Movie Journal: 2 Days in Paris

French beauty Julie Delpy wrote and directed 2 Days in Paris, so it’s not that big a surprise that it winds up playing a lot like Before/After Sunrise. That’s not to say it mimics the formula from those films entirely, just that it carries the same sort of attitude.

In 2DIP, Delpy plays one half of a couple who, after vacationing in Venice and other parts of Europe, stop by her parent’s home in Paris. This of course leads to all sorts of problems between her and her boyfriend (played by Adam Goldberg) as they run into some of her exes and otherwise find their relationship tested by being on ground that’s at once familiar and not so much.

It’s a loose, natural film with good performances from both the leads that gets you involved in their characters and their well-being. Well worth checking out if you’re a fan of walking-and-talking type movies about relationships.

Movie Journal: Ocean’s Thirteen

Not as fast and loose as the previous two movies in the series, Ocean’s Thirteen is still quite enjoyable. Clooney, Pitt and the rest of the cast all look like they’re still having fun just hanging out and making a heist movie together, though the script is even more tenuous than it was previously.

The best performance, though, is Al Pacino as the villain of this outing. He actually manages to find a balance between playing his character big and yet not going into caricature, something he’s had problems with in the past.

Asking the question nobody else seems to be

1. Consumerist’s primary source of revenue is advertising sales.
2. Consumerist has been sold to Consumer Reports for an unreported price, but it’s probably in the $1 – $2 million range.
3. Consumer Reports does not accept advertising
4. Consumer Reports says its audience is aging, meaning they’re soon going to see drastic subscription fall-offs if they already haven’t.

So how does Consumer Reports intend to pay for its purchase and the continued operations of Consumerist?

Maybe I’m missing some part of this equation but it’s been bugging me since I first read about it.

Starting at the beginning

One of the…oh I’ll just copy and paste this:

One of the goals of the Brothers of John the Steadfast is the creation of reading groups whose intention is to get with a Pastor and read through the Book of Concord. For those people who do not have access to a reading group, it occurred to us that we might try creating an “online reading group” right here on the BJS site.

Got it?

Well if you’re one of those people like me who likes to start things fresh, the BJS guide to reading the Book of Concord started this week at the beginning. Yesterday we read the three Creeds and today is the Preface to Luther’s Small Catechism.

If this were a comic book company bringing on a new writer to a series, I would describe this as a “Perfect jumping on point for new readers.” But I’m not so I won’t. Nope, not at all.

Movie Journal: Step Brothers

Step Brothers is probably the out-and-out raunchiest of the movies made by Will Ferrell and director/co-writer Adam McKay. Where their previous collaborations like Anchorman and Talledega Nights had their moments, they were more about gleaning the comedy from a collection of characters more than trying to get a laugh from, say, Ferrell rubbing his testicles on John C. Reilly’s drumset (and no, that’s not a metaphor – it’s a set of drums).

But Step Brothers is extremely funny if you go along for the ride. All of the sequences seen in the trailers play out even better when surrounded by the supporting material. Watching Ferrell hit Reilly in the face with a shovel and then try to bury him alive, for instance, was all over the marketing but actually works better in the film itself.

The thing that makes it funnier than it probably should be is that the actors are so committed to their characters. That’s the same secret ingredient that makes Anchorman and the other films work so well and it’s in good supply here.

This is what I get for learning more about church history

Perhaps it’s because the two both fell on a Sunday this year, but I just learned that December 28th is not only my birthday (I turned 34 yesterday) but also, according to Christian tradition, the remembrance of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. It commemorates this event from Matthew 2: 16 – 18:

Herod Kills the Children

16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Goodbye Mr. Lennell

The Maurice Lennell outlet in Norridge has closed. This was a destination point for many Sunday afternoon post-church drives when I was a kid so it’s sad to see this go.

Movie Journal: Fred Claus

There are moments in Fred Claus that give the watcher a glimpse of the kind of movie it could have been if the script didn’t so often descend into some of the most well-worn cliches of the Christmas movie. Most of these moments come when stars Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti are able to really let loose and actuallly act. Each one has a handful of moments when their performances transcend the material they’re given and do something special.

Overall Fred Claus isn’t the worst Christmas movie I’ve seen but it’s by no means the best. Enjoyable and worth checking out for those few and far-between performance moments.

QOTD: 12/29/08

Charlie O’Donnell:

Ask anyone in PR what they tell their clients when they say they want to be on TechCrunch–it isn’t worth it.  You’ll get a firehouse of traffic that will be gone in a week, with few of the people likely to be in your target audience anyway–unless your audience is other Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Incidentally, the idea that’s been floated of ranking Twitter search results by the number of followers is just the kind of thing that sounds interesting at first but which wouldn’t really work. Google ranks results based on an equation involving multiple factors that adds up to their definition of “authority.” While I don’t agree with some people’s assertions that *everyone* is gaming the number of Twitter followers they have, basing authority on one number isn’t all that comprehensive or accurate. Yeah, you could ignore it or sort results in other ways but it’s still a stupid idea.

Lego.com FTW

We had a worrisome moment the other day in the Thilk household when we realized that the instructions for a Lego “Creator” set had gotten lost in the year between 1) We received it and 2) Anyone was interested in actually building the vehicles shown on the box.

Luckily for me, I’d seen Jake McKee speak at BlogOrlando a couple of times.

Wait, what?

See Jake used to be a community evangelist for Lego and still talks about them often, telling the story of fan enthusiasm and his efforts to embrace those fans by the community, as well as the ways fans have created their own tools for sharing their passion.

So anyway, I eventually remembered Jake mentioning that most of Lego’s instructions were now online and so I ran upstairs, grabbed my laptop, hit the website, found the correct product code and within five minutes a construction vehicle was being built. I even downloaded a PDF of the original instruction sheet so I can pull it up any time I need to.

Lego putting the instructions online, I’m sure, has helped out a lot of people in similar situations to mine. Doing so not only helps resolve the immediate crisis but also has done a lot to enhance the goodwill I have for the company and its strategies. Good for them on all counts.