Divine Scrabble

Hmmmmm, maybe life isn't all random stuff, and there's a guiding force quietly shaping things from behind the scenes. Otherwise, how do you explain the following...

If you take the word PRESBYTERIAN and rearrange its letters, you get this: BEST IN PRAYER.

The letters in ASTRONOMER can be rearranged into MOON STARER.

The letters in DESPERATION can be turned into A ROPE ENDS IT.

Rearrange the letters in THE EYES and you get THEY SEE.

This one goes back a few years, but is still cute. With a little re-ordering of its letters, GEORGE BUSH becomes HE BUGS GORE.

Start off with THE MORSE CODE, switch the letters around, and you get HERE COME DOTS.

Here's a particularly good one. With a little rearranging, the letters of DORMITORY become DIRTY ROOM.

Start with SLOT MACHINES, move a few letters around, and you get CASH LOST IN ME. Another good one!

With a little letter jumbling, ANIMOSITY becomes IS NO AMITY.

Another funny one: when you move the letters of ELECTION RESULTS around, you come up with LIES- LET'S RECOUNT.

With a little letter shuffling, SNOOZE ALARMS turns into ALAS! NO MORE Z'S.

A DECIMAL POINT can be rearranged into I'M A DOT IN PLACE.

THE EARTHQUAKES can be turned into THAT QUEER SHAKE.

Another clever one: the letters of ELEVEN PLUS TWO can be moved around to become TWELVE PLUS ONE.

Of course, I had to save the best one for last: If you start off with MOTHER IN LAW, you can move its letters around to form... (drum roll, please)...
WOMAN HITLER. Gotta love that one.

Isn't it reassuring to know that a mysterious power has seen to it that divine guidance and the secret truths of the universe are available all around us if we only take the time to be more observant?

Space gore

Based on a series of videogames, the direct-to-DVD animated film Dead Space: Aftermath features a plot you'll either find comfortably familiar or painfully derivative (I kept going back and forth). In any event, the story revolves around a cold, calculating corporation and its cold, calculating scientists using a bunch of U.S. Marines-style space soldiers to test out the effects of some kind of mysterious space artifact, an artifact that horribly mutates anyone who comes in contact with it.

Of course, the evil corporate types think that the artifact's powers can be harnessed and controlled, despite the fact that all evidence indicates that it simply turns anyone who comes in contact with it into a hideous, slobbering monster. See what I mean, though? If you've seen all the Alien and Resident Evil movies, you've pretty much seen this.

Still, the production is polished and well-produced, with the different animation segments nicely organized and presented (as each surviving Marine flashes back to the events leading up to the carnage that killed virtually everyone on their ship, a different Japanese director takes over the storytelling for that segment). Just be warned, the creators were given free reign over the amount of violence and colorful language they wanted to employ to tell the movie's story. And they chose to use a lot of both.

I predict that fans of the Dead Space videogames will likely enjoy this film, with animation and science-fiction fans (I'm in this group) probably finding it at least tolerably interesting. Everyone else will most likely peg it as shrill and unpleasant. In other words, the movie is definitely aimed at a niche audience. If you're not in that niche, steer clear.

Just released, Dead Space: Aftermath is available in stores and via online retailers for about 15 or 20 bucks, or for a little more if you go the Blu-Ray route.

Overkill

I'm now reading a Stephen King book on my iPad, and I'm starting to feel that reading a catchy horror title or entertaining thriller on that device is akin to being served a hotdog with the works on your family's best china.

And I'm someone who doesn't look down on any genre, believing you can find both great and poor work in any type of book, whether it be a lofty literary release or a page-turning adventure. But there's something about the simple act of reading an enjoyable book on the shiny glass-and-metal technical wonder that is the iPad that just doesn't compute. Bluntly put, it feels like overkill using this amazing device that does a thousand different things to indulge in the simple joy of reading words on a page.

Maybe I'll feel differently if I read something truly challenging on my iPad... you know, a complex work to match the complex delivery system. But I don't think so.

