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Friday Night Follies
Jun. 30th, 2007 11:13 amI went to see Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth installment in the "Die Hard" franchise. I caught the movie with a bunch of fellow computer geeks at Hollywood Blvd, an independent theater, which I'll discuss in detail in a minute.
"Die Hard" was your typical "blow stuff up real good" Bruce Willis movie. The plot, involving a collection of super-hackers, had all the usual impossibilities involving hackers and summer movie-dom, such as:
1) completely integrated Internet-based systems, each vulnerable to a simple set of keystrokes
2) A chronic inability of the on-staff IT department to pull the Internet plug and reboot
3) Really cool and massively overengineered user interfaces
4) bad guys with automatic weapons who hit everything they're shooting at EXCEPT the star characters
5) Pipelines that defy the laws of physics.
Despite all of this, it was a fairly entertaining movie. On the character front, the 50-something Willis actually had some scenes where he needed help, and the rest of the Government wasn't completely incompetent. Mostly incompetent, but not completely.
The theater was an older six-screen multiplex. It had gone out of business and been converted into a "movie and a show" concept. The auditorium felt more like a lecture hall in a business college - rows of (cheap, fake) leather seats facing long counters. Once you were seated, waiters came out and took dinner orders. It wasn't gourmet food - hamburgers, pizza and the like - but then that kind of fare works well for eating in the dark. I wouldn't go there to attend a whodunit type movie, since the waiters, etc. were a bit distracting, but for a shoot-em-up like this, the theater was neat. Besides, after four beers (served during the show), the plot of "Die Hard" started to make some sense!
"Die Hard" was your typical "blow stuff up real good" Bruce Willis movie. The plot, involving a collection of super-hackers, had all the usual impossibilities involving hackers and summer movie-dom, such as:
1) completely integrated Internet-based systems, each vulnerable to a simple set of keystrokes
2) A chronic inability of the on-staff IT department to pull the Internet plug and reboot
3) Really cool and massively overengineered user interfaces
4) bad guys with automatic weapons who hit everything they're shooting at EXCEPT the star characters
5) Pipelines that defy the laws of physics.
Despite all of this, it was a fairly entertaining movie. On the character front, the 50-something Willis actually had some scenes where he needed help, and the rest of the Government wasn't completely incompetent. Mostly incompetent, but not completely.
The theater was an older six-screen multiplex. It had gone out of business and been converted into a "movie and a show" concept. The auditorium felt more like a lecture hall in a business college - rows of (cheap, fake) leather seats facing long counters. Once you were seated, waiters came out and took dinner orders. It wasn't gourmet food - hamburgers, pizza and the like - but then that kind of fare works well for eating in the dark. I wouldn't go there to attend a whodunit type movie, since the waiters, etc. were a bit distracting, but for a shoot-em-up like this, the theater was neat. Besides, after four beers (served during the show), the plot of "Die Hard" started to make some sense!
