The Kingdom and Eastern Promises

I try to keep up with my tradition that Thursday night is the movie night. This is not always the case, depending on what I am playing. But the thing is, I never run of good movies to watch. NEVER!!!

So, tonight (technically, we are on Friday's morning) I watched 2 movies: The Kingdom and Eastern Promises.

THE KINGDOM

There is something about this movie that I didn't like. Agreed, this is a good action movie, but take care of this: action movie. Although this movie tries, very hard, to carry a message, it fails... Not miserably, but it still fails.

The movie is about a terrorist attack on a foreigners' compound in Saudi Arabia. This is followed by the trials of a FBI team to get on Saudi soil, until eventually they manage to do so, or there wouldn't have been a movie, duh!!!

I hate Jamie Foxx! The guy can't act. The rest of the cast was OK. But the Arab cast was a hit and miss. First of all, they all sounded like voice overs from Battlefield 2! But I have to mention that they spoke correct Arabic. Maybe not 100% correct, but better than any movie I have seen. Non Arabic movie, that is.

The 4 superheroes making up the FBI team land in SA and they start teaching the Saudis how to investigate and how to collect evidence. This is really absurd. This reminds me of the scene in Kingdom of Heaven when Balian started digging a well for the Arabs to irrigate their crops. Balian was a blacksmith from England who knew nothing about life in the desert, but still he taught them. The same Tarzan the Ape Man Complex...

The movie tries to be balanced, and it is better, much better, than, say, Munich at that. But still, it's biased! By the end of the first 10 or 15 minutes, I think a Western audience would be so angry of Saudis and Muslims in general that whatever you say during or at the end of the movie won't help change this image. Some effectively symbolic shots really grab a Western audience by the throat and scream at them for affection.

It's understandable that the director wishes to show the Saudi world to a Western audience who, presumably, know nothing about this world. While no parts of the movie were shot in Saudi Arabia, the movie tries to capture what it is to be in a Middle Eastern country. But unfortunately, this didn't go without its faults... For starters, the movie draws attention to the females dressed in traditional Saudi dress more than once. It should have been done only once. Most of the urban areas around the Western compound look like the people in there live in the 1980s or something. In fact like my friend Falcon said, it does look like a level cut from Call of Duty 4. The environments are dirty, gritty and looks like there was a war fought there not too long ago, even though nothing actually happened there, yet. They also remind me of the gritty environments of Black Hawk Down. But the thing I want to say is that, Middle Eastern countries do not like this, not anymore... And certainly not in a rich, actually ridiculously rich, country like SA. In many parts of the movie, I sensed disrespect to Muslims, but in other shots, the movie tries to show the audience some of the activities of Muslims in a respectable way. My guess is that the director wanted to show all the colours of the rainbow in his movie. But the fact remains that the movie shows more Muslim villains than it shows Muslim good guys!

The action sequences are nicely done and it looks that we are getting more and more movies (and games!) featuring combat in the Middle East. I mean, the audience has already seen action in jungles, forests, European beaches, Mars, bla, bla, bla. Now it's the desert's turn.

I was originally going to give this movie a 7, but there was a thing that made me chop off another point: stupid cinematography! I don't mean that the shots are bad, it's just the camera is too shaky! It's a nice effect in action sequences, but when you have 2 people talking to each other, why do you have to shake the camera? I got a headache watching this movie. It was a nice effect but overused.

Nothing will ever beat Lawrence of Arabia when it comes to a movie done by a Westerner about the Middle East.

6/10

EASTERN PROMISES

Now, that's a good movie! If you have seen, and liked, A History of Violence, you will like this movie a lot. It share the same atmosphere. I will get to that later. And if you haven't liked HoV... Why?!

The movie takes place in modern day London and involves the Russian mafia. I won't get into any plot details for fear of spoilers. The plot is not the most complex of plots but it's very good.

Now, what made this movie excellent was the atmosphere. Like in David Cornenberg's other movie, the mob is real. These people are real and they live like other people, well, sort of. The scenes where you have mob members setting with family, cooking, drinking, ... etc makes you believe that they are real. They are crazy, stylish people, but they are real. Some of the locations and scenes in this movie are pretty memorable too.

Acting is great, although Naomi Watts screen time is rather limited. Like HoV, again, this is a somewhat short movie. At about 100 minutes, I think it was a bit short. The other actors did a great job too. But I think HoV had better acting... After all, it had Ed Harris!

