The weird thing about this movie is mostly related to the actors make-up when portraying the surrogates as they are meant to be perfect and there forth look like they’ve been airbrushed to death. This makes the film maintain a distinct and believable look which makes watching it enjoyable and interesting. Over all this is a thoroughly enjoyable movie for anyone looking for a decent sci-fi thriller.

The movie itself is based on a comic book with the same name. I tried reading the comic book but the art was not something I liked so I never bothered reading it. But if interested it is available from Amazon if it strikes your fancy.

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NOTE: In this post I will try not to spoil The Naming Of The Beasts but will contain extensive spoilers for the previous books in the series.

The Naming of The Beasts focuses on Castor’s quest to help his friend Rafi who has been possessed by a demon and his soul bound with the demon’s essence as Castor tried to exorcise the demon a few years prior but failing miserably. At the end of the last book, Thicker Than Water, the demon Asmodeus in Rafi’s body had just escaped the custody Castor had placed him in after an failed exorcism by extremist Christian exorcists. To try and capture Asmodeus once more and hope to exorcise him from Rafi’s body, Castor is forced to enlist the help of Professor Mulbridge and her squad of exorcists who have rather questionable morals. In return for their help Castor must once again enter the service of Professor Mulbridge in spite of his excessive hate for her operation and methods. The book throws Castor into a array of horrific encounters with varied demons, nefarious henchmen and various other entities of both supernatural and extremely ordinary nature.

The book is a packed thriller with very little downtime at all for Castor to reflect on his actions and consequences as he rushes onwards to save his friend from the clutches on the demon Asmodeus while fighting to keep himself alive long enough to see that goal attained. The book doesn’t do much in the sense of explaining the numerous questions wondering around in ones head after reading the previous books in the series but it does a good job of providing minor information concerning the nature of demons and their development/evolution. The book is a excellent follow up to the prior books in the series and provides a closure to issues that have hounded Castor since the inception of the series. The Naming of The Beasts is a quick read and you won’t want to put it down as you go through it but of course I can only recommend it to fans of the Felix Castor series who have read up on the previous books and if you haven’t done that yet, go grab them today and start reading!

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I Sell The Dead is clearly created as a low budget horror film in terms of visuals and storyline but in a friendly and familiar fashion to fans of horror films. Although this is a horror film it does not in any way take itself too seriously. It’s not an all out comedy with a horror plot like Shaun Of The Dead but most people who see the film will have ample opportunity to laugh. The movie does start off a bit generic and lacking in any manner of horror elements (excluding the fact that it’s about grave robbers). It does however take a sharp turn to the inclusion of horror elements as around the mid point of the film supernatural beings start showing up.

I Sell The Dead is a horror flick with ample comedic scenarios to make it appealing to most watchers as long as they are old enough. I full heartedly recommend this film.

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The movie tells the tale of one Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. Henry is a young man who has all his life been inflicted by his ability/curse of time travel. He doesn’t have the ability to control when he time travels nor where to or when to. He seems to be drawn to thing in his past or future that are of high impact to his life. One of these things is his wife Clare who he visits through out her young life until she finally meets him at a time where their respective timelines intersect and they can be together.

I’m not much of a fan of romantic movies but this one is quite good. All the actors perform admirably and the plot and the consequential plot twists keep you interested through out the film. I recommend this film to anyone except those with a high degree of alpha male complex and can’t watch a film if it doesn’t contain a singular explosion and high speed chases.

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The Soloist stars Downey as a successful LA Times journalist who comes across a musical servant (Foxx) who is homeless and has schizophrenia. The journalist instantly feels a connection with the musician and decides to write his story in the LA Times. Over the course of the film the two for a friendship as the journalist tries everything in his power to help the unfortunate musician.

The movie is at times a bit slow in unfolding the story and does feel a bit long but it shows a excellent story with an amazing cast so I would easily classify it as a must see.

