Yesterday was pretty epic. After ditching some class I went to give Albert his present and to pick up Rockband with him. Video and and pictures are below.
Then at night, I started watching Superman II: The Richard Donner cut. My TV has been having problems lately (for at least the last year or so) with retrace lines. At first I thought it was maybe interference from my speakers or coaxial cables, but apparently the blue voltage gun was out of sync. So I hacked open my TV with a chainsaw, and yada yada yada the blue lines are gone and also the picture looks a lot less washed out now. It's like getting my TV back. Yatta!
Come watch movies now. Better yet, come over when I get back from the motherland in January and we can watch Sunshine.
So I decided to delay your birthday by about 10 days, because your present came today. (It's okay 'cause you still haven't gotten rock band, so I win) I'm in pysch right now and you're ... getting not sober. I also have a presentation in my next class that I have no idea what to say for anymore 'cause my partner and I did the powerpoint for it 2 weeks ago and I don't know anything about rotoscoping. Anyways. Lets watch this on your Toshiba A2 and your Sony TV in like 2 days. (It'll be an official red vs blu event!)
I was originally going to write a whole long post about how moved I was by Beowulf and how excited I am by this new direction cinema can take and how I think Beowulf did everything Cloverfield promised to do. But oh hey, I just said it all in one sentence. I am now super excited for Avatar.
It seems to me that a part of becoming an adult is accepting the world and your life for what it is. I think there's a point before college when I really did feel anything was attainable. Maybe that's why picking a major (and sticking with it) is always so difficult. Before you pick a major, your life is malleable. There is still so much potential, you literally can do anything if you set your mind to it. Life after having a major becomes rigid, you can't be the surgeon general anymore, you won't win an Oscar, and you most definitely won't make more money than Bill Gates. Such is life, when you stop dreaming you can start living. Settling isn’t the right word for it, but eventually you have to know your place in society, know what other people already see in you, and then you become that.
Before yesterday, Cloverfield could've been anything. It could've re-invented cinema, it could've been a cultural revolution, hell I would've believed that it could've cured AIDS. And now it's just "Cloverfield". Up until this point Cloverfield's marketing campaign has made it seem like something truly new. If the film itself was as creative as the campaign it would've more than made up for a year of forgettable sequels and adaptations. Such was the promise of Cloverfield. That promise was broken. I understand from a marketing point of view, calling it anything but Cloverfield would just cause confusion, but withholding a title for this long to only go along with what everyone else is calling it can be described with no action but being complacent. Now instead of bringing something new into the world, it’s just another sci-fi, monster, thriller movie. When that monster sound shows up in trailers and tv spots, I no longer hear LOST's Smokey or Cuthulu, no longer will I hear what pure creativity of the human mind is capable of, I will only hear the sound of settling. (bahh bahh)
I’m still hungering for something great and it’s turning my stomach into knots. *
In my continued resolve not to study/be productive I've opted against watching a Netflix right now and decided to post a picture i took over the weekend.
So I was reading some notes at a coffee shop on Northside and listening to Radiohead, not really being that productive. I was just walking to reading places around campus partly for a change of venue, partly because my attention span is bad for anything except for WoW. Anyways this homeless guy sits down at the table next to mine, and it's a little awkward 'cause 'cmon he's homeless, and I'm there listening to music off my cell phone and reading notes that were printed from a laser printer. So he sits down and starts sipping from his cup (could've been coffee, could've been tea) and after a few minutes he gets up and walks towards the counter. I'm seeing this out of the corner of my eye since I was "studying" but more importantly I was trying not to stare. I didn't think to myself "I must photograph this homeless man" until after he came back. I noticed he had started writing on some napkin with a pen. As sneaky as I am with my phone, I don't think I would've been able to get close enough to take a picture of his writings.
At first it was just curiosity at seeing what a man whose possessions could fit into a plastic garbage bag would feel compelled to write about. And not just scribble on a napkin, he was writing with purpose and he was writing in English. Maybe he was writing about this asshole that was took a picture of him at Brewed Awakening, or maybe why HDDVD sucks, or maybe something more legitimate. He wasn't writing to put off studying for his midterm tomorrow, he went out of his way to put whatever was in his mind on paper. (and not conveniently i might add, writing on napkin with a ballpoint pen is fuckin hard.) So what if? What if this guy had figured out the secret of life and he had nobody to share it with. That means all the world's secrets could be on a piece of napkin somewhere on Northside. So close... yet so far away.
