william’s blog

Let us forget for a moment that Surrogates started out as a graphic novel. Somewhere along the movie's course of development, someone probably had the grand idea of making a movie concerning the morality of humanism - that is, that we are social creatures and need the natural input of others to be healthy and balanced, and that it is our responsibility to be a part of the larger human mechanism and advance the species, etc., etc. Unfortunately, this sentiment, noble as it is, never made it to the final product; instead, we get a wildly implausible, half-baked actioner dressed up in sci-fi drag.
Long story short, everyone (literally, everyone) on the planet has now forsaken their humanly weaknesses and uses a robotic avatar to go out in public and do their daily business. These avatars can take an astonishing amount of damage and not transmit that damage back to the "operator." This has led to an almost total drop in crime and disease (it must be noted that this movie takes place a scant 14 years from now), and life is good for everyone, except if you happen to not want an avatar and would rather go to the corner store yourself and pick up a six-pack. These people are shunned and live on reservations for avatarless "meatbags." Eventually, meatbag revolutionaries figure out a way to kill operators through their avatar's data connections, and it's up to Bruce Willis to blah blah blah.
It should be immediately obvious how blatantly implausible this movie is, even from conception. The whole story is built around this core of these telepresence machines that people use to do their everyday work. How can literally everyone on the planet afford an avatar? There are countries today that don't even have a complete electrical grid or reliable plumbing, let alone being able to supply every single person with a freaking lifelike robot.
Also, from a business standpoint, this is implausible in that this method of telepresence is insanely cost-inefficient. Imagine for a moment the sheer amount of money it'd take to construct and maintain a super-strong, super-fast robot. Multiply that by the number of employees you have. Now, compare that to the cost of setting up a camera and mic and streaming a meeting over the Internet. As one would imagine, the more business-friendly option is rather obvious. This technology could possibly be used for police officers or firemen, for example, or maybe soldiers, but it's doubtful that your pizza-delivery guy will ever see a practical need for a robot (and if somebody could afford a freaking robot, would you really be delivering pizzas?).
As far as the actual movie itself goes, it's a mixed bag, if these so-called mixed bags were filled with compost and medical waste and old leaky batteries. The important thing to remember here is that everyone in the movie is a robot, so the acting is - hopefully purposefully - very stiff, artificial, and, well, bad. Everyone - from the big names to the one-line walk-ons - is blatantly clay-faced and monotonous. The supporting actors, particularly Willis's partner (the otherwise-wonderful Radha Mitchell) and his wife (Rosamund Pike) are woefully underused and left powerless to fight the weak story.
The cinematography, particularly during the action scenes, is clunky, inefficient, and confusing. This isn't helped by ham-handed editing and frankly uneven pacing. Overall the production (again, particularly for the action scenes) looks painfully amateurish.
The visual effects on all fronts are cheap and poorly-rendered. The practical effects are obviously flimsy-looking; the studio should have sprung for Stan Winston's studio to step in and set up some decent animatronic robots. Everything that is computer-generated is obviously so; from crashing vehicles to pretty much every green-screen background, every CG element is not only poorly-rendered but badly composited as well. Even the sound effects seem isolated, blatant, and unnatural.
Surrogates is directed by Jonathan Mostow, who previously gave us the excellent Breakdown and the piss-poor Terminator 3. If he wanted to make an action movie, he should have made an action movie, and made it look like an action movie. This shoddy attempt at a sci-fi/action hybrid feels cheap and sloppy.
Also there's no such thing as the Tooth Fairy. So there.

If Gamer had a point at any time in its development, we may assume that the filmmakers had some sort of argument they wanted to make re: the fact that humans are predisposed to enjoy visceral entertainment; that we et al. get thrills out of watching and/or participating in activities that seemingly engage us in dangerous situations but leave us ultimately unharmed; and that, combined with the unsavory antisocial side-effects of the forces of socio-technological development (vis-à-vis telecommuting/telepresence/nonpersonal communication), that the next logical step in the evolution of human and machine would be the loss of some degree of humanity as we become one with machines – and that’s a bad thing.

One could further postulate that the reason this is a bad thing is that telepresence would free humanity of things like morality and responsibility, in that not only would repercussions of one’s actions – good or bad – would never truly be recognized by the participant, but also that the freedom of responsibility of community among mankind would result in not only further alienation and division, but it would free the participant from even maintaining a body in which to live.

If one were to make a movie about this and call it Gamer, one may expect some kind of conversation, a tête-à-tête between two sentient beings – one, the strong soldier, concerned for his fellow combatants in a real-life deathmatch, the other the strategic mind, the physically weaker controller, not physically committed to a bloody battle, connected through satellite. This conversation may take place entirely in the mind, and may concern the logical need and want of freedom of choice and the paradox of free will in the presence of a higher power. Or it may take a different tack and seek out the absolute borders of essentially two minds in one body, both seeking control. Or, if one were to really stretch, the conversation may concern the freedom of not having a choice, and the dominant/submissive relationship taking place on a purely cerebral level.

 

As I said, this may have been what the filmmakers were originally going for. Instead we got Gamer, as written, directed, and produced by the makers of Crank and Crank II: High Voltage, which, had I known that before I went to the theater, would have drastically changed my level of anticipation. It must be noted that as of this writing, Gamer is scoring an improbably high 7.2/10 on IMDB.

 

Essentially, the Gamer that exists today is nothing more than a montage of quick, shaky cuts that would leave even Tony (The Last Boy Scout, Domino, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3) Scott nauseous. If there was a story it’d be something like Gerard Butler is a wrongly-imprisoned death row inmate who is fighting for his freedom with the help of a brain implant that connects him to a 17-year-old videogame freak and ultimately must break free his bonds to save his wife and daughter from a fate worse than death. Also there’s a classically unambiguously evil bad guy whose intentions are literally to control everyone on Earth.

