13 posts tagged “film”

Romantic Comedy?  I do not think so my friends, Drama to Dramedy.  If you have ever been through a reasonably messy break up (GF/BF not a Divorce, that is a entirely different beast) then you will see some of your experiences in this movie.  Nobody cheated, nobody was immoral or evil... it is just a relationship gone sour between two people who once loved each other dearly.

It will be all over the press today but Paul Newman has passed away.  If you are not too familiar with Paul Newman I would suggest you see Hud and Cool Hand Luke to see why he became the star he is remembered as today.

All singed up!  Natalie and I are going to do the Bridgepedal this weekend.  I have wanted to do it for years but something always got in the way.  This year I was saying "hell to the no" nothing is getting in the way I am going to do this.

Really looking forward to it.  Providence Bridgepedal

Also saw a very interesting movie the other night.  I wrote a big review earlier but lost it in a little IE Browser issue... sigh.  In short I will say that I had low expecations and maybe that is why I liked it but it was enjoyable.  Natalie thought it was too complex, she hates complex movies where things are not all spelled out for you in the end.  I on the other hand love those movies (which you know by know if you have seen the other movies I rated highly).

Whew.... I have seen a few good movies recently.  So after seeing "Stalker" I wanted to see another Russian Soviet Era piece and I went back to the same director and what appears to be his response to Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey".  The only space faring nations locked in a mortal global Cold War across the planet and space at a time when there was great hope about our future in space (40 years and barely a return to the moon has kind of been the buzz kill on that one...) and they come out with two visions of our future in space.  Vaguely similiar but also starkly different.  Kubrick's stark cold technological piece vs Tarkovsky's more organic humanistic piece.

I love both.  I had seen the Solaris remake and while not this movie it had piqued me enough to see the original.  If you like Kubrick I think you will like this.

Next a Australian Cowboy movie set in the 1800's Australian Outback.  Great movie even if you do not like westerns you are almost gauranteed to love this character study.  Guy Pierce is an excellent lead, Nick Cave brings a little Old/New Testament redemption to the characters.  Overall a beautiful film.  The Proposition

And let's finish with a little home grown crabby' old guy humor with family and personal redemption.  Grumpy Old Men meets Oregon meets independent film.  Funny and wothe the watch.  Raising Flagg:

I think I started out being interested in this film as it was filmed at the height of the cold war and being old enough to even remember the cold war I was curious what type of film was being made in the Soviet Union while we were supposed to be hating them so much.

Simply wonderful.

Well I have finally decided that I can and I like it with all the details whenever I can get it.  Last year I stepped up and layed down a chunk of change for a high grade home theater/audio system.  Had it all wired into the living room, you know the basics, big plasma tv 1080P, HDMI 1.3 connections, Paradigm speakers and the top of the line Pioneer Elite receiver to round it out.  At the time I decided to go Blue Ray and got a PS3 as my Blue Ray player.  Figured I could enjoy some games and whatnot along the way.

Wow.... I love the PS3, streaming audio and video over my wireless network from the computer up in the den down to the home entertainment system.  Love the games and it is a CD/DVD/Blue Ray player to boot.  One of the best DVD upscalers on the market.

Well as I have watched movies I notice that when I play DVD's they audio is automatically recognized and the reciever plays it in the native format off of the DVD (DTS, Dolby Digital.. etc...).  Now obviously I expected a visual quality difference between a DVD and a Blue Ray disc and I do quite easily notice that.  But audio I was suprised.  All the Blue Rays come through the Reciever as PCM.  I had to go look it up.  That is the pure digital format, the one that all others are derived from and all others (Dolby's, MP3, WMA etc...) are compressed versions of the PCM format.

Even Natalie remarked the other day when we were watching 3:10 to Yuma how easier it is to hear the high quality and directional sound when we watch Blue Ray discs.  For her to say that is big... she does not care about this stuff like I do.

If she notices?  Anyone would.

They say you cannot tell, but in our household.  Well we beg to differ.

Later

Oh man,

What a documentary.  I think I will carry the weight from that for a long time.  I was slightly hesitant to watch it but dove in and did it anyway.  Right now it just feels like a sucking black hole in my chest.