This has been a pretty eventful weekend I would say. Or I guess not really eventful... I did a lot of random thinking: some of it while sober, some of it not, and not all of it coherent, but it'll all probably end up on this blog somehow seeing as how I don't use Xanga anymore and isiyu.sc4sex.com went down this is pretty much my exclusive blog now.
This doesn't necessarily have to do with HD directly but it has to do with films and our passion for it so I guess it applies (also it's here for the reason i mentioned because i don't have another blog to post this on.) I'm so tired of mainstream movies. I was all excited this year because I was so sure Sam Rami would kill with Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3 has such good pedigree. Hell I even thought Pirates 3 could've made up for the second movie. But after this summer, the best movie I saw was one that I had to forgive a fundamental flaw to really say I liked it, and I can't even remember Ocean's 13 came out this year without looking at Yahoo! Movies. I can't say I have a bitter aftertaste after this forgettable Summer of movies, there's just no taste there. I have a blank pallet and I've been waiting for something good.
Don Hertzfedlt is weired, and the films he and Mike Judge picked for the Animation Show 1 and 2 doubly so. This wasn't 'new' in the sense that I wasn't aware it existed, more so the opportunity to watch these DVDs did not cross my path until now. As I was watching some of these shorts and trying to understand them, it occurred to me that these films had more authenticity, more justification for its existence than most anything I've seen in months. Some of the movies in this collection are just weired for the sake of being weired, but some are arresting in the ways it seems to understand human essence and the directness with which it expresses these truths in such a short period of time. So I got to thinking, animated shorts, feature length movies... the point of all film is to tell stories, compelling stories, stories that have something to say about "the human condition" (I'm not really sure what I mean by human condition, but Wikipedia might). I don't think movies should be judged on picture quality, or cinematography, or special effects, or even acting. Those are all important to buttress the film, but they're just extensions to the barest essence of story; whose purpose I am asserting is to show something basic to being human. (Or they can just be fucking weired ala Hertzfeldt) I like movies that make me feel something, creeped out, happy, depressed, emo, even just weired. If I feel the same way after a film, as before it started I think the movie failed. I guess what I'm saying is, fancy picture quality, HDi, BD-J, and 1.3 Firmware is nice and shit, but at the heart of it all I still need some genuine content that moves me. (Sunshine on Blu-ray Jan 8th 2008) And that's something Sony and Toshiba/Microsoft can't fix on their own.
Lets AIM chat about this:
PS. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALBIE! YAY! you have exclusive rights to fulfilling my alcohol needs. (until next week, when Alex and you will split those rights 70/30, until he goes to Australia whereupon priority rights will revert back to you for the first seven months of 2008)
Kudos Albert. You, an avid supporter of HD-DVD who already has an HD-DVD addon and can support the format by buying HD-DVD movies, went out of your way to take a A2 player off the market, thus saving someone who didn't already have an HD-DVD player from being able to buy one at the low price point.
Also, you now have 2 HD-DVD players, thus reducing your attach rate of movies per piece of hardware by a factor of two. Maybe that guy that would've bought only WB movies this 4th quarter, but I guess it's now incumbent upon you to pick up the slack or you know just re-buy all the movies you already have.
Wow, reducing your own attach rate and preventing someone else from buying HD-DVD's? I thank you, and Sony thanks you. Seriously. Good fucking job.
So, last Friday was the "secret" Walmart sale - - an impressive effort that gained many more HD DVD supporters and getting rid of inventory for the new HD-A3 series. I'll admit, I woke up at 6:30AM to drive to the closest Walmart and picked up an HD-A2 for my home, so I won't have to bring my Xbox 360 each time I want to watch movies. It was well worth the $100 I spent.
But I think some other people had a better time that day.
