For the Big Nerd in your life

If you are hanging out at work or wherever today and you want to really impress that special nerd in you life, try this one:

"Hey, did you hear that Daftpunk is going to score Tron 2.0. What a great choice! Wendy Carlos did an amazing job with the original. This movie is going to be huge. Its like the new Watchman."

Say something like that and see what happens.

Let me unpack it for you a bit.

Tron was originally released in 1983. It is the best movie that Disney has ever made. A human enters the computer world to save programs from being deleted by the Master Control Program. This was pretty heavy duty stuff in 1983. I saw the movie when I was in kindergarten. It is one of the reasons I became a nerd.

Here is the original movie poster:

Daft Punk is a French electronic music duo. They formed in 1987 and had their first mainstream commercial success with their album Homework, released in 1997. They are both awesome and important.

Check out the dancing spacemen in this video:




Daft Punk
Around the World

Tron 2.0 is the sequel to Tron. Currently in pre-production. Slated for a 2011 release.

Wendy Carlos is the electronic musician who scored the original Tron. She also wrote the score for Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. She was an early master of the moog synthesizer, a real genius. Her most successful album, Switched on Bach, sold over one-million copies. I bought it and love it.

An early Moog Synthesizer:


Watchmen is a movie based on an awesome comic book. It comes out this Friday. Nerds everywhere rejoice.

Everybody Loves Vampires

We finally made out to the movies here in Honduras. At any given time there are four movies showing in La Ceiba's two theaters. Right now all four movies are good. Twilight, Valkarie, Tropic Thunder, and Marley & Me. I'd be happy to see all of these. But with Karine's ants-in-the-pants syndrome we rarely go see movies at the theater.

After some pleading I convinced Karine that we should see Twilight at the mall. She read all the books. I read the first one. The spanish translation of the title is Crepúsculo. I thought the movie was going to be Craptaculo, but it was really quite good. We liked the haircuts that all the vampires had and we liked their outfits. We especially liked the emo soundtrack.

The best part of the movie for us was the audience participation. The romanic climax of the movie is where Bella and Edward kiss for the first time. Their lips slowly move toward each other. Edward warns Bella not to move. It was pretty exciting for us. We didn't know if Edward, who is a vampire, was going to freak out and bite Bella's face off, or what. As their lips come together, some guy in the back of the theater cries out. His timing is perfect. "GOOOAL!!!!!" The whole audience burst into laughter.

Say what you want about theater etiquette. I know shouting at the screen is generally frowned upon in the states. But Karine and I had a richer, more memorable experince because of the guy in the back of the theater. Thank you unknown Honduran jokester!

Snacks

Got an email from a reader this morning:

Hey Karine and Tom! That movie looks awesome, but what did you guys have for snacks?

Great question. It wasn't easy to choose. Here's what we finally decided on:

Wall-E: Two Thumbs Up!

I love going to the movies with Karine. But it takes a lot of convincing to get her to go. She likes movies, but suffers from leg twitches and muscle spasms whenever we go to the theater. Its not a real serious medical condition. More like ants in the pants I think.

Wall-E is a great movie and we would recommend it to anyone who loves robots, robot love stories, fat people in outer space, spandex jumpsuits, or Fred Willard. It was a great story. My prediction: five Oscars.

My conservative hero Andrew Sullivan's take on the movie here.

TV Karma

Many of our readers are fans of the series, Lost on tv. Last year, Tom and I became hooked. We watched all 3 existing seasons over the course of a few months and when the season finale came last spring, we were very sad. We knew that we would be waiting 8 months to see the next episode.

When we moved down to Honduras, we were elated to learn that we have 3 U.S. network channels (out of Denver) on our cable package. (It's still a free package because of the fact they won't let me pay a bill if I don't have the paper copy, and they won't send us a bill). Anyway- since October, we've been counting down the months, weeks, and most recently days until the 2 hour premiere event. Thursday after school, we took Ruby on a long walk to the mall where we bought a bottle of wine and some Doritos, then went across the street to Quiznos for a tasty toasty treat. It would be one of those special fancy meals at the Lewandowski home.

We got home and were just settling in, and turned on the tv. No signal for the 3 networks. No Lost. I was almost beside myself. It's not that we're such tv watchers, it's just that we've been looking forward to this ONE SHOW for so many months. We missed it. We even tried going to expats to use the satellite feed they receive. The only problem was that their feed was from CA, and our show wouldn't even start until 11. We were so tired from a long week that we knew we couldn't get up at 5:30 if we stayed. We went home sad.

It's not always so rough though. Last night we went to Buckbuster video to rent a couple movies. We rented the Oscar nominee, Juno. I don't believe it's released on DVD anywhere else, but we live in Honduras. Here, a movie can open in theaters one day, and you can rent it on DVD the next. It's not always so bad. We watched this movie last night and loved it. It was also fun for us to see all the Minnesota references. (MN lottery posters in the gas station, license plates, St. Cloud) Check it out if you get a chance!


So, though we didn't get to watch Lost this week, we got to watch something on our TV that most of you won't be able to do anytime soon. It all evens out in the end.