August 17th

Last weekend William and I went up to visit my Uncle Roy who lives in Northern Georgia. Usually when we go to visit we go swimming, play kickball and just hang out.

This time though William was fighting a little bit of a cold. So we decided to just hang out, read books, still play kickball and also play with this great new toy airplane that Aunt Cheryl got us when were in Maryland. This plane is one that has a pull string start and flies over 30 feet into the air. So we played for the plane for a bit with no problem. The plane sailed through the air as promised.

Then Uncle Roy came out to hang with us.

Roy said he wanted to see William’s spiffy new toy, so William gives him the airplane. Roy tries it once, and it flies perfectly in to the sky. Roy being a kid at heart smiles, and then goes for the plane a second time. Vroom, no problems, off across the yard the plane flies. So then Roy grabs the plane again, and says “Ok, guys, this one is my last time, I have to go get changed to go swimming”. So Vroom, off the plane goes again, but this time smack dab in the only tree in Roy’s front yard.

Instead of the plane hitting a couple of branches and then crashing back to the ground, it gets stuck on one of the higher branches. Roy and I look at each other and both just roll our eyes. William was more panicked by the unfolding events. I figured since it was fairly high up we would need maybe something to throw up into the tree. (Of course I joked to William and told him we would throw him up there to get it down, and of course we got the usual answer “Dada, that’s just silly”). So we grabbed the kick ball we used earlier in the afternoon to play soccer and kickball, and I lobbed it towards the tree to knock down the plane. Nothing, once, twice, three times with no results.

Roy then said “Let me give it a try.”

Roy grabbed the ball and on his first shot the ball over shot the branch with the plane and landed somewhere in the heart of the tree. Again we both just stood there, with our mouths hanging open in amazement. Then we just started laughing at our predicament. William was like “Dada, did you just see what Uncle Roy just did?”

So Roy, then said “Ok guys, I’m going to go inside and change and bring my big ladder out and we are going to climb up the tree.”

Roy came back out in about five minutes with a huge ladder and a broom. We propped the ladder against the tree, as soon as the ladder touched the tree out fell the airplane (remember the airplane), so far so good. Roy then proceeded to start climbing the ladder to almost the top of the tree (with me keeping the ladder steady), nothing. No ball anywhere to be seen in the tree at all. Roy then climbed back down, and moved the ladder to the other side of the tree. The ground on this side wasn’t as flat and the ladder was a little more unstable. So once again I’m holding the ladder steady and Roy climbs back up. William walked up to me and said “Dada its ok if Uncle Roy doesn’t get the ball, we can always buy another one.” Where dose this kid get this kind of wisdom so young?

Anyway I digress; Roy is using the broom to push branches back and forth, still no ball. All of a sudden Roy pushes on a certain branch and the branch pushed back. The ladder started shaking violently and bam the broom crashed down to the ground. Worried I yell up to Roy, but he says he’s ok, and he’s coming down. After he finally came down, William came up and repeated what he said to me “Don’t worry Uncle Roy, Dada can buy me a new ball”. I really think we should start calling the kid ‘Confucius’.

So it basically came down to that we will wait till Fall to find where the ball is stuck in the tree to be able to get it down, and yes I will be buying William a new ball.

Hope everyone is doing well; updates will be coming more frequent from this point on.

Peace

Mike

P.S. They Still Haven't fixed the damage to the bathroom from the leak. But on a happy note, if you haven't seen "This Land (a Woody Guthrie parody - Kerry vs. Bush", it's a must see.

P.P.S. Here's the way real office conflicts should be handled. It's something funny that Michelle sent me a few weeks ago.

August 17th

Last weekend William and I went up to visit my Uncle Roy who lives in Northern Georgia. Usually when we go to visit we go swimming, play kickball and just hang out.

This time though William was fighting a little bit of a cold. So we decided to just hang out, read books, still play kickball and also play with this great new toy airplane that Aunt Cheryl got us when were in Maryland. This plane is one that has a pull string start and flies over 30 feet into the air. So we played for the plane for a bit with no problem. The plane sailed through the air as promised.

