Review: TRON: Legacy in IMAX 3D

I really don't even know what to say about this movie. You could say I was a fan of the original TRON, but then again it came out in 1982, and I probably saw it in 2002, so I was a bit behind the curve. Looking back at the trailer now, after having just seen the new visual masterpiece that was the sequel is like comparing a sleek new Ferrari 599 GTO to an old Ford Model T. Seriously, from the beginning of this movie all the way through the credits, this movie is stunning.

Now there are two things you should know if you have any sort of interest in this movie and I am here to report on both of them. One is the soundtrack. It is original music, entirely composed by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Or as I like to refer to them as, Daft Punk. I am a huge Daft Punk fan, and from the very beginning of this movie, when the music starts bumping it is phenomenal. Being a movie set mainly in a digital world, the digital stylings of Daft Punk work perfectly. And while the music alone is good, this is where the IMAX theater comes in. The base literally shakes the seats. You feel the music, and it adds exponentially to the experience.

The other thing that you may have noticed from the commercials is the usage of computer generated effects to de-age Jeff Bridges 21 years. Now it's a little weird, and it takes a little getting used to, but after you do it's really a non issue. I mean, I've seen giant blue guys on screen and I think I dealt with that pretty nicely. I'll admit it's not the best work I've ever seen, but then again absolutely everything else in the movie is gorgeous so I am going to let it slide.

Also I just wanted to say, I really liked this movie. It's the nerdiness, the video game-ness, the music, the visuals, the whole she-bang-bang. The world created by the events and aftermath of the original presented a really cool sequel. Plus, I thought the acting was pretty good too. I really liked Olivia Wilde in the movie, but I think that's just because she actually showed some emotion, specifically happiness, as opposed to her role as the sullen, emotionally reserved 13 in House. The main guy, Garrett Hedlund was also pretty good too. And who doesn't love Jeff Bridges right? I'm not the best critic for acting but I thought it was enjoyable all around.

The ending could have been better. It left me a bit confused I guess. The movie was so sweet then the ending fell flat and it was just so odd. All in all, if you like Daft Punk, spectacular visuals, video games, and some sweet action Tron provides a good movie going experience. Definitely a must see for nerds of all ages. 9/10.

Now I'm off to buy the soundtrack! You should too! Hooray!

A list of Excuses for why I can't write my 10 page paper:

• I sprained my typing finger (right, middle) so I can't type it. Or write it.
• I was too busy watching a 7 hour cricket match between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe on ESPN3 on the xBox 360.
• I had to watch the latest Blamimation on PATV.
• I had to watch the one of the movies for the paper, that I should've watched two months ago.
• I had to watch the countless videos of John Mayer that Jake kept finding on YouTube.
• I had to listen to Jake play guitar.
• I had to check, double check, and triple check my See Friendships with random people on Facebook.
• I had to Tweet about how bad this paper was.
• I had to make incoherent babbling sounds.
• I had to write a dozen fake intros to the paper using slang and cuss words to describe the class.
• I had to delete those intros.
• I had to write how much I hated the class.
• I had to delete that too.
• Andy kept talking my ear off every time I wanted to start working.
• Seriously, he'd be all like, "Hey man stop going on Facebook and do your work." 
• What a chatty Cathy right? 
• He's such a jerk.
• I kept staring at our fish, Wendel for inspiration.
• The Christmas lights we use to light our apartment just make it too comfortable to entertain the thought of doing anything other then staring at their dull white glow....
• I had to throw my hat in the corner in disgust of how bad I'm doing at writing this paper.
• I had to moan about how my hat is now over in the corner and I want it back on my head.
• I had to moan about how I'm too lazy to go get it and Andy why won't you go get it for me I don't care if it's farther away from you just go get it I know it's my hat but c'mon please you're such a jerk I hate you why don't you love me fine I'll go get it jerk.
• I had to double check and see if Netflix works on the xBox.
• I'm thirsty and I can't work if I'm thirsty.
• Alright so I'm totally gonna do it, but I just gotta pick out some music to listen to.
• What time're the Pats on again? Oh I could totally just start it after. Okay fine I'll start it!
• Dude this song's really good. 
• Just sit back and listen man.
• Close your eyes and just go for it.
• I had to wonder if Kevin was having fun in class. Or wherever he is.
• I had to ask what was for dinner.
• I had to get yelled at.
• I had to ask Jake how his car ride was first.
• But seriously this is getting ridiculous, I'm gonna go start it.
• I had to write a blog about how I couldn't write it.
• I did write a blog about how I couldn't write it.

