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Midsummer movies: Nousukausi, Willard, Gothika, Napoleon Dynamite

We spent a quiet midsummer (typical Finnish midsummer festivities are nothing but quiet) at home, watching movies. The results were interesting:

Nousukausi was great fun. The movie had a twist more interesting than we had expected. It was fun, too, but with such great actors what else can you expect. One does notice, though, that Finland has quite a few actors: Kari-Pekka Toivonen, for example, seems to appear in every movie recently.

Willard sounded good, but unfortunately flopped. It was dead boring, really. An idea of a sad little man who befriends the rats living in his basement was interesting, but it just didn't work. Instead of 90-minute movie, it would've made a decent 45-minute tv movie. The plot was quite obvious, too. This was the remake, I wonder if the original is any better...

Gothika was much better than we expected. It's a horror movie, and it scared us. Sure, it was a bit cheap as the worst horrors were simple surprise scares, but still, it was decent. The plot resembled Swiss cheese, though - it was a structure so weak that an intense stare would make it fall. The name sucks, too: Gothika tells you nothing about the movie, it has absolutely no significance. I would've named it Not Alone, I guess.

Napoleon Dynamite was Johanna's discovery. It's a bizarre little high school -movie, about an oddball outcast. It kind of reminded me of Ghost World. It was drop dead funny: the surreal gallery of characters, the bizarre dialog... the plot wasn't anything particularly interesting, but it is the amazing characters that drive this movie. It was a heart-warming movie and goes highly recommended for the fans of odd comedy.

26.06.2005 klo 16:33 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Clutter and CoverBuddy

I've discovered two nice utilities to enhance one's music experience.

Clutter by Sprote Research is a small OS X application that shows the album cover of the currently playing track. While iTunes does that too, sure, but with Clutter, you can drag'n'drop the cover on your desktop. That way you can emulate piles of cds cluttering your real desktop.

I'm not sure if that's of real use, but something else in Clutter is: there's also a browser mode, where you can browse your album collection. If a cover is missing from the music file, Clutter will find it from Amazon. Then you can just press shift-command-K to attach the cover to the music file so you see it in iTunes, as well. That's pretty useful.

CoverBuddy is more interesting way to utilize covers. It shows your music collection as albums with their cover art, so you can browse through them like they were real cds. That's pretty neat.

However, CoverBuddy is shareware and makes it annoyingly obvious if you haven't registered it, covering every cover with an ugly "please register" message. I'm not sure if I wish to pay that, so probably I'll end up tossing CoverBuddy away. Clutter, however, is free.

23.06.2005 klo 08:32 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Team America and Dead Birds

Yesterday we saw Team America: World Police, a movie by the authors of South Park. A spoof of Thunderbids, the movie made fun of ... what? American world police action, perhaps, but I think Hollywood was the main target.

We didn't quite enjoy it. The authors could've done a much better work (South Park movie was much better), somehow it all was just too stupid and too low-brow. The best thing the movie had to offer were the songs - they were just brilliant and certainly the best part of the movie.

Our second movie was much better. Expectations were nonexistant, but Dead Birds surpassed anything we could've expected. Set in the Civil War era America, it's about a group of bank robbers who hide in a deserted plantations for a night before heading to Mexico. As you might guess, none of them are alive in the morning to continue the voyage.

The mood of the movie is very scary. The stylish French-style country house makes a really impressive setting full of atmosphere. The movie is slow, subtle and creepy until it starts unraveling and revealing its secrets. The chaos and turmoil of the Civil War makes for a really good setting, I'm amazed how most horror film authors focus on modern day while there are plenty of other interesting settings.

What's best, the story made sense. The director Alex Turner links at his web site to Dead Birds Movie Field Guide, which gives the official explanations. They matched our understanding, which was nice. Of course: do not read the guide before watching the movie.

19.06.2005 klo 14:11 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Sharkbait

No matter how low one ranks Renny Harlin's, Finland's most prolific Hollywood movie director's career, Deep Blue Sea is a decent blockbuster action movie.

The movie's best bit is, of course, the death scene of Samuel L. Jackson. It's total top-10 class, no doubt about that. I'm also always delighted when Finland is mentioned in a movie, and that's for sure in a Harlin movie (it's his trademark). In this, we see a Finlandia vodka bottle, a Finnish flag and a whiteboard note about Finnish pancakes.

2.06.2005 klo 13:00 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Remote power

It's fun to notice I can still get quite excited by small things. One of them is Salling Clicker, a tool for Mac. Our PowerBook has Bluetooth capabilities, as does my mobile phone. Salling Clicker connects the two and allows me to control the Mac with the phone.

This can be used for presentations, reading e-mail, running AppleScripts doing whatever or simply as a remote control for iTunes! For example, I'm now listening to music and rating the songs as I hear them. Instead of bringing up the iTunes and interrupting my work (ahem) flow, I'll just reach for my mobile phone and adjust the rating. I can switch songs, adjust the volume and if somebody calls me, iTunes goes on pause automatically.

It's just fun. It's pretty useless, though at times I might want to control the music from the sofa, for example, but it's fun. It's just amazing, the way it works. I'm still a bit of a child at heart, I suppose.

Now I'm left wondering if this is something I'd like to pay $20 for... The unregistered edition is limited to 30 clicks on each connection, which is annoying. This just might be cool enough to buy, when I have more money.

2.06.2005 klo 09:42 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)