Here is a shor­list (aka remin­der) of movies coming out that I am not only inte­res­ted in, but need to see.
Eter­nal Sunshine of the Spot­less Mind : Char­lie Kaufman’s latest sta­rring Jim Carey and Kate Wins­let
“A cou­ple (Jim Carrey and Kate Wins­let) attempt to res­cue their fai­ling rela­tionship by having their bad memo­ries era­sed. Eli­jah Woods plays one of these tech­ni­cians per­for­ming this ope­ra­tion.” Aint it Cool Review
Kill Bill : NEW Taran­tino KB Vol 1 @ IMDB
Char­lie and the Cho­co­late Fac­tory : Tim Bur­ton IMDB
Lost in Trans­la­tion : Sofia Cop­pola latest with Bill Murray and Scar­let Johans­sen… Per­fect IMDB
Jer­sey Girl : Kevin Smith IMDB
21 Grams : Ale­jan­dro Gonzá­lez Iñá­rritu (Direc­tor of Amo­res Perros)

That’ll do pig, that’ll do for now.

95 minu­tes. That is how long I have just spent watching Paul Tho­mas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk love. The film stars Adam Sand­ler, Emily Watson and Phi­lip Sey­mour Hoff­man. I am a great fan of Anderson’s work; Mag­no­lia being one of my favou­rite movies. I am also a fan of Phi­lip Sey­mour Hoff­man; he has pla­yed so many roles and he has pulled them all off so superbly (e.g. Hap­pi­ness, Almost Famous). It was these two fac­tors that temp­ted me to watch this movie. Had it not been for them this delight would have never made itself known to me, I being a deep loather of most Adam Sand­ler movies; not because of Mr. Sand­ler but because of the type and style of movie he is usually in. Take for ins­tance Little Nicky, Water­boy, Airheads and even Sha­kes the Clown — movies desig­ned spe­ci­fi­cally so you don’t have to think, don’t have to feel; just laugh. I am not attrac­ted to mains­tream one liners and pre­dic­ta­ble plots — if I know how something works, how something will pan out, there are no sur­pri­ses, there are no laughs and the movie is a waste of time. That said, Adam Sand­ler can make me laugh and his sar­castc voice is a plus (I think).

So, any­way, having pre­vie­wed the movie at IMDB and duly noted the nice peo­ple invol­ved, I deci­ded to watch the movie when I had the chance. Going in with low expec­ta­tions. I was hoo­ked from the begin­ning, it must have been the whole ran­dom­ness of the intro­duc­tion (truck, top­ple, harp­sichord, smashing, “I don’t know if there is anything wrong because I don’t know how other peo­ple are”). But wha­te­ver it was, I was intri­gued and eager to know just what was going to hap­pen; having no ideas of the actual plot to the movie.

The first thing I should men­tion is the art direc­tion. It is simply supreme;
” In a gro­cery store scene, the items are stac­ked ver­ti­cally by color (echoing the color bars that appear perio­di­cally bet­ween sce­nes), making the scene appear other­worldly. Other sets are bare of color or dis­tinc­tion. Sandler’s love inte­rest in the film (pla­yed by Emily Watson) lives in a maze of white corri­dors. Somehow, every “place” in the film has its own cha­rac­ter and asso­cia­tion. Even the cha­rac­ters become asso­cia­ted with par­ti­cu­lar colors“
All in all, the cine­ma­tro­graphy is exce­llent and the same can be said for the use of light and colors.

Emily Watson who plays Sandler’s love inte­rest holds a see­mingly magi­cal and dream like qua­lity. I felt drawn to her as Barry Egan was. Her appea­rance, actions, dia­lo­gue and mys­te­rious cha­rac­ter cou­pled with child-like good looks held me in a grasp simi­lar to Egan’s throughout the fea­ture. Perfect.

I nor­mally shy away from movies that clut­ter too much into a scene. Take for ins­tance Bra­zil *shud­ders*. I hate it when I can’t work out what is going on, when the noise gives you a hea­dache and the camera keeps switching all over the place. There is a scene I would desc­ribe like this in PDL but it is in fact one of my favou­rite sce­nes in the movie;
“What about the great scene where Lena and Barry’s sis­ter enter his warehouse? The speed of the scene seems to inc­rease almost out of con­trol as his sis­ter harps and lea­ves, then Lena gets invol­ved in a con­ver­sa­tion with him just as the phone sex ope­ra­tor con­ti­nues to call and make threats, and with the for­klift crashing…and Barry takes it all in stride. The scene overwhelms the audience…but Barry seems keyed in only on Lena while casually ack­now­led­ging all of the wild things going on around him…fantastic scene where even I felt out of breath!”

As for Barry, I felt for him and could often relate to his dile­mas and opi­nions. When he got con­ned out of his cash I felt bad. When he poun­ded the blonds I felt good and when he fell in love, so too did I. It is movies like these that are simply above any other type of movie. I do not care if this movie is pre­ten­tious or too arty, has too many unde­ve­lo­ped plots or is too weird — It made me feel something, I got something out of the movie, and for that I am fore­ver gra­te­ful. Not many movies can do that, but this one did. Sand­ler should take more cha­llen­ging roles, Ander­son should make more movies and peo­ple who have not seen this… should.

Im done. Fork in me stick.

