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Brandy and I went to see Iron Man 2 last night.
Let’s start the story with the trailers. “Inception” (the next Christopher Nolan movie) looks to be fantastic. It looks like what would be created if Momento had a baby with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, infused with parts of Departed. Next, “Super 8″. This is one of JJ Abrams flicks, produced by Speilberg. Another monster flick, ala Cloverfield, but looks much better. Should be interesting.
On to the main event: Iron man 2. It was a solid flick, but not as good as the first, as I expected. I am glad I watched it, and will likely own it on Bluray when it comes out. I missed Terrance Howard in the role of Rhodey… Don Cheadle, while I like him as an actor, just didn’t have the same swagger. Downey, Jr continues to own the role of Tony Stark and it was a phenomenal performance. Without his charisma, the film likely would’ve fallen apart. Surprisingly enough, I truly enjoyed the casting of Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke. Strange choices that just seemed to click.
The plot was typical comic book fare. It was passable, but not overly groundbreaking. There wasn’t an overload of action, but the scenes that were there were pretty fantastic. I will say, i am disappointed that the final battle between Iron Man and Whiplash was just a tad short. I was expecting a bit more of a spectacle. Not to say that I wanted to watch a 30 minute battle of fisticuffs, as in the Hulk and the Abomination in “The Incredible Hulk”, but just something a bit more than what was offered.
What truly sold me on the movie, though, was the polish. There were so many little nods and details that just made this movie shine. From Jarvis (the return of Paul Bettany) to Cap’s Shield… Garry Shandling as Senator Stern… Sam Jackson’s “Nick fury” cameo… and the teaser after the credits. I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but they all just worked. I know Marvel Pictures is frantically piecing together the continuity of multiple stories to ultimately line up the Avengers movie, and I think their work is paying off. I am looking forward to Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, and ultimately Iron Man 3 (which, I hope, finally brings the Mandarin into play).
I would definitely catch this movie in the theaters and look forward to experiencing Iron Man in the comfort of my own home later this year.
This past weekend, we gathered a group of friends and went to the local cinema to watch “Star Trek” as directed by J.J. Abrams. I didn’t fully know what to expect when we walked into the theater. The level of hype around this movie equaled that of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and we know how that panned out.We were all pleasantly surprised to be treated to a fantastic film.
Who would’ve thought that this movie could live up to the hype and standards set by, not only, hardcore Star Trek fans, but avid Abrams followers? There are so many reasons this movie could have failed: poor casting, blackhole-sized plot holes, terrible script, lack of respect for the source material… and this film managed to walk all of these tightropes with grace and ease. And to top it off, it was an exciting journey from the first frame to the final fanfare.
Most Star Trek folks know that the series focuses on the characters… and this film is no different. All of the players enter the story as the plot demands, which allows for the proper introductions to be made for each and every character. And while Scotty shows up a bit late in the film for my tastes, it makes sense in the grand scheme of the movie.
The cast was spot on for each role. Chris Pine took command of James T. Kirk with reckless abandon. Zachary Quinto embodied the youthful Spock. I could take you through the entire list, but I will leave you with these two: Simon Pegg as Scotty (excellent, if underused) and the return of Leonard Nemoy (trust me, it just worked).
There is plenty of action to go around. In fact, there are only a few lulls in the entire 2 hour running time. The starship battles are spectacular, the halo-jumping skydive is amazing, and well… plenty of handy fisticuffs.
There is no better review for a movie than wanting to go right back into the theater and watch it again immediately. If I hadn’t have had plans already for the evening, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. This franchise reboot worked and worked well. It got my excited about Star Trek and anxious to see the next installment. Do yourself a favor and treat yourself to a theater viewing of this movie.
Last week, some folks celebrated Cinco de Mayo on Friday… which would’ve been Ocho de Mayo, but I am not sure anyone was actually keeping track. There was a smorgasbord of food available for everyone and most was quite tasty. There was a peculiar gem on the dessert table though… the Margarita Cake.
I have never had one of these before, much less heard of it. Regardless of my ignorance, this was a phenomenal cake: moist, tasty, and satisfying.
I have been in search of a recipe for this cake and found, what I believe, was the recipe used for the cake I had. I wasn’t expecting to find so many different variants on this idea. But here we go…
Margarita Cake – All Recipes
INGREDIENTS
* 1 (18.25 ounce) package orange cake mix
* 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
* 4 eggs
* 1/2 cup vegetable oil
* 2/3 cup water
* 1/4 cup lemon juice
* 1/4 cup tequila
* 2 tablespoons triple sec liqueur
* 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
* 1 tablespoon tequila
* 2 tablespoons triple sec liqueur
* 2 tablespoons lime juice
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan.