Spent 3 hours at Wal-Mart today. I stoped 11 out of 12 people from getting HD-DVD players. I will be spending a lot of time down thier the rest of this year. It is the best I can do to help the less tech savy not get screwed on this half-step format. One couple I talked too went straight over to the games section and picked up a 40GB PS3. The wife said about HD-DVD "We have purchased Toshiba products for over 10 years and we have never been disipointed in them. I can not believe that they would sell a product that is not of the upmost quality." Two other's went ahead and picked up the 80GB which really shocked me , because that is a lot more than they came in expecting to spend. One of these people was an older man about mid 50's he said "It would really be nice if they posted the differances between these products more. Seeing 30 of those GB things compared to 50 really gives you more of a idea about these products than price and names." The only one I could not stop from buying it was this 27 year old guy that said he already had the 360 HD-DVD drive for his 360 in the living room, and he wanted to get this one for his bedroom.
Overall I think the day went well. I was surprised to see so much traffic towards HDM. It seems this year will see a lot of sales in this spectrum of the market. I am going to do my best to try and make sure that these Walmart shoppers in my area make an informed decision before purchaseing into HDM. Hopefully it will help Blu win and put us on track to a medium that will last for a solid 15 to 20 years.
I have also got my wife doing the same thing at the Walmart in the next city over. If anyone else has time to dedicate to helping the consumers find their way I encourage it. I have seen plenty of threads of illigal things like unplugging HD-DVD and cases. This is a perfectly legal way to support Blu-ray, and it is probably the most effective. If you do this at all this year I would suggest Walmarts 99 HD-DVD day and black friday at any store. It is going way out of our way to do this, but both me and my wife know that in 5 years from now when we are watching movies on 200GB BD's it will all be worth it.
The reason gamers won't be able to play the Transformers movie on PlayStation 3 is because Toshiba anted up cash to Paramount to lure the studio over to its exclusive HD-DVD camp. Previously, Paramount had released all of its titles on both platforms. According to industry insiders at the event this week, Paramount was paid as much as $150 million to make the exclusive move for an undisclosed amount of time (perhaps as long as 18 months). The studio is rumored to have been paid $50 million alone for the Transformers HD-DVD exclusive, according to executives at the conference who didn't want to be identified for this story.
...
One home entertainment executive, who supports Blu-ray Disc, said if Microsoft was serious about HD-DVD they would put it inside of the Xbox 360. In reality, many home entertainment executives believe Microsoft is doing all it can to continue the format war for as long as possible. For Microsoft, which wants digital delivery of entertainment like its Xbox Live Video Marketplace to become the key form of consumer consumption of entertainment across multiple PC and Windows Vista-enabled devices, having a clear-cut winner in the next gen DVD war is not to its benefit. The longer consumer confusion continues and the longer many consumers remain on the sidelines awaiting a single format to emerge victorious, the more digital delivery-enabled devices are sold into the market.
"There's an 800 pound gorilla trying to confuse the consumer in an effort to get control of online content in the future," said Mike Dunn, worldwide president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. "A lot of people will end up paying money for a format that won't be around in 18 months."
(8:36:08 PM)iSIYU:(8:36:03 PM) iSIYU: i guess i should wait. they're just clearing their stock 'cause they know they wont' sell any more players 'cause HDDVD won't last through next june (8:36:38 PM)miktrebla:wow haha you are a retard (8:37:33 PM)iSIYU: TIME TO PROPAGANDIZE!!!!!
Now we all know retailers only severely cut prices like this on goods they know they can't sell to get rid of inventory so there's space for newer better goods (say the 40 gig PS3's that are coming out next week??). It is the basis of Black Friday. Nothing good (new and expensive) is on sale on Black Friday. It's always last year's stuff. So what can we take these major retailers slashing prices as? Obviously there is a lack in confidence of HD-DVD hardware as well as software from Best Buy and Wal*Mart. There is NO, and i repeat for emphasis (and underlining) NO retail confidence in HD-DVD.
Couple this with Warner Bros. executives stating their near resolve to drop HD-DVD all together. This format has no life left, the kindest thing you can do now is to just let HD-DVD die a quiet and respectable death. 'Twas a valiant effort.
