Andy Online

I finally got around to seeing this film after a few years of it occupying my Netflix queue. The funny thing is, I didn’t watch it through Netflix.

On to the review.

This film is about a socially awkward loner named Lars who lives in his brother’s garage. His sister in law keeps inviting him in for dinner, he says that he’ll come, but never does. One day, he buys a full size sex doll, names it Bianca, and starts treating it like his girlfriend. He doesn’t do anything lewd with it, he just acts as if it’s someone visiting from out of town. Now his family and the town have to react to his seemingly delusional behavior.

The script was brilliant. In fact, it was nominated for an Oscar in ‘07, which it lost…to Juno. Further proof that the Academy has it’s head so far up it’s own ass that it can see what it had for lunch. I’m surprised that Bianca didn’t win for best supporting actress.

Anyway…It was an enjoyable movie that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to watch with my family. Those two things seem to be mutually exclusive these days.

Overall Score: 4/5 stars.

Looking at the people who where involved in making this movie, you wouldn’t expect it to be any good. Reading the filmography for the director (Gavin Hood) is like reading the line up for a MST3K marathon. He has many wonderful pieces of cinematic art under his belt, such as Operation Delta Force 2: Mayday and Kickboxer 5. Looking at the resumes of the screenwriters is even scarier. One of the co-writers, Skip Woods, was the mastermind who brought us Hitman. If I had found this out before I went to see this movie, I probably would have had second thoughts.

It actually turned out to be halfway decent. Do you want to know why? It had a decent story. That’s it. That’s all it takes. A movie doesn’t have to have thrilling CG effects and an explosion every couple minutes in order to be good. All it takes is a good story. I think that the people of the X-Men movie franchise have realized this. You can’t just hand a monkey a typewriter and slap “X-Men 4″ on the crap that it flings at you and expect it to be good. Even though you spent millions on special effects.

If you spend your entire budget on special effects and leave nothing for the script, you end up with a Michael Bay movie. No one cares what happens because all of the characters are one dimensional. You might as well save some more money by casting cardboard cutouts instead of actors. At least cardboard cutouts don’t complain about being burned to death in giant fireball explosions.

I am not saying that it was a great script. What I am saying is that it was miles above X-Men: The Last Stand.

I wasn’t much of a fan at the ending though. It had a lot of potential that was just wasted. They spent the third act setting up a nuclear explosion that didn’t happen. What else was I supposed to expect from a movie set in the late ’70’s where the third act takes place on Three Mile Island. (I realize the irony in this paragraph. I don’t mind a few huge actions scenes here and there, but the story shouldn’t rely on them.)

That being said, I found the movie entertaining and worth watching at least once.

Overall Score: 3.5/5 stars.

I don’t see why anyone would use anything but Google to begin with, but for those of you who use MSN Live as your search engine, you might want to rethink it.  Here’s why:

Search engines use what are called “spiders” or “bots” to index web pages for their search engines.  What these spiders do is crawl the Internet, downloading the content of random web pages to be included in their search databases.  They will get the home page of a site, find all the links in the page, and download the content of those links.  This is all fine and dandy…if they follow the rules.

Since some people don’t want certain parts of their website to be searchable, they can give a spider visiting their site a list of places they are and are not allowed to go.  These rules are put into a file called robots.txt (to view my rules, take a look at http://andyonline.org/robots.txt).  All major search engines claim to follow these rules, including MSN.  However, I have caught MSN breaking the rules on more than one occasion.

Search engines are not the only people who use spiders.  They are also commonly used by the baddies of the Internet.  They search web pages for email addresses to send spam or to find sites that are vulnerable to hacking.  These bots rarely follow your instructions.

There are various techniques that I utilize to prevent bad spiders from accessing this site while still allowing legitimate visitors.  One of those is a “bad bot” trap.  There is a link on this site that is only visible to spiders, which I instruct them not to visit. If that link is visited, it bans that computer from visiting my site in the future.  This link points to http://andyonline.org/bot-trap/ (for the love of God, don’t go there or you won’t be able to access this site again).

My bot trap has caught the MSN Live spider…twice.

Here is the current content of my robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /podcast/
Disallow: /ua/
Disallow: /bot-trap/

“User-agent: *” is a blanket statement meaning “any spider visiting this site”. The next four lines detail the folders that I don’t want crawled.

