Experts: 'Indiana Jones' pure fiction Good thing we got that straight. The reality of archaeological field work is not a lone hero dashing into hidden chambers with a bullwhip and a pistol and coming away with a priceless relic. It's large groups of academics and students painstakingly sifting through grids to retrieve artifacts as mundane […]
I just got back from watching the penultimate showing of the night of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" at the local cineplex. A couple of things to note: First, it's rated "R" for good reason. Second, it's really funny. Jason Segel plays Peter Bretter, a "composer" who is in a long term relationship with Sarah Marshall (unattainable […]
I saw the movie first on HD-DVD (yes, dead format, I know, who'd have thought Sony of the Betamax, ATRAC3 and UMD would get something right) last week and was pleasantly surprised. The film had slipped past my radar -- and that of most of the public -- when it was first released in theaters. […]
A documentary on the disaster that is the Santa Barbara News-Press under the ownership of Wendy McCaw premiered last Friday. Time to add it to my Netflix queue.
I just got back from seeing the final showing of "Juno" at the local theater. Total number of people in the theater, including yours truly: Five. Juno's gotten a lot of press, both pro and con, because it takes the "unrealistic" and "controversial" plot of a teen faced with an unplanned pregnancy choosing to have […]
Christianity Today has a good article on the wealth of pro-life movies that have been released in the past year by a usually pro-choice Hollywood. Rob Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, notes that with the exception of Bella, these films aren't being made by Christians. "The church cannot take credit […]
It should really go without saying that the book is better. It's not possible to squeeze everything in the 500 page book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," into a 2 hour movie, so something's got to get left on the cutting room floor. All in all, I think the decisions were good. […]
Just got back from seeing the latest installment in the "Die Hard" series of films, "Live Free or Die Hard." It's the first of the films to be rated PG-13, largely due to a massive reduction in the number of four-letter words. Yes, there's the infamous Yipee Ki Yay line, but it isn't followed by […]
As of the writing of this blog post, Michael Moore's "crockumentary" SiCKO has a 91 percent positive rating over at RottenTomatoes.com. I'm not going to fatten Moore's wallet, because there's been more than enough actual reporting (as opposed to movie reviews) that exposes the film as fatally flawed. All of this means that it will […]
Just got back from seeing "Shooter," based on author Stephen Hunter's book "Point of Impact." It goes without saying really that the book is better. It had been nearly a decade since I'd read Hunter's book, so I picked up a copy of it and read it last week. It took me less than two […]