On Viewing: I had no need to justify spending thirty bucks on two 3D tickets to see John Carter.  The movie was fun, funny at times, not overly sappy, and had great action scenes.  The aliens looked cool, the monsters were well done, and you could really see where the money went. The action was fun, the plot worked, and I never felt bored.

Reaction to the Reaction: John Carter‘s box office success, or lack thereof, became a self-fulfilling prophecy.*  People worried about the cost of the m0vie before it debuted, and then flamed it hard when the movie failed to earn back all 250 million dollars in the first weekend.  Unless you happen to be a  studio exec, box office numbers should never determine the quality of a movie.**  Ahem, Titanic, cough.***  People started crowing about how no one was going out to see the movie, and crowds stayed away.  I forget sometimes that people are people, and have this stupid tendency to forget to act as persons.  “If no one else is seeing that movie, then I won’t see it either because if it were good, then people would be paying to see it.”

We’ve seen this before in political reporting.  If a candidate falls behind in fundraising, that becomes the story of the campaign until people are walking away from their preferred candidate because they are being told that candidate isn’t raising enough money.  I’ve seen a similar phenomenon happen in guild recruiting for online games.

I am not a rabid Burroughs fanboy, I would be surprised if that was even a group larger than ten, but I liked this movie.  I have never read the original books, and have been failing to find them for months in used book stores, but I have known of them for years.  I don’t know where I first saw some artist’s vision of Dejah Thoris, but it was probably a Boris Vallejo picture in Dragon Magazine.****

David Denby of the New Yorker spends the first paragraph of his review asking all the wrong questions:

…a battle between two warring cities populated by humanoid figures, the gentle Heliumites and the nasty Zodangans.  Immediately, we’re lost. Who are these people?  Why do the warriors fight with swords while winged battle cruisers, looking like oversized mosquitos, rain down death from above?  Is this an advanced civilization or a primitive one? All right, it’s both, but how do the two fit together?

To use a tired but effective example, I will substitute information for Star Wars and we will see if these questions are valid:

…a battle between two warring political groups populated by humanoid figures, the good Rebels and the evil Imperials.  Immediately, we’re lost. Who are these people? Why do the warriors fight with laser swords while winged battle cruisers, looking like oversized pizza slices, rain down death from above? Is this an advanced civilization or a primitive one? All right, it’s both, but how do the two fit together?

Your review is bad, and you should feel bad, David Denby.  These questions are all answered within the frame of the movie, and you shouldn’t require the plot to be laid out for you in the first two minutes.  Plots unfold, like flowers in spring or a woman’s clothing after a great date.  Yes, on the internet you can see pictures of flowers, and women, and skip ahead to read all the spoilers you want, but that is your choice and the director is not required to lay it all out for you in the first thirty seconds.

One paragraph in the six you wrote reviewing this movie was spent in truly reviewing it.  Your first paragraph asks stupid questions, your second complains about the look of the aliens and being confused about the rather simple war at the center of the plot, your third seems to be a complaint that the film is science fiction and not a lame romantic comedy (Of fucking course the two heroes approach each other warily, they have no reason to trust anyone and every reason to suspect everyone.), your fourth paragraph is a complaint about the source material and the fact that only men seem to like making movies about stuff they liked as children (So fucking what? Maybe movies would be better with Penny Marshall directing a Wonder Woman movie.), your fifth paragraph finally talks about the movie itself, and your final complaint focuses on the fact that the movie may rake in cash overseas like the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  As much as I want the Pirates movies to go to hell with a quickness, I hope that John Carter does well enough to spite you and everyone else who panned it.  I liked it, and I want to see more.

The Numbers:

$179,300,000 (Worldwide) (19 March2012)

John Carter’s numbers from IMDB.

2. Wrath Of The Titans ($34 million)

[Total: $34 million | WW: $112m | Budget: $250m]

Final Words: John Carter is a fun movie that science fiction fans will be sad that they didn’t see in the theaters, and others will live their lives breathing through their mouths while lining up to see fucking Titanic.  AGAIN.

