Cuz We Said So

Wealth Gap

I was thinking about this topic even before Obama showcased it in his SOTU (which I haven't listened to yet).  But, here goes:

I don't want to get into a huge ideological argument about redistribution of wealth or job creation. But I am curious about the widening wealth gap, particularly in this country, though this applies over most of the world.

I have no problem with a free labor market, but I am forced to wonder why rich and poor are further apart than they've been since before the Great Depression. What about the market has driven this gap? I have a couple of theories, but none ring true:

Wealth sliding up the scale is an inevitable emergent property of any free market. Money has its own gravity, and it seeks to pool. Artificial interference (income taxes, a culture of philanthropic giving, etc) is required to reverse the trend. I hope we can all agree that uncontrolled upwardly sliding wealth isn't healthy for the economy. Bill Gates needs someone to sell Windows to.

Problem with this theory: It's not an answer. It's an appeal to a mysterious force. I want to understand that mysterious force.

The emergence of India, China, Brazil, et.al. is devaluing most every job that can hop overseas, and company officers are about the only jobs that can't. (Yet.)

Problem with this theory: This would imply that people like plumbers, mechanics, doctors and nurses, people who can't be outsourced, aren't being impacted. I find that unlikely.

It's just temporary, because of the recession. Jobs at the top (and people who are independently wealthy) are disproportionately buffered from the effects.

Problem with this theory: It's got to be a factor, but I don't believe it's the whole story.

Some shift in the culture of compensation at most organizations has driven dollars upward, and the rank-and-file don't have the leverage (job-hopability) to reverse it.

Problem with this theory: I'm not sure how so many organizations all over the country could be impacted similarly, unless this is an unintended consequence of some federal regulation or tax code.

I do think it's ridiculous that a secretary can pay a higher total tax rate than her boss... that's just dumb policy. But I also don't think we need to return to 90% top marginal rate. (Even though that's what it was in the US's crazy-boom-50s.) I'm not interested in taking money away from people. I'm interested in the tweaks that need to be made to the overall system to encourage money, via the market, to find it's way to more people. Maybe that's a pipe dream. But it does seem that something is needed to keep everything sustainable. Another couple of decades like we've just been through, and the US is going to start looking like a third world country.

Russell on the Super Committee

Here's my take on the most (and least) likely scenarios of how the Super Committee will handle the debt reduction project:

Least Likely -- They find a solution that both sides can live with, which equitably addresses the problem.  My version? (Though certainly not the only one that fits these criteria.)  Increase the retirement age, reduce SS and drug benefits for the top earners, cut the military by 25%, institute a new, unloopholeable 50% tax on golden parachutes.  (You want to make a ton of cash at a company?  Stick around and earn it, jerk!)

Average Likely -- They deadlock and the predetermined $1.2 trillion cuts go into effect.  (Which wouldn't make me cry, incidentally.)

Most Likely -- They weasel out somehow.  I mean, they passed the Budget Control Act, they can always repeal it.  Or, they can fudge the numbers to make it look like they're cutting, but they're really significantly overstating future economic growth, or underestimating defense spending, or some other accounting BS.

Why is that one the most likely?  It's not like the debt is top of mind like it was a few months ago.  I mean, come on!  There's a sex scandal in the Republican nominating field and Kim Kardashian just got divorced.  Divorced!  They can quietly screw over our financial future.  And the quieter the better, if you're going the weasel route.  I've got to think that the sheer volume of doom-saying coming out of Washington probably had something to do with those rating drops.

That's just my entirely unfounded opinion.

Red Riding Hood and Battle: Los Angeles

You might wonder, "Russell, why are you reviewing Red Riding Hood and Battle: Los Angles in the same post?" And I would respond, "Mind your own business! This is my review!"

Okay, not really.  What I would say is that in one sense these are two diametrically opposite films, but in another, they're really quite similar.

Fringe Dodges a Bullet

I think Fringe is one of the smartest shows on TV. They're juggling a freaky premise (two alternate universes are trying to survive under the shadow of possible demise) and some subtle character work at the same time.

