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Watching

No Maps for These Territories (2000)
Snapping
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Being The
Geekly Diary of Waider
(may
contain traces of drinking, movies, and sport)
- September 22
- I've been meaning to rip a bunch of DVDs onto a DNLA server for
ages but basically hadn't gotten around to figuring out
the options. This evening I successfully ripped a DVD to the
server and then figured out which of the 27 options I needed to
activate on my media setup to enable surround sound. It's overly
complicated and I wish there were some sensible defaults but at
least I know it works.
- September 17
- I've had No Maps for these Territories
on DVD for ages but somehow never ever got around to
removing the security seal; somewhere along the line I'd absorbed
the incorrect notion that it was a visual counterpart to the
article William Gibson had done for Wired or whoever on U2's
rolling engineering works that makes their shows possible, but
it's not that, it's Gibson in a limousine talking about
... everything. The funny thing about him is that he's got all
this thought out, or at least seems to, but the delivery makes it
come across as if he's just coming up with these really deep
thoughts completely ad lib. The video is very much of its time:
jerky camera and harsh cuts when we're not doing the
Gibson-talks-to-the-camera stuff. Is it good? I don't really
know.
- September 15
- Marlowe
was frankly disappointing. Neil Jordan! Liam Neeson! Colm Meaney!
Jessica Lange! Based on a book by John Banville!
How could you go wrong? Well, by muddling up the editing so the
whole thing doesn't really hang together, for starters: there were
a few cuts early on where I took a minute or two to figure out
what exactly had happened the timeline. Some scenes seem to just
... stop: Neeson says something half-way pithy (never even close
to the level of classic Marlowe), and then cut to some scenery or
something to allow the audience their moment to absorb it or laugh
or, I dunno, roll their eyes vigourously. This could've been a
contender, to coin a phrase, but alas no.
- September 14
- ...and that's a wrap for Reacher
season 1. Quite good: big, dumb, not trying to be cleverer than it
needs to be, funny... I'd watch more of this.
- September 09
- I had watched Blood Diamond
years ago, so long ago that the only dim recollection I had of it
turned out to be incorrect. I'd definitely forgotten the fate of
both Arnold Vosloo and Leonardo DiCaprio. It's a good movie, but
grim, and there's probably a lot I'm missing in terms of how it
might be seen by people from the parts of the world it's set
in.
- September 08
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:
it's getting a little strained, but it's still a whole lot of
fun.
- September 05
- Well, I thought that a few extra seasons of The Blacklist
had come unlocked, but no. So we wound up watching the first
episode of Reacher,
and it's kinda big and dumb but also pretty much what we were
looking for, so that'll do us for a week I guess.
- September 02
- We wrapped up The Tick:
they stuck the landing, pretty much, which was nice given that
they didn't get a third season. And then we watched the three
Star Wars prequels over the course of a few
nights. Clones is definitely the weakest of the three; I
think all three suffer somewhat from not knowing what's going to
happen next, so they actually improve marginally on a
rewatch. There's an awful lot of handwaving in the stories if you
think too hard about it, which I guess Lucas didn't. In any case,
I think we'll probably watch Rogue One next to bridge
into the original trilogy. Maybe.
The Mercedes Me developer website seems to have lost my little
home automation project. This is annoying because I don't believe
I had a copy of the setup anywhere, and now I need to go and
recreate it (it's basically a bunch of onboarding stuff for OAuth
to allow me access to the API). On the plus side this may reset my
access count for the limited APIs.
Ah, they've cancelled the "Bring Your Own Car" tier
of access. Which of course is the one I was using. Someone had
reverse-engineered the app's API for a different home automation
system to the one I use; maybe I can port that or
something. Sigh.
- August 25
- Survivor
wasn't terrible, but there was a certain amount of
scoffing at the TV, particularly when a supposedly skilled US
intelligence operative didn't swap her heels for a pair of
flats while on the run. Really now. But we've watched
worse.
- August 18
- Wrapped season one of The Tick,
and it was excellent. Strongly recommend.
Ready Player One
went from "meh" to "dear god" as it went on. and on. and on. I
enjoyed the book; I understand, retrospectively, there maybe were
some problems with it that I didn't recognise at the time because
I was busy wallowing in the nostalgia of it. Regardless, the movie
is a stinker and, well, NO. I think between this and the
faux-biopic we're pretty much no longer interested in anything
else Stephen Spielberg has to offer.
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