More obscure movie jokes

Sorry, can't help it. More writing in next post; less pictures.

Ssstars...

Just noticed today that a rating interface has appeared on the blog's posts without warning. Do you guys see it too (it's very obvious at the bottom of every post), or is it just me? Anyway, the interface is a five-star rating system that allows you to rate the posts, I dunno, for literary competence or something. I checked the settings to see if it was one of the Freaks tampering with the blog, but no one has been authorised for administrative duties but me. Furthermore, there isn't a rating interface option at all in the settings. Could this be some kind of reward from Blogger.com? You know, either for using their services after a period of time, or just being a plain awesome blog. Yeah, probably the latter.

High-definition... WTF?!

To me, there's no topic drier than a technical one (although the Tech Freak might disagree), but if you're planning to set up a home theatre system, there is really no escape from it. You might have heard about this whole high-definition (HD for short) craze that's going on, with people hoarding bargain-priced HD televisions (HDTV for short) at tech fairs as much as they do with rice (well, maybe just in Singapore). Then, there was this format "war" going on between the two HD formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. HD who, you say? To many people, they probably thought that Blu-Ray just burst into the scene recently and were oblivious to whatever "war" that was going on. Probably nobody cared too, because some of us are still transitioning from VCDs to DVDs! (Note: DVDs only came into prominence here in the first half of this decade.)

Of course, to fully utilise the prowess of your HDTV, you need to watch something in HD, and that thing could be either a HD channel from free TV or cable, or from a Blu-Ray disc. I don't doubt the awesomeness of watching movies in glorious HD (e.g. the Blu-Ray's resolution is six times better than a DVD's!), but it's still too early to jump on the bandwagon. For one thing, the Blu-Ray library is currently very limited, so a lot of your favourite movies might not be available in this format for years to come. Furthermore, Blu-Ray disc prices are around the range of S$50, compared to Region 3 DVDs, often priced between S$20-S$30. A Blu-Ray player costs around S$600.

Unless you have deep pockets, it's better to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Prices would naturally drop once the Blu-Ray market widens in the next few months, and it's not like the DVD is immensely inferior to Blu-Ray. If you didn't know, there are Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players that can "upscale" your DVDs, or artificially process the video from your DVDs into near-HD video quality, so, don't sell away your precious DVD collection just yet. The best time to start is either in 2009 or 2010. By then, legal movie downloads might have already become the norm, who knows?

Personally, I think the jump to HD is largely unnecessary. Unless you want to examine every pock mark on your favourite celebrity's cheek, the video quality on DVDs are already sufficient. The only time your eyes need the relief of HD video is when you're gaming. Us gamers are all too familiar with the eye-watering blurry graphics of past-gen systems, but the recent crop of HD-supported consoles have significantly lessen the visual strain, and probably improved gamers' endurance for marathon gaming sessions (to the chagrin of some parents, no doubt.)

Note: I never mentioned about Blu-Ray's audio quality because I'm the kind of person who can't tell the difference between 5.1 and DTS except that one is louder than the other. Thus, the prospect of having 7.1 surround sound in my movies isn't exactly something earth-shattering to me. You might want to ask or check out an audiophile's website for more info on this.

This week's highlight: Speed Racer!

Having never watched a single Speed Racer episode, I'm going into this one not as an anime fan but as a Wachowskis supporter giving the directors their second chance after flubbing the Matrix sequels. Though they redeemed themselves a little with V for Vendetta, but they only did the screenplay adaptation, while Speed Racer would be their true directorial comeback after The Matrix Revolutions. Looking at the promo materials, you'd be an idiot if you're expecting anything more than a silly kid flick. But I still hope that it's a good kid's flick, or if we're lucky, maybe some unexpected intelligence, Wachowski-style, in the script. (Though, based on early reviews on the web, its seems that our luck has ran out.)

Iron Man blasts his way into a US$100m opening

Looks like it's a slam dunk after all. According to Box Office Mojo, Iron Man easily took the number one spot for this week's top earners with a three-day weekend gross of over US$100 million. It also scored very well with the critics, with Rottentomatoes.com registering a 94% fresh rating from U.S. online film critics. Notably absent were reviews from Roger Ebert and Film Freak Central. Good luck next week, Speed Racer.