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A Conversation About Payroll Data That You Never Saw On CNBC
by Robert E. Bronson, III
Bronson Capital Markets Research

~~~~

Joereal at CNBC: We’re very pleased today to introduce Constant Pangloss for his take on today’s payroll data report.

Pangloss: Thank you, Joereal. I’m delighted to be here. Today’s report was just outstanding! To be factual, July’s loss of jobs was 44% less than June’s jobs loss and a huge 64% less than the biggest jobs loss in February! This “green shoot” is proof positive that the recession has nearly, if not already, ended, which is confirmed by today’s breakout bull market rally to a new intraday high at 1018 for the S&P 500!

Joereal: Did you notice that the 9.4% unemployment rate from the household survey would have been 9.7% rather than 9.4%, if some 422,000 unemployed people had not left the labor force during the four weeks prior to the survey, many of them so discouraged that they did not look for work because they know there are no jobs for them?

Or that the seasonal adjustment of the payroll data artificially created 28,000 jobs in the auto industry, when, in fact, automakers cut 8,600 jobs, so that the reported 247,000 jobs lost in July were really closer to 285,000 jobs or 15% worse than reported?

Pangloss: I’ll take your word for it, Joreal, but I find that hyper-technical, and in any case, it doesn’t change the solid uptrend of “green shoots” in the payroll data because of the current administration’s stimulus and their other constructive interventions.

…..

Read the rest of the post on The Big Picture

No related posts.

Now that I’ve gotten past the part were I take a piss all over the film out of the way, I can move unto the plot. The film stars Katherine Heigl as a anal retentive television producer for a local US cable channel. It also stars Gerard Butler as a guy who thinks of himself as a regular pimp and can get any woman he wants. The main problem about Butler starring in this film is that all the time you’re waiting for him to just kick Heigl away for being anally retentive and yell “This is SPARTA” but for obvious reasons you are not treated to such an exquisite scene. Anyway on to the plot. Heigl becomes Butler’s boss, Butler helps Heigl get six pack doctor for a boyfriend, Butler falls for Heigl…. good God I’m bored to death just writing this.

Please don’t see this movie unless you have both X and Y chromosomes and hate your self sufficiently to spend 90 minutes watching drivel.

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The plot…. wait, no, the plot is simplistic and I’m not going to spend time writing it down, here is a copy paste for you:

In the near future, weapons expert James McCullen has created a nanotechnology-based weapon capable of destroying an entire city. His company MARS sells four warheads to NATO, and the U.S. Army is tasked with delivering the warheads. Duke and Ripcord are delivering the warheads when they are ambushed by the Baroness, whom Duke recognizes to be his ex-fiancee Ana Lewis. Duke and Ripcord are rescued by Scarlett, Snake Eyes and Heavy Duty. They take the warheads to The Pit, G.I. Joe’s command center in North Africa, and upon arriving rendezvous with the head of the G.I. Joe Team, General Hawk . Hawk takes command of the warheads and excuses Duke and Ripcord, only to be convinced to let them join his group after Duke reveals that he knows the Baroness. McCullen is revealed to be using the same nanotechnology to build an army of soldiers with the aid of the Doctor, planning on using the warheads to cause panic and bring about a new world order.

Now Transformers was set up in a way such that both old fans and new 12 year old fans could enjoy it. The steaming pile of garbage that is G.I. Joe does not manage to do that. I can give the movie good marks for excellent special effects and some good action scenes but that’s pretty much all it has to offer. The acting is horrid and awkward and the plot is just horrible. As an example of the daft ideas that are forced on the audience are things like the fact that NATO has a weapon of mass destruction designed, they build it in eastern Europe and then charter 14 marines to guard it as it moved to western Europe (I don’t know how many they would use in real life but it sure wouldn’t be 14). If that wasn’t enough, the bad guys are a team of 20 guys while the G.I. Joe group is 3000 Joes but only five of them are deployed at any one time so that the bad guys at least have a chance. This movie is just plainly put a direct insult on the viewers intellect and I hope it tanks hard enough so they don’t make a sequel. Pretty please, don’t see this film!

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Män som hatar kvinnor is a Swedish thriller of the best kind. The story revolves around Mikael Blomkvist which is a down on his luck journalist who has just been indited for slander against a large corporation. Mikael has gained a reputation for being a hard hitting journalist that doesn’t give up for nobody or nothing. His attributes are what lead to him being recruited to investigate a 40 year old case of assumed murder. On his quest for the truth Mikael is joined by a young girl by the name of Lizbeth. Lizbeth has had a hard upbringing and became a “child of the system” at a early age. Lizbeth is a brilliant computer hacker who utilizes her skills for various thing but most specifically background tracking. Lizbeth tends to offer her expertise to the highest bidder but somehow get herself sucked into Mikaels investigation and decides to help him.

The story in the movie is not exactly epic like those Hollywood action thrillers but I think that’s the reason why people like the film and the books so much. The film and books tell a tale that is believable and compelling and will keep the watcher interested through and through. The only complain I have about the film is that it does contain a very graphical and horrifying rape scene which felt horrible to sit through in the cinema. As long as you can live through or skip past this rape scene I highly recommend seeing the movie to enjoy a compelling storyline, excellent characters and be thoroughly entertained for a solid 152 minutes (yes it’s a bit long) then this is a film for you.

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