But the multiverse they've constructed assumes that for every person 'here', there's an exact duplicate 'there'. Same looks, same age, same name. That makes it fun for the actors, most of whom get to play alternate versions of themselves. But that also presupposes that every couple has their children at the exact same time... and has for all of history. If any one person has a different set of offspring anywhere in history, the entire doppelganger concept falls apart.

In the recent episode "6B", the climax relied on the situation of an elderly couple having children in one universe, and no children in the other. In fact, they had at least two, since they were referred to as "the girls".  Uh-oh! The entire construction of this multiverse may be faulty!

But wait. The Walter from 'here' broke into 'there' to steal Peter. That, theortically, means that everything from that moment on (in 1985) is up for grabs. Children born after 1985 wouldn't necessarily have doppelgangers.

In the episode, the old woman claim to have been with her husband since they were 20, and said they were together "almost 45 years". That means she's almost 65.  1985 was twenty-six years ago, when she was almost 39. She might have had two children (even twins) at such an age.

Bullet dodged! All is right with the multiverse!

Of course, I haven't dodged the bullet of excessive geekiness. But that's okay, too.  That ship sailed long before 1985.

Russell's 2010 Movie Wrap Up

What am I waiting for?!

Skyline

The sky is far from the limit.

There are so many things to dislike about this film, I have to address them in the order that they appear on screen.  (This review will have many spoilers.  If you want the spoiler free version, here it is: "Don't see it.  The best stuff is in the trailer.")

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Oh, Gordon, how we’ve missed you!

(This review is kind of out of date, but I wanted to get it up before I did my year end wrap up...)

In 1987, Gordon Gekko taught us that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”  Nobody remembers the whole quote.  All they remember is “Greed is good.”  And this sequel is kind of like that memory.  It’s not as complex and engaging and filled with family drama and angst as the original.  It’s a simpler tale, told well all the same.

Gekko has done his time in prison, and is now hawking his new book which (prophetically, since this takes place in 2008) anticipates the sub-prime bust that dropped us smack dab into the Great Recession.  (Do you hate that term as much as I do?)

Gekko’s daughter Winnie (played by the remarkable Carey Mulligan) has tried to put her father’s troubles behind her, mostly by starting up a left-wing activist website with the terrible name “The Frozen Truth”.  But she certainly hasn’t backed away from Wall Street enough to, you know, leave New York.  Or not date Jake (Shia LaBeouf) who is (you guessed it) a Wall Street analyst.  And just so we are reminded of the whole Enron debacle, the screenwriters made Jake an expert in energy.

The film juggles quite a few plot balls.  Jake is on a quest to avenge the professional destruction of his mentor (Frank Langella) by a sort of mini-Gekko (Josh Brolin).  He’s trying to wean his mother (Susan Sarandon) off of her real estate tweaking.  He’s trying to marry Winnie.  He’s trying to finance the next phase of human development in laser-assisted fusion.  But all of these are secondary to his primary fascination: Gordon Gekko.

Ostensibly to help heal the rift between Gekko and his fiancé, Jake befriends Gordon.  But it’s clear from the outset that he worships the guy.  The central mystery of the film isn’t whether Jake will get the girl or destroy the bad guy or save the world.  The central mystery is whether Gekko has really been rehabilitated, whether he’ll help Jake or screw him over.

This is a pretty clever construction.  It gives all the heavy lifting to Shia, and leaves Michael Douglas to come in a few minutes at a time and be awesome.  And awesome he is.  By the climax of the film, I was really not sure which way he’d jump.  Some things he said and did were just like the Gordon of old, and others were a picture of an old man trying desperately to reconnect with anything from his pre-incarceration life.

Oliver Stone has done many superior films, not to mention some real turdballs (I’m looking at you, Natural Born Killers), but this one is, I think, certainly above average.

HPATDHP1

I can't say that the first half of "The Deathly Hallows" is a perfect movie, and it's certainly not the best of the series.  (That would go to whichever of Azkaban, Goblet, or Order I've seen most recently.)  But it's miles better than "Half-Blood Prince".

The most unfortunate thing about this film is the palpable feeling of disorientation since there's not a single scene in Hogwarts.  Harry (and, by proxy, Hermione and Ron) are outlaws, missing their final year at the wizarding school because they're on a seemingly impossible mission to find and destroy the artifacts that contain the shards of Voldemort's soul.  And in this two-and-a-half hour installment, they only manage to find one, while they also manage to lose a number of friends in the process.

