[…] Just to clarify, the lack of a Resume Play option is tied to BD-Java […]. While all BD-Live discs are authored with BD-Java (so they do go hand-in-hand to a certain extent), it’s also possible for discs without BD-Live to share this problem. Java-enabled discs will usually start with a “Loading” icon before the main menu, and tend to take longer to load than non-Java titles. All of Fox Home Entertainment’s James Bond Blu-rays are programmed with BD-Java, even though none have BD-Live content, for example.

I agree that this is a major shortcoming of BD-Java, and I’m flabbergasted that none of the Blu-ray format developers ever gave this issue serious consideration. […]

So, that’s the scoop, apparently; I’m glad it wasn’t just me. (Up until now, I wasn’t quite sure if maybe I just hadn't configured my Blu-ray player quite right.) That aside, though, Blu-ray still offers a phenomenal picture, so I'm going to continue happily buying Blu-ray discs :).

In case you've been living under a rock, Walk the Line is the recent biopic on the country singer Johnny Cash (no, I didn’t really think of him as a “country singer”, either, but that's what I keep reading). Like most music-based movies, there's not much of a plot here — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The movie focuses of Cash’s music and, if you like that, you’ll have a good time.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Cash and what I found most fascinating about the performance he performed all the songs himself — there was no dubbing of Cash’s voice over his. If someone had mentioned that to me a month ago, before I had seen the film, that surely would have been a red flag for me since Cash has such an identifiable voice. Still, Phoenix was spot on — several times during the movie I actually closed my eyes for a few seconds and it was like I was listening to a Johnny Cash album.

Admittedly, I have little Cash experience. Sure, I’ve heard clips on tv and in other movies, but I don’t know whether I should be embarrassed that possibly the first time I heard one of his songs uninterrupted was his cover of NiN’s “Hurt”. Dont' get me wrong — I like the track; it’s just that it came out in 2003. The video creeped me out a bit, but that’s mostly because I couldn’t figure out what was going on (the plot of the music video, if you will).

Walk the Line certainly celebrates Cash’s life but it doesn't hold back from his darker times either. Possible spoilers in the rest of this paragraph — if you happen to care about the film’s plot. Among other things, his first marriage was a bit rocky and it was mostly his fault; he lashed out at his wife in anger and cheated on her as well. Then there're the pills. He became addicted to a pill-based drug of some sort (I’m not sure the drug was named) and that certainly did more harm than good, especially in terms of how his drug-induced state put strains on his personal relationships. Basically, Johnny Cash was a jerk.

All the same, Cash has a musicality that’s hard to dislike. The film never goes too many minutes without an excuse to play more of his music (and I’m ok with that). And, if there’re two things that I've realized from this film, it's that I should probably buy some of Cash’s music and it might also be worth adding a few Phoenix flicks to my Netflix queue. Much to the extent of my Cash experience, I hadn’t seen much of Phoenix until now, either (I think Gladiator was his only movie that I had seen). Oh, and I’m open to suggestions on a starter Cash.

Well, let’s get right down to it — if you liked the show, you'll love this movie. Heck, even if you’ve never seen the show, you'll probably still like this movie. Now, admittedly, I hadn't really seen the show. Firefly (on which Serenity was based) aired on Fox from 2002–2003. [Typography geek aside: Yes, that really is an en-dash there :).] Anyhow, I watched a few episodes of Firefly when it was first on the air, but I never really got into it. Mostly, it was the steampunk nature of the show that I couldn’t get past. I mean, these guys had spaceships but rode on horses once they landed on a planet? What, someone figured out the jet engine but the old rod-and-piston was too elusive for their society?

I’ not going to go into the plot too much here, for two reasons. The first of which is that any Firefly fanboys may be annoyed if I give away too much of the movie. However, secondly, and more importantly, is this: all you need to know is that there’re plenty of guns, explosions, spaceships and special effects (see also the trailer). If that sounds like it could be your kind of movie, then this is your kind of movie.

