… a work in progress

This is a funny video I found on YouTube about the Downfall of HD DVD. It uses a clip from the movie “Downfall” with Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler. Great movie about the fall of the Third Reich, go check it out sometime. A couple of other German movies to go check out if you haven’t seen them are “Run Lola Run”, “Das Boot” and “The Lives Of Others” Brilliant films

Recently I’ve been watching a lot of movies. Some recent one’s I’ve seen both at home and in the theater.

Paprika - Trying to get through this one, hard to work and watch at the same time since it’s in Japanese and in English subtitles. From what I’ve seen, it looks interesting but the sound seems amazing. It’s a movie from Sony, so of course it’s on Blu-Ray. I’m going to have to save it another day.

2 Days In Paris - I watched this last night and thought it was very funny. Written, Directed by Julie Delpy who also stared in the movie and even composed the musical score, this is a twisted romantic comedy of a couples trip to Paris.

Training Day - Saw this on Blu-Ray, seen it before a few times. Fun to watch once in a while, it’s so intense

The Lives Of Others - Absolutely loved this movie, go out and rent it or add it to your Netflix. It’s even on Blu-Ray! It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, so go see it.

There Will Be Blood - Crazy movie, left the theater unsure of what I had just seen. I’d have to say I liked it?! A few things I do have to say is that the music was great, the first few minutes were strangely intense and Daniel Day Lewis is a phenomenal actor. The pastor dude in the movie you may remember from Little Miss Sunshine.

I was just watching Late Night With Conan O’Brien and one of his guests was motocross/baja/rally car dude Travis Pastrana. They showed a clip of him jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Here is the clip:

So I’ve been in California away from the cold Colorado weather to visit with family. My cousin is visiting from overseas and it is his first visit to America. It’s been an interesting trip for him, would have made a great movie or short film about his experience in the USA. So this trip is really all about showing my cousin from Japan a great time.

He had many ideas about America, most of which were not true or exaggerated. Or it’s possibly Californians are different from the rest of the US. But one funny stereotype he has about Americans were that we all have ice cream in our freezer. Well everyone we asked and every freezer we checked had some ice cream.

Wandered around La Jolla the first day which was Friday. Got to see some things I have not seen since I lived in San Diego, like the tide pools and sea lions. The next morning my cousin and I drove up to Claremont to pick up my Erika and Michael. My cousin Masamichi had his first experience with real Mexican food (I think it was called Brendan’s). People had brought their own pots to pick up Menudo and were lined up for the Huevos Rancheros. I suppose this is not real Mexican food, but closer than the stuff served in Japan. After breakfast we drove up to Las Vegas for one night. We stayed in the Paris hotel but spent a lot of time downtown at the Golden Nugget, Plaza and California. I guess there are a lot of Hawaiians that go to the California hotel. We gambled a little, I played some craps and video poker while everyone else hit the slots. After a few plays at craps I dropped some money on “YO Eleven!” A 15 to 1 payout and won. Nothing really funny that I recall happened in Vegas but on the drive up the traffic was horrible. It was so bad and so slow a guy jumped out of the car he was riding in, ran to a construction porta-potty in the freeway median and afterwards ran to catch up with the car.

Back in Claremont with my sister on Monday we wandered around LA, hitting up Pink’s hotdogs, K-Town, UCLA, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and stopped in Sawtelle. Driving consumes most of the time in LA so we head home for a Christmas eve dinner of steak at the only place where we could get a reservatio, Cask and Cleaver in Rancho Cucamonga. Christmas in Chino Hills was great, always great to see family. Pics will be updated below and on Flickr.

Post Christmas was a typical American event, shopping at the mall, looking for good deals and eating a “Hot Dog On A Stick”. My cousin has never seen a Pretzel or Mongolian BBQ, which seemed really strange to me. Afterwards we drove back down to San Diego we stopped by Tofu House for some Korean Soon Du Boo Chigae, which also my cousin has never seen.

Today was an easy day, Balboa Park and Old Town. It was Masamichi’s first time to have a Margarita, and it was a good one from Coyote Cafe. We are off to deep sea fishing tomorrow with H&M landing near Point Loma.

Update: I’ve changed my schedule and airline ticket and have decided to spend New Years (the biggest Japanese holiday) with family.  I’ve added an additional 4 days which is fine, it’s snowing and cold in Denver anyhow.

I was just sitting here in front of the computer watching The English Patient on TV when my DirecTV box shut off. I turned it back on and it went through its reboot sequence and there it was. All my new HD channels that I’ve been waiting for. DirecTV had announced 70 HD channels to be launched around now and a total of 100 by the end of the year. Just scrolling through the channels, most are familiar like The Science Channel, A&E, TLC, Animal Planet, The History Channel and more ESPN, HBO, Starz, Showtime in HD. This is so exciting because the new 65″ TV looked so horrible when going from Late Night With Conan O’Brien in HD 1080i/720p to SDTV 480i Survivorman. It’s such a huge improvement, I’m so happy. Hopefully Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drops some more in price so I can check out 1080p.

Chuck was amusing, Heroes was confusing, Journeyman was jaw dropping and Man vs. Wild was fake. haha. Man vs. Wild now has a disclaimer after the commercials. There was a scene I saw where it appeared that Bear snared a rabbit in one of his traps. But in the voiceover Bear mentions that he wasn’t lucky and will show the viewers how to clean a rabbit they had supplied. There was an episode where he tried to trap a fish in a shallow portion of the water, and there was a brief mention that they placed the fish there to show the viewers how to do it. No wonder they pulled the show for a few months to have them re-edit the season. I’ll have to find it a post it here. More on these shows a little later

Wow, I hope everyone watched the full hour season premier of Family Guy on Sunday. It was a whole episode of Star Wars, authorized by George Lucas with scenes animated into Family Guy and music from John Williams. It was so funny and so many scenes I loved.

This link will probably go dead real fast but here is it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWsqNEH5×14