I was looking forward to seeing Cloverfield for a while now. So, of course we went to see it opening night.

My summary for this movie is that the concept was great, the effects were awesome, but the movie stumbled at points because of bursts of horrible writing. Basically, we get to see a Godzilla movie but from the perspective of a video camera carried by a 20-something and his friends trying to rescue someone trapped in the city. The movie starts of slowly, almost lulling you into boredom when, Wham!, the action starts with only a few pauses. The perspective is awesome, and the film really captures the chaos and terror of being on the ground if something like that were to happen. The details are awesome, too. Of course folks, early on during something like this, would probably stand around trying to capture pics on their cell phone cameras. I loved the perspective and the taste of what it would be like if you were there for a monster attack.

The film had two recurring writing problems. First, the characters weren’t very sympathetic. You weren’t rooting for them in any way. The film works simply by making you a witness of the event, but it would’ve been better if I wasn’t impartial to the main characters. This was a relatively minor problem.

My bigger problem with the writing was some laziness in the details. Characters, when they need to be, are gravely injured (for example, impaled on rebar), but then can run carrying someone else 20 minutes later. There were a few of these moments in the movie that jarred me out of suspending disbelief. Again, not what you want in a monster movie.

I still loved the concept, though, and recommend seeing it. This is one to see in the theater if you love monster movies or pulp science fiction. It’s definitely a rental otherwise. The concept is unique (Heidi mildly disagrees) and that alone makes it worth seeing.

Speaking of end of year giving (give via Kiva.org!), another organization I give to every year is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I mention this because the entertainment setup I describe below is one that the movie industry would like to outlaw directly and have, with current laws and lobbying, managed to indirectly make very difficult. The EFF fights these laws that are both anti-free-market and anti-consumer (a more common combination than you might think).

In fact, the setup I describe below is really only possible with a little bit of labor and using DVDs as opposed to HD-DVDs or BluRay sources. The movie industry tries to “protect” their movies and music with a technology broadly called DRM, which makes it impossible to view the movies you buy in the ways you want to. New DRM technology is why I’ve sworn off buying HD media. To make this clearer, let’s walk through my new setup.

Here’s what my goal is with the new setup. I want to be able to use my computer as a digital video jukebox with my TV. Basically, I’d like to end up with my movies on my computer so that I don’t need to keep the DVDs in the same room as the TV. This way, I can also copy the movies to my laptop when I travel (again, no discs to break or carry), or put them on my iPhone just in case I’m stuck somewhere.

The first part of getting this working is to get the movies onto my computer. Because of the DRM the studios use, this is more difficult than it ought to be. I’ve written up how I do this on the Mac in an older post, so if you need help, check that out. Please note that I’ve since changed my process a bit, though it involves some commercial software. Specifically, I’ve switched to using a great piece of software called VisualHub. It has presets for every device, including Apple TV, iPhone, PSPs, etc. So, everything from Step 6 onward has been replaced with the simple, “fire up VisualHub, select your device and quality and hit GO.” I typically use the Apple TV settings, with H.264 checked and High quality. I let iTunes cut an iPhone specific version as well when I need one.

Now that I have a version on my computer, I need to get it on the TV. Since I own an Xbox 360, this turned out to be pretty easy. The XBox can connect to a Windows PC and stream videos, photos, and music to the XBox and out to the TV and receiver you have it connected to. It’s not just for playing video games, after all. I assume that the PS3 allows similar functionality, but I don’t own one to try it out.

Now, I don’t own a Windows PC, since I’m a Mac/Unix person and only have Macs in the house. That would be a problem except for a nice little program called Connect 360 made by the fine folks at nullriver. They have a free demo so I downloaded it and fired it up. Within seconds, I was able to fire up the XBox, navigate over to the Media tab in the Dashboard, select Movies and I was thumbing through the films on my laptop on the big screen. These movies are at DVD quality, which is roughly 480p for the HD enthusiasts here. Sure, it’s not as pretty as an HD source, but the XBox does a good job upconverting to 1080p.

I wanted to see if the software and network could keep up with a 1080p video without trouble so I borrowed a 1080p rip of Transformers from a friend because I don’t know how to convert an HD-DVD yet. I’ve streamed that using the above setup with great results. The video is gorgeous and I could still surf the Internet off the same computer. Not a bad setup.

