For the most part, I enjoyed Spider-Man (the first movie.) Toby Maguire, who I didn’t know before he was cast in it, played a great Peter Parker, Sam Raimi turned in a restrained performance as director, and while I didn’t thrill to the Green Goblin’s character, William Dafoe did a decent job playing him. My only real complaint had to do with the special effects. Once scene in particular (Pajama-man climbing his first wall) almost ruined the movie for me.

My biggest hope for the second movie was for them to make the effects more believable. I’d heard somewhere that Raimi liked the original’s “comic bookish” quality of effects, but that just doesn’t hold water with me. If you’re going to make a live-action movie out of a comic book character, do what you can to make it look realistic – if you want it to look like a cartoon, animate it. Sounds to me like they just ran out of money/time/talent.

I went into Spider-Man 2 having already heard some critical praise which bordered on hype. Normally, that’s a bad sign – when my expectations are high, movies have an annoying tendency of falling short of the mark. And it didn’t help any that I read my fair share of Spider-man comic books back in high school… If anything, they just made me harder to please.

Even so, I didn’t come away from the theater disappointed! In fact, I’ll say that Spider-man 2 is the best movie I’ve seen this year. Without giving away any spoilers (not already seen in the trailer), here’s why:

• The fight scenes were absolutely amazing. Frenetic, fluid, and very believable (as much as a radioactive-spider-infected man fighting a neuro-interfaced-man-robot-thing can be believable, anyway.) The visual effects were much improved.
• Tobey Maguire is Peter Parker. Even behind the mask, his voice comes across as that of a nerdy college kid (contrast this with the way actors typically voice Bruce Wayne differently than his alter ego, Batman.)
• Alfred Molina was perfectly cast as Doc Ock (awesome villain!), J.K. Simmons completely nails the role of J. Jonah Jamison, and James Franco is quite believable in his intentions as Harry Osborn.
• Aunt May being on Spider-man’s side was a nice twist on the comic book’s portrayal of her character. Peter Parker had enough to worry about in this movie without her unintentional guilt trip added in.
• Now that Sam Raimi has an honest-to-God blockbuster under his belt, it’s nice to see the big studios’ rein on him loosen up a bit. Witness the Evil Dead homage in the operating room!
• Raimi fans (like me) also have fun looking for cameos in his films. It was great to see Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi, and even his… car in Spider-man 2 (not to mention Stan Lee!)

Despite all the good stuff, there were a few things that bothered me:

• I don’t know how the comic book versions went down, but Doc Ock’s and the Green Goblins’ origin stories were far too similar. Someone should really crack down on Oscorp.
• Kristen Dunst didn’t sell me on the Mary Jane character. She didn’t do a bad job, but she definitely wasn’t as perfectly matched to the roll as Tobey Maguire was to Peter Parker.
• Is it just me, or is Spider-man much more resilient in this movie? The subway scene in particular portrayed his human body as practically indestructible. Judging from my experience, spiders are not especially invulnerable – where did he gain those powers?
• Must every villain in the Spider-man movie franchise communicate their motivations through insane ramblings with themselves? I think it’s time we had a villain that’s not certifiably crazy, just, you know, motivated by evil!
• J. Jonah Jamison’s son was completely unnecessary. Boooooring.

All the bad things I listed above are just nit-picking. For what it’s worth, I only came up with most of them after the movie was over – they certainly didn’t detract from the film. Because I’ve already decided that I want to see it again (at $9 a pop!) Spider-man 2 is definitely going to the top of my list for summer movies.

Trivial Thought: One of the reasons I want to go back and see Spider-man 2 again was because I saw it the first time from the 3rd row. Maybe those special effects weren’t as good as I thought…
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? It’s another great sequel that continues the all-important character development right where it left off (see Shrek 2). We all know how easy it is for Hollywood to cash in and screw up movie franchises – fortunately, this movie is probably even better than the first one!
Would I recommend the movie? Even to people that have never owned over 4000 comic books!
Will I buy it on DVD? Yes, first day it’s out.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Spider-man 2
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Terminal
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing
The Stepford Wives

My 4-day 4th of July weekend has come and gone, and I spent most of it planted squarely in front of my computer monitor. Part of it was futzing with my cable modem and GCI’s tech support (only to have them tell me after a house call that “it must be network problems”), but most of it was playing computer games. Every once in awhile I rediscover the catharsis in casting aside my responsibilities and losing myself in frag-filled entertainment.

