The Fighter

H and I watched The Fighter on Netflix this past weekend. I found it to be Rocky for the artsy crowd. The plot is the typical stuff. Without knowing any of the real life story of Micky Ward, I knew the basic plot five minutes into the movie. It didn't matter much since I like a good zero to hero redemption tale. I like it even more when there is fighting involved.
What makes The Fighter special are the performances. The male leads, Whalberg and Bale, are excellent.
Whalberg plays Micky with deft physicality. It would have been easy for Micky to be seen as dull or even a tool, but Whalberg brings the character's grace and strength to the fore.
Bale does the opposite. He takes a manic and overly verbal joke and humanizes him. Dicky could easily have become annoying and unlikable. He talks too much and sucks the oxygen out of the room. In Bale's capable hands, however, Dicky becomes human. Even early in the movie, you can see the love and loyalty alongside the fear and desperation in Dicky. It makes the transformation at the end of the movie believable.
I recommend seeing this movie. It has a good, if predictable, story that showcases several great performances.

Your Highness

Given the awesome cast signed up to this film, I had high hopes. I should have remembered that the quality of a movie is often inversely proportional to the number of hot stars that are in it.
The performances are passable, but it is pretty obvious that Natalie Portman is not a comedic actor and neither is James Franco. While they have superb dramatic skills, they were unable to find the sweet spot for a satiric performance that was funny because it was supposed to be and not because it was so bad.
The humor also was a let down. The jokes relied too heavily on homo jokes and dick jokes. Sure one or two jokes about macho men being unknowingly gay is funny, but an hour and forty minutes of it is wearing. The rest of the dick jokes were just lame.
I certainly hope that Portman and Franco look back on this movie as a bad mistake. Maybe they will feel guilty enough to make up for the hours wasted by people watching this shlock. If I wasn't trapped on a plane for three hours I would have walked out of this just after seeing Portman semi-nude. That is the only good thing in the whole film.

2012

So this is the last year of the Mayan calendar, so the world might end in December. If that is the case, which I doubt, there is a lot of living left to squeeze into the year....
For me, less is usually more so I'm not going to clutter the year up with lots of big plans and lofty must accomplish goals. Instead, I'm going to set myself a few things to guide how I live this year:
1. I'm going to value time with my family over time at work.
2. I will do my best in all things that I do.
3. I will read indiscriminately.
4. I will prefer outdoor time to screen time.
5. I will stay active.
6. I will eat healthy with the occasional chocolate and ice cream.
7. I will try to relax.
These are just guiding principles. They are not mandates. They are not goals to be reached.
Mandates, goals, resolutions are just another way to beat yourself up. They are carrots to chase and hoops to jump through on the way to the next goal. They are not a way to live a life.
If they Mayans were right, I don't want to be looking back from the end of the world wishing I had accomplished some goal. I want to be happy knowing that I had lived life.

Breakfast of Camels

Location:Canyon Run Dr,Las Vegas,United States

ChronicTaco

While wandering around the suburbs of Vegas looking for food, I found Chronic Tacos in an oasis of strip mall stores. It is a small taco and burrito joint with a distinctly skate punk decor. Don't let the decor put you off though, the food is good if you are looking for basic burritos or tacos. I got a chicken burrito with hot salsa and it was on par with Chipolte Grill. The chips were also excellent.
The ordering process was similar to other joints in the genre. You tell them what you want and they custom build your meal out of the available meats, rices, beans and toppings. All of the food was fresh, but I'm not sure how local, GM free, or organic it was. They kid who served me also had a distinctly skater punk feel, but the other workers looked very Mexican. All of them were polite and efficient.
Overall I enjoyed the meal. If I lived in Vegas, I'd considered making Chronic Taco a regular joint.

Location:Canyon Run Dr,Las Vegas,United States

Camel Goes to Vegas

Source Code

Rented Source Code on iTunes for a flight today. It was an interesting film. I'm not sure I liked the twist at the end, but it was kind of cool. For me there were two things that made it so compelling: the acting and the premiss. All of the actors do a great job making the characters real. Gyllenhall's war hero chopper pilot is both inspiring and heart breaking. You want him to succeed and get the girl and find some peace. The actor that plays his handler paints an equally compelling character. You can see the conflict in her. She knows her duty and will see the mission through. You also see the pain it causes her to use another soldier this way. The idea that you can relive the last eight minutes of a person's life is interesting. The idea that you can use those eight minutes as the basis for a role playing game is out there. The idea that you can use those eight minutes to relive the past is crazy, but fascinating. Can you do that without altering the time line? Is it all just a computer simulation? If it is just a simulation how can you trust that the "facts" that are uncovered aren't just ghosts in the machine? Is it really time travel? The who done it and the love story are almost ancillary. They are required to give the characters something to do and some way to make the premise tangible. They are handled well enough to make the film work. I do recommend the movie. I think it would be better on a big screen although I didn't find the small screen detracted too much.