Virtue Is Knowledge . com

Throw  the movies Contact, Signs, Deep Impact, The Day the Earth Stood Still (not the good one either) and creepy kids into a pot, add Nicolas Cage and you’ll have a movie that leaves you wondering, not knowing. OK the performances aren’t that bad, but the tragic widower astro-physicist whose father is a minister? Cryptic  numbers in a time capsule? And your GPS is the glue that brings it all together. The story line is a mess and the script is full of tired cinema cliches. The effects are not too bad, but they do not make for the ridiculousness of the rest. White bunnies? Give me a break. I don’t want to write too much on this as I’ve wasted enough time on this movie. You don’t want to know Knowing.

I knew nothing of the Watchmen before the start of the movie. The opening scenes were captivating in setting the history of these crime fighters and introducing the alternative history where the story takes place. The story was even interesting for the most part. Murder, mystery, political intrigue…should be enough to keep your attention. I wanted to like this movie. The characters were likeable and even if they had few real super powers, they were competent crime stoppers. But the movie was rather boring.  Like The Spirit there just wasn’t enough to generate excitement and you kept wanting more action, more reason to care or something to keep you from wondering what was playing in the next theater. Maybe the film is relying on an informed and loyal base of comic fans and perhaps had I read up on it, I would be more forgiving.  As it stands though, Watchmen was barely watchable.

Evil Bankers, there’s something you don’t hear about much these days. Clive Owen is always fun to watch. He can make the most predictable and inane thriller almost believable. At least he doesn’t try to be Jason Bourne. Clive always gets beat up or shot up and must like having the cuts and butterfly bandages to add to his character. Maybe he’s trying to downplay his good looks and flesh out the role, I don’t know. I can imagine him and Christian Bale in a curse fest as to how each took him out of ‘the moment’ and ruined the take. I was expecting something a little more interesting, I suppose. This isn’t up to par with Marathon Man or even Michael Clayton, but you might not think it a total waste of time. Did I mention it has Clive Owen in it?

I kind of liked this movie. It reminds me of classic head blowing up movies like Scanners and The Fury. There is not a lot of suspense, but enough action to keep it interesting. The various film techniques used were the best part and director Paul McGuigan is someone to watch. I hope he gets the chance to make a truly original film. The performances were fine. Dakota Fanning is getting older and is somewhat awkward onscreen. Maybe she was miscast, but I’m sure she was part of the deal to make the picture. It’s a toss up. If you like mutants and read your horoscope everyday, you may really like this movie.

I’m an action guy and there is no dearth of action film these days. Every male actor seems to want to try their hand at a James Bond, super-operator, gun wielding, bad ass. Taken follows the mold with few detours. Liam Neeson is adequate as the ex-CIA operative who has 96 hours to find his daughter before she is lost in the underground world of white-slavery. His character is perhaps more brutally efficient than some and he is certainly not afraid of ‘wet work’ as he turns beautiful Paris upside down in his search. The stunts are nothing new. Lots of quick Wing-chun, Aikido and Krav maga style close quarter combatives. I can’t say it was a bad movie, but it wasn’t very interesting either. It was mildly entertaining. If you like action and Liam Neeson, you could do worse.

Wow. Sam Mendes can take you places you would never go, never want to go and then make you glad you went. Revolutionary Road is a voyeuristic look at the train wreck that is the life of what should be the quintessential All-American couple. Leonardo DiCaprio is very good as a real bastard who plays everything and everyone for his own benefit. The subtle psychological abuse he doles out is truly evil when you see it. The ambiguity of his character is fascinating. Does he do it consciously or is it a reflection of the mores of the times? The only thing I can criticize is his looks. When he’s 60, I bet he will still look 20. It’s hard to imagine him as an adult with his boyish looks. Winslet is wonderful and the tragic star. The one person who dares to express dissatisfaction with her lot and trys to change it. You will get something from this film. It may be a warning. It may be depressing. You may thank God you’re not them, but you will take something away with you. See the movie and tell me what you think.

Added some new drives to the data robot recently. Now have a 1TB, 750GB, 500GB and a 320GB for 1.42TB of redundant, protected storage and about 600GB free at the moment. I Have dumped media from all but one external drive onto the drobo and now have several external drives that I don’t have a use for, at the moment. I think an immutable law of digital storage is you will find stuff, no matter its usefulness, to fill 80% of the storage available and then think how you can increase it before the last 20% is used up.

