Few creatures of the night have captured our imagination like vampires…
What explains our enduring fascination with vampires?
What is it about the vampire myth that explains our interest?
Is it the overtones of sexual lust, power, control…
Or is it a fascination with the immortality of the undead?
And what dark and hidden parts of our psyche are aroused and captivated
By the legends of the undead

– Vampires, Godsmack

I remember when vampires were awesome.  Whether it’s a book by Anne Rice, the Lost Boys, pretty much any RPG, or Dracula himself — Vampires are to be feared.  As suggested, vampires have always had a “sexiness” to them but first and foremost, they were creatures to be feared.

No more.

I suppose it started with Blade making vampires “cool”.  Then Kate Beckinsale made them ridiculously hot.  Finally, Stephenie Meyer emasculated them.  The so-called “next J.K. Rowling” has turned vampires as ordinary teenagers experiencing overly dramatic romanticism.  Now vampires are cropping up everywhere but almost universally as a love interest as opposed to, you know, a terrifying force of evil.

Thankfully, a fellow supernatural undead, the zombie, is also riding a huge upswell up popularity.  When it comes to the undead, zombies have always been perceived as the plebs to the vampires patricians.  Unlike vampires however, zombies haven’t had to resort to teen angst for their popularity.  Left 4 Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Plants vs Zombies, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil 5, and the upcoming ZombieLand… zombies are riding high.

The mysteries of the undead will continue to fascinate the living.

– Vampires, Godsmack

District 9 was the more interesting of the two — drawing an obvious but not overbearing correlation to apartheid and with more than a few curious plot inconsistencies, it still managed to come across as a great action & special effects movie with a smart backstory.  It’s told in a newsroom/documentary-style that I thought worked pretty well even if the shaky-cam was probably a bit overdone.  It also wasn’t trying to tell the “whole” story and that explains some (but not all) of the aforementioned plot-holes.  That said, if you are looking for a movie that tells the whole story from start to finish, you are not going to appreciate the “incompleteness” of District 9.

Inglourious Basterds has Tarantino at his best… and his worst.  If you appreciate Buschemi ranting about tipping or Jackson preaching, you should definitely see Inglourious Basterds.  The dairy farmhouse and tavern basement scenes are worth the price of admission — some of the most entertaining scenes I’ve ever seen.  The rest of the movie is quite good as well though Tarantino doesn’t know how to pull on the brakes for some of the more sadistic violence scenes.  There are 2 or 3 parts in the movie that are essentially completely unnecessary and break the audience out of the movie’s spell as they look away in disgust.  A better filmmaker would probably have left un-shown the violence and just left it to the audiences imagination.  The last scene in particular could have been one of the greatest final scenes ever but instead, most people walked out of the theater disgusted.  A few minutes later, everyone will recall how good the movie was but why he took that approach, I don’t know.  Lastly, if Christopher Waltz doesn’t get a nomination for his role in the movie, it’s a travesty — his character is the one you want to hate the most but will be talking about long after the movie ends.

If I could only see one of the two movies, it would be District 9.  Basterds was, at its core, just another WW2 movie (granted one with extreme historic license) while District 9 actually broke fairly unknown ground with its story.  That said, I would highly recommend them both.

1. A Few Good Men is awesome.
2. Jack Nicholson is even more awesome.
3. AT&T is worthless. Though, to be fair, no more so than their primary competitor.
4. Google Voice is neat (if largely useless for me).
5. iPhone is “the” phone.

AT&T: You want answers?

TechCrunch: We think we’re entitled to them.

AT&T: You want answers?!

TechCrunch: We want Google Voice on our iPhones.

AT&T: You can’t handle the iPhone with Google Voice!

Son, we operate on network that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by carriers with restrictions. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Verizon Wireless? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Google Voice and you curse AT&T. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: That pulling Google Voice, while tragic, probably saved the network. And our existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves the network.

You don’t want the Google Voice on your iPhone. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at TechCrunch50, you want us protecting the network. You need us protecting that network. We use words like rate limiting, application approval and restrictions…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.

We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a blog who writes and profits under the blanket of the very network that we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide it. We’d prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, we suggest you pick up a router and build your own network. Either way, We don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: We did the job you sent us to do.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: You’re goddamn right we did.

If you have no idea what this is about, AT&T recently blocked the release of a Google Voice application for the iPhone.

Update: Brian would like it known that he saw this before me.  Please don’t let this remarkable event lead you to idolize him as he has a big enough ego as it is. 

The Interpreter is a few years old but was interesting and a solid way to spend a couple hours.  I sort of guessed at the ending fairly early on but it was a pretty decent movie regardless.

Harry Potter was, of course, the huge new release — Is there anyone who hasn’t read the books?  The movie was well-done, I like that J.K. Rowling wasn’t afraid to add some “darkness” to the series, but to be fair, there really wasn’t much going on this particular movie.  I mean, the famous “major character dies!” happens in this movie but otherwise, it’s a relatively straight-forward movie designed to get the plot rolling to the final chapter of the series.  Though, at it turns out, it seems they are turning the final book into not one but two movies…

Finally, Christina and I watched He’s Just Not That Into You last night.  It had a pretty good ensemble cast which I find almost always turns into at least a decent movie and this one was no exception.  A bit of background: A couple of years ago, I was on a cruise and on the last day of the cruise, a lady sitting at the table next to us all week came over and told me she was convinced that I was Ben Affleck.

