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Video of the Moon through telescope (Feb 15, 2008)
2008-02-17 01:06:00
vYou need to have flashplayer enabled to watch this Google video Video of the Moon shot through Meade ETX-125AT telescope with just a simple cheap Canon A620 7.1MP point-and-shoot camera that can also take 640×480 videos at 30fps. The camera is mounted on top of 26mm eyepiece.   You won’t see THE flag, but you can quite ...
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Fool?s Gold (2008) PG-13 113min
2008-02-16 22:44:00
The plot: Ben Finn Finnegan (Mathew McConaughey) and his wife Tess (Kate Hudson) were passionate about each other and treasure hunting, but now they are fed up with each other and decide to get divorced. Just as Tess has begun to rebuild her life, working aboard a mega-yacht owned by billionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland), ...
More About: Comedy , Movies , Marriage , Action , Adventure

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Official Trailer
2008-02-16 17:18:00
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video The official trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Directed by Stephen Spielberg. Starring Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf. Karen Allen is also playing Marion Ravenwood - back from Raiders of the lost Ark. Also starring Cate Blanchett and John Hurt. Just 95 ...
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Vanity Fair (2004) PG-13 141min
2008-02-08 08:52:00
I didn’t read William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic novel yet, but looking forward to it (should have read it when I was a kid - everyone I know did). The movie is directed by Mira Nair and script written by Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet. The plot: Becky Sharp (Angelica Mandy/Reese Witherspoon) was from a lower class, ...
More About: Movies , India , Marriage , Drama , Romance

Movies to see this weekend (Feb 08, 2008)
2008-02-07 18:36:00
Opening in theatres in wide release: Fool’s Gold (2008 ) PG-13 113min - Action/Adventure/Romance. Matthew McConaughey plays Ben Finn Finnegan, a treasure hunter on the hunt for legendary 1715 century Queen’s Dowry lost at sea, while trying to keep his wife Tess Finnegan (Kate Hudson) from leaving him. Ben Finn discovers a clue and convinces owner of the yacht where his wife’s is working to go after the treasure. But they aren’t the only ones who know about it - his mentor also wants to claim it. Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (2008) PG-13 - Comedy. A.k.a. The Better Man. Martin Lawrence plays a successful talk show host who was picked on by his family when he was a kid, heads home to Georgia to the parent’s 50th anniversary with his 10-year old son and diva bride-to-be. He plans to prove to his parents that he has it made. But his family calls him on his attitude and he takes a hard look at what kind of man he had become Opening in select theatres: Th...
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Bill Maher: The Decider (HBO Video/DVD) (2007) R 60 min
2008-02-07 06:25:00
This is one of the best Bill Maher ’s stand up comedy shows. He performs on stage in Boston in jeans and t-shirt, some time after the Bush’s “surge” began and presidential campaigns were at full speed, probably summer of 2007 when it came out live on HBO, ironically on the day Bush had a colonoscopy. He talks about Giuliani, conservatives and liberals, mess in Iraq, the “homosexuals on the march to destroy America”, “no child left behind”, “abstinence programs” and other “achievements” of Bush administration. His performance literally begins with describing Bush as incompetent f***-up. He also talks about many other issues such as abortion, gay marriage, double standards, cronyism, environment, pop culture, the wall Bush proposed to build along US/Mexico border, hypocrisy of religious right (”I’m sorry religion is so retarded, but it is”) etc. If you are Maher’s fan, or if you love Jon ...
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The Lookout (2007) R 99min
2008-01-30 08:25:00
This movie passed relatively unnoticed at the theatres: it wasn’t aggressively promoted, and other, bigger movies were also showing. The plot: Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was once a great high-school hockey player, but after a car accident that kill two of his friends and Chris had a head injury that caused the short term memory loss. He takes special classes at the “center” to improve the quality of his life. The “center” arranged an apartment for him with another [blind] guy Lewis (Jeff Daniels) and found a janitor job for him at the framers’ bank in the rural area. Memory improvement classes go quite well, and Chris is hoping to get a better job at the bank. One day he is approached by a new friend Gary Spargo (Mathew Goode) who quickly wins Chris’s trust and even sets him up with a hot girl Lovlee (Isla Fisher). However Chris soon realizes that the recent events had been too good to be true: his new friends are planning to rob the ...

