presentsense

No TV update (or "Times change, but humans, not so much")

So, you may know that Steph and I yanked broadcast TV out of the house a month or so ago. Lots of people have asked how it's going, and in response I will say that we haven't missed much. The Michael Jackson thing. Anything related to sports. Anything related to politics. But all in all, the news we WANTED to get, we haven't had much trouble finding online, and as quickly as we wanted to. I'll save all the pros and cons (believe me, there have been way more pros to this point), but I wanted to share something interesting I have found out about people. This is as a result of only having old TV to watch.

We as humans have not changed very much.

We're watching TV shows like The Dick Van Dyke show, Leave it to Beaver, and movies like The Music Man and The Great Escape. Classic shows, and lots of documentaries (Steph would say too many documentaries). 

Guess what: Kids used to hide the truth from their parents when they thought the truth might get them in trouble. Wives used to worry about what their husbands thought of their figures. Husbands used to get stressed out at work and come home grumpy. People used to spend money to fight their fears. Injustices used to be done, and injustices used to be overcome.

Sure, we may be able to say and show things on TV now that we couldn't then (think Rob and Laura sleeping in twin beds), but then again, Dick Van Dyke can't advertise his favorite brand of cigarette anymore, so things haven't completely gone down hill. I don't know, I guess it just comforts me a little to know that The Beaver was way stupider and way more devious than my kids are.

Oh, and to all you ladies who strive for the "perfect" home that June was able to keep, we uncovered a little secret. She had a housekeeper (go find season 1 episode 2).

Please take a look at www.wevues.com

Hey, loyal readers,

A few weeks ago, we Steph and I floated a test-balloon we called the "He said She said Review" and it was a hit. So much so that we decided to flesh the concept out a little more, get a domain name, and give it its own home on the web, and so....

http://www.wevues.com

...was born. We've been working hard at putting some real content up on the site before publicizing it, so there's already some good stuff to read out there, including our latest review - Slumdog Millionaire. Please visit it, put the feed in your reader, or just check back the next time you are looking to watch a movie and need some good ideas. We'll give you our take (from both his and her perspectives), as well as things that parents might want to be tipped-off about in the movies we've seen.

Thanks for checking it out!

HsSsR#1 - Lakeview Terrace (Blu-Ray)

He Says:

I really liked this movie. I would say that I was pleasantly surprised by it, and it mostly all comes down to Samuel L. Jackson. For some reason, to me, he's a lot more believable as a bad guy than as a hero. As a crooked cop, well really, what other kind of cop could he be? It's his eyes. He just looks like he's lying to you all the time. Anyway...the story is predictable. You know who the bad guy is pretty much from the beginning. Heck, you know if you watch the trailer, so there are no spoilers there. You know he's going to get his at some point, although the ending is mildly unexpected, while at the same time being ultimately satisfying. The good guys - the couple that bought the house - are well played and believable as well.

She Says:

While I sat down for this movie I had to have my glass of wine, bowl of popcorn and lights turned off. I liked this movie o.k. It wasn't one of my favorite, and it wasn't my worst. I wish it had more suspense scenes. I thought the husband was kind of a jerk so, it made it hard to root for him even though the evil cop (samuel L. Jackson) next door was harassing them.  Samuel L. Jackson is a very good convincing evil twisted bad cop.

However, it did have a beginning, climax, and a dramatic end. I did appreciate the twist and turns but at the same time were a little predictable. I wish that his grudge against his neighbors was not because they were a mixed couple but maybe something else that built. The plot was good, the acting was good, the dialogue was good, the soundtrack was good. It did have all the points of a good movie.

Parent's corner...
Violence: There's a lot of violence, but little gore. Guns, fighting, and one bitch-slap.

Sex: There's a bachelor party scene with strippers doing lap dances, but no naughty bits are exposed. There's also a married-sex-in-the-pool scene, but it's pretty mild with no boobies, butts, or humping noises.

Awkward moments?: It might be tough to explain the whole concept of "bad cops" to kids under 8. There's some exposure to racism - mostly blacks against interracial marriage. That will probably fly right over most kids' heads.

