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Ponderings For 2008-12-10

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 12/11/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Forgot to mention the last couple movies in my ongoing Christmas movie viewings. Last Friday, I did one of the required entries, A Christmas Story, on HD-DVD. On Sunday I did the Blu-Ray of The Polar Express (though I went for the standard 2D version this time, not the 3D). On Monday, I did a TV Christmas episode triple feature. First was Buffy's third season episode, Amends. Second was Roswell's second season episode, A Roswell Christmas Carol. Third was My So-Called Life's episode So-Called Angels. And tonight I did Black Christmas (the remake). It isn't a particularly great movie, and is more of a horror movie, but it's a good counterpoint to the normal ones for how twisted it is. And I also picked up the HD-DVD at Fry's yesterday for $3. I think Fry's has pretty much accumulated the left over HD-DVD supply of North America, and will continue selling them until the supply finally runs out. Having seen the boxes and boxes and boxes full of Heroes Season 1 HD-DVD sets underneath their shelves, it's gonna be some time before they get rid of those dozens and dozens (if not hundreds and hundreds) of copies.
  • Hurray! The Dark Knight score has been re-instated for eligibility for the Academy Awards. It was a completely stupid thing they did a while back disqualifying the score. It's one of the best scores of the year, so I'm happy to hear that they grew a brain and allowed it back in. I was only so-so on the score for Batman Begins, but for The Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard really perfected what they were going for, and the incredibly well done nervous tension they gave to The Joker is brilliant. The more times I watch the movie, the more I realize how darn well the score works.
  • Google has added (back) the capability to do SMS texting from inside GMail's chat interface.
  • Sad to hear the news that David Tennant has had to drop out of his Hamlet run with the RSC due to a back injury. Hope he has a good recovery, and is able to start filming Doctor Who again in January.
  • Here's some great work at adapting major corporate logos for their current financial state...
  • Endeavour is finally winging its way back to Florida
  • Ah, the delicious irony
  • Need to catch up on Battlestar before it comes back in January for its final run? Here's a fantastic, funny recap they put together. Naturally, if you haven't seen the episodes aired up to this point before, and ever plan to, do NOT watch this video. It's, uh, just a tad spoilery.

Ponderings For 2008-12-05

Submitted by GuyGG on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Looks like OJ has finally gotten his just rewards
  • Here's a very cool fan art modifying an older Academy Awards promo poster for The Dark Knight
  • Speaking of The Dark Knight, Warner Bros is going to do a re-release of the IMAX print of the film in January (to both help the box office climb over $1 billion and to get more Oscar attention). If you didn't manage to see the IMAX print of the film before, you really should get out there and check it out. It's breathtaking. Yeah, it'll be on Blu-Ray next Tuesday, but you really should check it out on the IMAX screen.
  • You can send away for some groovy GMail stickers
  • The Google Reader team has done a functional design overhaul, and it's noticeably quicker. I use Google Reader many times a day, and am always happy to see more improvements.
  • I've played a bit with Songbird since having mentioned it in yesterday's post. I can definitely say that I won't be using it yet, but it has the potential to be great some day. It's definitely not there yet, though. It's still quite basic.

