Friday, March 23, 2007

Blade Runner

I was putting together a Top Ten list of my all-time favorite movies the other day--I know, I'm silly.

Anyway, surprisingly, Blade Runner made the top of the list.

Now, to explain my rationale behind the decision, I'll give you a few details about the movie. Blade Runner was a sci-fi movie made in 1982. It stared Harrison Ford. The movie was based on a Philip K. Dick novel--if I'm not mistaken the title of the book was "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

The movie itself had a pretty simple premise. In the future, clones were made to work as slaves in various trades. They only had a 4 year lifespan. 4 clones figured out they were clones and were going to expire. They decided to track down their maker to reverse the expiration date. Harrison Ford's job was to track down the rogue clones and kill them because that's just what you do when clones are being naughty.

Anyway, I'll spare you the details of the all the plot twists and whatnot. Suffice it to say, I liked the movie, which brings me to the point about the movie that I liked.

There are 3 types of sci-fi movies:

1. Really really really bad sci-fi movies...ridiculous plots....nauseating dialog...stupid gadgetry...bad special effects...and I'm sorry to say this, but Star Trek falls into this category.

2. Good sci-fi movies that result in negative consequences...classic dialog...good special effects...clever plots...however, 10 years later, some bonehead is still wearing the the storm trooper costume, going to conventions and speaking the "language" of one of the characters. Again, Star Trek still falls into this category, but then again, so does Star Wars. Sorry, nerds.

3. And finally, really good sci-fi movies. They come and go. The only time you ever hear about them is when people say, "yep, that was a good movie," but there aren't any spin-offs or sequels. The movie simply stands on it's own and exists as an inspiring work of art. This is something that rarely if ever happens in the sci-fi genre--Blade Runner is the best example I can think of. It has all the components of a really good movie--Alien and Aliens were also good.

Actually, Aliens is the rare example of a sequel being better than the original.

I put these movies up there with Casablanca or Roman Holiday.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Why being lonely is super awesome.

The above title was supposedly the title to Zach Braff's latest blog entry on Scrubs . It made me laugh and reminded me of how silly blogging is.

Friday, March 09, 2007

2 technological advances making George Lucas cream in his jeans!!

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, and I'm just now getting around to it.

Advancement #1: the iphone. Rarely.....lots emphasis rarely, do I get giddy when a new piece of technology comes along. Normally, I'm simply blase when it comes to people who try to impress with their whiz-bang gagdets. (There's supposed to be an accent over the "e" in "blase" but this blog software isn't as suffistimicated as me, sorry.)

Apple's new iphone is probably the coolest thing that's graced the surface of this planet since Sony's Walkman.

It would be foolish for me to try and describe all the cool features it has. You're better off just going to http://www.apple.com/ and clicking on the iphone link.


Advancement #2: Plug-In Hybrids. From my understanding, it's an electric car that happens to have an engine just in case you go past the range of the batteries. Theoretically, you could plug it in each night and never touch the gas in your gas tank--Martha Stewart says, "And, that's a good thing."

If you ever watched "Who Kill the Electric Car?" it goes into loads of detail about why electric cars will be the wave of the future. For one thing, they have really good range now thanks to improvements in battery technology. Most electric cars have about a 100 mile range these days, which is pretty good considering most people only commute 20 miles max.

The other cool part about having a car that's primarily electric is there's less maintenance involved--but, don't take my word for it, go talk to an electric car mechanic.

With an engine now onboard that means you could take your plug-in hybrid on a road trip. Let's see, I took 1 road trip last year, I went about 200 miles. So, that's 100 miles I could have saved.....carry the 4.....divide the 2.....Oh hell, you do the math.

Plainly, you can see, plug-in hybrids are going to kick ass, and you're going to want one.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

HBO

I'll start by talking about "Big Love" the HBO series. Generally, I'm a huge fan anything HBO, but in this case, I Netflixed the 1st couple episodes, watched them, and decided to take the rest of Season 1 out of my queue.

I won't say "Big Love" sucked because it didn't. I will say after watching 1 or 2 episodes I got it. I don't need to watch any more. I'll summarize the series for you--3 women take turns bangin' Bill Paxton. There, I just saved you from wasting several hours of your life.

I admire HBO for taking on taboo subjects, but they have a tendency to be a little too aware of the fact they entering unchartered territory. It makes for a whole lot of pretentiousness, which makes it painful to watch at times. It also leads to story lines that fall off a cliff, yet they keep going on a few seasons too many. This happened in "Six Feet Under" and the "Sapranos." I've heard this has happened with Entourage in Season 3, but I haven't watched it yet.

I will say "Sex in the City" stayed true to its formula. Sometimes, it was too sappy, but for the most part, it was pretty decent. (Please note: you just witnessed a pretty high compliment from me considering "Sex in the City" was pretty much a chick show.)