The weekend wasn’t a total creative loss, though. I pried myself away from the keyboard long enough to show up at a friend’s fireworks-watching party on the night of the 3rd. Years ago I admitted to myself that I didn’t find the festivities on the 4th very exciting. The parade, fireworks, street events and parties, I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but I do enjoy hanging out with my friends. The house we were visiting was high up on a hill downtown, too, and it offered the perfect vantage point to try to capture the fireworks show.

I’ve been looking for years for a good place to rig up a time-lapse of the Juneau traffic after the fireworks display. Thousands upon thousands of people drive downtown for the show at midnight and before the last explosion finishes echoing off the mountainsides, the mass exodus along the only road out to the valley has already begun. For the next hour (at least!) you can see mile after mile of red taillights filling the north-bound lane contrasted with only the occasional pair of headlights going south. Seeing wave after wave of red running lights turning to redder brake lights at each stoplight’s intersection has always entranced me, and although I’ve recorded it to videotape twice, I’ve yet to do it from a really good spot.

Location, in photography as well as in real estate, is everything. I know that I should be scouting the best vantage point weeks in advance for pre-planned events like this. Photos and video could soar from good to great just by having the right foreground or background element. Why then do I rarely make the effort?

(more…)

There’s been a lot of hoopla in the news lately about NASA’s probe, Cassini-Huygens, and its visit to Saturn. I grew up reading science fiction novels and I’m fascinated that in our current exploration of Mars and Saturn we could be on the verge of discovering life (albeit of the single-celled variety) on other planets and moons in our solar system. If a discovery like that is verified, I can only hope that the public consciousness will then latch onto what might be out in the near infinity beyond.

Despite working in a department that actually rebroadcasts the NASA channel; I regrettably have very little time to pursue all the latest news of their findings. Still, the bits and pieces that I catch online and on the news are intriguing; what’s more, they sparked a memory I had of doing some research on the Cassini probe back in 1997 while I was still in college.

This is where being an amateur archivist pays off. I was able to dig up an old CD-ROM backup of the screamin’ 90Mhz Pentium (with 16MB of RAM, and an impossible-to-fill 730MB hard drive, baby!) I had throughout my college career. Written for Freshman Comp. (taken in, yes, my senior year), this is an unexciting, compare-and-contrast, research paper, but I thought I’d post it here for nostalgic purposes and for a look back at the NASA hoopla of seven years ago.
(more…)

Getting back into the groove at work and then faced with a busy 4th of July weekend hasn’t left me much time to write in my web log. I still want to do a write up on the family reunion, but that will have to wait. Today is July 1st, and it’s time to take a look at my Photoblog statistics again.

Here’s the quick lowdown:

June 2004: 83 visitors, 160 visits
May 2004: 37 visitors, 116 visits
April 2004: 21 visitors, 60 visits

On the surface it looks as though I’ve yet again doubled the number of unique hits on the site, but the straight numbers are a little misleading. About 18 to 20 of those 83 hits are probably from ‘blog indices verifying my site when I initially signed up with them at the beginning of the month. Still, even taking that into account, it looks as though registering was worth the effort as the indices do seem to help boost the overall number of unique visits.

As you can see from the image to the left, most of the incoming visits are still coming from my web log. That makes sense, considering I do these write ups each month (not to mention the link on this page directly to the photoblog.) The big surprise, though, came in the last couple days of the month when I logged almost as many visits from http://www.le-cam.org. I visited their site, but I still have no idea why they linked to me! If you can make heads or tails of that particular French rowing fan site (or more importantly, if you can find the link back to my photoblog), please clue me in!

Interestingly, it doesn’t appear as if anyone arrived at my site this month via the results of a web search query. After last month, I expected to see quite a few more Google hits on the site, but I guess those “Sally Lightfoot Crab” keywords were just a fluke.

