The USPS transformed some of their blue mailboxes into R2-D2 across several cities, to promote up and coming Star Wars stamps, and Tampa happened to be one of the locations. So here’s my picture of the droid, we found R2 downtown today at the corner of Kennedy and Pierce. The force is strong with Danielle, as she spotted the mailbox from miles away.

A spin on Dick’s speech at the Republican Convention.

Southwest is giving away a coupon good for one free movie download from Movielink.

We love teh bittorrent! Here’s the torrent links for the movie Fahrenheit 911.(A legal download, hah!)

In order to download this movie you will have to install BitTorrent. Those of you that prefer P2P programs you can download Shareaza, (works the same as Kazaa) which also handles BitTorrent downloads.

I admit, I’m a sucker for true crime movies and shows. The story and the characters consume me and when the credits roll, I am left knowing that it really happened and wasn’t a creation of someone’s imagination.

I recently watched Monster, starring Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci. The movie is based on the actual events of Aileen Wuornos from Daytona and her tragic life of prostitution and loneliness that ends in a string of murders.

What sparks her first kill is a brutal, horrifying, torturous rape in this seriously disturbed guy’s car. She fortunately breaks free and is able to grab a gun and liberate this guy from his demented life.

This particular scene invoked a plethora of emotions in me. As I’m sure it did with countless others who have viewed this film. I’ve heard others compare it to a particular scene in Boys Don’t Cry. Personally, I don’t think you can compare something like this. However, both movies (both true stories) left permanent feelings in me. You can’t help but feel compassion and anger at once. I admit, I cried, several times during both films.

This is one of those really great films that’s based on really unfortunate and sad events.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I’ll just end this with saying:

Charlize Theron’s performance was absolutely mind blowing and profound, definitely worthy of several awards. A good movie is a movie that sparks a thought, a feeling, an idea, (etc.), it can change your perspective about something and it stays with you forever. And this is one of those movies.

Do you know Jesus? I was always under the impression that God was black, lesbian, and Jewish. After seeing Mel Gibson’s Jesus, I now understand that most people believe the Christ family was white!

Anyway, I caved into the propaganda and conspiracy and saw The Passion of the Christ. How do I explain this movie? Let me see.

Okay, imagine if Mel Gibson had made a movie, we’ll call it, for example, The Life of Jesus. Now, let’s just say that this movie was a trilogy. Instead of releasing all three movies he just releases the second film and calls it The Passion of the Christ. That’s how I felt after watching this film, like I had watched the middle of a movie.

This is a two hour movie on the crucifixion of Jesus. That’s it. No more, no less. I don’t know where the main character came from, why they wanted to crucify him, or anything that would add to a PLOT. (A plot, Mel! A plot!) The only thing I gained from this movie was how a crucifixion is performed.

From what I personally know of the tales of Jesus, as little as that may be, I can honestly tell you that the actual process of his crucifixion was the only thing I didn’t need explained. I can understand emphasizing just how horrible this was, but two whole hours?

Maybe those who are familiar with all the other details about Jesus and biblical times will enjoy this movie. I would have enjoyed a little more of a story. When someone asks me how this movie was all I can say is, “Well, there was this guy Jesus and these other people crucified him.” That and capital punishment is wrong.

I just personally found the film to be rather dull, lacking a lot in the story department, and severely overrated. I just didn’t grasp the message here, if there even was one. Maybe I should have read the book first?

I found the interview with Mel Gibson’s dad, Hutton Gibson, more interesting. Afterall, he thinks most of the Holocaust is fiction. [Full transcript here]

I just don’t think this movie really lived up to all the press it’s getting.

The Kodak CX6200 digital camera. This camera is hot for the price. If you’re just looking to get your hands on a simple, yet functional digital camera, this one is perfect. It’s very inexpensive and takes great pictures. It only comes with 8MB internal memory which isn’t very useful but I don’t know why you’d get a digital camera and not get a memory stick anyway. Miraculously, we managed to get a 128MB memory stick for a meager $25.00! The sales woman swore it was on sale for $25.00 and I mean, would you argue? Considering a 128MB stick is equal in price with the camera! The software bundled with this camera is lame, but I very rarely use software that comes with virtually any new device I get. This camera goes with me everywhere and I definitely recommend it to those who are just looking for their first digital camera.

Toy number 2: BUSlink USB 2.0 cd burner. I’m one of those unfortunate ones who must use an external burner for my laptop, unless of course, I wanted to dish out about $350.00 for one specifically for my laptop. I got this one for roughly $90.00, which isn’t too bad. My previous burner was a refurbished BenQ that I got for $60.00. That beast gave me a over 100 solid burns before it retired from it’s short career of burning and now just functions as an extra cd-player on my Linux box.