*There are no other kinds of prophecy, but clarity is paramount.

**If you do happen to be a studio exec, go borrow George Lucas’ rusty pinecone.

***Titanic was the biggest earning, utterly pandering, boringly predictable movie ever made, until Avatar.

****Frank Cho makes no apologies for anything.

You have to be careful with friends.  There are friends that help you move, there are friends that help you move on, and there are friends that recommend movies to you.  There are movies you recommend to everyone, there are movies you recommend to people you don’t like, and there are movies that you never admit to having watched, even under extreme torture, like being forced to watch that very movie a second time.  In our wondrous new age of being in constant electronic contact with all of our friends all of the time, you must be even more suspect of other people’s tastes.  This suspicion could rightly be spread to all categories of everything except spouses, because she isn’t getting a divorce just because you don’t like him and never admitted your love for her, move on.

A few months ago, I saw that a friend I usually trust on such matters had seen and enjoyed Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.  I had read his words on this movie because he had not written any at the time, he had merely clicked a button on a famous social media site and that button-clicking had been delivered to me through some strange algorithmic alchemy.  I remember my exact thought process upon receiving this information.  “Huh, Randall liked Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.  He is generally circumspect in matters of such import, and wouldn’t like a movie without good reason.  Furthermore, he is not such a huge fan of utter shit as I, and would not like something simply because it was godawful atrocious as I would.  That movie must be better than it looked in its half-hearted media campaign.”

The next evening when the Lovely Lady and I went to the local video rental establishment in the parking lot of a drugstore, I voiced my interest in Dylan Dog while we scrolled through the available selections.  My Lovely Lady agreed that Randall could be trusted with movie recommendations, and we rented the movie.  I will be concise in my review: Randall is on a one year Movie-Recommendation ban.  There are no redeeming facets to this movie.  If it had been made in the 80s, it might have a reason for the crappiness of the effects.  If it were written by an Tourettes Syndrome afflicted autistic child, then it might have a reason for the poorly written dialogue and lame plot.  If I had recently been the unfortunate victim of a terrible accident while putting on my glasses and the junction between the halves of my brain had been severed, I might have been able to forgive my friend for liking this movie.  Dylan Dog: Dead of Night sucked.  I don’t need to delve into all the great, and mediocre, successes that exist in the niche of Supernatural Private Detective subgenre.  Anyone who is inclined to read this site can, or should be able, to name five examples off the top of their clawed appendages.

The mere fact that Dylan Dog is a terrible movie is not why Randall received the year long ban.  It was the fact that he recommended it without comment.  I enjoy and own a number of movies that I will only permit certain people to watch, and only under special circumstances.  In ascending order of restriction three of these movies are: Evil Dead (I will never recommend these movies to my parents), C.H.U.D. (I will never recommend this movie to my brother), and, the crown jewel in the Throne of Ultimate Suck, Demon Wind (I will only recommend this movie to the most astute viewer who proves to me their enjoyment of the worst movies of all time).  Recommending movies is very much like finding presents for people.  There are guaranteed presents like Bond movies, or Spies Like Us, but those are easy movies to recommend.  Finding something that the recommendee will enjoy and always remember that you suggested requires a level of empathy and movie knowledge that goes beyond the box office.

I failed pretty spectacularly in giving my brother a copy of Dead Alive one year for Christmas.  He tried to watch it once, about a year after I gave it to him, and he hated it.  He hated it so much that he kept a smoldering coal of a grudge for several years.  I had described a scene or two, and he had reacted favorably.  I had made a classic mistake.  While Dead Alive has its place on many a shelf, the film does not belong on a shelf that almost exclusively holds Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.  I was trying to force a movie on a person who would never enjoy it.  I had forgotten, or perhaps ignored, in my zeal for this movie, that other people have tastes, justified or not, that do not always jive with mine.  Opinions, assholes, etc.

