Category Archives: reviews

Reviews / feedback / comments on books, movies, television, technology, food, etc. (These might be short snippets and not long reviews)

Cloverfield – Review

Posted on January 21, 2008 | 1 comment

So I’ve mentioned this movie a few times before, mostly back in the summer of 2007 when I saw the unnamed 1-18-08 preview. I think I was pretty accurate in my original description when I originally referred to it as “Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project“, that’s exactly what it was (except the creature wasn’t Godzilla). Lots of action, really awesome special effects. The jiggly camera action bothered some people, I was okay with it but I certainly understand why it’d be annoying…

Cloverfield Matt ReevesThe plot needed a faster start at the beginning, they spent forever setting everything up. I thought the slow start was really odd since I thought the preview did a great job of setting everything up in about 30 seconds (rob,. party, going away, friends, explosion, monster, run) so I’m not sure why it took so long to set up in the film. I’ve got comments on the end too, but don’t worry I wont talk about those. I really enjoyed it, it’s pretty much what I expected (but with better effects) so I was happy.

What I didn’t like was a few technical details: I thought at the beginning they specifically mentioned the video was specifically found on an SD chip, but throughout the movie it’s a “tape” and treated that way too, so I’m not sure why they bothered to set that up. And they didn’t seem to bother worrying about the camera battery as a plot problem, which I would have been okay with, except they did worry about they cell phone battery as a plot problem (and they way they handled it could have let them fix it as a camera problem too). Continue reading →

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A Fine Frenzy – Live Session (iTunes Exclusive) – EP

Posted on December 29, 2007 | Leave a comment

Aff-Live-ItunesSo on Thursday the 4 track A Fine Frenzy – Live Session EP came out exclusively at the iTunes store. Of course I purchased it, can’t pass something like that up from A Fine Frenzy. It’s a great EP with 4 tracks – Almost Lover, Borrowed Time, Last of Days, and The Minnow & the Trout. They don’t sound very “live” to me but that’s okay with me, they’re more like different versions of the songs. And for $3.49 you can hardly go wrong…

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Tori Amos at the Fox Theater in Detroit – Review

Posted on October 27, 2007 | 1 comment

Tori Amos was awesome! I really haven’t listened to her newer stuff very much but I really enjoyed the latest album when she played those songs. She played a lot of older songs, which is what I like.

I’ve seen Tori a few times, I’m guessing about a dozen times now, spaced out over the last 15 years. So by this time, not only do I know where to sit, my mother knows, she specifically asked me on the phone, “did you get a seat on the right-hand side?”, I’m surprised she remembered something like that. I did sit slightly to the right and before I went and I thought I needed to be a bit more to the right, but my seat was perfect! Plus, all the people sitting in my line of sight were short!

She’s always a little quirky, but she didn’t talk much so it was hard to tell. But after her first outfit change, she was halfway through the third song and she stopped, and asked the guys to continue to play, “I’ve gotta go take this corset off, it’s killing me”. They finished up the song as she came back out and she just went on to the next song :)

Yoav opened for her and her was great! Not sure how to describe him, but he was a good act, could have listened to him more. He had a short EP for $5, they really needed to have a seperate line for his CD at intermission (maybe a ca$h only line). Everyone ran out to get it and it was a disaster.

You can see more of my Tori Photos at flickr (they didn’t come out very well, but you can see the different stage setups). If you saw my photo of the ceiling of the theater, go back and look at it because I added some more info (and sort of link to some older photos).

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Kerby’s Coney Island – Dearborn, MI

Posted on October 21, 2007 | 5 comments

So I just got a bite to eat at the new Dearborn Kerby’s Coney Island at Ford and Mercury (next to the Best Buy). I gotta tell you this is the most boring Chile-Cheese Omelet I’ve every had in my life. The eggs are boring, the chili sauce is boring and the toast seemed boring. I even tried the hash browns, which I generally find boring, to also be boring. Fortunately, the strawberry jam tastes normal so I know it’s not me; and the water actually tastes pretty good!

There is another (non-chain?) restaurant, Parthenon II (Coney Island), where I usually get a Chile-Cheese Omelet, a little farther into this strip mall area that I’ve been to a million times and I’ll be sure to go back there next time. Unfortunately, they’ll probably lose business since Kerby’s does have a much better location.

I’ve also got to try the new Seahorse Grill which just opened at the same mall.

UPDATE – I just drove by the Parthenon II and it looks like they are out of business :(

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Brandi Carlile in Detroit – Mini Review

Posted on October 16, 2007 | Leave a comment

This past Sunday Brandi, as usual, was excellent. She just belts out some of those tunes and other times she’s just kind of mellow, she did a great concert. She covered a Queen song on the piano and it was awesome; it might not have been “a” queen song, it might have been a multiple medley song since I know part of Bohemian Rhapsody (‘momma, just killed a man’) was in it but I think there were parts of that song not sung (‘Gallileo Figaro – magnifico’); does anyone know for sure? She did the Queen song so perfect, I’ve got to think some of the younger crowd assumed it was a song of hers…

She talked about people traveling from Ann Arbor to see her (and vice-versa) and was excited by the response. I’ve driven to Chicago to see her and it was worth it! This was my third time seeing Brandi and I’ll go again next chance!

Back to her music. Some of her more passionate songs just totally get inside me. It wasn’t just me, you could see some were affecting other people too, I don’t know exactly what it is. But a couple really got to me, especially Hallelujah at the end.

Little did I know that while I had an excellent time at the concert that it’s emotional high was just that start of a roller coster ride of emotions this week…

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A Fine Frenzy in Detroit – Review

Posted on October 16, 2007 | 1 comment

So A Fine Frenzy opened for Brandi Carlile on Sunday and they were so awesome they should be on their own tour. It was a small venue at St. Andrews and I’ve never seen it that packed, they were sold out and they were was a great crowd for AFF. Alison Sudol is the singer and she’s wonderful the songs she did were just beautiful, I wish she had played more. She was so polite and so gracious when everyone kept clapping after a few of her perfectly done songs. I so wish they would have played longer, I thought I saw an extra song on the set list but they didn’t do an encore; I couldn’t read the title so it might have been a song earlier played…

Alison did show up at the sales table to sign autographs. So of course, I purchased another copy of the CD. I got her to autograph it, a booklet and I got my picture taken with her (I sure wish I had a better camera than my phone with me, the lighting was pretty poor were we stood). Once again, she was so polite and pleasant with everyone, almost shy like. I hadn’t realized how very beautiful she was until I got that close to her, it made me feel kind of shy at that point.

The booklet was interesting about ten 5 inch by 7 inch pages with great photos and an interview. I think they were giving them away (at least I didn’t pay for the ones I grabbed for my friends and I) but they were really nice. They looked like they were from an earlier tour (maybe from some kind of press or info packet). Continue reading →

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Stardust – The Movie

Posted on August 21, 2007 | 1 comment

So I’ve been excited since I originally saw the preview for Stardust a few months ago and I got to see a preview of the movie a few weeks ago (the movie is out now). I really enjoyed the movie and the cast was great (Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Charlie Cox). They didn’t follow the book exactly and I have no problem with that, I’m re-reading the book and I’m finding that I really enjoy it after just seeing the movie.

I really like Neil Gaiman but I really haven’t seen them promoting him much in relation to the book and the movie; the book came out about 10 years ago as both a regular book and as a graphic novel (illustrated by Charles Vess). And I’ve seen this book in so many variations of the cover not even including the movie editions or the graphic novels…

Claire Danes as the falling star was wonderful, technically she was a fallen star but that sounds like it has a negative connotations and she didn’t have any. From the previews I wasn’t sure how Claire would be in the part (I eel they edited the preview oddly) but I thought she was perfect. DeNiro played a different part than I expected from the previews; I guess it was a different role than I’ve ever seen him in before. Charlie Cox was great, I’m not sure where I’ve seen him before.

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AppleTV is Awesome!!!

Posted on July 22, 2007 | 2 comments

My AppleTV is awesome! An “iPod for your TV” is a accurate description. I ran the software update (painless!) and it gave me YouTube videos and fixed “enhanced podcasts”.

It mirrors one of your computer’s iTunes just like an iPod does (and allows you exceptions) and will stream from any other computers running iTunes (platform independent) and I don’t think there is a limit. I can’t believe how fast it pulls hi-res movie previews from Apple down to the unit, it’s very very fast. It’s actually much faster than pulling down YouTube videos (many which are low-res).

It really streams full-scren video from other computers really efficiently. Very rarely does it need a moment to catch up. It has no problem with steaming audio. It almost makes no sense to download podcasts, I bet you could stream them live if you had a way to just get the RSS feeds onto the AppleTV.

With “enhanced podcasts” it now properly advances the embedded images to follow along with the audio. The problem is that it just shows them to the side like the album artwork, some images are much larger so it really cheats you by scaling them down. Since you don’t use the up/down keys on the remote during this process “up” would be a great way to enlarge the images.

I have the same image size concern when viewing slideshows with the “Ken Burns effect”, sometimes I want to view the whole image. Once again this would be another great use for the up button. The down button could be used for viewing filenames, date, time and other info about the images. Actually, this would be a good use for the down button while viewing videos or audio.

A few more features (like on the TiVo) like weather, movie listings and maybe Flickr photo viewing and it’d be even better… Continue reading →

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