lifebsideben

I’ve been staying out of the HD-DVD / Blu-ray format war for a long time, but Val sucked me in to it. You see, she got me the BBC ‘Planet Earth’ DVD set for X-mas… only it was the HD-DVD set. One of the reasons I hadn’t bought it previously, is because I hadn’t wanted to get it on standard def DVD, since that would be a ‘travesty’ to lose 3/4ths of the detail that it was shot in, for such sweeping and compelling nature content. But, now she had bought it for me, and I didn’t want to return it. I quickly did some research, decided yep, HD-DVD was the format I preferred, and bought a Toshiba A3 from Amazon for $179 (this was January 2nd). Of course, a week later, and obviously because Ben Margolin finally jumped into the fray and cast my dice, Warner Brothers threw all their weight behind Blu-ray, and the couple remaining HD-DVD allied studios look soon to follow. Toshiba was taken by surprise, and canceled their press statements at CES a couple of days later. It looks bad for HD-DVD as a format. You’re welcome! You’re now free to buy Blu-ray now… but here’s why you shouldn’t.
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Tags: apple, Apple-TV, DVDs, format-wars, HDDVD, iTunes, movies, Technology

One of neighbors has a son who is 4. My son Alex is just about to turn 3. But what a difference a year seems to make!

The other day they were playing, and both have ‘Transformers’ toys from the movie. As I’ve been reminded, the bad guys are the Decepticons, who just as often take shape of tanks or planes, while the good guys are the Autobots, who are apparently always cars or trucks. When I was growing up I guess I was just a little too old for the Transformers TV show; I remember it being on, but thinking it was too childish. My friends all liked Robotech instead. Well actually, we liked girls by then, but Robotech was a lot more accessible.

Back to the story at hand–so my son has Barricade, the mustang-derived police-car bad guy (Decepticon, sorry) which is a very impressively designed little toy, and pretty snazzy looking. It’s damn near impossible to get back from ‘robot mode’ to ‘car mode’ for me (although his mother seems to manage it fairly well). Anyhow, the neighbor kid has “Optimus Prime. He’s the leader of the Autobots”. Alex, who hasn’t seen the movie (nor will for many more years if I have anything to say about it), said “Oct-o-pus CRIME?” which I definitely got a kick out of. He was pretty confused, though, and the neighbor kid started reenacting scenes from the movie, which just confused Alex more. Understand that Alex really likes to play with this kid, and tries to impress him. Alex starts claiming to have seen the movie (I don’t think he even understands that there really is a Transformers movie.) The neighbor starts in again with “I have Optimus Prime”, Alex responds “I have that Transformer too!” (he doesn’t). The neighbor: “I have another Transformer too” (he does). Alex: “Me too!” Neighbor: “You dooo?” Alex: “I have ALL of them!”, and the verbal arms battle continued, until Alex was practically claiming to own Toys ‘R Us.

Eventually, this devolved into them each transforming their toys into robot mode and chasing each other around doing the “pyew pyew pyew” laser shooting noise, which took Alex all of 16 milliseconds to learn from the neighbor. But they had fun, got a little exercise, and shared pretty well, so it was OK in the end. I just can’t believe the difference a year seems to make in their level of sophistication! It’s going to be another interesting year, it seems, as a Dad. But I can guarantee you Alex still isn’t going to see the Transformers movie anytime soon!

Tags: movies, parenting

So there’s this new Star Wars videogame coming out in uhm, next Spring, but our biz-dev guys managed to cut some deal with LucasArts earlier this week, so of course, we had to get a branded site out ASAP. Here it is, just launched: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, with an exclusive trailer and awesome concept artwork gallery to boot! The team did an awesome job turning this around from concept to deployment in less than 4 days, of course, leveraging tons of the stuff from the other sites for GTA, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean. An awesome effort and it looks great. I especially recommend the two videos about the “Euphoria” and “Digital Molecular Matter” physics engine stuff… looks really awesome. Even if the game turns out to be too hard to play, I wouldn’t mind just whipping stormtroopers who are trying to cling on for dear life, at a bunch of wooden structures I’ve built (go watch the videos!)

Anyhow, my appreciation and congratulations to the team, great job!

Tags: Games, gaming, movies, work, Yahoo

For the 2nd brandsite, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, (you will recall that Pirates of Caribbean was the first), we had a nifty little badge made up with photos in a slideshow… see whatcha think!

