c0up

I have a condition. Ok, no, it's more that I've been conditioned. Every time I'm watching a movie or TV show, and there is a front-facing or side-on shot of the driver and or passenger in a car, I fear for them. It may be the happiest movie of all time, but I fear for them.

It was the 2nd of 3rd year of uni, and I was sitting towards the back of a lecture theatre watching the season 4 finale of Alias. In the space of 10 seconds, I heard "well, for starters, my name isn't Michael Vaughn", and before I could even gasp at the revelation, I jumped out of my seat, startled at that car crash.

Read the rest of this post »

'Cafe de Flore'. Love, its dizzying highs and lows, and everything else in between, in this brave, stunning, deeply affecting film. 

I am still reeling from this thing, three hours later. What starts as two seemingly separate, simple stories about love, takes a very dark, spiritual turn, and in the process, explores "love" in its many forms.

I say two simple stories in relation to where the story goes, but they aren't simple by any means.

source

Read the rest of this post »

'The Avengers'. An absolute blast from start to finish! Whedon has pulled off the ultimate Summer blockbuster!

Superhero ensemble films are never easy to get right, and even the best of them to date, like X-Men: First Class, though thoroughly enjoyable, still fall flat in parts, with their throwaway, not-so-fleshed out characters. The sheer scope of The Avengers is insane. The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Phil. Dear old Phil. What's crazy is that this thing works SO well.

Read the rest of this post »

Destroyer's Kaputt was my favourite album of 2011. I'd given up hope of ever seeing them live, as I doubt they'd ever tour Australia. The Vaccines' What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? was a close second for album of the year. I got to see them both today. Live, back to back.

Oh, and did I mention the Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, The Black Keys, M83, Yuck, We Were Promised Jetpacks, St. Vincent, Bon Iver and Radiohead.

I've had the best two days of Coachella! It's just that I'm 12,000km away, and have the wonders of streaming technology, social media, YouTube and State Farm to thank.

Yes, it's not the same as being there, but it's a darn close second!

Read the rest of this post »

What a day. I have never been as in love with New York as I am right now. It's my third visit in three years, but today won't be topped.

It started with a walk through the NYU campus on West 4th Street and into the magical Washington Square Park. A park packed with locals, tourists, squirrels, dogs, wiry trees, chess masters and a grand arch. You can sit there and take it all in for hours on end, being at complete peace with the world.

Continue on West 4th Street and the West Village awaits. Walking through the West Village and its tiny, exquisite cafes, zig-zaggy staircased apartments and archway of blossoming trees made me want to live there instantly. 

Read the rest of this post »

'Lost and Sound'. An incredibly touching insight into the adaptive power of the brain and impact technological advances can have in the lives of three individuals.

Don't get me wrong, but deafness has always fascinated me. I'll have these internal arguments every now and then on whether I'd give up sight or sound, if I had to give up one; I usually settle on sound. My crude view equated deafness to hearing nothing. I don't know if it's simply the three particular individuals in this film, or the advent of the Cochlear implant, but it is indeed not as clear cut as everything or nothing. There's a phrase in the film about a mother realising the difference between simply "hearing" and "listening", and this crystallised things.

Then there's the brain. As described in the film, the ears simply provide a portal for the electrical impulses in your brain to interpret the rhythm, timbre, beat, etc of music, and turn it into that something that is deeply profound to all of us. The incredible, taken-for-granted effect music has in the life of every human being is exemplified further with the very music-oriented stars of the film.

Read the rest of this post »

Read the rest of this post »

Let's be clear on this, I love Grooveshark. I have professed my love several times on this blog, and I've championed it to the extent that quite a few people have signed up and paid for the yearly membership [SORRY]. The promise of Grooveshark was to give me easy access to the music I love, anytime, anywhere. This has been broken lately.

Duplicates of songs and albums, incomplete listings and ID3 information. I noticed these blemishes long ago, but hey, no one's perfect, and the relationship had way more ups than downs; platform independence, access anywhere, and a shared collection of music. Its ease of use was unparalleled, and it wasn't that much of a stretch to cobble an album or playlist together.

Grooveshark has always skirted a legal grey area, but as of late, their legal woes have caught up with them. All four major record labels are suing them, and its outright blocked in Germany, last I heard. I haven't bothered reading up on whatever other troubles they're in.

And then songs started disappearing.

Read the rest of this post »

What a strange, delightful feeling it is returning somewhere that's so familiar, but so different at the same time. Hell, even the name of the darn city's changed; "Bengaluru" just doesn't sound right. Yet.

Clearing customs and what not at the airport was surprisingly quick, calm and organised. Step out the door of the airport though, and the chaos and cacophony of Bangalore greets you warmly!

Read the rest of this post »

Sigh. I was rather enjoying my Monday until I read this infuriating piece by Alexia Tsotsis over on TechCrunch - I’d Rather Watch Instagram Than A Movie.

The basis of the comparison? Attention. The basis of the preference? Simplicity and relatability.

