The Day the Earth Stood Still

I saw updated version of The Day The Earth Stood Still the other day. It was tolerable, but just tolerable. This time, aliens come to earth to warn the pesky humans to take better care of the earth! No warnings about being so warlike (as in the original). The spearhead of this effort is Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), whom the directors/producers cleverly made an alien who is “born” into human-form, thus in one swoop explaining away his incredibly wooden performance!

Jennifer Connelly gamely tries to save the movie, playing Helen Benson, a xenobiologist (can’t remember her real title) of sorts who is brought on board by the U.S. Government to study Klaatu. Realizing that the gov’t sucks, she helps Klaatu escape and they run around trying not to get caught while Klaatu explains to Helen that the best way to clean up the earth is to destroy it. Well not quite true. Just destroy all the humans and other living creatures on the planet. But don’t worry, they collected a few samples so they can reseed the planet afterwards!

Yes, the best the super-intelligent, super-capable aliens can think of is to destroy the Earth to save it. What are we, in some sort of strange Viet-Nam era paradox? The reasoning is strange: our planet is one of the few capable of supporting complex life. Humans are mucking up the earth. Thus, humans must die. Of course humans might be considered the most complex form of life on the planet. Sentient and all that. So what is the point to killing all the humans? So that some other creature can evolve to be intelligent and probably also come close to destroying the environment so that the aliens can destroy them too? So what is the point of “saving” the planet for complex life?

I think the method of destroying the earth was chosen so that they could employ some computer animation people and do cool scenes of semi-trucks being disintegrated or a football stadium being disintigrated by the pseudo-nanotechnological equivalent of locusts. The things actually had wings! It seems like it would have been a lot easier to simply create a virus that would make everybody sick and die. Of course, you could create a virus to reduce fertility rates so that the population declines and not just wipe out every living thing on the planet! Or… I could spend much more time picking apart the movie and the ludicrous plot, but I’m on a lunch break and have to get back to work!

I thought most of the acting was pretty decent. Everybody acted like they were in a good movie. Too bad they weren’t! And really, its not like the movie made we want to stab my eyes out or anything. It’s just a dumb movie.

Watch this movie late at night when nothing else is on! 3/10

Get your Vitamin D!

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51913.php

This was forwarded to me by a friend of mine. I’ve seen other articles that have, dosage-wise, said the same thing: take 4000 – 5000 IU per day of Vitamin D in the wintertime to avoid the flu.

Give the various nasty flus that are running around this year, and the dangers of getting vaccinated, I think it is more important than ever to make sure you have adequate Vitamin D levels. It is so cheap these days that it’s almost criminal not to take enough! As with anything, do your research before taking something but I am taking 4000IU/day right now and will increase to 5000 IU/day when the weather gets really bad and I no longer see the sun!

Sunshine Cleaning

I saw Sunshine Cleaning the other day. I liked the movie. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a good movie. The essential story is single mom with troubled kid needs more money and starts a small business to get more money. The background story is that the single mom, Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) is a former head cheerleader whose life has gone all wrong. She is still seeing her high-school beau on the side though he’s married to somebody else! She never went to college so is cleaning houses for a living. Her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) is in even worse shape! A series of events leads Rose and Norah to end up doing crime scene cleanup. The money is good if you can stand the odor!

So I thought the plot was decent, no complaints there. There were many funny scenes along with some painful ones (but in a good way – they were meant to be painful not accidentally painful) and heartfelt ones. Once scene I thought was good was one that occurred during a baby shower that Rose attended. The mom was a former high-school cheerleader and they had lost contact. I think the idea was that Rose pretty much lost contact with everybody from high-school as she didn’t want to be found. Rose’s meeting was accidental: she was cleaning her former friend’s house.

Anyway, at this baby-shower, Rose explains what she does. At first she talks very superficially, but even that sounds very “blue-collar” to her (Rose’s friend was upper middle class along with all of her friends). So she digs deeper and begins to talk about how she helps people by taking care of something unpleasant. As she talks, you can see the lightbulb go off in her own head. Her words became meaning. It was a good scene.

The only really odd thing about the movie was the color. It sort of ‘wandered’ a bit; like they had some sort of film development issue.

