I haven't watched a lot of Top Gear, but it certainly is entertaining. Some people have really, really cool jobs.

The Raid: Redemption

A coworker told me this was a great movie and showed me a clip. I take his opinions with a grain of salt since they tend to be pretty different from mine, but I also read a pretty good review of it, so I figured it was worth a shot.

It's brutally violent, so be prepared to cringe. I knew the story was going to be a little shallow, with the focus on the action, but I was still hoping for more after my coworker said he was surprised by how good the story was. While the writing's better than in a lot of action movies, I still didn't feel very invested in the action. I think you really have to be able to like the action for the action's sake. I can do that on occasion, but in this case, I don't think it was quite at that level. Anyway, not a bad movie, and it had its moments, but it's not going in my favorites.

Jaws

It had been forever since I'd seen it. I bought the Blu-ray because I figured, if nothing else, at least the soundtrack should be a winner. It looks and sounds really good, though I'll admit wanting to fall asleep. The pace and general tone of a lot of the movie actually reminded me of The Shining, which I just watched for the firs time not too long ago. Not because it's the same type of story or anything, just the strange feel because of the way they were made. Everything's more slow and deliberate, like they don't want to interrupt the acting, but the acting's not quite natural enough, so yeah, it just gives both films a similar strangeness. I'm sure if I re-watched more films from the era, I'd see more of the same. Kind of like the current over-use of shaky-cam (which I still think can be effective), there are just certain ways of doing things that persist for a while.

While I don't find it at all scary anymore, I can respect what it did at the time. I know it freaked me out enough as a kid.

I also re-watched the previous week's Breaking Bad at closer to reference level. Very fun. You can really feel that train.

My 15 year old talked us into watching Scott Pilgrim vs the world. Interesting movie. ...

Didn't have to go to work, so I watched 3 movies today. At a local theater, I watched the new version of Total Rekall. Interesting how it was much the same, but at the same time, much different. A totally engrossing action movie. Well worth the watch.

Then I went home and watched 2 of my latest acquisitions.

From Up On Poppy Hill. This is the latest one from Studio Ghibli. Voiced in Japanese with English subtitles. It'll get an English dub over by next Spring. Not as engrossing a movie as most of the Ghibli line. It's Hayao's son's 2nd attempt at directing an anime. I hated the panning. Isn't as smooth as his dad's movies. All panning motions were in big jerky movements. Quite distracting. The scenery and sound was typical Ghibli. Sound was better than the other movie's English versions. Somehow I think the voice dub over takes quality and volume away from the sound track, but it shouldn't.

The other one was Journey 2: Mystery Island in 3D. I liked this movie. I though I'd be disappointed in it from reading some of the reviews, but it was much better than I expected it to be. Lots of action all the way through.

My brother-in-law posted the link to this video on Facebook. It's cool, but it makes me feel dumb.

This beautiful video about parabolas will 100% blow your mind

That brain of hers. WOW.

I corrected someone the other day when he said parabola, when the shape was indeed a catenary.

I really should subscribe to her channel. I've had enough Math classes that I don't learn anything new, but just the way she describes the things I think I know really makes them click.

In one video she's talking about Pythagoras' theorem, and just does something as simple as turning each of the sides of a triangle into one side of a square, and saying the area of the two smaller squares added together equals the area of the largest square. I was like "what?!" why didn't my teachers just say that. It makes so much sense!

I wish I had an understanding of math like she does. She's too fast for me with a lot of it, but she's very entertaining besides.