Movies Worth Watching: Star Trek

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So…the new Star Trek movie. What to say…what to say. By now most of the hardcore Trek fans will have seen it and will have their own opinions about it. Myself, I really enjoyed it. What’s worth saying to all the non-hardcore fans is that this movie is unique amongst all the previous Star Trek movies in that it’s not a springboard from a TV show. Yes, the characters are the same, but the actors are not, and as such the movie is quite approachable and stands on its own as a solid action movie. There are many nods to the characters created by Gene Roddenberry, and certainly Trek fans who know the lore inside and out will find much to enjoy here, but unlike basically every other Star Trek movie, you don’t need to have a deep knowledge of Trek to enjoy what’s put in front of you. On one hand, I’m sad to see the old Trek fade away – I thought that Star Trek: Enterprise was killed off too soon, and I was hoping for one more Star Trek: The Next Generation movie. On the other hand, this is an exciting re-imagining of the Star Trek universe that breathes life into the wheezing carcass of a franchise that had all but sputtered out, at least in the minds of the general public. Whether or not this evolves into a series of movies that would make Gene Roddenberry proud has yet to be seen, but at the very least this new crew is bringing Star Trek to a new generation of movie-goers. Live long and prosper!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I thought this video was too funny not to share – and anyone that has a brother will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Was it National Insane Parking Day?

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A few weeks back, when there was still some snow on the ground, Ashley and I went to Best Buy to pick something up. It was about 11AM, an hour after they opened. I was stunned to see the way people were parked around this one area. It was like some sort of “who can park the worst contest” – and everybody was a winner. You might expect to see this type of thing if there was a huge pile of snow, and eight hours later the snow is all melted and the cars look parked funny…but it was still a cold day and the snow wasn’t melting much at all. Weirdest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I should call M. Night Shyamalan, I think he’s looking for movie ideas…

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Crazy Shipping Charges on eBay

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With shipping charges like that, it’s no wonder people are losing interest in using eBay. I find myself using Kijiji more lately to sell things, and I’ve bought less and less from eBay – largely because of sellers who gouge people with insane shipping charges.

Bruce Lee vs. Iron Man: Stop Motion Magic

My friend Tim Heerebout pointed me to this short video, and it was just too cool not to share. The creator, a Canadian named Patrick Bovin, has some other excellent videos worth checking out.

Round 5 MMA Figurines

round5-anderson-silvaIf you know an MMA fan, and aren’t sure what to buy them for a gift, this is a pretty safe bet: Round 5 MMA figurines. I haven’t seen anything quite like this before, but the figurines are quite amusing. They stand six inches tall, sell for $16.99 USD, and the likeness of some of the top MMA fighters in the world are available for purchase, including Randy Couture, Anderson Silva (shown at right), Matt Hughes, Quinton Jackson, Rich Franklin, Sean Sherk, and more.

There are a few notable missing superstars, namely George St. Pierre, but I assume we’ll see him eventually. You can even get Big John McCarthy! Cool stuff. 🙂

TV Worth Watching: Caprica

caprica-dvdAmazon.ca delivered this DVD to me yesterday, so I eagerly watched it last night with Ashley. If you haven’t heard yet, it’s the premiere episode of the new TV series Caprica, released in DVD format prior to the launch of the TV show (which happens in early 2010).  I didn’t really have much expectation going into it – it’s a completely different set of actors, a completely different storyline, and while the Executive Producers of Battlestar Galactica are involved, all in all it’s a different beast than BSG is. The DVD paints a rich back-story to BSG – we get to see some of what the civilization was like before the events that start off BSG. Looks like it was still shot in and around Vancouver though.

There’s a lot to like with Caprica – the acting is solid, the storyline is compelling, and the special effects are top-notch. The CG robotics in particular are extremely well-done – I haven’t seen realism like that to date. Being straight to DVD, they get to add things that a cable TV show can’t have – namely, nudity. It was almost comical how they used it as a part of the intro to a certain location every time, but it’s not so gratuitous as to be distracting.

