wildyams

The worst part about staying at work till after midnight is that when I get home I can't just make myself go right to bed, and instead end up fiddling around my apartment for usually a couple hours before finally going to sleep, and naturally that leaves me pretty dead tired for the next day at work. At least tomorrow's Friday

As you may have noticed, I haven't been around here much lately. I just was burned out on blogging (and probably still am), and have been spending time on WhoNeedsIce anyway, but I've been getting complaints about my absence so I'll post a couple entries in the next couple days. Tonight I went to the Lakers-Hornets game with Dave (Cookie, not Riggs). I won tickets to the game this past week at work, and Dave's been through a rough stretch lately (and he and I have been to a few Laker games together) so I thought he might enjoy going with me. He picked me up before the game and we went and had dinner at the fantastic and famous Phillippe's and then went over to Staples Center.

It was cool to go to a game again, since I hadn't been to one all year, but they were the worst seats I've ever had for a Laker game. They were in the corner, but they were literally one row removed from the back row/ceiling. It didn't matter though cause we both had fun at the game. The Lakers trailed most of the first half, but I don't think they trailed at all in the second half, and they won by 11, running their current winning streak to 4.

The Lakers are starting to look pretty good in this stretch run to finish out the regular season and they should end up making the playoffs this year. Last week they beat the Kings pretty bad, and with a few setbacks over the last couple weeks have generally looked pretty decent, even handily beating the Spurs and Pistons (the two teams who will probably meet in the Finals again this year). The Lakers aren't gonna win anything this year, and will probably be lucky to even get to the second round of the playoffs, but there is some entertainment and intrigue in following the team as they are trying to climb back to the top of the pile.

I've often looked back and thought that in many ways, following the Lakers in the mid to late 90's were more fun than watching them as they won their three titles in this decade. Watching a team improve and overachieve by beating teams they're supposed to lose to can be more exciting than just hoping and praying that they don't tumble as the best team in the league and lose to someone they shouldn't. Anyway, I have a lot of optimism about the Lakers, although I know that realistically they won't have a good shot at a title till probably 2008 or so. It's still been fun to watch them try to figure out the triangle offense and their roles on the team. It's been fascinating to watch Kobe try to learn what his eventual role is going to be on another (hopefully) championship team. I've been watching all the games on Tivo and have been enjoying that a lot. I'm going to miss it when the summer comes and there's no more games to watch. For now though, it's fun to see the team try to make the playoffs, and I'll enjoy the playoff games they do have.

On Saturday I went to dinner at Hoggly Woggly's with Jen, and then we went up to ShittyWalk to see V For Vendetta on the IMAX screen, and afterwards we snuck into Inside Man. I'd already seen V For Vendetta, but I really enjoyed it, and so didn't mind seeing it again, although Inside Man was my real reason for going to the theaters since it was new and I hadn't seen it yet. But I figured that seeing V For Vendetta again would be cool, especially to see it on the IMAX screen.

Lemme first say, I can't stress enough how much more important it's becoming for me to see movies at the Arclight than at any other theater. Not only are the seats incredibly comfortable, and the sound and picture are always top notch (and there's no commercials, etc...), but the crowds there are always good, serious filmgoers. There we were in the IMAX theater at Shittywalk and about 2 minutes into the movie a couple comes in and sits right next to us with a baby in a stroller (V For Vendetta is Rated R, by the way). Luckily the kid didn't cry at all during the movie, but it did keep saying things over and over, and the mom had to keep shushing it. If that wasn't enough, about an hour into the movie a girl in the row in front of us got a call on her cell phone and answered it and proceeded to have a conversation. Jen said rather loudly "Are you kidding me?" and so the girl wrapped up her conversation and hung up; but then she spent the next half hour at least text messenging back and forth with the glow of her cell phone screen being a big distraction to everyone behind her. Jen eventually yelled at her "turn your cell phone off!" and the girl looked back sheepishly and then finally turned it off. After seeing so many movies at the Arclight over the last couple months, I'd almost forgotten what a nightmare it can be to try to watch something with people who really just don't give a shit about the movie they paid to see.

Enough of that though, let me actually review the film itself. I saw the movie twice, and paid $14 to see it each time, so that should tell you that I really liked it. I think it's a great movie, and it was possibly even better the second time. It's a movie that has some good action/kung-fu type stuff, but at its heart it has an important message about individual freedoms and rising up against oppressive governments, which is something I strongly believe in (as did our Founding Fathers, of course). There is also just a good emotional core to the movie, and Natalie Portman does a really fantastic job as Evey. Hugo Weaving also does a really impressive job considering you never see his face throughout the entire movie. I think that not only is it an entertaining and emotionally stirring movie that is well-written and well acted and directed, but I think it's an important movie for people to see, because I often think that we as a society do need reminders about what should be truly important when it comes to our government and our society, so I like to see movies like this (and like Fight Club, for instance) that have these kinds of messages, even though they may be somewhat radical.

If you haven't seen V For Vendetta you definitely should, and I'd recommend seeing it on the big screen for the full effect. Also, it's a movie that is definitely worth supporting with your movie-going box office dollars. Tomorrow if I get a chance I'll review Inside Man, which was also a really fantastic movie.

As promised here is my review of Inside Man, the new Spike Lee movie I saw this past weekend. The movie features a great cast, including Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Plummer. It also features the odd pairing of Spike Lee's directing with Brian Grazer's producing, but in this case, the pairing worked great because the movie is really good. The movie is essentially a bank robbery movie, and when these types of movies are done well, they're some of my favorites. I love movies that have a somewhat new or unique method or twist involved in robbing banks. I even sorta liked Swordfish for this very reason. I like seeing well thought-out crimes played out in movies, and Inside Man does not disappoint.

The acting is really topnotch in the movie, but my main enjoyment most likely derived just from the cool bank robbery plan. Also, the title of the movie proved to be a good red herring type of clue about what was going on as I was trying to figure out if someone was going to turn out to be something they weren't, or really just what "inside man" could possibly mean. I won't give away what the title actually means, because trying to figure out exactly what happens is really the fun of the movie. I'd reccomend the movie to anyone, and probably the only people who won't like it might be those who tend to nitpick some movies to death trying to find any flaw or thing that they can't suspend disbelief about. I personally didn't feel I needed to suspend disbelief at all, but there's always people who are just looking for anything in a movie about a complex crime to try to point out as being flawed so they can come off superior. Whatever, I thought it was a lot of fun and I would guess most other people would also. Along with V For Vendetta it's the best movie I've seen so far this year.

Well the Lakers lost a rather disappointing game last night to the San Antonio Spurs, but despite the loss I'm still encouraged by what I'm seeing in the Lakers lately. They're not gonna win the title this year (or next year without a key player or two), but they are showing improvement and they're even showing some grit. They lost, but the Spurs are my pick to win the title this year, so the Lakers can't be too down on themselves for getting beat by a team that they're so overmatched against talent-wise.

I took the day off from work today because of the Nine Inch Nails show I'm going to tonight (which I'm leaving for as soon as I finish writing this). Tonight's show should be real interesting because it will be in a really small venue (only 900 people) and it will be the first ever Nine Inch Nails show that's for the fanclub only, so maybe they've got something special in mind for tonight. I haven't seen NIN since November, and I won't see them again till July, so this is perfectly placed, right in the middle of those shows. I'm very happy I've been able to see my favorite band play 4 times in less than a year.

This weekend Cella and his band are coming into town and I will no doubt get to see them and hang out with Cella some. I don't know which day I'm gonna do that, but I'm sure I'll blog about it later. Ok, I'm off to the show, have a happy Friday everyone