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I just finished reading the book so I’m pretty excited about the movie.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/da_vinci_code/

If you haven’t heard of this movie here’s the synopsis from IMDB.

“The story is set in a world where implanted microchips can record all moments of an individual’s life. The chips are removed upon death so the images can be edited into something of a highlight reel for loved ones who want to remember the deceased.”

I thought the movie was quite interesting up until the end. It just kind of fizzled out without any kind of real resolution or message.

The main problem I have with the movie is the business model for the company that provides the implants. The movie never reveals exactly how much these things cost but it’s understood that only wealthy people can afford them. Normal people have to get loans for them. And they can only be implanted into the brains of unborn children.

So the idea is that people will pay a lot of money for something they will likely never receive direct benefit from. The person who has the implant will certainly never benefit from it as they must be dead before the implant can be removed and processed. The only people to benefit from this thing is the friends and family of the deceased.

What they get is a 90 minute highlight reel of the person’s life from the deceased’s point of view. The subject of the documentary is never actually seen in their own film. Putting aside all ethical concerns for a moment ask yourself, would you play a lot of money for something like that? How many people would? There is simply no way this company would ever survive for more than 5 years let alone an entire person’s lifetime.

What a great pair of action flicks! I can’t believe I waited this long to see these movies! I liked the opening credits song (Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra) so much that I bought it from the iTunes Music Store immediately after I finished watching Vol. 1.

Time can make old movies seem better than they really were. If you don’t watch them since their original release that is. Such is the case with Excalibur. Most of the movie is kinda cheesy by today’s standards but the last 45 minutes make up for it with a strong emotional ending.

It’s interesting to note that Excalibur marks the big screen debut of Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson.

Really good movie. I highly recommend it.

What I really found interesting were the scenes involving Ray’s refusal to play a segregated show in Georgia and subsequently being banned from playing any shows in Georgia for life. The ban was later lifted in 1979 and “Georgia On My Mind” was declared Georgia’s official state song.

What’s interesting to me is that the civil rights movement started to happen until about ‘62 and ‘63. For people in my generation we think that segregation and Jim Crow laws as something of the distant past. However, the early sixties aren’t that far in the past. My parents were born in the early forties which means my parents (and the parents of everyone else my age) were teenagers when the civil rights movement started. Which means they lived the early part of their lives during the time of segregation. It’s probably safe to assume that life in the southern part of the United States was much different from the north but it’s still interesting to note that our parents lived in a world we generally view as the distant past.

That’s not to make our parents feel old. Here’s an interesting fact our children will someday figure out. I lived the early part of my life without the Internet! The Internet is the greatest modern invention and I remember life without it. Information was much more precious in those days. We had to pay for almost any piece of knowledge whether it was movie times or technical how-to articles. Now we have the Internet and Google. How did we ever live without them?

I think guy-coaching-high-school-sports-team should be considered it’s own genre. You really haven’t arrived as an actor until you’ve starred in a movie as a coach of a high school sports team. Here’s a few recent additions to the genre. I’m sure I’m missing many that could be added to this list.

Remember the Titans (Denzel Washington)
Friday Night Lights (Billy Bob Thorton)
Radio (Ed Harris)

And now Coach Carter with Samuel Jackson. This is not to say that these movies are bad. Quite the contrary. I’ve really enjoyed every single one of the movies mentioned above.

Coach Carter is of special interest to us Bay Area viewers because it’s based in Richmond California. However, the movie is about the basketball team and not the area in which they lived and played. Don’t expect to see a lot of Bay Area locations in Coach Carter.

The events the movie are based on the 1999 Richmond high school basketball team. One of the big news items of that time is the lockout that coach Ken Carter instituted when his team failed to meet minimum academic standards. Despite the headlines this made I knew absolutely nothing about it when it was going on. That goes to show how much I pay attention to the news.

