Just as how Godzilla came from the Japanese cultural horror reaction to the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Cloverfield is producer J.J. Abram’s modern giant monster movie for a nation of handycam equipped, post 9/11 Americans. After the sudden and unexplained attack of a huge creature upon Manhattan island, a video tape is found among the ruins by the US military. When you go to see Cloverfield in theaters, what you’re witnessing is the one hour and fifteens minutes of raw DV footage found on a camcorder discovered in what was previously known as Central Park. The footage is completely unedited.
Contained within this footage is a first hand account of the attack from the perspective of a small group of New York friends at ground zero just hours prior to and during the monster’s hellish rampage upon the city. The tape is in fairly good condition even though parts of a month’s before previously recorded Coney Island date by the film’s main couple periodically appears when the camera was violently shaken or the tape temporarily removed.
All in all, I highly recommend seeing this movie. It’s a roller-coaster ride that grabs you from the moment it begins and maintains that feeling that you are truly witnessing this historic event as it occurred until the final, bitter-sweet shot. It’s an awesome premise that makes something as silly as a giant monster attack feel as real and plausible as any modern day disaster scenario you might happen to watch unfold live on television.
Steve Jobs finished giving the MacWorld 2008 keynote presentation just a few hours ago. What has become a sort of tradition for me, I decided to take the day off so I could relax at home and follow all the online coverage in real-time. Knowing full well that it would take something miraculous to top last year’s legendary iPhone announcement, I went in with modest expectations. Overall, the presentation was rather ho-hum even if the super-lightweight new laptop revealed was far, far thinner than expected.
Broken into four parts, the Steve started by covering how much of a great success Leopard has been. I agree but this is old news. Part two covered the iPhone and its success. As expected, he talked about the new 1.1.3 upgrade which was leaked weeks ago. It adds several nifty new features such as pseudo-GPS to the maps application and customizable home screens. More importantly, they’ve set the groundwork to make adding more third party apps to the device easy in the future. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually announce anything in the area of third party applications so I’m going to have to wait until February to find out more. That’s when the official SDK is scheduled to debut. None the less, I’m happy to have the new firmware installed.
The third part of the keynote was dedicated to what is probably the most significant announcement in my opinion: movie rentals in both standard definition and high definition from the iTunes store. This coupled with a new version of the Apple TV set-top box shows Apple has a strong desire to own the home theater space. While I think it’s great Apple is going to offer rentals, this isn’t something I’m probably going to use much of. With Xbox Live, I already have this functionality. What Apple does bring that’s unique is the ability to share your rentals between your TV, computer and mobile devices. Also, they got every every movie studio to back them on this deal; something Microsoft wasn’t able to do.
The fourth and last announcement was the hugely rumored MacBook Air. This thing is slim and light. Apple was going for pure sex factor with this design, even so far as to take out some practicality. For example, it only has one USB port. However, I respect their bold design decisions in what is clearly designed to be an “ultra-portable”. I’ve already heard people complaining about the lack of an internal optical drive but that is silly. In my opinion, optical media is on the way out anyway, Apple is again just being a trend setter. No-matter how sexy it is though, the price is high ($1799) and should be considered a luxury device. One last interesting note about the Air, it has a thin 80GB hard drive (PATA) but they also offer it with a 64GB solid state drive as an option… but for an additional $900 bucks! Clearly, solid state drives are, at least for now, an option only for people with money to burn. All said, that doesn’t make me wish I owned one any less.
Whether it’s books, movies or TV shows, I’m a fan of time travel stories. I’ve seen most every movie about the subject and I’ve even done some non-fiction reading about time paradoxes from experts like Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking. Yet, no matter how entertaining a movie or show might be in depicting reverse time travel it usually gets one or more fundamental details wrong. Thankfully, I’ve been fortunate enough to learn about a little gem of a movie that was released in 2004 that I’m sure went under most people’s radar called Primer.
Primer is an independent film that won great critical praise at the Sundance Film festival for both its innovative concept and astounding micro-budget of only $7000. I’ll refrain from trying to explain the plot because I would not do it justice. The movie so successfully demonstrates the inherent confusion of time paradoxes that even after two viewings I’ve yet to fully comprehend what all occurred. Let me just say that the film depicts a couple of hobby physicists working out of their garage who accidently create an actual functioning time machine of sorts. As the characters come to grips with understanding their bizarre invention, the movie explores the moral and ethical ramifications of possessing such a device.
So, what makes Primer such a fantastic movie about time travel? First up, it has a totally original method for how reverse time travel might work. “The box”, while certainly confusing in operation, does well to explain the more curious aspects of time travel such as spacial location and duplication that most time travel movies overlook. Secondly, as is to be expected with a good movie about time travel, there are lots of twists and changes that occur that make you really scratch your head. It’s the first movie I’ve seen about time travel that puts the topic under an electron microscope and really focuses on the subject and not just as a plot device.
It also sits along side such movies as Donnie Darko and 12 Monkeys where the viewer is given very little exposition to understand what is going on and instead is left to figure it out on their own. I personally love movies like this as it makes for a much more believable narrative. If you decide to give this flick a viewing (good luck finding it) I highly recommend it. Just expect to be confused… a lot.
As an early adopter and subsequent beta tester of the original 14 hour TiVo, I’ve been a long time fan and supporter of the preeminent DVR brand for almost eight years now. With the advent of HD television, I like many have waited and waited for the company to develop a unit capable of handing HD content. Now that cable companies are mandatorily required to offer their digital channels to third party devices through the use of the CableCARD standard, TiVo has been able to finally release units that offer HD recording.
Their first unit to come out almost a year ago, the TiVO Series 3, was a feature packed device with a far too hefty price tag. At over $800, it was well out the the price range of even the most devoted TiVo fan. Thankfully they have released the lower priced TiVo HD that has almost all of the same functionality for less than half the price. My brother was kind enough to get me one for this Christmas (and early to boot!) and I’m happy to say it’s everything I’ve been waiting for. Read on to find out why the TiVo HD is the best HD DVR solution you can use.
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