Posts Tagged ‘movies’

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30 Days with the Roku Netflix Player

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Roku Netflix Player TopWith the recent inclusion of the Amazon Video on Demand service, and the talk about more services being available this year, this slim black box has gotten a little more indispensable and pulls the curtain back to reveal what life will be like after the cable and satellite companies pass fully into obsolescence.

The Netflix Player (now being re-branded as Digital Video Player to highlight its flexibility) is priced very competitively at $99 USD when compared to the other devices like Vudu and Blockbuster’s OnDemand which really kill their value proposition by charging per rental, the all-you-can-eat model of Netflix encourages you to explore and watch things that you might not normally or to re-watch shows like we do with our daughter–Word World at $1.99, 3 times daily, 7 days a week can add up quickly. Now, Amazon VOD is positioned in a similar way as Vudu and Blockbuster so we really haven’t dipped our toes into their waters just because the idea of “buying” movies that are “stored” on their servers leaves us a little uneasy because that purchase is more like a “lifetime” lease for their service goes away your purchase goes with it. Subscriptions just “feel” like more bang for my buck, I suppose.

Roku Netflix Player FrontArguments aside for rental or subscription, the Netflix Player is fantastic. It is stupid-simple to set up from hooking it up to your TV, updating the firmware, and authorizing it with Netflix and Amazon. In our case, we hooked it up to a 10 year old 19″ TV in our bedroom and it looks and performs great with no lag in playback and a clear crisp picture.

The Netflix experience is much better than we had anticipated with the movies in our queue browsed in a coverflow-like implementation and while that might sound clunky we can easily flip through the some 250 items in our queue with little to no problem. What we would like to see, though, is the ability to make shelves for those titles so that we can quickly scan by genre, keyword, or even alphabetically. Once you find a movie selecting it brings you to a synopsis and the ability to play it either from where you left off or at the beginning and if it is a TV show you can select which episode to watch. On our DSL connection (6 Mbps/768 Kbps) buffering the movie takes a little under a minute but after that there are no hiccups and the picture does not have the same type of blocky pixelation that we often find on our Mac Mini using Silverlight.

What has us excited though are the mysterious 10 new services to make an appearance by years end. Management and I have been speculating about what services are next to come and while YouTube is likely we would love to see Hulu make an appearance. The recent kerfuffle with Boxee could be an argument for or against, one can never tell when it comes to entertainment executives and their whims but Hulu on the Roku would be a coup for Internet delivered entertainment. The more services available to the Roku the better as it might spur more companies to open up to more platforms and let their gardens grow over the walls.

Pros

  • Small set-top box
  • Comfortable remote
  • Easy set-up
  • Responsive navigation
  • Hiccup free viewing

Cons***

  • No search
  • No finding movies outside of queue
  • No sorting by genre or title

Bottom-Line: $99 + $9/month at Netflix is money well spent.

*** This are more cons regarding the implementation of the Netflix service as we really have not felt compelled to explore Amazon’s due to the cost of à la carte viewing.

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Cutting Deep into the Lifestyle

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Bye-bye television.

Well, more like, bye-bye Dish Network.  Management and I sat down and talked about everything from the economy playing out like the Titantic to how much TV we actually watch and came to the conclusion that we are not getting $120 a month worth of anything from it.  Our solution? We are ditching it.  Completely.  Moving on to cable? Nope.

Here’s our crazy idea. GreenCine for our main DVD rentals, Netflix account for streaming, and an Xbox 360 for watching the streams and playing games.  All together it is a little less than $30 a month so we are looking at a net savings of $90 a month and if we cancel the gym and spa memberships we will be saving around $260 per month.  Sure we have the up front cost of the Xbox but that really is only 20% of the annual cost of Dish.
We are thinking that the end of this month is when we’ll leap feet first into the “post television” era, just in time for the Holidays.

