This past weekend the lady friend and I went down to Cape May for a little R&R. Little did we know during the planning of the trip that it's more of a summer locale. As a result, it was pretty much a ghost town while we were there. Though it was still a great time, it made me think about how sucky it must be to live there regularly. Especially as a kid.
Our first night out there we went to this bar for a late night snack and were able to witness the off-season nightlife. Needless to say, it was pretty lame - yet simultaneously funny. The fashions on these kids (I'd put them in the early 20's range) seemed stuck in a different era. For the guys, a little Bud Bundy meets Kevin from the Wonder Years. For the ladies, a little Molly Ringwald in her heyday meets a buffet. Well that's a little harsh I suppose; there was only one whale in the bunch. What there weren't were attractive people. Male nor female. And yet one could still see the gears grinding in people's heads as they considered the prospects on hand (and there weren't even that many people in this place, and it was literally the only place open in town). I kind of felt sorry for them. Then again, maybe all the cool kids in town were hanging out in someones house playing dollar tournaments...
Another funny thing was that all the other guests at the B&B we were at were older and had either teenage kids or grandkids. They were all discussing problems they had with their (grand)kids or how happy they were to have the house to themselves again. They assumed the gf and I were married as well, and we played right along. They were worried that they were going to discourage us from having kids, and I tried to play that angle as well, but I don't think I did it with a straight face. Old people are weird.
Moral of the story: Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
P.S. - I suggest everyone take this test, and all the others on the page.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Oscar wrap up
It was a pretty good oscar show overall I'd say. I didn't even come close to winning the pool (I think I only picked 11 right), but I'm not bitter - I swear...
Best Documentary/ Short film/ Foreign film
I actually had the opportunity to catch a screening of all of the nominated short and animated films. That lost out to an intense Rock Band session though. The documentaries/foreign films just weren't widely available enough to view in a timely manner. As such, these categories were guesstimated, as usual, and I lost no sleep over the choosing of the eventual winner.
Best Picture
This choice was no surprise. No Country was a great movie, with only one or two minor flaws. A fine choice given the competition.
Best Director
This usually goes to the Best Picture winner. It didn't hurt that it was the best directed picture anyway. Pretty much a lock.
Best Actor
I called this one, too. He had won in just about every other awards show, and he is well respected by the academy. I'm still not sure how I feel about Danny as a person though. Like, I don't think I'd wanna share a beer with him over lunch. Still think Viggo could've won this as well, though.
Best Actress
Biggest upset of the night, I think. Marion did put in a heck of a performance, but it had been the general consensus of those in the industry that Julie Christie would win, especially considering her previous award wins this season. Maybe Hollywood is trying to go more international and wanted more people on stage with unintelligible accents.
Best Supporting Actor/Actress
Javier blew me away in this role, mainly because I had never heard of him before. His win was most appropriate. And I haven't gotten the chance to see Charlie Wilsons War quite yet, but I hope sometime in the movie they explain Philip Seymour Hoffman's appearance. I bet they don't though...
My previous declaration of a Michael Clayton shutout was pretty close to occurring before Tilda came along. The thing is, after further thinking I realized she probably did have the best performance given her competition, and I actually picked her. Go me. I'd put Amy Ryan as second in this category, over manCate.
Best Screenplays
This is another category in which my initial feelings were defeated by my common sense. The characterization in Lars was still excellent, in my opinion, but that may have been more because of the acting than by the script compared to a Juno, so I correctly made this pick as well.
The Coen sweep was completed by the Adapted category. Really wasn't hard choice if you thought about it for a second.
Best Animated Film
Ratatouille. Nuff said.
Best Special Effects
I was watching a time delayed Tivo broadcast of the awards, while conversing on various message boards. At one point I noticed a topic declaring that "Transformers was robbed", and my heart sank. I refused to click on the topic and I refused to fast forward the show, in hope that the internet world existed in some alternate dimension where travesties such as this could transpire. Alas, this proved untrue. Another piece of me died inside when I saw that it was The Golden Compass that had beaten the mighty autobots, and not At Worlds End. The academy should be ashamed.