Of course, if the movie industry had their way, I wouldn’t be able to do what I did. Technically, the DRM on the DVDs should prevent me from doing what I did. Because, however, it has been broken by numerous hackers over the years, it merely represents an inconvenience in this process. You could argue that I could easily just buy my movies off of a service like iTunes or Amazon Unbox but that still presents the DRM dilemma.

For example, in my setup, I have devices from 3 different manufacturers and several different movie studios. Microsoft makes the XBox 360 and Apple makes my Mac and OS X and Sony makes my PSP (which I’ve stopped using for video in favor of the iPhone). If I chose iTunes, I would need to buy an Apple TV in order to watch the video on my big TV. In fact, the movies I’ve bought from iTunes don’t work in the setup I’ve described because the XBox doesn’t understand Apple’s DRM. Amazon doesn’t support Macs or my iPhone (yet), so that’s a non-starter as well. The only way to do this is with a DRM-free copy of the movies.

Which brings me to the title of this post. There are two ways to get DRM free copies of your favorite movies. The first is to do what I’ve done, buy DVDs and go through the trouble of stripping the DRM off and encoding them for your computer. It’s a lot of work (takes about 4 hours per DVD on a MacBook Pro).

The other option is to download these movies via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network or BitTorrent or whatever. This is technically both against the law (for the person making the video available) and opens one up to civil lawsuits from the movie studios.

Think about that for a second: To use the devices I own in a way that they all enable, the convenient choice is to download the movies for free. All I want to do is use the hardware I already own with movies I’ve paid for and my choices are to circumvent the DRM on the DVDs or to download them from the Internet.

It’s ridiculous, and really shows the idiocy of the current copyright fight between the studios and their customers. There’s a future here for a nice little video jukebox device with a couple of USB ports for devices like the iPhone or iPod that serves as a nice hub for all your media. My Mac is almost perfect, in fact, but imagine a little $200 device. Believe it or not, they exist already, and the only reason they’re not more popular is because of stupid DRM battles from the studios that do nothing to stop piracy anyway.

Anyway, I’m considering moving my old iMac downstairs so that it’s attached via the wired network to the XBox 360. Leave all the videos on an attached terabyte external drive and I’ll have my video collection available whenever I want.

Also, consider this an thumbs up for Connect 360. The software has made all the videos and music available on my XBox and offers some nice other features that I’ve yet to take advantage of. The software retails for $20 and is worth it if you plan on making use of a setup like this. Enjoy!

Update: PS. HD Podcasts that I download via iTunes look GREAT. No DRM on those, and they look great on the TV. I can recommend the Political Lunch as one to start with. It’s a good rundown of the day’s political news. Good stuff.

Just a random note: Someone at work just put on The Ringer on our big TV. It’s an awful movie, but there’s a scene where the guys are all dancing in a sauna. The music used during that scene also appears in Moonraker, as Bond rides the horse into the monastery/MI6 research base. I’ve heard it enough that I knew it had to be from some other work, probably a soundtrack but maybe a classical piece I just didn’t know. Turns out, I was right. The music used in both scenes is the theme from The Magnificent Seven by Elmer Bernstein.

Further proving that everything worth knowing is on the Internet, Wikipedia’s entry for The Magnificent Seven contains a section about the score which mentions both The Ringer and Moonraker.

Walking out of Transformers last night, I couldn’t decide what to say about it. The movie was a lot of fun, and the last few sections of the movie were just filled with amazing action/CG sequences, but at the same time I felt a bit underwhelmed. Bottom line: the movie is just so-so, but the experience of seeing it on the big screen outweighs the story. Definitely worth seeing, just don’t expect much from the story.

Honestly, that almost seems like a perfect summary of all Michael Bay movies. All of his movies have had horrible writing. The Rock is probably the best story among all of them, and even that movie had it’s boring/awkward moments. There are simply some awful moments in this film with the dialog.

Of course, that’s not why you’re going to see Transformers. For those of you looking for a connection with your youth, I hate to say that the new incarnation of the characters are just not even close to the original cartoons. That’s not to say that they’re not fun, but they’re a bit… wooden, if you can call 40 foot CG metal robots wooden.

For those of you looking for a great special effects movie, you’ll be happy. The final 30 minutes is pretty much the best CG/live action sequence I’ve ever seen. The live actors blend in almost perfectly with the CG characters. There was only one moment where the CG/live illusion was broken, and that was about 10 seconds. A lot of scenes look like they were written in just to provide visually cool ways of incorporating the robots into live sequences. So, the dialog sucks, the acting is good, but this is why this movie is worth seeing. You will not see another movie this summer where the computer generated characters blend in so well.

