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Checkout out Jumper at the movies tonight. Was pretty good — probably not “magnificent”, but still a good piece of entertainment. With a storyline both innovative and familiar, it takes you into one of those classic “good vs evil” stories with a mechanism that is pretty damn interesting and visually very entertaining.

Pretty good acting for the most part — Hayden Christensen is good as the sometimes morally dubious hero, far better than he was in the Star Wars movies. Rachel Bilson is cute and natural and hot as his girlfriend. Samuel L Jackson is as badass as ever as the villain of the piece, something called a “Paladin” that hunts down the Jumpers. And Jamie Bell is possibly the most interesting character in the whole show — a fellow jumper named Griffin who is both hero and villain in the story.

Being able to jump around the world at will is a fascinating idea, and it’s presented excellently visually, especially when they are able to also jump objects around with them. This leads to one of the most amazing fight scenes in movie history, definitely the action highlight of the movie.

Jumper is based on a YA novel and you can see its youthful origins, but possibly it should have been deeper, with some more indepth stuff from the book. It’s clear they chose to limit the scope of the overall story, becasue the ending is good, but pure sequel bait. And it does give me more fiction ideas as well, but that’s for another day …

So Jumper is a fun piece of entertainment with some interesting and appealing visual ideas.

I’m wondering if I need a career change. Or a career readjustment, or something.

Or just more focus on what I should really be doing …

Damn the weather has been awful today.

The things you think about in that situation …

I’ve already blogged before about Nine’s legal troubles with screening Underbelly in Victoria, and the ridiculousness of a suppression order on one state in the Internet age.

We all knew that copies would be on BitTorrent as soon as they were aired in other states (in numbers I’ve never seen before for an Aussie show, no less), but now advance episodes are appearing there as well … this can only be the work of insiders.

Screener copies for the next five episodes have been released to BitTorrent channels (a check of any popular site confirms this) — and these either came from inside the network, or maybe from reviewers or other media types (or maybe even some of the still-living gangsters themselves).

While Nine could not be blamed for the stuff getting online after airing, this time they won’t have such luck. There’s already talk of more contempt of court proceedings relating to this, especially if they can find out who uploaded this new stuff. I’m usually pretty relaxed about Torrents, but this pre-release stuff is what gets people into trouble (witness what happened with 24 last year).

Meanwhile, since the cat’s out of the bag now, I’ll be reconsidering where I get my episodes of Underbelly from, since being stuck in the dark ages and still having to videotape the show (while watching Spicks and Specks), I know where I can watch the show in far better quality now

This - the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this - it’s just to prove, no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible.

And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up.

– Marketa Irglova, star and songwriter, “Falling Slowly”, from the movie “Once”. 2008 Oscar winner for Best Original Song, with Glen Hansard.

Check out the BBC story for full text of her speech and Glen’s as well. Beautiful and stirring stuff.

And thanks to Jon Stewart for making sure Marketa was able to come back on stage to make that speech. It was too awkward to be pre-arranged

Largely what I expected, funnily enough.

The Oscars are done for another year, and again I was an avid watcher, even though they didn’t finish on our telecast until midnight local time. But they always go quickly for me, and I’ve always been a sucker for a good awards ceremony, so I lap it all up.

It helps when Jon Stewart is the host of course — his delivery is very different to someone like Billy Crystal, more droll standup and political humour, but definitely what I like.

The various winners were good to see — I haven’t actually seen many of the movies yet, but No Country for Old Men was heavily favoured to take the top prizes and deservedly won. My personal favourites included Ratatouille taking Animated Feature, and Diablo Cody winning for Original Screenplay for Juno (both of which I’ve seen.)

At the least, the various winners are great pointers to plan my DVD viewing around for the next few months, now that we gloriously actually have a good local video shop again.

And there’s something about a show like the Oscars that really moves me. Hollywood may be so full lof shit so much of the time, but there’s something very honest about the Oscars — the celebration of creativity and achievement, of honest emotions and the happiness of lives being led doing what you love — that is so inspirational, and probably much of what I love about the show. Moments like Diablo Cody breaking into tears with amazement at her Original Screenplay win, or co-star and songwriter from Once, Marketa Irglova, amazingly coming back to the stage to deliver her perfect little speech that she’d been cut off from earlier after her and Glen Hansard won Original Song (incidentally, that has to be the first time ever that Original Song went to song writers were were song performers and actors in the project all at once).

I guess it’s part of the dream to see people doing just what they’ve wanted to do and being rewarded for it. It makes me, and I guess all of us, feel like we can get there too.

(To add: There’s also the Oscar tipping comp at work, that I probably did quite well at, though I’ll have to find out tomorrow whether I did well enough to figure in the prizes … )

Finally watching Ratatouille tonight, probably the last chance I had to watch anything up for Oscars before Monday. And it was as good as I expected, sometimes better, but really a unique film.

I think that one of the most amazing things about Pixar overall is the way they’re able to make every single movie they do so completely unlike all the others before it. They use different animation styles, different storytelling techniques and different kinds of stories overall. You would not think for instance that The Incredibles and Ratatouille were directed by the same guy, but they were. The differences are more impressive considering how all the films are inhouse productions with many of the same crew, so they must all push each other to be different and unique.

