Bill

I've seen Les Miserables on stage twice.  Once in 1989 or so and the other in 2012.  Thus, I've seen both the original stage setup and the newer digitally enhanced version.  I loved both of them and I discuss them both at length in a different post.  I only mention them here to illustrate my opinion of the show itself.

The trailer for the new movie really had me fired up to see it:

For the most part I enjoyed the movie but there were certain parts that I disliked so much I can't help but comment on them.

The singing, for the most part, was really good.  Hugh Jackman, as Valjean, did a great job and I was really impressed with Anne Hathaway as Fantine - I had no idea she could sing so well.  I also really enjoyed Samantha Barks as Eponine.  However, every time Russel Crowe sang I cringed.  Don't get me wrong, Crowe had the perfect bearing as Javert - but his nasal singing just destroyed the air of authority and self-righteousness of the character for me; Javert needs a strong voice and Crowe just couldn't deliver.

At first I was a little thrown off when the songs weren't quite in the right order or were divided up a little but I actually appreciated the directors decisions in doing so to translate the script to the screen.  However, there were some new song bits injected into the movie that I just didn't like.  Most jarring was the carriage ride with the young Cosette sleeping beside Valjean where Jackman sang "Suddenly."  The movie would have been better without the song.

From a cinematic perspective I liked the majority of it but there were some scenes that just were glaringly bad or annoying.  The view down to the river during Javert's personal crisis looked absurd - in fact the entire scenery looked way too fake.  I also didn't care for the sound effect upon impact.  Likewise, I didn't really like most of the up close face shots when people were singing.  I suppose it was supposed to create a sense of intimacy but it often jarred me out of the realm of disbelief too frequently and took away some of the scope of the story.

My last issue was with Marius.  I actually liked him for most of the movie but his voice sounded too throaty when he sang deeper notes and his facial expression during the scene where Valjean reveals his secret history is completely out of place.  He looks to be smirking almost - it just didn't make sense given the context.

The most moving scene for me in the movie was all Marius though - when he sang "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables" he blew me away. He had great emotion and I got caught up a little.  The movie really brought that scene alive for me where the stage version never did.  In the the two stage versions the last stand at the barricade along with the dramatic moment featuring Gavroche at the conclusion of "Little People" is what always got me - in the movie I just didn't experience the same impact; but Empty Chairs and Empty Tables blew me away.

Overall, Russel Crowe's singing bothered me so much I can't give the movie any better than a 3/5.  If it were any other story I'd probably give it a 2 due to my issues with the cinematography but "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables" saved the show.

#les-miserables #reviews #MovieReview

Fly Me To The Moon is a 3-D animated movie from Disney nWave Pictures & Illuminata Pictures that is about three fly's who stow away on Apollo 11 and have the adventure of their lives going to the moon and back with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Well, that's the basic boring marketing premise. In actuality it was really more of a showcase of Disney's new 3D movie making techniques and a lot less about the flys, their adventures, or even the moon for that matter.

The movie starts with the 3 young "teenage" flies hanging out in a junkyard building their own model rocket and dreaming of their own opportunities for adventure. They are quickly taunted by two apparently"cool" flies who are off to a great adventure of visiting a neighboring town. At this point the story goes into one of it's many lulls and the viewer is subjected to a 3D travel sequence. These generally meaningless segments of the movie happen quite a bit but I suppose they aren't any worse than the boring and stereotypical group of heros; the rebel and his two friends (the smart one and the fat one), the soft but cagey old grandfather, the boring and oft-fainting mother, and the too-good-for you cool kids. Add into this mix the typical cold-ware fare Russian stereotypes (where in Soviet Russia even the Fly's are Communist) such as the beautiful and mysterious lady who falls for the roguish American, the scarred spy, and the short and belligerent colonel. In general the cast of characters was pretty lame and predictable (kind of like the incredibly shallow story).

The boys adventure to space attracts the attention of the Soviet flies and the impending danger helps the old American fly reunite with his lost Russian love as well as brining all of the American flies together to save our intrepid heroes. Yawn. To top it all off the price of admission was $27 for three people - or, as the cashier put it, 1 adult and 2 children. $9 a person! Why? Because the studio had opted out of actually telling a story and, instead, decided to try and WOW us with their 3D technology. Consider me unimpressed. We did get some high-grade plastic 3D glasses though; however, I doubt we will be able to use them to save money at a future 3D movie.

If it weren't for the fact that my 7 year old daughter liked the movie so much I would say there is nothing worthwhile in the film. However, the 3D effects really did entrance her and she spent quite a bit of time acting like she was grabbing at the various flies, mosquitoes, and maggots that seemed to jump off of the screen. On a scale of 0-5 I'll give this a 1/2 and only because she liked the effects.

