First, the short version: it was a fast paced, man-movie of an adventure (especially in 3D!). Not quite as testosterone-ly epicly big screen worthy as, say, 300, but still a movie well worth seeing in a theater (in 3D!). Really fun.
The longer version: It was good, but won't hold up - even for re-watching in the near term, and certainly not in the longer term as a "film".
Obviously, there's the whole 3D(!) -motion capture thing. Definitely a huge step forward here, especially as compared to Zemeckis' previous outing with this technology in The Polar Express. In particular, I thought they really nailed the close shots (especially the eyes), but in attempting to service the "real" left a lot of the motion looking very stiff. Ironically, it was the big motion action sequences and distance shots that looked the most fake - great effort, but still short of the "reality bar" and likely to look Dr. Who bad in a decade or so. Still - there are moments when you really, completely get drawn in (and then, *whack* get snapped out :P...)
Story-wise, the conceit of the movie (i.e. why the filmakers are "re-visiting" the well known story) is this: Imagine if everything in the original were literally true, but embellished by the narrator (Beowulf himself for much of the tale) and edited for "mature content" by the transcribers (likely cleric/priest scribes) of the epic Olde Englishe poeme. It definitely adds a layer of pathos to the story - filling in the missing "back story", but also afflicts the story with that Soap opera interconnectedness that's drowned action/adventure storytelling (especially sci-fi and fantasy) in the wake of the Empire Strikes Back.
Sometimes a dragon is just a big evil dragon, you know? (apologies in advance for the politics of the previous link - but, whattya gonna do?)
Still - its was fun to watch, and fun to note where (and why) it diverged from its source. And it was co-written by Neil Gaiman, who, even when just off, is miles better than most...
Between moving, commuting, traveling, and the like, I've been spending a lot of time in transit - which more or less sucks. On the "less" sucking side, its given me the opportunity to do some reading, and I've recently "discovered" the works of Joe Haldeman.
Haldeman is probably best know for his Hugo and Nebula award winning novel "The Forever War" (published in 1974), and it had been on my I-should-read-that-but-probably-won't reading list for a while. To make a long story short(-ish), I finally got around to reading it.
It's good. Quite good.
So much so that I've been devouring my way through all of his works. His writing is definitely of the "hard" sci-fi genre, but closer to Asimov, in spirit, than say, a Stephen Baxter. That is to say, the science is grounded in very real extrapolations of existing technology (and theories), but the technology is a backdrop to explore the human social condition - particularly warfare. For example, "the Coming" is not about an impending alien visitation, whatever the book jacket says, which I think might have lead to some confusion/disappointment with readers and reviewers. Rather than wallowing in the ideas of science (which, normally, I love doing :)) Haldeman writes, for lack of a better term, "chick sci-fi": its about the relationships.
The only real criticism I have - the only thing I'd argue keeps Haldeman from being more commercially renowned - are the way he closes his novels. The endings are satisfying, but oddly abrupt. I've read more than a few of his novels at this point ("Old Twentieth", "The Coming", "Forever Peace", "Camouflage", etc.) and although none of the ending are bad (at all - they're logical, exciting, and compelling), none of the endings are what I'd call great either. They do the job, but spartanly.
We took the kids to see Surf's Up over the weekend. I've been getting pretty tired of the anthromorphic kids movies that rehash teen comedy plots from the 80's (especially if they include bears, deer, or penguins), but, unlike at other recent outings to kid flicks, neither my wife nor I fell asleep!
The "mockumentary" conceit of the narrative was engagingly entertaining, with the characters distinct and interesting, even if a bit archetypal. And the camerawork, lighting, and animation were superb - possibly the best I've seen in any animated film to date.
In short, go see it! (if you've got kids - its no Shrek :P)
Sure - there were some snippets that rocked, but they were mere wisps of symphony in a sea of rhythmless plot meanderings and tone-deaf dialog. Spiderman 3 seemed like it was trying to create some sense of depth, direction, and development - as previous installments did more successfully - but everything felt far too forced to be much fun. Too much motion (emotional as well as physical) into too little movie...
My advice?
Wait for it on DVD, where there's a fast forward button, or if you must go see a movie on the big screen, try to find the infinitely smarter, funnier, and edge-of-your-seat exciting Grindhouse (best movie I saw this year), or the guy-flick adrenaline orgy that is 300 (Persian [dramatically]: "Our arrows raining down upon you shall be so numerous that they blot out the sun!" Spartan [laconically]: "Then we will fight in the shade...").
