Vlad

Kodak has a list of Top Tips for Camera Phone Pictures. I thought some of you might be interested.

Via BotHack!

With so many good novels and movies about lawyers, it’s really hard to understand how come this is one of the most hated professions.

This time we have two classics, both based on John Grisham’s novels. Grisham as of The Firm fame. Which was a nice book but a poor movie (and I usually like Cruise’s movies).

First The Rainmaker (1997) with Matt Damon and Danny De Vito. Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) is a young lawyer from Memphis Tenessee whose first serious case is against a big inssurance company that refused to pay a young man’s treatment for leucemia. Rudy has to fight against a team of tough sharks and his only help is Deck Shifflet (Danny De Vito), more of a wanabee that never got pas his bar exam. On a second plane comes Rudy’s personal life as he falls for a married but abused woman.

Both planes are interesting to watch, although the story is quite predictive. The movie is pretty well done and Francis Ford Coppola’s directing experience plays it’s part.

Second is Runaway Jury (2003). This features one helluva cast: John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz. The story is not too previsible and sometimes takes some strange turns. It’s a captivating movie alternating action scenes with fine humor and tense psychological moments. Nicholas Easter (John Cusack) manages to perpetrate a jury in a high profile case involving gun manufacturers and tries to sell out the jury’s decision. His helper on the outside is Marlee (Rachel Weisz).

Dustin Hoffman plays a great role and so does Gene Hackman. Overall it’s a good movie, although the tagline The Best John Grisham Adaptation After The Firm doesn’t do much to help its image. I found the following to be more interesting: Trials are too important to be left up to juries

I recommend both movies if you’re in the mood for some court movies. Though none is a masterpiece, I liked them both. Perhaps not having read the books helped.

Star Trek meets Hackers & Painters: a programming language for painters. Take a look at the examples!