The heroes of this movie are those who sit through it. I was amazed and appalled at how uncompelling this film is. I’m a history buff and a WWII nerd. I knew about the Officers’ Plot and think it is a great story to be told. Despite the bad buzz, I was more than willing to give the benefit of doubt to this movie. I found nothing to recommend. The acting is mediocre. Cruise is out of place and unsympathetic. The script is dull. The cinematography was OK, but nothing visually exciting. The aftermath was skipped and that may be the most interesting part of the story. Hitler was never the same after this incident. His paranoia and mistrust of the Wehrmacht General staff only grew and any influence they may have had was gone. The ruthless extermination of anyone connected to the plot was glossed over. Irwin Rommel, The Desert Fox and a national hero, was implicated and forced to commit suicide to save his family. Not even mentioned. I didn’t think this film was apologetic of the Nazi regime as some have criticized, it is just bad. I got no feeling of the director’s vision and I’m left with unanswered questions. I know why some folks wanted to kill Hitler, I don’t know why they made this movie.
Archive for December, 2008
Saying “Klaatu barada nikto” didn’t make this movie stop no matter how many time I said it to myself and Gort couldn’t put me out of my misery despite my violent thoughts. Remakes are evidence of the cynicism inherent in the film industry. If an old movie did well a generation (or two) ago, then why not retread it for a new audience. Put in some glitzy effects, cast a big name star and you’ll have a box office hit. No need to come up with something new. If they had simply reshot the 1951 classic, they might have had a good movie. The 2008 version, (very, very loosely based on the original SCI-FI epic) is not anywhere near as compelling. Keanu Reeves is not Michael Rennie by any stretch of the imagination. He’s Neo here to save the Earth from us horrible humans, but without the kung-fu. The message is not presented with any degree of subtlety. There’s is the obligatory evil U.S. Government and kill crazy military, naturally. Jennifer Connelly gives a good performance and is as lovely as ever, still that doesn’t carry this picture. The child here is annoying, unlike the innocent boy who takes the ‘stranger in a strange land’ around in the original. The special effects are decent, but that doens’t make up for the convoluted script . Go to Walmart and get a $5 copy of the 1951 movie. You’ll not be disappointed.
I haven’t been into comics since high school and never did read The Punisher even then, but I was familiar with the story line of the vigilante whose family is murdered and he sets about avenging them. Ray Stevenson plays Frank Castle and I wasn’t aware of him before this. He apparently is a star in the HBO series Rome which is pretty popular, but I don’t pay for HBO and have never seen an episode. He’s very cool in this film and plays the dark brooding vigilante well. He’s as cold blooded as they come and the massive graphic violence he doles out on screen is rather surprising in this day of political correctness. The gunplay is realistic and Stevenson obviously had training from pros for this part. His use of the M-16 was textbook and the techniques familiar to any SWAT or military ‘operator’. His penchant for Baretta 93R’s was a bit over the top, but it is a film based on a comic book. The supporting characters are well played and the bad guys are classic comic book villains with an evil and black humor bent. This is a niche movie that appeals to a limited comic/action/testosterone heavy audience, but if any of that is your thing, then you’ll not be punished seeing this flick. (Your significant-other may be though. You may have to endure Four Christmases to make up for it and that would be punishment indeed!)
the amazing drobo click for larger image
I finally got myself a drobo. It’s a unique storage device that adds unlimited capacity and data redundancy in a very simple product. They market it as a ‘data robot’ and thus the name drobo. It’s a USB 2.0 or firewire 800/400 (that’s ieee1394 or ilink to some people) external drive enclosure that will hold up to 4 sata drives of any capacity. Some geeks love to set up RAID arrays and will argue whether RAID 5 or Raid 10 is best. I’d rather not have to worry about striped and/or mirrored arrays where you must use disks of the same size (and usually exact brand and model or you are likely to have problems). The drobo eliminates all the hassle. You just slide in two or more drives of any capacity and connect the USB or firewire cable. There is a simple software application that gives you the drobo dashboard. You first decide how you want to format the drives. NTFS is best for windows user, but Mac and linux users have their options too. In a couple of minutes the drives are formatted and you have one large volume that you can map as any available drive letter and name whatever you want (Mine is the X: drive named drobo). Now I can dump anything I want on that drive and it is safe from system crashes and hard drive failures on my computer and even more importantly on the drobo itself. the drobo uses a proprietary sytem (it’s not RAID!) that allows the drobo to rebuild itself when a drive fails with no loss of data. All your precious pictures, music, video, even your memoirs are protected against drive failures. The cost of this is reduced capacity of all the drives. You can figure about a third of the total capacity is lost to this redundancy. A small price figuratively and literally when you look at hard drives these days.
Drobo has 4 bays and accepts any sized sata drive
I had a 250gb, a 320gb, and a new 1terabyte drive on hand and slid them in. This is not the most efficient combination since the available storage is less than 500gb overall due to the difference in sizes and how the data is spread over all the drives so that the failure of any drive allows all the data to be recovered from the other two. The drobo is smart. It’ll tell you when a drive is getting full or is in danger of crashing. Just slide out the smallest drive and add a bigger one. The drobo will rebuild all the data with no muss or fuss. This is a great data protection and back up solution for anyone who has important information on their computer(s). Keep in mind that while drobo will guard your data at home or office, it can’t protect against fire, flood, earthquake or even thieves. A comprehensive data storage and protection system has to incorporate some sort of off site storage plan. This could be an external drive with your critical data that you take to work, or a dvd your burn and send to your mother, brother, or friend. There are online solutions like carbonite or amazon’s S3 service. Microsoft has Windows Live (http://home.live.com) and you get 25gb of free storage and a number of other interesting services as well. However you choose to do it, you need to have multiple copies of important data in more than one place or you are only one act of God away from lost data. Drobo is pricey compared to simple external hard drives. I have a small forest of drives next to my computer for storage and back-ups. The drobo will be replacing most of them due to its set and forget ease of use. I can use a free app like SyncToy from Microsoft and set up folders on the drobo that mirror folders and files on my desktop and laptop machines. SyncToy will copy any changes and keep the folders synched. Check out the drobo and see if it fits into your back-up and storage plan. www.drobo.com
Action movies should be full of action. The bad guys are bad and the good guy is good. Expectations were not high for this film and I wasn’t disappointed. Jason Statham is the little big man who can’t be stopped no matter what impossible situation he’s forced into. He out MacGyvers MacGyver. There are highly choreographed fight scenes that would impress the best of Hong Kong in its prime. The over the top and impossible driving exploits are campy and reminiscent of Smokey and the Bandit (Jason Statham doesn’t wear a rug, however). There will be no Oscar nominations coming out of this, but if you like cars, guns and fights, then you’ll be happy with this latest installment of the Transporter. It is certainly a guy thing.
