I was going through my notes for stuff I thought was worth mentioning here - movies I had seen, books I had read, etc. and realized that a lot of these notes are a few years old, so I'm guessing they'll never see the light of day. And now that I've mentioned them, I can delete the old notes with a clear conscience.
But first, a brief summary of the soon-to-be-deleted notes. Just for fun. I had images, quotes, etc. to post with most of these, but it's kinda pointless now, isn't it?
Pirates of the Caribbean III
I liked this film a lot, despite the annoying fish-faced characters. It was much more piratey than the second one.
Dragonheart: A New Beginning
This was Saturday morning kids' show fare. Very Land of the Lost-ish.
Goofy.
Prophecy
I subtitled my notes "Some Kind of Evil" due to...well, Eric Stolz being in the main role. Oh, and Aragorn is too pretty to be the devil...or maybe that was the point.
Highlander: the Source
It was like watching 2 hours of Highander, the TV series. Which was okay, I guess, since it was on TV. It wasn't too bad, but it was unatisfying in general.
Conan Returns
This isn't an actual film, but was related to news that New Line had acquired rights to make new Conan movies, which I thought was pretty cool.
Beowulf
I saw this movie in IMAX 3D in a full theater during a matinee showing and ended up sitting way too close to the screen. The movie was pretty interesting though. Here's a little factoid: Angelina was preggers when she was shooting her part. So all the uber-sexiness of the movie (from the shoulders down) was digitally done. And despite my intentions of keeping these brief, I'm going to delve a little more into Beowulf.
Here's something that might be interesting to fans of the film: A Book On Fire: An Exploration of Beowulf in the Media. I thought it was very interesting.
The date is October 23, 1731, and words are burning. The Cotton Library, the world's greatest collection of literature from the Middle Ages, has caught fire. Doctor Bentley, the library's curator, staggers from the door clutching what might be the oldest, most complete copy of the Bible, dating from the 1400's. That's the book he's chosen to save from the flames, but what has he inside? Illuminated gospels, their magnificent pages covered in a thin layer of worked gold; a copy of the Magna Charta, some stories of the saints, histories of England, travel memoirs, riddles composed by a long dead wit...and the only copy of Beowulf.
And here is the first part of the actual text (as it reads today - remember the original text wasn't English as we know it if it was English at all) of Beowulf, for your reading pleasure.
Beowulf is one book that wouldn't make a very watchable film in its original form.
(the above pages were scanned from the Beowulf comic book published by IDW).
The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang
This is actually a movie I just saw recently, not just something from the ancient scrolls of my notes. I was flipping through the channels last weekend when I should have been sleeping and came across a movie I didn't recognize with a couple of nerds talking about D&D and...well, I don't remember exactly which part I tuned in on. I actually haven't seen the first part of the movie, but I'm sure I'll catch it eventually.
It's full of Napoleon Dynamite-type humor (Napoleon and Uncle Rico both have roles, though John Heder's role is tiny). The girl (there's really only one) in the movie, Addie Land, is a cuter version of the girl from Napoleon Dynamite and reminds me of a girl I went to High School with. And the Macintrash TV commercial guy has an interesting role.
I didn't quite make it through the list. There are a couple of movies and a few books left in the old notes. Next time.
Since no one has complained, I'm guessing that nobody is bothering with the Opus Archive I've been maintaining. So it's probably not a great disappointment to anyone that I'm months behind on the scanning and posting of 2008 Opus strips. Or that I'm probably not going to bother scanning any of those past strips or the future strips.
But there's a bigger reason for this than just laziness (though that is the reason I'm months behind on scanning).
Berke has an official outlet for posting the clean versions (brighter, though often smaller than those I scanned and uploaded) of his strips. So there's no annoying newspaper bleed-through to deal with, just vibrant Opussy colorfulness. But the strips on Salon.com only go back to the June 3, 2007 Opus strip, so you'll have to find the older ones elsewhere (I have most of the pre-June 3, 2007 strips, but I did miss many of those from 2004). The URL for the strips is "http://images.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/06/03/opus/story.jpg" - you can see any strip later than June 3 by replacing the year, month and day of the URL.
I ordered a new 19" wide-screen LCD monitor (made by Hanns-G, model HW-191D) from newegg.com a couple of weeks ago because it was a lot lower-priced than I'd seen any other 19" monitors and I wanted a second LCD for my work-at-home days. I have a 19" CRT, but lugging it in and out of the garage is a major pain - it's a heavy beast. The new monitor was priced at $159 with no mail-in nonsense.
So I placed the order and the monitor actually arrived the very next day - which was a very nice surprise. I hooked it up that night (using the DVI connector) and also connected my non-wide-screen 17" LCD (with the VGA connector) to my trusty computer and expanded the desktop across both monitors, basking in the sweet blissfulness of massive screen real estate.
Thursday, I was a good boy and actually paid attention to the family, so the monitor was unused.
And then on Friday, I booted the computer up and started doing my thing. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, I realized that there was a thin blue line stretching from the top of the screen to the bottom that I had assumed was just there from Windows not refreshing the background. But refreshing the screen, changing the resolution to exclude the old monitor, and even rebooting didn't make any difference. The line remained steadfastly in the same position about 1/4 of the way from the left side of the monitor. I even tried a couple of games that run in DOS mode (thus removing any possibility that the line was Windows-related) and the line remained.
Grrrr. There's nothing quite as wonderful as having to return something you bought online. I fully expected to get gouged for return shipping and to receive a replacement monitor of the same quality as a replacement. Newegg's return policy on monitors is very specific - you get 30 days to report a problem and only get a replacement monitor of the same brand/model in the event of catastrophic failure. Fortunately, my problem was catastrophic enough to warrant replacement and Newegg issued an RMA. Surprisingly, they also issued me a postage-paid UPS shipping label, so I didn't have to pay a dime to ship it back to them (on the following Tuesday). Score!
The day after I shipped it back, I discovered another 19" wide-screen monitor on Newegg's site that was even a few bucks less than the one I had returned. And I actually recognized the manufacturer of this one: Acer. I also received an email informing me that Newegg was out of stock on the monitor I had returned, so I was being issued a full credit (which took a few days to post, but did eventually appear on my credit card) and I could now order the monitor of my choice. Sweet! So I ordered the Acer and it arrived the next day. (I think their warehouse must be somewhere around L.A.)
I've only been using the new monitor for about four days so far, but it's working like a champ. Go, go Acer! The moral of the story: you can trust newegg for you computer-related-stuff buying needs. They'll take care of you.
