I caught a couple of movies this past week or thereabouts, so I thought I’d quickly share my impressions of these silver screen wonders with you, my flick-catching public. Up to bat for this pick-up game are Little Miss Sunshine (starring Steve Carell of 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Office fame) and The Illusionist (starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti).

Little Miss Sunshine is a strange indie flick that follows a young girl as she embarks on a journey to win a national beauty pageant, appropriately named Little Miss Sunshine. While that may not sound very appealing to the vast majority of people out there, the dark humour and quirky events along the way make this well worth the price of admission. Steve Carell is great as Frank Hoover, a renowned Proust scholar and a recent suicide survivor. Abigail Breslin is unforgettable as little Olive Hoover, Frank’s niece and Little Miss Sunshine contestant. While primarily a comedy, there are a few darker moments and lines where some may be disturbed.
Grade: A-

The Illusionist takes place in turn of the century Vienna where Eisenheim the Illusionist (played by Edward Norton) earns himself quite the name as an extraordinary magician (some even call him a wizard with supernatural powers). He can “speed up time” and grow an orange tree in mere seconds, turn his gloves into crows, and make a sword stand on end. Naturally, there is some conflict, of course, when he discovers that his childhood sweetheart is destined to marry an evil Crown Prince. I found this movie to be a little too formulaic, far too predictable, and a little lacking in proper storytelling. This is not to fault the acting of Mr. Norton or Mr. Giamatti (the latter of which plays a chief inspector), but I was hoping for more. Sure, the special effects are pretty spiffy, but nothing extraordinary. It just wasn’t enough.
Grade: C+.

There’s this feeling I get in my gut when the primary marketing point of a new product is that it sports “eye-popping style and color selection”, and then the press release isn’t even accompanied by any photos. That’s exactly the case with the unveiling of the Aero line of
MP3 players from MediaREADY. They say that this new set of players follows on the success of the Glider line before it, but I’ve never heard of that either. Maybe I’m just out of the loop.

In any case, the flash-based Aero players come bundled with Tunebite 3.0 trial software, show love for a range of formats (MP3, WMA, ASF, and WAV), and come with a few other goodies like FM tuning/recording, voice recording, and USB 2.0. Available in capacities ranging from 128MB to 2GB, the MediaREADY Aero DAP can be had for as little as $29. First shipments are expected next month.

Source

I’ve found some pics, and they’re less than “eye-popping”:

Last week, I went to see Cooking at the Cookery with Joseph Planta of The Commentary. Brought to you by the Arts Club Theatre Company, Cooking at the Cookery, despite its name, has nothing to do with fixing up dinner in the kitchen. Instead, it is a “sizzling musical revue” of the life of “legendary African-American songstress Alberta Hunter.” The story of her life — from her humble beginnings in Memphis to her peak, playing a number of top-rated venues in New York, Chicago, and London — is described in this musical play, but the most entertaining part of the show was the singing.

The show is essentially a two woman show, starring Jackie Richardson and Janice Lorraine. Janice takes on the role of Alberta Hunter as a young child and Jackie takes over as we get into her later years. Both actresses take on several other personas over the course of the two-and-a-half hour play, like Alberta’s mother, club owners, and head nurses, but of course, the character of Alberta Hunter features most prominently.

Personally, I found the storytelling to be a little lacking. Granted, I’m not all too familiar with the 1920s jazz scene (nor am I all that interested in that era), but a well told biopic is always welcome in my books. Sure, it was fun watching little Alberta grow up, aspiring to be a professional singer some day, always sleeping facing the window so that she could see the sun rise, but it just didn’t do it for me. It was lacking and I wanted a little more substance. It was as if the musical numbers were dangling off of a very thin “story” thread.

That said, I was amazed by the vocal ability of Jackie Richardson (the larger and older of the two women). She was absolultely fantastic, even in the simulated concert environment. She spoke to the audience as if we were there in the smoky night in 1923, and it created quite the surreal experience. I was very impressed with her powerful song stylings as she belted out one terrific tune after another, but I was a little disappointed by Janice Lorraine. Granted, she had more of a “character voice” when she is singing (she impersonates the legendary Louis Armstrong at one point, much of her singing is as a 10-year-old Alberta, etc.).

All in all, if you’re a fan of old school blues and jazz (especially one of Alberta Hunter), then you’ll thoroughly enjoy the performances. Myself, while the music was great and all, the “plot” wasn’t enough to enrapture me for the length of the show.

Cooking at the Cookery is playing at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (”Stanley Theatre”) in Vancouver, BC until October 15th. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Standard tickets are $45.50 plus applicable taxes, fees, etc. For more on Alberta Hunter, check out the Wikipedia article.

Bear with me and this post, because it’s sole purpose is to get me listed in Technorati. Apparently I have to provide some kind of special link so that I can get indexed properly or something like that. So, uh, yeah. Have a nice weekend!

Technorati Profile

The UPS guy just came by my house a couple of hours ago and dropped off a package. I’m expecting several items (a couple from eBay, a couple for Mobile Magazine), so I wasn’t completely positive what I was unpacking. I signed the handheld device, closed the door, and proceed to tear the box apart. Getting beyond some bubble wrap, I found the Arc Wireless Freedom Antenna, an external cell phone signal booster which is said to give you the best of reception no matter where you are. Whether you’re in a moving vehicle, stuck in a concrete jungle, or living in a small town where service is spotty, the Arc Wireless Freedom Antenna is supposed to give you an extra bar or three.

I will be doing a more in-depth review and extensive testing as part of my work for Mobile Magazine, but before I can do that, I need the appropriate cable to connect to my cell phone. It appears that the guy in the packing and shipping department goofed, because they included an adapter for what appears to be a ten-year-old Motorola cell phone (T191/T192/T193). Yeah, I don’t have that phone.

As I wait angrily  patiently for them to reply to my email and send a replacement adapter, I will provide you with an initial shot of the product (they gave me a bunch of advertisements and marketing materials “literature” to acompany the device). Anyways, here it is:

As some of you may already know, I also maintain a blog over at the WritingUp website (which you can check out here). It hasn’t gotten that many updates since Beyond the Rhetoric hit the scene, but it still gets the odd post from time to time to keep that side of my audience satisfied if not satiated. I just put up three new entries there in the past couple of days that you might want to check out, including a link for some free iTunes music.

The three posts are thus:

Samsung YP-T9B DAP plays vids, sports Bluetooth
Apple’s iPod may dominate the mobile music market, but it is far from
being the only option. If you’re in love with the slim glossy look of
Samsung’s cell phones, then you’ll feel right at home with their new
YP-T9B digital audio and video player….

Four new Cambridge stereos love iPods
Cambridge may be Creative’s lesser known cousin and their designs seem
more retro than the more contemporary-looking Zen, but these new
stereos are ushering in a new era of collaboration (sort of) between
Apple and Creative. Cambridge SoundWorks is unveiling four new stereos
that boast lots of love for the Apple iPod….

Get 50 iTunes songs for free
Now, of course you know that Apple isn’t going to just give stuff away.
They know better than that, considering that they own 75% of the MP3
player market, as well as a substantial portion of the legal music
download market. It’s not them who are giving it away for free, per se….