The least unfortunate thing about "Deathly Hallows Part 1" is that it's almost all about our three heroes.  Ron and Hermione got short shrift in the last film, I thought, and having all three of them stuck out in the wilderness, getting on each other's nerves (and generating some big laughs in the process) is enjoyable, at least for someone who really likes these characters.

But, make no mistake, this is definitely a "Part 1".  The ending is a real low point for Harry, and a real high for You Know Who, but that only cements my desire to see "Part 2" next year.

Russell’s Pre-Review of the 2010 TV Season

I enjoy pretending that my opinions matter.  I mean, this is the internet, after all, the home of unmotivated whonking.  Here are my uncalled for, unreasoned, and unnecessary thoughts on the new TV season, in the order that the shows will premiere…

Summer Movies 2010 on Gilligan's Island

I was reminded recently that I haven't done a single movie review on CWSS all summer!  The horror!

Rather than shoehorn in a bunch of reviews of films which are mostly gone from theatres, I thought I'd provide a season review (along with links to a handful of reviews I wrote on my brother's website, 6throwcenter).

But, just for fun, I'm categorizing them based on which character in "Gilligan's Island" would have liked them!

Fun with Polls

Specifically, polls that make conservatives look foolish.

"A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, believe Obama is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The survey also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't know his religion."  (Quotes from Yahoo! News.)

Now, this isn't a poll of just conservatives.  This is a poll of everybody.  But we all know who disseminates these kinds of foundless rumors, don't we?

But here is the part that's particularly fun.

"The Pew poll found that about three in 10 of Obama's fiercest political rivals, Republicans and conservatives, say he is a Muslim. That is up significantly from last year and far higher than the share of Democrats and liberals who say so."

IOW, nearly twice as many conservatives are plain wrong on this point compared to the entire population.

Heh.

Of course, this is all just a distraction from the bigger question: why does it matter?  Is it so terrible, the thought of having a Muslim president? 

It's funny that conservatives are wrong.  It's scary that they care in the first place.

"Beyond the Lighted Stage"

Russell's favorite moments in this Rush documentary:

1. Home movie of Alex Lifeson as a high-schooler telling his parents he wants to be a musician; he doesn't need school.
2. Gene Simmons wondering why, when Kiss toured with Rush, he gets all the girls, and the Canadians never did.
3. Neil Peart talking about how he just does not want to talk to fans; it's just creepy.
4. Geddy Lee still referring to Neil as "the new guy".

Russell's Week with Glenn, Day 2

The theme of the episode is that GB has a problem with faith based initiatives that are designed around advancing green technology. (He uses the phrase "the EPA merging with churches" about twenty times, making it sound like some sort of Borg assimilation.) He has no problem using religious language to impart his own message, so I assume he's either simply against green technology, or believes it to not be consistent with Christian ideals. He does not make clear which of these is his stance, though either one is a hard sell to me.

GB claims that this program will be the final nail in the coffin of our churches, though he offers no indication of how or why that would happen.  More baseless fear-mongering.  (This concept may become a theme of these posts.  How about I just call it BFM from now on?)

16:00 -- GB talks about how much more of his income he's given to charity than either Obama or Biden.  I humbly offer the following:

Proverbs 26:12
2 Philippians 2:3
Matthew 23:12

31:00 -- "They're already indoctrinating our children. 'There is no God.'" Really?  Alot of classes in atheism in our primary schools nowadays? Not talking about God <> talking about God's nonexistence.

42:00 -- GB's guest likens taxation to stealing, which is contrary to one of the commandments. I offer him this:

Matthew 22:21

GB also (I didn't get the time marker on this one) said that Net Neutrailty is Marxism.  Really?  How exactly does the ability to have non-discriminatory access to the internet going to elevate the proletariat?

As for things I agreed with, I suppose I can't fault him for criticizing the left for being silent on Obama's faith-based initiatives, when W was loudly castigated for the same thing.  Of course, Obama hasn't (that I've heard) indicated that he's President because it's God's will, so perhaps there's little need to fear he'll become some kind of theocratic oligarch.