- Microsoft Vista Home Overall, its a great improvement over XP - looks good, works well; I like it. But underwhelming after all this time (not sure there's a killer feature), and a mess from a consumer perspective, in two ways in particular (thus far that I've noticed):
a) It takes a loooooong time to get installed and started. I bought a brand spankin' new PC with Vista pre-installed, turned it on (expecting to be able to play with Vista), and it was probably, oh, 45 minutes to an hour, if not longer, before I actually made it to the desktop. Between the install, performance check, customization, etc. - oy. I mean, it was probably much less time if you sat there the entire time, but of course, like most real users, I kept getting up to do other stuff after any progress bar took more than a minute or two. Contrast that to the Mac mini I just bought, which was an out-of-the-box joy... that "what if Microsoft produced the iPod" spoof spot really rang true whilst I waited...
b) The "everybody's-a-limited-user" mentality in the pursuit of security is well intentioned, but just awful in practice. Everytime my kids put in a CD to play some game, they get two different dialogs - one to ask whether they want to run whatever autorun application the CD has, and another asking if its OK to run that file. The dialogs look completely different, and you click in different places on different actions to continue, and to add aesthetic insult to injury, the entire screen flashes black in-between the dialogs (the second dialog, for security, is a hardware interrupt, like ctrl-alt-del). All this is teaching my kids is to click "ok" or "allow" ALL THE TIME because these warnings pops up so often - but I guess it permits Microsoft the legal high ground, so that's good, right?
I can see the marketing slogan now: "Vista! Now with less Class Actions!"...
- Adobe Lightroom Its shipped, and its a really nice execution of a productivity tool for photographers. But although its a good value at $199, I think unfortunately that the preponderance of good free image organization/editing software (most notably Picasa) will limit the impact and reach. Adobe should consider a version that's free, but limited in some way (for example, only support 8-bit channels so that they can preserve the pro-market, who are the only people who are going to pay anyway).
- GeForce 8800 Holy mother of god is that thing fast! I bought the GeForce 8800 GTS, the "lesser" of the two models, which has a mere 640MB (on my video card - hah! :)), and only a 24 BILLION pixel fillrate. That's with a "B".
Installing it was a mess, and its HUUUUGE, but its cool... though the gap between the low end and high end for consumer graphics continues to widen, which means in practice, no game looks as good as the demos ATI and nVidia produced 3 years ago (and yes, I've played Oblivion :P)
I was talking to John McKinley the other day - he of "I'm leaving, and I'll tell you about it on Valleywag" fame (sorry John, couldn't resist :P)... but I digress... I was talking to John, and he recommended a product he'd been using recently - which I purchased and had sent to me two day overnight from Amazon.
John was the one who first turned me onto Flickr, Skype, and LinkedIn (waaaay back when), so his track record for "cool tech/products" is pretty good, with me, at least.
First of all, its hyper easy to setup and use: it has all of four buttons, and you're literally recording video within two clicks of opening the box (hit "power", hit "record" - it comes preloaded with the two AA batteries it requires to function). It has a built in USB port/jack for connecting to your computer, and stores a full hour of MPEG-2 (I think) video. You can also connect it right to your TV for display with included cables.
It records at VGA resolution, and I have to admit that although the quality isn't QUITE good enough to replace my 3CCD mini-DV Panasonic just yet, I'll still be using it quite a bit. It also does a fabulous job adjusting to all manner of lighting conditions automagically - its a category defining product in my opinion; its really that polished. The aesthetics of device and software could really use some work (for example, I've often stopping my recording when trying to zoom-in/out because of poor button placement), but the thing is small, light, durable, completely portable, entirely self contained and easy to use. It even includes software to immediately upload, e-mail, or copy your videos on your PC right on the flash RAM on the device, so when you plug-it into your computer, it just works - nothing else you really need.
I'm not sure if Pure Digital's specific implementation will carry the day, but its a good execution.
I read (among other things ) Michael Crichton's new novel Next over the holidays. As is always the case with Crichton, the book is a meticulously researched (not to be confused with well researched :P) escapist thriller about the social, ethical, legal (three terms also not to be confused) and technical dangers of some either common or emerging disruptive technology development. His last two novel, Prey and State of Fear were about nanotechnology and global warming, respectively. Next is about transgenics.
Part of the joy of Crichton is that he does provide a lot of background education and details about his field of attack, which is always fun. He is to science and technology what John Stewart is to Network News - there's real information, but fact and fiction are sometimes more than a little entwined.
But make no mistake: the science and plot are riddled with holes, even moreso than the average novel (Crichton or not), and though most thrillers and sci-fi make short shrift of characterizations in favor of plot advancement, Next carries that stereotype to a new level. There are waaaaay too many characters and plotlines, including two characters with the same name, just (as far as I can tell) in order to serve one minor, slightly silly plot point. And the plot is ridiculously riddled with an (literally) unbelievable cacophony of of coincidences required to string it together. But still.... somehow the novel does compel you to turn from one page to the next until the end. The man knows how to keep you reading.
In short, if you're a fan of the Michael Crichton house style - procedural thrillers exploring intellectual ambiguities - chances are you'll enjoy the novel, but not that much. It passes the time, but you won't remember or re-read this book.
If you're not a fan, read something else.
Speaking of which... my favourite Michael Crichton novel, though still adhering to that procedural thriller modus operandi, is the Great Train Robbery. Highly recommended, whether you like Crichton or not - its a very well executed "caper" story with just enough social commentary and periodic detail to engage you in its Victorian era setting. The characters are engaging if a bit archetypal, but that works in favour of the narrative which builds steadily to a crescendo of a conclusion that will have you marveling at its elegance (IMHO, of course). Its a page turner I'd read again and again...
