Reviews and More

Reese Witherspoon is one of my favorite actresses, so I’ve been wanting to see Walk the Line ever since I heard that she won an Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash. However, I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to see the film because of the subject matter. I’m not a country music fan and barely know who Johnny Cash was, so I didn’t think I’d be all that interested in the film.

But I was pleasantly surprised by how good the movie was. Even without knowing anything about Cash or his music, I found that I was still able to enjoy Walk the Line. That’s because it was basically a love story about how Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix — another brilliant performance) fell for Carter and pursued her for more than a decade before finally getting her to marry him. Their marriage lasted 35 years until June’s death in 2003. Johnny followed her to the grave just 4 months later.

I just watched Ray (the Ray Charles biopic) recently, so I felt that the plot of Walk the Line was very familiar. Poor kid suffers through tragic death of sibling. Check. Poor kid grows into young man determined to make his mark in music. Check. Success comes almost immediately. Check. With success comes alcohol and drug addiction. Check. With drugs and booze comes women. Check. Marriage falls apart. Check. Musician cleans up his act and becomes a legend. Check. See what I mean?

But Witherspoon’s presence as June Carter made all the difference in Walk the Line and kept me watching. This is definitely a movie that was worth all the Oscar hoopla.

I live in Japan for part of the year, so I’m always on the lookout for good information that will help make life in that country a bit easier. There are a lot of websites dedicated to Japan, so it can be hard to sift through all of them to come up with a quality one. But GaijinPot.com is one of the better ones.

GaijinPot is a pretty comprehensive site that can help foreigners (”gaijin” in Japanese) get answers to common and not-so-common questions or problems they might have. These answers come from the message board, which is frequented by both short- and long-term expats who have personal experience with living in Japan. The site is mostly geared towards job-seekers (it has a whole section where you can post your resume, apply for jobs, etc.), but other aspects of everyday life are covered too. The message board categories include Shopping, TV, Travel, Shipping, Banking, Accommodations, and other relevant topics.

You have to put up with the usual B.S. that comes with a public Internet message board, but most of the information is indeed helpful. I’ve posted questions on several occasions and have always gotten satisfactory answers.

Check it out!

I finally got around to watching Brokeback Mountain last night. I borrowed the DVD from a friend of mine and it’s been sitting on top of my DVD player for like the last two weeks. I’m not sure why I didn’t get to it sooner — I was perhaps afraid of being let down by the movie. After all, there’s so much hype surrounding it that I thought it would be almost impossible for me to be impressed now.

Boy, how wrong I was! Brokeback Mountain is every bit the spectacular film that everyone says it is. From the cinematography to the score to the acting to the storyline, the movie was just an amazing experience that is hard to put into words. It’s been a long, long, long time since a movie has affected me so much. I cried during the film, of course, and really haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger were absolutely fantastic as two young men who fall in love while herding sheep together one summer on Brokeback Mountain. They think that what they have going is a “one shot deal,” but it turns into an affair that spans more than 20 years. It’s heartbreaking to watch these two men constrained by society and unable to live the way they want. They both end up unhappy, and, ultimately, alone.

Brokeback Mountain is an incredible accomplishment and has put director Ang Lee at the top of my list of favorites. You must see this movie! Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

I watched The Butterfly Effect last night, and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the movie as a whole. I didn’t know anything about the movie prior to watching it except that Ashton Kutcher was in it. I had never seen him play a dramatic role, so I was looking forward to the change. I wasn’t disappointed!

Basically, Kutcher plays a guy named Evan who studies psychology. He’s doing research into memories or something and learns that he has the power to go back in time and change the bad things that happened to him. What he doesn’t count on is the fact that a whole bunch of other things change along with the bad incident. So every time Evan changes something, he comes back to a present that is different than the one he knows. This is the “butterfly effect” and it usually works out in a bad way.

The problem Evan faces is that he wants to save his childhood friend Kayleigh from committing suicide as an adult. So he goes back several different times until he finds the one incident that he can change which will allow Kayleigh to have a happy life.

Overall, this was a pretty good movie. Sure, there are plot holes if you try to pick the script apart, but the general concept was very cool. Check it out!

I have an interest in language, so I was thrilled when a friend gave me a book called 2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk (of Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary fame). As you might expect from the title, this book traces the origins of various idioms that have become such common fixtures in the English language.

This book was first published in 1948, and Funk’s writing style is a bit on the archaic, long-winded, academic side. His paragraphs are very long and he makes frequent use of commas, which results in rather tedious reading at times. But fortunately, this isn’t the kind of book that you sit and read straight through. It’s a reference, and as such can be taken up to look for a particular phrase or can be read for a few minutes just for personal edification.

Once you get past the writing style, I think you’ll find that the book is very interesting. I’ve actually learned quite a bit from this book and therefore recommend it to everyone!

