Goodbye 2007

So here we are, the final entry of 2007. I know I haven't updated in ages. Guess I only made two entries this year, this one just barely beating the clock. Truth is I've been super busy lately. This year I was so busy I didn't even take my usual two week long vacation back home in Lincoln. I pretty much just popped out there for Xmas and popped back to Dallas. I'll probably wait and take a longer vacation later in the year. I'm thinking of doing Vegas for a week maybe.

Speaking of Vegas, I wound up there a few more times in the latter half of the year. I did a few demos there in August and caught Celine Dion's show there. Say what you will about her music, that was one bad ass show visually. Here's a pic.

On the way driving back I took some pics of Hoover Dam. Didn't stop to look check it out too much, but I got some good pictures at least.

In September it was back to Vegas again for the MTV VMA's to do lasers for Linkin Park. I was expecting the worst but surprisingly everyone there I worked with was friendly and helpful. As far as shows go it was probably one of the less stressful ones overall, aside from the thought that if I messed something up 7 million people would see it. Thankfully everything went off smoothly, and I met some pretty cool people there. Here's a pic.

While there I also managed to sneak away to catch Joss Stone in concert for the second time this year. This show wasn't nearly as good as the first one, but it was outdoors and she was on a stage across an artifical lake at Mandalay Bay. Not exactly a prime concert venue. Over Thanksgiving weekend I also managed to catch Kelly Clarkson and Tori Amos in concert. So there was a lot of concert going for me in 2007. I finally decided to start taking advantage of living in a major market that gets a lot of shows. Only took me seven years. :)

The rest of the year was just mostly work here in the studio, which I like better than going out on site anyway. I did a bunch of programming for the Spice Girl's tour, though I never saw the results so I don't know how much was kept for the final show. Hopefully the lavandar waves for Two Become One made it in the final show - it was a cool effect. As big as they are, I actually don't like doing concert programming very much because the main focus is the performers and not the other visuals, thus things tend to get dummed down a lot. But it's a living.

So that's the end of 2007. A lot of work, concerts and not much else this year. I've added galleries to the pictures page for the MTV VMA's, Hoover Dam and Celine Dion. Happy new year everyone!

Finally updating

Geesh, it seems like forever since I posted here. I guess it's time to update the goings on in life for the past year or so. I'm trying to remember when I last posted. Last summer (the summer of 2006 in case there's any confusion) ended up being crazy having to go out on lots of shows. I think there was a period from about June through August where I didn't have a day off at all. Lots of outdoor shows all over the place. I know I was pretty beat and glad for the summer season to be over. It's too hot to be working outdoors! At least most of the time. In August I did a show in Nantucket with the Boston Pops. It was right on the beach, and it was cold! At one point my hands were shaking so much I could barely type on the computer! I've posted pictures from the trip in the photos section.
Things slowed down a little bit in the fall, as they always do. I was pretty heavy in a serious relationship then so I kind of let work take a back seat for once. I did finally buy some furniture for my apartment. I'd lived in Dallas for six years and still didn't have anything beyond a bed and some bookshelves. Truth is, I bought a new big tv and I realized I needed some place to sit to watch it! Here are a few pictures of my nice comfy apartment completely with a place to sit now:







I spent most of the rest of the year between staying home and watching hd-dvd's (and later blu-ray discs when they finally released the player I'd ordered), and traveling to New York. It was a pretty crazy year.

Over the holidays I went back home to Lincoln for a couple of weeks. Didn't really do too much there other than watch films and look at the snow. I did pop in to the Nebraska Historical Museum, which I'd been meaning to do before I left Lincoln back in 2000 but never got around to. Pictures of the trip are in the photos section.

2007 Started off pretty quiet. Nothing much happened for the first couple of months. Just work and watching films at home. I didn't even really go out much.

In February I spent a few days in LA doing programming for some laser effects for Roger Water's current tour. Our company built the giant prism effect currently on tour. Unfortunately they only used a small fraction of what the effect is capable of in the show, but it was still a fun one to work on. Probably as close to working with Pink Floyd as I'll get unless they tour again, which I doubt. Anyway, here are a few pictures:

In April the new Lynch film, Inland Empire, finally played Dallas for a whole wopping one week. I was horribily sick that week with my luck, but I still managed to catch it a couple of times. The first time I was so out of it from cold medicine I wasn't sure what was part of the film and what I imagined. Thankfully the second time I was feeling much better and was able to enjoy the film more. A new Lynch film is always cause for celebration. Everytime I wonder if he'll be able to keep up the quality of his films, and everytime he knocks one out of the part. Amazing someone can be so consistant. Inland Empire comes out on DVD next month so I'm already jazzed about that.

