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There is a link that my wife found on StumbleUpon (thank you!) that shows all rare photos from the production of StarWars. All of the characters, actors, movie staff about the production sets and on breaks. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/3XaHae/www.mdolla.com/2011/04/star-wars-photos-that-are-seldom-seen.html/

I've started to watch Stephen Fry in America via Netflix, which is of course is a documentery following the fairly famous Englishman Stephen Fry. He drives around the United States across five or six episodes, meeting different people and visiting some of the more famous landmarks. The series are addressed mostly towards the British audience, to show a little bit of life here on this side of the pond. However, Stephen does not stick around much in one place. He looks around, gives a brief glimpse or a brief interview and moves on, never sticking to more than one or two places per state. He finds something unique and intersting per state, or in case of some states the only thing available. As an example he spends exactly a minute and a half in the fine state of Delaware. What I like about this documentary is that it shows places I would probably never had gone myself(body farm in Virginia featuren in the Bones epiisode) and interviews people I would never have met in my life (a ...

I finished watching the documentary The Captains yesterday and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I was really happy to see all of the StarTrek captains in one movie, on the other hand I am not sure the MAIN question was answered by any of them, and Mr. Shatner did not push for it, What does it mean to be The Federation Starship captain? There were some awesome moments with Patrick Stewart. I like the fact that he admits that StarTrek could have been his greatest accomplishment in television, despite the fact that he is an accomplished actor and thespian. He embraces playing Jean Luc Picard and everything StarTrek accomplished. It also seems that Shatner has the best rapport with Sir Stewart. It is nearly impossible to get a straight answer from Avery Brooks it seems. It's possible that his jazz persona is who he really is, but give a straight answer just once man. He is an accomplished actor, he could have faked seriousness of Benjamin Sisko just once. The movie did no...

I am taking this from Jason's blog and I am going to try to come up with a bunch of things I love about the movies. It might take me several attempts to complete as I tend to forget things quickly. Mostly this list will containt stuff from the movies I have seens thousands of times and remember well. I am also doing specifically American movies. So here's the list in no particular order: 1. The nose signal in The Sting 2. "I'll be back!" The Terminator 3. "Stuck in the middle with you.." not the ear cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs but the way the music is used by Mr. Tarantino (I actually like that about all of his movies) 4. "Girl, you'll be a woman soon" with Uma Thurman OD'ing in Pulp Fiction 5. Bruce Lee grabbing a fistfull of Chuck Norris's fur in Way of the Dragon 6. "Do you understand the words that are coming out my mouth" Chris Tucket to Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 7. The sword against revolver scene in Raiders of ...

Me and The 6 Year Old went to see Mars Needs Moms last Friday. She wanted to see Gnomeo and Juliet, but lucklily (or not) for me it wasn't showing anymore. For some reason I can not picture a good movie about a timeless story adjusted to modern sensibilities. Anyway, I liked Mars Needs it has a very simple story and premise. Martians kidnap Joan Kuscak to use her in robot-mind-melding experiments. And the action ensues. The movie has a lot of action, it's more or less non-stop. There are a lot of effect that were purely done for the 3D experience with falling, flying, spilling, light kid friendly shooting (if there is such a thing) and so on. Most of the action is not scary and some of it is funny. There is one small problem witht he movie. It goes for the realistic style of 3d rendering, instead of toonish. It gets creepy, because facial expressions a lot of times don't match or fail to catch up to what is being emoted. The effect I think comes from the consious part of th...

I know why I am not a good writer. I don't plan ahead. I don't make time to prepare what is it I wanted to sa. I don't jot down points, or think about what I am writing. I just sit down and write. The problem is, if the thought is not developed I end up with a single undeveloped sentence and not much of the story to tell. I don't have stars or thubms up images, I'll just write the first thing that comes to my head. I watched two movies recently. One over the Netflix on my Wii, another one on DVD. Law Abiding Citizen . Encapsulated review: What a waste of time. What is the idea behind this movie? Law is not perfect, I would guess. There are a lot of things in this movie that don't make any sense. I won't go into the detail, some people might actually want to see it I guess. But why would a movie "to-catch-a-bad-guy" all of suddent turn into the race to disarm a bomb. Anyway, lots of things in this movie don't make more sense than let's try ...

AWESOME! 'NUFF SAID!

What is a jewish boy to do on a Christmas day? Of course take his child and go to the movies. Me and the 5 Year Old went to see A Princess and the Frog. Surprisingly it's a good movie, well drawn and colorful. Very little gimmiks, a lot of jazz and dixie music. Vey funny characters and very little "Disneyee" things. I think killing off one of the characters was too much for a little kid to take in, but they have spun it nicely. Anyway, it was a very enjoyable affair, espcially to go with your kid. Tomorrow I am going to see Avatar with my wife.