Ode to the Worst Class I've Ever Had The Displeasure of Taking

College is a wonderful place. There's plenty of opportunities, there's plenty of girls (or guys (if that's your thing)) to swoon over, and there's plenty of interesting classes you can take. Unfortunately, after the honeymoon that is most student's freshman year, in my case freshman and sophomore years, you settle down with a major, maybe a minor, and you have to take some classes that aren't so interesting.

Now I don't remember if I've ever gone into detail on my schooling and whatnot, but I'm now officially a Communications major here at the good ol' University of Massachusetts. I'm also unofficially an Education minor. It's a Catch-22 system, where you can't be a minor until you have completed all the courses, and it never tells you what courses you need to take online, because you are not a minor. It's a dumb and flawed system.

But what's more dumb and flawed is one of the classes that I've needed to take. Now I won't go into specifics of when I had to take this class, or which class it is specifically, but let me tell you about it. This class had a promising title, offering to teach us about international things, implying that the general scope would be scattered, you know, internationally. Turns out international, in this context, stands for "Africa, India, and China."

Now, I wouldn't mind studying Africa, India and China, except that's all we did. I was under the assumption that if our teacher was from Great Britain, we might actually take interest in the U.K. and Europe, but apparently I was mistaken. My Bad.

Anyways, this class was painful to go to. Not only did we have the class in a room that always had the heat blasting from 5 gigantic radiators, even during the fall when it was already high 70's, but the class was rarely taught by our actual teacher. Most of the time, we'd walk into class, and we'd have a guest speaker, talking about something irrelevant, and non-consequential to the class. Then a few times, we'd walk in to class only to find that all 8 of the TA's were going to parade up to the front of the class and tell us about all their time spent in the peace corps in, oh wouldn't you look at that! Africa. The few classes she actually taught? Yeah, she just stood up there and talked at us. It was painful.

So that's what happened from a "teaching" perspective for the first few classes. From a "student" perspective I did the following:

• Read a book
• Listened to my iPod
• Played PSP
• Played Trivia/Solitaire on my iPod
• Played Mahjong on my Laptop
• Read the Newspaper

There was no wireless in this building for some godforsaken reason. Who knows why. Perhaps they thought the heat would make us pass out before we tried to use it. Perhaps they were right.

I will take this time to tell you the sole, shimmering gem of wisdom I've gleaned from this class. Having all that time of sitting in class allows one to accomplish tremendous feats. I mastered the alphabet. Backwards. Yes. Through repetitive writing, and filling two pages of paper, I, Jim Redding, have conquered the alphabet both forwards and backwards. I feel accomplished. I also wrote a short screen play for a Star Wars spoof created by my bro-host Kevin and myself. We are thinking of selling it to Robot Chicken. They seem pretty cool.

After the Midterm Reviews, where everyone slammed her for having an awful class, she decided to merge the second and third papers of the class into one final paper. At this point I need to mention the discussion section of the class. The class only met once a week, with a discussion section immediately following the class itself. Two and a half hours of class purely on one subject is brutal, even in the best of classes. This was living in a hellish netherworld where time falls to a standstill and you are prodded with a pointy stick for what seems like eternity.

Now my TA was nice enough. Arguably too nice. Hailing from, oh weird, AFRICA (specifically Nigeria), she was all about being our friend, and us being buddies. So the first couple of classes, we'd go in, and instead of you know, having class, possibly getting through everything so we could get out early, we'd sit down, and have to find a neighbor and ask them, "How was your day?"

Cue the prodding.