In May Joss Stone played the new House of Blues here in Dallas. I have to say, it's probably the second best concert I've been to ever (Rush in Toronto in 1997 being the first). I rarely pay to see a concert, this being the exception since it was a new venue. And it was worth every penny! I was right at the front of the stage. I took a few pictures with the phone on my camera. They aren't the greatest but it was all I had on me. Anyway, that show rocked!

Summer hasn't been as busy as last year, but still pretty intense. I went to Vegas for my birthday and hung out a bit at the Roger Waters show, which happened to be the same day. Unfortunately I was so tired from work and traveling that I didn't really enjoy it as much as I probably should have. I actually fell asleep during part of the first half of the concert. But it was still a fun birthday. I was only there for a day and then off again. I wish I'd had a bit more time to spend in Vegas. I love that town, it keeps the same hours I do. Any time of night you can find something to do.

Well, I think that pretty much brings me up to now. I've been spending most days working a lot. Weekends is film time. Always time for cinema. Saturdays is film day now, I usually see about 3-5 then. Sundays I've been staying home entirely and watching dvds and hd discs. That's pretty much life lately. I'll try not to let so much time go by without updating next time!

Oscar predictions - how'd I do

Well, 14 out of 24 this year, which actually is better than I expected considering I didn't have time to research them like I usually do and made them earlier than usual.

Best Motion Picture Of The Year:
Prediction: "Babel"
Winner: "The Departed"

Achievement In Directing:
Prediction: "The Departed" Martin Scorsese"
Winner: "The Departed" Martin Scorsese"

Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role:
Prediction: Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland"
Winner: Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland"

Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role:
Prediction: Eddie Murphy in "Dreamgirls"
Winner: Alan Arkin in "Little Miss Sunshine"

Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role:
Prediction: Helen Mirren in "The Queen"
Winner: Helen Mirren in "The Queen"

Performance By An Actress In A Supporting :
Prediction: Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls"
Winner: Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls"

Original Screenplay:
Prediction: "Little Miss Sunshine"
Winner: "Little Miss Sunshine"

Adapted Screenplay:
Prediction: "The Departed"
Winner: "The Departed"

Best Animated Feature Film Of The Year:
Prediction: "Cars"
Winner: "Happy Feet"

Achievement In Art Direction:
Prediction: "Pan's Labyrinth"
Winner: "Pan's Labyrinth"

Achievement In Cinematography:
Prediction: "Children of Men"
Winner: "Pan's Labyrinth"

Achievement In Costume Design:
Prediction: "The Queen"
Winner: "Marie Antoinette"

Achievement In Film Editing:
Prediction: "The Departed"
Winner: "The Departed"

Best Documentary Feature:
Prediction: “An Inconvenient Truth”
Winner: “An Inconvenient Truth”

Best Foreign Language Film Of The Year:
Prediction: "Pan's Labyrinth" - Mexico
Winner: "The Lives of Others" - Germany"

Achievement In Makeup:
Prediction: "Pan's Labyrinth"
Winner: "Pan's Labyrinth"

Achievement In Sound Editing:
Prediction: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
Winner: "Letters From Iwo Jima"

Achievement In Sound Mixing:
Prediction: "Dreamgirls"
Winner: "Dreamgirls"

Achievement In Visual Effects:
Prediction: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”
Winner: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”

Best documentary short subject:
Prediction: “The Blood of Yingzhou District”
Winner: “The Blood of Yingzhou District”

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score):
Prediction: “Babel” Gustavo Santaolalla
Winner: “Babel” Gustavo Santaolalla

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song):
Prediction: “Listen” from “Dreamgirls”
Winner: "I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth"

Best animated short film:
Prediction: “The Little Matchgirl”
Winner: "The Danish Poet"

Best live action short film:
Prediction: “Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)”
Winner: "West Bank Story"

Oscar Predictions 2007

I'll update my blog next week with more of the goings on in my life. I know I've fallen behind a good bit. But till then, here are my yearly oscar predictions. I don't have as much time this year to do the research I usually do to come up with my predictions due to work. So I'm not as confident in them as I usually am. A couple of the factors I usually use for some of the predictions aren't available till later in the week, so I'm having to go with my gut in a few places. The best picture could go either way between Babel and The Departed. On one hand, Babel is political which the academy usually likes, and they usually dislike big action films like The Departed. On the flip side, they may give it to The Departed just because no other Scorsese film has won. My gut is saying they'll go political, Scorsese being appeased with the Director Oscar instead.

