I saw Transformers last night and it was everything the 12 year old boy in me could ever hope for. Giant alien fighting robots are possibly the best thing ever. Lots of explosions, giant weapons, hot women, and giant alien fighting robots.

Negatives:

There are two comic relief characters. I wanted to kick both of them in the face, or preferably have Optimus Prime squish them with his giant fist. One was a small robot, I think the name is Soundwave, that transforms into a boom box. My main complaint about him is the annoying animal sounds he makes. The other character that needed to be squashed is John Turturro's character, an obnoxious agent from a secret government agency called Sector 7. I don't think secret government agencies employ anyone as annoying as this character.

Beyond Turtorro's dialogue there was some additional cheesy moments. But hey, what do you expect from a movie based on a cartoon that was based on a bunch of toys?

Plot holes as big as the giant robots. Hmmm, giant killer alien robots will stop at nothing to get this little cube...I know, let's bring it to a highly populated area!

All the Decepticons looked really similar in their robot form. I had a hard time keeping track of which one was fighting in a given scene.

Positives:

Everything else.

The CGI was even better than imagined. The action sequences were fantastic! Starscream transforming from a jet mid air and crushing Air Force jets! Optimus Prime transforming while going full speed down a crowded freeway and sliding to a stop to face off charging Decepticons! Blackout leveling a military base in Qatar, leaving only a handful of survivors and hacking a military computer network. Optimus Prime and Megatron facing off between towering sky scrapers! Giant alien fighting robots!

The plot and acting won't win any academy awards, but it didn't make me nauseas...which is much more than I hoped for.

Character development was really decent. You start to really care about the Autobots. The main character Sam, played by Shia LeBeouf, was also likable.

Nostalgic bliss! Hearing the original Optimus Prime voice say "Autobots, roll out!" or "One shall stand - and one shall fall!" is awesome.

And did I mention giant alien fighting robots?

I saw King Kong...it wasn't great.

I saw Polar Express last night; I got outvoted by the family...it narrowly lost out to my choice, The Life Aquatic. I wasn't too impressed by Polar Express. It was painfully obvious that this is a 29 page kids book adapted into a movie. The CG suffered horribly from Uncanny Valley syndrome. The characters were poorly developed, the dialogue was clunky, and there wasn't really a plot. I'm sure it manages its intended purpose of keeping the kids quiet for a couple hours (if the creepy CG doesn't make them wet themselves), but I was bored out of my mind.

I saw Shrek 2 last night. It was very funny. I don't think it was quite as good as the first one though. I think they relied more on parody and gags and less on a good story in this one. It was very good, I just kinda wish I had had gone to see Troy instead. It seems more like a should_be_seen_in_the_theatre type of movie...maybe next week.

I have listened to some of Air America Radio recently. It is very refreshing to have some quality talk radio. Previous to AAR I had to resort to the local community station which broke out into folk music much too often for my taste.

I posted the following comment as a response to a Kuro5hin diary entry on the subject of Air America Radio:

I was thinking to myself a couple weeks before I heard about Air America Radio that the left wing really needed its own strong radio personality. The right has Rush, who despite his problems still has a throng of faithful listeners. But then it donned on me, there isn't the liberal equivalent of Rush's ditto-heads. Liberals are free thinkers and are less likely to line up behind a single celebrity pundit. I suppose this is both a strength and a weakness, but I'll take it any day over the alternative. Hopefully Air America Radio can provide some strong liberal voices and increase discussion on important topics (and maybe counteract O'Reilly), but I suggest that it will never reach the popularity levels of Rush Limbaugh because the target audience is unlikely to line up like the brain-dead ditto-heads do for Rush.

Plus, there is the issue of the few corporations that own most of the radio stations being fairly conservative. Air America Radio is only on about 6 stations (yay for internet radio) and that won't increase quickly if corporations like Clear Channel have anything to say about it, and they certainly will.

Rented A Mighty Wind last night. It is about the strange sub-culture that is folk singing. It is made to look like a documentary, but isn't actually a documentary...not sure if there is a name for that type of movie. If you liked Best of Show you'll like A Mighty Wind. I liked Best of Show better, but that might be because I know some dog-show people (the faux-documentary subject of Best of Show) and how crazy they are, but I don't know any folk singers. The same director also did Waiting for Guffman which I haven't seen yet.

Update: The IMDB calls it a mockumentary.

NOTE: the following are some movie reviews that I wrote a few weeks ago and didn't manage to post, so the movies might not even be in the theatre anymore.

OK, now for a quick movie wrap-up for my new reviews section. I have seen three movies in the theatre in the last couple weeks.

1. Something's got to Give - Bad
2. The Last Samurai - Not Bad
3. LOTR: Return of the King - Damn Good

First, despite what the Antispamist might tell you Something's got to Give is not a good movie. It survived on Jack Nicholson's antics for the first half of the movie, but after that not even Jack could save it. I also like Amanda Peet, but again...not enough to save this boring movie. This movie is a definate chick-flick. I found myself wondering if it was ever going to end.

The Last Samurai wasn't nearly as bad. Although Tom Cruise didn't do anything to improve this movie he also didn't manage to ruin it.

Return of the King is an excellent movie. There was some controversy over Peter Jackson leaving some stuff out from the book, but I think he did a good job (better than he did with Two Towers). I would have liked to have seen Sauron, but I can wait for the extended edition DVD for that. People also complained about the "Scouring of the Shire" scenes being left out, but I don't think this was a bad thing. The movie is allready 3.5 hours long, Scouring the Shire would have added at least another 15 minutes. In the book this part showed how much Pippen, Merry, Sam and Frodo had grown (physically & mentally) from their adventures in Middle Earth. They came home and took control of the Shire and earned much respect from their fellow hobbits. In the movie the foursome are mostly ignored by their fellow hobbits upon their return. I wish there had been a happy medium. I would have liked to see the hobbits get excited about the foursome's return and maybe show Merry and Pippen showing off their swords or battle wounds. This would have only taken a couple more minutes and would have conveyed some of the message from the book. One thing I did wonder about that might have also been left poorly explained in the book (can't remember): Aaragorn decides that they should attack Mordor and then all of a sudden he has a huge army at the gates of Mordor. It took Frodo, Sam and Gollum much much longer to travel the same distance.

Since writing those reviews I also saw Big Fish, which I enjoyed. Definately Tim Burton's best movie since Edward Scissor Hands...if not better (its been a while since I watched ESH). So I would give it a good, which is betther than the not bad that Last Samurai got but not up to the damn good that ROTK got.

Also, I am having a problem with a couple NICs not working. The problem is described in the Dell 1400 community forum, so if anyone has any suggestions either post here or reply to my message in the forum.