Lost Finale Questions

Here, in roughly chronological order, are the questions I would like for the finale of Lost to answer.  I fully expect that none of them will be:

Why was the Island still getting Dharma Initiative shipments of food long after the purge?
Why did that psychic feel the need to put Claire on a doomed plane?
What was Walt's power?
Why did Charlie have religious visions that drove him to baptize Aaron?
Why did Kate (and Sawyer) see that horse?
Why didn't the Others purge Kelvin and Radzinsky?  (Alternately, why didn't they help Kelvin, if they knew his button-pushing was important?)
Why did the destruction of the Swan station not kill Desmond, Eko and Locke?
Why do pregnant women die on the Island?  Why now and not before?
Why can Hurley/Miles talk/listen to ghosts?
Why did Widmore hire all those Island-connected people for his freighter team?
Why did Ben think it was necessary to bring Locke's body back to the Island?
Why did Richard (and the rest of the Others) not skip through time along with the Lostaways?
Why did Sun not go back in time with Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid?

Please note that I didn't even bother to mention the questions that this season has raised, but I suspect might actually be answered.  (Why are there two timelines?  Will the MIB finally be killed or contained?)

Oh, Lost, it has been a fun ride.

The First Minute

That's how long I had to watch the May 17, 2010 episode of "Glenn Beck" until he made me angry.  You see, my familiarity with this much loved (and much hated) pundit comes largely from clips I see on "The Daily Show", or "The Colbert Report".  So, I said to myself, "Myself, watch him, start to finish."  And I really thought it might take five or ten minutes for him to incur my wrath.  Nope.  I the first minute he said:

"We have Markist revolutionaries fundamentally transforming and 
attacking the republic of the United States and moving us a global 
community."

I have two problems with this.  1) I think there are probably not that many Marxists in government right now.  There are some Democrats, and maybe even a Green or two.  But no Marxists.  I have to assume Beck is being incindiary for shock value, not that he's dense enough to not know the difference.  And 2), is global community bad?  And if so, why?  He does not return to this theme again in the show.  So, maybe just a strange slip of the tongue.

In the ninteenth minute, he likens the impending collapse of our economy (which, if we don't believe is going to happen, we clearly have no honor... no, I'm not kidding, he said that) to a sinking ship, and underlined it by showing some of the more horrifying special effects from "Titanic".  Now, that's pretty bad.  But it got worse when he went directly from there to a commercial, which had an actor in front of a green screen, showing stormy seas, and we learn he's pitching GOLD as an investment.  Way to cozy up to your few remaining sponsors!

In the twenty-fourth minute he told us about the three things that the progressive movement at the start of the Twentieth Century did to undermine our country.  They systematically devalued our churches and our faith first, then the Constitution, then the founders. 

"We don't talk about the consitution anymore. The founders, we 
don't talk about."

Well, I hear people talking about the Constitution endlessly.  And as for the founders, I wonder if he's hoping people will want to hear more about the founders because he's selling a huge bucket of books about them on his website.  Only $828!

Now, to be honest, he did spend a chunk of the show talking about how terror suspects shouldn't have their rights abridged, Miranda-wize.  But he went on to take Eric Holder to task for being uncomfortable with the phrase "radical Islam", as if there's some sect out there with the name "Radical Islam" on the door.  And is it really a bad idea for our nations top attorney to be measured with his language?  Even when I agree with Beck, I disagree with him.

Well, there's one hour down.  I wonder what today will bring!

Clash of the Titans (2010)

I still have an issue with 3D film.  It seems more like a gimmick than a storytelling device.  Also, this film was retroactively made 3D, largely because of the pressure of Avatar.  So I wasn't too disappointed when I found that the theater I went to was showing the 2D version.  Though, based on my fondness for the film, I might go ahead and seek out a 3D cinema to see it again.

I was never a huge fan of the original 80's version of COTT.  It was cheesy even then, despite the appearance of Lawrence Olivier.  I knew even as a kid that Bebo (the mechanical owl) was kind of doofy.  But you have to like Medusa and, of course, the Kraken.