This is a milestone film for computer generated effects, and that’s why you should see this movie.

This is a cross-post which can also be found at The Connecticutian.

While I wanted to see Sicko on opening night, we went to see Ratatouille instead. So tonight, we finally went to see Sicko, even though I pledged on MoveOn.Org that I would see it Saturday evening — Sorry, MoveOn. My first reaction when I left the theater was — I really want to feel empowered and inspired, yet I feel a sense of despair and powerlessness. It seems the lobbies in this country are magnanimously strong. But I’d like to try to get beyond an initial feeling of powerlessness.

Ironically — or not ironically, I suppose — the movie was not playing at one of the major cinemas in our area. We saw Fahrenheit 911 at the cinema in Plainville, and I was going to get tickets to see Sicko there on Friday afternoon, yet it was only playing at one of the Hartford “arts” cinemas (and a mall cinema that is fairly far from us). I was surprised it wasn’t at Plainville, and Sujal told me his theory that it might have something to do with the fact that Hartford is the insurance capital. Makes sense…

Take the time to look at Michael Moore’s website, as it has lots of info and resources.

Here’s an interesting YouTube link in which Moore responds to potential attacks on 911 rescue workers.

Finally, at the end of the film, it lists this site, Hook-A-Canuck, a dating site for Americans to find a Canadian mate so the American can get free healthcare — though it is not serious, of course.

I truly hope this does open a national healthcare debate and movement. It is high time!

Go See It Now! Right now. If you hurry, you can still make the 10:something showing. This is easily one of the best Pixar movies in recent history. Though they haven’t really made one I don’t like, Cars and The Incredibles weren’t up to the same level as Monsters Inc or the Toy Story films. Ratatouille is one of the best Pixar films, period.

The impressive thing about this one is that unlike the last few films, this movie requires a heavy suspension of disbelief. Compared to say, Monster’s Inc, which exists in a complete fantasy world, Ratatouille is based in a more realistic world where some completely unbelievable things happen. High up on that list are that Remy, our protagonist rat, can understand English (French?) and can control his human friend by tugging on particular clumps of his hair. When we’re first introduced to the concept in the film, I couldn’t help but think of it as absurd. Normally, that’s where a film would lose me, when suspension of disbelief is broken. That didn’t happen this time because the story immediately became about the characters.

Ultimately, that’s why this movie is so awesome. The story is funny and entertaining and rich. Everything else is forgivable when you have that. There were entire stretches of the film where Heidi and I couldn’t stop snickering, giggling, and laughing along with the film. Most importantly, the movie ends on a really strong note with an awesome little twist that just makes the film.

As with all the movies I really love, I’ll leave you with a few other reviews. As always, my favorite comes from Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek, who calls the film “pure joy, a grand achievement — one of the most beautiful animated pictures ever made.” Rotten Tomatoes has this film at an almost unbelievable 95%. (Cars was a 76%, though The Incredibles hit 97%(!)).

Go see this, you’ll enjoy it!

I got another rich ad from Google Adsense on FatMixx. These are clearly widgets, not just plain old rich ads.

Why is it a widget? Because you can embed it. Check the “Share” tab out:

In fact, I’ll embed it here:

Hopefully that works. That’s a great advertising model.

Update: Hmmm, the embed tag doesn’t work… wtf? I’ve checked the code again and I don’t think I embedded it incorrectly… anyone have any ideas?

Update 2: I see what might be wrong. Should be fixed in a sec.

Update 3: OK, so Wordpress bit me in the butt again… this time, the dynamic_replaces in the wptexturize function replaces the x in 300×250 (see the different x?). That value was in the URL, so that broke the URL and kept the embed from working. I hate these fancy replaces WordPress has, and may finally just give up and turn it off. I do like the extra typographical flourishes, though… Just wish it would detect whether it was in an HTML element or attribute or script block. I fixed this by replacing the x in the URL with %78, the urlencoded value for a lowercase x in utf-8.

