10 reasons why I love Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

  1. It's a movie about being young and crazy and in love and heartbroken all at once.
  2. Amazing soundtrack.
  3. New York City
  4. Not settling when it comes to your most important relationships. This is important.
  5. Great comic timing and hilarious repartee.
  6. Indie music.
  7. Innocence.
  8. Awkwardness. There aren't enough movies that deal with the awkwardness of life. We are all awkward sometimes.
  9. Where's fluffy?
  10. Epicness.

August: movie FAIL about a startup FAIL

Someone posted a link to a full video of unreleased movie August on Hacker News. It's worth watching the 2nd scene in the movie in the meeting room with Hartnett and potential business partners. Probably the most unintentionally funny scene in the whole film. Here's a gem from that scene: "That's so 3rd quarter 99. You want bleeding edge cross platform robust scalable architectures? Well duh. That's what everyone wants."

Other than that, it's a boring tailspin of a movie about the implosion of an egomaniacal startup founder with a reality distortion field the size of Kansas. It's shot beautifully, though. And I do love the Radiohead in the soundtrack. I also couldn't believe Hartnett dropped a reference to [edit: Luis Bunuel and] Salvadore Dali's surrealist film Un Chien Andalu! James and I saw it at the Dali retrospective at the Tate Modern last summer.

Also: I don't understand how filmmakers think that putting a tense driving score to very EXCEEDINGLY boring scenes (e.g. Hartnett cooking dinner, doing dishes, etc.) will suddenly transform the scene into dramatic brilliance.

The Dark Knight

It was fantastic hanging out with friends from our ycombinator summer cohort of startups to grab beers and watch The Dark Knight. By the end of the movie, my eyes had dried out and I had a crick in my back from hunching over with suspense. Also, the 3 beers I had prior to entering the theater were a bad idea but even through a more urgent bout of bladder urgency, I could not tear my eyes away.

I guess I can't help but find social messages in major summer blockbuster movies. This time, The Dark Knight plays with themes around the role of chance, good and evil of men, and the chaos of anarchy in the face of order. Along the way, there are some amazing situations where the morality of choice is brought to the fore.

Also, excellent fight scenes, lots of building-to-building paragliding by Batman, a lot of complete mayhem by the Joker, and more than a few twists and turns along the way. I have to say though, it was the longest awesome movie I ever saw. You know how some great movies you watch and time just flies by, and it doesn't feel like 2 hours? This 152 minute film felt like around 4 hours.

Four hours of AWESOME.

Wall-E = 10 out of 10

Just saw wall-e with steph, sushmita and theo.

I dig the anti consumerist message, though I have to admit it would be pretty awesome to have such an amazing level of technological sophistication.

Will technology always make us fat, dumb and out of touch with life? I hope not. :)

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