I recognized Howard Shore's music from the opening credits!!! As usual, he is great!

This is a highly recommended movie. Watch it ASAP.

8.5/10

EDIT: Part of the review of The Kingdom was edited from its original form. The reason for this is that I saw it was a bit unbalanced. And I did reference my friend, Falcon, who was the first to comment on this post.

Grindhouse

I was very interested to see this movie. Directed by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill) and Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, El Mariachi Trilogy and Sin City) and it made it to the IMDb Top 250 in its release week although it performed poorly in the box office.

The idea is simple, you have 2 full length feature movies with trailers for fake movies in-between. I am a fan of Tarantino and Rodriguez, so you must think how excited I was to watch this movie.

The movie was not released in cinemas where I live, so I got my copies from you-know-where!!! I only got to see one of the fake trailers, out of four. I will look for the rest and try to see them, but this review is for the 2 feature movies; Planet Terror by Rodriguez and Death Proof by Tarantino.


Planet Terror

This movie is a spoof of all the cheap zombie/sci-fi B-movies. You get crazy soldiers with a crazy scientist, redneck Texans, vigilante police officers with shotguns, some hot chicks and a hero who is a nobody and everyone calls him Wray, but when things go wrong, it turn out that he is El Wray, the badass.

Wray's girlfriend gets attacked by zombies and her leg is chopped off, instead she has an assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher!

This movie resembles From Dusk Till Dawn a lot. If you liked the former, you will certainly like Planet Terror. The movie has a visual filter than makes the screen grainy and very old, like you are watching a movie in a very cheap theater, which is intended by the makers. The soundtrack of this movie is also pretty good. The main rock theme blends with the action smoothly, and it has the cheesy feeling that accompanies the whole movie.

All in all, the movie was good. It was so cheesy to the extent that it was good!

If you like zombies or other sci-fi related movies, or if you want to see a ridiculously cheesy action movie, you will like Planet Terror.

6.5/10



Death Proof

This is Tarantino's newest movie. This guy has a problem. He is very self-conscious. If you have seen Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, then you saw Jackie Brown, you will know what I mean. His hits will make him so full of air that his next movie will be not-so-good. In our case, Kill Bill is the good movie and Death Proof is the bad one.

This movie is incredibly boring, and I have seen a lot of boring movies, so I know what boring is! It's so full of ego, I thought it would burst. There is ZERO plot. There are lots of f-words and strong language for no reason other than ... well, to make the movie sound cool. Anyone who have seen Pulp Fiction will know that f-words can make the dialog a bit interesting. But this is too much.

The plot (which doesn't exist!) is about a stuntman who stalks young girls using his creepy stunt car. The movie is made of 2 parts with ZERO relevance to each other, other than the stuntman and the car. The dialogs are very, very long and again, incredibly boring... like Ocean's Twelve-boring. It's like a group of random girls talking about random things which have no relevance to each other or to the audience. The girls are also, very sleazy and almost all of them sound like Uma Thurman (The Bride) from Kill Bill. By that I mean, strong, over-confident and foul-mouthed women.

The car chase scenes are well done, but boring. This movie pays homage to all the 70s car chase movies, and this is referenced more than once in the movie. Car chases are good, but you can't base a movie on them!

The only good part of this movie was the soundtrack, which is, typical of Tarantino, very cool. The visual filters present in Planet Terror are almost missing in this movie, which is really a shame, considering that they added a lot to the feeling that I am watching a B-movie.

This is one Tarantino movie that I really didn't like... And I even liked Jackie Brown, which was great compared to this crap!

6/10... Sorry Q!

Overall rating for Grindhouse (subjective, not an average): 6/10. Only watch if you are a fan of either of the 2 directors. But if you are a regular guy who wants a good movie, avoid this.

EDIT: I changed the score of Death Proof. Now it's 6 instead of 4. It's still a bad movie, but what made me pump up the score was the fact that this movie was highly memorable! Whenever I am driving, I can't help but remembering it. But, thank God, I don't drive like Stuntman Mike!!!

The score for Grindhouse as a whole is not changed. It's still 6/10.

The dust settles...

Oh it's over. The past few months were full of great games, released one after another. The worst thing is that all I could do was to look, but not to touch! My aging PC, Metal Gear REX, just can't do it. It's very old!

