James Bond vs. Vampires...

Over the past couple of weeks, I've managed to catch two of the most anticipated movies of the fall, the latest 007 film Quantum of Solace and the movie adaptation of the teen sensation book Twilight.  I was a bit surprised by my reactions to each.

First up, Quantum of Solace.  After Daniel Craig's first stint as James Bond in Casino Royale, I was pleased to see that the franchise had gotten a fresh reboot into something that was a bit less preposterous than what the Pierce Brosnan movies were escalating into and before they got to the absurd realm of the later Roger Moore films.  Bond was still a debonaire spy who looked good in a tux and was still quite smooth with the ladies.  Yet, this iteration of Bond was not indestructable.  He could screw up.  He could bleed.  He could be tortured.  And he could even love.  

Quantum of Solace seems to pick up with that notion, by opening up with it's first scene as a continuation of Casino Royale.  Literally moments after the last scene of Casino Royale, Bond is in quite an exhilarating car chase scene through the cliffside roads of Italy.  This will later be followed by just about every chase sequence possible--on foot, in a boat, on a plane.  Lots of action sequences, just like any good Bond film.  So far, so good.  The problem is that the action doesn't seem to flow very well, and the pay off at the end of most of these scenes isn't satisfying.  Marc Forster, known more for his dramatic films, lends a bit of artistry to the action by using unusual angles and lots of montages.  A foot chase underground is intercut with a horse race going on right above them.  A shootout is mixed with scenes from Puccini's Tosca being performed in the auditorium nearby.  I actually liked what he was doing with this, except he goes a completely different direction with the rest of the action sequences, filming them in the standard flow of action way we're all used to, which seems to give the whole movie a bit of a disjointed feel.  

There are flashes of classic Bond goodness.  Daniel Craig still fits the role well, despite his non-classic looks for Ian Fleming's ultimate British agent.  We get just a peek of his usual playfulness during a hotel changing sequence with a female British agent sent to bring Bond back to England ("Fields.  Just Fields."--although pay attention to the credits, her name is Strawberry Fields, and probably the only playful name we usually come to expect in Bond movies).  There's even a nice touch involving her that harkens back to a famous scene from Goldfinger--a nice sort of Easter egg for all the devout Bond fans out there that's almost as cool as the scene in Casino Royale that explains how Bond got his Aston Martin DB5.  We get a glimpse of the ongoing friendship between him and his CIA contact Felix Lighter.  And his relationship with M is also developed well.  

Even the way the ended the film was quite clever when you look at it as if Casino Royale was the beginning of the story.  The final scenes of Quantum of Solace are very reminiscent of how Bond waited in the shadows on a snowy day that started the previous film.  And they even save the classic walk of 007 across the screen before he shoots directly at the camera for the end of Quantum as if to say that this segment, in combination with Casino Royale, is finally over.

But in the end, it's just not enough.  Why?  Because the villain wasn't scary.  At all.  He didn't even have any scary henchmen.  And his diabolical plan?  It involves controlling Bolivia.  Bolivia!  No offense to Bolivians, but who cares about Bolivia?  Granted Le Chiffre wasn't all that scary either, but at least you got a twinge of fear when he was literally busting Bond's balls in that torture scene.

Finally, the worst offense?  No, not the theme song (although that was a disaster).  The worst offense is that Bond doesn't bed the Bond girl at the end.  That just seems like blasphemy.  I mean, come on.  They were stranded in a chasm in the earth in the middle of nowhere.  He couldn't pass the time like he usually does when a beautiful woman is around?  I know this is going to sound completely sexist, but what is the Bond girl for?  

All in all, Quantum of Solace was a bit of a let down.  It closes out the events of Casino Royale well, I guess, and lays the ground work for a sinister group of evil to fight in future films, but it just doesn't quite deliver as a film all its own.  As the usual words at the end of the credits say, "James Bond will return," and I hope its with a bit more of the classic ingredients put back into the formula. 

In contrast, I found Twilight a bit of a surprise.  Usually I wouldn't have had much interest in this movie.  Lemon, however, picked up this book on a whim awhile back and has been reading the entire series ravenously since then.  As all fans of this series (which apparently is some phenomenon with teen girls that almost rivals the Harry Potter craze with younger kids), I was "forced" to watch with my wife.  Based on the first book of a series by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight introduces us to Bella Swan, a teenage girl who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to the small town of Forks, Washington to live with her father while her mother and her boyfriend travel the country.  Her adjustment as the new kid in school seems to go relatively well until she seems to spark the obvious disgust of Edward Cullen.  Of course, the outward nausea he seems to exude towards her at first really is essentially love at first sight mixed in with a bit of hunger, as Edward is actually part of a family of local vampires.  

