![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rangerBlog - March 19th, 2007
Mar. 19th, 2007
01:41 am - The Good Shepherd
I finally saw the movie The Good Shepherd.
Zzzz....
No, that's unfair, TGS was quite good, and quite long, and quite... talky.
It's got Skull and Bones and a condemnation of suburban utopian disconnect, utopianist racism and... and... *yawn* well, none of that really matters, refreshingly, because that's not what the movie is about. It's about a man in his time, and that man is the extremely reserved Matt Damon (who, I gather, wishes he was less reserved, but feels flattened by duty, necessity, and society.)
It's not a bad yarn. The ending, sadly, lost me on the first viewing. Damon's perfidity, OTOH, seems to actually grant him a chance to open up with his son in genuine (albeit partially masked) grief, which is as close to a happy ending as this tainted film is likely to deliver.
The film makes no sense without knowing a fair amount about the Bay of Pigs already. The majority of moviegoers are under 18, and while this film clearly skews older- it the Bay of Pigs was 45 years ago. Show some fucking mercy to a generation that thinks the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs were the same event.
Oh, and it made me take Angelina Jolie seriously in a dramatic role, a feat in itself.
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/angry.gif){kind=small}
bitchy02:30 am - Digital Comics
Well, I finally found out why my local comics store closed down overnight. I've got to say, if you have to go down, being caught speeding in a van full of quasi-legal weapons and drug paraphernalia is the way to go.
Naturally this was an inconvenience for me, but fortunately many people have spent a lot of time and energy over the last decade or so working out the technical and aesthetic problems of distributing and reading comics on a computer, and I'm pleased with the experience.
Of course, Marvel, DC and IDW aren't among those people, but my compulsive buy-again-in-tradeism means I'll have a legally purchased copy of everything eventually. It thrills me is to see the kinks have been mostly worked out of the user-experience side by the pirates so that legitimate online sellers can swoop in and utilize all that hard-won knowledge!
...unless they were to create a proprietary service/format that's less versatile, harder to use, and costs money, and then blame users for failing to adopt it. That would be a nightmare of course.
| ← Previous day | (Calendar) | Next day → |