Best Motion Picture Of The Year: "Babel"

Achievement In Directing: "The Departed" Martin Scorsese"

Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role: Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland"

Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role: Eddie Murphy in "Dreamgirls"

Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role: Helen Mirren in "The Queen"

Performance By An Actress In A Supporting : Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls"

Original Screenplay: "Little Miss Sunshine" - Written by Michael Arndt

Adapted Screenplay: "The Departed" - Screenplay by William Monahan

Best Animated Feature Film Of The Year: "Cars" John Lasseter

Achievement In Art Direction: "Pan's Labyrinth" - Art Direction: Eugenio Caballer, Set Decoration: Pilar Revuelta

Achievement In Cinematography: "Children of Men" Emmanuel Lubezki

Achievement In Costume Design: "The Queen" Consolata Boyle

Achievement In Film Editing: "The Departed" - Thelma Schoonmaker

Best Documentary Feature: “An Inconvenient Truth”

Best Foreign Language Film Of The Year: "Pan's Labyrinth" - Mexico

Achievement In Makeup: "Pan's Labyrinth" David Marti and Montse Ribe

Achievement In Sound Editing: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" - Christopher Boyes and George Watters II

Achievement In Sound Mixing: "Dreamgirls" - Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer and Willie Burton

Achievement In Visual Effects: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall

Best documentary short subject: “The Blood of Yingzhou District” Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): “Babel” Gustavo Santaolalla

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): “Listen” from “Dreamgirls”

Best animated short film: “The Little Matchgirl” Roger Allers and Don Hahn

Best live action short film: “Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)” Javier Fesser and Luis Manso

Orange County

Last week I ended up going out on a show in Orange County. It was nice to be at the beach, but unfortunately I never really had any time to enjoy it. This is a close as I ever got to the ocean:

The show ended up being a small nightmare and I don't think I got more than four hours of sleep the entire three days I was there. But everything worked out well in the end. Here are a few pictures from the show:



Upon getting back to the airport in Dallas, there was a suspicious package at the luggage carousel so they weren't letting anyone near it to get their bags. They had to get out the bomb disposal robots, which took forever. Apparently the package was on our flight. We'd flown all the way from California with the package on the airplane and they didn't notice it till after we'd landed! That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in airline security.
I've added a few more pictures from the trip on my pictures page here.

Finally checking out my Hd-dvd player and another Blu-ray demo

As I said in my last entry, I've been super busy lately. But I finally took some time out Saturday to play with my new HD-DVD player. After four discs, I have to say I'm totally blown away by it. To say I'm happy with the purchase would be an understatement. The player was hooked up to a projector via an hdmi to dvi cable (dual link), with the audio going out the analog outs to my receiver. Since there's no receiver out yet that will decode the new formats, analog using the player's internal decoders is the only way to check out the new audio formats. The native resolution of the projector is 768, but per suggestions I left the player set to output 1080 (the resolution of the discs) and let the projector scale down.

The four discs I watched were Apollo 13, Goodfellas, Serenity and Phantom of the Opera. I also have Million Dollar Baby and Last Samurai, but haven't watched them yet. But first of course I baptized the player by playing a bit of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on standard dvd. It's kind of silly, but with every piece of electronics hardware I've owned since my first laserdisc player, I've played something Lynch related on them first for good luck. This also gave me a chance to check out the upconversion of standard dvd. Granted, the encoding on the FWWM disc isn't the greatest, but it was a good test of the average dvd. Images were sharper upconverted, but only a little better. The scaler in the player doesn't appear to be all that great. Granted, you can only do so much with resolution that wasn't there, so I wasn't expecting miracles.

Then it was on to the real hd-dvds. First, I want to report that after watching all four films back to back, I had absolutely zero lock-ups or player freezes, as some people have reported. Nor did I have a single click or pop in the audio. Looks like I must have got one of the good players. The player does take a good 40 seconds after you insert the dvd to start playing. By watching what both the player and projector is doing during this time, it looks like the hdcp handshaking is what's taking up most of the 40 seconds. So you can thank paranoid hollywood studios for the delay in playing. Once it get started though, menus and scene selection are pretty quick. Of course, the fact that the menus pop up over the film make things move a bit quicker. I never saw a single indication of a layer change. The Warner titles go straight to a little HD-DVD intro and then the film, instead of starting with the menu as I'd rather it did. But that's a minor nitpick. The first two Warner titles, Phantom and Samurai, have the audio levels authored a bit low. They appear to have fixed this with later titles as Goodfellas was fine. Even then, the lower audio level wasn't so bad as to cause any problems. I had to bump up the levels about 8 db to get it to where I usually listen at. But there was still plenty of headroom left on my receiver.