Tags: badges, movies, work, Yahoo

Regardless of the female love interests in each of the Pirates of Caribbean and Spiderman franchises, seriously, the lead characters are likely gay. Johnny Depp does his best Prince impersonation throughout, but without the cool guitar playing. Tobey Maguire seemed pretty hetero in the first 2 Spiderman movies, but in the 3rd, well, not so much, and not so good, either.

Warning: there may be spoilers within. But you’re likely going to be snoozing through a bunch of Spiderman 3 so it won’t likely make any difference, in fact you could see this as a public service–I felt compelled to stay awake throughout the flick, although it would have been really tough without the giant frozen drink and pound of Junior Mints.
So yeah, I saw Spiderman 3 (the ‘3′ is for “third rate”) today, and was not impressed. It’s Marvel comics if produced by the Lifetime channel. Peter Parker cries… several times. He gets big help in the final battle scene from his way-too-chipper best friend. You know they are best friends, because when Spidey’s crying, he says they are “BEST friends”. I almost though he was going to pull out a “B.F.F.” locket through the weeping. And yes, Kirsten Dunst is in a lot of scenes. If her face doesn’t make you consider going gay, I don’t know what would. At least they got her to brush her teeth this time, although she’s still got the choppers of some malnourished woodland creature.

On the bright side, there is a choice moment when Peter Parker looks skyward and says the Sandman’s  first name, “MARCO!” Which, I must confess, is an awesome time to yell out “POLO!” which was of course what I did. I’m a laugh riot in a theater! Look, I grew up in Detroit, we yell shit at the screen, it’s just how we roll.

So in addition to crying (about his girlfriend dumping him, people dying, flashbacks of people dying from the earlier movies, wondering if his new black spidey suit makes him look fat, etc.) there is a scene that apparently got picked up off The Mask’s cutting room floor. Seriously, it is WAY out of place, and silly, and doesn’t work. Peter Parker playing piano! Peter Parker dancing modern jazz! Give me a fucking break… swing from some lightpoles and kick some ass… and no need for spirit fingers or Astaire footwork while you’re doing it.

Stan Lee gets his couple lines, too, gee, nice cameo, did you realize your hair looked like you just got a $5 haircut from a  blind barber? Sadly, the best part of the flick was the Bruce Campbell cameo, which was totally unbelievable but fit in with the tone of the other movies and was well-executed. Always good to see B.C., even without his boom stick.

So… one summer disappointment down, on to the next thing. Pirates had better kick some serious high seas booty. (See what I did there, because “booty” is what Pirates covet, and also a slang term for “ass”. Damn I’m clever!)

Tags: Film, gay, movies, pirates, review, sequel, spiderman

I ordered a copy of Gore’s Keynote-riffic movie on Earth Day from Amazon, so that Paramount would donate a copy to schools as well (it was a promo if purchased that day). Thanks to Amazon Prime, it arrived today, with three bubble-bags, an insert, a packing list, and a 12×9x4 cardboard box. Sweet!! Pretty much negated any benefit of the paper wrapper instead of a clamshell for the DVD, I guess.

Probably should have just downloaded it. Oh wait, I did bittorrent it first… this was just to make me “whole”

Tags: amazon, bitching, environment, movies

There’s lots of new goodies you can add to your ‘tar, including a bunch of Oscars outfits and backgrounds… here I’m sporting the tux pants and “red carpet” paparazzi background. Nice, eh?

Tags: avatars, movies, Yahoo

A buncha folks are doing it, I guess i’m jump on the bandwagon; writing a post of specific 4-item lists about themselves. This seems about as self-referential and indulgent as blogging can get, so I feel confident I’m doing my part to destroy any wider benefits the medium might be capable of today. What will others think of me? Should I leave “Tron” off the movies list? Oh wait, no one reads this anyway, whew.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Museum ticketing agent
2. House painter (well, more like assistant to house painters. I was the one who got to climb/fall of the ladders, which may explain a lot)
3. Engineering Director of a publicly-traded porn company
4. Yahoo! manager

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Goodfellas
2. Wargames
3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
4. Tron

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. The Simpsons
2. The Daily Show
3. Frontline
4. NOVA

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1. Seattle
2. Paris
3. Copenhagen
4. Detroit, unfortunately