Anyhow, other than what I saw in the trailer, I didn’t know much about what to expect as I walked in — I didn’t even know any of the characters’ names. And, by any account, there are some kick-ass special effects in that trailer. All that aside, what most impressed me was the dialog in the film. And, I really have to give writer Joss Whedon credit for this (he also directed the film). I don't really want to give away the punch lines but, as a way of example, I’ve been told that it was he who wrote what may have been the best line in the X-Men movie:

[Cyclops doesn’t know if Logan’s an impostor]
Wolverine: It’s me!
Cyclops: Prove it!
Wolverine: You’re a dick.
Cyclops: Okay.

It's that kind of playful snarkiness that goes on throughout Serenity, and to great effect. Whedon also has a knack for comic relief — in some heavier scenes, he offers a respite through jesting snarktitude.

Another quality that the movie had going for it was its villain. I’m not really giving anything away to say that the guy goes unnamed, which I suppose is neither here nor there. In any case, unlike countless Bond villains, this guy isn’t crazy! Really, in an action movie, a strong villain is as important as a strong hero; and, a villain who is evil merely due to a mental imbalance just deflates the gravitas of the villain’s perspective. What's great about this flick is that the villain is driven by reason (granted, it’s faulty reasoning, but reasoning nonetheless).

Now on to the downsides, of which there’s one more significant than the other. The more significant of the two is that this movie suffers a bit from The Transporter Effect. In case you haven't seen The Transporter, it’s a movie from 2002 which prominently features driving at high speeds (a good thing). And, if that movie kept up what it was dishing out in its first third, it may have been one of my top-10 favorite movies (you may already see where this is going). However, after about that first third, The Transporter becomes more ordinary and not quite oh-that’s-awesome as the first part.

Such is the case with Serenity. If you’ve seen the trailer, almost all the cool spaceship-chases and action that you see there take place in the first third or so of the movie. Not that the last half is dry, but I was almost left wondering if Whedon cut back on his caffeine intake halfway through writing the screenplay. Another possibility which I’m not entirely discounting is that perhaps either the CG folks ran out of time in which to render scenes that may have been planned, or money with which to buy hardware to do that rendering. I have to give the CG team credit, though, for their astounding particle effects — remember that ship with the smoke pluming out of it from the trailer? That looked even better on the big screen.

There’s one other niggle which I have with the film and I’m going to be ambiguous here since I don’t want to give anything away for those who are going to see the the film. In any case, you might say that a film may embody various emotions from one scene to the next — you know, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, jealousy, love, and so on. Well, there was a certain set of two scenes where the film changed from one emotion to another emotion quickly and I thought it just didn’t work at all. The two scenes could have worked just fine if they were juxtaposed differently, but that wasn’t the case.

One last thing. This pertains mostly to the audiophile in me, but I couldn’t help but notice it — while the sound design was mostly top-notch, this film had some awful ADR in parts. In case you're not familiar with it (which isn't really surprising), automated dialog replacement is the process in films by which dialog is dubbed into the same language. So, much in the same way that an English film could be dubbed into French for French-speaking audiences, so could an English film be dubbed into English — portions of films are routinely dubbed into their original language. One common example would be outdoor scenes. Due to wind noise or other environmental noise, movie scenes filmed outdoors hardly ever have usable audio.

So, the actors re-record their lines inside a studio; those lines are then synced with the original photography so that the filmed lips match with the words recorded (and, if done right, it’s unnoticeable). The problem is with the acoustics. Just as someone's voice sounds different if you’re talking inside a library vs talking inside a warehouse, dialog-replaced audio recorded inside a studio often sounds like it was recorded in a small room (which it was) rather than (say) outside in a field. And, Serenity had a few such scenes. In some flashbacks, a group of students students are in an outdoor classroom but the dialog sounds like it was recorded in anything but an outdoor setting.

So, all of those factors together, is Serenity a good movie? Yeah, it sure is. Would I recommend seeing it? If you've seen the show, I'm sure you need no further convincing (since those that regularly watched the show are usually rabidly enthusiastic about it, not that there's anything wrong with that). But, maybe you haven't seen the show? Well, take a look at the trailers — if what you see looks like a fun time, you'll find that’s the case.