2. In a large bowl combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, oil, water, lemon juice 1/4 cup tequila and 2 tablespoons triple sec. Beat for 2 minutes.
3. Pour batter into prepared pan (Bundt pan). Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes; remove to rack and pour glaze over cake while still warm.
4. To make the glaze: In a small bowl, combine confectioners’ sugar with 1 tablespoon tequila, 2 tablespoons triple sec and 2 tablespoons lime juice. Mix until smooth.
Today is the little hellion’s birthday. I had my doubts that Lily would still be with us at this time, but I must say she has made marked improvements in behavior over the past 2 months. It could be that we have started treating her more like a tiny dog than a hyperactive feral, but tame, cat.
In the course of the last year, Lily has kept us up at all hours of the night, tormented Bosco and Maggie relentlessly, discovered that feather dusters are the scourge of the Earth, developed a talent of leaping 6 feet in the air for a sitting position, and learned to sit on command. But, most importantly, she has become much more mellow, limiting her feral outbursts to only a few short bursts at night. Yay for us!
Happy Birthday, Lily!
If you couldn’t tell from the title of this post, I was a little less than pleased with my time spent with the latest, and hopefully last, installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise. I knew going in that I should keep my expectations low, because let’s face it — George Lucas hasn’t had a great track record when it comes to bringing back beloved movie franchises from my childhood. Wow — I had no idea what to expect, but what I got wasn’t it.
First off, some positive notes. It was great to see Harrison Ford back in action wielding the legendary whip and donning the infamous fedora. He definitely not the action star he used to be, but I wasn’t expecting him to be either. Shia LeBeouf handled his character as well as he could have. Both actors did quite well, provided the schlock they were given. The musical score was a total throwback to the original series – great! Spielberg can create some amazingly beautiful shots. The ant sequence was entertaining as well.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the matter. I figure I’ll present my complaints in a bulleted format.
- The script was just pitiful. It was said the powers that be were waiting for the perfect script to come along — I’m wondering why they stopped waiting. Since when did Indiana Jones become a sci-fi character? As my friend Christian mentioned, the plot seemed to fit around action-sequences as opposed to the action fitting around the plot. Moving along…
- Did we need the gratuitous crotch-shot, and I use this word loosely, joke?
- I was not aware that George of the Jungle was a part of the Indiana Jones mythos.
- Gophers? Monkeys? Aliens? Really?
- I wasn’t aware that Cate Blanchett’s character was supposed to be psychic until well after the movie was over.
- Many of the action sequences left me bored. There were several times I found myself just staring at the screen wondering why I wasn’t more involved with the story. There was little to draw me into the film and make me really truly care about the adventure that was being spoon-fed to the audience.
This was another reason to dislike George Lucas, or at least what he has become. Without his vision, we wouldn’t have such fond childhood memories, but did he really have to come back and spit on these memories? The acting was decent, the visuals were appealing, the score was exciting, the story was terrible, the dialog was bland. Would I recommend seeing the movie? Yes, but in the comfort of your own home. That way, you won’t feel bad when you want to turn it off and go do something else.
I have been using QuickTest Pro for several years now and have just discovered a simple, but highly useful, feature. In dealing with ActiveX controls, there are many times when the ActiveX add-in for QTP just doesn’t full recognize an application object.
Using the ObjectSpy, you can select the object in question and see all the runtime properties and methods available for the object. For the longest time, I had been using the GetROProperty() method to retrieve the values of the properties. However, I’d not considered how to execute the methods of the objects, as I never needed to do that.
It turns out that you can access the methods, and properties, of the object with this simple code snippet:
VbWindow("frmWindow").ActiveX("testObject").Object.methodName()
VbWindow("frmWindow").ActiveX("testObject").Object.Property
Happy Testing!
from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit
A sketch is a free hand drawing. In Adobe Photoshop, you can add a sketch effect to any color image or photograph and give it an artistic feel, or perhaps trick your friends into thinking you’ve suddenly become an amazing sketcher.
Continue reading Make a Color Image Look Like a Sketch in Photoshop
When creating reusable actions in QuickTest Pro, there are times you may come across the need to dynamically access an object within your application that may or may not exist within your Object Repository. One approach to handling this opportunity is through the use of Description Objects.
I could spend a lot of time attempting to explain how to go about implementing description objects, but I have found that QTP’s help files do a good job explaining exactly what you need to do. To find what you are looking for, search for “Using Description Objects for Programmatic Descriptions” within the help file.
Continue reading Description Objects
This is from FunnyOrDie.com. A great parody of the Pc/Mac Apple commericals starring Iron Man and Batman. The video is embedded after the jump.
Continue reading I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC
This Siting displays Bosco has he discovers the Ladybug of Loose Change in Baby Pate’s room.
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