Ehh to both Hollywood and weather

[altivo]

So the promise of a dry week to follow Friday's deluge and wind has already been broken. It's been raining on and off this afternoon, and the next few days are once again filled with "chance of thunderstorms." Water in the pastures is again deeper than the top of my rubber boots, and I think deeper than it was at its peak earlier this spring. I can't get to the vegetable garden without a boat, even though I can see the snow peas hanging there begging to be harvested. In the first nine years that we lived here, we saw flooding like this only once. On that occasion, we received four inches of rain in a 24 hour period, so anything was certainly possible.

Since the stupid developers busted up the tiling in the 250 acres of land uphill of us, we are seeing this every time there is an inch or more of rain in 24 hours. That's about six times in the last two years. Our ability to use our land has been damaged by this, significantly so. Our chance of getting anything done about it is, of course, non-existent. I take great pleasure in the fact that no one has actually chosen to build anything in that "development." I hope the developers go bankrupt.

We went to see the Star Trek film this afternoon because Gary wanted to. Even setting aside the fact that I now have a headache imposed by the earthquake inducing level of the sound in the theatre (which always irritates the hell out of me...I guess everyone else is already deaf from listening to stuff at those decibel levels, so they keep escalating) my reactions are mostly negative. There were some cute moments and an occasional clever concept, but c'mon, folks. Star Trek has used the time paradox thing far too much. It's no longer credible to me. I never liked Kirk and I like him even less after this film. Giving Spock a romantic interest, even at a young age, doesn't wash with me either, no matter how cleverly they could play it off against Kirk. The young Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekhov were interestingly portrayed, but they can't carry off a weak plot all by themselves. I won't even dignify it with any apples at all.

On the way home we stopped and used the "coupon" (plus $16) to get a digital conversion box. I don't anticipate it doing any good here, but we can always give it to someone else if it's completely useless.

Comments

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad it's not just me that finds 90% of theaters astoundingly loud. I've done a lot of loud things, but they usually involve some flavor of hearing protection, and I'm probably going to add "going to the movies" to that list. I wonder if they're hoping the Fletcher-Munson curve will try and make it sound "better"? I'm fairly sensitive to excessive bass anyways. Gives me a headache after just a few seconds, but it's odd that no one else seems to notice or care.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Most people suffer from hearing loss and attention deficit, I've decided. All you have to do is observe them screaming into their cell phones, shouting to one another when the distance between them is just two or three feet, or where they set the volume level on their car radios or television sets.

Unfortunately, hearing loss due to environmental factors escalates as people try to compensate for it by increasing the volume level.

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

They do that at work! Dash 60 (gas turbine generator, you've got an idea of how loud that would be) is running, and it's using the bleed air (noisy) to drive an air conditioning unit (also predictably loud), and instead of just giving up on hearing their "music"*, they'll turn that all the way up. Making it even louder doesn't help, you still can barely hear it (good thing) but it's even noisier still.

*"Music" being some sort of death metal grind core something with the singer screaming incoherent lyrics, or maybe just is gargling gravel. Awful, no talent crap. Coming from a guy who likes Def Leppard, Hammerfall, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Nightwish...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hee! Keegan, you're a fox after my own heart. And you sound like me, though I never liked rock music much beyond the Beatles era.

[frith]

I haven't noticed the sound being too loud here in the Great White North... maybe we have a kindlier, gentler sound system.

The Trek film is getting a 9 out of ten rating here, which should translate into an outstanding movie. I saw it a week ago Saturday... It was worth admission in an uncrowded theater, but only just. The doomsday plot with the mad bald villain was déjà vu all over again. I bought the 'new timeline' aspect but the over-the-top exaggerations of personas of the core cast rankled as did stuff like why carry so much red-matter and why was so little water dumped with Scotty from the emergency hatch? Oh well, with a new time-line, they can remake the whole Star Trek universe pretty much any way they please.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

maybe we have a kindlier, gentler sound system.

Or maybe you have theatres that are not managed by kids barely out of their teens, whose evaluation of a film is based on how loud the explosions were and whether it had "great effects" (whatever that means.)

Myself, I'd rather see something resembling a credible plot and some acting that is both believable and appropriate. This film had neither.

Hollywood makes whatever sells, of course. The fault for the general crappy level of today's film output lies with the audiences who continue to flock to see the garbage, no matter how bad it is, as long as it has lots of explosions and chase scenes.

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

"audiences who continue to flock to see the garbage, no matter how bad it is, as long as it has lots of explosions and chase scenes." So that explains Quantum of Solace?
Worst. Bond. Film. Ever.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That one I can't offer an opinion about, since I didn't and won't see it. Bond consisting of nothing but violence, sex, explosions, and chase scenes anyway, I couldn't see the point of any of them.

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, the old Bond films were alright. Thunderball (my favorite), Goldfinger, and Dr. No weren't any masterpieces, but they at least had a story I could follow, and I didn't feel ripped off afterward.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

And why would you need to drill a hole to the center of the planet, black holes tend to be very VERY efficient from what I gather. Oh, and I never thought of that one, intersecting your own matter with a whole lot of water can't be good for the digestion. In all, more than the usual insanely bad logical gaffes.

I figure that the universe, being the young rebellious sort of universe, will not like being told what to do ergo we can expect to see...

