I just logged in to netflix to update my queue and what do I find? Battle Royale as one of my top recommendations.

The truth is that I have already seen this one, but I was a bit suprised to even see it available on netflix. Quoting from the netflix description ...

Kinji Fukasaki's explosive drama takes place early in the new millennium, with Japan on the verge of societal collapse. When even the schoolchildren begin to abuse the system, the government introduces a strict new punishment whereby a randomly chosen group of students are taken to a desert island and forced to fight each other to the death.

This is not for your everyday movie watcher, but personally I loved it. Crazy story filled with blood and gore and grade school kids running around killing each other, what's not to love? This is like watching kung fu films ... strangely pleasing.

Kudos to netflix for having this film and double kudos for actually recommending it to me. They really do know what I like!

"good humor is goodness and wisdom combined."

Yesterday I decided it was time for a phone upgrade, and since I was eligible for new phone discount from Verzion I stopped in the store to pick up one of the new Razr v3. Mine is actually a steel grey which looks much better than the silver one in that picture.

The Razr pretty much whips my old phones ass in all areas, except that I don't particularly like the way it's shaped when it's open. My old phone seemed more ergonomic in the way that it angled between my ear and mouth while I was using it, the Razr isn't as good about that. The other bizarre thing I noticed is that right after getting the phone the time would not stay current and would always show the last time I used the phone. A little googling seems to have fixed that problem though, apparently there was some kind of software bug? More info here. It's pretty sweet that you can just dial *228 and get your phone software updated. Very slick.

Probably the most shocking thing so far is how good the video on the phone looks. Verizon is giving a 1 month free trial on their Vcast service so I signed up and have been trying it out. It's actually really cool! It drains the battery pretty quickly, but oh well. I'm sure as the phones keep getting better and more and more video content comes online that will be a pretty standard service in a year or two.

Two thumbs up for the Razr from me.