In the new version, many things are altered.  This time around, Perseus is not on a quest for love.  He and Andromeda share about twelve lines in the whole film.  No, Perseus has a chip on his shoulder about the Gods, and he's on a quest to increase man's fortunes in the world, and bring these dieties down a peg.  That's a strange tack for a big Hollywood film to take, but I think it works.  Since these Greek gods are shown as flawed and certainly not omnipotent, it's not like this is a tract against current religious belief (though I'm sure many people will misinterpret it as such).

There's a lot of great acting in this one.  Liam Neeson nails Zeus.  Ralph Fiennes does a not-too-Voldemorty take on Hades.  Pete Postlethwaite is his always-awesome self.  (If you doubt me, take another look at The Usual Suspects, or even The Lost World.)  I really enjoyed Alexa Davalos' performance of Andromeda.  They didn't make her some ridiculous amazon (see Keira Knightley in King Arthur for what I mean).  Neither was she a squealing damsel in distress.  She was a strong woman who was willing (though certainly not eager) to sacrifice herself for her people.

But the film lives or dies with Perseus, and Sam Worthington does the job well.  He plays that whole tortured hero thing very well.  (Really, is Perseus really that different from Marcus in Terminator Salvation, or Jake from Avatar?)  I liked that fact that he never wavered in his hatred for the Gods, even when he's forced to accept help from them.

And, of course, the effects.  They were really quite awesome.  Loved the scorpions.  Loved the Pegasus.  Loved the Kraken.  Medusa was the least impressive, as if they hadn't put the final layer of texturing on the CG model, but it wasn't enough to bounce me out of the film.

I did have a couple of quibbles.  One was the use (again) of Hades as the bad guy in the film.  This does not match with my understanding of Greek mythology.  Hades wasn't the bad guy.  They were all bad guys.  Hades was just the one living underground.  But that's a minor quibble, since the film has to have a bad guy.  The other was the heavy-handed sequel set up at the end.  I have no problem with there being a sequel.  That'd be cool.  But don't dare me to hate your movie by being so blunt!

Even so, big thumbs up!

2009 Movie Wrap Up

It occurs to me that I never did my year end list of the movies I saw in 2009 with a relative breakdown of their merits.  So, here we go:

Great
Star Trek
Invictus -- The best Eastwood film I've ever seen.  Damon and Freeman are both perfect.  A surprisingly emotional film for being about racial disharmony, politics and rugby.
Taken
District 9

Very Good
Avatar
Monsters Vs. Aliens -- Cute, funny, inventive.  The number of laughs they get just on the topic of scale alone would make this recommendable.
Sherlock Holmes -- This deserves a full review from me, but I'm lazy.  Downey is awesome, Law is great.  The look and feel of the film is enjoyable.
The Hurt Locker -- This pretty much is the example of a taut thriler.  And the hero (played by Jeremy Renner) is someone you can love and hate simultaneously.  (But mostly you love him.)
Food, Inc. -- A documentary that will make you question how you eat.  And if can do that for me, you know it's good.
2012 -- Loved it.  It made no sense, and it was awesome.
The Proposal
Watchmen -- Wasn't quite as chock-full-of-awesome as I would have liked, but I found Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan and Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach to be pretty much perfection.
Zombieland
The Informant! -- Based on a non-fiction book about the craziest anti-trust investigation in US history, Matt Damon plays the least heroic character of his career.  And (yay!) Scott Bakula is in it!
The Taking of Pelham 123
A Christmas Carol -- After Polar Express and Beowulf, I was getting kind of motion-captured out.  Can't Zemeckis direct live actors anymore?  But this one is remarkably subtle for great swaths of its running time.  I could have done without the crazy chase sequences, but most of the film is remarkable and very true to the original Dickens novel.

Good
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Terminator Salvation
Ingourious Basterds
The Road -- Yes, it's just as bleak as the book (and the trailer) would have you believe.  Viggo Mortensen plays the best dad ever.

