Monthly Archive for February, 2006

This isn’t a review, but I’d been meaning to watch _The Professional_ for a while and caught it on OnDemand(tm) tonight. The quick and dirty version is that a hitman who is disconnected from life and spends his days in an emotionless routine comes to the rescue of the scared, scarred, and world-weary young girl next door when her abusive parents and younger brother are shot in a drug deal gone bad. Mathilda forces Leon to reconnect with the world, and he shows her that life is worth living and good people (that is, good bad people, or is it bad good people?) do exist in the world.

What I got from this film was nothing like I expected: rather than cute and schlocky, it was violent, dark, thoughtful, full of uncomfortable sexual tension — and brilliant. Natalie Portman’s film debut here shows clearly the actor she was to become, and sets her up as that “wise beyond her years” young girl that plays so well in later films. Jean Reno is great as the hitman of few words but a big heart. But don’t be fooled, this movie doesn’t get sappy, nor does it cross that scary line into pedophelia — it plays everything just right, skirting the edges, staying true to the story and the characters, to a story about love, not sex, not violence, not despair.

The only thing I didn’t like about the film is that I felt like some of the angles simply weren’t fleshed out enough — Leon is training Mathilda to be a “cleaner,” but we never get to see how far she goes, whether she has the skills, whether she’ll follow through with a job. She has an inappropriate infatuation with him, clearly leading somewhere, but we never see how that plays out. It was interesting to see on IMDb that the director’s cut of the film, at 24 minutes longer and released in Europe, addresses just these issues, and is even more of a character driven film. It figures that the US test screenings would want more bloody action and less complex characters. Now I’m gonna go have to buy the DVD. Damn you, Amazon Prime!

Yesterday I went on Amazon.com to buy a phone accessory that I wanted to get quickly. After adding it to my cart, I clicked on the two day shipping option to see what the price was — expensive! But then an offer popped up for a free 3-month trial of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium shipping service. For $79 per year, Prime offers free 2 day shipping on all Amazon orders, with the option for discounted overnight shipping. I don’t buy enough to justify this, but this free offer was pretty tempting, so I took it.

Immediately my purchasing behavior changed. First, I finally gave in after several years and turned on Amazon’s “One-Click” shopping option, which lets you purchase items in one step. Previously I’ve avoided it like the plague because I’d always wait to make sure I had enough in my shopping cart to qualify for free ground shipping before placing an order. But now, I get free two day shipping on everything, which is pretty darn close to instant gratification. So when I saw a book that looked interesting, I clicked “buy.” A few minutes later, I saw a DVD, and clicked “buy” again. And then again. It was so simple, so fun, and so nice to not have to worry about the stupid shipping charges. And hey, I had a couple gift certificates in there anyway, so what’s the harm?

Amazon has caught me in their web. I don’t know if the intent of the Prime free trial is to change your shopping habits or just to get you addicted to the free shipping — probably both — but with me, so far, they are succeeding. Eep.

One thing I should add, the offer has the (obvious) caveat that after three months if you do not cancel, you will be charged the $79 for a year subscription to the service. The difference between this offer and every other offer I’ve ever seen is that Amazon emails you *before* your trial runs out, to warn you if you want to cancel, and they allow you to *immediately* cancel, well before the subscription runs out. Meaning, I signed up and cancelled on the same day, and my free trial is still active for the next three months *without any worry about being rebilled*. That’s absolutely awesome, and makes me love Amazon even more. Which is smart on their part, because if someone like me, a loyal customer for several years, were to get pissed off by being charged for something they didn’t want, Amazon might lose a lot of good will. Instead, at least in my eyes, they just gained a ton, and who knows, if I use it enough, I might even sign up for their damn Prime program. But probably not.