Brian's Blogroll

movie review of 'the box'

The Box is one of the most suspenseful, sometimes creepy, movies I have seen in a while. Although this movie got bad reviews by most critics, I am with the ones who liked it. Despite some plot flaws and a somewhat weak ending, it kept me intrigued and tense throughout.

SPOILER ALERT
The movie stars Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz, There's Something About Mary) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden, X-Men) as a 1970s couple (with all the orange, brown and glorious wallpaper of the era). Diaz plays a school teacher with a Southern drawl and a disfigured right foot with only one toe. She finds out that teachers have just lost 'tuition assistance'. Marsden is a NASA worker who worked on the Mars project and loses his job.

Cue in the mysterious and ominous Arlington Steward (Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon) - a man with half his face missing. He appears one day at the Lewis residence with a strange proposition: Here is a box with a button built into it. If you press it you will receive $1,000,000. The catch is someone in the world will die because of it. You have 24 hours to come to a decision.

The financially strapped Lewis's battle over the morality of the decision but ultimately give in a press the button (there would not be much of a movie if they did not). Strange events start to unfold - nosebleeds, spying strangers, laughing lunatics, missing persons.

Mr. Steward appears to be of a higher power than humans - is he the devil? is he alien? What is the purpose of this experiment he seems to be conducting? There are many questions presented on the film journey, some of which are left unanswered.

This film is not for everyone. But if you like watered down (you can actually follow along) David Lynch strangeness, conspiracy theories, suspense and the 1970s, give this film a try.

Created a new site, tech-lull.com

I have setup another domain tech-lull.com
The transition will take a few days to complete. I am thinking of leaving a permanent tech-lull block on this homepage with latest items (as is), but would have the links then redirect to the tech-lull page.

Seperating the site was done for several reasons including:

1. making material more searchable and easier to navigate
2. separating my blog (personal) from technical material (more professional)
3. speed boosts to the site
4. increased maintainability
5. SEO/adsense reasons

I have registered another domain (art-lull) and am considering moving my artistic endeavors to it after this move is complete. That would leave briandanchilla.com as primarily a blog with homepage entry points to tech-lull and art-lull

On all these sites, I want to improve the ease of adding comments and the presentation of comment replies. Feel free to suggest changes, in the form of a comment or email,

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Last night I watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and very much enjoyed it. spoiler alert! do not read if you do not want some of the movie ruined for you.

It is from the creative mind of Terry Gilliam, director of Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and a member of Monty Python. The movie has a good plot and great visuals, and is also interesting for the morbid reason that it was Heath Ledger's final film. He died about a third of the way through filming, and Gilliam thought that it would never be finished. But alas, it did, and it works.

The movie pits Dr. Parnassus, played by Christopher plummer against Mr. Nick (the devil) played superbly by Tom Waits. As the story unfolds we see that Parnassus is a member of a travelling sideshow, literally a single mobile show. Also in his troupe are the dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer), magician Anton (Andrew Garfield), and Parnassus' daughter Valentina (Lily Cole).

Ledger thickens the plot by playing Tony, a mysterious stranger that the crew finds hanging under a bridge. Tony claims not to remember anything and appears to be hiding something. He joins the troupe but under the watchful eyes of Parnassus and Anton.

The plot hinges around repeated bets between Parnassus and Mr. Nick and the revelation that one such bet was that any child of Parnassus, the devil will own when they turn 16. Valentina just happens to be turning this age in a few days, and the devil is back to collect. Being a sporting man, the devil wagers Parnassus one last bet - "first one to five souls collected" wins.

Parnassus has a prop mirror which acts connects to his subconscious and creates a dream landscape for anyone who enters through the mirror. Once inside, they are free to choose the easy route (the devil) or the harder route (Parnassus).

The movie is visually stunning, and Gilliam enlisted Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Ferrill to finish Ledger's parts. You might think this would be disastrous, but it is done in a way where if you did not know that Ledger died during the movie, you might not know that it was reworked.

As a final note, when I say visually stunning, it is, but it is nothing like Avatar in 3D which is just incredible. However, it is a much better movie overall, with solid plot and just under two hour runtime. Once Avatar is out of theatres, I would recommend this movie over it to anyone.

improved 'song of the day' area

If you have not visited the song of the day archive section in awhile, I invite you to revisit it. There is now streaming available for most songs.

recent events, good fortunes

So what is new with me?
Well, a lot! In chronological order:

I watched some very good World Junior hockey games including both semifinals. The second semifinal between USA and Sweden was very, very good. Extremely fast and skilled players. Thought Sweden should of won that contest.

Got sick (ok I guess this part was not 'good fortune'). Had strep throat for almost two weeks, missed some work and had a low key New Years.

Tressa's luck turned around! She has had a lot of good fortune in 2010 including health, accolades and financial events. She is my lil' panda and I am very happy to still be with her.

I finished doing a technical review for the first round of editing of the upcoming book PHP: The Good Parts. It turned out to be more time consuming then I thought it would be, but was an honour. For my effort, I get some free books of my choice from O'Reilly and my name in the book, so that is very cool.

I got a new job! I am starting at FrontLogic in two weeks and am very excited at the prospects with the new position/company. As with any major transition though, there will be elements of my old job at zu that I will miss.