Best Score/Song
More categories in which my original picks won out. Before the nominations even were released I felt I knew what the winners should be. The 3 songs from Enchanted kind of annoyed me, too. I'm sure they came off well in the movie because of the whole spoof angle, but when performed it just seemed cliche.
Best Costumes
*sigh*
C'mon academy. Are you serious? Do the voters just look for the movie with the biggest dress and funniest hat? I mean they've been using these same costumes for every period piece since the 70's. There's no originality there, no creative thought whatsoever.
Best Makeup
I had no interest in this category either. But I guess there's a whole industry of people out there that do this so they've got to include it. Yay for them?
Best Cinematography/Art Direction
For these I depended a little too much on critics and not enough on my gut. I haven't seen the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but heard good things (which effectively screwed me).
Even with that failed pick, I knew There Will Be Blood should win one of these categories, I just picked the wrong one.
Best Sound Mixing/Editing
These two categories overlap so much its hard to differentiate between them. Either of them can be done during the process of the other; its just all so silly. Anyways, Transformers should have gotten one of them because I said so. Maybe Hollywood just hates Michael Bay for some reason.
Best Film Editing
Another misguided Diving Bell pick. I'm really going to have to stop taking one persons fascination with a movie as a be all end all critique. Oh well.
P.S. - Congrats on the win, Jose.
Best Documentary/ Short film/ Foreign film
I actually had the opportunity to catch a screening of all of the nominated short and animated films. That lost out to an intense Rock Band session though. The documentaries/foreign films just weren't widely available enough to view in a timely manner. As such, these categories were guesstimated, as usual, and I lost no sleep over the choosing of the eventual winner.
Best Picture
This choice was no surprise. No Country was a great movie, with only one or two minor flaws. A fine choice given the competition.
Best Director
This usually goes to the Best Picture winner. It didn't hurt that it was the best directed picture anyway. Pretty much a lock.
Best Actor
I called this one, too. He had won in just about every other awards show, and he is well respected by the academy. I'm still not sure how I feel about Danny as a person though. Like, I don't think I'd wanna share a beer with him over lunch. Still think Viggo could've won this as well, though.
Best Actress
Biggest upset of the night, I think. Marion did put in a heck of a performance, but it had been the general consensus of those in the industry that Julie Christie would win, especially considering her previous award wins this season. Maybe Hollywood is trying to go more international and wanted more people on stage with unintelligible accents.
Best Supporting Actor/Actress
Javier blew me away in this role, mainly because I had never heard of him before. His win was most appropriate. And I haven't gotten the chance to see Charlie Wilsons War quite yet, but I hope sometime in the movie they explain Philip Seymour Hoffman's appearance. I bet they don't though...
My previous declaration of a Michael Clayton shutout was pretty close to occurring before Tilda came along. The thing is, after further thinking I realized she probably did have the best performance given her competition, and I actually picked her. Go me. I'd put Amy Ryan as second in this category, over manCate.
Best Screenplays
This is another category in which my initial feelings were defeated by my common sense. The characterization in Lars was still excellent, in my opinion, but that may have been more because of the acting than by the script compared to a Juno, so I correctly made this pick as well.
The Coen sweep was completed by the Adapted category. Really wasn't hard choice if you thought about it for a second.
Best Animated Film
Ratatouille. Nuff said.
Best Special Effects
I was watching a time delayed Tivo broadcast of the awards, while conversing on various message boards. At one point I noticed a topic declaring that "Transformers was robbed", and my heart sank. I refused to click on the topic and I refused to fast forward the show, in hope that the internet world existed in some alternate dimension where travesties such as this could transpire. Alas, this proved untrue. Another piece of me died inside when I saw that it was The Golden Compass that had beaten the mighty autobots, and not At Worlds End. The academy should be ashamed.
Best Score/Song
More categories in which my original picks won out. Before the nominations even were released I felt I knew what the winners should be. The 3 songs from Enchanted kind of annoyed me, too. I'm sure they came off well in the movie because of the whole spoof angle, but when performed it just seemed cliche.
Best Costumes
*sigh*
C'mon academy. Are you serious? Do the voters just look for the movie with the biggest dress and funniest hat? I mean they've been using these same costumes for every period piece since the 70's. There's no originality there, no creative thought whatsoever.