The movie comes so close to actually accomplishing something several times through the course of the movie, but quickly backs away, seemingly because the filmmakers didn’t want to have to write themselves out of any of the previously-mentioned sticky situations. There are no grays here, only a black-and-white, straightforward actioner with enough onscreen nudity to fulfill any R-rating requirements. There are no surprises; if you came up to me and, based on the trailer, told me what you thought would happen in the movie, I bet you’d get pretty damned close.

There are some positives, though. Butler brings a certain sense of blunt force to his character; watching him during the action scenes is definitely entertaining (see above), especially for a crowd that has obviously played their fair share of first-person shooters (FPS). The set pieces, particularly in the battle zones, are wonderfully detailed and remind one of fondly-played urban warfare maps in certain FPSs.

Ultimately, though, it’s a poor attempt at making a “message” movie by the guys who “brought” us (“forced upon us”) the Crank movies. Despite terrible dialog, hackneyed plot development and a complete lack of cohesive story holding it together, there are tiny spots of actual interesting development, but ultimately they are quickly ejected by the seasick editing. Unfortunately, we don’t pay to see good intentions; we pay to see good movies.

 

For the super, super, super-nerdy, watch for a rather shockingly in-your-face callout to Blade Runner.

When a content creator becomes a personality of some celebrity through a direct result of their work - or something less savory - they live forever in danger of becoming more famous than their actual art. Enter Quentin Tarantino. The one-time wunderkind responsible for Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, etc., etc., has become more than a director; indeed, his name is more well-known than some of his movies. Some of these latter-day movies didn't perform well at the box office, and questions naturally arose as to whether or not he had washed up.
It is without question that Tarantino is a walking film database - a student to virtually every kind of cinema, paying homage after homage to the works of old in every one of his movies. He doubtless knows more about movies than I ever will; has seen more movies from more directors in more languages and from more countries than I ever will; and has been more successful at constructing his own works out of his own ideas mixed with collages of older movies than I probably will be at doing anything.
I, on the other hand, really liked Pulp Fiction.
It's with that in mind that I went to see Inglourious Basterds, his latest offering, apparently in works at least at one time or another over the past decade or more. Originally titled Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, the story involves a hardened squad of Jewish-American soldiers dropped into France to terrorize the National Socialist party members and soldiers there (it must be noted that apparently in Tarantino's WWII there was no difference between a Nazi and a run-of-the-mill German soldier). Led by.. well, I'm going to assume you already know this part. Suffice to say that the movie runs about two and a half hours and contains more on-screen scalping than probably any other movie ever made, ever.
Basterds is a movie of conflicting directions. Marketed by the foundering Weinsteins (who continue to bankroll projects like the sequel-to-the-remade-original Halloween II) as a WWII-style action flick, scalpings aside, it's really more of a meditative, borderline-psychological thriller than an actual action movie, although it does have chunks of action dropped in briefly, presumably to wake up the less patient viewer. Tarantino has been able to infuse actual tension into his work for the first time in meory since Pulp Fiction. The opening section, bestowed with the movie's original title, is a gloriously tight 20-minute chunk of honest-to-God Spaghetti Western. The atmosphere that Tarantino is able to create between two characters about whom we know nothing is incredible. There are scenes later in the movie that carry this tension to a fine pitch - the basement, the projection room, etc.; it is some of Tarantino's best work.
However, in between these admittedly excellent scenes are scenes that move slowly, perhaps in an attempt to carry that tension from scene to scene, perhaps to let the atmosphere grow. Unfortunately these do tend to be a little too slow; the story could be set up to move a little more quickly without losing much of the wonderful anticipation he creates in other sections.
As for the Basterds themselves, we have no characters at all. Tarantino drops them right into the story - good, in that we are spared the training and/or instruction montage, but without any frame of reference as to where they came from or where they are going. One could argue that that's not the point; these men are simply there to kill Nazis. Oddly enough we are give the backstory for one or two minor characters, but because they're not really the main characters, the effect was distracting. We are left with a band of Jewish-American soldiers butchering their way through France, tireless, fearless, merciless, and remorseless. Despite the fact that the movie is named after them, they are in so little of the actual movie (my estimate is that we are Basterdless for nearly half the movie) that Tarantino could really have left the title of the movie as Once Upon a Time... and nobody would have been the wiser. It's difficult to feel any empathy for their characters because we see so little of them, and indeed the lion's share of the emotional involvement goes to the smaller, more nuanced roles.
Speaking of which, the story of the movie theater owner and, indeed, her backstory, are exceptionally well-done, and her character, despite not being one of the actual Basterds, is one of the most fleshed-out, empathetic characters in the entire movie. Really, the world around the Basterds is more interesting than the Basterds themselves.
Unfortunately, coincidence (read deus ex machina) resolves the climax of the movie, where two storylines - military and civilian - merge into one in one cataclysmic night at the movies. Additionally, one of the characters, who to this point has been the point of much empathetic work on Tarantino's part, suddenly becomes the antithesis of everything he's displayed so far in the movie, without much of a reason, and the whole thing felt forced.
At any rate, the pros - particularly the "villain," Col. Hans Landa, who is excellent (see also: Don Logan and Bill the Butcher) - outweigh the cons. Inglourious Basterds is more of an atmospheric offering than we're led to believe by the advertising, and taken as that it's quite enjoyable. The slow spots that separate certain scenes are something that indeed could be easily excised and maybe reduce the movie to an even two hours, but I'm sure film students of the future will revel in their glory. You'll have a good time with Inglourious; just don't go looking for Basterds.

I had been looking to make the jump to a smartphone. My previous phone, my trusty, battle-worn QWERTY LG enV VX9900 was great, beacuse all I really used it for was texting and making calls; however, I wanted to also be able to write and check emails, access my Twitter and, if necessary, look up stuff on Wikipedia and have access to Google for regular searches. Unfortunately, due to the crushing cost of Verizon's data plan, I was unable to justify the cost of doing so, and stuck with their regular text plan, thank you very much.

