Before I get to the review, I had referred a number of you to a Facebook Dislike button add-on. It’s been causing people lots of problems and has also started serving advertising. I had to remove it and the complaints are mounting. But, here’s another one that is more popular and seems to be more reliable. I’ll have more on Add-Ons for Firefox later in this post.
The Fantastic Mister Fox is great. No, ifs, ands, or buts. Voiced by an all-star cast, but it would have been just as good with a cast of nobodies. Based on Dahl’s book, this would appear on the surface to be a children’s movie. It’s not but it’s kid safe. There are so many adult subtexts to this from the marital stress between Mr Fox and his wife to the sibling rivalry between Ash and Kristofferson. There’s lots of smoking but it adds a bit of grit. There’s some language but they just say “cuss” instead of the real word. “That’s a cussing big dog” (as an example). I would think it could develop into a catchphrase, though I fear with a $7M opening, it’ll be gone from theatres before you know it. And that’s a shame. The animation (stop motion) is fantastic and the details down the fox’s fur is great. I liked this way more than I thought I would. We saw it with a large group of people (13) and everyone liked it as well. The plot is strong, the main characters are well-fleshed out (and flawed), the action is engrossing, and not once did I look at my watch. See this film. I’ll buy it when it comes out on Blu-Ray.
Last night I had some insomnia so I watched the Forbidden Kingdom, a martial arts movie with pretty much damn near everyone in China in it starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan. This movie tells the tale of the Monkey King and the Jade Warlord wrapped inside a secondary story that is, to be honest, silly. The martial arts, as would be expected are great. The visual scenery is beyond belief. I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. Jet Li and Jackie Chan both play two roles in the film so pay attention if you can.
And, because I enjoy pointing out things like this — thanks Sue — some fact checking on Sarah Palin’s Bus Tour. Which, despite what it may appear, doesn’t involve much bus and does involve lots of plane. And certain groups paying for it. Check out the video and story at crooksandliars.com.
Breakfast was at OPH and we had a party of twelve and they actually did a decent job of seating us. Sadly, the waiter was borderline. We lost John and his parents before the movie and they were replaced with Karen (party of three), and my Mom. After that Liz and I went ice skating (by way of ColdStone) but we were reminded of why we don’t skate afternoon sessions. It was crowded and we were knocked about several times. Not fun at all but I had fun with her because I got the telenovela update followed by lots of interesting people and travel discussions.
As promised, here’s the list of Firefox Add-Ons I use and like. I have various codec plug-ins installed but they are machine specific so I won’t list them. The add-ons below are Mac and PC compatible and work with Firefox 3.5 — most work with earlier versions as well.
- CheckPlaces 1.6.3 — validates your bookmarks to see if they’re still valid and gives you a chance to fix them, delete them, etc. (Just started using this so maybe you want to wait for my opinions)
- Download Helper 4.6.5 — Lets you grab video content of YouTube and other sites and save it easily without a kludge.
- FaceMod Dislike Button 0.7 — See above. Adds a dislike button to Facebook
- Favicon Picker 3 0.5 — Lets you add/change Favicons in your bookmark menu
- Firebug 1.4.5 — This is a geek tool that Jose taught me to use so I can futz around with my webpages while they’re live. Most of you won’t want this one.
- Flagfox 3.3.18 — This is one of the most useful extensions ever. It shows a flag representing the country the server presenting the webpage you’re on. So if you’re at BankAmerica and see a Chinese flag, you know something’s wrong. Also installed on all our work machines as a security feature.
- Googlebar 0.9.15.14 — Way better than the real Google bar. You will need to edit the version code to work with Firefox 3.5; Someone’s posted the hacked version if you don’t know how to edit XPI files.
- Open Bookmarks In New Tab 0.1.2009100801 — Duh. Very useful.
- Password Exporter 1.2 — Do not export your passwords. I don’t recommend it. However, if you forget one this also lets you view them from the preferences area. Set a master password if you use this.
- Print Image 0.4 — Selects and prints images from websites (not Flash content but static images)
- SearchPreview 4.0 — Shows thumbnail images of sites as part of Google/Yahoo/Bing searches
- StumbleUpon 3.52 — You will waste more time with this than I can ever explain. But I love it. I’m ‘darsys’ if you want to follow me.
- TimeTracker 1.2.5 — You can keep track of how long a window, session, or whatever has been open. Or from time installed forever.
- WOT 20091028 — (Web of Trust) Installed here and on all work machines. Sites show Green, Yellow, or Red warnings and if a site is Red it will ask if you’re sure you want to proceed. This is the best extension you can install on your machine for safety reasons. You can also add and rate sites if you make a free account, all from within Firefox.
- Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) 3.69 — This is the theme I use. I rather like it and you might too.
I’m doing laundry and getting ready to cook dinner as soon as I decide what to cook.