Monthly Archives: January 2011

Spartacus: What a difference 50 years makes

This entry was posted in art movies and tagged movies reviews spartacus on by (updated 5003 days ago)

Having now watched the first two episodes of the Starz series Spartacus:Gods of the Arena and re-watched last year’s Spartacus:Blood and Sand, I decided to go back and re-watch the 1960 Stanley Kubrik film based on the revolutionary gladiator.  Wow, what a difference half a century makes. I’ve long been a fan of Kubrik’s work and he created some amazing films including Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket.

However, sitting down and watching Spartacus this afternoon I’m reminded that Kubrik also often needed a strong editorial hand on his work. Of course given his reputation as something of a control freak, it’s unlikely that he ever would have accepted such oversight in the final cutting of his films. Despite having won four Oscars, I found the movie to be very uneven and often plodding with long wordless sequences of the camera panning over the camps of escaped slaves or other scenes that really did nothing to move the plot forward or develop the characters.  Both the dialog in many places and the performances also left much to be desired, although the bath scene with Laurence Olivier’s Crassus and Tony Curtis’s Antonius remains a classic.  Don’t even get me started on the This three hour epic could have easily been cut by a third without losing anything of significance.

Aside from being set in a ludus (gladitorial school) in Capua, the modern iteration of this tale couldn’t be more different from the film. In typical modern fashion, the new Spartacus takes advantage (or is that disadvantage?) of lots of digital effects.  Unfortunately, much of it used to produce gratuitous amounts of violence. Despite that, the story telling and character development in this modern iteration is actually quite good and goes well beyond what Kubric achieved 50 years ago.  The back stories of many of the characters are quite fleshed out, especially in this second season which is actually a prequel. Andy Whitfield who played Spartacus was unable to film the second season after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

The full first season and each of the episodes of season two are available for streaming on Netflix and well worth checking out.

Kids demonstrate the acceleration of tech obsolescence

This entry was posted in technology on by (updated 5042 days ago)

At the age of 45, I’ve lived through an era where technological advancement is proceeding at such a rapid pace that numerous technologies have appeared and then completely vanished from the landscape before successive generations could be born. The telephone in its original incarnation went largely unchanged for the better part of a century.  Today, increasingly advanced mobile phones have far more capability than computers and cameras that I was using just a decade ago.

Four years ago I wrote a post about my then 11 year old son and his first encounter with a rotary dial phone. Max has experienced film cameras and vinyl turntables, but he’s never seen an 8-track or a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. In all likelihood, his children will never have seen a compact disk or DVD.  The DVD came to market two years after he was born and by today’s standards is old tech at more than a decade old but will likely be long gone in the next few years. During Max’s life span the Zip disk and other devices have come and gone while audio cassettes, VHS tapes and Polaroid instant cameras have mostly faded into history.

The video above shows a group of French 10 year olds contemplating devices that were contemporary just in my lifetime.

Roku XD-S shows the way toward a la carte TV

This entry was posted in media technology on by (updated 5055 days ago)

For years now those of that are tired of paying exorbitant monthly fees to their cable providers to receive 100s of different channels have been clamoring for a la carte television service. The problem is that most of us typically only watch a tiny fraction of the available channels. In my household we never ever watch the Golf channel or eternal world TV network or ESPN and have no desire to pay for them.  The cable companies of course want none of this because they bundle all of these niche channels into packages with more popular channels to pump up their revenues. Allowing customers to pick and choose the channels they want would likely lead to substantially reduced revenues for the likes of Comcast and Time Warner.

When Roku introduced its original Netflix streaming box a couple of years ago it was just the beginning of routing around the cable companies. At first, the Roku could only stream Netflix and the quality and content was limited.  However, Roku and Netflix have steadily improved the interface and the streaming quality to the point where the service can now deliver at 720p HD movies and TV shows on demand with quality similar to what we get directly through the cable box.

More importantly Roku made a brilliant move and created a software development kit that allowed programmers to create additional channels that run on the box to provide more content. These “channels” are apps similar to those you can run on most smartphones now. There are now dozens of channels available now for the Roku.  Many of these channels are from independent content creators like the TWiT and Revision3 networks, but also include the likes of Pandora, Archive.org and others.

The Roku is now available in several versions that support standard definition and high def output  with the top-end XD-S model also including a USB port so that a hard drive can be plugged in to playback local content including photos, music and video. Setup is very easy, just plug in the Roku to power and your TV and then connect to your local network. The Roku has both a wired ethernet port and WiFi. The box has HDMI, optical audio and composite audio/video outputs to support whatever your TV and stereo can handle. If you have an available HDMI port on your TV, the Roku requires a single cable connection.  Whatever you do just make sure you order your HDMI cables from Amazon or Monoprice instead of paying the ridiculous prices charged by places like Best Buy.

Netflix is set up by default and the channel store allows you to browse for additional channels to add. If like me, you have an old computer set up with content for the family, you can also add the Roksbox channel that allows you stream content from other machines on your network.  Last year I went through all of our old home videos and digitized them and they can now be played back on the TV through the Roku. The only problem with the Roku is limited video format support.  Currently it only supports MP4 and H264 so I’ve had to convert a bunch of video content, but once that’s done it works great.  Roku offers regular software updates and at some point it will hopefully add more codec support.

Whatever you choose to watch or listen to, the Roku has a clean simple interface that allows you browse through your available content. Netflix now offers a streaming only package for $7.99 and they are constantly adding more content including a lot of TV series.  Now if networks like BBC, Discovery and HBO would just create Roku channels, I would happily subscribe and cut Comcast loose from everything but internet access.