“…that pretty lady to her right, who’s dressed like she’s a villain on Star Trek, is her lawyer”

Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal.  To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2004/04/

To catch up with my recent media adventures:

Some time last week, I finished Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. It was decent. Not great, not bad, like The Da Vinci Code. It was a page-turner and fun, but that's about it. It was good to see the EFF written into it. I was also happy that the craziness about mutating plaintext was just a ruse. I mean, really. Mutating plaintext? Isn't that just wrapping one cipher with another? Also, either the NSA in the world of the book employs morans, or I am a lot smarter than I thought. A lot of the mysteries/puzzles that went on for pages and pages and pages, I instantly knew upon reading the first sentence.

Kill Bill came out Tuesday, and I almost did not get to see it. It turns out that when everywhere in town is sold out, you can still buy it from Albertsons while getting groceries, so I was saved. Nobody thinks to buy DVDs from there. Anyway, Kill Bill is quite good. I had a number of “ewww, gross” cringe moments, but found that people getting getting sliced, diced, juilanned and turning into human high-pressure blood-sprinklers to be quite entertaining. Some of the overdone 70's motifs, I could have done without. I cannot wait for the next two volumes!

Last night, I finished Roswell. Good stuff! It started strong, got a little slow, then picked up again. It was crazy-loco-insane by couple of discs. I had to stay up late just because I didn't want to stop watching. It ended on a note that was not quite a cliffhanger, but certainly makes we want to see the next season as soon as it comes out.

P.S. I have now started looking at DVD menus with an eye for “how did they do that?” I keep trying to mentally picture how they do the masking, scripting, and video segments. I am still trying to figure out how they did the animated head as a menu selector in House of 1000 Corpses. As best as I can guess, all menu items have the animated head constantly playing. Selecting any one option masks out all the other heads with black, causing only the one to be visible. In fact, now that I have selected a menu option, it becomes apparent. Now I am going to have to run off and duplicate that in DVD Studio Pro.

P.P.S. When is somebody going to release “House of 1000 Corpuscles?”

Posted in: Books Movies Television

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