Shouzer

I happened to catch this article on Engadget about Sony adding it’s music catalog to Amazon mp3. It’s amazing to me how quickly all the major studios have come around on drm-free downloads after EMI showed that it was perfectly sane.

EMI couldn’t have put drm-free mp3s on iTunes anymore than a year ago. I don’t actually remember when it was, but seriously… After such a long-fought “battle” against college students, you’d think one of these companies would have jumped to this conclusion a little earlier.

As far as I’m concerned, DRM of all forms is anti-consumer. It’s not pro-copyright or anything like that, it’s just plain old anti-consumer. Bought the first couple seasons of The Office on iTunes? Too fucking bad, you’re going to have to get the next couple on Amazon Unbox, and you’ll have to watch them on different devices. Fuck that shit. You know what that’s going to do? That’s going to make me more likely to pirate it. That’s the only way I have any guarantee that it won’t quit working at some point.

This whole HD-DVD vs Blu-ray thing is absolutely pitiful. Here we’ve got a bunch of asshole movie studios, tv producers, etc. refusing to pay the writers who are responsible for everything they make. On top of that, we’ve got mostly the same bunch of assholes who couldn’t come to a decision on a standard to replace DVD. And finally, we’ve got the same assholes suing people left and right claiming piracy costs them over $6 billion per year.

Whatever. Maybe you’re losing money because, as I’ve mentioned already, you’re all a bunch of rich fucking assholes that nobody wants to give their money to. I’ve done my research when it comes to the WGA strike, and the writers have every right in the world to be pissed. What’s more, they were actually willing to work through their current shit contract. It’s not as if they’ve got a contract, and they want to renegotiate. No, their contract ran out, and they’re wanting a new, better one. But the execs aren’t willing to give them anything reasonable. Basically, they’re just a bunch of rich, greedy bastards.

As for the HD formats, it’s hilarious to me that the movie studios ever consider themselves to be for consumers. When I got my TV, I got a PS3 also, because it seemed to suit me best. It would give me access to PS3 games and Blu-ray movies both, which sounded pretty appealing. However, most of the Blu-Ray lineup sucks, and I don’t own a single PS3 game. In the same time, I’ve bought four 360 games. What a mistake that was. Hopefully the games will stop sucking, but as far as movies, I certainly should have gone with HD-DVD. One way or another, two formats is dumb, and it’s horrible for consumers.

The sooner the studios embrace reasonably priced, reasonably versatile HD downloads (and I’m talking 1080p), the sooner I might start to think they actually know what they’re doing. I wanted to buy Transformers in HD, but it’s not on Blu-ray. That’s cool, I figured, I’ve got a TiVo, so I’ll download it on Unbox. Nope, I can only download it in SD. Well, that’s just too bad, now you don’t get my money. And you wonder why your sales are down? Dumbasses.

I went to see a movie last night called Rakna 24 Hours. This, obviously, was a Thai-made movie, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. The whole experience of going to a movie in another country is quite strange for me because I always process it differently than other people in the audience. I have seen Ocean’s 13 and Pirates 3 here already, and there were times in both of those movies that I was laughing hysterically while everyone else was sitting in silence because they did not understand the cultural reference. The same happened to me last night. Everyone in the theater was laughing while I was sitting there lost because of bad subtitles and/or a lack of understanding of the culture. I actually enjoy being on both sides of the coin. It’s honestly pretty cool to be the only one in a huge theater that understands a joke, but it’s also pretty neat to be in a theater in a foreign country watching a film native to that country.

I had to convince the ticket girl last night that I actually wanted to see a Thai movie, which was difficult as she didn’t speak much English. She actually called one of her fellow employees over to laugh at me and ensure that I did actually want to see this movie. They were both quite surprised that I was willing to read subtitles. I’m not sure why since Thai people do this all the time with American movies.