Why I didn’t like Equi­li­brium
I really didn’t like this movie. If it wasn’t for Chris­tian Bale and the “gun-kung-fu” this movie incor­po­ra­tes, it would have been a flop. The actual idea of the movie is not plau­si­ble howe­ver it does allow for an inte­res­ting story­line — but this movie does not explore it well enough. We see very little of people’s daily life and there are many flaws along with con­cepts the wri­ters have not thought about. It merely touches the sur­face of something that could be brilliant.

For ins­tance they did not men­tion how the peo­ple dis­tin­guish bet­ween what is right and wrong. Even without emo­tion a human would still have the abi­lity to ques­tion something — and as a result of the ques­tion an action would arise, simply “to see what hap­pens”. Howe­ver without the gui­dance of emo­tion (such as guilt or plea­sure) the per­son can­not know whether the thing that he has done is wrong or not. These can be sim­ple things such as stea­ling someone’s pen or more dras­tic such as mur­der. Hence it would not be a per­fect state.

Exam­ple of a flaw: Towards the end when Pres­ton is on the “emo­tion detec­tor”, the per­son stan­ding behind him says, “Shit”. There are also loads of con­ti­nuity mistakes.

I think it did snatch ideas from other pla­ces and few parts of it are ori­gi­nal. There are very strong simi­la­ri­ties with 1984, in par­ti­cu­lar the dan­ge­rous children.

I also found “Father’s” voice over anno­ying and the inven­tion of a miracle drug (pro­tium) to remove emo­tion was IMO a poor way of ren­de­ring peo­ple emo­tion­less. I did enjoy the twist in the office where his new part­ner turns him in though and samu­rai swords are always cool. The fight sce­nes were mode­rate — con­sis­ting mainly of a man boun­cing up and down shoo­ting over his shoulder.

Oh and the Mona Lisa is not pain­ted on a can­vas, it’s pain­ted on a woo­den plate.

I watched Bra­zil and it just didn’t appeal. Spoi­lers herein.

I unders­tand how others have enjo­yed it, for ins­tance the future that holds an essence of the past — along with small tid­bit sayings that appear thoughout, such as:

“Sam Lowry: How are the twins?
Jack Lint: Tri­plets.
Sam Lowry: My, how time flies!”

These made me chuckle.

What I didn’t like. The pipes, these just annoy me des­pite their repre­sen­ta­tion and mea­ning within the movie — the stran­gling hold, the clut­ter, the con­cea­led mess that over­flows — a defi­ni­tion of the movie itself. The pri­mi­tive animal-like noise they produce.

Watching this movie I simply became more and more frus­tra­ted, so much so that I had to turn it off and take a break before watching the last half hour. The movie lac­ked a basic struc­ture. Boun­ding through ran­dom hallu­ci­na­tions it just became a mes­me­ri­zing down­ward spi­ral with added extra­va­gant and exa­ge­ra­ted ideas and con­cepts pou­red in to add depth. This cou­pled with poor pro­duc­tion and very shoddy effects pro­vide for an unplea­sant vie­wing expi­rience. In watching the movie I felt like Mr Tuttle when the papers kept coming at him — a moments peace could not be had.

I am not saying this movie shouldn’t be a clas­sic. It has much more going for it than many other movies, par­ti­cu­larly in the sci-fi fan­tasy gen­res. I am saying that this movie was not enjo­yed — I do not enjoy watching peo­ple stum­ble, make mis­ta­kes and suf­fer effects of misun­ders­tan­dings and comic errors. The story, although being a fan­tasy became inplau­si­ble, impos­si­ble and blu­rred. I did not feel the need to watch more as there was no sus­pense, there was no desire to know what was hap­pe­ning or what was going to hap­pen — why would there be when all the movie is doing is expan­ding on a basic idea while devia­ting further from the norm. Any conc­lu­sion that could have been pro­vi­ded would not have accoun­ted for the mess pre­ce­ding it.

If I could sum up my pres­cise fee­lings on this movie it would be through a quote from it,
“What is this mess? An empty desk is an effi­cient desk.”

The men­tal escape of the main cha­rac­ter at the end of the movie, his desi­red free­dom from such a rea­lity was the same fee­ling I had as the cre­dits began to “appear”.

I have a simi­lar pro­blem to this:
http://​www​.experts​-exchange​.com/​O​p​e​r​a​t​i​n​g​_​S​y​s​t​e​m​s​/​W​i​n​X​P​/​Q​_​2​0​7​0​5​5​2​3​.​h​tml

“MMC can­not open services.msc

This may be because the file does not exist, it is not an MMC con­sole, or was crea­ted by a later ver­sion of MMC.

This may also be because you do not have suf­fi­cient access rights to the file.”

This hap­pens for any .msc file. The files can be run manually via the MMC con­sole howe­ver.
“I also just noti­ced that run/find doesn’t work either. It com­plains about not being able to find a file it needs to run. At least it said so nicely in a large, pretty XP box.“
I have this pro­blem also. I also have mul­ti­ple script errors when vie­wing mic­ro­soft help files and pla­ying zone​.com games on MSN6.

I have searched hi and low on the inter­net for a solu­tion to this but nothing has as of yet hel­ped. A user who also had this pro­blem men­tio­ned the AverTv card and pos­si­ble dri­ver rela­ted issues. I have also used this card but have since remo­ved it.

Solu­tions I have tried:
New admin users show the same pro­blems, as do res­tric­ted users.
” SFC /scannow” didn’t help.

HELP!