Under a Gibbous Moon

Movie adaptions of graphic novels seem to be all the rage these days. While I have never read the source for this movie, I have no particular doubt that it is far superior to this movie. Within the first ten minutes you’ll see Kate Beckinsale in her underwear. The movie goes downhill from there.

The premise of the movie is that it takes place in Antarctica just before the long winter sets in and cuts off the outpost from the rest of society. As everyone is getting ready to leave, there is a series a murders that must be solved before darkness sets in and the murder gets away with whatever he is trying to get away with (by the end, you won’t care either).

Within the first twenty minutes you know who is behind the murders. There is no ambiguity as each event that occurs only strengthens your conviction. This leaves you with an hour and twenty minutes to kill as our heroine catches up to where the audience is at. This lack of opacity or even a surprise twist makes the movie stumble around (literally) as the characters try to figure out the obvious. Even the red herrings are easily dismissed.

The movie is dull, the romance is forced, and people wandering around in a snowstorm gets old after forty-five minutes.

I recently recieved a letter in the mail from my old cable and internet service provider.The reason we got rid of them was they were radically overpriced and provided extremely poor service. Apparently, their service was so poor that it was illegal. The letter was notifying us about a class action settlement involving RCN’s habit of throttling people who had the nerve of making use of their broadband connection.

RCN’s poor service aside, that is not the real travesty. According to the letter, the lawyers stand to collect $540,00. So how much does the plaintiff get? A one time payment of $3,000. Yup that’s it. Despite it’s class action status, no one else gets anything and the person who originally brought suit will get about 5.5% of what their lawyers do. What a country we live in.