What Happens in Vegas

The Hangover opened a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn't all that interested in going to see it. I had seen the preview and read about the premise of the movie, and I thought I'd just catch it on DVD later in the year. Then my friend Glen went to see it, and he loved it. Then, The Hangover came up first at the box office on its opening weekend, beating Pixar's Up by a handful of dollars. Then the positive buzz and the great word of mouth started to build up. Then, The Hangover came up first at the box office on its second weekend, and I decided maybe I should check it out. Shortly after that, I coerced my friend Mike, and we went to The Rave to see what the noise was all about, and man am I glad I went to see it.

The movie stars with Phil (Bradley Cooper) calling his best friend's fiance and telling her they've lost Doug (Justin Bartha), the guy she is supposed to marry in five hours. Along with two other friends, they had gone to Las Vegas for Doug's bachelor's party, and now they could find him. Right after this conversation, the movie goes two days back in time, to when the four friends are about to leave for Vegas, and goes from there to right before they're ready to party that night. Here there's another time jump, and all of a sudden it is the following morning, and we witness the aftermath of what happened the night before. Their room looks like a battlefield, and there are plenty of objects and creatures that shouldn't be there but somehow are. What happened last night? Nobody remembers. And, where's Doug? Nobody knows. But he's getting married tomorrow, so they'd better go find him.

The Hangover is one of those movies that makes you laugh while watching other people's misfortune. There are so many horrific situations and just plain out wrong moments and comments that one can't help but laugh until he cries. The kind of humor in this movie reminded me of Love Stinks and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, and, to a lesser extent, Get Smart. I had so much fun watching this movie that I would just go and see it again, and I will make sure I get it on DVD, because it was such a good time.

Bottom line: if you don't mind wincing and laughing at the same time, The Hangover is your kind of movie. Go see it, and get ready for very bad things to start happening, and for the laughter to ensue. I guarantee it.

Slick Sci-Fi

Check out the trailer for Surrogates, a movie starring Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell opening on September 25. It sort of reminds me of Blade Runner and I, Robot, and Bruce Willis's hair brings The Fifth Element to mind.

The movie is based on The Surrogates, a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele that I haven't actually read, but the premise looks interesting. Check out the trailer and let me know what you think!

The Ghost of the Darkness

Here you have a picture I drew for one of my students. She wanted me to draw a lion for her, and I had to oblige. As I said before, I like to get "commissions" because people usually ask for stuff I wouldn't usually draw, which stretches my abilities and lets me have some fun. And other than that, there really isn't much else to say about it, so I hope you like it.

DVD Fever

Is there anything better than cool DVDs? Yes, there is: cool DVDs on sale. Over the last week I've found myself buying seven DVDs from places such as Target and Walmart, and I am very excited about my purchases. Some of these movies I wasn't specifically looking for, but I couldn't miss the opportunity to get them. Some other movies I was interested in buying, and I was happy to find them. And yet some other movies surprised me because they're still pretty much new releases, but Target was having a limited-time sale, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Anyway, this is what I got:

The Robot Chicken Star Wars Special. Better than the prequels (a kick in the nuts would also be better than the prequels, I guess), and only five bucks. I already raved about it when I saw it on TV a couple of years ago --a must have!

The Gift. Sam Raimi's spooky movie, I've seen The Gift several times, and it was about time I bought it. And for five bucks, I just couldn't say no.

Frequency. I saw this movie a really, really long time ago, but I have very fond memories of it. You know what I'm also fond of? The four-dollar sale price. Beat that!

Scoop. Scarlett Johansson's second collaboration with Woody Allen, Scoop is a fun romp, and Scarlett Johansson is the main character. Paying seven bucks to have Scarlett onscreen for an hour and a half is well worth it.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe. One of the three limited-time sales Target enticed me with, this completes my X-Files collection, since I already own the nine seasons and the first movie, Fight the Future (better than this one, I think). And it was only ten bucks!

Yes Man. You might remember from my very positive review that I enjoyed Jim Carrey's latest comedy quite a bit. It was also on sale for ten dollars, and Zooey Deschanel's eyes were looking at me from the DVD box daring me to pass on this great offer. Needless to say, I could not.

He's Just Not That Into You. Another movie I liked when I saw it earlier this year, HJNTIY just came out on DVD, and they had it for ten bucks. And did I mention a couple of hot scenes with Scarlett Johansson? Pause button, here I come!

Small Favor, Big Size

Small Favor is the tenth book in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, and even though I still haven't read it yet (I haven't even started the ninth installment in the series), I feel compelled to talk about it. Or to talk about its size, to be precise.

It all started with me looking up White Night (the ninth book in the series) on Amazon. I had seen it at Barnes & Noble, but the only copy they had was in pretty bad shape, so I thought I'd check it out online and get it there. I typed in the words, and the Amazon search engine gave me both White Night and Small Favor, paperback editions for both of them. That's when I realized the price difference: White Night was $7.99, as is usually the case with paperbacks, but Small Favor was $9.99. After frowning for a couple of seconds I remembered seeing the book at Barnes & Noble a couple of months ago, and I remembered I thought it looked bigger than usual. At the time, without even picking it up to flip through the pages, I thought it was maybe one of those large print editions, and therefore the size of the book was somewhere between a trade and a mass market paperback. Curious now, I clicked on the book, and I checked all the available formats. Turns out I was wrong: the $9.99 book was the only paperback edition available, and it is the normal edition. What gives?