Interestingly, I don't get this feeling when reading a book on my Kindle. In the end, that may be the biggest favor the iPad does for Amazon's device: making it seem quaint, simple, old-fashioned, and comforting, even to those final hold-outs who have so far resisted anything other than ink printed on paper.

Grey skies

Concluding my report on a couple of Best Picture nominated films recently viewed on DVD...

Alternately dangerous, dreary, and tense, Winter's Bone concerns a teenage girl (Jennifer Lawrence) trying to save the few worldly possessions enjoyed by her mother and siblings. Set in the Ozark mountains of Missouri, 17 year old Ree has to find her missing-in-action father and make sure he shows up for a court date; otherwise the bail bonds company will take the modest family house Ree's father put up as his bail collateral.

Ree's search for her father puts her in contact with various dangerous types, most outright criminals and most, unfortunately, related to Ree. And everything is set against a social backdrop maybe one or two small steps above outright poverty.

Despite the grim story and the grim setting, there are one or two rays of hope, a couple of sympathetic characters, and the small chance that things might just work out. I won't say any more, other than the movie isn't as relentlessly grim as the ads and trailers make it look. But it is mostly grim. Oh, I should also report that the story is well told, sensitively acted, and in its own understated way, elegantly produced. I enjoyed it and can see why it made the cut as one of this year's ten Best Picture nominees.

Winter's Bone looks and sounds great on standard DVD and there are a variety of interesting extra features, including about 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes material that really makes you want to hand it to director Debra Granik. Seeing what little she had to work with (small budget, people's actual houses and yards used as sets, the bulk of the actors picked up via a casting call held in a school gym, etc.), it's amazing that Winter's Bone turned out as well as it did.

The accompanying photograph shows Ms. Lawrence looking quite a bit more star-like than she does in the movie. The movie poster for Winter's Bone accompanies my January 25 post, entitled "Oscar Noms".

Nice pal

Recently overheard as one guy was talking to another at a bar:

"You are such a good friend that if we were on a sinking ship together and there was only one life jacket... I'd miss the Hell out of you and think of you often."

More than all right

As noted previously, several of the Motion Picture Academy's Best Picture nominees are already available on DVD, and we used that opportunity this past weekend to catch a couple of the movies we hadn't yet seen. Here's what we thought of one of them...

The Kids Are All Right is an entertaining little story about the ups and downs of family life, with the only notable off-the-beaten-track aspect of the movie being that the two parents in the family are both women. The movie's one other somewhat unusual element is the eventual involvement of a third parental figure, the formerly anonymous sperm donor who enabled the two women to start a family years before. But even that wasn't too unusual, as additional parental figures are something that straight families also regularly encounter, in the form of ex-spouses and ex-significant others.

There are many reasons to enjoy this smart, engaging movie, but I think it especially helps that the strongest political statement the film makes is not to make a political statement, at least not an overt one. If there's a gay cabal in the shadows trying to use the movie to promote a message, the message seems to be a pretty innocuous one, something along the lines of, "Gay parents walk the same path as straight parents. Sometimes we make good decisions, sometimes we make stupid ones, sometimes we treat our partners well, sometimes we hurt them."

In any event, my wife and I both enjoyed this breezy little drama, which works especially well in the comfortable intimacy of your living room (or wherever you watch your movies at home). In fact, it wouldn't be bad if the movie's characters and scenarios were expanded into a television series... though of course you wouldn't get Annette Bening and Julianne moore to reprise their roles. Both are excellent here.

The Kids Are All Right looks and sounds fine on standard DVD, though- somewhat annoyingly- the "rental only" version of the DVD provided to us by Netflix didn't allow access to the many extras listed on the bonus menu. Viewing the extra features, which look interesting, won't be a problem if you buy or borrow a regular retail version of the DVD, or- for all I know- rent the movie from somewhere other than Netflix.

Film tip

Did you know that five of the movies nominated for an Academy Award "Best Picture" Oscar are already available on DVD? In the comfort of your own home, you can now watch and judge the merits of Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, and Winter's Bone. Just thought I'd let you know that, with minimal effort (especially if you're a Netflix subscriber),you can be fairly up on the competition without even leaving your home.