On March 2, Jimmy Fallon is set to take the helm of Conan O'Brien's Late Night show.

It's moving time!

When E and I started this thing, we were a humble little blog. Eventually, we outgrew little blog things, and had to move to a non-standard Blogger template. Well, we've outgrown that too!

Over the weekend, we'll be moving to our new site: www.geekprospectus.com.

So come monday, head on over to the new site. All that great Geek Prospectus content you've come to know and love will still be there, and in a fancy new format. We're still testing and trying things out, so expect some changes over the next few months, but we're all set and ready to go, and we hope you'll like it.

For you RSS subscribers, well, this is much less exciting for you, because there's no change. The feed will switch over automatically, so no need for you to do anything. Though you should take a second to look at the new site and see how you like it.

Thanks for supporting the website, everyone. We look forward to keeping you entertained while you are bored at work.

For the curious: We've imported all the old posts and comments to the new site, so everything will still be there. We're also pretty excited about the new site. It looks awesome, and will help us continue the illusion that we are actually good at this. Join the fun!

In this round, we continue to pick the best action sequences from films.

1) Grimbil - Lobby scene from the Matrix. After forcing yourself through the 2nd and 3rd
installments, it's easy to forget just how ground breaking and amazing first
movie was. The scene of Neo running in slow motion with the stone columns
exploding under a hailstorm of gunfire is absolutely classic.

LD - I was going to pick this one at some point. The third act of the first
Matrix film was just amazing at the time. One of the best action sequences
ever. I don't know if I've ever been so excited during a movie. Luckily,
the following six hours of turgid dialogue and asinine symbolism disguised
as meandering plot have allowed me to sound rational when discussing it.

E - I saw the original Matrix THREE times in the theaters! That's how much of a
dork I was!
2) E - Casino Royale - opening chase scene
Parkour bad assedness that ends in the embassy with Bond facing down tons of
assault rifles. A joy to look at, ridiculous stunts on that crane, and Craig
being as Craig as he wants to be.

3) LD - B13 - Casino fight
I can't believe Bond is going to get drafted before B13. THIS is what an
awesome Parkour fight looks like. 20-foot long jumpkicks, men being thrown
through tables, just insane stunts and incredible sense of geography.

E - having only seen B13 once, I didn't feel like I could really pick it since I
barely remember anything specific about it other than it was just
awesomeness.

4) SN - Let's take it back a bit with the shopping mall sequence in True
Lies. First, there's the awesome shootout in the bathroom, with a bit
of humor in it as well. Then, Ah-nald follows the terrorist, who's on
a motorcycle, on horseback in an incredibly entertaining chase
sequence. For a second, you think he's actually going to jump from one
skyscraper to another on a horse. Wisely, he does not. In case you
haven't figured it out yet, awesome chase sequences give me a hard-on.

LD - Wow. What an obscure but awesome choice. That really is a fantastic
scene. Don't even get me started on the impossibly great SNES game.

5) N8 - The unfilmed Ewok genocide following the explosion of the Death Star
over the moon of Endor. No, just kidding. I want something a little more
interpersonal than some of the more recent picks. The action sequence
in *Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade* as Indy takes over the tank as they race they
Nazis through the dessert to the canyon of the crescent moon. Not only do
you have some of the great "shoot three guys at once" humor, but you also
have Indy being draged all over the tank treads before the groundswell of
Indy music bursts out and you get his triumphant ass-kicking, climaxing when
the tank goes over the edge. "Damn it, Saul, I said 'No camels! That's
four camels -- can't you count?'"

6) JC - Duel of the Fates - Episode 1.

Sorry the production of these masterworks has slowed. I intend to change that.

Are there any actors out there that you constantly hate? Not necessarily the actors themselves, but the characters they play, that is? For me, that actress is Tilda Swinton.



