Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a show by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly creator, Joss Whedon, that aired over the Web in three parts in July, 2008 (on drhorrible.com). It may be the pilot for a future project. It may be a stand-alone show. There's nothing certain other than the fact that there will eventually be a DVD and soundtrack made available. So, how was it? Transcendent. It's the first Web show that I've seen that I think truly transcends the medium and deserves to simply be called a short film. With a run time of just under 45 minutes in total (across the three episodes which range from 13 to 15 minutes), it certainly feels too short, but every minute is rewarding. The short form of this review is simple: Go see it.

Wanted is the first American film by the acclaimed Russian director, Timur Bekmambetov. He was previously best known for the action/horror/fantasy films Night Watch and Day Watch which are now available as brilliantly subtitled re-releases in the U.S. Wanted focuses on Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) who learns that his father was the best assassin in the world, but has just been murdered by a rogue assassin he used to work with. He teams up with Fox (Angelina Jolie) against his father's killer, Cross (Thomas Kretschmann) and plot ensues. At its core this is a superhero film. The idea that a gunman can "bend" bullets in the air and shoot targets with pinpoint accuracy from across town is absurd, but practically mainstream for the flexible physics of the graphic print medium. So, our hero learns to be a super-assassin for good.

None of this prepares you for the wild ride that ensues, and in the end the film actually manages to be a bit of a morality play about the dangers of fanaticism, how easily one can be seduced by it and the costs that it can bring to bear. I definitely enjoyed this film, but as with Night Watch, I felt it had a slightly "foreign" flavor that would forever keep it out of the mainstream. Still, it's well worth seeing, and I recommend that it be seen on the big screen or on Blue Ray once it comes out in that format.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

At work (just started the new job at VMware, Inc.), I've been eating this dehydrated soup called Dr. McDougall's. I'm going to be trying them all, but so far I've just fallen in love with the Split Pea. It's actually got flavor, which for something that's a) dehydrated and b) vegan is just shocking to me. Mind you, I'm not vegan, but I'm fully capable of throwing some cubed ham into my soup, thank you very much. What I really want is a dehydrated soup that tastes like food, and this certainly does the trick!

Typically, I review things that you can buy, here, but I'm so pleased with DownThemAll that I'm breaking that rule just this once. DownThemAll is a plugin for the Firefox Web browser (Addon in Firefox parlance). It has a hundred different uses, but let me cover some of the basics:

• Download everything listed on a page (e.g. music, images, videos)
• Accelerate downloads by fetching multiple sections of a file at once
• Provide a handy list of all current downloads that's much improved over Firefox's default download list
• Graphs statistics of download performance
• Can control how many downloads occur at once (4 by default) and all other downloads will queue up

I now use this all the time and recommend it to anyone who downloads music, images, software or videos on a regular basis.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Iron Man is a superhero movie based on the Iron Man comic book series that has been running (in one form or another) since 1963. While not Marvel's most beloved hero, Tony Stark AKA Iron Man has long been a core member of their universe, often acting as a peer to Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. There are plenty of plots and twists from the 45 year history of the character. In rather typical fashion, the movie chose to focus on his origin, and in the case of Iron Man, that origin played well into current events in the real world.

OK, all of that's out of the way. How was it? Amazingly good. I don't throw around praise like that easily, and certainly not at superhero movies-gone-comedy. However, this was easily the best superhero film since the first Spider Man and for many of the same reasons. Let me cover some of the bad, then I'll get into why you should watch this.

Friday, May 2, 2008

The Orphanage (El Orfanato in Spanish) is a Spanish-language release by Juan Antonio Bayona (director) and Sergio G. Sánchez (writer), but you'll hear a lot about Guillermo del Toro in association with this film. He executive produced it, and the film shares his sensibilities expressed in Pan's Labyrinth (which del Toro wrote and directed). Unlike Pan's Labyrinth, however, this film does not explore the fairy tale world of imagination from a child's eyes, but rather from an adult's. At its heart, this is a ghost story, not horror. That's an important distinction. If you walk in thinking that you're going to see blood and gore or have people jumping out of dark corners at our heroes then you'll get little of what you came for. Instead, this is a very cerebral and personal thriller that tracks the fate of a distraught mother as she becomes more and more aware of what is going on in her home.

Cloverfield is a hybrid between the horror and giant-monster/action genres. Typically, I would expect this to be light on plot and characterization and heavy on explosions and laboriously explained pseudo-technical arm-waving. Nothing could be further from the truth, and that's what made this easily the best giant monster movie in recent memory, and perhaps of all time.

You've heard of direct-to-DVD, so why not direct-to-comic-book? This collected volume of issues 1-5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight is the official 8th season of the Emmy-winning TV series, written by show creator Joss Whedon and packed with every surviving character from the series (plus a few that you thought didn't make it). Only Angel and Faith fail to make an appearance, both of whom show up later on (Angel in his own after-the-series comic and Faith in the latter half of season 8).

On the more meta side, I'd just like to say that this is an idea whose time has come. There's no good reason not to spin a TV show off into a comic once new seasons are no longer practical (due to viewership, actor availability or what have you). It's much cheaper, so the audience size is not an issue, and I think Season 8 really demonstrates that a comic book that is not only canon, but considered a part of the core continuity of the series will find its market.

Read on for the specifics (with no serious spoilers).

The Sacrifice is a psychological horror film that takes place in a sleepy New England town that has too many secrets. On the surface it's a bit Lovecraftian, but it has some modern twists including a romantic interest between the two male leads, Jonathan Kelly (Kersey) and David (Snyder). This is a first effort for independent director, Jamie Fessenden, and it shows. The camera work is uneven, the lighting is occasionally terrible, and the sound makes some scenes feel more like a reality show than a movie. For all its warts, though, this is the kind of suspenseful horror that the genre used to be all about. If you enjoyed The Ninth Gate or some of the Twilight Zone's more horror-oriented episodes, then this is a film for you. Keep an eye out for the upcoming sequel from Dunkirk Studios.