Movies

Today we went to go see The Muppets. It's been something that we've been meaning to do since it was released.

What can I say, Muppets have been a part of both Natalie's and my life as long as either of us can really remember. And Muppets are fun.

The movie is pretty much what you would expect from a mid-70's-to-early-80's reintroduction/reboot movie. There were things about the orignial Muppets where they made fun of themselves and some of the things that they did in the original TV run or the earlier movies. There were a number of storylines that they hinted to but didn't address as completely as I thought they could have. Most of these had to do with how some of the Muppets get to where they are when they are first found in the story. I don't want to really do any spoilers, and this isn't really a movie review. More a follow up on the previous post. Honestly, this is a Disney movie.

Untraceable - A group of cybercops finds themselves grappling with a megalomaniacal, murderous psychopath who uses the Internet to show off his grisly handiwork, rigging his site so that his remaining captives' fate depends on how many viewers it attracts. Led by FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and working against the clock, can the team apprehend the technologically brilliant killer? Colin Hanks and Mary Beth Hurt also star in this tense thriller. [Netflix Movies]

I remember seeing the trailers for this movie right before it was released. I was not exactly surprised that someone was going to do this, somewhere between a police procedural and I would assume what was supposed to be a horror flick. It wasn't a bad movie, and they seemed to actually get about half of the technology bits right. I did feel like they were pandering a bit early on when Agent Marsh spews not exactly meaningless technobabble and her boss doesn't understand her. I mean seriously. Would the guy heading up cybercrimes not have an IT background at this point?
It seemed a little too predictable. I won't spoil it for anyone. But you can pick which one of the supporting characters gets taken by the psycho about 5 minutes after the character is introduced. And you also can predict how the character is taken.
I have recently started to think about movies as "it's not how it really [would have] happened; it's more how people will remember it later when they talk about it." This movie fits that description. It seems more like an Internet myth made into a movie than realistic. For a story with a serious technical bent, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother was better. This isn't an "apples to apples" comparison: movie versus book. Doctorow was able to take a lot more time presenting what he was doing, and even explain how some of the tech worked. Untraceable just plowed right through it. As Agent Marsh says at one point: "It's a website." That's pretty much all anyone needs to know. The rest of the tech just falls in with the same black magic that the rest of the Internet runs on. It's not really needed to understand the movie's story or plot. Most people just want a toaster. Little Brother manages to almost make the network a character in the story.
And no, I'm not planning on doing a lot of movie reviews. I just felt like talking about this one.