I'm sure all of you have read by now that in a move to improve its financial performance, Circuit City canned 3,400 sales assistants and will be replacing them with lower paid employees. If you haven't, check out Mark Fleischmann's take <A HREF="http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/040707circuit/">here</A>.
The first bitter disappointment associated with moving into my new home and reconfiguring my AV system came to fruition earlier this week when it was discovered that I can no longer use DirecTV as my source of TV and HDTV programming. While the southern exposure at my new place is good, a beautiful little patch of fir trees across the street blocks one of the satellites critical for HD programming. Looks like Comcast is the only game in town for me now. Ugh. Can't say I'm looking forward to it. Let me tell you why.
Actually, move out day was Wednesday and move in day will be next Tuesday. That's right, my <I>UAV</I> supersonic, holosonic, holistic laboratory grade home theater is all packed up and on a Bekins moving truck somewhere between California and our new home Gig Harbor, Washington. (I couldn't help the references above, an homage to an editor I used to work for with a penchant for overly elaborate handles for his home theater rigs).
Talk about rare treats. Spielberg and Lucas became notorious for holding their titles from the DVD market until there was a sufficient install base for them to do killer sales numbers on release. This meant it was years into the format until we saw <I>Star Wars</I>, <I>Indiana Jones</I>, etc. This pattern is holding true on Blu-ray and HD DVD- they're both Lucas and Spielberg free so far.
<I>The Matador</I> is an off kilter comedy that works by expertly playing on the audience's expectations without being overly manipulative. Erstwhile 007 Pierce Brosnan plays the the low down and dirty version of JB, a hit man for hire with very bad people skills. He's coming to the end of his run at the top, and has enough money to retire, but nothing or no one to retire to, not a single friend or any other human connection. While on a job in Mexico he runs into Danny, played by Greg Kinnear, who's also in town on a business trip, albeit ina different line of work! The two strike up as mcuh of a friendship as Brosnan's Julian allows, and inevitably when Julian's bosses decide he's more of a lliability than an asset Kinnear's Danny is the only friend he can turn to for help.
Wow. I'm generally more into Will Ferrell than Colin Farrell, and still haven't forgiven Joel Schumacher for <I>Batman and Robin</I>, so <I>Phone Booth</I> wasn't even close to being on my radar until it showed up on Blu-ray. Happy to say, this was a surpirse as both a movie and BD transfer.
Got your blanket with you? I have barely a passing familiarity with Douglas Adams' <I>Hitchhiker's</I> series of books. So passing that I actually thought it was a single book, and only found out that it was first a radio creation and then a series of books, TV shows, and other media creations when I read the Wikipdia entry before writing this.
What do you say about a Best Picture Winner? For one, I can say I didn't think it was the best movie I saw in 2006, even though I only saw a handful of movies. I can also say unequivocally that I don't agree at all that this is Martin Scorsese's best movie since the seminal <I>Goodfellas</I> in 1990. <I>Kundun</I> and <I>The Aviator</I> were as good or better. But Oscar had some catching up to do, and did so with a vengeance.
Ben Affleck drunk, and wearing tights- threat or menace? Actually <I>Hollywoodland</I> reminded me that we once knew Ben Affleck's name because of his acting talent and not the sheer tonnage of projects he was involved with or who he was engaged to. This well crafted movie tells the story of the death and then life of George Reeves, the Superman of 1950s camp TV. Coming in I knew nothing of Reeves' mysterious death let alone his life beyond the tights. <I>Hollywoodland</I> weaves through Reeves' life by way of a private investigator's look into his death, a character the film's creators acknowledge is an amalgam of several people and not a real person. The other chracters names have apparently not been changed to protect the innocent (or guilty).
Here's a freebie. I love this industry, and I love HDTV in spite of the format war. But this is too funny to not pass along to as many people as possible. Check out this <A HREF="http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72768-0.html?tw=wn_index_11">HDTV FAQ</A>, and have a good laugh. As an industry, we probably deserve this.