I know nothing about Tilda Swinton personally. I do know, however, that she often plays a bitch in movies. She was a cold bitch with no regard for human life in Michael Clayton. She was a cold bitch again in Burn After Reading. Then, in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she was kind of a cold bitch, having an affair with Button while staying married to her husband -- no doubt for the money, that gold-digging whore.


Then there's this -- her imdb profile lists several movies with German titles. "Now, where have I heard of Germany before?" you may be asking yourself. Well, they were the bad guys in World War II (there was also a World War I, but the history of who fought against who has been lost with the passage of time). So it's safe to assume that anyone acting in a German movie is herself a Nazi.

She's also in The Chronicles of Narnia movies, playing -- get this -- a witch. That seals it for me. I am disinclined to like you, Tilda Swinton.

[Rom Com Roundup is a project where I watch 30 romantic comedies I've never seen from now until valentine's day and document how it affects my outlook on love. (Link to the full list of movies)]

The Movie: Must Love Dogs

The Blurb: Two divorcees (WHO DON'T EVEN OWN DOGS) meet via an internet dating website with a WHOOOOOLE LOTTA BAGGAGE. And wouldn't ya know, they hit it off, but end up on bad terms due to a series of coincidences. Each go off the map and almost lose themselves, only to find each other again cuz they love each other. Oh, and John Cusack wears a trenchcoat through the whole movie. I mean, seriously, dude, isn't it time you ditched that look?

Conventions: Gay guy friends, Dr. Zhivago as a point of reference, strip club to ease the woes of a guy, dating montage! TWO OF THEM!

Current State of Mind: Y'know, if you put a dog and John Cusack in a movie, chances are I'm going to like it. And this movie had about oh, half an hour of charm to it. Too bad it crumbles into the ashes of its own absurdity. First, there's a family sing-a-long to the Partridge Family Theme, and I mean, that's charming. No, seriously, it was. And then there's the first date with the overly intense Cuscack talking about the universe, and all that. And then, things go ahhh kerfluffle, and lo and behold, this movie turns into some shit culminating in an old man talking about how dating three women at once MIGHT make him forget about the love of his life who passed away. Um...what? After that, well...shit only goes one way on a hill.

This movie was supposed to be a movie about adults, which should have had some mature things to say. Only, no one acts like an adult in this movie. They act like idiotic, self-centered, sex-crazed, petty, retarded assclowns. This movie wanted to tell you that your life's never over, and that everyone has their huckleberry somewhere out there. But they built their whole dating profiles through LIES, and their only connection was made by Cusack spitting some philosophical shit about the universe. And then the ending of this movie, holy god. Are you kidding me?

Thanks Must Love Dogs. Thanks for ruining a good vibe I had going. And to bring DOGS, cute, adorable, lovable dogs into this. You deserve no less than death. If this is what I'm going to act like as a 40 something, god...I better find someone before I get there. God save me.

Up Next: Keeping the Faith

Cross posted here...

To be honest, if I had an Oscar ballot this year (and honestly, why don't I?), I'd write-in The Wrestler. Ayo! But if I had to vote off the ones that were actually nominated, I'd vote Slumdog Millionaire in a walk. To me, Slumdog is the closest thing we had to a universally great movie this year, one that was both massively entertaining and thoughtfully rewarding. And that's pretty much how I judge which movie deserves to be "Best Picture": the movie that can convey meaningful themes and messages in the most entertaining and universal way possible.

Slumdog hit the ground running after TIFF and Telluride, garnering a massive buzz and earning a limited U.S. release. In a year where the biggest story had been the crushing, cynical realism of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, word about a movie as rich and uplifting as Slumdog Millionaire had people excited, and for good reason. Everything about Slumdog represented the sunny side of movies, from the cute kid actors, to the sappy love story, to the feel good ending. The mix of Indian culture and Bollywood infused stylings gave this movie pretty much everything it possibly could have needed to take the world by storm. And I'd be tempted to give it a pass in the Not Best Picture series if the movie had stuck with what worked for it, mainly the unflinching peek into the lives of Mumbai "slumdogs" (is that term derogatory?), the unapologetic romance, and the joyful Bollywood flourishes.

