Two fine films last night.
Next, starring Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore. Cage’s character can see two minutes into the future and he makes a living as a second tier magician and blackjack player in Las Vegas. He gets noticed by the FBI who “enlist” his help in preventing a smuggled nuclear weapon from being detonated in Los Angeles harbor. Admittedly the whole time travel/seeing into the future genre appeals to me and this film (very loosely based on a Philip Dick short story) was pretty well done. Nice little cameo appearence by Cage’s Korean bride as well. It holds the attention well, but for me the ending was a big disappointment. Still, for entertainment value I’m giving it a 4/5 rating. You can read what Wiki has to say here.
Stardust is a nice little fantasy/fairy tale/romance/action film with a great overall job from an ensemble cast, including a hilarious Robert DeNiro as a gay pirate and Michelle Pfeiffer as a wicked witch. Again, entertaining and fun to watch, with some laughs along the way. A solid 4 in my book.
As I’ve mentioned before, since moving to Korea in 2005 I’m pretty much out of touch with popular culture in America. Both of these movies came out in 2007 and I had heard nothing about either. The nice thing about my Netflix subscription is I can read a little blurb and at least gain a little idea about what I’m renting.
Next up in my Netflix queue is The Civilization of Maxwell Bright, an independent film highly recommended by Dennis, a frequent commenter here at LTG.
And yes, I know my reviews suck, that’s why I provide the Wiki links. But at least it gives me something to post, right?
John,
Neither your reviews, your photo’s nor your blog commentaries suck…….dude. They’re the essence of LTG.
Your first flick above, Next, made the rounds on cable TV and I saw most of it there a while back. I found it somewhat interesting but not majorly so. Cage seems to be choosing the off-beat sorta flick these days – almost like he’s carved out a little niche in that genre for himself. I saw a bi-opic on him recently where he apparently owns 5 or 6 castles around the world. Strange dude, kinda.
Haven’t seen the other DeNiro movie yet but will look for it to show up. I was formerly a subscriber to Comcast cable TV and hi-speed internet here in FL. Comcast had taken over a substantial portion of the US cable market, seems, but as might be expected, their customer service zucked big time and was all but unusable – so I switched to ATT U-verse about a month and a half ago and I can’t believe the difference. The ATT cable TV/internet customer service is the best I’ve ever encountered in any such endeavor and the service seems, for the first time in life, nearly worth the buck. It’s all fiber-optic to your neighborhood, then only copper from the switch box to your home so the result is the clearest TV pic I’ve ever seen. Don’t even need HD, but the package I subscribed to includes it anyway. Comes with a Digital recorder/Tuner on the main TV and after you record a movie (can record up to four programs simultaneously) you can access and watch it from any other TV in the house – to include, pause, fast forward/reverse etc, and if you stop watching it then go back later it askes you if you want to resume from where you were – quite cool. I’ve never before been so pleased with a cable TV service. The accompanying internet has speeds of up to 18Mb per second, download – I’m currently subscribed to 10MbPS and it’s faster than Comcast ever was at their highest speed and since it’s fiber optic it doesn’t bog down under user-load.
So now you know state-of-the-art in cable TV in the States, more or less.
Bet that makes you really happy.
Can’t wait to see what you think of Maxwell Bright. I’ve downloaded it to the U-verse digital recorder and trying to figure out how to make a copy on my DVD tuner/recorder/home-theater.
So John, your dart team the champeen’s, then?
Ok, then. I’m OOT for next 10+ days to the FL west-coast (Heidi’s vacation) to assess a move to that area, potentially, so you won’t have me nosing around for awhile.
Best regards and hang in there.
BTW, John,
Count yourself, IMV, fortunate to be out of touch with the ‘popular culture’ in America. I firmly believe that, cumulatively, it is strongly contributing to escalating the decline in our culture and way of life. No BS.
Just my .02c, but don’t get me started.