Perfect for children’s parties!
All posts by archangel
George Lucas Strikes Back
Extra credit if you’ve seen the excellent Korean thriller Oldboy (Amazon Prime members get free streaming).
Has Someone Stolen Your Light?
Roger Ebert has been railing against 3D movies because, amongst other things, you’re only getting half the light on the screen. And in some situations, it can be 85% darker. Now he’s discovered that it’s bleeding over into 2D films as well. The primary culprit is Sony (big surprise), who has built a popular 3D-ready digital projector with an interchangeable lens system.1 You have to change the lens to go from 2D to 3D and vice versa, and thy have made this a complex process that requires more skill than your average projectionist has. It’s so complex and time consuming that even Sony Studios didn’t remove it for an industry screening of The Social Network in their flagship auditorium. But either way, what ends up happening is that they put he light-reducing 3D lens on, and then leave it on for 2D pictures! At the end of his article, he quotes Mike Humphries of Geek.com, who shares how you can tell if you’re getting screwed:
- The title of the movie listed by the theater will have a “D” after it if it is being shown on a digital projector (Note: Fandango will write “digital projection” to make it clear.)
- If you are in a D movie, look at the projector window when seated. If you see two stacked beams of light it is a Sony projector with the 3D lens still on.
- A single beam of light means no 3D lens, or a different make of projector that doesn’t have the issue
- If you see the two beams, then get up and go complain. You paid good money to see the movie, so make a fuss until they either give you back that money or remove the lens. Seeing as that’s an involved and time-consuming process, expect a refund.
I realize most won’t leave, but it’s good to know. I used to lean toward the showing with the digital projector, but now I’m going to think twice and try to find out which of my local theaters have the Sony’s and are too cheap to properly configure them between shows.
- As some commented there, you can have a single lens 3D system with a filter, but apparently it’s much easier to raise and lower that filter than it is to change the lens on a Sony. [↩]
D&D Online Now Free
While I’m doing my best to avoid even casual video games, I recently discovered that the D&D MMORPG is now free. Apparently, they make money by selling optional equipment, characters, etc.. It sounds like they’re allowing you to pay cash for game gold, which of course you also earn in game. It’s 3.5 based, so all that knowledge (assuming you haven’t forgotten it all after moving to 4.0) won’t go to waste.
The best part is that by selling directly to gamers, it should cut down on Chinese prisoner gold miners. I know Blizzard is too greedy to cut off China, home to an estimated 80% of their gold farmers, but you’d think by now they’d set up servers for US only players, verified by credit card ZIP code and IP (with no proxies allowed). I hear it’s gotten so bad you need an addon to strip out the gold adverts in the chat stream…
This is not Lords of Acid (or even Praga Khan), but it’s the first new thing in years to make me think of them. Clearly they influenced the remix. The good news is that LOA is supposed to release a new album this year. The bad news is that you probably missed their March tour with My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.
Richard Vission & Static Revenger – I Like That (Adam F Dubstep Remix)
Fuck. Yes.
In other news, Germany did not get Star Trek. At least not Star Trek: Voyager.
If I Didn’t Have You…
…I’d probably have somebody else. Tim Minchin on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson:
Outsourced, The Event Canceled; Chuck Renewed
According to Variety, NBC has canceled Outsourced and The Event, but Chuck will be back for at least 13 more episodes. I never watched The Event, but I did like Outsourced. Diedrich Bader was pretty funny there, and I dig cute Indian (and Aussie) girls, but I admit it wasn’t quite the laugh riot it could have been. Glad to see Chuck return; even if the ratings aren’t great, they must be making money from those embedded Subway commercials.
UPDATE: Bad news, NBC announced that this will be the final season of Chuck. I imagine the ratings will have to be phenomenal to reverse that.
UPDATE 2: They’ve now announced that Chuck will air in the Friday 8-9PM slot, the death knell for all sci fi/fantasy shows (BSG, Smallville, etc.). Enjoy it while it lasts!
Skipping Trailers and Warnings on Blu-ray Discs
There has been an increase in crimes against consumers. They are being held hostage. By what? Warnings and trailers on Blu-ray discs! I don’t steal movies off the internet, I rent them via Netflix, and rental discs1 are the biggest culprit.
Yes, you can fast forward, but on my PC’s BD player2 only goes so fast, so I’m still stuck for several minutes. Worse, I often need to stop the disc and get back to work, which means closing the player since it disables the Windows Aero interface and color scheme. When I start the player again, I’m back at square one! I’ve been looking for a player that allows me to skip anything, much like VLC Media Player and Media Player Classic (the open source version) allow me to do for DVDs. Unfortunately, I’ve seen no open source BD players and the commercial ones won’t dare allow you to perform a “user prohibited action” as defined by the disc makers. How they have the balls to charge $100 for that crap I’ll never know.
But we have a savior! It’s called AnyDVD HD. It sits between your BD ROM drive and your software player software and presents the disc as decrypted. It will also disable all your warnings and trailers.3. I just installed it and put in a disc and it immediately went to the main menu. It’s exactly what I was looking for and it’s currently going for about $75, with a 3 week trial so you can check it out first. Yes, a little pricey, but still cheaper than the other software players and I’ll make up for it in time saved. The bummer is that it only works on Windows, so when I have a home theater set up with my PS3, I’ll be back to slogging through trailers, or schlepping my laptop over to the coffee table.