Ponderings For 2008-09-18

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 09/19/2008 - 1:59am
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  • I guess I should congratulate Alicia Keys and Jack White for coming through with the worst title song for a Bond film in the history of the franchise. At this point in the life of the venerable film series, it takes a good amount of effort to be the single best or worst for any aspect of the franchise.
  • Congratulations go out to Doctor Who Magazine for reaching issue #400. DWM is by far the best genre fan magazine ever published, with a long and proud history. It's one of my favorite magazines to read month after month, and I look forward to 400 more (assuming I live that long).
  • I mentioned Pushing Daisies winning a creative arts Emmy for composer Jim Dooley's excellent score yesterday, but I forgot to mention that Varese Sarabande is going to be releasing a CD of his wonderful score on October 21.
  • For years, I suffered through watching Heathers on crappy quality pan & scan VHS. It was the best there was for quite some time. Then came the widescreen laserdisc, and I was very happy. Later there were quite a few DVD releases, all of which were quite nice. They didn't add much when they kept re-releasing it to DVD, but it was still nice to have some quality releases of the film out there. Now we get another big step in the video release history of this film, as it is being released in high def to Blu-Ray. I know that given the source material that this will hardly be any kind of reference quality demo material. Still, I would have never dreamed of ever getting my grubby little paws on Heathers in such quality back in the days of watching the horrid quality VHS. How very.
  • Cool, there's going to be another 3D Blu-Ray release - Journey To The Center Of The Earth. It's a surprisingly fun movie, and I hope they can get the excellent 3D production quality well represented in the home video format.
  • Looks like Fox is going to get it right with some very nice sounding Blu-Ray releases of the recent X-Files: I Want To Believe as well as the first X-Files: Fight The Future film. I'm very happy to see them including an isolated score (on I Want To Believe, anyway).
  • Greatest news clip. Ever.
  • MediaDefender - one year after the e-mail leak.
  • And if you think MediaDefender was evil, try these dudes.
  • GMail has added one of the cooler and more useful little features to their Labs list - forgotten attachment detector.
  • As a new U-Verse customer, I've been keeping a close eye on news items about them. After Comcast's bandwidth cap idiocy, people are misinterpreting and reacting wrong to news like this. That minor adjustment in their service statement is nothing like throttling. They're just giving better definition to the way they divide your connection between data and video.
  • Now this is my kind of humor
  • I'll get the many pending movie reviews started tomorrow. Gotta end my posting for today with this. I'm busy doing some rewiring of stuff, to best include the new U-Verse DVR unit.

Ponderings For 2008-07-12

Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-07-07

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-03-06

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 2:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-02-25

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 2:59am
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Ponderings For 2008-02-21

Submitted by GuyGG on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Congrats to the navy for a great shoot down. No, seriously. Here's the video. Anybody who thinks that is an easy thing has no idea.
  • Speaking of which, they are starting to see broken up pieces of the bird entering the atmo.
  • To add to the fun, the satellite shoot-down took place just as the moon was going through an infrequent lunar eclipse. I took a look at it during a few phases of the eclipse. A pic of the eclipse I took with my nifty new Canon PowerShot S5 IS camera is featured on this post. I know I could have taken a better shot, but I'm still kinda getting used to the controls on the camera, and it was frickin' freezing out (nearly zero degrees). Still, the pic turned out pretty good for being only a partially manual shot.
  • Lunar EclipseOccasionally, The Onion will have a news story that just strikes my funny bone perfectly. This is just such a story. I was tearing up, laughing so hard while reading it.
  • Oooooh, David Fincher is directing a graphic novel adaptation, Black Hole. I'm there.
  • Then there's word that Leonardo DiCaprio is involved in a LIVE ACTION remake of Akira. I've got no idea if they can even come close to making it work. I like Akira, and I'll admit that the last act of the movie makes zero sense. I have to imagine them reworking it, somehow. But if they could somehow bring the first 30 minutes to life, with anywhere near the style that the animated film has, I'll wanna see that.
  • More and more cast members are being added onto the roster for the Buffy Paley Center event. Now Alyson Hannigan and David Boreanaz have joined in on the fun. But hey, if Alyson is going, where's Alexis Denisof?
  • Coolness... ;-)
  • Was your science fair project better than these? Too funny...
  • The HD-DVD walls continue to crumble. The major remaining HD-DVD supporting studios, Paramount and Universal, have officially jumped ship as well.
  • Help Stop Darth Weinstein. I haven't actually seen Fanboys yet, though I've wanted to for some time. The reason I really want to see it just goes to underline the true nature of Fanboys in general. I want to see it because it stars Kristen Bell. Doesn't hurt that it's about Star Wars/fans. But yeah, this movie has had a stupid, tumultuous history trying to get to an actual release.
  • Here's an amusing little entry in the GMail Team Blog
  • Congrats to Monk for a seventh season pickup
  • iPaper - a hopeful new attempt to kill the PDF. It's certainly a faster platform (what isn't?).
  • A nifty presentation of the newest version of the $5 bill (and some cool pics and info on previous versions)
  • The Sharper Image has filed for chapter 11
  • Gotta love code developers (credit for this one goes to Drupal's always-excellent and fun Jeff Eaton)
  • Meanwhile, Juno continues on it's steady run

Ponderings For 2007-10-28

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 10/29/2007 - 1:59am
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Ponderings For 2007-09-24

Submitted by GuyGG on Tue, 09/25/2007 - 1:59am
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