Month: November 2011

I don’t mind supposed “remakes”, but even I have my limits.

D'Arque Bishop

Movie remakes are all the rage these days, it seems. A few recent examples have included Fright Night, Footloose, and the upcoming Robocop. Needless to say, a lot of people are getting enraged at the lack of originality in Hollywood these days. I don’t really blame them, myself, though I’m not entirely sold on whether a lot of the films being bandied about as remakes should be considered so.

To me, for a film to be considered a “remake”, it needs to be a new version of an original movie and not based on other media. For example, The Thing (the 1982 movie, not the 2011 prequel) is often touted as a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World. The truth of the matter is that the 1982 movie, like the 1951 one, was based on a novella called Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell; unlike the 1951 film, the 1982 film was FAR more faithful to the original material. Another example is the upcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as like the Swedish-language movie (which I highly recommend), it’s based on the novel by Stieg Larsson. New movies based on Spider-Man and Superman are in the works; as they’re based on comic books, I see them as fresh looks at the source material as opposed to remakes of previous films.

Even then, I’m not against remakes as a whole. If a remake can provide a new, fresh interpretation of the original story while still being a quality product, then I’m all for it. People were against remakes of the aforementioned Fright Night and Footloose, yet critical reception of both films was positive. In fact, according to Rotten Tomatoes, Footloose got much better ratings than the original version did.

Still, it strikes me as funny that remakes are causing so much rage. Classic movies have been remade and new interpretations of old materials released for as long as I can remember. For example, the 1983 classic Scarface was a remake of a 1932 film. The most well-known versions of The Wizard of Oz and The Maltese Falcon were not the first adaptations of those novels to film. It’s hardly a new thing to come about.

Now, while I’m normally not against remakes or adaptations, there is one exception. I don’t like it when an adaptation comes out in a particular medium for the first time, and does not try to be faithful to the original source material. It could be an animated film based on a comic, but changes personalities of characters and the basic plotline. The adaptation that comes to mind most prominently is the live-action adaptation of the comic and animated film Akira. Akira is a profoundly Japanese film, that served as a generation’s introduction to Japanese animation. However, the live-action adaptation is casting whites instead of Japanese (for example, Kristen Stewart has been offered the lead female role), and the setting has been changed from Neo-Tokyo to “New Manhattan”. If what I’ve read online is true, then the storyline has been altered as well, no longer focusing on juvenile delinquents as the main protagonists/antagonists.

The Spirit is another example. Leaving out Frank Miller’s supposedly horrid writing and direction, the movie is not faithful to the comics in several respects. One that comes to mind is that in the film Denny Colt has superhuman abilities after the incident that made him become the Spirit, while Will Eisner deliberately made him an everyman in the comics. Another is that the Octopus was prominently shown in the movie, whereas in the comics his face was never seen. Had it been a faithful adaptation, I would have been more inclined to watch it. As it stands… no.

Why is it so difficult for the studios making these films to make a faithful adaptation?

In the end, though, it comes down to quality. The remakes and new adaptations that succeed are faithful to the source material while bringing a fresh look and new perspectives. The ones that fail are the money grabs that don’t pay attention to what made the original source material great in the first place. I know I’m preaching to the choir there, as I’m hardly the only one to feel that way.

I just wish the studio executives understood that too.

Ultraviolet? More like ultra-annoying.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

By now, it’s pretty obvious to people who know me that I like to have digital copies of my movies. I guess one could argue I got started relatively early (compared to the current consumer desire, that is), seeing as that as far back as 2006, I was making digital copies of Mortal Kombat to watch on my smartphone. Nowadays, though, when a movie comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray, I buy the version of the disc that comes with the digital copy. I like being able to have the movie in iTunes, where I can watch it later using my iPhone or HP TouchPad.

However, the studios have started offering this “new service” for the digital copies that is really annoying me.

I’ve noticed that several movies that featuring a digital copy have a label on the packaging advertising that it is an “Ultraviolet digital copy”. It’s a reference to Ultraviolet, a service by Flixster that sells access to streamed versions of movies, plus allows you to redeem codes for movies you’ve bought. You can watch the movies via the Flixster app on iOS and Android, and there’s also an app (based on Adobe AIR) for PCs as well. Sounds great, right?

In my case, it’s anything but.

The primary reason I have digital copies of movies is because I want to watch them while traveling. As I brought up earlier, I like watching Mortal Kombat when on trips for Mortal Kombat Online. Another example was when I was traveling from Dubai to Houston; I watched the entire The Lord of the Rings film trilogy on the flight. Also, on a drive from New Orleans to Houston, Jennifer and I once watched The Dark Knight. In other words, I mostly watch my digital copies on portable devices. PC playback support, while kind of nice, is less important to me.

There are really three problems here. The first problem is that I like to use iTunes to manage the media on my iPhone. It tells me how much space I have available on the device, so when I’m picking and choosing what movies I want on the phone, I can make accommodations for what I’m willing to remove to make space, like shrinking the music playlists and the like. Furthermore, with the movies on the hard drive, I can simply copy the movies over USB to the phone. With Ultraviolet, while I can copy the media to my devices, I can’t actually copy it to iTunes. I can copy it to my PC, but iTunes will not recognize it as a viewable movie. I can download it straight to my iPhone, but then I have to figure out ahead of time how much space I need to clear. Worse, according to Flixster’s website, I can’t delete the movie afterwards without deleting the entire app first.

