Suddenly got into the mood of changing some stuff here. Let’s see:
I’ve wasted time enough! Back to pleasure…
From oldest to most recent:
Transformers: The Movie. As an entertaining movie, it delivers (this I attribute it to the prevalent humor). But, as a Transformers movie… well, it’s not that great. The plot is… er let’s not talk about the plot – it is a Michael Bay film after all. It is dubbed an action movie, but to me it is just one with lots of loud explosions. Action sequences are barely comprehensible, devoid of any memorable amount of suspense. Just imagine if Spielberg directed the movie instead of merely producing it!
Part of mentioned shortcoming is due to the way the robots were designed: while very sleek-modern cool, they are just visually too complicated. The Tranformers were once toys that could actually be converted into robots from otherwise normal vehicles. In the movie, the way these machines transform does not anymore resemble what the toys (and the cartoons) used to do, each robot barely looking distinct enough to be recognized from another. These are not the Transformers I used to play with, therefore they do not register any sense of nostalgia or novelty – two things that movies like this should have lots of in order to work.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This is the best Harry Potter movie ever! Well, at least in terms of plot. (I am still part film snob and so adores Alfonso Cuaron’s take of Prisoner of Azkhaban very much.) The other Potter films feel more like episodes in a TV series, contributing only very small amounts to the entire Harry Potter saga. Order of the Phoenix, though, is A LOT of story. It is also much, much darker than the previous installments, and every turn of events have an urgency and sense of doom in it. There is no time for slacking around here. The director, David Yates, did not match Cuaron’s creativity, but he does more than enough telling this story. The movie builds up into a spectacular climax, fueling my expectations for the next one, because I saw a glimpse of how – and indeed the only real way – wars between magicians are fought.
(NOTE: I have not read any Harry Potter books except the first, so these thoughts are based only upon seeing the films.)
Ratatouille. The most amazing thing about Pixar is, it seems to grow up as if it were an actual human being. While primarily intended for kids, Pixar movies are equally as fun for adults (sorry, I am counting Cars out!). But in Ratatouille the tables have somehow turned: it is now more for the adults, while still keeping the young ones happy. It is like, the (then) kids who loved Toy Story when it first came out are the same bunch of people Pixar wanted to please most of all. There is a sense of “parenthood” going on in Pixar’s part, and I guess for a studio that makes family films, that is the best thing that can be said about it.
The maturity that is now found in Ratatouille is expected, come to think of it. Finding Nemo was the point when the movie starts to address its message to the parent, not the child. From then on, the content kept improving, only skipping a beat in the “meh” feature Cars. One thing though – I can barely explain it, but Ratatouille has something that previous Pixar movies did not have. Restraint, maybe? The movie feels very confident of itself, and placing its trust in the story and its characters, succeeding splendidly. And the details – I do not just mean the technical quality of the animation (which, hands down, is the best that it has ever been), but of the elements put into the frames, those subtle “extras” that give that special “vibe”. I dare say there is a hint of Japanese, Hayao Miyazaki-style animation persistent throughout. (Not to undermine the American Pixar, they are great in their own way just as the Japanese Ghibli are in theirs.)
As I told a friend, “always trust the filmmaker.” Brad Bird is no novice, having also written and directed The Incredibles. He has done good then, and he has done even better now. And um, do I still need to say that I find Ratatouille the best Pixar movie yet?
The Simpsons Movie. I have followed every The Simpsons episodes until around season 7, and still watch what I could since then, so I can claim to be somewhat of a Simpsons fan at this point. That said, the Simpsons movie is, well, mostly one big Simpsons episode. It being a movie was taken advantage of, showing us stuff that would not pass television censors, but overall, the humor, the story, etc. is still… very Simpsonian. Which is both good and bad for a Simpsons fan. Bad, because the plots and subplots (and even some of the jokes) sound familiar, but at the same time it takes us back to those yester-years, the “golden age” of the series (the good). That same familiarity makes the movie very fun, but offered nothing really new. Homer said it best, at the beginning of the movie as he points to the audience: we are suckers for paying to see a show we can watch for free every week!
And speaking of that opening, one should see the movie even only for its first twenty minutes – pure brilliance. It is the part that I found most fresh, and most self-parodying (er, of the series). After that it is “we now resume to your regular programming” – but still as good as the best episodes.
Early this week, I finished up ALL songs in Guitar Hero II. This is to make way for the newly-released Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s. Me and the girlfriend tried a couple of songs last night. While some of the first few default songs are only vaguely familiar (and a bit boring, at least as first impression), the ones unlocked along Campaign Mode, especially onto the third set of songs, really start to get interesting. Not to mention bringing out that 80s nostalgic feel. (I look forward to playing “Turning Japanese”). I see that I will be playing these a lot.
And as if I did not already spend countless hours playing Guitar Hero II. Two give you an idea, I have two guitar controllers, and one of them already has an almost-busted tremolo bar. Putting it another way, if I spent all those hours practicing with a real guitar, well, I think I could have been able to play bebop jazz confidently by now.
But hey, misspending otherwise productive hours occur all the time. Guitar playing video games are some of the most fun games ever, so it’s not all a waste. Plus they improve hand/eye coordination and reflexes (I think).
Behold! My Guitar Hero II scores in Hard difficulty. I am currenly ranked 319th overall, which I guess is good enough, competing with thousands of Guitar Hero freaks around the world.
Just upgraded to Flickr Pro earlier. Unlimited pictures of unlimited sizes, for eternal archiving! That should lessen the burden for my storage needs. Although, downsized versions of full-res images in Flickr aren’t as sharp as my resizing method, which is 1) using the Lanczos filter to downsize, then 2) unsharp mask by 0.2-0.3px at around 50%. What to do, what to do..
(FOOTNOTE: I learned that great bit of resizing advice from this article.)
Last weekend, I have successfully changed my filesystem to – I wouldn’t have guessed it – Reiser4! Seems stable enough so far, and feels quicker too. Plus there’s the great feeling you get after the triumphant FS change and kernel reconfig/compile. Once again, just like 5-6 years ago when I used to be working fulltime on Linux, I have customized my own kernel (well, semi-customized).
I have also learned so much stuff about the Ubuntu architecture in the process. I would say, as a customizable suite with tools developed to make it as easy as possible (e.g. make-kpkg is godsend! I should have used Debian from the get-go) and best drivers support, nothing beats Ubuntu. (For the record, I’m using an Ubuntu variant, Xubuntu.)
Some notes to self when customizing kernels from the Ubuntu kernel-source on my laptop (HP DV6000t):
My current project is building a kernel for music production. For improved latency I will need most importantly the realtime-preempt kernel patch by Ingo Molnar that is modified for Ubuntu kernels. So far I could not find this, so I am now experimenting with the realtime-lsm module (which is available) and with setting the system timer to 1000MHz from the default 250MHz. First objective: get my MIDI/USB keyboard to work with Rosegarden with minimum lag.
Yes, I have decided to go all-out open source for music. So long, Windows! (Except for my precious games ;D)