Finally, though, my contract with Verizon was up, so I went searching for a reasonably-priced QWERTY phone on which I could install apps, check email, sync m calendar, etc., etc. Through my searches I discovered that Nokia made a number of phones that fit my criteria perfectly, most notably the e71 and the e75. Both are gorgeous monuments of engineering, but unfortunately the cost of the handsets was prohibitive at best. I snooped around for another few months but nothing really exciting came down the pipe (although HTC's Touch Pro 2 proved to be equally beautiful and useful) - that is, until AT&T offered a branded, locked-down version of the previously internationall-unlocked e71, their e71x. The e71x looks like a jet-black, polished version of the silver-and-gray e71, the only visible difference being a tiny AT&T logo on the stainless-steel body. That, however, is only the beginning of how different those phones are.

I went down to my local big-box electronics retailer and picked up the e71x on sale with my new AT&T plan. The reason I was attracted to this phone was because it claimed to be abel to sync up with Gmail and the Google calendar and contacts without problems. However, these claims were made with the e71, not the e71x. I'd soon find out exactly what that meant.

After the guys at the big-box store got my contacts shifted over from the old phone to the new phone (a service I'm infinitely grateful exists), I brought the phone home and started the process for getting the email systems synced up. It had been recommended to me to skip the AT&T XpressMail and Microsoft Exchange setups in favor of Nokia's own Messenger software, which indeed seamlessly synced up with my Gmail. However, that's about as far as I got.

The con to the seamless pro was that I could see the mails in my inbox, and reply to them, but I could not access my contacts to write a totally new email. This, as you can imagine, was frustrating to say the least. Additionally, I hadn't yet found ANY way to synchronize the calendar, despite visiting many Nokia- and AT&T-friendly forums.

Admittedly I made some halfhearted attempts to set up XpressMail, following the advice of one of the guys at my local AT&T store, but that led to a mysterious problem of ghost inboxes shownig up with nothing in them for email accounts that didn't exist. I also made forays into setting up the Exchange server software but I very quickly found myself in over my head, trying to answer questions that didn't appear on any page of the manual.

So I was left with a system of "try a new app, find it doesn't work, and hard-reset (format) the phone." I repeated this about four times before I finally grew frustrated enough to throw out a blind query for help on my Google Reader account. Lo and behold, the answer came from my new friend Nancy (@nancy_martira), who happened to know someone who worked for the Nokia corporation. She was able to get me in touch with someone who knows what they're talking about, and I was able to figure out about 95% of my problems. What follows is a paraphrased conversation we had, with my obvious technical deficiencies elided for reasons of saving face.

 

"Keeping in mind the ultimate goal of having my complete Google suite (email, contacts, calendar) synced to my phone, I need to have certain pieces of software installed on my phone so that the local server protocol (be they POP3 or IMAP; this problem appears to exist for both) can push the information to my phone and vice versa.

 

"The major program I tried to use is Google Sync, naturally. This was a program created for the Symbian60 (s60) operating system build 3.1. Google Sync works by talking to another piece of software, written by Nokia, called Mail for Exchange (abbreviated MfE or sometimes M4E) - note that this is actually linked off Google's website as a necessary step in installing their software.

The problem here is that when AT&T locked the phone, the OS jumped from build 3.1 (for the unlocked e71) to build 3.2 (for the e71x). Unfortunately something was lost in the transition and when I try to install the base Nokia MfE software (admittedly labeled quite clearly as for the e71 non-x) it plainly says in an error message on my Nokia's screen that the software is not compatible with the device. This is after I had done a complete hard reset and rendered the machine as new as it came out of the box.

Using other third-party applications runs into the same problem; another popular program, Nuevasync, runs on that same server software as Google Sync and I get nowhere installing it.

 

"Of course, I have tried taking a different approach entirely with a different protocol. I've downloaded and installed Nokia's own email software, named simply Nokia Messaging (keeping in mind that again this was designed for e71 non-x) - this installs perfectly and works GREAT for replying to e-mails already in my inbox, but for some reason it categorically refuses to display my contacts! Unfortunately this means that I can't write a fresh email to anyone who doesn't have an email sitting in my inbox."

 

I also go into detail about my inabilities to sync my calendar, etc. I honestly sent out this email without any great hope of getting useful information, or any information of any kind, actually, in reply. Instead, I got a whopping 2,000-word response for a guy named Dustin. Again, shortened, abridged and paraphrased, here's the helpful response:

 

"The E71x comes ready to use Mail for Exchange with no external download. It can access the web from the device and install the correct version. All that you need to do is start the Email Settings Wizard by pressing Menu > Messaging > Set up Em. When the wizard opens press Start > Mail for Exch. Then enter your Google Account as follows:

Email Address:

Password:

Username:

Domain:

Mail for Exchange server name: m.google.com"

 

(Here, I had already found one thing I had been doing wrong, as in my previous attempts to set up an email system, I hadn't known what to enter for the Domain or Mail for Exchange Server blanks.)

 

"After you enter this information the device will connect to the Internet and download the correct version of Mail for Exchange that works with the Nokia E71x. Download and install. The version shown should be 2.09(158).

 

"By default only your Email will be synchronized. Since this is not supported by Google we need to change this. Press Options> Edit Profile to change these settings. Open Connection and verify the following settings are selected:

Exchange Server: m.google.com

Secure Connection: Yes

Access Point: If you have the unlimited data plan you should select Internet.

Sync while roaming: Default is Yes, always but this is a decision that you choose.

Use default port: Yes."

 

(Now, here's the really interesting part. Their exchange server software isn't totally compatible with Google's Gmail system, so really we're just doing all this to get the calendar synced up. This follows.)

