Mike O

I used to have those trades. Still haven't read the books, I'm ashamed to admit. Read The Hobbit many times though. Any advice for ADHD readers? It's a Star Wars forum, not a psych one, why am I asking :p.

I know these movies are bloated cash grabs which are self-indulgent and overlong and bloated. But damned if I won't miss Middle Earth :(. I want to watch the EE of DOS before seeing the new one, but I'm waiting on the inevitable Mega-Middle Earth boxed set (Which will probably still omit the fucking extras from the theatrical cuts), and my libraries haven't gotten the EE yet, and it isn't available for rental anywhere. FML. So it goes, I guess.

Early buzz on this one was good, but it dropped fast on RT. I'll still see it. These movies are flawed, Lord knows, but I still like enough things about them to find them interesting, haters be damned :(. Reading a lot of negative press.

Have no interesting 3-D and haven't seen the HFR stuff as a result, but I've been reading about framerates lately. Kind of interesting.

So, no official line on this? I have to admit that the rumor sounded too good to be true, but I guess we'll see. I'd comb the thread, but the forum software is still such that I can't go through my old posts and then align to where they are in threads like I can on most other forums, follow a user, search for specific things, etc, and have come to the conclusion that this is just the software we're going to be stuck with :p. I'm just popping back in, I guess. It's late, hopefully this post is semi-coherent.

And why do we have no search function?! Seriously, we're stuck in the Usenet era :p.

I'm a moron, I tried to delete this post, contacted AT&T, it won't buffer above because of the plan I'm paying for. I'd have to pay more for more Mbps, I should check that before asking stupid questions. Thanks all. We need a "delete post" button.

OK, the party never stops. So I got the photos from the tower to the external to the new hard drive. But when I sync them to my iPhone, I find something peculiar: the ones I actually took are all sorted under the appropriate folders, but the ones saved onto the phone from various websites are no longer sorted under the proper dates. Is this a new thing with iOS 8, or is it just another side effect of moving everything? I don't suppose I can get it back to the old way?

Oh, and more fun: I picked up an Ethernet cable. Much to my surprise, my DVR has an Ethernet port, and when I connect that to the Blu-ray player, it does in fact get me online! However, I naively assumed that his would be faster than the WiFi, but I'm still having trouble getting it above 720p. The thought of AT&T throttling me has certainly crossed my mind, why doesn't it come at full bore through the Ethernet as opposed to the WiFi? How will they handle charging me for data consumption? I assume it doesn't count under WiFi?

On a tangential note as regards the music itself, is there any way to preserve the playlists? I can recreate them in the new iTunes account, but the Sherlock Holmes audiobook series I have has all of the stories out of order, so putting them back in order would be a gigantic pain in the neck. And while this probably wouldn't matter to a normal, well-adjusted person who gets laid once in a while ;), can you manually set the number of plays on a song? It's a small thing, but it sub-grouped some stuff that way in the old iTunes account, so I was wondering if I could tell the new computer what said numbers were? I could check them and set songs on repeat, but that'd not only be a pain in the neck, but the final definitive proof that I have too much free time :D.

PS The phone keeps disconnecting and reconnecting when syncing. A bad cable, I assume? And by the by, what is "other?"

And the adventure continues! Got the old tower back, theoretically free of viruses, and moved everything off of it onto the external hard drive. The iPhone phots are grouped in files as per the day they were taken, but when I put them into the photos folder on the new computer, they aren't syncing the same way for some weird-ass reason. And though the music has been transferred over, it's syncinh to the phone sans album artwork, but with the added lyrics which I added. They're in the itunes files proper, because they come up when I look. 

The Ten Commandments- Cecil B. Demille's VistaVision 35mm spectacular, an endless biblical epic about Moses leading the Egyptians out of Exodus. A study in excess to make Peter Jackson look like a minimalist, it's a an unbelievably long, bombastic, silly, but often entertaining blend of soap opera romance, old-style Hollywood spectacle, sword-and-sandle battles, dated special effects, and colorful kitsch. It's hugely iconic scenes achieve a certain pop grandeur, but disappointingly, DeMille is no David Lean. The many matte paintings stick out, and the whole film is disappointingly stiff and dull, shot mostly in static long takes with Demille's usually stationary camera. Though seeing it on the big screen would be a cool opportunity, but in spite of the 6K restoration credits, the DCP shown by my local AMC wasn't a dazzler (presumably compressed or something) and the film's sluggish pacing didn't help matters. A classic to some, and probably plays much better on the small screen when you can pause it to get up and get food and go to the bathroom, but time hasn't been kind to it. Still, it's a cultural touchstone, and there's a certain fun to be had. Let my people go!

Freddy vs. Jason- Much better than it has any right to be monster movie mashup. Those looking for the intelligence found in the Craven films will be most disappointed, but if you've stuck with the franchise this long, that likely won't be an issue. Braindead? Sure. But way more fun than you'd expect. Screenwriters Shannon and Swift are obviously fanboys themselves, and they've clearly done their homework, and Hong Kong-bred director Ronny Yu Yan-Tai infuses the proceedings with lots of kinetic razzle-dazzle and the requisite blood and boobs. The characters are annoying stereotypes who exist solely to be killed off in gruesome ways, but it's very stylish-looking and the final showdown delivers what you expect. It is what it is, it knows what it is, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. And for once, that's good enough.

Ben Hur- William Wyler's sweeping, sprawling, massive biblical epic, seen as a DCP at my local AMC, and not a very impressive one either, curiously muted colors and somewhat muddy. Add to that the fact that you have one of a small handful of films ever shot in super-wide Panavision 65, and they put it on their smallest, dingiest, most pissant little screen in the whole multiplex. Still, I'll never see it 70mm or even 35mm, so a cinema screen is still a cinema screen. Anyway, the film is unwieldy, uneven, sometimes silly, and occasionally dated, but also robust, bold, engaging, exciting, beautiful-looking, sometimes thrilling, and frequently awe-inspiring, and has a well-deserved reputation at the kind of spectacle that CG has all but dulled completely. The kind of thing that cinema is all about, nearly four hours that get your your money's worth the whole time. And that chariot race? Wow. James Cameron, eat your heart out. 55 years later, it's still a breathtaking knockout. I'll never get to see it in 70mm, so I guess this'll have to do. 

No mods ever come to this forum, but if one ever does, they can feel free to attempt to fix the structure of that post. Don't know what the hell happened. God, we need nee forum software :(

No mods

To think even a digital freak like Peter Jackson shot 35mm once upon a time :(!I remember hearing that the EE Blu-rays were taken right of the DI as opposed to how the DVD transfers were done (Telecine?), but there was controversy aboutover-saturated  greens on FOTR BR. I doubt WB want to fix it,especially with the market for physical media about to die. Flaws and all (and there are many, particularly in the new trilogy which could've and should've been one three-hour film at most), I love the hell out of these movies anyway, and continue to pay for The Lord of Excess' extended cuts ;). I'm waiting on the inevitable mega-Middle Earth boxed set (Which God willing, will have ALL of the extras, UV copies, the works), but given that the EE of DOS won't be of until December, the EE of BOFA will probably be NEXT December, and the boxed set some time after that. And man alive, is that a long ass wait :(. And try renting the EE's right when they come out just to see what's new, it's a bitch. Managed to get the last one at a library by carefully watching when it was returned and driving out. 

I feel like a moron for not knowing that I should've put them on the hard drive rather than just dragged hem into iTunes, thank you. I should be getting the external and the tower back at the end of the week, if I can't get the photos off of that, I'll use Dropbox. How much will it cost? I don't suppose it'll keep the iPhone's logged locations and dates for when the pictures were taken. I'll look at Winamp too, whatever it is. Thank you guys. I'm glad that this kind of thing exists for morons like me to ask for help. 

Unfortunately, the setup of Wondows 8i s not intuitive, so moving from the external to the computer is harder than it should be, frankly. 

I moved the files from the folders off of the old computer onto the external, dragged them into iTunes. Each one can't be found when I try to play it. Hopefully, the guy will be able to get the photos off of the old CPU, but I can't get an answer about it. But the music was moved thus: from CDs to interal HDD on he old computer. Internal HDD on the old computer to external HDD. External HDD to internal HDD on new computer. Now the files "can't be located." Apple washes their hands of it. If you don't buy from iTunes and use iCloud services, fuck ya, it isn't their problem. 

Just got off of a 40 minute phone call with Apple. Because the photos are backed up in the cloud, they have solve themselves all responsibility and wash their hands. I can email the 1400 photos and 30 Videos to myself one of the time, or I can go fuck myself. As for the music, I transferred it off of my old computer's hard drive onto an external hard drive so that I wouldn't have to reload the hundreds of CDs into iTunes with lyrics and album artwork, and the versions that I loaded off of the external hard drive onto the new computer no longer work. It cannot find files. Fuck. My. Life. And now I have more threads to go through with that HDTV stuff ;). 

