Thursday, March 23, 2006 :: 2:17:00 AM

As if the people of this planet whose intelligence still has yet to move beyond that of an ape-like creature need a place to kick up their heels and rest on the internet...

I've been surfing around.. noticed that they're making a Fast and the Furious 3... think, 'hmm.. i wonder if the dude in the first two will be in the third..' so I head over to IMDB and look it up..

nope, no dice.. oh well.. i dont really care, it was just curiousity.

Anyway, I noticed "Bow Wow" (the artist formerly known as "lil Bow Wow" to all you out there) is in this movie...

GOOD lord.. who would pay this kid to do ANYthing?

To go back to my original point... I think I've found the collective internet gathering place of 'unintelligent life' on earth.... The IMDB forum on Bow Wow's page... allow me to elaborate:

On Bow Wow getting Raped (supposedly)

lil_cynth_k6 : lol i bet Ciara [his supposed girlfriend that looks like a dude] raped him too shes a man.
RingofWater : Umm hmm... how can she rape him without a PENIS first of all...

Random comment by user

eternalfaith : i strongly agree wiv "krazyfcx"...previous message.
but newaiz wat do i know?im frm uk ryte oooo i passed my geography!!!

should have spent some of that geography time on learning English.

On his height

metalshredder86 : Troyer is not just any midge, he's the shortest little person in Hollywood. his fans rationalize by saying he gets to score w/ hot chicks. But i can't really see anyone doing the inout inout doggystyle as a 2'8" person.

Yes a freak of nature

very eloquent, I thought... kind of poetic!

I.. I'm at a loss for words with this one...

JasnoSkrilla3 : Jojo said dat cause B wow could see tdat the time they was together.
Bow wow used to write her for the same album dat that bit ch told her.
She say on trl last week! She almost dunno waht to ask and he day was crunk.
Both of them was tole last thurday on Bet dat fool Aj. Cause he wanna get togetha with the studio. Bow wow said dat and did nt have cause he didnt like himseld or AJ like dat. B wow and lil romoe deciced to run on it and make it together.

excuse me while I try to figure out what this person is trying to say.. i'm totally lost here..

*sigh*.. that's, like, 10 minutes I'll never ever ever get back.... and i think i'm actually dumber for having read it...

and now you are, too!

Until next time.......
*fade to black*

:: Eldorado ::

Monday, March 06, 2006 ::

alright.. so oscars are over..
lets check out how i did.. pretty horrible if memory serves me right from watching earlier..

i'll give me 1 point for my top pick being the winner, and 0.5 points for my second pick being the winner..

*************************************

Winners

Performance by an actor in a leading role - Philip Seymour Hoffman CAPOTE

1 point
1 total

Performance by an actor in a supporting role - George Clooney SYRIANA

0 points
1 total

Performance by an actress in a leading role - Reese Witherspoon WALK THE LINE

1 points
2 total

Performance by an actress in a supporting role - Rachel Weisz THE CONSTANT GARDENER

I could have swore I picked Rachel Weisz instead of Michelle Williams... but apparently not..

0 points
2 total

Best animated feature film of the year - WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

1 point
3 total

Achievement in art direction - MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

1 points
4 total

Achievement in cinematography - MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

0.5 points
4.5 total

Achievement in costume design - MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

1 point
5.5 total

Achievement in directing - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

0 points
5.5 total

Best documentary feature - MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

1 point
6.5 total

Best documentary short subject - A NOTE OF TRIUMPH: THE GOLDEN AGE OF NORMAN CORWIN

0 points
6.5 total

Achievement in film editing - CRASH

1 point
7.5 total

Achievement in makeup - THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

0.5 points
8 total

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score) - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN Gustavo Santaolalla

0 points
8 total

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song) - "IT'S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP" FROM HUSTLE & FLOW Music and Lyric by Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard

0.5 points
8.5 total

Best motion picture of the year - CRASH

0.5 points
9 total

Best animated short film - THE MOON AND THE SON: AN IMAGINED CONVERSATION

0 points
9 total

Best live action short film - SIX SHOOTER

*gasp* i didn't pick one for this! but it was of the 2 that i listed, so I'll give myself 0.5 points just to be fair.

