I just realized that I probably have seen more movies in the past two weeks then I did in the first four months of the year (which equates to 3 movies), and I don't think that alot of people really have thought about going to see them but me and a few weird friends.  So I have decided to give you my take on them.  WARNING! I may in advertantly put in some stuff that people may feel are "Spoilers" where as I only found them little sections of the larger story. Read at your own risk.

Balls of Fury...

Out of the 3 movies that I have seen recently this was the one that I was looking forward to the longest.  When I heard Christopher Walken doing and interview with John Holmberg on 98 KUPD about his upcoming movie about an underworld ping pong tournament back in March, I wanted to see this movie.

Well I guess I waited too long.  While this movie is good and silly all of the way through, there are really no big belly laughs and all of the funniest scenes are in the trailers.  Walken, of course, is great, and the movie is filled with subtle humor (like you are wondering how Walken could be a chinese drug lord named Feng when he is as white as could be, then later he puts on these THICK glasses that make his eyes look oriental) but the lack of one or two just gut bustingly funny scenes that you expect from a comedy keeps this from being a good movie.  If you want a good "Enter the Dragon" parady look up "A fist full of yen".  Put this in your netflix queue but don't see it in the theaters.

3:10 to Yuma...

Out of the 3 movies that I have seen recently this was my favorite.  For those of you who haven't heard of this movie yet it is Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in a remake of a 1957 cowboy movie.  

Yes a western.

But the story in this one is great, and the acting is wonderful.  If you like your action with a good heaping of drama and emotion, this is the movie for you.  If you know me, you know that I will pick apart a movie and complain about all of the stupind things that charaters will do in it.  For the first time in a while I have found a movie that I couldn't do that with.  If a charater did something wrong, it was something that the charater would have done wrong in that situation.  Everyone in this movie develope their charater and was true to it till the end.

Anyway, unless you just can't stand westerns, I say see this one in the theaters before it goes to rental.

Shoot 'em up...

I have to admit that even though the trailers looked good and silly on this action flick, Kelly had to kind of talk me into this one.  And I am glad she did.

Do you feel like your action movies have been taking their gun fight scenes just a little to far past the edge of believability? Well Shoot 'em up lives up to the name and takes a flying leap over that edge and gives it the finger as it soars by.  The first couple of gun fight scenes seem like something right out of "The Transporter", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" or any other newer action film, with the bad guys straight out of "The Storm Trooper School of Marksmanship" and the good guy killing one bad guy to one bullet.  The use of enviroment to your advantage is such an homage to John Woo it isn't even funny... No wait it IS funny, and that is why I liked this movie.  Every gun fight scene as the movie continues goes one more jump past that edge and you just have to laugh because you know the film makers were laughing as well, you can tell just from the cheezy one liners.  Just make sure that you go in with the right mindset on this one.  The atitude of this movie can be summed up in this line from the bad guy... " Man do we suck! Or is this guy REALY that good!" Expect not to believe, don't expect there to be a real story, expect to laugh.  This film lives up to its name.

See this one at a matinee or dollar theater.

Anyway, that is what I thought of those movies, if you have a different opinion then I have a carrot for you...

Here is a little overview of my day yesterday. (Andy's actually putting content in his journal, that means that stock on thermal undies just went up in hell.)

I went to work in the morning and stuffed everything that I needed to do early so I could get off at around 11.  I then ran home and showered and changed to get ready for my meeting at Congressman Shadegg's office.  What, you didn't know that I had a meeting with a Congressman?  See you are not as psycic as you thought you were.

To back up a little on that end of the story, I have been watching the "Net Neutrality" issue fairly closely after seeing an "Ask a Ninja" episode on it.  (Yes you can learn from the "Ninja").  I have been receiving info from a site called freepress.org about up coming news on the subject.  Anyway, 2 weeks ago they put out a message to people in Phoenix saying they were looking for people to meet with Congressman Shadegg on Tuesday the 28th.  I knew that Kelly would be out of town this week so I would not need to pick her up after work so I would be able to go.  I sent in a message expressing my interest and they e-mailed me back saying that they were interested.

So the first problem surfaced on Friday when they told me that the meeting would be at 1pm.  I didn't realize that it would be that early in the day so I was going to have to get the time off, but I didn't find out until I was home on Friday so I had to wait until Monday morning to confirm that I would be able to make that time.  Well Monday comes and my work doesn't have any problems with me leaving early.  I let them know that I will be able to make it and they tell me there will be a conference call that evening at 8:30.

I take a break from playing Call of Duty 2 at 8:25 and call in at 8:27 only to find out that the conference call is all ready over.  A little anoid I e-mail my rep at freepress and the next morning he sends me a FAQ pdf that I print a couple of copies of, read through for the details, and informs me that everyone will be meeting 15 minutes early so we can meet face to face and go over who would be doing the talking.  So at this point I figure that because I had missed the conference call I would end up being the silent support for the group because I really didn't have an assigned task.

I get there at 20 minutes to 1 and go into Congressman Shadeggs office.  No one else is there yet but I was a little early so I wasn't worried about it.   Shadegg's Senior Aide, Bruce Raden, comes out and informs me that the meeting was going to be the meeting was with him.  No problem, this guy is the Congressman's right hand man so it still is an important meeting.  He leads me into the meeting room and grabs me some water.  When he comes back him and I start talking about nothing in particular (what we think about World of Warcraft and how the internet is effecting our society) and he seems to be really interested in my opinion on the matter.  Next thing we know it is almost 1:30 and no one else has showed up for the meeting yet.  I am a little surprised so we both check our paperwork to make sure that we had the right time.  Sure enough we both had the same time.  By that point we had already started talking about the subject of the meeting so we decided to make it official and dove into the subject completely.

By the end I feel I had at least given him some serious food for thought and he told me that he was going to definitely discuss it with the Congressman.  He gave me the impression that he was expecting to possibly meet with me again, why I'm not sure, but I left the meeting feeling pretty good about my self.  If I could do that with such little prep, how much better would I have been with a little more effort?

Anyway it was definitely a new experience for me.  I wish that I had brought a camera or something to commemorate the occasion, but I will live with what I have. :-)

Just to give you a heads up, John Shadegg had voted against any bills that included wording that protected "Net Neutrality" feeling that the government should stay out of the internet and that market competition would protect the customer.  The biggest point Mr. Raden took from our meeting is how can you have market competition with only 1 or 2 companies competing.