July 1st, 2008

It's a pretty warm day to wear your gown, Fonz. 1:50 AM Whee. The light of my life -- my brand-new, sparkling Pioneer Kuro Elite Pro-151FD 60" plasma -- showed up today somewhat unexpectedly. Even though there's still a lot of cleanup I have to do, I went ahead and snapped a few pictures. A kinda awful shot of Almost Famous in Blu-ray on the 151FD: Adding a little perspective to the size of the TV in an admittedly kind of cavernous room: I moved the 50" plasma (a Panasonic TH-50PX50U) up to my room: ...and the 36" HDTV (a Sony KD-36XS955) was shoved into the other bedroom: The ancient 27" in the downstairs bathroom: Another 27", this time in the guestier guest bedroom: (Comment!)

June 30th, 2008

Bored again. 12:18 AM Gasp! I only watched one movie all of last week: Walk Hard, as suggested by Mr. Matthew C. Dobson as his days in the Upstate dwindled down. No, Mad Men consumed just about every other available second. For pretty much five days straight, I did nothing but work, sleep, and watch Mad Men. An hour long drama...thirteen episodes...twenty-three audio commentaries...33 hours of material with a five day deadline. So, yeah, I won't be doing that again anytime soon. I made up for a bit of lost time over the weekend. Finally gave Cloverfield and There Will Be Blood a spin on Blu-ray, wiping off the dust that had been sitting on those cases since they showed up in the mail however many weeks ago. Watched-'n-reviewed Sex and Death 101, a double feature of The Night of the Werewolf and Vengeance of the Zombies, and a nearly twenty year old waste of time called Horror Rock. Watched Hero on DVD afterwards just for good measure. Played a heckuva lot of 'Rock Band' too, including tearing through the entirety of "Dolittle". So, yeah, that's something, I guess. (Comment!)

June 25th, 2008

D'oh. 3:13 PM TV shipment is being delayed a week. As luck would have it, I'd already gutted my entire home theater in preparation for all of this. (Comment!)

June 23rd, 2008

A couple of pictures from Saturday 10:11 PM Emiliano, me, and Jon: Dinner at Nolia's with me looking somewhat serial killer-ish (left to right: Val, Rachel, Leanne, Rod, Jon, me, and Emiliano): Me, Emiliano, and Rod: (Comment!)

June 22nd, 2008

Following up a moderately interesting story with the boring movie recap. 11:22 PM Oh...so, it was kind of a light week for movie-watchin'. Spent Monday and Tuesday watching-slash-reviewing Persepolis on Blu-ray. Watched the predominately lousy third season of Weeds on Blu-ray over Wednesday and Thursday. Knocked out Be Kind Rewind -- which was a lot more Capra-esque than the homespun-movie-riff I was expecting -- on Blu-ray late nite Thursday. Rounded out the work week with The Professionals...and saying "on Blu-ray" is probably understood by this point. Dug it. Kind of just a puffed-chest-grrr-I'm-a-man flick. Saturday remained movie-free, what with the 15 hours spent in and around Charlotte. Sunday...? Didn't really try to make up for lost time. Waded through a couple of Blockbuster Online shipments: The Bourne Supremacy on HD DVD and Grave of the Fireflies on DVD. Grave... was so scuffed that I wound up having to watch it on my PC...my DVD player upstairs choked on it. Dunno how much movie-watching I'll be doing next week either. I should have Mad Men to review on Blu-ray on Monday, so between that and the complete upending of my home theater that follows a couple days later, that'll be gobbling up most of my free time. (Comment!)