The appeal of Instagram is, for lack of a better word, simple; the world is moving too damn fast and we don’t want the cognitive load of figuring out what we’re looking at — we just want to see simple pretty things. This simplicity is what makes services like Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest a joy versus other entertainment offerings.

The truth is that on any given day, I’d rather check in on Instagram then watch a movie.

Call me a snob, but I feel sorry for the simple mind that can equate one form of attention to another so easily, and put it down to "killing time". It is total underappreciation for film as an artform.

Read the rest of this post »

This post from tnl.net, entitled Where the hits are streaming in 2011 was a real eye-opener, and one that I first heard on TWiT 336.

For each movie of the top 100 movies at the box office, I pulled data on for stream­ing info on Net­flix, Ama­zon on Demand, iTunes, and Vudu. I also pulled up avail­abil­ity of DVDs to use as a yard­stick in terms of over­all movie avail­abil­ity.

Read the rest of this post »

I'm trying something new this year. I've traditionally ranked my end of year list top to bottom, and it's been incredibly difficult, not to mention a false, unfair measure. This year, I'm grouping them by star-rating.

I've been using Flixster for the past 1.5 years, but this year, I've made a conscious effort—for every movie I've seen this year that's in Flixster's database—to add a star rating, and write a review; be it a sentence or a rare, wordy exposition. Note that this will also contain random, older movies I've seen at home, etc throughout the year.

One thing I'm noticing now is how extremely difficult it has been for me to award something 5 stars. It's silly in retrospect, but shows I don't completely believe in my ratings, or am afraid to say, "hey, I think this is worth 5 stars and found basically nothing I didn't love about it". Considering the extremely subjective nature of it all, I don't know why, so I'll have to normalise some of that now.

On the flipside to that, you'll also notice how rather positive I am with my ratings in general, because, heck, I love my movies, dammit! At least in the context of everything else on here, it can be taken as relative.

Oh, and just to clarify, these are movies I've seen at the cinemas in the year of 2011, in Australia and Austin, during SXSW. While looking back, I was surprised that some of these weren't 2010 releases, but then remembered Australia's backward nature in receiving them.

I've written a relatively large amount about movies in 2011 across Twitter, posts on this blog, Flixster, and the /r/movies subreddit, so this is simply going to be a list.

Here they are, grouped by star-rating out of 5, and alphabetically within the groupings.

Read the rest of this post »

I live in an unbelievably large technology bubble. I'm rather happy living in it, and haven't stepped out of it for a while. A couple of days ago, I momentarily did, through the lens of my mother; it was hilarious.

To cut a long story short, we were looking for a new TV, went to Harvey Norman [oh, the irony] and bought the thing. We were told there was a warehouse a few kilometres away where we needed to pick it up and given an address.

As we got in the car, my mother started rifling through the glove compartment and back seats, and worridly said, "I can't find the street directory. How are we going to get there?". If I was in a TV show, I might have said something like, "two words, Google Maps". Good lord, that sounds corny.

Ahem, anyway, I entered the address into Google Maps ["oh, you're calling someone to ask for directions?"], and that lovely British accent started telling us where to go. I handed the phone to her and said, "just hold this, it'll tell you where to go". Suffice it to say, she was astounded.

We get back home, and the first thing she says to my father is, "do you know his phone just tells him where to go? He'll never be lost with that thing".

It really is as simple as that. Google Maps is my favourite travel accessory. I was in New York earlier this year, and the transit directions helped me navigate an unfamiliar public transport system with ease. Clearly I've taken it for granted, but seeing someone experience its magic for the first time was fun!

Then of course the TV's set up, and she asks, "can you watch those TV shows from your computer on this now?". Gosh, I hadn't even thought that far ahead.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. An IMAX marvel of breathtaking, beautifully constructed action sequences and ingenious use of field tech!

Tom Cruise is so meant for this role that it's ridiculous. His physique, intensity and willingness to put his own body at risk are only magnified by the IMAX screen and Brad Bird's wonderful direction. You've all seen the scene in the trailer with the craning shots atop the Burj Khalifa, but they don't prepare you for half the beauty and thrill you'll experience. 

Read the rest of this post »

Well, this post by Min Ming on Android UI fragmentation has certainly been doing the rounds today, and while there is no doubt that UI fragmentation across Android, and even some of their Google-branded offerings exists, instead of looking at how it's headed in a positive direction, the post chose to pick on some disparate cases. Hey, it wasn't made up, and the point stands, but below are how the core Google apps in Ice Cream Sandwich are doing things right in terms of unification, and setting a standard developers and UI dudes and dudettes can certainly use as examples.

By the way, Google, you can do SO MUCH MORE to make things easy for developers in providing some rigid guidelines, and ultimately, for your end users, getting accustomed to a consistent experience across the OS and applications. I mean, really, how hard is it to set up some UI patterns like Android Patterns.

Click to embiggen images! This reduced size view does their gloriousness no justice.

Tabs

The More icon AKA the new Menu

Read the rest of this post »