Chili marathon

 restaurants  Comments Off
Jan 302010
 

Dong Bei Hu served an admirable eight courses (with shredded pork repeated as the ninth bonus dish) for seven people. Very heavy on taste and capsaicin – amazingly low on boredom.

Movie Monday #24: Fairy tale / Lifelong lie

 movie monday  1 Response »
Jan 272010
 

Big Fish posterTim Burton’s Big Fish fits both halves of this week’s Movie Monday challenge – it’s a modern fairy tale, and definitely has the elements of the biggest self-deluding lie possible.

I missed the movie in the theatres, and saw it quite quite delayed off a dvd. And was impressed, very impressed.

With the plot. With the acting. With the cinematography. With the occasional effects. With the effect of the film on me.

This is a five star movie, and I still stand by the key sentence of the review:

how could a movie that begins with a tracking shot of a huge catfish be anything but absolutely brilliant.

A fairy tale meets southern gothic is an appropriate oneliner, but there’s a lot more to the film, which goes heavily recommended to all.

Movie Monday #24: Fairy tale / Lifelong lie.

11/60

 sports  Comments Off
Jan 272010
 

WSJ on footballAccording to a WSJ study, a football game contains only eleven minutes of action.

Advertisers’ heaven, obviously – but painfully slow for watching live.

And that’s the american variety of football. Whose fans claim that soccer’s goal numbers are too low. At least the games contain more action than one sixth of the time, and the clock runs continuously.

Prediction for tomorrow's launch

 apple, gadgets  Comments Off
Jan 262010
 

For Apple’s tablet, that is:
Yes (duh), yes, yes ($899 for the lower-spec device), yes, yes, yes (Xcode 4), yes (the model’s been a rousing success), yes (at least a subset, with non-scaled resolution), yes, no, yes, yes, yes (itunes all the way), yes, yes, no (USB only), no (no haptics yet), yes, no (though eventually yes), yes (this is a killer platform for flash games), no (not yet, but definitely by the time next school year kicks off), yes (none of this i* stuff any longer), no, no, no, no, no, no, yes (yay Verizon), yes (especially if the screen has pressure-sensitive elements), no, yes (see previous), no, no, no, yes, no.

Scored tomorrow after the event.

Three week lead

 television, video  Comments Off
Jan 252010
 

The last season of Lost begins next week.

In the states, that is.

The finnish broadcast is three weeks later.

As usual, there’s a compressed version of the preceding seasons available for easy reference:

Bowling, superbowling

 sports, television  Comments Off
Jan 252010
 

Yay!

Two of the best NFL teams actually meet in the Superbowl on 7.2. in Miami.

Probably it’ll be the offenses that settle the game between Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints. And with two high-powered and reliable quarterbacks leading the aerial attacks, it ought to be enjoyable indeed.

Too bad no channel visible in the wilderlands of Nöykkiö has announced they will broadcast the game. And the p2p -tv opportunities are quite likely limited by the immense popularity of the game.

Were a reliable pay per view available, I’d snap it immediately.

Who Dat or the third Manning victory in four years – it’s not the niners playing, so I’m fine with either team winning. With a medium-class preference on the Saints. After all, I’ve been a fan of Drew Brees since his Chargers years (whose front office must really be kicking themselves after multiple consecutive winning seasons).

Battery troubles

 apple  2 Responses »
Jan 242010
 

Meh, Lynch the Macbook Pro has undergone a drastic decrease in battery power lately.

Charging is slow, but consumption quick, even when sleeping.

This is no good.

And neither is the price that Apple offers – 140€ is on the steep side.

Fight for your right

 photography  Comments Off
Jan 232010
 

Photo gathering @ Trafalgar SquareThe struggle against photography in the UK has taken several worrisome turns lately. A mass gathering around Lord Nelson’s pillar is not going to change things one way or the other. But a public display of defiance is always appreciated.

For the record: I had no issues with my rampant photography in London last summer, but the arbitrary handling of camera-wielders doesn’t seem to be within the portfolio of a civilized nation…

DPE

 television  Comments Off
Jan 192010
 

DPE = Dudes Per Episode, as said by Hurley.

The attention to detail applied in topic-specific wikis rarely fails to amaze.

Movie Monday #22: The End

 movie monday, video  2 Responses »
Jan 182010
 

To Live and Die in L.A. posterAs with the previous installment of the Movie Monday meme, this week’s challenge had of the end a lot of good candidates.

Apocalypse Now would have been an obvious choice. After all, the last song of the movie is The Doors’ The End.

That would have been too easy a choice, and I settled on William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A..

Back in late eighties when the movie was shown on finnish television, the sudden twist and the subsequent events at the end of the movie were something that left a mark on my pliable mind. The turn of the plot is available in white for the spoiler-averse here: out of the blue, the protagonist is shot in the head and killed in an undercover operation. There, that was easy.

The film introduced Willem Dafoe as a merciless villain, and featured William Petersen in his first big role (which was then followed by a long dry season before CSI emerged in 2000).

The nihilistic and grim plot is dominated by characters out to get what they want, to get it without sparing a thought for collateral damage. The sun-bleached L.A. once again forms a perfect backdrop for a story where things seldom go as planned, and the consequences for failure are severe.

An instrumental soundtrack by Wang Chung rounds out the movie, which is far more than just a “west coast update of the French Connection”.

Movie Monday #22: The End.

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