A recap of Saturday involving entirely too many ellipses 1:34 PM I was in Charlotte all day yesterday for...well, not HeroesCon itself, so much, but to pal around with a bunch of other folks who'd made the trek. Even though the con had a pretty outstanding guest list, I really didn't bother seeking out autographs or sketches, chatting up the talent behind my fav'rite four-color heroes, or digging through boxes and boxes of musty comic books. Nope, I spent the entire time hanging out with Jon (the most likely to read this, so he gets top billing), Val, Emiliano, Rachel, Rod, and Leanne. I had a really, really great time -- I tried (and failed) to track down an issue of Ghost Whisperer for Jon (JLH ranks fourth in his heart behind Britney Spears, Shia LeBeouf, and the guy from Phil of the Future), Emiliano drew me a really tremendous He-Man sketch that I've already gone ahead and framed, and we had a classy dinner together at a fantastic restaurant that I need to ensure winds up listed at 10Best.com. We were originally going to go to Val's favorite Caribbean joint in Charlotte (click on that hyperlink just to watch the awesome commercial, if nothing else) but they ran out of chicken, and...yeah, at a jerk chicken place, that means they ran out of food, period...so we wandered around and stumbled upon Nolia, a really cozy New Southern restaurant that had just in the past few weeks set up shop in a converted house. You'll no doubt be thrilled to hear that I decided to experiment a bit and tried goat cheese ravioli with mushrooms. I don't make my way up to Charlotte all that often, but I will have to make it a point to give Nolia another look the next time I'm up there. Outstanding food, exceptional service, a really wonderful atmosphere... I don't know how much weight the Adam Tyner Seal of Approval carries these days, but I'm forking it over to Nolia anyway. Lengthy, in-depth discussions about everything from various incarnations of Doctor Who to black-and-white BBC horror adaptations to the series of Freds on G.I. Joe...the international appeal of palling around with an Italian and a transplant from New Zealand...comic industry and people-we-know-online gossip...yeah, probably the all-around best time I've had in months. It was lower key than the last big get-together (Chicago '06 had around 4X as many people and was...um, rowdier, what with drunken threeways, stripping down in the public, and the like) but this one was clearly a lot more my speed. Once my current Big Work Project is wrapped up, my goal is to head up to Cedar Point in September, so I'm hoping to wave hello to at least a couple of these cats on the way if not drag them along outright. Jon -- fling me your address and I'll mail you an issue of Ghost Whisperer. That's the mark of true friendship since I'd actually have to walk to the counter with a straight face to buy the sucker. Saturday was also Scott's birthday, and since I knew I wouldn't really be around, I dragged him out to dinner Friday night instead. Also picked him up a few CDs to say "happy birthday!" -- All Time Low, We the Kings, Origin, and...um, As Blood Runs Black. Kinda spans the whole musical spectrum right there, at least if your spectrum consists of nothing but sugary-poppy-kinda-punk and speed metal. (Comment!)

June 19th, 2008

Uh-oh! Finally got an ETA. 5:30 PM Thursday, June 26th, 2008 between 9 and 10 AM. (Comment!)

June 17th, 2008

Local celebrity Scott Hoffman 3:47 PM Link. (Comment!)

June 16th, 2008

Oh, what boring stuff happened this weekend for me to rattle off...? 9:37 AM Scattergories was indirectly responsible for a Today We Escape show being truncated to four songs. That's not really accurate, but it makes for a moderately more interesting story than "miscommunication" and "everyone showed up late". Movies watched over the past few days include Patton, The Longest Day, and Dirty Harry on Blu-ray, a quickie review of the '87 schlock/horror trailer comp Drive-In Madness!, and Stalag 17, Kurosawa's Ran, and The Gold Rush on DVD. That bumps me up to an even two-two-two on twofifty.org, so I'm clawing my way towards the end there... I also tore through the entire run of Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., which was brilliant -- the sort of thing I'd like to believe I could write if I had any...y'know, talent. Also read the most recent Invincible trade. Still no word on the arrival of the oversized new TV. I'm thinking I probably won't get one of the first batches of sets because I waited so long to pre-order, but I'm hopeful to have one in July. Listening to the new Sloan now. (I ordered an autographed copy, incidentally, even though I already had two sets of Sloan autographs.) "Parallel Play" seemed almost aggressively mediocre my first time through, but I'm warming up to it... (Comment!)

June 13th, 2008

Why didn't Uncle Phil pick Will up from the airport? 9:54 AM Proof-positive that I have a terrible, terrible sense of humor -- I laughed out loud at this: ...and it got a laugh even though "Holmes" is misspelled. Random! When I was in 7th grade, I think it was, we were reading a Sherlock Holmes story aloud in English class, and everybody in the room cracked up whenever Watson would say "Holmes", which was...kind of a lot. Other than the not-here-quite-yet new TV, things have been pretty much normal: reviewed The Eye and The Signal. More or less stopped sleeping for several days running. Watched Patton on Blu-ray last night and was in awe at just how gorgeous 65mm can look in high-def. (Patton is at least my fourth 65mm production on HD DVD or Blu-ray -- along with Mutiny on the Bounty, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Grand Prix -- but it's easily the most striking.) Might go see Today We Escape tonight or blow off the show to pore through my movie backlog. (Comment!)