This is the last place any of us wanted to be, and we were forced into niceties with strangers, that nobody really wanted to be there with. This eventually escalated into "Friendship Groups" which consisted of 5 people sitting around and asking each other how our days were. This was quickly replaced with us asking each other why they had made the horrible decision of taking this class.

This also might be a good time to note, while after the midterm beat-down, our teacher started teaching, and actually used PowerPoint, we weren't graded or tested upon anything we learned in class. The entire grading system is based on homeworks, done using readings provided to us online, and turned in to discussion. We took a few weeks off after we figured this out, skipping the class and blending in with the crowds as we filtered off to discussion. It was, unfortunately, all too easy, and still horrifically painful.

I have explained to you my rage, and agony I have experienced for participating in this class, but this does it no justice. Should you ever be in a similar position to that of my own, be wary of international classes. I beg of you. Should you ever stumble into a class where there is a promise of "International" and "Learning," be wary. Be very wary.

Lookout: The Lifesaver

So for those of you not in the know, I am the proud owner of the original Droid. It has been a most admirable companion, coming in clutch in many a situation. This past weekend however, we had a very close call.

Going out as some tend to do, on weekends, in college, I found myself walking home in the middle of the evening by my lonesome. Upon arriving home, I reached to check my trusty Droid only to find my right pocket man was not there. Surely my left pocket? Back pocket? Jacket pockets? Alas! My Droid was lost! After a moment of panic, the answer hit me as it so often does. Right in the face.

I bet you watch TV. I bet you see commercials. I will even go so far as to bet that you've seen more than one commercial about the Droid. Perchance you might have seen the Droid commercial about Lookout, Mobile Security. I too have seen this commercial, enough times for it to appeal to my paranoid side, that, "Hey, security is good! I should get some on my phone!" I've got to figure, we've got alarms on cars, anti-virus on computers, low-jack for both, why not on a phone? More importantly, why not on my phone?

As I made a mad dash the two feet from where I was standing to my laptop, I was questioned as to what I was doing. A quick explanation and some mad typing later, and I was on the Lookout website, logged in, and it was in the process of hunting down my phone. It hunted it down to within about 10 feet before I realized I knew exactly where I'd dropped it and set out on a quick jog to go get it. At last my Droid and I were reunited.

It was a scary 5 minutes, but once again, technology saved my ass. This is a PSA to all you smart phone users. I don't care if you're young or old, cause you're just as likely to drop your phone at a party as you are at a business meeting. Either way, Lookout helped me find my phone, and saved me the time and hassle, not to mention the money it'd take to replace my phone. So spend the 2 minutes it takes to find the App on your Droid or Blackberry or Windows Mobile, and save yourself hundreds of dollars and a boat load of stress. As for you iPhone users, maybe you can find a comprable app, but you dumbphone users are outta luck. Just another reason for everyone to get a Droid.

My name is Jim Redding and I approve this message.

Jim Redding vs. The State of Massachusetts

This post is already awesome. The title alone is not only a legal thing, but also a Scott Pilgrim thing. I am the master of word play. It is me.

So last Tuesday I went to court. "Now Jim, you're such an upstanding why would you ever need to go to court?" you ask. Well friend, I was LIDAR'd speeding in Gardner. A tragic tale, I assure you. Feeling as it was my duty to get my day in court, I decided to fight the ticket. I mean really, worst case scenario I have to pay my ticket, which I'd have to do anyway. So I decide to go to court.

So the night before I look up a few ways of getting out of the ticket, and long story short, I stayed up until 4AM writing cross examination questions. I basically would have destroyed this Officer's credibility.

I say would have because what I didn't know, is that in Massachusetts I don't get to confront my accuser. Instead of the age old way of having your officer show up (or hopefully not show up) and take your case in front of a judge, you go in front of the Court Magistrate, after paying a 25 dollar filing fee, and some old Officer sits in the witness stand and reads the original Officer's report of the incident. Not knowing this, most of my cross examination questions were reduced to little pointless jabs at this (presumably) innocent Officer. And being under oath I couldn't lie about the incident (morals!) and inevitably, my motion to be found Not Responsible was denied. But they did drop down the fee, which was nice.

