SIFF 2015

Wow, I can't believe I haven't made any posts since last year's SIFF! I had a few posts in mind, but obviously they never came to fruition. I guess planning a wedding in between working a full time job takes its toll. My special someone and I still managed to jam in find time to watch 14 movies this season from the largest film festival in the nation, so I wanted to give my somewhat arbitrary awards. I tried to keep most of the same awards from last year, but I decided to swap one of them out given the makeup of the films we saw. While I think as a while I enjoyed the slate of films we had last year at SIFF better, when I look back at this year I still thought there were some real gems to be enjoyed.

Best Documentary
Winner: The Birth of Saké


The Birth of Saké official trailer from erik shirai on Vimeo.

This was a clear winner to me because I think it is the most impressive documentary I've ever seen. I honestly can't think of a documentary I've seen before that I enjoyed more. What really grabbed me about this film was that it felt so honest. It felt less like a documentary and more like real life was scripted and adapted into a movie. There's no forced talking heads or awkward flashbacks to terrible quality footage - the director and producer actually spend multiple weeks living at the Tedorigawa brewery just like the normal set of about a dozen employees do for half the year. This gave them unprecedented access into the lives of these men and into their process. The process of making quality saké isn't exactly a secret, but the laborious manual process is so rarely practiced nowadays (compared to using modern machinery) that this movie gives you a glimpse into something not only steeped in tradition but deeply enriched by Japanese culture. I believe this is Erik Shirai's first feature film, which makes it all the more impressive. If you get the chance to watch this movie please do. Though I personally find saké to be delicious, I really don't think you have to in order to enjoy this documentary.

Best Eye Candy
Winner: Henri Henri

I can't overlook a film that took the high bar set by Amélie and decided that it was going to produce an equally satisfying film that has a completely different plot. While this movie was made in Quebec, there are clear parallels in some of the overall set of characters and style of the movie compared to Amelie, but other than that it really takes a life of its own. The film follows the somewhat naive Henri, an orphan who is being evicted from the convent he grew up in and has to find his footing in the real world with his only marketable skill being that of a rebulber (i.e. changing light bulbs). With that simple premise, a tale of romance, hopefulness, and a bit of magic takes shape. It's as sweet as it is beautiful with strong visual sense that sticks with you after you leave the theater. While it doesn't create quite as rich as a world as Amelie does (in part due to its modest timeline, in my opinion), it does make effective use of the imagery it's trying to convey. While at times I felt the imagery was a little on the nose, I had to put that aside because so much was right about this movie. It's a feel-good movie that you should really want to see.

Runner Up: The Birth of Saké

I've already spoken about this film above, but I did just want to add that the cinematography in this film is ridiculous. I cannot fathom how they got such crisp visuals when only Erik Shirai and his producer were at the brewery making the film. They had a great editor, too, but the raw footage had to be high quality to produce such jaw dropping visuals. So many scenes would look good plastered on the wall of my college apartment's bedroom (heck, there are stills I would frame and put on my wall now).

Most Touching

Winner: Good Ol' Boy

I had a hard time deciding on this one because I had a few movies that I felt could've met this category. I decided to give it to Good Ol' Boy because I loved the breadth of emotions it brought out of me. I think it affected me on a personal level because I somewhat identify with the lead character since I, too, grew up in an immigrant Indian family (although my family isn't Hindu and I wasn't born in India in the 70s). It's not a sad movie necessarily, but I did find it to be very evocative. It's a style of movie that you don't see enough of nowadays - a small town coming of age story. There's plenty of movies targeted at teens/tweens nowadays that capitalize on melodrama culture, but this movie juxtaposes real life problems for children in the 70s along with cultural differences. Even though I wish we could've spent more time with these characters you get quite a bit about them from a pretty concise script and it's just enough to keep you satisfied without overwhelming you with subtext. To top it off, lead actor Roni Akurati steals the screen as a really endearing Indian boy. I enjoyed this film thoroughly and really hope it gets picked up. Also, SIFF is showing it this Sunday again for any locals who didn't catch it.

Runner Up: I'll See You In My Dreams 

Blythe Danner, where have you been all my life? What an amazing leading lady for a really cute film. The humorous situation we found ourselves in for this movie was that at least three fourths of the people in the theater were 50 years old or above. That shouldn't indicate that the movie is only for an older crowd - it's actually not cheesy like a lot of films that pander to this audience are. It's very honest and heartfelt. It follows widower Carol Petersen who has become somewhat numb to life in her twilight years and is trying to make sense of it all. It's never preachy, but it has so many scenes with interesting implications that I really appreciated. What I think I found most surprising is that Blythe works as an actress not just as being very talented but still having this air of being sexy. She's not slutty, she's just very human and very endearing in a really fresh way. Her performance is wonderful and really stuck with me. Sam Elliott is also perfect as the love interest and in real life he seems exactly as his character on the big screen (personality-wise), which I thought was kind of fun to see.


Best Short Film
Winner: The World of Tomorrow

Don Hertzfeld, of Rejected fame, has a really strong offering in this short. It's the story of the future self of a young girl going back in time to reveal the girl's long and quirky future as technology advances. It's funny, sweet, and at times a little eerie, but always provocative and interesting. I can't say too much more about it without giving away important details, but I think of it as if XKCD and sci fi movies got together and had a short film baby. You can actually buy this film for a few bucks online, which I recommend doing. It's a worthwhile way to kill 15 minutes and be totally entranced.

Runner Up: Live Fast Draw Yung

There were so many great shorts this year that picking just one runner up was hard, but I have to give it to this really fun short documentary about Yung Lenox, a 7 year-old with a penchant for doing hand drawn portraits of rappers and their albums. His Instagram account has generated a cult following and his father's love for him really shines through in this documentary. The kid is really cute and fun, and the short had just the right amount of everything.


Best Overall
Winner: Love & Mercy

When I walked out of this movie, I didn't expect that it would be my favorite film of SIFF 2015. As time has progressed though, it has clearly emerged as the film that I've thought about the most. This almost haunting portrayal of the life of Brian Wilson at the peak of his career and probably the lowest point of his life is a very unique experience. I didn't even want to see this movie because I'm so tired of the formulaic big name biopic movies that have been getting churned out every year or two like clockwork. This film has a twist though - Paul Dano portrays Brian Wilson towards the latter part of his time with the Beach Boys (around the time when Pet Sounds was recorded and released) while John Cusack portrays Brian Wilson in the late 1980s when he is under the care of psychologist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) and in a budding relationship with Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks). The movie is so bizarre at times that I wouldn't have believed it was true if I didn't see interviews with Wilson that confirm it. In fact, I probably watched at least half an hour of old footage from Beach Boys performances and interviews because the film got under my skin so much. It's pretty surprising how much the faces on screen mimic their real life counterparts.


Paul Dano clearly puts it all out there in his portrayal of Wilson. While Cusack's performance may not have been quite as nuanced, I still found it to be an effective dramatization of Wilson's time under Landy. Paul Giamatti as Landy was also a powerhouse in his performance - truly incredible and at times truly frightening. This movie also has made me look at Elizabeth Banks in a whole new light. I'm used to seeing her in comedies and less heavy material, but this movie shows that she's ready for more serious material like this (this isn't her first drama by any means, it's just a good demonstration of her abilities). You don't have to be a Beach Boys fan to enjoy this movie, you just have to be a lover of music and good storytelling and I doubt you'll be disappointed here.