Phantom of the Opera looked simply amazing! The amount of detail in the street scenes and inside the theater was truly incredible. The colors were about the most vibrate I've ever seen on home video. NTSC and even PAL have nothing on HD. There was not a compression artifact to be seen. I would go so far as to say not only did this look as good as it did in the theater, it looked better (which is probably as much a statement on modern theaters as it is on HD-DVD). The sound blew me away as well. I've always really liked the sound design in this film, and the Dolby Digital Plus really gave it a fuller sound the regular dvd didn't capture. I gave the lossless TrueHD soundtrack a listen as well. Unfortunately, while the disc is encoded with 5.1 True HD, the player will only decode and output 2.0. It was certainly crystal clear, but listening to this film in only two channels is not the way to go. I can't wait till new players come out that will decode the lossless 5.1.

Goodfellas, Apollo 13 and Serenity weren't nearly as clear as Phantom, but then they were shot softer with more film grain so that's to be expected. Still, they all showed great clarity in details. Again, the Dolby Digital Plus gave them an extra bump over their standard dvd counterparts. Though I didn't think the Apollo 13 track quite matched the DTS version on dvd. But it was no slouch.

I have only one minor nitpick with the player - its remote. It's good and sturdy, but the labels on the buttons are next to impossible to read, especially in the dark. Also, the player has a really small sweet spot you have to aim for. Fortunately for me I'm the type that usually pushes play once and watched a film all the way though, so the remote isn't really needed that much.

Overall, I'd say this is probably the best $450 I've spent. HD has finally come of age (that badly compressed stuff on cable and satellte doesn't hold a candle). I know there have been a few reports of people having problems with the players, but I'm happy to report I experienced none. At such a low price, it's a steal. I only hope Blu-ray looks as good since it'll have more studio support. Speaking of which...

Starpower in Dallas had another Blu-ray demo this weekend, so I stopped by on Friday. There were no Sony reps but they did have the player hooked up and running. However only the video was hooked up, they had no sound. They guy at the store claimed the prototype player didn't have any sound yet, but I don't know if I buy that. More likely they were just too lazy to hook it up. The player was indeed a prototype, but not the same one that they were using last time. This one looks kind of like the BDP-S1 but it's black (see picture). All the menus were still in Japanese, so I suspect this is the prototype of the BDP-S1 from Japan. They said the BDP-S1 should be in stock by the end of June or start of July.



They had a new demo disc playing. It started with a Blu-ray ad that featured a guy sitting in a chair watching a few seconds from several studio's films. Off the top of my head I seem to remember seeing Team America, Spider-man 2, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Corpse Bride, The Dukes of Hazzard, Moulin Rouge, The Fantastic Four, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Crash, Constantine, Batman Begins and The Transporter. I noted there were a lot of titles in the ad that are coming out on HD-DVD as well, so it seems like they're trying to point out that you can get them and more in their format. The ad also played up the studios and manufacturers supporting Blu-ray.

The contents of the rest of the demo disc are as follows:
Chicken Little clip
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe trailer
Spiderman 2 clip
Fifith Element clip
Hitch trailer
Resident Evil 2 trailer
Click trailer
The Davinci Code trailer
RV trailer
Dido - White Flag clip
Sheryl Crow - Always On Your Side clip

It was interesting to see that some of those trailers are for films currently in theaters or not even released yet (Click, Davinci Code, RV). Probably a good indication of what some of the early day and date releases are going to be.

Honestly, I'd say the encoding on this disc was actually worse than on the demo disc I saw in March. Lots of artifacting. Some of the clips looked no better than badly compressed cable/satellite. Chicken little was the only clip I was truely blown away by - it was flawless. Too bad it's a crappy film. The guy at the store didn't have a way to check the player to see what the disc was encoded with, but he thought it was mpeg2. I'd say the HD-DVD discs I own look far better than what was on the blu-ray demo disc. But then, the HD-DVD demo disc in stores didn't look as good as the actual films ended up being, so I suspect the actual final release BD discs will look a lot better than the demo as they get the bugs worked out. And who knows how they had the display calibrated. I had pre-ordered the BDP-S1 from Starpower back at the first demo in March (had to drop 50% up front on the player too) and I see no reason to cancel my order even though the demo was less than stellar. I'm keeping the faith that the final discs will look great.

Here are some pictures I took. Of course, they don't really represent what it looks like in person. Also, there's some nasty glare on the screen caused by the sets behind me due to the way they had everything arranged.

Manufacturer support
Chicken Little
Team America
Narnia
Fifth Element
Hitch
Resident Evil 2
Click
The Davinci Code
RV
Dido
Sheryl Crow
Moulin Rouge

Tales of the border, Deca and other assorted updates.