Our glorious new electronic existence has brought us closer to our friends in some respects, while also showing us just how wide the perceived gulf in opinion can be.  There is little context allowed on many social websites, or if there is, it can often be a hassle to include.  There are many reasons Randall may have selected the Like button.  Perhaps he has some app that allows him to build an online library of his owned movies in reality.  Perhaps he was pranking someone into watching that abysmal movie.  Perhaps he suffered a massive brain injury and genuinely liked that stinking turd.  I shall be more cautious in the future.  Considering the source of all recommendations as I already do, I will also be considering the context in which a film is recommended.  A simple one-click recommendation will not be enough without some corroborating words from the proponent.

I was lucky enough to hear about this concert before the fact, and doubly lucky to make it to the show.  I missed the first half thanks to traffic, but the half I saw was enthralling.  If you don’t have time to watch the video, and you should make time for it, their music was atmospheric and creative, like a Sigur Ros from Belgium by way of New Orleans.

The entire show was recorded and uploaded.

* Full disclosure for a semblance of journalistic integrity, I knew Helen Gillet in college and am not exactly an unbiased reviewer.

While browsing through my e-mail archive for the login information to this here bloggio, I found a metric e-ton of comment notification e-mails reminding me of past glories.  One post in particular was somewhat timely for seven months ago:

The Post

I am somewhat surprised by the movies I was right about, and also by the movies about which I was horribly wrong.   Conan and I Am Legend were both bad, but for different reasons.  Conan was just boring, it had a lot of great elements, swords, sorcery, boobs, monsters, but it couldn’t get everything together to really psych me up.  As a member of their target demographic, I should have been raving about it.  Instead, when it was over, I was left wondering when the action was going to start.  I Am Legend was also disappointing in the way so many adaptations are: TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT.  There are not going to be many more events where Vincent Price can upstage Will Smith, if there have been any before, but The Last Man on Earth knocked it out of the park, while I Am Legend thought the game was football.

10,000 BC was a terrible story with moronic arc, a silly plot, and overall just tiresome.  Funny Story, True Story:  There are striking similarities between the end of 10,000 BC and Avatar.

Speed Racer was unseen aside from commercials, as was Beowulf.  The first went by because I remembered that I never really liked Speed Racer, and the second because the CGI turned me way the hell off.

Most of the rest of the movies remain in development hell.

So, it’s that time of blog again.  The time where I make the occasional post again due to confusion and remembering that I’m still paying for the WRN domain name.  Not anything amazing to post but I did want to say that I upgraded to Pandora One last month and I’ve really been enjoying it.  At $36 a year it averages out to $3 a month.  But for the amount that I listen to it and enjoy it, it’s a pretty great bargain.

I’d listened to Pandora Radio off and on for the past couple years but when the regular internet streaming radio station I listened to started to get crappy, I knew I needed to move on.  I tried to find another, and I checked out Last.fm but at the end of the day, I liked the simplicity of Pandora and it’s general ability to create stations I liked.   I’m really happy since upgrading to Pandora One though.  The biggest issue with regular Pandora is that they cap you to 40 hours a month.  I tend to listen to it off and on while I’m at work and hit that 40 hour cap in just a couple weeks.  The additional annoyance of how often they stop playback (every hour it seems) is also pretty annoying.

And while getting rid of those two would be alright, I don’t know if it would be enough because it’s paying money to deal with hassles that they had introduced.  The thing I really like is the increased bit-rate on the music.  What used to sound pretty good, now sounds great.  As good as any of the MP3′s I have ripped.  And the variety is still there (although a little wonky).  I love being able to pick as song to start, and then gradually tweak a station I’ve created.

An added benefit has been the Pandora One app as well.  While it requires the installation of Adobe Air, it’s great not to have Pandora tied to the browser.  And while Flash would sometimes seem to take up an inordinate amount of CPUs in my browser, Pandora One seems to operate quite efficiently.

Anyway, don’t want to go on too much but if you like Pandora and find yourself bumping up against the caps or wishing it sounded a bit nicer, I would really recommend Pandora One.  It’s not free but it has seemed worth the money to me.

