Paranormal Review

Don't worry, no spoilers here so I'll be brief. It's a truly scary movie, just don't be expecting any expensive CGI shots or exotic locations. Watch it at night in a movie theater with a good sound system and don't read any reviews or comments. Go in as cold as you can and you will enjoy it. It's the type of horror movie Rob and I have always wanted to make.

The only flaw of the film was the last 10 seconds which I'm pretty sure is the alternative ending that was hinted at before. It's unfortunate because the supposed original ending seems 100x better (I was going to link to this but decided not to for fear of spoiling the movie for those who have not seen it). Hopefully Paramount will include it in the DVD release. According to this LA Times article we can thank Steven Speilberg for the new "Hollywood" ending.

Since the ArcLight is so close to the Technicolor USA headquarters, I went to work there for the day and periodically walked over to the theater to see if a line was forming. Starting at 4:00 pm a group of 6 people were sitting down in line so I called Angie to start driving, went back to work, gathered my laptop and went back to wait in line. When I got back there 3 more people were in line. By the time Angie, Mando and Boo Boo came the line got a bit deeper, but still seemed reasonable. It wasn't until around 8:00 pm that the line started to get long. By 10:00 pm it wrapped around the block (see if you can spot us in the picture). We also saw Chinese actress Bai Ling walk in the theater for her movie A Beautiful Life that was also screening in the ArcLight.

It turns out that over 4,500 people showed up. When they finally let us in, they ushered us to a theater with most of the seats blocked off for what appeared to be Paramount employees, guests and other VIP's so we had to sit near the front. I commented to Angie that I didn't know how the hundreds of people behind us would get a seat but it turns out Paramount added more screens to accommodate them.

It's Coming!

Back in January 2008, Rob blogged about a well reviewed independent horror movie, called Paranormal Activity. What wasn't known at the time, but later told to me by Rob was that Dreamworks quickly bought the rights to the film with a plan to remake it using a bigger budget. I was quickly against this as I felt it would lose the indy vibe and thus the scare factor that is sadly so missing in today's Hollywood.

Well it appears the studio changed course and decided to release the original movie, although rumored with a different ending (I really hope this isn't true). Nonetheless my sister Angie quickly alerted me to the press release which states that a midnight screening is going to take place at the ArcLight Hollywood on Sept 24th, 2009. I joined Facebook today just so I could RSVP but I've been meaning to join anyways.

Krudd, let me know if you want to join us for what should be a truly horrific film. I promise it has to be better than The Final Destination I took you to!

Plants vs Zombies

Kruddler and I were talking about recent MacBreak Weekly episodes where Leo and the gang can't stop talking about the tower defense game Plants vs Zombies.

Intrigued, I ordered it from Amazon and received the game today. I've only touched the surface but it's as good as they say and a blast to play. I can't figure out why they haven't ported this to the iPhone/iPod touch. The interface and controls would work perfectly.

For only 20 bucks it's a must buy, plus it's a Mac/PC disc and I like to support companies that don't discriminate against the Mac (ie. Blizzard) with same day releases. The only negative is that it's Intel only so I can't play on my G5. Come on, it's not like the graphics are Crysis quality!

Finally!

After enough ribbing from my own family, I finally upgraded my iPod touch to the latest 3.1.1 Software Update. To be honest what finally pushed me over was the price drop from $9.99 to a more reasonable $4.95. At five bucks its much more of an impulse buy, sort of like the 99 cent song.

Of course lowering the price of anything creates some angry Apple users who are never satisfied. Note the numerous complaints and negative comments on MacRumors.

Now with my G5 at the very latest operating system that it can support (Leopard 10.5) I'm finally up to date with all my Mac hardware/software.

Shake

Mark's recent posting about Apple discontinuing their high-end digital compositor Shake, had me thinking of the same question of "why?"

Original developer Nothing Real sold a SGI or Windows 95/NT license for a cool $9,900. After announcing a port to Mac OS X during Macworld Expo 2001, Nothing Real was acquired by Apple in February 2002. Apple's statement at the time was that "Apple plans to use Nothing Real's technology in future versions of its products."

Later that year, Apple released the first version of Shake (version 2.5) for Mac OS X while dramatically slashing the price to $4,950. With the version 4 announcement in 2005, Apple cut the price to $2,999. With the 4.1 update in 2006, they yet again dropped the price to a bargin basement $499.

So what does the future hold for Shake's technology? Some of it has been incorporated into Motion. As far as a rumored next generation high-end compositor? Ron Brinkmann, who was a founder of Nothing Real and former Apple employee doesn't think that will happen.

If I had had ANY indication that Apple was interested in creating a new piece of software that addressed a market even SOMEWHAT close to Shake’s, I probably wouldn’t have quit 2+ years ago. Obviously I don’t know anything for certain, but I’d be extraordinarily surprised if anything more than updated versions of Motion come out of Apple in the compositing space, at least for the foreseeable future.

RIP Shake. RIP trueSpace!