Pocket Universe

There are moments in life when everything changes. Sometimes the changes are so subtle, so seemingly unimportant, that we don’t recognize their full significance until much later, if ever. Other times, the change is immediate and pervasive, where it feels like the world is suddenly spinning on a different axis, and you realize that nothing will ever be the same again.

This is one of those times.

Prior to today, you have lived your life in blissful ignorance. From time to time, you may have paused and said to yourself, “I wonder what Andy is thinking about? I wonder what interests and obsessions matter to Andy today? And, more importantly, will he still care about them tomorrow?” Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to talk to me, either in person or through some sort of mass-communication medium. And then, with a little patience and lots of concerned questions, you may have been able to get me to talk, if only for a brief moment, about what I’m currently interested in or fascinated by.

But like a brief ray of sunlight on a cloudy day, the moment is gone, and you are once again alone in your own world. Perhaps your life has been made a little richer, a little brighter, but the moment is all too brief, and you are left thirsty for more. But now, thanks to this website, you can at last slake that thirst. You can drink from the fountainhead and bathe in its cool waters. Here, you can always come and have life’s critical questions answered for you, questions that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time: Has Andy seen any good movies lately? Has he found any interesting websites? Is there something that he wants to do, to make, or perhaps, to buy? Has he bought any new DVDs, and if so, has he watched them? And most importanly, what makes him such an amazing, unique, and charismatic person?

Together, we will explore the answers to those questions, as well as questions that you never even thought of asking. The journey begins here; let’s make it together.

Andy’s Rating: Really Liked It (10/13)

I went and saw Hellboy a few weeks ago, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to give away any major plot points, so I’ll keep my review somewhat short. Surprisingly, the character of Hellboy serves as the emotional center of the film, not just the action hero. Despite his appearance, he is just a working-class superhero, and therein lies much of the appeal of the movie. He doesn’t have the heroic, larger-than-life qualities of a Superman or a Batman; he’s just trying to get through the day…it’s just that his day usually involves dispatching assorted Lovecraftian baddies. In that respect, you feel a little more empathy towards him. There is a little Hellboy in all of us.

But what make the movie really enjoyable are the over-the-top action sequences. The characters and villains are drawn with large, almost archetypical brush strokes. The design of Hellboy typifies this, with his bright coloration, his prominent facial features (granted, most of which are shared by the actor, Ron Perlman), and of course, the comically oversized Right Hand of Doom. And without getting into too much detail, the other heroes, villians, and assorted beasties are similarly exaggerated and unearthly. Consequently, the action sequences are a grand spectacle. For this reason alone, the movie is worth seeing. But beyond that, the movie is a great superhero romp, it has a little bit of everything, and it is just plain fun. I highly recommend it.

Once again, Apple manages to coalesce all of my geeky interests into one! Their latest coup is a deal with Disney to put their library of music exclusively on iTunes until September 30. You can read the whole press release at Apple and Walt Disney Records Team up to Deliver Exclusive Soundtracks on iTunes.

So as you may know, I just got back from working at NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters convention. I was there for two days, and worked two morning shifts in the Apple booth. The rest of the day I had free time to wander around the show floor, but I actually spent most of my time back in the Apple booth, watching the demo presentations and trying out the new apps. Here’s a quick summary of what caught my eye:

Both of my shifts were spent demonstrating Final Cut Pro HD. I had to fake my way through a few things, because I work primarily on Final Cut Express, but overall I think I was able to show the product off really well. The HD support is excellent, from 720p24 all the way up to 1080i60. You could even play back HD video from a Powerbook hard drive, which is an impressive feat considering the video bandwidth. On the dual-processor 2Ghz G5, it can run four HD streams simultaneously in real time. But overall, the product pretty much sells itself. I was especially pleased by all of the people who stopped by raving about how great the product is. You can get a top-of-the-line G5, a 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, and the Final Cut Pro HD software for $6000. For a full HD editing system, that is an amazing deal.

Motion was the application that impressed me the most. It’s a little difficult understand the full scope of the program without actually seeing it, but I’ll try to explain it. Basically, it’s a full-motion animation and titling application, with behavioral animation and real-time previewing. So for example, you could set the title text for your movie, then apply a Fade In behavior, use Throw to have the text get thrown in from offscreen, then have another object come in and knock the letters away using real-world physics and simulated gravity. Or you could easily create a field of butterflies that constantly fly around another object. Then you change the color of some of the butterflies, add a Glow filter to others, maybe add a Blur effect…and you can do all this in real-time, while the butterflies are continuously flying around. It is really spectacular, and you should see it. Motion is expected to ship this summer.

Even if you don’t know what Shake is, you have definitely seen movies that used the software. In fact, the last seven Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects were all made with Shake. (For the record, the movies were Titanic, What Dreams May Come, The Matrix, Gladiator, and all three Lord of the Rings movies, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.) Again, look at the web page to get more details, but basically Shake is a compositing program that can handle movie-resolution projects. They did a demo at the show using plates from a scene in Return of the King: They started with a 4K (4000 lines of resolution) background plate of Mordor, added in an animation of the Eye of Sauron, punched up the glow on the top of the volcano, added smoke effects, model shots of the two main gates, and animated orcs on the gates. Then, they composited in lots of 2K plates of actors in orc costumes, shot against a blue screen, which were then matted out, color corrected, and placed in the scene. To fill out the back of the crowd, they had tons of shots of computer-generated orcs and trolls that were all composited together, along with rotoscoped outlines and a height map that was used to put in additional dust and haze effects. Then all of the elements were color corrected and adjusted to fit in the film frame. If you have any interest in film effects at all, it was a beautiful sight to behold. I even recorded the demo on video, so I will be able to show it to all of my friends.

