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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Saturday, April 12, 2003
02:08 - Plumbing the depths

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I thought I'd relax tonight with a good ol' big, dumb pachyderm of a movie: The Core. I gotta say, it fulfilled all my expectations of it.

Seriously-- I didn't exactly expect a hard-core sci-fi thriller. But as action/adventure movies of this sort go, it was by-the-numbers, but executed fairly well. It had a lot of scenes that really took things to the limit, scenes I wasn't expecting at all. Very well-done effects for the most part. A predictable plotline and timetable for cast members dying in valiant acts of heroism, but it was sold well. It pushed all the right buttons.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the science wasn't as dumb as I was expecting. Now, granted, that's like saying the movie was more light-hearted than Schindler's List or shorter than Titanic, but I'm serious. It sounded as though they got someone with a reasonable grasp of the requisite jargon to vet the dialogue, if not the overall plot.

They did make a game attempt to do the same for the computers used in the movie; but while at least the computers don't beep with every keystroke anymore, they still run ILM-OS; the Internet still consists of big high-resolution digital maps of the world with messages traveling in big ballistic arcs from points labeled "Venice, CA" to "New York" and "Atlanta" and "Belize" and so on. And at least the heaviest-guarded and hardened DoD systems all give 404 errors now, before with one second left on the countdown clock putting up big banners saying CONGRATULATIONS - AUTHORIZATION GRANTED - FULL ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS. And omniscient l33t h4X0r kids with gigantic ears and noses still make demands for unlimited supplies of Xena tapes and Hot Pockets in exchange for their all-powerful wisecracking. (Real live white-hat types are more indebted for their legitimacy to Hollywood for turning bizarre, preconceived caricatures of them into ingenious protagonists than to their own real-world actions.)

They certainly got one thing right, though: as everybody knows, all white-hats use PowerBook G3s for taking over the world.

(Well, maybe not; but those things sure are easy on the eyes, particularly on the big screen.)

Fun movie. Still a bit jarring to see a scene revolve around a desperate attempt to salvage a Space Shuttle reentry, but oddly moving in that it succeeds. Nice microcosm of the movie as a whole.


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© Brian Tiemann