Reese's

While I was in St. Louis for an all-too-short duration last weekend, I found myself in a mall candy store when this found me.

I should have put something up as a size reference, but for the record, this is nearly 4 times the volume of a standard tube of lip balm, clocking in at .58 oz compared to the usual .15 oz. It's probably as close to a Reese's cup as you could expect a petroleum-based product to taste/smell, but suffers from a truly unfortunate color, which luckily doesn't show up when applied.

Oh, it's Zero

I heard a radio commercial today for the Jitterbug cell phone, marketed as a simple, easy-to-use phone. One of the features they mention is the ability to "dial oh and be greeted by name by our operator". Um, okay, last time I checked the letter O was located on the number 6. So in the interest of keeping things simple, are they really telling people to dial 6 to get the operator? Or perhaps they actually mean ZERO? Saying "Oh" is not an acceptible substitute for zero, ESPECIALLY when talking about buttons that serve as BOTH numbers and letters!

Sigh of relief

Apparently the source of my rant yesterday was bad information:

We're pleased to inform you all that Sony's confirmed that the BD release will actually be Leon: The Professional, and will include BOTH the much-loved international cut as well as the U.S. theatrical version. This is in addition to the extras we mentioned yesterday, which should include 3 featurettes (10 Year Retrospective: Cast and Crew Look Back, Jean Reno: The Road to Leon and Natalie Portman: Starting Young), as well as a BD-Java Fact Track.

Blu

DVD has truly been a revolution over the last 12 years in the way we watch movies at home. A lot of us don't even own VHS-machine technology any longer. Blu-ray, while a huge improvement, isn't really a revolution. Nevertheless, it's still incredible the amount of information one disc is able to hold. Some studios have used Blu-ray to give deserving films a royal treatment. Blade Runner was released as a 5-disc set for under $30 with 5 versions of the film, 3 of which are on the same disc using seamless branching. However, this same studio (rhymes with Warmer Covers) failed to do justice to the 1984 Best Picture Academy award winner, Amadeus.

I used to own the 2-sided disc of Amadeus until the 2-disc Director's cut was announced and I bought that one instead. It's a long movie and I've never done a side-by-side comparison, but I recall being told that not only were some scenes added, but one scene was actually deleted from the theatrical cut. It's the theatrical cut that won the Oscar, not the recut, now-with-75%-more-nudity version. While I have no objection to directors releasing different versions of a film, I insist on at least having the option to watch the original (George Lucas). So why have Yakko and Wacko refused to include both versions of the film on the same Blu-ray Disc using seamless branching?

Natalie Portman's first film, The Professional (Léon) is another interesting case. I've owned it on DVD 3 different times. The first time it was The Professional, then when Léon (the longer, international cut of the same film) came out, I bought it, only to find it had been recalled for faulty audio, so I returned it for the corrected copy. For this film, the longer version was not an extended version. Rather, the film released as The Professional was a shorted version of the director's original vision, the internatinally-released "Léon". Apparently the distributor wasn't comfortable showing too much footage of a 12-year-old girl learning to be an assassin, just some of it. Sony, the original backer of Blu-ray, has announced that the forthcoming release of The Professional will NOT include Léon, which again, could EASILY be done through seamless branching.

So I will continue to wait for the original versions of these movies. I refuse to spend my money on these while the possibility, or more likely, inevitability, exists of a Blu-ray release of my preferred version, or better yet, both in the same package.

Indian Cuisine in the Dayton area

I flew with a student early this morning, but had to cancel my noon flight, so I decided to check out the lunch buffet at Maharaja Indian restaurant in Beavercreek behind Sam's Club. One of my students had taken me there earlier in the week, and it was the first time I was even aware it existed. They don't have buffets in the evening, so I have terrific dinner serving of Chiken Tikka Masala and Peshawari naan. A month or so ago I had taken a friend on his first visit to Jeet India in Beavercreek. Towards the end of our time there, the line was nearly to the front door, so I was sad to see a restaurant with at least equal quality food that was completely empty at 12:30 on a Saturday afternoon. I can only hope the intense rain was keeping people at home.

I'm not very much into the lentil dishes, but there were plenty of vegetarian choices, including potatos and peppers in the same type of sauce as the Chicken Tikka Masala. The other chicken dishes were Chicken Curry, and Tandoori Chicken on a huge bed of onions. I have to admit, I prefer the spinach from Jeet India, but the naan at Maharaja is the superior of the two. Mahraja also offers a different cold bar, with fried cheese curd in syrup, a different flavor of "exotic" ice cream, and pineapple for dessert.

So now to the real reason I'm writing...to encourage anyone with a taste for Indian food in the area to give Maharaja a try. Both times I've been there the food and service have been terrific. The owner and staff are very friendly. "They" say when people have a good restaurant experience they tell just a few people, but then tell or 5 times that many people about a bad experience, so this is me telling as many people about a good place to because I'd like to see them do well, and selfishly want it to stay open, after having seen it so empty today.

Can't Stop the Serenity

This past Tuesday night was Joss Whedon's birthday. I was never really a fan of his earlier, vampire-centered fare, but I got hooked on Firefly shortly after Serenity came out, but never got to see Serenity in the theater, so I jumped at the chance to go to a Can't Stop the Serenity charity screening in Yellow Springs (one of only two on Joss's birthday, according to the event calendar). There had been a bigger Serenity event Saturday night with a packed house, but I had to work, and don't like packed houses. It was the first time I'd been to the Little Art Theater and was really looking forward to seeing the movie with an audience and in 35mm.

Before the show started people were slowly trickling in. (Some guy took all day in a 1-seater Men's room.) Embracing my geekiness, I wore my Blue Sun t-shirt, and I wasn't the only one. I finally got a chance to pick my seat on the aisle, relatively close to the front of the long, narrow theater. A trio of filmgoers in their late 50's came in and took the seats immediately to my left, and I staked my claim to the armrest, but claiming something only does so much good when the stomach of the other guy spills over onto it. I knew I was going to have to move or be uncomfortable. Luckily for me (not so much for the women 2 rows up) they decided to move. There had been what looked like a mother and daughter sitting there. When the daughter went to the concession stand, the trio got up and took the middle 3 seats of a 5-seat row, forcing the mother to move. They appeared to remain clueless as to why she moved even as the daughter returned.

There was a drawing and several promotional videos, the one from Joss Whedon being particularly entertaining. As the movie opened by toying with the Universal Studios logo, I began to suspect this wasn't a 35mm print at all. My suspicions were pretty much confirmed when I began to see some color seperation as a result of the digital projector whenever something bright white moved quickly on the screen (like looking at the white light of a flatbed scanner and seeing an array of colors as it moves). When the playback menu dropped into the movie at the top left of the screen it was indisputable that they had a 1080i 60 Hz playback, apparently from a Blu-ray copy of the movie. The picture looked nice for the most part, except for the distracting color seperation, the audience laughed at all the right parts, and even clapped at the end. If I had known it wasn't a 35mm print, though, I probably would have stayed home and watched it at 1080p 24fps, which is a step closer to film, and without the rainbow effect.

Set list

Isis at 20th Century Theatre, Cincinnati, OH Setlist on June 10, 2009

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/isis/2009/20th-century-theatre-cincinnati-oh-3d60d9f.html

Hall of the Dead
20 Minutes / 40 Years
Dulcinea
Threshold of Transformation
Ghost Key
In Fiction
Hand of the Host
Carry

Encore:
The Beginning and the End