I’m going to give this a 6/10. I liked it, it’s watchable. I don’t think it rates higher for me personally because, in the end, I don’t really think about the characters. With some movies, you sort of wonder what happened to the characters after the movie ends. I guess, to me, that means the characters are more real in some sense.

Inglorious Basterds

I saw Inglorious Basterds this weekend. I liked the movie. It is long, but I don’t realize it was so long until after the movie was over and I looked at my watch! Inglorious Basterds is sort of a fictional historical rewrite of WWII. In it, a small group of elite Jewish killers were dropped into France to extract their revenge on the “nat-sis”, as Lt. Aldo Raine (Bradd Pitt) would say it.

Though there is some gore (scalpings and some baseball bats to heads) for the most part, the movie is almost what you might call a spy thriller. There isn’t really all that much gore, but when there is, there’s a lot of it!

The start of the movie is awesome. It involves a long and increasingly tense scene as the ” Jew Hunter”, as he is nicknamed is Col. Hans Landa  and fantastically, creepily played by Christoph Waltz, interviews the farmer to see where a particular Jewish family went. This sets up one of the characters for the future.

There are 3 things I especially liked about the movie. First is the classic Quentin Tarantino dialogue. Great dialogue and for the most part and it sounds like something a real person would have said. Second, Tarantino isn’t afraid to let a scene and its dialogue go on for a long time as long as things build and build and build. So many movies these days are like music vidoes that jump frenetically from one scene to the next. Third, I liked the extensive use of foreign language in the film. Yeah, you have to read sub-titles a lot, but it’s cool to have a popular, big-budget movie that makes you work for a it just a little. I was often a bit disappointed when they switched to English, though in one case, there was a diabolical explanation as to why English was chosen.

I thought the choice of actors was quite good too. Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa was by far the runaway pick. Everybody else was good, but Mr. Waltz ate up his scenes! But nobody seemed out of place. Brad Pitt’s character was good and fun, but, though he’s featured prominently in the ads, he wasn’t on screen all that much.

8/10

Good news/Bad news

I had a body fat test done this morning. The good news is that I’m up about 1.3lbs of muscle. The bad news is that I’m up about the same amount of fat. So now I’m at 15.8% body fat (from 15.4%). I guess I will start working on cutting some fat, though it’s gonna affect my weight-lifting negatively. I know part of this is due to diet. I tend to eat way too heavily in the evening and not enough during the day. There have been days where I’ve been more than 1000 calories short by my final meal. So I’m left with the choice of being way short (meaning no or little muscle gain) or eating more and having some of it end up as fat.

District 9

I saw District 9 yesterday with some friends. I liked the movie. It is definitely a “sci-fi” movie. It has aliens, alien technology, a floating mothership and even a “mech“. Plus there is a rather large amount of fighting in the movie. However, the core of the movie revolves around a single character, Wikus Van De Merwe, who, at the start of the movie, strongly reminded me of Michael Scott in The Office.

The basic outline of the story is that 20 years ago, a large alien ship shows up and hovers over Cape Town, South Africa. 1 million plus aliens are onboard, but the vast majority of them are functionally equivalent to worker drones, so they are waiting on board, starving when humans finally decide to cut their way into the ship. Eventually, the aliens are resettled into one giant camp/slum, “District 9″. Now the higher-ups want the aliens moved to a new camp further away from humans. Wikus is chosen to be the guy in charge for the operation.

Initially the movie is even shot in a sort of documentary style and we see Wikus moving from shack to shack in District 9 attempting to evict the rather hostile residents with lesser or greater success. Eventually he manages to expose himself to some alien technology that starts a transformation in him and then all hell breaks loose.

Plot spoilers will follow, so be warned!

The bad parts: There are some logical inconsistencies in the movie. I wondered how the small child of “Christopher” (I think that was the alien’s name) knew so much. The little guy sort of saved Wikus’ and Christopher’s bacon at one point activating a mech at just the right time and moving the mothership into position. There is a mysterious black fluid, that is a power source, though to me it seemed more of a control fluid, that is needed to reactivate the command module of the mothership. But then the command module is shot down and so the mothership uses what amounts to a tractor beam to pull the command module up to it. Why did the aliens, especially Christopher, wait 20 years to do that? Why was the command module never found even though it was buried on a few feet underground (ground penetrating radar would have found it easily).