I thought this was a pretty slow-moving episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I lost interest about halfway through it and kept glancing at the clock to see how much longer it would be on. Not a particularly good sign, huh? Here’s what happened:

Bailey: The hospital had some kind of conference where the doctors got together to talk about recent mortalities. Bailey totally got blamed for the Denny mess even though it wasn’t really her fault. I guess the other doctors thought that since Izzie was her intern, Bailey should have been more on top of things. Yeah, like what’s she supposed to do, institute a 24-hr watch on all the patients her interns come into contact with?

Izzie: Normally, I like this character, but she has been grating on my nerves this season. I’m sorry, but I simply cannot believe that she fell completely and totally in love with Denny. The guy was in a hospital bed the entire time, for god’s sake! Sure, there could be an attraction. Maybe even strong feelings. But love? True love? I highly doubt it. But here’s Izzie moping around like she just lost her husband of 50 years. Plus, would anyone really act that way about an $8.7 million check? Put it in the bank, you idiot!

Addison/Derek: God, he is such a jerk. I like Addison — she’s become one of my favorite characters. She deserves so much better than Derek. Thankfully that divorce is final now. Let’s move on, people.

Meredith/Derek: I don’t even care anymore. Seriously? Seriously.

Cristina/Burke: These two are playing with fire here. Burke is suffering from tremors or something, but only Cristina knows about it. Instead of having a specialist look at the hand, they’re trying to cover up the existence of a problem. Cristina jumped in to finish off a procedure that Burke was struggling with. This can’t lead to anything good.

George/Callie: George tries to make up with Callie, but she’s not having any of it. She insists that she’s not there to compete with his friends, and literally slams the door in his face when he shows up with a bucket of chicken and some video games (his peace offering, I guess).

Alex: For someone who can be such a complete ass at times, he can also be really nice and considerate too. He showed off this side at the very end when he told Bailey that he had a chance to stop Izzie too (re: the whole Denny thing) but didn’t do it. In other words, he was saying that it wasn’t Bailey’s fault, which is exactly what she needed to hear — even if it was coming from an intern.

What can I say about Amazon.com? If you’ve never heard of that site, then you’re either completely new to the Internet or you’ve been living in a cave. Amazon.com is one of the premiere online shopping sites for several reasons. Let’s go through some of them.

First of all, Amazon offers all kinds of products, from housewares to jewelry to electronics. Do you remember way back when Amazon only had books and music? Wow, they’ve really expanded in the last decade, haven’t they?

Second, Amazon offers some of the lowest prices on the Internet. Because they’re so huge, Amazon is able to give its customers discounts that we simply can’t get from other sites. Even if I don’t intend to purchase from Amazon.com, I always use that site as a pricing guideline to see if other places are charging comparable amounts.

Third, Amazon.com offers fast, accurate shipping. I’ve order a lot of products from that site over the years and I’ve never once received a late shipment or inaccurate order. They’ve got an excellent track record with me.

In short, you can’t go wrong with Amazon.com! They haven’t let me down in 10 years, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon!

I’ve studied from a lot of Japanese books over the years, and have therefore had a chance to look at some really good ones (and a few terrible ones as well). One of the good ones, in my opinion, is Japanese Phrases for Dummies by Eriko Sato. As you can tell from the title, this book is from the for Dummies series, and is therefore arranged in much the same manner. In other words, it is a very easy-to-use reference manual.

There are several reasons I like this book. First of all, I think there’s just the right mix of grammar and useful phrases. Despite the title, this is not a phrase book alone (those are kind of useless if you don’t know grammar). Instead, Sato lays out some very basic grammar rules for the reader, which makes the book infinitely more useful in the long run.

Second, I like that this book is compact. It’s small and lightweight, making it easy to carry in a purse, backpack, or briefcase. There was a time when I always had this thing with me and would pull it out to study whenever I had a few free minutes. After a while, I had the material down pat, and my Japanese improved.

Third, the layout is fantastic. I really enjoy the For Dummies series anyway, and this book is no exception. There are icons letting you know which items are the most important, so if you’re in a hurry you can look at just those parts and skip everything else. Plus, there are cultural notes, extra grammar explanations, etc.

In a word, this book is awesome, so check it out today!

Moonlighting was by far one of my favorite television shows when I was growing up. I loved both David Addison and Maddie Hayes as individual characters (played, of course, by Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd) and I loved the way they interacted with each other as partners in the Blue Moon Detective Agency. So when I heard that Moonlighting DVDs were available I just had to buy them.

There were just five episodes plus the pilot in Season One, so the DVD set combines Seasons One and Two in order to give the viewer a bit more value. In total, there are 24 episodes (if you include the pilot as an episode) spread out over six discs. In addition, there are a couple of bonus features, including “The Story of Moonlighting,” “The Moonlighting Phenomenon,” and commentaries for several of the episodes.

