You Know What Part » movies

A Few Steps Closer to Blu-Ray and Netflix

ryan — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:37:55 +0000

We have yet to make the leap to Blu-Ray. Frankly, I haven’t seen the point yet. Yes, I’d love to see what the quality would be on our TV, but I’m not willing to shell out $300+ for a new player and then $30-60 for movies that I likely already have. We did buy an up-convert DVD player when we got the TV and, so far, movies have looked pretty damned good.

But, today was yet another step closer to our purchase of a Blu-Ray player with the announcement of Samsung adding Netflix streaming capability to a new model of their Blu-Ray players. We’ve been using the Blockbuster service for a while now. It started at Blockbuster because we could exchange mailed movies at the store for in-store movies, and we got a coupon every month for a free game rental. It was a sweet deal until Blockbuster jacked up the price. We downgraded, still getting movies via mail, but no in-store exhange and no monthly game rental.

To be honest, the only reason we didn’t switch was a) the price at Netflix at the time was the same and b) we had hundreds of movies queued up and were too lazy to re-do all that work on Netflix. (Hint to Netflix: find a way to import my Blockbuster queue and you might have a deal.)

Of course, in the long run, this announcement may not push us over the purchasing edge at all; the Xbox announcement in July hasn’t because of the Xbox Gold requirement (seriously? I have to pay to watch content I already paid for once? Lame.) But, if I own the player and there’s no fee to watch the movies I’ve already paid Netflix to see, that’s a pretty tempting deal.

Wonder if these will be out by the time tax season rolls around…

Blu-ray players hooking up with Netflix

Ghostbusters Remake?

ryan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:44:26 +0000

As if the JC Penny’s ad featuing the total composting of The Breakfast Club wasn’t enough for you, the newest rumor has it that Judd Apatow and crew (Seth Rogen, etc..) might remake Ghostbusters.

Can an actual remake of The Breakfast Club be far behind? Come on John Hughes, give Uwe Boll and call!

One Function Review of the New Indiana Jones movie.

ryan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:04:05 +0000

(with apologies to anyone who actually can code)

function toViewOrNotToView (seeFilmInTheatre) {

int fanboi = 0;
int literalism = 1;
int alteredState = 0;
int mentalAcuity = 1;

//note, we can’t let mentalAcuity dip below 1 to operate machinery safely

if (fanboi == 1 && alteredState ==1) {
return 1;
fanboi–;
mentalAcuity–;

}

elseif (fanboi ==0 && alteredState == 1) {
return 1;
alteredstate = 0;
mentalAcuity–;

}

elseif (fanboi == 0 && alteredState == 0 && literalism == 1) {
return 0;
alert (“How many more films must George Lucas ruin before he is stopped?”);

//I know we’re not subtracting from mentalAcuity
//here, but that should be covered in the viewDVDAtHome function

}

Expelled Exposed

ryan — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:03:32 +0000

Since I talked about it before, and a CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY APPARATUS DIRECTIVE exists, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point of that Expelled has a new counter-site aggregating the awful reviews and accounts for and about the movie.

Oh, and Overcompensating has good comic up today as well.

Know Your Enemy

ryan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:19:00 +0000

Slight backstory: There is a movie currently being screened for very select crowds called EXPELLED!, hosted by Ben Stein. It is, essentially, creationist propaganda about how colleges and universities are evil for promoting science and not religious dogma in their classes (here’s a trailer, if you have 8 minutes to sacrifice). It has, predictably, come under intense criticism from actual scientists for what it is; creationism dressed up as victimization. Yah know, the classical view that evolution is, as they say, the view that life is simply “mud animated by lightening.” The trailer even Godwin’s itself.

Anyway, as I said, they are screening this movie for very select audiences to build good grass-roots support for it. This basically means they hand-pick audiences of the Faithful to view the film or go to churches and show it there. They have been very wary of allowing anyone not on The List to see the film, which should send up red flags everywhere.

Last night, PZ Meyers, a biologist, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, and vocal critic of the creationist agenda, tried to see the film with his family. According to his blog, he registered for the event (as did everyone else attending), but was thrown out of line and then the theater property altogether before being able to enter the movie at the request of the producer.

The funny bit is who the producer (Mark Mathis) missed. You’d think that if one were so averse to allowing any potential critic into one’s movie, one would know all the major players to bar from one’s film. You’d be wrong because, although the producer knew Meyers, he didn’t know his friend, a friend who was able to enter and view the film. The friend? Richard Dawkins.

Yeah, good one guys. I bet your film is utter crap and I can’t wait for its vivisection.