February 25, 2005

Movies: NausicaƤ of the Valley of the Winds

Another wonderful Miyazaki film, apparently his first feature. He has an incredible gift for gorgeous visuals, incredibly appealing characters and engrossing storylines and this was no exception. A very strong vocal cast here again doing the English version including Patrick Stewart, Uma Thurman and Edward James Olmos. ****

Posted by aarondf at 11:42 AM | Movies | Comments (0)

February 24, 2005

Movies: Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry

How did this guy lose to W! This is an excellent and interesting documentary/propaganda film, entirely biased towards Kerry but not in a bad or dishonest way, as I feel Michael Moore's films are. Moore's films leave me feeling almost unclean as I have to fight against the crap and manipulation he is throwing at me, not knowing what is honest and what is not - yes, it is all real footage but one can definitely be lied to with editing and Moore does it constantly. I think this film getting wider attention might have helped Kerry but who knows. Anyway, worth checking out ****.

Posted by aarondf at 02:23 PM | Movies | Comments (0)

February 18, 2005

Test Entry

My main blog is soon to migrate to a new server so this is a test of posting there and to see if LJ Crossposting from there works.

Posted by aarondf at 04:46 PM | Meta | Comments (0)

February 16, 2005

Link 100 Funniest Jokes

GQ has come out with a list of the 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time.

Posted by aarondf at 04:02 PM | Links | Comments (0)

February 14, 2005

Movies: Lone Wolf and Cub

Watched two installments of Lone Wolf and Cub, "Baby Cart in Peril" and "White Heaven in Hell". These movies are extremely bloody and pretty ridiculous as Lone Wolf at times kills literally hundreds of guys himself (even more than Uma kills in Kill Bill v1 against the Crazy 88), although maybe it isn't completely crazy if he is that much better than they are - I wonder? Anyway, I enjoyed both although probably should have spaced them out more ***1/2.

Posted by aarondf at 04:38 PM | Movies | Comments (0)

Movies: Freaky Friday

This was surprisingly enjoyable, with excellent performances by Curtis and the gorgeous (and talented) Lindsay Lohan. ***3/4 (first quarter star rating I've given but I was torn).

Posted by aarondf at 04:34 PM | Movies | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Links: Google Maps

Wow, another amazing tool from Google - Google Maps. It is still in beta (and a few issues ARE apparent) but it is fast and interactive and has a much better rendering engine than MapQuest and other maps I have used, making the maps so much more readable. Due to a Firefox bug, the route line for driving directions doesn't print, but I'm sure this and other minor things will quickly be fixed. This will almost certainly immediately become my mapping tool of choice.

There is a nice article, written by a user, on the technology and HTML/XML/Map data tricks behind Google Maps.

Posted by aarondf at 11:33 AM | Links | Comments (1)

Link: Restaurant Review

This is from an excellent wine blog I read, a very well written review of what might be the best restaurant in the world.

Posted by aarondf at 11:30 AM | Links | Comments (0)

February 04, 2005

Movies: The Bourne Supremacy

Well, this movie and the one before it, The Bourne Identity are just simple action movies but they are very good action movies. Matt Damon, surprisingly, fits very well into the role and seems very believable as this small, quiet guy who can suddenly explode into action. ***1/2.

Posted by aarondf at 11:54 AM | Movies | Comments (0)