Best Makeup
I had no interest in this category either. But I guess there's a whole industry of people out there that do this so they've got to include it. Yay for them?
Best Cinematography/Art Direction
For these I depended a little too much on critics and not enough on my gut. I haven't seen the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but heard good things (which effectively screwed me).
Even with that failed pick, I knew There Will Be Blood should win one of these categories, I just picked the wrong one.
Best Sound Mixing/Editing
These two categories overlap so much its hard to differentiate between them. Either of them can be done during the process of the other; its just all so silly. Anyways, Transformers should have gotten one of them because I said so. Maybe Hollywood just hates Michael Bay for some reason.
Best Film Editing
Another misguided Diving Bell pick. I'm really going to have to stop taking one persons fascination with a movie as a be all end all critique. Oh well.
P.S. - Congrats on the win, Jose.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
RIP HD-DVD
A moment of silence, please.
Wait a minute, on second thought: light up a cigar. Let's get this party started!
Format wars suck. They're bad for the consumer since some early adopters are bound to get screwed over. They're bad for the industry since total unit sales are generally lower since the user base is split, and smart people don't even invest until a winner is decided. The war itself is really one big beta test, making the early adopters flush out the kinks and allowing the winning company to optimize the product by the time it hits the mass market.
Some format wars are fine. Say, when the industry involved allows for choice. Take digital music formats, for example. It's fine (but still stupid) that there are about 600 different music types out there (mp3, mp2, wav, wma, ogg, aac, m4a, aiff, voc, etc.) because there are plenty of players that are compatible with a variety of formats. You won't usually find a CD player that plays minidiscs though. Dual HD players are a temporary solution, but are absurdly expensive.
It's a shame that high definition movies won't even make much of a dent in the overall home video market. DVD was able to decimate VHS due to the extra features and accessibility (in the form of chapter selection, multiple language tracks, no rewinding, ummm... bonus features, etc.) that came along with it; the increased visual clarity was just a bonus. And all this for less than what VHS tapes cost.
Blu-Ray, for the most part, only offers increased resolution. There are various potential web based features that could be implemented, but everything else has pretty much either already been done, or is capable with DVD also, given the right player. This is not enough to get the average consumer to make the switch. Especially when you consider these resolutions are only applicable with the proper TV. I believe just under 200 million Blu-Ray movies were sold in 2007, compared with over 15 billion DVDs. Blu-Ray's got a long way to go to become the standard.
However, if it should catch on within the same time frame that DVD did, it'll cause ripples throughout the entire tech universe. Since PS3's have been and continue to be the cheapest Blu-Ray (BR) option on the market, the take off of the BR brand will cause the sales of PS3's to skyrocket, if Joe Consumer has any shred of common sense (hmmm, I can buy this BR player, or this BR player with built in video game system for $100 less). A shift of that magnitude would drastically alter the gaming industry (I won't go into that right now, God only knows no one's even read this far).
The BR standard would most likely cause it to become the de-facto packed in optical drive with all new computers. The licensing fees Sony earns from this would give them the capital, and the motivation, to include DRM features into any number of common programs. Sony would effectively take over the Earth, infusing the populace with microprocessors and ginseng. The world would end as we know it...
Wow. Really got on a bit of a tangent there. I think I need to go lie down.
Wait a minute, on second thought: light up a cigar. Let's get this party started!
Format wars suck. They're bad for the consumer since some early adopters are bound to get screwed over. They're bad for the industry since total unit sales are generally lower since the user base is split, and smart people don't even invest until a winner is decided. The war itself is really one big beta test, making the early adopters flush out the kinks and allowing the winning company to optimize the product by the time it hits the mass market.
Some format wars are fine. Say, when the industry involved allows for choice. Take digital music formats, for example. It's fine (but still stupid) that there are about 600 different music types out there (mp3, mp2, wav, wma, ogg, aac, m4a, aiff, voc, etc.) because there are plenty of players that are compatible with a variety of formats. You won't usually find a CD player that plays minidiscs though. Dual HD players are a temporary solution, but are absurdly expensive.