The thought is that we should be making cutbacks to our lifestyle before we are forced to and to truly make an effort to live as far below our means as we can.  We have, over the past year, been consciously cutting back on dining out and delaying or not making purchases that aren’t of an immediate need.  The hope is that we can put our lifestyle on a diet so that when lean times hit they won’t feel so lean.

If anything we’ll be saving some money and maybe have more time to read a book and who knows maybe it will all work out and television as a monolithic service will be nothing but an expensive memory.

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Movie Roundup, The Weekend Edition

Monday, February 11th, 2008

6ixtynin9 (1999) Ruang talok 69 (1999) Here’s a film with a simple premise, blood money delivered to the wrong apartment results in a high body count. Now before you discount it as an action flick there is very little fighting and when it occurs it is over in a breath. What 6ixtynin9, the English title of the film, lays out is the notion of how far one might go to protect a secret, in this case a case of money delivered to the door of a young woman who had just lost her job and was facing a tight economy with little or no prospects and the events that ensue are darkly comedic. Added to this, the cinematography is lush and colorful making every environment pop from the dull concrete floor light by flickering fluorescence to the verdant countryside. Highly worthwhile.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005) The Call of Cthulhu (2005) The subject of easy ordering from Amazon via the iPhone this is a film that I have been waiting to see since I first heard about it a couple of years prior. Some caveats, it is silent, low budget, and a fairly strict interpretation of Lovecraft’s work so if any of the three turn you off skip it. That said, I was riveted by the movie not just because I cut my literary teeth on Lovecraft or that I suffered through so many terrible film adaptations of his work but for the creativity and artistry expressed in the film.

The score was tense, moody, and lyrical and carried the plot along unobtrusively (are you reading this John Williams?). The set design and camera work was imaginative, particularly when creating the city of dreams and the lost island, and seeing the production stills after the feature really makes the point that with less you can often do more. The scant 47 minutes saw the story neatly delivered, unfolded, and concluded and there was never a moment that I felt short changed or as if some key element were missing. I cannot recommend this film enough.

The End of Suburbia The End of Suburbia (2004) I am officially depressed.

If there is a film you should watch this election year make it this one. The current wars and conflicts we are embroiled in are a direct result of an unsustainable lifestyle that we all partake in. The message is all the more painful to swallow for me as I sit in my three-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, with two cars in the driveway, a lawn I hate to mow, and a daughter I am trying to raise as best as possible. The life I have will not be hers. The life I live is taking that away from her.

So when you listen to the politicking this year think about what the candidates are really saying and bear in mind that the world will change whether we want it or try to will it to not. Are they asking those difficult questions and seeking those seemingly impossible answers? Will we live by blood and sword or in some enlightened fashion? We have had but the smallest taste of the former in the last seven years, can we sacrifice more of our own and others to ensure that the smallest of conveniences are met?

Watch it.

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Christopher Nolan’s Following

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Following (1998) Just finished watching this intriguing and artful neo-noir film (on the new tv nonetheless!). Shot in black and white on a handheld camera using natural lighting, Following is a tense study of voyeurism and theft of objects that possess material and immaterial value. The narrative winds about three different scams with the intersection of each teasing the viewer to speculate on impending double and triple crosses.

I’m certainly more interested in seeing some more of his work–I had seen Batman Begins and thought that was the right take on the character–in particular Insomnia and Memento both of which I have heard good things about.

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Old Timey Movie Round Up

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

The Killers
Simply awesome take on the hard boiled crime genre as it casts the insurance industry into a less dry light. Who knew members of the property and casualty coverage profession are as tough as nails with steel jaws and a hunger for justice whether by the bench or by the street. Seriously though, Edmond O’Brien and Burt Lancaster were fantastic as was Ava Gardner’s portrayal of a woman willing to double cross anyone just to rise above her past. Great film and highly recommended.

The Letter
Bette Davis’ character, Leslie Crosbie, was about as cold as a person could get. Sure, she said that she truly loved the man that she killed but I had a hard time believing her just for the fact that she came off as the DSM-IV definition of exhibiting sociopathic tendencies. Gripping look into how her husband and lawyer get sucked down the drain as she wriggles and worms her way to a not guilty conviction.

