My incision itches. It's driving me nuts. Before it properly healed, it itched with that internal healing sensation, and the stitches didn't help either. The nerve endings ate all gone about two thirds of the distance between my collarbones in a shallow arc, so I shouldn't be feeling anything. Nonetheless, it itches. Argh. Scratching does no good, I can't even tell that I'm scratching anything.
I also did nothing on my birthday, which is light years better than previous ones. Last year, well, bleh, I was rendered homeless two years in a row on the week of my birthday, which is always a nice present, but things worked out in a manner of speaking. Before that, well, still not really a round of fun, but this one was okay...I stayed put, planned nothing, drank some really good tequila, and cooked myself some nice stir fry that really, really stank up the place, but tasted wonderful.
I also went and saw Spiderman 2, which I enjoyed for the most part. My experience was marred by several ill mannered children of dubious descent, being sheparded by uncaring adults who did nothing but jabber and talk on cellphones. One bright spark saw fit to kick my seat all thoughout the movie, and each time I would turn around ready to snarl and commit murder, and the mom would lean over and slap the little shit, but it had no effect. Little bastard was probably numb to the trauma from repeated acts of feeble discipline, 'cos he still kicked my seat and would squeal "ESO ES SPIDERMAN!" for every scene he appeared.
I can assume the larva acted tat way by example and genetics, because whoever was herding them were equally rude. Talk, talk talk, loudly, and in multiple languages, which hurts for some reason. This is how it would sound: "Nyeadaestandomosesolibrosconquesotodossantavidaerratamonquienpureto! Yes, that's what I told her. But anyway, avinatonosotroscomidarinotosatadanachomaspequino and it was blue!"
So on and so forth, all the way through the previews. I made a bet with myself that if I killed the entire extended family behind me, no jury in the world would convict. I can tune out spurious conversation easily, but when it changes from one language to another, whatever is monitoring inside my brain thows the switch that says "pay attention!".
But the movie itself, great. I liked it better than the first one, but somoene needs to fix Kirsten Dunst. I do think she's cute, but she's also, well, she acts brain damaged, and MJ isn't brain damaged in the comic.
I do see why people didn't like some of the CG based combat scenes. It's a real bitch to get that sort of thing right, and to be frank, nobody really has yet. There's always small problems with computer generated figures and motion control, especially when they are organic. The human eye is also trained to notice patterns, and when something doesn't appear "real", it stands out immediately and isn't accepted. The closer you get to "real", the more jarring it is.
A good example would be the basketball court sequence in Matrix Reloaded. Four shots are of an animated Keanu Reeves and a bunch of Agent Smithii duking it out, and when I wa watching it on the big screen, it was instant;y bvious what was done. The face became rigid, the trechcoat stopped flowing properly and small details went out of sync, such as the texture of clothing. I'm not saying it was a bad job, far from it...I couldn't do any better if I had the hardware and resources, I'm just saying it was obvious.
It's one thing to model an airplane, or spacecraft and move it around. Rolling a ball downhill is also a relatively trivial task. But a complex organic shape, like a person, has many moving parts that must be moved in sync. Skin moves over bones, it is not helld rigidly in place, and that must be modeled. Look at the difference between dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park films. Each succeeding generation of software has more tweaks built into it, more control over surface textures, programs to control muscles and virtual tendons that will flex other parts of the body during movement. Imagine your foot playing a bass drum, it would look okay if the foot just tapped the pedal, but when you do that, the calf muscles contract and relax, the subcutaneous fat vibrates, cloes move a certain way, all that moust be considered. If any of it is missing, it's immediately noticable.
Which is why I make still pictures. I'm pretty good at motion control with static objects, like an Enterprise or a car. Moving them around is easy, few moving parts and I can automate all that. But a person is something else, and I'm generally not up to it. Maybe later I'll demonstrate.