One to another

This is a recent French flick about a bunch of kids in their early twenties and an incestuous relationship between two of them. It's supposedly based on a true story, and it's really well done: very well cast, very well directed, very well shot, and interesting throughout. It's also got some quirks to it that make the look very distinctive, for instance the lipstick color used on all the characters, which a mauvey sort of tone. This is one of those movies that I secretly hope was made for 10K and made a million...

Revenge

... is sooo sweet. Except that in this movie it doesn't work out that way. I watched this at the behest of Cap'n Tad, and I am forced to agree with him that it is an excellent and underrated movie. It starts out Top Gun fashion, so there goes your breath, if you're so inclined, which I am. Show me a tomcat and I turn to jelly. Then it gets kind of uncomfortable, then it gets really hot, then violent and then it turns into a Tarantino-esque road movie -- I thought this last part is the best done, and the one that Costner's lanky ease fit best. It's filmed on location in Mexico, and, though I can't distinguish Mexico from SoCal, I can tell they actually get weather down there, which makes the cinematography spectacular. Why is it called "Revenge", though?

Rex Goliath 2004 Shiraz

Oh my sweet baby jeezus! I just tried this and mmmm! The silly story about the rooster notwithstanding, this is a fabulous Monterey Co Shiraz, and I think it's likely best drunk solo. It's quite sweet and very berry, so I'd be hard pressed to pair it with savory foods. Yes, I think it's a post-dinner wine. W00t!

BitDefender AntiVirus 2008 for windows

I'm impressed with this little antivirus for many reasons. For one, it's the cheapest on the market, for another, it doesn't constantly hassle you about updating, scanning, rebooting, blah di blah. Finally, it's sufficiently "niced" by default that it's unobtrusive.

Find me guilty

I watched this last night and I was impressed. Vin Diesel can act! Who'd'a thunk?! The scene where he gets beaten up in jail is really heartbreaking.

Miro on mac and windows

I use miro on both my mac mini and my windows machine, and I'm very very impressed. It's not that I don't have things I'd love done differently, because I do -- and I should probably write them down and say something about them sometime. But here is a piece of software that tries to be a bit of everything for everyone, and miraculously succeeds. Azureus vuze is supposed to do most of the same things and it is positively depressing. So hats off to Miro!

Borsao 2006 Red Wine

So, after I bought the last disgusting bottle from TJ's, I changed my m.o. and went to Lazy Acres, where I picked up this Borsao. Granted I've known this wine for a couple years, and I've loved it for as long. I especially love that it says plain "Red Wine" (though it does give the breakdown on the back of the bottle: 75% garnacha, 25% tempranillo) -- another favorite of mine is the Ojai plain "White Wine". This wine never fails to impress me.

Vinas Chilenas Reserva 2006 Merlot

I bought this from TJ's for $3, thinking I've never had a $3 wine before, maybe I should try it. But it's disgusting! I'll keep it for tenderizing or something.

Interface

I was reminded by Cory Doctorow's post in boing boing today of the fact that I read Neal Stephenson's "Interface" on my last trip to Greece and was blown away impressed. That book has so much life-like detail, so many extremely acute observations and is just so damn fun to get into. I left it with my brother when I returned, so I'll have to poll him for his opinion.

Knocked up

Watched this the other night, and I was extremely impressed, entertained some, and dismayed a lot. I thought Heigl's acting was brilliant, and I thought the rest of the cast did a pretty good job, as well. The topic is not near or dear to my heart, the outcome is not one I would have approved of, and the characters were unsympathetic to me, but I thought the movie was masterfully made.

Hairspray

I'm a huge fan of musicals, and when I saw the trailers for this one I loved the look and feel and couldn't wait to see it. I was indeed impressed. The look was indeed amazing, the cast was brilliant, but the emotion, aside from Michelle Pfeiffer's performance, was not there for me.

Incidentally, it just so happens that when the question, "who's your favorite actress" is posed to the men I hold nearest and dearest, a very very large percentage of them responds, "Michelle Pfeiffer". When asked why, they give a reason that's part, "because I actually like her" and part "because I think it's the right answer to give". That latter reason I've always found baffling. Is it that somehow women are supposed to like Michelle enough that we're not threatened by the choice? Or is it that being like her is sufficiently unattainable, and getting her is sufficiently unattainable to the men, that Michelle's name should end the conversation. What's with the universal, ageless appeal of Michelle as an answer to this question?

Velvet Moon Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

It's tough to pass judgment on wine, because a little bit into drinking it you become used to it. So I'll go by whether I want another bottle of this or whether I want to move on to something else. Next, please! I'm not exactly depressed about it. I drank it at the rate of one glass per evening all of last week, and kept it outside the fridge, but away from sun, since the temperatures were cold anyway. It held up to the mistreatment ok. If anything I'd say I was a little disappointed by the taste, but again, not enough to demote it to cooking wine.

The Hitching Post I

Yesterday we went up to Vandenberg AFB to see a launch. It ended up being scrapped, but we had dinner at the Hitching Post I (not the one in "Sideways") in Casmalia. Impressive steak!

Zodiac

Awesome movie, even though I'm not a fan of any of the actors individually! I'm very impressed.

Azureus 3.0.3.4 on a mac

I'd only tried this for Windoze before, and been disappointed by the Vuze interface, which I still don't like. This time I got it for my mac, because BitRocket has BitRotted after the Jaguar upgrade. Yeah, Java hasn't improved any since I last checked... So depressing. I'm running Firefox, iTunes, a hundred other things, and the one little program that's supposed to sit in the background and download things for me, yeah, that's the one taking up the most memory and CPU time.

Lucky number Slevin

So depressing I fell asleep midway, despite the hotness of Lucy.

Mac Mini 80GB HD/Combo drive edition

I bought a Mac Mini, the cheaper version, from Fry's about a month ago. Holy cow, am I impressed! It's silent (though runs hot, obviously, due to the lack of fan), fast, practically shaped, and so far flawless (though the OS X upgrade to Jaguar has compromised its reliability). It has plenty of USB ports in the back, and the firewire 400 is a welcome addition for people who need fast access to an external drive or a fancy webcam. The Bluetooth remote is also super cool! The video card is adequate for everything I've tried so far, though I still haven't installed any of my Myst games on it ;-P

Mac OS X 10.5 Jaguar upgrade

I got the Mac OS X Jaguar upgrade for $9.95 because I recently bought a Mac Mini just before the new OS X came out. I was depressed by how long it took to install the upgrade, the extra 3.5 GB of disk space it needed, the fact that the kernel crashed overnight on the first night (some Atheros-related bogosity), and the fact that BitRocket now crashes every 5 minutes.

Western Digital 500 GB MyBook Essential Edition

I just bought one of these from Circuit City this morning. Aside from the obvious lust that half a terabyte on my desk causes me to feel, I'm impressed at the relative quietness of the thing. We'll see if it's quiet enough to leave it on at night.

If pressed ...

If pressed
would you report
that by this thingy here
you are impressed
or depressed?

This is a blog for opinions and reviews. We make no pretense of impartiality, and we reserve the right to change our mind.