The Departed (2006)

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Joel

Today was an  odd-yet-relaxed day. I got the kids ready for school, then Namita and I went the funeral of a friend’s grandfather down in Englishtown, NJ. Afterwards, we went to get a late lunch at a new Thai restaurant that opened up recently, Tom Yum Goong II (2nd restaurant, 1st is in Princeton.)  I had to run some errands, and then settled down to watch our next Netflix movie queue selection, The Departed.

The Departed is a 2006 Martin Scorsese that won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Achievement in Directing. It stars a great cast, including Leonard DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Alex Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and many more. Big, talented cast. Strong performances. Interesting story with edge-of-your-seat plot turns. I certainly didn’t know how the story twist and turn, and I couldn’t accurately predict the climax for the story.

I would recommend this film. I love a well-done film.

The Departed (2006)

The Departed (2006)

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The Expendables (2010)

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Joel

Busy day yesterday. In the morning, I went for an early 25 mile ride on my bike after the quick-and-dirty repairs. Unfortunately, another rear wheel spoke broke on the ride home. In the afternoon, we visited and had lunch with my parents. At night, I met up with my friend Doug in East Hanover, NJ, for the 10:40pm showing of The Expendables.

The Expendables is a new release this week, directed by Sylvester Stallone, and starring a veritable who’s who of action/regular stars from the 80’s and 90’s. Stallone, Stratham, Li, Rourke, Lundgren, Steve Austin, Bruce Willis, and even a brief cameo by Schwarzenegger himself. It’s a action film about a team of mercenaries who get hired by, we think, the CIA, to kill a corrupt South American (and imaginary) country.

While they’re down there, they get a heart for the suffering populace (and more importantly, a beautiful woman with a heart of gold.) The story was a bit cliched for sure, but at a certain level, the film was entertaining. It was interesting to see the old stars in action. For that, I’ll give Stallone some slack on the story.

The Expendables (2010)

The Expendables (2010)

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My road bike is back

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Joel

After a long week and a half, I picked up my bicycle today. It’s not perfect, as I ordered a new rear wheel, but delivery on the wheel has been delayed. Maybe next week. In the meantime, I got the rest of the work done, new spoke on the rear wheel, and they’ll put the new rear wheel later on for no additional charge.

The work I got done:

  • Retaped the handlebars with new handlebar tape, so I’ll have more cushion for my hands.
  • Replaced the broken rear spoke.
  • Two new tires and a replacement tube.

While I was at the shop, I spoke to one of the guys there that I don’t like the clipless pedals that I have on there now. They aren’t wide enough to provide enough foot support, and my shoes aren’t so great anymore. Guess what they told me? Those pedals are more suited for mountain biking! I asked why the guy that I bought them from at the bike shop (Diamond Cycle) would recommend them. I was getting infuriated, thinking I was hoodwinked. However, he told me that those might suggested for someone learning clipless pedals for the first time. I harrumped, but was partly mollified.

Okay, so I wasn’t hoodwinked, but I want real road pedals and shoes. I don’t want to be out there struggling with the wrong gear, making my ride unecessarily more difficult. I browsed the pedals and shoes, but decided to hold off after consulting my wife. New shoes and pedals would run me another $250. Add in today’s repair bill, and I’m looking at nearly $500 flying out the door today.

Hmmmm, maybe next month then.

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The Hangover (2009)

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Joel

After four weeks, we finally sat down to watch 2009’s breakout comedy The Hangover. The film was directed by Todd Phillips, and stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galiafianakis. I think, at this point, hasn’t everyone seen this film but us? Four guys head to Las Vegas for a swingin’ bachelor party, and three of them wake up the next morning with no recollection of the night before. Furthermore, the groom-to-be is missing, and the guys follow various clues to backtrack their evening of debauchery (and dare I say it, chicanery?) to find the groom. 

Although the Blu-ray disc contained both the rated and unrated version my wife “woosed out” on watching the unrated version. Having watched the rated R version, I’m curious to know what the heck they took out that was too crazy for normal consumption. The Hangover was hilarious, it didn’t hit slow parts, and I found it to be fun movie to watch. I was laughing hard at times, which is always a good sign of a comedy. If you examine the film, there are no big-name celebrities, so I hope this is another nail in the coffin in the Hollywood belief that studies should pay celebrities big money to bring in the audience. If you have a good movie, people will come.

The Hangover (2009)

The Hangover (2009)

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Verizon FiOS conducting trials with new Motorola DVR set-top boxes that are higher capacity, more energy-efficient

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Joel

Woohoo, a better FiOS DVR set-top box, and it can’t get here soon enough. Verizon is testing out the new Motorola DVR QIP7232, and while it is more energy-efficient, I don’t think that’s the most important new feature. The Motorola QIP 7216 DVRs that Verizon currently deploys to FiOS consumers have 160 Gb hard drives standard, which provides you about 80 hours of SD video, but only a skimpy 20 hours of HD video. The new DVRs are spec’d out with 320 Gb hard drives, so that’s a nice upgrade. No word yet on any other specs. I never quite understood why the old Moto 7216’s have all these disabled ports on the back, never to be utilized, e.g. USB, Ethernet, and even eSATA. What a waste.

In the past 30 days of HD recording and viewing, we’ve hit 100% capacity nearly every day. In a house with a family of four sharing one DVR and HDTV, 20 hours isn’t enough. Sure, Lily doesn’t watch her own shows per se, but after recording a few shows for the adults, some Sesame Street, some Sid the Science Kid, and your DVR is filled to capacity.