The movie's biggest problem is also its biggest asset: the structure of the plot. The whole, gameshow question/flashback/explanation hook has the effect of whipping you into such a frenzy by the end of the movie, you really don't have any time to stop and consider how....moderately pointless all of this is. Do we REALLY care why Jamal knows the answers? When you watch it for the first time, of course you do, but it doesn't really matter so long as Jamal gets the answers right and gets to keep playing. On multiple views, the movie loses a good amount of steam. You know why he knows, you know he's not lying, you know he's going to win and everything's going to be okay. But objectively, you knew all of that going into the movie, didn't you? Add to that, the clumsy handling of Salim's death or the stiff-as-a-board portrayal by the adult Latika, the movie's got some holes in it that are easily filled by the grand awesomeness of "when are they getting to the fireworks factory" effect that the plot structure has on viewers.

I'm not going to sit here and try to tear down a movie that I personally loved. While it's true that there are no perfect movies, there are near-perfect movie moments that keep you watching movies, like a junkie searching for that first high again. And really, other than a few minor nitpicks, the only criticism I can really lob at Slumdog is that it's never going to be as good as the first time. So screw it, I'm cheering for this one to win.

Cross posted here, with a formal review here.

The Reader swooped in and took the fifth slot for the Best Picture category, against other sorta-favorites like Revolutionary Road, Doubt, Wall-E, and The Dark Knight (am I missing any here?). It's just one of those movies that, while good on paper, is just kinda...a boring masterpiece on screen. There's no question that Daldry's vision of love and repentance, told against the backdrop of the Holocaust, is a feat. The movie is beautiful, slow, quiet, and delicate with complex themes of guilt and justice haunting Hanna and Michael's love over their whole lives. But really, you could've swapped in Rev Road or Doubt, and I wouldn't have even blinked. You could've swapped in TDK or Wall-E and made for a more interesting Best Picture category. And really, you could never see The Reader and your life really wouldn't be much different. I put it in a category I like to call "The English Patient Movies," which is funny seeing as I've never actually seen The English Patient. But it's just a group of movies that while I'm sure are all high quality, emotionally moving, and time-worthy affairs, I'm just not that interested in seeing it. Maybe some of them would rise above the pack and become favorites, but mostly I'm just sure that I'd get bored at some point in all of them.*

I'd go on about why I don't think The Reader should win Best Picture, but honestly. It's not going to. So why bother? Go see it if you want, it's a great movie, don't get me wrong. But if you haven't seen the others in this category, I'd knock them out first.

* Other movies in this category: The Piano, The Constant Gardener

It's been far too long since we had a draft around these parts, but we're coming out swinging. The idea is pretty simple:

[Rom Com Roundup is a project where I watch 30 romantic comedies I've never seen from now until valentine's day and document how it affects my outlook on love. (Link to the full list of movies)]

The Movie: Music & Lyrics

The Blurb: A washed up 80's pop star has one shot at getting back into the big time by writing a song for a young starlet. While he's great with melody, he's terrible with lyrics, and inadvertently stumbles on Sophie, his house...plant waterer, or something, who has a quirk of talking to herself and singing random lyrics to any music playing around her. He hires her to write the song he needs, and wouldn't you know it, they fall in love. KISMET!

The Conventions: montage, revealing past skeletons, the "how do you know it's love" conversation between women

Did I Cry? Nope..didn't. I'm convinced it's never going to happen. I'm dead inside.

Current State of Mind: Wow, I should NOT have watched this right after Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I wouldn't say this movie is necessarily bad, but it's definitely not good. I was talking to someone while finishing it up, and called it a Fresca, or Crystal Light. It barely exists. Sure, it tries, and god bless it for trying so hard to make some sort of commentary about the creation of music and how it mirrors love (don't you get it, the MUSIC is like the physical attraction, and the LYRICS are like the things you fall in love with). But the actual love affair in this movie takes such a backseat to the story of Hugh Grant's character, that you almost don't really care whether they end up together or not.

