Conservativa

Citizen foils bank robbery. Arguments break out in the comments, but police probably will not charge the citizen.

Short version: 2.5 stars out of 5.

Long version: to enjoy this movie, park your brain at the door and enjoy what’s good about it. The premise is complete bosh. The bad things you have heard about the movie are true. But, I couldn’t hate the movie. There were some good things in it, but not what you would expect. The action sequences and CGI effects were with a few exceptions not so good. The human moments in the film were its highlights. I know, I know, you don’t expect that from Lucasfilm. And there were some of those moments that were creaky and didn’t work. But overall that is what to me redeems the movie from 1.5 to 2.5 stars. I don’t want to list my favorites as that would leave spoilers. Some of the acting is good. This too is uneven, though - Indiana Jones has aged believably, but he is set against a villainess who would have to go buy herself some y-coordinates to be two-dimensional.

I should say that I saw the movie with someone else who rated it a 5/5 just for the entertainment quotient, so, there you go.

Now for a long technical maunder on its cinematography. Why on earth would I care about it? Mostly because the cinematographer for this film was Janusz Kaminski, who won a richly-deserved Academy Award for being cinematographer for Schindler’s List. Now that movie was a masterpiece, helped to be that by Kaminski’s work. (Kaminski won another Oscar for Saving Private Ryan). But his work in this Indiana Jones movie was as frustratingly uneven as the rest of the movie. First, in the beginning, in the “desert,” I had heard that you can see arc lights and unmotivated hair lights, and it’s true. That’s bad.

Second, the movie is set in 1957, and it appears to me that Kaminski has chosen film and/or processing or post-processing to duplicate the look of fresh Kodachrome but just washed over with an overly warm-brown (tobacco maybe?) filter. This, plus an admirable attention to prop detail, definitely puts you back at that time… but Kaminski’s effect there is too obvious - it’s just overdone, to me.

Third, I must say, Kaminski does “dark” well - the characters often end up in this or that cave or tomb, and Kaminski manages to put enough light on them to pick them out of the murk. But, I thought, perhaps unkindly, “Let’s not think too hard about the motivation for that light there,” and “This extra lighting will help, when this goes to DVD, as too-dark films tend to go even more black on the small screen.”

High points in the cinematography: the scene at Indy’s home, when he is speaking to the other faculty member. Beautiful light in every shot - very mixed and layered lighting. That’s also true in the coffee shop when Indy talks with Mutt.

So what’s the problem here? I’m glad Kaminski is working and I hope Spielberg paid him a mint. But that kind of photographic talent applied to this movie? Not good. There were some cases in which I was thinking, “This scene is a turkey, but is sure is beautifully lit and photographed…” and even, “I wonder if Kaminski was doing this because he didn’t know any better than to over-do this, or, if he really went all-out on purpose, hoping that his exertions would be the kicker that would subtly help the audience think this scene is better than it is?”

Folks, when the audience is thinking that, it ain’t good.

Be sure to see the beautiful quilts over at Kat’s Place. This might be my favorite, but there are lots more. Just keep scrolling down. Thanks for bringing these to the Virginia blogosphere, Kat!

And, for you guys who are too tough to want to look at quilts, there are some nice pictures of a black snake, too. They’re good to have in the yard, but I wouldn’t pick one up…

Lord of the Rings is in fact a huge property law case. Attorneys, take note. There could be a test later. More here, where it is claimed that it’s a case about a contract. Take a look through the comments. Man, I thought engineers were geeky.

Apparently someone has gotten ahold of a leaked Best Buy training document that profiles some typical consumers and discusses how Best Buy sales staff can reach them. Profiling? Stereotyping? Smart marketing? Maybe a little of all.

Hey Best Buy - want to know how to win my business?

1. Turn. Down. The. Stupid. Car. Stereo. Displays. If I can’t hear myself think because some yahoo has lingered there, turning up the stereos and your sales people just leave the volume up, I am going to leave the store ASAP. If it’s bad, I may well leave the store before buying anything. So: loud demo car stereos = lost sales for you. Does this make me an old fogey-ette? Maybe. But old-fogey money spends like young yahoo money, doesn’t it?
2. Get sales people who can answer technical questions. If I am spending 100s of dollars on something, I will have already researched the item online before I come in, but I may have some lingering questions. Have at least one person in each department during store hours that knows the merchandise well.

These, from Sigmund, Carl and Alfred.  More, from Snopes.

You are pretty old if you remember the following joke or have flown on some of these airlines:

Pilot: Tower, what time is it?

Tower: What airline are you with?

Pilot: What’s the difference? What time is it?

Tower: Well, if you’re Pan Am, it’s 1900 Greenwich Mean Time; if you’re Eastern airlines, it’s 2 p.m.; if you’re Ozark airlines, the little hand is on the 2….

In which I explain why I thought it best to throw away the very nice coffee mug [an elected official] gave to all the participants at the [event redacted] this year.

The other day in Richmond we had a bad windstorm blow through. Winds gusted to 50MPH, and it was windy much of the day Saturday. Coming back to the house, on the concrete, I saw a bat lying there. It was moving. Maybe it got blown into something and was halfway stunned. I figured it would recover and fly away. Monday it was still there. I assumed it was dead so I gently pushed it with my shoe, meaning to push it into the grass. It flapped one wing and squeaked at me. So it was alive!

I went into the house, got two pieces of newspaper, and the mug with some water in it, that mug just because it happened to be at hand. I scooped up the bat with the newspaper and put the bat on the grass. The bat squeaked and tried to bite the newspaper. The bat had been out there several days, so if it was recovering, I guessed it would be thirsty, which is why I brought the water.

So the bat was now face-first in the grass. I poured out the water from the mug, near the bat, so it could drink a little from the grass, and I poured the last few drops over its face, and I could see that it was drinking the water. Then I accidentally got the mug too close and it touched the bat’s mouth.

Ew.

Okay, now what? I like the mug, so I guess I could soak it in a Clorox/water bath and then scrub it. But. What if the bat is carrying rabies, and what if the rabies-infested bat spit could not be washed off easily? I could never again think of the mug as anything other than the Bat Lip Mug.

I took the mug inside, wrapped it in the newspapers, and threw it away. Sorry, [Mr. Elected Official]. It was a very nice mug. Its last act was a compassionate one, giving a drink to a thirsty bat.

Here’s the bat, face-down in the grass, face away from the camera. Still don’t know if it’s going to make it. Photo below the fold, because, let’s face it, bats gross out some people. My guess is it’s a Little Brown Bat, not the official Virginia State Bat.

Continue reading “Bat Lips”

The truth can be told about ketchup chips. I have now tried them and can report that they are basically BARBEQUE chips. Just a little more tomato-ey and a little less sweet. Even the packaging isn’t right - it shows ketchup-red chips. Nope - these are just like BBQ chips with their sprayed-on “BBQ.” Now you know. No, no photo. I had too much contempt for these little poseurs to spend the pixels on them.

Small explosion overnight at military recruiting office in Times Square:

An explosive device caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above “the crossroads of the world.”

No one hurt. There must be a lot of security cameras around - that could help.

…and I saw this evening some people with a lighted Christmas tree, yes, I said Christmas tree, in their yard. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.