Movie Review: Men In Black 3

I liked it, I liked it better than MIB 2, and somewhat better than MIB1. The jokes were clever, the acting was reasonable, and the story done about as well as any time travel storyline can be.  Of course the entire time travel, change history thing is way overdone in science fiction these days, so I would say it loses points for that.  Not as many as something more serious would, but I'm still tired of the whole time travel thing.

On the whole, I'm glad I waited until it came on Starz, since I get that for free with my employment, so I didn't actually have to pay to see it, but it wasn't a bad show, and while it probably wouldn't have been worth seeing in a full price theater, I'm not sorry I saw it.    I'd give it about 4 stars out of 5.

Movie Review The Amazing Spiderman.

I'm still divided on how I feel about this movie.   While watching it, I found that I didn't care much about the characters.  The action scenes weren't done nearly as well as we've come to expect in action superhero movies, and that may be its biggest problem.

Reloading

If you're not into shooting and reloading, you might not understand this. 

I'm a fairly serious shooter, or rather I have been.  Life has significantly intervened, and I haven't been able to go shooting for a while.  Since my funds are somewhat limited, and I need to do SOMETHING shooting related, I am going to get back into reloading.

I had been reloading for a few years.  I was introduced by my uncle, but I think I kind of upset him.  What took him about 20 years of work to grasp, I understood in a day or so.  That particular uncle isn't particularly bright.

Anyway.  I had been reloading rather avidly, then something important happened.  I fell in love and got married.  I moved, then I moved again.  I left my reloading setup in my parents' house, but I didn't really have time or energy to devote to it. It kind of got buried, when my wife and I stored some of our stuff in the same room.  When my job went away, we had to move back in, and even more stuff went wherever I could put it.

Now I'm needing to get back into it, even if I don't have the time to go shooting now, or the money to get a range membership.  I can at least do something shooting related.

Since I left my reloading table as it was the last time I finished using it,  I thought I would share some insights.  Finish whatever you were doing before you stop, and put it away with understandable labels.

Let me share with you how I found my reloading table when I unburied it:

I found a powder trickeler full of an unidentified powder.  I don't remember what I was reloading last, so that powder is basically useless.   I'm pretty sure it's IMR 4732, but that is only based on its look, and where my powder measure was set.  I'm not willing to bet my life on it.  That means over 300 grains of powder just went down the drain.  On the plus side, I hear it's good fertilizer.

I found 2 #10 cans partially full of brass. I'm pretty sure I was doing some sort of process on a batch of brass, but I can't remember the process, or which can was the ones I was finished with vs. the ones I wss going to work on. I had various tools everywhere.  It was a mess.

While I don't really need to buy anything new, I might as well be starting over.  I have to take all of my brass and separate it out.  I have to get a bunch of new containers to store it in, and make sure everything is labeled.

I can only be thankful that nothing was rusty, or degraded in any other way.  Even my scale was still pretty close to being zeroed.

The moral of this story?  Even though most reloading equipment is of extremely good quality compared to most consumer goods, that can't keep you from all of your problems. Keep your reloading area clean and organized.  ALWAYS put your powder away, and if you can't finish a batch of something, label it.  Say what you were doing, and which stack was done and which one was not. Even masking tape and sharpie will work for that.  Finally if you can, clean up and store your supplies BEFORE you stop using them for an extended period of time.

Tron Legacy Review

For my birthday, my wife gave me tickets to the opening night of the new Tron movie, Tron Legacy 3D.  Despite it's rather dull storyline, I had been something of a fan of the original Tron, particularly that it was a rather groundbreaking movie with computer generated special effects. 

Tron Legacy is a much better movie. It's still a special effects movie, and the storyline is still somewhat lacking, but no more than a lot of other movies that try to be primarily special effects.  Unfortunately, while the effects in the original Tron were, at the time,  fantastic and futuristic, The Tron Legacy effects were nothing special by modern standards.  These days everything is done in the computer anyway, so it isn't that big of a deal anymore.

One other annoying detail, The 3D version isn't exactly 3D all the way through.  It is 2D until Sam Flynn (Kevin Flynn's son) is pulled into the computer (I'll trust that's not a significant spoiler, It wouldn't be much of a Tron movie if someone didn't get sucked into a computer).  Then it's 3D until it shows the real world again, when it goes back to 2D.  All I can figure out is that they were trying to do what The Wizard of Oz did with the color, black and white change when entering Oz.  As far as I'm concerned, it was annoying in both instances, and I think that I'll skip the 3D version of this particular movie in the future.

There is a little anti-capitalist propaganda that I detected in the movie.  It's rather blatant, and the attitude is almost a cartoonish version of progressive thought.  After all, how dare a company try to turn a profit. Kevin Flynn is even more of a hippie type than before, and that really looks like a caricature as well.  Interestingly, there is also very much an anti-utopist message in the movie.  Attempting to create some sort of utopia doesn't work, and totalitarianism generally results.  There is even a strong pro family message to the movie.  The liberal propaganda seems tacked on to get things past the leftists running Hollywood,

One final complaint.  It wasn't really finished.  Most of Tron Legacy almost seemed to be more about setting up the sequel, than having an actual movie.  There were several major plot threads that were never finished or fleshed out.  I suspect at least one, possibly two more movies are in the works.

Overall, if you want a deep movie Tron Legacy isn't it.  It is a nice popcorn type movie with decent if not fantastic (by modern standards) special effects.  The plot is also fairly flat, better than the original, but also rather similar to the original. 

Finally, if you want to see and actually understand Tron Legacy, you should probably rent the original Tron.  There are a number of references that could leave the uninitiated confused.

I intend to get the DVD when it's available, and I'll see the sequels.  It's not a deep or masterpiece of a movie, but it's worth a nice view a few times.

Glenn Beck Is in Danger -- They WILL Kill Him. He is Exposing Them.

The radical left has taken control of this country, and Glenn Beck has been doing a lot to expose it.  He's called crazy, and  yet the things he predicts keep coming true.  Not long ago, he said that socialists were trying to take control.  He was called crazy.  "There are no more socialists," was the constant refrain.  Now he's showing videos created by the supposedly mainstream left, of people not espousing socialism, but openly espousing communism.

He said that the fed would monetize the debt.  They said that he was fear mongering, and such a thing could never happen in America.  Now the fed has announced that they're monetizing the debt.  The left has gone to great lengths to discredit Mr.  Beck, but he's practically prophetic in his predictions.  Every time they try to discredit him, he gains credibility, because he is so often right.

Now he is running a countdown to the revelation of the "puppetmaster", and revealing the plan. this week.  They can not let this stand.  They now have no choice but to silence him.  He and they know that will only stop things for a while, but they are at a critical juncture.  Mr. Beck has the ear of a huge number of Americans, and he is exposing their agenda at a critical time. 

Now if Mr. Beck is killed, another will step up in his place, but if they can silence him for just a little while longer, they might be able to finish implementing their plan.


Mr.  Beck, please take care of yourself.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

My wife and I went to this movie a few nights ago.  We originally had no real intention of seeing it, but we wanted a date night, and decided to go to a movie.  This was the only one playing we wanted to see at all. It was a wonderful movie, with stunning 3D special effects.  It reminded me a lot of the Secret of NIMH in it's overall feel, but with a significantly different story.

The Legend of the Guardians, is a fantasy, that not only involves talking owls, but owls that can forge metal, and wear helmets, and metal covers for their talons.  If you can get past that, it is a wonderful little story about good and evil.