Then Uncle Roy came out to hang with us.

Roy said he wanted to see William’s spiffy new toy, so William gives him the airplane. Roy tries it once, and it flies perfectly in to the sky. Roy being a kid at heart smiles, and then goes for the plane a second time. Vroom, no problems, off across the yard the plane flies. So then Roy grabs the plane again, and says “Ok, guys, this one is my last time, I have to go get changed to go swimming”. So Vroom, off the plane goes again, but this time smack dab in the only tree in Roy’s front yard.

Instead of the plane hitting a couple of branches and then crashing back to the ground, it gets stuck on one of the higher branches. Roy and I look at each other and both just roll our eyes. William was more panicked by the unfolding events. I figured since it was fairly high up we would need maybe something to throw up into the tree. (Of course I joked to William and told him we would throw him up there to get it down, and of course we got the usual answer “Dada, that’s just silly”). So we grabbed the kick ball we used earlier in the afternoon to play soccer and kickball, and I lobbed it towards the tree to knock down the plane. Nothing, once, twice, three times with no results.

Roy then said “Let me give it a try.”

Roy grabbed the ball and on his first shot the ball over shot the branch with the plane and landed somewhere in the heart of the tree. Again we both just stood there, with our mouths hanging open in amazement. Then we just started laughing at our predicament. William was like “Dada, did you just see what Uncle Roy just did?”

So Roy, then said “Ok guys, I’m going to go inside and change and bring my big ladder out and we are going to climb up the tree.”

Roy came back out in about five minutes with a huge ladder and a broom. We propped the ladder against the tree, as soon as the ladder touched the tree out fell the airplane (remember the airplane), so far so good. Roy then proceeded to start climbing the ladder to almost the top of the tree (with me keeping the ladder steady), nothing. No ball anywhere to be seen in the tree at all. Roy then climbed back down, and moved the ladder to the other side of the tree. The ground on this side wasn’t as flat and the ladder was a little more unstable. So once again I’m holding the ladder steady and Roy climbs back up. William walked up to me and said “Dada its ok if Uncle Roy doesn’t get the ball, we can always buy another one.” Where dose this kid get this kind of wisdom so young?

Anyway I digress; Roy is using the broom to push branches back and forth, still no ball. All of a sudden Roy pushes on a certain branch and the branch pushed back. The ladder started shaking violently and bam the broom crashed down to the ground. Worried I yell up to Roy, but he says he’s ok, and he’s coming down. After he finally came down, William came up and repeated what he said to me “Don’t worry Uncle Roy, Dada can buy me a new ball”. I really think we should start calling the kid ‘Confucius’.

So it basically came down to that we will wait till Fall to find where the ball is stuck in the tree to be able to get it down, and yes I will be buying William a new ball.

Hope everyone is doing well; updates will be coming more frequent from this point on.

Peace

Mike

P.S. They Still Haven't fixed the damage to the bathroom from the leak. But on a happy note, if you haven't seen "This Land (a Woody Guthrie parody - Kerry vs. Bush", it's a must see.

P.P.S. Here's the way real office conflicts should be handled. It's something funny that Michelle sent me a few weeks ago.

August 4th

Ok here’s something for you, I got home from vacation to Maryland (will write all about that in my next update, but we had a great time), and boy did I come home to a big surprise.

The thing I came home to find was that we were experiencing one of the hottest days of the year in Atlanta and my air conditioning decided to go on the fritz. Before I had left on the trip I had been noticing that the apartment was feeling warmer and the air conditioning was running longer.

I figured ok, no problem just call the rental office, and boom it would be fixed. NOT. I had called in the morning to complain, but didn’t get any response (been having a lot of issues with the rental office as of late).

