Tag Archives: music

Well I couldn’t wait any longer for The Darjeeling Limited to play in Buffalo. It ended up opening this past weekend in Rochester, so Kayta and myself made the hour long drive to the Little Theatre. At first we were the only people there, but that quickly changed when middle aged folks who I’d never expect to see at a Wes Anderson movie consumed the theatre.

The film was what you’ve come to expect from Wes Anderson; Jason Schwartzman, one of the Wilson brothers, quirky characters, humorous situations, and an amazing soundtrack. I would probably rank it just behind The Royal Tenebaums or Rushmore—sorry The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou…I wanted to love you but felt like something was missing. =(

Prior to seeing The Darjeeling Limited I had heard various reviews about the second half taking a drastic turn in plot and structure. I have no idea what they were talking about because it felt like the same movie to me. At first I thought it was going to turn into one big flashback or maybe they’d go on an expedition to find the tiger who would then turn out to be their reincarnated father. Neither happened.

Also, make sure you view the short companion piece Hotel Chevalier (iTunes and several other online sites have it available for free) prior to seeing The Darjeeling Limited. You don’t have to, but you’ll get a few insights into Schwartzman’s character while he is in France and is visited by his ex played by Natalie Portman. I’m sure it was only meant to be a short film, but I’d really like to see it developed into a feature.

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On Monday I followed up The Darjeeling Limited with Across The Universe—that movie whose narrative is told through Beatles’ songs. I’m not one for song and dance numbers, but this was alright. My only problem with it was how forced all the scenes and characters felt. Every time someone new was introduced and they spoke their name, you could just guess what song would be used next to explain the story.

For the most part the songs and characters worked and served the story. Let’s be honest here, this is a movie for Beatles fans and if you love their music you’ll love this movie. I enjoyed it enough to justify the movie ticket even if the characters were cliche. My least favorite parts were the psychedelic hippie dream like scenes. I’m all for weird and goofy stuff, but I don’t know if it’s just my hatred of this era of music or what, but I could have done without them. Seeing how it was a movie about the war and all that it sort of had to be included, so I’ll forgive it this time.

The big question now is… “what will I see this weekend?” Do I want to continue down the indie art house road with Into The Wild? Or should I go all Halloween horror with 30 Days of Night. Hmmmmm.

I was overcome with excitement as I read Engadget’s live blogging of Steve Job’s Keynote at the “Beat Goes On” Special Event held Yesterday. Finally Apple was releasing an iPod that had everything I had been waiting for–touch screen, beautiful widescreen display, built in wifi, amazing web browsing, and decent battery life. Then reality kicked in when I immediately thought to myself “how is something this thin going to have more than 40GB’s of disk space?” My dream had been killed when it was announced that the new iPod touch would come in two flavors–an 8GB model and a 16GB model. =(

I have been putting off purchasing a new iPod for the past two years. With every refresh I tell myself “just wait six more months…something better is coming.” That something better turned out to be an iPhone, but with it being an exclusive to AT&T I just couldn’t justify switching carriers and paying more to get all the plan features I have now. So I waited, knowing the day would come when Apple would release an iPod in the iPhone form factor, minus the phone stuff.

My first impulse was to just buy the iPod touch when it was announced. Saying the hell with having a ton of space to store all my music. The beautiful screen, the ability to browse the real internet with Safari, being able to watch YouTube videos on the go, and flipping through my music by using multi-touch seemed to outweigh the fact that it was ONLY 16GB!!!

Then I started making a list of all the things I needed in a portable music player and what I’d really use it for.

• Has to be 60GB or great. My iTunes Music Library is around 50GB and I have 5GB of photos. If I want access to all my goodies it needs to be at least this size.
• Battery life. My current iPod (a 3rd Generation 40GB) lasts about 4 hours with back-light and shuffle turned off. Need something to get me through a full 8 hour shift at work and then some.
• Has to be easy to browse through my music while driving. This is where I do most of my music listening. Really don’t need to get into an accident because I was trying to change albums or rate a track.

That’s it. Those are the only features I really need! Having wifi would surely be nice, but I’m rarely in range of free public wifi to make it useful. When I am it’s at my house and could just use my iMac or Wii or something to browse the internet instead. I could care less about wirelessly downloading music from the iTunes Music Store right from my iPod or buying tracks that are playing in my local Starbucks.

Coming to those realizations I decided to go with the re-branded iPod classic 160GB. With that amount of hard drive space I shouldn’t have any problems holding all my content for the next 4 years. It’ll be nice to have all my music, photos, and possibly videos (if I decide to start encoding movies from my DVD collection) in one small package. I’m sure it’ll be a lot safer when I drive compared to an iPod touch. I’ll be able to change tracks without looking at the screen since the classic has hardware buttons and I can feel where they are. Something impossible to do with the iPod touch. Not to mention the classic has an insane battery life…40 hours of audio 7 hours of video!!!

This weekend I’ll venture out to my local Apple Store at the Walden Galleria Mall and pick me up an iPod Classic. Stay tuned for a quick review of it chock full of nerdy unpacking pictures. The only other decision left to be made is silver or black? Decisions decisions…does it ever end?