Indiana Jones and the blahblahblah Crystal Skull

A bunch of us went out to see the new Indy movie last weekend. I enjoyed it and would probably go again. Harrison Ford played a remarkably spry senior citizen Indy, fighting the Russians (led by a wonderful, saber wielding Cate Blanchett) over the secret of some crystal skull thing that will blahblahblah incredible power to whomever blahblahblah. Shia Labeouf from transformers is channeling James Dean and Marlon Brando as Indy's sidekick. Don't worry about plot details like what metals can be magnetized by what. It's a fast paced Indiana Jones roller coaster. I liked it about as much as the last one. Some people complained that the story was far fetched, but to them I reply: "Compared to what?" The last story was about finding the Cup of Christ and fighting off the Nazis for it. Raiders was about the Ark of the Covenant. Seems a bit late to complain about the plausibility of whatever it is Indy's chasing. Anyway, the film looks great (the used the original cameras from Raiders), especially the first part when they're in the desert, where they have a 50s color film look about it.

RIP Robert Asprin

Robert Asprin, author of the Myth Adventures series of books (as well as the Phule's Company series) has died. When I was a kid the adventures of Aahz, Skeeve, and the others was one of my favorite reading subjects. The stories were very lighthearted and punny and I looked forward to new ones whenever they came out. Another part of my childhood has passed away.

Napa Trip

(click image to go to my flickr set)

Noelle and I took a nice weekend getaway to the north bay last weekend. We visited a few wineries, drank in the countryside and stayed at the Geyserville Inn, which is a great place to stay if you book a hotel room for wine country in May the week before going on it. It was actually a pretty nice place, but Geyserville was a bit north of where I had planned on visiting. On the bright side, driving route 128 from St. Helena to Geyserville is a gorgeous drive, especially at night with a lot of moonlight. I took Noelle to the Niebaum-Coppola winery because the facility itself is so cool. Sadly they've removed the desk from the Godfather and the suit of armor from Dracula from this winery. The Tucker is still there. Evidently he's building another winery/resort up in Geyserville and a lot of the props will end up going there. We also had a chance to eat at the Culinary Institute of America restaurant in St. Helena, which has fantastic food. A tad on the pricey side, but worth doing at least once. Anyway, it was nice to get out of the house and travel and not have to worry about when we had to be at a certain place.

The Chronic-What-Cles of Narnia

Noelle and I went out last Friday to catch our latest movie of the week (there seems to be a new blockbuster every week): Prince Caspian. I have to say, I didn't recognize the latter half of this movie at all, but from digging around on the net it doesn't seem like they mucked with the story too much. It seemed like a bit of a mess, really. I guess I'll have to re-read the book and see if my memory is faulty or the adaptation was. Anyway, it wasn't a bad movie, but I was kind of expecting more. Do not expect theater.

May B-Day Pix

(click for more pictures)

Here are some pictures from the BBQ we had to celebrate the May birthdays this year.

Randy Milholland At San Diego Comic-Con

W00t! The creator of Something Positive will be at SDCC! That is all. :-)

Go Speed Racer, Go!

A bunch of us went on Friday to see the latest Wachowski Brothers film, the live action adaptation of Speed Racer.

Holy. Crap. It was like a someone dumped a gallon of California Sunshine directly into my cerebral cortex. The vivid colors, the hyperfocused scenes, the freakish wipes and the special effects generally were almost too much to take in. The plot was not really that deep as one might expect from the cartoon. Basically there's this guy Speed Racer of the Racer family who lives to, well, race. There are some people determined to keep him from racing. The races of the future (or in some alternate reality, it's hard to tell) are kind of beautiful, as if you did an auto race on roller coaster. At the same time, they're totally brutal with all the racers doing whatever it takes to disable their opponents. The talky parts were nothing to write home about, but mercifully were not a major part of the film. The movie has races, kung fu, chimpanzees, and the occasional ninja. It almost made me a little queasy at times, because frequently the angles kept changing very wildly, very rapidly. Did I mention the crazy colors? It's really hard to describe, (like the Matrix) but I'd say go for the special effects, stay for the mind blowing special effects.

KT Tunstall

Noelle and I caught KT Tunstall at the Warfield tonight. Pretty cool show. I especially liked how she appeared to use a looper to create backup singers from samples of her singing. It was a mostly acoustic set with a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and drummer in her backup band.

Busy Weekend

Friday night we drove a million miles to Concord to see Duran Duran. They're actually still holding up pretty well after all these years. They trotted out all the hits (except "New Moon On Monday").

Saturday was spent cleaning up the house and working outdoors in preparation for the BBQ on Sunday. Both lawns got mowed and the plants generally got cared for.

Sunday we had about 30-35 people over for a BBQ to celebrate all of our friends' birthdays for the month of May. It started out as a small gathering for a couple friends, but it kind of got out of control. People got see our newly painted interior walls and the bookcases we put up in the living room (the spring remodeling project) to house the Video Collection of Doom (fills two Billy™ bookcases). We had a fire in the fireplace outside as it was a bit chilly towards the end of the afternoon. This was a bit unusual as normally when we have people over it's really hot. Anyway, everybody seemed to have a splendid afternoon, so it was well worth the preparation. Then a number of us went out to see Iron Man. Good times!

Iron Man

Dude! We went to see Iron Man and that movie is Teh Awesome! Robert Downey Jr. makes an excellent Tony Stark, the selfish, boozing, womanizer who gets a new lease on life after being kidnapped while demoing his company's latest weapon system in Afghanistan. I have seen a lot of clips from the movie since they first talked about it at Comic-con a couple years ago. I figured it would either be spectacular or dreadful. The result: spectacular. This is the first comic inspired movie that I've really thoroughly enjoyed in a long time.