The Bourne Ultimatum

Jason Bourne is back for another round of heart pounding, edge of your seat, “no way that could happen” action orgasms. He continues to defy death time and time again for at least another hour and 51 minutes. The end cap of this exciting trilogy deserves every percentage point of the 94% it is getting on Rotten Tomatoes. Attention retards behind the making of Transformers, please report to your local theater to see how an action movie is supposed to be made and don’t forget to take notes. The Bourne Ultimatum is intelligent through and through and does not slow down along to the way to make sure the lowest common denominator is following along. This film is proof positive that great acting and action flicks can indeed get along. Everyone from Joan Allen to even Julia Stiles turned in great performances that showed that these actors were completely on board with director Paul Greengrass in making a quality, thought provoking action film. Although it is still a little awkward to accept Matt Damon’s transformation from Will “It’s not your fault” Hunting to a ninja-like Jack Bauer, you can’t say he isn’t good in this role. This chapter of the Bourne trilogy is more emotional than the others. Numerous uncomfortably tight close ups of the characters faces shows the turmoil and transformations as they question loyalties, accept hard truths and lose faith in ideals. Greengrass has a knack for making you feel like you’re there. The tension leaps from the screen and enters the theater creating a feeling reminiscent of his previous achievement, United 93. As the characters toil with corruption and question institutions so do we. How much liberty are we willing to give up in order to feel safe? How far should the government be allowed to go in the name of security? Are there factions of our government that are better left top secret? These are the questions real politicians, soldiers, and citizens are wrestling with today. I guess it’s comforting to know that Jason Bourne doesn’t have any better answers than we do.

I've been Simpsonized

This is what SimpsonizeMe.com thinks I would look like as a character on The Simpsons. I don't see the resemblance. It makes me look like I'm in my 40's. Maybe that's just me.



Short and sweet review of The Simpsons Movie: Very funny. Even better than the past few seasons of the Simpsons. It lives up to the hype. It didn't feel like I was just watching a really long episode. The one liners are one after another. I hope we don't have to wait another 17 years for another movie.

