The Dark Knight
Permalink | May 13, 2007 by John in Entertainment
I don’t imagine we’re going to see a true teaser site or teaser trailer until at least fall of this year.
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The Brightside?
Permalink | May 10, 2007 by John in Of a Personal Nature
With the passing of my grandmother one major anchor keeping me in Helena, and therefore at Northrop Grumman, has been removed. The next biggest anchor is my house which is unsellable right now, unless I take a big loss. After that it’s my debt.
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Spiderman 3
Permalink | May 9, 2007 by John in Entertainment
I agree with George Lucas, what a “silly movie.”
Too much going on. Too much ground to cover. Too many plot threads. Too many potential subtleties steamrolled in an effort to get it all in. I read a review that said any one of the villains/threads threads could’ve made a great movie on its own. What we got instead was a jumbled mess.
I know how and why they dropped the ball; just like Superman Returns I understand what they were trying to accomplish. But at least I enjoyed Superman Returns and I felt it did what they intended. Spiderman 3 wasn’t awful. It wasn’t Fantastic Four bad. But it was far below the first two Spiderman movies.
In the first two Spiderman movies director Sam Raimi was doing so well avoiding the trap that the 1990’s Batman films fell into: too many villains. Heck, too many principal characters on either side. Of course in the Marvel universe the line between good and evil is often blurred and this movie is no different. Raimi also forgot this is a comic book movie. I appreciated the character moments and development in the earlier installments, but it’s just too much here and derails the movie. The special effects were outstanding, for the most part, what little there was. It’s as if they decided that there’s no way they’ll top 1 and 2, or other genre flicks like the excellent Pirate movies, so they dragged it, kicking and screaming, towards drama. And honestly? Some of those character moments were just simply painful to watch. If you haven’t seen it and you want to know what I’m talking about, I have two words for you: “Boogie Fever.”
Yikes.
Update: Here’s a review by Harry Knowles over at Aintitcool.com that I can’t really disagree with. Venom did seem out of place and neither MJ nor Gwen really are right for Pete and Raimi really is stuck in the “Silver-age.”
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Status of Social Security Payments on Death
Permalink | by John in Interesting/Trivia, Of a Personal Nature
Does SSA reclaim benefits when someone dies?
Kent is indeed correct. I discovered the SSA arrears payments this morning when talking to the Funeral Director and visited the local SSA office to confirm.
This will definitely help with the funeral expenses.
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Play Time is Over
Permalink | May 8, 2007 by John in JB.com, Web Design
And… we’re back to the old theme. I really liked that new Gangway theme from performancing.com, it’s a real change of pace for JohnBedard.com and would’ve worked well as a basis for the next design. However, as soon as I started monkeying with the sidebars it sort of blew up. I couldn’t get it to render consistently and I don’t have the time or inclination to chase down the problem(s) when so many other things are going on.
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