It is a documentary about people who commit suicide off of the Golden Gate bridge.  Which I guess is the number one spot in the world to travel to in order to commit suicide.  Something like 25 per year....  but the live footage, of people jumping.  It was just more than I could bear.  Sigh...

Having suffered anxiety myself I know what it feels like in the ever so slightest way to not have complete control over your mental faculties on occasion.  But what I have suffered is just a minor blip compared to the burdens these people have carried and drove them to that spot.

There is a lot of suffering a lot.

I have been seeing some great movies lately but just been slow to upload them and it is not always easy to find a good trailer to post.  But this one was recent and very dearly enjoyed.  1980's Stasi....  Beautifully shot and written.  Worth it even if you cannot bear subtitles.

Oh lord,

What a weekend.   :blackeyed:

But it is over.  Or at least for the moment.  We shall see how things do or do not come together on Monday.  We moved our company datacenter over the weekend, we had outgrown our last one and we had constant problems getting enough power and cooling.  We moved to another facility out on the westside of Portland.

Good times.  450 servers, 6 trucks 2 Million dollars in equipment per truck (all we could insure per truck) not including application and software costs.  I worked about 34 hours this weekend on this project.  But it looks like all I am responsible for is up and running as it should be.  Even had time to watch a good movie tonight and to report on another I saw a few days back.

Couple days ago.  The Good German.  Really enjoyed this show, they filmed it in complete 1940's film noir detective style.  With cuts of actual footage from the time, really I was hard pressed to tell where the cuts where.  They did it that well.  Well woth seeing.  George Clooney and Cate Blanchet.

Tonight?  Raise the Red Lantern.  It was good, maybe not as much as I had hoped but perhaps it was the set.  It small all taking place in just a couple of rooms in a house.  The acting and the story were great but I love those Chinese movies with the wide scope that show you how much there is to see in China.  This was not that.  :)

Well I should get some rest.  So much to do.  Sheesh.... have not even started prepping for Thanksgiving.  Would be extremely helpful if I could get Wednesday off to get ready but I don't think it is going to happen because my assistant is out that day also.  I think it depends on how tomorrow goes.

Hope your all doing well.

Sean

Could not help the introduction there.  So I got a Harmony 880 universal remote for my system the other day.  These things can be insanly expensive for a remote (about $250) but I picked it up refurbished for $89 and it seems to be just fine.

I do not have that many components to my system but even with my system this thing is a god send.  It is so easy to program with the USB connection to your computer and wizards to walk you through what kind of equipment you have and how you want to setup the remote.

It is all setup around "Activities".  "Watch Cable", "Watch DVD", "Listen to Radio", "Play Game Console", "Watch DVR" etc...  The wizards set the activities up and ask you a few basic questions.  Then you take the remote to your system and hit the button next to the LCD screen for the Activity you want and the remote sequences all the various commands to all components in the right order to get all the inputs setup for that activity.

As a guy you can see I can kind of get "Tech Geek" with this thing.  But Natalie loves it.  She could not for the life of her figure out how to change from watching Cable to watching a DVD (Change TV Input from Component1 to HDMI1, Change AV Reciever from TV/SAT to HDMI1, Turn Cable Box off, Turn DVD Player On, Control volume on AV Reciever remote not Cable Remote.... etc...)  I could do it but it was a pain.  This Harmony you just hit the Activity for DVD and it does all those things for you.  Does not matter what state each device is in when you start the activity since the remote already remembers what it last did and the state of each device.

Super nice.  :)

The Surround Sound system is half setup.  They came and wired the rear channel speakers and the subwoofer on Satruday.  Took several hours to get everything running up through the walls the way I wanted.  So last night as I am doing my Sunday evening chores to prep for the work week I left the TV on for the intro to Saving Private Ryan that was on TNT in HD.  Now since it was through the stereo it was louder than it has ever been before through the TV.  I could tell during the D-Day landing sequence that it was much more realistic sounding than it has ever been before.  How could I tell?

Mr. Snuffy.  His eyes were the size of saucers and his head was flicking this way and that as the bullet and artillery sounds were going off.  I had to turn it down before Mr. Snuffy went into full cardiac arrest!  Poor Kitty.  :)

Later