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I updated my blog. I've been busier than hell lately. So busy that my new HD-DVD player has been sitting still in the box on the floor of my office for the last couple of weeks, as I haven't had time to play with it yet. And anyone who knows me knows that's something I was really looking forward to. That should give you an idea of how crazy things have been.

I ended up going out on a couple of shows last month, which I usually try to avoid. One of them was in Brownsville, Texas. Brownsville is as far south as you can go in Texas and still be in the U.S. In fact, the checkpoint for the border was right across the street from the hotel!

This way lies Mexico!

Brownsville might as well be in Mexico. Most everyone only spoke Spanish, and the town, especially close to the border, was really run down. It kind of looked like something out of the film El Mariachi. Also, they seem to really love shoes down there (or zapatos for the local residents). I swear every other store was a shoe store. Actually, I need to pick up a new pair of shoes, so I probably should have checked them out. No time though.

The show was a performance with the University of Texas at Brownsville symphony and jazz band. It was a ball buster going into it, but things worked out and the show went off pretty well.




The week after the Brownsville show I found myself doing a show for the Deca National Conference in Dallas. That was kind of a blast from the past. Back in high school I was actually in Deca. For anyone who doesn't know, Deca is an organization for high school students interested in marketing. It used to stand for Distributive Education Clubs of America, but after a while they realized no one knew what the hell that meant and dropped the acronym completely. So now I guess you could say Deca stands for nothing. :) I didn't really intend on getting that involved in it when I was in high school. But I needed something to have as an extracurricular activity on my college application, and I was already taking a marketing class, which pretty much made you a member by default. So Deca it was. Somehow over the course of those two years I went from planning on just showing up so I could say I was in it, to being an officer my senior year and actually placing at a few competitions and going to the national conference both years. Go figure! Both years at the national conference they had lasers, and I remember thinking to myself back then that some day I'd have to do the lasers at the conference and show them how it should be done. Of course, that was back when I was young and naive and didn't understand the concepts of limited budgets and such yet.

So now 14 years after the fact, I found myself back in the land of Deca. I can't say much had changed. Most of the kids seemed fairly stupid and clueless, just as it was back in my day. And of course I now knew that, as much as I used to think of all the cool laser things that could be done for the opening of the conference, most people don't want to spend that kind of money for their event. So green beams is all Deca was willing to spring for this year. Still, it looked pretty good. I programmed up a spiffy segment for their opening Coldplay songs (I seriously hate Coldplay!). Then latter on I jammed a bit with some live beams during the country music act they had playing, who I'd never heard of. They did the most bizarre country version of Zeppelin's Kashmir that I've ever heard. The real fun started about three songs from the end of their act when all the kids decided to run out of the stands and rush the stage. Nothing like hearing screams of "fuck!" and "shit!" in my ear coming from the comm. I think the organizers were afraid they were going to riot or something. Alas, no such luck. The band left the stage and everyone went back to their seats. And thus I finally achieved the goal I had set back in 1992 of doing lasers for a Deca national conference.






Nothing else much going on lately. I made it back to Lincoln towards the end of March for my dad's wedding. He seems happier than I've ever seen him, so that's pretty good. And while I was back there I finally got a Davinci's cheesesteak that I'd been dying to have for a while. No one in Texas seems to be able to make good cheesesteaks! I also stopped by at the SAC Museum and saw the Liberty Bell 7 exhibit. The photos I took of the exhibit are posted here.

I'm somewhat behind on seeing movies. Last thing I saw was Scary Movie 4 (a few chuckles but not great). Hopefully this week I'll start to get caught up on them. I had to get my car fixed (again) a couple of days ago, so now I can get out and about more. I swear though, this is the last time I'm spending any money on repairs for that car. Next time something breaks I'm buying a new one!

HD-DVD in Action

I went to the HD-DVD demo at Fry's in Plano today. Unfortunately the the store wouldn't let me take pictures. So no spiffy images to share like I had for the Blu-ray demo at Starpower a couple of weeks ago. The Toshiba player they were using was a HD-XA1 running a demo disc on a Toshiba 1080p set, but I didn't get the model number. No real HD discs were available yet, though they did have mock-up boxes on display for Aeon Flux and Batman Begins. The demo disc containted trailers for The Dukes of Hazzard, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Serenity, The Interpreter, King Kong, Batman Begins, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Constantine. Everything was encoded with mepg4. All the trailers were full 16x9, not OAR, but that's not unexpected. The disc also contained a split screen demo showing SD on one side and HD on the other. The footage wasn't from an actual film, it looked like some travelogue type stuff. Like Blu-ray's splitscreen demo, the HD-DVD one was faked to make SD look a lot worse than it usually does. The HD side was far sharper and clearer. The SD side was fuzzy with little detail and kind of looked like a laserdisc transfer from 1997.