Avengers, Assemble!

I'm a little bummed that I haven't had time to blog in a while, but I decide to make some time tonight to at least put up a quick review about a little movie that came out last week called The Avengers.

In case you've lived in a cave for a while, Marvel had this almost absurd plan that they were going to make individual films about each of the superheroes that are part of the team in the Marvel Universe known as Avengers who assemble in the comic book world when there's a really big threat. They were created in response to DC's Justice League and had a rotating cast of heroes/heroines, but the movie sticks with the most popular ones. The only members to not get their own films were Black Widow and Hawkeye, though they received cameos in Iron Man and Thor, respectively. The premise of this film is that Thor's brother, Loki, is trying to enslave humanity with the help of an alien army that enters the planet via a portal created by an extremely powerful cube called the Tesseract. Naturally, the Avengers reluctantly assemble to stop the threat.

I decided to see the movie at midnight on opening night, which was actually a lot more comfortable than I imagined it'd be, and I was shocked that this movie wasn't awful. Joss Whedon being on board made it seem pretty likely that it'd be a great film, but to take so many larger-than-life characters that bring a lot of backstory baggage from their own movies and put them together just seemed exceedingly difficult. Especially considering that these were the same actors (except for Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as Bruce Banner) from each superhero's own film - there was no guarantee that they'd work well together. This movie worked on many levels though, and I think the main reason is the fact that this movie didn't take itself too seriously. In modern superhero films, these's a pretty clear dichotomy between films that really strive to exist in a grounded, real world (like The Dark Knight or Chronicle) and those that fully embrace the comic world without going overboard (like X-Men or Spider-Man). The Avengers falls in the latter category, and I think we should all be glad for that because it manages to appeal to the comic book fans with lots of subtle, inside jokes while still being accessible to mainstream audiences and building a storyline that everyone can get on board with. It doesn't try to adhere too strictly to the comics aside from the characters themselves, but rather it's a very creative take on what happens when you throw all these different elements together.

If you're expecting a groundbreaking film here, you're going to be disappointed. At its core, it follows a very standard formula. I don't see anything wrong with that though - it executes on this formula very well with the added benefit that there's no need for a prolonged backstory on the characters. It doesn't bother re-hashing what's happened in previous movies except very briefly giving you just enough so that you can still follow along. Sure, it slightly penalizes the people who haven't see the previous four films, but not nearly enough to keep you from seeing this one. I didn't see Thor or Captain America: The First Avenger and yet I didn't feel lost at all. In effect, it was refreshing that the movie could move at such a brisk pace keeping the audience really engaged with loads of humor and fight scenarios that geeks normally have to put a lot of brain power into daydreaming about. The humor really is pretty impressive - subtle, dry, and timed very well.

The acting is as solid as you'd expect. Nick Fury is Sam Jackson, so it makes sense that he'd do the character justice and obviously plays a much bigger role in this film than any of the previous ones. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with Scarlett Johansson - I think the screenplay didn't really give us a clear picture of Black Widow. There were bits and pieces, and it was probably somewhat intentional that she be a bit of a mystique, but I don't think Johansson helped - the character just seemed a bit flat. She's still gorgeous though. The rest of the cast knocks it out of the park, especially Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr (for the third Tony Stark movie in a row - he's on fire). I didn't think I'd be happy with re-casting Edward Norton because I love him as an actor, but when you see Ruffalo it's clear that he should've been Bruce Banner all along.

The action sequences are grand and well done - with very minor exceptions that I won't get into so as to not spoil the film at all. The production quality is as top notch as you'd expect, and I was especially impressed by the sound editing. Maybe it was just the theater I was at, but the seats would literally rumble at the appropriate times and more so than any movie I've seen in a while I thought it was quite an immersive experience, despite being in a packed auditorium where every single geeky thing got lots of applause and/or laughter.

My score for this movie would probably be an A-. I loved it, would highly recommend, and would definitely see it again (it survives the test of me still reminiscing about the movie 3 days later), but there's nothing especially extraordinary about it. It's just a super fun action film that's well worth the ride if you're willing to tolerate being in an entirely geek driven universe and can suspend disbelief on a few things (e.g. there were definitely some anachronisms with Captain America).

P.S. There are not one but two post-credits bonus scenes. So don't let the janitor kick you out - stay in your seat until you see the second bonus scene. I only saw one, myself, because I didn't know there were two.

Super 8

Super 8 Review

I think putting spoilers in a movie review are stupid - they defeat the point of a review for most readers. So you won't find any here.

J.J. Abrams is a really interesting guy. I think he's one of the more divisive figures in filmmaking and television for a very good reason: he's daring. One of the things that Jeff Bezos is often as quoted as saying and bleeds through into the culture at Amazon is the idea that you shouldn't be afraid to be misunderstood. Abrams clearly has that in his mind because, depending on who you ask, Lost, Alias, and Star Trek are brilliant or awful. He gives everything he does his all and even though his bets don't always pan out (*cough*Cloverfield*cough*) you have to respect his innovative spirit.

Super 8 isn't necessarily the most novel idea in the world, but there's something to be said for taking a genre that's basically been dead for years and using it to tell a really engaging story. The genre isn't disaster movies - God knows we've had way too many of those in the past few years. It's the movies that I recall from when I was little that were probably slightly before my time where it was a mysterious thriller that put flashy special effects in the backseat of a movie you couldn't help but have fun watching. It may not have been up for any Oscars, but you really enjoyed it. I'm afraid of giving examples of this sort of film because I think I risk spoiling the movie, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's actually great cinema. Even though there are some cheap shots at making you jump in your seat, the thriller aspect takes a backseat to storytelling, suspense, and mystery.

The plot is a very simple concept: a group of kids (presumably in late middle school or early high school) are making a horror film and get caught in the middle of a huge train accident while shooting one particular scene. Strange things start happening around town right after the accident. On paper, it sounds pretty silly, and the main characters are mostly no-names. However, I could really identify with these kids. Even though they're living in a time years before I was even born, their interactions with each other felt so genuine. There was even a part where they were filming a scene and one of them was being an awful actor and I thought it was really meta how good he was at pretending to be a bad actor. I cringe sometimes to watch movies centered around young kids because they often treat them in an almost cartoonish way and I think this movie gave them some dignity and real character development and I really appreciated that.

The main drawback the film had was probably the pacing. It felt a little uneven, and I imagine that will turn off some audiences. It's not an action packed two hours - it's a mystery movie at the heart of it. In fact, I almost was disappointed in its cheap shots at the audience with the moments that made you jump in your seat. It wasn't a horror movie so I thought it was odd to have those moments in there.

All in all though, it's definitely worth seeing. The big reveal is not lame like in most of M Night Shayamalan's movies and they really keep you guessing as to which of the possibilities in your head is the right one. Don't go and see it expecting lots of action and special effects, but go and see it because you appreciate heartfelt filmmaking. It earns an A- rating from me.

Oh, and sorry about being MIA. Time has flown by and I've been surprisingly busy. I will do my best to get out an original post I've been toying with later this week.

Iron Man 2

Let the Summer Blockbuster Season Begin

Since I saw Iron Man 2 on Friday I figure I might as well share my thoughts before we get into the normal stuff.

