Mumbling about the dying of the light

I think Sky+ is great, one of the best home entertainment inventions ever. Yes I know it's been done before and it's not that revolutionary really but the integration of it and ease of use just make it oh so very good. A bit like the iPod I guess, not the first, just done right.

However now I've been hurt by it.

Last night I watched Stealth.

I think the box did try to save me, the first time I recorded it it had signed "subtitles" on it. I didn't learn, I tried again.

Now I enjoy trashy movies. A couple of hours of popcorn fun can be quite enjoyable. Earlier on I'd finished watching K-PAX so I was in the mood for something fluffy.

When I want fluff I want it to be fluff. Stealth tried to be more. Someone involved with the script had clearly picked up a few buzz military words and threw them about all over the place with scant regard for what they actually meant.

What was worse though was it's complete flagrant disregard for the rest of the world. The American's could do what they want, when they wanted and they were always the good guys.

They blow some nukes up, the cloud of nuclear waste covers a town of thousands of people and is going to drift into Pakistan. Never mentioned again...

Two armed military aircraft fly into Russian airspace, one with the intent of attacking a Russian target. The Russians understandably launch aircraft to intercept them. They're shot down without thought. Hello? You're kind of in the wrong aren't you? Especially in the wake of 9/11 you'd think that the movie people might realise that. No. They're still the heroes.

Another aircraft later flies over North Korea and the pilot ejects. She starts shooting the North Koreans who are trying to capture her. Then another "hero" plane shows up and starts blowing up North Korean soldiers. Finally the US Navy show up.

So two foreign sovereign states are invaded and attacked by the "good guys" and when they try to defend themselves and their borders they're "bad".

It all really kind of annoyed me.

Much of the conflict and "drama" in the movie revolved around the heroes actually being bad.

To really cap it off the same pilots spend bits of the movie talking about the ethics and morals of war. They speak of how a human is better than a computer because they understand the moral dimension of what they're doing. Um. No. Not by their example.

So basically it was a bad movie. A very bad movie. I had to rant somewhere about it.....

Transformers and Badgers in glorious union....

Click Here

So off I went to Wembley yesterday to see the Metallica show.

Wembley itself looks pretty good. I only ever went to the old stadium once, several years ago for Aerosmith. It struck me then as being a bit tired. Now it looks rather swish and very very big. We were on the pitch and the seats tower above you.

However the view from the pitch was pretty sucky, and I'm not short. The stage needs to be higher.

What did I think of the show?

Well they were good, very good. I've seen them a few times and this was up there with the best of them. We got the new nice clean James Hetfield once again. Years ago when he used the term MFs on stage it meant something a bit ruder than the My Friends term he uses now. He did slip up near the end though and out came a few profanities. I'm sure his therapist was rubbing his hands at that, that'll take several hours to discuss away.

One complaint I did have was that there didn't seem to be much interaction with the crowd. On the positive side that means no more 20 minute long sing along versions of Seek and Destroy, on the downside it did leave me feeling that something was missing.

A bigger concern I've got is that of Metallica becoming a nostalgia act. The bulk of their set came from the albums up to, and including, the black album. Scarily enough that's over 15 years old now (even scarier I saw them on one of the many tours for it). There was one track from ReLoad, which is 10 years old, and one track from the S&M Album (which was very cool to hear live) which is 8 years old now.

St. Anger and Load were just avoided.

So as said it was a nostalgia trip. I'm kinda worried that they're going to turn into Black Sabbath, who much as I love them to bits and paid a fortune to see them in the Astoria ended up becoming just that. A worshipping of things and times past rather than something new and vital.

There was a positive sign, it was nice to see the new bass player being "allowed" to play Orion. A sign of respect in him and also of the band also feeling able to step up to the oche and dealing with that aspect of their history.

Fingers crossed the new album will be good and the first step forward since the Black Album that they don't later seem to regret.

I've managed to drag my birthday out to over a week not but I think it's finally over......

Many things to cover.....

Avenue Q, fantastic, very funny indeed.

Souk Medina Restaurant, an amazing atmosphere. You sit around the low tables on low seats or benches, you really do feel like you're in a different world. The food though was good but not superb, filling and satisfying it is though. They do an excellent Mohito cocktail though. Lots of fresh mint, very good indeed. I'm usually a beer man so it takes a lot to tempt me away, they managed it though.

The Star Wars Exhibition, very good indeed! Highlights included seeing some young kids "fight" Darth Vader at Jedi school, watching Mr Vader come down the stairs very slowly because it was dark and his force skills don't seem to cover detecting stairs and seeing lots of the famous concept art at first hand. Everyone who went seemed to enjoy it and it's woken a desire to watch the movies again.

Getting a boat back to Greenwich, much better than the train! Sure it takes a while but it's so good.

I seem to have been going down with a cold recently but it held off yesterday and kicked today so even that's good.

So much happy happy joy joy going on!

OK hit a problem.....

