Monday, May 25, 2009

Vid of Week 2009-05-25: Michael Bay Fan Video

I have not laughed this hard in quite some time.



Breakfast As Directed by Michael Bay -- powered by Cracked.com

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Sherlock Holmes Trailer

Directed by Guy Ritchie. It sort of makes Holmes out to be an action hero. I'm no Holmes aficionado, but I always thought he was more cerebral? This trailer plays at best like John Woo's Sherlock Holmes, and at worst like Michael Bay's. I wonder if the Holmes faithful are up in arms.



Thanks to Dave for forwarding this along.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Blu Ray Bandwagon

Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a Blu-Ray player. What clinched the deal? Well, after the whole format war ended last year, I was ready to go, but I wanted to wait for prices to drop and some enhancements, most importantly speed, BD Live, and Wi-Fi connectivity. I was also somewhat concerned about the viability of the new format, given what many consumers see to be the only incremental quality improvements. I didn't want to buy the next Minidisc. Now that Wal Mart is betting on Blu-Ray, I think the format will explode. So I took the plunge and got the Samsung BD-P3600.

Of course, my first order of business was to upgrade my Netflix account to Blu-Ray. The whole process was pretty painless, aside from the arguably justifiable but real cost. Enable upgrade to Blu-Ray on your account, and all of the movies in your queue that have Blu-Ray offerings are switched. Of course then I shuffled my queue significantly to push many of the Blu-Ray titles to the top. Can't wait to try it out. I'll post my impressions.

Vid of Week 2009-05-18: New Notebook Technology!

Revolutionary "Notebook" makes you lunch, but still uses IE.



Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.


via Gizmodo

Friday, May 15, 2009

Zombie Omar

That crazy kids Michael K Williams! Great at playing scary-ass characters. First Omar, now this!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

IMAX Pimping Their Name?

Somebody is mad about fake IMAX and you should be too if you paid $5 extra to see Star Trek on it, IMHO.

Star Trek Impressions

Looooved it. I loved the reimagining of the characters and how the story served the reimagining premise. Quinto and Pine were great as Spock and Kirk, and Simon Pegg stole every scene he was in. I loved that it didn't take itself too seriously yet kept to Roddenberry's vision. So overall I loved it. Except I did have one major problem.

****SPOILER ALERT HAVEN'T SEEN IT? READ NO FURTHER*****

What the heck was it with the insane coincidence where young Kirk meets old Spock in a cave? That was just simply too unbelievable a coincidence. Running into one another was necessary for the story, I get it, but together in some random cave? At least they could/should have run into one another in the Federation base on the same planet.

OK, so many of you non-sci fi fans are probably laughing at me at this point. Kirk meeting Spock in a cave was unbelieveable? How about the weird "red matter" that can create black holes and all of the other Trek-isms like warp speed, transporters, etc that are simply accepted? All I can say to that is that Trek assumes that technology is far advanced, and the audience has to accept that in the world of this film. Wild coincidences are not part of the Trek wold, it is just bad storytelling.

Furthermore, that whole ice planet scene annoyed me beyond just that coincidence. Old Spock spending 5 minutes narrating a backstory with a few visuals was just another chunk of lazy-ass story telling. Why not tell the back (future) story in a full-fledged flash-forward? It would have been better storytelling and given underutilized Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy more to do. If budget or running time was an issue, we certainly could've done without the whole ice monster chase sequence which, though exciting, did not serve the overall story in the slightest. Kirk had already repeatedly demonstrated his exceptional survival skills.

So in other words, excellent movie. Could have been perfect if director JJ Abrams had cut the 10 minutes of ice monster sequence/Spock narration and inserted some kind of flash-forward with more Leonard Nimoy and Eric Bana instead. Kudos JJ!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

JJ Abrams, Mes sci-fi a?

Lost, Fringe, Wired, Trek... I think that this week should be declared National JJ Abrams Month. I have got to be among one of the most ardent fans of Abrams, but even his harshest critics have to agree that his achievements this week are impressive. Fringe got off to a slow start but it has been picking up dramatic momentum and celebrates its season 1 finale tonight, Lost has totally redefined science fiction and in its 5th season (and 100th episode) and promises a mind-blowing finale tomorrow night. And of course Star Trek scored big at the box office and with critics (95% on Rotten Tomatoes and 83% on Metacritic). Plus, he spectacularly edited this month's Wired magazine. Move over Howard Stern, JJ is the new King of All Media.

That being said, I haven't seen any of the three yet. I'll be seeing Trek, Fringe and Lost over the next few days. I'm eager to see just how mind blowing JJ can be. I have a feeling that this week will cement his place TV/Film history for the ages with the likes of Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock.

OK, so I posted this before, but I leave you with Abram's talk at TED.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Trek Lost Connections

JJ Abrams' Lost wraps up it's 5th season next week, and JJ Abrams' Star Trek opens tonight. Did you know that there is another connection between Lost and Star Trek?



Friday, May 1, 2009

How Will Lost End?

Do any of you out there still think that the creative team on ABC's Lost is making it up as they go along? The progression of Season 5 thus far should have pretty much killed that idea. In case it has not, Lost Executive Producer Damon Lindelof talks to the NYTimes about how the series will end. He says,

There’ll be people who love it, there’ll be people who hate it. There’ll be people who’ll be confused by it, there’ll be people who love being confused. It’ll end on its own terms.
Even though the thought of Lost ending makes me want to cry, I am just so happy, knowing how this season has unfolded and hearing what Lindelof had to say. I am certain that we are in for a blowout.

Read the full New York Times article and the rest of what Lindelof had to say.

Speaking of how Lost ends, DarkUFO has an interesting theory that he offers in his recap of "The Variable"--I think that he could have described the perfect Lost ending. If you don't like to be spoiled, read at your own risk.
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