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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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. =)

[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*

[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 ;)