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Ponderings

A daily ponderings digest post

Ponderings For 2010-03-10

Submitted by GuyGG on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • Man, it's so cool lately for those of us who have been Tron fanatics for decades. The first trailer for Tron Legacy (the one from a year and a half ago was just a proof-of-concept test reel) has just gone live, and it's awesome. And then check out the cool new "Tronorail" launch.
  • For those wondering how crazy looking a "sea mouse" would be.
  • Minority Report is becoming more science than fiction, fast than most of us probably would have liked.
  • Now THIS connection is one that I might not be able to completely saturate.
  • Here's an awesome pool table.
  • Short post today. More to come tomorrow, as well as a quick review of Alice In Wonderland. Will likely be catching the midnight screening of Green Zone tomorrow night, too.

Ponderings For 2010-03-02

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • I'm watching the Rifftrax of Transformers 2 as I type this. You know, I was wondering if this movie was truly as awful as I remembered, or if I was thinking of it through 110% black glasses. I'm halfway through it at the moment and can confirm that not only is it as bad as I remember, but it's actually worse, as hard to believe as that may be. However, the Rifftrax boys are making it a whole lot of fun. This is the only way this movie should be viewed. Seriously, this is one incredibly horrendous movie. Michael Bay should be taken out into town square, tortured, drawn, quartered then forced to watch this movie on constant loop with the volume cranked to 11.
  • Woo hoo! Hurray! One of my most wanted series for DVD has been announced - Max Headroom! And it's being licensed to Shout Factory, so it's gonna get nice treatment, too. Woo hoo!
  • One word: AWESOME
  • And if that wasn't awesome enough, then this is.
  • Holy cow, this movie sucks.
  • Wait, Apple hasn't been including HDMI ports on computers? Hasn't every other computer manufacturer on the face of the Earth been doing so for some time now? OK, never mind that, there's a number of other stupidities involved in this situation (Seriously? Phasing out Blu-Ray due to licensing fees? REALLY, APPLE? They who run iTunes?)
  • Great stuff
  • Geez, this movie sucks.
  • Long live The Pirate Bay...
  • Some Tron Legacy details (including a Blu-Ray of the original film - though it also debuts in HD on HDNet tomorrow night). Can't wait to check out the first trailer this weekend.
  • Nice imaging work by the boys at NASA
  • For the love of all that is sane, this movie sucks.
  • Forget the cute kitten pics. How about guinea pigs?
  • no, No, NO, *NO*! Where's the delete button for those memory cells in my brain!?!?!?!
  • Humanity is finished. (those toys are almost as bad as this movie)
  • Jar-Jar Binks has *NOTHING* on Skids and Mudflap.
  • Probably a good thing I don't speak whatever language they're chattering.
  • Easter eggs for Hitler, indeed.
  • Did I mention how much this movie sucks?
  • Dude, this movie sucks.
  • No, really, THIS MOVIE SUCKS!  (thankfully Mike, Bill & Kevin at Rifftrax don't)
  • You know what? Never mind Crank. Never mind Space Jam. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is the worst movie I've ever seen. I'm making that official.

