June 2005 – garinungkadol

War of the Worlds

An alien invasion is more realistic than married assassins? Sounds strange but that’s how I felt. We see War of the Worlds through the eyes of the Ferrier family as they flee their home for some place safer. And that makes the movie work because their fear is our fear, the tension is so palpable that my heart was beating double-time in a lot of the scenes.

Yet there are moments of tenderness, humor because we are seeing one family. The movie is personal even though it’s on a grand scale.

I’m glad that the trailers didn’t show the aliens and their crafts because watching the destroyer rise from the ground had the whole theatre audience going, “Whoa!” and “Whoaaaaaa!” and “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaa shit!”

And if you’re wondering, I was able to forget about TomKat for most of the movie.

I’m giving War of the Worlds 8.5 out 10. It would have been 9 but the ending was kind of abrupt and I was a bit confused as to the resolution of the conflict.

War of the Worlds plays on our fears of terrorism. In one scene, Rachel screams “Is it the terrorists?” over and over

The Buzz #3

Conspiracy Theory : Katie Holmes’s missing days. FameTracker was quite prophetic ~ Maybe she’ll be able to date slightly out of her pay grade

Rebecca Blood interviews Matt Haughey

Where the F* is Wellington?

As mentioned earlier, there’s a video blog for Superman Returns.

One interesting video is of Bryan Singer heading over to Wellington, New Zealand to help out a very tired Peter Jackson with some shots for King Kong.

MIT Weblog Survey

The Buzz #2

Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm trailer.

Go Fug Yourself has me laughing my ass off.
Really! I have no butt now because of this site.

Tooling Around

Added a new theme, Coffee Cup from Zenith but I’ve modified the picture with a stock photo from stock.exchange.

Playing around with some plugins…

Making My Life Easier:
Adds more functionality to the “Write Post” screen

In Touch – Allows you to place a contact form on your posts/pages.
LMB Box File Press – Allows you to upload files.
Speedy Cat – Add new categories quickly

Categorizing Posts:

In Series – Lets you link posts belonging to the same series.
Ultimate Tag Warrior – Organize posts using tags. Create tag clouds

To Try Out:

Multiply : Manage multiple blogs from one admin interface. Obviously not a simple upload and activate plugin since it involves some customization and there are caveats but when I have more time I’ll test this out.
CG-InBetween : Lets you place stuff between your posts.
Search Reloaded : Improves on WordPress search
WP- PHPList : Integrates PHPList with Worpdress. Don’t have a need for a mailing list here but this could come in handy on other projects

Bad Behavior

Here’s another script to deal with Spambots which bills itself as “set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambot”.

It’s not just for WordPress and can be installed for Geeklog and MediaWiki.

Another solution to the referrer spam nightmare.

Batman Begins

As we’re in the middle of 2005 I will say that Batman Begins is on the top of the list of Best Movies Watched in 2005.

Christian Bale is a convincing Batman/Bruce Wayne and he’s totally erased the nightmare that was Batman and Robin (Sorry George Clooney, I heart you but that movie should definately not be on your “highlight reel”).
The duality of him as the brooding Batman and happy-go-lucky Wayne is striking. Once he dons the mask and cape, Bruce Wayne ceases to exist.

The action is just right and there are moments of humor that lightens the tension of this far darker Batman movie. Michael Caine is brilliant as Alfred. Morgan Freeman has a small role as Lucius Fox, friend of the family, and inventor of the many cool things that Batman uses.

Like Pia, I love how Christopher Nolan has utilized the cape, which really makes Batman more frightening than he has in the past with all the swooping and diving.

Katie Holmes has her moments as Rachel Dawes, but please woman! Enough of the “Joey Potter” facial tics. I was distracted by her lop-sided grin.

That is just one detraction from the film and a minor one as that. I highly recommend Batman Begins. It’s one movie I wouldn’t mind watching again.