And the fact that Pixar movies can be enjoyed by three year olds as much as any adult is also a wonder — especially when I see it first hand. Will has been wanting to see it for months now ever since we got him the picture book for Christmas to go with the rest of his Pixar collection, so he walked down to Video Ezy with me. Apart from the dog scare halfway there, it was a great father-son walk — need to do it more often

As a movie, really fun, with a good heart. A nice message about creativity and personal fulfillment, which I could really identify with. Definitely one of Pixar’s “grownup movies that kids can enjoy” (like The Incredibles) rather than “kids movie that grownups can enjoy” (like Monsters, Toy Story and Nemo). It’s only a perception issue really, but again it just contributes to Pixar’s incredible variety.

Favourite of them all? Probably The Incredibles still, but I would place Ratatouille second now.

And it really captured the food well. Some amazing chase sequences (that early scene with the rats-eye view of a busy kitchen was magnificent), and great visual styling. The credits were another work of art completely separate from the movie, and the extra short film “Get to know your rat” was one of the best extras Pixar has included yet.

Voice work was good — Patton Oswalt is excellent and engaging as Remy, and everyone else works convincingly in the French setting, despite all being American or British. Perennial Pixar favourite John Ratzenberger was in there, though I didn’t spot him at all, so even he changed his voice well.

There really isn’t a production house that does their movies as consistently brilliant as Pixar. Expect them to win at least one Oscar on Monday for animated feature, and maybe more depending on how things go.

And they’ll deserve every single one they get!

Bring on Wall-E. Think that might be Will’s first ever movie trip

It’s an odd situation when both parents in a house want to go to be, and the three-year-old doesn’t …

This is what happens when Will puts himself to bed at 5pm, then wakes up at 10pm when his brother is ill. You get two grumpy kids, one sick, one tired …

But Will cheers up easily when he’s well, and I read him Monster’s Inc (his latest obsession, always Pixar of course!), but half way through he got bored and decided he wanted the other version of Monsters instead.

By then it was midnight, and we wanted to go to bed, so Will sat in the loung room with the lights off, whinging loudly … nothing for it but to put him to bed quite directly, you’d assume.

Then he just quietly wanders off to bed of his own accord, like nothing ever happened

Ah, the willfulness of a three-year-old

A day that started off OK, then ended up feeling really frustrating, at least in a professional sense. Some amusement in the morning that at least gave me the illusion of being involved, but then an afternoon that dragged on and on with no end in sight. It usually ends eventually of course, but then usually much later than everyone else there.

However, Happy Birthday Mum! Won’t say how old she is here, but it’s a major, even age.

Some amusing and interesting links this afternoon though:

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?
Is this brilliance or idiocy? Hard to say really, but it is in the tech section, so I can’t really complain about their political seriousness. Kind of a funny idea though, but it does have a fairly thorough examination of their websites. Someone should forward this to John Hodgman and see what he thinks

Time Space Map
Now if this is handled well, this could really be a great site. A Google Maps mashup that is a bit like Wikimapia, but takes the 4th dimension, allowing you to plot history on the site. Will develop as people add to it, but could be a great resource.

Angry Journalist
Now I can see myself adding to this one … on some days anyway. Basically an anonymous complaints box where you can write and read angry comments on the profession. Sometimes inspiringly true, sometimes sad, sometimes pathetic.

Let’s make tomorrow better …

That’s hardly an unheard of accusation in these parts, as I’m big on smart TV and always have been.

But I read today about a list from international genius group Mensa, that lists their smartest TV shows (of all time presumably).

As an aside, I can’t believe I didn’t read about this list online first, instead it was a piece on the local mX free newspaper — which is usually rubbish and full of things I read online anywhere from a day to a week previously. But not this time.

Mensa seems to have a pretty good set of criteria for their selections, with most of the list having a logic to it that is hard to fault:

1. M*A*S*H
2. Cosmos
3. CSI
4. House
5. The West Wing
6. Boston Legal
7. All in the Family
8. Frasier
9. Mad About You
10. Jeopardy!

M*A*S*H is smart and funny, Cosmos was the most famous science show of all time, CSI is dumb but scientific, House is predictable but medical, The West Wing is just brilliant, Boston Legal is funny but makes you think about the law, All in the Family is really way before my time and I wonder about that one, Frasier could be smart, but again I have to wonder, Mad About You was cute, but what the hell? and Jeopardy! is an easy one, being one of the smartest quiz shows around.

Of course, again, it’s just a list a group has made … very American as well of course. If I was going to include more Aussie shows I would have added things like The Chaser’s War on Everything and Wildside, and more broadly my own list would definitely have included The Day Show over some of the other choices.

Finally found the story online with a few searches, can’t beleive I didn’t read it online first!

Nice move from the Labor government today — a stunt, but a damn good one — that shows both their humility and desire to change, while highlighting the power-mad idiocy of the previous government:

I have too much power: Immigration Minister

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has ordered a review of his role, saying he feels the position has too much power.

Senator Evans has told a Parliamentary Committee there was a substantial increase in ministerial powers under the previous federal government and has commissioned a report into how that could be changed.

It’s a nice reversal of how you’d usually term this sort of thing, and it works perfectly, It will get the headlines, show your qualities, and show the previous government’s negatives (on the day of Mister 9% Nelson!)

The comments under this ABC story are funny too — most people get it, even begrudgingly, but there’s still a few Liberal Party stooges that think they should be believed on everything and are still arguing like it’s 2004. I really want to slip them some very unkind words, but I think the deafening silence to their rubbish does the job for me.

Well played Labor, well played …