So then a few days go by and nothing. But then…

Here comes the second disaster: A lot of you know I do freelance work for a few different folks, one of my things is working for Insite Magazine, usually doing the work in the evenings after my regular job. So Monday night I get home around 12:30 am and the apartment of course feels warm (from the broken a/c). I go into my bathroom to change, what I walk into was a little surreal. I hear water running steady into a puddle. Of coure I go to the sink to see if I left something on. NO. Then I move into room a little more and notice my feet were getting very wet, I then look up and see that the water was dripping down from the ceiling down onto the counter and then into a huge puddle onto my floor. It turned out that my upstairs neighbors pipes had flooded and he forgot to think about who lives below him. (I always knew I loved living on the top floor, and the advantages it brought).

Normally I would just let this pass, clean up the mess, and have maintenance repair the leak, but you know the problems I was having with them about the A/C. So I was kind of worried and concerned. And another sad thing was that I had one major casualty of the flooding of my bathroom. I am sad to announce the death of my laptop computer. The night before I had left my laptop on the counter in the bathroom (I bet you can see where this is going, and guess what took the brunt of the water hitting the counter), and when I came home and saw my laptop sitting in a pool of water, I was not a happy camper. I literally could see the water pouring out of the computer. The two good thing about this computer getting damaged was: that it was my travel / backup computer so I didn’t lose any files or such, and thanks to renters insurance I might be able to get a new laptop out of this mess. So I at least I got to end this update on a happy note.

Glad to be back, have lots to tell about the trip to Maryland (and a ton of pictures).

Talk to you soon

Peace

Mike

P.S. A little follow up to this update: When I got home tonight maintenance left a note on my door saying that they had been in to fix the A/C finally but when I went into the bathroom they didn’t touch a thing. Oh well 1 out of 2 isn’t too bad.

P.P.S. Some New Harry Potter News

Fiennes to Play Voldemort in Next 'Potter'

By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES - He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been named. Ralph Fiennes who played memorable evil guys in "Red Dragon" and "Schindler's List," has signed on to portray the wicked warlock Voldemort in the next "Harry Potter" movie, Warner Bros. announced Wednesday.

Voldemort is so bad that the magical characters in author J.K. Rowling's stories do their best not to speak his name aloud.
In the first three installments of the saga, a deadly magic spell meant for a baby Harry Potter backfired and deprived him of a body. So only his spirit wrought havoc in "The Sorcerer's Stone," "The Chamber of Secrets" and the recent "Prisoner of Azkaban."
But Voldemort finally returns in the flesh in part four: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Filming has been under way on "Goblet" since June 25, mainly with star Daniel Racliffe as the boy-wizard, and co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as his pals Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Fiennes has not yet filmed any scenes.

Other additions to the cast include Brendan Gleeson ("Troy," "The Village" and "Cold Mountain") as Potter's new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, the fearsome Mad-Eye Moody, and Miranda Richardson, ("The Crying Game," "Sleepy Hollow") as Rita Skeeter, a gossip columnist for a magical newspaper.

The cast also includes Robert Pattinson as Hogwarts student Cedric Diggory, Stanislav Ianevski as Quidditch star Viktor Krum, French actress Clemence Poesy as the heart-fluttering visiting student Fleur Delacour, and Katie Leung as Potter's love-interest and Quidditch rival Cho Chang.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," directed by "Four Weddings and a Funeral" filmmaker Mike Newell, is scheduled for theatrical release in November 2005.

July 23rd

Man don’t you hate it when you have so many things that you want to talk about, but only have a limited amount of space and time to talk about it. I know your going “Mike this is an open forum for you, you can write anything that you want.” Theoretically, yes that would be true but I do have to keep to my promise I wrote a while back that I would not be writing long novelettes updates anymore.

Well this next week is going to be quite interesting, as of tomorrow I’m going to be taking William on our first airplane trip together to go see Grandpa Ira in Maryland. I’m sure it will be fun with everything planned for us to do. Between going to visit with family and going to the new Air and Space Museum in Virginia, seeing the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in Washington DC, we also have planned to go to the top of the Washington Monument, and see the fish at the National Aquarium. So I’ll probably need a vacation from my vacation. So next week don’t fret when I don’t write an update for a few days.