The original Iron Man is without equivocation considered one of the best comic book superhero movies ever by any comic book geek. Definitely top 5 if not top 3. Given that Iron Man was never a blockbuster franchise like Batman or Superman, I thought it was definitely special what Jon Favreau was able to accomplish with Robert Downey, Jr. and the Iron Man universe. It was a better origin story than Batman Begins in terms of pacing and probably a few other things and just a fun all-around summer movie. That's really huge shoes for a sequel to fill. Did it get it right? That's hard to say, to be honest. I think when people's expectations are high like they were for this movie you've gotta be perfect to really blow them away, and this movie didn't do that. Nonetheless, I thought it was a more than acceptable sequel and definitely well worth seeing.

Plot-wise, this movie takes over literally right where the first one left off and shows how the ending (which I don't want to spoil) gave rise to physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) as a villain using Stark's own arc reactor technology. Meanwhile, Tony Stark is dealing with the adverse health effects of the arc reactor in his chest while being watched closely by Nick Fury (Sam Jackson). I don't want to spoil anything by revealing any more than that, but suffice to say it's an interesting, though comic book far-fetched, storyline that diverts somewhat from the Iron Man comic book storyline to tell its own story. I thought it was actually a pretty well-written story. You have to really forgive the hand-waving with regard to the technological expertise of some of the main characters, but I personally watch 24 and am already well-seasoned in that.

I thought the acting was superb across the board. Robert Downing, Jr was possibly even better in this movie, Scarlett Johansson was the perfect casting for Black Widow (so glad that they didn't go with Emily Blunt), and Gwenyth Paltrow was still as sexy and sophisticated as ever. Johansson's role was a pretty decent female empowerment character (sans a couple of her outfits) and I was glad to see that they didn't really overdo it. I think some hardcore fans will be a little disappointed with her portrayal, but I thought it worked in the context of the movie. I think the re-casting of Rhodes was noticeably weird. I think Don Cheadle would've been fine if he was in the original as well, but whenever I saw him I just kept picturing Terrence Howard. I was happy overall with Mickey Rourke, he did his hokey Russian accent well.

The problem is that Iron Man 2 didn't bring to the table what Iron Man did because it didn't break the formula of superhero movies like that one did. It felt more like a continuation of the previous movie instead of something totally new. So less like The Dark Knight, which was a huge breath of fresh air, and more like X-men 2. The action scenes were great and the movie was so much fun to watch - especially the well-timed humor. However, it felt like a comic book movie. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means that it can't be extraordinary. I still give it an A- and strongly recommend seeing it yourself while it's on the big screen. Just don't bolt after the credits - they snuck in an extra scene like in the first one. It's not life-changing or anything, but it's something that will give you goosebumps if you're a comic book geek.

Kin Available this week

I know you've been waiting with bated breath so here it is: the new Kin will be available in Verizon stores on May 13 and is already available online. The creatively named Kin One and Kin Two are priced at $50 and $100, respectively, but apparently will have interesting data plan like the Sidekick.

However, Pre Central aggregated some of the reviews and they don't seem to be very positive. It seems like the phone was pretty half-baked overall and an uneven experience. The ideas from the original presentation that I originally raved about were apparently poorly executed. It looks like Kin Studio, the online timeline of your phone, is pretty decent, but the Kin Spot and a number of other features are disastrous user experiences. Despite the pricing being good, I'd be surprised if these flew off the shelves and insulted if people chose them over the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, which are usually easy to find at those price points and have a lot more features, like pretty good call quality.

Treasury Site and Google Chat Hacks

There were a few security breaches last week, the most flagrant of which I felt was the U.S. Treasury websites being compromised and giving malware to its visitors. Well, technically they redirected to a Ukrainian site that gave out the malware, but what an embarrassment to that IT department that these guys injected HTML code. I'm guessing it was some sort of XSS variant, but they're being hush on the details. They already look bad - hiding the truth from the people who pay these idiots' salaries isn't going to make them look any better.

I thought I'd throw in this AP story about a vulnerability in how your web site requests are routed that could be disastrous if exploited. The bottom line is that TCP/IP, the protocol that the Internet operates on, was not built with security in mind because it was not designed for massive public use. I think this is something the U.S. government should step into to motivate a fix. The private companies apparently don't have a strong interest in fixing things but an attack on how Internet packets are routed could be really bad for our infrastructure.

Techcrunch was tipped off on a pretty big vulnerability last week regarding Facebook. It turns out that in where in your Privacy Settings you can see how other people view your profile, you can also see who they're chatting with. Rather than applying their restriction to how you view your profile, they basically gave you a window into their Facebook, more or less. You could even mess with their friend requests. Who knows how many people have exploited this without reporting it. It really calls into question Facebook's quality assurance principles. It's fixed now, but disturbing that it was out there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Facebook Under Fire

Riding off the coattails of that story, let's talk about the rabble growing against Facebook. It used to be that Facebook's changes were an annoyance that people just got used to. Now though, multiple people are being very vocal about their problems with Facebook and these editorials are getting a lot of eyeballs.

One blogger gave his ten reasons why you should quit Facebook while Wired calls for an open alternative where things make sense instead of following the whims of Facebook. This was mostly prompted by how Facebook is now sharing a lot of information about you to developers taking advantage of its new APIs and how the fact that Facebook encourages you to turn your text in your profile to "Pages" means that you're exposed through these "Pages" as being a fan of that thing to the world. Of course, there have been plenty of offenses leading up to this (how you can never really remove yourself, how your information is being passed along to third-party application developers, etc.), but ultimately their misleading policies have really become cause for some concern.

If you're stubborn like me and are hesitant to quit Facebook cold turkey, at least consider abating the amount of information you feed to it.

Final Notes

Ok, I'm running way behind on what I wanted to get done tonight because of a nap I took earlier. I'm going to have to cut out sooner on this post than originally planned. Here's what else I had for you:

Apple is now in the middle of an antitrust suit for anti-competitive practices. It's not clear if this is because of their ban on Flash or their patent lawsuits against HTC, but it'll be interested to see what happens. Some of their practices are unconscionable, but I'm not sure that they're illegal.

The FCC is still pushing forward on net neutrality trying to find a way around the court decision ruling that they can't regulate the ISPs.

The U.S. ranks 30th in the world in Internet speed. Even Andorra is beating us. Ouch.

Netflix is moving more of its computational power into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Smart move. Much more efficient than buying and maintaining your own hardware for solving those big problems.

This is a pretty eye-opening breakdown of the cell phone providers in America by customer satisfaction and dropped calls.

Check out all the new features coming in the forthcoming Kindle firmware upgrade including password protection and better sharing capabilities.

It looks like Amazon has one of the biggest databases in the world, and it's pretty exciting that I help process some of that data every day. Anyway, check out who has the other enormous databases.

If you want to know what's on TV the Interweb, check out Clicker.

If you're on Windows and didn't know about Microsoft's Fix It tool, then go check it out now.

Last but not least, Google made a really awesome video advertising how fast Chrome is compared to things like sound and a potato gun. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Avatar

A Sci Fi Classic is Born

I feel kind of silly talking about Avatar 3 weeks after its domestic release. Most of you have seen it by now. There wasn't a lot of tech news over the past couple of weeks though (just a lot of lists of things from the past year or decade or predictions), and I just saw Avatar in 3-D today so it seemed silly to make something else the headline of this post given that nothing that's been happening compares to Avatar. I walked out of the theater over 6 hours ago but it's still on my mind.

