Tag: Movies and Television Posts

Yes, I think it’s true. HD-DVD, my friends, is dead, or at least in the last of its death throes. Being an early adopter, I went out a few months ago and picked up a HD-DVD player, thinking that at the bare minimum both formats would exist for a year or more. It turns out my timing was rather poor. A few of the major studios moved from HD-DVD to BluRay last month, and the move was so dramatic that the HD-DVD guys cancelled their talks at the CES show in Vegas (which actually probably did the most harm to their effort). Reuter’s is reporting that HD-DVD is basically dead, and a leak from WalMart indicates that they are no longer planning to stock HD-DVD in the future. This is yet another example how corporate greed once again took precedence over consumer satisfaction. While nobody forced me to go out […]

There are a bunch of guys over at my place right now, messing around with blogs, media, podcasts, and of course, beer. Right now it’s John Bollwitt, John Biehler, and Boris Mann is downstairs with the next shipment of beer. I’ll update this as the day/night goes on. We all have a few projects we want to do. I’m currently moving all my websites over to Media Temple, which is basically easy but requires a bunch of grunt work to pull off. After that I’m going to attempt to make really awesome movie/mp3 player for WordPress. John Bollwitt making scrambled eggs, photo by John Biehler Wow, the day sure went quick. It’s already 8:45pm. I’ve been working on a pretty cool WordPress plugin during the day that will automatically extract all media out of blog posts and put it into a media player. I’ll have a demo going in a […]

Tonight I ended up down at the Paramount theatre in Vancouver for a premiere of Cloverfield. For those of you who keep up with such things, Cloverfield has been somewhat of a mystery, relying mainly on word of mouth and a few minutes of raw footage released as a trailer for promotional means. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD Going into the movie, I basically expected something similar to the Blair Witch Project, and for the most part, that’s exactly what I got. Granted there are a few more effects in this movie, and it is set in the heart of Manhattan, but for the most part it’s just the regurgitation of the formula used for the BWP. In fact, Cloverfield to me really was a rip off of a lot of different movies. First, you have the Bourne Supremacy’s shaky cam that was used throughout the entire film, even in sequences where […]

Photo by miss604 Be afraid. Be very afraid. I’m heading out to watch this tonight with Rebecca, John and John. Rebecca had tickets to the Vancouver premiere and invited me along, which is totally exciting. I’m going on the record as saying I’m pretty sure this is going to suck (the trailer reminds me of a techy Blair Witch Project), but it’ll be a fun suck with a bunch of friends. That sounds dirty, I know. Check out the trailer below: I’m pretty sure the entire budget for the film went into the funky Independence-Day-looking poster, just to attract more people.

I have attended a few photowalks in the last year, most of which have been in or around the Gastown area. These events have typically brought together anywhere from 5 to 50 people, and have usually involved people walking around and snapping shots for an hour or two. They are a lot of fun, and always a great chance for people to improve their skills or just get out and stretch their wings a bit. I’m organizing one down in my neck of the woods for this Sunday. It will be mostly along the beach, eventually ending up near English Bay and the famous Inukshuk. Hopefully we’ll even manage to catch a sunset at the end. There’s a facebook event for it if you’re interested. If you’re into photography and can get downtown this Sunday, make sure you come out and snap a few photos.

About four years ago, the push for new television technologies first emerged, supported primarily by advances in LCD and plasma technology. Many of these new televisions supported high definition (HD) content, at least in the traditional 720p variety. While Europe is ahead of North America in this regard, we have slowly been migrating most of our North American television services to digital, and in most cases, HD. I believe the US has a target date of around 2013 to be completely digital. HD content looks, quite simply, amazing. Which is why Hollywood has spent the last few years humming and hawing over what to do about HD content distribution. The problem of course, in their eyes, is that HD content piracy has the potential to undermine further industry revenue sources. The solution, at least in Hollywood’s eyes, is multifaceted, involving both software and hardware anti-piracy mechanisms. Most people making television […]

7:36pm – So John and Brennen just arrived for the Friday night nerd-a-thon. We’re debating what movies to watch right now while waiting for pizza to arrive. We have a big list of geeky movies here, some of which are on HD-DVD. Right now the short runners are: The Matrix in HD Dark City Gladiator Desperado Heat Ocean’s Thirteen in HD So we’ll see how it goes. Jeff will probably show up in a bit, and I’m not sure who else. I’m guessing The Matrix will be first just to kick everything off with a bag of kick-ass. My copy of Dark City has seen better days, so I’m trying to rip it to my laptop and reburn it before putting into my HD-DVD player, since it’s rather flaky and doesn’t like scratched discs. Photo of downtown from my place. Taken by John Biehler. 9:11pm Dustin just showed up and […]

Surprisingly, I have never seen this before.. It’s an old opening scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. I thought it was a complete fake at first, but it looks like it was real footage that was intended to be included at one point. What’s weird is that it’s sort of processed and seems to have been scored, which is unusual for anything that hits the cutting room floor. Possibly some fan added some Star Wars music to those scenes, but the music fits rather nicely which sort of makes me think it was in the movie up until the last minute. I’m having a small HD-DVD movie marathon at my pad tomorrow. Should be fun.

2007 is officially in the past now, and today was basically the start of a whole new year, at least in terms of my routine again. I spent the day at work today getting back into the groove again. Tomorrow I will most likely dive head-first into a fairly large new project, which should be pretty exciting. I still have some unpacking to do from my trip, and will most likely take the tree and decorations down this coming weekend. At that point, the holidays will be completely behind me. I think tomorrow Dustin and I are going to get together and hang out for a bit, and this weekend there will probably be a small movie marathon at my place with some friends. I’m also going planning to take a break from the bar scene for a while, and will spend the next few weeks just hanging out with […]

I read a few articles last night on what 2008 holds in terms of new movies. Most of the list was fairly yawn-inducing for me (even though they author was clearly excited about them), but a few stood out. The movie 21, for example, about six MIT students who battled Vegas, seems fairly cool, even though I’m sure they’ve completed deviated from the real story. 21 trailerUploaded by mamouang Check it out. Also on the list was the new Star Trek movie, which is essentially a prequel for the original series. To be honest, I have a hard time thinking that one is really going to fly. I’ll be down there on opening night with the other geeks and my bag of popcorn, just to see the Enterprise sail through the skies one more time, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to suck.