June 11th, 2008

I did it. 1:04 PM I just spent seven thousand dollars on a new TV. Just pre-ordered a 9th-gen 60" Pioneer Elite Kuro -- the PRO-151FD. The TV itself was only (only) $5,799, but tax, shipping, and the you're-gosh-darn-right-I-bought-an-extended warranty pushed it up another grand and change. It's literally the nicest television in existence (well, until the 10Gs come out next year, but technology's always marching on...). It's the most I've spent on any one thing, minus my car and my house, and it's not quite twice what I paid for my 50" Panasonic plasma not even three years ago. Having lots of money plus being kind of nuts equals big new TV! It's so bleeding edge that it's not even out yet, but I'm hoping to have it in my hands in the next month. (Comment!)

June 9th, 2008

The I-Know-You-Don't-Care weekly recap 12:47 AM I spent most of the week toiling away from the Tyner Compound, culminating in what amounted to a 15 hour workday on Thursday. Yikes. So, needless to say, not much in the way of movie-watchin' over the past week. I plowed my way through the last four episodes of Masters of Horror on Blu-ray early on, but that was it. Matthew C. Dobson made his triumphant return to the Upstate this weekend, and even though I hadn't seen him in...what, four years? and had barely said anything to him in the meantime either, hanging out again with him felt as if absolutely no time had passed at all. It's the curse of the nerdy shut-in: nothing ever changes. I guess the highlight there would be smuggling an entire Scattergories board game into Red Robin as a calculated in-joke. Knocked out a review of the sixth volume of Freedom on HD DVD. Settled down with The Sand Pebbles on Blu-ray Saturday morning and followed that up with UHF and Justice League: The New Frontier while I waited for Dobson to roll into town. No movies on Sunday, alas. Random Dobson story: I once convinced him that I was dating Shandi from the second season of America's Next Top Model. (Technically, it was a different person I'd made up...I was just using candid shots of Shandi as part of the ploy.) I had him going for a few weeks -- and it might've barely crossed into "months" -- with my plan being to keep the ruse going for a full year, send him a fake wedding invitation, and then give him a disinterested "what? Oh, that was just a joke" when he came up. It would've been a pretty great gag to pull, but I couldn't keep some of the details straight, and he saw through the holes in my story. Oh well. I'd probably make all of this sound incrementally less dorky if I mentioned that 3/4s of a local hard rock band were over to watch the first round of the NBA finals, at least if I left out the part where I stayed in my room most of the game to continue writing image libraries. (Comment!)

June 2nd, 2008

You're all I've got tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 12:25 PM I just bought "Wii Fit" and "We Ski", although I'm not really sure why, being...like, 20 lbs. underweight and all. I think it's just the combination of the gimmickry and its near-impossibility to find, although nothing is out of reach for a nerd of my mighty stature. Except for girls' boobs. Seeing all those copies of "Wii Fit" moving for over $160 on eBay does make ditching it online pretty tempting. So, um, I didn't have to write any Blu-ray reviews this weekend, and that's kind of a rarity. The not-going-outside tally for this weekend includes: DVD: The Ox-Bow Incident and Nosferatu ('22) HD DVD: Letters from Iwo Jima Blu-ray: Rambo ('08), Hostel Part II, 5 more episodes of Masters of Horror TV: The King of Kong along with the season finales for Friday Night Lights and Lost Comics: Peter David's Madrox miniseries along with the first year's worth of his new run on X-Factor Yeah. I also bought The Cars' first album on "Rock Band" for something and giggles, pretty much just to get "Bye Bye Love", although (most of) the rest of the album is pretty fun too. I played one song 100% one-handed just because I could. (Comment!)

May 29th, 2008

I'd quote a line from the song if I could understand any of it except for the part with the F-bomb 10:15 PM Today's goofy juxtaposition: writing a review of Bee Movie while listening to As Blood Runs Black. (For the record, my usual taste in music is make-your-teeth-hurt saccharine power-pop like XTC, that dog., Velocity Girl, The Young Fresh Fellows, Sloan, a bunch of other bands that haven't put out a record in a decade, blah blah blah...) Oh, and here's a welcomed sight, to make myself sound even more depraved: (Comment!)

May 28th, 2008

Not a word about movies. Scout's honor! 1:50 PM Observation of the day: if I walk around long enough, someone will inevitably shout gay slurs at me (today, it was "Faggot! Homo faggot!"), despite the whole not being gay thing. (Comment!)

