The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

I think this movie sat on my Netflix queue for at least 3 or 4 months before I finally got it. After receiving it I'm pretty sure it sat around my house for at least a week or two. Eventually, I broke down from the boredom of cleaning my room and decided to watch all 2 hours and 40 minutes of it. I think the reason it sat around for so long is because I was apprehensive about watching it. While I had heard some good things about it, the majority of the what was on the grapevine was negative a la, "terrible"; "worst movie I have ever seen"; "bored me to tears"; "my grandmother killed herself while watching it."

 

The first highly notable thing about this film is that it seems like every damn person in it is a super famous and/or super awesome actor. Doesn't matter how small the roll, it's probably someone famous. On top of this, the acting in this film is fantabulous. Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, and Casey Affleck especially play their roles delightfully. The roles played by actresses such as Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel are brief, suprising, and effective as well. In retrospect, my opinion on Brad Pitt in this movie may be a bit swayed. He plays a crazy person, and we all know how much I love when Brad Pitt plays crazy people (see: Fight Club and 12 Monkeys).

The movie is paced in a horrifically ungainly manner, and there are long stretches of silence punctuated by dialogue that often made me squirm in my seat. Parts of this movie will make you think you're getting bored, but you're probably not. It's hard to describe this movie because it's something that has to be taken as a whole. I wouldn't even go so far as to say I had a favorite part. It also has a narrator who comes in intermittently to fill you in on what has happened in the inexplicable time jumps that have just occured.

Despite all that, I really enjoyed The Assassination of Jesse James. As I said above, it's something that has to be taken in as a whole. If you only catch parts of it, or turn it off halfway through, or come in halfway through, you're probably not going to like it. I also recommend watching it by yourself so that there isn't anyone else around to distract you or interrupt it.

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford gets 6 Beards.

Good Pyschology movie?

Okay kids, because I only have about 25 tv stations, I've been watching a lot of ABC Family. Because of this I have subjected myself to their "Countdown to the 25 days of Christmas" (and for those of you wondering there are 7 days until the 25 days of Christmas countdown.)
I bring this up to you because I recently watched a movie called Holiday in Handcuffs.

The movie is about a woman named "Trudie" played by Melissa Joan Hart who plans to visit her family with her then boyfriend Nick. Nick breaks up with her the day they are supposed to leave and then like all girls are apt to do Trudie goes crazy. Since she is working as waitress she chooses the best looking guy there (Mario A.C. Slater Lopez) and kidnaps him to bring home and meet her parents at Christmas.

Normally a movie like this would not be worth the celluloid it was filmed on, very basic. But the place that this movie shines is the fact that it depicts two psychological conditions and very well I might add. The first condition is Stockholm Syndrome where a kidnapping victim grows to like and care for their kidnapper.
The second is Lima syndrome which is the opposite, the kidnapper starts to develop feelings for their victim.
Okay without to much more text because I started this thing after a night of drinking...huh? yes I was up drinking and watching ABC Family what's it to you?

Holiday in Handcuffs gets 4 Clarissa explained beards
(side note I woke up and proofread this slightly then posted it, hooray drunk past randy for being lazy!)

Quantum Of Solace

Somehow we all managed to drag our sorry asses out of bed around 1030 yesterday and managed to make it to the theater (that is a 2 minute drive) by 1130. Barely. We showed up and plunked down our $4.75 and got to see the newest James Bond installment: Quantum Of Solace. Let me preface all of this by stating that I think the new Bond films are the best because they are finally taking the series in a new direction.

Now to start off, let's talk about Daniel Craig. Mr. Craig has been in some of my favorite movies over the last 6 or 7 years (Munich, Layer Cake, Road to Perdition, Golden Compass) and with the addition of his role in the new Bond movies and the preview for his upcoming film Defiance my enjoyment of him has only grown. While I fully recognize that Connery was an awesome Bond, he was definitely the best of the old school Bonds while Craig is the flag bearer of the new vanguard. In my humble opinion Craig's Bond is better than Connery's Bond. He just plays him with a little bit more edge that I never realized was missing until Craig brought it to the table. He basically makes all the other Bonds look like softies.

