Movie Mini Review: Run Lola Run

Title: Run Lola Run (Lola rennt)

Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri

Plot summary:
Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks and get it to her boyfriend, Manni, who lost a bag full of cash during a botched diamond smuggling operation. If she's not there on time, Manni will be sleeping with the fishes courtesy of the German Tony Soprano.

My thoughts:
This is another film that has been on the DVR for a few months now, so when my Supermodel Wife and I had some unexpected free time last week, we cued it up.

I had a vague idea of what the movie was about. I remember it receiving some good press when it was released in 1998, even winning an award at the Sundance Film Festival. But despite the title, I wasn't quite prepared for the pace set by director Tom Tykwer. There is literally only a few minutes before the action starts for the characters.

I thought the acting was strong for the main characters. Even though my knowledge of the German language is limited to schadenfreude and fahrvergnügen, the sexy Franka Potente did an excellent job of conveying her character's fear, anger and frustration -- sometime all at once.

The acting, combined with the video editing and a driving techno soundtrack did a great job of conveying the feeling of urgency and intensity that I think Tykwer was going for.

And the plot line was a nice change of pace. Like a couple of my other favorite movies, Pulp Fiction and Memento, Lola employs a non-linear storytelling device. The first twenty minutes advance through a story and then repeat back to the beginning. The story then unfolds again, but this time with slight changes in seemingly insignificant details that lead to major changes in the outcome.

The advantage of this is that it gives the two principal actors that much sought-after death scene (sorry for the spoiler if you haven't seen this one yet, but c'mon, it's been out for nine years), while at the same time keeping them around for the ending.

The one thing that still bothers me is that Tykwer gave no reason within the world of the story for the characters to repeat the last 20 minutes. Perhaps it makes sense in the original German, but it didn't translate for me and I felt a little shortchanged because of it.

But I was happy with the examination of this sort of quantum principal that other worlds exist depending on what choice we make, what we observe and do at any given moment. It would be nice to have the kind of "do overs" in real life that Lola and Manni had in this film.

My final rating: Definitely see it again.

Favorite quote:
"The ball is round, a game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory. Off we go!"

tagged: movie, Run Lola Run, film, culture, Franka Potente, Lola rennt, Moritz Bleibtreu, Tom Tykwer

Fellowship of the Ring in 15 seconds

This totally cracks me up (click to embiggen).



tagged: Lord of the Rings, animated gif, humor, pop culture

Virtually complete

Pictures of the Sprint Center under construction in downtown KCMO have been making the rounds on the interwebs lately.

The most recent pics showed up first on KCRag forum, and then Tony linked in with some comments.

Problem is, the thing isn't done yet. That may be good enough for some people, but not for me. I insist upon instant gratification.

Even if it's just virtual.

So, I logged back in to Second Life for the first time in months (which is years in online time).

There, you can get a virtual feel for what the arena is going to be like. Here are some pics for the SL-challenged:

Here's a wide shot of the exterior of the arena.

This is the "interior" of the Sprint Center, the main arena.
This is the main lobby. You can get a free virtual T-shirt at the kiosk on the right to give Sprint some free virtual advertising.
This is the virtual sales chick. Kind of a two dimensional personality.This is a secondary lobby between the main lobby and the arena. I guess you can watch free Spanish rock videos on that TV in the corner.

tagged: Sprint, Sprint Center, arena, Kansas City, downtown, Second Life, virtual, advertising, marketing

You can't prevent crazy

On the way into the office today I heard a caller to a radio show say, in reference to the Virginia Tech incident, "You can't prevent crazy."

How true.

When things like this happen, be it in New York, Colorado, Oklahoma or Virginia, it seems that the typical knee-jerk reaction is "How could this have happened? Why didn't somebody stop it? There ought to be a law. We need new procedures to prevent this from happening again."

And after all of the discussions, hearings, interviews, analysis and reviews of procedures, such things end up (inevitably?) happening again.

Predictably, the discussion over the last day or so in the wall-to-wall media coverage has circled around questions like why the campus wasn't locked down earlier. Why did nobody see Cho's previous calls for help? How did he get the guns and ammo?

We need tighter gun control. We need more concealed carry. We need stricter campus security. Who is to blame?

All of this brushes aside the fact that the guy was crazy. We know he was crazy (aside from the obvious insanity of the act) because we are all crazy. Nobody is 100% sane (if there is such a thing).