Brute Force
All this time I envisioned Hume Cronyn as the kindly old man from Cocoon and *batteries not included who was married to Jessica Tandy for some half a century. I was wrong. That man could beat the snot out of you with a piece of rubber tubing like nobody’s business. Anyway, great and depressing prison escape movie with Burt Lancaster doing anything he can to break out of Westgate as it falls into the hands of power mad Captain Munsey.

Seven Samurai
This was my first time watching the film and I fell in love immediately. Lushly shot, artfully paced, and beautifully acted I can understand why so many people refer to it as a masterpiece. As someone with little to no attention span for movies I was surprised that I was glued to the TV during the three and one half hours it took for the story to unfold and conclude. This is a film I would buy on DVD to have in my collection, it is just that good.

The Magnificent Seven
I wanted to really like this film, and I did on some levels, but there was one glaring issue for me and that was the character Chico. Drawing from Seven Samurai the writers made the character into a hybrid of Kikuchiyo and Katsushirō Okamoto which lent a very annoying schizophrenic feel to the film when he was on screen. He was either a clown or a hopeless, wet-behind-the-ears romantic and the film would have been better served following more closely to the source material and developing two characters for Chico.

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Sleepless in Windsor, The Movie Roundup Edition

Friday, April 6th, 2007

This week has been filled to the brim with fractured sleep schedules and near sleepless nights–last night, in particular was one long stretch of no more that 45 minutes of shut eye. Needless to say, since I cannot effectively work on the laptop at an awkward 90 degree angle with one arm, and I hesitate to open a book for fear that half-digested soy formula will spatter on the pages, movies are my friend and companion in the witching hour.

Ong-Bak (2003)
While light on plot and character development–the head of Buddha is stolen from a small village by big city thugs and the local nice/tough guy heads out to retrieve it–the movie excels in its stunts and fight choreography. The pace of the film is brisk and Tony Jaa demonstrates some incredible athletic and Muay Thai skills . If you like action and martial arts than this film is a must see. Add bonus, it spawned this conversation in the middle of the night:

Management: Why is the TV so loud?
Me: What?
Management: The TV, it’s L-O-U-D! (turns down the volume)
Me: Oh. I had trouble hearing the subtitles.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
There has been plenty said about this film and I have little to add except that I found it profoundly sad, moving, and enlightening all at once. See it.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Fantastic film. Beautifully shot; one of my favorite scenes is when the children are fleeing down the river the lighting and photography is lush and storybook like with shots peeking through the grass and over the back of a fat frog. The story is an old one of cruel step father after the hidden wealth of the young children yet Laughton and Agee took Grubb’s novel and blended together equal parts Mother Goose and Brothers Grimm while casting it in a dark Faulkner-esque Southern Gothic mold. Very highly recommended.

The Jacket (2005)
The synopsis on Dish did this movie no justice and I was left shaking my head as to why it only received two stars. It is a sad tale that folds Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind into Jacob’s Ladder and The Machinist. Adrien Brody plays an amnesiac Gulf War vet who is wrongfully accused of killing a Vermont state trooper and subsequently committed to a state run psychiatric hospital. Through the course of some incredibly cruel and inhumane “therapy” he finds he is able to step forward fifteen years in time allowing him to influence events in the present. Taut and well acted The Jacket is a must see.

Brazil (1985)
The last time I saw this film was some 20 years ago and my teenage self was amused by the Dadaist take on themes explored by Orwell, Kafka and Dostoevsky. This time around, in light of the last seven years, I felt profoundly sad and disheartened as Brazil is rapidly becoming a reality. Gilliam is at the top of his game, Pryce’s acting is top notch, and De Niro is inspired. See it and laugh through your tears.

Still on queue to watch is Brick along with a pile of movies from the Thirties, so long as my endurance holds up.

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