God, I wish there was a mobile version of this forum, it's a bitch on an iPhone. 

Oh, and Command and Conquer: The First Decade keeps fucking freezing, and Yuri's Revenge won't play at all. 

OK, so back to the first part ;)...

Also, I picked up Disney's World of Wonder disc, how long will calibrating my cheap HDTV take? A half hour? An hour? The blues and reds keep bleeding, for starters. It's an inexpensive LED, I'd love a plasma, but don't have the money, and won't have the chance come the end of the year. It also has a bajillion subsettings in addition to the regular controls, and I don't know what the hell they do. And that's not even counting the SRS sound, which much be useful if I was actually in the center of the room. Anyhow? Anyone done this before? How long did it take?

iCloud? After this fiasco in the news? None of those pictures are offensive or incriminating, but I still don't know.... But if it's the only way. I will respond to your post more fully when I am I have a physical computer, but in Firefox, I have set the settings to clear history when it leaves except for active logins, but for some reason, even though it saves the passwords, it doesn't keep me logged in. Previously, when I had Firefox, I was able to close Firefox and clear all of the history but keep everything out which I was logged into. Also, is there anyway to put the iPhone backups I have saved on the external hard drive back into iTunes? Just for precautionary purposes. I like having them around. Incidentally, I bought the Command and Conquer First Decade DVD, and it keeps freezing on me. It's probably because it's only designed to run with a version of Windows which is much lower than the one which I can we have, Windows 8, but is there anything to be done about it? I also have to transfer my old Firefox favorites. 

And yes, Apple's podcasts app is terrible! Trying to delete something off of the phones hard drive causes it to get to leave it in the computer, and vice versa, then I have to re-download it again. I don't get why can't be like my old iPod, simply download everything on the computer, transferred to the MP3 device, and then uncheck the selection and re-sync, and it goes away. It's irritating as hell, I don't know what Apple were thinking, or perhaps they simply weren't.

Have a new computer. Don't want to sync iPhone because it has a bunch of old photos synced from old compromised computer which was hacked. I'd have SWORN I backed up my pictures on the external hard drive I used to keep most of my iTunes music, but can find it there. Outside of sending these hundreds of pictures via e-mail and then saving them onto the PC hard drive out of order since they'd all dated from when I took them and of like to keep it that way, can I do anything else? Having trouble with the Podcasts too. Why does Apple no longer have a download all option?! I keep trying to put them in from the hard drive, and the computer gets scrambled and can't seem to find the source files for them. I've tried asking about the stuff on Apple's forums, and I can't find any information from them, because apparently no on feels like answering.

I realize this is an incredibly stupid question, but as I still live with my parents, it is technically their computer. As they paid for, I have no right to complain or ask for specific features, but I want to know if the computer is capable of handling HD, and if there was any method of connecting the DVR to it to preserve some recordings I have which are not available on video. How would I tell this?

On another note, the fact that Netflix advertises super HD, I have so far been unable to get my Blu-ray player or my father Smart TV to buffer up to 1080 P, even though they are both advertised as being capable of doing it. Is it possible to get the Wi-Fi to do it without anything that cable connected to the device? It's possible to do without a VPN (which I do not want to pay for). I have heard that most ISPs will not admit it, but they throttle streaming services. When I used Vudu, sometimes it is full 1080p, but it frequently blurs. How can I tell how fast the Wi-Fi is going? When I contacted AT&T via their customer chat, they sent me to a website, and told me that the speed at which my modem was running and my wife I wore it was running more optimal, but I do not remember what that number was, or if they were simply telling me when I should get better. I'm a major digital skeptic (RIP Kodak :(), but if they want me to adopt did you want to see you soon and streaming over physical media, one of the first steps would be figuring out how the hell to solve problems like this one the data loads are so heavy.

TheBoost said:

DUCK SOUP

My five year old laughed HYSTERICALLY at Harpo. Good times.

Five Grouchos out of Five.

 "He's has a change of heart."

"Yes, but unfortunately his face is still the same."