A quick review because I promised Josh I would write one. If you liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you’ll probably enjoy Knocked Up. It’s pretty much the same cast with the same style of writing with the same uneven pace throughout. There are great laughs in the film but the film relied too much on a couple of jokes. Too many pot jokes for my taste. I didn’t like it as much as Virgin, to be honest. The biggest problem is that Seth Rogen’s character’s transformation took too long. They make it to week 24 before he realizes she doesn’t like the fact that he’s broke, smokes a ton of pot, and is a bit, uh, vulgar in public. And then, in the last 12 weeks, he suddenly realizes what’s wrong and changes everything about his life. It’s forgivable, because his being normal kind of ruins the foundation of most of the humor.

So, go see it if you liked Virgin. You could wait until it comes out on DVD, though, because it didn’t seem to benefit from the crowd much at all.

I just finished watching V for Vendetta on HD-DVD. I read the graphic novel a while ago, right around when the movie came out and enjoyed it. The political overtones and the almost surreal storyline make for a great graphic novel. Clearly influenced by 1980’s British (and American) politics, the book sets up an interesting world in a post-nuclear holocaust Britain that succumbs to fascism. That world was set in the near future then, which I guess would be right now. The story and the society in the novel have some eerie parallels in our modern world. It’s not hard to pull some symbolism out of the novel to our modern world shaped by terrorism.

Unfortunately, the movie takes this idea and kicks it way, way over the top. In general, I’m sympathetic to the idea that societies must be vigilant against those that would offer safety in conformity. The government’s motto in the novel/movie is “Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith”), and I definitely bristle at that. Unfortunately, the film takes the novel, introduces the vocabulary of our modern battle with terrorism, and bludgeons the viewer over the head several times during the movie. It’s almost as if they took a smart novel and tried to dumb it down so that everyone would get the point. It’s especially bad as the style of V for Vendetta is over the top. V, the protagonist, is over-the-top, a theatrical person who speaks in monologues to explain his purpose to a populace that has forgotten it’s own purpose in society. He isn’t written subtly.

Thankfully these moments are relatively few and, assuming you like stylized novels/films like Sin City, the movie ends up being pretty good. A lot of things are different in the film, so if you’ve read the novel, be prepared to reacquaint yourself with a number of the minor characters. The “Fate” computer is gone, as is the entire development of the Chancellor’s character.

The soundtrack to the film is solid, by the way. The closing credits feature a song by Ethan Stoller called BKAB. The version used in the movie had clips of Malcolm X and Gloria Steinem speeches playing over BKAB’s Bollywood influenced beats and samples. Cool piece, especially since I’m a fan of artists that fuse Indian and Western beats/music. Karsh Kale, Cornershop, Nitin Sawhney, etc. are all interesting artists if you’re into that. BKAB is only available from the artist directly, FYI. I also can’t find a version with the speeches overlay. It’s not on the soundtrack and the artist’s web site says that he’s still working on getting rights to those recordings so he can remix the track with them in there. Interestingly enough, the name of the song comes from a Malcolm X speech. Check out the artist’s site for an explanation.

I’ve seen The Notebook, Wedding Crashers, and The Family Stone and through those films, I’ve become a fan of Rachel McAdams. Now, I’m watching Mean Girls and I’m floored that this is the same Rachel McAdams. She’s a pretty good actress, but it’s hard to believe she’s the evil blonde in Mean Girls. All four characters are pretty different and she’s been believable in all of them.

I’m not sure I’ve posted about this, but Heidi and I just got the DVD last week and just watched it again. It is such a good movie. It’s actually way better than I remembered, in part because it’s such an unassuming movie. It’s such a light plot that it doesn’t interfere with watching the characters evolve. Zach Braff and Natalie Portman are amazing in this movie. The soundtrack is phenomenal.

Zach Braff directed and wrote the screenplay, so this is really a movie about his life. The commentary for the DVD was worth listening to for the random trivia of the film. His high school is in the film and a lot of little details were actual experiences or things from his life. Of course, a lot of it is just random stuff only a guy like him would make up, but then again, that’s what makes the movie rock. If you haven’t seen this, rent it, buy it, or see it. It’s a great movie.

This has to go in the bizarre but apparently true column. An independent filmmaker is making a film about Ryan Leaf. Why? I don’t actually know. Will I watch it? Let’s just say I hope to never see it even on accident flipping through the channels. It might even be more unbelievable in HD.

Here’s the trailer:

I can’t even tell if it’s an elaborate joke or just bad production values…

I was watching something the other day, and I can’t remember what network it was or when, even, but I caught the tail end of this documentary which basically followed two Western men who were allowed to go to North Korea and film a documentary. Because it was officially sanctioned, they were taken to see the sights by “approved” guides, in approved cars, through approved streets. The surreal quality of the guides and people they interacted with was overwhelming. I caught this by accident and ended up watching the rest of it.