However then I was told that if I didn't like the finding, I could pay 50 bucks, then do the whole Judge thing, and they'd then subpoena my citing Officer. But at that point, I'd skipped class and driven an hour to the court house, and waited another hour for my hearing only to be found Responsible, and to be honest, that's a lot of stuff to be hit over the head with mid-October, when I should just be living it up at school. So I'm not doing the second hearing cause in the end, it'll probably be the same finding, and let's be honest, if the cop used a Laser enhanced Radar gun, and tagged you as speeding, you were speeding. Which unfortunately I was. So next time you're fighting a speeding ticket, at least in Massachusetts, unless you were paying some huge fee (like I was) or you actually weren't speeding, especially if it's an hour away from where you live, and you have to drive there on a b-e-a-utiful fall day, it's not worth it. Save the gas money.

Adventures in Radioland

Week 3 of classes is in the hole, but more importantly week 3 of Music Salad Sandwich has blessed the airwaves. If you haven't heard Kevin and my latest adventure on the airwaves, I must say I think we're outdoing ourselves. Last year, our brutal taskmaster of a program director came to us mid-semester and basically told us, "Listen guys, I don't want you playing any music that has ever been played on any other station, and I don't want you talking more than three or four times an show." Fearing for our infant show's life we accepted these terms and conditions.

But now it's a new year, and a new show, with a new program director. We're making the rules this year. As well as having our intern Mariah on the phones Kevin and I really have a lot more of our creative juices flowing at midnight, instead of 2 AM.

Point in case, on our way to the Station last night, we drove by the Rotary by Totman that we see every day. This time I stop to ask Kevin what he thinks is going in the middle of it. Before we even park the car down the road, we've got it. UMass's greatest alumni, back to back buddy cop style. That's right, Bill Cosby and Dr. J. Can you imagine, driving down the longest street through campus, only to find the literal gold at the end of the rainbow? That's right, not only is it an amazing statue, it is also an amazing gold statue. It would make everyone on campus's day. Imagine the nice warm spring sun gleaming upon the golden statue as snow slowly seeps off, revealing the heroes of UMass under the tundra. There would be absolutely nothing better.

Now we know, this idea has not only made your day, but your lives. We get it. This is everyone's dream come true. We don't need a lot of recognition, names on a plaque perhaps. But what we do need, is everybody's signature. If you're interested in this beautiful, priceless statue adorning our unworthy campus, write on the Music Salad Sandwich wall, through either the link up there, the link at the bottom of the page, or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-Salad-Sandwich/141646119211523 for all of you who are reading through Facebook and let us know you're interested. Tell your friends, get them in on this. Who knows, maybe we can actually get this dream realized!

Jim's State of The Union

So tonight was the first real night in the apartment. Everyone's settled in. We all woke up and ran some errands. Hung around all day, grilled dogs and burgers while we played a little catch on the front lawn. Then to top it all off we rented Repo Men off OnDemand and had a little movie night. The guys all went to bed, but I'm a bit of a night owl so I'm up and watching the last half of Criminal Intent before SVU comes on in a few minutes.

Being here with the guys, hangin out, talking, broin' out (yes, separate from hangin' out) and even just sitting watching TV makes me realize that this; right here; this apartment, this year, this college, this life, that I am living, is the prime of my days. I arguably couldn't be happier with the situation. I mean, sure, there are things I want to change, like I'm sure I'll dislike a class or two, I'll wish I had a better situation with some girl, and I'll wish I had a bigger budget to buy more video games, but on the whole, I am very pleased with my situation in life as a whole. I mean as far as the good life is concerned, I'm livin' it.

I guess I'm going to keep this one short. But the brevity is not for lack of emphasis. Trust me, the emphasis is there, and there's a whole bunch of it. We're keeping this one short, due to the fact that I think you guys might get a little annoyed with me rubbing it in your faces that right now, my life is incredible.