Review of Land of the Dead

I've been eagerly waiting to see Land of the Dead for a couple of years now, ever since I first heard about the project. (That was back when George Romero had a different name for the project; I think Dead Reckoning and Twilight of the Dead were two of the titles under consideration.) Having finally seen it on DVD tonight, I have to report that it was a major disappointment.

I loved all of Romero's other zombie movies, but this one lacked charm. More importantly, it also lacked any kind of emotional punch. The situations were so predictable and cliched, and the characters were so predictable and cliched, that it was just plain hard to care about what happened.

Dennis Hopper has never phoned in a role to the extent that he did in this movie. It was like he wasn't acting at all, just reading his lines. It's a shame too, because I like Hopper quite a bit. But I could have portrayed that role more convincingly myself.

If you like zombie movies, check out the remake of Dawn of the Dead or watch Shaun of the Dead instead of Land of the Dead. You'll have a better time, and you'll enjoy the characters more. Heck, you might even care about what happens in the movie.

2005 Halloween Party - Mary and Maddie

These are pics of my 3 year old girls in their Halloween costumes. They're dressed as pumpkins. (My Aunt Marty bought them their costumes this year.)

A To-Do List for My Blog

A friend of mine, Iggy, pointed out to me a new article on Jakob Nielsen's website usability site about design mistakes that bloggers make. I'm making most of them, so I've decided to convert the mistakes that I'm making into a to-do list for this blog.

To-Do List

1. Write an author bio.

This one should be easy and I'm surprised I haven't already done it.

2- Add an author photo.

Another easy one, since I bought my wife a digital camera.

3- Add link titles.

I'll probably start doing this on blog posts moving forward rather than revising all my old blog posts.

4- Add a "classic hits" section.

I don't know for sure that I have a lot of posts here that I would consider classics, but this will give me something to aspire to.

5- Categorize my posts.

I don't know if blogger even has this functionality, but I'll look into it.

6- Get on a publishing schedule.

Since I haven't posted in over 2 months, it's pretty clear that I'm not on a good posting schedule. I think I'll go for a single post per day on this blog, even if it's a short post.

One item on his list of mistakes that might be an issue for me is narrowing the focus of the blog. I've got opinions on so much stuff that it's going to be hard for me to narrow them all down, but I guess since this blog is about me and my opinions, that will have to be narrow enough.