As for the trailers, they were a mixed bag. Some were crystal clear, such as King Kong, Corpse Bride and 40 Year Old Virgin. They looked so good it was almost as if looking through a window. I was actually impressed, and I'm usually pretty jaded about these things. Other trailers looked like they weren't encoded as well and had some mild mpeg noise. But they still looked better than any HD I've seen on satellite or cable. And honestly, they looked better than the encoding I saw on the Blu-ray demo a few weeks back. Just based on the demos I'd call HD-DVD the winner in the image department (and before someone accuses me of being a flack for the hd-dvd side, I happen to have both format's players pre-ordered). Of course, I think the BD demo disc has been around a year at least and is older, so hopefully they'll improve the quality on the real discs. These demos are nice, but until we see real product from both sides it's hard to really compare one to the other.

One thing Toshiba really needs to work on is training their reps and keeping them up to date. The rep running the demo didn't really know anything beyond what was in the scripted spiel. So unfortunately I don't really have any new information to report beyond what is already known. The guy didn't even know if the players output 1080i or 1080p. He had pretty much no info beyond what's on Toshiba's website. Less even. Here's a typical conversation I had with him:
Me: "When will the player be released?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: So it'll probably be around April 18, when the first Warner titles come out?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "So that would be around the 18th then."
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "I like cheese."

He wasn't able to answer any questions I had. Not exactly the best way to represent your format. Toshiba better be thankful their demo looked so good, because they sure as hell aren't going to get any sales off the knowledge of their sales rep. I did get a nice hd-dvd pen and cd/dvd disc case from the demo though. :)

Oscar Predictions Pt. 2 - how'd I do?

19 out of 24, better than I expected this year. Those short film categories always kill me because I usually haven't seen them and only Academy members who attend special screenings get to vote on them, as opposed to the whole membership. I never in a million years would have predicted the best song win for Hustle and Flow. I guess Hollywood wanted to prove they were "hip" this year.

Best Picture
Prediction: Crash
Winner: Crash

Achievement in Directing
Prediction: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Winner: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor
Prediction: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Best Actress
Prediction: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Winner: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actor
Prediction: George Clooney, Syriana
Winner: George Clooney, Syriana

Best Supporting Actress
Prediction: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Winner: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Original Screenplay
Prediction: Crash
Winner: Crash

Best Adapted Screenplay
Prediction: Brokeback Mountain
Winner: Brokeback Mountain

Achievement in Cinematography
Prediction: Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha
Winner: Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha

Best Film Editing
Prediction: Crash
Winner: Crash

Best Art Direction
Prediction: King Kong
Winner: Memoirs of a Geisha

Achievement in Costume Design
Prediction: Memoirs of a Geisha
Winner: Memoirs of a Geisha

Achievement in Makeup
Prediction: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Winner: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Best Original Score
Prediction: Brokeback Mountain
Winner: Brokeback Mountain

Best Original Song
Prediction: In the Deep from Crash
Winner: It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp from Hustle & Flow

Achievement in Sound Editing
Prediction: King Kong
Winner: King Kong

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Prediction: King Kong
Winner: King Kong

Best Visual Effects
Prediction: King Kong
Winner: King Kong

Best Animated Feature Film
Prediction: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Winner: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Best Animated Short Film
Prediction: One Man Band
Winner: The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation

Best Foreign-Language Film
Prediction: Tsotsi (South Africa)
Winner: Tsotsi (South Africa)

Best Live-Action Short Film
Prediction: Cashback
Winner: Six Shooter

Best Documentary Feature
Prediction: March of the Penguins
Winner: March of the Penguins

Best Documentary Short
Prediction: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Winner: A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin

Oscar Predictions

It's that time of year, so here are my yearly Oscar predictions. Usually I do pretty good, but I have to confess, this has been a really tough year to predict. The best picture and best actress races are really too close to call. Best Picture could go either way to Brokeback Mountain or Crash, and Best Actress could go to Reese Witherspoon or Felicity Huffman. Ideally I'd like to list both of them, but I know that's not really fair as far as predictions go. Both races are hard to pick, so I'm more or less flipping a coin on those two. So here are my predictions:

Best Picture
Crash

Achievement in Directing
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Best Actress
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actor
George Clooney, Syriana

Best Supporting Actress
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Original Screenplay
Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco, Crash

Best Adapted Screenplay
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain

Achievement in Cinematography
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha

Best Film Editing
Hughes Winborne, Crash

Best Art Direction
Art Direction: Grant Major; Set Decoration: Dan Hennah and Simon Bright, King Kong

Achievement in Costume Design
Colleen Atwood, Memoirs of a Geisha

Achievement in Makeup
Howard Berger and Tami Lane, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Best Original Score
Gustavo Santaolalla, Brokeback Mountain

Best Original Song
'In the Deep' - Music by Kathleen “Bird” York and Michael Becker, Lyric by Kathleen “Bird” York, Crash

Achievement in Sound Editing
Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn, King Kong

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek, King Kong

Best Visual Effects
Joe Letteri, Brian Van't Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor, King Kong

Best Animated Feature Film
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Best Animated Short Film
One Man Band

Best Foreign-Language Film
Tsotsi (South Africa)

Best Live-Action Short Film
Cashback

Best Documentary Feature
March of the Penguins

Best Documentary Short
God Sleeps in Rwanda

Blu-ray In Action

Just came back from the HD expo at Starpower here in Dallas. They had a Sony rep there demoing Blu-ray, one of the two next generation formats that are more or less high definition versions of dvd. The player they were using was the prototype from Japan that's been seen at most of the trade shows. The BDPS1 apparent isn't ready yet. It was hooked up via DVI outputting 1080i to a Sony display, I forget which model it was exactly but I'm sure someone will figure it out from the pictures. As with the HD-DVD demos, they didn't have any official product yet to show off - they were running a specially made demo disc. The disc contained the trailers for Spiderman 2, Stealth, Big Fish, Into the Blue and Hitch, as well as a scene from Spiderman 2 and a splitscreen comparison between DVD and Blu-ray using Lawrence of Arabia. The DVD/Blu-ray comparison showed Blu-ray being a lot sharper than dvd, but honestly I don't think I've ever seen dvd look as bad as they made it in their demo. Overall the Blu-ray images looked pretty good, but there were a lot more compression artifacts than I expected to see. For having all this extra disc space it didn't look like they were taking much advantage of it, and the encoding didn't look much better than standard dvd. But who knows how long ago this demo disc was made, hopefully the real discs will be encoded better. The image was sharp and the colors held well. It looked at lot better than what I've seen from satellite or cable HDTV. For some reason everything but the Arabia demo was cropped 16x9, not OAR. Hopefully that was done just for the demo and the real discs won't be that way, but the rep didn't know.
They didn't have any official specs for the Sony player, but the rep did confirm it would output 1080p/24 over HDMI. He wasn't sure about 1080p/60. Like the Pioneer Elite player, the Sony won't have any internal decoders for the new audio formats, so you'll have to wait for new receivers that handle the formats to be able to take advantage of them. Also, the Sony Blu-ray player does not support SACD.
The rep said right now the rumor is that the list price for the Sony player will be around $1200, but since the Samsung is coming out first at a lower price Sony will probably drop it to $999.99 to compete. The Sony player will be out in July of this year. The Sony rep said Blu-ray Recorders will probably hit the US around April or May of next year, and that the delay is because they're still working out all the copy protection issues. He also said the current rumor is that the PS3 will launch in the US in August. I asked him about Sony's somewhat poor choice of launch titles (IMHO anyway) and he said the titles they picked were originally geared towards gamers because they had planned for the PS3 to be the first player BD released. Since it got delayed that kind of messed things up. But he repeated the line that they'd have 100 titles out by the end of the year.
When all was said and done, I was impressed enough that I went ahead and pre-ordered a player. So I guess I'm all the way in now as an early adopter for both formats, as I have the Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player pre-ordered as well.
Here are some pictures, though it's hard to really pick up the details from photos. The difference between the DVD and BD sides of the Arabia demo were a lot more distinct than what the camera picked up. Also, their demo area wasn't the best as there were a lot of lights reflecting not only from the room, but from the other displays around it.

So, a new year.

Things have been kind of slow so far this year. Not that I'm complaining about that though. I made it back from my yearly holiday vacation in Lincoln. Two new picture sets from the trip, one from the Strategic Air and Space Museum and one of assorted images of Lincoln. It's always nice to take a break at the start of the year and recharge the batteries. When I came back I finally went for a follow-up with the gastroenterologist to see if they could do anything about my stomach problems. After numerous x-rays and ct scans, they've decided they still can't find out exactly what's wrong and told me to come back in another couple of months. It's been seven months now since these problems started and all they ever tell me is to wait and come back. Doctor's have a great racket going - run up charges on your insurance and never actually do anything. Hopefully they'll figure it out once of these days. Till then, I'm still living on a limited diet and in pain. Such as life.
Not too much else going on. Hung out with a friend at an Aerosmith concert tonight, but we left half way through. Work is non-hectic for once for the next few weeks, at least that's the theory. Usually when I think I'm going to get some breathing room it's only a short time before all hell breaks loose. I've started trying to spend a bit more time at home now that I have the bigger place. I still have three boxes of stuff I haven't even unpacked. It's nice to stay in and catch up on dvds on the weekends. Finally made it all the way through season one of Veronica Mars, now I'm on to season four of Alias. I haven't been too impressed by it so far though.

