RaaD Technology, Movies & News

Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime, to just name a couple.

I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff Garlin John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.

This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.

Dany

CollegeHumor (subscribe here) has come out with another funny video. This time, they ape Apple’s Steve Jobs‘ traditional keynote style with their new video, called The Apple “i.”

The whole thing perfectly captures the reality distortion field that Steve Jobs seems to bring to anything Apple!

Thanks to CollegeHumor for the above pic.

Check it out

Dany

The first trailer that caught my eye is for the upcoming Willem Dafoe movie where he’s hunting down a serial killer, Anamorph.

Another serial killer movie, this time starring Al Pacino is 88 Minutes, apparently the film was released worldwide over a year ago, but we’ll get to see it on April 18th (get the HD trailer here from Yahoo Trailers).

Lastly, we have Righteous Kill, which is only the 3rd movie starring both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (Godfather II and Heat) and only the second with the two acting together on screen (Heat). I don’t know how good it will be, but just having the two on screen together gets me interested in seeing it (get the HD trailer here from Apple Trailers).

Enjoy

Dany

I thought it was a fluke or just a marketing ploy, but now that it has happened twice, Apple’s corporate methods are really pissing me off.

I use the Apple Software Update tool on Windows to keep my copies of Quicktime and iTunes up to date. Last week though, Apple tried to push an installation for their Safari v3.0 browser. Now, I use the update tool to keep my current software up to date, not to get advertised new software to download… especially not a 4th web browser! Having Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera is more than enough for me.

Now, a week later, after NOT downloading Safari 3.o, Apple just popped up an offer for Safari 3.1, with the pitch:

“Safari for Windows is the fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for the PC. It displays web pages faster than any other browser and is filled with innovative features — all delivered in an efficient and elegant user interface.

For more information on Safari 3.1, please visit http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307467“

Apple, if you are listening, STOP DOING THIS! I don’t want to have to opt out of getting new software to download, if you want to offer new software, make me opt IN! Even Microsoft has stopped using this style of tactics recently, for Microsoft’s last Microsoft Update, they wanted me to download their Silverlight software, but it was offered in with a whole bunch of other downloads… the difference with Silverlight though, if I wanted to download it, I would have had to check the box to opt into the download.

Now, I have NO inclination to even TRY Safari! If Apple was a computer company with a larger market share, this type of tactic would get Apple in a LOT of trouble with anti-competitive tactics.

Thanks to All Things New for the above pic AND the similar feelings on the issue that I read after I wrote this, looking for a good photo to use for this post. Also, check out this HILARIOUS article from The Register, which maintains that Apple’s own Safari License Agreement does not allow you to legally install Safari on a non-Apple-labeled (ie: Windows) machine, when I read it, I made sure to read the Safari 3.1 for Windows License Agreement for myself and verified that this was STILL the case! I LOVE it!

Dany