May 27th, 2008

Meetings are fun! 4:14 PM Meeting at work from 11 AM to 12:30. Half hour for lunch. Another meeting from 1 PM to...well, now, just shy of 4 PM. Memorial Day was rather uneventful. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon on my write-up of The Other Boleyn Girl...no cookout and not even the traditional annual lacrosse finals. Watched Rififi. Ordered pizza (from a chain, alas, since my preferred mom-and-pop joint was closed for the holiday). Watched three episodes of Masters of Horror, none of which were all that great, although I believe it was the first time I've been able to leer at something Argento had helmed in high-def. (Comment!)

May 25th, 2008

Bored on a Sunday night. 11:14 PM There's something just a little strange about sitting in my bedroom at 11 PM on a Sunday night and hearing Huey Lewis and the News playing (well, "performing" would probably be more accurate) off in the distance. They're tearing through "Working For a Living" as I speaktype. So -- I had a big stack of wonderful movies crying out to be watched, and what was the first thing I grabbed...? Short Circuit. Why? No idea. I also watched Battle of Britain on Friday night, and I managed to polish off a review of A Bridge Too Far just in time to dart out the door and make it to Today We Escape's set at the Handlebar. I shot it on HDV if you want a, um, wobbly, noisy, high definition version with thin, slightly distorted audio. And really, who wouldn't? I believe Today We Escape is the second band I've tagged along with to The Handlebar who's walked out saying that they'll never, ever play there again. Today was incrementally more exciting than usual as well, I guess. Gabbed with the long-MIA Matthew C. Dobson on the phone. Re-read Ministry of Space. Watched the first of Masters of Horror's thirteen episodes on Blu-ray, and, um, money well spent...? Not so much. Visited briefly with a couple of cousins I hadn't seen in quite a long time. It'd been a while since I tore through a proper film noir, so I watched Out of the Past this morning and followed that up with the lurid costume drama The Other Boleyn Girl on Blu-ray. A review's impending, and I'm going to dig through the last of the extras momentarily. [Edited to add: Here 'tis! Even after stripping away HTML, I've clacked away at just shy of 56,000 characters in reviews over the past few days.] There are other things I guess I could ramble on about, but they don't involve me so much as my family in Charleston, and...yikes, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. (Comment!)

May 23rd, 2008

I exert no self-control. 10:35 PM Y'know, I just looked at my list of pending orders at Amazon, and in the space of one week, I have $197.35 worth of Blu-ray discs being shipped my way. Yee-ikes. If you're curious, the list includes Cloverfield, There Will Be Blood, The Longest Day, The Sand Pebbles, Patton, the third season of Weeds (which I hated, so why I'm buying it on Blu-ray, I can only blame on being a completist), and the double feature of Night of the Werewolf and Vengeance of the Zombies. It would've been even more expensive, but I wound up being sent A Bridge Too Far and Battle of Britain to review. Hopefully I'll have those knocked out this weekend. I also have the 2008 spin on Rambo en route, along with all four volumes of season one of Masters of Horror. Kinda goes without saying that all of those are on Blu-ray. (Comment!)

Not going to pretend that I'm going to post an update about anything other than movies I've watched 3:48 PM Whee! So, I spent most of the weekend reviewing the Rambo trilogy: three movies (well, obviously), five audio commentaries, more than an hour of retrospective bells and whistles... Took oodles of time and a tattered fistful of what's left of my sanity to plow my way through it. I recovered last night with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on Blu-ray and William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives. Our little tech group at work just got back from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as well, so it's been an awfully cinematic twenty four-ish hours. My Indy review would read pretty much like anyone else's, I guess. 'Sokay in a disposable summer blockbuster sort of way. It's not the adrenaline rush that Raiders of the Lost Ark is and has been the twenty or thirty or however many times it is that I've given that movie a whirl. Really clumsy compositing continually distracted me. There's something about miniatures and old school optical effects that lends themselves much better to this sort of period action piece than a render bank in Palo Alto. Oh well. Oh! And I just hit the 215 mark on twofifty.org, so I'm inching closer... (Comment!)

May 21st, 2008

I have a Boston song in my head but I forget which one it is 6:54 PM Y'know, there are an awful lot of "B"s in my upcoming review slate: A Bridge Too Far, Battle of Britain, Bee Movie, Blades of Glory, and The Other Boleyn Girl -- appropriately enough, all on Blu-ray. I'm writing this because I really, really don't want to finish watching Rambo III. (Comment!)

