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Ponderings For 2010-02-04

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 12:59am
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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 2010-01-21

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 01/22/2010 - 12:59am
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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 Tue, 01/19/2010 - 12:59am
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  • 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 Thu, 01/14/2010 - 12:59am
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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.

Ponderings For 2009-06-25

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 11:59pm
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Ponderings For 2009-04-05

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 04/05/2009 - 11:59pm
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  • One of the biggest pieces of news, for me anyway, during the lack of posts on this site recently was the very sad news of Andy Hallett's death. Hallett was a fantastic performer and was always nothing short of fantastic in his co-starring role on Angel. He was a fan favorite and always went out of his way to be nice to the fan community. He will be missed.
  • And of course, during said break was April Fools, celebrated across the web in a great many of amusing ways.
  • And, given that it amusingly launch on April Fools Day, GMail celebrated its 5th anniversary.
  • Hurray! Word has it that ABC has finally put the last 3 episodes of Pushing Daisies on the schedule for May 30. I guess I'll actually get to see them before picking up the Blu-Ray release of season 2 on July 21.
  • So, Fast & Furious opened huge this weekend. That might have been a bit surprising had I not seen the insane lines for it at the theater on Friday night. I haven't seen it yet, but plan to. I liked the first film, but thought the second and third were so-so. Given that this reunites the original cast and production team, I'm hoping they pull it off.
  • The first preview of the new K9 series has been posted. Might be better than I thought it would be. The redesigned K9 looks a bit odd, but I think it'll work once I've gotten used to it.
  • And speaking of Who, the newest special is set to air on April 11th. Can't wait.
  • Frank Miller's Peanuts
  • Here's a gorgeous set of photos of Tokyo
  • I couldn't care less about soap operas, but the recent cancelling of Guiding Light is a major event in TV history. After a 72 year run (originally on radio because, well, TV didn't exist that long ago), and a mind blowingly insane amount of programming (it passed the 15,000 episodes on TV mark nearly 3 years ago), it comes to an end. It'll be interesting to see if the producers can successfully continue it on the net or something, just to keep the statistics going.
  • That's just wrong
  • Here's a great set of vintage Dharma Initiative advertisements. Incidentally, I've been having a blast watching Lost this season. The writers are taking things to insane levels (in a good way). Last season was no slouch either. I'll be very interested to see where they take things by the end of the next, and final, season.
  • An interesting photo set of a NYC skyscraper from the 1920's to today.
  • That'll do for now. I've got tons more stuff earmarked to add to Ponderings posts. I'll try to keep 'em coming throughout the week, as well as continue tweaking and adding to the rest of the site. Stay tuned.
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