Just in case it wasn’t painfully obvious, I’ve got mobile devices on the brain.  My latest wonderings have been on the FaceTime app that is in the iPhone 4.  Apple has been advertising the crap out of it and tech blogs have been mentioning it everywhere.  And it really does look cool.

The problem is, I still have a few questions:

1) Apple called it an ‘open standard’ when they announced it.

Yet, here we are almost a month and a half from when the iPhone 4 launched and there’s still no official word on a timeline of when access to the service might become available for 3rd parties.

Is it an open standard once Apple has released new iPods and iPads that have front facing cameras? Is it an open standard that’s only for companies that want to pay Apple money?

You shouldn’t call a standard “open” unless you’re actually unveiling the standard.  Feel free to say it’s designed to be an open standard but don’t claim it is one when no one but you can access it.

2) WiFi only?

What is this crap?  Look, I know iPhones are killing AT&T’s bandwidth but it’s kind of annoying that the person who bought the phone and is paying for the data plan doesn’t get to make that decision.  If I want to chew up a bunch of bandwidth making video calls to other people, that should be my choice.

When the iPhone first came out, it was obvious that AT&T was giving up its authority to get the device on their network.  However, every year since its release, it seems like their fears and insecurities are having a bigger impact on the device.

No tethering, no Google Voice, no 3G video calls, really crappy resolution for streaming video over 3G.  These are all decisions that smack of carrier interference and Apple’s willingness to compromise on the functionality of their product to make the service provider happy highlights why we need more open access to a mobile wireless internet.

3)  Long term usefulness

My final question, is this really that useful?  I can certainly see uses for it.  The best example I can think of is when I end up offering tech support remotely.  Way too often I find myself thinking, “If I could just see what they see, I’d have this resolved in 5 minutes.”  And that’s a great use.  But besides that, what is there?

Do I really want to have video chats with people.  Not particularly.  Not if it means I have to sit there and hold a phone up in front of my face the whole time.

The situations where having video contributes to the conversation is, I think, going to be the vast minority of the time.  Not that I don’t think it will come in handy sometimes, just that it would probably account for less than 5% of my phone calls.

Anyway, at the end of the day, Apple has taken something that’s been tried by a number of different people before and managed to make it relevant by streamlining it, getting widespread adoption, and just having it work.

It’s hard to think of any other company that’s ever been as good at taking failed tech ideas and reinvent them into success.

So, as I mentioned before. I ended up ordering the Samsung Vibrant Android phone for T-Mobile.  Just a few short days later, I’m sorry to say that I’ve ended up sending it back.

On its surface the phone is pretty good.  The display is crisp and amazing.  The form factor is nice and relatively compact.  It’s got an expandable micro SD slot and I generally got pretty good reception with it.

There were a number of smaller issues though that kept annoying me.  The biggest one had to be the battery life.  The phone would be almost dead after 12 hours of standby and mild use.  Worse, there would always be a bunch of random pre-installed apps that would start in the background and were probably killing the battery.

I had to download this program to kill the apps since it wasn’t always obvious what was running.  And even then there was no clear explanation of what had been started and why.

Besides the poor battery life (which I probably could have addressed in a month or two by buying a larger battery), the GPS functionality didn’t work.  It was unable to ever determine my position with the GPS.  A quick search online revealed it as a widespread problem that would supposedly get fixed in an update that was coming out soon but given that the GPS was one thing that I really wanted to get from the phone, I’m not willing to hang onto it and hope for the best.

And finally we get to the Android OS.  I generally like the OS but it suffers from the same thing that Windows always has, when the OS itself wasn’t designed for specific hardware, it just doesn’t feel seamless.  The way the Samsung vs. T-Mobile vs. Google apps worked was just too inconsistent.  I was never confident of where to look or how to use something.  As someone who has gone to school for interface design, it was just inconsistent enough to be frustrating.  And I don’t want my phone to be something I have to sit there and tinker with.

