Short Movie Review: Real Steel

2.5 out of 5 stars

Evangeline Lilly (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Real Steel is your typical Steven Spielberg fare: awesome CGI and action scenes intersperced with crappy dialogue, overacting, and plot contrivances. Centered around the relationship between former boxer Charlie Keaton (Hugh Jackman) and his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo), the movie is a typical boxing film set in the near future and featuring robot fighters instead of humans. Along the way, it manages to somehow stuff into the plot a one-dimensional romantic relationship between Charlie and childhood sweetheart Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lily), a dance montage between Max and his fighting robot Atom, stereotypical evil-Asian and evil-white-girl characters (Karl Yune and Olga Fonda), and dialogue so stilted and unrealistic that not even an excellent performance from Mr. Jackman could save it.

If you're a fan of Michael Bay movies, you'll probably enjoy the movie's over-the-top and melodramatic performances. Otherwise, I would watch it once on Netflix (or the pirated version online) and save the ticket money for a better movie.

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The Google+ project: A quick look-see

Here is a video that overviews the Google+ social network. I am not sure why, but this video was among the most popular videos on Youtube when I posted it.



So, yeah, Google wants to take over the world. There's no surprise there ...

Personally, I think that the Google+ social network is lame. My experience with it has been somewhat negative so far. I signed up for an account, played with it for 10 minutes, and then never touched it again.

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Review of Walden University website

For this blog post, I thought that I would review the Walden University website: WaldenU.edu.As a warning, I do get paid for some of the posts that I write for this blog, and this post happens to be among them. However, my getting paid to review a website would never affect my review of said website, either positively or negatively for Walden University's online degree programs.

From my initial pass through the website, I can tell that their site is very clean and looks very professional. It is relatively easy to navigate, with a large pull down menu on the homepage and a nice layout that directs me to different parts of the website. So, I give them high marks for this feature. Below is a screen shot of the homepage:

The part of the website I am most interested in is the degrees that they offer. So, I click on that link and check out the doctoral programs that they offer on the site. This directs me to the following page:

The doctoral degrees that they offer seem to be geared more towards education professionals, which makes sense for an online university and is probably a good thing. After all, you wouldn't want to drive on a bridge built by someone with an online degree, now would you?

After seeing the program for a doctorate degree in Education, I am curious how much this would cost me. So, I click through the Tuition and Fees tab and find the cost per semester hour in a table.

Wow!!! A quick calculation reveals that 770$ per semester credit hour times 54 credit hours minimum plus fees easily puts a student over 42,000$ for a Ed.D. degree. To me, that seems like a lot of money.

I guess that, if the student is able to get a good job after with an online degree, then it's fine. However, as I said before, I am not sure who would hire a person with a Ed.D degree from an online university over someone from a brick-and-mortar college.

So, I am impressed overall with the website, at least in terms of the technical aspects of the site. The site is easy to use and easy to navigate. I'm not sold on the programs they offer, however.

Click here to learn about Walden.

Review of Microsoft Word 2010 Blog Post Feature

I am actually writing this post, for the first time, on Microsoft 2010. I think that I really like this feature of Word. First off, I notice that it is possible to directly publish to my Blogger account through the "Publish" button under the "Blog Post" menu in the toolbar. This is a nice feature and will save me some hassle from having to copy and paste the text from Word over to the Blogger text editing window. It's a small convenience, but every little bit helps.

The second thing that pops out at me is how much easier it is to edit blog entries using the Word interface than it is to use the Blogger interface. The next features I want to test are whether Word will correctly interpret html code, say from an embedded Youtube video. Here is my test case, which is a kitten falling down a few stairs:



I am a little disappointed that Word doesn't seem to have a built in java interpreter. I will have to see if the video renders correctly when I publish it or not.

The second thing that I want to check is whether pictures are correctly embedded in posts. So, I go over to Flickr and find some pictures of kittens . . .

 

 

 






It looks like I will have to insert the pictures later, through the Blogger interface, because the Word interface doesn't allow me to insert pictures from a website (which is crazy in this age of hyperlinking pictures).

So, overall, I would give the Word Blog Post feature a very marginal rating. I think that it's good for someone who is going to write a long text based article and needs a lot of formatting to make the text look nice. However, in terms of multimedia support, I would give Word a very marginal grade. There is no support for hyperlinking images and no support for java script so that movies, etc. can display real time during the editing process. However, the "Publish as Draft" feature under the "Publish" menu is nice, but it's still only nice because it means that I have a chance to fix my posts before putting them on the internet, which is something I should be able to do OUTSIDE of the blogger interface.

Final analysis: I won't use this feature, unless I am writing a long, text based article. 
 Kittens For Dummies

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Christina Grimmie (zeldalove64) singing "Set Fire To The Rain"

,,I found the following song by Christina Grimmie on her Youtube channel zeldalove64 on Youtube. The song is "Set Fire To The Rain". If you haven't heard of her before, maybe you'll remember the name after you hear her sing.



