Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Hurt Locker And other points of interest.

The Hurt Locker is generally a good film, it's a fictional story based on the war in iraq. I think it's worthy to be on top ten lists and have a best picture nomination. Unfortunately I don't think it was for me. I enjoy war movies, but they need to be about wars that are finished. I give this movie mad props (really?) for being a- a fictional story based on the current war, and b- not being pro/antiwar. After the screening at Full Sail a student pointed out that the film's more of a character study where the location happens to be that they're soldiers, and I'd have to agree with it that. However I can't quite figure out why it didn't hook me like it did with others. The story is more of a collection of smaller stories which happen over a period in the soldiers rotation, maybe my problem was that there wasn't a clear goal, these soldier have to their job for 38 days and survive. I got in to a few of the situations in the beginning and in the towards the end, but it ran a little long in the middle, and I wasn't really on the edge of my seat during the bomb diffusion scenes early on, maybe it's because I knew the main character was a sort of bomb diffusing super man (not a spoiler you can tell).

The film was shot by Paul Greengrass' cinematographer, and if I didn't mention it already I couldn't stand the Bourne Ultimatum a good deal because of it's cinematography. But this movie managed to stay close the entire time and gave it a more believable documentary feel. Infact in the opening scene I struggled for the first few minutes wondering if it was a documentary.

I don't know if I'd necessarily give the film best picture but if the it came down to it and I had to choose between Katherine Bigelow and her ex-husband James Cameron, I'd definitely give it to Bigelow.

That said Golden Globes are tomorrow, I'll have my fingers crossed for either Jason Reitman or Tarantino, (and anyone who's not Sandra Bullock).

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I was going to take some time to talk about how every bit of writing about how a computer works is way over my head, but instead I'll talk about something more exciting... We had to a video podcast for the online Computer Science Class. I recorded and did some basic editing on it tonight, and I discovered something... boy can I ramble. This podcast needs to be between 3-4 minutes, I recorded 14. Of course I've cut it down to fit the time constraint but boy does this make me want to podcast. I need to get people on ichat/skype and just record a podcast that way, it'd be a good time.

A side note for those who don't know SModcast's favorite bear Malcolm Ingram has his own podcast coming out soon which I'm looking forward to hearing.

Well it's now 2 in the morning, so goodnight internets.

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