San Francisco

For our honeymoon, we decided on San Francisco mainly because of the MLB All Star Game but also because we both had never been there. My first impression of San Francisco was not great. On the ride from the airport, the cab driver had to drive us through a seedy part of downtown that I had never seen on Full House. Scum-soaked, hourly-rate hotels and pornography stores created a mishmash of uneasiness and regret as we cruised through the streets. The scenery greatly improved as we got closer to the hotel. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt which is located in Union Square by Market Street. The area was a high class shopping district that put my stomach at ease. There were Louis Vinton, Apple Stores, and Neiman Marcus as far as the eye could see. After dropping off our bag (I use the singular “bag” because American Airlines misplaced two of our bags for a while), we hit the streets and immersed ourselves in the flamboyant arrogance that can only be found in the heart of wealthy California. To our surprise (insert tongue in cheek) there were a myriad of homeless men and women draped across the sidewalks. One has to wonder why there are so many homeless in the wealthy, liberal Mecca that is San Francisco, but I digress. That’s another blog for another day. If you can tolerate being asked for change every seven and a half seconds, a stroll in downtown San Francisco can be quite nice. The weather is really great. It hardly gets above 80 degrees in the middle of the day in July, which is pretty remarkable. At night, it gets fairly cold; sometimes in the low 60’s depending on the wind. San Francisco is quite accessible by foot. There were only a few attractions we had to ride the bus for. Unlike New York, every pedestrian obeys traffic signals. Nobody cross the street when the don’t walk sign is lit and nobody crosses outside of the crosswalk. Maybe it’s the pacifist nature of a liberal city; maybe it’s the fact that you would most certainly be flattened by cars running red lights. Who knows?
The food in San Francisco was surprising not terrible. There is a much wider variety of restaurants than I expected. Just about every restaurant is a “fusion” of different ethnic cuisines showing off the city as a vast melting pot. We ate at a number of restaurants: most of them good, others merely adequate. They all share a commonality in the level of service. Every single restaurant in San Francisco has horrible service. It doesn’t matter if you go to a greasy spoon or an upscale bistro, the servers could care less if you enjoyed yourself or not. The servers are unfriendly, slow, and rarely come by to check up on you. Maybe they are trying to be more like Europe or maybe they didn’t like us, either way bad service can ruin a dining experience no matter how great the food is. The best place we ate was a French restaurant called Le Charm. This cozy bistro featured interesting entrees and the best French onion soup I’ve ever had. It wasn’t too pricey either. A close runner up was Citizen Cake. Their specialty is pastries, but these bakers wiped up a pretty tasty roasted eggplant sandwich for lunch. After lunch, we had their famous “personal-sized” cakes which are whole cakes about the size of a Ding-Dong that feed one person. Having the largest Chinatown in America, we figured the Chinese food must be great. We ate at two restaurants there: Young Café and The Four Seas. Young Café was a small, rambunctious joint that seemed to specialize in quick lunches. The Four Seas is Chinatown’s oldest restaurant which featured dim sum and family style portions. I was a little shocked that the food in Chinatown wasn’t that much different than the Chinese food in Baton Rouge. I guess we went to the touristy places. Oh well. Some of the other places we ate were the overly trendy Cortez and Colibri restaurants as well as the charmingly strange Irish bar/cafeteria Lefty O’Doul’s. San Francisco doesn’t have as many attractions as other cities that size. We walked on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was pretty much a huge bridge. We got exactly what we expected. Fisherman’s Wharf is also a popular spot for out-of-towners. It is a touristy, fisherman-themed money trap on the bay that is lined with overpriced restaurants and stores that sell stuff that makes the products in Spencer’s Gifts look luxurious. It reminded me a lot of Navy Pier in Chicago. We didn’t stay there long because if you aren’t in the mood to eat or waste money there really is nothing there for you. We also ventured off to City Lights Bookstore as was suggested to us by more than one person as a place we should check out. It seemed cool enough. They had a huge inventory for such a small, independent bookstore, but the three different Socialist magazines (sitting right next to the latest copies of The Nation and The Progressive) available told me everything I needed to know about that place. Needless to say, they did not have the latest copy of National Review I was looking for. Open minded, Schmopen minded. We also went to the MLB All Star game and took a tour of wine country, but I will blog about those experiences separately. San Francisco was everything I thought it would be, but I am a little disappointed that I was only asked one time to join the ACLU. However, there are always union protests to remind you that the heart of San Francisco bleeds, but not for the homeless of course.

Country + Nolan Ryan = WTF

I'm probably one of the biggest Nolan Ryan fans out there (especially under the age of 40). I have over 300 Nolan Ryan baseball cards including his rookie card, I own a $300 retro Nolan Ryan Angels jersey and I've waited in line 6 hours at an Arlington baseball card convention to get his autograph, but this is too much:

Transformers

Man, that was stupid. Michael Bay has done it again. He’s managed to make yet another two and a half hour car commercial and make us pay to see it. That was probably the worst Chevrolet commercial I have ever seen, including the ones that are shown in Louisiana with country singers. One hundred fifty million dollar budgets and extraordinary special effects cannot legitimize the juvenile core of Transformers. They will always be robots that turn into cars, and it will never be interesting to any thinking person over the age of ten. It’s obvious who this movie was aimed for with scenes where robots speak Ebonics, robots urinate on humans, and cheesy lines are dispensed by the dozens. This movie caters more to fans of Bad Boys 2 (another Michael Bay bore) than that of The Matrix. The movie proves that Michael Bay still has learned nothing about story telling. He breaks all the rules without even knowing there were rules to begin with. His dizzying camera angles continue a trend amongst action directors who fill the need to spend fifty grand on the special effects for one shot and then show you NONE of it. Did we really need to see a character from the perspective of a bike chain? The constant switching of camera angles during intense scenes creates a disorienting array of rapid movement that makes the action indiscernible. Why spend all that money on CGI, and not let the audience see these spectacular fights. The rare instances where they pulled the camera back and stuck with one angle for more than ten seconds created unbelievable visuals including the best shot of the movie where Optimus Prime and Megatron tumble from several freeway levels. Had they done that more throughout the movie, it might have held my interest for more than ten minutes of the two and a half hours (did I mention that this movie was two an a half hours!?). The writers did try to keep the smarter crowd interested by tying the Transformers into American history with them being responsible for the Hoover Dam and such. The notion of a secret organization (Sector 7) reverse engineering all our inventions from aliens would have been interesting had I never seen a movie called Men in Black. I’ve just read that they Bay has mentioned plans for a sequel. Thank goodness because I didn’t get to vomit at this one.

