Author: Jason

Movie Round-Up: July 2nd, 2010

Reviews

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse:

No.

The Last Airbender:

M. Night Shyamalan without a twist.  Or rather, I should say without material he created himself.  Based on the cartoon series I’ve always meant to watch, I now want to see the movie first, if only because I’m sure that it will be good but it will be “less” than the cartoon.  By less I simply mean that it will have elements removed to fit the story into a movie length.  Somehow, despite it being around for years, I’ve managed to not learn anything about the story.  The effects and action look good in the trailer, and I’ll walk in with a blank slate.  This movie is on my radar and I plan to see it.

Hulu Plus

Random Thoughts

Yesterday, Hulu announced the details of their Hulu Plus plan.  Of course, being the Internet, it was immediately filled with people saying it was too expensive, not enough content, and that the inclusion of ads was a deal breaker.

You know, on the content end, they are probably right, but that it something that will get better over time.  But the price and ads…  Think about your cable service if you have it.  You pay XX for TV and XX for Internet access.  In my case, with Comcast, those prices would be about $50 and $45 respectively (it varies based on the package you get).  Personally, due to issues with Comcast not having a DVR capable of letting me record 6 shows at a time and their OnDemand service not having everything I already pay for for free, I kicked the TV part to the curb and just pay for Internet now.  At the moment, I torrent, but it means I watch shows a day or two late — minimum (someone has to upload it before I can download it).  But if Hulu were to give me access to even half of those shows on a completely OnDemand basis for $10 a month, even with commercials, I’ll take it.

And about those commercials… oddly enough, Ctrl+Alt+Del ran a related comic and rant.  Are commercials really that bad?  Yeah, sometimes they are annoying, but in general they are informative, about products or shows that might interest me, and then, if I want, I can go buy them.  Since switching to torrenting, where they always edit out the commercials, I’ve been missing my advertising.  New shows will pop up out of the woodwork and be a few episodes in before I’ve even heard of them (you know, because I don’t spend my time trolling TV Network and entertainment gossip websites).  I’ll go to the store and see a product on the shelf and say, “Hey! This is great!” and find out that it’s been available for months, only I’d never seen an ad for it so I didn’t know it existed.  And seriously, why is Hulu for $10 with commercials bad but cable TV for $50+ with commercials okay?

Personally, I’m excited.  This sort of OnDemand a la carte TV watching is exactly what I want.  Sure, torrenting is free, but I’d much rather support the shows I watch in some way AND not have to deal with the annoying limitations of cable TV providers.  I just wish the Xbox version wasn’t being delayed to 2011.

Bypassing the Uncanny Valley

Gaming

If you are familiar with computer graphics, be it in movies or games, you have probably heard the term The Uncanny Valley.  In short, the idea is that the closer you approach realism without reaching it the more striking the tiniest flaws become that actually cause the viewer to become more aware of the “falseness” of it.  Often you’ll hear people talk about the “dead eyes” because they don’t blink or twitch enough, or problems with the way the mouth forms words not being quite right.

For me, new games that try so hard to be super realistic actually result in me not wanting to stare at their graphics for hours on end.  Even my current favorite game, Red Dead Redemption, has issues.  Many of the people in that game look overly dirty, and most of the female characters are downright hideous.  You could brush that off as “people were dirtier in the Old West” and that might be true, but it still doesn’t look right.  That’s why most of the game is played pulled back behind your character.  If it was first person and you had to look all these people in the face to interact, it would be very off putting.

All of this is why what a company called Depth Analysis showed off at E3 this year is just so cool.  It’s called MotionScan and essentially it takes the current motion capture (the suits people wear to get things like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films) to a whole new level.  It scans the entire body, so that not only motions of the limbs are recorded, but facial ticks and lines as well.  Just check out this comparison from the above linked article:

John Noble in real life and in MotionScan.
John Noble in real life and in MotionScan.

It does look pretty damn impressive.  This has me really looking forward to Rockstar’s L.A. Noire which is going to utilize this technology.

Movie Round-Up: June 25th, 2010

Reviews

Grown Ups:

Yeah, it looks stupid.  But it also looks funny.  I’m sure there will be some gross out humor, but it’ll probably have a nice heartwarming family message at the end too.  It isn’t worth $10 to see, but might be worth a matinée or early bird priced ticket.  It’s definitely going into the Netflix queue.

Knight & Day:

In real life, Tom Cruise is fruity, nutty and every other food descriptor used to also describe crazy behavior.  He’s just odd.  But dammit if I don’t end up loving every single movie that he does.  I do find it funny that the plot to this seems very similar to Killers with Kutcher and Heigl, and I’d much rather watch Heigl than Diaz, but even so I find myself drawn to this film.  Plus, it’s big actiony explody guns and cars and fighting which always looks better on the big screen.  I might just have to make my way to the local multiplex for this one.