This is a no doubt a teen chick flick, complete with longing gazes into each others eyes and some sappy dialogue.  There was even one particular scene that looked like something out of a cheesy John Tesh music video and that I might put up there on the "roll your eyes" kind of scale as the obligatory chick flick sing-along-scene (which, thankfully, this movie did not have).  The romance itself, central to the entire series, isn't even developed all that well.  Yet for some reason, it all just seemed to work for me.  Perhaps I'm intrigued by the whole vampire angle.  Edward belongs to a vampire family that are strict "vegeterians" as they only feed on the blood of wild animals and not humans.  Running around are a group of more traditional blood-suckers who will feast on their human prey at will and eventually come to spoil all the love and harmony.  Maybe it's the hint of future things to come.  The Cullen family had apparently made a pact long ago with the Native Americans in the area who descend from a wolf-respecting tribe--can you say vampire vs. werewolf throwdown in the future sequels?

But in the end, I was just kind of impressed by the whole abstinence message this movie seemed to convey.  The typical teen drama seems to portray love at first sight and true love as something that can only be visualized by sexual intercourse, and never seems to emphasize the importance of waiting.  What a better metaphor than a male teenager with hormonal urges who has to control himself before literally devouring his girlfriend, and a girlfriend that needs to figure out how to slowdown her own impulses to give up her entire life strictly on her feelings of first love?  In a pop culture world where I think sex is thrown around way too easily for eye candy and quick stimulation, it was nice to see a story treat it as something special to wait for.

So there you go.  Two movies.  One a bit of a disappointment.  One a bit of a surprise.  Oddly enough, I didn't like one because it wasn't naughty enough, and I liked the other because it wasn't really that naughty at all.  In the end, though, I give them about the same rating.

Be careful what you wish for...

As every Texas fan Saturday night, I made a deal with the devil and wished for a Sooner win over the Red Raiders.  Alas, as I washed my mouth out with soap the following day, I find the aftermath that the Sooners brought forth with their total domination of Texas Tech.  OU leapfrogs over Texas in both the AP, Harris, and Coaches' polls, and only a hair under Texas in the BCS rankings? With just one week left, there's only a thin shred of hope that the Longhorns will come out on top of the Big 12 South in hopes of competing for what should be a BCS National Championship berth.   I don't have confidence that even Mack Brown could lobby the voters to get Texas back on top, and I fear the devil would own my soul if I asked for too much, such as both Tech and Oklahoma losing next week.  But maybe just Tech?  

Man, to think that the destiny of this years UT football squad could have been determined on one touchdown score at the last second of a game.  I just may be crying by the end of this season--I'm just not sure if it'll be tears of loss or tears of joy.

Return of the Trekkies (or is that Trekkers?)

Anyone catch the trailer for the new Star Trek movie coming out next summer?  I've always thought Star Trek had the potential to overcome its nerdy reputation as a franchise only loved by supergeeks.  Then again, I think I'm still in denial as to how much of a dork I am.  Anywho, in this day and age when nerdy and geeky has become hip and cool, perhaps this is the perfect time for a Star Trek resurgence:

Enough Said!

How to kill a bull...

The global financial market has gotten way to complicated for me too understand. Granted, I didn't major in economics in college, but I still consider myself a relatively intelligent guy who should be able to sort of get some semblance of how Wall Street works. This scares me given the fact that we all rely on financial investments to insure we aren't living in a tent eating Spaghettios for dinner when we retire, especially with the gloom and doom reports that I hear on the news everyday.

It used to be, that this didn't worry me so much. Heck, I'm no Warren Buffet genius, so I figured, it's best to leave the mental work of the market to the experts. But as I think about it more, I have to wonder where this unearned confidence in the investment community ever came from. I used to recall a banner in the commons at some college once that said something to the effect of, "Want a BMW when you grow up? Get an MBA."  This was the kind of people they were recruiting into business school.  Not anyone with a social consience, just guys whose goal in life was to make lots and lots of money.  Now typically there is the occassional wiz kid that really wants to understand  economic theory, but I always got the feeling that most of the guys going into finance and business weren't always the brightest guys in the world.  I had this stereotypical image that the smartest students became engineers, doctors, scientists, and maybe even lawyers while the others were a bunch of frat boys just extending their party to Wall Street, with some bullshitting their way to the very top.  So instead of the best and the brightest in the world overseeing essentially our future livelihood, we've got clueless guys playing a game of high stakes poker and making poor bets with our money.  Based on this article by Michael Lewis about what led to the current economic collapse, maybe I wasn't so far off:

