Viraj's Weblog

It's been almost a year since I released a version of Movie Vote. In that time I had been rewriting the UI in Java with Google Web Toolkit off and on. That started out as an experiment because I hated Javascript so much. I liked GWT so much I went full-on with it. Now the server side of my app is mostly JSON interfaces, and the UI is AJAXy without any Javascript written by me. I was glad to 'svn rm' the horrible Javascript I had in my previous versions. With GWT and Java, type checking is done before I deploy and I no longer have to worry about variable misspellings and other stupidness when writing JS.

Anyway, just in time for the holidays, I give you Movie Vote v1.5.

In general, web programming is really not my thing. No matter what language I'm writing a UI in, I'm just not a UI developer. I can guess as to what I think is a cool interface but this is better left to UI designers. I now have a screenshot on the project page. That minimal-looking interface involved a lot of code!

Upon reading some reviews of this movie, it sounded like a feel-good racial harmony picture. I've liked Eastwood's directing and acting. He is a masterful storyteller, so I decided to check this out. What's interesting about this film was how gritty and real it felt. Eastwood has a knack for getting at the primitive feelings in characters. The lead character proudly says racist remarks, and at times he really means bad by them. It's those gut feelings that all humans have when they see someone that looks different from them. But it's not only other races he dislikes. It's generally anyone that's not like him, including his priest. Clint Eastwood can show hatred in his facial expressions like no one else.

The film is basically old war man meets gangland violence. Even though he's been through war, he's no match for the stupidity of kids with guns. He walks a tightrope pushing everyone's buttons, and eventually he knows what's coming. It's a good movie that shows the sign of our times. I especially like the comical parts. Some of them are racist and vulgar, but it's not done in a mean-spirited way at all. The characters understand they are different and are ok with brutally making fun of each other.

The plot has some unlikely dramatic events. But then again it wouldn't be a movie if it didn't.