The Reduced Shakespeare Company (2000)
2008-01-23 00:05:00
A.k.a. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). I heard an interview with Adam Long on NPR a few years back, and immediately added the film to my Netflix queue, but only now it arrived in mail. Damn, I have a long queue! The plot: the Canadian trio performs on stage 37 plays by William Shakespeare in 90 minutes. The summary: this is a hilarious show, an attempt to perform all known Shakespeare’s plays in under an hour and a half, engaging the audience (and viewers). The show is outrageously funny. It reminded me of a Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode where Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, were performed using hand-, flag-, light-signals and telegraph without saying a word. Cracked me and my friends up. When the DVD stopped, everybody could not believe that was all - they wanted more. Well, the trio has also released “The Complete History Of America (Abridged)”. There’s a scene where they rap Othello’s monologue. The...
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HD DVD camp may lose more of its supporters
2008-01-11 02:50:00
After Warner Bros. decided to commit to Blu-Ray and stop releasing their movies on HD-DVD in May 2008, the HD-DVD camp has been reduced to just Universal Studio and Paramount as far as Hollywood studios go. The latter has an “escape” clause in their contract to switch to Blu-Ray should Warner Bros. switch too (WB is the biggest studio). Warner’s sister companies, HBO and Lionsgate, are also switching to Blu-Ray. Paramount at the moment states that it will keep supporting HD-DVD, to which it comitted exclusively as recently as August, 2007. It’s been rumored that Universal Studio’s commitment to HD DVD exclusively has expired today. Microsoft, the largest backer of HD-DVD after Toshiba, confirmed that they will not support Blu-Ray for as long as Toshiba wants to make HD-DVD hardware. Sales of Toshiba’s hardware, HD-DVD players such as HD A2, HD A3, HD XA2 and HD A35 have been very strong in the 4th quarter of 2007, especially on Amazon and Buy....
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) R 1h 57min
2008-01-09 09:42:00
Wow! What a movie! This is Tim Burton at his best. I could not think of a better director to make this screen adaptation of the Broadway musical. The plot: After had been convicted for a crime he was innocent of and spending 15 years in exile doing hard labour before he escaped, Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to London with the help of a sailor, Anthony Hope. He assumed a new name, Sweeney Todd . He was looking forward to see his wife and daughter, but only finds out that his wife committed suicide and his daughter Johanna was adopted by evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), the very judge who convicted him and destroyed his life, life of his wife, his entire family with help of his sidekick Beadle Bamford (Officer of the Order of British Empire Timothy Spall). With the help of the baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Sweeney Todd goes on the murderous rampage for revenge, luring his victims into his barber shop he opened above Mrs. Lovett’s “worst meat pie in...
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Atonement (2007) R 122min
2008-01-06 09:29:00
Christopher Hampton based his screenplay on the novel by Ian McEwan, and Joe Wright directed. Joe Wright is a very talented director. In 2007 Joe became youngest director presenting at Venice Film Festival. At 34 years old he was already famous as director of Pride & Prejudice (2005), in which he directed Keira Knightley in an Oscar-nominated performance ...
More About: Movies , Drama , France , Interview , War

Best Movies Of 2007
2008-01-04 22:16:00
Pick up to 10 top movies of the year in the poll below. If you see an error or to nominate another movie to the list, leave me a comment. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll. If you liked this post, buy me a beer Share This Related reviews and articlesJanuary 3, 2008 -- The Prestige (2006) PG-13 130min (1)January 2, 2008 -- Premonition (2007) PG-13 96min (1)December 30, 2007 -- National Treasure: Book Of Secrets (2007) PG 124min (0)December 29, 2007 -- Movie review: I Am Legend (2007) PG-13 101min (1)December 28, 2007 -- Children Of Men (2006) R 109min HD DVD (0)
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The Prestige (2006) PG-13 130min
2008-01-04 08:42:00
The director of “Batman Begins” Christopher Nolan directed this film written by him and Jonathan Nolan based on the novel by Christopher Priest. Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie star. The plot: End of 19th century London. Three friends, Robert, his wife Julia and Alfred, are assistants of a magician. A escape trick goes badly and Julia dies on stage. Robert and Alfred become enemies, trying to sabotage each other on stage and disclose each other’s tricks of the trade. When Alfred performs a successful trick, Robert becomes obsessed in figuring it out, while intense rivalry between former friends jeopardises life of other people around them with some deadly consequences. The Prestige in the language of magicians like Michael Caine’s character Cutter is the third part of every trick. The other two are [1] The Pledge, in which a seemingly real situation is set up. [2] The Turn, in which the initial reality is cha...
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National Treasure: Book Of Secrets (2007) PG 124min
2007-12-31 08:13:00
A.k.a. National Treasure 2, this is a sequel to Disney’s treasure hunting flick from 3 years ago. The plot: Treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) believes that his grand-grand father was Civil War hero and a patriot who paid with his life to prevent the Confederates from getting the map to the huge treasure they could use to finance the war effort - an entire city made of gold. Gates’s competitor in treasure hunting (there’s always someone else after the treasure!) Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) publicly implicates Gates’s nobel forefather in masterminding assassination of president Lincoln. Determined to find the truth, Benjamin Gates endeavours to prove that the golden city exists. To get the map of the golden city, Gates has to break in to Buckingham palace, kidnap THE President and outrun Mitch Wilkinson and FBI. His sidekick Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) and his ex-wife Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) are helping. His dad (Jon Voight), w...
More About: Book , Secrets , National Treasure , Book of Secrets

