by ·4 Comments

(as the movie we’ve been watching together is rolling its credits…)

Her: [Looks up suggestively and moves hand across bed]

Me: You do realize this is quite possibly the worst pre-coital movie. ever?

Her: [Keeps silent and smiles a wicked toothy smile]

Me: That’s it! stay the hell away from me!!! I’m sleeping on the floor tonight.

(awesome movie, otherwise)

by ·2 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I was buried up to my armpits in Game Theory (nothing to do with Quake or World of Warcraft, trust me), Decision Theory, Cryptology and a dozen other fascinating topics. After a couple days non-stop writing/reading/studying/coding on those topics, I felt I really needed a two-hour break. Yet, feeling guilty about leaving my books for a minute, I compromised by downloading renting that award-winning movie about John Nash. I figured if I was not studying, at least watching a biopic on one of the pioneer in the field of Game Theory wouldn’t be straying too far off.

As it turns out, the movie is not as bad as I’d expected (which is not to say it is any good). Russel Crowe is as convincing as you would imagine a hunky Australian actor playing a nerdy US mathematician to be. All along, you half-expect Crowe to draw a gladius and slice open his mathematical studies nemesis. Instead, you see him mumbling and x-ray-visioning his way into mathematical stardom and bona-fide paranoid schizophrenia.

Continue reading

by ·6 Comments

I took from my five remaining daily hours of sleep schedule to go watch Shortbus last Sunday.

I know it’s been released a few eons ago in other parts of the civilized world and that, by now, everybody has either seen it or think John Cameron Mitchell is the antichrist (or both)… Yet I felt I should add to the general consensus (met amidst people of taste):

This is one brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable movie.

Definitely not a family movie, and you might not want to take a date there without checking out before… But otherwise: best way to spend ten bucks with your clothes on, these days.

by ·Comments Off on Social Recipes

I’m not sure if anything can still be done for the reputation of this blog, seeing how the past 24 hours have seen an unusually high amount of somewhat sensible, even possibly useful information put here. Frankly, I don’t know if my blogger’s ethics will ever recover.

I will try nonetheless.

Wars of the Geeks is officially over, silly inconsequent navel-gazing is now back for the month.

Let’s start by what should have been yesterday’s sum up of how to succeed at cooking an enjoyable Summer evening with friends. It goes a little something like this:

[steps sideways, does two entrechats and starts singing while tap-dancing to the beat]

  • Some second-hand equipment purchased for a fistful of euros on the outer rim of the Internets.
  • Cranberry juice + vodka + a splash of lemon juice + a dash of cointreau + a few wedges of lime + loads of ice, times a few gallons.
  • One lovably demented masterpiece of a Japanese movie recommended by S. a while back.
  • People (also: other people without blogs, but likeable nonetheless).

Shake but do not stir, serve fresh with cocktail straws.

Such a fabulous evening that our little Cinéma de quartier might very well be on its way to become a regular bi-monthly.

Then there also was yesterday’s recipe: another kind of enjoyable dish. Though it’s made of much harder-to-find of ingredients and I am not even quite sure I remember myself how the cooking process went.

If you absolutely want to try at home, I think it involved a bottle of contraband Absinth, eye-burning Japanese menthol eye drops, one of the most furious thunderstorm of the Summer and lots of Parisian girls running by in the street, wearing but thin blouses soaking wet from the sudden rain.

Also what appears to be a medium-sized rodent stuck to my living room table in a puddle of melted wax and solidifying liquor. But I will only be able to confirm that when I finish removing the few dozens glasses and beer bottles stacked over it.

by ·6 Comments

It’s official now:

Years after losing its Will-pay-$8-for-it status, falling more recently from Maybe-if-it’s-on-discount-at-Blockbluster’s to Might-download-it-one-day, the James Bond franchise is now being downgraded to If-the-only-other-inflight-movie-has-got-Adam-Sandler-in-it status. Ranking any lower than that involves the use of torture or massive amounts of psychoactive substances as a mandatory condition for viewing.

Let me list a few of the reasons, per my recent viewing of the latest two-hour long necrophiliac gang-bang over Ian Flemming’s corpse to date:

  • Perennial intro sequence. Appears Bond… riding the wave… on. a. surfboard. Do I need to go through the foot-long list of why this is wrong on so many levels? I can only expect the next movie will see him shooting villains from his skateboard in between two half-pipes.
  • A few random series of explosions later, we get treated to, without a doubt, the worst massacre of a James Bond theme ever. Sung by a vocoder loosely assisted by Madonna’s flailing vocal cords, this song makes Tina Turner’s sub-Shirley Bassey performance a work of art by comparison.
  • By then, the average viewer already wants to take his eyes out with a dull spoon. Mind you the movie hasn’t even begun yet.
  • It is still unclear whether Madonna’s useless cameo, a few scenes later, was payment or retribution for her earlier vocal pummeling. Either way, she once again proves her uncanny ability to destroy celluloid and ruin scenes with a mere few seconds of her appearance on screen. I guess we should only be thankful the producers talked her out of doing the embarrassingly fake British accent she has instead been serving journalists ever since.
  • On the stilted acting front, the battle is fierce, Halle Berry wins, but only by a thin margin.
  • Concluding the paroxystic fight of your movie by any variation on the “die, bitch!” theme, uttered by the plucky hero/heroin, is OK. In the fucking 80’s.
  • Even accounting for mandatory Evil Genius’ Factor of Unexplainable Stupidity (e.g.: spending 3 hours explaining one’s evil plot instead of just shooting the hero), tell me exactly why would one ever name his Grand Evil Project after the most widely known tale of Rise and Fall in recorded History? Was “Project Miserable Failure” already taken?
  • The naming and oh-so-unexpected failure of the Project, along with its 3-mile wide blinking billboard of a metaphor, should give an idea as to the level of subtlety injected in the story altogether.
  • Another two or three episodes and the next movie in the franchise will be released as a mere adaptation of the eponymous videogame. Oh wait, it already is.

In other news, word is that the doomsday machine in next episode will be powered by the corpse of Ian Flemming, rotating at supersonic speed inside his grave.