Also next week will bring to the Democratic Party to the forefront of the general public. This will be the stage that will bring the two John’s (Kerry and Edwards) into the spotlight. Finally we will see the platform and vision that John Kerry will try to sell to the American Public. I’m not going to be glued to the TV or even the evening news (but I am looking forward to the Daily Show Coverage though). It will be interesting to see if Kerry can start putting the nails into George W. Bush’s presidency. The only thing that really scares me is what the current administration is going to try and pull to divert attention from the democrats. I don’t think it will be anything huge like capturing Osoma bin Ladin (Bush is waiting for that to be his October surprise, to use that one to try and capture the election), but don’t be surprised if something happens next week. Oh wait, the Republicans are always the nice guys and play by the rules (well according to syndicated radio talk show host Shawn Hannity that's the truth. Don’t worry I wasn’t really listening, I was waiting for a baseball game broadcast to start). Man I’m kind of worried how dirty this is really going to get over the next few months.

And now going with that theme and let’s talk about Michael Moore’s new movie ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’. Ok if you have been living under a rock for the past three months and haven’t heard about this film, the theme of this film explores George W. Bush and his administration’s reaction to September 11th and their actions since. It also dives into how money and business ties have helped shape the current administration’s policies against Iraq, Afghanistan and Al Quida. The scene that stuns me the most is when President Bush first hears that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center and that the United States is under attack. He was at a photo op in Florida, remember, reading "My Pet Goat" to a schoolroom full of children, and his expression of confusion and Michael Moore Voices over and says "This is the leader of the free world?" I didn’t know if I felt sorry for the man, or anger at him for just sitting there for seven minutes while thousands of innocent souls were dying. A lot of this film brings Moore’s dislike and disdain for the current administration and it comes across throughout, but it also open’s one’s eyes with which no government commission or news program will show to the general public. Moore brings the reality of the war back to America and shows what our troops have to experience and bring to the people of Iraq. Did I feel like this movie pushed convinced me one way or the other in my feelings on George Bush? No. I already had a dislike with where the country is going, but this film did open my eyes to how hypocritical and the dangerous direction this country could be going. I will say this, we saw the movie three weeks since it opened, and the theater was almost sold out (very rare for a documentary) and I also noticed that when we leaving the theater the amount of discussion on the film’s material was more then average. Hate him or love him Michael Moore dose get his point across in this film, and which side of the political spectrum this is a film you can’t miss.

Ok my friends I’m off on my grand adventures with William, I can’t wait to give you the full report. Have fun.

Peace

Mike

Ok here’s another joke Judy sent me a few days ago…

CARDIOLOGIST'S FUNERAL

A cardiologist died and was given an elaborate funeral. A huge heart covered in flowers stood behind the casket during the service. Following the eulogy, the heart opened, and the casket rolled inside.

The heart then closed, sealing the doctor in the beautiful heart forever.

At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter. When all eyes Stared at him, he said, "I'm sorry, I was just thinking of my own funeral...I'm a gynecologist."

At that point, the proctologist fainted.

July 20th

Hi there remember me?

Yeah I know I bet you thought I had forgotten all about you guys, naaa I’m still around. I have been busily been working on a lot of projects and making my way through life and having a few adventures in the meantime. I figured most people would be away for the summer so I figured it would be a good time to take a little time off also.

Well this is my official welcome back to Fabersplace and over the next few weeks I have a lot to talk about. Some good some pretty scary, and some downright sad subjects too. I have never been anything but honest with you and some of the things that I’ll be sharing with you will make your head spin and your stomach turn.

Hop on board, if you’re a returning user welcome back, and if you’re a new viewer, WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG!!!Ok, here a great little parody I found online. If you’re a republican or a democrat you will find humor in this. Take a peek.