Facebook wants to turn you inside out.

Random Thoughts

This is a post I started about a month ago and had left sitting in the draft bin, but due to yesterday’s post and topic, I decided to dig it up and polish it…

Most people, unless you’ve grown up entirely in the Internet enabled world, think of “being social” as joining groups.  You play sports.  You have a book club.  You form a tabletop gaming group.  You go to a party.  You sit at a lunch table.  You go to the company picnic.  Your kids play at the same park.  And so on.  Being social involves joining people doing something.

When I first joined Facebook, it was all about joining groups.  Your college, your high school, your jobs both past and present.  Groups still exist on Facebook, but just barely.  When people post things in the groups I belong to it doesn’t show in the feed, in fact it doesn’t show anywhere unless I go look at my list of groups.  Groups are a thing of the past, now everyone are “friends”.

Facebook is all about getting all your “friends” together from every activity and dumping them all into one place.  Of course, people in general don’t really function that way, and it has caused issues for many folks as they have dived into the “social web”.  Work friends and other friends used to be separate groups, and with a lot of work on your part they still can be on Facebook, but by default they are all the same.  Facebook doesn’t want you talking about things in groups privately among your friends, they want you to put everything in your feed where everyone can see it (unless you’ve taken the time to protect your feed and group your friends).  Facebook wants to take your segregated group, integrate them with the whole and put them on a stage, and they want to put ads on the page in the column next to it.

Facebook, Real ID and other such efforts are slowly eroding privacy.  Is this a bad thing?  Not everyone cares, especially younger folks, but many of them haven’t run into an issue where something they said on Facebook or Twitter or some other forum has cost them a job yet.  Maybe they won’t.  Maybe by the time it matters for them, the people doing the hiring and firing won’t care.

I can see the draw, I really can.  I grew up watching Cheers on TV and singing alone with “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name” and the social web feels like that sometimes, it feels like this intimate group of people who you can talk to, who you can trust.  But can you?  Once you’ve racked up over a thousand “friends” on Facebook that includes former coworkers and employers, current ones, old friends from a decade ago, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, and all the other random people who’ve come into contact, can you really trust them all with that thought that just ran through your head, down your fingers and spilled out onto your keyboard?  Do you want that random thought to exist on the Internet forever?  I know I actually consider everything I put out there before I hit the publish button here.  I’ve scrapped entire posts because I didn’t feel comfortable with the content, and others I’ve hacked up and removed specifics to keep a level of separation.

What the hell am I getting at?  I don’t know… perhaps I’m just an old man yelling at the kids to get off of his lawn…

Real Issues with Real ID

Gaming

Lots of people are in a huff over Blizzard’s new Real ID.

I won’t go into it very much, but let me just drop this on you… None of the “good” parts of Real ID, the cross server chat, cross game chat, seeing people’s alts, and so on, required the use of real names and an “all or nothing” design.  Why aren’t some of these features part of World of Warcraft’s existing friend list design?  Why does it have to be ALL of my characters on ALL of my servers?  Do I have to get a second account now if I want some “alone time”?

I hope things continue to change, because right now all I am seeing is a feature I’d never use for more than maybe one or two people in the whole world.

Smartphones

Random Thoughts

I’ve been a smartphone user for a few years now.  The funny thing is that about 90% of the features of a smartphone I don’t care about.  Here is the list of things I don’t need my phone to be able to do:

  • Play music/MP3
  • Play video/watch TV
  • Play games
  • GPS navigation
  • Make fart noises
  • Twitter, Facebook and 99% of the Internet

Now, here is a list of all the features a phone needs for me to love it:

  • Make/receive phone calls
  • Text messaging with a full keyboard because I 442833 trying to type with a 12 key phone pad
  • Sync my contacts with other sources like Google or Exchange over the air

That’s it.  Really.  So simple, and yet no one does it.  At least not that 3rd point, unless you get a full blown smartphone and pay $70-$100 a month for service.  Sure, a camera on the phone is nice, but I don’t need it and use it so rarely that I wouldn’t miss it if it were gone.  But its the contact sync that is the deal breaker.  Every non-smartphone I’ve owned could sync, but you have to buy software and connect it to your PC to do it.  Lame.

I could be wrong.  Maybe there is a phone out there that does just what I need and doesn’t require a large monthly payment for service.  But if there is, I haven’t found it yet.

Innovation and Iteration

Gaming

This is an interesting article about how Nintendo and the Wii “invented” the casual game market (spoiler: they didn’t).  It is a long but good read, and while it is a couple years old and not every prediction toward the end has come to pass, it does paint an excellent picture.

One thing is certain.  The Wii came in and got millions of people who never would have bought a 360 or PS3 to buy a console entirely based on casual “silly” games, and this year both Microsoft and Sony are chasing that market with the Kinect and Move respectively.

Read and discuss…