialed in the role. Maybe she just makes the acting look easy.

The plot was rather mildly interesting in parts. I thought the droving was good (but poorly CGI-d). The landscape shots were awesome. The way the movie handled the aboriginal persecution was also interesting.

There were just some bits that were really slow, like the setup to the Japanese attack of the island. By this point the movie has been already going 2 hours and they had to do all of this story setup on how Nicole Kidman's character now works in the communication department. Obviously that was necessary for a plot point, the movie just seemed to drag.

I am also tired of the movies where the guy does something really selfish or stupid, splits up the relationship, and then has to fight his way back to his woman and in the process saving her life. That plotline is so hackneyed and predictable it also causes me to fast forward. Don't get me wrong, guys do stupid stuff to women all the time, but the way it typically plays out on screen is so formulaic that it feels like a time waster. I know that the script writer has to do it to try and make it suspenseful, but it has been overused so much that it really takes me out of the drama. One of two things will inevitably happen:

1. Guy rescues girl, happy ending
2. Guy rescues girl, he dies just as he saves her

It is rare that the girl ever dies. The cynic that I am, I guess that wouldn't be romantic enough.

I give it 2 stars out of 5. Formulaic and not worth ever seeing again. I don't recommend it unless you can make it through 3 hour movies easily.

After a brief time away, I have got back to face tagging my photos in iPhoto. It is really addictive. Last night I had over 1700 pictures to tag and now I am down to around 750. It is such a monkey type of work that I was even doing it during two of my phone meetings today at work. It was very easy to listen to the conversations and click-click-click.

I am not done yet, but my wife is definitely leading the pack with the number of pictures in which she is tagged. She's at about 1350 right now. I am a close second with about 1100.

Some of the pictures are really difficult to tag because iPhoto doesn't find all of the faces. So our wedding photos in that small-ish room with a number of our friends and family was really difficult. Sometimes 10-15 people need to be tagged in one photo.

The cool thing is that it is already worth it. Going into the Faces view is really neat. Sliding over the my wife’s group from left to right shows a nice timeline view of what she looked like from 2001 to the present.

We got Into the Wild on Friday night. We started watching it pretty late so we only caught about an hour of it. We finished it today (Saturday).

The movie itself was pretty interesting, but we had to fast forward through a couple of slow parts. Also, when he was slaughtering the moose we had to blow right past that. The images weren't good for a pregnant woman to see.

Good acting. The imagery was nice. Bouncing in time type of movie. Hal Holbrook and Catherine Keener were excellent in the movie.

I think my wife and I both have adventurous spirit when it comes to traveling, but not that adventurous.

The one part of the movie that I thought was pretty interesting was about having to pay $2000 to go down the Colorado River unless you hooked up with a commercial venture. It did put a sense of silliness to what this country puts laws and fines on.

As a movie I give it 3 out of 5 stars. Thought-provoking, but not re-watchable.

I watched my all-time favorite movie for the first time in a couple years last night.

Fight Club is one of those movies from that magic year of 1999 when US cinema peaked, IMHO. American Pie, American Beauty, Dogma, The Matrix, The Mummy, Notting Hill, October Sky, Office Space, The Sixth Sense, and Star Wars: Episode 1 were all released in 1999. As a colleague once put it, "1999 was the year were almost every week during the summer you were blown away by a new movie.". And from the list above, every movie but Star Wars was not a sequel. Now you can argue that Episode 1 wasn't a great movie, but the hubbub surrounding it's release went on for literally months.

So I was in the mood to watch a movie last night that I hadn't seen in a while, and quickly thought of Fight Club.

Back in 1999, I wasn't even sure I was going to even see the movie. I even let a work colleague spoil the end of the movie for me because I wasn't sure I'd go see it. Brad Pitt to me was too much of the pretty boy at the time even though I thought he was great in the movie Se7en. In hindsight, I do regret knowing the twist at the end, but in all honesty I don't think it spoiled the ride, that's how well crafted the movie was.