Okay
Surrogates -- Bruce Willis as a plastic-coated robot!  Then Bruce Willis as a broken-down slob of a man!  Who wouldn't want to see that?  Does a nice job dramatizing a world filled entirely with couch potatoes.
The Men Who Stare at Goats -- There's some really funny stuff, and some really dumb stuff.  The performances are good, the story is bad, so it clocks in at okay for me.
The International -- The story is entirely forgettable.  (Really.  I can't remember it now.)  But that gun fight in the Guggenheim is awesome!
Fast and Furious -- Never saw installments 2 or 3, but this was mildly diverting, and had some nifty car chases.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li -- It's tough to categorize a film that you enjoy thoroughly because it's so terrible.  And terrible this one is.  Terrible... and awesome!  Chris Klein rules!!
Knowing -- Here's what I know about this film.  Two great action sequences eclipse a ridiculous story.
The Girlfriend Experience

Okay, But Should Have Been Much Better
Angels & Demons
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The Twilight Saga: New Moon -- I really want this franchise to be good.  It just keeps not doing that.  Still, this one's an improvement over Twilight.

Kind of Bad
Whiteout -- One of those "Maybe there's a supernatural component!" films that doesn't deliver.  But you get to see Kate Beckinsale in her underwear, so there's that.
Jennifer's Body -- Wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, wasn't scary enough to be horror, wasn't enough skin to be sheer titillation.
Law Abiding Citizen -- Over the top performances followed by over the top plot contrivances.  I hoped for better from Butler and Foxx.
My Bloody Valentine 3-D -- Everything you think it'd be, based on the title.

Very, Very Bad
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

"Daybreakers" and "The Book of Eli"

It may not make complete sense to review these two films simultaneously, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway, partly because they are both new takes on old tropes... and partly because I'm really lazy.

I saw "Daybreakers" first, and went in with only a one sentence description from some magazine.  I hadn't even seen the trailer, but I was intrigued nonetheless.  In the film, it's ten years since an unexplained plague began transforming people into vampires.  The vampires promptly took over the world, gave everyone the chance to change, and those that didn't were rounded up and put into uber-creepy blood banks.  Ethan Hawke plays a vampire hematologist working on a blood substitute, since the supplies of the real article are running low.  Worse still, if you don't have a consistent supply of human blood, you basically turn into a feral bat-creature.  So, the vampires are nearing their own catastrophe.

Enter Willem Dafoe as a human who managed (through a bizarre coincidence) to become a vampire for about three seconds, and then be cured.  He and Hawke work together to come up with a way to replicate the process, to reverse vampirism completely.

I liked the stylized look of the film, and the little details that tell us about vampire life: the houses with retractable windows, the subwalk system under the city, the stand selling coffee "still with 20% blood!"  The mechanics of the ending are important, but I won't give them away.  Coming up with a satisfying ending when the world is so ridiculously screwed up wasn't easy to do.  It's neither easy nor sure-fire, but it's modestly hopeful, while at the same time being about as bloody as any film I've ever seen.

"The Book of Eli" is another film with a very familiar premise: the world was destroyed in some cataclysmic (probably nuclear) war, and Denzel Washington is a mysterious "walker" with a precious book.  Gary Oldman is the town boss (somewhere in the extra-blasted southwest) who really, really wants that book.

The ads were somewhat cagey about what the book was, but the film doesn't take long to make it clear that the book in question is The Bible.  Washington wants to get it into the hands of someone who will use the book for good.  Oldman wants to use it to take over... well, pretty much everything.  It's an interesting tightrope the film walks between the positive use of faith, and the horrifying power of religion as a tool of mass control.  I suspect that balance is the only reason a film about religion could get made.  (Outside the "Christian" media, I mean.)

I enjoyed the film, partly because the story had very few real holes in it.  (Could people really have destroyed almost all the Bibles in the world?)  Most important, the film looked amazing.  The scenes of past destruction were affecting without being maudlin or overdone.  And the performances were good.  Denzel has rarely been so selflessly heroic.  Or so scruffy.

Do Not Use Allied Moving Group or Bravo Moving - Ever

My fiance recently scheduled a move from Atlanta to San Jose.  This is, of course, a long move, and will be expensive, so she shopped around, and got a very reasonable quote from Allied Moving Group.  She learned, far too late, that this is not to be confused with the respectable Allied Van Lines.

Allied Moving Group then sub-contracted with a local Atlanta company called Bravo Moving.  This company seems to be just one guy, Louie.  Louie started this move with a brilliant opening salvo: he waited until half of her stuff was already on the truck to tell her the original estimate was off... by about 100%.  Yes, he doubled the estimate. 