My last and final toy is a Philips DVD player that we acquired just last night. We are dvd-aholics. We tend to purchase about three DVDs a week. Our previous DVD player only played MP3 CDs and I’ve since wanted one that played other formats, or at least play VCDs. This particular player was on sale for $80.00 and it plays all of the abbreviations: DVD+RW, DVD+R, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3-CD, VCD, S-VCD and Picture CD Formats. And it is a Philips to boot. It was a bit of a compulsive buy but makes for a nice companion to our new burner. It has a sleek design with a ton of options and preferences. So, instead of pooling the money for all of these devices together and getting a PS2 we opted for three new toys. Needless to say, we are far from disappointed. Besides, we’re very content with our 8 bit Nintendo.

First There was something about Mary, then he met the parents, and then suddenly, along came Polly. Have you ever wondered if it was possible to typecast yourself in all of your own rehashed movies? Ben Stiller is horribly afflicted with self-inflicted typecasting.

Let me begin with a personal disclaimer: The only thing that lured me into seeing this movie was the ferret. I’ve been an avid (somewhat obsessive) ferret owner for roughly six years now and I simply could not resist. After seeing the trailer with little Adolfo running around, I was lured into and hour and a half of pure torture, haplessly awaiting cute ferret scenes, only to be disappointed that I had previously seen them all in the trailer. On another exasperating note, every scene involving the ferret, they had incorporated these ridiculous ferret sounds. I’d love to know where they found sound samples of that nature and just exactly what it was that made that noise.

Anyway, let’s sum up the plot, shall we? Guy marries girl. Guy and girl go on honeymoon. Girl sleeps with scuba instructor. Guy leaves girl. Guy runs into old classmate from high school. Thus, Along Came Polly.

Yeah.

Well, somewhere in between there are other irrelevant, underdeveloped characters and blatant stereotypes. Oh, and a ferret.

Eventually the plot thickens, so thick it will suffocate you and whisk you off into a dreadful movie coma, where you will be plagued with nail-biting suspense as you violently hang on the edge of your chair, desperately awaiting Ben Stiller’s character’s (was it Reuben?) gut-wrenching, heartbreaking decision: Stay with Polly or salvage his marriage with his wife who decided to return to the movie fifteen minutes before the credits?

At this point, the drama is so intense I actually open my eyes to watch the rest of the movie!

Ben chases down Polly before she ditches town. It’s very whimsical with the slow-motion effect of him running after the taxi. Something I had NEVER seen before in a movie! Then BAM!!! A semi slams right into him! All while Polly watches from the taxi, then they zoom in and then Adolfo, the ferret, has a close-up and he brutally attacks Polly, in an obvious attempt to voice his opinion of the movie and turns to give the camera the finger.

Wait, I guess the dramatic conclusion didn’t really wake me up.

Okay - he does chase Polly down and you know how that goes. But it gets better. Just as you relish in the happy union of these two wonderfully scripted characters, you know you are only seconds away from the best part of the movie, THE CREDITS!

So, if you have some sort of inclination to view this film, just watch the trailer. Unless of course you are a Ben Stiller fanatic, then you will be astounded by this movie that has been marked with such a clever, unique story.

I thought I’d start posting more about some of the crazy forked up movies we rent from our beloved Unique Video. I’ll post about our past movies as well.

So recently we checked out another Todd Solondz movie, Storytelling. After seeing Welcome to the Dollhouse six bah-zillion times and of course the brutally-honest-crazy-freaking-disturbing movie Happiness, it’s sort of hard to pass up a Todd Solondz piece of work. I still have to see his older film Fear, Anxiety and Depression.

Storytelling is divided up into two segments, “Fiction” and “Nonfiction”. The first, Fiction, tells the story of a woman taking a fiction-writing class, played by Selma Blair.

The second segment, Nonfiction, gives the details of a soon-to-be documentarian and his new found subject, a suburban high school boy (and his whacked out family starring John Goodman as the father).

The movie delves into a bunch of issues (i.e.: race, sex, exploitation, etc.) and has a nice dark comedy undertone. I have to say, the ending was a bit disappointing. One of those endings that you go, “WTF?! You can just end the movie here!”

A decent movie and highly recommended if you enjoyed Todd’s previous movies, especially Happiness.

I have to thank Benny for opening my eyes to a world with better movies. Up until yesterday, I was under the impression that Red Dragon was the best out of all the movies I’ve seen this year so far. I stand corrected. Amélie is. I watched this movie yesterday and plan to watch it once again this evening.

Amélie is a French flick, so for those of you that don’t enjoy foreign films and subtitles…well, you should. If you’re into movies with the whole “life can be beautiful” theme, quirky humor, and gorgeous cinematography, this is a must see.