I’m still under the influence of This is Spinal Tap and what an influence that is. After seeing this movie, the words of Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) come naturally to me:
“The review for [your album] “Shark Sandwich” was merely a two word review which simply read “Shit Sandwich”.
I could really sum up this review as “Shit Cake” but that would be taking away from the movie. It’s an ambitions, stylish, gangster B-movie with a lot of character actors who know their drill and deliver the goods. The problem lies with the protagonist and the angle.
Layer Cake starts with a good premise: a guy, who deals with cocaine, is planning to retire. His partners in crime all have names, he is supposed to stay nameless. The end credits feature him as XXXX, that’s one notch nastier than XXX apparently. The part is played by Daniel Craig who barely makes the passing grade as the new James Bond. He’s neither very tough, nor smart but he does get beaten up a lot. In that way, he’s more like Indiana Jones.
We know he’s not going to retire. These guys never do. The beginning of the end is when his “boss” sends him on an errand. Or rather, two errands. One is to locate a missing girl. The other to find a buyer for a million ecstasy pills. The plot follows the second errand, the first being nothing but smoke and mirrors to make the game more complicated than it actually is. This complexity is something that this movie shares with Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Richie is a master of plot twists and character actors doing the necessary characterization.
Director Matthew Vaughn is also a producer of Lock so you’d think some of that Ritchie stuff will rub off. Some of the visual style does come off as a bit Ritchiesque. The movie, however, takes itself too seriously and ambitiously seeks to do a character study. The problem with that is you need to care about the protagonist. I didn’t. Daniel’s character felt distant and cold, I never cared if he was going to succeed with this double-crossing game or not.
If it’s any consolation, Ritchie’s third crime movie, Revolver, fell short as well. When you want to be in the same league as Scarface and Goodfellas, you know you’ll be falling a long way if you miss the mark. Shit Cake. Watch out.
Unless you live in a cave on an island, you’ve probably heard that Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. Or, as some people dub him – he’s James Blonde. Being the first blonde James Bond to grace the screen will look good on his CV. (The most recent addition to his CV,
Back to the forum wars… Panasonic got sick too (I guess) as there are even formal protest issued from posters about the lack of information about the new camera. So they launched a new blog site: 

Andrzej Bartkowiak is a good cinematographer (Dante’s Peak, Lethal Weapon 4), who turned into a not-so-good director (Cradle 2 the Grave, Romeo Must Die). He is probably the right man for this job. He captures the creepy atmosphere of Doom 3, the latest installment in the game series.
Call me naïve but I love the mockumentary style – pioneered in 1984 by Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. I just saw the movie again and it hasn’t dated at all. Like with any good wine (check out
It’s amazing how quickly torrent sites adapt. I was looking for an old movie – “Yellobeard” (by Graham Chapman, of Monthy Python fame). Browsing through the list, I saw numerous movies encoded “IPOD FORMAT.”
It’s easy to identify with Miles (Paul Giamatti), if you’re into drinking and/or writing. Not surprisingly, “Sideways” has become an instant favorite amongst critics. The director (Alexander Payne) steers clear of sarcasm and heads straight for humor and sweetness.
I know this sounds like a BAD joke. While I’m blogging and checking my email at the same time, some people still persist with writing letters. The problem with any letter (yes, even emails) is that they might end up in the wrong hands. CIA’s hands.
Although all evidences of female wookies are left off-screen, it would seem that Chewbacca has found a mate. She’s a Texan. Enought said.
The next generation of HD formats has been split in two for years. There has been some famous switching of sides (Microsoft leaving Blu-ray and joining HD-DVD).
“Strangers on a Train” is probably one of the best in his “wrongly-accused” series. The movie is based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. That’s the same author who wrote the Ripley series. She was always fascinated by smart criminals. 
For all you BitTorrent users, you can download an advanced BitTorent client that won’t take a ton of system resources. You don’t need to install anything, you just download an exe that’s less than 100KB! Here’s an overview:
For the first 60 minutes, it’s actually fun to place names to faces because the casting and the acting is so good (I do give credit where credit is due). Goebbels and Himler are an excellent match. I viewed Triumph of the Will (1934) recently and the resemblance is uncanny. Bruno Ganz portrays a broken man whose rages feed on each piece of bad news and in 1945 every news is bad news: the Red Army is inside Berlin, Hitler’s closest aides desert him… The rages don’t last very long and leave a smaller, even more broken Fuhrer.
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