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Filet mignon
2. Macaroni and cheese
3. Lasagna (which maybe should be considered a variant on mac & cheese?)
4. Hamachi sushi

Four websites I visit daily:

1. prince.org
2. Yahoo! News
3. Bloglines
4. my team’s Bugzilla queue

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Rolling around on the carpet playing with my son
2. Drinking coffee at a cafe on Las Ramblas in Barcelona with my wife uhh… edit! -Ben
3. Scubadiving off Fiji. Not that I know how to scuba, but I think I’d really like it…
4. Sleeping

Four bloggers I am tagging to do this as well:

1. Jeff Boulter
2. Dave Viner
3. Ubaldo Huerta
4. Russel Beattie

FYI: some other posts like this I’ve read…

Tags: Life, movies, nostalgia, travel, TV, work

In this article at Wired about digital projection of films and anti-piracy measures, Brad Hunt of the MPAA is quoted as saying:

“We’re not trying to describe specifically what is being done, because the effectiveness of these technologies is based on a lack of knowledge.”

Ah, the old “security through obscurity” tactic. That always works so well… not. But hey, don’t tell the MPAA; their continued ignorance is probably an overall good thing: the more shitty movies get pirated, the less likely people will pay to go see them, the more likely quality movies are to be made, for which people DO pay for. I have seen a bootleg or two in my time, largely because with a 17-month-old, I don’t get many opportunities to go to the movies, and I want to see some things before the DVD is released. Movies I like, I buy the DVDs for. Many other people are the same way, I’m sure. (Actually, a lot of folks are probably renting the dvds and not buying them, via Netflix or Blockbuster, but I tend to like to own movies that are worth watching, especially if there’s extras on the disc.)

Aside from that silliness above, the article basically just says there will be a time & location stamp in the film. Big whoop. I suspect (a) this won’t survive through the projection->camcorder->encoding (and possibly ->reencoding) process, and (b) most pirates just don’t care. Until you have to show ID and have your picture taken going into the theater, I don’t see this being much of a deterrent. Better plan: have ushers (remember them?) or security folks observe people in the theater, and spot people with camcorders. But wait, this would cost the theaters money, and is likely difficult to acheive 100% success, which is almost needed, due to the multiplication factor innate to piracy.

But hey, maybe it’ll stop the low-tech pirates hawking cheap dvds at swap meets and on the corner. Maybe…. but internet-based/p2p piracy, I seriously doubt it’ll have any effect. You know what would work? Making quality movies, giving something extra to the theater experience (interactivity? better value? purchase the DVD at a discount on the way out?), and treating your customers with respect instead of apathy, disdain, and mistrust.

Tags: big_business, dvd, movies, MPAA, piracy, security

Actually went to a movie yesterday, which is wildly unusual now that we’ve got the wee one. Saw King Kong with my dad at the Metreon in SF. The nice thing about going to the 10:40am show is you can sit wherever you want! The bad part is, at the Metreon, there’s no matinee price break. $8/person, and after a 3hr move, $11 in parking at the 4th & Mission garage. Over $30 for two people to see a movie (including the 5oz bag of peanut m&ms: $3.80) seems pretty steep, but hey, it’s King Kong! Gotta see it on the big screen.

And see it we did. All of it. All 3 hours. Every little detail Peter Jackson could possibly dream up. Seriously, get a better editor. It never quite got boring, but certainly there was a lot of languishing on scenes, extra shots, that really didn’t add anything, but did draw it all out. Some of the stuff (the rescued kid on the steamer, the brontosaurus stampede, shooting the giant roaches off a person) even detracted, in my opinion. Still, there was a lot of neat stuff to see, the T-Rex vs. Kong part was entertaining if ridiculous, and the ending was really well done. I don’t remember much from the original, but I think the spirit of it was probably pretty accurately carried forward–adventurous, over-the-top, etc. I didn’t mind that we didn’t see Kong until the 1hr mark (except that if it were edited properly that would have been the 35 minute mark). Some of the effects were cheesier than I had expected (especially the stampede stuff), but that’s in part because I expect them to be perfect these days. Overall I’d give it a B-/C+. Mostly entertaining, but too long and not “perfect” effects. Not worth $8 to me personally, but some folks probably would think it is. I do believe it’s not going to be the box office savior a lot of folks are hoping for.

Tags: movies, review, Sony