The movie itself was about a guy with split personalities. There was a set of twins, one of which died during birth, and the two consciousnesses moved into one of the bodies. Ble A got the body on odd days and Ble B got the body on even days. (I may have that reversed.) When this/these boy grew up, he started to work at 7-11 because everyday was the same, meaning neither brother would miss anything. A new female employee (Tau), though, catches of the interest of Ble B, but Ble A does not care for her. Ble B asks A to be nice to her, and he starts to fall for her as well. Tau falls in love with Ble as well, despite a few missteps caused by lack of communication between the brothers. For example, Tau tells B that the next day is her birthday, but he does not tell A because he wants to share the experience with her. On Feb 13, B promises to propose the next day, but once again does not tell A because once again, he wants to share the experience. To make matters worse, when B finds out that A is in love with her as well, he gets quite angry at him. In the end, Tau’s angry ex-boyfriend enters the 7-11 and shoots Ble while Tau is struggling with her newfound realization that Ble is two brothers trapped in one body. On the surgery table, the two brothers meet in an out of body experience, and they realize that one of them must die. A bites the bullet while Tau realizes that she is in love with A and not B. Tau runs off, and B spends the next two years working in 7-11s around the country looking for Tau. He eventually finds her, but she rejects him again although she allows for a friendship. Yes, he got stuck in the dreaded friend zone.

Normally, I hate movies which use the stupidity of characters as a plot device. I think that obviously if your girlfriend tells you that you need to give her a birthday cake the next day, you tell your brother about it if is going to be inhabiting your body. Also, if you only have the body half the time, you have to realize that a marriage is going to require a commitment from both brothers. Neither is going to be the brother in law in this situation as B suggested. I was able to forgive these transgressions in this case though because the much more obvious problem with the plot was that two people shared one body. This included a scene at the beginning where the two babies were in the womb, and they swam around and tried to help each other. Yes, there is plenty of room in there for two babies to swim around futilely grasp at each other’s hands. If I could accept that, I think I can accept that the two brothers would be jealous and somewhat uncooperative.

And Jared-> That is how you do a movie review.

I’ve watched a lot of movies lately. I guess in the past week or so I’ve watched nine movies. Maybe that’s not a lot to some of you crazies out there, but I think falling into the class of “crazies” generally speaks for itself. Anyway, I figured I’d give my impression of some of these movies. I’ll try to keep it short and succinct, but sometimes that’s tough when you’ve got a lot of bitching to do.

Smokin’ Aces - I’ll be honest… I’m not sure what I thought of this movie. That’s pretty weak on my part, I know. How hard is it to decide if you liked something? It should be pretty cut and dry, but sometimes it’s not that simple. It should be, but it’s not. Maybe we should work on that. Computers should tell us whether or not we liked something. And then make us believe it. We’ll call that phase 2.

So, the movie had some decent action and some quirky characters, and that’s about all I was expecting. So there’s a plus. On the other hand–let’s say my right hand–the ending was strange to me. It seemed like all of a sudden it wanted to get all psychological on me or something, but it shouldn’t have. It was no good at it.

Knocked Up - Everybody seems to be in love with this movie right now, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. It had a fun story for the most part (and I can dig that), but it really didn’t make me laugh. I like Paul Rudd quite a bit, but that doesn’t make up for the lack of funny. Comedy requires funny. Last time I checked, that was the point of a comedy. Maybe the rules have changed since Borat. I don’t know. Computer?

Miami Vice - Meh, Collateral was better. I haven’t seen Heat, but I imagine that’s better. Jordy says it was the most “visually inspiring” movie he’s seen in a long time, and I say it’s a lot of dark, grainy shots. Oh, and long unnecessary closeups of Colin Farrell. I mean, nothing against the guy. He’s alright, I’d say, but I just don’t really care to stare at him. It’s not my bag, baby.

The parts of the movie with nice views of Miami didn’t drive the plot. Instead, they were just there to extend the pain. I guess that’s not my thing. The pain doesn’t make me feel alive; it just hurts.

I really did like the story, but I was hoping for more overall. In all reality, I don’t see how you can say this movie is more “visually inspiring” than something like Return of the King. For the record, Jordy didn’t say that. However, that would be the honest impression I got from his post.

