Sin City, OMFG I want a dual core Opteron and Tom DeLay ain't the only prick in Washington
(another Monday morning wrap-up)
Like half of the country, Jessi and I finally did see Sin City on Thursday night. I was less impressed with it than she was, I fear, but I definitely still liked it. Here's why.
There are two traditional fields of geek interest that I simply have never developed a taste for. One of them is Japanese animation and the other is comic books of most varieties (gasp!). The fact that I don't tend to enjoy comic books due to their shallow storylines, simplified dialog and 2D characters (all of which I understand are part of the form and not necessarily flaws - just not aspects of the medium that I like) means that there are certain things about Sin City that just rubbed me the wrong way. A couple of the storylines were a bit dull and/or confusing, some of the dialog drove me nuts and I found some of the characters (especially villians) to be not nearly as menacing as they should have been. Elijah Wood's "Kevin" character was fairly creepy, but Nick Stahl's "Yellow Bastard" was comically bad. Powers Boothe was disturbing, though. Then again, Powers Boothe is always disturbing.
I have to admit that the entire storyline with the hookers and Clive Owens' character left me confused. Okay, hooker war...so what? They should have either left all of the storylines separated or connected them all, not connected two and left the third one dangling. Then again, that storyline was also the one I found the most boring, so that might have something to do with it. The storylines with Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis' respective characters were much more compelling, in my opinion.
Bear in mind that these are the observations of someone who had never so much as heard of the Sin City comic books until talk of this movie started brewing. I cannot profess to understand the (no doubt) brilliant mind of Frank Miller or claim to be an expert when it comes to discussing or critiquing his work. I just know what I did and didn't like in the movie.
Also, there was far too much gear being shot or ripped off in this movie. Not good.
All-in-all, though, it was an enjoyable flick. It was visually stunning and at least two thirds of the film was entertaining and engaging, if a bit short on the dialog and character depth at times. I have a feeling that the slight disappointment that I felt at its conclusion was due almost entirely to the enormous amount of hype I'd heard about the film, not only from the media but from some of my good friends who'd seen it and been completely blown away by it. Then again, they were all comic book fans :)
My favorite website is reporting that AMD will announce dual-core Opterons before the end of April. Color me aroused ;)
Ars' Jon "Hannibal" Stokes makes some very excellent points in his article, though. Will it matter if AMD beats Intel to market with a dual-core processor if none of the enthusiasts (like myself and most of you, I'd wager) who buy their products can't afford them? In my opinion, a large part of AMD's market is people like myself who build their own machines and look heavily at the bang/buck ratio before purchasing. For me, and a lot of other enthusiasts, AMD has filled that need for quite a while now. If they release dual-core Opterons that start at well over $1000, how many of them will they really sell? And what if Intel can come along two months later with a dual-core Pentium D that can be had for $500 or $600, with AMD still months away from affordable dual-core Athlon 64s? Dual-core definitely would not convince me to drop $500 or $600 on a Pentium D versus $100-$200 for a single-core Athlon 64, but for some enthusiasts that's an acceptable price.
I just home AMD's got those dual-core 64s waiting in the wings.
Google News has a myriad of stories about the current trials of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). As most of you are aware, I'm sure, a certain number of ethically-questionable activies that Representative DeLay may have been involved in have come to light recently. These activities have triggered a chain reaction of people calling for DeLay's resignation, starting with Democrats in the House and Senate, moving on to the general media and finally coming from some members of his own party (most notably Representative Chris Shays (R-CT)).
While I can understand anyone who is genuinely outraged at DeLay's apparently egregious flaunting of House ethics rules, the delicious hypocrisy of other major political figures calling him out for questionable conduct is too much to resist commenting on. We all know that if God asked Abraham to find one righteous person within the halls of Congress, a storm of fire and brimstone to make Sodom and Gamorrah look like a badly-botched July 4th barbecue would ensue.
Repeat after me - there is nothing more hilarious than watching one politician calling out another politician for ethical or moral flaws of character.
Welcome to Amerika, where our politicians provide more entertainment than the whole of Hollywood can churn out in a year.
-Sam
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