I thought it was a lot of fun reliving all these old episodes. I was surprised at how many of them I remembered — especially since the show went off the air way back in 1989 and I hadn’t watched any reruns since then. It just goes to show how memorable the characters and their escapades were.

If you’re a Moonlighting fan, then you’ve got to get your hands on these DVDs. Check them out today!

When The English Patient came out on video back in 1996, I tried to watch it a couple of times, but couldn’t get past the boring beginning. Plus, I was completely turned off due to that Seinfeld episode where everyone loves the movie but Elaine hates it. I remember her sitting in the theater with her boss J. Peterman and screaming “Just die already, DIE!!” at the screen as she writhed in boredom.

But I figured enough time had passed to give it another chance. This time, I didn’t think it was all that bad. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think it was a great movie or anything like that and I’m not quite sure why it won the Best Picture Oscar, but it was ok. It took me four sittings to get through the 2 hour and 40 minute running time, though.

I remember everyone saying that this was a great love story, but frankly, I didn’t see that at all. The Count and Katherine Clifton were committing adultery, after all. Hey, I’m no prude, but that hardly seems like the basis of a great love story to me. Of course something like that would end in tragedy!

Overall, the film was just average to me. I certainly can’t imagine ever watching it again, but at least now I can at least say that I’ve seen it!

Read Roger Ebert’s somewhat enigmatic review of The English Patient right here.

I never watched that MTV show called Punk’d very often, but I knew the basic concept. Ashton Kutcher goes around setting up and recording elaborate pranks. The thing that makes this show enjoyable is that the targets are celebrities: actors, musicians, athletes, etc. I don’t know what MTV’s programming schedule is, so I just basically watch Punk’d over on YouTube. They don’t have full episodes up, but you can see specific pranks pulled on specific celebrities.

Anyway, I actually like Punk’d. It gives us a chance to see how celebrities act when they think they’re out of the spotlight. Some of them are actually very gracious, kind people (Serena Williams comes to mind) and some are not (I won’t mention names here). It was also interesting for me to see that Matthew Perry was exactly the same kind of wisecracking joker as his character Chandler on Friends. Pretty funny!

Punk’d is entertaining in bits and pieces, but I don’t think I could sit through a marathon of it or anything like that. But for now, I like it!

I love listening to audiobooks on my iPod because doing so makes me feel so productive. Rather than “wasting” my time sitting in traffic or whatever, I can be entertained with a novel of some sort. I used to be an Audible.com member, but found their prices to be a bit high considering the quality of the product. I also thought it was difficult to browse for titles on their website, so I canceled my membership.

I then discovered Librivox.org, which is a site that offers free downloads of audiobooks that are in the public domain. In other words, these are old books, typically classics, for which the copyright has run out.

Librivox books are read by volunteers, so the readings aren’t very polished at all. Sometimes the people are downright annoying, but on the whole, I’ve found that many of the readers are tolerable, and some are even very good. All deserve kudos, by the way, for volunteering their time in such a manner.

The Librivox Catalog can be found here. It’s not very comprehensive, but they’re constantly adding new titles as more people volunteer for projects. Overall, though, you simply can’t beat free audiobooks. Check it out!

I’m not exactly a video game fanatic, but I do enjoy sitting down and playing for a couple hours every now and then, especially when I find a fun game to play. And that’s exactly what MX vs. ATV Unleashed for PS2 is.

This game is produced by THQ/Rainbow Studios and has lots of great features. For example, you can totally customize your bike and rider with real MX brands and logos. So if you want your guy to ride a Pro Circuit Kawasaki in Thor gear with Alpinestars boots, you can. If you want him to be on a Suzuki in MSR gear, you can do that too. You get the picture.

In addition, pro riders have loaned their names to this game, so you can race against guys like Ivan Tedesco, Nathan Ramsey, James Stewart, Michael Byrne, and more.

There are several different modes, including practice, race, freestyle, and free ride modes. That makes the game fun for people of all ages. Even my four-year-old son likes playing in free ride mode, where he can just ride around the tracks without the pressure or constraints of a timed race.

The physics of the game are the best that I’ve seen thus far in a MX racing game. It feels very realistic, and the bike sounds are fantastic too.

Overall, MX vs. ATV Unleashed is a fun game that would be worth adding to your collection.

The first time I saw Fargo by Ethan and Joel Coen, I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it supposed to be a drama? Was it supposed to be a comedy? Why did all the characters sound like goons? I didn’t like it at all.

But because there was so many critics said it was one of the best films out there at the time, I decided to give it another chance. I forced myself to watch it again the very next day, which is something I rarely do.

