define: Jared Barden

Check out the following video to see what it’s like when your second movie at the drive in catches on fire. This was shot about 15-20 minutes into Get Smart, which was our second movie of the night, after watching The Dark Night.

Get Smart caught on fire around 12:15 or so, and seeing as how we were leaving for vacation at 6:00, we decided to just go home instead of waiting it out for the staff to splice the film. You’ve got to love the cars honking at the end, as if that will help get the movie running any faster.

Enjoy!

Tonight Danielle and I went out on a date to celebrate our anniversary. It’s the first time the two of us have been out alone in I can’t even remember how long.

The date started with a trip to my favorite Chinese place - The Dumpling House in Wellsboro. After a scrumptious dinner of Chicken with Curry sauce, we headed over to the Arcadia to get our seats, which were unfortunately located in the Dinner and a Movie theater, which is my least of the 4 screens.

Before I get into my “review,” I must say that I had reservations when I first heard about / saw trailers for WALL•E. It looked like a bold departure for Pixar, and I thought it might be their first movie that would flop. While I don’t think it’s going to flop, I still think it’s going to be one of those movies where you really like it, or you just don’t quite get it.

The move started out pretty slowly, following WALL•E around his daily tasks of cleaning up the mess that humans left on the Earth (they just had to get their Green plug in there). Don’t worry though. We’ll have to be around a lot longer to pile up all the trash left for WALL•E to pick up. But I digress…

As I said, the beginning was slow, but we do get to see glimpses of WALL•E’s personality, and see why he is so lovable. Then EVE shows up to search for vegetation, and WALL•E falls in love. However, EVE doesn’t return the feelings at first, in fact, she tries to blow him away several times. However, she does warm to WALL•E over time.

Fast forward and WALL•E and EVE are back on the ship Axiom where thousands (millions?) of humans are located deep in space. Apparently they all got lazy and suffered from bone loss due to gravity, because EVERYONE is obese, and all they do is float around in their little hover chairs all day long, while robots wait on them hand and foot. Kind of like a 700-year long cruise, except nobody is doing any sort of physical activity.

I won’t get into all the nitty gritty of what happens next, but this was the part of the movie that really hooked me. During the whole movie, there were little kids making comments, as they are prone to do, but there was a scene close to the end of the movie where you could have heard a pin drop due to its dramatic nature.

So, WALL•E had a little bit of everything - comedy, very little dialog, personable / lovable robots, a trigger-happy love interest, drama, and amazing animation. Definitely one of my favorite movies of the year. Go see it!

We just returned from Williamsport, where we watched Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled, with our friend Mara.

I didn’t know too much about the movie, but I did know that it was supposedly in support of Intelligent Design, and I like Ben Stein, so I figured it would be a good time.

I was definitely not disappointed. Well, at least not totally. I was kind of hoping Ben would take more of a side/stand than he did, but that is his prerogative.

I won’t really get into the whole Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate, because for me there isn’t much of a debate. I believe in Intelligent Design, but I also further believe in Creationism. Do animals/species evolve over time? Sure they do. It would be silly to think otherwise, but did we all come from single-celled organism in some cosmic soup? Highly unlikely.

What I wanted to touch on were some of the explanations offered by prominent Evolutionists as to how life might have begun.

1.) Molecules attached themselves to inorganic crystals and somehow formed life.

Wow. That’s about all I can say on that one. I’m pretty sure that takes more faith than believing that God created life.

2.) There is a possibility of an Intelligent Designer out there, but it must have evolved from somewhere, and then evolved enough to create life in our own universe.

Another far-fetched one it seems. And this was mentioned by one of the world’s foremost Evolutionsts - Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. Frankly, that explanation seems a little delusional to me, but that’s just me.

No matter what you believe on this issue, I hope we can all agree that debate should not be stifled, as is apparently happening in academic institutions at all levels across this country. That is truly a shame. Voices from both sides of the aisle should be heard, and then people should be able to make their choices from there.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we watched Pirates of the Caribbean: at World’s End this weekend during our trip to Scranton. The following is my amateur “review” of the film.

Let me start about by saying that I had high hopes for this incarnation of the Pirates series. I was hoping that we would get past the unnecessarily-long-sword-fight-on-a-moving-wheel type scenes that we saw in Dead Man’s Chest. Thankfully, for the most part, these types of scenes were avoided.

I also knew that a lot had to happen during this film, due to all the plots that had to be wrapped up. Will wanted to save his father. The crew wanted to retrieve Jack from the Pirate “underworld.” Will wants to win back Elizabeth. Jack wants to capture Davey Jones’ heart. And the list goes on.

I thought the movie started a little slowly. There was the scene of the pirate associates being executed at the command of Lord Beckett, followed by a lengthy scene that takes the crew of the Black Pearl to Singapore, which leads to the introduction of the first of many new characters in the film.

I won’t spill too many details for those of you who might be reading who haven’t seen the film yet, but suffice it to say there is a lot of backstabbing and apparent side switching that goes on throughout the film. So much so that it can get a little confusing at times.  Unfortunately it gave me the feeling that they were trying to tie up too many plots at one time. Maybe not, but it felt a little frantic at points.

One of the biggest oddities was that of the multiple Jack Sparrow characters that came as a result of apparent hallucinations Jack had while spending time in Davey Jones’ Locker. Our first introduction to Jack comes during one of these hallucinations. The characters seemed a little weird and out of place, but they would have been fine with me, except for one gigantic issue.

Later in the movie, when Jack is being held in a cell, we see two other Jacks occupying the cell with him. These Jacks looked absolutely terrible. The lighting didn’t match the rest of  the scene, and the characters looked awfully grainy. I’m sure that millions upon millions of dollars were spent on this movie, and it seems that a little more could have been spent on making these characters seem a little more realistic.

I guess that’s it for my rants. I want to see the film again, because I think it will make more sense and be more enjoyable. Also, I have heard that there is a scene after the ending credits that we missed the other day.

On another note, if you ever get the chance to see a digital movie, by all means, take it! This was a digital screening that we went to, and it was amazing. Even Danielle, who can never see the difference in high definition TVs noticed the difference right away. It was evident from the very first trailer we saw up until the end of the film. The picture quality was so crisp and vibrant - not a bit washed out at all. Those little annoying specks and black flecks that you notice on normal movie screens were completely nonexistent. It was wonderful.