May 19th, 2008

...and Effie never left her side... 9:28 AM The closest thing I've ever had to a mentor died this weekend in a fairly surreal accident. I haven't spoken to Gregory in...six years? Maybe even longer than that. Still, he defined my then-fresh-out-of-college programming style, and whatever talent I have today is owed in large part to him. I was axed in a round of layoffs just about immediately after being officially hired -- y'know, last in, first out -- and he offered to take a paycut to keep me onboard. It ultimately wasn't necessary -- the company moved some money around and kept me on without me missing a beat-slash-paycheck -- but still, that's about the most enormous compliment I could ever hope to be paid. So few people I've known have ever died that it's still somewhat of an abstract concept to me, especially when it's someone I haven't seen or spoken to in such a tremendously long time. So, anyway... It was kind of an odd weekend. Went to a Christian rock show to see a band several of my co-workers' husbands are in, so that'd be a first. Spent way too much time on Sunday trying to fix -- and, inadvertently, pretty much completely trashing -- an old computer I handed down to Scott. Um, extensively cleaned, as boring as that sounds. Didn't watch as many movies as usual in this black-and-white-centric weekend: Good Night, and Good Luck, The Hustler, and Judgment at Nuremberg. Now that I'm even more flush with cash post-another-raise, I'm eyeing a 60" Kuro -- the Pioneer Pro-151FD -- when it bows later this year. It'll be nice to be back on the bleeding edge. (Comment!)

May 16th, 2008

When I say "fitness", you say "fun"! Fitness! Fun! Fitness! Fun! Fitness! Fun! 12:55 AM So, it's been kind of a reviewing frenzy lately. I got a package Wednesday evening with One Missed Call, Anger Management, and Hip Hop Harry: Move Those Feet, and...well, as you could probably guess from the fact that all those titles are hyperlinked, I've already churned out reviews for all three. I can't say I thought all that much of any of 'em, although I do think I'll be looking at my life from here on out as Before Hip Hop Harry and After. Click, click, click for a sample. The other movies I've watched this week include The Lost Weekend (wow, so that's where the lush-plagued-by-streams-of-neon-signs cliché originated!) and another spin through Hollywoodland. Um, not much else to report. I got a 10% raise. Yay. I'd brag about the exact dollar amount, but that'd be kind of obnoxious. Polished off the underwhelming new Serenity miniseries and decided I'd add Matt Fraction's new Iron Man series to my rotation to make up for the loss of The Order. Mailed Mariposa Barbie to my five year old sister who's graduating Kindergarten and is in desperate need of such things. Hmmm. I really need to come up with something to make myself sound vaguely interesting, although I think I said that four years ago or whenever it was I started this thing, and that really hasn't panned out so far. (Comment!)

May 11th, 2008

The I-know-you-don't-care-but-I'm-posting-this-anyway weekly movie recap 11:14 PM I didn't really watch that much this time around, truth be told. Tuesday! The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Witness for the Prosecution. I love, love, love Charles Laughton, and his turn in Witness... is absolute genius. Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power, not so much, but it's a clever courtroom drama boasting outstanding lead performances by Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. I was rather smitten with The Diving Bell... as well, particularly the gorgeous, inventive cinematography. Friday! Watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on Blu-ray. Saturday! Spent the morning and early afternoon writing up my review of Master and Commander. Did laundry over 20 Million Miles to Earth on Blu-ray. Watched Creepshow 2 again on DVD and immediately regretted it. Closed out the night with Layer Cake on Blu-ray. Sunday! I've had the itch to re-watch Junebug for a while, and I finally scratched that early this morning. Went for a Blue Underground double feature with Lucio Fulci's Zombie (agonizingly dull in any scene where people aren't being eaten or zombies aren't fighting sharks) and The Final Countdown. Goofed around most of the evening but made time to watch Children of Men on HD DVD. I've ranked first place in all 8 circuits on 50cc and 100cc on Mario Kart Wii, for anyone keeping track at home, and I'm just starting to do the same on 150cc. (Comment!)

Posting another link I should probably have just e-mailed to Scott 4:38 PM Major League Eating: The Game (Comment!)

May 7th, 2008

Criterion to start supporting Blu-ray in October. 7:24 PM Criterion just announced their initial slate on Blu-ray, with the first titles debuting in October, each priced the same as the traditional DVD release. The list includes: The Third Man Bottle Rocket Chungking Express The Man Who Fell to Earth The Last Emperor El Norte The 400 Blows Gimme Shelter The Complete Monterey Pop Contempt Walkabout For All Mankind The Wages of Fear So, yeah. Lotsa money to start being forked over starting this Fall. (Comment!)