Movie review: I Am Legend (2007) PG-13 101min
2007-12-30 05:40:00
This movie may become the legend of the box office success: it’s been in theaters for two weeks now and it’s still selling out. The plot: Brilliant scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith) may be the only survivor of the human-engineered virus that wiped out almost entire population of the Earth. 99% of people dies from the virus at once, the others turned into carnivorous monsters who hide in the dark. Somehow he happened to be immune to the virus, and he’s trying to use his own blood to find the cure for the virus in the medical lab he set up in the basement of this house, while trying to survive all alone in the city of New York that hasn’t seen another human for 3 years. He knows he is outnumbered and he completely lost faith in ever meeting another human being; the time and hope are running out. The first half of the movie is basically “Cast Away“: Will Smith… oh, I mean Robert Neville, is a sole survivor of the virus, and his only f...
More About: Movie , Movie Review , Review , I Am Legend , Legend

Onkyo TX-SR705 THX-certified home theater receiver with HDMI switching and
2007-12-29 00:24:00
Onkyo TX-SR705 home theater receiver will set you up for the next 5 years or more. It has everything the modern home theater needs: the power, loads of inputs, 7.1 audio, up-conversion of SD-video via HDMI to up to 1080p/24p. What I was looking for: a home theater receiver with many HDMI inputs, HDMI pass-through, up-conversion, ...
More About: Theater , Home , Home Theater , Receiver , Hdmi

Children Of Men (2006) R 109min HD DVD
2007-12-28 09:33:00
The plot: in the alternate near future women stopped getting pregnant and giving birth - on the entire planet. Societies are collapsing, and only Britain has maintained some sort of order by introducing strict military control everywhere. Illegal immigrants are escaping from their countries trying to find relative piece in England, but military rounds them ...
More About: Movies , Children , Drama , Action , Adventure

Movies opening this weekend (December 28, 2007)
2007-12-27 04:58:00
Align vs Predator: Requiem (2007) R 1h 26min - Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Sequel. (a.k.a. Alien vs Predator 2). The monsters from the two famous sci-fi action films slaughter each other in an unsuspecting Colorado town, while a humans band together to survive in this sequel. The Orhpanage (2007) R 1h 45min- Art/Foreign(Spain)/Suspence/Horror/Thrill er. Laura spent the happiest years of her childhood growing up in an orphanage by the seaside, cared for by the staff and fellow orphans whom she loved as brothers and sisters. Now, thirty years later, she returns with her husband Carlos and Simon, their 7-year-old son, with a dream of restoring and reopening the long abandoned orphanage as a home for disabled children. The new home and mysterious surroundings awaken Simon’s imagination and the boy starts to spin a web of fantastic tales and not-so-innocent games. As the opening day draws near, tension builds within the family. Carlos remains skeptical, believing that Simon is making...
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Hot Fuzz (2007) R 121min on HD DVD
2007-12-26 09:20:00
This is a surprisingly very funny cop-buddy comedy from creators of Shaun of the Dead (2004), director Edgar Wright who co-wrote thr script with Simon Pegg, who starred as main character in both movies. There are no big special effects, but all movies look better in HD. Probably for that reason this movie was released on dual-format disk: one side is regular standard definition DVD and the other side is HD DVD. The plot: Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is an exceptional cop. He is so outstanding, in fact, that he had become a nusence for his coleagues in London: he’s so good he makes everyone else look bad. For his achivements his captain and Chief Inspector (Bill Nighy) of his department decided to “promote” him to a small village of Sandford far away from the capital. But he is so dedicated he got to work of lawman even before he officially went on duty, which immediately made him subject of jokes. At first the village seams crime-free and peaceful, until b...
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Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) R 96min
2007-12-22 08:40:00
From Judd Apatow, the guy who brought you Knocked Up and Superbad - a new comedy starring John C. Reilly! The plot: America loves larger-than-life musician and songwriter Dewey Cox (a composite character in whom you can recognize Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash and others). But behind the music is the up-and-down-and-up-again story of a musician whose songs would change a nation. On his rock ‘n roll spiral, Cox sleeps with 411 women, marries three times, has 22 kids and 14 step-kids, stars in his own 70s TV show, collects friends ranging from Elvis to the Beatles to a chimp, and gets addicted to - and then kicks - every drug known to man… but despite it all, Cox grows into a national icon and eventually earns the love of a good woman - longtime backup singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer). *** This paragraph may contain spoilers. *** The movie starts when little 6-year old Dewey and his brother go the barn to play with machetes, and his brother says, “ain’t nothing h...
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Shrek The Third (2007) PG 92min - DVD
2007-12-12 17:51:00
The plot: when the frog-king ‘croaks’, Shrek (Mike Myers) is looked at as the next successor to the throne of the Far, Far Away. Shrek, however, believes he is not the right candidate for wearing the crown, and dreams of returning to his Swamp to live with Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz ) there happily ever after. Together ...
More About: Comedy , Animation , Eddie Murphy , Action