2007 may go down in history as the year for gaming. But I still think 2004 was better. In 2004 you got Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Doom 3, Far Cry, UT2004 and GTA: San Andreas. While in 2007, you had Halo 3, The Orange Box, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament III, BioShock, and many more.

REX managed to run the CoD4 demo quite well, I still have to run the full game. It ran The Orange Box magnificently. This game compilation deserves a separate post.

My PC needs and urgent upgrade, but I will wait a bit more. AMD's Phenom has just been released. It offers great value for money with good performance and peace of mind! The AM2 socket will continue to 2009. Intel is discontinuing its Socket 775 next year. Let's wait and see.

A mantis in my window

This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting in my room when I looked at the window and saw it. This was the largest praying mantis I have ever seen. These creatures have always fascinated me. They are beautiful, calm and deadly predators (like cats!).

I tried to take photos in macro mode using my Sony DSC-W50 digital camera. But it kept focusing on the mosquito wire of my window rather than focusing on the mantis itself. So, sorry for the quality of the photos. I could have shot the exterior of the window by opening it, but I didn't want Mr. Mantis to pray in my room, besides, if it managed to get inside my room, it would have driven my cat crazy!

I lost my virginity!

OK... I am lying! But that's the closest term that can describe what happened to me tonight!

Ever since I joined medical school, I made a secret pact with myself that I won't take private lessons. It was part ideological and part practical (lessons = waste of time).

Thank God, I am doing well in college and my grades are fine. But I decided to give a try at attending a private lesson in internal medicine. My glorious college doesn't offer good lectures and some professors don't attend, and those who attend, shouldn't! They are not born to be lecturers. Maybe they are superb doctors, but they can't teach!

Anyway, I decided it will be very foolish of me if I didn't take a lesson based on ideology alone, if the price was that I will be a less qualified doctor than my peers. Grades can go to hell, I want to be a good practitioner! So, I made the decision.

To start, I felt like something broke inside me! Seriously, it was like an idol that was breaking apart! It reminds me of the victory scene in Shadow of the Colossus when you kill a colossus and in turn, his idol is destroyed. I haven't taken a private lesson for 5 years... since I was in school!

Let's sum it up with that: the tutor was very good (and God damn the stupid policies that prevents a guy like him from explaining the whole internal medicine curriculum for us in college!). But the surroundings were abysmal. The entrance was surrounded by secondary school students. The center has everything from a cafeteria to a place where they sell pre-paid mobile phone cards! There was about 300 students in the lecture hall. The tutor arrived more than an hour late.

I really don't know if I can go on like this. The subject is tough, but taking a private lessons won't make it go away. The problem with me is that I am picky! If I am not 100% content with the person (and the surroundings) teaching me, then it will be useless. I am better off alone.

I will try another tutor and see.

Final piece of advice: If you are interested in medicine... don't study it here!

Kojima speaks...

Of course I watched the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) trailer the day the HD direct feed was out. Simply WOW!!! This game will really just tie all the lose knots in the Metal Gear Saga. I just can't wait for it to be released.

After being blown away by the Halo 3 review, I was browsing Gamespot when I came to this article. I don't know why I wasn't emailed about this from Gamespot. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I check Gamespot like 3-4 times daily!

If you haven't played the full MGS series, then don't bother reading the Gamespot article, for you it will be full of spoilers and jargon. In MGS you have to know who is who.

The article fully explains the SOP thing which was first revealed in the E3 trailer this year. SOP stands for Sons of the Patriots. A nanomachine system that was injected into all soldiers from Private Military Companies or PMCs. The purpose is to achieve total real-time control over battlefields by the Patriots. With this, the Patriots have supreme control over everything. The SOP system allows for integration between soldiers as if they were one unit. This was shown by the unit commanded by Meryl Silverburgh. They are not PMC, in fact they are anti-PMC. The problem with PMCs is that they have grown considerably. Their size has grown to rival the size of the US military.

Enters Liquid Ocelot...

Since Revolver Ocelot became possessed by Liquid Snake's arm which was transplanted to him, he started to act and think like Liquid. Liquid wants to destroy the Patriots, for revenge. So, he organized an insurrection. He forced Naomi Hunter, the original creator of the nanomachine technology first used by Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident, and the creator of FoxDie, to control the soldiers from PMCs and raise a huge army to make the vision of Big Boss true. He wants to create Outer Heaven... The one place where soldiers will always have a place.