Still, there's something kinda poignant about comparing the way a washed up rock star views making music with the way adults having been through heartbreak may view love. Yes, it's cheesy, that it just takes the right song/person to make you believe again, after being so cynical about it for so many years, but it's true. Even the song they write, "A Way Back Into Love" (and dammit, it's kinda catchy) is centered on this concept. To everyone out there who hasn't felt love in a while, you (and I) might just have to accept...we got a lot of unthrilling songs to hear before one hits us the right way. But, y'know, it's better than no music at all...

Don't know why, but I'm 11 down, and feeling...pretty positive right now. it's probably all the glue I've been huffing.

Up Next: Must Love Dogs

Cross posted here....

For funsies, I'm going through each of the Best Picture nominees and talking about why I don't think they should win Best Picture. And being that I'm going from worst to first (except for The Reader, which I just saw today, so will be last to let it marinate a bit), today I get the privilege of trying to break down the movie I actually do believe will win Best Picture, Milk.

Milk's biggest problem was something completely out of its own control: the political environment of 2008. Put out in limited release in late October, by the time Milk found its way to most theaters, the smoke had already cleared from election day and the fallout of Proposition 8 and other referendums around the country regarding gay marriage. Which isn't to say that things might have been different had Milk been released earlier, but what was once seen as a potential victory lap for the gay rights movement now became a stinging reminder of how much work still needed to be done. And with that knowledge came an expectation, that the ghost of Harvey Milk would heal our wounds and inspire us from beyond the grave, this time on the screen. The fact that Milk isn't unbelievably awesome somehow makes you MORE disappointed in it, if only because this was the movement's time in the spotlight. For those of us on the same side of the aisle, it was disappointing that the movie was merely very, very good.

It's hard to know where Milk loses its focus. The movie feels long, even though exposition-wise, there really wasn't that much explanation for a lot of Harvey's crew, or for the central conflict between him and Dan White, the man who would eventually become Harvey's killer. I credit Van Sant for making this film less dreamy and meandering than his last few efforts, but wonder why, given the subject material, he didn't go more with the Good Will Hunting/Finding Forrester vibe. The movie was in desperate need of a bigger heart, and while all the elements are there, they never really come together into anything that you can empathize with. The story is moving because of the subject matter, not necessarily because anyone in the film really grabs a hold of you.

All that being said, Penn really did no wrong in this movie. But here, Penn's performance hogs the air a bit, sometimes obscuring the bigger picture this film should have been pushing. A lot of people say that Harvey Milk was really like that, a man aching to be in the spotlight and narcissistic to a fault. Again, if that was true, the film never gave any indication that we should view Harvey in that way. Instead, the power and veracity of Penn's performance, while jaw-droppingly awesome, sometimes took you out of the story. When combined with the odd portrayal of Diego Luna's character and the lack of focus for Brolin's performance as Dan White, the movie just seemed MORE uneven. And as I've said before, I'm reluctant to praise a movie based on one person's performance.

I wonder what my feelings would be on Milk had the events of this election year never happened. Would I be so full of expectations for a film that is, let's face it, the laziest of all narratives: the biopic? I doubt it, and maybe I would've been able to enjoy the high quality and messages that Milk sought to espouse. But given the political atmosphere, this film needed to be more, and the fact that it fell short only creates a sense of disappointment and lost potential. I'm fairly certain that Milk will win, and I say bravo. It's an important film that deserves accolades and a moment at the podium to call out those who seek to push back the very things it seeks to accomplish. But the movie in a vacuum leaves a lot to be desired.

With the recent double-swearing in of Jesus as president, the world seems back on track. In just a few days, it has been remarkable the amount of progress accomplished just by undoing the regressive executive orders of the last eight years...

