Friday, August 25, 2006

Miami Vice

I just came back a few hours ago from watching Miami Vice, and my friend put it best when he said that you could've watched it with the sound muted and it would've been just as enjoyable. Click to enlargeYou can take that as a compliment to the movie or a criticism since it's a little of both. Nearly every scene in the movie just looked gorgeous, and you could tell that some shots were only put in there just to make the movie look cooler. However, I think that one of the movie's pitfalls was that it thought it was too cool for its own good. It let the style take over the movie and muddled the story. You may have been confused the first time you saw Goodfellas or The Godfather and figured things out later on, but with this movie you're just plain confused. The acting was pretty good from most actors except for Colin Farrell (does his face ever change?) and his love interest in the movie, and Jamie Foxx was the best, of course. The dialogue was also largely pretty great stuff, if only it didn't make the audience feel like such an outsider sometimes it would be much better. The action scenes were good and the movie's length, though a bit long, seemed about wrong. I felt that it was an enjoyable movie to watch, especially on the big screen, but Michael Mann could've done so much better. I give it a B- since the goods outweighed the bads, but don't feel bad to wait to see it on video (preferably on a big screen DLP TV though).

I'm going to start out here with the Mac news. A couple of Apple news outlets have confirmed that resellers are not taking batch orders on the Mac Mini until after Labor Day, which most likely means that Apple is planning on rolling out a new model since I can't imagine that they'd be lacking in supply of the small boxes. I wonder what else we might see after Labor Day? They are lacking in supply of their MacBooks though, which is causing current orders to be delayed and I'm sure pissing off their customers. Apple must be pretty happy though to see how well the new model has done, which makes me hope that they drop the price before I have to buy a new laptop! Oh, and if you use iTunes, you'll find this tip helpful on controlling videos from your taskbar. Meanwhile, Microsoft is pissing off its customers in a different way: the 32-bit version of Vista will not support the next generation of high-definition DVD formats due to, supposedly, a security hole. This isn't a big deal right now since it's not like people are chomping at the bit for Blu-ray or anything, but it's more disconcerting that someone could gain kernel mode access with these discs. How is that even possible? When else is it possible? For now though, everyone is happy with their video sharing sites online, and DivX is now trying to threaten the reign of YouTube with Stage6. Stage6 is a community-oriented video site that uses the DivX compression scheme to get higher quality videos with faster load times. The difference is quite notable, but I wonder if they can gain the kind of steam that YouTube has?

Christopher Nolan has let loose another small nugget of information regarding The Dark Knight. Apparently, the movie's title is actually strongly tied to the story and The Joker's role is highly influenced by Alan Moore's depiction of the character, which should mean that he'll become a much more three-dimensional character with a real story behind him. 28 Weeks Later now has its leading man, and it turns out that he'll be leading a special forces team into London to keep the peace in the aftermath of the first movie while efforts progress for a cure. It sounds like it could be a legitimate sequel to me, especially since the original producers will be involved. AICN has an early review of The Departed, and it sounds like Scorcese may have really scored with this one (despite it just being a remake of Internal Affairs). I wonder why it is that the public at-large is such a sucker for these gritty mob movies? I'm just excited to Jack Nicholson in an organized crime movie. Lionsgate is planning on distributing the first scene from Saw 3 with Crank, which comes out next week. Just an extra incentive for you considering seeing that movie. Lastly, Kevin Smith has said a few more words on his next movie claiming that it'll be a real horror movie, not a joke one, and his inspiration will likely be drawn from the 80's era slasher flicks.

I'm going to give the Thursday Threesome meme a stab this week:

Onesome: Name-- Ah, what about names? How did your blog name come to be? Is there a story there?
I honestly just couldn't come up with anything better. I wanted it to be clever, but, as you can see, that didn't turn out all that well. Most of all, I wanted it to represent that the blog is going to center on the news that interests me and my commentary on it, which is mostly fairly nerdy stuff.

Twosome: that-- and this. We've all thought about a change of locations from time to time: is there any place you'd like to try living for a while? (You can go back home when you're done with the tryout .)
I'd like to try out NYC or L.A.. It's a completely different setting from Texas, and I just want to see how I'd like it there. It just seems like there's so much more to do on the coasts, especially in the winter.

Threesome: Tune-- us into what you're listening to lately. ...anything on your radar we should be aware of?
Nothing in particular, I've just been listening to the radio since I don't do much in iTunes without my speakers, which I'll unpack when I get back to Austin. I've been really digging Stadium Arcadium though and look forward to the new Audioslave album release on September 5.

No guarantees on a post tomorrow since I have to prepare for my drive on Saturday, but I'll do my best.

No comments: