Review: Megamind (2010)

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Saturday November 06, 2010 · 3:23 PM PDT

2010/11/06 · 15:23

Warning, perhaps mild spoilers could be contained below. I thought I'd post this here, since it's worth seeing, new, mildly a political parody:

Review: Megamind (2010)
3 out of 4 stars

Megamind isn't the best Will Ferrell movie of the year so far (The Other Guys is), but it is the best animated one. And it's a pretty good reversal of the usual superhero movie plot (and more specifically, the usual Superman plot) where the villain actually wins some and gets to rule the day.

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ourprez08

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Sunday March 14, 2010 · 11:22 PM PDT

2010/03/14 · 23:22

Thought I'd post this here, since it's a political film:

Review: Green Zone (2010)
3 1/2 out of 4 stars

Paul Greengrass's Green Zone, a fictional "true story" based in part upon the non-fiction work by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City (which I have not read), about the beginning of the Iraq War and the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction, constructs a fairly believable allegory which fits in broad strokes what we now know really took place as the Bush-Cheney administration media-flogged our nation into its desired war.

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ourprez08

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Friday November 13, 2009 · 7:46 PM PST

2009/11/13 · 19:46

I wrote a couple of reviews of politics-related movies recently, so I thought I'd post them here:

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
3 1/2 out of 4 stars

Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare at Goats is an outlandish hippie paean to outlandish hippie-ism, using true facts about some of the weirdest ideas ever embraced by the military from Jon Ronson's non-fiction book of the same name to create characters who can spout and explicate them.

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ourprez08

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Thursday July 23, 2009 · 9:25 PM PDT

2009/07/23 · 21:25

Thought I'd post this here. I can't compare "The Hurt Locker" with any other movies set in the (current) Iraq War, since I haven't seen any, but from everything I've read it's quite accurate in its depiction, and I'd recommend it for anybody of any political stripe:

Review: The Hurt Locker (2009)
4 out of 4 stars

It's hard to write a movie review about a movie about a bomb squad without including any spoilers, but I promise I will try to do my best. If you wish to avoid any chance of them altogether, I'll just say that The Hurt Locker is the best movie I've seen all year, a great, suspenseful, entertaining, intelligent war and action picture, and an all-around perfect film, and you can bail out here.

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ourprez08

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Monday March 09, 2009 · 12:12 AM PDT

2009/03/09 · 00:12

Since my last open thread, about my transmogrified version of an Alejo Duran Colombian vallenato song, "Evangelina," I did a bunch more ('cause I'm currently a bit heartbroken and was bored and found more lyrics in Spanish online that I could check for accuracy against available Alejo performances).

I used some serendipities of translation/transliteration/etymology to make them very different, though a few of them are pretty direct translations, if you excuse my poor Spanish.

Join me below the fold for my versions, and please post up any poems you'd like!

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Poll

17 votes Show Results

Have you ever heard of Alejo Duran or Colombian vallenato music before?

17 votes Vote Now!

Have you ever heard of Alejo Duran or Colombian vallenato music before?

Yes, I am familiar with both Alejo Duran and vallenato

2 votes

Yes, I have heard of Alejo Duran

0 votes

Yes, I have heard of Colombian vallenato music

2 votes

No, I have never heard of either

13 votes

Late Night Open Poetry Thread

ourprez08

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Thursday February 12, 2009 · 1:54 AM PST

2009/02/12 · 01:54

It's late, how 'bout some poetry?

I transmogrified another Alejo Duran song, "Evangelina," again using serendipities of translation/transliteration/etymology to make it lots different. But this particular one maintains the flavor of the original, I think.

Join me below the fold for my version, and please post up any poems you'd like!

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ourprez08

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Tuesday September 02, 2008 · 3:31 AM PDT

2008/09/02 · 03:31

By now, the whole world knows that John McCain's vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin and her husband have five children: Track, a brave enlistee soon headed to Iraq, Bristol, Willow, Piper and baby Trig.

As you may have noticed, all of their children have unconventional names, four common nouns and one proper noun which is a common place name in English-speaking nations.

In addition to probably causing brutal teasing of their children in school, their naming raises troubling parallels to the worst excesses of recent celebrity baby-naming.

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Poll

133 votes Show Results

What should Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston name their child?

133 votes Vote Now!

What should Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston name their child?

Snow

8 votes

Sleet

8 votes

Field

6 votes

Stream

1 vote

Soldier of Fortune

23 votes

Baobab

4 votes

Banzai

10 votes

Flautist

5 votes

Manila Envelope

20 votes

Brussels Sprout

25 votes

February

0 votes

October

4 votes

Jack

5 votes

Diane

2 votes

Other (please expand their comments)

12 votes

Open G'P veep Limerick thread

ourprez08

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Friday August 29, 2008 · 10:24 PM PDT

2008/08/29 · 22:24

There once was a maverick "un"
whose veepstakes was really no fun.
He picked Sarah Palin:
"When it comes to Dan Quaylin'
I'm second to Bush 41!"