Jason posted a nice movie meme on his blog. It asks to least 15 movies that made a sort of impact on your life, or stuck in you memory. The trick is not to take more than 15 minutes on the list. Given my usual memory state, I will try my best to come up with one. I also can not sit in one place for 15 minutes. 1. Commando . This was the first American movie I have ever seen on VHS. Impressed the hell out of me. Also introduced me to Arnold. 2,3. Alien or The Thing . My memory is shoddy, but these two were the first horror flicks I have ever seen. There were moments in Alien where I had to step out of the room and pick around a corner. 4. Police Academy Part 3 . I don't remeber why I started with Part 3, but I remember laughing my ass of. 5. Pulp Fiction . Should be No 1 really. I loved this movie, and still do. The soundtrack made the biggest impact. I am a person often driven by an auditory experience as well as visual. The soundtrack fit so perfectly with the movie, i can'...

The work and school load are still pretty big, so here are some thoughts from the weekend. - Everything tastes better from a grill. - McCormick Grillmates are awesome to put on any meet. Mesquite spices (whatever they might be) add so much flavor to the smoke and to the meat it's possible to drown in your own saliva. - Went to see UP! Another awesome offering from the Pixar. On par with Incredibles. I think Pixar needs to disassociate themseleves from Disney. - Performing arts isn't all fun. The instructions we recieved for a "dress rehearsal" are very similar to what, I bet, soldiers go through for a roll-call.. maybe even SWAT preparations before an all out assault.

I have done something on the weekend that I don't think I did ever. I went to see a late night showing of a movie. Yes, I went to see Startrek alone. A lot of folks have written a lot of words about the movie, so all that i am going to say is that I enjoyed it. There were several pieces that did not make sense to me, or I thought the movie could do without, but that's to be expected. The Little One participated in a Russian school recital of sorts. She did great, even though she was a bit scared in the beginning. I am very very proud of her. And that's it.

I have a lot to do before the vacation, so I'll cop-out for a bunch of mini-posts today. Post #1. We watched Righteous Kill yesterday. It's a good movie. Here's my question. Without a doubt, both DeNiro and Pacino are great actors. Why is it then, that the writers prefer to give monologues to Pacino? It seems like he stole the movie, while DeNiro was more of a standby. Post #2. This amazing stat is off Peter King's Monday Morning Quaterback. Mariano Rivera's career blown saves against Boston: 12. Mariano Rivera's career blown saves against the other 28 teams in baseball: 47. Post #3. We went to see Jersey Boys on Friday, as part of our 9 year of being married. Excellent show. Good music, amazing singing from the cast. The story is "loosely" based on the Four Seasons story and Franky Valli. After the show I absolutely had to get a compilation of Four Seasons music. Some of the song I easily recognized some I didn't. Most of them did not get any asso...

After watching The Bucket List : There is a scene in a movie where a little girl comes up to Jack Nicholson and smiles. My thought, you have to be a pretty brave kid to do what she did. Mr. Nicholson is a scary son of a bitch in that movie. Kudos to the girl. After watching another cop show : Why is it that cop-show writers feel that the correct way to finish a case is having a perp admit the guilt in the interrogation room. What is the message behind that? Do they not trust us to figure out the guilty party by the "evidence" the investigation amasses? Work related : for those classic ASP developers. Server 2003 does not like you to have an epmty global.asa file. It will throw a HTTP 500 Error, without an explanation. Better to not have a global.asa at all. School related : Financial Management or Managerial Finance class has started. The good thing is that sessions two and three are online course. Finally couple of Tuesdays where I don't have to go to school, but learn ...

We went to see a movie today. The Inlaws came-in to spend an evening with their grand-daughter, which pretty much means that we need to leave the house. We couldn't decide which movie to see. There's Knowing, getting good reviews. There's I Love You Man, not something to see with one's wife. And then there was Duplicity, a perfect match for a couples' visit to the movie theater. There Julia ROberts, and then there's Clive Owen. Miss Roberts is her charming self. Mr. Owen is good, but for some reason I thought that Mr. Clooney might have made a better job. The movie is so twisted I did not have a clue about what was real and what wasn't. Till the very end I thought the actors were playing each other, and it got to be a little too much. I think i was expecting sincerety to appear a bit sooner, than the movie-makers. They just kept throwing twists until the end. I had a fleeting thought about the ending in the beginning, which was of course a correct one, but t...

