Just finished it and yes it’s the Blu-ray version of “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.” 2.0 is still in my queue with a “very long wait” time but I wanted something new to watch for the holiday weekend and figured it wouldn’t hurt to see the old version first to compare to the new one later so I could see what all the whining about the new CGI graphics is all about.

First time watching it because I couldn’t get an English dub before. It certainly upholds the quality of the rest of the story. Didn’t like the Major being so out of the picture she’s clearly the best character.

The music sounded fantastic. The rest of the audio was great with lots going on up front but not much involvement of the surround channels. Being cyber punk it’s mostly muted colours but when it does get colourfull it’s incredibly vivid. Hard to imagine the new one looking or sounding much better.

Just watched “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”

First thing I noticed is that I really like this version of Anakin much better than the movie (whiny little…). Also like the new character of Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s padawan. Plucky and clearly designed to appeal to a younger audience.

I checked the Rotten Tomatoes and there’s all sorts of people whining about it not being a real movie. Ok it’s not “Ghost in the Shell 2” but then it wasn’t meant to be an as an existentialist cyberpunk drama either. Take for what it is, an amped up pilot for a kids cartoon series version of “Star Wars II” and at this it does great.

The writing is not great, the plot is thin, sacrifices depth for action and visuals. Sort of reminds me of “Star War” after all. However, if you could make the transition from liking the original “Star Trek” to the Saturday morning cartoon I think this one is even easier. I saw the age poll. I know there’s more of you out there that get that reference than we might care to admit.

Of the three Blu-rays I’ve watched so far today, all animated I just realized, “Tinker Bell” is the clear winner. As mentioned above I really liked the others and give them at least 4 out of 5 stars for getting what they intended to do right, but on that count “Tinker Bell” hits it out of the park. If you like true Disney style movies this one is a must.

I thought it would look good based on some of the shorts I’d seen on the Disney Channel, but it really looks amazing. The animation makes no attempt to look real which makes it work way better than either of the above movies in consistency. That consistency in animation, appropriateness of the music, minimization of filler, tight plot and short length actually made it easier to suspend disbelief and enter the story than either of the other two I just watched.

If you have little kids just buy it because they will likely be pissed at you when you send it back. Get ready to fork out for the sequels. I just queued up “The Lost Treasure” and saw that two more are in the works.

Maybe I'll pick it up when it's cheap. I heard decent things about it.

I just watched Lucky # Slevin. I kind of liked it, but I fell asleep during part of it, which means I'll have to watch it again sometime. I missed some important exposition.

Looks kind of interesting, why’d you fall asleep?

Just watched “The Longest Day Blu-ray. This is IMO the best traditional war movie of all time (I think “Kelly’s Heroes is the best “war” movie but not a true example of the genre). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen this but never got to see it on the big screen until now. In other words I should say I never “really” saw it before today.

This Blu-ray looked great, or so I thought until after it was over and I popped in my standard def copy to compare and realized just how awesome the Blu-ray really was. There’s just no comparison between them either in the picture or sound. Where the standard definition’s PQ is grainy and SQ is muted the Blu-ray is sharp and dynamic respectively.

I thought that Blu-ray was mostly going to enhance newer movies and these older movies Blu-ray were only going to amount to a bigger picture w/o loss in PQ. The reality has been that “The Longest Day,” “Patton,” and “Goldfinger” have all been spectacular compared to their SD counterparts. Granted all three of these are rated pretty highly at Blu-ray.com but based on them I can see renting a lot more older movies than I expect. I imagine my dad is going to get a real kick out of them too. It’s probably just nostalgia but watching these on the big screen feels like I’m really watching a movie as compared to much of what is produced today that just seems like an extended cut scene from a computer game (“300” being the starkest example of this) designed just to show off what the special effect people can do.

This movie was the most stark example of the benefits and costs of frame interpolation. Without it almost every scene with any sort of panning was blurred which might not have been an issue if the picture wasn’t so clear when not moving. Mode 2 on the AE4000, my normal setting, wasn’t even enough to stop the blurring but bumping it up to mode 3 did. The cost was one of those hyper vivid images I’d been reading about. It’s been called the “soap opera effect.” I did look exactly like “Dark Shadows” and “The Avengers” (Honor Blackman episodes). However, except when this stark imaging contrasted with real WWII film footage it was much more preferable to the motion blurring.

Because I underestimate how tired I am. I keep falling asleep watching stuff lately. Is this part of getting old?

I do know that people on average sleep less as they get older. But that doesn’t really answer the question whether they feel more, the same or less tired than when they were younger and slept more.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/sleep.html

My body clock has always caused me to want to sleep in until about 10am assuming mundane things like work don’t interfere. 20 years ago I would sleep from about 1am to 10am. Now that’s shifted to about 4am to 10am. Can’t say I feel any more tired though. Not running regularly or being around people to much are what really make me feel tired.

Only if your joints are making enough noise to wake you back up.

I finally found the blu-ray version of "2010: The Year We Made Contact". I had this on VCR about 15 years ago and haven't watched it since I gave away all of my VCR tapes about 10 years ago. Watching it again after all of these years was somewhat of a let down. I remembered it as a good movie, but the rewatching it sort of paled with my memories.

I really like that movie. In some ways more than the original but I haven’t seen it in awhile and have been worried it wouldn’t stand the test of time.