For July, I know I should be exploring a new tactic, but I think I’m going to continue as is. Rather than try to rationalize a reason why, I’m just going to admit that I’m feeling lazy. I still want to submit the site to search engines, but I think that should be further down the line. I also have at least three other plans, but they’re going to involve a lot of motivation I don’t currently have. (I want to research and implement automated RSS feeds, create html metatags for each entry, and submit every picture to Photo.net.) All those sound like too much work too soon after my vacation, so I think I’ll just let it ride for another month.

Hey, you know what? Even a falloff in the number of hits would tell me something… Oh, that’s right. I wasn’t going to rationalize. Never mind.

—

Two P.S.’s: First: Yes, I know it’s not July 1st anymore (despite what the first paragraph above says). I’m having terrible cable modem troubles and haven’t been able to reliably connect to the web. The good news is that tech support will be here “sometime within 24 to 72 hours.” Second: Props to Mike for helping me figure out why the last three entries are showing up on the front page of my blog — I completely spaced the fact that Greymatter operates by date rather than by entry. (I posted the last three entries on the same day — just before going on vacation — before immediately closing them. When it came time to update the photoblog, I could simply hop online and open each entry again.) Fear not… the photoblog should fix itself with the next update.

When I hear that Stephen Spielberg is directing a new movie, for some reason I automatically think it’ll fall into one of two categories: Action flicks (Indiana Jones, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Jaws, A.I.) or Fishing-for-Academy-Awards dramas (Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun, Amistad). After seeing the Terminal, I’m reminded that he’s more frequently dipping into another category that’s difficult to ascribe a name. Let’s call it the Throwaway Story.

Calling The Terminal a throwaway story isn’t a bad review, it’s just my way of saying that the movie is simply about a bunch of stuff that happens. Apparently it’s loosely based on real life events just like Spielberg Throwaway Story: Catch Me If You Can. Tom Hanks, who was an FBI agent in the latter, now plays a very different character in Viktor Navorski, a citizen of the make-believe country of Krakozia. When his plane lands at JFK in New York, he discovers that his country has erupted in civil war, that the United States will not issue him a visa nor return him to his country, and that until his government is legitimately recognized, he will be unable to leave the “international transit lounge.”

It’s a testament to Steven Spielberg’s abilities as a director that he was able to perfectly pace a two-hour movie on such a thin premise. Although most of the group I saw the movie with complained about its length, I thought that he spent just enough time what he needed to: Viktor conquering the language barrier, Viktor figuring out the airport’s dynamics, Viktor meeting and making friends, falling in love, and finding a job.

For a Spielberg movie, though, I came away with a surprising number of nit-picks. I thought that the portrayal of Viktor’s comprehension level was a bit too high (admittedly, perhaps this bothers me only because I’ve taken the time to learn another language). Also, the head INS agent came across as a bit too harsh in his extreme dislike for Viktor, and yet he wouldn’t take advantage of certain opportunities to get rid of him.

On the plus side, I was pleasantly surprised to guess wrong on the reason for Viktor’s visit to the States and I commend Spielberg for shying away from a typical Hollywood ending with at least a couple of his relationships with his friends.

The Terminal is a nice, neat little movie. It’s funny in all the right places, makes you want to cry here and there, and even has a worthy villian to hate. Thankfully, it doesn’t make a Big Statement on life, culture, politics, or anything else, and I think its lack of a Message is what makes it charming. In the years to come, I’ll bet that The Terminal will be one of those movies that we’ll see over and over again on cable TV.

Trivial Thought: Has anyone else noticed Spielberg’s recent propensity for the extreme backlighting of characters? I wonder if it’s intentional. And that reminds me: What was up with that fountain?
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? It’s a study in cinematic pacing – not to mention set design and extras coordination on a massive scale!
Would I recommend the movie? Yes.
Will I buy it on DVD? Doubtful. It was a good movie, but probably won’t stand up to multiple viewings.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Terminal
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing
The Stepford Wives

I have to be careful in writing about The Stepford Wives, because if you go in knowing what it’s about, it can be a very predictable movie. This isn’t normally a movie I’d see, especially in a movie theater, but I had a few reasons:

I really like the new theater on the Outer Banks.
The movie was listed in the paper as a Sci-fi/Drama/Comedy.
Mathew Broderick is pretty cool and
Nicole Kidman is pretty hot.

