On Acting

There is a story, probably apocryphal, about Sir Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man. There is a scene where Hoffman's character has been awake for a few days and is physically exhausted. So on the day they were to film that scene, Hoffman came to the set in terrible shape, and Olivier said, 'Dusty, you look absolutely wretched!'. According to the story, it turned out that Hoffman had been awake for twenty-four hours and had been running laps around a track, in order to prepare for the scene by making himself sleep-deprived and exhausted. On learning this, Olivier shakes his head and says, 'Oh, Dusty, why don't you just try acting?'

My first introduction to the world behind the stage came from reading Robert Heinlein's Double Star when I was a teenager. I get flashbacks to Double Star from the Olivier story, and from the following video clip where another great actor, Sir Ian McKellen explains his acting method.

Cowboys and Aliens

There will be at least one movie that I will see in a theatre in 2011!

15 Useful Guides

The MakeUseOf website has an article containing links to 15 (actually 16) useful guides that provide a lot of (not necessarily obvious) information for day to day geekly living. Here is the list of guides that the article links to, with my comments:

1 – Internet Guide for the Movie Addict - includes a discussion on how to fix bad/corrupted video files. Unfortunately, nothing on how to remove Vodei encoding.

2 – Internet Guidebook for An Audiophile - this is a howto guide covering internet music, including free sites.

3 – The Incredible Free Manual for Every Mac User - Mac users probably should read this.

4 – The Underground Guide to the iPhone ditto for iPhone users.

5 – Twitter: Best Practices & Tips - some thoughts on how to best take advantage of this (relatively) new communication tool.

6 – The Ultimate Guide to your Windows Mobile Phone - for anyone whose phone runs Windows CE

7 – A Computer Geek’s Smart Productivity Guide - all about time management and productivity. See also the (unrelated) Pomodoro strategy over on the Lifehacker site.

8 – Building a Media Center for your Home - instructions on how to set up a media server for your home theatre/home audio system.

9 – The Only Easy Guide To Computer Networks - this won't teach you how to manage a Cisco-based network with hundreds of hubs, but will help you set up your home network and get it working.

10 – The Big Book of BitTorrent - how to use BitTorrent to download files. The more generic parts of the discussion should also apply to uTorrent and other Torrent apps.

11 – A Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux - Linux is the future of computing, and this guide will help you get started. [Note - I am presenting the title as they appear in the original source, but my editorial instinct here really really wants to change "to Linux" to read "with Linux".]

12 – The Idiot’s Guide To Photoshop - this guide won't replace a formal course in how to use Photoshop, which is one of the most most capable (but also most complex) software packages out there. However, the guide will give you a starting point -- with the guide, and hours of practice, you too can plant a moustache on your co-worker's Christmas party photo.

13 – The Big Book of iTunes - I don't use iTunes or an iPod myself, but I will probably read this guide anyway just to get a handle on the technology.

14 – The Idiot’s Guide to Building Your Own PC - an important document if you are going to either build a new PC or if you plan on swapping out and upgrading a motherboard on an old PC.

15 – Laptop Buying Guide for 2009 - a guide to all things laptop.

(BONUS) PSP Up- and Downgrading Guide - a howto guide for PSP owners to help with getting around those pesky lockouts that prevent homebrew apps from working properly.

Ghost Busters (1954)

A trailer, for the little known 1954 black and white movie that inspired the Ivan Reitman remake decades later :-)

Finally, the Star Trek movie!

This movie is worth seeing, and probably more than once. We watched this down at the Beaches Cinema yesterday. All three of us thought this was a good movie, although (as usual) I have issues. I had vague thoughts about taking the day off to line up and watch the first showing on Friday, but those never got past the vague thoughts stage. If this were 20 years ago, I would have done it, no question.

The review in the Toronto Star is generally positive.

Here are some of the issues (possible spoiler warnings) --

Delta Vega is fairly close to the energy barrier at the galaxy's edge, not between Earth and Vulcan.

"Red Matter"? WTF? This substance is used to initiate a black hole collapse. It should have been straightforward to insert a reference to dark matter here.

Replacing a planet with an equivalent mass black hole doesn't create an instant "vacuum cleaner" effect.

Most serious - a supernova explosion won't destroy a planet in the way that it is shown to occur.

However, the rationale behind the "reboot" is well done -- it allows therm to acknowledge all of the existing history without necessarily being tied to it.

After the disasters of Star Trek Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis, this movie franchise needed a good entry to lift it back up - and this movie is it. Star Trek nerds can rejoice.

Coraline - Two Thumbs Up

We went on a family expedition down to the Beaches theatre on Saturday to see Coraline. It was a fine movie, and despite the fact that it is a true horror film, did not cause any squickiness.



It has been a while since I read Neil Gaiman's (children's) novel on which this movie is based. All of the important elements are present: Coraline's busy parents (whom I seem to remember were computer programmers in the book not gardeners as they are in the movie), the aging actress sisters, the mouse circus trainer. And of course, Coraline's Other Mother on the other side of the doorway. The horror is elegant and gradual, like a slowly tightening web.

Coraline is brave, determined, and intelligent -- exactly what every parent hopes their own child will be. She makes mistakes, but she works to overcome their consequences.

For most of the movies I watch, I generally have quibbles about the story they tell. Usually, writers or directors manage to do something to break my suspension of disbelief. I did not have any quibbles about this one.

This movie is definitely recommended.

Ratatouille

Sunday July 8 was Bri's last day with us before returning home. We got her all packed up and her stuff loaded into the car, then went off to see Ratatouille -- the new movie from Pixar.

Although Pixar had faltered a bit with their last release -- Cars -- they got it all back and more with this one. It should be noted that Ratatouille was written and directed by Brad Bird -- who previously did The Incredibles and Iron Giant.

This is the promotional trailer:



This is a longer extract:



We loved the movie. The family consensus is that this movie will be a keeper when it comes out on DVD.

Transformers -- More than meets the eye!

I took Tuesday July 3rd off and went with Corwin and Bri to see the Transformers movie. This was not a good movie, but it was lots of fun. I liked it.

Older Transformers trailer (6 months ago):



Newer Transformers trailer (one month ago):



Corwin is still a bit afraid in theatres - he has a hard time with the combination of overwhelming sound and giant visuals. But once he got past the trailers and into the actual movie, he was fine.