I'm remaining skeptical until I hear any official line, this sounds like the same rumors which have been flying since the Disney buyout. Even if true, there are still a half-dozen ways to mess it up and questions to answer: condition of the source elements, resolution of the master, sound mixes, color timing, and God knows what else. Still sounds strictly rumor mill until hear anything official. Just too good to be true.  It's amazing how many releases omit mono mixes, and unlike screwy color timing or cropping, not nearly a big enough deal is made about them: <I>North by Northwest, Evil Dead, An American Werewolf in London, Meet Me in St. Louis, Evil Dead 2,The Terminator, <I> Leone's whole body of work, the list goes on and on. When did SW ever have mono? There have probably been at least half a dozen mixes for each movie, I assume?

FanFiltration said:

I was so happy today to find a film that I have been searching for for many many years. Close to 18 years ago, I saw the last hour on T.V., but never knew the name. Every time I would ask people if they knew what it was, they would say "Quest for Fire". That was incredibly frustrating. Well after all this time, someone replied with the film's title to a Google post describing the basic plot as I had remembered it.

Missing Link (1988)

The movie is set in Africa roughly one million years ago, at a time when one species of "man-apes" was being displaced by the ancestors of modern humans.

After experiencing a hallucination brought on by ingesting a hallucinogenic plant (possibly a reference to the stoned ape theory), he realizes the stone ax that he has been carrying after finding it at the site where his tribe was killed is a weapon. When he comes across a human footprint at the ocean shore, he sniffs it and then starts hitting it, wanting revenge against the humans.

Missing Link is an unusual film in that it blends elements of drama, documentary, and avant-garde cinema. There is no dialogue, though there is narration (by Michael Gambon). There is also very little action. Instead, the film is filled with extended, picturesque sequences reminiscent of the style often used in nature documentaries. Perhaps due to its unconventionality, the movie was not a commercial success.

This film remains out of print, and hard to find. A very poor copy is on YouTube. It's mistitled as "Missing Link - 2013 Full Movie HD". It's not from 2013, and it most certainly is not presented in HD. Worth checking out if you are a fellow psychedelic warrior. 

8 Magic Mushrooms out of 10

 Whatever else the Internet has done, it's certainly made it sometime barely possible to see things which were completely impossible to find once upon a time.

Anyway....

Dazed and Confused- What a difference a decade makes. First saw this on TV almost ten years ago during my own high school years. At the time, I found it a little bit nostalgic, a sort of look at what I was presumably supposed to going through during my own rigorous high school education. Now, quite apart from looking back on what I've missed, I noticed the aching streak of sad melancholia which runs through, a tale of existential emptiness and purgatorial suburban existence which though bound by its setting, is curiously forward-looking too. That's not to say that there isn't lots of humor and stoner jokes, but bubbling underneath is a much darker story, youth viewed with experience, not nostalgic, but melancholic and almost sad and existentially empty. Though there's joy in discovery, there's a darker underpinning of unrest and even sadism in the little small town setting. Committing a felony is a hell of a lot more exciting than graduating. Even the film grain now seems like a reminder of something soon-to-be-gone. Linklater's sitcom setting exists at the corner of Sartre and Camu's hell, the director's look back to the 70s defined the 90s in ways I couldn't even realize. A cast of future stars and a killer soundtrack too. Tuesday's gone, but it's what she's taken with her that you can only see in your rear-view mirror.

"It Is What It Is" by Kacey Musgraves. The closing track to her terrific new album, the first pop record I've bought in a while, a melancholy, almost detached, blunt but non-judgemental tale about a casual sex fling (Gasp!). This girl is showing me that there may he glimmers of hope for pop music.

"Too dumb to give up, to stubborn to change."

My fuckin' life story ;). 

Fuji are dead and Kodak will be by the end of the year. 

DrCrowTStarwars said:

darth_ender said:

I enjoyed your pretentious reviews.  Don't stop.  I think it's fun.  We're all aspiring for something greater.  No harm in getting some practice :)

 Yeah well said.  You can't get better at something without doing it badly. 

To really get good you have to dare to be stupid,that means you can't be afraid of looking foolish.

I for example make riffed videos on Youtube and write fanfiction that mostly sucks and I know it makes me look silly and most people don't care for it but I don't care because I am also getting practice and feedback on these things so little by little I am getting better.

I think internet critic SF Debris put it best when he said "The first thing you do in any creative field is going to suck" but that is no reason to stop doing it. 

I have found your reviews interesting and I think they are getting better so please don't give up.

 If anyone would publish my ass, I'd be there in a heartbeat, but print magazines are all dead, and the Internet is vast.

Believe it or not, a relative of mine was involved with the making if Detropia. I've lived in the suburbs outside my whole life. Sad story, that once-great city :(. Haven't seen the film yet though. 

