Monday, September 25, 2006
Movies, Pictures, and a Phone
The last several days have been pretty interesting in terms of entertainment. On Thursday Heidi called me up and let me know that she had acquired tickets to a sneak preview of Flyboys on behalf of the Phoenix Film Society. It sounded like a pleasant deviation from the normal Thursday night activities and I had the free time... Wow, what a horrible dog-shit movie. Let me be clear: I didn't walk into that movie expecting it to be good. I walked into that movie with roughly the same expectations I have whenever I walk into a movie that I wasn't particularly interested in. It failed to meet even those. Not only are the main characters disinteresting, but they have no plot arcs either. Really only the peripheral characters have any sense of depth. Disappointing. As much as I'd love to discuss plot, I have a policy against posting plot spoilers. Rest assured though, the plot sucked as well. Even the eye candy was sub-par. As much as I think James Franco is hot, there wasn't even partial nudity (at least that I can remember). Also, apparently Jean Reno is the only man on Earth capable of playing a Frenchman. According to IMDB he isn't even French.
Over the weekend Phil and I went to go see "Another Gay Movie." I didn't walk into this one with high expectations either, and surprisingly enough it turned out to be pretty good. Let me contextualize that: it's good in the same sense that "Not Another Team Movie", "Scary Movie", and "American Pie" were good movies. Really stupid plots, but they manage to make you laugh so you leave without the sense that you have been cheated. The other thing we did not realize about this movie until we were buying tickets was that it was rated NC-17. Both Phil and I agreed this was the first time either of us had seen an NC-17 film in theater. I won't go into any of the details here, but the movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you removed the full frontal male nudity and sex scenes from this movie you would possibly trim off about 20 minutes as well as a substantial amount of plot. There's not really a lot of eye candy in this film unless you happen to really enjoy hairless smaller-figured men (read as: twink). Matthew Rush (Probably not work safe) had a pretty humorous cameo appearance that I enjoyed.
In preparation for some photo stuff I want to start working on I've started learning how to do some of the neater tricks in Photoshop. Particularly giving images more of an impression of fine art than just being photo realistic. I'm going to keep playing with it and maybe one day I'll be halfway decent at it (samples are available in the Flickr gallery at the moment). While I'm on it, I believe all my pictures are finally up on Flickr. There's currently some 295 images up there in 15 sets.
Lastly, my yellow brick of a phone has finally decided it no longer wishes to cooperate with me. It has faithfully served me for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3+ years. When I purchased it I was still somewhat actively skating (and falling) and told the sales people that I wanted something that could take a substantial beating and keep on working. They sold me the Motorola i58sr. The selling point that hooked me was the fact it meets all military grade specifications on shock resistance, water resistance, and dust/sand resistance. Ever since I got that phone I never wanted to upgrade because every time I pick up a phone today I just take one look at it and go "Wow, this is a piece of shit." Of course, that's because my previous phone was rubber gripped and included fully accessible GPS, not just the faux GPS most phones give for emergency services. Enter the Motorola i580. Essentially the upgrade to my previous phone in a smaller more compact and flip version. All the same military specifications and robustness with a higher resolution screen and a few other bells and whistles. So when my phone decided to finally stop taking a charge completely and this one JUST became available I took it as a sign. RIP i58sr, your services have not been forgotten and your tasks have been taken up by the new generation of hardcore phones.
Over the weekend Phil and I went to go see "Another Gay Movie." I didn't walk into this one with high expectations either, and surprisingly enough it turned out to be pretty good. Let me contextualize that: it's good in the same sense that "Not Another Team Movie", "Scary Movie", and "American Pie" were good movies. Really stupid plots, but they manage to make you laugh so you leave without the sense that you have been cheated. The other thing we did not realize about this movie until we were buying tickets was that it was rated NC-17. Both Phil and I agreed this was the first time either of us had seen an NC-17 film in theater. I won't go into any of the details here, but the movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you removed the full frontal male nudity and sex scenes from this movie you would possibly trim off about 20 minutes as well as a substantial amount of plot. There's not really a lot of eye candy in this film unless you happen to really enjoy hairless smaller-figured men (read as: twink). Matthew Rush (Probably not work safe) had a pretty humorous cameo appearance that I enjoyed.
In preparation for some photo stuff I want to start working on I've started learning how to do some of the neater tricks in Photoshop. Particularly giving images more of an impression of fine art than just being photo realistic. I'm going to keep playing with it and maybe one day I'll be halfway decent at it (samples are available in the Flickr gallery at the moment). While I'm on it, I believe all my pictures are finally up on Flickr. There's currently some 295 images up there in 15 sets.
Lastly, my yellow brick of a phone has finally decided it no longer wishes to cooperate with me. It has faithfully served me for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3+ years. When I purchased it I was still somewhat actively skating (and falling) and told the sales people that I wanted something that could take a substantial beating and keep on working. They sold me the Motorola i58sr. The selling point that hooked me was the fact it meets all military grade specifications on shock resistance, water resistance, and dust/sand resistance. Ever since I got that phone I never wanted to upgrade because every time I pick up a phone today I just take one look at it and go "Wow, this is a piece of shit." Of course, that's because my previous phone was rubber gripped and included fully accessible GPS, not just the faux GPS most phones give for emergency services. Enter the Motorola i580. Essentially the upgrade to my previous phone in a smaller more compact and flip version. All the same military specifications and robustness with a higher resolution screen and a few other bells and whistles. So when my phone decided to finally stop taking a charge completely and this one JUST became available I took it as a sign. RIP i58sr, your services have not been forgotten and your tasks have been taken up by the new generation of hardcore phones.
# posted by Chris/Stewy @ Monday, September 25, 2006 