Yeah, I don’t see it either.

Having crushed her dream of meeting a celebrity, I signed an autograph for her (it’ll be worth something some day!) so at least she’s got that going for her.  Then again, perhaps it was just foreshadowing.   Continuing our odd bond, Mr. Affleck plays well, essentially me, in He’s Just Not That Into You.  Now that’s just weird.

While the plot — a love story between a bullied boy and a girl who turns out to be a vampire — gave me pause (it sounded like the unnecessary teen-angst Twilight film), the praise it was getting across the interwebs was more than enough for me to have an open mind about it.  Unfortunately, I finally watched it last night and was underwhelmed.  It definitely comes across as an art-house movie — beautiful, deliberate… but boring and pointless.  I suspect the filmmakers were trying to convey that love can outweigh terror or some other metaphorical agenda.   All I took away from it was that I wished I had spent those rare 2 free hours doing something else.

However, of those that have seen the movie, I seem to be in the minority in my opinion.  There are already plans in the works for making a Hollywood adaption of it by the same guy who made Cloverfield.

The Hangover seems to be the “breakout” comedy of the year.  While I’ve heard good things about Paul Blart: Mall Cop (seriously) and, of course, Up and Monsters vs. Aliens were also hilarious, The Hangover seems to be catching the most people off-guard on how funny it is.  Several of the film sites out there seems shocked that a film could be this funny without any “big names”.  They contrast it with the disappointment/bombs of the “made” comedy stars (Seth Rogen in Observe & Report, Will Ferrell in Land of the Lost, and Jack Black/Michael Cera in Year One) and wonder why it succeeded instead of the others.   I can’t speak for others but I can watch the trailers for Mall Cop and The Hangover and say, hey, those look funny while the others all looked … well, not.

Nor do I understand why the big names like Will Ferrell and Jack Black are supposed to carry more weight than Kevin James and Ed Helms — The latter two are significantly more entertaining.  I can appreciate Will Ferrell & Jack Black but give me Ed Helms on the Office and his Daily Show work anyday of the week.

Much like Wall-E before it, Up has a near perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.  The reviews were so positive across the board that there was actually a running story last week as to whether it would receive any negative reviews.  Needless to say, I am not going against the popular sentiment — Up is an excellent movie and is one more notch on Pixar’s perfect record.

I am not what one would consider a Trekkie.   The original Star Trek series was enjoyable enough but it never really caught me like it did many others — it was a bit before my time, I guess.  I never paid much attention to any of the later series but when I did happen to catch the odd show, it ranged from “all right” to “who watches this stuff?”.

As far as the movies though, I thoroughly enjoyed II – The Wrath of Khan, IV – The Voyage Home, and VI – The Undiscovered Country, the three of the so-called “even-numbered” Star Trek movies with the original cast; the rule of thumb being that the even-numbered movies were the good ones.   The last of the “good” Star Trek movies, VIII – Insurrection, didn’t impress as much but that’s possibly because I never found The Next Generation cast as compelling as The Original Series cast.

I typically find time-travel movies/books instantly worthless as there will inevitable be too many plot-holes to tie the story together (see Lost above).  However, on very rare occasions, a movie/book can overcome that and succeed.  The Back To The Future movies have been the only exceptions I ever held to my “time-travel stories suck” — the exception that proves the rule — until Star Trek.

Not to say Star Trek didn’t have massive plot holes that weren’t glaringly obvious.  It just succeeded with a very entertaining story, a great foundation for future adventures, and a superb cast based on the original series characters.   Simon Pegg as Scotty?!   Yes, please!

Space… the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

The premise of Star Trek — man’s voyages to discover space — is simple, open-ended, and a great foundation for some truly great entertainment.   I highly recommend the new movie, plot holes and all, and am looking forward to the future sequels.   Star Trek is now relevant again.

On the other hand, the sticker shock of the movie ticket was quite memorable.  I’ve read that the movie theater business has been struggling for years even as movie ticket sales have grown to enormous portions.  Despite being a movie aficionado, I very rarely make the journey to the theater.  After paying $14.50 for my movie on Friday night, I don’t seen any reason to increase my theater attendance.  $11/ticket + $3.50 for the 3D “bonus” and you’ve matched the cost of my Netflix subscription per month!  I do like the 3D and IMAX presentations theaters are now offering — a legitimate improvement over my home theater that typically movies do not have — but the cost is a bit much.

Because of those movie prices, there are few movies that are compelling enough that I do with to see them in the theater — and that is only because I would like to see them sooner versus later.  Obviously, Pixar movies are almost universally worth the money for me to go see in the theater.  The occasional Dreamworks movie — Shrek (the original), despite some elitist naysayers, was a great idea and an excellent movie — also tends to make the list.  The fact that these studios are CGI-Animation studios has little influence on my decision but it seems to be a big deal to other people.  I recall sitting in a theater several years ago for a movie and nearly every preview was for an upcoming animated movie, including one of the Pixar movies.  After several of these animated movie previews, a lady in front of me exclaimed “Aren’t there any adult movies coming out?”  For whatever reason, that has always struck me as odd.   I don’t equate cgi/animation with “kids” movies or classify “real” movies as adult movies.  I would consider any Pixar movie to be a genuine contender for Best Picture any year.