the news all around

congrats to tabitha on getting married tomorrow! i'm really happy for her and it sucks i couldn't go out there for it. school is just a beast right now.

i'll give a little rundown of what is currently occupying 80 percent of my time these days. first and foremost is the spring challenge which is next saturday. my partner is jamie and we have to spit out a 5-7 page paper, prepare a 15 minute presentation with powerpoint of course, and present to a number of consulting firm guys/gals. the topic is if we should go to reverse auctions to provide service to high cost subscribers (i.e. rural folk). currently high cost subscribers are subsidized by the universal service fund (go check out your phone bill). this money is given out to carriers based on their cost to provide rural service. but the amount of money required to continue the program is skyrocketing out of control because of competitive eligible telecom carriers, such as wireless providers, coming into rural areas and taking all of the USF money. the reverse auction proposal is simply to replace the existing program with a system that will choose a single carrier for a given area based on whoever can provide service for the lowest cost. jamie and i are representing the rural incumbent local exchange carriers and must (in a nutshell) say whether reverse auctions are a good idea or not. anyway, we have a freaking week to accomplish all of this. currently we are in the research stage and have to sift through probably a couple hundred pages of FCC documents, background info, etc. so that is next saturday.

the very next day kim and i leave for cabo. while in cabo i will probably be working on a data comm take-home midterm. before that though we have our first lab in telecom systems this coming week. it will be really good i'm sure, but there is a lab write up and lots of busy work that will go with it. typical lab i guess. then i have usual homework due each week and reading that i never seem to be caught up with. grad school is difficult.

my days are really packed. i'd say a rough estimate might be about 15 hours a week spent on each class. then i have guitar here and there, movies, taking the bus to school and back each day which takes anywhere from 45 to 1+ hour to get there. and boulder is like a 15 minute car ride from our place. what else. my mom is in town for a week watching my little bro while his dads are out doing whatever it is that two dads do. i actually don't even want to know. i'm out of my sweet and spicy bbq sauce that i get from this restaurant called goodwood in orem, ut. so that irritates me. i'm even out of jellybeans/theater tix. no time for wfmu, no time to clean the house, no time to run errands. and i really have no time to write people back. somehow i always have about 10 emails that i have to reply to. friends in ut, ca, wa, va, and here all have to wait at least a month before ever getting a response from me. i wish it wasn't this way though. i feel like the only person who has this problem. and we are having a baby.

the baby is due in august. we don't know the gender but have names picked out. katelyn marie and jack allen. i think. subject to change of course. we are totally thrilled. thrilled for tom too. they are having little madison in about a week and a half. it's all very exciting times for us all. scary, but exciting. so that is that.

a couple more things. are you still mourning the loss of anna nicole? it is hard to believe how much attention she is still getting. and finally, someday i think genealogy will be somewhat good enough to be able to search an online database and see how i am related to, say, the president, or dr. seuss. or anyone. you get the point. anyway, someday.

Smokin' Aces (2007): tons of guys are out to kill buddy aces for $1m in bounty before he testifies against la costa nostra. the first three scenes are ten minutes of semi-big actors standing around giving tons and tons of back story. and introducing lots of crazy characters. they did well at giving the viewers friendly reminders of all the back-story. otherwise the audience would have forgotten what anyone was doing. and introducing each character with a title such as "hitman" or "ex-cop" really helped to sort everyone out. ben affleck plays a potential assassin and has the scene of his career playing a dead guy. there is some good dialogue here and there. ryan reynolds and ray liotta were for sure the stars of this show. both had really solid performances. mtv movie award worthy. the second half of the movie was good because it was always a mystery about who would kill aces or if he would even die. the end is a blood bath so be ready for it. it is for sure worth seeing and out of all the post-pulp fiction crime movies like this, this one is surprisingly better than most. might be worth buying sometime down the road.
good, B

Pan's Labyrinth (2006): during a spanish civil war a little girl and her mother, con niño, go to the general's house for the summer. there's a big labyrinth that she hangs around in. it's basically a new take on alice in wonderland. a rated r alice in wonderland that is. and actually, it's not too rated r, but just very dark i'd say. this girl is a really good, good actress. and the character she plays is some kind of brave. you never know if the kid is really experiences all of this craziness or if she is just delusional. the frog sequence is so nasty. so nasty i say. but has really good special effects for once. and there is definitely more than one really gross moment in the movie. she goes through some really crazy stuff. this movie gets intense and scary. tom probably wouldn't like the scary parts. i'm not sure who plays the ruthless general in charge of everyone, but he is really amazing at playing a devil of a person. it would be hard to watch over and over again. but once is for sure recommended to all. possibly buy it.
memorable, B+