 

"Synchronize Calendar: Yes.

Sync calendar back: I strongly suggest not doing All entries. This takes up space and execution memory and can result is poorer than expected performance of the device.

Initial Sync: Delete items on phone.

Synchronize tasks: No (Not currently supported by Google)

Synchronize contacts: your choice"

 

(I tried contact sync but it didn't work as I had anticipated, and after hard-resetting and going through this process again, I opted to not use it. More on that later.)

 

"Initial sync: same as calendar setting

Synchronize Email: No (Not currently supported by Google)

 

"If you are set up to be Always Online, the device will begin it’s sync run with the next change that arrives. If you want to synchronize everything now, which is likely the case, simply scroll to Current Status and press the center select key, then Yes to begin synchronization. This should get you up and running with your contacts and calendar."

 

So, after that gargantual email I was able to finally get my calendar synced up. It's not that I'm necessarily a busy guy, but I like to be able to carry my calendar with me so I can add things as they pop up.

 

Moving on, I discovered that the order in which I did things affected their operating abilities greatly. The four major things I needed to do were:

1) install my phone contacts

2) sync calendar

3) Install Nokia email for my Gmail-checking needs

4) configure phone

 

Ideally one could install all of these individually at any point, but unfortunately there were several instances of phantom Inboxes showing up, so I had to go through a nine-hour-long trial-and-error gauntlet to see what would work. What I found to work best was:

1) Go through the above steps and sync the calendar FIRST. If this is successful, then you can move on.

2) Install phone contacts. I did this using data backed up from my original phone though a program called Nokia PC suite. WARNING - do NOT use PC Suite to sync your calendar or emails or anything else except applications that have nothing to do with the calendar, and contacts. Otherwise information can be duplicated or corrupted, etc.

3) Once you're successful with that, the rest is easy. You can throw Nokia Messenger on there for Gmail syncing (still no Gmail contacts, oddly enough), and other applications (I have a few on there, like a Twitter app and a 3rd-party web browser, etc.).

 

In closing, I am definitely impressed with Nokia's customer service; however, the guy helping me seemed greatly surprised when I suggested that all these sync necessities (Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Gmail itself) be in ONE software suite. He said he'd pass the idea on, since there was interest.

 

Engineers. Hah.

I first heard about Logitech's new PS3 adapter for their wildly popular Harmony remote line when it popped up on Engadget about three months ago, and I've been eagerly following its development right up until its release a few weeks ago. I missed the first shipment to come off the truck, but I was able to get my hands on one for a not-obscene price just a little while ago. However, before we get into a review of the actual piece of equipment itself, we have to discuss - at least, briefly - what it is and why such a thing is needed.

Two Technologies
One of the most popular full-theater smart remote controls available on the market today is Logitech's Harmony series. The Harmony itself comes in several varieties, but the main thing that the models have in common is that they transmit their signals using a method called IR, or infrared radiation, emission. This is basically a line-of-sight remote control, because light that is beyond our visual spectrum comes shooting out of the front light bulb of the remote and is picked up by the sensors in whatever you want to control. IR is the most widespread remote control technology available because it's easy to make and repair/replace. However, it does have that weakness of being line-of-sight limited. There is a newer, alternate technology, though, that has its own strengths and weaknesses as well: RF.
RF (radio frequency) is not limited by line-of-sight, and therefore is used for more location-sensitive operations, such as wireless mice and keyboards, WiFi transmission, Bluetooth communications, and certain types of video game console controllers. Weaknesses, while not many, do exist - particularly the fact that RF transmissions can be interrupted/jammed by OTHER RF transmissions. For example, a wireless video game controller can be interrupted when a wireless home telephone rings, or someone turns on the microwave (based on actual studies as well as anecdotal evidence).

The Catch
Logitech took all this into consideration and decided that in order to fit all the equipment into a single, hand-held remote control, and to ensure that they had the maximum compatibility with as many pieces of existing consumer-level electronic equipment as possible, they'd go with IR. This is fine, and life is good, until you want to hide the equipment in a closet to get it out of the way, or if you have Sony's Playstation 3, which uses RF communication between its console and the controllers.

I have the PS3.

Solution
So, home theater enthusiasts who purchased the PS3 because of its unrivaled Blu-ray (BD) playing and audio decoding capabilities (firmware-upgraded and all) have always been stuck with at least two remote controls - their original Harmony, and the PS3 game controller (or, if you got fancy, the RF remote control available separately). Until now.
Logitech has finally developed an adapter that accepts the IR commands from my Harmony remote control and retransmits them as RF commands, interpretable by the PS3.
The receiver unit itself (no model number?) is of fairly nondescript construction: a black plastic oblong with a sensor window on the front. It has a power plug in the back and a spare jack for an IR extender (used in cases where the unit itself is hidden in an equipment closet or an elcosed A/V rack). It doesn't use any USB jacks on the PS3, instead communicating through bluetooth with the PS3 itself.

The Process
Installing the new receiver was a snap. Literally, all there was to do was to just plug the receiver's power plug into an open socket. After that, the easy-to-follow (installation) directions walked me through how to synch the new receiver with the PS3's internal bluetooth network, which took all of twenty seconds.
The only snag I hit was when it came time to reprogram my Harmony One to control the PS3. After reading through the instructions, I went through and removed the Activities in my remote program that required the PS3 and re-added them; however, the program still gave me errors saying that it wouldn't be able to communicate with the PS3. I interpreted this as it saying that normally it wouldn't be able to control the PS3, but now I have an adapter, right?
Not so much. After finishing the reprogramming, I tried my luck and nothing happened (obviously). After playing around with various settings for a while, I finally realized that the instructions said to actually remove the Device itself from the program and re-add it, not the activites that used it. After doing that, the program went through without a problem.
I attribute this to my own rushing through the process, trying to get my new toy hooked up, rather than reading Logitech's directions carefully.

