Up In The Air

This is not the type of movie I usually see in the theaters first. Even if it’s an excellent movie this is a type of movie I typically grab as a rental or purchase. It just so happens that when TheJoe and I were out and found the opportunity to see this movie, we took it.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, whose job takes him on the road almost every day of his life, and he thrives on it. He is a master at simplifying and streamlining his life, so much so that he sometimes speaks about it, encouraging people to look hard at what is in their life’s backpack and do what they can to lighten the load. He even applies this philosophy to his job where he fires people companies don’t have the guts to fire themselves, including one interesting sequence with newly-fired Bob (played by J.K. Simmons), with Bingham spinning the situation as an opportunity to start on a goal that Bob had long-since abandoned.

Clooney does indeed bring his trademark charm to his role. Bignham is charming, likable, sure of himself. What separates this role from others Clooney has had is how he uses this skills to separate himself from other people. To him, relationships are the heaviest weights one can carry around, and his lifestyle gives him the perfect distance from others. It’s in an ironic twist where a young hire (Natale, played by Amanda Keener) develops a way to do his job via webcam, thus separating humanity from the process further and negating the need for a travel budget that Bingham must pause and look at his life.

There’s some issues in this film that we have all had to face at some time or another. The choice we make with family and work and the balance we try to achieve. And if there was ever a movie that showed the value of the journey versus the goal to achieve, this is it. While there’s some amusing comedic moments in here, the tone is more dramatic with some great comedic actors (J. K. Simmons, Jason Bateman, Melanie Lynskey, and Danny McBride) turning in some solid “straight” performances. It’s also filmed pretty simply as well, although I don’t know what hoops you have to go through to film at an airport these days, that must have been the exciting part for the producers. But as much travelling as happens in this film, it never overshadows the characters.

At the end, I felt it was worth the price of a movie ticket. Matinee. And I think it would be worth a rental. I’m glad I saw it. It’s a very solid drama with some amusing moments that shows it’s not just technology that separates people. Sometimes people separate themselves.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

You know what’s really hard to animate? Fur. Think about it. You have all these individual strands of hair that can move independently of each other yet they need to move a certain way to look believable. It takes some skill to be able to control fur on an animated character. There’s also something of a challenge when the characters are less than a foot high and they are constantly dwarfed by regular-sized human beings and objects. If those characters are the star, then a director must constantly be thinking about camera angles and tricks to make sure those characters are the center of attention all the time. It takes a fair amount of creativity to think about types of shots that you wouldn’t normally have to consider.

Why am I talking about computer-generated fur and shot composition? Because that’s what was keeping me interested during this film. Rhythm and Hues did a great job animating all the chipmunks and gave them some great physical personality and amusing scenes (including a nice chase sequence with remote controlled helicopters and motorcycles), but all in all, nothing else in the movie really kept me interested. There is a character, Toby (Zachary Levi) who is the chipmunks’ guardian, that is irresponsible, unfocused, clumsy and an avid video gamer, and I could not even muster any animosity toward the filmmakers because it was such an obvious and tired stereotype (also a bit hypocritical as there will most likely be a videogame tie-in coming out).

If the filmmakers meant for this to be a film that would appeal to all ages, then they didn’t succeed. I had DJ with me when I saw it and he thought it was really funny. So if your a Chipmunks fan or a kid, you will probably enjoy this film better than I did and you’ll probably be buying it for them when it’s released.

Avatar

Even if you aren’t an avid movie viewer and don’t pay attention to movie ads, you’ve probably heard of “Avatar”. With all the buzz and blitz promoting this movie and with all the articles written about the groundbreaking technology developed for it, at it’s base there’s a highly enjoyable movie.

Humans have established a base at the alien world of Pandora in search of a highly valuable mineral. The only thing that stands in the way are the hostile-to-humans environment and the natives, the Na’vi: large blue-skinned creatures with tails. Humans have developed a small number a alien bodies called avatars that can be controlled remotely by a person whose genetics are encoded into it. Jake Sully, a marine who lost his scientist brother and the use of his legs in battle is given the chance to walk again using his brother’s avatar, in the hopes that he can connect with the Na’vi and negotiate with them. There are themes here that have been explored before (technology vs. nature, diplomacy vs. war, science vs. faith) and they all have been woven together in a solid and very satisfying action-adventure. If none of the new technology used in this film existed and the film was told in a more tried and true process like animation, this film would still have a very solid story to make it worth seeing.

