Watched Live Free or Die Hard and Mad Max tonight. Mad Max was an overly simple plot wrapped in convoluted cinematography and poor audio level equalization. I can definitely see it being a great movie, if only any of it had any feeling of repercussion. The bad guys gave no believable idea of insanity, they were just a bunch of actors being loony, which is really boring to watch because it’s so meaningless. I hope and am led to believe the second is much better.
Live Free or Die Hard was an atrocity. That is, the importance placed on certain elements is entirely the opposite from the first and best Die Hard. Live Free focuses on bigger and bigger explosions, and worse and worse cuts and scrapes on John McClane. The swearing was cut down so drastically so the movie could make a PG 13 rating, and it feels so castrated and dumb. The original focused on the one building, the small spaces within it, the shitty situation this normal cop found himself in, the swearing! It’s so frustrating that a character who has been swearing up a storm like the crude cowboy he is through a full trilogy is suddenly reduced to a handful of “shit”s and an “asshole” or two. It’s absurd. The situations, which escalate to affect multiple states and the entire country’s money, calls for swearing! It is appropriate in such a situation to be calling the people trying to kill you and your daughter and rob the nation a bunch of “motherfuckers,” and not “maniacs,” as heard in the movie.
Die Hard II: Die Harder, though I never even finished watching it, appeared to be the second worst, mostly just bland. Die Hard with a Vengeance had Samuel L. Jackson and the final scene took place in Quebec (though the NYPD following the criminals all the way there makes no fucking sense), so it had some redeeming qualities.
Geoff Manaugh wrote a great article about “Nakatomi Space” in Die Hard on BLDG BLOG. Read it! He talks about how John McClane moves through the building mostly avoiding the intended public space, instead using vents and elevator shafts, making his own path. Live Free actually uses an elevator scene also, though much less effectively. It also has a few parkour scenes, which Manaugh also talks about and relates to the idea of adapting the space to your own movement.
While Live Free was stupidity compounded on absurdity, it was still (mindlessly) entertaining.
Laura told me about a sexism test to apply to movies about a month ago. I’ve been testing all the movies I’ve watched since. They’ve all failed. Here’s the test:
- Are there any significant female characters in the movie?
- If there is more than one, do they communicate with one another?
- If they do communicate, is the dialogue about more than just the male characters?
Sadly, most movies fail on the second. That’s obscene.
So on Friday I caught my rideshare to Ottawa. Magenta drove, I sat shotgun, Martin sat behind me, and Hank behind Magenta.
Magenta is turning 31 today, I believe. She’s a film maker, graduated from Concordia film studies.
Martin is mid-thirties, currently working in Ottawa with First Nations people, running a program to help them be independent and successful in the system we long ago forced upon them.
Hank is mid-forties, a musician and rideshare veteran. He is apparently the most entertaining passenger and driver on the Craigslist and Kijiji Ottawa-Montreal rideshare circuit. He certainly lived up to his title on our trip. He told us about one rideshare a few weeks ago which was his worst ever. I retold it to just about everyone I saw last weekend. It goes like this:
Hank was meeting up with a guy he often takes rides with (we’ll call him Driver), but this time he was meeting at a different station than usual. Once at the station it took a while to find Driver, who told him to go find the car in the parking lot, he’d be back in a minute. So Hank goes to the car and waits for a while. Driver shows up with a family of four, which will fill up the rest of the seats in the minivan. Then Driver says they have one last stop before they get on the road. They stop behind a building, pop the back door, and guys in white jackets start piling in boxes. The open boxes contain meat, and the guys are butchers. The pile in six boxes, a frozen lamb leg the width of the van, and two or three dead, dangling, bleeding, plastic-wrapped sheep. Aghast, Hank is then asked to drive, as Driver has some work to do on the trip. Hank obliges and gets the mobile butchery on the road. After a while the mother in the family asks if they could stop to get some water. Driver says there is no need and pulls two bottles out from somewhere under the dead sheep. After all this, Driver still had the audacity to charge Hank $10 for the ride.
Magenta happened to be going back to Montreal on Sunday, leaving Ottawa at 8pm, which was perfect for me, so I caught that ride as well, joined by two girls going to a Coco Rosie show. I forget their names. I was fortunate enough to get dropped off at my doorstep, which is quite rare for a rideshare, and in this case excellent because I was lugging a PC around with me.
It was a great first experience and I will definitely use rideshares whenever I can.
Laura is too good at the job she’s presently doing. She’s too efficient for her boss to keep up. She’s even doing extra work, taking photos for use instead of waiting for the stock photo CD if it ever even shows up. Her boss loves her. I’m really happy it’s turning out so well. There may be future opportunities for Laura in this, and hopefully closer to her many fields of expertise.
I visited her office when I was in Ottawa. It was small but had its charm. I’m actually a little jealous she got to work in an office for two weeks. I’ve always wanted to have some office work experience. While my Bell job is in an office, it’s a call centre, so it doesn’t count.
I finally have a PC back in the apartment, one that is my own. It’s currently inhabiting the other half of my desk, the entirety of which is getting fairly crowded. The PC will be dedicated to IE testing and playing indie games that don’t run on Mac.
I made a pop can in Blender as an example for Arun of what exactly I can do with 3D, and what clients might be interested in. Now I need to skin it and get some renders. Blender 2.5 seems to not want to render my object, just the background, which is confusing.
I also very much want to get some super low poly orcs and human models done for a Ork Attack remake that has been bouncing around my head for years.
I found a program today called Alchemy. It’s a vector based sketching program with all sorts of interesting input methods. It is a lot of fun to mess around with. Check out the video on their homepage.