It's been a long time, but Led Zeppelin still rock
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For those of you who were wondering, the Roomba is pretty cool. I have a robot vacuum. It doesn't fit underneath the couch or coffee table which is a little disappointing, because that's where all the dust bunnies like to live - YMMV. In the hour long cleaning session it performed of the living room and kitchen, it attempted to get itself stuck on various pieces of furniture and rugs and floor dividers. In all but two encounters, it managed to unstick itself and continue on its way. Those two encounters were it trying to fit itself under the unfortunately not-high-enough-to-fit-robots-entirely but not-short-enough-to-keep-them-out coffee table. I can sympathize with the Roomba, because I also think there is some pretty awesome dirt under the coffee table, and were I a robot vacuum, I would also expend much effort to wedge myself underneath to try to clean that dirt. Alas, I am neither robot, nor vacuum.

One feature I would like to see on the Roomba, is the ability to put it on a rug and tell it, "Clean this rug." At which point the Roomba would stay on the rug, and clean only it. The iRobot company does allow you to program your Roomba if you are so inclined, so maybe I could whip up an algorithm for that, but I'm probably not that good. And at some point in the future, a combination Roomba/Scooba would be awesome - just one self contained floor cleaning machine. Another weak point is corners; since the Roomba is round, it naturally can't get all the way into the corners, but it the area left uncleaned is really quite small.

Overall, I'm really impressed. If you don't have one already, and a $99 Roomba deal crosses Woot.com or any other site, I highly recommend picking one up. It did a great job removing dirt and dust from the hard floors, and an even better job on the carpets. If you have a lot of animal (or - shudder - body) hair or if you just haven't cleaned in a really long time, it can get overwhelmed and fill it's collection bin pretty fast, and might not pick up as much until you empty the bin. But then it's not really a spring cleaning kind of machine, it's more of a once or twice a week press-the-clean-button-before-going-to-work-and-there's-no-more-dust-when-you-get-home kind of cleaning. Or if you have the scheduling kind like me, you can just set it to clean at say 1300 every Wednesday and never worry about it since it just returns to its charging station in the corner when it's done (just have to remember to empty the bin every so often).

Errr... 5/5 stars for Roomba. 

Garden State Wri: Zach Braff Dir: Zach Braff Date: 2004   —   DVD product page Rating:

Like Lost In Translation , Garden State conveys as much through its tone, pacing, music, and non-dialogue sequences as it does through the words we hear from the actors' mouths. Also akin to Sofia Coppola's soul search script is that while there are physical events transpiring on the screen in front of our eyes, the real story lies in the inner journeys the characters take.

I appreciate how bits of story are told through context and not spelled out for me, which I think helps put me in the perspective of the main character and keeps the focus of the movie. The dry, subtle humor was perfect and didn't interrupt the tone while still providing laughs.

I'm not completely sure how I want to rate Garden State. I think it's a better movie than how I liked it; and I think I liked it less than I should; but I want to see more movies like it; and I want to like it differently from how it made me feel.

Objective Score 4/5 - It doesn't quite have what it takes to be a great movie, but it is very good.

Subjective Score 5/5  - This is really closer to a 4.5 out of 5, but I gave it 5 stars in Netflix because I feel like it needed to be in that category rather than the 4/5.

Fever Pitch Wri: Lowell Ganz (based on screenplay and book by Nick Hornby); Dir: Farrelly Brothers Date: 1997   —   DVD product page Rating:

Ok, so I can't even make it up to 15 minutes without talking about what's wrong with this movie - so this is a live one. He's supposed to be obsessed with baseball, and so far every spare minute he has he's playing around with a football. WTF?

Rock climbing doesn't work that way. If someone is pulling you up the climbing wall with a rope, IT'S NOT CLIMBING NOW IS IT!?!? 

14mins 36secs, still super-lame.

What? Super-lameness continues - line about the protagonist (who has so far only had one tiny mention about baseball) : "something's not quite right." Yes. Because apparently this lady's special sports-team-obsession sense it tingling! Isn't it obvious?

Thank god. 21 minutes: finally getting better.