I use my work provided external HDD as a backup for my Mac. The problem is I now need to work on a huge database and it looks like I'm going to need to use the external drive to do that, which means it'll have to be converted to NTFS, which means it won't work with my Mac (well it will apparently read from it but won't write to it).

Plop.

So I might have to buy my own external drive, it's not just for backups but I'm playing around with videos now and they're huge.

Do I buy the 250gb (£80) or the 500gb (£130) version of the model I've got my eye on. A part of me is determined not to cut corners and get the bigger one, you never known when I might want the space. However 500gb is huge! I've got an hours odd of footage from Vegas and the project comes in at about 35gb right now and that'll probably be deleted once I've finished it. I can't see me ever working on more than one or two videos at a time so the 250gb is plenty big enough. Or is it.

Ponder, ponder, ponder.....

Well that was quite quick.....

It's from the movie Requiem for a Dream, well almost. An edited version of Lux Aeterna was produced for the trailer to LOTR The Two Towers and has then been reused in many trailers, it's that version that is the one in particular I was looking for and it's known as "Requiem for the Tower".

Anyhow the original music can be found here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e2Ma4BvMUwU

The "remix" is here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VQnE74BDzu0

Go me :)

I'll probably grab myself a copy of the soundtrack now, it sounds like it'll be ideal for gaming purposes.

Edited to Add:
Well partial curses.....

The Soundtrack is available on Play, which is good. However there's an album which has the remix and some other material on it which is an iTunes exclusive, it's called Requiem for a Tower.

Now iTunes is great for buying the odd song from, something that I'm finding myself increasingly doing. However the idea of purchasing a whole album doesn't sit well with me. If it were a great deal cheaper than a hard copy CD then great, but as it is laden with DRM and at a low(ish) bit rate and all for the same price as many CDs it seems a bit much. However it's only on iTunes, I've got no choice, awkward.....

Does anyone recognise the music that starts off in the trailer for Sunshine at about 50 seconds? I've heard it before and it's often used for trailers (I've got an excellent fan trailer for Star Wars III that uses it) but I'm sure that it comes from another movie. Any ideas?

While I'm on YouTube I came across this the other day while searching for Roger Waters videos. I thought it looked really pretty good, though it does kind of give away how the movie ends. Anyhow it's from the movie The Legend of 1900 and I managed to find it on DVD the other day, whoop whoop!

I so want to see this movie....



If only so I can see this bit properly....



The Hoff in makeup with a lightsaber, oh yes, oh yes indeed.

There's a flurry of activity going around the Web 2.0 crowd, well those that aren't engrossed in writing rude scripts for Second Life, about digg.com and it's publishing of one of the keys for the protection system on HD-DVDs.

It went something along the lines of....

REPEAT
Digg.Add(Key)
Digg.Remove(Key)
UNTIL CeaseAndDesistLetter

Personally I think copying movies, TV and music is a bad thing, unless you've got permission to do it it's theft in my opinion.

However I equally dislike the industries reaction to the problem with the emergence of ever increasing DRM on what we buy.

I buy it, it's mine, I should be able to do what I want with it.

So the publishing of the keys to get at encrypted comment. People are saying that it's freedom of speech. If I know the PIN to get at your bank money and spread it all over the internet is that freedom of speech?

Awkward.

Big business is fighting a bad thing and is using a bad thing to do it.

I wonder where this will go.....

I've just watched what is currently the last piece of Babylon 5 TV that you can watch, the Legend of the Rangers movie. It wasn't much cop to be honest, and that's from someone who liked Crusade. It was intended to act as the possible lead in for a new series, it didn't happen, I can see why.

However I must admit that it was so good to see Andreas Katsulas back in action again, G'Kar was such a good character that went through so much. He will be much missed, I always hoped I'd see G'Kar and Londo together again somehow. I know that Londo's arc had kind of finished but they always brought out the best in each other, maybe that's just the inner fan boy talking though.

This kind of brings me on to my next point. More Babylon 5 is on the way, in July apparently. A direct to DVD release which should be the first of a few. Apparently the bean counters were more than impressed with the sales that the DVD box sets pulled in and have agreed to fund some new DVD releases. JMS agreed to it under the proviso that he gets full control over them. So now we'll see if he really has still got it in him or if the pretty poor Babylon 5 production since the end of Season 4 was really down to him....

Anyhow here's some clickys....

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/118.html
http://www.babylon5scripts.com/TLT-JMS-Photos.html

Well it's the day of the London Marathon and for us spectators it's fantastic weather, less so for the runners though. I watch the start of the race on the TV while having some juice and wait till the lead women are approaching the 5 mile mark which is at the bottom of my road, only a couple of minutes walk away. Then I toddle down there and watch the action.

I really enjoy watching the race. It's kind of broken in two with the professionals and then the masses behind them, two very different moods. It's also something that makes me very glad that I live here, it's so cool to have something like like just roll past the end of your road. It's also so nice to see what it would be like if the streers were car free :)

The only slight downside is that I'm planning on doing some DIY today so I didn't partake in the cool beers that the Antigallican was selling, tempting though, very tempting.