I checked the customer reviews specifically looking for comments about the abnormal size of the book, and sure enough there was a thread that talked about this. I proceeded to read the different messages with a sinking heart, already knowing what was coming, and boy was I right.

Apparently, some publishers (if not all of them) have decided this time of economic crisis is as good a moment as any to raise the price of books, and to hell with the consequences. I had already noticed this trend with hardcovers (the only hardcovers I buy as a rule are Stephen King's books, so this took a while to sink in), but now it is obviously finding its way to the paperback market. So paperbacks from Roc (publishers of The Dresden Files) are going to be $9.99 now. That is bad. You want to hear what's worse? That the size of the books, as I've already pointed out earlier, is different. Small Favor is not smaller but bigger than its brothers. (Ah, the irony.) It stands about an inch taller than the previous nine books in the series, so what's going to happen when I get it? That my cool collection will look uniform up until book nine, and then we'll have this stupid change. So they're both raising the price (how much is that? A twenty percent increase?) and destroying continuity in one fell swoop. Nice job, guys.

Obviously, they want to make more money, and they've probably figured that people who will be bothered by the size change will just go ahead and purchase the previous nine books in the new, taller format when they are re-released, as they unquestionably will be. Well, I, for one, will not buy them again; and what's more, I think I am going to wait as long as I can to see if there is a newer, normal-sized edition of Small Favor put out after the general outcry. (Riiiight.) Therefore, by wanting to get two extra dollars from me, I am going to withhold the eight I would have gladly paid, so they will be losing money. I bet if everyone voted with their money, Roc would change their mind, but I doubt that will happen, and people will just buy the book.

The question remains: is this going to be the new standard in price and size across the board? Why not just the price? Do they really need to change the size to make a feeble attempt at justifying the price hike? And why not just one dollar? Why not $8.99? That would be bad enough, but twenty percent, and the stupid new size to boot? Give me a break. Or even better-- give me the old size and the old cover price.

Love me, Love me

This has to be the most out-of-character movie I’ve watched in a while, but I enjoyed it for the most part. The original title of this French movie is Jeux d’enfants (Quiéreme si te atreves in Spanish), and I watched it in French with English subtitles.

The movie was bittersweet, with lots of black humor and a pervasive twistedness that made it very interesting, surprising, but also quite wrong on more than one occasion. Basically, Love me if you Dare tells the story of a boy (Guillaume Canet) and a girl (Marion Cotillard) that grow up as best friends and like to play dares all the time. As they grow up, they become more and more attracted to each other, and the dares become more and more hurtful. I won’t spoil anything for you, but everything escalates progressively throughout the movie, and sometimes you really wonder what the hell they’re thinking.

The theme of perfect love and the impossibility thereof is manifest from beginning to end, and I found it as interesting as the idea of irresistible attraction that is presented along with it. Those are powerful, intriguing concepts, and seeing the characters navigate through their lives fighting their feelings while unable to stop feeling the way they feel was both fun and unnerving, seeing what they constantly do to each other.

Are you interested yet? If you are, check out this movie and let me know what you think!

Culpable

Proven Guilty es el octavo libro de la serie The Dresden Files escrita por Jim Butcher, y es también el más largo de los ocho. Los primeros cinco o seis volúmenes no llegaban a las cuatrocientas páginas, pero los últimos dos o tres rondan las quinientas, y eso tras reducir el tamaño de la letra. Será que cuanto más escribes, más tienes que contar, o alguna otra extraña ley sinergística. En cualquier caso, ni una sola de las páginas de la octava aventura de Harry Dresden es prescindible, y al igual que en las siete novelas previas, Jim Butcher nos regala una historia estupenda llena de peligro, magia, seres sobrenaturales, y fantásticos diálogos entre personajes bien construidos. Como novedad, y si no me equivoco, éste es el primer libro en el que no tenemos nuevos personajes, sino que la trama la tejen viejos conocidos en ambos lados de la línea que cada vez más difusamente separa el Bien del Mal. Esta observación, de hecho, se hace en un diálogo entre Harry y Molly (creo), en el que Harry, por razones que no voy a explicar, tiene cada vez más problemas en distinguir a los buenos de los malos, y acaba diciendo que, de ahora en adelante, se referirá a las distintas facciones como "nosotros y ellos". Y es que sucesos que tuvieron lugar en episodios anteriores siguen desarrollándose en Proven Guilty, con consecuencias que cada vez son más graves y ramificaciones que empiezan a ser más evidentes. Esto es especialmente cierto en el caso del mago protagonista y "su amiga imaginaria" (por bautizarla de forma que no destripe nada), relación esta que, en el momento en que explote, los personajes cercanos a Harry van a verse metidos hasta las rodillas en problemas inimaginables. Los que sigan en pie, claro.

En resumen, Proven Guilty es otra excelente entrega en la serie, de la que sólo me quedan tres libros más publicados hasta la fecha. Tendré que mandarle un email al amigo Jim pidiéndole amablemente que por favor escriba más rápido.