0.5 points
9.5 total

Achievement in sound editing - KING KONG

1 point
10.5 total

Achievement in sound mixing - KING KONG

1 point
11.5 total

Achievement in visual effects - KING KONG

1 point
12.5 total

Adapted screenplay - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

0 points
12.5 total

Original screenplay - CRASH

1 point
13.5 total

*******************************

so I got 13.5 out of a possible 23 for a whopping 59% LOL
Not as great as I had hoped.. Brokeback Mountain really surprised me. Granted I haven't seen it, but I didn't think it was going to come away winning in the areas where it was nominated. Good on them!

They weren't bad guesses though, for only having seen the movies I have out of ALL the winners. Those being:

Crash
March of the Penguins
Walk the Line
Wallace and Gromit
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

I wasn't too impressed with all the films of last year.. Hopefully this year brings something better....
Well, lets see.. we've got:

Mission Impossible 3 - May 5
The Da Vinci Code - May 19
X-Men - The Last Stand (X3) - May 26
Superman Returns - June 30
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - July 7
Rocky Balboa (Rocky VI) - December 2006

I know I'm missing some, but can you tell I'm a sucker for sequels?

Anyway, that's enough movie posting for a while... I'm gonna boogie - i'm tired.

Until next time.......
*fade to black*

:: Eldorado ::

Sunday, March 05, 2006 ::

The Oscars started 25 mins ago, but i've been meaning all week to make a predictions list.. here it is! I promise I haven't even seen any of the oscars yet - so lets see how close I've become!

I've narrowed my choices down to two per category, the one with stars is the one I choose over the other.

I hope it's easy enough to follow, i've just thrown this list together....


******************************


- NOMINATIONS BY CATEGORY - 78TH AWARDS -

Performance by an actor in a leading role

***Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote" (UA/Sony Pictures Classics)
Joaquin Phoenix in "Walk the Line" (20th Century Fox)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

***Matt Dillon in "Crash" (Lions Gate)
Paul Giamatti in "Cinderella Man" (Universal and Miramax)

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Judi Dench in "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (The Weinstein Company)
***Reese Witherspoon in "Walk the Line" (20th Century Fox)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

***Catherine Keener in "Capote" (UA/Sony Pictures Classics)
Michelle Williams in BrokebackMountain" (Focus Features)

Best animated feature film of the year

"Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" (Warner Bros.) Yim Burton and Mike Johnson
***"Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit" (DreamWorks Animation SKG)
Nick Park and Steve Box

Achievement in art direction

"King Kong" (Universal) Art Direction: Grant Major Set Decoration: Dan Hennah and Simon Bright
***"Memoirs of a Geisha" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Art Direction: John Myhre Set Decoration: Gretchen Rau

Achievement in cinematography

***"Batman Begins" (Warner Bros.) Wally Pfister
"Memoirs of a Geisha" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Dion Beebe

Achievement in costume design

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Warner Bros.) Gabriella Pescucci
***"Memoirs of a Geisha" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Colleen Atwood

Achievement in directing

"Capote" (UA/Sony Pictures Classics) Bennett Miller
***"Crash" (Lions Gate) Paul Haggis

Best documentary feature

***"March of the Penguins" (Warner Independent Pictures) Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau A Bonne Pioche Production
"Murderball" (THINKFilm) Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro
An Eat Films Production

Best documentary short subject

***"God Sleeps in Rwanda" Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman
An Acquaro/Sherman Production
"The Mushroom Club" Steven Okazaki A Farallon Films Production

Achievement in film editing

***"Crash" (Lions Gate) Hughes Winborne
"Munich"(Universal and DreamWorks) Michael Kahn

Achievement in makeup

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch Howard Berger and Tami Lane
and the Wardrobe" (Buena Vista)
***"Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" Dave Elsey and Nikki Gooley
(20th Century Fox)

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

***"Memoirs of a Geisha" (Sony Pictures Releasing) John Williams
"Munich" (Universal and DreamWorks) John Williams

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

***"In the Deep" from Music by Kathleen "Bird" York and Michael Becker "Crash" (Lions Gate) Lyric by Kathleen "Bird" York
"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Music and Lyric by Jordan Houston,edric Coleman "Hustle & Flow" and Paul Beauregard Paramount Classics, MTV Films and New Deal Entertainment)

