Posts from — March 2008

Over the weekend, I watched the intriguing First Snow starring Guy Pearce, Piper Perabo, and William Fichter.

It was directed by Mark Fergus, half of the screenwriting team for Children of Men. I really loved that movie, which was totally shafted at last year’s Oscars btw, so First Snow has been sitting in my netflix queue for some time now. I basically had to force myself to watch it yesterday. I won’t lie, it was pretty slow at first.

The movie focuses on Jimmy Stark (Pearce), a floor salesman with big ambitions and a con man feel. While stranded at an auto shop in the desert, he gets a psychic reading out of pure boredom. During the session, the psychic has a sorta seizure and asks for Jimmy to leave. Well, this withheld prediction begins to bug the crap out of Jimmy, especially when some of the early predictions the guy made came true (like getting a promotion and a fluke basketball game win). After tracking the psychic down again, he learns that the psychic predicted that Jimmy wouldn’t live past the first snow. You follow Jimmy along as he tries to make sense of this revelation as it drives him to near madness.

The pacing could be a bit better, but overall I’m glad to have seen it. Definitely a good effort made by a first-time director. I think the cinematography and the acting really held my interest the most. The eerie lighting design and deliberately framed scene composition added to the suspense. I feel it would be quite difficult to reproduce these artistic choices with even the best professional camcorders on the market today.

See the trailer here.

Over the summer back in the day, I used to systematically watch every movie at the rental store. There wasn’t much going on where I grew up in terms of non-sporting activities. So I would go to the local blockbuster and just scour the rows for something I hadn’t seen that perked my interest. And merely by chance did I see CrossWorlds.

It stars Rutger Hauer (who was the best blind ninja I’d ever seen in Blind Side), Josh Charles, and Andrea Roth (FX’s “Rescue Me”). For awhile there, I’d see any movie with Josh Charles ever since he played the love interest in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter. So when I saw the box, I was immediately sold.

After re-watching this flick yesterday, I can’t truthfully say it’s a good movie, but it’s fun to watch on lazy sunday. The plot is ridiculously simple: Find the crystal, find the scepter, and safeguard them from being abused by evil. All set in the real world with people from other dimension running around doing so-called magic.

Check this montage I found online to get the gist. First off, you gotta just accept the obligatory cheesy effects, which were probably a dead giveaway by the poster. Nevertheless, I really think Stuart Wilson proves to be menacing enough as the villain.

One question though, what was going on with Andrea Roth’s outfit? There were too many mismatched colors going on, even for 1996. Burgundy velvet skirt, white button down shirt, red top, and then brown boots with white hiking socks peeking out! Plus, I think she’s was wearing a red bodysuit. Remember those? God, that was an awful trend. I am hoping that American Apparel’ new line of bodysuits doesn’t catch on.

And the random star of today in CrossWorlds: Jack Black as the joke telling roommate.

While researching digital camcorders, I noticed that the product descriptions always play up the optical and digital zoom. But what’s the difference between the two types? Is one more important than the other?

From Cnet:

“As with digital still cameras, the optical zoom of a camcorder determines the number of times a camera can magnify an image through its lenses. Take note that this is different from digital zoom which simply takes a portion of an image and enlarges it, resulting in a loss of quality. Optically zoomed images enlarge the picture without sacrificing quality.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to look at the optical zoom power rather than the digital zoom rating on the camcorder to determine the actual amount of zoom you need. In fact, we don’t even recommend using digital zoom since it affects the quality of the video capture. Instead, look out for at least a 10x optical zoom lens which is commonly found on most camcorders today and would generally be more than sufficient for most users.”

Well, it looks like the optical zoom seems to be the most important. Optical zoom refers to the ability to preserve the image, while digital zoom is just the basic zoom capability of the device without regard to image quality.

Most camcorders have a optical zoom between 10x and 42x. And even better, many affordable camcorders have high zoom capabilities. Take this Sony DCR-DVD610 for example. It has a 40x optical zoom, while only costing around $294 - $352 bucks.

Many digital camcorders have still image capability. And since some camcorder consumers don’t need advanced features, they are perfectly happy to use a camcorder to take pictures.

It’s easy to use a time laspe setting on your camcorder to take pictures of the night sky.

Or maybe you want to video record a vacation or child’s sporting event, then you might be tempted to grab some photos with the same device. Adding the still photography feature seems to be pretty easy for most camcorder manufacturers.

When shopping for camcorders, it could prove useful to look for a camcorder with decent still image resolution. This term refers to the megapixel ratings, which is an important feature when looking at digital cameras.

Even though this sounds like a great bonus to any camcorder, I personally prefer to have my technology separated and take my photos with digital cameras. And it’s worth saying that most digital cameras have pretty decent video capabilities.

I guess it all depends on your level of use for each device. If you see yourself video recording most of the time and rarely taking still images, then maybe go for a Panasonic GS320.

I feel like the remake trend may be going too far after seeing the trailer below for Prom Night.

What was wrong with the old one? All you needed back then was a pun-ful poster and you were set.

Now you gotta set it in a fancy hotel and bring in “teens” who are way too old to pass as high schoolers. The 2008 version looks like a cross between Scream, Carrie, and a CW soap. And why oh why is one of my fave actors from “The Wire” Idris Elba associating himself with this tacky remake?

And what’s this now? Michael Bay, the mastermind behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes, is producing a Friday the 13th remake starring Jared Padalecki.

Casting him isn’t that surprising since he’s already starred in the horror remake of House of Wax. So he knows how to play stupid and aloof really well.

But sheesh, can we call a truce on the 80s horror remakes.