Vertigo - Supposedly one of Hitchcock’s best films. Supposedly. I read about it a little after watching it, and it really wasn’t considered special immediately after its release. So maybe in 15 years I’ll love it too? That would be weird. I guess that’s when phase 2 is deployed.

Until then, I’ll keep believing the plot was slow, and it took James Stewart out of his element. Yet I was fine with that. I really was. I wasn’t going to complain. I was planning to keep my mouth shut. Even if things in a movie bother me, I typically don’t complain about them, unless it’s the ending. But then the ending sucked it up, and I had to find something else that pissed me off too.

Breach - I went into this movie hoping for a lot, and it delivered. Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillipe (btw, wtf is up with his IMDB photo?) both did excellent jobs. Chris Cooper in particular. All around, I’d recommend it to anyone, though I’m admittedly biased by my fascination with the fact that it’s based on a true story.

Rear Window - Now this is a great movie. Hitchcock did such great work with just one setting–a single room in an apartment. James Stewart literally doesn’t move more than 10 feet the entire movie, but it keeps its pace (hurray!), the characters are enjoyable, and you really never know for sure what’s going on. Oh, and the ending doesn’t suck. Bonus points there. Bonus points.

X-Men: The Last Stand - I’d love to own the first two X-Men movies. They were great. They had a fair bit of action, but it was always driven by interesting plots. The third movie wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. I would think “good” is typically what the Hollywood types typically strive for. In this case, it was a blatant attempt to make more money. Ah money, you wily foe. How I desire you, yet you consistently elude me.

Way too much happened in the movie, there was absolutely no character development, and the battle at the end felt rushed. They also killed too many people. At least the series looked like it was about wrapped up, but then they threw in a last second “cliffhanger” to leave open another sequel. I guess they saw more money as a possibility.

Children of Men - I thought this movie was good. It wasn’t great, but I don’t have too many complaints about it. I really liked Michael Caine’s character, and I think Clive Owen is a great actor. I think most of my issues come from the lack of giving background information and a lack of closure.

I really didn’t understand the state the world was in. For instance, where was the main safehouse at? Inside the fences or out? If out, then it seemed relatively nice, so what was the big deal? The same goes for Jasper… His life seemed decent enough, so why was everybody else going apeshit? Finally, the ending didn’t really explain much, which is a consistent complaint of mine across any form of media. Leaving it up to the viewer is a copout. If I wanted to use my imagination, I wouldn’t be fucking staring movie screen for two hours.

Pan’s Labyrinth - I just watched this movie last tonight and was greatly underwhelmed. Metacritic has it as the 4th best rated movie of all time. Are you fucking kidding me? What jackasses gave this movie a god damn 98/100 average on Metacritic?

I actually enjoyed the movie. The acting was good, and the plot kept moving. It was entertaining, to the say the least. But it certainly was NOT what I’d heard it to be. Honestly, I think there’s too many people out there just longing for quality foreign films. For that matter, this may well be a quality foreign film (though I doubt it). Yet it’s ridiculous to consider this “fantasy” movie anywhere near deserving the acclaim it’s gotten.

For one, it’s not a fantasy movie. It’s simply not. Does it have fantasy elements? Certainly. Count the number of minutes it spends in those fantasy settings, though. A total of maybe 10? Out of 120? What it comes down to is that it’s a fairy tale, rated R only because it has unnecessary violence and odd moments of swearing.

Second, there was nothing revolutionary about the story or the cinematography. The Captain was a cliche; he was nothing more than an over-the-top, sadistic bad guy. The mother was a coward who put her children in a dangerous situation. And the fantasy elements just did not deliver as they should have. The melding of fantasy and reality was interesting, but, again, it was underplayed.

Finally, it failed to make me care about the characters. The little girl is dumb (don’t eat the grapes, asshole!), the mother is blind to her family’s situation, and Mercedes should have killed the Captain. I just find it hard to sympathize with characters who are morons.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Go see the movies yourselves, and if you’ve already seen them, let me know what you thought. Then let the computer decide for you.

I’m off to Prague tomorrow; pulling out of Herrin at 8am. I’m really excited about my trip as you can imagine, and probably read elsewhere on this site. I figured I’d throw up one more post before I go.

