barely fatal

A movie with Ben Affleck in a lead role that doesn’t suck and isn’t Dogma? It’s possible: The Town.

A horror movie with six girls that doesn’t feel “cliche naive copy-paste template” and is genuinely creepy yet fun? Orc-Gollums design aside, this is it: The Descent.

I bought a watch. I’ve not had a watch for years, because frankly, who doesn’t have a cell phone or iPod or computer or public watch at their disposal  almost all the time nowadays. Why I got one now? I’m not even sure. It looked cool, it was on sale, and I guess it’d go nicely with a suit. It doesn’t have your standard face, it’s “binary” – only that it’s not. You push a button, and LEDs show the time and day. There’re 12 LEDs for each hour and month, 12 for every five minutes and 4 for minutes. It’s perfectly easy to read, but it’s marketed as being “binary”. You should read the ridiculous slogans on the box, too, oh boy. “Connect with your intuitive ambitions. You are imminent.” Yes, feeling very imminent indeed. Anyways, it’s a nice looking watch, now let’s see how often I’ll actually wear it…

Oscars are up tomorrow. I wonder if Portman will get hers … or Nolan for that matter. Probably not.

I’ve watched Toy Story 3 (really great, better than part 2) and The Expendables. Oh my, the Expendables. I don’t think it’s as bad as everybody keep saying, but there’s some crappy scenes for sure. Especially when Arnold, Bruce and Sly meet in the church? The dialog, the horror. The rest is so ridiculous it’s fun again, or for most parts. Some parts just don’t work, and for every great action scene (shotgun) there are two “Meh” ones. Eventually seeing guys get stomped on their necks gets pretty old. The documentary on the disc is well done, and you can tell how many things Sly thought up on the spot while filming, some of them became the best parts of the movie (gunship). Too bad they couldn’t find more to do for Mickey Rourke than wise cracking and knife throwing contests… I’m surprised how well mumbling Sly is still doing. Hell, Arnold is right though, he IS too old for that kinda film by now.

I’ve watched three movies recently:

John Woo’s Red Cliff, which I am kind of indifferent to (didn’t click for me). Milk, which surely was worth seeing for learning about the topic matter, but which almost sent me to sleep (granted, it was a long day). And Repo Men, which – I kid you not – made be squeal like a girl in a scene. I’ve never been a big fan of splatter, but I usually don’t have much problems with it. I can totally live with the wet knife fights. But the “cutting up his torso, stick a scanner in” thing was gross. As was the knee thing. Or the other.

Be the story as unbelievable as it may, the idea alone (artificial organs, repo men come to take them back if you can’t pay) gives me the creeps and for once I did not see the twist coming up, not like that. The movie’s got its problems, especially the very sudden u-turn of the main character’s morale system and his utter lack of emotions in some parts, the misinterpreted Schrödinger quote and some plot holes. But for what it was, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Not as good as Splice (go see that one!) but I still enjoyed it. Gruesome, gory – dangit, I’m becoming a wuss. Back to score some kills in Battlefield. A-hem.

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Been to Bucharest last week by the way (business trip). Weird city, a patchwork of old and new, big and very big, rich and less so, grey and colors. Met very friendly people there. They like it warm, it seems, I was sweating inside in my t-shirts while outside it was below zero. Language reminds me of Italian a little bit, the people in the office had near perfect English though. Small airport for such a big European city. Next time, I’ll try to see more.

The new year starts slow. Even though I’m on the new job and travel a lot (to Romania very soon!) it’s not really taken off yet. It’s still freakishly cold, though it looks like a sunny day today (which I will be spending playing New Vegas – yarr).

Saw Tron Legacy this week – in 3D – and it’s bland. The dialog hasn’t come very far since the original movie, however it looks mighty prettier nowadays. The young Jeff Bridges looks kinda eery, as these computer-youngified characters often do (best effort yet: Patrick Steward in X-Men 3). But the 3D stuff doesn’t rock my world either. Sure it’s a nice enough effect, but that’s what it is to me, an effect. The theatre I went to used shutter glasses, clunky and heavy,  and I can barely put those over my regular glasses. I spend correcting them all the time and they just felt “in the way”. Plus sometimes I got the feeling it wasn’t even working right, strange distortions and flat images (and I don’t mean the scenes which were deliberately left in 2D). I think I could have enjoyed the movie better, without the distractions, in 2D only – and cheaper, for that matter.

I got the Bad Company 2 Vietnam add-on two weeks ago by the way and have not yet even started it. Instead I tried to find a part for my bike which broke during the move. The fourth (!) bike shop had it, and I had to cycle all through town. Man, non-standard parts suck, why do they do that? Now I am less inclined to buy a bike of the same brand again…

I’ve been fighting with my internet provider since I signed up for their service. I am not a difficult customer, in fact, I’m usually very civil and forgiving. But last week I finally wrote an angry letter, after 2 months of back and forth and many, many stupid things they did. The last straw was that they asked me to chase after a modem they lost, which they said they couldn’t send me anyway and which I don’t even need as it turned out. It’s a nightmare, and that does not even take into account that in the evenings I get 10 MBit/s max, having a 32 MBit/s contract. Just sent them screenshots of their speed test and all, I wonder if they will be able to at least fix that. And if they will pay me back some money for all the trouble I’ve had with them.

Aaaahh…well. I’ll just continue enjoying this lovely quiet weekend now.