Tweaks
The only tweak I'd recommend is to link the Play button to the PS3's "start" command instead of its default ("play"). I've had problems in the past with certain BDs ("Batman Begins" springs to mind) where, for example, if I'm fast-forwarding or rewinding, the PS3 won't play again until I hit the "start" button instead of the triangle ("play") button. A minor tweak and one that won't affect usability at all - for all intents and purposes, "play" and "start" are the same command.
Otherwise, the up/down, left/right, select/eject and everything in between work perfectly. The shape buttons show up as actual shapes on the softkeys in my One's touchscreen - I'm not sure how Logitech would do that with a screenless remote, but it's a small detail.

Overall the remote receiver/adapter is a complete success. I've been able to eliminate the PS3 controller from my living room table, and now all I need is one remote for literally everything - listening to music, watching television, and experiencing BD movies. 

This is too long for a Tweet so I thought I'd throw it up on here.
Last night, about 11:30 or so, I was driving home from Guilderland, heading north on 155 between Washington Extension and Central Ave. There was some jackass behind me, tailgating the living hell out of me, and I think he had his bright lights on. He'd been following me ever since he turned on behind me off Wash. Ext.
We got to the Central Ave. intersection and I signaled/pulled into the left turn lane. The light was red so I started slowing down. The Tailgater proceeded to not slow down, drive straight ahead, and slam into the back of the car stopped in the straight-ahead lane of the intersection. He hit the guy probably at about 20 mph or so.
The other guy was ok, as he got out of his car and started screaming at the Tailgater.

Apparently Jackass Tailgaters have a weakness, and that weakness is turn signals.

Wolverine can be inspected from two angles: the comic book fanboy side, and the movie fanboy side. The two are, at least in this case, nearly entirely mutually exclusive, so far from classic canon does Wolverine (the movie) stray.

Essentially, if viewed from the comic book fanboy side, this movie shouldn't even really exist. For the longest time, nobody knew anything about the character, except that when he wasn't Wolverine he was Logan, and that he liked riding motorcycles and smoking cigars, and had a fatherly affection for Jubilee. That's it. Through the years - and we're talking literally decades here, folks - we gathered small scraps of information from the X-Men books, Wolverine's solo series, and other larger cross-book collaborations that he was Canadian, a product of a shadowy Weapon X military program, and that he hated flying. That's it. But then, back in 2001, Marvel got it into its head that they wanted to blow the whole thing open and give him an actual origin story, which they did. I guess Wolverine lost a little of his "cool loner" status then. The whole thing felt manufactured.

So then the first Spider-Man movie was a hit, and the X-Men franchise took off, so of course Hugh Jackman's Wolverine got his own movie and it was based (to varying degrees) on the newly-minted origin series, and that gets us caught up to today. However, the movie itself is generally entertaining while remaining strangely unsatisfying. As you know, the full title of the movie is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This means that Wolverine will definitely, absolutely live to the end of the movie. This releases us from all pretense of worrying about his character (though, more on that in a moment) and we're left with a good hour and three-quarters to fill with fight scenes, chases, and origin-ing, right? Well, somewhat.

The removal of any kind of suspense as to Logan's survival means that something else must fill that void; however, this movie's shoddy CG removed much of the fun of the motorcycle/helicopter chase. The majority of the scenery is painfully CG-on-greenscreen, and even the actors themselves are occasionally rendered in cheap 3D (watch towards the end of the movie for a rather unsettling and startling guest appearance). This cheesy feel really hammers on the viewer's suspension of disbelief - and let's face it: it's a comic book movie, so suspension of disbelief should be easy.

Besides the fact that we know that Logan must live to the end of the movie so he can later join the X-Men (it is an origin story, after all), our excitement is further diminished by the fact that Wolverine is now, for all intents and purposes, totally immortal. When James Bond is running through a hail of gunfire, we know he won't get hit because he has to live to the end of the movie, and therefore we don't worry about it. Wolverine runs through that same hail of bullets and gets hit by all of them, and he still lives because his healing factor has gone so far beyond what the original creators had intended. Literally, there is apparently no way to kill Logan (even old age, apparently), with the possible theoretical exception of decapitating him, but even this was recently cast into doubt (check out the little blurb after the credits). What this means is that whenever James Logan/Wolverine and his half-brother Victor/Sabretooth (who has a similar healing factor) are fighting, it's really just a contest to see who can poke more holes in whom. The fights aren't engaging and really border on boring. The fact that the two can whale on each other for many minutes, with several major impalements, yet nearly no blood is spilled at all removes us even from the visceral excitement of having gigantic blades coming out of our arms.

The script itself is rather laughable. After an agonizing first act where the Logan brothers are boys, and we're guided through their participation in every single armed conflict the United States has ever been involved in (despite the fact that they're Canadian), we settle on modern-day cliches. At one point, an operative is sent out to retrieve Logan after he escapes from a government facility. Wolverine kills him (obviously, after a terrible CG chase). Back at the facility someone says, "well, that guy never stood a chance anyway. What we really need is...," which would have been great had they done that the first time. I will say, though, that the process of Logan getting his adamantium grafts is very successfully well-rendered - the visceral pain of getting molten metal injected into one's bones is made very satisfyingly clear.

So, for all that, Wolverine is a barely entertaining movie, and not actually "good." The only real reason I can recommend it is to watch Danny Huston try to act as anything more than a monosyllabic bloodsucker.