Kirk drunk in a bar after being beat out by Zap Brannigan for captaincy of the Enterprise.. "They shaid I was gonna be a goddamn hero fuck! *hick!*"

McCoy gets turned into a Santaran bibble-worm the first time he works up the nerve to use a teleport.

And since the universe has a 'dark' sense of humor, the only success story is Uhuru who uses her reputation to break into the recording industry, currently CEO of "Black Hoe" records.

Down the tubes

[frith]

I figure the transporter disperses matter at the target location, thus air, water, rock, no difference. Since water doesn't compress too well, I hope there was a big air pocket somewhere in that system, or Scotty is going to be treated for some really nasty embolisms.

Re: Down the tubes

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Or it incorporates and transforms the matter at the target location. Or something. They kept changing the explanations and theory all the time.

Drilling to the core of the planet in order to explode it is an old Dr Who plot, used more than once I think. At least they sort of excused it by making the villain an ex-miner.

I think the pseudo-science that bothered me most was the Enterprise escaping the black hole that Vulcan became. It was that same old Star Trek methodology: "We just make shit up."

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

We're in agreement on our assessment of "Star Trek".

The sad thing is that, if you think about it for a few minutes, you could easily think of ways to have almost exactly the same story played out, but without any time travel, and without any time paradoxes with every single Star Trek movie and series that there have been. That's just poor writing that they insisted on making it a time travel movie rather than a good sci-fi movie. And the '90210' portrayal of the young crew sure didn't help.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I liked the idea of showing us the younger versions of the original officers.

I think I was most bothered by having them all be rule breaking rebels, cheaters, liars, brawlers and thieves. Great message to be sending to kids, Hollywood. Really great job.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

You're sending that rain here aren't you!! It's been raining for ages here now, and I'm getting tired of it :P

The house is getting damp.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*innocent*

You did ask me to send rain there, remember? I'd have sent more, but my transporter is malfunctioning again.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Did you also send fog, we had the biggest white out I've ever seen yesterday.
I could barely see buildings next to the one I work in from the windows.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nope, no fog to send. We get that in winter and spring. It's freaking hot summer here now.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

This whole audio and music thing is a bit silly... On radio, it's been compressed to death, with just a bit of leeway given to commercials so those can be played even louder.

Movies on the other hand have beyond-real-life dynamics, especially something like DVDs with the DTS encoding. Speech is all quiet, making you turn up the volume to hear it, until the first explosion when the small loudspeakers try to jump through the wall. Much fun when you're trying to watch a movie in an apartment building like mine.

My next home theater setup will include a 5.1-channel compressor/limiter... maybe I could loan one from the radio stations. =)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Surely you could put your education to work and design and build your own audio compresser, wuffy? I'll lend you a slide rule...

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

I could go whack the audio engineers with that slide rule, maybe they'd learn something... But that's hardly a proper use for one. ^^;

[saythename.livejournal.com]

*kicks your bedroom door in and trundles in with a tray
of sliced melon and altarian eggs and a tricorder to
diagnose that headache*

SO! So...shhh...you...don't...like...Kirk?

And you don't like LOUD MUSIC!?

*headtilts*

Okay.

*leaves the tray but tosses a copy of Gravity's Rainbow
on the bed and rubs his hands together cunningly*

"That'll keep him busy for awhile!"

*goes off with the local foxes*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thomas Pynchon? Eww. Unreadable. Certainly not a headache cure. *tosses it aside in favor of Clement-Davies*

Nope, never liked Kirk. To me he was an impulsive troublemaker, an irritating womanizer, and used too much muscle and not enough brains. Without Spock and McCoy to counterbalance him, he'd have been an utter disaster. His cocksure attitudes always rubbed me the wrong way. Tim Allen's spoof of him in the 1999 film Galaxy Quest summed it up perfectly. ;p

Definitely no loud music, and even moreso no loud explosions and gunfire, which seems to be the entire point of so many films these days. I can hear a mouse from two rooms away, which is remarkable at my age, and I want to keep it that way.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased you don't like Pynchon. I never understood
how he got such a fine reputation. If I want obscure
but heavy I go for Hesse. Just me. The Glass Bead
Game was a story that drew you in with characters
and a setting, though I have to say Neil Stephenson's
"Anathem" does the idea a whole lot better, and is
about as long.

Okay, no cocksure Kirks and no loud music.

But you secretly want Kirk...you want him on that
galactic rim...you NEED him on that galactic rim!

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I need Kirk to be as far away from me as possible, the galactic rim might do, Andromeda might be better. Except that he's very likely to start a gigantic interstellar war unless someone is constantly watching over him.

I liked Piccard much better.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

There from different "eras" in the story line but
it would be probable that Picard would get to
Admiral and then eventually to head the Federation
while Kirk was being busted every few years back
to Ships Captain. XD

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised you didn't like it. It seems only 10% of the movies you see get a positive review, at best. :)

I liked Star Trek and considering the fact that I watched it while I was having a severe allergic reaction and my hives flared up all over me and was in near torture, that's saying a lot. However, since I was in that kind of state I can't really say what I thought about the movie because I was far too...distracted.

I was pleasantly amused by Kirk's confession of having sex with farm animals ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nah. I like at least half the films I see, but that's because I'm extremely selective about what I watch. I liked Bolt and said so. That's the the last before this one.