Dang. It’s hard to write about this movie without spoiling anything. Let’s just say that the introduction to Nicole Kidman’s character was too lengthy, characters were completely dropped (the kids), the writers didn’t even make an effort to make the science believable, and the ending felt tacked on. I think I read somewhere that this was a remake of an older movie. Perhaps they were constrained by that.

The best I can say about The Stepford Wives is that it was a “cute” movie.

Trivial Thought: The twist at the end must have been an attempt to alleviate the predictablity of the movie.
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? Christopher Walken is always fun to watch and Mathew Broderick is still pretty cool.
Would I recommend the movie? No.
Will I buy it on DVD? No.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing
The Stepford Wives *

(* Ranking these movies is harder than I thought! I’m going with a “What would I rather see again?” approach. For instance, I’d rather see Van Helsing again than The Stepford Wives, even though The Stepford Wives is a better movie. Same goes for The Chronicles of Riddick and Troy. Obviously this will be an extremely subjective ranking!)

Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way: I really liked Pitch Black. It was the sort of B-grade, sci-fi sleeper hit that even the critics seemed to like because, I like to think, it took itself seriously. Decent creature effects, a couple of good scare moments, and a twist ending was all it took to launch Vin Diesel’s career.

Watching Riddick in the sequel, though, makes you wonder how Vin made it this far. When an action hero character starts spouting of witty one-liners, I begin to wonder who should be blamed. Was it the script? Does the actor’s ego play a part? Does the director or studio think that a movie won’t last in the public’s consciousness without a sound bite that can be repeated endlessly on a middle school playground? I don’t get it. Maybe the answer is in XXX – I missed that movie.

The Chronicles of Riddick borrows only a bit from the original Pitch Black. Three characters make a comeback and, I think, a certain prison that was mentioned in the first movie is now the setting for a full act in Riddick. The rest of the movie is an attempt to create a literal universe of setting with only a smattering of backstory dialog combined with a plethora of special effects. In my opinion, The Chronicles of Riddick could only have been a success if it had been broken up into more movies.

Whenever I see a mess like this, I inevitably think back (fondly) to The Fifth Element. The biggest accomplishment of that movie was its ability, it just over two hours, to create a robust universe that seemed fully fleshed out and internally consistent. I wish that Riddick had spent more time working on that and less time working on fight scenes. I didn’t care about the characters – I wanted to know what the hell the “Underverse” was all about! What were those cool panther beasts and how did Riddick get their eyes? How does black, smoky, heat ripples propel a ship and what were the motivations of the mutinous “Necromongers?”

I’m sorry. I really wanted to like The Chronicles of Riddick – I do so enjoy my sci-fi. But when the most interesting characters were either downplayed or killed off and so much of the crucial backstory was simply glossed over, there doesn’t leave a lot left to savor. I do hope for another movie in the series, if only to flesh out the universe more. The ending they wrote obviously had a sequel in mind, but unfortunately I can’t imagine that it’ll ever be made. Vin Diesel will probably ask for more money than his rapidly sinking career will command and unless The Chronicles of Riddick does much better at the box office than I think it will, it will have a hard time recovering the money spent on his salary and the (admittedly good) special effects.

You know what would be cool, though? Continuing the story with Return-of-the-King Guy and his power-hungry girlfriend.

Trivial Thought: I’m sorry, 700 degrees is just not that hot.
What did I find worthwhile about the movie? The special effects, again. (Must be summer.) I also liked what little of the backstory I could gleam. Seems like it could be pretty interesting.
Would I recommend the movie? Only if you’re a diehard science fiction fan.
Will I buy it on DVD? Tough one. If so, only because I already own Pitch Black.

Overall Summer Movie Ranking
Shrek 2
The Day After Tomorrow
The Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing