NorthGeek

NFB Online Short Film Contest – Love and Theft

Love and Theft is Andreas Hykade’s entry into The National Film Board of Canada’s Online Short Film Contest. Wow, truly mesmerizing:

Check out the other 10 short-listed entries here. Public voting for this contest ends May 17, but don’t forget how much amazing content is available for free always on the NFB.ca site!

This entry appears to be the only Canadian one — The Technician by Simon Olivier Fecteau:

A first look at Panasonic’s new Full HD 3D experience!

NorthGeek was lucky enough to have been invited to the media-only opening of the Panasonic Pavilion at LiveCity Yaletown in Vancouver today for a sneak peak at Panasonic’s new Full HD 3D technology. The awesome new technology is both for large-format theater and home theaters.

The best part of all was that we got to be among an elite group of reporters who enjoyed, first-hand, this new 3D entertainment experience. We started in a theater, similar to a movie theater, only a bit smaller -- then we got to see it in “real-life” in a typical home theater set-up. Both were equally as impressive.

We had a chance to interview Panasonic North America Chief Technology Officer Eisuke Tsuyuzaki -- here’s what he had to say about their exciting new 3D technology (the video will soon become available in HD if it hasn’t yet -- YouTube needs to finish processing):

The first demo (which happened before the above interview) was on an extremely impressive, 103″ Plasma 3D television. I tried to take it home, they didn’t let. It was, as Borat would say, VERY NIIICE!!

Next up, we witnessed what our homes could look like as soon as April 2010 and for (apparently, still not clear) as little as $3,000 -- equipped with a 3D-ready Panasonic TV, Blu-Ray player, 3D Blu-Ray media, and spiffy (battery-powered) 3D glasses.

The demos of 3D content included a bunch of winter Olympic sports, summer Olympic sports, clips from the movie Avatar, and a recently released music video featuring Soprano sensation Sarah Brightman. The sports (especially basketball, track, gymnastics, skiing, and cycling) were, in my opinion, the most impressive in 3D. The music video and movie just don’t look “real” enough for me to truly appreciate, whereas seeing a basketball net in the foreground and fans in the background looked really, really cool.

I should note, that what impressed me as much as anything else, was the lineup of (what I assume were) Viera Neo Plasma TVs, all color and temperature synched with each other, it was true perfection. I’d love to have that guy come to my home and calibrate my TV!

Leaving the venue, we had a chance to appreciate what LiveCity Yaletown actually looks like, without the zillions of international Olympic fans that are soon to cover each and every recently installed fake brick:

How to choose a movie

It is the age old question. How can you find a movie to rent, in a world of polarizing opinions on movies, a plethora of terrible movies, and movies that are rarely less than a time-consuming 90 minutes? A terrible movie, and you will complain that you’ll never get those two hours back! But a great movie, and you will be captivated into a different world and wholly entertained for those two.

We’ve all tried to show up to Blockbuster or the local indie shop without a plan but a hope, and 45 minutes later, you’ve maybe finally got a movie, and you’re not even sure if you’re gonna like it. The video store has become a black hole for video selection. Perhaps the employee can decisively recommend a movie, or the employee picks beckon. But these are still risky and biased.

Here are some ideas for saving the frustration and watching only great movies, ordered with the best means towards the end:

1. Classics: You gotta see the classics. Check out the American Film Institute’s AFI 100, every Oscar winner for best picture, and the highest grossing films of all time. This is cool, but imperfect lists and ultimately not so helpful.
2. Friend recommendations: Reach out to your friends and/or social networks — yes, sometimes not the same eh — for some good ones. Ask your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers, and see what you get. You’ll get their opinion. But who do you trust more?
3. Famous critics: Manohla Dargis and her crew at the New York Times put together reputable reviews of movies. The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane is worth reading even if you don’t watch movies. Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek is great for the mainstream flicks. ReelView’s James Berardinelli knows his movies. And of course there’s also Ebert. (And a bunch more here or check out Quentin Tarantino’s top 20 movies since 1992.) However, critics are great at enriching your movie experience, but to find a movie to watch, you’re still left wading…
4. Ratings & aggregated sites: Metacritic (top) and Rotten Tomatoes do a great job at aggregating ratings, from both professional and amateur critics. IMDB’s got lots of user votes.
5. Online contextual recommendations and semantic labeling (THIS IS YOUR WINNER): Netflix just spent $1 million as a prize to a team that could improve the accuracy of predications about how much someone is going to enjoy a movie based on their movie preferences. Unfortunately, you can’t use that engine without a subscription! Another great resource is Nanocrowd, which defines movies by moods and memes, much like Pandora’s Music Genome Project to assign to songs fundamental attributes which give them their true essence. Nanocrowd looks like a great site in that realm.

And lastly, start building your list of movies to see, stick it on your mobile phone, and don’t roam the video store halls of abyss!

Home Theater: What can $6 million buy you?

To take an opening line from the original author of this post, when it comes to home theaters, I thought I had seen it all. Well, all that was worthy of my critical (yet practical – see: ‘egzak’) eyes… But this, well, THIS, I had never seen until early 2008. Yeah yeah, I know the date because the article is from February 2008 – whatever!

The giant Stewart Snowmatte screen isn’t all that’s impressive! There’s also the Sony ultra-high-resolution (4,096-by-2,160) SRX-S110 digital projector – this bad boy is on my “Need/Want” list, too! Just not sure if it’s a “need” or a “want” yet… Outfitted primarily with Snell speakers, Jeremy Kipnis’ $6 million home theater setup is an 8.8 system – that’s right, 8 speakers and 8 subwoofers. Although there are really more than 8 speakers. He has THREE center speakers, as he felt that just the one center was being too overpowered by the eight Snell THX Cinema & Music Reference towers he has surrounding the room.

This beast of a “home” theater is powered by two humongous General Electric 13,800-volt/800-amp step-down transformers next to Kipnis’ garage.

Amplified by two Mark Levinson N° 33h Amplifiers, thirty (yes, that is 30) McIntosh MC-2102 Amplifiers, and three Crown Macro Reference Gold Amplifiers, 13 Theta Digital Generation VIII 32-bit 8x Oversampling Dual Processors run the show.

Something odd about Bruno the movie

The preview for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new gem Bruno is now for the viewing. Of course, this movie is going to be hilarious — Cohen’s gotta be the most creative and abrasive mainstream comedian out there. But what’s so funny, or strange about this? Why does the official movie website look like a hacked together Wordpress site built on the free Revolution template originally from Brian Gardner? (By the way, Brian makes great stuff.) Notice the funny gradients, typical ironic t-shirt ads, Google ad banners, obvious keyword usage, dead links, etc. Have a look and see if you can figure out how it fits in with the movie… is it not really the official movie site, or it must just be part of the humour?

Here’s the trailer. Enjoy:

Not like there’s anything wrong with launching an incomplete Wordpress project…