The process used to apply an actor’s performance to a CG character here results in some amazing work. The Na’vi look and act as natural as if they were actually alive, not just in the body but in the crucial area of facial expressions. The actor’s performances really shine through their characters with all their nuances and subtlety. It deserves to be seen on the big screen to appreciate it in detail. All the acting is top-notch too. Sci-fi fans can geek out in the face of Sigourney Weaver appearing in another James Cameron film as the hardened scientist Dr. Grace Augustine, Sam Worthington ably takes on the lead role of Jake Sully, Zoe Saldana (Neytiri) shows off her chops and grabs yet another role in a high-profile sci-fi property. I was also intruiged be Stephen Lang who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch, the leader of the human’s military. While other actors would play such a high-powered officer’s role with more bluster and volume, he imbues a very cold composure in Quaritch that gives him depth beyond the typical antagonist.

Detail was also given to the creation of the world of Pandora. It’s an amazing world with a palette of deep blues, greens and purples that is alive with all sorts of plants and creatures. (Although it does remind me of World of Warcraft’s design, which leads me to believe that either James Cameron or someone very high up in the production design department has at least one level 80 character.)

Even if you’re not a sci-fi fan this movie is easily worth multiple viewings in the theater and worth seeing at least once in 3D. The 3D is very well done and amazing to view but it’s also good to see in it’s non-3D format to catch details that might have been missed. This will definitely be worth purchasing when it gets released to the home market as well. Highly recommended.

WWDC 2009 Keynote Recap

Three thumbs up for Apple!
BOOO for AT&T!

Today was the highly anticipated WWDC (apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference) keynote.  Rumors have been focusing on the iPhone, but in just the first half of the keynote speech, they WOW’d us in true apple form with some interesting announcements.

Wow, I just got finished watching TWiT’s feed and commentary on the WWDC Keynote speech.  WOW.  A lot of very exciting things coming down the apple pipeline.  I took some notes while watching/listening to the cast.

The most anticipated announcement is that the new iPhone will be available on June 19th. It is known as the 3GS.  With the S for SPEED .  Some of the new features are 3 megapixel with video and autofocus, faster speed 7.2 megabit, and a compass.  WOW  32GB for $299 and 16GB for $199 and the old 3G at 8GB will be available for  $99.

The following is a bullet list of what was announced.

MacBook Pro’s
- all MacBook Pro’s have been refreshed
- battery life extended
- non-replaceable battery
- 13″ Unibody MacBook now a Pro
- – Firewire added to the 13″ unibody

Quicktime New
- iMovie like editing

OSX Snow Leopard
- Available in September
- 64 Bit
- 16 Billion Gigabyte Memory ceiling
- Multi core support more efficient
- $29 upgrade $49 family pack upgrade (not confirmed, but that would rock)
- $129 Standard buy (not the upgrade)
- Exchange support in ical, mail, address book, etc (great for business users)
- Snow Leopard will be available for all intel mac

iPhone
- 50,000 apps in the app store
- 40,000,000 iPhones and iPod touches sold
- in 9 months of the app store, 1 billion apps downloaded

iPhone OS 3.0
- more than 100 new features
- cut, copy and paste
- landscape keyboard in all applications
- mms added
- AT&T will support mms later this summer LOL
- message search
- spotlight – search across the phone

- iTunes rent and purchase movies and audiobooks from iPhone
- Parental control on apps and movies etc

- Tethering USB AND Bluetooth
- – AT&T not supported yet BOOO

- support for streaming video and audio HTTP
- autofill
- HTML 5

- robust language support (over 30 languages)

- Find my iphone (??) available to mobile me…
- – it will show you on a web browser where your iphone is  NICE
- – if completely lost you can erase all data on the phone

- support for peer to peer gaming over bluetooth

- hardware protocol support for external devices

- push notifications
- turn by turn using core location

- free for iPhone – $9.95 for iPod touch
- Available June 17 (devs get it today)

iPhone Hardware
- iPhone 3GS (S for Speed for the most powerful, fastest one ever)
- same design as 3G
- OpenGL|ES 2.0 support
- 7.2 megabit HSPDA
- 3 megapixel autofocus camera
- – tap to focus
- – low light sensitivity
- VIDEO
- – 30fps 640×480
- – autofocus
- voice control
- – control things like ipod (“play more songs like this”)
- digital compass
- hardware encryption
- improved battery
- Pricing: $199 16 GB and $299 32 GB plus $99 for the 8GB 3G (non-S)
- Availability: June 19th, 2009

Wow,  kudos APPLE!  The boo for AT&T is that the MMS and Tethering “is coming” LOL