The two documentaries about the real Ken Carter and the players are well worth the time to watch. It’s really encouraging to know that amazing things can happen in one of the worst school districts in the country. Coach Carter is a real hero and we need more people like him working with our kids today.

There’s only two categories of people who should see this movie:

1. Actors who want to see a great example of how to portray a mentally disturbed serial killer.

2. Makeup artists who want to see the masterwork that went into making Charlize Theron look genuinely ugly.

If you don’t fall into either of those two groups of people you should not see this movie. It’s just too dark and depressing.

Next movie in our queue: Schindler’s List. Ya, like The Abyss it’s one of those older movies that I never saw the first time around.

Emily and I are using our Blockbuster Online account to rent some old movies from the late eighties and early nineties that I’ve never seen before. This weekend we watched James Cameron’s The Abyss starring Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

I was expecting a typical formulaic blockbuster movie along the lines of Armageddon or Day After Tomorrow. However, I was pleasantly surprised and found myself engaged by the story for the whole three hours. So the ending was a bit preachy though. So the aliens are appalled by our history of violence and wars. Sure, but what about all those times when people don’t kill each other and actually do nice things for one another. The aliens never talk about that do they?

What I really want to discuss though is the drowning scene. About two hours into the movie Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio find themselves in the classic one-must-die-in-order-to-save-the-other scenario. They’re stuck in a submersible that’s quickly filling up with water and only have one diving suit. The main station they need to swim to is too far away for either one of them to simply hold their breath. Mary’s solution to this predicament is to sit there until their submersible fills with water and then stay there and drown. After she has drowned Ed will use the suit and tow her back to the main station. When he gets back to the station with her body he’ll use CPR to revive her. This all hinges on his swimming back fast enough for her to not be completely dead. Yep, that was her plan. And of course, it worked!

Now this got Emily and I talking. What would we do if we found ourselves in that same situation? Hey, it could happen. Maybe. Possibly. So how would we handle it? We discussed this and arrived at the following solution which we think is a pretty big improvement on the one from The Abyss.

First, we identify who the fastest swimmer is. The fastest swimmer gets the diving suit. I think we decided that would be me. Then instead of waiting for the submersible to fill up with water we both start swimming toward the main station right away. Me with the diving suit and Emily holding her breath. After all, why would you want to waste a perfectly good breath of air? When we get as far as Emily can go we’ll stop so she can do her drowning thing. Then I’ll grab her and tow her the rest of the way to the main station. This way she spends a far less amount of time without oxygen and will be much easier to revive once we’re back to safety.

Next we’ll have to discuss what we’ll do if we’re ever stuck on an airplane that’s going to crash and we only have one parachute.

I Heart Huckabees
This movie was so bizzare but in a really great way. There’s so many odd moments that make you laugh. I highly recommend this movie. Not necessarily for the philosophic content which I think is a lot of nonsense but because the story itself was so unconventional and brilliantly written.

Saw
Gruesome. Dark. Disturbing. WARNING! SPOILERS FOLLOW! Highlight the following text to read the rest. All of this would have been okay if it had a good ending but it didn’t. I’m not the kind of person who thinks all movies should have a happy ending but when these kind of dark and twisted serial killer movies ends with the killer getting away with it I’m not happy. At least not in this case. Identity ended with the killer getting away with it but I didn’t seem to mind that one as much. But in the case of Saw I was extremely disappointed with the ending. The twist at the end was kind of interesting but not believable. Think about it. They guy had to play dead for over 6 hours! How did the two other guys in the room not see him breathing? How did he not move or twitch at all for over 6 hours!? And why was it so difficult for anyone to kill the first guy? So in summary, if you didn’t like Seven you probably won’t like this one eitther.

Black Hawk Down
This is the three disc special edition version of the DVD we got for Christmas. Ridley Scott is an amazing director. I can’t wait to see what Kingdom of Heaven turns out like.

The Forgotten
This was a really great drama with some truly surprising moments. I highly recommend it.