3rd
July
2007
Ponderings For 2007-07-03
- I saw Die Hard 4 (I’m gonna stop calling it Live Free or Die Hard - I hate that title) again tonight. I did like it a bit better the second time around, but I think I’ll refrain from changing my personal score of the film up from an 8 out of 10. That F-35 sequence with the expressway is just too needlessly excessive. Yeah, I’m drawing one of those personal believability lines in the sand, I suppose. I mean, what’s to say that the cool sequence of ramping a cop car into a helicopter in mid-air isn’t past a similar line in the sand. Ah well, personal entertainment will vary. I did catch a couple little jokes in the movie I didn’t notice the first time. One of them I missed was McClane’s amused response to one of the FBI agents introducing himself as Agent Johnson - a reference to the two (”no relation”) Agent Johnsons in the first Die Hard. Another one I missed the first time is a bit where McClane opens one side of a big, heavy metal doorway and Justin Long’s Farrell character casually jokes “this side must be locked.”
- On the subject of seeing Die Hard 4 again, I went to see it at the just-opened Cinemark, 16 screen Stratford Square theaters in Bloomingdale. From the early 80’s, Stratford Square mall had a Cineplex Odeon set of theaters (one of which was a great big “event” size screen). I saw many movies there growing up. When Loews bought Cineplex Odeon, that was one of a number of my beloved Cineplex Odeon locations to bite the dust. A small operation called Village Theaters re-opened the theaters for 5 or so years, but did little-to-nothing to improve upon the dated, run-down facilities. They folded operation of those screens again a couple years ago. I only went to them under the Village Theaters ownership a few times, primarily for nostalgia reasons, as the presentation and facilities left quite a bit to be desired. Well, Century Theaters began completely remodeling that section of the mall a year or so ago to relaunch a fancy new set of theaters. During said construction, Cinemark bought out Century, so it became a Cinemark location. Well, this past weekend (on 6/29) the new theaters opened. I just checked ‘em out tonight and I must say I’m very impressed. There’s still a bit of nostalgia for me to be walking into that mall to see a movie. The screen I was in wasn’t all too big, but it was nice. Don’t know how much the capacity varies between screens there, since I have no basis of comparison yet. All 16 of the screens are both digital sound (nothing new there) and also digital projection (making it the first megaplex I’ve been to that is entirely digital projection). For somebody who was very familiar with the old facilities, it’s mind-bending to believe that this is the same location. There’s absolutely nothing about the newly built-out section that bares any resemblance to the old. I doubt there’s an original wall or element left from the old structure. The new one is something of a weird rat-maze hallway tying the screens together. I’d love to scrounge up a floor plan, just to see how the thing is truly laid out, and to compare it to how the old Cineplex screens were spatially in comparison. I think this’ll quickly become a regular movie-going venue for me.
- Freema Agyeman is thankfully returning as Martha Jones in season 4 of Doctor Who (in the later half of the season). She’s also appearing in a few Torchwood episodes in between. In a related story, mega-star singer Kylie Minogue will be the guest star in this year’s Christmas episode.
- Woo hoo! Nathan Fillion is in negotiations to become a regular for season 4 of Desperate Housewives. Very cool. His sense of humor will be a great fit for the show.
- Here’s a very interesting story about premature death figures regarding pollution in Chinese cities.
- Here’s a very cool shot of jetliner vortices.
- I may have to check out Chicago’s Kwik-E-Mart location
- Good to see that CBS is not only renewing Jericho, but putting some effort into supporting it this time ’round.
- Yeah, the extras released to date for Vista Ultimate have been pathetic in number and wide-spread usefulness. Somebody at MS fell asleep at this wheel.
- Drupal version 6.0 goes into code freeze. I look forward to playing with it. One day, this site will migrate to Drupal.
- Oooh, we’re getting some pretty cool lightning and thunder outside at the moment…
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