The Zephyr Experience

It’s strange seeing how much I like baseball that I’ve never been to a New Orleans Zephyrs game before. Ten years later, free tickets fell into my lap, and I find myself in the middle of over-commercialized, nonchalant AAA baseball. The atmosphere at Zephyr Field is unlike any other sporting event I’ve attended. I’ve never been to a game where over 95 percent of the audience could care less about what was happening on the field. I don’t think it would be a stretch to suggest that majority of the “fans” couldn’t tell you how baseball is played. Of course when it’s “one dollar beer night” in Metairie, it’s hard to care about anything. I too found myself lost in the humid buzz that only Louisiana weather mixed with lukewarm Bud Light can create. Good thing there was a scoreboard or no one would have known when to leave. Our seats were great; only four rows from the Zephyrs’ dugout. I’ve never actually been that close to the field since I’ve watched a high school game. Sitting that close to the action opened new experiences to game for me such as hearing the coach scream at the umpire and actually being able to understand what he’s saying. It was a relief to know someone at the ballpark cared who won. I also discovered what a buzz-kill a foul ball flying at your face can be. It was great to see that Minor League baseball still has the charm and aura that Bull Durham revealed to us. There’s nothing in a AAA ballpark that isn’t for sale to the highest bidding sponsor. It would be sad to see baseball whored out this way if it weren’t so amusing. Who can’t smile at the “Hamburger Helper Skillet Challenge” and the like in between innings? I can’t blame them; if the audience isn’t interested in the game, you’ve got to come up with something. Nothing compliments dollar beer night better than “Jewish Heritage Night” complete with Jewish baseball trivia (of course Shawn Green was an answer) and kosher food in the Coors Light pavilion. It’s wasn’t the Wailing Wall, but I’m sure it was the next best thing. And that’s the unpredictable gimmicky nature of Minor League baseball that keeps Americans and me coming back for more.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Huge improvement. Rise of the Silver Surfer continues Marvel’s streak of making sequels that surpass the original. Unfortunately, it also continues another streak: putting silly dance numbers in Marvel superhero movies. That streak now stands at an obnoxious two in a row (see my review of Spiderman 3). When comparing this film to the first, there is hardly a comparison. The humor is funnier, the writing more coherent, and the subplots more relevant and integral. However, when comparing this movie to any other movie, I can see why many critics will pan it. The movie’s themes are cliché and progress in a formulaic fashion that leaves their conclusions predictable and boring. Rise of the Silver Surfer is slow to start which is detrimental to a movie that is only an hour and a half to begin with. I’m pretty sure the average Fantastic Four audience is not interested in how difficult it is for Reed and Susan to plan a wedding. The exposition kick-starts the age old theme can also be found in every other comic book movie ever made: “Can we ever live a normal life?” And the character development does not get any more ground breaking than that. Fantastic Four shows its audience nothing new or innovative in the way of plot or special effects. The movie’s bright spot is its humor. Director Tim Story’s experience with comedy films (Barbershop, Taxi) shines through in his approach to Fantastic Four. At least Fantastic Four never takes itself seriously, and it doesn’t expect you to either. At every point in the plot where the action or drama seems too tense, a wise crack shows up just in time to bring the mood back to where it should be. However, sometimes the humor can seem to be forced and out of place. Fantastic Four never pretends to be anything other than a mindless special effects display so keep that in mind when buying your tickets. By the way, I have to say that casting Laurence Fishburne as the voice of the Silver Surfer was a brilliant move.