Digital Impulses

In line to see Dark Knight a second time

Long line in El Segundo, CA to see Batman: The Dark Knight.

Hancock: A Mini Review

Just got back from Pacific Theaters in El Segundo, Ca where my son, his girlfriend and I went to see the 1900 showing of Hancock, the summer blockbuster starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron.

The movie was entertaining and fun to watch.  Pure escapism on the scale we've become accustomed to from Hollywood.  Not much of a story, but the special effects are amazing. a 6.5 out 10.

Cloverfield

Cloverfield: A Film Review
AJ, Cindi and I and just got back form Pacific Theaters on Rosecrans in El Segundo where we saw the 8:15 PM showing of Cloverfield.

Man, what a great time!

The movie was tense. suspense-filled and very exciting.  I was surprised that the near 100% camera jerkiness did not impact me visually and did not get me the least bit motion sick.

This was an old-time monster movie with good acting and absolutely awesome special effects.  The fact that they didn't cheat and explain where the monster came from was even better.  The film is chock full of "jump out of your seat" moments and leaves you on a definite adrenaline high.

I give it an 8.5/10.  Definitely Recommended.  Beware of the motion sickness aspect, tho.  You've been warned.

Very busy, fun Sunday

Wow.  What a day.

Isa
It started off with a visit to my sister's house to see about fixing a problem with the AOL software installed on her computer.  I managed to install something called 'AOL Desktop' and typically (of course), my sister *hated* it and made NO ATTEMPT WHATSOEVER to get familiar with it.  More on this at a later date.

Pedro
Later in the early afternoon, Pedro, my uncle stopped by the house on his motorcycle to pay us a visit.  He stayed for a few minutes and I showed him all of the home improvement stuff we have done to the house.

Street Sweep
After Pedro left, i spent the next 30 minutes sweeping the street and sidewalk directly in front of my house in my continued vain attempts to win the war of debris that the tree in front of our house is waging against us.  I lost again because an hour after I was done, there was a messy crapload of leaves all over the street and sidewalk again.  Why do I bother??

Wifi Signal Extended: Victory!
Later in the afternoon, I found a Linksys product that looked like it might help me finally get a usable WiFi signal into the Den:  Linksys makes a Wifi 802.11N PCI Card that has IT"S OWN ANTENNA that you connect to the back of the card.

I picked it up at the Hawthorne Best Buy for like $86.00 and brought it home and installed it .  BINGO.  The signal coming into the house is more than OK (on average about 55% signal strength) and wireless internet access at my wife's PC is snappy and working great.  Nice.

Movie Review: Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix

Just got back from seeing 'Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix' with my son, his girlfriend and a friend of his.  We got to the theaters with about 10 Mins to spare and were able to get really good seats in the middle of the theater.

All in all, the consensus was that it was a really good movie and turned out to be pretty faithful to the book.  However, I read Book 5 at last a half a dozen times and thus I am intimately familiar with how the plot unfolds in that book.

Some of the reviews that I have read of this movie refer to it being 'disjointed' and I am afraid that it is.  It seemed like they took most of the big scenes in the movie and just sort of spliced them together to make sure that there wouldn't be too much complaining by the hard-core fans.

I can't help but think that at too many times in the movie, a person who didn't read the book and is unfamiliar with the HP movies would just be utterly confused as to what is happening in the movie and perhaps, most importantly WHY it is happening.

Those things aside however, the movie was quite good and the special effects were nothing short of spectacular.  Especially the final battle at the Ministry of Magic between Voldemort and Dumbledore.  That scene in and of itself is well worth the price of admission.

An 8 out of 10.  Recommended.

Film Review: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I just returned from Pacific Theaters in El Segundo, CA where I went to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

This is one of those flicks, that when you see the preview, you say to yourself, "Oh, Man!  I've got to see this movie..."  However, once it starts, you find yourself not laughing as much as you thought you might or as much as you remembered from seeing the preview.

In general, I thought the movie was entertaining enough, and quite shocking in some places.  I certainly could have done without the excess graphic frontal nudity, but that is what a lot of people found so entertaining about this movie.

There is a scene in the movie where the two main characters in the movie get in an argument and end up wrestling completely naked in bed and end up in a position that I can only describe as, shall we say, disturbing.

Judging by the audience's reaction, the movie is quite funny.  I thought it was OK and would give it about a 7 out of 10.  My son A.J., who went with me, rates it an 8.

I guess in a nutshell, Borat is worth seeing, if only to remind oneself how far things have come in society today to earn a movie like this an 'R' rating.

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Steven Starr

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Steven Starr to begin at 1900 hours. 

Cory Doctorow is holding an animated discussion with two gentlemen on the evils of DRM and what the MPAA and the RIAA in lockstep with the hardware manufacturers are planning to foist on the public in terms of DRM and your ability to do what you want with the media you pay for.

Cory just stated that if you update your Creative MP3 player to get the newest firmware, it surreptitiously disables the ability to record from the built-in FM receiver, all this under the guise of “added functionality”. This is precisely the reason I am here tonight.