#reviews #Movies #MovieReview #Entertainment

A few months ago I posted a review of the financial management site mint.com. In general I gave it a very glowing review because I really liked it. I still do. However, I was turned on to a different site this week that, while not as refined as mint is even more powerful. The funny thing is, when I signed up for mint, mint actually told me about this competing site - but I didn't listen.

The site I'm talking about is Yodlee. Yodlee is kind of a clearinghouse for monetary information. All sorts of transactions pass through their system and, in fact, it is where Mint goes to get all of your data (and, coincidentally, where Mint stores your account credentials). Mint just puts a really nice wrapper on top of what Yodlee offers; except mint doesn't offer everything Yodlee does (yet).

The key part of any of these sites is that they provide me with the ability to see an overarching view of my entire financial situation at a glance. Mint goes about half way to that end; Yodlee gets about 90% of the way. For instance, some of the accounts that I can view in Yodlee that are missing from my mint account are my mortgage, home equity loan, paypal account, 401k plan, and my daughters 529 plans. Yodlee gives me all of those and tons of details about each. In fact, I get more detail about my 401k plan from within Yodlee about my recent activity than I do from my 529 plans website. What's up with that?

Yodlee isn't all sunshine though. Like I said Mint has a nice sugary coating on it that makes it super easy to use and asks very little of the user before you can start gleaning some very useful information. Yodlee's UI isn't nearly as polished and, at first, doesn't seem even remotely as powerful. However, after digging into it for a while today I have gotten it to mimic most of what Mint offered with the added bonus of a much deeper view of my finances. It's great.

Here are some tips if you decide to give Yodlee a try:

1. 
   
2. Define some sub-categories. Mint has some defined out of the box. Yodlee is actually better in this regard because you can define as many categories as you want. With mint you are stuck with the categories they give you. (In mint's defense you can also tag things with all the tags you want, called labels in mint, and you can't do that in Yodlee. However, you can't run any of the graphical reports in mint against tags so I have found little value to that feature).
   
3. Go to the options page and make your default homepage the "Dashboard" It is what gives you the quick look into your current status.
   
4. Import as many accounts as you can think of. They also let you import many of the places you pay bills to. For instance I added in my Dish network account - it is handy for letting me see not just when I spend money but also where it is all going. One thing I do like better about Mint is the ability to graph trends by vendor (such as walmart, kroger, toy-r-us, etc - you can't do that in Yodlee unless you have it in there as an account - that kind of sucks).
   
5. Also on the options page notice you can organize your dashboard a little - By default the right column is MUCH taller than the left so shift things around a bit so you get a good balance.
   
6. After you have imported a bunch of accounts define a custom account group that contains just your primary accounts (checking, savings and that's it). Then setup the transactions module on the dashboard to just show that group. It makes it much easier to focus on your actual cash flow at a glance while still letting you run deep and complex reports
   
7. When you login and go to add an account the first time you will pick a bank, say Bank of America, and then it will put BoA in the left column - but never have asked you for your account info. You aren't really done with the BoA account addition yet - you've just queued up BoA for addition to your account.
   
   After you identify all the institutions you want to add they will be listed in the left column, at that point just go through each (there is an add account link under each) and provide your info and, in no time, you'll have a full composite of your finances.
   

I like Yodlee so much I'm going to be deleting my mint account and, as much as I like mint, that is saying something. I still prefer the UI of mint and I love the charting based on merchant, but in the end I really don't need those as much as I do the deeper insight into my finances. Both are free so the depth of coverage was the deal breaker for me.

#reviews #Geekiness

I have a net-flix account that I am pretty bad at using. I have had three DVDs sitting on top of my TV since mid-august waiting on me to watch them. This past week I actually got around to watching all three, but only one, Stranger than Fiction, was good enough, to me, to warrant any commentary.

Stranger Than Fiction is a Will Ferrell movie that is totally and unequivocally like no other Will Ferrell movie. He plays the role of Harold Crick, an IRS Agent, who is also, oddly enough, the protagonist in a book that is being written by a high respected author; Karen Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson). I realize, if you haven't seen the movie that that little summation probably doesn't make any sense. However, it didn't make much sense to Harold either as he was brushing his teeth and suddenly heard the authors voice narrating his normal, and dull, daily life - narrating in a voice only he can hear.

Most people, I think, would think that they might be crazy. However, the authors narration is uncannily accurate and so Harold is both frustrated and intrigued, until suddenly, while waiting on the bus, he hears the narration that foreshadows his impending, and nearly-immediate death. At first Harold visits a psychiatrist but he disagrees with her diagnosis so he follows her secondary advice and visits with a literary expert, Professor Jules Hibert (played by Dustin Hoffman). Professor Hibert tries to help him make sense of the narration but, overall, is little help beyond telling Harold that he should just live his own life.

Thankfully, Harold listens to the professor and starts to break out of his mold of living his days in a cookie cutter fashion and he pursues a love interest with the most recent victim of one of his audits, a baker named Ana Pascal (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal). Harold not only finds Ana exceptionally attractive and intriguing but Professor Hibert alluded that were she to fall in love with Harold that perhaps his story would become a comedy and not a deadly tragedy.