It is a difficult endeavor, indeed, to try to pin down exactly what kind of a novel Cryptonomicon is trying to be. It is fiction, but it is based on real mathematical theories and proven formulae. It is historical, but it is also modern. Its 900 pages contain elements of romance, comedy, adventure, computer programming, history, and a tremendous amount of mind-bending storytelling.
At its core, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is an adventure that spans from just before World War II to then-present 1999. It involves three major protagonists (and, later in the novel, a fourth) and a plethora of minor characters spanning two generations in war- and postwar time America, the Pacific and Europe. Describing the plot without re-writing the book itself is nigh impossible. The best way I can describe it, on a very simple level in broad strokes, is that it is about the human mathematical prodigies who designed executed some of the most incredibly complicated math-based code systems (and code-breaking systems) ever conceived and the ramifications of those codes on then-current (circa 1945-ish) events and the future events (circa 1998-1999), drawn in a meandering, sprawling, far-flung line through history.
Perhaps the novel's greatest strength (and some may argue weakness) is that Stephenson allows the story to evolve through the progression of chapters. This is not, I repeat NOT, by any means, a strictly linear story. It is not a static plot. It does not start at point A and proceed directly to point Z. However, allow me to be clear: this is not a Shyamalan story; there are no 90-degree turns here. Instead, Stephenson likes to keep the story moving fast, but he leaves enough bread crumbs that the reader isn't lost in the woods alone. One of his literary mechanisms is to rotate chapters, each in succession telling another piece of the story concerning the three (four) major protagonists. This creates a rather resilient web that changes shape to suit the story. I can provide a number of specific examples but to describe them even in minor detail a) would take far too long and b) may result in spoilers. Suffice to say that as a reader, one is pleasantly kept on guard for the next turn. Indeed, Stephenson doesn't take himself too seriously, and because of that, the story is kept lighthearted most of the time, even during tragedy, and moves quickly.
The quick pace is accomplished, as I said, not by having the story progress from A to Z, but by placing the reader inside a web of patches of story. Each one is very small, but fits inextricably into the larger framework. Perhaps, if I had to make a small criticism, it is that Stephenson takes the concept of time and compresses it whenever it suits him; this results in minor occasional disorientation. In one story patch a character can be on a journey that lasts several months, but it takes place over paragraphs. In another scrap, a small event can be described in complete detail, with exquisite attention paid to the most excruciating minutiae. For example, a character's (admittedly fascinating) trip to the dentist is granted its own entire chapter and serves no real purpose in advancing the story; it's there, though, to develop character. Likewise, a character travels literally around the world and the process is described in less than three pages. Time is a flexible commodity in Stephenson's world and it does take some time to acquaint oneself with the process.
Despite the fact that Cryptonomicon was published in 1999, it is technically a spiritual successor to Stephenson's grand opus, The Baroque Cycle (being comprised of the three mega-novels Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World). I originally read Cryptonomicon over the course of two months sometime around three or four years ago. I'll admit now that there were elements in the novel that I just did not understand - large elements of the story seemed totally alien to me. I enjoyed it, but I can't say that I really understood it. I liked the novel enough that I went back and read Stephenson's other works, including Snow Crash (which I may have to go back and re-read, as I'm not sure I understood that one, either, but still a mighty enjoyable cyberpunk in a very Gibson-esque way) and the fairly ok The Diamond Age, both of which were admittedly easier to understand but not as biting, not as immediately sharp as Cryptonomicon.
Apparently immediately after he finished Cryptonomicon, Stephenson began writing his Baroque Cycle - in longhand. Two thousand seven hundred pages later he had created a story of a magnitude that I had not previously encountered. I'm not speaking necessarily in the sense of look-how-heavy-these-books-are; instead, I mean the sheer scale and breadth and depth of character development and plot and fast-paced story he was able to construct inside a plot as convoluted and turning and patchwork as Crypto except way more involved. At any rate, I've reviewed that work in earlier posts.
I recently went back and re-read Crypto and it was as if I was reading a different book. A better book, even, than I had remembered. The exciting thing is that there were many things that were paid off during the course of 1945- and 1999-era Crypto that Stephenson had planted way back in the 1650- and 1715-era Baroque. The reader didn't know that they were being paid off, though, until Stephenson wrote the next three mega-novels (spiritual prequels, or sorts) after he had written the last book in the quadrilogy. In particular, we find that the two major families - the Waterhouses and the Shaftoes - are ineludibly entangled throughout the course of history. In a sly (and, now that I understand it, tremendously exciting) aside, one of the characters, when asked about this relationship in the course of the story, says that "[t]he connections make a very long story. I would have to write a whole fucking book."
It's clear that Stephenson had had these ideas already worked up - at least in rudimentary form - when he was writing Cryptonomicon and took five long years to pay them off (in reverse, actually) in The Baroque Cycle. One of my favorites directly involves a certain set of certain weapons, which I literally cannot descibe without spoiling anything. Stephenson reveals this so casually and in such an offhand manner that it almost slips by - the reveal isn't even a sentence long and is never mentioned again - but that it exists is testament to his dedication to intricate storytelling.
So what does this all mean? On its surface, Cryptonomicon is a tremendously entertaining book, although the hard math is still, to this day, totally bewildering. Also totally baffling to me are the bits of (real, functional) Perl script that Stephenson occasionally weaves into the text. Overall, though, it's an amazing read.
What makes it more amazing, though, as I said, are the three books that come before (came after) it. Really, I think the best way to experience Cryptonomicon is to read it once, then read the entire The Baroque Cycle, and then go back and re-read Cryptonomicon. This, (un)fortunately means devouring 4,500 pages, which would result in a pile of softcover reading materials stacked about eight inches high if laid flat on top of each other. If I had a full-time job reading books, I estimate it would take me about a calendar year.
But it would be totally worth it.

PS - in the course of researching this article I learned two new words, one of which applies to both Stephenson and another of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, and the other to a character in The Diamond Age.)

If one were to ague that the concept of “subtlety” was not in the original blueprints for Grunge, then certainly you’d have myriad evidence to bandy that point; for example, have you ever seen a Grunge music video? However, now, where at a certain point one only knew headbanging and big riffs and few guitar solos, one confronts the existence of the nebulous, unquantifiable nuance of going back to a seminal recording and having a big-time producer twiddle the knobs. It’s a way of going back to see what may have been, had we not been confused and blinded by improbably long hair and the abundance of plaid, in that hangover just after hair metal’s demise.

