Reviews

Two Tickets to Broadway (1951)

Two Tickets to Broadway (1951)The story of this movie is simple, and normally bankable: small town girl makes good in big city. This is a story with plenty of room for nice little twists and turns that make a movie worthwhile. However bankable the story is, the movie feels fake all the way through. Granted it’s a musical, and they’re always a little fake, but still, it’s terrible, and I can point exactly to what’s ruining it: the screenplay. Who wrote this pickle of a screenplay, anyway? Yikes! It’s just not grounded, it goes all over the place and tries to do too much. They should have used it for toilet paper instead of filming it.

It’s a shame, too, because the actors were good, and the singing was good, even great at times. Bugsby Berkeley’s choreography was surprisingly toned down, and it sort of fit in with the atmosphere of the movie. I say sort of, because Bugsby’s stuff never really fits in, it always stands out. When he steps into a movie, it changes. Thank goodness there were none of his usually outlandish dance numbers here, although I have to say the American-Indian dance was too weird. It was just insulting, and I bet it wouldn’t get done nowadays, in our more relaxed culture. What were those people thinking when they left that number in?

Things to watch for if you want to kill some time watching this movie: Janet Leigh is great all the way through, Tony Martin sings beautifully, Ann Miller is her usual self, dancing all over the place and baring her long legs as usual, and the reparte between Charles Dale and Joe Smith, as Leo and Harry, the owners of the deli, is just plain funny.

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Thoughts

Restoring planes is one expensive hobby

Paul Allen, one of the Microsoft co-founders, turns out to have more up his sleeve than the X Prize, although it’s related to it. He loves restoring old war planes. I’m not talking about painting them up so they can be placed in a museum, I’m talking about getting them up in the air! Just the idea sends shivers down my spine. I’d love to see a 1918 Curtiss Wright, or a Messerschmitt take flight, and he’s done it! What’s more, no expense is spared to restore them to their exact state when they were in flight, with the same materials and look. This is amazing restoration work, and it’s also very costly, bringing the price to hundreds of thousands of dollars per plane.

He’s purchased about three dozen airplanes since 1998, and about half of them are on display in two hangars at the Arlington airport outside Seattle. Once a year, he holds a flight day, where these old planes take flight for a public audience. His collection is open for viewing on Fridays and Saturdays, and the fee is $20. Definitely worth it!

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Thoughts

The Internet is not a truck

You may or may not have heard about the serious gaffe on the part of Senator Ted Stevens (R), who is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. He voted against the Net Neutrality Act, and gave a speech on the Senate floor to explain his actions. He may have been better off not saying anything.

By giving this speech that keeps on truckin’, Senator Stevens has shown that he wasn’t knowledgeable enough about the issue to even speak about it, much less vote on it. It worries me that he’s in charge of a committee charged with deciding on matters as important as science, commerce and transportation, when his understanding of the Internet is that it’s a “it’s not a truck, it’s a series of tubes” that can get “clogged up”. I wonder which telecom lobbyist fed him that analogy. At any rate, the aftermath of the speech is haunting him, and one of the funniest takes comes from The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

I am reminded of an Abraham Lincoln quote: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

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Reviews

Hasselblad H2D-39: A 39-megapixel DSLR!

The Hasselblad H2D-39 DSLR Camera

Hold the presses, because I’ve just stumbled onto an amazing DSLR. I used to think 22-megapixels was really something, but this puppy cooks up 39-megapixels! It records in RAW format, and the photos are so big that it comes with an external 80GB hard drive. You can even connect it directly to your Mac or PC and transfer the images as you take them.

Of course, if you yearn for mobility, it also writes to CF cards. I can’t imagine how big they’d need to be or how many you’d need for a typical commercial photo shoot, but hey, it’s your call, right?

It comes with a rechargeable Li-ion battery that will let you take up to 250 photos, or “captures”, as they call them in 4 hours. Needless to say, you won’t be able to put it in your pocket: the camera plus battery and CF card comes in at 2,175 grams, a little over 2 kilos, or 4 pounds.

So how much will all this megapixely goodness cost you? $29,995 seems to be the going price, although I’ve seen it listed on Froogle for as high as $32,973. I can’t say that I’ve got a burning need to get one, but I suppose if my livelihood depended on delivering really high quality pics, it’d be on my shopping list. Read up on it right here.