Ok, now that I've blown enough smoke up Daniel Craig's ass, lets talk about the rest of the movie. Quatum of Solace comes right out and kicks you in the left nut, and then walks away for a minute during the intro sequence/credits and then comes back and kicks you in the right nut. Feel free to substitute nuts for vagina lips, ladies. Anyways, this is to prepare for a movie full of "Oh my god"s "Wow"s and "Holy shit"s. These phrase can also be upgraded by adding "that's awesome!" to the end of them. The film is rock solid. Excellent filming really helps set and keep the mood of each scene as well as the overall story. The writing and dialogue is also interesting but efficient, I don't really feel like anything unneccesary was said. In addition, I totally got a big geek boner over the technology displayed in this film as well. A lot of it was subtle but the stuff used in the MI6 headquarters was fracking amazing.

The thing I liked most about this movie can be boiled down to one idea: continuity. This movie literally picks up no more than 15-30 mins after where Casino Royale ended. The continuity they are building here is impressive, and it definitely lends itself to a more immersive and therefore enjoyable experience. All the previous Bond movies had a serious single serving aspect to them and in retrospect I feel like that hurt them a little bit. One other thing of importance to me is the turn towards realism that these two films have taken. As much as I loved Q, the nonsense gadgets and Aston Martins with more weaponry than an armored cavalry division are not missed.

Quantum of Solace gets 9 Beards for being fucking awesome.

New Facebook

What's this?  Double update?  Well, I did neglect this thing for a long time.  I figured I should try to get a second one up to make it happy.  Haha, see what I did there?  No?  Well screw you, jerk.  I'm here to talk about something a bit controversial today: the new version of Facebook.

Let me get this out of the way.  Everyone who hates the new Facebook is a fucking troglodyte who should have their internet priveleges revoked.

The biggest complaint I've heard is that people can't find the things they're looking for, and my counter to this is, take 30 seconds out of your day and maybe look around the screen a little bit.  Most things have simply been rearranged.  Now, I know this might be a little tough to deal with, because lord knows people have a hard enough time with Publix moving something from one aisle to another, but God forbid the programmers move a link on their favorite social networking site.  And, also, no one ever sends me a petition against Publix when they decide to rearrange the layout of their store.

The profiles are where we saw the biggest changes, with the addition of the tabs.  While this may seem dumb at first, it's actually quite ingeniuous because now you don't have to go srolling all over the damn place trying to find someones contact info, favorite's lists, Bumper Stickers, etc.  Also, the combination of the wall and the news feed is ingenious.  I love it.  I think it's the smartest thing Facebook has done since adding the ability to comment on peoples' status.

Wait, I take it back.  The smartest thing Facebook has done, and the definitive argument in favor of the new Facebook is the Pirate setting for the language.  Just scroll to the bottom of any page, and in the left hand corner next to the copyright is the language setting, just change it to English(Pirate) and you'll see what I mean.

New Facebook gets 7 Beards for being a big step forward, and for not kowtowing to the pressures of the ignroant masses.  Of course it lost points for still being Facebook and still causing me to waste endless hours of my life and because the goddamn picture uploading app still sucks.

In Bruges

Oh, hello there, Interwebs, I didn't see you there.  Let me put my pants back on.  Ok, now that we're that much more intimate I've got a little story to tell.  It's a story about a little film called In Bruges, and I'm going to tell as best I can remember because I may have been drunk while watching it.  Or, I could've been totally sober sitting on my couch soaking my ass rash in a bucket of mayonaise and tomato soup.

Starring Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes (there are others buy you probably don't know them) the movie follows the story of two hit men who are sent to the small city of Bruges, Belgium after a botched job.  Haha, I accidentally typed bitched at first.  That was funny.  Moving on.  There are two main characters: the younger hitman, Ray (played by Farrell) who thinks Bruges is a shithol, and Ken (played by not Ralp Fiennes) who thinks it's a delightful little town.

The story is fairly straightforward, but also interestingly designed.  I was pretty much enraptured the whole time and found myself both laughing hysterically and deeply concerned for the characters.  Granted when some of you watch it and think back on my reaction it may jsut cement your findings that I am missing the morality section of my brain since this move involves several moments of extreme violence, racism, and drug use.  All of which I found hysterical.

In Bruges gets a solid 9 Beards because there's not a single moment in the movie where I felt uninterested. 

P.S. Don't watch this movie if you don't like blood.