In case you haven't seen the more revealing trailers, Avatar's story falls in the family of films like Pocahontas or Tarzan - the clash of two disparate worlds. A human company has arrived at Pandora to mine for a very valuable rock, but there's a village of natives, the Na'vi, who are sitting on a large deposit of this rock. Sam Worthington's character is part of the Avatar program, in which a human's being can be transferred to a genetically engineered Na'vi version of himself, to try to learn from the Na'vi and find a way to get this village to move. I know that sounds like I just spoiled the whole movie for you, but that all probably happened in the first 20 minutes. It's literally nearly 3 hours long, so a lot happens in it. I'd say 4 major acts, in all.

There are some movies that you can look at over the history of film making and know that they are classics for one reason or another. On my short list of classics would be Chinatown, The Godfather, The Matrix, Star Wars: A New Hope, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can say what you will about them, but they're definitely classics. If I had an honorable mentions list it'd probably include Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but neither of those series' starting movie was as important as the movies I just listed (which is obviously not an exhaustive list). I think Avatar is a movie we're going to look back on as a big deal in science fiction films and probably in films, in general.



I heard all this hype about the movie but didn't buy any of it because the movie didn't look interesting to me. I was as big a skeptic as they come and insulted that James Cameron claimed a CG movie was an innovation, even if it was 3-D. Both those technologies had already existed, so what was the big deal? Well, he was right: I don't think I've ever been so impressed with computer graphics before in my life. He was able to map his actors/actress's faces to their computer-generated forms to display real emotions. It's phenomenal. I felt more for these characters than many movies I've seen with live action movies. As for being in 3-D - it looks amazing in 3-D. It's no longer that stupid gimmick at your local science museum from when you were little where at special moments you'd put on these gigantic classes to see something silly coming at you. It's not a gimmick at all in this movie, in fact - it's a part of how you experience the movie. It makes everything very palpable to the point that I don't know how I'd react to some scenes if I saw them in 2-D. The idea of depth of field you get in some scenes is very valuable for conveying a lot of information to you without having to spend a lot of time on it or just use camera tricks. To not see this movie in 3-D is a disservice to yourself since seeing it in 2-D will be easy once it's out on home video. Back to just the visuals though: the level of detail in this movie is awe-inspiring. You definitely willfully would forget that the world you're seeing isn't real and that these creatures are just computer generated - they're that realistic. Part of what makes you believe is that when you see scenes that didn't need to be computer generated - the scenes between just humans - they don't look computer generated at all. If you see this movie for nothing else other than to enjoy it as a visual feast then it was well worth the price of admission.

When it comes to the acting and writing, you start entering somewhat thorny territory. I enjoyed the story more than I thought it would. It was somewhat formulaic but still epic and engaging. It wasn't as predictable as I thought it would be, but I was still happy with the direction it went in. Some of the writing came off to me as a little kludgy and corny. Strangely, I found myself moved even by a couple of the cornier scenes. The acting by most of the leads was strong, especially Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and Zoe Saldana. Giovanni Ribisi never made sense to me though and Stephen Lang's role as the Colonel felt hollow and stereotypical. I think that's more due to the writing than his portrayal though. I did find myself enjoying Michelle Rodriguez as the same character she always plays, but I have a soft spot for her so I was ok with that. The movie was definitely way too long. I don't know what they could've done about that, but it was quite long. To be honest, I enjoyed it enough that I didn't mind sitting through all of it, but I can see other people losing interest during the slower parts. The set up of the film feels like a bunch of scenes I won't want to watch whenever I get it on Blu-ray, but once it gets going it really does fly by. It reminds me a bit of the end of a Metal Gear Solid game where the ending keeps getting prolonged. I know I'm saying a lot of bad stuff here, but the writing was good overall and I thought the language they created was actually kind of cool. All the Na'vi characters were very cool and well-designed.

The bottom line is that you have to see this movie. There's no reason to not go out and see this movie in 3-D if you're in a place that has it in 3-D. If you do not you will almost certainly regret it. Whether or not you like sci-fi, this is an important movie to see right now in theaters. Even if you don't love it like I did, you will at least appreciate the significance of the technology at play here. Even the people I knew who didn't love it definitely didn't hate it, so I think it's a fair bet that you won't hate it either. It'll almost certainly come out on Blu-ray in 3-D, possibly the first movie to do so, but unless you're rich I'm guessing that you're not getting a 3-D TV set and this is one of the very few movies where 3-D adds to the experience. If you see it in 3-D and hate it then you can yell at me about it later. My overall score for Avatar is an A-, by the way, for those of you keeping score at home.

More on Nexus One

The Nexus One has become the darling of the cell phone world and it hasn't even been formally announced yet! For the record, I don't see what's so special about it. Word is that it'll be $180 subsidized or $530 unsubsidized, and you'll have to get a special T-Mobile plan for it even if you're already on T-Mobile (welcome to the world of many Palm Pre adopters 6 months ago). Engadget somehow managed to get a unit to test out and even put up a video. Aside from being snappier than any other Android phone on the market the only other advantages it seems to ostensibly have are UI tweaks, like "live" (animated) backgrounds and a quick view of all your homescreens. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it'll be a very good phone, but it just seems like another touchscreen Android phone (that I believe is being manufactured by HTC).

Google Voice Going Enterprise

Word on the street is that Google Voice is going to be joining Google's lineup of Google Apps targeted at small businesses (which includes stuff like Google Docs and Gmail with a higher tier of service). Everyone's best guess is that it'll be a virtual phone system, but it would make a lot of sense that this is true since they'll want to continue to milk their bigger products with enterprise licenses.

Apple in Talks For Online TV

The Wall Street Journal made a short note the week before last about talks that Apple and Disney had started regarding a subscription-based online TV service, and Hollywood Reporter put up a very interesting editorial about how this only supplements cable TV instead of killing it. It's just another experiment to diversify an industry that has dropped off a bit in recent years. In my opinion, cable TV is on its way out no matter how you slice it. In 2020 I'm sure we'll be talking about something that put the nail in the coffin of cable TV because it's definitely not serving customers' needs well enough.

DDoS and ICANN

Those two things wouldn't normally be together, but they happen to be at the core of two major security issues.

The first was pretty major: a major DNS provider used in e-Commerce was hit was a DDoS attack two days before Christmas. If your DNS server is down then that means that people can't get to your site unless they know your IP address or have you cached on their router. They were down for an hour and one of the impacted sites was Wal-mart. I can't comment on the impact on Amazon at all since I don't know anything internally, but I am impressed (just from reading that article) that they were able to isolate the issue to just Northern California so quickly. It just shows you how your site doesn't have to have a security flaw for you to get impacted by DDoS.

Here's a very interested story I actually heard about TWiT in passing but never reported on: ICANN has decided to allow non-Latin characters in domain names, which is kind of scary. If you've seen the Russian alphabet, for example, you'll note that some characters are exactly the same as those in the Latin alphabet, like the letters in the word "paypal". Now major domains will have to register their domain in multiple languages to ensure users don't get accidentally lured by a malicious fake version of their site. Be very careful about the links you click to popular sites now - even more so than before. Something like Web of Trust would probably help.

Quickies

TechRepublic has a very exhaustive article on all the differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 including all the different connector types and the 10x speed difference.

