Thursday, February 01, 2007

Films

This has been a pretty damn good year for movies. I would highly recommend you direct your eyeballs to the following films if you can. If not in the theater, as the Gods intended us to see movies, then on DVD:

  • Smokin' Aces - Its violent but its well done violence. Some great characters.
  • Perfume - A wonderful period piece about a nasal savant. This film was a rich tapestry of filth. Great to watch and not predictable.
  • Children of Men - Gritty dystopia fare that looks more like a documentary.
  • Pan's Labyrinth - Wonderful and dark. A true old school fairy tale.

And now a tangent...

I watched Man on Fire last night and am still convinced that it is one of the best damn vengance films ever made. It's right up there with Tombstone in its sheer badassness. It came out at about the same time as The Punisher and although the punnisher tried to be hardcore, it failed miserably. It was standard action-film fare with stock bad guys and lots of explosions and gunplay blah blah.

Man on Fire takes place in Mexico City and feels real. It's shot in oversaturated colors with characters that are interresting, flawed and very himan. Denzel is great as a former military operative who drinks excessively and is obviously haunted by his past (although they thankfully do not give us the standard flashback scenes). Tony Scott, the director is guilty of over and undercranking the camera a bit much, and is guilty of using Opera (Pagliachi) in a scene where it was not needed. But it doesn't take away from the overall story. The soundtrack is awesome. Go rent this and tell me I'm wromg. Best vengance film ever.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Sheer Joy

You should go and view this short called "The Grandfather of Soul". I'm not going to tell you anything about it. It's short and very sweet. Pass the link on to your friends.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Oh yeah, this will end well...

Ok folks, its time for another installment of 'The Danger Show - with Grimm and Steve'. What are these two kooky kids up to today? Well, they've decided to built a ballista. That's right, these brain surgeons are going to use tools, to make a weapon. It's a danger trifecta!

We began with a well written set of directions and blueprints we obtained off the interweb. These plans were promptly ignored by Grimm, who has in typical fashion, completely redesigned the project in his brain.

Things got off to a good start when Grimm informed me that the prod (the bow shaped thing that makes the big arrows go zoom) did not look good enough, and would have to be cut down. Now, because of the spring like nature of this piece of steel, it cannot be subjected to heat. This would ruin the tempter. The solution? Hose down the prod as we use an electric circular saw to cut the prod.

I am not making this up. If you click HERE you will see the larger image, labelled accordingly:

1. The Hose
2. The Saw
3. The electric cord
4. Glasses. Subject to fogging and debris
5. Grimm's mind

I'll upload some video to youtube later. It was fun, if you consider getting soaked to the skin in ice water while risking electrocution fun. But somehow, we managed not to injure ourselves. We only got half the prod done before the cold forced us indoors for fresh socks. We began the body of the weapon, which looks pretty good. To be fair, Grimm did the lions share of the hard work work this first session. I alternated between flinching and trying not to pee myself. To feel productive I've started stripping a pair of Amish wheels Grimm 'obtained' which will be used to move the weapon once its done. I am fairly sure that using Amish wagon wheels as part of a Medieval siege weapons is a fairly straight path to Hell.