There are lots of what I consider to be minor plot questions like this. So the movie isn’t perfect. What movie is really?

What really drives the movie is Wikus. As he become more alien in form, he becomes more human in spirit. He starts the movie as sort of a friendly prick, who can make light of what we might consider monstrous things like killing a bunch of alien babies (the aliens start out as eggs). However, as things evolve, and Wikus discovers things about what the humans have been doing to the aliens, he begins to have a change of heart. Eventually, he forms a sort of alliance with Christopher to recapture the control fluid from the government labs. Finally, things turn into more of a friendship and Wikus sacrifices himself so that Christopher has a chance to go home.

The special effects were top-notch. After a short period of time you stop paying attention to the fact that the aliens are all CGI. They did such a good job with shadows and having the environment deform (there was one scene where an alien walks over some corrugated steel and you see it move and deform) that you forget all about CGI and just watch the movie.

Worth watching even if it is not perfect. 8/10.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about 10 days ago. It was the Imax 3D. I was disappointed. The 3D Imax experience is not worth the extra cost. You get about 10 minutes of 3D at the very beginning of the movie and after that, you’re done! You have to hang on to your 3D glasses for the rest of the movie!

This move was the most disappointing movie of the bunch for me. There wasn’t much action, the plot-line felt unfocused, and the title of the movie, and, of course the book, was barely a present in the movie. I thought the actors were all reasonably competent, like they have bene throughout the movie, though the Harry Potter character is somehow becoming less and less interesting even though the whole series is all about him! I don’t think it is the fault of the actor.

I’m going to plot spoil, so don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet (hah! Like that would be the case). One thing that I found disappointing was the whole “half-blood Prince” plotline. Harry has his (the half-blood Prince’s) book, so he kicks ass in the potions class since the half-blood prince obviously knew his potions very well (and annotated the book quite thoroughly). There is questioning about who he is, but not much of the movie is devoted to it. Only at the very end of the movie do you find out who it is, and then even the revelation that the half-blood prince is Snape is almost an afterthought. What is the meaning of “half-blood prince”? Is this supposed to be revealed in the last book? I wonder if it will ever be mentioned again?

There was some romantic comedy action going on, which was fine, but again, it was sort of sprinkled into the movie. “A little of this, and a little of that…” There just wasn’t a real drive to this movie unlike most of the other ones where there was a central mystery to be solved.

I would wait till it comed out on DVD.

4/10 (add one if you are a Harry Potter fan)

Sugar During Exercise Increases Power and Endurance

Interesting info here. With my new workout program (Book Of Muscle, Beginner), I am working so hard that after only 30 minutes, I am literally shaking from low blood sugar. I am going to have to start bringing a workout drink with some carbs in it since next week I will be working out for nearly 60 minutes!

Dr. Gabe Mirkin’s Fitness and Health E-Zine July 26, 2009

Sugar During Exercise Increases Power and Endurance

A study from Copenhagen, Denmark shows that taking sugar while you exercise increases the amount of training you can do, and does not lessen the benefits of your increased training (Journal of Applied Physiology, June 2009). In this study, men trained one leg while ingesting a 6 percent sugar drink and the other leg while taking an artificially sweetened (sugarless) drink, two hours a day, on alternate days, five days a week. The legs trained with sugar had 14 percent more power and a 30 percent greater time to exhaustion.

Athletes in sports requiring endurance need to train in their sport many hours each day. They damage their muscles by taking a hard workout on one day, feel sore on the next, and then take less intense workouts for as many days as it takes for the muscles to heal and the soreness to go away. The more intense the training workout without injury, the more intensely they can compete. The longer they can go on their less intense recovery days, the tougher their muscles become to withstand the tremendous forces on them during their hard workouts and during competition.