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ourprez08

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Saturday August 23, 2008 · 5:00 PM PDT

2008/08/23 · 17:00

I started running pretty much daily open Obama v.p. speculation threads back on May 9. I may have been too repetitive, opinionated, stubborn, or whatever else, but I had a lot of fun and appreciated hearing everybody's viewpoints. Many times it was a very worthwhile conversation, I think.

There were three main elimination series of polls. The first generated Sen. Jim Webb (VA) as the winner, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (KS) as the runner-up, by a slim margin. The second round produced Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark (AR), with Sebelius again the runner-up, and the result of the third was identical to the second. Of the three top names generated, I think all could have been solid and winning choices, along with my other three top choices, Fmr. Sen. Sam Nunn (GA), Sen. Russ Feingold (WI) and Gov. Tim Kaine (VA).

I could be said to have been correct in my analysis in generating the field for the third round of eliminations, only in that the eventual choice, Sen. Joe Biden (DE), was included among the 14 most likely choices, though he was not in my top four in my predictions or preference. So this diary is just me fulfilling my promise to eat crow here if I was wrong. And I was.

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ourprez08

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Friday August 22, 2008 · 5:18 PM PDT

2008/08/22 · 17:18

Welcome back for more speculation! Today continues the new final series of possibilities for Obama's v.p.

This series began with a new top 14 list of names I considered most likely to be named Obama's v.p. running mate, and we'll eliminate the bottom vote-getter each day until there is a winner, or a real-life winner is named by Obama. Starting today, candidates will be listed in order of votes from the previous poll, from most to least, so we'll have some idea of preference in this thread's voting should Obama decide before there is a series winner. Sen. Joe Biden (MBNA) and Fmr. Vice President Al Gore (TN) were eliminated in the previous round.

Please discuss any v.p. candidates in the comments. The most correct format would be to state their name, unless you have further comments. I'm happy to hear all ideas in this open thread, and I'm no official gatekeeper, so play nice.

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Poll

514 votes Show Results

Who should be Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate?

514 votes Vote Now!

Who should be Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate?

Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark (AR)

208 votes

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY)

75 votes

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (KS)

116 votes

Other (please expand in comments)

115 votes

5 p.m. PDT Daily Open Obama V.P. Thread #73: New Series Round Eight (w/poll)

ourprez08

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Thursday August 21, 2008 · 5:00 PM PDT

2008/08/21 · 17:00

Welcome back for more speculation! Today continues the new final series of possibilities for Obama's v.p.

This series began with a new top 14 list of names I considered most likely to be named Obama's v.p. running mate, and we'll eliminate the bottom vote-getter each day until there is a winner, or a real-life winner is named by Obama. Starting today, candidates will be listed in order of votes from the previous poll, from most to least, so we'll have some idea of preference in this thread's voting should Obama decide before there is a series winner. Sen. Russ Feingold (WI) was eliminated in the previous round.

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Poll

235 votes Show Results

Who should be Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate?

235 votes Vote Now!

Who should be Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate?

Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark (AR)

63 votes

Sen. Joe Biden (MBNA)

40 votes

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (KS)

40 votes

Fmr. Vice President Al Gore (TN)

35 votes

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY)

41 votes

Other (please expand in comments)

16 votes

Teaching the teacher

ourprez08

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Wednesday August 20, 2008 · 8:47 PM PDT

2008/08/20 · 20:47

Well, I missed my v.p. diary taking a long nap in the hot afternoon after work today. I taught English to tenth graders, so I thought I'd share an anecdote about what I learned in school today.

We started out with silent reading and some writing practice, then I gave the students some notes on figurative language. After I had defined various terms and given examples, they had a bunch of worksheets to do, so I went over the directions with them and set them to work on that, telling them to ask me or the teacher's aide if they had any questions.

I got up again to point out that many (if not most) common literary figures of speech they would encounter in speaking or reading could be traced back in some form either to the Bible, Shakespeare or Cervantes.

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Review: Megamind (2010)

Review: Green Zone (2010)

Reviews: The Men Who Stare at Goats and 2012 (2009)

Review: The Hurt Locker (2009)

Late Night Open Poetry Thread

Late Night Open Poetry Thread

BABYGATE: "Celebrity" naming

Open G'P veep Limerick thread

5 p.m. PDT Daily Open Obama V.P. Thread the Last: It Was Fun

UPDATED: 5 p.m. PDT Daily Open Obama V.P. Thread #74: New Series Round Nine (w/poll)

5 p.m. PDT Daily Open Obama V.P. Thread #73: New Series Round Eight (w/poll)

Teaching the teacher