Enters Solid Snake...

He is once again recruited by Colonel Campbell. Col. Campbell works for a UN organization, the purpose of which is to monitor PMC activity. He knew about the insurrection and he sent Snake to assassinate Liquid.


The best thing about MGS is the plot twists. You never know what's going to happen next. Since this game is a continuation to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, then I hope it will have a highly convoluted and engaging story. I didn't like the fact that they over-simplified the story for MGS3: Snake Eater. I still liked the story a lot, but I wanted more twists! MGS2 made me crazy!!!

EVA returns in MGS4 as a 80 year-old woman, but still looks powerful, to combat the Patriots. She is called Big Mama. Kojima said that the name is indicative to something. I wonder...

As shown by numerous trailers, Vamp returns. He looks more dangerous than ever. I hope that Snake (or Raiden) gets to finish him once and for all.

There is a rookie in Meryl's squad. He is called Johnny and he looks to have some intestinal problems. I don't know who he will be. I thought he was Raiden in disguise. Maybe he is the young Snake shown in last year's TGS trailer.

And finally, there is the battle between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot in Metal Gears!!! Snake is using the old Metal Gear REX, while Ocelot is using Metal Gear RAY. I think it will be a spectacular battle. Something for the ages...

Solid




VS

Liquid

Halo 3 gets released!!!

The final chapter in the epic fight of Master Chief vs. the Covenant. It was released today on the Xbox 360. The Gamespot review gave it a 9.5. A game like this, you don't ask if it will be good or not, you ask, how much above 9, Gamespot will give it in the review!

Although I don't have a 360 and I don't intend to get one any time soon (for the lack of money, that is). But I am slightly reassured that I will, God willing, play this game someday. Microsoft will release it to the PC. The did it with Halo, Halo 2 and soon with Gears of War. But my guess that this will be in 2009 or 2010 (Maybe then I will have upgraded REX). MS is not stupid enough to do it before then. Halo 3 will be the spearhead of MS attack to dominate the gaming world, and so far, it's been successful.

Just imagine this: Halo 2 on the original Xbox made about $ 125 million in the first 48 hours!

Anyway, back to my life. I have got to stop dreaming.

I became a grandfather!!!

Not really! I am only 21! But my cat, Bondok, now has an offspring!

I mated him with a friend's female cat, Tweety. She stayed with him for 18 days. For 15 days, he followed he like her shadow and they had some fights. Basically, Bondok was the one getting his ass kicked. Tweety was 3 years old while Bondok was only 1 year old. She was almost twice his size. He claws were razor-sharp and I got to try them myself! Not to mention her wonderful bite!

Anyway, in the last 3 days, they did it. For 3 full days, they did nothing but copulate! Bondok didn't sleep or eat or even use the litter box. Just pure action! He lost a lot of weight in 3 days.

Then I decided that I (and Bondok) had enough, and I was lucky that the cat's owner wanted her. Bondok was like a lost baby when she left. He, then, remembered that he has a loving owner (me) and after 2 weeks, returned to normal.

Tweety, however, turned out to have missed her vaccine schedule. In her 3 years of life, she was only vaccinated once. A cat should be vaccinated annually. She had some kind of viral infection and had tongue and mouth ulcers which prevented her from eating. I have no idea how she got this infection, but I guess Bondok should know!

After receiving her treatment, we discovered that she was pregnant. And yesterday, she gave birth to 2 beautiful kittens. One of them looks just like her father. I don't know which is the male and which is the female and maybe they are of the same sex. She gave birth inside a wardrobe in my friend's house. She did it over a dozen or so bedsheets.

I went there and brought my camera. I started shooting like crazy, she and the kittens were so lovely.

Beggers are not choosers

On the 25th of September, Halo 3 will be released on the Xbox 360 and the Crysis demo will be released for the PC on the same day. It's clear that I won't be affected by either! I don't have an Xbox 360 and my REX will only (if) manage to run Crysis in slide show mode!

So, I will just keep myself busy and wait for Mandriva 2008 release on the 27th. Trying a Linux distro is not as fun as playing a game like Halo 3 or Crysis, but beggars are not choosers!