And, in the spirit of Friday Flash Fun, someone had discovered a Flash slideshow based on Billy Joel’s pop hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. Not that the original was brilliant in the first place (it was mostly a list, after all), but I can appreciate the effort put into finding 100+ images and timing those with the pace of the original song.

PS Can anyone enlighten me on “MonkeyFilter”? Their home page describes it as “a Metafilter clone, only with more bananas and less flinging”. Is that just hyperbole or is this site worth checking from time to time?

In any case, I was reading a rather inane Slashdot parody about installling Linux on a badger and one of the comments pointed a group of knuckleheads (“badgerheads”?) who decided to act-out their own real-life rendition and videotape it (complete with mushroom & snake). There’s no need to bother with the Slashdot article but, if you liked the original Flash, you may appreciate the effort put into the enactment as well.

And, the best part is that this managed to somewhat derail the Slashdot discussion as some posters commented on the relative badger-badgering skill of the video participants:

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this video is the fact that most of them do the badger dance so… poorly. The tall one on the right has the right instincts for synching up the arm waving and knee bending, so I give him credit for that, but it&Rsquo;s not how the badgers actually do it. And the rest of them do very little to dispel certain stereotypes about the lack of rhythm in the heterosexual caucasian male. […]

PS I’m heading off to Pittsburgh for the weekend (leaving Thursday), so updates may be a bit sparse until I return Monday.

I took my camera along and took a whole bunch of photos which I’ll post once I finish processing/correcting them. They’re mostly from Thanksgiving day, as San Francisco was a bit drizzly on Friday and not terribly conductive to photographs.

My brother also borrowed a MiniDV camcorder from a friend and filmed most of the festivities. And, unlike many consumers who are content with raw footage, Adrian edited the footage into a Thanksgiving montage (warning: it’s a 27 MB QuickTime file). He edited the file on his 12" PowerBook, I’m guessing with iMovie.

Due to the gamma differences between platforms, Adrian also recommends increasing your brightness if you’re viewing the file on a PC (though it looked fine without much tweaking on my box). And the two people you probably won’t recognize are two of Adrian’s friends who joined us for Thanksgiving, Dylan (one of Adrian’s roommates, with shorter hair) and Jason (with longer hair).

And if you’re curious about the song playing throughout, Adrian tells me that it’s “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth” by Four Tet (MP3s; album review).

An Open Invitation

I’d like to invite you to join me on Friday May 16th for eats at Fuddruckers followed by The Matrix Reloaded.

Fuddruckers - 7:30pm
Old Town Village Shopping Center
5500 Greenville Avenue
Dallas, TX 75206

The Matrix Reloaded - 9:00pm
Loews Cineplex Keystone
13933 N. Central Expressway
Dallas, TX 75243

I recommend Fandango for buying tickets ahead of time. And, this link should point directly to the buy-tickets page for that theater & showtime.

Please RSVP by leaving a comment.

However, Amanda cleared things yesterday: it’s just regular party at his house, with cupcakes & wine. The whole photography angle is apparently a parody of the movie One Hour Photo (which I haven’t seen, but I’ve heard is rather creepy).

I first heard about 8 Minute Dating from a segment on Fox News. I was at the gym and I just happened to see it one one of the overhead tvs. I thought it sounded like fun, so I decided to give it a try (I had heard about speed dating before, but I wasn’t aware of any in Dallas until now). A few clicks and $28 later, I had a spot.

I didn’t really know what to expect, going into it. This group was for people 25-35 (with me falling at the bottom end of that). Most of the dates were very pleasant, though a couple girls were around 30 (a bit old for me) and there was this one crazy girl that couldn’t stop talking about NASCAR ;).

The site guarantees that each person will find someone that he/she would like to see again. As it turns out, there was someone that interested me, though I haven’t heard if she has picked me as well.

Update: Nope, no matches. Maybe next time.

[This] video clip offers nearly 2 minutes of some of the most amazing and intriguing dance you’ve likely seen in awhile. It’s a clip from Kollaboration, a Korean-American talent show sponsored by prokreation. The show’s aim is to break down Asian stereotypes. […]

That was some seriously impressive dancing.