Thankfully the vast majority of our individual neuroses don't manifest themselves in a shooting rampage. But we all have hang-ups about something. We learn to live with them, and we trust that everyone else will learn to live with their issues as well.

That some people don't, that they go off the rails as Ozzy says, is a calculated risk.

In our society, we've determined that we're willing to risk the occasional mass-murder so that we won't have to live under an oppressive totalitarian regime. We don't want our schools to resemble prisons. We don't want our interstate highways to look like Checkpoint Charlie. We don't want Big Brother looking over our shoulders every minute of every day. We don't want to give up our individual liberties.

Tragic as they are, incidents like the one that happened at Virginia Tech are the price we pay for living in an open society.

So what do we do?

We go home, embrace our loved ones, and thank whatever gods may be that we are alive and able to enjoy another day.

tagged: Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-hui, gun, Big Brother, tragedy, concealed carry, gun control

I was the ugly fat guy with the yellow shirt

It was great to meet you all in person.

What a strange feeling to meet people in the corporeal world that you previously knew only in the virtual one. How awkward to introduce yourself by name, then by blog?

Apologies to XO for having to ask twice for your name. I was honored to be in the presence of so much talent -- Greg, Michelle, Spyder, HIB, mToast, Cara and Eric.

I'm just sorry I had to leave early, but as I said family obligations demanded I head home early. I'll have to wait to see if that coward Tony showed up.

Anyway, it was great to meet you all, even the guys from The Pitch.

tagged: Kansas City, blog, blogger, meet-up

YouTube Tuesday: Vader + MST3K = Crazy hilarious

I've commented about RiffTrax, the video companions produced by the writers from MST3k. And I've mentioned Chad Vader in previous YouTube Tuesday features.

Now, the two great tastes taste great together.

Here's the background:


And here's a teaser of the result:


tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Chad Vader, MST3K, Mystery Science Theater, RiffTrax, pop culture

Book Report: The Road

All I can say is "wow" ... just... "wow"...

I bought Cormac McCarthy's latest opus The Road not because Oprah recently added it to the Oprah Book Cult, but because one of the smartest bloggers I know suggested it.

All of the comments I've heard about the story are true. It is dismal, and tragic and bleak. In fact, saying this story is bleak is like saying the Pope is a little bit Catholic. It's like calling Larry Moore "mature" (had to get a Larry Moore dig in there).

This is a raw cheerless book. And yet somehow, after consuming it in about a day and a half (I do have a job unfortunately) I wasn't depressed at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

In case you haven't heard about it yet, the story follows the struggles of an unnamed man and his young son as they trudge through a post-apocalyptic America on their way to the coast and what they hope will be a better life. Along the way, they face threats from starvation, freezing, sickness and (gulp) cannibals.

It seemed to me McCarthy was attempting to strip away everything but the essence of existence. He peeled off the unnecessary layers of luxury, money, success, power, religion (though not necessarily spirituality) and cheap sentimentality in an attempt to discuss the core issues of why we are here.

Reflective of this philosophy, the writing is sparse, like the landscape it is describing. Anything unessential has been left out -- even to the point of eliminating some punctuation and parts of sentences.

This is all to illustrate that there is one thing important in this story: The relationship between the man and his son. In the world that McCarthy has conjured, there is no reason to go on living other than their love for each other. They are "each other's world entire" as McCarthy writes.

And this is the hope and beauty of the story set in an altogether ugly world. That at the heart of everything, taking away all of that which we think is important, in the end love is what will sustain us.

There was much symbolism around the nature of God, good and evil, and all manner of ethical questions that smarter people than I will get into.

But for me, the book wasn't depressing. In fact, when I finished the final pages my only thought was that I wanted to pick up my 4-year-old daughter and give her a long hug.

And that's what I did.

Rating: Highly recommended

---

PS - I was remiss in omitting these excellent and insightful posts about The Road by other of the smartest bloggers I know:

• Joel from Cup o' Joel: The Road
• Randall Sherman at Musings from the Hinterland: Creation "Myths" Meet Creation Reality: Some Thoughts On Cormac McCarthy's The Road

tagged: The Road, Cormac McCarthy, apocalypse, literature, Oprah

It sounded much funnier at midnight

The following IM conversation took place between 11:30 p.m. and 11:59 p.m. Saturday between myself and Xavier Onassis from HSWG.