Here's where financial technology became suddenly, urgently relevant. The typical mortgage bond was still structured in much the same way it had been when I worked at Salomon Brothers. The loans went into a trust that was designed to pay off its investors not all at once but according to their rankings. The investors in the top tranche, rated AAA, received the first payment from the trust and, because their investment was the least risky, received the lowest interest rate on their money. The investors who held the trusts' BBB tranche got the last payments—and bore the brunt of the first defaults. Because they were taking the most risk, they received the highest return. Eisman wanted to bet that some subprime borrowers would default, causing the trust to suffer losses. The way to express this view was to short the BBB tranche. The trouble was that the BBB tranche was only a tiny slice of the deal.

But the scarcity of truly crappy subprime-mortgage bonds no longer mattered. The big Wall Street firms had just made it possible to short even the tiniest and most obscure subprime-mortgage-backed bond by creating, in effect, a market of side bets. Instead of shorting the actual BBB bond, you could now enter into an agreement for a credit-default swap with Deutsche Bank or Goldman Sachs. It cost money to make this side bet, but nothing like what it cost to short the stocks, and the upside was far greater.

The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the N.F.L. Eisman was perplexed in particular about why Wall Street firms would be to and asking him to sell short. "What Lippman did, to his credit, was he came around several times to me and said, 'Short this market,' " Eisman says. "In my entire life, I never saw a sell-side guy come in and say, 'Short my market.' "

And short Eisman did—then he tried to get his mind around what he'd just done so he could do it better. He'd call over to a big firm and ask for a list of mortgage bonds from all over the country. The juiciest shorts—the bonds ultimately backed by the mortgages most likely to default—had several characteristics. They'd be in what Wall Street people were now calling the sand states: Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada. The loans would have been made by one of the more dubious mortgage lenders; Long Beach Financial, wholly owned by Washington Mutual, was a great example. Long Beach Financial was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking home owners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.

More generally, the subprime market tapped a tranche of the American public that did not typically have anything to do with Wall Street. Lenders were making loans to people who, based on their credit ratings, were less creditworthy than 71 percent of the population. Eisman knew some of these people. One day, his housekeeper, a South American woman, told him that she was planning to buy a townhouse in Queens. "The price was absurd, and they were giving her a low-down-payment option-ARM," says Eisman, who talked her into taking out a conventional fixed-rate mortgage. Next, the baby nurse he'd hired back in 1997 to take care of his newborn twin daughters phoned him. "She was this lovely woman from Jamaica," he says. "One day she calls me and says she and her sister own five townhouses in Queens. I said, 'How did that happen?' " It happened because after they bought the first one and its value rose, the lenders came and suggested they refinance and take out $250,000, which they used to buy another one. Then the price of that one rose too, and they repeated the experiment. "By the time they were done," Eisman says, "they owned five of them, the market was falling, and they couldn't make any of the payments."

The entire article is a bit of a lengthy read, but kind of fascinating to see exactly how either clueless or evil these guys are.  Maybe that's where the symbol of the bull for a growing market came from--it's all just based on bullshit.

Comic book geeks have no excuses anymore...

Much has been said about the historic victory Barack Obama achieved with his presidential election and it's effect on minority achievement.  I think I heard Will Smith say something on Oprah the other day that from his point of view, African-Americans now have no excuses not to strive for greatness.  I find this reassuring for my own future kids.  And now, I'm even more encouraged by the fact that Obama has raised the bar for another group of stereotyped underachievers--comic book aficionados.  What's the first thing mentioned on "the 50 facts you might not know" about Barack Obama?

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

Heck, if the President of the United States and the leader of the free world can read comic books, well, so can I.

And a part of me dreams that Chuck Norris from The Delta Force aka Major Scott McCoy was part of at least one of these missions...

I was reading this article in The New York Times about an order signed by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld secretly authorizing the military to go into a number of foreign countries we weren't actually at war with to hunt down Al Qaeda targets:

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

I'm still deciding whether I think this is a good or bad idea.  I'm not sure anyone really knows how we're supposed to conduct this war on terrorism, but a part of me thinks you have to hit targets when the opportunity arises and not become Boss Hogg chasing after the Duke brothers having to stop at the county line when the General Lee makes that jump over the river.  But that's just my first impression.  Regardless, this directive sounds like something straight out of the movies.  

John Williams is the man...

