Actually, I don't think that it was a bug in Galeon per se - the sound support on Debian has been rather flaky and causing apps to lock up, in this case, I think it was a noisy flash anim that caused the lock-up. I did try grepping through a memory dump to retrieve what I'd typed - this gave me the 'OMG Trailers' section, but nothing else.
On Saturday's foray into town, I went to see The Italian Job - which is not a bad movie in and of itself, albeit not a great one either. The problems with it lie in the fact that it's a remake of The Italian Job, which is a superior film in practically every way. The new version does at least come with an (almost) entirely new plot, which does give it some interest for aficionados of the original, but on the downside:
- The Cast: Mos Def and Seth Green are pretty good in the remake, but the original had Michael Caine, Noël Coward and even Benny Hill.
- The Chase: Yes there are red, white and blue Minis and the traffic jam, but the chase sequence in the new version is much curtailed and a pitiful shadow of that in the original. Helicopter niftiness adds something, but not much.
- The Music: The original had cracking tunes and rousing songs. The new version has ... um ... er ... well, clearly nothing memorable.
- The Ending: The original has what is indisputably one of the greatest movie endings of all time, and nicely handles the fact that the protagonists aren't exactly 'good guys'. The remake, however, has the predictable Hollywood schmaltz - the protagonists get their happily-ever-afters and the antagonist gets his comeuppance. Yawn.
- The Missing Line: You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! - I rest my case.
On Sunday, despite an afternoon of random wibbling (I suspect that Sainsbury's spiked the soup I had for lunch), I did actually manage to get some work done on my new content management system for restrictedsection.org, and now have working uploads. I've also grabbed a copy of the site that I need for final integration and testing of the new code. I also learned that there's a MySQL database available, which lead to all sorts of evil schemes for Phase II.
A couple of long-awaited trailers have popped up in the last few days:
A couple of long-awaited trailers have popped up in the last few days:
- The Matrix Revolutions
- The final theatrical trailer, which manages to be even more jaw-dropping than the first one (CGI! Bullet time! Loadsasmiths!), as well as providing some more hints into the plot. OMG I need to see this movie now (preferably in IMAX).
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- Mmmm. Lots of goodness in this one too - and more with the hints than the full-on look-at-my-effects extravaganza. See also the shot-by-shot analysis. OMG I need to see this movie now (and the extended DVD of The Two Towers
Sadly, my Nifty Dilbert Grabber ran into problems with the panels moving around the image slightly. I've rewritten it to programmatically find the panels which seems to work very nicely - see icon. The new code should be easily adaptable to handle the Sunday strips, although whether they will fit into a 100k animated gif remains to be seen.
Last night's dinnertime DVD was The Mask, which contrived to be even more fun than I remembered. For me, It's the film that marked the watershed point in special effects beyond which anything is possible - given enough time and money - certainly that seems to be the case with today’s blockbusters. You also have Jim Carrey at his madcap best (although his more straight performance in The Truman Show is even better), and this was the movie that introduced to the world the hotness of Cameron Diaz. Another reason I love this movie is the fact that I like to identify with Stanley Ipkiss - if you can't see it, don't ask me to try and explain it (and it's not because he gets Tina).
Last night's dinnertime DVD was The Mask, which contrived to be even more fun than I remembered. For me, It's the film that marked the watershed point in special effects beyond which anything is possible - given enough time and money - certainly that seems to be the case with today’s blockbusters. You also have Jim Carrey at his madcap best (although his more straight performance in The Truman Show is even better), and this was the movie that introduced to the world the hotness of Cameron Diaz. Another reason I love this movie is the fact that I like to identify with Stanley Ipkiss - if you can't see it, don't ask me to try and explain it (and it's not because he gets Tina).
October 1 2003, 05:48:14 UTC 17 years ago
- She Who Is Nothing Like Cameron Diaz