I think that this girl, Christina Grimmie, has some talent. I think that she mentions in the video that she is opening for Selena Gomez, not great but definitely a start.

I guess I'll wait to see if she really is the next big thing.

I was going to provide the Amazon link, but I think that she's only on Itunes. Here is a link to a similar artist:

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Final Michael Episode of The Office: My Reaction

Image via Wikipedia

I just wanted to write a short post today reacting to watching the final Michael Scott episode from the television series The Office. I have to admit that I was a big fan of the show early on, thought that the series hit it's peak around Seasons four and five (with the best episode of all time, in my opinion, being "Stress Relief" where Dwight Schrute does the fake fire drill) and kind of tapered off from there (especially with the Jim-Pam romance) and became unwatchable when that company that makes printers bought Dunder-Mifflin. However, I was curious to see the final episode with Michael,. Would the series actually make the exit funny and memorable, or would they produce a sappy, emotional piece of drivel?

It was pretty terrible.

As expected, almost the entire episode was devoted to an insipid and drawn out farewell between Michael and the rest of the coworkers in the office. A minute at the end of the episode is something I could excuse. Having nearly the entire episode devoted to this sappiness, however, was downright aggravating. One of the charms of The Office back when it originally started was that it involved a bunch of difficult people stuck together in an office and trying to find ways to avoid killing each other. Even after that element died out -- probably because the writers made the mistake of falling in love with their characters -- the sheer talent and charisma of Steve Carrell carried the series for a little while. But, to me, this silly cry-fest that the audience was subjected to tonight is evidence that the series should have ended a long time ago.

If the series has any chance of surviving a few more seasons, the writers need to take a serious step back and have the characters start disliking each other again. When I tune in, I want to see tension, sarcasm, and the discomfort that comes with people saying and doing things in situations that mimic those in real life. I don't want to see hugging.

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Short Review of No Strings Attached Movie

Image by jasonEscapist via Flickr

No Strings Attached

3 out of 5 stars

The movie No Strings Attached with Natalie Portmann and Ashton Kutcher is your typical Rom-Com. Short on plot but full of sexy shots of Natalie and Ashton, the movie is charming as far movies in the genre go. In this incarnation of the classic formula, Portmann plays Emma, an oversexed and commitment-phobic nurse who wants a casual sexual relationship ("No Strings Attached") with an aspiring movie set assistant, Adam. If you like Rom-Coms, this movie is for you. If not, take a pass.

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Funny or Die Sucks: Review of 3 New Videos

Image via CrunchBase

A while back on this blog, I wrote an entry about how the internet comedy series Funny or Die actually sucks and isn't very funny. However, I had a friend email me a link to some of their new videos so that I could do an updated review of the series. My updated opinion: Funny or Die is still hit or miss, with mostly misses and a very few mildly amusing hits. So, yeah, it still sucks. Scroll down for my review of the three new videos:

1.  Sequal to When Harry Met Sally:

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal & Helen Mirren from Billy Crystal

In this sequal to When Harry Met Sally, a studio exec takes Billy Crystal's idea of making a sequel to the classical romantic comedy and turns it into a vampire movie renamed When Harry Bit Sally, Even though the idea is brilliant and Billy Crystal is one of my favorite all time comedians, the execution on the video seemed a little off. I thought the jokes were a bit forced (like the one where Crystal suddenly gets excited over a bloody handkerchief used for a circumcision) to somewhat gross (as when Crystal spits blood onto the window of a car without rolling it down). It felt like every other Funny or Die short I've ever seen -- good idea, lots of promise, poor execution, and poor comedic timing. It's still worth watching once, but it's not the type of video I'd post on Facebook or email to a friend.


2. Wax On, F*ck off with Ralph Macchio:

Wax On, F*ck Off with Ralph Macchio from Ralph Macchio

I actually found myself laughing a few times during this short, which is rare when I watch Funny or Die videos. The premise in this video is that Ralph Maccio (The Karate Kid) has to remake himself as a Hollywood bad boy to restart his movie career. The video has a few funny moments, like where he wants to make a sex tape with "no cuddling" at the end. Also, the scene where he is paying the hooker 50 bucks for a hug is pretty good. Even so, I still get this overall sense of pandering to stars from this video, just like every other Funny or Die video out there. I would also rate this one as a watch once video, with maybe a Facebook post if you have lots of Karate Kid fans in your family.


3. David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Pornography"

David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Pornography" w/ Kristen Bell, Ed O'Neill & Ricky Jay from David Mamet

Here is yet another video from Funny or Die that should have been funny, could have been funny, but wasn't. It had all of the elements: pretty girl, old guys, pornography lost since 1938 -- I guess those are all funny, right? The problem with this video is, like other Funny or Die videos, it just doesn't take itself seriously. The ideas are all right, the acting talent is there, but the execution is just off somehow.

I don't understand why Funny of Die isn't funny, I really don't. But, for some inexplicable reason, it isn't funny. So, yes, Funny or Die still sucks, unfortunately.

What do you think of Funny or Die?

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