Distro Smackdown (First half, 2007)

So, I have tried all the major Linux distributions released during the months of April and May. These are: Mandriva 2007.1, Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7 and PCLinuxOS 2007.

Let's start with Mandriva:
Installation: The Free DVD version is much better in my opinion. The live/install One CD is good if you want to get to know Mandriva. But if you want to install it, go for the DVD edition. The Mandriva installer worked fine for me in both, although a very annoying thing in the One installer was that there was no "back" button!

Package management: I am a bit spoiled by APT, so Mandriva URPMI wasn't that good in my opinion. I did install Smart. But I don't like Smart that much.

Artwork: Mandriva Free has beautiful blue artwork, while One has an annoying orange one. You can change that but not easily. The icon of the K menu (if you use KDE) is not that easy to change, besides it is oversized. In fact, it's huge!

Package selection: You get all the usual suspects (Firefox, OOo, etc). But as you should expect, the Free DVD has more software.

Management: The Mandriva Control Center makes your life a lot easier. You almost never have to go near the Terminal or type any commands, except for adding repositories from the EasyURPMI site.

Thoughts: The most annoying thing that I encountered in Mandriva 2007 was that when there was an update, you will have to select the packages to be updated manually. This was very annoying. This was fixed in 2007.1. What Mandriva needs to get back to where Mandrake (Mandriva's precursor!) was, is to remove the confusion the users have developed thanks to a bad website and lots of versions to choose from.

I had Mandriva on my REX but removed it after sometime. I got bored of the slow URPMI (which downloads packages and updates one by one). REX is currently running Ubuntu 7.04.

I will revisit Mandriva when 2008 is released sometime this month, God willing.

Now it's Ubuntu's turn:
Installation: I use the standard (live/install) CD. I also downloaded those for Kubuntu and Xubuntu to try them. The installer in all of them was the same as the one that was introduced with Ubuntu 6.06. An addition, however, was the Windows migration tool. I didn't use it so I can't comment on how good it was.

Package management: It's based on Debian, so it has APT. Now add Automatix to install all the software that you want and you have one of the easiest distros to manage software in.

Artwork: It's Ubuntu!!! They will never change the brown theme! It's not bad at all, it's just OLD. They need to change it to add a touch of freshness to this distro. Artwork for Kubuntu and Xubuntu remained almost the same too.

Packages: The usual suspects. But you have a huge repo and Automatix.

Thoughts: Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) added some nice additions to Ubuntu like the addition of the codec installer, the restricted driver module and easy to use Compiz. Almost none of these features are available in Kubuntu or Xubuntu (except the restricted driver module in Xubuntu). Xubuntu is completely uninspired. It confused. It doesn't look like a regular XFCE distro like ZenWalk. Instead, it looks almost like Ubuntu. While Ubuntu is fine, but XFCE has it's own character that is different from Ubuntu's GNOME.

Kubuntu however is good, but it lacks the advanced features of Ubuntu, and it also lacks a characteristic configuration method of any kind. You only get KDE's configuration tools.

Ubuntu 7.04 is really good. I have my two systems running it. But I always wish it was perfect. Looking forward to 7.10, due in October.

As for Fedora 7, I have already stated my opinion on UbuntuForums. Here is what I said:

I installed Fedora 7 twice. The first time, installation went fine, I added Livna and started installing stuff using Yumex. Then I discovered that almost everything I installed had a missing dependency. This has never ever happened to me in any distro I have used. Never! I removed and reinstalled the packages and they worked fine. But I decided that I needed a fresh install.

On the second install, everything went smoothly, which gave me time to think about Fedora. The package manager is a pain in the back. For example, the update manager tells me that there are updates but doesn't tell me their size or how much time is remaining for individual packages. I have a slow DSL line (256 Kbps) and downloading updates without knowing when they will finish is annoying. Moreover, I don't want to use Yumex anymore, because of my previous experience. As for Smart, it's good but I didn't install Fedora just to use Smart, you know!

Apart from the package manager, I had a Gnome desktop. I realized that with the exception of a nice GUI to configure Samba, there is very little difference between Fedora and Ubuntu. I am not saying that Ubuntu invented Gnome. But when you have a distro with a better package manager, better repos, better forums and better wikis and documentation on the web, what will make me go and use Fedora... The Smaba GUI, no thanks!