As the resident contrarian around here, I was challenged to name a single thing about the advent of the Age Of Obama that made the world materially worse off than it was before. Not some Fox News fabrication, but an actual true fact about the state of the world that makes it less appealing now than it was before. Not as easy as I thought it might have been, when I started to think about it. But then I thought about the great romantic poets.

Echoing others and to be echoed by so many others, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are good examples of a very common poetic backdrop. Romantic poets in all ages are quick to invoke the idea that life is short, so that it more easily follows that you should grab love while you are still vertical. For example,

Some of the most invoked sonnets make use of mortality as the literary backdrop to the wooer's immediate request that their love be requited. Summer's lease hath all too short a date is the poetic equivalent of "none of us will be young and beautiful forever, so are you sure you don't want to see the back of my Nisan Sentra?"


As a poetic go-to theme, you don't have to look far to see the transitory nature of life, beauty and youth invoked as an incitement to ill-advised coupling. Staring the prospect of death in the face has a way of loosening the corsets of young ladies, and the backdrop of Time's scythe isn't uncommon in poetry. It's an odd image to go with the flowers, unless you think about why it's there.

You see the idea everywhere in modern movies, too, from the girl in Airplane ("I don't know if we're going to get out of this, and I don't want to die a virgin") to that little kid in the back of the truck with the drunk crop-duster's daughter in Independence Day, whose incitement to sex is the simple line: the world is ending.

Well, that's what Obama has taken from some of us. It is much more difficult to declare to a would-be lover that the end is neigh with the same conviction as it was a week ago. Under Bush, "the sky is falling" was a frighteningly appropriate refrain, and I fear that the foregrounding of the end of days as a romantic hook has receded before this new tide of Hope. If "Yes, We Can" doesn't develop it's own free-love cache soon, I'm going to have to go back to asking the duty nurse at the maternity ward which birth certificates only have one parent's name on them...

Here in America, we have a proud tradition of ridiculously bad-ass action movies. Who among us will ever forget the exploits of John McClane, John Spartan, John Matrix, or John Highlyimprobablebutincrediblybadasslastname? None of the writers at this site, that's for sure. That's why we're so amped about the year 2009. Sure, we may not have the A-list action heroes of yesteryear, but we've traded them in on something better, namely, truly awesome action films.

Ask any guy who loves movies about Crank, and you're likely to see them go into an awesomeness-induced Grand Mal seizure. Chev Chelios, the adrenaline-addicted man with a literally indestructible heart was the star of the most insane, off-the-wall, and innovative action film of the last...ever? Come this April, he's back in Crank 2: High Voltage



Ever the DeGaullists, France has spied the awesomeness that America is about to unleash on the world, and has decided to unload their biggest weapon against us: a sequel to District B13. The movie that made parkour really, really cool returns with a bigger budget, the same leads and (unfortunately) wire work. Still, who can resist the siren's song of French guys jumping through tiny openings and fighting off a corrupt government through the power of flipping?



Oh, and you can go ahead and suck it, Bond films. No more stealing B13's thunder.

[Rom Com Roundup is a project where I watch 30 romantic comedies I've never seen from now until valentine's day and document how it affects my outlook on love. (Link to the full list of movies)]

The Movie: Kissing Jessica Stein

The Blurb: Jessica's a newspaper writer who's dating life is in shambles, whether due to the awful men she meets or the fact that she's nuttier than a Payday bar. When she answers a personal ad due to an affinity for the literary quote a young woman uses, she decides to try her hand at being a lesbian. She starts dating Helen, a young free-spirited bisexual, and learns how to adjust her neuroses to her new relationship, and in the end learns that it's not so much about the men or women in her life, but really her own outlook that has kept her unhappy for so long. Or something. Plus a svelte Jon Hamm's in it, who I'm totally gay for (no pun intended).

