The Kingdom 2007 (R)
The Kingdom **** 1.8.7 NFK (Graphic violence) Loved the movie. Tense, action filled with great characters and acting. It looked terrific in Blu-Ray.
Watching movies in Windows Media Center
I’ve transferred some of my movies to an external hard drive to make it more convenient to browse, select and watch a movie. Windows Media Center makes it easy to select and play movies stored on disk. First you will need to enable My DVDs by editing a registry setting. Details are found in this post. It will instruct you to edit the following key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings].
and change “ShowGallery”=”Play” to “ShowGallery”=”Gallery”
You will next want to select folders to monitor for movies. It turns out that the settings for My Videos are used to locate DVDs on disk as well. Navigate to the My Videos Screen, then hit <Ctrl><D> or right click or hit the Info button on the Windows Media remote. Select Add Videos from the popup menu. You will be able to add or remove folders.
WMC doesn’t show you artwork for your movies so you will have to manually provide an image to use in the main My DVDs screen. I get all my artwork from CD Covers. You will need to name the image folder.jpg and place it in the folder where your ripped movie is stored (the folder CONTAINING the VIDEO_TS folder). Not the easiest process to go through but once you’ve done it you have a nice free catalog for your movies.
Anagrams
I had fun with this anagram generator.
My full name generated Dreamily Cranky Healer
Alan Jane Cassidy David Kristen generated Jackasses Divine and Radiantly
He’s Just Not That Into You 2009 (PG-13)
He’s Just Not That Into You *** My expectations were low for this movie from the popular book. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Lots of beautiful people starring in it. What surprised me the most is that the movie had some good writing and it was a little grittier than most of the feel-good formulaic movies that are a dime a dozen.
Flyboys 2006 (PG-13)
Flyboys *** This isn’t a GREAT movie. Staring James Franco, Harry from Spiderman, I didn’t think the characters were very well developed. The love story seemed a bit contrived. As a whole though, I enjoyed it. I loved the cinematography. It was emotional and the aerial dog fighting was pretty good. I recommend it.
What Happens In Vegas 2008 (PG-13)
What Happens in Vegas *** Pretty much a formulaic commedy starring Cameraon Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. It was not bad if you’re into some light comedy with a happy ending.
Sounder 1972 (G)
Sounder *** Not a very fast paced movie. I was so proud of David for sticking it out and watching this with me. The acting was great. The story was interesting and emotional. I read this book in school. I admit I got this movie as an educational experience for the kids.
The Nanny Diaries 2007 (PG-13)
The Nanny Diaries *** I actually read the first few chapters of this book but wasn’t interested enough to finish it. This is the first time I’ve seen Scarlett Johansson. This didn’t quite show off what all the hoopla over hottie Johansson is all about (for that see HJNTITY) but I did like her in the role and enjoyed the movie.
Losing everything on your iPhone
I should have protected my friend, Lee better. He was eager to update his iPhone with the just released 3.0 software. I don’t own an iPhone but am becoming somewhat familiar with the device and software due to Cassidy and David each buying for themselves an iPod touch (it’s not the device that breaks the bank, it’s the service plan -$70 minimum).
We downloaded the latest iTunes to Lee’s laptop since he has never used iTunes or hooked up his iPod to a computer! We then started the update. Once downloaded it began to install. We left it working to have dinner and when we returned we found that his laptop had turned itself off. First lessson: Never do a significant software install/update on a laptop that is not plugged in! I recently upgraded Windows Vista on my laptop and it didn’t let me continue until I had plugged in the laptop. Now that’s a nice touch! Too bad Apple didn’t think to protect the user in the same way.
When we powered the laptop back on we found the iPhone in a recovery state. We had no choice but to select restore (to factory settings). That looked really bad. Lee had no known backups and he had over 300 names that he has collected over the past 10 years. His iPhone is only a few months old and he had originally synced his blackberry to it with a SIM card. After the restore had completed and we confirmed that he did in fact have his contacts completely wiped, Lee was as low as I’ve ever seen him. We called Apple but the technician had no good news for him. Although the iPhone appeared to do a sync when we first plugged it in to his laptop after installing iTunes, there was no backup (right click the iPhone device in iTunes). The technician said that iTunes performs a backup before each sync. That seemed to be strike two against Apple in looking out for the customer. We did realize that Lee should be able to download his contacts from an old SIM card as he had done originally. The Apple technician said we would have to go to AT&T to do this.
Well, not wanting to give up yet, I did a google search and found others in the same predicament. I found out that in the iPhone Settings….Mail page at the very bottom there is a button to Sync from SIM card. That did it! There were some numbers missing that Lee had added which apparently saved to the iPhone memory rather than the SIM but most of his lost numbers had been recovered. Fortunately, Lee didn’t have any music or other data that was lost. He actually uses the iPhone as a phone! Go figure!
Body of Lies 2008 (R)
Body of Lies *** Leonardo DiCaprio seems lately to be typecast as a tough street-wise/undercover agents. His roles in Blood Diamond, The Departed, and now Body of Lies come to mind. Though I enjoyed this one, I felt the other two movies were better.