Ponderings For 2010-02-21

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 02/21/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • You know how some music artists intentionally try to recapture their original magic while staging a return, and fail miserably? Well, Harold Faltermeyer is not one of those people. Over the last couple days I've been constantly listening to an online leaked copy of his new score to Kevin Smith's retro buddy-cop comedy, Cop Out (don't worry, my purchased, physical copy of the score is due to arrive from Amazon on Tuesday). This score is instantly one of my favorites of the year. Faltermeyer flawlessly slips right back into the groove of his action/comedy scores of the 80's and early 90's. I forgot just how much I missed his scores. They have a sense of bounce and style, not to mention truly catchy melodic work, that nearly all composers since have failed to match. John Powell is one of the few I can think of that comes close to being able to tap into the same vein with any repeatable consistency. For Cop Out, Faltermeyer intentionally brings back some of that retro electronic instrumentation, and he makes it work in a way that has a fun retro feel without sounding awkwardly dated. It must have been quite the fine line to walk.
  • Ladies and gents, here is the very definition of the word, AWESOME
  • Holy *!%#: "Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!"
  • For all of you fellow King Of Kong fans: Way to go, Steve!
  • Eeeeek, the first promo for the new season of Doctor Who. Can't wait to see what the new cast and crew get up to. I do like the gleeful energy of the goofball promo.
  • More great Colbert goodness. The ending is particularly great.
  • Sure the only VW Beetle to ever be intimidating.
  • While certainly not somebody I would have thought of for the role of Nikita, I approve.
  • The Oscars have just improved the ceremony by axing the worst part of the show: the best song nominee performances.
  • CubeStormer. Too cool.
  • Talk about a clever security system...
  • Gotta love the work of a true artist
  • A great infographic
  • The rare example of a great commercial
  • A classic photo, indeed.
  • No kidding
  • Spent the last day or two nuking my main machine at the house. It had the soon-to-expire Windows 7 Release Candidate still running on it. So my machine got to have a nice, fresh install of the final Windows 7. Thankfully, things went pretty smoothly. I'm actually gonna be posting a write-up soon (along with 4 others that are partially complete) detailing a number of my favorite applications (I took some notes during the rebuild to be able to use it as a list for people to use as recommended apps).

Ponderings For 2010-02-14

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 02/14/2010 - 11:59pm
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Ponderings For 2010-02-09

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 11:59pm
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Ponderings For 2010-02-04

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • I've been compiling a blu-ray compilation of the criminally under appreciated 2006 TV series Standoff recently. While looking up the episode information online I noticed that series stars Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt actually got married in November of 2009. Standoff was an excellent series, and much of that was thanks to Livingston & DeWitt. I had noticed in passing a while back that the two of them were dating after starring together on the series, but that's not an unprecedented thing. It's kinda cool that a few years later they actually tied the knot. The two of them had that on-screen spark of chemistry with seemingly effortless ease, so I guess it wasn't entirely an act.
  • Incidentally, it's worth mentioning just how far digital video technology has come in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, you were lucky to pull off VHS quality in a digital format (via SVCD, for instance). And CD-R's were the best you were going to do for media, and it wasn't gonna be comparatively cheap. Today, one can make a BD-R compilation on a single layer 25gb disc containing extremely nice quality 720p video and 5.1 audio comfortably holding 750 or more minutes for less than a buck and a half.
  • Tuesday's Lost episode was great (well, technically it was 2 episodes). It's cool to finally have the final year of the series under way. Amusingly, ABC just announced the date that the series finale will air - May 23. That's amusing because it just happens to be my mother's 75th birthday.
  • Speaking of the Lost series finale, here's an amusing video.
  • Now THIS is a great paint job.
  • A very fun vid for your Star Wars or Star Trek fans.
  • A great write-up for those of you wishing to harness the power of GMail's interface & functionality. Particularly you keyboard reliant users out there.
  • For you less-than-butch soldiers
  • The can make Transformers 3 in 3D, with magical holigram technology, rumble-rama, and sensurround for all I care. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING they can do with Transformers 3 that will get me to see it. It could star my favorite actors and actresses, with a score by Bruce Broughton or John Williams, and there wouldn't be a whelk's chance in a supernova of my seeing it.
  • Groovy
  • And RIP: Justin Mentell. He was good during his brief starring run on the late, great Boston Legal.
  • I'll be getting a couple specialty posts online over the next couple days. One will be a write-up on the Oscar nomination list (which I'm very happy with this year), including my yearly predictions. Another will finally be my follow-up on the iPhone now that I've been using it for a few months. And within a week or so, I should have some Doctor Who fun posted. I just got my Complete Specials blu-ray set today and am going through extras on it. I must say that David Tennant's video diaries are some of the greatest special features on any home video releases ever. Plenty more of them on this set. On, and I've also got a general TV related post mostly put together that I have to put the finishing touches upon. Should be posted by the weekend.