When I did finally go see it in the theater, I remember walking out of the movie at the end in a stupor. So much to digest, so much to contemplate. The movie talked to me in a way that no other movie has or has since. And no it wasn't the nihilism, or absurdity, or even the obvious shock factor that hooked me. It was the not so underlying message about why do we do the things that society tells us to do. The idea that when we chase the dream of owning things, things end up (to quote the movie) "owning you". And that happiness is somehow a given if you have everything in life. I think my parents generation (very early baby boomer) aren't as afflicted by the current world's ADD behavior because life back then wasn't just simpler. It was because they valued and cherished simpler things longer.

A friend of mine just recently pointed me to a YouTube link of a comedian who told a story of recently taking a flight on a plane. The plane had Wi-Fi as most airlines are starting to carry. A technology that has really only been common for less than a year. So on this flight the Wi-Fi was down and the person sitting next to the comedian starts to get irate and launches into a "This Stinks" tirade. The comedian of course makes light of the fact that they are flying 7 miles up and on-the-Internet. Something that no one would have ever considered 10 years ago. It was just a great example of the current times in which we live that points back to really the core message of the movie.

Don't get me wrong. I realize Fight Club is not a movie for everyone. I would never let any of my children see the movie until they were 17. Bob, and his extra sized parts... The bloody fights and violence... Everything out of Marla Singer's mouth... and even the social terrorism is not kosher to all in today's post-9/11 world. However, the reason for absurdity isn't just for the sake of comedy. All the way back to Shakespeare, writers and playwrights have used absurdity to stick a magnifying glass up to things that we usually take for granted and rarely question. Audiences are smart enough to realize this even if it is on a subconscious level. That's why TV like The Daily Show and outlets like The Onion make us laugh as well as make us think. They point something out to us that we typically don't think twice about.

I'd like to think that I was irrevocably changed by seeing the movie. Yes, there have been times that I have been sad or depressed since seeing the movie. And sometimes over very minor things. But I feel like it is because of Fight Club that I really see the world through a different lens. When a 2 hour movie can do that to you, you know you have found something great.

I am not really sure why I call these posts reviews. I don't go all Ebert and say a lot about the movie. Just little tidbits.

Today's feature was Run Fatboy Run. I picked it up on the way out of the video store as one of the few comedies out there that aren't marketed to a teenager. I had seen Shaun of the Dead when it came out on DVD and was rather amused. (Hard to believe it was 5 years ago).

We actually watched the movie during the afternoon which is rather rare for us. Our typical movie watching time is between 7pm and 9pm, since it will end just before my wife’s bed time.

There was a lot of cliche and overdone stuff, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Both Simon Pegg and Hank Azaria were convincing. I am still not sure about Thandie Newton. My favorite role I have seen her in was ER. I was kind of shocked to see at the end that David Schwimmer of Friends fame was the Director.

It was nice to see another movie where London is used as a character. Any time I see a movie set in Europe, I guess I always think about where it is in relation to Prague. I really feel like Prague is like my home away from home. With my wife still owning the flat there, I guess that has something to do with it.

Movie Rating: 3 stars out of 5 (Enjoyable, but don't plan on a repeat viewing)

We watched Changeling tonight. It was a pretty good film. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Angelina Jolie was pretty convincing in the role of the mother who lost her son. Great acting. Also a nice supporting role out of Amy Ryan. I didn't really like her too much in Gone Baby Gone (that was probably the point), but ever since she has been in The Office, I changed my tune.

I guess the one part of the evening that took me by surprise was Blockbuster. We had not rented at Blockbuster in a while. The whole new choose to rent by-the-day ($2/movie, $1 for additional days) or rent by-the-week ($5) was a little strange to digest. I guess that is Blockbusters way of getting more customers away from Netflix. So we got the Changeling for $2. We usually watch movies within the first day so I can't see us ever renting by-the-week. So I guess the questions are "Will people really rent movies by-the-week?" and "How come movie rentals have been $4+ for 2 day rentals for the last couple of years?"