Well it looks like The Aviator didn’t do as well as expected Millon Dollar Baby cleaned up in all the major categories, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood (for direction) all got Oscars. Jamie Foxx picked up Best Actor for Ray, and Cate Blanchett got Best Supporting Actress.
Martin Scorsese looks like he got overlooked again, I’m begning to think the Academy has something against him. The Aviator did win 7 awards, the majority of the wins were in technical categories.
Went and watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou yesterday. It was hilarious, though I have a feeling the majority of audience did not get the jokes. Bill Murray was great, as was Luke Wilson. The rest of the cast included Angelica Houston, Cate Blanchett, Willam Defoe and Jeff Goldblum.
The most surprising for me was Defoe since I have never seen him in a comic role, he has some great bits. This film is highly recommended, if you liked Royal Tenenbuams then you will like this.
Just got back from a short break to Venice, was out there with Raad and Raj. We had a good time, the weather held quite well over the weekend, saturday was nice and bright, sunday was cold but dry, however yesterday the snow hit. It was freezing, fortunately our flight back was not delayed by much.
Got a chance to see most of the big things around Venice, the highlights were St Mark’s Basillica, the musuems and travelling around Venice itself. We were staying on Lido, an island south east of the main island. Getting to and from the island was easy thanks to the water bus, it only takes 10 minutes. Walking around Venice is great, you can’t get really lost, however you sort of need a good sense of direction so you don’t waste too much time.
Didn’t get a chance to go on a gondola will save that for next time.
Just watched Assualt on Precinct 13, it has been put together by the people behind Training Day. Now I was surprised by this flick, it is way better than the reviews I had read lead me to believe. The combination of action and suspense, and A* cast is just right. Fishburne is his usual cool self, playing the crime lord that can put away a bunch of crooked cops. Hawke plays a convincing ex-undercover cop who is hiding away behind a desk job at a small suburban precinct.
Hawke, some colleagues, some inmates and Fishburne get caught in a siege in the precinct on New Year’s Eve. Thanks to a group of bad cops lead by Gabriel Byrne. A little formulaic perhap but a good action film, it doesn’t matter if you have or have not seen the original.
Well it has finally happened, Carly Fiorina has stepped down as CEO of HP. HP have been having a though time for a while now, the merger with Compaq was supposed to have helped, but ultimately it created new problems which took time to address. ‘The HP Way’ died along time ago anyway, I don’t think things will change much since they are such a large beast, breaking up into seperate divisions is one possibility. But I think the board and investors would not be to pleased.
HP historically was one of the first companies to break on to the scene when Silicon Valley was starting out. I have been to the HP muesuem and visited various spots around Palo Alto which have been made significant by having some link to HP. Stanford even has a building named after Dave Packard, which is the Electrical Engineering department. It will be interesting to see how things turn out, especially who they bring into replace Carly.
I doubt this will be the last we hear of Carly Fiorina either.
I really liked the Ocean’s 11 remake from a couple of years ago, when I heard they were doing a sequel Ocean’s 12 I was a little surprised. The main premise of the film is that Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) the bad guy from the first film has tracked down the 11 and issued them with an ultimatum which basically amounts to ‘Give me my money back or you die’. The cast again is amazing, they managed to get Catherine Zeta Jones to join the cast. She plays the Interpol agent that is assigned to the case of the Grey Fox and just happens to be Brad Pitt’s old love interest.
The story is clever, and how things pan out is not obvious so in that respect they did a good job. However some bits seemed either to fast or too slow. Also they decided to make Julia Roberts pretend to be Julia Roberts which I thought was a bit silly, Bruce Willis even made a little cameo which was kind of funny.
On the whole I did enjoy the film, if you liked the first film this will go down well.
Season 4 of 24 started here in the UK last week, unfortunately I screwed up the VCR recording by not using a tape with enough space on it, since it was a double bill. So I set about looking on BitTorrent sites looking for 24 episodes, I knew we were a few weeks behind, but I was amazed to find 6 episodes all available openly on the internet. So I setup a bunch of downloads, come monday evening I had the first 6. The reason for there being 6 already was apparently in the US Fox has been showing 2 per week until last week. So all is good. On wednesday evening I pulled episode 7 as well.
Season 4 is good, it is sort of repeating the terrorist line in the 2nd season, however the whole story background has changed. Season 4 is set 18 months after season 3, some of the characters have from the previous season have been totally written out. The first episode does a good job of introducing all of the new faces. The biggest change being that Jack no longer works at CTU, but instead is a consultant attached to the Secretary of Defence. So far my favourtite episodes are 5 and 7, which have the right mix of action and story. The first 6 episodes as usual, are a sub story which then leads on to new developments.
Watched Meet the Fockers last night. It was hilarious, much funnier than I thought plus it was better than the first film. Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand play the Fockers. The rest of the cast was the same as the first film. De Niro was excellent the whole string of gags with the strap on feeding breasts was funny.