I saw two movies this weekend, Breach and 300. Breach was about a leak at the FBI, and it was based on a true story. I liked it except for the true story bit. I remembered the even in the news, and it felt a little dirty to be watching a movie about it. 300 was pretty awesome. Obviously, it was overdone and ridiculous, but that’s why I liked it. There’s nothing like digitally enhanced abs in the morning, that’s what I always say.

The other purpose for my posting tonight it to try out Picasa. I plan to use it as a means for sharing all of my trip photos. I created an album tonight showcasing screenshots from my senior design project. The other members of my team are still working on it, so if you have an comments, I’ll forward them along. I’d appreciate the input to be honest. They updated the menu screen this week, but I don’t have the new stuff. Anyway, here it is:

Senior Design Screen Shots

It has been a long time since my last post, and for that, I apologize.  I haven’t had much worth writing about lately.

 Yesterday, I went over to the Milford Proving Grounds yesterday for a tour, and I got to stay for the Technology Show, which is a showcase of all the the powertrain technology.  They had a bunch of cars out for people to drive, and I tried an Escalade, a Saab 93, and an Astra from Germany.  The show-stealer was the Corvette Z06 with 505hp.  It was absolutely amazing.  It was cool to get to see the Powertrain facilities and all of the test tracks as well.

 I also went to see the new Steve Carell movie, Little Miss Sunshine, which was brilliant.  The story centered around a disfunctional family taking their daughter to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest.  The whole movie was hilarious, but the ending at the beauty contest stole the show.  It’s a pretty low budget, small time movie so it’s not showing in southern Illinois or Terre Haute.  That’s just another reason I much prefer living in cities.

I went to see Superman Returns last night, and I have to admit that I was disappointed with it.  Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie, but it just didn’t live up to the hype.  I don’t think I have ever seen the original Superman movies.  If I have, I don’t remember them.  My biggest problem with the movie was that Superman’s powers were just a little too over the top.  I guess that’s a complaint against the Superman franchise instead of just against this movie, but the movie itself was a little light on the action.  I think that was due to the over the top powers though.  I mean, fight scenes are just a little boring when one guy can stop bullets with his eye, but even still, they could have shown a little more butt-kicking action.  The other big problem I had was that the story line was quite familiar.  The main love story centered around a girl who loved Superman, but hardly noticed Clark Kent.  Sounds a little like Spiderman to me.  I don’t know which franchise came first, Spiderman or Superman, but the love interest seems to be practically the same.

To be fair, I can easily see how this type of love-story structure started in the comic book genre.  Since the average comic book reader is a male nerd (I know I’m generalizing), this type of love story just make sense.  Certainly, a story in which the hot girl ignores the geek but falls in love with the real man underneath would appeal to guys who can’t get girls.

I guess that all sounds a little harsh.  The movie really wasn’t too bad, it just did not live up to all the hype around it.  It did get me out of my apartment for the evening, and I don’t feel cheated about spending $7.50 on watching it, which is more than I can say for some movies.

In other news, I’ve been watching a lot of World Cup action lately.  One of my roommates is a huge soccer fan, and he’s honestly gotten me interested in it.  It’s really not a bad game to watch.  Unfortunately, all of the teams I wanted to win this weekend ended up losing.  I was pulling for the Ukraine, Argentina, Brazil, and England.  I guess I’m the kiss of death for soccer teams.  The US team lost in team play, which is the first round, in case you didn’t know.  I have to say that even though they lost, I am still proud of those guys.  All of the other teams (see Italy and Portugal) seem to be a bunch of wusses.  They take dives and falls all over the place to try to get the refs to call fouls.  The sad part is, this tactic actually works.  The announcers even condone it as being “part of the art of soccer.”  To me, taking a dive is probably one of the most dishonorable things you can do in sports.  Now I know why Americans don’t watch.  It’s not because soccer is boring; it’s because soccer players are pansies.

I will still watch as much of the tournament as I can because I don’t have work next week.  I will need all I can to fill my time.  I should probably spend my free time getting ahead on my reading for class.  We’ll see how ambitious I get though.

