fine whine

I don't think I'll be able to get past my reservations for its name, but I cannot deny that so-called 'phishing' is a reality. I received another example of it in my work email box yesterday, ostensibly from SunTrust bank.

I've never heard of SunTrust bank, let alone do I have an account there. Never mind the fact that I wouldn't click on a link to change my settings anyway, let alone a fake link in an image covered by an image map. I might be going out on a limb here, but in my opinion email does not need image map functionality.

I'm not entirely convinced that HTML mail was all that great of an idea. But some people really like it, and for that matter 'phishing' must be profitable enough to justify its continued exploitation. They're just not making any money off of me.

Even better than going into watching a film with lowered expectations is to doing it with no expectations at all. Such was the case with Aussie export Dirty deeds, of which I had never heard until I saw it leaning jauntily on the library shelf.

It was pretty good, though the weird camera angles at the beginning of scenes took some getting used to. I assume that it looked a lot cooler on the big screen.

It does look pretty cool, or at least the movie does, though I find myself agreeing to the allmovie guide's mention of a similarity between this and Guy Richie's heist movies. I find my own similarity between mob boss Brian Brown and the man who would be him in Britain, Michael Caine.

I'm losing steam, but the film generally doesn't. There's an amusing food story woven through the rest of them, but it works. The only thing that seems out of place (other than John Goodman's mustache) is the video slot machine the Americans bring with them. It just doesn't say "late sixties technology" to me, but it's really just a minor thing.

No worries.

I've been watching the Die hard movies recently, and tonight ... with a vengeance's number came up. Don't ask me why I've watched it more than once; I offer no excuse other than that I own it and every now and then I feel the need to throw something in that isn't too esoteric or intelligent.

Except that this movie thinks that it is intelligent, or at least brainy. It's got brain teasers in it! Today I realized the simple, blatantly obvious reason why this movie feels so contrived. The first time we see Bruce Willis's John McClane on his feet he's wearing a very offensive signboard on a Harlem street. The "Simon" character who is pulling the strings until the very end (oops, don't want to give away too much) appparently wants McClane dead.

Except that if McClane died in the beginning, Simon's whole plan falls apart. End of story, end of movie, no more billions and billions of dollars (whoops, just gave something away again). Prescient and brilliant though he may be, this Simon fellow could not possibly have predicted Sam Jackson's showing up on the scene. Mister puppet-string puller must have assumed some random good Samaritan would show up.

Who in New York has that kind of faith in human nature?

I'm sorry, Shenia.

I should have introduced you to the co-worker I bumped into at the company thing tonight, but I couldn't remember how to pronounce your name.

I felt like a rat bastard, though I'm sure all of this will pass soon enough.

As I said, though, sorry.

Between last night and tonight I watched some or all of four movies. Wow.

21 grams is more complicated than it needs to be, and less gripping than it thinks it is. Nowhere had I been told that the film was going to be non-linear, though it was easy enough to figure out before too long. "Too long" is a fitting phrase for this, by the way, as it felt like it dragged out far too long. Then again, it might just be the fact that I didn't really care about any of the characters on screen. I realize that movies like this are made with well-known stars (like Benicio and Naomi) to generate some interest and sympathy for uninteresting or unsympathetic characters, but it doesn't work that well. I just didn't care what happened to any of them (though I do have to admit it was nice to see Homicide's Melissa Leo acting again) and wasn't as compelled as I probably should have been. Everybody turned in a good performance, but somewhere between the jarring chronology and the heaps of despair I just didn't care enough. I guess I'll stick to action movies, or something.

For a sequel, X2: X-men united was quite good. I probably shouldn't even say "for a sequel" since it was obvious that this will be the second in a long series of installments of a long-lived series, unless somebody at Fox really screws up. Seen that way, it's a solid installment, and provides encouragement for the inevitably forthcoming follow-ups. I'm not always so tolerant of sequels (like, oh, The Matrix reloaded) but this time around I found the whole take-what-worked-before-and-crank-it-to-11 thing to work pretty much everywhere, except for the scenes with "lady deathshade" or whatever the new mutant secretary's name was (since it was never said onscreen to my memory), particularly the rather drawn-out and utterly unsurprising battle with Wolverine at the end. The movie stopped. Completely. Also seemingly out of place was Storm's rage against humans (or whatever she meant by being "like, sooo done with pity, you know"). Brian Cox was great, as usual, and pretty much everybody put in a good turn. Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler was surprisingly good, but I have low expectations for the actor and know little more than ancillary video game information about the character. So, score one for the good guys, and bring on X3. Soon.

As for comic movies, X2 entertained me more than Hellboy did. I hate to say that, but the movie just didn't do it for me. I'm marginally familiar with Mignola and his creation and am intrigued by them, but the movie just didn't push me over the fan fence. The special effects are great, the characterizations well done, but the plot was a bit overreaching for my tastes. I realize that the movie was likely made with grim prospects of starting a franchise or spawning sequels, but throwing an end-of-the-world scenario in with superhuman/undead Nazis and pyrokinesis just seemed like more than one movie could contain. Unanswered questions abound, but I'll leave them unasked as well. I'll reserve full judgment until I see the Director's Cut, I suppose, but I'm in no rush.

On an unrelated note, one role in which I'd like to see Harvey Keitel is the geniunely nice guy (or for a real challenge, the gay best friend). I think that it would be such a stretch that he'd need to put forth a great effort to distance himself from the hard-talking tough guys he usually plays. Perhaps a supermarket clerk, even, or how about a friendly crossing guard. There may well be a movie in which he plays against type; I just haven't looked for it yet. He plays his usual brute in the overlooked City of industry (incidently also featuring Famke Janssen), and on the whole it works. It's another entry for the "determined crook bent on revenge" genre but the performances make it relatively decent, if not too noteworthy. I knew about it years ago because the soundtrack's a decent selection of trip-hop music, but it wasn't until I was trying to figure out why Famke looked familiar to Jessica (which we still couldn't tell) that I stumbled across the movie again, and lo, the library had a copy. So I watched it.

In other news, I'm happy to hear that there's a Director's Cut of Donnie Darko soon to be released.

I realize that this is both likely blatantly obvious and also a question nobody would consider pondering. This matters not to me.

Jessica and I were wandering around the neighborhood, talking about jobs and stuff, when it came to me that there is no obvious verb for 'what epidemiologists do' (epidemiologe? I don't know how it would be spelled but it sounded right for a brief moment), nor technologists, dentists, or any other -ists that came to mind. I came to wonder if there were any -ists at all that were based on a verb form in the manner of the -ers and others out there, and couldn't think of a single one. Could it be that this is some sort of definitive rule without exception, that rarest of beast in the rules of English grammar? Could it?

For a good ten or fifteen minutes I contemplated this -ist phenomenon. And then I mentally shelved the whole thing, lacking any new insight.

So if you have any thoughts on the matter, please leave a comment. This matters to me. A little.