Pintmaster

Through Katie, I received a freebie ticket to “The Good Shepherd“, a new movie about the CIA through the eyes of one character, Edward Wilson played by Matt Damon. The movie spans the 20s, when Wilson sees his father commit suicide, to his days at Yale where he joins the illustrious Skull & Bones secret society, to his entrance into the OSS during world war II, to the formation of the CIA, to the bay of pigs fiasco….. wow I am out of breath. That is a lot to cover in a movie, which is why the movie is about 2 hrs and 30 minutes long. I must warn the reader, that if your favorite movie is “Mean Girls“, this is not for you. I am a history buff and am fascinated with life in the United States pre 1970, so this movie was right up my alley. Had it not been, I would be pretty bored, which I suppose the two teeny-bopper girls next to me were when they left after about 35 - 40 minutes.

Strengths

The strengths of the movie lie in the directors ability to bring this history to life and use Damon’s character as a vehicle for viewing history. Wilson is a stoic man, who does not say much. In fact, based on the interactions with other characters, you sense that Wilson is well respected by peers, enemies and the like, but either the director wants to purvey that he does not see this in himself, or Damon’s performance is unconvincing. You be the judge.

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are certainly the length. There are several, interesting but irrelevant forays into topics that have no bearing on the plot. For example, Wilson is asked to be a “bonesman” while performing dressed in drag in a play at Yale. This is amusing, but irrelevant. We could have had this part left out and just jumped straight into him being in the “Skull & Bones”.

Conclusion

Overall, I would rate this as a 7/10. Anything over 5, I think you should go watch. I believe in a true average being 5/10 and this movie is certainly above the average crap that Hollywood seems to love to churn out.

As an afterthought, I would recommend this movie to people who enjoyed the movies “Kinsey“, and/or “A Beautiful Mind“. These movies all feature the same sorrowful brilliance of the protagonist.

I’ve been a big fan of Sascha Baron Cohen for a while and Im excited to see Borat - The Movie coming out. You can check out the first 4 minutes of the movie below.

Also, be sure to check out all the deleted scenes!

• Puppy
• Dinner Prayer
• Police aka Cinnabon
• Jail

A bunch more official content is available in “Borat’s” video stream profile. Even more stilll is on Borat’s official homesite

Worried about getting busted using Bittorrent? You probably should be since it doesnt hide your identity. It seems that downloading movies is more likely to get you busted than other content. I have several friends who got notices from their internet provider after downloading movies. You may be able to do that safely too!

What you have to do is run a piece of software in the background called “PeerGuardian 2“. The way it works is by blocking IP addresses. Your list is updated based on a master list, and you can choose if you want to block corporations, educational institutions, governments, etc.

In non-technical terms, internet addresses, just like physical addresses can be traced to their owners. By blocking addresses that are more likely to be tracking copyright infringement or sending bad data, it enables you to sneak under the radar and continue to download.

As always, be careful where you get your torrents from and use a reputable source like piratebay or tvrss. While I am on the subject, I’ll give a plug for ¬µTorrent too! It’s a great windows based bittorrent client. If you are on a mac, Bitrocket is increasing in quality at a really fast pace. The built in search is awesome.

Worried about getting busted for music? allofmp3 is still up and running, and according to them is legal! I dont know about that, but $2 an album is the price music should be!

Im kinda scared. This seems very cultish. I wonder what type of parent promotes this kind of activity.

Since I am sick this weekend, I have been watching quite a few movies. I figure that I should try and do something productive with it so Im going to share my opinions of the movies:

The Benchwarmers

The benchwarmers is one of those lame underdog movies. It’s basically about a bunch of losers whose goal as adults is to beat a bunch of kids baseball teams. It has the usual SNL guys - Rob Schneider, David Spade as well as Jon Heder of “Napoleon Dynamite” fame. However, this movie is terrible. It is cheesy, predictable and fails to maintain attention through the movie. It has a few funny parts, but basically it is disappointing. Maybe it works if you are a bunch of teenagers at a slumber party. Anyone else, leave it on the shelf

3/10

Basic Instinct 2

This is the raunchy sequel to the leg-uncrossing Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone is older and raunchier. It is set in London, probably to try and make it more interesting. I can half pay attention to the movie when they start talking dirty or have a graphic sex scene. The car that she crashes at the beginning is pretty interesting. Overall, the movie was more interesting than Benchwarmers, but I would still refrain from giving it good marks.

5/10

Ultraviolet

Decent special effects, poor story and really fails to set the mood to give the viewer the full feeling of the dystopian future. The idea is that there are people infected with a virus who are stronger, heal faster etc… than humans, but they also die faster. The humans are trying to eradicate these infected people from the general population. Violet is one of the infected and wants to prevent the humans from killing all of the infected. It’s another comic book made into movie. It isnt interesting enough in the transfer and I would be pretty bored seeing it again.

4/10

Inside Man

Fantastic Spike Lee movie about a bank robbery in New York city. It has the usual Spike Lee racial undertones.¬† It has a really interesting cast - Denzel Washington, Willem Dafoe, Jodie Foster. The cast makes for a really interesting dynamic. The story reminds of “The Usual Suspects” and flashes back and forth between times as the hostages in the bank robbery are being interviewed. Unlike “The Usual Suspects”, the viewer is more omnipotent, and only the Detective (Washington) has the epiphany moment when he realizes ‘whodunnit’. It’s certainly one that slipped under my radar, and is more interesting than a lot of crud that hollywood has pumped out. Nice one spike!

8/10