Remember, despite the redundancy of the drobo, you still need some sort of off site storage solution or you are at risk. Francis Ford Coppola had his computer and back-up drives stolen from his home in Argentina and he literally lost his life’s work. Microsoft’s Skydrive will give you 25GB of storage for free. Don’t risk losing the important documents, music and pictures you are accumulating.

Who would think a character study of a beat up professional wrestler would get the attention of the Academy? Sometimes making a good movie is rewarded. Mickey Roarke is stellar. He’s had a lot of personal experience to draw on for this role. He’s been down and forgotten a few times only to come back and surprise me. Sin City was the last surprise from him and The Wrestler is Oscar caliber in my unprofessional opinion. (Much more deserving than Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button!) Marisa Tomei is excellent as well. She is gorgeous and gives depth to her role as a middle aged stripper. The film is shot largely in a hand held style that gives the picture a documentary feel that makes it seem more real. Anyone working through middle-age will see plenty of themselves in this film. The movie made me think and that is, to me, a sign of a good movie.

More than a year ago I found, what I thought, to be the perfect revolver for concealed carry and defense. It was a S&W 686+ with a 3 inch barrel. It was handier and a tad lighter than my 4 inch 686 and gave me 7 rounds of .38/.357 ammunition. I used it in IDPA matches and did just as well with the shorter sight radius. I got a Galco Summer Comfort for it and all was right with the world. My only wish would be some kind of night sight and maybe something a little lighter.

The 386NG Night Guard

Well S&W can read minds, or there are quite a few of us who expressed the same idea, and has recently introduced the Night Guard series of revolvers. These are all Scandium lightweight frames with stainless cylinders, 2.5 inch barrels and a big tritium front sight. You can have a 6,7, or 8 shot .38/.357 in K,L, or N frames and there’s a 6 shot .45ACP as well as a 5 shot .44 special. There’s 10mm/.40S&W, .41 and.44 magnum models now too. (These weigh less than 30oz. Ouch!) Since I had a 3 inch 686+ already, the 386NG seemed ideal. My HKS speedloaders would work in both and the Summer Special fit it too. The 386NG weighs around 24,5 ounces, a good 12 ounces less than the all steel 3 inch 686. In comparison the scandium frame guns feel like toys. This weight reduction means a more comfortable carry and more comfort means more carry. (I’m partial to full size 1911’s and have regularly carried one for years. My Wilson Combat CQB has a factory trigger pull of 3.25lbs. Mas Ayoob said it was a bit light for a carry piece and I grudgingly decided he was right. I might justify it by my years of experience, schools and competition with it, but why give someone ammunition that could be used against me? So, I’ve been wheelgunning for defense and use my 1911 for IPSC/USPSA competition.)

The guns are a matte black all over. The blackened stainless cylinder is virtually indistinguishable from the frame. They come with big cushy Pachmayr grips that cover the backstrap. This added to the bulk and seemed a bit odd to me. I’m sure the big grips would help in reducing felt recoil, but I have small hands to begin with and they just had to go. I put on a set of Hogue compact monobloc grips. They fit flush and expose the backstrap. They give me the best reach to the trigger and are perfect for the concealed carry role of this revolver.

The double action out of the case was somewhat stiff and a bit ‘gritty’. The single action was S&W sweet. I don’t know the poundage (2-4lbs?), but there’s no creep or movement at all and the release is like the proverbial glass rod. There is a slight bit of over travel and no stop on these factory guns. A few thousand dry fires and treating some of the interior points with a good grease has smoothed the double action considerably. A wolf spring swap is looking imminent too.

Cylinder and Slide sights

The sights come from Cylinder and Slide. The front is a big white circle with a green tritium insert. Bright and very easy to pick up. The rear is their new heavy duty replacement for any S&W adjustable. It is a big U notch. The front sight fills the rear notch almost perfectly. You won’t see much of anything on either side of that big dot. This set up is pretty good. I would like to see a tritium insert in the rear personally. A straight 8 dot on dot, or a bar dot would make low light alignment quicker. I noticed I lost the front sight frequently in very dark scenarios where a slight off center alignment hid the front sight. At ranges this weapon would likely be used, putting the tritium dot on the target and squeezing the trigger will probably produce good hits.

