The Tourists are Fair Game Adjustment Review

And now, 3 reviews of not-so-recent movies.

The Tourist Rated: 4 /5 stars

This in many ways seems like a very old-fashioned movie: Movie Stars instead of Actors, Pretty European Architecture instead of Stunning CGI Effects, a Silly but Fun Fantasy Plot instead of Endless Machine-Gun Fire. I guess the reviews and box office show why they Don't Make Them Like This Any More, but still, it is well done for what it is, if you are in the mood for this sort of thing you will probably enjoy it.

Fair Game Rated: 4 / 5 stars

This movie really works as a political thriller. The one thing that kind of gets in the way of me enjoying this is that it is a true story, and I get mad and distracted thinking about how the scumbags who betrayed and defamed Wilson and Plame mostly got away with it. And there are still idiots running around repeating the lies as part of pretending the Iraq War was not a huge scam and a national disgrace.

The Adjustment Bureau Rated: 2 / 5 stars

This movie has only two kinds of scenes in it, both tedious.

1. Matt running away from Men in Hats, with or without Emily holding his hand.

2. Matt pretending to be a politician.

Two stars because of the automatic bonus star for pretending to base the film on a Philip K. Dick short story.

When Patents Attack!

People who should know better continue to parrot the myth that the Patent system benefits the "little guy" with the great idea, that it rewards innovation. In the real world it punishes real inventiveness and rewards mostly patent lawyers.

You don't believe it? Listen to this story from the This American Life radio show. Also read this The Economist blog commenting on a version of the story.

Think it is just software patents that are bad for innovation? What about patent drugs?

New recordings, new places

I added a blog at circumlunar.tumblr.com because it seems to be easier to post audio files / songs / mp3s there. Plus I guess it is trendy this month. Two songs there, more in the pipeline. I seem to be revisiting my 2003 collection Rituals and Reconciliations which was a CD-R album of raw demos of the songs I had written to that point.

I added one of the songs mentioned above to my Folk Alley page too. The other one is too rock-y for those folks.

Too much copyright equals book-burning?

Here is a thoughtful presentation on how over-extending the copyright system harms everyone, using Ray Bradbury’s 1953 classic book, Fahrenheit 451, as its incendiary starting point.