Final entry of 2005

Unless something major happens, this will probably be the last entry for 2005. Kind of a bummer of a year, though not as bad as 2001-2002 I guess. My stomach is still fucked up from whatever happened to it back in June. Doctors still think food poisioning, but this sure is a long time to be recovering from food poisioning. I haven't eaten regularlly since the summer. On the plus side, I have lost a lot of weight this year that I need to. I guess not eating much will do that. Only downside is that I really have to go shopping for new clothes soon. Everything's too big now and my pants barely stay up even with my belt on the innermost loop. My jacket almost looks like a tent on me now. Still, a good problem to have I suppose.
In a bit over a week I'll finally get to leave the hell that is Texas and go back home for a couple of weeks. Nebraska will be cold, but at least I can relax for a while and do nothing but veg out and watch movies. Time to catch up on my reading as well. I have a bad habit of starting a book, then getting distracted by another one and starting it as well, then distracted again by yet another. So I have a lot of books I've started that I need to finish reading.
It's been kind of chilly here in Dallas lately. I hate the cold weather! One of the reasons I moved here was to get in a warmer climate. Anything below 55 F is too cold. Last week we actually had an ice storm. Back up north that's no big deal, but here in Texas they treat a little ice like a major disaster. Considering that Dallas drivers aren't the greatest to start with, put them on ice and it almost is a major disaster. When there's snow or ice out, it's best to just not go out, less you get run into by some idiot driving 80 miles an hour on solid ice. Unfortunately I have too much work to do before I go on vacation to stay home. At least my new apartment seems to stay warmer than my old one.
So that's about it for the rest of this year. I'm sure I'll post an entry after the start of the year when I get back to recount the exciting goings on of Lincoln, Nebraska. "Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine." A shiny new nickel to the person who can identify where that quote is from. :)

Moving is hard work.

After living in the same small crappy apartment for the five years I've been in Texas, I finally got around to moving at the start of October. So now I have a large crappy apartment instead. I know, everyone's going to ask why I don't get a house instead. It's partially because I don't have enough time for the upkeep on a house. I'm also still trying to deny that I actually live in Texas, and a house just sounds too permanent. When I finally buy a house it'll be in someplace more civilized, not here.
Let me just say, to anyone who thinks they're going to move themselves, it's worth every penny to pay someone to do it for you. I made the error of thinking it'd be easy to move considering how short a distance I was going. Big mistake! It took me a few days to recover from the pain and fatigue of moving all that stuff. Of course it wasn't helped by the fact that the people who originally were going to help me move bailed on me. Thankfully a co-work stepped in to help out for a few hours to help with the big stuff. But next time I move, I don't care how much it costs, I'm paying someone to do it for me.
The new apartment is pretty big. I have two bedrooms now. The second one I'll probably make into a little office area, though I still don't actually have a computer at home. Or I might make it into a guest bedroom. I also have two bathrooms, which is kind of silly for only one person. Every now and then I go use the second one just because I can. :) The only annoying thing is that the kitchen is kind of out of the way of the rest of the apartment. For the first couple of days I kept forgetting where it was. But overall I like having the extra room. I guess now I'll finally buy some furniture for the living room, something else I'd been putting off since moving here.
I'd post pics of the new place, but there are still boxes everywhere and I haven't finished unpacking. Maybe in a few weeks.

Hurricane Rita

Well, that one was kind of a dud wasn't it? And thankfully so. Just last week they were saying it would still be a category 1 hurricane when it got here to Dallas. Not only did it weaken over all, but it never even got close to us. We didn't even get any much needed rain out of it. It was a bit windy on Saturday, but that's pretty much it. Biggest problem has been all the evacuees from Houston and other places in south Texas overrunning the city. It's hard to find any stations with gas as there haven't been any tankers re-filling them since before the hurricane made landfall, and what little there is the evacuees have been taking for their return trips home. Hopefully by mid week things will get back to normal. There are just too many extra people in Dallas right now!

In other news, I finally finished moving into a bigger office. Now I have a bit more room to work with! Here are some pics.