Yeah, yeah.  This is kind of nerdy.  Lemon has been giving me the eye as I've watched this video like, "OMG.  My husband is a dork."  That's OK, 'cause I think it's pretty cool:

Change is good...

As I celebrate with the rest of the country on this night, I'm struck by the fact that the truly historic nature of tonight still hasn't hit me.  Although I was born and raised in the United States, I've still grown up as a minority in this country and in some subtle ways have had to deal with the hurdles that entails.  Now, my struggles are in some respects pretty minor compared to other minority groups (and even some in my own minority group).  I haven't had to deal with too much blatant racism, low expectations, or hidden mistrust based solely on the color of my skin.  Still, there have always been subtle reminders growing up that I'm not white.  My entire life, I've tried to shrug off such things.  Much of this is a result of the environment I grew up in, essentially separated from minority groups of my own kind.  Perhaps some of it, too, was my defense mechanism to try and fit in.  But I like to believe that some of it was my way of trying to prove something I've always believed--we're all equal Americans in this country, and the minute I start making categories for anybody is the minute I've become a racist myself.  

I've prided myself in the thought that I had the potential to achieve anything my own intellectual and physical abilities were capable of, and I tried not to see my race as a barrier to my potential.  Yet reminders of the state of this country and the ignorance that still exists becomes more apparent to me day by day.  But as we celebrate the election of our 44th President of the United States, I again see hope that what I grew up believing is truly achievable.  And I'm proud of the fact that perhaps the majority of people that voted for our next President didn't support him to make some sort of statement about race.  They did it because they were truly moved by his words, ideals, judgement, and leadership.  

Thank you, Barack Obama, for reaffirming my belief in the American dream.  You've truly inspired all of us to believe that "Yes we can."

Rants and Raves

Since when did I begin to care so much about politics? It is not so much the outcome of what is unfolding tonight in terms of the election, but how I believe that it unfolded.

It began for me by looking at the election results for my county, and seeing that there is only one contested Republican that won. This does not bother me, what bothers me though is that almost all of the winners won by an amount that is almost completely identical with the number of straight party ticket votes.

I have heard many educated people talk about there being some qualification other than age for voting. Examples include, a certain level of education attained, a certain level of income, or even holding voting to happen on one day. I don't agree with the examples listed, but I do feel like every citizen should do his or her civic DUTY to research the candidates.

Allowing an option for a straight ticket vote only enables an absent civic duty. This goes for both Republican and Democratic parties. I believe that not only should this not be an option when voting, but that there should also not be any party affiliation of one individual listed on the ballot. I believe that then you would end up with people voting the way they do for judges - either blindly or with a well prepared civic duty.

I performed my civic duty before voting. I ended up voting not only for Republicans and Democrats, but I even voted for the Libertarian candidate for some seats. Maybe it is because I have become a parent and this sort of stuff crosses my mind now, but I am going to make sure that my children see the value in civic duty.

[Update: Obama has been announced as our next President. I do look forward to his Presidency, and I hope that the idea of change he has spoken of can happen.]

I don't know about Lando, but Chewbacca definitely has my vote...

On the eve of the Presidential election, here's something to lighten up the mood a bit.  And let's all break out the Colt 45 tomorrow night for whomever ends up being our next President:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

By the way, is that the Washington D.C. subway tunnel in the background that's standing in for some Star Wars locale?

There may be hope for this country yet...

Check out this short video from the BBC.  I say there's hope not because this guy is supporting Obama, but because he's looking beyond race and color to vote for the candidate he feels will do the best job in leading this country.  I'm a bit embarrased and ashamed to admit that I probably would have grouped him into the stereotypical redneck category upon first glance.  I may never automatically make fun of anyone wearing a NASCAR hat again.

I think watching Texas this year has taken at least a few years off my life expectancy...

(AP Photo/LM Otero)

Can you believe how close this game was? Crazy that you can chalk up the loss to every part of the Longhorns team. An ice cold start to the offense in the first half, bad special teams play on the last kick off, a horrible defensive effort on the last drive to lose the game--ugh. Maybe I don't give the Red Raiders enough credit, but I think Texas really had the skills to win this game and it's too bad they didn't bring their "A-game" to key parts of this.  

So the three way tie scenario in the Big 12 South is one step closer to reality. I've been worried that the conference was going to beat each other up to the point that no one from the Big 12 gets to the National Championship game. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but one could realistically predict OU beating Tech and winning over OSU, creating a tie between the Longhorns, Sooners, and Red Raiders. I'm not sure what the rules say about how you break this--anyone know?