I liked the movie much better the second time around. I started to understand the humor a bit more and liked the darker elements of the movie. I appreciated Steve Buscemi’s performance, as well as William H. Macy’s. I wasn’t completely sold on Frances McDormand, however, and still don’t get why her turn as Marge was Oscar-worthy.

Anyway, Fargo tells the story of Jerry Lundegaard (Macy), who is badly in need of money. He devises a scheme to get money from his rich father-in-law by hiring two thugs (Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to “kidnap” his wife. His father-in-law would then pay the ransom, which Jerry would split with the kidnappers.

However, Murphy’s Law is alive and well in this film and just about everything goes wrong with the plan. I won’t get into specifics here, but it turns into one big, gruesome mess.

Fargo is now one of my favorite movies, and I watch it a couple times a year — and I’m not a diehard Coen brothers fan or anything like that. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet!

I recently discovered the Librivox website and couldn’t be happier with it (that’s a subject for another review!). One of the free audiobooks that I just got done listening to was The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. I really enjoy Christie’s works and thought it would be fun to listen to one for a change.

The book was read by a Librivox volunteer named Alex Foster. At first, I couldn’t really get into Foster’s reading style. He was reading so quickly at the beginning that I could barely process what was going on. This was pretty disorienting, especially when it came to dialogue. I actually had to listen to the first chapter a couple of times to make sure I was following the plot properly.

Fortunately, Foster got much better after that inauspicious start and by the end of the book I was actually enjoying his reading. I thought he did a marvelous job with the voices of Arthur Hastings and Hercule Poirot, and his overall performance was very good. Oh yeah, Christie’s first published novel was excellent as well!

This was a good audiobook, and it’s free, so head on over the Librivox.org to download a copy of Alex Foster’s reading of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.

I usually don’t watch war movies, but I decided to give Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down a try because it was based on a true story and because I like several of the cast members, including Josh Hartnett, William Fichtner, and Ewan McGregor. Plus, Black Hawk Down got fantastic reviews, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to watch it.

Boy, was I wrong! Black Hawk Down just didn’t appeal to me at all. I couldn’t keep the characters straight because they all looked the same when they were in full gear. As a result, I didn’t know who was who or what was going on. In addition, the setting was very confusing to me. The Mogadishu city streets all looked the same, so I had no clue where the guys were or where they were trying to go. In other words, I was completely lost during this film.

Because of this, I have to give Black Hawk Down a bad rating. I didn’t like it at all, thought it dragged on for two long (2 hours and 20 minutes), and thought it was pretty boring. I know I’m in the minority here, but there you have it.

Read Roger Ebert’s review right here for a different perspective.

There were so many great episodes during the second season of The West Wing that the DVD box set is a must for any fan of this show. The set I have contains four double-sided DVDs with all 22 episodes from Season Two, plus a few extra features.

Some of the better episodes from this season include “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen” (parts I and II) where the President and Josh get shot; “Noel”, where Josh nearly goes over the edge thanks to post-traumatic stress disorder; “Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail”, which was a “block of cheese day” episode; and “18th and Potomac” and “Two Cathedrals,” which deal with the loss of Mrs. Landingham.

The extra features are titled “Constructing Two Cathedrals,” “Access Granted,” “Deleted Scenes,” and “Gag Order.”

Overall it’s a pretty good box set for the price (just $19.99 at Wal-Mart). Go get it right now!

I used to love Stephen King when I was younger, but have really moved away from his works as an adult. Even so, there’s one book of his that I still periodically read from time to time, and that is the 1982 collection of novellas called Different Seasons. This volume contains four of the best stories I’ve ever read in a single work, bar none.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption: I’m probably one of the few people on this planet who think the original story is far superior to the movie, but I simply couldn’t stand Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne. He was not the right actor for the part, and I couldn’t get past that in order to enjoy the film. The original story is fantastic, a real tearjerker with a positive ending that we don’t see much in King’s works.

Apt Pupil: This was another strong story, and again, I liked the original better than the movie that followed (though I think most people did here). I felt this was a gripping psychological tale, and I could easily see how Todd would fall into that vicious cycle and not be able to get out. Scary.

The Body: Everyone knows this better as the movie Stand By Me, and here I have to say that the movie was superior to the original story. The film was tighter and more compact, while the original has a lot of extraneous elements that I felt weren’t really necessary. As it is, though, The Body is still a very engrossing coming-of-age story, and it does indeed make me think of the friends I had when I was 12 every time I read it.

The Breathing Method: This was really the only one of the stories that contained a supernatural element, so it’s a bit different from the rest of the collection, but it’s still very good. This is the one I’ve re-read the least; however, that’s not a reflection on its inherent quality.

Read Different Seasons if you haven’t done so already!