It's a shame that high definition movies won't even make much of a dent in the overall home video market. DVD was able to decimate VHS due to the extra features and accessibility (in the form of chapter selection, multiple language tracks, no rewinding, ummm... bonus features, etc.) that came along with it; the increased visual clarity was just a bonus. And all this for less than what VHS tapes cost.
Blu-Ray, for the most part, only offers increased resolution. There are various potential web based features that could be implemented, but everything else has pretty much either already been done, or is capable with DVD also, given the right player. This is not enough to get the average consumer to make the switch. Especially when you consider these resolutions are only applicable with the proper TV. I believe just under 200 million Blu-Ray movies were sold in 2007, compared with over 15 billion DVDs. Blu-Ray's got a long way to go to become the standard.
However, if it should catch on within the same time frame that DVD did, it'll cause ripples throughout the entire tech universe. Since PS3's have been and continue to be the cheapest Blu-Ray (BR) option on the market, the take off of the BR brand will cause the sales of PS3's to skyrocket, if Joe Consumer has any shred of common sense (hmmm, I can buy this BR player, or this BR player with built in video game system for $100 less). A shift of that magnitude would drastically alter the gaming industry (I won't go into that right now, God only knows no one's even read this far).
The BR standard would most likely cause it to become the de-facto packed in optical drive with all new computers. The licensing fees Sony earns from this would give them the capital, and the motivation, to include DRM features into any number of common programs. Sony would effectively take over the Earth, infusing the populace with microprocessors and ginseng. The world would end as we know it...
Wow. Really got on a bit of a tangent there. I think I need to go lie down.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
There Won't Be Editing
So I finally got around to seeing There Will Be Blood, and it was actually a lot better than I initially thought it would be. The plot boiled down to exactly what I perceived from the trailers: one guys rise to power via the early 20th century oil boom, with smatterings of religious fanaticism thrown in for good measure. That plot seemed pretty boring to me, at least for a movie that I'd pay $10 for, but it turned out to be pretty engaging.
I'm not going to turn this into a full fledged review, because I don't care that much, but it definitely could've used some trimming to the running time. It's unnecessary to pause for dramatic effect after every line of dialog. The same problem applied to The Assassination of Jesse James... I still enjoyed the movie though, and would place it above Michael Clayton in terms of the best picture noms, and maybe Juno, but probably not. I'd definitely put No Country and Atonement above it though.
On a side note, aging sucks. I can no longer throw myself down a flight of stairs without feeling it the next day. I did a one-two punch of football and basketball earlier in the week, and I still can't walk without a limp. Now I'm not sure if this is aging, per se, or just proof that I need to hit the ol' yoga class a bit more. Either way, life sucks for me right now.
On a note even further to the left than the one above, I spent over an hour yesterday studying palindromes and palindromic theory. Yeah, that wasn't a typo. This is what my life has come to. I had to buy stain proof pillow cases to shield my nightly tears from eating away at the down inside.
On a side note, a perfect finish is better than a perfect season.
I'm not going to turn this into a full fledged review, because I don't care that much, but it definitely could've used some trimming to the running time. It's unnecessary to pause for dramatic effect after every line of dialog. The same problem applied to The Assassination of Jesse James... I still enjoyed the movie though, and would place it above Michael Clayton in terms of the best picture noms, and maybe Juno, but probably not. I'd definitely put No Country and Atonement above it though.
On a side note, aging sucks. I can no longer throw myself down a flight of stairs without feeling it the next day. I did a one-two punch of football and basketball earlier in the week, and I still can't walk without a limp. Now I'm not sure if this is aging, per se, or just proof that I need to hit the ol' yoga class a bit more. Either way, life sucks for me right now.
On a note even further to the left than the one above, I spent over an hour yesterday studying palindromes and palindromic theory. Yeah, that wasn't a typo. This is what my life has come to. I had to buy stain proof pillow cases to shield my nightly tears from eating away at the down inside.
On a side note, a perfect finish is better than a perfect season.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Oscar Poll
I just sent out the 2k7 oscar poll. if you didn't get it and want in, email me at gideonbryant@gmail.com
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