By far the biggest event for our family this year, was adding a third member. The XKCD comic from a few weeks back was thus. I felt it appropriate to share with you all.
Happy new year, everyone! From the four of us here in Finland.
Monthly Archive for December, 2009
Many people and organizations have released their best 100 or best 50 films of the last decade already, which are available elsewhere. I’ve decided to distill my own favourites into 10 of the best cinematic experiences. So that means the Lord of the Rings trilogy are grouped into one, as they truly are intended to be a coherent cinematic experience, but Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are separate. This is not what I think to be the best of the decade, just the ones that I personally enjoyed the most.
- Lord of the Rings (a masterpiece)
- Avatar (Avatar will literally and figuratively usher in the next 10 years of cinema)
- Little Miss Sunshine (if you haven’t seen this, go see it now, it’s the best “family” movie not suited for families, ever.)
- Gladiator
- The Dark Knight (special mention also for The Prestige, and Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan is a genius)
- Big Fish (special mention also for Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)
- The Simpsons Movie (I was looking for nothing more than a regular episode stretched to 90 minutes, and that’s what I got. Fantastic!)
- Inglourious Basterds (special mention also for everything Tarantino did this decade: Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, and Grindhouse)
- The Bourne Trilogy (I had to think hard about this. Having read the Bourne novels, the films really pale in comparison. But as films go, they are pretty excellent.)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Other special mentions:
- Star Wars Episode II and III – awful. It’s worth mentioning how awful they are. I recently re-watched all the prequels, and they’re just so bad, it’s painful.
- The Matrix Sequels – I re-watched them all recently, and I think they were judged quite harshly. They are enjoyable films, and I dare say, good filmmaking.
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – Wes Anderson was in top form here, as was Bill Murray. I have yet to see Fantastic Mr Fox, though I’m told it’s excellent.
- Wall*E – I’m not a huge fan of Disney/Pixar films. I enjoy them, but they generally don’t rank high with me. Wall*E was the one I enjoyed the most, I did not see Up.
- Everyone tells me I would love Pan’s Labyrinth. I never got around to seeing it.
Highlights of the coming years? I’m definitely looking forward to The Hobbit and it’s accompanying film, the Tin Tin film(s), and the rumoured Alien 5 helmed by Ridley Scott. Here’s to 10 more years of exciting cinema!
As a cryptography and computer security expert, I have never understood the current fuss about the open source software movement. In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It’s true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn’t just a business model; it’s smart engineering practice. – Bruce Schneier, Crypto-Gram 1999/09/15
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