Enchanted (2007) PG 107min
2007-12-02 08:53:00
This movie was…………… 230;…. really fun! Very enjoyable! An unexpected surprise. Clever and charming. We went to see it in the theatre because nothing else was staring within 20 minutes and I thought I’d treat Elena to a movie she might like for once: something with a princess, prince, romance and wedding, without guns and violence ...
More About: Comedy , Movies , Animation , Adventure , Disney

Movies to see this week (Nov 30, 2007)
2007-11-30 19:49:00
Opening in theatres: Awake (2007) R - In United States, more then 60,000 people every year experience what’s called “anesthetical awareness”, a condition when anesthesia fails during surgery, so the patient can feel the pain, but because he/she is paralyzed, cannot do anything about it. This is a story of one of the “victims”. Drama/Thriller. Badland (2007) R ...
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Hitman (2007) R 100min
2007-11-23 10:29:00
The plot: The Hitman, Agent 47, the “creation” of the secret organization called “The Agency”, was sent to assassinate the [fictional] Russian president (Ulrich Thomsen - ehm, Danish actor) who was involved in trade of drugs, prostitution, arms trades etc. Instead, hitman kills the president’s double. Realizing he was set up he threatens his “organization” to get to ...
More About: Movies , Turkey , Action , Crime , Films

DVD releases of this week (Nov 19-25, 2007)
2007-11-22 03:38:00
Anime/Animation Death Note (2006) NR - 2-disk series about a boy who found a notebook with magical properties: a person who’s name is written in it would die. The boy turns it into a crime fighting tool. Garfield Gets Real (2007) NR - Garfield jumps our of his comic strip and attempts to live in the “real world”, ...
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My first pictures of the Moon through the telescope
2007-11-20 09:09:00
Tonight for the first time I tried to make pictures of the moon through my new telescope, Meade ETX-125AT. Around 10:30pm I went outside, setup tripod and the telescope on it. Attached 26mm eyepiece to the eyepiece port. Attached Meade #64 T-adapter with T-ring for my Canon EOS 20D to the accessory port. The pictures are here: ...
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Beowulf (2007) PG-13 113min
2007-11-17 08:17:00
Just came out of the theatre. Saw it in both regular and 3D. This movie should only be seen in 3D! Completely different experience. The plot is based on the only known surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry manuscript about a warrior Beowulf , hero of Geats (a.k.a. Goths, Swedes)  in 6th century A.D. who defeated three antagonists: the demon ...

New on DVD this week (Nov 16, 2007)
2007-11-17 02:14:00
CIA: Exiled (2007) R - An ex-CIA operative consulate security guy and his buddy go after South-African spies. Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) PG-13 - Third installment of Ocean’s Eleven. Better then the second but worse then the third. Ocean (Clooney) and the crew are back in Vegas with a vengeance for another mega-hit on a casino. Duck Tales (1988) ...
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Movies to see this weekend (Nov 16, 2007)
2007-11-16 19:25:00
Opening everywhere: Beowulf (2007) - yet another Robert Zemeckis’s motion capture fantasy tale about warrior Beowulf who must defeat the demon Grendel… and his mother. Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie at al gave the characters their voices and some likeness. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007) - as holiday season approaches, Natalie Portman is the ...
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Running With Scissors (2006) R 120min
2007-11-14 18:00:00
This all-star cast movie is based on Augusten Burroughs’s best-selling novel memoir. The plot: Augusten Burroughs (Jack Kaeding -> Joseph Cross) was growing up in a dysfunctional family, with alcoholic father (Alec Baldwin) and mentally unstable mother (Annette Bening) with her delusions of grandeur. As a boy he was handed over to his mother’s therapist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) for adoption, and spends his adolescent years with his eccentric family. He skips school and practices cosmetology, gets an older male lover (Joseph Fiennes) and becomes friend with Finch’s younger daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). I suppose this movie qualifies as a dark comedy. These families, both Burroughs and Finch, are so dysfunctional and everybody is so psychotic I could not wait for the movie to end because I felt like I’m going to get infected with this psychosis if I watch it any longer. Every character felt repulsive, yet somehow I also cared for every character. I felt ...
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