A short review of the stuff I've watched and read this weekend so far:

The Office - watched it online yesterday, much better than the episode after the Superbowl. Dwight is ridiculous.

Burn Notice - good show, Bruce Campbell is the man. Thursday's episode was some nice plot development.

Blood Diamond - watched it on HDDVD, oh yeah. It was quite a depressing movie. At the end it seemed like things were improving, then I watched a documentary in the special features to find out that things hadn't really changed over there. Very sad.

Paycheck - This is the short story by Philip K. Dick later made into a movie by John Woo with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. Like The Minority Report, there was a LOT different here. Only the overarching idea was the same: a guy agrees to work for a while for a company and have his memories of the time erased afterwards. When he's done he finds that instead of a large sum of money he has instead left himself a collection of random odds and ends and has to figure out what it all means. If you've seen the movie or read the book, I'll tell you that the general reason he does it is the same, but the things he goes through and the ending are quite different. The book definitely had a more bleak outlook that is very typical of PKD's work and that seems to have been left on the cutting room floor so they could have a happy ending. The same thing seems to have happened in The Minority Report. Like that story, I'd say Paycheck is a good action flick that makes you think but doesn't do justice to the original intent of the book.

Battlestar Galactica - this show is so awesome, it's so sad they're ending it. It's promising to wrap up just about everything though, and in an exciting and crazy manner too.

Second Variety - Another PKD story, and the last in the collection of his stories that I bought. This one was the inspiration for the movie Screamers, which I have not seen but hope to at some point. It was an interesting look and what might have happened if the Cold War became a real war, but only if you're very pessimistic and think that we're all going to die. I enjoyed it, but halfway through I saw the big twist coming, which was kind of sad because I like to be surprised. I still thoroughly enjoyed the story though.

So that's it for this entry. The rest of my weekend will probably be spent finishing up homework and watching the Pro Bowl, maybe playing some videogames if I'm lucky.