Caché (Hidden)- My first Michael Haneke film, an unusual, icy drama shot on cool, detached digital video with a camera that rarely moves. It's nominally a thriller, but it certainly doesn't play anything like a thriller would in the US. Very European, slow, and deliberate, but with a deeply creepy atmosphere and some moments of explosive shock. Answers very few of its questions, it's one of those cryptic art films which wants to be analyzed and dissected more than liked. Fascinating movie.

Spirit of the Beehive- Fascinating, frustrating, slow, but often hypotonic Spanish art film about a little girl under the fascist Franco regime who loses her innocence to the heavy weight of the monstrous regime. It's a quiet, subtle film, and though director Victor Erice cites Ozu as a big influence, it feels like Malick with a bit of Haneke. Though acknowledged as a major influence on Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, and though it shares a number of similarities, it's a subtler, more melancholy film without any of del Toro's uplift. I was reminded of Haneke in the film's depiction of fascism's suffocating banality, characters going about their lives mechanically as creativity and reasons for living are bled away. Though the film shies away from any real violence, the atmosphere is genuinely oppressive, and highlights evil's way of taking away hope and innocence. A bit slow, but I'm not convinced I'd say "dull." I don't feel I fully acclimated to the film's pace, somehow waiting for it to "get going" as though it were a regular film. I think a second viewing is in order after some reading. As a quick side note, there's a wonderful scene where a group of children away cans of 35mm at a traveling cinema, whisked off into the world of movies through the clicking projector. Sadly, with the recent announcement of film's final death knell, it's a reminder of a vanished magic in more ways than one, and adds another sad layer to a film about loss .

Can we PLEASE get new forum software? Posting on this motherfucker on an iPhone is psychotically difficult!

The Third Man- A pulp writer goes to bombed-out post-war Vienna in search of a friend and finds a dark glimpse of evil. Extraordinary film noir about the darkness of humanity, set against a hellish real backdrop that no production designer could ever conceive. If you've seen this in 35mm, I envy you. You've truly gotten to see magic. A brilliant masterpiece that represents the best that filmmaking has to offer. Brilliant performances, rich atmosphere, a compelling story, noir fatalism which hasn't been darkened by our age of nihilism, a smart script, and some of the most amazing cinematography you'll ever see, bleak beauty tinged with dark and fatalistic Romanticism. Truly one of the greats.

I Know What You Did Last Summer- A post-modern slasher flick from screenwriter Kevin Williamson hot on the heels of his success with Scream. Unfortunately, director Jim Gillespie doesn't have the wit that Craven had, and characters talking about how you shouldn't do something doesn't excuse their stupidity when they do it. A cast of once hot stars who're now largely faded, it has a few pleasures, but not enough to differentiate from the endless slasher films which it attempts to imitate. Followed by a sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and a direct-to-video followup called I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Another installment is evidently in the works, evidently simply titled I Know. I was holding out for The Knowledge of What You Did Last Summer Remains With Me Still.

Identity- Fun and twisty thriller from director James Magnold, the ever-watchable John Cusack head up a good cast who have fun in a post-modern riff on Agatha Christie. Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense when you stop and think about it, but rattles along a great pace while it does with some nice atmosphere. Enjoyable enough, certainly a better variation on a theme than the above.

Sherlock Jr.- Fun two-reeler from Buster Keaton. Tons of funny gags and great stunts, it holds ups surprisingly well, though of course its brief length means that it won't be that substantial, Keaton knows it and takes the chance to make something lean and mean that you don't see much of in today's age of excess.

Sholay- My first Bollywood flick, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Western with musical numbers, martial arts, and all kinds of things. Actually pretty fun in strange way.

Lagaan- Once Upon A Time India- Another Bollywood flick. I don't know anything about Cricket, and wow is it long, but it's the kind of thing Arthur Freed would've loved-lavishly colorful with fun musical numbers and old Hollywood glamor.

Django- Spaghetti Western Yojimbo knockoff with a nice muddy setting and some brutal exploitation violence. Slight, but lean, mean, and effective at what it does.

A Fistful of Dollars- Micro-budgeted Spaghetti Western that launched the careers of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. A hugely iconic cultural touchstone, a post-modern comic book of a movie which was pretty innovative once upon a time. Though its often been imitated and has dated and lost some of its bite, Leone's grandly operatic style makes it good fun and a precursor to the more ambitious films to come later in his career.

Lately, I'm beginning to come to the uncomfortable revelation that maybe it's success...