City of God

First of all, I'm really pissed because I wrote this whole post and then that bloody storm knocked off my electricity. I'll try to reproduce what I had. City of God has to be one of the most ironic movie titles I've heard. The Cicudad de Deus is a housing project near Rio de Janeiro where all the poor live so that Rio de Janeiro remains a bustling tourist spot. The movie is based on a true story as told by the main character, who had a brother when he was a boy who was part of a group of hoodlums known as the Tender Trio. This is during the 60s and the trio's career focused on thievery, until they let on a kid who totally changed things and from there the story goes into the crime scene of the 70s (drugs and territorialism). The movie is as hard-hitting as it is brilliant. Every storyline is weaved together perfectly and it feels more like the real thing than a motion picture dramatization. The whole movie is in Portugeuse, which sounds beautiful, and comes with English subtitles that actually sound like they're probably right. This flick is a must-see because of how awesome the balance is between shocking scenes and more frivolous details that keeps the movie running smooth. It's not for the weak of stomach as people will die suddenly like you would expect in any other gangster movie, but it's not all that gory. The movie is rich with themes and morals with an overlying motif of a circular structure. I give this movie an A+ so run out and rent it.

Now it's time for me to try to piece together all the techie news I had all over again. Ever wonder why Google stuff works faster in Mozilla-based browsers than IE? It's driven me crazy and I've finally found the answer: they prefetch information in Mozilla to speed things up. And if you're a fan of Firefox who wants to know more about its history I think you'll appreciate this. Back to Google though, apparently they've banned Wordpress, which is big for open-source blogging software, for fiddling with keywords to increase their hits. I'm kind of surprised that they got found out and am glad that Google is handling it. Microsoft has finally launched their video download service for handheld device users. Though it's not free, it is a step closer in the diffusion of video content. A student at UC-Santa Barbara is facing some serious penalties after stealing the identities of two professors to change grades. It's quite an impressive feat but definitely not cool. As part of my ongoing coverage of the Grokster trial I thought I'd plug this interview with billionaire Mark Cuban who is supporting P2P because he hates congressmen being pimped by the studios and he realizes how long P2P has been around. He is not a supporter of illegal downloading though, which may become less popular with the rise of alternatives. If you've got a beef with cell phones to snazzy for their own good you won't want to miss this article on just that topic and measures being taken to simplify them. And lastly, paralyzed people may have new hope for living normal lives with advances in implanting chips in brains to allow control by thought alone. Now that's futuristic!

A lot of my movie news today is actually Sin City related. The rest of the press conference I had posted about yesterday is now online with some pretty pictures. Speaking of pretty pictures, you can catch some shots from the premiere over here. And if you haven't gotten enough exclusive clips yet, here's yet another one. Of all the Sin City news though, my favorite is a comic-to-film comparison done by some fans. This is the one I like the best:



While I'm still on pictures, there are a few more new Harry Potter ones over at FilmForce. Eli Roth isn't particarly popular but he wrote a horror script that Quentin Tarantino liked enough to invite him over for a chat about it. This can only mean good things for Hostel. Since I'm sure some of you are Dukes of Hazard fans you may want to take a look at this interview with star Johnny Knoxville. And last, but definitely not least, FilmForce put up some exclusive previews of the new seasons of Family Guy and American Dad. May 1 couldn't come any slower.

Now it's time for some Thursday Thoughts:

Talk about your favorite comic book heroes. It doesn't have to directly relate to comic books.
My favorite is definitely Batman. He just oozes cool because he has a do-anything attitude and he strikes fear into criminals. Plus the outfit is slick and so is the Batmobile. Not having parents would kind of suck, but it's how he handles it that makes him so great. My second favorite is Spiderman because he's so down-to-earth and relatable. And lastly, the X-men for obvious reasons.

Oh, and I'm not sure what the odds are that I'll be posting on Friday given all I have to do but we'll see what happens.