I did a little testing at my state game lands range. It was a cold morning with temps in the teens. I brought a selection of .38 loads. I’ve shot small all steel guns with full power .357 rounds and I can say it was none too pleasant. In this Scandium frame piece I am not even contemplating firing .357’s of any kind. So, I had Federal 129gr Hydrashoks, Speer Gold Dot 125gr, Remington classic 158gr LSWCHP all in +P and some S&B 158gr FMJ standard pressure loads to test. I see this gun as a defensive weapon to be used at contact to across the room ranges. I don’t have a Ransom Rest and since it was below freezing, I decided to run a simple drill to test the combat accuracy of the test loads. I would fire a cylinder of each load. The first two rounds would be to assess felt recoil. Then I would fire 5 as fast as I could hit my aiming point at 10 yards. You could call it a modified ‘Bill drill’. I wouldn’t fire as fast as I could pull the trigger, but as fast as I could reacquire my aim point and fire again. I averaged about a round per second which gave me a good compromise between speed and accuracy. Looking at the target and groups, I can say this gun will do anything I can ask of it at reasonable ranges. All the loads fired shot pretty much to point of aim at 10 yards and they all shot around 3-4 inches for 5 rounds and best 3 groups were mostly around 2 inches. Like my mentor Ayoob I think best 3 groups fired offhand like this gives a good average of what the gun can do from a rest. The Cylinder and Slide sights are not precision optics. The big dot and round U rear are meant for fast pick up and combat accuracy. Taking head shots at squirrels off hand at 50 yards is asking a bit much of them.

Test Groups: Top-158gr LSWCHP, Right-125gr Speer Gold Dot, Bottom-129gr Hydrashok

As for the felt recoil, I can tell you it wasn’t too bad. The big Pachmayr’s would have softened it quite a bit no doubt. But the bare backstrap and thinner grips were not bad either. Recoil was brisk, but with a good ‘crush’ grip and strong stance the recoil was very manageable and shot to shot recovery very close to that of my all steel 686’s. I couldn’t tell any difference between the +P loadings, but the standard pressure S&B load felt like the difference between a .45 and 9mm to me. Like I said, I feel no need to fire .357’s through this gun. The +P’s are very manageable, but I wouldn’t want to take a class and shoot hundreds of them a day. I’m sure my hand would give in long before the gun would. With standard pressure rounds I might shoot an IDPA match with it this spring to see if I do any worse than with the all steel 3 inch. I think with match nerves and andrenaline, I won’t notice much of a difference.

Overall, I really like this gun and it will no doubt spend a lot of time inside my pants.

386NG & Galco Summer Comfort IWB holster

Dustin Hoffman has been playing lovable losers his entire career it seems, The Graduate, Little Big Man and Marathon Man to name a few. I’ve been smitten by Emma Thompson ever since The Remains of the Day. Put them together in a romantic comedy and you have a sweet, if improbable, story that will inspire droves of hopeless romantics to update their profile on eHarmony.com. Hoffman has such an extraordinary way of communicating emotion through facial expression and body language. In the most powerful scenes he says very little. Thompson too is very expressive without words. She is extremely seductive as a vulnerable, neurotic spinster always on the verge of tears. Hoffman is a loser, but you can’t help but love the lost little gnome. Everyone will identify with some aspect of these two characters. It’s a fairytale and you know it’s going to have a happy ending, and these things don’t happen in the real world, and it really doesn’t make much sense, but you will cry anyway and think Love can be found and Life is too short to be miserable. Sometimes you just need to take a chance.

Defiance is a decent WWII action/dramatic picture. It is straightforward and watchable, but it’s no Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List. I’m sure it was pitched as the best of both: action + pathos. Daniel Craig is the lead and he clearly out does Cruise in at least affecting a believable Slavic accent (there was a lot of Russian spoken and maybe Polish, I can’t differentiate them myself). There won’t be any Oscar nominations, but it is a story worth telling. Some may see it as just another WWII story of courageous partisans fighting Nazis and think it a waste of time. I think we can’t get enough of this stuff. It’s impossible for us to imagine the horrors and sacrifice people made to fight evil and we should remind ourselves constantly. Whenever you feel sorry for yourself because gas is too expensive, your 401K has taken a beating, or there’s no cell signal where you are, then think about living in the forest for a few years with people trying to kill you because you were born a certain ethnicity. It puts thing in perspective. The Bielski’s, like Oscar Schindler, did not seek recognition for what they did, but they saved thousands of Jews from extermination and their children’s, children’s, children may be you or a friend of yours.