Here is an excerpt from my site access log from early this morning:
65.55.106.112 – - [14/May/2009:02:31:33 -0600] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1″ 200 91 “-” “msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”
65.55.106.112 – - [14/May/2009:02:32:29 -0600] “GET /bot-trap/index.php HTTP/1.1″ 200 1892 “-” “msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”

The funny thing is that the MSN spider grabbed my robots.txt file right before it got itself banned.

This exact scenario played itself out last October.  I unbanned their spider and tried to contact MSN tech support to tell them to stop being jerks, but their support system is a tangle of help pages and canned responses. Their basic response was “Just deal with it”. They said that I must have recently changed my robots.txt file and their spider hasn’t caught up with the changes. I call shenanigans. I haven’t modified my robots.txt file since August 2008. For the first incident, it hadn’t changed in 2 months, the second time, it hadn’t changed in 9.

The MSN Live spiders blatantly go where they don’t belong.

I’m done cleaning up the mess from the MSN spider plowing through like a bulldozer in a sandbox.  I am no longer unbanning the MSN spider when it goes where it doesn’t belong.  It should know better.  Will it affect this site showing up in MSN Live Search?  Possibly.  I’m not too worried about that though.  MSN still has plenty of other unbanned spiders still happily crawling away at this site.  Plus, most of my search engine traffic comes from Google anyway.  Over the last 30 days, traffic to this site originating from Google out numbered traffic from MSN by 8:1.

I’m not the only one who uses a bot trap.  How many other web sites have blacklisted the MSN spider?  How much information is unavailable through MSN Live Search because of their behavior?

MSN uses unfriendly tactics when building their search database.  You shouldn’t support their behavior.

Don’t use MSN Live Search.

I saw this movie at the Cinebarre Theater, which was interesting. The Cinebarre experience is similar to going to the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX. What they’ve done is combined dinner and a movie into one venue. They’ve taken out every other row of seating and replaced it with a long table. As you arrive at your seat, a member of the waitstaff takes your food order, and BAM, you’re eating dinner while watching a movie. Brilliant. I sat back with a pint of Guinness and a “Fight Club” sandwich. Heaven.

Something else they do that I particularly like is that they don’t show you commercials. I hate that about going to the movies. I pay $9.75 to watch a metric buttload of commercials. What they show instead is some really random, quirky stuff. When I arrived they were showing a ’50s era PSA involving a high school kid who though he had witnessed someone stealing a wallet. They went on for 20 minutes about the proper way to handle the situation. Other videos included: a music video for a local band, a clip from a show featuring break dancers, and a cartoon game show where the contestants included “You”, “A Rock” and “Nobody”. A friend I was with made a comment about these videos to our waitress and she said that people actually complain about them. People are stupid.

The ticket price is $10. I will gladly pay $.25 extra to watch something interesting instead of a commercial for the Marines. I wonder if the Marines actually get people to sign up from their movie theater commercials. To me it seems like that’s the last place they should try. Think about it, should they be recruiting from a room full of people sitting on their ass, stuffing their face with empty calories? They should be showing commercials at the gym.

Anyway, on to the movie.

This movie is about a British journalist who has made a name for himself by refusing to bow to pop culture, suddenly gets a job at America’s top pop culture magazine. He then has to decide whether he will sell out and be the brown nosing, lap dog journalist, or stick to his guns and be the hard nosed writer that he wants to be.

I thought this movie was entertaining…up until act III. Acts I and II were funny and enjoyable, then it seemed that the writers didn’t know where to take it. The plot took a nosedive and became cheesy and predictable. The only saving grace was that Simon Pegg was the leading man. He turned a mediocre movie into a slightly above average movie. Oh yeah, they also had a few references to The Big Lebowski. Movie references never hurt, in my opinion.

I say wait to rent this one.

Overall Score: 3/5 stars.

I’m reminded of a story that Kevin Smith tells. He talks about a discussion he had with Ben Affleck and that Ben was telling him how much he enjoyed being in Chasing Amy. He enjoyed it so much that he keeps pressuring Kevin to write something else just like it. “Just write it and I’ll do it.” Then Kevin says, “Hey, Mother*%^&er, one of us won an Oscar for writing!”

That’s right, Ben Affleck is an Oscar award winner. Yes, the lead actor in such quality movies as Paycheck, Reindeer Games, Pearl Harbor, Gigli, Daredevil, Forces of Nature, Armageddon, and Phantoms won an Oscar. The shocker is that he didn’t win it for acting. This movie is proof that Ben Affleck should stay behind the camera. It’s so much better when he is creating the story rather than acting in it. If he continues to act he should at least get some tips from his brother Casey.