28:40 - lame again.

still lame.

not getting any unlamer.

Drew Barrymore says, "I've never really been good at servicing myself..." It wasn't supposed to be funny. BTW, it kinda looked like it was getting better, but it's still lame.

There's no real bonding. They don't bond. It's all just like they're reading off cue cards and trying not to pronounce any of the words wrong.

Still lame. 45:12. I can't believe there's an hour to go... :-(

It's so uphill and downhill. The gameday scenes are great. The scenes of the game being played and the atmosphere of the stadium crowd are very entertaining and lend a great feel to movie, but every non-game scene just totally loses it. The story's focus isn't in the right place.

Around and hour and it's starting to get better. Better now. Still has some lingering lameness occasionally.

They do a good job on the ending, but movie watchers just shouldn't have to sit through an hour to get something good.

It's got a cheery tone, which is not inherently a bad thing, but I think there needs to be more angst or anxiety around the protagonist to show the depths of his obsession. He doesn't sell it, and I don't buy it.

The soundtrack is good, but then you can't go wrong with songs about Boston. "Dirty Water" is an all-time favorite.

Only 2/5 stars

It's a phone-in. It had promise, but every time it showed through, the script would turn around and start talking about something else.

Brigadoon Wri: Alan Jay Lerner; Dir: Vincente Minnelli Date: 1954   —   DVD product page Rating:

Ok, so I'm not really one for musicals, but I do like older movies, and the description of the story of Brigadoon was interesting to me so I had some high hopes for it. I was disappointed a little, but overall it's a good movie.

The first thing I noticed that set me off and started to lose me were the funny argyle tights. We're talkin' spandex here. Argyle. I'm pretty sure that's not Scottish dress of any time period, let alone 1748 or whenever they're supposed to be from. Why don't they all just wear kilts? Most of them did - it was only a few that wore the tights, and it's not like they were all doing splits and flying through the air ballet style or anything. It was mostly just frolicking around. The argyle tights really lost me.

The first 30 seconds are a great opener to the movie. The sing-song narration sets the tone for some mystical happenings, but then goes off-'kilt'er with a confusing song & dance piece that is supposed to establish setting. It does establish a setting, but the problem is we don't know where this setting is. It could be the North Pole for all we know. It's just confusing. This part should have either been the intro, or occurred after Tommy and Jeff agree they are lost and catch a glimpse of the village. Also two of the main characters are featured in this scene, but they aren't and haven't been introduced yet, so it's unclear why they are the focus and why they share a hostile look between them.

I was looking to use an adjectival form of the word animus in the previous sentence, but i don't think it exists. Bueller? 

Despite the confusing start, it's an enjoyable progression. The sets are very pretty in a Disney fairy tale kind of way, and it's crazy to think the entire thing is inside. It gets better as the movie progresses. The underlying premise is good, although a little bit too much of a heavy-handed Christian explanation of it for my tastes. I'll chalk it up to the 1950's though and ignore it. Again, the further the movie progresses, the better it gets. I could, however, do with all the song and dance pieces being cut in half. Because about that time in each of them, I was getting ready for the plot to move on, but they just kept on dancing.

The ending was good but left me wanting for knowledge of Jeff's situation. What happened to him? As far as we know he's just standing there at the end of the bridge in the mist. And in my mind, he's the one who needed Brigadoon the most. If it were me, I'd have him say, "Aw, what the heck!" and traipse across the bridge to find the rowdy shepherd girl. Would that really have been so hard to write in?

So, the scores... 

Objective 3/5 - It would be ranked a bit higher, but it has some mandatory deductions for poor structure and poorly explained plot. The important plot points are glossed over as if they didn't matter, and not in a mysterious guess why kind of way, but in a there's-some-really-heavy-shit-going-on-here,-but-lets-sing-a-happy-song-instead! kind of way.

Subective 3/5 - I wish some things were different, and if I liked the song and dance more, I'd probably give it 4 stars. But as it stands, I'll mark it up as an "I liked it." Despite the argyle tights, it does a very good job of transporting you to another place.