The Kindle became the most gifted product ever on Amazon.com during this past holiday season - take that, Nook!

PC Mag has a good short list of what you need to know about Intel's new line of mobile processors: Arrandale.

Engadget wrote an article that I largely agree with regarding the ten gadgets of the past decade that really defined it, but as you can see from my post last week I definitely didn't agree with everything.

I'm going out of the country this Saturday and don't expect to post again until the week of January 24, at the earliest. I'll try to put up some pictures before then while I'm in India, but no promises. Have a great few weeks, everyone!

Inglourious Basterds on Blu-ray

Tarantino's First Blu Treatment

I managed to get my grubby paws on the Inglourious Basterds Blu-ray a day in advance of its release so I thought it made sense to delay my post for the week until now to be able to give my little review on it on its release date. I'm so glad I got Amazon Prime.

This is the first new release from directorial giant Quentin Tarantino that is released on Blu-ray and DVD simultaneously. His previous films on Blu-ray were just adapted for the format and so they don't take advantage of Blu-ray's additional benefits (other than great picture and sound quality) or have high definition special features. It seems like each Blu-ray I buy gets better and better in terms of overall presentation and navigation and picture quality (not counting Harry Potters 3-5, which I didn't get on their release dates, anyway), and Inglourious Basterds takes very little exception to that rule.



I've already gone into great detail about the movie itself back in August so I don't want to get into too much of it here. However, it's a tour de force in cultivating situations around people who are plotting against Hitler and the dialogue surrounding these situations. Not every work spoken is necessary but every sentence is definitely carefully crafted and in the end feels very satisfying even though 30 minutes probably could've been cut from the film without significantly damaging the plot. The experience of that 30 minutes though is well worth it though. The acting is exceptional all around. I understand that there's definitely some contention over whether Brad Pitt did well in his role, which I feel is surprising because his caricature in this movie is one of my favorite things about it. It goes without saying that the Academy would be insane to not nominate Cristoph Waltz for an Oscar and as I watched through my favorite scenes with him again I just re-discovered while I loved to hate his character all over again. Tarantino is no stranger to ensemble casts and I think he really struck it out of the park with this one. While I didn't see a ton of movies this year I did see quite a few and this was definitely my favorite. It may not have technically been the best movie to come out, but I was totally blown away by it and am still surprised that it has already stuck with me to a similar degree that Pulp Fiction has over the year.

I think the overall picture quality of this Blu-ray may actually just barely surpass even Star Trek, but both look so good that it's honestly hard to judge. I don't think I've ever paused a Blu-ray before and had a hard time finding artifacts up close. They're usually not that bad and not noticeable while actually watching the film, but the fact that this movie looks just as crisp and clear when you pause as while you're watching it really speaks for the detail in every frame. Part of why I'm emphasizing pausing the film is that there are some really great shots that are wonderful portraits of an emotion or a plot device that I have to pause to get the full effect of, sometimes. Anyway, the colors always feel true and the detail in faces and objects and settings is unmistakeably meticulous. I didn't realize that my living room could be lit up so much by a movie set in World War II. To put it simply, this is the way a Tarantino film was meant to be enjoyed outside of a movie theater. Without a surround sound setup I'd feel weird to talk much to sound, but everything sounded great on my TV. It comes with subtitles and audio tracks in English, French, and Spanish, by the way.

For a Blu-ray presented so well I was definitely surprised by the lack of attractive features. First off, I liked the case right off the bat and its reflective quality in the light. When I put in the disc I was very happy that Universal didn't decide to barrage me with trailers and other junk like my WB Blu-rays do without fail. It's sad that it's become so prevalent that starting a disc with the main menu or feature film is something worth calling out. Anyway, it's cool that if you have a BD Live enabled player you get a ticker off to the right side with news that you can easily turn off and menu sound effects are optional (and default to being off). This is actually my first movie to take advantage of the 4 colored buttons on my remote: you can use them during the movie to help mark clips of the movie you like for easy reference and sending to friends (who I beleive must also have the disco watch your favorite scenes, which seems a bit silly but I can definitely understand why the studios would want it. Anyway, these options actually show up while your pause or seek during the movie, or if you hit 'down'.

As I alluded to, the special features are definitely lacking. I knew there was something to be concerned about when I realized that a 2-disc edition meant that one had to be a digital copy, which expires if you don't remember/have the time to use it before then. Anyway, only a few of the extras are in 1080p with the rest being in 720i (the box claims 1080i, but it didn't look it) or 480p. The best extras are the trailers, the posters, and the round table with Tarantino and Brad Pitt. The other stuff is surprising unexciting. There are a couple of fun things, like a behind-the-scenes look at Nation's Pride (that film itself is also included, but less than 10 minutes long) and greetings to the editor during takes, and then a couple of serious pieces, like a discussion of the posters in the movie and some interviews and behind-the-scenes looks with the creator of the original Inglorious Bastards and one of its stars, but that's about it. The 3 extended scenes included aren't very exciting and there's still a scene in the trailers that I haven't seen in its entirety so Universal is definitely holding back on us. There's also a trivia game and some BD Live features like live chat, streaming previews of other films, and sending clips to friends, but these are also just little things. If they had just included a commentary track I think it would've helped a lot. But alas, there are a still a few scenes that I'd like to know the original intentions of and I'll never know the intentions of, now.

Despite the failings of the special features, I think the picture quality of the feature film alone is enough to sell it. This is a movie with really great replay value, in my opinion, and that looks good enough that you'll really want to keep putting it in. I highly recommend it.

The Normal Stuff

I am actually way to absolutely exhaused to continue with my normal dose of tech news, but I will try to make up for it in next week's post. Besides, the biggest thing to happen was that Apple acquired Lala and we still don't quite know what the means.

Star Trek on Blu-ray

Live Long and Watch Star Trek

It's been a brutal 6 months, which is rounding down on the amount of time since the release of the JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek to its release on Blu-ray, but it was worth the wait. There was literally a shorter wait for GI Joe and Transformers 2, which I only compare because they were big summer blockbusters (not because I think they ordinarily belong in the same paragraph as Star Trek).

I've already reviewed the movie itself, so I'll direct you to that May post instead of going into all the gritty details about the content of the movie itself. I don't pre-order movies very often at all though (hadn't since literally January) because I'm usually ok with waiting for price drops if I liked it enough that I'll want to watch it again sometime, so the fact that I pre-ordered this should be some indication of how blown away I was by this film. Months after seeing it there were scenes that stuck with me (much like my favorite of the year, Inglourious Basterds) and it proved further to me that this is a really fun film for repeat viewings. It puts together a well-constructed story (despite being controversial) with truly dedicated actors/actresses and grand set pieces that feel really worthwhile rather than tawdry reminders that this is a summer movie (that was actually intended originally for a winter release). If you haven't seen this movie then you really need to put renting it at the top of your list for movies to check out - definitely above pretty much anything playing in your local theater right now (at the time of this posting, at least).