To me, this movie seems to be about good vs. evil. The struggle is to define who or what is good and who or what is evil. Is good following the letter of the law or is good breaking a few rules to better the situation. Is good getting what’s rightfully yours or is good getting what you deserve.

This film is a definite “must see”.

Overall Score: 4/5 stars.

I am sorry for the extreme untimeliness of this review. I have been meaning to see this film ever since opening night, but have been thwarted multiple times. Anyway…

Here’s what I didn’t like about the movie:

1. • It had completely ridiculous movie technology. There is a scene where Batman pulls a chunk out of a wall that has a bullet hole. He then scans it with some kind of computer modeling device using lasers. Then his computer is able to determine which parts of this 3d model are bullet fragments. The computer then is somehow able to reassemble the bullet virtually, complete with a fingerprint that would not only be underneath the shell casing but burned off by the bullet being fired. That is some AMAZING technology.

   • Another bit of incredible technology is that they are able to hack an ordinary cellphone to become a 3d modeler by using sonar. Right. Every phone has the speaker quality needed to transmit a inaudible sonar blib and a microphone good enough to pick up the inaudible sounds being bounced back with enough quality to build a 3d model. I hear the next big iPhone app is iSonar.
2. Christian Bale’s “Batman” voice. When he was Bruce Wayne, he sounded like the silky smooth, devonaire millionaire that he was. But as soon as he but on that Batsuit he immediately sounded like he was just force fed a cheese grater. Does the batsuit really have that much tracheal constriction? It was difficult to understand what he was saying in parts of the movie. Batman needs to add some Earl Grey to his utility belt.

On to the good.

The best thing about this film is that it has potential to knock Titanic out of it’s #1 spot as the highest domestic grossing film ever (James Cameron, if you are reading this, kindly kick yourself in the groin). I have been waiting for this for so long, I will be hoping against all hopes that it bitch-slaps Titanic down a peg.

I don’t want to sound like every other review and say that Heath Ledger is the greatest Joker of all time, blah, blah, blah. He was great and everyone knows it. Done. I want to talk about another great performance that was overshadowed by the whole “OMG Heath Ledger was great and now he’s dead” hype. I’m talking about Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Twoface. His performance took me by surprise. Added to this was the incredible special effects to create Twoface. It was reminiscent of the Mummy, only creepier. I couldn’t look away from his eyes, oh the eyes! They will haunt my dreams. Ok, not really, but they were haunting.

This was a great movie with a great cast and an amazing director. I highly recommend seeing it.

Overall Score: 4.5/5 stars.

First of all, I want to say that I wasn’t planning on doing a review of this movie. Since the last movie I reviewed was Kung Fu Panda, I thought that reviewing two animated films in a row would make me a sissy.

Then I came across this article. What the hell?

Back to the film, I’ll get to the nut-job bs in a second. The basic premise of this movie is that in the not too distant future, we humans have trashed the planet beyond it’s ability to sustain life. So, everyone hops on a space cruise while trash compacting robots or WALL-Es clean the earth. The last remaining WALL-E inadvertently ends up on the ship and “fascist” “left wing” “propaganda” ensues. Just like most movies that Pixar creates, it was fresh, fun and very entertaining. They push the envelope with every movie they make. In this movie, you aren’t introduced to the first human character until the movie is about half over. Even then, they only credit 7 voice actors in the credits. A vast majority of the characters are robots. It’s a robot love story. Brilliant.

Ok, back to the no brain nutters who condemn this film. On a blog called “Liberal Fascism”, I kid you not, it is really called “Liberal Fascism”, this letter is posted, describing the movie’s “fascistic elements”. “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” I consulted my good friend Merriam Webster and he told me that fascism is a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. The entire letter talks about how the characters fight the “system”. How the flying rat turds is that fascist? Socialist, maybe, (and that’s a stretch) but fascist? C’mon now. If any character in this film had fascist undertones it would be corporate/governmental character who gave the order specifically to prevent anyone returning to Earth. Or possibly the autopilot robot who followed this order. In any case the only possible fascistic characters were the antagonists. These cake eaters need to learn to open a dictionary.

So remember kids, when you think fascist dictators think: Benito Mussulini, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, and a little trash compacting robot named WALL-E.