There were a number of other nitpicky things that annoyed me as well: lack of an integrated music library manager, no integrated video store, the location of the power button, the poor integration of my work/GMail/phone contacts, the use of a separate GMail client vs. work email, no Skype app, and more I’m sure.

I guess at the end of the day, there were too many little details that I was unhappy with to commit to using the phone for the next 2 years.

My plan now is to wait a few months and see what happens and if anyone is going to come out with a phone that addresses my issues (Microsoft, Palm/HP, Google, or even Apple).  If not, I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal with what I can get but until I’ve reached that point I’m going to go back to using my ol’ Sony Ericsson  phone.

Ah well, it’s way cheaper anyway.

I signed up for Google Voice the other day when I checked out their international calling rates.  They had calls to Jakarta for 3 cents a minute or calls to Indonesian cell phones for 11 cents a minute.  Cheaper than Skype and about on par with calling cards.

I tried to make my first calls today though and I am a little disappointed.  First I tried to call my girlfriend’s cell phone and would get 1 ring and a dead tone.  This happened on 3 separate occasions.

After giving up on her cell, I tried to call her hotel room.  While the call went through this time the quality was pretty horrible.  There was way too much compression that made it quite difficult to understand the other person and way too much lag introduced.  It made having a conversation pretty hard … heck, it made getting the front desk person to understand who I was calling for pretty hard.

Besides internationally, I also used Google Voice to try to get a callback from waiting on hold today.  While I eventually received the call, it too had some compression (not as obvious but still something I noticed).  It was generally ok but not as good quality as other VoIP services I’ve used (like Skype, Vonage, cable phones).

Since I’m already paying for other phone services, I don’t know why I’d want to use Google Voice at all.  I guess I’ll try it for a while longer but as the title said, this is my first impression.

Just a quick post, recently there’s been a new pizza place that opened up in Falls Church that finally has some really great wood-fired brick-oven pizza.  It’s called Pizzeria Orso and is near downtown Falls Church (actual address: 400 S. Maple Ave., Falls Church, VA  2204).

Probably not worth the trip for those in DC (you’ve got Matchbox, Pizzeria Paradiso, and 2Amy’s) but if you’re in the Tyson’s Corner area it’s the best pizza place I’ve been to in the area.  I haven’t had a bad pizza there.  Definitely better than Pie-tanza (which I thought would be good but ended up not) and a notch (or several) above places like zpizza or Flippin Pizza Those places definitely have their value though 2 slices and a drink for $5 lunch at Flippin for example.

Succinct review: Almost as good as Madison’s Pizza Brutta but twice as as expensive. Atmosphere inside not quite as nice as it should be but not bad.

I’ve talked about my cell phone lust on this blog a number of times and by my count it’s about time to go back to that well.

I think I’m in the same place that many people are now: iPhone or Android?

They both have their pluses and minuses:

iPhone

• a stabler more robust platform
• has only one form factor per year making the software specifically tailored for the device
• I already have a bunch of iTunes movies/music
• will be guaranteed at least 1 significant OS update per year
• stuck with AT&T and no unlimited data
• not great multitasking

Android

• the new kid on the block, seems to be hungrier and more innovative than Apple … also buggier
• So many different hardware types, not all software in the app store works on each device
• no guarantee that the device software will be updated by the manufacturer
• Can stick with T-Mobile
• Can develop software for it without having to buy a Mac or use Objective C
• Includes a pretty good (and free GPS software)
• Removable battery/expandable memory

Those are just off the top of my head.  Of course, at this point I’m strongly leaning towards an Android phone (specifically the new Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile).  The only reason I’d stick with Apple would be that I’ve got an old iPod Touch G1 that I really like and I’ve got some copy protected media that I wouldn’t mind being able to keep on it.

I’m afraid that trying to port my number might be a hassle since I’m no longer in the same city that I was when I got my cell phone (they seem to not let you port numbers for different area codes for some reason).  So that’d be another reason to stick with T-Mobile–who I’ve always been generally satisfied with.

Anyway, I guess I’ll update this when I make up my mind.