The original plan was always to hold the items in Atlanta in storage until she had a destination arranged.  The destination (because of this ring I gave her) changed to Seattle.  So she called them up and said, "Well, the destination has changed, and the mileage has now increased by three percent."  Yes, three percent.  Their response?  "We're going to increase the cost of the move by twenty-five percent, because we're evil."  Okay, I added the italicized part, but that doesn't make it not true.

We asked how long it would take to get the stuff after we tell them to make it happen.  They said some time in the next fifteen days.  Now, this isn't convenient, but I suppose it's understandable, since it is very nearly the longest haul possible in the continental US.  (I suppose Miami to Bellingham would be farther.)  We gave them the go ahead on November 30, in anticipation of arrival before the 15th of December.

When the 13th rolled around and we hadn't gotten any updates, we called and found out that they would be arriving on the 19th or 20th.  This was bad for two reasons: 1) I wouldn't be in Seattle, since I was planning on going home for Christmas early this year, and 2) my new building doesn't allow moves on weekends.  So, I had to contract with a local firm to: 1) accept the delivery with me not there, 2) store the items for a week, and 3) deliver the items after Leslie and I returned to Seattle.  They offered to do this for a very reasonable price (one which was less than the cost of a single day delay for the Bravo Moving driver).

But wait.  It gets better.  The fateful day arrives, our local guy has the cashier's check ready to hand to the driver... and the driver won't accept it.  He will only accept a money order or cash.  We try to make him understand that a cashier's check is exactly the same as a money order.  He seems to have selective deafness when dealing with this issue.  He tries to get Louie on the phone all day.  Louie does not answer.  The move waits for a day.

The next day rolls around, and we finally get Louie on the phone and he says they can accept the check.  The driver calls the local move guy and says he's on his way.  But the local move guy has a scheduling conflict and can't get there exactly at the same time.  There's a delay of three hours.  The driver, therefore, insists that he will not deliver until he is paid three hundred dollars (a hundred dollars per hour) for waiting.  We try to make it clear that there was an extra charge in the estimate for a "long carry", based on the distance from the loading dock to the condo.  Now since there is no "long carry" (they're carrying directly from the truck into a storage facility) there should be a discount, which should make up for some of the waiting time.  The selective deafness kicks in.

Never, ever use Bravo Moving, if you live in the Atlanta area, and never, ever use Allied Moving Group in you live anywhere at all.

Just to make sure this post comes up if anyone tries to Google either Allied Moving Group or Bravo Moving, I'm going to copy these names several more times at the end. 

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Allied Moving Group Bravo Moving BAD

Thank you for your patience.

Avatar

I went on opening day to see Avatar, the first feature from James Cameron since he was crowned King of the World in 1998.  From the ads, I had relatively low hopes for the film.  I thought it was going to be Dances with Wolves as directed by George Lucas.  Thankfully, my worst fears were not realized.  By and large, I liked it.

First off, the story was less Dances and more Dune, which is fine, since I haven't seen Dune ripped off a hundred times.  (Only the once.)  The acting was pretty solid.  I liked Sam Worthington much more here than in Terminator Salvation.  Zoe Saldana did some nice work as an alien.  Giovanni Ribisi is fun.  And Sigourney Weaver never disappoints.  Special kudos to Stephen Lang for his hyper-dedicated (though not strictly crazy) bad-guy-army-dude.

On the down side, it was a tad long.  At two hours and forty minutes, I think it could have withstood a trim of about fifteen to twenty minutes.  But that's really a quibble.

The special effects are, no question, state of the art.  Do they look like "reality"?  Nope.  But they're getting mighty close.  The environments are stellar.  There might have been a few too many weird creatures in the jungle, but it is a jungle after all, so I can buy it.  And the finale sequence was Cameron doing what he does best: action.  It's basically what Lucas tried to do at the end of Return of the Jedi, with an indigenous and primitive race battling a technologically advanced invading force.  This one was much more believable.

The thing that really impressed me was the seamless way the human actors are integrated into the environments.  What's funny is that it's not that the environments necessarily look more real (well, they do, but that's not the point) it's that the humans look more fake.  It kinda works.

All in all, much more enjoyable than Titanic, but still not in the same league with Cameron's earlier work.