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006): ken watanabe is the army general i think and has an amazing on screen presence as usual. the story starts off like there are a few dozen guys who have to get ready for the entire u.s. military to attack and kill them on their crappy island. but i thought iwo jima was a pretty significant battle. the story is really about how these guys spend these days which they know will be their last. they only seemed to focus briefly on why the island was so important to defend. but i guess it got to a point where the reasons why didn't matter and what did matter was just to try and live for at least another ten minutes. the sound was really incredible i thought. it's loud, crisp, and lots of detail went into adding and mixing up the sounds. it should win in the sound editing category. i think eastwood is really going to come away a big winner at the oscars. this guy never quits. there was a scene when the battleships are just ripping the island to shreds while this one japanese soldier struggles for five minutes to pick up the can of crap he dropped (he was on doodie duty). there are many moments like this scattered throughout the film and it really helps to make the movie bearable. from start to finish it is pretty violent, even more so than saving ryan's privates i thought. this year was certainly an extra bloody year for movies. half the movie i would hear the americans bombing but i wasn't sure who they were shooting at. i only saw maybe thirty japanese soldiers from start to finish. they should have established at the beginning that there were many more japanese on the island. the end was really touching when they all react reading this u.s. soldier's letter from his mom. the movie is long and feels long. more than enough times i would get a few of the characters completely mixed up. it's a really good wwii movie, but there is just so much death. not just in the scenes with guys blowing themselves up, but it was like the theme of the movie. see it.
memorable, B+

Quinceañera (2006): magdalena has enough pressure trying to plan a big quinceañera and be like her rich friends, but then she decides to get preggers. i guess it wasn't really her decision. and her gangster cousin is gay. i liked how the people would go back and forth between english and spanish, depending on the character. this is probably the first mexican-american movie i've seen. some of the acting was fake but there was a lot of really good dialogue scattered here and there. it felt pointless for a good part of the movie. like five minutes of gay party shots(?). other times it could get pretty boring. never really builds up to anything. don't see.
disappointing, C-

The Queen (2006): the queen of england must face her country after the death of princess diana. i liked the glaring opening stare from the queen. the cuts between all the characters during the events of princess diana's death were very well done. the actors who play these super-power people in britain all do so good. but it's hard to know if this is how all the people really behave. i mean, who knows if the queen really felt so put off by diana; dead or alive. who knows if they just let the queen of england try and drive her land rover by herself through some river. i liked the allegory between diana and the stag that the royal family was trying to hunt the whole time on their property. i enjoyed the relationship between the queen and tony blair. most of the royals' acting was superb and deserved some supporting actor nominations. some of scenes are eerie, like how diana always seemed to be haunting the queen. very realistic. and sad too. the movie is not as dry as you would think. it is very witty which makes it easier to watch despite the bland subject matter. of course it is not the most exciting movie ever, but it is well done enough to keep you interested. awesome cast, perfect locations, very effective soundtrack, worth seeing.
memorable, B+

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): the opening shots are all these scenes of the universe (klaatu flying to earth i presume) and the effects are really believable. especially for the time. and wow. so much of washington dc was used in this movie. i can't imagine someone today being able to pull that off. they jump immediately into the action and i felt as if i couldn't look away. michael rennie who plays the space man does really good. and the secretary of state who first talks with klaatu does awesome. not including that guy, but some of how the government responds to the alien is pretty unbelievable. then again it was the 50s. you want to believe that this was just how things were back then with all the paranoia. or is it just a bad script? you could take this movie and say that it is a take on society, or government, or early mccarthyism, or that wendy's shouldn't have gotten rid of their jalapeño cheddar melt. you could interpret so much from this movie, that it would be interesting to see what the filmaker's real intent was. it could have just been to make a sci-fi movie. who knows. most of the time that klaatu is on earth, he is talking about how he wants to warn earthlings of something really important. this ends up being a mcguffin because the story ends up being more about his treatment by us earthlings. his message basically ends up being, "don't be putting missles or any such things in space. otherwise we aliens will blow up your planet." the problem is that everyone is too afraid of him to listen. it is a pretty good story and worthy of a remake. see it. on a lame side note, it won a golden globe for "best motion picture promoting international understanding." they gave awards out for everything back then.
flaw but worth seeing, C+

coming soon: top ten movies of 2006. just in time for the oscars which i will be missing to be in mexico. i will hopefully have it recorded and i'll watch when i get home. later.