It seems the president is following me around. I kidd…I kidd… Still, President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi are here (or very nearly here) now. Airspace has been shut down over the city, which I’m sure FedEx is quite unhappy about. There isn’t a time during the day you look up and don’t see a FedEx plane.

Here’s the TFR for the President’s flight: http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/notams.html#6/1294

Here’s a news story about the visit: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,201683,00.html

I got a job!  One month and three weeks after graduation I got my first post-degree job.  We’ll see how it goes in the coming weeks.

We went to see Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties yesterday while waiting for Shinta’s car to get done at Sears.  Once again I am surprised at just how bad the critics (and even regular folks) said the movie was.  I saw it for myself and I simply don’t agree.  Yes, the story isn’t deep.  Yes, the acting isn’t the best.  Yes, it’s very juvenile, but you know what?  It’s a kids movie.  It’s perfect for it’s target audience.  It’s no frills, and funny.  Certainly, this could have just been a made-for-TV movie, but apparently it’s not what Jim Davis wanted.  I for one thought it was funny and appropriate for anyone, just don’t come looking for a groundbreaking film.

We went to watch Click today.  It was certainly not what I expected of an Adam Sandler film.  It definitely starts out as one of his standard campy flicks, but about 2/3 of the way through it changes into something deeper, more meaningful, less funny (it’s still a comedy), and quite emotional.  I was surprised to see this extension.  Obviously, Sandler has quite a following in his normal form, so why challenge what brings in the bucks?  At least that’s the Hollywood mentality.  I quite liked the step he has taken with this film and look forward to seeing how or if he goes further in his next.  Thumbs up!

Yes, I actually went to see The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.  Actually, it wasn’t that bad.  Obviously, it’s not that realistic, and the story isn’t the most solid, but it’s your typical teenager summer film.  The stunt driving was amazing.  I’m sure there were a lot of special effects involved as well, but I’m fairly sure a good chunk of the fancy driving was really done.  I particularly liked Brian Tee (Drift King) and Sung Kang’s (Han) performances.  Sung Kang reminds me very much of a younger Jackie Chan (in appearance and likeability, he does no martial arts here).  The director did a decent job of pulling elements of film together to emphasize the intended feelings as scenes passed.  Nicely done.  This isn’t a contender for some special award or anything, but it did a good job fulfilling the genre for which it is intended.

I found a link to this article a few days back discussing education vs median income rates for the USA.  It’s quite interesting.  I’m particularly horrified at how low median income levels are everywhere, but it’s feels funny to move from Oklahoma to Tennessee and see that the rate right next to eachother.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=mosteducatedstates

We went to see The Lake House yesterday.  All the reviews had seemed pretty lack luster.  It seemed the whole media didn’t like the film and intended it to do poorly in the box office (and the opening numbers reflected this).  I really don’t understand why the media didn’t like it.  One thing I heard on an NPR review was that Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves didn’t share any screen time.  Did they even watch the film?  I really enjoyed it.  The ongoing twists were fairly predictable, but I wonder if the happy ending was Hollywood at work or if the original Korean film was the same.  Oops, I guess that twist is a bit of a spoiler – maybe.  Anyway, I fully enjoyed it.  It had decent cinematogrophy, good story line, decent acting (I mean, come on, it’s Keanu Reeves, he plays one character), nice special effect shots, and good mis-en-scene.

Well, apparently my connection and server outages are still happening. I contacted my host to see what’s up and they said that they are still having issues with the server I’m on and they hope to have it fixed next week. This is really making me think about not renewing with them this year.

My host has upgraded their network connection AND upgraded the server I’m on, so things should be much faster now.  We’ll see.  I’ve been considering moving as things have been so slow (and up and down like a yo-yo) lately.  So far so good.

We went to see Cars today.  It was quite a cute film.  From the previews I’d seen before other movies and the commercials on TV I really didn’t think it would be much good, but quite to the contrary it was great.  Something I must add, though.  I don’t know if I would have liked it as well on the small screen.  If we had waited for it to come out on video first I may have had a different impression.  The film really benfits from the larger format and big sound that a theater provides.  It has a good story and the computer animation was done in such a way to be more like some modern cartoons, but still with Pixar’s stylistic touch.  I recommend it for everyone.