I am calling the Oscars right now. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a lock for Best Actor. "Capote" will be nominated.

OMG! I was stunned, overwhelmed by his performance and the movie itself. You could hear a pin drop. Hoffman is an extraordinary actor. He's never made a false move, and he chooses his films very well. He produced "Capote," too.

It's a deeply layered story about the creation of Capote's book, "In Cold Blood." Familiar as I thought I was with Capote and ICB, I never knew the devastating effect it had on him and how it changed his life.

I can't stop thinking about it. I was moved to tears.

Anyone seen this? I'm not sure if I liked it or hated it.

Storyline:30
Actors&Actresses:60
Music&Sound effect:80
Cinematography:100
Art design:50
SFX:80

Today I went to see "Stealth". This is good example about "good action, bad story".
About story...well, some parts were similar to "War Game", "Firefox", "Blue Thunder", "An Enemy Line", "Short Circuit".... Also I could imagine the ending. It was very simple movie. Just one word, "Mediocre". But I enjoyed it. Sound effect and SFX was excellent. Dogfight scenes were exciting. It was more than Top Gun.

About actors&actresses...Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx. Hmm......well, in this movie, main role is Stealth, not them. But Sam Shepard and Joe Morton had good acting.

As a result; It's good for time killer. Enjoy!

Watched Into the Blue last night. Must say, it has a good storyline, great picture postcard backdrops, and some very nice acting. However, whenever possible, the cameraman keeps focussing on Jessica Alba's butt; it doesn't matter if it's relavent to the scene or not--there's a shot of her butt, whether she's napping or swimming underwater, and, of course, the camera lingers there. Not that it isn't a nice view, but what does it have to do with the movie? And if you haven't seen enough of her butt by the movie's end, well, surprize!, all the leftover footage of Jessica Alba's butt that wasn't used in the movie show up during the end credits. By this time I was laughing at the obvious exposure and overabundance of buttcheek.

So, the moral is: Into the Blue is a good movie without the butt shots, but it's a great movie if you like being mooned by Jessica Alba.

AC

P.S. On my way to see Wallace and Gromit. YES!!!

** VARIOUS RJ NOVEL SPOILERS **

Hello buoys and gulls,

What better thing for a newcomer to do than "go negative?"

I'm going to be trying to think of things I wish were otherwise about the work of that lout FPW. I mean, what's all this silliness in "The Tomb"? There's no such thing as tombs. Anyway, here's one item:

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With respect to Rasalom and Jack: "I'll let you live because you amuse me."

I'm sorry, but for Rasalom to be fully aware of Jack, and of Jack's increasing involvement with the upcoming conflict, but to nonetheless let him live is very disappointing.

Two alternative takes (too late, I know) occur to me.

First, to take much more seriously the admonition that R.'s name must never be uttered, and relatedly for Jack to be _much_ less in R's radar than he now is.

Under this take on it, in the RJ universe it would be REALLY REALLY CRUCIAL that R. not become aware you may be working against him. In this case, the fact that during Conspiracies Jack managed to enter R.'s awareness but not get killed by him was pretty amazing -- and (in a perfect RJ world) would have been due to something pretty incredible about Jack's capabilities. And it's now (in the novels following Conspiracies) _critical_ that Jack never let R.'s attention turn to him again.

The second take would be more Jack-centric. (And let me here tip my hat to the question of whether, in reading these novels, we care more about Jack and his character than about the conflict between humanity and the Adversity. That is, what are these books _about_? I vote for the former.)

This second take would be: What is it about JACK, Jack and his amazing capabilities, that spares him from death at the hands of R.? I know that a generous interpretation of the climax of Gateways would say, "It's because he's so entertaining to Rasalom," but I rally would prefer the reason to be due to something much more formidable about/unique to Jack.

For instance (and I'm not saying this is a good idea -- it's all I'm capable of thinking of because I'm not a super-genius like FPW), _because_ Jack had the nerve and single-mindedness to take on a rakosh and be slashed by it, he's now undetectable to Rasalom's supernatural powers of detection -- much as he has antibodies that stave off the virus in Hosts.

Or (and I guess this really is just a subset of the first suggestion, i.e., that Jack stay off of R.'s radar) that by the very virtue of Jack's long habit of staying incognito and unknown and untraceable -- his long habits of circumspection -- he's also able to evade R.' s scrutiny.

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To summarize, I think FPW is trying to balance two mutually exclusive things:

A. To have Jack be incredibly cool and kickass. Jack's earned himself a unique role in the world because he's had the courage of his convictions for years. (This is why we read these books.)

B. To have Jack be a much more conventional adversary (ha ha!) of the Adversary, and to nonetheless survive.

The latter is, I think, a significant strain against the seams of disbelief. Rasalom wants to gain our universe for the Adversary. He shouldn't be an Adam West Batman villain who's happy to crow and rub his palms, explaining his devious plot while Jack's tied up over a pit of alligators, secretly cutting through his bonds with a hairpin.

With respect to A. (Jack being incredibly cool and kickass), I always find myself wishing that the very thing that makes him a character unique in literature (that "he's earned himself a unique role in the world because he's had the courage of his convictions for years") would be (with a wonderful poetic appropriateness) the very thing that allows him to play a part in the downfall of Rasalom.

I think it'd be _terrific_ if exactly the same traits/virtues that enable him to be a good balker of petty thieves and shakedown artists and blackmailers also proved applicable and sufficient to take down a villain unimaginable orders of magnitude worse.

With the way the series is developing (and I have NOT read Infernal yet) that ideal is present... to an extent; but not to as great an extent as I would like.

-oss

This is really funny!

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/dart...rs_psychic

Tomorrow morning, at 10:00 a.m., the crew and I of Dead in the Water head up to location for the shoot. On Saturday Dave flys to the states and join us, then on Sunday the cast will drive up and we start our feature film!

Our last day of the shoot is October 19 and we all come back to our regular lives October 20. Then I will begin the job of editing what will probably be roughly 25 hours of footage down to a 90 minute movie.

So wish us luck and I'll see you when I get back.

I haven't seen this, but I read an interview with the director. Regardless of the quality of his movies (I haven't seen any of them), he's a neat guy who _loooooves_ the genre. I'll check them out...

http://imdb.com/title/tt0331334/

-oss

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Saw this movie yesterday. May I advise people interested in seeing History of Violence: The movie does not revolve around whether or not Viggo is a former killer or not; that part is explained away pretty quickly in the movie; it revolves around what he does about it. So don't go in thinking that you have to wait until the very end to get the payoff, 'cause you'll be disappointed. But if you're Viggo fan or a Cronenberg fan for that matter, you'll really enjoy the movie (although John Hurt is a bit over the top--even gave Jim Carrey a run for his money IMHO).

AC

P.S. Yes, it does have the typical amount of Cronenberg gore.