Best motion picture of the year

***"Capote" (UA/Sony Pictures Classics) Caroline Baron, William Vince and Michael Ohoven, An A-Line Pictures/Cooper's Town/ Producers Infinity Media Production
"Crash" (Lions Gate) Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman, Producers A Bob Yari/DEJ/Blackfriar's Bridge/ Harris Company/ApolloProscreen GmbH & Co./Bull's Eye Entertainment Production

Best animated short film

"Badgered" Sharon Colman A National Film and Television School Production
***"One Man Band" Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews A Pixar Animation Studios Production

Best live action short film

"The Last Farm" Rúnar Rúnarsson and Thor S. Sigurjónsson A Zik Zak Filmworks Production
"Six Shooter" (Sundance Film Channel) Martin McDonagh A Missing in Action Films and
Funny Farm Films Production

Achievement in sound editing

***"King Kong" (Universal) Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn
"War of the Worlds" (Paramount and DreamWorks) Richard King

Achievement in sound mixing

***"King Kong" (Universal) Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick,
"Walk the Line" (20th Century Fox) Paul Massey, D.M. Hemphill and Peter F. Kurland

Achievement in visual effects

***"King Kong" (Universal) Joe Letteri, Brian Van't Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor
"War of the Worlds" (Paramount and DreamWorks) Dennis Muren, Pablo Helman, Randal M. Dutra and Daniel Sudick

Adapted screenplay

***"Capote" (UA/Sony Pictures Classics) Screenplay by Dan Futterman
"Munich" (Universal and DreamWorks) Screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth

Original screenplay

***"Crash" (Lions Gate) Screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco Story by Paul Haggis
"Match Point" (DreamWorks) Written by Woody Allen

:: Eldorado ::

Friday, March 03, 2006 ::

missing my xbox oh so much because of a 'damaged' dvd drive that had worn out over the years... I decided to open it up and take a look at the inside. Yes, it voided my warranty, but it had run out anyway.

It wasn't uncharted ground for me. It is, after all, just a computer. A 700mhz computer with a dvd rom drive and an 8gb hard drive...

My first challenge was met with the screws. Wouldn't you know it, the exact same problem that prevented us from fixing my car a couple weeks ago existed in my xbox. The screws were a torx (6 sided star) shape, and needed a special screwdriver to remove. After slightly modifying a pair of kitchen tongs, which worked quite well as a screwdriver, I opened it up.. Seeing as how the problem was with the dvd drive, I yanked that out first.

Opening the dvd drive and taking it apart I found out the model of the drive and did a little research. It turns out that it was a budget drive used by Microsoft when they first made the xbox (mine was a v1.0 - the first kind they ever made), and it was very popular for the laser in this drive to wear down with age, which fooled my xbox into thinking i was just putting in damaged disks (no matter how good they looked)..

The good thing? There is a potentiometer (POT) that I found right on the circuit board next to the laser. This is very rare for an optical drive to have, but this one did. What a POT is, is a variable resistor. You can use it to modify the amount of resistance in an electrical circuit by turning a little dial... I just made the laser more powerful by turning the dial! simple as that.. put everything back together, and my box worked good as new.

Ahh, once again I can stream movies from my computer to play through my networked xbox.... yep, that's right, I've modded it and turned my xbox into a media center.. w00t! (links on the left (My Digg) to see how to do this.. it's quite simple).

To celebrate, I went out and bought Star Wars Battlefront 2 for it..

My review? It is an *ok* game.
the majority of the game is quite easy, with 2 or 3 levels in it that really kick your ass. Regardless, I beat the game in a matter of a couple of days..

The artwork and graphics were... middle of the road for me.

And the audio? typical realistic sound effects you'd hear in any other starwars game out there... But the voice overs were horrid! They didn't use the real actors from the movie, so this degraded the experience exponentially for me.

The maps were huge and elaborate, *but*, still very linear. There wasn't much room to explore... another disappointment for me.. It reminded me very much of Halo 2... huge maps, but they still manage to force you to take a certain direction through the map... the rest of it just boils down to making it "look pretty" and full of depth. Another disappointment.

One thing I really did like was that the story of the game pans out from episode 1 to 6 as Journal written in the perspective of the Clone Commander Cody, who was the leader of the Clones in episode 3. You take in the Star Wars story from the perspective of the evil Empire, and Cody directly.. puts a great spin on the story.. that's pretty much all I liked about this game.

anyway, just bored so I figured I'd write something and this is what came out..
I am deeply sorry =P

Until next time.......
*fade to black*

:: Eldorado ::