As you may know, Pearl Jam has just released what some would call a stopgap between releases proper (being 2006’s self-titled affair and whatever they’re working on for 2009) in the form of a remastered/remixed/redone version of their debut full-length album, 1991’s Ten. Regardless of which version you settle on – there are four: two- and three-disc versions, a double vinyl, as well as a mammoth, surfboard-sized boxed set that includes the three aforementioned discs plus an actual audiocassette of their demo, plus the whole thing on vinyl, etc., etc. – you will end up with the original version of Ten remastered, as well as a fully-remixed version produced by Brendan O’Brien, titled, appropriately enough, Ten Redux.

In short terms, the remastered version is what you’d expect. The album is louder and clearer, with little change as far as actual content. It’s a nice spit-and-polish to a great album, but really unnecessary if it was the only thing available. Luckily, there is more to this 17-year anniversary than just a nice dinner out.

The Redux remix is, to say the least, impressive. The subtleties of Grunge that may not have been initially noticed – or of which one may not have even been aware – are presented here with the deft authority of someone finally getting a nagging job done.

Taken as a whole, the project has done something that has been a problem even way back in the days of Ten’s original release – reverb. For the uninitiated, reverb is basically an undesirable echo which, for example, comes from recording music in a studio that’s not properly insulated. Conversely, it may be artificially added later in mixing, although only God knows why. It creates the effect of poor sound, even when the subject matter is listened to through high-quality sound systems. Here, with the new mix, O’Brien has ruthlessly gone through and removed every trace of audible reverb.

With the reverb removed, three things are immediately noticeable: one, that everything sounds so much clearer. It is a revelation. Two, that Eddie Vedder sounds as if he’s in your fucking living room, sitting next to you on your couch. And three, that the bass guitar is so clean, so gloriously clean now. The bass, in the original mix, was so washed-out and smeared and concealed by the rest of the music that it may as well have been left off the final master track.

As for the mixing itself, the differences are many and, to someone who has heard this CD literally a hundred times, maintain different levels of audibility. Overall, two of the more noticeable differences between the original and the new is that the jangling, electro-acoustic guitar has been mercifully turned down in the mix, letting that early-‘90s electric guitar riffage stretch itself out across the soundscape, and the bass, instead of sounding big and bloated and reverb-y is now tight and clean, beyond any wildest hope.

Taken individually, the songs have all seen some kind of drastic overhaul. “Evenflow,” for example, has noticeably more prominent opening guitar licks. Interestingly enough, O’Brien included (or maybe clarified) some vocals Eddie Vedder had laid down of begging for change, which are now clearly audible in the bridge; they are not in the original recording. Also of note is that the guitar solo, somewhat disappointingly, is buried in the left speaker and turned down now, so that the rhythm guitar’s choppy chords come through in a much more obvious way.

“Why Go,” too, in addition to being much more of a “powerful” mix, has had some rather startling and totally inexplicable echoes added to Vedder’s voice in the chorus; not a bad thing, mind, but definitely rather abrupt. “Jeremy,” too, has stronger vocal harmonies in the chorus and a more “aggressive” sound, although that may be more attributable to the newfound clarity, which is absolutely brilliant.

In addition to the original 11 tracks are six bonus tracks. These are basically throwaway tracks – two demos of full songs available elsewhere, two rather dull-b-sides, and two other totally disposable, previously-unreleased songs that only die-hard Pearl Jam fans will care about. These are not the reason to get this CD, and can be easily ignored while ripping the original 11 tracks to high-bitrate mp3s for portability’s sake.

Pearl Jam, to a man, has said publicly that they’ve always disliked the mixing on Ten, and now, finally, they’ve made good. Overall, this set – either the two- or three-disc version, is definitely worth picking up (the surfboard edition may be a bit expensive for what you get in it). I guarantee that, once the comparison is made between the two mixes, the first disc will not be listened to again.

 

Included in the three-disc and surfboard editions of Ten is a DVD copy of the band’s controversial 1992 appearance on MTV’s Unplugged. Until now, this performance of a scant seven songs hasn’t been available commercially in any form, seemingly because seven songs (36 minutes) isn’t really album-length but too long for an EP. Finally, though, we see it as a bonus disc, if for nothing more than nostalgia and/or historical value.

“Controversial” may have been a bit of an overstatement. Really, the major issue (aside from the content of the lyrics – murder, incest, obsession, etc.) was that Vedder wrote the phrase “pro-choice” on his arm in black magic marker. Today, that’s about as shocking as watching ice cream melt in the sun, but back in 1993 it was apparently a bit confrontational for low-tier cable programming.

The other odd thing is that this “pro-choice” marking appears and disappears through the concert; during the second-to-last song (“Evenflow”), the marks are visible under the end of Vedder’s sleeve. However, when he takes his jacket off for the last song (“Porch”), the arm is clear and he proceeds to write on it. The only conclusion I can come to is that the producers somehow switched around songs, or perhaps had Pearl Jam re-record “Evenflow” for some reason, and made Vedder put his jacket back on for continuity.

From a technical standpoint, the disc winds up as a mixed bag. The video has a lot of video noise in it; it was recorded using cheap magnetic tape, apparently, and this makes for a lack of sharpness, even for standard-definition material. The sound is, for a show originally broadcast on television, very good. Comparing the PCM 2.0 and the newly-created 5.1 Dolby surround mix, it’s evident that some care has been put into mastering both tracks. To nitpick, the master is quite loud – louder than regular DVDs and even newer blu-rays – and the drums are turned up too hot, but otherwise, a very good presentation.