Moving swiftly along: I was a little disappointed with the overall presentation of this set. First of all, the slip case for the Blu-ray box had the back side with the run time and pictures and such just tacked on with the junk that credit card companies use to send you new cards. I like the fact that the Blu-ray case itself is full-on Chris Pine's face (the one peeking through the title on the slip case), and on the other side is a close up of Zachary Quinto's face as Spock. I loved the focus in the marketing of the theatrical release on the characters as being powerful enough imagery to sell the film - it's simple and it works. What I was really more disappointed in was the overall menu system. It's not terrible, but I just expected something cooler given that it's Star Trek, especially compared to Iron Man. There's also like 3 trailers (or ads, as I like to call them) and a video game ad to start the feature film disc, but I actually just figured out today that you can hit the 'pop-up menu' button on your Blu-ray player remote to skip straight to the top menu (I don't recall ever hitting any menu button a DVD and going straight to the main menu until I watched all the ads).

Why am I whining about something so trivial? Because that's about all I can complain about here. I was floored by the ridiculous video quality here. I can't recommend it as a gold standard for introducing people to Blu-ray necessarily because it doesn't have bright colors like Planet Earth, but I think the only Blu-ray I own now that looks better than it is Wall-E. Still, the transitions between dark scenes in this movie and those with color are quite smooth with all the colors looking very true to how they should be (the more vibrant they're supposed to be the more awesome they look on your TV). There are a lot of face close ups in this movie and the clarity in even these shots made me want to get up off my couch and just applaud the folks who did this transfer. If you are disappointed with the video quality of this disc, no matter how big or high-end your TV is, there may be something wrong with you (or your TV video settings). I don't have a high-end surround system so I don't want to pass judgement on sound, but it does sound great as far as I can tell. I can't complain about anything except for that maybe it's a bit soft in some places. Clarity is stellar, even in scenes where I was afraid I would be straining my ears to understand what they're saying.

There are so many special feature videos on the second disc that I couldn't get through all of them. What' truly remarkable is that each and every video you see on these discs is in high definition. I think the movie itself certainly looks better than the special features, but we're really talking about shades of gray here because they still look like you're watching an HD channel and whatever the aspect ratio is on them fits my widescreen TV perfectly (whereas the movie has black bars on top and bottom). There's actual more content here (in minutes) than the running time of the feature film, and this is one of those movies that actually has interesting backstories for how every aspect of the production process came about so they're pretty addictive if you have an afternoon/evening to spare going through them all. The deleted scenes are also more interesting than you normally find on a home video release, including the original opening sequence of Spock's birth. The only other features on this disc are a gag reel, all 3 trailers, and 3-d models of the Enterprise and Nero's vessels with details about specific parts of them. As a cherry on top, these features actually have subtitles (which, in my experience, is pretty rare). On the main disc, there's also commentary, which I didn't listen to a whole lot of it but I have to say that it was hard to stop watching once I did turn it on because it's very much like you're peering into the minds of the writers and producers in the format of a candid, relaxed conversation that doesn't feel forced or scripted at all. I don't usually listen to these, but I think I'll have to make an exception here.

Simply put, if you have a Blu-ray player and liked Star Trek at all, you're really doing a disservice to yourself by not picking this up. The studios are trying this crazy thing now where they price Blu-rays equivalent to DVDs instead of price-gouging, so $20 for this one is more than reasonable. They really didn't put this out there to set up for a double dip, or they're doing so with great stupidity because I can't think of what else you'd realistically want from a Blu-ray set for this movie in any sort of re-release. It's going to quickly become one of favorite Blu-rays, for sure.

More Chrome OS Details

It's been quite a few months now since Google Chrome OS was announced. It was a pretty no-frills announcement since they didn't have anything to show for it and very little to say. To keep interest up in the operating system, Google held an event going into more details about the look and feel of the OS, a few of the applications, and the security model. You can get a pretty brief summary of the event here. I don't know if they fully grasp the weight of what they're trying to do, but this event seemed to really hammer hard on simplicity regarding an idea that's really not that simple. Getting users to trust a computer that is wholly dependent on the cloud is a really hard sell, and I didn't see any remarks about what happens if you lose your connection to the Internet or how they're going to ensure the security, safety, and integrity (i.e. that it doesn't get corrupted) of your data. There was a lot of talk about how you configuration is remote so you don't lose it even when switching computers, but that doesn't explain what happens if they shut down their servers one day. I'll admit that the look and feel is pretty nice - for a netbook. It doesn't look to me like a viable OS still for anything but a netbook. Which is fine, but is that really going to be a strong market once this finally ships?

I don't want to be too discouraging of the idea of Chrome OS because it's ballsy and I like that. The security aspect of it is very bold in that it aims to not only have your computer run in a sandbox (since everything lives in the cloud, after all) but aims to do boot time verification of every system element, which is actually a concept that dates back all the way to the creation of the Java Virtual Machine (I'm sure it's older than that, it's just probably the first big implementation of it). It's a pretty good plan that relies on the idea that valid signatures for infected system components can't be forged, but it's too early to tell if Google is doing everything right here. Even with these two big protections, it probably won't be foolproof (it's still built on Linux, after all, which definitely has security flaws in every distribution), but it sounds like they're really taking security seriously.

Palm Pixi Released

It didn't receive a whole lot of press fanfare, as far as I could tell, but the Palm Pixi is now available on Sprint. I know they're a little biased, but Pre Central had an interesting enough review of the Pixi that I actually read the whole thing on my Pre at the airport last week. Their biggest complaints were that it felt a bit small and runs a bit slower than the Pre. I think it looks really attractive and I love webOS so I can't imagine that it's a bad phone for someone who's not a power smartphone user but wants a smartphone nonetheless.

While Sprint launched the Pixi, Verizon was busy launching more AT&T attack ads, which you've probably seen like a hundred times by now. AT&T is still in a legal battle with Verizon claiming that the ads misrepresent AT&T's network, but they don't since it's clearly specified as AT&T's 3G network rather than their entire data network, and the red map really is Verizon's 3G network - it's just that widespread.

And, off in a corner, Samsung launched a new mobile OS called Bada. It's cute that they still think they're a big player. They took too many gambles that didn't pay off and now they're often an afterthought when people shop for a new phone. Fortunately, Bada is an open platform and I have to give Samsung credit for at least trying something new instead of floundering with outdated phone UI designs. I wonder if they ever considered building Android phones?

Bing Captures More Market Share

Claims of Bing's market share being a fluke are now way past us as they sail into grabbing 10% of the search engine market share. It could be their marketing, it could be the quality of their results, or it could be the new features they keep rolling that keeps them in the news and, theoretically, in people's minds. The new feature last week was integrating Wolfram Alpha results. You have to click on a bar on the left side to get to some of this added stuff, but it is pretty neat.

Quickies

I have to pack for my trip home, so it's time to wrap things up here with some quick stories.

Google has invented its own programming language called Go. It doesn't seem all that exciting to me, but I'll probably come back to it when it's more mature and see if it's viable as a quick and dirty scripting language since it does run so quickly.

If you're interested in learning to program, Lifehacker has a surprisingly good guide. Knowing how to program is definitely only one facet to being a good software developer, but that article covers great ways to see if you have an interest in it that you may want to pursue with formal education or side projects.

SquareTrade pitted a bunch of laptop manufacturers against one another and found Asus and Toshiba at the top in reliability. I wasn't surprised about Asus since they've been a little-known excellent brand for a while now, but Toshiba has definitely come along.

If you want to know what not to ask in an interview, check out this story from some bad Google interviews. If you're still asking riddles in your job interviews then you need to hop in your time machine and go back to 2006 where those questions weren't considered useless.

The PS3 saw some interesting improvements this month including Facebook support and Netflix support.