The general consensus of the blogosphere is that if you have nothing to write about, do not write anything. Well, screw that. I will write about a lot of small nothings today. The weekend was hectic as always, or so it seemed. Looking back we always get bewildered at the fact that we are tired as hell without really doing that much. I blame everything on the weather. It has rained for two days non-stop. The sum-pump has been chugging along for two days now, and was still working in the morning. One question we asked ourselves was how did we manage not get flooded without turning it on for the last three years. Only logical answer was that this was a very rainy last six months. The Little One has started a new rebellion under a slogan that "Sleeping is boring!" It only concerns the night time sleeping, not the afternoon weekend naps. We have no clue why this is happening now, but she falls asleep very late at night now, which is very bad, since she can not wake up normally in ...

ON friday night me and my wife did something that we weren't able to do for the last 3 or 4 years. We went to Andy's Jazz club, on the more famouse Chicago jazz spots that features live muscisians. We were able to witness two live features.The first one was Kelly Brand Trio, consisting of a piano player, a bass, and a drummer. The played variations on Miles Davis and other famouse musicians and were very very nice. The featured artist of the night was a dual sax act of John Wojciechowski - a tenor saxophone player with a local jazz celebrity Mike Smith. Unfortunately we were able to capture only first half hour of the show, but the guys were absolutely amazing. John is in the first clip. I apologize for the darkness. It's the only video I could find. He is the taller one of the two. MIke Smith is in the second clip. Absolutely amazing night of Jazz. I wish we could get out more often. Oh, and on Saturday we watched Madagascar 2 and Body of Lies. Very good two movies. Madaga...

Not a bad weekend overall. For those who taped Oscars by didn't see it yet, avoid this post as it got spoilers. We have made an exception and went to see an Oscar nominated movie on Saturday. With the exception of Lord of the Rings movies (I think at the time we went to see it it wasn't nominated yet) I usualy avoid movies that get Best Picture nomination and go for those that get nominated for best Visual Effects. We went to see Slumdog Millionaire. I was a great movie, in all aspects. Very entertaining, good story, excellent production values (whatever I believe the production values are). I think it deserved the Best Picture nod. The interesting part about it, for me, was that it was made by Brits, with Indian cast, and yet it was very Hollywood-y, story line and all. It also seemed to clean house at the Oscars. We watched the show, as we always do. I think it went faster than the previous ceremonies. Less presenters, good hosting by Mr. Jackman. Kudos to him for the musical...

Well, the Razzies are out and here are this year's nominees Worst Picture Bratz * Daddy Day Camp I Know Who Killed Me I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry Norbit Worst Actor Nicholas Cage — Ghost Rider, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and Next Jim Carrey — The Number 23 Cuba Gooding, Jr. — Daddy Day Camp and Norbit Eddie Murphy (as Norbit) — Norbit * Adam Sandler — I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry Worst Actress * Jessica Alba — Awake, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Good Luck Chuck Logan Browning, Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos, and Skyler Shaye — Bratz Elisha Cuthbert — Captivity Diane Keaton — Because I Said So Lindsay Lohan (as Aubrey) — I Know Who Killed Me Lindsay Lohan (as Dakota) — I Know Who Killed Me Worst Supporting Actor * Orlando Bloom — Pirates of the Carob-bean: At Wit’s End — aka Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Kevin James — I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry Eddie Murphy (as Mr. Wong) — Norbit Rob Schneider — I Now Pronounce You C...

To all my 2 readers Happy New Year! Let it be no worse than this one! I have wached Hancock yesterday and liked it a lot. Better than some other superhero movies in my opinion. I watched the last Mummy, very enjoybale flick, lots of action little pretense, funny as hell. An also watched the first 20 minutes of War Inc. I couldn't stand it for more than 20 minutes. As much as I like both Cusacks, this was a farce, and not a smart one. The jokes and homages were lame. What I usually like about Cusack's movies is the interchanges between characters. Not chemistry between John and Marissa Tomei. Again, that's the last post for this year. I'll be piss drunk in about 5 hours.

My two weeks of vacation are into the second week. I am procrastinating the hell out of it. My days consist of playing the new Prince Of Persia, which is a visual masterpiece, occasionally going to the gym, and trying to watch a lot of movies. I haven't watched a lot of movies so far. I did watch Hellboy II. I found it extremely enjoyable. The story isn't too bad, the acting is good, although Selma Blair is slipping IMHO. The visuals are great, del Toro's style is absolutely amazing. Today I will be watching Hancock. The idea of an anti-hero hero is always appealing to me and Will Smith has grown as an actor in leaps and bounds. I do have an assignment due next week, but I just can't force myself to start on it yet. An ethical case study based on the bribery and international business corruption policies and laws. --------------------------- In other stupid news, Illinois goverement has FAILED to stop Gov. Blah-go-blah-blah from selecting a senate appointee. How the hel...