The second problem is the one that REALLY irks me. There’s no support at all for the iPod Classic or the HP TouchPad. There isn’t a Flixster app for webOS (and I’m not holding out hope that one will come out), and the iPod Classic doesn’t have net access at all. The iPod Classic is what I bring with me on trips where I don’t know what I’ll want to watch beforehand, as my entire media library will fit on it (as it has a 160 GB hard drive). One might think it’s annoying watching a movie on a screen the size of the iPod Classic’s, but if I’m not sharing with another person, it’s not that bad.

The third problem is that all of this depends on the Flixster and Ultraviolet services being completely in sync. That doesn’t seem to be the case. During the setup process for my account (done while trying to redeem a digital copy of Green Lantern), it set up a Flixster account and asked me for an email address and password for the Ultraviolet account. However, I was never told what the sign in name was for Ultraviolet, and there isn’t a process by which to find out what it is on Ultraviolet’s website. I’ve got a support ticket in, and I hope they can tell me what it is. In addition, the Flixster app for iOS isn’t giving me access to the movies in Ultraviolet. The FAQ on Flixster’s site said that if the Flixster and Ultraviolet accounts are linked, I should have access to the movies. I guess the accounts weren’t linked after all (despite what the setup process said).

All in all, I’m pretty fed up. At least when the movies had iTunes support, all I needed to do was put the code in to iTunes and the movie would simply download to my PC, and work right off. All of these extra hoops I’m having to jump through with extra accounts, new players, and the like do nothing to make things easier for the consumer. It’s crap like this that helps increase piracy, as those people who “do the right thing” get the shaft, and the pirates can get their copies of the movie far more easily and without any of the hassle.

I guess I should just look at the bright side. The worst case scenario for me is that I can take the DVD and use HandBrake to create my own digital copies. Still, it’s frustrating, and I’m going to definitely think twice before buying any film that features an “Ultraviolet” digital copy.

The Bishop Wedding Soundtrack

D'Arque Bishop

As part of our way of saying “thank you” to everyone who came out to our wedding, Jennifer put together a bunch of gift bags for all of the guests and had the hotel front desk hand them out when they arrived. Among the items we included were a beach bag, suntan lotion, a small bottle of rum, and other items. One of the most personal items we put in was a music CD, filled with songs that we felt represented us and our lives together. I wanted to go ahead and list out and give an explanation for each of tracks… not just for the guests but for everyone who might be interested. :-) Read more “The Bishop Wedding Soundtrack”

Not really how I wanted to upgrade…

D'Arque Bishop

Some (but not many) people are probably wondering why it took me so long to put the blog post up announcing our marriage. The answer is that, well… it wasn’t exactly by choice.

A couple of days after we arrived in the Bahamas, I noticed that I wasn’t receiving email from my main server. A quick check showed that the web services weren’t responding and that the server itself wasn’t responding to pings. I wasn’t too worried; I just figured the system suffered a kernel panic (the Linux equivalent of a BSOD) and needed to be rebooted. I sent an email to the pet sitter asking him to hit the reset button on the server, and left it at that.

A day or so later, he emailed back saying he had done so. I checked, and it was still down. I still wasn’t too concerned, as I figured he probably hit the wrong button. I ended up asking Jennifer’s mom to power cycle the box. After the now-in-laws returned home, I got an email saying she had done so. I checked the server, and I still got nothing. Now I began to worry, thinking a hard drive might have failed.

When we got home, one of the first things I did was check on the server. It was worse than I thought: the system wouldn’t even bring up video. I sighed, and decided to check to see if I had a replacement motherboard. I did, but it was in an old case and wouldn’t come out.

I think it was about at that point that I decided “frak this” and started checking Newegg to see how much a new server would cost. To my surprise, there was an HP Proliant server that fit my needs that only cost $450. I talked to my dad, and he bought it for me with next day delivery (as I host his business email as well, and have done so for years).

We ended up learning a life lesson. When Newegg says “next day delivery”, they mean “delivery the day after the order is processed”. Until now, all of my orders had been processed within two hours. This time, it took two DAYS to process. The end result was that the box arrived on Wednesday instead of Monday. Dad was unhappy, even after Newegg graciously refunded the shipping costs.

As soon as the server arrived, I added a second hard drive (to hold backups), added the users and groups, installed the backup software, and copied the backup archives to the server. Thankfully, the backups restored with no problems. After that I got mail up and running (and was promptly buried under an avalanche of two weeks of undelivered email). Once email was up, I could get everything else up and running.

The new server is pretty nice, too. It’s a lot faster than the old box was (as the old one was using 10 year old hardware), has a smaller case, and it’s far more quiet. The only disadvantage is that I don’t have it set up for RAID, but I don’t need it just yet. Besides, the RAID on the old server caused me issues when I was trying to read the drives from my Windows PC for recovery purposes. :-)

Ah, well. The server, barring some last minor problems, is completely up and running. I’m just thankful the restore (once started) went as quickly as it did, and that the friends who do secondary MX for me were so willing to accommodate having two weeks worth of queued mail on their servers. :-)