Overall Score: 4 out of 5 stars.

In my extremely, ridiculously humble opinion, Scarface is one of the greatest movies of all time. That being said, I also think that it is one of the most misunderstood movies of all time.

I used to work retail. I used to work retail at a mall. Ugh. It wasn’t even a good mall. It’s the kind of mall that was good about 15 years ago, but now when you go there you wonder why they’re still open. Because of this, the mall would attract many wannabe gangsters. Every other person that walked into my store looked the same: pants so big that they’d have to walk around with one hand holding them up, ball cap with a perfectly flat bill worn crooked, cubic zirconium grill, using words like “aight” and reeking so bad of weed that I would routinely get headaches. An overwhelming majority of these jackasses wore a Scarface t-shirts.

What the hell? Why would anyone even remotely “gangsta” think that movie is cool? Ok, back up a moment. The movie starts well for Tony. He is ambitious, uncompromising, confident. He knows what he wants and will stop at nothing to get it. He gets respect from his fellow drug runners and he gets the girl. Great traits for a role model.

Then the second half of the movie happens.

Lets see, what happens in the third act again? Oh yeah, Tony abandons his mother, gets left by his wife, murders his best friend, causes his sister to be shot, gets pumped full of hot lead and dies in his fountain. I want to be just like him when I grow up. On a positive note, he was on enough cocaine to kill a small rhinoceros when he died.

Seriously, what are these no-brain wank-jobs thinking? This is the only scenario I can think of: The only version of this movie these gobshites have ever seen is a copy from their friend’s cousin’s roommate that they taped off of tv. But, unfortunately, the last half was taped over with an episode of American Idol. How else can Tony Montana look good to you?

I don’t get it.

I’m the greatest man that ever lived…sorry, I’m listening to the new Weezer album as I write this. So, Kung Fu Panda, where do I begin? Overall this was an enjoyable movie. I must say that I am a fan of the Jack Black. The opening scene was a dream that “Po”, the Panda, had about being a kung fu master. I would venture to guess that a majority of which was Mr. Black’s improvisation. “There’s no charge for awesomeness!” Pure gold.

I do have to say that it was interesting having “kung fu masters” voiced by the “pot-smoking” Seth Rogan (Mantis) and the “blue” David Cross (Crane). I don’t know that I would have cast them in these roles, but I think that they added a great deal to the movie. This movie was cast very well. Dustin Hoffman did a wonderful job as Master Shifu. Animated films always have great casts, usually due to the fact that they don’t have to get everyone in the same room at the same time.

The story has been done many times before; The unlikely hero has to overcome his self-doubt and gain enough skill in a short period of time to defeat the evil expert. (Right. How long does it take to become a kung fu master? Hours? Days?) It wasn’t very hard to predict what would happen next. That being said, I would have to say that Kung Fu Panda was pretty good. It was entertaining and a good way to spend an hour and a half.

Overall score: 3.5/5 stars.

I’ve been looking forward to this film ever since I heard that they were making another Indiana Jones movie. I was even more exited when I saw a photo from production that showed George Lucas wearing a “Han Shot First” t-shirt. I thought, “Hey, maybe ol’ Georgie finally realized that he’s been royally screwing up his movies lately.”

Sadly, I was wrong.

My first clue that something was wrong was the appearance of Neil Flynn as a federal agent (”Janitor” from scrubs, for those who don’t know). Don’t get me wrong, I love Neil. He just seemed out of place.

In another scene Indy and his friends are in pursuit of the Russians driving through the jungle. During which Cate Blanchett and Shia LeBouf get into a sword fight while standing on opposing moving vehicles. Granted, it’s a movie and they movies are allowed to stretch the laws of physics, but there’s no way in hell anyone could do that. A little later in the scene, Shia’s character gets caught up on some vines and pulled out of the car. Guess what happens next. Right, he goes Tarzan on those vines and somehow catches up with the speeding cars. This is when I started thinking this movie was supposed to be a comedy.

I can’t forget to talk about the ending. Do you remember watching the movie A.I.? Remember the end, where Haley Joel Osment is talking to the alien looking robot things, and you’re thinking “What in the holy hell is going on”? This movie had an ending like that. This movie took the Indiana Jones from the Adventure genre right into Sci Fi.

My final thoughts. George Lucas, if you’re reading this, for the love of all that is good and Holy, please stop making movies.

Overall score: 2/5 stars.