Clint Eastwood has given rise to some of the iconic characters in cinema. From spaghetti westerns to cool cop to noted director and Oscar winner he has earned a respected place in movie history. Gran Torino will no doubt get him another Oscar nomination and if he wins, it will be due to his body of work and not this performance. Not that he gives a poor performance, it’s just not Oscar material in my opinion. The story of a grouchy old man dealing with being alone and facing the changes in his world is nothing new. Old folks learning to respect and appreciate others is cliche’ too. Maybe simple familiar themes are comforting to people and we can identify easily with them. The audience certainly identified with Walt Kowalski. Every racial epithet and grumble elicited chortles and snickers. I couldn’t get away with it, but Clint can. It’s OK. We expect old people to be racist. In earlier times much of Gran Torino would be considered a minstrel show and abhorred by ‘enlightened’ individuals, but since most of the racism is directed towards Asians it’s not so bad. I don’t think Clint had this in mind while directing the film. His character is an ignorant old man carrying scars he won’t let anyone but us see and we know he will be redeemed by the end of the movie. I can’t decide if this is an important film for Clint or not. He works fast and doesn’t like too many takes. He trusts his actors and likes the ‘honesty’ of the first take whenever possible. This doesn’t allow for much subtlety in the performances. I may be getting grouchy myself in being hyper critical. As I left the theater I saw a woman weeping uncontrollably, really inconsolable, so Gran Torino had some impact on the audience. Am I getting too old and jaded to be able to simply enjoy a movie? See Gran Torino and let me know what you think.

Look around and find this movie before it disappears. A clever story about a street kid whose whole life has prepared him for his moment of destiny on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. There is a love story, tragedy, humor and a look at the best and worst sides of life in the urban jungle of Mumbai. This isn’t a big budget movie and goes to show that a good story that draws you into it doesn’t need special effects to dazzle the senses. For most of us, the scenes of modern India will be like a National Geographic special. The photography is naturally spectacular. From the early scenes of ghetto life you identify with the characters and want to find out what happens through every twist and turn. Will he find the girl? Will his brother find forgiveness? Will he win the 20,000,00 Rupees? See the movie to find out. There is considerable buzz about this movie and for once it is deserved. It has won awards in Toronto and Telluride and Oscars are being talked about.

I loved Sin City and 300. I like film noir. Samuel L. Jackson has been my hero since Pulp Fiction. The trailers and previews had me hoping this movie would be as good as the hype. Alas, The Spirit is lacking, well…spirit. The elements of cast, script, and cinematography just didn’t come together for me. The noir aspect didn’t quite come off. The fast over the top dialog quickly became inane and lacked the sincerity needed to sell it. Watch The Maltese Falcon and listen to the exchanges between Bogart and Lorrie, or Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep. Just as preposterous, but you accept it and believe people may actually talk like that. The visuals are good a la Sin City, but we’ve already seen Sin City many times and would like something different. Gabriel Macht isn’t bad, but he doesn’t make a memorable superhero crime-fighter. Jackson is too cartoonish as a mad scientist. The costume changes for every scene are cute and the best part of the film is waiting to see what Scarlet Jo will be wearing. That’s not enough for me. If you were dying for a big screen adaptation of your favorite cult comic, then you may not be too disappointed. But if you want really good films watch any of those mentioned above and add The Asphalt Jungle, Double Indemnity, Key Largo, The Killers, Out of the Past, Laura, and many others of the classic noir period. You’ll see where many standard film techniques were born.

Lot’s of people will like this movie. Lot’s of people like Brad Pitt and refuse to see any flaw in anything he does. The film looks good. I enjoyed much of the visuals, but the frequent flashbacks (to the present) were rather annoying. The story is intriguing. I like fantasy and the paradox explored is fun to discuss. Believe me, I rail regularly at how cruel fate is to grant wisdom and knowledge with age and commensurate frailty of body. The performances are pretty good when Pitt and Blanchett can act their relative ages. For some reason actors think they have to do these age transformations to prove something to the guild. The hours of makeup are some kind of badge of honor, it seems. Pitt and Blanchett try hard and it was distracting. You could tell they were ‘acting’ old with all the usual old people business you might see in an actor’s workshop. Why New Orleans and the old southern accents? Couldn’t Cate do any other American accent? And since the story has nothing in common with F. Scott’s short story, (except the title and theme of living life from old to young) why not let her talk like an Aussie? I don’t think Pitt can carry a picture on his own. His devotion to the art is genuine, but I don’t think he has the chops. It seems he’s always Brad Pitt doing some other character. As Olivier is alleged to have quipped to Dustin Hoffman while making Marathon Man, “…try acting…”.