Oh on a quick side note I finally got a new digital camera so be prepaired to be bombared daily with new pictures (starting in the next update that is)

Ok it’s 12:30 in the morning, I just wanted to touch base and let you know I’m still alive and kicking. Tomorrow night I’ll my review of Michael Moore’s movie ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’

Hope your all having a great summer so far.

I’ll talk to you soon

Peace

Mike

P.S. Judy sent me this great joke.. I hope you like

Three marines were driving in their jeep outside of Baghdad, and they noticed an Iraqi insurgent on one side of the road and an American GI on the other side of the road.

They stopped and went to the Iraqi, and he was pretty beat up and unconscious. They went to the GI and he also was pretty beat up but awake. They asked him what had happened. He said he was walking down this road and came upon that Iraqi over there. We were standing here pointing our weapons at each other, when he said "George Bush is an a--hole". I replied "Saddam Hussein is an a--hole"

We were shaking each others hands in the middle of the road when a truck hit us.

June 24th

Well here I am finally back from my whirlwind trip of New Jersey, as usual it was once again a memorable family reunion. It’s an interesting time when the Faber gang gets together. This time we got together because the younger generation of Faber kids were graduating (Daniel, Nick & Jessie from high school & Jake from M.I.T.), so when you have that many graduates its time for a huge party. And man did my Uncle Ed throw a shindig, (Catered, DJ & dancing), and about 100 friends and relatives coming and going.

It was great getting to take the time to see all my relatives, but also I had ulterior motives to the trip. As many of you know, I have been dating Judy now for quite some time and had decided to take it to the next step. But I wanted to keep her on pins and needles for some time, we had talked about getting married but I kept very vague on when and where. I had planned for almost three months now on finally asking her to marry me when we went to New York, but wanted to make it special and ask her on the edge of White Lake (the area of New York state where I used to spend the summers growing up). To throw her off I kept on trying to drop false hints, or I even took Judy into Manhattan on Saturday and took her to my uncles jewelry shop to get ideas for rings (little did she know I already had it, but we did see some interesting wedding bans). Then on Monday we drove up to White Lake for a cook out with the rest of my family (about 10 of us).

After lunch I decided it was finally time to make my move, so I set it up that we would take pictures of all the graduates (see above), and after that was done, and then pulled Judy into the middle of the deck and got on one knee. It was so funny everyone was crowded around on the deck but as soon as I went onto my knee everyone parted and all the cameras came out. Judy’s face turned bright red, and she started saying “oh my, oh my… Mike I can’t believe your doing this in front of your whole family.” So I pulled out the ring from my back pocket and asked her to marry me. Of course there was never a doubt in my head that she wouldn’t say yes. To Judy’s credit, she didn’t cry (and this coming from a woman who breaks into tears at a Hallmark commercials), the moment was incredible, it was so special and I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. I guess I’m heading down that path for a new adventure, it’s going to be fun, spending the rest of eternity with Judy is something I am so looking forward to.

It was so moving being there in my favorite place in the world, with all my favorite people (having Cheryl, Danny & William there would of made it completely perfect), but it was completely priceless. I’ll have pictures from the trip and the big event up on the site in a few days. Before you ask, Judy and I aren’t registered anywhere yet and we don’t have a date set yet, but of course you will find out as soon as we know on any of the big events.

Overall the trip was fantastic, but my one complaint was with the airlines getting up there, let's just say I'll have to think twice before I fly Airtran again. I have never been on a airline so unorginized, and prone to delays (and this is coming from someone who used to fly at least twice a month on various airlines). Oh well, live and learn.

I'll have some more news coming soon, and hopefully will be able to get out sometime this weekend and see Fahrenheit 9/11, I'm curious to see if the conservatives are making something out of nothing. Michael Moore should thank each one of those conservative groups for the free advertising.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Peace

Mike

June 17th

Man sometimes I just scare myself. The other morning William decided to get up at 4am, so of course when William wakes up I wake up. This time though I tried to try a little experiment and have him stay in bed and I would lay on the floor to keep him company. So I turned on the TV and switched on the cartoon network, which was showing old Tom and Jerry cartoons. I proceeded to fall back asleep for another hour or so and I think William just ended up playing in bed and watched the TV.