If you've ever fallen for one of TechCrunch's crazy stories, you'll like this PC Mag editorial about Michael Arrington.

YouTube is adding auto captions for deaf views - goodonya Google!

Skype bought itself back from eBay.

Amazon Fresh is now more usable on the iPhone - grocery shop on your work commute so you can spend more time sleeping instead of shopping.

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Zombieland

Welcome to Zombieland

I've (thankfully) gotten some positive feedback for my movie reviews, so I'd like to continue doing that whenever I see movies on or before opening weekend, or when I get DVDs/Blu-rays on release week.

Zombieland is a zomedy/zom-com/whatever you want to call a zombie movie that's self-aware and makes fun of the genre actively. To be honest, the whole horror genre is predicated on movies that have fun scaring you and making you laugh at totally ridiculous situations, so a zombie comedy isn't really very far-fetched. It's also not very unique given the popularity of Shaun of the Dead. Fortunately, it's not like Scary Movie where it's actively making fun of a prototypical zombie movie but rather it derives humor from existing in a world where, without logical explanation, a zombie outbreak has spun out of control and virtually everyone except for our group of survivors are zombies. Aside from that, the plot just follows the main character (Columbus, Ohio, is his name - the characters don't use real names to avoid getting attached) as he tries to head home to find his family, which he's largely been estranged from. Needless to say, hilarity and misadventures ensue along the way.



I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. Shaun of the Dead was definitely good, but I didn't love it and didn't laugh as much as I thought I would. Conversely, Zombieland was full of situational humor and violence so ridiculous and gratuitous that it was hilarious. It had a very good visual style with superb special effects. I don't know if I've seen such detailed violence before. Part of the visual style is borrowed from Stranger Than Fiction (which I love more each time I see it and looks great just on DVD) where you have information presented to you in an augmented reality design. The main character has rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse that appear in the movie as if they're as 3-dimensional as the actors in the appropriate scenes and are just the cherry on top of already funny scenes.

I think the cast really works, overall. There's something seductive and sweet in a scary way about Emma Stone and it plays out perfectly here. Woody Harrelson really steals the show though and clearly has a lot of fun doing so. There's also a cameo so good that I'd urge you to not go to the iMDB page for the movie until after you've seen it. The cast is literally just 4 characters plus a cameo, and I found it really cool that they were able to do much with so few characters. There's no question that the plot has its issues and there are as many things that don't make sense as your average zombie movie, but you find yourself caring less about those as you have more and more fun with the movie. It has its scary parts, but they're few and far between and well-balanced with comedy, which I thought worked really well overall.

If you can stomach a few scares, this movie is well worth the price of admission. Try to see it with a group though (or with a date) - it's just one of those movies that work better when you're with other people. I give it a B+ just because I can't in good faith give a B movie and A score, but I definitely highly recommend it. It's probably the most worthwhile movie in theaters right now (unless your theater has Inglourious Basterds, which is one of the best of the year and everyone needs to see it).

Joel on Overengineering

Joel Spolsky put up an essay last week that was somewhat controversial called "The Duct Tape Programmer" as he was inspired by Coders at Work (which is on my wish list now). The essay is all over the place, but it makes a couple of points I really liked. It's important to design something well and stick to your design without being tempted with sexy new technologies. Over-engineering lurks around every corner so it's really important to stay practical. I hate that he advocates cutting unit tests in the interest of making a deadline because I hold firm to good QA being the bedrock of a successful project and I don't accept his statement that someone is just born into being a "duct tape programmer", but understanding that you're working on a project to ship a product rather than writing the most beautiful code in the world is really important. Just because you can make an optimization doesn't mean you should - it can over-complicate things and cause headaches later on. Getting the job done as minimally as possible the first time through is really a good habit to make - iteration is a good policy.

First Looks at Office Web Apps and Wave

The idea of Microsoft Office Web Apps should come as a surprise to no one - Google paved the way for online environments to do word processing and spreadsheets and the like. The technical preview is out there and PC World seemed impressed with it. It aims to seamlessly integrate the desktop experience with the cloud-based experience of web apps and sounds like it hits the mark even in this preview stage.



Meanwhile, Office sent out the first wave of invites for Google Wave. Lifehacker put up an article peeling back some of the mystery of what Wave is. Apparently, it allows you to send out "waves", which are rich documents that are easy to edit (WYSIWIG easy) and allow you to embed multimedia easily, but these waves allow for advanced collaborative functionality ideal for groups of people working together on something. Where it gets cool is the idea of widgets and robots. Widgets are little applications built on the platform that are interactive with a group of people, like a video game. Or you could send out a teleconferencing wave where the invitees put in their phone numbers and are subsequently added to the call. Robots are like bots you can add to your waves to modify them or do something with them, like blog them or plug in links automatically. I don't think Wave is useful in an enterprise situation just due to security concerns, but I can definitely see it being useful in people's personal lives. Like what if you're planning a getaway with your friends and want to organize what you're going to do online but you're all in different cities? Or what if you're just trying to catch up with friends some school and want to share information about one another in a place where everyone can be in on the conversation? I've found resistance from several of my friends in using Facebook, which makes planning events somewhat challenging since e-mail threads can get unruly and Evite is the same site as when it first launched, but I could definitely see Wave doing well here.

While I'm talking about Google: they added two new features to search. One addition is that it combs search results now and adds links within the results to key sections on a given result. The other feature is just a variation on this that specifically calls out what you were searching for if it detects it as a major section on the page. You could speculate that they're starting to feel the competition from Bing, but it's more likely just Google being Google.

Hot Stuff from Redmond

The temperature is dropping in Seattle just as it's starting to sizzle in Redmond! Ok, not really, but I thought it was funny that Mashable called some new footage on a tablet with a spine "hot". The new footage is pretty slick though. Courier is a rumored Microsoft touchscreen tablet that folds like a book. The video is almost certainly just a concept video rather than a demonstration of something that Microsoft actually has, but what I like about it is that it very much feels like if you were working with a digital spiral notebook that has access to everything on the Internet. Plus, it's a good use case for browsing magazines and newspapers. No one really knows if this is any more likely than the heavily rumored Apple tablet, but it's turning some heads so there may be more of a market for tablets than analysts think (or it could just be a lot of hype drummed up by tech journalists).

What is tangible is Microsoft Security Essentials, free anti-malware software from Microsoft. Ars Technica reviewed it and seemed quite impressed with it. They convinced me to try it out myself and I'm also pretty happy with it. It's very lightweight and easy-to-use while still providing a fair amount of customization for advanced users. I think it's cool that it has DSS, which is basically anomaly detection since it's not looking for the pattern of a specific virus or worm but rather just behavior that seems malicious.

Android and webOS Get New Releases

Android and webOS are tied for the second-highest customer satisfaction rate among smartphones (with iPhone taking the top spot), and both just got updates. The Android updates were pretty back-end including CDMA support, the introduction of WiMAX, better performance for the camera software, and universal search.

Meanwhile, webOS 1.2 is also an incremental improvement but has been long awaited from Pre users for features like copying images and text from the web and e-mail, LinkedIn support in synergy, a decent number of performance improvements that really shine, LED notification (opt-in), automatic backup to the cloud for browser data and pictures, and, perhaps most significantly, an app catalog that supports paid apps (but still has none). What really excited me about webOS 1.2 is that it's a number of things that Pre owners have been asking for and Palm has actually listened. I find that surprising and impressive. Having paid apps will definitely up the ante in the app catalog for the really good stuff. Also, Google Maps now has transit and walking directions, which is something I've wanted ever since I moved to Seattle so that's pretty awesome.

