Scargill

Archive for December, 2009

Well, not quite yet. I’m waiting for the inevitable price war in January wherein hopefully Orange will drop the price of their phone – as Voda and Tescos start to bite into sales….

I’ve already started a wish list and first on the list is a power extender.. http://www.powerskin.co.uk/

Do you have a list of must-haves for the iPhone – please do let me know!

Given the current festivities, those less likely to be drawn into the “God made the lot” view may well get there share of wonder by taking a look at this video, which starts off with a close-up view of the earth and as scientifically accurate as possible, zooms out to the very edge of the known universe. What’s REALLY impressive is that we’re actually capable of making something like this in the FIRST place. If you have the bandwidth, view this in HD and full screen. Very impressive.

Despite atrocious weather and the worst flu I can recall which has been pestering me for days and has now caught Maureen, we headed off to the new MetroCentre Imax cinema last night to see the long-awaited AVATAR movie.

So there are two aspects to this – the new Imax cinema and the movie itself. Despite a completely misleading picture in the local Journal newspaper recently, showing a normal cinema screen, the new digital Imax screen did not disappoint. For those living on an island for a generation, Imax cinemas traditionally feature MASSIVE screens using an ultra-wide film format to provide the best cinema that money can buy – this is NOTHING like your parent’s cinema – we’re talking huge screens with virtually perfect imagery. While the MetroCentre is not the largest Imax I’ve seen by ANY stretch of the imagination and it’s digital, not film, the results can still be described as totally realistic and “awesome”. So if you’re an old hand at Imax theatres you might want to try to get to London or similar monster varieties of Imax but if you’ve never been to an Imax before – the new MetroCentre complex will blow you away. Seats were comfortable, price was no more extortionate than usual and the only let-down was the exceeding TIGHTNESS of the person providing my Nachos with Jalapenos. None of the cinema staff at the MetroCentre seem to have been taught how to pronounce Jalapenos (“Jaleepeenoz” as they call them or “hah-lah-PEHN-yo” as the rest of us call them) and you’d think they were in short supply. As were were a tad late I let them get away with it – I’m normally prepared to start world war III over being cheated.

Then there is the movie. Again for those who don’t get out much, Avatar is James Cameron’s new outrageously expensive movie set on a distant planet in the very near future where we’re off pillaging as we’ve used up our own resources – and that’s the one thing about the movie that got me – I felt a TAD as if I was being lectured – the people who need lecturing are some of our third world friends who think that global warming is a Yankee plot – not us!

And that’s it, that is the ONLY complaint I can make about a movie that is totally mercerising, totally believable, has utterly believable aliens the likes of which you’ve never even remotely seen before, which features total 3D throughout and which had me choked up on several occasions as the story line was also (unlike many sci-fi movies) an absolute classic. Thanks to the 3D you’re in the jungle right next to these creatures so close you can see the hairs – and they STILL look “real”. Amazing and somehow exhilarating.

Put it this way, if Avatar does not win every award it is possible to win, I’ll consider there’s been a stitch-up. If you do nothing else this winter break, get down to the cinema, preferably a 3D Imax cinema and watch this feast of imagery. Make sure they don’t cheat you on the food though!

When Star-Trek first came out (not that I’m making any other comparison) nearly every aspect of it was science fiction – flip-phones did not exist, plug-in memory modules did not exist, touch tablets did not exist – all of which featured on the original shows as pure fiction… and so on. Ignoring the more exotic items like warp drive and the transporter, the majority of innovations that viewers saw on the original Star-trek either now exist or have been considerably bettered…. and so it will be with Avatar. As you watch the movie, only the brain-dead will fail to be moved by the totally believable 3D displays, manned robots, the Avatar system and more – and I confidently predict that by the time my grandkids grow up, virtually everything we saw in Avatar will be either common-place or old-hat. Maybe we’ll find a habitable planet, maybe not, but the rest – definitely.  You just HAVE to see this.

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