Posts Tagged ‘BluRay’

Movie RatingMovie Rating Knowing – I watched the Blue-Ray version of the movie Knowing the other night and was not impressed. I can’t believe how much money Hollywood is wasting on film these days. I have spent more enjoyable time on YouTube. Don’t try to blame Nicolas Cage it was not his fault at all. The story had nowhere to go except where it ended. There were just not any real surprises. The Aliens made no sense appearing and disappearing and watching, what for? In the end they just took the kids anyway so why the cat and mouse? Why drive people crazy with incoherent whispering and numbers if you don’t really care if they are going to understand? You are just going to take them anyway, right? The spaceships were very lame and there were presumably hundreds if not thousands. Did they drive all of those people crazy for 50 years and then torture their kids with whispering and number carving just to kidnap the kids in the end? Figuring it out or “knowing” didn’t and couldn’t save anyone. I just didn’t get the script, who wrote this crap? One more thing, why was some of it shot in Australia? This is another stupid trend. I watched New in Town a week ago and it is set in Minnesota but they filmed it in Canada.

If you have a choice you should watch New in Town rather than Knowing. It’s corny, predictable, and a cookie cutter chick flick but it doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is. Harry Connick Jr. does a great job too.

The Magnavox NB500MG9 BluRay player looked like a great deal and things were going good for a month or two. When I upgraded my Netflix account to 3 movies at a time I started getting a lot of Blu-Ray Discs and I started to see that the player had issues. Many times the movie would freeze or jump ahead. I could not rewind or forward to see what I missed so I would unplug the player and start over and it seemed that it would do this at exactly the same spot every time. I would clean the disk, try again and it just would not play. I would have to go upstairs and borrow the kids PS3 to finish watching the movie. The latest failure is the 15th Anniversary Resevoir Dogs on Blu-Ray, no audio or video, period. Fire up the PS3 and no problem.

Reservoir Dogs 15th Anniversary

By the way, Reservoir Dogs Blue-Ray is only $10 at Amazon right now.

At the request of my wife I was updating my Christmas list and 2 of the first 3 movies I looked for are not out on BluRay yet. I was happy to see they released Man On Fire (Denzel Washington) but then I looked up Heat (Deniro, Pacino) and Collateral (Tom Cruise) and no luck. Still no Minority Report on Blu-Ray either, come on, is there really no demand, is everyone really buying Planet Earth and Kung-Fu Panda? I get the appeal and top ranking of movies like Ironman, it has something for everyone and Robert Downey Jr. has that special charisma that would have turned any 1950’s actor into a screen legend but some of these Blu Disk releases baffle me. Hollywood! I need action movies with a plot and actors that can, well, act and I need them in HD. I don’t need Crank or The Transporter, you should be ashamed.

I was looking for minority report on BluRay or HD-DVD and had no idea it wasn’t available until just now. What a bummer. I can get Rio Bravo on Blu-Ray or Christmas Vacation on HDDVD but not minority Report?
Don’t get me wrong, I like both of those movies but there is no reason for an old grainy western like Rio Bravo to be out on HD before Minority Report and Christmas Vacation has a choice of stereo or mono track on HD. Give me a break Hollywood.

My wife and 2 sons bought me a Blu-Ray player for my birthday. Sweet! I thought I would have to wait until Christmas. I got the new John Mayer concert, “Where The Light Is” and “The Punisher” both on Blu-Ray.

Update: Turned out even at a great price the Magnavox NB500MG9 Blu-Ray player was not up to the task. There were way too many discs from NetFlix that just wouldn’t play on it. We constantly had to use the Playstation to watch Blu-Ray discs from NetFlix. It was very slow but that would have been OK if it just worked.

I recommend the JVC XV-BP1 for features and performance. At current prices there is no reason to buy less. There are better, if you have the budget for it.

They did it, they killed HD-DVD. I didn’t get to open and watch every one of the HDDVD movies I got for Christmas and it’s already obsolete. Toshiba officially announced that they give up. I guess I’ll be getting a Blu-Ray player before the end of the year. It stinks being on the losing team :)