At this point I am reluctant to really reveal more about the movie's plot for fear of ruining it. I rarely write reviews and they are normally very brief and cursory. However, I think this movie deserves a little more effort on my part. I throughly enjoyed it. I am not a Will Ferrell fan but I thought he did a superb job in this movie and, much like Harold Crick I found Maggie Gyllenhaal to be irresistible. I have not seen her in any other movies before and I doubt I will watch any of her previous work based on this movie - but her performance, and presence, in this movie was a very nice complement to Ferrell's. Dustin Hoffman was his typical odd self - very much the same person he always seems to be to me; his motions always seem a little jerky and his dictation equally unbalanced - but he was still an interesting character who added a little flavor to the movie. The best performance however, was by Emma Thompson - the Author. Not only did I really enjoy her voice as she narrated her caustic and torn character, when the audience experienced her personally was a great counter to the hum-drum existence of Harold and his friends, and Ana and her edgy cuteness.

I doubt kids would really enjoy the movie just because it does move along at a slow pace, the scenes are generally pretty dry, and the humor quirky. However, I think most adults would enjoy this film - I will even watch this one again with Lisa - I think she will like it as well.

RATING7

#reviews #Movies #MovieReview #Entertainment

A couple of weeks ago Lisa "surprised" me with a Wii. My coworker, and friend, Ed had bought two of the three Toys-R-Us had (one for him, one for his sister) but it turns out his sister got one the same day in D.C. So Lisa bought the extra one and let me tell you, it is really fun. It comes with five basic sports games; bowling, golf, boxing, tennis, and baseball. I'm not too fond of boxing or baseball (in fact I don't like the baseball game at all) but I really enjoy the golf, bowling, and tennis games. I would probably like the boxing a bit more if more of my swings actually registered (read: if I didn't suck).

I haven't owned a new to market console since the Sega Genesis even though I have eyed the PS2, XBox, XBox 360, and the PS3. Lisa isn't much of a gamer and the girls aren't either so it was hard to justify the spending of hundreds of dollars on a game machine if I was the only one going to play it. While the Wii hasn't suddenly turned the family into avid gamers it has managed to draw Lisa in to play some games and Shannon really enjoys it (though Emily hasn't even tried it and won't for another year or so).

We have bought a few extra games for it; Sonic and the Secret Rings, Tiger Woods 2007, Madden 2007, and Wii Play (a set of nine mini-games). I haven't tried Sonic yet but Lisa, Shannon and Joe all played it. Lisa and Shannon seemed to like it somewhat but Joe didn't care for it. The Wii Play games are mostly lame but they can be kind of fun - particularly an old Atari 2600 rebirth of Combat! (the tank game). I am no good at Madden 2007 which is no different than my skill level at any other Madden game however the controls are a lot different so I kind of like it - even though it can be very, very frustrating. Tiger Woods golf is cool but the graphics are rendered a bit darkly on our TV so it is hard to see the hole on the green plus the Wii remote doesn't always register my swings when I'm putting so it can be very difficult to have good "touch" for distance.

The Wii has definitely taken up a lot of our time - we have reduced our overall TV watching substantially because we are playing Wii games (mostly Wii Sports - the five games that came with the Wii). The only real gripes I have with the Wii so far are that there is no online play, the graphics, and the controls. I really wish there was online play because I would really like playing some of these games against my friends without having to have them come over. While the graphics are "ok" they just aren't very good - particularly in Tiger Woods golf. The people all look "weird" and the animations of them are really awkward plus everything is too dark. If I squat and have the TV at exact eye level it is better but the point of the golf mechanics are that you stand up and swing the remote like a real golf club. Finally, the controller. Sometimes it is overly sensitive and other times it doesn't register my moving of it at all. While I love the concept of the controller and have a blast playing the games with it it just doesn't work well enough for sensitive movements. It's perfect for abrupt moves (baseball, golf driving, tennis smashes) but sucks for putting or tennis drop shots - you just can't be delicate and that really gets aggravating.

I have hope that the mechanics and online play stuff will be resolved eventually. I'm resigned to the awkward graphics and think the sports games designers should as well and not try so hard to be photo realistic with the people (Tiger) because they just look odd. My overall impression of the system is a positive one though. My arms have actually been a touch sore after playing a lot of boxing or tennis the next day and, at least with boxing, it is easy to break a sweat so I figure I'm doing myself some minor good by playing some of these games. The price still seems kind of high - and the $50 a game sucks - but that is only because I am cheap. I have gotten my monies worth in hours of entertainment already (as compared to going to movies, amusement parks, etc) so it really isn't all that bad.

As soon as I manage to get my "Mii" off the "Wii" I will get a screen grab of him and put him on the blog for you too see.

#reviews #FunStuff #Wii #Entertainment

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