Oldies, but goldies!

Been on a shopping spree again. On sale stuff mostly. All except for one item actually. The stuff above is:

• A Stephen king movie box containing Children of the Corn, Köplust (Needful Things) and Tales from the Darkside.
• Eisenstein’s silent movie classic Battleship Potemkin.
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 1992 version with Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder.
• Evanescence’s The Open Door album
• Pink Floyd’s Wish you were here album
• Cornelis Wreeswijk’s Guldkorn från Mäster Cees memoarer

Like I said; oldies, but goldies…

Pilgrim’s Bounty event

The Pilgrim’s Bounty world event was unleashed yesterday in World of Warcraft. Thanksgiving in disguise. Nothing strange or odd with that. What was odd though was that I nailed six out of nine event achievements in just a couple of hours and probably will take another today. Maybe even two with a bit of luck…

Oh, the horror…!

Horror’s gone soft, hasn’t it? Or maybe I’m just not getting the right movies for the job. Last night, on my way home from work, I stopped by SF-bokhandeln and bought All the boys love Mandy Lane, just the standard “teen slasher” stereotype kind of film. At first glance filled with clichés, but I was pleasantly surprised. The photography and music was more than good. Had to love a bit of Paul Anka’s “Sealed with a kiss” at the title screen. As far as acting goes, well, the (good-looking) actors did fine. The story was a bit on the non-complicated side of things and the ending wasn’t much of a surprise… All in all, a nice, cozy, all too familiar horror flick.

The other movie I got wasn’t so much for the horror, but for the cult label and film history. F. W. Warnau’s Nosferatu, a silent movie filmed in 1922 and based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Max Schreck’s portrait of count Orlok, or Dracula, pretty much set the standard for vampires on the silver screen. What I think of it? Aside from being brilliant when it was made, it made use of stronger symbolic imagery (it went deeper into the human psyche) and a lot of technical stuff for the time such as editing. For example, a semi-transparent Dracula, sitting on a casket, showing himself to a sailor in a ship’s storage room. That must’ve creeped people out a lot back then…

Fotomässan 2009

Went to Fotomässan in Älvsjö with a buddy o’ mine today. Lots of stuff to see and play around with.

Said hello to people I know at Nikon, met up with my youngest cousin and her friend and a colleague who’s taken a year off to study photography. He’s kick-ass already, but wants to get really good.

I also rummaged through tons of photo books, drooled immensely over the Hasselblad stand and at the H4D 60, enjoyed the photo exhibits a lot and played around with Sigma’s bazook… eh, 400-1000 mm lens. Holy heck! Man, I guess a weapon’s license is needed for it. Just look at it for Pete’s sake! The toes better watch out when this baby slips from your grip…

Mo’ flicks!

Added two more BD movies to the collection today; Day Watch and the classic 1994 Stargate movie. Cover pics will come later.

Now, I say to you… Screw you guys, I’ll be in my sofa under a blanket with a cup of tea all night…

The first BD movies

Now that I’ve got a BD player, I need BD movies. Of course. And after work last night I got some. The ones above.

Night Watch (or Nochnoi Dozor), a fantasy tale set in modern day, tell the story of a delicate balance between the forces of Light and Darkness. I had half expected it to be a sad copy and mixture of Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and Underworld, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that while elements from the aforementioned works are present in Night Watch, the director has managed to weave them together nicely. I will get Day Watch, the sequel, later on.

Angels and Demons is, for those that don’t know, based on Dan Brown’s book with the same name. Professor Langdon (Tom Hanks) returns in a race against time to find four kidnapped cardinals. This film is a lot more action themed than The da Vinci Code, but that in itself doesn’t make it worse. In fact, it’s an enjoyable movie for those who liked The da Vinci Code and mysteries involving the secret mason brotherhood of the Illuminati…

Just one thing, Night Watch played without troubles. Angels and Demons didn’t. I had to upgrade the player firmware for the disc to be recognized so, please, upgrade to the latest firmware version for your player. Also, at some points during the film, the movie froze. Sort of like when a double-sided DVD switches layers to read from, only longer. So, I fast-forwarded back a bit only to find that the movie had leapt a minute or so forward from where it had froze. Anyone else experiencing this with Samsung’s BD-P4600?

Don’t feel…

Like posting anything substantial today. Or anything at all for that matter. Waiting for the day to end…

waiting for the day to end
as silence came too late
I turn my eyes inside
close the lids
deny the world to enter

’cause I’m turning the desires down
again rose the monstrous of hours in between
I taint the thought
the trauma born inside
all the thoughts that you defined
tread the light again
take the pain away
it feels as though time as tears
never seem to end

’cause I’m turning the desires down
again rose the monstrous of hours in between
I taint the thought
the trauma born inside
oh, inside
oh, inside
oh, inside

as I hold you in I try to make sure
these treasures that I hide
these treasures that I hide

’cause I’m turning the desires down
again rose the monstrous of hours in between
I taint the thought
the trauma born inside

’cause I’m turning the desires down
again rose the monstrous of hours in between
I taint the thought
the trauma born inside

It has arrived!

My Blu-ray Disc player is here! They’ve shipped it and it should arrive at the office this afternoon unless something unexpected happens. Happy happy joy joy! I’ll update once it’s up and running.

On a side note, I almost bought Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons on DVD last night. I’m glad I didn’t.

Update: Installation was a no-brainer. Just attach the power cord to the player and an HDMI cable ‘tween player and TV set. That was all there was to it. Upscaling DVD’s works great. Can’t wait until I’ve bought a Blu-ray Disc movie to get the better experience…

Tooltips!

Do you have a lot of digital music? And a Mac and iTunes? Tired of manually hunting down album cover artwork and lyrics? Here’s what works incredibly well for me.

First off, the cover artwork. I found a widget called, simply and to the point, Album Art Widget today and thought I’d give it a go. And what a go it was! It found nearly all covers I looked for! Get it over at liquidx.net

As for the lyrics, a nifty little program called Get Lyrical works like a charm too. Searches a wiki database for lyrics and then inserts it in iTunes. Shullian.com is the place to find that app.

The Future

While being a great song by Leonard Cohen, this post isn’t going to be about it.

I’ve taken a step toward the future of home movie entertainment and ordered a Blu-Ray Disc player. Since my TV set can handle HD resolution material and the player wasn’t too expensive, I hit the order button. Can’t wait until I’ve set it up.

Great design from Samsung. And it’s so shiny too!