Saturday, January 26, 2008

10 items or less

Just finished watching it, at Tad's recommendation. This movie made me think of the phrase "an actors' movie". Boy, that was one of them, if one ever existed! I thought it was interesting and probably unpretentious, though you can never be sure when actors are involved...

Lie with me

Watched this the other night and I have two comments: a) what was the point of this movie? and b) Eric Balfour is undoubtedly one of the hottest men alive.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Parker Station 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon

Had it at a friends' place the other night, and was blown away. Granted, I'm not a cab connoiseur, but my good taste was confirmed by someone who is, so there! Very very smooth, not tannic, not acidic, not angry at all!

Into the Wild

Watched this (for free!) at Campbell a couple nights ago. Overall I liked it. It was faithful to most facts, but I didn't think it was terribly faithful to the point of the book. Nevertheless, it had a point of its own. You can hardly fault a movie-maker for taking something other than what I did from a book. I found the nature photography only so-so, and it's bugging me that I can't pinpoint what bothered me about it. Other than that, I thought it was well acted, and I thought the leading actor's avoidance of pregnant pauses and looks was remarkable.

The Kite Runner

Watched this at the Riviera last night, and I was quite impressed. It's not often you see a movie that makes you feel delight, sorrow and fury in any meaningful order. I absolutely loved the setting of this film, the photography, the storyline, and the performance of the actor who played the hero's father. I could have done without the last 15 or so minutes, but it seems most people have a very different notion from me regarding what constitutes a good ending. I would have been perfectly cool had we not come back full circle to the kite running theme, complete with rehashed lines...

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Anchovies from Collioure, France

Manufactured by Roque. Pricy as hell ($13-ish) but worth every penny (link.)

Two words: adult candy.

SSH on Mac OS X

So, whose brilliant idea was it that OS X should pop up a window in which one enters their SSH pass phrase, instead of doing it in the cmdline? Must be boy genius, Mr. Jobs again.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Babel

More perplexed than impressed or depressed by this one. I suspect it was masterfully dome, but I have no clue what the point of this movie was.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Like water for chocolate

I watched this last night and loved it. I haven't read the book, but I think I would enjoy it. So far magical realism has treated me well in books. I had never imagined it would be possible to pull it off in a movie, or rather pull off a movie based on a book of this kind. My only quibble was with the sound production: at times it was all too obvious that you were watching voice-over, and at times it was too stilted. I loved the fact that the dark scenes had the orange glow that dark scenes have when photographed with a fast lens on a still camera... But what does the title mean?

Pola X

I tried to watch this on Netflix streaming service the other night and I couldn't finish it. OK, so Guillaume Depardieu is gorgeous, and Catherine Deneuve is haughty as ever. But the movie was fake and annoying. This was a far cry from some of the fresh new French cinema that's been making the rounds lately. Also, what's with the French obsession with incest?

Avilla 2005 Syrah

I'm a fan of this SB Co wine, and it's just incredibly cheap at TJ's. I was having a conversation with my friend Jeff the other day about how it's much easier to get good Syrah for cheap, than any other red wine.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Deep Water

I watched this documentary last night on a big screen and I was *bawling*. I mean driving home on the 101 and sobbing! It's a very very good documentary, throughout, but the end is masterful. I was particularly impressed by the gale footage -- I'm going to look into how they got those shots -- and the footage of England in the 60s. I had never imagined it to have been so drab. Robin Knox-Johnston has always been a hero of mine ("Sea, Ice and Rock" having been one of the first books I ever read in English), but I now have a minor crush on the Frenchman Moitessier, as well. I'm watching every documentary this director has made.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Apple Finder UI

Sometimes I get *so* pissed at UIs. For instance, evidently Apple does not share my opinion that my application focus should never be taken away from me unless I relinquish it. If I'm on one app, and another one wants my attention, the latter should not steal focus from the one I'm working on. This is pretty basic shit, people! User-friendly my ass!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Tokina 28-70mm f2.8-4.3 lens

I bought a Tokina 28-70mm f2.8-4.3 zoom lens used for $20 from Samy's in SB (btw, the majority of the people working there are a bit on the asshole side, they all seem so bothered by customers it's like I'm back in Greece...) This is a ~20 year old lens, from the SZ-X series, so the middle-of-the-road series by Tokina (which, I found out, was founded by Nikon engineers, and therefore shared Nikon's quirks regarding their lens qualities and naming schemes). I took it on a two day backpacking trip on my *ist DS, thinking it might be a decent all-around lens -- good focal lengths, sensitive enough for night shooting. Nevertheless, this lens had a few difficulties, some of which have to do with its age and consequent lack of coatings, and some of which have to do with my using beyond its intended capabilities:

a) high contrast areas have blue halos, especially if they're not exactly in focus -- I was told this is due to lack of coating. I compared its performance at 50mm to my pentax 50mm f2 and the blue haze issue is not present in the pentax. However, the tokina seems to have a deeper DOF at the same focal length and aperture. This stumps me, because I thought DOF was not affected by number of elements in the lens...

b) the tokina systematically overexposes sunny shots

c) the tokina suffers from very strong flares in wide-angle sky shots

Where it did excel (but no better than my 50mm f2) is low light indoors shots.

This is the album shot with it.

Memoirs of a Geisha (the movie)

I watched this last night and I wasn't disappointed. I'd actually read the book years ago (borrowed from Ian or Heather, I think) and liked it, too. The movie changed some bits and made the story overall more fable-like, but it worked. The actual memoir had some gritty, disconcerting things, and, while it ended on an up note, it didn't run with the certainty that it would all along.

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Woolly got me this book by Haruki Murakami for Christmas, probably in return for the fact that I introduced him to the Takeshi Covacz series by Richard Morgan. To say that I was impressed is an understatement. Thinking back, I don't think there has been a single Japanese author I've read who hasn't impressed me, but I suppose that is not surprising since I've read very few and they're supposed to be the cream of the crop. The translation for Wonderland is fantastic. I don't presume to know whether it captures the style of the original Japanese, but it does have a style. The book is wholly engrossing and very hard to put down. The sci-fi bits are the dumbest, while the little pithy analyses of everyday things are the best (for instance the bit about couches, or the bit about how people can be split into two categories according to the breadth of perspective). I'm left wondering whether the whole unicorn fixation on Boing-Boing has anything to do with this book...

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Love Actually

Loved it. How did they manage to pack so many likeable characters in one movie? This was a total feel-good flick, and any conflicts were really really tame.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

98 Toyota RAV4 2-door soft-top

If you've ever wondered whether two-door SUVs lack something compared to their 4-door counterparts, let me paint a mental picture for you of the capacity of a 2-door RAV4 soft-top: 4 adults, a german shepherd, 4 mountaineering backpacks for 40 miles of winding up- and downhills at 4000-6000 ft in the middle of the night in 4th gear. Yeah baby!