When I finally woke back up, I sat next to William and started watching some Looney Tunes cartoons. It took me a few minutes but I started realizing that none of the characters on the TV were speaking English. At first I thought I was still half asleep, then I turned to William and I said “William are they talking funny?”, he said “Yea Da Da, everyone on the TV is talking like Dora the Explorer”

I realized that when I turned on the TV half asleep I must of hit the SAP button on the remote and William had been sitting through all the cartoons in Spanish, while I slept on the floor. It was too funny, and William didn’t seem to really mind.

With William getting up so early on Sunday morning though, he kind of got a little cranky by lunchtime. So I put him in his room to relax a little bit, here’s a picture of how he fell asleep. It was so cute.

Last night I ended up finally taking William to see Shrek 2. We were both excited to see the movie, since we the both the original, but I hate to say it, but I was actually kind of disappointed overall with the new film. Don’t get me wrong I loved the animation; it literally was the most realistic computer generated film I have seen yet, the detail they went into it this time was so incredible (right down to the freckles on Princess Fiona’s cheeks). I guess though story wise a lot of the film felt very contrived and formulaic. But one of the most shocking things with the film was how much of the humor was geared more towards adults then children, 99% of the jokes went right over William’s head. The movie really didn’t hold his interest, and he was ready to leave half way through. I was able to hold his interest by pointing out things in the film to entertain him. At least William was entertained by the introduction of Puss In Boots (played superbly by Zorro himself Antonio Bandaras), and the take off of Cops (Knights), kept him humored. I’ll probably give it another viewing when it comes out on DVD. After all they hype for the film I was left kind of blaa, and eagerly awaiting the Pixar film “The Incredibles.” coming soon to a theater near you. (To see the preview click here).

Hope everyone is doing great, and I’ll talk to you soon, I’m off to New Jersey for a Faber family reunion. I’m sure I’ll have lots to write about that.

Peace

Mike

June 8th

For some reason I thought of this when I was taking a shower this morning….

I used to suffer from earaches and sometimes when I used to go swimming I used to feel like I had water stuck in my ears. Most people would say that seems pretty normal, especially for a younger child. But the silly thing about it with me was this was from my mid 20’s till my mid thirties, and only in one ear, so you could understand my frustration.

So I finally broke down and went to my doctor’s office to get checked out. She asked how long I had this problem and I told her on and off for about 10 years. So she then asked me how I cleaned my ears, told her how I used Q-tips and she asked if I had ever punctured my eardrum. I told her not that I knew of, but when I was in college I had been cleaning my ear one night and thought I had lost some cotton from the tip of Q-tip in my ear, but had found it on the floor. (I was so worried that I had cotton stuck in my ear, that I called my mom if I should go to the doctors and she said the odds of that happening were very slim, so don’t worry about it. Gee thanks mom).

Anyway, after telling the doctor my story about the cotton swab incident she then proceeded to look into my ear and said, “Well I think we might have found the culprit”. She then proceeded tilt my head and began to pour some liquid into my ear. Then she grabbed a pair of tweezers (remember kids don’t try this at home, she is a professional), and stuck it down my ear. All of a sudden out she came with a fairly large yellowish kind of solidified piece of Q-tip.

After looking at this thing for a few moments I began to laugh at the sheer goofiness of walking around for almost a decade with that thing in my head. Of course I got a full lecture from the doctor about not to stick things in my ears, and the proper way of cleaning one’s earlobes.

Of course I had to tease back saying, “this might explain why all my teachers used to say it looked like I wasn’t listening in class”. Go figure.

Ok I’m out of here; I have some new CD’s to listen too.