Somewhat controversially, a 1.2.1 update made available over the weekend fixes syncing with iTunes, which definitely puts a bee in the bonnet of the USB Implementors Forum since Palm broke a rule in restoring the syncing capability, but it looks like Palm is willing to take the risk to get the Pre syncing with iTunes. To be honest, I wish they'd just license doubleTwist instead of fighting with Apple - it's getting a little old now.

The Leftovers

It's past my bedtime and I'm on call so I need to turn in soon. Here's a quick rundown of what else happened last week.

PC Mag put up an impressively concise article about what you need to know about the new Intel Core i7 architecture and it definitely sounds pretty dead sexy. They're inexpensive, have an L3 cache, and add turbo boost? Sign me up.

I wanted to talk more to this, but Slate has a little editorial up about why the Netflix Prize was brilliant: they basically got a team of brilliant scientists to improve their recommendation algorithm for the bargain price of $1 million, which is much cheaper than hiring each of them individually for even a year.

Tech Radar has a good rundown of USB 3.0. Aside from being 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and supporting simultaneous read/write, it's more power efficient.

I was pretty blown away by a post on the Yahoo Developers' Blog about bandwidth. It explains the concept in a very easily understandable way and provides some great tips for improve page load times on your website.

MakeUseOf posted some tips for tweaking Internet performance on your Vista machine and, after trying a few myself, I have to admit that they actually work.

If you're bored and are looking to just surf the web, start here.

Fox put up a Dollhouse application that I think is super cool because it creates an augmented reality using your webcam where you can interact with Echo virtually (not in a dirty way!).

The "Did You Know" meme that spread like wildfire a while ago now has a fourth update on YouTube.

Enjoy your week, everyone!

Inglourious Basterds

I'm really sorry that I'm so behind on posting. To sum it up, my life has been insanely busy. Aside from having to meet a tight deadline at work on Monday, I'm on call now and have had a cousin in from out of town so blogging has fallen as a priority. I haven't even practiced guitar in several days, and I got Batman: Arkham Asylum just sitting on my couch, begging me to play it (the little I played from the demo was pretty incredible, by the way). I should be back to normal next week as things will calm down by then. I just wanted to put together a quick post for now with my review of Inglorious Basterds.


The Basterds

Quentin Tarantino is, without question, my favorite director of all time. Aside from being a total movie geek, what I love about him is his intense passion to make great films no matter how long it takes. He's a perfectionist. Each one of his films are full-blown experiences. It's incredible to consider that his worst movies are probably Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof, even though they're almost instant genre classics. He spent over a decade writing Inglourious Basterds and I've been waiting for it ever since I saw Kill Bill (Vol. 2). As you can imagine, my hopes were high and I had a lot of expectations walking into the theater (which I barely made it into since Cinebarre doesn't understand what it means when you buy tickets in advance), but I'm glad that I didn't seek out leaked information or read the script before watching the movie. In fact, you should try to shield yourself from spoilers as much as possible, as well.

So how did it stack up? It's almost certainly the best movie to come out so far this year. On one hand, it wasn't quite what I expected at all from the trailer and hearing comparisons to The Dirty Dozen. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that he wrote enough scripts to create 3 films, but it's not a World War II movie, an action film, or a dirty dozen homage. It's actually a very dialogue-heavy, cerebral spaghetti western that takes place during World War II and happens to have some very trademark Tarantino action scenes. All I can really tell you about the plot is that it's about a group of Jewish-American soldiers deep behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany who have a goal of killing as many Nazis as possible and giving the Nazis something to be afraid of.

What I find really striking about this film, compared to all his movies since Reservoir Dogs, is that it's really slow-paced and yet it flies by. My friends were shocked when we walked out of the theaters more than 2 and half hours after the show started (including trailers). It's a movie characterized by a few long scenes focusing on very important dialogue. There are some random flashback sequences and moments of brutal violence, but there really aren't a lot of scene changes when you add it all up. As I was watching the movie, I was trying to remain skeptical and didn't feel that the dialogue was as quotable as it was in Pulp Fiction (which I hold is his masterpiece, even though I like Kill Bill the most), but I was wrong. There were a number of lines that stuck with me (some of which are in the trailers) that I say to myself every so often now. Each word almost feels like it's carefully crafted. My only criticism is that I felt on at least one occasion that the switch from using a foreign language to using English was a bit contrived, much like it was in Oren Ishi-i's speech to the Council. It's hard to complain though because I still loved those scenes in spit of that.

Another striking quality, although this isn't really a huge surprise coming from Tarantino, is his attention to detail. This movie just bleeds details that you can't begin to appreciate on your first viewing. I really hope his costume designer is at least nominated for an academy award because they did a wonderful job of totally nailing the atmosphere and the time period. The sets were well put-together, as well. It's so perfect that I was a little sad to learn that German viewers had to watch a version with some Nazi iconography redacted due to federal law.


I don't think I have enough words to praise the acting in this film. I think sometimes Brad Pitt is underrated because he's such a mainstream actor, but this may be his best role yet. No one could've been a better Aldo Raine than him. What's crazy is that he's not actually the star of the show - Christoph Waltz is as Hans Landa. He definitely needs an Academy Award for the tension that he sends down the spines of the audience. I didn't know who Cristoph Waltz was before seeing this movie, but I don't think I'll ever forget him as Landa whenever I see him in the future. I also have to give props to Mélanie Laurent as Shoshanna. Her emotions jumped off the screen and it was a really memorable performance. No one did badly, to be honest. The casting was perfect (as usual, for Tarantino), to put it simply.

One more thing to note is that this movie had scenes in it that were very visually powerful. There were several shots in this movie that I think would look great as a still shot framed and hung somewhere. That's partially a tribute to the cinematographer, but obviously a lot of people are involved in making scenes like that. There's one image towards the end of the film that's so powerful that it comes to my mind every day now and has just stuck with me.

I can't possible end this review without citing the fact that the tense scenes in this movie were so nerve-wracking that it was palpable. I've never been so afraid or anxious in a movie that wasn't in a horror genre before. Even though I felt a couple of times that he was being cheap in using music to build these moments, I appreciated how difficult they are to construct and didn't feel like they were being artificially dragged on but were just organic pieces of the film.

I don't know how to criticize this movie, I honestly don't. There's a reason why it has the second highest grossing
second-half of August opening and the best opening weekend for any Tarantino film. I can say that it did start out slow, and if you're not willing to stick with it you may be inclined to even walk out earlier, but it's imperative that you stay through the end. Some scenes definitely could've been a little shorter, and some of the violence could've stood to be a little less graphic (and stomach twisting), but I don't feel like these were major drawbacks by any means. The humor in this movie was consistently fun and refreshing, and the provocative scenes were just as fun to watch unravel as your favorite scenes were in Pulp Fiction. If you're not squeamish, I cannot recommend this movie higher. I can see some people not appreciate how geeky some parts of this movie are, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find a movie this year with a better script or better acting. If you see it for nothing else please see it for those two things. I give this movie an A+, and I'm already dying to get my hands on it on Blu-ray (though I know that won't be until next year).