Ponderings For 2010-01-27

Submitted by GuyGG on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • By Grabthar's Hammer, What A Movie! I received my blu-ray copy of Galaxy Quest today from Amazon and just finished watching it. This is one of those movies that's just as entertaining with every single viewing. It's one of the rarest comedies in that it's both a parody and a genuine representation of what it parodies. It's the best of both worlds. It's one of the all-time great comedies, and it's great to have a nice, great quality release of it with the recent blu-ray release. I think the funniest thing is that the legendary Michael & Denise Okuda did the trivia/information system for the Galaxy Quest (for you non-Trek fans, the Okuda's have done many trivia tracks, written tech books and were art and tech advisors on a number of Trek series). Another cool thing is that 10 years later the visual effects in Galaxy Quest still hold up remarkably well. And the story is still as brilliant yet elegantly simple as ever. And of course the cast is perfect. The film also feature one of the single most obvious dialog replacement moments to achieve a lower rating in film history (for those who've somehow never noticed it, pay attention to Sigourney Weaver when the come upon the "chomper" metal compressor obstacle course. This new 10th anniversary edition features a nice, new retrospective documentary as well. At any rate, if you haven't seen it, you must. If you have, then you should see it again. Never give up! Never surrender!
  • Hurray! Looks like ABC has ordered up an additional 2 episodes of Castle, and the series may be finding the traction to survive a long life.
  • Try this piece of weirdness on - the great Weird Al is going to direct his first feature film, for Cartoon Network, and it's going to be live action. Well, I guess "weird" is the watch word.
  • Best of luck to Mars rover, Spirit. Hopefully it can survive the Martian winter. It's amazing that they're still getting use from Spirit & Opportunity after this many years.
  • La Femme Nikita gets yet another iteration. As a fan of all three previous forms (yes, even Point Of No Return), I'll give the new one a chance.
  • 25 classic dialog scenes performed in "typography." It's really quite nifty work.
  • And in closing, ladies and gents, I give you this piece of utterly, gobsmackingly, insanely unbelievable piece of stupidity. I swear I thought I was reading an article from The Onion at first. This bit of lunacy is not much better (though it's at least slightly understandable).

Ponderings For 2010-01-21

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • Excellent - details on the upcoming Battlestar Galactica: The Plan / Razor score CD release. I can't wait to check out some of the stuff on this album. The "Husker In Combat" stuff is of particular interest, though there's plenty of other great materials in the two scores to be had on this album. The "Apocalypse" cues in The Plan were also particularly awesome.
  • Here's an awesome fan vid editing together all the various plot lines during the crash of Oceanic 815 from Lost. If you haven't seen all 5 aired seasons of Lost to date, then for goodness sake don't watch this as it's entirely spoiler laden.
  • And here's a cool 23 minutes behind-the-scenes video for the making of Avatar. It's got too much EPK kinda stuff in the first part, but most of it is cool behind-the-scenes material. The virtual camera and simul-cam stuff is SO incredibly cool. When you watch the controlled chaos of shooting the film, it's easy to understand some of the safe choices that were made in terms of story.
  • Google Wave has added access permissions to waves. Definitely a step in the right direction. Also nice of them to add rollback/restore functionality.
  • Google has also rolled out an experimental, opt-in feature for YouTube to play back videos via the HTML5 embedded tag rather than flash. It has very limited browser support as yet, but worked great for me in Chrome (which is my default browser now, btw).
  • This editorial on Google's mobile strategy potential is right on the mark. I think it's likely to play out as this write-up predicts.
  • And this write-up is spot on as well. The pricing models in the music trade are quite goofy in many cases, and often drives me nuts. I'm a much bigger fan of Amazon than iTunes, to be sure (and will always support the CD version as much as possible - at least until lossless or better become more available in digital downloads).
  • NBC continues to scramble to figure out their schedule, and it has a definite upside: more episodes of shows I love (like Community, 30 Rock, etc). Frankly, I'm just as happy to have a late night talk show die in order to get more episodes of shows I actually watch. I rarely watch any of the late night talk shows.

