We just finished watching Hit and Runway and it was great! Its the debut of writer/director/producer/editor Christopher Livingston , at least from what I can find at imdb.com it’s the only thing he’s done.

Ok, so its a story about a less that genius Italian from New York (wonderfully acted by Michael Parducci) who is a wanna-be screen writer. He teams up with a gay New York Jew (Peter Jacobson does an incredible job here) to write a action/comedy film staring your typical rugged action star (played by Hoyt Richards). It is hysterical! How couldn’t it be when you team up a New York Italian and a gay Jew! I highly recommend it! The only down side was that it was pretty low budget and wasn’t in Dolby Digital surround (ok, so I’m a home theatre snob, can you blame me? If you like great little artsy movies you’ll love this film!

Today the Firefox team at Mozilla.org launched Firefox 1.0 Right now their servers are getting hammered, but I’ve managed to get a copy. Feel free to download it from me here. If you’ve never used Firefox it’s time to switch to the most secure, stable, fastest, and feature rich browser around. Trust me, you’ll thank me for it later!

We just finished watching Shrek 2. What did I think? I was totally disappointed. After hearing such great things about it I thought it was a total let down. How would I describe it in one word? Dark. I don’t mean that the comedy was dark, or that the story was dark, just that the movie was dark. Most of the scenes were at night making the whole film just feel down. It’s amazing how different the film felt from the first, I was surprised to find that the same team directed it (Andrew Adamson and Kelly Asbury).

All your favorites are back. Mike Myers is once again Shrek, and Cameron Diaz is back as Princess Fionna (as is Eddie Murphy as Donkey). New comer to the Shrek series is Antonio Banderas as Puss and the wonderfully funny comic master John Cleese as the king. While everyone does a great job at their respective parts, the whole picture feels like they are just out of ideas. It seems as if they did all the great stuff the first time around and are now left with the task of creating another movie with material that wouldn’t have made the cut from the first film.

So the story is pretty basic. Shrek and Fionna are back from their honeymoon and Fionna’s parents (who banished her to the tall tower) want to meet her new beau. When the realize it’s Shrek her father the King works with the Fairy Godmother (played by relatively unknown Jennifer Saunders) to get Fionna and Prince Charming (ably played by Rupert Everett). Guess what happens in the end? Well I won’t spoil it for you but you won’t be surprised…

The music is great (but not as great as the first), the animation is great (in some ways better), the characters are great (again not as good as the first). It’s just that after the amazingly wonderful Shrek its hard to see why a sequel is necessary. I have to say I’m not looking forward to Shrek 3 (yep all the big ones have signed on).

Last night we watched Saved!. It’s basically a dark comedy about the supposed hypocrites of organized religion. It’s the story of a girl that goes to a Christian high school and gets pregnant. When her boyfriend tells her that he’s gay she decides to fix him by sleeping with him (because Jesus comes to her in a vision and tells her too). When she finds out that she’s pregnant she does the only thing she can – she hides her pregnancy.

It’s really funny, very satirical, and has a really great cast. Jena Malone (from Cold Mountain and the young Jodi Foster from Contact) stars with Patrick Fugit (from Almost Famous) who plays the new, understanding boyfriend (and son of the preacher/principal at the school). Macaulay Culkin plays the handicapped brother of Many Moore (the leader of the Christian Jewels – the ultra-christian club at school) . Culkin is really great in this role. It’s really nice to see that he’s grown up from his days of being left at home…

As for the story it’s very predictable, everyone “learns their lesson” in the end. However I think it’s a bit too harsh on organized religion, with the major of the characters being huge parodies of themselves. It’s clear that director Brian Dannelly wants to point out how everyone is wrong and they all have to learn what is right. While trying point out that things should be less black and white I think he goes a little far with how he portrays the characters. They are just too extreme to be believable.

However given all that it is quite funny and worth a watch.

Last night we watched the Sci-Fi classic Blade Runner. Blade Runner was recently named by a group of the nations top scientists as the world’s best science fiction film. Now, I don’t know that I’d go that far, but I would most definitely put it way up there, maybe even in the top ten.

The film stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner. A Blade Runner is a cop that is responsible for retiring replicants (aka killing). Replicants are basically genetically engineered people. They are not androids, as they are biological. Basically the replicants have run amuck since they’ve discovered that they were designed to live for only 4 years (to keep them from developing emotions). Rutger Hauer stars as the villain, but he’s much more than that. Near the end of the film you really begin to sympathize with him, as all he wants is to live. Well, he also enjoys killing, but we won’t hold that against him. Daryl Hannah is also wonderfully creepy as Pris, Rutger Hauer’s pseudo-girlfriend.

Blade Runner is Ridley Scott’s follow up to his 1979 thriller Alien (Blade Runner is circa 1982). It’s really evident that this was his next film as the lighting and overall look of the film is very similar to Alien. While the look may be similar to Alien, it is a very different movie with a very different direction (as you don’t really feel anything for the aliens…). What I think makes this film great is that its much more than a sci-fi film. In some ways its a love story between Decker (Ford) and replicant Rachel (Sean Young) – who doesn’t know she’s a replicant. She was given memories before she was “activated” so she thinks she’s lived for 30+ years. Decker falls in love with her but knows he is supposed to, by law, destroy her. As the film ends he decides he can’t destroy her, and even though his pseudo-partner Gaff (Edward James Olmos) makes it clear that she must die, he leaves with her, presumably to take her somewhere safe (although its clear from earlier in the film there is no such place). If you haven’t seen Blade Runner you should, it’s a great film and deserves all the accolades its received.