Motorola QIP7232

Motorola QIP7232

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The BlackBerry Torch 9800 is nice and all but I’m underwhelmed

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Joel

Research in Motion (RIM) is trying to stay in the game, and announced their new BlackBerry 9800, dubbed the BlackBerry Torch. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the Storm 2 with a built-in keyboard, and will be available on the AT&T network beginning August 12th.

BlackBerry Torch 9800

BlackBerry Torch 9800

Here’s the thing. I’m a tech head, and I loves me a good phone. No, not a good phone. An awesome phone. I moved to AT&T for the RIM BlackBerry Curve so I could get a smarter phone that would allow me to synch my contacts and calendar data to my MS Outlook on the home PC. I’d tried Motorola’s Phone Tools application years ago to synch their Motorola flip phones (the v710 and E815), but Motorola’s app left much to be desired. Using RIM’s Desktop Manager software, synching is a breeze. The two BlackBerrys that I’ve owned so far — the Curve and the Bold, are great phones. They’re really good. So why am I underwhelmed?

Three words: iPhone and Android. The iPhone 4 came out a few months ago, and despite Antenna-gate, it’s a beautiful phone. I still have my Apple iPod Touch from a few years ago, and the I still think the form-factor is fantastic. I like the few apps installed so far, but it’d be so much better to have access to those apps outside of my Wi-Fi home network.

More importantly, Google’s Android. After much prompting for me, my wife recently moved to her first smartphone, the HTC Droid Incredible. I checked out her phone during our recent road trip, and it’s an amazing phone. Absolutely amazing. It’s beautiful, it’s useful, it’s smooth, it’s polished. It’s so well done, it’s awe-inspiring. It’s truly lust-worthy. While there is technically nothing wrong with the current slate of BlackBerries on the market, they don’t quite compare to the Android models on the scene and the new iPhone 4.

My next opportunity to upgrade is November 2010, but I’m considering either upgrading to the iPhone 4 in November, or waiting until March 2011 to move back to Verizon.

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iSkysoft’s free DVD-to-iPhone converter until August 9 2010

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Joel

Last month, the 5th Circuit court ruled that it is not illegal to rip DVDs as long as you aren’t sharing or selling copyrighted content. That’s great, because I believe if you own the content, you should have it available to you in any format you need. Why should the consumer be forced to purchase the same content more than once if they want to watch it on on more than one device?

For example, I would never purchase or rent a movie or tv show from Apple’s iTunes. Why? I can only watch it on my iPod or on my home PC. If I wanted to watch it on my HDTV, I’d have to first purchase an Apple TV device, which you can only watch content purchased from iTunes. DVDs and Blu-rays are great, but I can’t watch it on my iPod when I’m sitting on the train? It’s abysmal.

For a limited time only until August 9th 2010, iSkysoft is offering a free DVD-to-iPhone converter. I’m going to try it this weekend. I hope this is good.

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PC World: Stupid Movie Tech Moments

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Joel

As a tech head, I hate silly or nonsensical recreations of technology. Don’t ever get me started with how they depicted hacking in the film Swordfish. That Hugh Jackman movie drives me nuts every time I watch him banging away on the keyboard. [Palm strikes forehead.]

PC World compiled their list of nine stupid movie tech moments. Robocop was running MS-DOS? Wow.

1987's Robocop ran MS-DOS?

1987's Robocop ran MS-DOS?

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Jay & Aimee’s Wedding

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Joel

The primary reason we had to come home in one day yesterday was so we could attend Jay & Aimee’s wedding. On Saturday morning, Nums had a church meeting to attend, so I dropped off the kids to my sister-in-law. Nums came home, got dressed up, and went to the wedding. By the time I got home, I dressed up, and went to the wedding reception. What was cool about this wedding is that it was certainly the closest in proximity in our entire lives. It took place at a Holiday Inn in the same town we live in. We literally had a 5 min drive. How amazing is that?

The wedding reception was small, intimate, and very nice. That’s all I can really say. Oh, and congratulations Jay and Aimee!

Jay & Aimee's Wedding, July 31st 2010

Jay & Aimee's Wedding, July 31st 2010

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Inception (2010)

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Joel

After all the good word, we went to see the new Christopher Nolan film Inception on our Michigan date night. We got a little lost on the way to the theater, and I didn’t think we’d make our 6:30pm showing, but with the numerous trailers and commercials, the movie didn’t start until 6:42pm. We walked in, got great seats, watched the last 30 seconds of the last trailer, and then the movie started. Can you believe that? AND we had great seats right in the middle. We were pleased.

Haven’t most people seen this film already? I won’t write out the entire synopsis — I’ll copy & paste from the Wikipedia entry.

Inception is a 2010 American science fiction action film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy. The film is inspired by the experience of lucid dreaming and dream incubation. The film, a variant on the heist genre, centers on Dom Cobb, an “extractor”, who enters the dreams of others to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible. His abilities and questions about the death of his wife have cost him his family and his nationality, but he is promised a chance to regain his old life in exchange for planting an idea in a corporate target’s mind. This process of planting an idea, known as “inception”, is less familiar and far more difficult than Cobb’s usual job of “extraction.”

Good synopsis, eh? The film runs 148 minutes, but it was pretty good. I had read so many good reviews that you get the impression that it’s the greatest film ever. I wouldn’t say that. It won’t change your life like the Star Wars original trilogy or The Matrix (yeah, I said it), but it’s an intelligent movie that is entertaining. I couldn’t believe that my wife sat through and enjoyed a sci-fi action film. That’s a testament that this was a good film.

I was happy to see this film. I was happy to see a smart Hollywood film. After experiencing the mindless debacle that was A-Team, it was refreshing to see something that someone with a brain had written.

Inception (2010)

Inception (2010)

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