Friday Is The New Saturday

A Really Pretty Day Off

Apologies to Indiana, Ohio, etc., because the current round of storms is tracking south of us. We had a cool but lovely and mostly sunny day. Perfect for the Last Real Day of Spring Break. So naturally we drove off and hid inside a windowless building for an hour or two.

The Bank Job [R]

Was amusing to see 10,000 B.C. get pounded in the reviews in the local newspaper. We don't see many bad movies because -- we don't go to bad movies. (grin) So when there's a new British bank caper movie, it looked like the thing to go see. Such a good decision.

Supposedly based on real events back in the 1970s, we got a bunch of guys who are just not A- or B-list criminals. Not necessarily incompetent, though they have a few issues with that, but just not big league. And yet they get an opportunity to make a big score, to break into a bank vault, and they decide to take it.

The thing of it is that it's all a set-up job. The whole goal is to break into one safe deposit box and remove some pictures. Except only one of the crew knows this. Along the way we have some Whitehall types, either MI5 or MI6 (grin), some police, some thugs, and a pornographer. Just about everybody screws up and is screwed, one way or another. In fact for just about everyone things tend, as the British say, "to go rather pear shaped".

This isn't a comedic romp, such as the original 1960s version of The Italian Job. This is a serious movie, deadly serious. But that doesn't meant it is bereft of humor. It has some aspects of The Sting, including the fact the first caper gets them involved in Bigger Dealings, but the crew is much more compact.

A couple of the national reviews call it uneven, but we had no problems. Though I will warn you there's a couple of rather squeamish scenes -- the bad bad guys are rather bad, after all. And the British party a lot harder than Americans, criminals included, and so the British sensibilities about showing off female body parts may surprise their more prudish American cousins. But overall we had a lot of fun and The Bank Job is one of the best bank job movies we've seen.
Highly Recommended

Trailers

Practically a waste of time to even type anything up. Several bad looking horror movies coming that just don't seem very horrific. There is one movie coming where Al Pacino has 88 Minutes left to live. Might see that when it comes. Otherwise, boring and dreck, at least amongst these promos.

Edited 3-9-08 Sun: Oh, there was at least one other movie that might be fun. It has both Jackie Chan and Jet Li in it, something about teaching some geeky kid how to be a kung fu hero. Looks beautiful, could be funny.

Dr. Phil

It's Coming! It's Here! Pfffftbt!

DST 2008

Tonight we'll jump directly from 2am to 3am here in the Eastern Time Zone as we go from EST to EDT. Early. Again. Sigh.

The whole point of Daylight Savings Time is, of course, to save Energy. After all, DST 2007/2008 was part of the Energy Bill the other year. The idea being that it will be more light in the evening, allowing us freedom to do all sorts of things in the sunshine that we couldn't do at that same time otherwise.

Just think of the possibilities. Gardening. Sunbathing. Washing the car. Sitting on the deck and read a book. Have a backyard barbeque. Mow the lawn. Uh... wait. It's MARCH. In MICHIGAN. Our yard and driveway are still encased in snow and ice. And what isn't snow and ice is thick, soggy mud. And the overnight temperature was 14degF and the highs are around freezing.

It will be WEEKS before one could plant flowers, mow lawn, sit outside and read a book. It's even too crappy for most of the cross-country skiers and most of the snowmobilers.

Plus the twenty-four hour clock is a zero-sum game -- you can't get an hour extra of daylight in the evening without trimming off an hour of daylight in the morning. So for the next couple of weeks it will be dark out at the road for the kids waiting for the school bus. And we'll still have all the lights and heat on in the morning -- and since we won't be outside enjoying that Saved Time, we'll be inside with the lights and heat in the evening.

Exactly how much Energy is this idiocy going to save? I suspect somewhere between ZERO and "we're going to use MORE".

Morons. Yeah, and I'm talking to the local West Michigan Congressman who proposed this turkey.

Dr. Phil