So today I saw The Da Vinci Code. Having already read the book I figured that the movie wouldn’t be as good since they usually never are, but I really enjoyed the movie.

I thought the cast was wonderulf. I love Tom Hanks, I think he’s great in every project he does. Ian McKellan was great as Sir Leigh Teabing. I think his scenes were fantastic, he’s a very good actor. Audrey Tautou was great as Sophie. I’d never heard of her before, but apparently she’s been in a lot of things…but those were all French films.

I say it’s good, though it seems like almost everywhere else I read they think the movie is horrible. Hey, whatever, I can deal with that. Afterall, we all have different tastes in entertainment.

But for these people he think it’s hypocrisy, get real. For those who think it’s a true story…GET REAL. It’s a movie based off of a book. It’s FICTION. SLU went a tad bit crazy/overboard with this. We had theology and philosophy professors offering classes and seminars to demonstrate how false the book is and how not to go see the movie this past semester. Can you say overkill?

It’s entertainment….that’s all. It doesn’t try to be anything more. It’s one man’s–though that was questionable until a judical ruling–ingenious idea for a compelling and entertaining adventure/story.

So, overall…I enjoyed the book and the movie. I’d go see it.

Story

The date has been set for the Simpson’s movie. It’s coming out July 27,2007. Are you excited? Because I know I am.

I went to see King Kong last night, and I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, the CG was just amazing. When they did close up shots of Kong, I couldn’t tell whether they used a real ape or not. I was thinking they might have just gotten a smaller one and then changed the size of everything else. It would have been hard for them to train and ape to do make those facial expressions.

The movie was pretty entertaining too. The whole thing had this great sense of adventure to it. I couldn’t figure out how they were going to fill 3 hours, but most of it was full of exciting scenes in the jungle. I won’t spoil those for you.

The movie drew a lot of conspicuous comparisons to Heart of Darkness. I really didn’t get the reference until about 5 minutes ago. In the book, a guy travels down this jungle river and found “civilized” men living amongst savages. (At least, I think that’s how to goes. It’s been a few years since I read that book). The parallel comes in the form of Kong traveling to live in New York. The movie then is asking, who is the real savage? I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t figure that out until today. I’ll blame it on the fact that I didn’t really remember the Heart of Darkness story very well.

A friend of mine scored some free advanced screening tickets to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night, so we went and saw it.

I thought it was pretty amazing. Being a big fan of the books and all, it was pretty exciting…plus I got to see it for free and before it actually comes out so that made it all the more exciting.

I definitely recommend it, and I’ll prolly go to see it again.

I saw the new Harry Potter movie last night, and overall I liked it. Although, my brain did spoil the ending for me since I knew what was going to happen.

I only complaint I had about it was that they couldn’t jam in everything from the book. There were several things which they did not explain thoroughly enough to warrant including in the movie. For instance, they did not tie Neville’s dismay over the crucio curse to his parents’ torture very well. It was there, but I doubt many people noticed it. Harry’s pursuit of Cho was hardly worth having in the movie either. It added an interesting layer to the book, but the movie would have been fine without it. I was also disappointed that they did not include the Weasley twins’ jokes. Those were highly entertaining, but I guess they just would not fit in the movie.

Still though, I liked it a lot. It was the first time I had read the book prior to seeing the movie, so it spoiled it a bit, but I was still entertained.

Somebody at work sent me a link to a preview for this new movie called Shining. It looks pretty good, you guys should check it out.

Those of you who haven’t done it need to go see Serenity. I mean this weekend, too. The show rocked when it was one, the movie rocks, and I want a sequel. Seriously, go see it tomorrow!

I went to see the 40 yr old virigin tonight, and they carded me. Can you believe that? I have been carded since,…well, i’m not sure that i ever have.

Anyway, the movie itself was great. It was a sex comedy, of course, but Steve Carell made it feel innocent and wholesome. I was laughing all the way through, and they did not show all the funny parts in the preview.

It was good enough, that I am considering going to see it again.