I actually didn’t spend much time looking at DVD Studio Pro, and I don’t know many of the new features that were added for this release. The only one I can remember offhand is the graphical display of your DVD layout. They did show a full workflow demonstration, where a video was edited in Final Cut Pro HD, titles were added with LiveType and Motion, music was added with Logic Pro, then everything was output to Compressor to prepare it for DVD, then those files were imported into DVD Studio Pro where addition menu effects were added using Motion, and then the entire project was burned to a DVD. And this all took place in about a half hour, maybe less. It was truly a wonder to behold. I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what DVD Studio Pro can do, but it really is easy to use and extremely powerful. I hope I can get many more chances to use it in the future.

Andy’s Rating: one notch below Loved It (12/13)

Went and saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 today. Taken as separate movies, I have to admit that Vol. 2 is not quite as good as Vol. 1. Taken together, however, Vol. 2 provides about as satisfying an ending as I could think of for this epic film. Less violence and more talking, but honestly, it would be hard to match the frenetic kinetic pace of the first film. If you’ve seen the first one, then nothing should keep you from seeing the second.

Unfortunately, I had not seen this memo until after I left the theater, but it’s worth noting if you haven’t seen the movie yet. Personally, I’m hoping they’ll let me sneak back in later tonight and catch it. It may be nothing, but I have to be sure.

Update 4/26/04 00:01: I stopped back by Century 22 tonight, and sure enough, they let me back in to see the end. The actual end of the credits was just an outtake from the first movie, and not a plot twist as I had originally expected. However, there was one little interesting twist somewhere else in the end credits. Sorry to be so cryptic, but you’ll have to see it to understand.

Welcome to a new feature which I like to call DVD Tuesday. It’s really very simple: Every Tuesday, the new DVD releases of the week come out. So, to help you in your buying decisions, I list the important releases of the week, either the ones I am buying myself, or others that you should take note of. Also, whenever possible, I will try to recommend the best place to buy the DVD to take advantage of the opening-week sales which often occur. This week is a short list, however, so let’s get to it…

Big Fish is a wonderful, magical film about a…well, it regards a guy who…okay, I haven’t actually seen the movie. But it is by Tim Burton, which should be enough reason to buy it. In any case, it is supposed to be really good, it got nominated for some award or other, and the commercials featured the Yes song I’ve Seen All Good People. And at Best Buy this week, it’s only $15.99. Go pick it up.

This Boston Globe article, entitled Greedy studios make DVDs not so special, provides some sobering thoughts about the attitude of some studios towards DVD consumers. The quote from the Miramax COO is particularly disturbing. Basically, some studios have the attitude that they can release a bare-bones edition of a DVD, with the intention of releasing a special edition later to milk movie buffs for more money. Hardly news, I know, but it is surprising to hear studio executives basically admit what they are doing.

As for my take on the article, I am not as concerned about the issue as the writer seems to be. There are several different situations where a studio releases multiple versions of the same film, and they are rarely malicious. The first example is where the studio puts out a bare-bones edition early in the life of the format, and then works towards a special-edition release later. I don’t have a problem with that, since I would rather have a better edition come out later, than no new release at all. It’s up to the individual whether he wants to buy the newer release; no one is forcing me…I mean, him…to buy the same thing again. And usually, you can get a decent price on eBay for the previous version. So in that case, I don’t think that having more options is a bad thing.

The other case is when a studio releases a movie on DVD with the intention of release a more deluxe version at a later date. Even then, the studio can go about it in different ways: They can either keep the special edition secret, or they can announce both versions ahead of time, and let the consumer take his pick. The Lord of the Rings DVDs are a perfect example of the latter case. It’s not like consumers were blindly buying the first version without knowing that a special edition would be released later. And in that case, the standard edition and the special edition were two completely different cuts of the film, with two completely separate sets of supplemental materials. The consumer who buys both is maximizing his buying dollar, not wasting money on the same thing twice.

And then you have the Kill Bill example, where a special edition is planned, but not announced until later. Again, it’s up to the consumer to decide how much he wants to spend on the movie. Regardless of the supplements, the movie is worth buying in an of itself, especially for the $10 purchase price I paid on its release date. For that little money, I can afford to buy a special edition later. And for other movies with later special-edition releases, you have to decide on a case-by-case basis. For example, will it be worth buying the new Spider-Man special edition, just to get the exact same supplements as before, but with one new segment on Spider-Man 2? Not for me, and probably not for most people. But for someone who is buying the movie for the first time, they will get a slightly better release with the newer edition.

So, what is the issue again? Regardless of what the writer says, the main appeal of the DVD, at least for me, is the movie itself. If I am happy spending $20 on a bare-bones release, I shouldn’t be any less happy when a better release comes out later. In my mind, that’s like the people who buy a fast computer, and then when a faster one comes out, they say, “Oh, my computer is so slow!” It’s all about perception. As time goes on, DVDs will get better and cheaper, with more supplements, better picture and sound quality, and lower prices. Should the early adopters be unhappy? Of course not. Maybe they would only be happy if every movie was released once and never again, but that seems unreasonable, it doesn’t help anyone, and it is actually worse for the consumer and the movie industry as a whole. I say, let the studios improve their product lines as they see fit, but they should try to tell the consumers as soon as possible if a special edition is planned. Then the consumer can make the decision for himself, as it should be.