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Many walk the Japanese Metropolis at night looking for neon urban dystopia — technology overwhelming civilization. … I do, at least.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Twenty years ago I was quite culture shocked in this nation. But this time it seems clean, organized and friendly.

Welcoming.

Finally I got a taste of film noir. First night in Osaka, against advice at my hostel, I ran blindly along a riverbank.

Jets thundered overhead. Trains rumbled past every few minutes. It was dark. Pitch dark. Dogs raced by (well behaved, since they are Japanese). … A guitarist played “Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?“, alone. …

At the same time, on my iPod, I was listening to Blade Runner inspired Altered Carbon:

… hybrid of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Norman Spinrad’s Deus X …

I was anticipating a Spinner spotlight.

… But it didn’t happen.

We’ll have to wait on the new Blade Runner movie, I guess, either a sequel or a prequel, with filming to begin no earlier than 2013. Without Harrison Ford.
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Though it gets rave reviews, I agree with this guy. Altered Carbon’s nothing but “neckbeard wish-fulfillment”. Overrated.

Altered Carbon may well be a Hollywood film soon, too.

I love all movies with dubious time travel plots. Films like Memento.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

… Source Code has received critical acclaim by reviewers. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review …

Critics have compared Source Code with the 1993 film Groundhog Day …

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film “Confounding, exhilarating, challenging – and the best movie I’ve seen so far in 2011.” Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, calling it “an ingenious thriller” where “you forgive the preposterous because it takes you to the perplexing.” …

Jake Gyllenhaal is terrific.

I saw the latest “WAllen” — Midnight in Paris

He had fun with this one. Casting Cole Porter, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein must have been a blast.

Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway was perfect.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

… The movie explores themes of nostalgia, existentialism and xenocentrism.

Produced by Spanish group Mediapro and Allen’s Gravier Productions, the film stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody and Michael Sheen. …

His 41st film actually made money.

… Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 149 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. Among Top Critics it received 95% positive reviews with an average rating of 8.2. The critical consensus is: “It may not boast the depth of his classic films, but the sweetly sentimental Midnight in Paris is funny and charming enough to satisfy Woody Allen fans.”

I’m a fan.

Schindler is the largest supplier of escalators and the second largest manufacturer of elevators worldwide. …

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the greatest movies of all time. A 1986 masterpiece by John Hughes.

Click PLAY or watch a clip on YouTube.

On the convertible 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California:

Cameron: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.

Ferris: A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.

Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) is truly the star of the show.

Girlfriend Sloane Peterson, Mia Sara, married and divorced Jason Connery, son of Sean Connery.

Hoop Dreams tops the list on this list of the Top 10 Sports Documentaries of All Time.

My personal favourite documentary style movie is Touching the Void. It’s the 4th highest grossing documentary of all time.

This one I’ve not yet seen.

Click PLAY or watch an Endless Summer preview on YouTube.

… Colin Firth plays King George VI who, to overcome his stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush.

The two men become friends as they work together, and after his brother Edward VIII abdicates, the new King relies on Logue to help him make a radio broadcast on the day that Britain declared war on Germany, beginning of World War II. …

I finally saw the slightly controversial film.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

… a major box office and critical success. On a budget of £8 million, it earned over $400 million internationally. …

… The film was also nominated for 12 Academy Awards, the most of any film that year, and won four: Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler). …

Kudos to Colin Firth. He was excellent. An actor I’ve always criticized in the past as being a one trick pony, type cast as the opposite of Hugh Grant.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Geoffrey Rush was even better. Shame he didn’t win Best Supporting Actor.

I’m happy this film won for Best Picture as my bias is to see it go to an EPIC film. For example, The English Patient. By the same logic I’m still mortified that Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture. (Not EPIC)

The Millennium series … bestselling novels originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson. Originally, ten books in total were planned, but only three were completed. The novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, were first published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. …

The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist with a history similar to Larsson’s.

An unlikely success.

Clearly Larsson was no skilled author. He breaks most of the rules on what makes a successful novel. Yet the series kept me engaged throughout. If a 4th novel is ever released, I’ll buy it too.

I liked that the books are unapologetically Swedish. But never have I read any books with so much unnecessary (infuriating) detail. If I had a krona for every coffee in those 3 books, … I’d have a lot of kronor.

A skilled murder mystery writer – Ian Rankin, for example – could make one excellent novel out of the 3 simply by eliminating every factoid and character unimportant to the actual story.

Why did any publisher accept those manuscripts?

Salander is a truly weird and fascinating character. Very original.

Also well done were the endings of each. I could not guess in advance on what would happen.

The exotic setting appealed to me, too.

I guess I recommend these books, if there is anyone out there who has not yet read them. No doubt you’ve already heard warnings about the scenes of violent sex.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

Scandinavian TV and movie adaptations have already been released.

In the American movies, Daniel Craig will play Mikael Blomkvist, Rooney Mara Lisbeth Salander. The 3 films are slated for release in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

When visiting Scotland I got into Rebus. Happily, Warren is a bit of a fan, too, collecting those that have been televised or turned into movies.

Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist in the Inspector Rebus series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Ian Rankin, ten of which have so far been televised as Rebus. The novels are mostly set in and around Edinburgh. …

Rebus can be said to belong to a long tradition of paternal Scottish hard men. A natural leader whose gruff exterior and fierce will to succeed in his field belies a benevolent nature. …

In the Rebus television adaptations he was played by John Hannah in the first two series, but in the later series the role was taken over by Ken Stott to much acclaim. …

Hannah is a terrific actor, but I’d say Stott is much truer to the Rebus of the novels.

Stott as Rebus

Leave a comment if you’ve an opinion on the two actors.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves orcs.”

- Attributed to Paul Krugman.

Atlas Shrugged had that effect on me.

… explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society.

The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry (including Taggart Transcontinental, the once mighty transcontinental railroad for which she serves as the Vice President of Operations), while society’s most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. …

I’ve given Atlas Shrugged to a number of teens. It’s an important book …

Kids need to learn that all men are not created equal, rather that all men should have equal opportunity.

Kids need to learn that we should promote and encourage greatness.

Kids need to learn that authority organizations can ruin their lives ... OK, they already know that.

Now I find myself defending Ayn Rand alongside fans as odious as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That does hurt.

The new Ayn Rand movie adaptation Atlas Shrugged Part 1 got nuked and ridiculed on the Slate Culture Gabfest audiocast.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

I’m going to see it. Unfortunately the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said:

… that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.

“Critics, you won,” …

I hope he joins Gault and makes the two sequels.