Ponderings For 2010-01-18

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 01/18/2010 - 11:59pm
Posted in
  • AWESOME music video
  • Coolness. Not only is Ride With The Devil coming to blu-ray, but it's coming in a longer director's cut from The Criterion Collection. It's my favorite Ang Lee movie (I'm likely in a short list of people for which that's true). Now, if only Criterion could get their edition of The Ice Storm (my second favorite Ang Lee movie) kicked up from standard def to a blu-ray release.
  • So apparently the networks in every other country can come up with cool promos for Lost's final season, but ABC can only turn out generic crap promos? Why shouldn't I be surprised. Frankly, I've always been amazed how much better all the international promos have been over the years for Lost compared to the domestic ones. ABC, you guys have GOT to find a better agency for producing your promos. If you're doing them internally, then outsource the things.
  • Excellent. A new collection of Firefly short stories is in the works, and the awesome Jane Espenson is contributing.
  • HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!  Like I'm *EVER* going to watch another of this film series with him at  the helm, let alone one making wildly improbable claims like this. Is there ANYONE who believes the franchise is going to suddenly grow a brain?
  • A genius technique for checking luggage at the airport.
  • Gotta admit that this is one of the few Doctor Who actors that I didn't particularly care for, and am actually a bit disappointed to hear she's gotten the lead in a new JJ Abrams show. Perhaps I'm wrong and she'll be great. Here's hoping.
  • Gotta admit that I've got mixed feelings about the Spider Man franchise getting retooled. Yeah, the third film was a major mis-step, but the cast was excellent and the second film proved that it did work well and could have again if they got their act together again. Not sure I like the idea of it getting a reboot this fast.

Ponderings For 2010-01-13

Submitted by GuyGG on Wed, 01/13/2010 - 11:59pm
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  • For those of you that I didn't already point to it, I'll mention that I finally got my 2009 Retrospective finished and posted a few days ago. However, I'll mention that I made a tweak to the post tonight before mentioning it here. I bumped up The Hurt Locker a couple spots in the best picture category, essentially knocking Up out from position 5 on the list. Having seen the films in that top category multiple times each, I think I'm happy with this final order. Truth be told, if I were going to make one more tweak to that category, it might be to bump Hurt Locker up above Inglourious Basterds, but I think I'll leave it the way it is.
  • Oh, and speaking of The Hurt Locker, Best Buy should be flogged for their stocking of the blu-ray for the film, or lack thereof. They had an exclusive steelbook version. I have 3 different Best Buy's on the way home from where I was on Tuesday's release day. I stopped at the first one, and not only didn't they have any of the steelbook editions, but they didn't have any copies of the blu-ray in stock. So, I stopped at the second (and admittedly smaller) location, and had the same result. No copies of it, steelbook or otherwise. Sure enough, stopped at the third (and largest of the three) location, and yet again, not a single copy to be found. And go figure, Walmart had oodles of them. What the heck, Best Buy? Major movie release and you can't even stock enough of them to hold out for 8 hours?
  • ABC has now officially demonstrated the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of how to do good recap videos (needless to say these videos are 100% spoilers - don't watch if you ain't current on the show). Take, for instance, the recap video for seasons 1-3 of Lost. It's brilliant, and is done by the folks who've done a couple other brilliant/hilarious recap videos for other shows like Battlestar Galactica (which is still the best one they've done so far). Then, witness the annoying, horrible abomination that is this season 1-5 recap video for Lost that ABC just put out. My goodness, I couldn't have done this worse if I tried. Seriously, whoever is responsible for this one should be fired.
  • AWESOME: The entire Big Lebowski script in Shakespearean.
  • As somebody who works in IT, it goes without saying that printing technology makes my life more miserable than just about anything else. And I ain't the only one with this opinion...
  • "World's Most Talented Man" - hard to argue with.
  • My follow-up post on the iPhone I've now been using for a month or two is also pending and should be posted in the next couple days. Until then, here's some fun stats on the iPhone app store.
  • Oh, and I have a few mini-reviews to catch up on. Coming shortly will be ones for Youth In Revolt, Daybreakers and Leap Year. Short post for today.
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