 Here we go:
 (1903 hrs) 

• Steven Starr is the co-founder of a company called Revver.
• Revver pays MORE the MORE a media file gets played
• He just mentioned the sale of YouTube to Google
• Revver sets up technology to allow the distribution of media files
• They have developed ‘Super Distribution’, where media files fly through the      Internet, reporting back to Revver “Hey, I'm being watched! Send me an Ad!”. So people get paid on those terms.
• Revver splits ad revenue 50-50 with the media creator
• The Mentos and Coke creators got:
  • 5 – 6M views and
  • got $70K in Ad revenue that they split with Revver, thus
  • making 35K on a 2.5 minute video that cost
  • $100-200 to make
• Revver has a set of tools and technologies, with an API that allows you to create      your own site and become an affiliate of Revver that makes money as a      re-distributor who makes 20% of the Ad revenue
• Content creators can opt out of Ad categories that they do not wish to be associated with
• Revver released its BETA 11 months ago
• They do NOT allow copyrighted video
• Revver has been seen as a company that has taken UGC to the forfront of the ‘free media conversation”.
• Revver uses CC licenses. Every piece of video flies out with a 2.5 version CC license.
• Revver is NOT a video portal destination site, per se. They differentiate themselves as a tools and services company

All in all, it was a great talk, where a lot of very good questions and issues were raised on the legalities and dangers of content creation and rights retentions/ownership in the world of UGC or User Generated Content.

'Firewall' with Harrison Ford at mom's house

Just got back from a very, very enjoyable evening at my mom's house.  We rented the Harrison Ford flick Firewall 'via Time Warner Cable's "Pay-Per-View" system and we really enjoyed it.

It is a non-stop action thriller in which Harrsion Ford plays a network security Guru at a bank whose identity is stolen in an attempt to coerce him into helping rob the bank that employs him as rnasom payment for his family's kidnapping.

I need to do this more often to get away from the rat race and decompress.  Recommended.

Nacho Libre: Worst Movie Ever

Or almost.  Worst I can recall in a long, long time, at least.  Less you wonder what I am referring to, it is Nacho Libre.

I absolutely hated it.  I had an instinct to leave the theater at least a dozen times.  Suffice it to say, I have no earthly idea how this piece of crap garnered a 35% over at rottentomatoes.com. To quote well-known and highly respected movie reviewer Roger Ebert:

"It takes some doing to make a Jack Black comedy that doesn't work. But Nacho Libre does it."

What a waste of $10.00.  Jesus.

Movie Review: The Davinci Code

 

FIRST OFF: Despite all of the pile-on, jump on the “The Davinci Code movie sucks” bandwagon nearly everywhere on the Internet, I throughly enjoyed the movie.

People, please.  The movie is BASED on the book, for god’s sake.  It’s not a word-for-word to film interpretation.  It was never intended to be that; that’s impossible.  To do so would require a 15 hour movie.

I read an article that Dan Brown wrote for USA Today Weekend edition, and in that article, Dan Brown details what he went through to write the Screenplay for the Davinci Code, a  task which he ultimately failed at and gave to someone else…

What more of an endorsement for the movie do you need than the author of the novel himself being extremely pleased with the film?

Most of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or other film review sites around the web drone on about 3 principal items:

1. Tom Hanks was miscast.
2. The movie is too “talky”.
3. The movie is too long / dull.

1.– Get over it. Dan Brown himself was “thrilled” at the casting of Hanks as Robert Langdon.  WHO better to approval stamp Hanks as a good choice to portray Langdon?  Brown created the character, so he knows better than anyone else what Robert Langdon would be like in real life. 

2.– Talky, shmaky. The subject matter demands it.  People who fault this movie as too “talky” simply either never read the book or read the book and didn’t understand the many of the high-brow concepts being introduced by Brown. 

Let’s face it:  Some novels and movies are simply not everyday, fast-food fare to be consumed without giving them a second’s thought.  The Davinci Code novel and movie should require an admissions exam to determine if you are fit to comment on either one of them after reading the book or seeing the movie.

3.– Gimme a break.  Too long?  As it is, Ron Howard and the screenplay writer(s) faced some truly agonizing decisions in terms of what to include and what to leave on the cutting room floor and still do justice to an incredibly complex subject matter. 

This point is one of those “dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t” areas where it would have been impossible to please everyone. 

I thought the movie was fast-paced, thrilling, action packed and had truly breathtaking cinematography. Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou,  Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, Sir Ian McKellen and Alfred Molina had superb on screen chemistry and played their respective roles to the hilt.

So the movie deviates from the book. So the endings are dissimilar.  So what?  Let me repeat: It’s a movie b-a-s-e-d on a novel with a very complex subject matter. 

Ron Howard faced the nearly impossible task of bringing to life a novel that had recent sales totals of over 60 Million copies.  He was bound to fail.  That he pulled it off as well as he did, is a testament to his talent as a film director and a story teller and to the brilliance of the cast he assembled to star in the movie.

4.5 stars out of 5 for this great movie.