The other RPM distros that I used and had to bear the bad package management were Mandriva, PCLOS and openSUSE. They had somethings to offer that Ubuntu doesn't have: Better KDE and a user-friendly control panel. Ubuntu doesn't have these.

That's what I think of Fedora!

Now, it's PCLinuxOS 2007's turn:

Apart from the cheesy name, this is a very good distro. A very, very good distro. The only problem that I felt (By the way, I almost didn't run into any problem using this distro) is that PCLOS is uninspired. I feel that it's not its own distro. You get the best parts of every other distro, but where is the PCLOS character? Even the looks was made similar to Windows XP!!!

The only missing feature is that Synaptic (the GUI for the package manager) lacks an "Update" utility, which means that you won't be notified of new updates, instead you will have to check for updates yourself using Synaptic or simply "apt-get update" from the terminal. But this is only a minor problem.

So for me, the winner was Ubuntu followed closely by PCLOS. The clear loser was Fedora 7!

Bioshock: thoughts

NO. I haven't played this game yet. This is by no means a review. I am just expressing my thoughts. The system requirements for this game are exactly those of my REX. It will be simply unplayable.

Ever since the first trailers, I fell in love with this game. I really liked the atmosphere. The game world reminds me of Dark City, a very good sci-fi movie that almost no one remembers because it was overshadowed by The Matrix.

It may be a lot of time before I can play this game.

The game received a 9.7 from IGN and a 9.0 from Gamespot.

A Big Daddy... Run!

BioShock: IGN review

This game is one of the main reason that I want to upgrade my PC, er..., Metal Gear REX. It's just too old!

IGN reviewed the game and gave it a 9.7. I don't like their reviews in general, but it is something to read until Gamespot release theirs.

Check some trailers and gameplay videos on gametrailers.com

Strangers on a Train

I really want to watch all the movies in my collection before the start of college. So, I gave this Hitchcock movie a try today.

Let's start be saying that the movie idea was new: two strangers having an innocent conversation while on a train may cause more problems than they imagined. But the problem of the movie was that while the movie plot was great and the acting was superb (as any thing you would expect by Hitchcock), the general pace of the movie was lacking. I think the movie could have been a little shorter. I don't mind long movie, and Strangers on a Train is not long, it's just an hour and 40 minutes long, but I think it could have been shorter, say 1 hour and 15 minutes at max.

Short movies are not bad. I have recently seen Christopher Nolan's debut movie, Following. The movie is very short, but that works for it, as anything longer would have been bad. I will try to review this movie some day. Nolan is one of my favourite directors.

Anyway, I am not saying that Strangers on a Train is a bad movie. Not at all. It was enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it as I did enjoy other Hitchcock movies (Like The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo). Maybe because there was no James Stewart in this one!

My next Hitchcock movie, God willing, will be Lifeboat. I have seen this movie as a kid. It's time that I watch it again as a grown up.

Score: 7/10

Best quote:

"My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer."
- Bruno

The Man Who Wasn't There: I love B&W

Hello, dear readers.

I was going to write a boring intro for this blog as this is the first post. But I thought it was too much work and instead I watched a movie.

It was the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. Simply amazing, and this comes from a guy who has seen a lot of film-noirs. It captured the feeling, that strange feeling that you felt when you see Humphrey Bogart on the screen.

The story is pretty normal, but it's the storytelling and acting which are amazing. Billy Bob Thornton did a very good voice-over. He has this strong, sad and gritty voice that is typical for the role. I like this guy.

The rest of the cast were good, especially James Gandolfini (The Sopranos). Music was mostly piano sonatas by Beethoven and some jazz. Cinematography was great. I saw the original, theatrical B&W version, not the coloured one (which I own, but I don't think I will ever watch). Lighting and smoke were perfectly captured on screen. I hate cigarette smoke and smokers, but this time I didn't mind it: Thornton smokes in almost every scene of the movie. It gave me ideas!

This is not the first Coen Brothers movie that I have seen. I saw Miller's Crossing, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, The Ladykillers and Fargo. I think I may need to watch Miller's Crossing and Fargo again, as those were the ones that I really liked and I haven't seen them in a long time. I still have to watch Blood Simple and The Big Lebowski.

Anyway, it was a nice movie: 8/10. Recommended if you want to watch a modern stylish movie in B&W.

Best quote:

"Me? I don't talk much. I just cut the hair."
- Ed