Peace

Mike

June 6th

Hi there, remember me. I’m the guy who writes updates for this website. Yeah I know many of you have thought I had fallen off the face of the earth, or just taken a long hike off a short pier. Sorry to say neither had happened, things have just been incredibly busy, last weekend (Memorial Day weekend) I took Judy and William on a road trip to he U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. You know I was quite concerned how William would do on a four-hour drive. Judy and had planned for any kind of distraction that William could cause, but we were pleasantly surprised that he did quite well, and we all ended up having a great time.

It was so incredible seeing William’s reaction to the Space Center. As soon as he saw the first rocket he was floating above the ground and his feet didn’t touch the ground till he fell asleep that night. I’ll have a few pictures of the trip up on the next few days (still don’t have a digital camera, so I have to be stuck using a disposable camera, of course if anyone wants to donate a digital camera to their friends at Fabersplace it would be most welcome, HINT HINT).

Things also have busy with some projects I have been working though Kalico Productions. I have been really trying to focus a lot of time and effort on redesigning the whole corporate identity and focus of the company. You can see some of our most recent projects with Insite magazine, I have been doing all their artwork and advertising monthly for them for the past four months now. Also have been doing some work for some smaller clients, but nothing yet to show you, yet. When the new Kalico site goes live in the next week or two I’ll let you know.

Yes I know I had promised to write a few movie reviews over the past few movies months but after much procrastination none of those films are relevant to current readers. So I’ll just let them disappear into vaporware.

So onto two new movies that I have had the pleasure to see recently..

The first movie is Quentin Tarantino’s epic ending to his saga of pure revenge in Kill Bill vol. II. As many of you know I really enjoyed Kill Bill vol. I, and thought it was a great respect to Japanese cinema (the references and homage of Bruce Lee were incredible), and the movie was to match incredibly violent and bloody (but masterfully done, it was almost beautiful how well it was done). Now we come to the final installment of this series and the director / writer take us on a 180% roller coaster ride and we get a more personalized to actually learn finally who the Bride was and how she ended up in that church in the Texas desert on that faithful day. Yes the film shows how the Bride dose eventually get her revenge, but it also really focuses on the most intriguing character in the whole story itself, Bill himself. Yes Uma Thurman is quite incredible in this film (something about Quentin Tarantino brings out he best in her), but in this film it was totally dominated by David Carradine as Bill. His role is both deep, and moving and makes you totally wonder his true motives for everything occurring and I was actually sad to see his demise. I won’t ruin anything from the film but it wouldn’t really be cheating if I told you that the Bride dose eventually Kill Bill.

The second movie that I just saw this past weekend is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past three years, this is the movie based off of the third book in the Harry Potter sieries by the same name. 'Prisoner of Azkaban' is the first REAL film in the Potter saga, the adaptation we've been waiting for. They've brought along Alfonso Cuaron in the place of, now producer, Chris Columbus, and he succeeds greatly in giving a separate identity to the franchise. It's hard to say how the general public would react to the sudden shift of style and pacing, but from what I've read so far, most people have accepted and enjoyed the new twist in the series. In the last two films the sets seemed very contrived and kind of fairy tallish, where the new director had brought a more ‘live’ feel to the movie. In this film it actually felt like Hogwarts was a place that you could actually walk through or see in real life. (Ok as much as a place like that would exist in real life, and there is no way I would ever want to see a Dementor).

The film flowed incredibly well, and kept very close to the book, the acting has improved with this film (with welcome additions of Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon & Emma Thompson), it flowed quite well but in parts felt kind of rushed. I think my only complaint in the whole movie was that the students were often seen in everyday ‘street clothing’, compared to the school uniforms seen in the last two films. It almost seemed like ah gosh ‘Harry and Hermione’ went shopping at Old Navy before coming to school. Oh well no movie is perfect.

Ok that’s it for tonight, I promise to have another update sooner. Still weird to think it's June 6th already.

Peace

Mike