The Conventions: catty gay guy friends, frank discussion of how women have sex with each other, bad dating montage!, Barry White as an awkward lovemaking soundtrack, artists are free spirits!

Did I Cry? I felt a little moved when her mother accepted her. It got a little dusty in here.

Current State of Mind: Well this was nice. I got to actually watch a movie that didn't make me cringe or vomit. I really enjoyed Kissing Jessica Stein, and whether that's because it's inherently good or because I just finished watching Good Luck Chuck is up to you to decide, but there was something refreshing about seeing things from the woman's point of view. The only movie I've seen up to now that had a woman's point of view was 27 Dresses, and we all know how well that went.

I was kind of surprised at how conventional this movie was. I don't know why I expected it to be any different just b/c it involved two women, but I did...and I was surprised to see how much I could actually relate to Stein, as neurotic as I am. There's something both entertaining, but also disheartening about the fact that *SPOILER* Helen and Jessica couldn't make it work, mostly because of her bubbling cauldron of totally undertsandable neuroses. And in all honesty, the reason they broke up (not enough sex!) will probably cloud the fact that they should've broken up months, eons ago. It was clear that Helen would lose patience with her, just as clear as Jessica would never be able to fully make herself into what Helen wanted out of a serious lesbian relationship. The double standard here being that as a guy, I don't have the added social pressure of having to get hitched up by the time I'm 30 in the same way most of my female friends do. But I think I have enough neurotic landmines to suffice.

The end of this movie also marked the first movie I've seen where the end didn't result in a nice ribbon-tied-on-a-box ending, which was surprisingly satisfying being that so many rom coms are built around this expectation that the happy ending is coming. It actually made me feel BETTER, not having to watch couples on screen having everything figured out perfectly, realizing that there's no rush when it comes to finding love, or something like it. It was a nice change of pace, probably one that I needed.

Up Next: Music and Lyrics.

Cross posted here.

You've already heard my complaints about Ben Button, so it's really no surprise that I don't think it deserves to win Best Picture. I've already called this movie an "emotional molestation," the kind of movie that forces you into a corner where you either have to abandon the movie, or give in to the blatantly obvious emotional play that it seeks to accomplish. Sure, there's some heart to this movie, but it wastes the conceit by shutting you out of Button's mind, giving you absolutely nothing to project onto him and no guidance as to how the events in Button's life are supposed to feel to us, the viewers. The whole movie is about the lack of connection with any of the characters, which some may say is the point being that Button is so disconnected from everyone around him due to his condition. But this movie is, at its heart, a love story, and it tries to sell the love story by pushing sympathy for characters you never connect with. The emotion you feel rings out because it's familiar territory, a pavlovian response to certain cinematic markers that you've seen hundreds of times before, not from anything organic in the movie itself.

Maybe this coldness comes from the meticulous style of Fincher, who definitely paints the movie in such a stunning visual style, you're almost tempted to give it a pass. The movie is a joy to behold in almost every scene. The moment where Button sits on the deck over the water and the camera splits the sun ray around his head is the kind of shot that directors search their whole lifetimes for, and watching it on the big screen kinda takes your breath away. But I'm not content in watching a movie simply because it looks fantastic (*cough* ATONEMENT). Because of the inherent problems with the script and performances, the visual stylings border on self-indulgence, as the scenery really serves no purpose other than creating an impressive visual feat. I'd say that maybe the point was to create a warm beauty to juxtapose with the cold fashion of the story, but I highly doubt Eric Roth (writer of Forrest Gump) would ever create something so cold on purpose. Instead, the coldness and disconnect in the screenplay leads me to think that it's a failed effort at creating something emotionally meaningful, a fact that Fincher's handiwork only seeks to reinforce through contrast.

In the end, Benjamin Button is the kind of movie that deserves recognition of the highest caliber, because it is an accomplishment, faults aside. But as for being representative of the best of the year, it falls short of the bar it sets for itself and everything it had going for it. Oh, and it will never win because David Fincher is an asshole.