Quick and Dirty

Haven't blogged recently, so I wanted to do some quick catching up.
MOVIE REVIEWS:
The Core: Interesting cast, good Direction, super dumb. Two and a half stars.
Spider: Relatively interesting, but nothing happens for 25 minutes. Two and a half stars.
Mystic River: Moving, emotional film with many layers. Some minor flaws, has a few minutes at the end that don't fit. Three and a half stars.

Win32 Programming Trick of the Day

You've detected the user's current locale is right-to-left, therefore you've given a window the WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL style in order to reverse the window. Normally this would work fine, but you also have the style WS_EX_COMPOSITED on the window to reduce flicker. When the window is drawn everything is more backwards than it should be. The image being displayed to the user is completely opposite of what it should be. What do you do? Add WS_EX_LAYERED to the window, even though you're not using any layering features (translucent or odd shaped windows). Suddenly everything works fine. Why? I don't know.

If You See Only One Half of a Movie This Year

MOVIE REVIEW: Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Four years after being left for dead at her wedding, Uma Thurman's "The Bride" wakes up from a coma and seeks vengeance for herself and her unborn child. Her targets are fellow members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and their leader, Bill. Her first targets are O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), a half-Chinese and half-Japanese American who now controls the Yakuza, and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox).

Walking into Kill Bill, I wasn't expecting much except a few thrills. Quentin Tarantino hasn't had a film in theaters for nearly 6 years, the uninspired Jackie Brown. I was of the belief that he probably didn't have anything important left to bring to cinema after Pulp Fiction. I also wasn't excited about the fact that I would only be seeing the first half of a film cut into two pieces. It's easy to be impressed when you have low expectations. With that in mind, let me say that nearly every frame of this movie is brilliant.

The film is an Hommage to the Chop Suey B-Movie, and the characters are playing under B-Movie rules yet sometimes walking in our universe, as in the first sequence where The Bride fights Vernita, now living as an ordinary housewife in Pasadena. The film allows us to laugh at this style yet does not wink at us or sink into parody. The true brilliance of the film is the style. The combination of action, cinematography, and music elevates the film to the level of art. Tarantino switches styles throughout the film. In the hospital escape and Pasadena sequences the feel is very similar to Pulp Fiction. He then moves completely into Anime for the O-Ren Ishii origin segment. Later he create a fake, low budget Tokyo with buildings and an Airplane that looks like a model and a set that feels like it's just a set.

The Caveat to all this is that we've only been given half of a film. There's no ending, just a breaking point in the middle. The film was created as one piece and divided into two pieces by Mirimax. Fortunately, the film is so good that it makes up for this failing and leaving you longing for the second part. Four Stars, will be required that all film students study this movie in the future, though probably with the second half in place.

Rockin' with the Plot Holes

MOVIE REVIEW: School of Rock
Wannabe rock god Dewey Finn (Jack Black) is kicked out of his band a few weeks before a Battle of The Bands competition. He's unemployed, broke and living with his friend, substitute teacher Ned Scheebly (Mike White). Dewey owes Ned over two thousand dollars in rent and Ned's girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman) wants Dewey out. To get the money to pay Ned, Dewey pretends to be Ned and takes a job at a prestigious private school. Dewey doesn't even try to teach the kids, until he discovers that some of the students have musical talent. He comes up with a Zany Scheme: Form a new band under the guise of a school project and take the students to the Battle of the Bands. Dewey teaches the kids about how to rock and about rock history, keeping the operation secret from the school principal (Joan Cusack) and the kids' parents.

It's hard to evaluate this movie. On one level it's a good comedy, and on another it's a silly version of the mentor brings out the best in students kind of film. On the other side there's a certain tension running throughout the whole film, as it feels like Dewey could be caught at any moment. It's also hard to believe he could train a rock band in a classroom for three weeks and no one would notice. Apparently the walls of the classroom are so solid that the noise of a rock band with amplifiers can only faintly be heard in the nearby rooms. Three stars, the good outweighs the unbelievable.

Romancing the Stone 3

MOVIE REVIEW: The Rundown
Muscle-bound "retrieval expert" Beck (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is sent to a small mining to in South America. He's there to retrieve Travis (Seann William Scott), the son of a gangster. Travis is looking for a long lost ancient artifact, but he's not the only one. Local rebels want the artifact so they can sell it in order to buy their freedom. The man who runs the town, Hatcher(Christopher Walken) wants to get his hands on it first. Beck and Travis end up stuck in the jungle with barmaid Mariana (Rosario Dawson) looking for the artifact and running from Hatcher.

The plot is a setup for a series of action pieces and a few light comedy bits. Surprisingly, most of it works. The action is especially well done, sort of a mix between Jackie Chan and The Matrix. Most of the fighting is hand to hand or with environmental objects and it is interspersed with sudden slow motion shots. The acting is good, or at least good enough not to detract from the movie. Christopher Walken is especially good, knowing just the right tone to take with the material. Director Peter Berg has done an excellent job taking material that should have made a bad film and making it enjoyable. Three Stars