Just finished watching A Fighter’s Blues. It was a pretty good film, albeit with a few plot holes here and there. I also recently saw Sausalito, which was an interesting little film, with good cinematography that presents San Francisco in a HK cinema style, but the conflict of the piece was contrived. Shaolin Soccer was another viewing, a good cheesy kung-fu flick, but the special effects are surprisingly well executed.
If you liked The Matrix, you’ll also like The Matrix Reloaded. Well, just skip the first 30 minutes or so (or bring a book). Reloaded really starts out slow and but then throws you into insane hyperdrive for the rest of the film.
Some of you may know that one of my old research friends, George Borshukov, is one of the top R&D visual effects supervisors on The Matrix trilogy, he is the guy behind Bullet Time and Virtual Cinematography (the Burly Fight in Reloaded), Mission Impossible 2 and When Dreams May Come. I also have another friend working there, H.P. Duiker, who I knew through our old research team led by Paul Debevec at Cal. I also know some other friends working on creature effects in Revolutions at Tippett Studios.
Since I started watching Buffy, some of the Buffyisms have crept into my daily vocabulary. “smoochies”, “you’re not wrong”, “oogily boogilys”, “kicked in the ghoulies”, and the habit of making everything all adverby. It’s fun, it’s like my personal guarantee.
Smallville was better than the average ooh-monster-ooh-meteor-rock-mutant episodes. They finally advanced the Lana Lang / Clark Kent storyline (about frickin’ time), and we’re not quite sure whether Lex Luthor is good or evil yet… but the only real TV answer is “a little of both, let’s explore that inner conflict”.