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Reviews

Two great bargains: HP Pavilion dv2000 and dv6000 series laptops

As detailed in my last post, I’ve been scouring the market looking for laptop deals, and I found two that were really good. After I compared the specs for these two laptops with similarly equipped laptops, I found them to be hundreds below comparable models, and on top of that, well-made – at least when it came to their exterior.

The HP Pavilion dv2000 and dv6000 series laptops are part of HP’s re-design of its Pavilion laptop line. They feature upgraded hardware and beautiful exteriors. I can’t speak about their reliability, since I only got the chance to use them for a few minutes at a computer store, but when it comes to looks and features, they’ve got it! From the moment I touched the keyboard and used the trackpad, I could tell HP invested serious attention to detail when they made these laptops. If you’ve ever used a Dell laptop, then you know what I’m talking about. The keys are so thin, that your fingers sometimes get pinched inbetween them. Not on these two HP laptops! The keys are thicker, smoother, and have better action. The trackpad is responsive, and the left and right mouse buttons are soft to the touch. I thought the travel could be shortened a bit, but other than that, it’s a very good experience. The lines are well defined, the color tones are well chosen, the overall thickness is kept to a minimum (around 1″ height for either one) – what can I say, they look good!

A well-equipped dv2000 series laptop features Windows XP Pro, a dual core Intel 2.0 GHz processor, a 14.1″ BrightView wide screen, integrated 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth, an integrated webcam with dual noise-cancelling microphones, a 120GB SATA hard drive, a 128MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7200 video card, 2GB of RAM, a LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD +/- RW with Double Layer drive, a 12-cell battery that lasts up to 8 hours, a 2-year HP Accidental Damage with Express Repair extended service plan, a credit-card sized remote control for the InstantOn feature that lets you play DVDs and CDs without turning on the laptop, an HP Silver Messenger Bag, HP Mobile Noise Cancelling headphones, a retractable phone, ethernet and USB cord kit, and a FREE printer. The price for the whole set is $2,051.93 ($1801.93 without the extended service plan). Try matching these specs with another laptop (Lenovo, Sony, Dell, Acer, Asus) and see if it’s still that low. Go ahead, I’ve done it, and it isn’t.

How about the dv6000 series? A well-equipped dv6000 includes the following: Windows XP Pro, a dual core AMD 1.8 GHz processor, a 15.4″ wide screen, a 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7200 video card, integrated 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth, an integrated webcam with dual noise-cancelling microphones, a 120GB SATA hard drive, 2GB of RAM, a LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD +/- RW with Double Layer drive, a 12-cell battery that lasts up to 8 hours, a 2-year HP Accidental Damage with Express Repair extended service plan, a credit-card sized remote control for the InstantOn feature that lets you play DVDs and CDs without turning on the laptop, an HP Silver Messenger Bag, HP Mobile Noise Cancelling headphones, a retractable phone, ethernet and USB cord kit, and a FREE printer. The price for the set is just $2.111.94 ($1,861.95 without the extended service plan). Again, I dare you to match these specs and see if you can get a similar price.

I have only two bad things to say. I haven’t heard good things about HP reliability from my friends and contacts. I also know from personal experience that once HP decides to discontinue a product, their interest in supporting it goes downhill, and it’s basically forgotten. Perhaps that’s changed now that they’ve re-designed their laptops, but still, I’d recommend getting the extended support plan. The one I mentioned above includes two years (there are 1 and 3 year options as well) of Accidental Damage (in case you drop it or spill something on it) and Extended Repair (when your hardware just plain fails). I would actually recommend getting an extended support plan for any laptop or desktop you purchase, because you don’t want to be left stranded when you’re in a bind.

The second thing is more like a wish, and that is for the dv6000 line to include dual core Intel processors. It currently doesn’t. Although AMD may beat out Intel with its recent line-up of dual core processors, the Core Duo 2 line of processors, code-named Merom, that Intel will come out with in August, are already beating AMD’s line-up. Plus, they’re readily interchangeable with the current dual core Intel chips. That means you can get a laptop now, and upgrade your processor to a screaming fast Merom chip when the price for those goes down.

At any rate, I can’t find a better deal for the specs and looks that these two laptops, so if you’re in the market for a Windows laptop, get your hands on one of these!

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