Sociability: We'd watch this with our older kids, and our parents, but probably not our grandparents.

Language scale: Mr. Rogers - Mormon - Gym teacher - Sailor - Vietnam War Platoon Leader

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Lakeview Terrace on IMDB.

Time lapse with a twist

I love time lapse photography, but most of it is from a fixed vantage point. This example is pseudo-fixed, in that the camera is in fact mounted, but to a moving car, and it is driven from LA to New York in four minutes. The music is pretty cool too. Enjoy. Two weeks of mindless crap and art posts to go!

Amazing tilt-shift time lapse videos [Photography] — I Heart Chaos

Link: Amazing tilt-shift time lapse videos [Photography] — I Heart Chaos.

OK, this stuff is really cool. I am trying to figure out how this is done.

Think this will take off?

I remember the first time I saw one of these. It was at a McDonald's in Anderson indiana. It was a dumb I idea I said. Now here I am 3 deep in line at the redbox machine.

Gold. Mine.

Once

Here I go again, pumping up a movie I just saw...Once.

This is a great movie, full of really good, raw music and passion. Steph and I rented it on the old AppleTV and watched it. By the end, we decided we would buy the movie AND the soundtrack (next time the budgets says it's OK). It's that good. "Falling Slowly" won the Oscar for song of the year, but it's hard to say it's the best song in the film. There's just so much good stuff in it. Do yourself a favor and try to watch it. It will make you feel good.

Patting my own back...

I was right. Props to Javier Bardem, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joel and Ethan Coen (although I thought PT Anderson deserved it more). No Country... didn't wrap things up as well as ...Blood did, but then, that might be what the academy liked better. Still, I like both movies. I have seen There Will Be Blood three times so far in the theater.

Oh yeah, and here's where I predicted the actor categories again....

There Will Be Blood

I don't do too many film reviews here, but I highly recommend "There Will Be Blood." Along with "No Country For Old Men" (which I also highly recommend), it got 8 Oscar nominations this week. It's fortunate that Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis are not going head to head for the Oscar, because that would be a damned shame. They are shoo-ins in their respective categories, in my opinion.

Interesting trivia...The score for "There Will Be Blood" was such a distinct character in this film that I had to stick around and find out who was responsible. It was Johnny Greenwood. "That's funny," I say to myself. "Johnny Greenwood is the name of Radiohead's lead guitarist." Yep, my sniffer still works. It is that Johnny Greenwood. And no, there's not an electric guitar, theremin, or Rhodes anywhere near this score.

Go see this movie, preferably somewhere they turn the soundtrack up to 11.

Movie trailers are lies! LIES!

Check out this article by David Pogue in the New York Times.

Not sure why I only now started noticing this. It has probably been done for years, but I definitely did notice it twice in the last two weeks - first with the movie "Dan In Real Life," and then second with the movie Pogue talks about, "National Treasure 2." If you've seen the trailer for Dan In Real Life, you will no doubt remember the scene where Dan and his girls are in the car, and his daughter pulls out into traffic and nearly crashes, and Dan says, "Student Driver!". Yeah, well that scene's not even in the movie, but I chalked that one up to editing for length and pace, which is done all the time. Trailers are often cut well before the movie actually releases, and probably even before it test screens. During test screenings, the audience is monitored, and if the producer/director don't like the reaction certain scenes get, they cut them out of the film before wide release.

With "National Treasure" on the other hand, I find subterfuge afoot. Multiple scenes in the trailer appear in the movie, but seem to be shot from completely different angles, with different voice inflection, etc. It's almost as though they were filming the movie, and when they got a take for the film, they said, "Cut! OK, now let's do a take for the trailer." Personally, I don't mind cutting a scene out of a movie to tighten it up - I get that, and odds are the scene will show up on the DVD release as a "deleted scene." But this business of "shooting for the trailer" pisses me off a little bit. Pogue argues, and I think I agree, it borders on false advertising, making a film seem more intense, more funny, more - whatever - than it actually is.