And yes, on second thought, it is quite lame.

XO: Are you coming to the blog meet on Tuesday?

EmawKC: Still unsure. I may have family coming into town.
EmawKC: Of course they are in-laws, so it might be good to "get out of the house for a while"

XO: LOL! We used to call that "Going to Casey's". Could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours. No questions asked.

EmawKC: :clap:
EmawKC: What time you gonna get there?

XO: Well, I'll keep an eye out for a chain smoking chimp.
XO: I work down town so I will probably be the first one there. 5ish.

EmawKC: I just want to make sure you have a chance to buy me that scotch

XO: Hey, bub! I think you're having a dyslexic moment!
XO: LOL!

EmawKC: Yeah, I guess I owe you a bourbon too.

XO: Actually, I'd be honored to buy you a drink. You were one of my very first commentors. Ever. And you can get off easy and buy me a coke. I don't drink and drive.

EmawKC: Me neither. I plan on taking Clay Chastain's new gondola home that night.

XO: ROFLMAO!!! Nothing like a drunkin gondola ride to cap off a blog meet!

EmawKC: What I don't get is how their going to dig a Venice-style canal from Union Station to Overland Park.

XO: LOL! What I don't get is where the demand originates for a light rail connection from the zoo to the airport! WTF???

EmawKC: Zebra's gotta fly, man. Zebra's gotta fly.

XO: Hello. My name is Klaus. I just flew in from Berlin. This is my first time in the United States. What is the quickest way to get to the Swope Park Zoo?
XO: Do you have any, how you say, gondolas?

EmawKC: "I got your gondolas right here!"

XO: EEEWWW!! LOL!

EmawKC: Overheard in Westport: "Dude, check out that chick's huge gondolas"

XO: LOL!

EmawKC: Now that I think about it, "gondola's" is a pretty funny word.

XO: Yeah, it is. Has a lot of possibilities. Sounds like post fodder.

EmawKC: DIBS!

XO: You got it dude!

Here's the time and place for the blogger meetup. Be there or be somewhere else entirely:

Tuesday, April 17th
Happy Hour until ????

Harry’s Country Club
(Harry’s in the River Market, NOT Harry’s in Westport)
112 Missouri Ave
Kansas City, MO 64106

tagged: Kansas City, blog, blogger, meet up, happy hour, gondola, Clay Chastainfont>

Friday Blogthing: Sex and the City and Me

This seems to make a lot of sense. I think this actress who played this character turned out to be gay. So maybe I really am a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

You Are Most Like Miranda!

While you've had your fair share of romance, men don't come first Guys are a distant third to your friends and career. And this independence *is* attractive to some men, in measured doses. Remember that if you imagine the best outcome, it might just happen. Romantic prediction: Someone from your past is waiting to reconnect... But you'll have to think of him differently, if you want things to work.

Which Sex and the City Vixen Are You?

tagged: Sex and the City, Miranda, Friday, blog, quiz, character, test, dating

Imushamed

Well thank god science that's over.

CBS has made the right decision in listening to the clamoring mob and firing washed-up radio talk show host Don Imus for saying what nearly every hip-hop artist spews at 50 words per minute.

And I for one couldn't be happier. It's not that I really care what happens to Imus, or freedom of speech, or racial equality or the hypocrisy of cultural leaders or that the traumatized members of the Rutgers women's basketball team can now begin the process of healing and trying to avoid the fate of becoming crack whores because of the debilitating abuse of an old white geezer.

What I'm most grateful for is that now that our long national nightmare is over -- a nightmare that the mediots dutifully pasted wall-to-wall across the 24-hour news cycle -- we can begin to focus once again on the other important stories of the day.

Stories like:

• Who is really the father of Anna Nicole Smith's child?
• Who is poisoning our pets and elderly?
• Do these genes make me look fat?
• How will we survive the attack of the drug-resistant gonorrhea?

As you can see, we've got a lot to worry about. But at least Don Imus won't be darkening the 9-11 terrestrial AM radio frequencies of irrelevance anymore.

tagged: Imus, race, culture, black, ho, Rutgers, Anna Nicole Smith, obesity gene, pet food, gonorrhea, free speech, hypocrisy