It will be interesting to watch Caprica as it goes to television – will it be able to maintain itself? BSG kicked off with such a huge bang – the annihilation of the human race – that it was able to coast on the shock of that for many an episode. Not in a lazy way mind you; they built on it very effectively. Caprica has no such event, so they have to rely on their own plot elements to move the story forward. With this 90 minute direct-to-DVD movie, Caprica is off to a good start.

Microsoft Outlook, I Want You To Be Smarter

outlook-2007-smart-accountsI have six email accounts I use regularly – four for my Web sites, one for my corporate email (my hosted Exchange account), and one for my personal email. All are IMAP accounts, other than the Exchange account. There are certain people, such as my wife and friends, that I tend to email strictly from my personal (jasondunn.com) email account. And when it comes to sending emails to business contacts, I use one of my business accounts. I imagine I’m quite typical in that regard, and that anyone using Outlook with both a personal and a business acount probably works the same way. So why then do I have to manually select the account I want to send the email from every time I send a new message?

I want Outlook to be smarter. I want it to recognize that if I’m sending an email to my wife, it should be sent from the personal email account. If I’m emailing a contact at Microsoft, it should come from my Exchange account. I could override this behavious if I wanted to, but once it learned which email accounts were used to email each person, I doubt I’d never need to…

YouTube’s Dysfunctional Commenting System

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What’s that above? A screen shot of three of the comments I posted on one of my YouTube videos this afternoon. I was responding to the comments and questions that other people have left, and I spent about 60 minutes today posting replies…only to have a tiny fraction of them actually make it live. YouTube happily lets me click the POST COMMENT button, but it never posted most of my comments. There’s nothing worse than spending time doing something, only to have all your work vanish. YouTube’s commenting system has been buggy for years, and they never seem to fix the problems with it. Worse yet, even as a YouTube partner, I can’t even talk to anyone about this issue – their partner email address now goes into a non-monitored email account with an auto-responder telling me to use a contact form that doesn’t seem to exist. Everything that Google buys turns to crap from a customer service perspective, YouTube included.

Billy Bob Thornton Interview: Like Watching a Train Wreck…

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an interview filled with more awkward pauses – I really have to hand it to the host, he tried his best to keep it together. Billy Bob Thornton was clearly on some heavy narcotics – he was unable to answer even the simplest questions such as “How long has your band being playing together?”. Then to watch Thornton get angry with the host for mentioning that he’s an actor…wow. I watched the YouTube HD version, and I noticed the image below on one of the shots:

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If you can’t quite make it out, it says “If this really goes sideways – I have [someone] Keil, new Metric standing by”. This is a message from the producer to the host, telling him that if the interview tanks even worse, they can cut to another guest. That’s disaster planing at its finest right there.

I can’t claim to know much about the style of music that Billy Bob Thornton claims to make, but after listening to it on Amazon.com, I can firmly say that I don’t like it very much. I used to be quite anti-country music, largely because I didn’t like the old-school twangy stuff. I like some country music now, mostly the rock-country or pop-country crossover stuff.

At any rate, listening to The Boxmasters, what I hear is pretty straight-ahead boom-chick country music, with a perfectly average vocal lead. There’s nothing interesting or noteworthy about this music from what I can tell – and I sure as hell don’t hear any ’60s British influences…what am I missing here? My guess is the only reason they’ve been able to put out three albums in less than two years is because it’s all self-produced and no one has the guts to tell ol’ Billy Bob that not every song the band comes up with is good enough to be on a record. Most bands will generate 2-3 times more music than can fit on an album, and what goes on the album is the best of those songs.

The only reason The Boxmasters are getting any media attention at all is because Thornton is in the band. Take his personal fame out of the equation, and you have an average-sounding weekend country bar band worthy of exactly zero attention.  For him to get angry about the radio host mentioning his acting experience makes him a complete prick – it’s the only reason his band was invited onto the show. I might like him as an actor, but as a human being, he needs to grow up.