Anything that can increase the intensity of their hard days or amount of work they can do on their recovery days will make them better in competition. Running out of muscle sugar makes you feel tired. So anything that preserves stored sugar in muscles during a workout will help you exercise longer. This study shows that taking sugar regularly during workouts allows you to extend the amount of training without lessening the benefits that you receive from the extra work.

The question had been asked whether restricting sugar during training could enhance performance by teaching the muscles to get along with less sugar. These authors showed that the enzymes used to convert sugar and fat to energy function just as well when sugar is taken continuously during exercise. The muscles trained on sugar had no loss in the amount of stored sugar or the ability to convert food to energy.

Another study showed that taking a drink containing both protein and sugar every three miles and at the finish of a 36-mile bicycle time trial was far more effective than a drink containing just sugar in 1) riding faster at the end of the time trial, 2) preventing next-day muscle soreness and 3) lessening muscle damage, as measured by a blood test called CPk (International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, April 2009). A protein-sugar drink taken immediately after intense exercise also hastens healing of the muscles damaged by hard exercise (Journal of Applied Physiology, April 2009).

Taking refined carbohydrates (sugar or flour) when you are not exercising can cause a high rise in blood sugar that increases risk for diabetes and heart attacks. Contracting muscles remove sugar so fast from the bloodstream that blood sugar usually does not rise too high during exercise and for up to half an hour after you finish exercising.

Saw a house fire this morning

Around 4AM I was awoken to crackling noises. In my dreamy state, I thought, “that sounds like a fire”. When the noise persisted for a minute or two, I got up and looked out the window. I saw a small fire in what, to me, sleepy and in the dark of 4AM, looked like a charcoal BBQ close to the house across my backyard. I watched it for a few moments and it quickly died down to embers. Since the fire didn’t seem to be doing anything, I went back to bed. Who knew why they were burning anything at 4AM?

About 30 minutes later, I heard crackling again. I got up and looked out. The fire was back. Only this time, it looked a bit different somehow. It was still pitch black out, but it seemed like it was closer to the house. I watched it for a few moments. This time it didn’t seem to be dying down. Then I noticed that it seemed like the vinyl siding was beginning to warp. Yep, the vinyl sidingwas definitely warping! Uh oh! I woke up Stacy getting ready to run over to the house to knock on the door while she called 911. Didn’t think about the fact that I could do both at the same time.

By the time Stacy had gotten up and we looked out the window again, the house was definitely on fire! It was amazing how fast the fire gained strength. I dialed 911 and at that moment, the neighbors came out the back door and hosed down the fire. Within moments, the fire was out. 

The fire department still came and they sawed into the exterior. I saw that they had a thermal imager so perhaps they saw some latent hot spots.

Fortunately, it doesn’t appear anybody was hurt and there is primarily exterior damage to the house.

The Man From Earth

I saw The Man From Earth the other day with Stacy and Anthony and Randy. I liked the movie. Stacy hated the movie. The movie is very intellectual and it takes place almost entirely within one room of a house. The basic premise is: how would you react if your coworker claimed to be 14,000 years old? Of course, we’re not talking about a crowd of construction workers who would ply him for tips on seducing chicks. His coworkers are college professors who think he’s gone nuts.

I liked the basic premise of the movie. It is an interesting idea. And from the 14,000 year old guy’s perspective, how do you “prove” that you are who you say you are? Anything you say that is not written in the history books cannot be verified and anything you do say that is in the history books you could have simply read there! Certainly photographs from the early 1900’s might suffice, but even then, without some sophisticated testing equipment, there is no way to determine the veracity of the photo! In the end, the exercise comes down to one of faith: do you believe him or not?

In the movie, different characters react differently, from intrigue to outright hostility. Some find what he tells them offensive while others are entertained. Some test him, other simply accept.

I thought the ending was surprising in a good way. I will have to leave it at that or spoil the plot!

This movie is hard for me to give a number to. Part of me wants to give it an 8/10 because I thought it was thought-provoking and nicely done. On the other hand, I find myself thinking that, even given its intellectual nature, it hasn’t really “stuck to my ribs” in that I don’t dwell on the movie like I do really good movies. So I am going to give this a 7/10.

Yeah, another 7/10. Keven’s generic “it was pretty good” number. Sorry!