While understandable, it’s still a shame that this never got the wide release that Pearl Jam’s contemporaries saw; the legendary full-length Unplugged sets from none other than Nirvana and Alice in Chains, but again, at a slim seven songs it’s difficult to justify this as a separate release. It is, however, the perfect extra addition to a decently-priced boxed set.

 

I've been a big fan of Stargate for quite a while now, for any number of reasons. It's not an easy movie to like unless you're of a particular breed of human. To wit, the movie features wormhole travel, Egyptian-style pyramids and civilizations, pyramid-shaped spaceships (known from now on as space-pyramids), laser weapons, pre-bronze-age cities, bizarre animatronic alien animals, alien spacepod strafing runs, and basically everything else that would deliberately drive any fan of subtlety and eloquence literally nuts. There are plot holes a-plenty, poor dialogue, and deus ex machina rears its ugly head without shame. The suspension of disbelief that must be maintained throughout the entire affair is Herculean in task; yet, for all that, this movie is awesome. Not necessarily "good," mind you, but awesome and incredibly entertaining.
James Spader stars as some kind of linguist, an expert researcher on prehistoric Egyptian heiroglyphs. He is contacted by a mysterious woman about a job deciphering symbols on a piece of rock dug out of the Egyptian desert about 80 years ago. Kurt Russell stars as a borderline-suicidal military man, complete with standard-issue jarhead haircut; his is the role of the defender, in case, he puts it, "they succeed" in activating the Stargate.
To really compress a long story (the "extended cut" is safely over two hours long), they activate the Stargate, natch. An elite military strike team (with Spader in tow as comic relief) travels to another planet, and are thrown immediately into battle with a seemingly all-powerful, immortal alien god-king who was apparently responsible for human civilization and now wants to destroy it. I never said it has to make sense - it just has to be awesome, which it does vigorously.

The Video
Before I say anything about the video quality of the BD version, it's safe for me to say that no matter how good or bad the picture is, it will be better than how it looked on DVD. With that said, the BD picture, compared to other movies from the same time period (around 1994), is absolutely miserable. This is one of Lionsgate's earliest offerings on the HD media and it shows. Exterior shots in the desert, and in general any other well-lit shots, are generally acceptable, but ocasionally display dull edges and blurring. However, any time the movie is in the slightest bit dark, or there's a scene where shadows cover any portion of the screen, there is an exceedingly high amount of video noise and compression crush. I'm not talking film grain here, either - this is full-on noise. In addition to that, in some scenes there is banding, particularly at the top of the screen, and black levels are grayish and crushed to within an inch of their existence. Unintended softness is visible is several shots, and detail is sorely lacking in all cases. I can say that so far, the only worse picture I've seen from a BD is Ocean's 13.
However, oddly enough, it appears that great pains have been taken to correct some mistakes from the original DVD pressing - for example, the wires that were painfully visible on the spacepods as they flew through the city, shooting anything that moved, are now merficully gone, perhaps removed by the original theatrical production team. It's a shame that the BD production team couldn't pay as close attention to detail.

The Audio
Audio comes courtesy of a DTS HD ES 6.1 track. There's also a standard Dolby Digital EX 5.1 track, but I stuck with the next-gen format. Overall the sound is not excellent and in some cases terribly disappointing, but again it shows grand improvement over the original DVD. Treble is muffled throughout the entire movie; gunfire is lifeless and dim, and laser fire is weak. The bass, particularly in the LFE channel, is similarly crushed and in some cases actually suffered minor reverb.
However, the movement through the sound field was well done, and the movie used the surround channels to great effect. Crowd noise swallows the listener, as does the amazing wind from a sandstorm. Dialog is front-and-center, as it should be, and vocals are easy to understand and unhindered by sound effects.

The Disc
Considering the fact that Lionsgate used only a BD25 to store this movie, the compression is understandable. Not forgivable, but understandable. This being an early entrant into the blu-ray race, Lionsgate offers a truly bizarre TUTORIAL in the paltry "extra features" on how to use the disc, the main menu, and the pop-up navigation display. This tutorial is narrated by what sounds like the main villain in the movie and the vocals are distored as such; an incredibly bizarre experience.
Also, in what appears to be a deliberate-yet-frustrating move, the discmakes saw fit to bury the subtitle track. The way the movie plays by default is to have no subtitles of any kind, which is great when you're watching the scenes that are in English; however, when the movie takes us to Egypt or an alien world, we have no idea what's going on. The first English subtitle track subtitles everything, even the regular English words. Also no good. If you want to just have the Egyptian and alien languages subtitled, you have to skip ahead to the subtitle track marked as English3. This is something that should come by default and is a ridiculous task to perform every time the viewer would put in the disc. (For the record, the subtitle appears layered over the picture, instead of underneath the frame.)

Overall
As a personal note, I've had an interesting history with this movie. I saw Stargate way back in the day, at a crappy theater in a mall that no longer exists; in fact, this was one of my first experiences going to see a movie without one of my parents there. When I bought my first DVD player for about $350 (if I remember correctly, this was circa 1999 or so, when DVD was still really getting started - AND IT STILL RUNS), this was one of the first movies that I purchased, along with The Matrix. In fact, my DVD of this movie is so old that halfway through the movie I have to take the disc out, flip it over, and put it back in the player. What I suppose I'm trying to say is that for any criticism I have here, it's done out of love for this quasi-cult classic. I'm overjoyed that it's made the transition to HD, but I wish it could have been done better.
For all its flaws, both as a movie and as a BD release, this movie is still awesome. This latest presentation is by far the best it's ever had, and for that reason and for that reason alone is worth a purchase (I personally got this for $12 in the bargain bin at my local big-box electronics store). This is NOT a movie that you would use to show off the capabilities of your system, and should only be viewed by those who understand that technical quality does not an entertaining movie make.

(All images borrowed with respect from blu-ray.com)