I didn’t catch the name, but some Googling tonight turned up this link which makes me think that I saw Welcome to North Korea. This was brilliant and highly recommended.

If you have an hour to spare, you can download the movie at the link above or here. You won’t be disappointed.

Before I say anything else, watch this:

So, what did you think of the ad?

Well, NBC has refused to air it because it deals with “public controversy.” Weinstein plans to take legal action, though I’m not sure how or on what grounds. We’ll have to see if that ends up materializing.

We ended up in a rather long and heated discussion at work about the controversy that prompted the movie. You might remember in 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines said to a crowd in London, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” The overreaction from holier-than-thou country music fans was swift and harsh.

Cumulus Broadcasting pulled their music across the network, and Clear Channel stations organized protests where people were encouraged to stomp on, burn, or destroy Dixie Chicks CDs and memorabilia. It was pretty ugly stuff.

It was this participation by the larger media companies that prompted our discussion. Specifically, we debated whether anyone should be upset by the actions taken by NBC or by the radio stations in 2003. After all, the radio stations and these networks are simply making profit decisions. If the decision isn’t the one that will make them the most money (or it angers customers directly), the market will let the stations and networks know by taking their money elsewhere.

Second, is there anything wrong with the radio stations simply doing whatever they think makes the most business sense for them? If they want to avoid upsetting the administration because it makes business easier, then so be it. They have that right, as they have the right to do what they want with their own stations.

Those that know me will know that while I appreciate the sentiment in those thoughts, I couldn’t disagree more. The idea that markets are self-correcting is fine, but markets often don’t consider externalities until the cost of dealing with them is acute. To look back at 2002 and 2003, market-driven media brought us the poor journalism surrounding the lead up to the Iraq War. Very little media sought to anger or alienate a President riding a big popularity surge. It is also cheaper to simply report what the government says rather than doing actual investigation.

Beyond that, however, people can and should make moral judgments about why these companies chose to pull the music or reject the ad for the movie. This is not to say that laws should be created to compel these networks to air songs or commercials they don’t want to. Instead, the public has a right and obligation to inform the company of their displeasure and to either convince the network to make the “better” decision or to help change circumstances so that the “better” decision is the natural choice for the networks.

For example, in the case of this commercial, if NBC was standing up for some principle or for a real business case where their customers (advertisers) would really take their money elsewhere, that would be unfortunate but morally neutral in my opinion. Companies try to make money and listening to the people that give them money is a natural thing. It’s a mantra of business, after all.

On the other hand, there are situations like this:

The studio provided media outlets copies of “clearance” reports from NBC’s standards and practices department bearing handwritten notations stating the ads were deemed unacceptable because “they are disparaging of President Bush.“

To me, that represents a different choice, not one born of business or customer needs, but by fear of retribution or by political considerations outside of this particular transaction. In either case, that is a failure of a free press and NBC should be criticized for this. I’m sure that the market might end up costing NBC something, but the reality is that the market will reward the Dixie Chicks and NBC will see no lasting impact. They will sell their inventory to someone else, and they’ll hardly look back at this.

The background upon which this entire story is unfolding also has to play a part in our judgment of what NBC is doing. There have been numerous examples of our media protecting the administration and Republicans. The bias is undeniable and is unprecedented in our modern history. Imagine if President Clinton were protected and coddled by the media as much as President Bush?

That alone isn’t reason to criticize NBC, but it is reason to be concerned that more is going on here than a simple business decision. It would be great to see some actual reporting on this. Unfortunately, if there is something that the media is bad at, it’s self-examination. Without critical journalism, we’re relegated to having public outrage drive the day. In fact, without concerned citizens asking the next level of questions, where would we be?

Glenn Greenwald has more on the issue, including other pointers on Bush administration voodoo over the media.

Click through if you want to see the full trailer.
(Click here to read the rest of this post)

The next Bond flick, Casino Royale, comes out November 17th. It looks like this movie will be close to the book which happens to be the the first Bond book Ian Fleming ever wrote. We’ll see how close to the books this movie is. Already from the trailer, I see that they’ve changed the casino game from Baccarat to Texas Hold ‘Em, but I guess you roll with the times (and the marketing tie ins?).