Anyhow roll on the Tour de France which will go along the same road in the summer :)

I've posted up some photos behind the following cut for those who are interested.....

Oh and I had a lovely day yesterday baby sitting a friends kid. We took him over the park and fed the squirrels and ducks and then in the evening got in a game of Settlers of Catan with the parents. We only had to deal with one nappy change and, thankfully, it wasn't a stinky one.....

( Clicky here to see the photos.... )

I've won tickets to go and see Daywatch next Monday :) As far as I know the official UK release date isn't until October so I'm seeing it a fair bit ahead of schedule.

Should be fun :)

Photos from Vegas will be posted up soon.....

For those who are into such things the company doing the film version of Gatchman (better known as Battle of the Planets to me when I was a nipper) has posted some pieces of art online:
http://www.imagi.com.hk/web/main.php

It's a cracking example of why I hate flash and frame based web sites. Oh sure it's all very flash but they're a b*tch to navigate around and link to.

Anyhow I hope that Keyop and 7-Zark-7 are put into it....

I've just watched the final Babylon 5 episode with the commentary turned on, even not being able to hear all the dialogue I still found it an incredibly moving program. JMS was the guy doing the commentary and he seemed to find it hard to do, he said that he's not seen the episode since he made it.

Things don't exist in isolation. The episode gets to me not so much because of what it is but because it's the end to all that came before. Little moments that echo back through the past 5 seasons. In so many ways it's the right ending, it fits.

I think that it's also weird and somewhat moving to think about the changes from when I saw the first episode back around 1994 to now thirteen years later.

"There can always be new beginnings, even for people like us."

I finally upgraded my Babylon 5 collection to DVD the other day. Well there was quite a gap between selling my VHS box sets (before Christmas) and getting the DVD set (yesterday) but I got there in the end.

Anyway I watched the final episode last night as a starter. I think it was the fourth time that I've seen it, once on TV years ago, twice on video and now on DVD. I still think it's an amazing episode that knows how to touch many of the right emotional buttons.

The D was working in another room but popped past and saw just a few minutes and she said that brough tears to her eyes.

I'm looking forward to watching them all again gradually over the next year or so. I've also got a few of the movies that I never quite caught that I can now catch up with.

To begin with I think I'll watch that last episode again with the commentary turned on....

The Thames Barrier closed today due to the weather, there's flooding up in East Anglia and it might spread further down around the coast.

Anyway I took myself down there, I've never seen it closed before :)

( Read more with photos! )

Rumours are coming out that Apple's going to rejig the iMac line and make widescreen models that would function as HDTVs.

I've been considering getting one anyway, what would have tipped me over the edge would have been a way of using it as a monitor for my PC.

So if Apple are going to push this new iMac as being a TV then might it have inputs, might it accept VGA or DVI?

If they do that then I think I'm sold!

It would then mean that I'd have a HD display unit and a PS3 becomes an option further down the line......

I had a dream last night, rather good, but as has happened before the special effects department seem to have blown their budget on something more important (Krispy Kremes?) rather than the
visuals.

( Read more... )

On Saturday I finally had the LOTR movie marathon that I've been speaking about with few friends for months. We started at about 8.30 and finished about 7.30 at which point we promptly went down the pub for a few well earned pints.

The conclusion seems to be that they are very good films but that all told the first one is the weakest. Opinion seems split on the length of the Shire scenes, personally I really like them where as the others felt that they went on for far too long for very little gain.

We all agreed that the Elvish scenes could have been hacked down, possibly even beyond what was done for the cinema cut. Everything just kind of dragged in those parts.

After the first film things picked up and were soon clipping along.

A few complaints were made though.

Firstly the appearance of the army of the dead out side Minas Tirith and their pretty much complete destruction of the "evil" army makes a lot of that battle, and the sacrifices made, pointless. The book's version where they just deal with the Corsairs makes the battle a lot more dramatic.

On the matter of Minas Tirith how on earth does that city work? There was no farmland around it or signs of merchants. Rohan to me makes sense, a scattered dark age society of farmers and herders. Minas Tirith just seemed awkwardly dropped in for story reasons with little thought for the why.

Finally why not just pop the ring on the back of an eagle and fly it to Mount Doom?

Anyhow a good day, they are very good films. Sam's definitely the hero though :)

There's a film on the way about Boudica, apparently it's going to be called Warrior and is out next year.

So far so [shrug].

Rumours are though that Mel Gibson is/was attached as a producer. Now you begin to worry. We all know that Mel's got a thing or two against the English and a very "relaxed" view of historical accuracy. I dread where he could take the story.

Even worse could he somehow get some digs in at Jewish people too? Some historical accounts say that after Boudica's husband died money lenders called in the debts that he had built up. Mel's had a few beers, reads the script, reads money lenders and away his mind runs.

Please no. Just no.