Title: Merchant Ivory
Genre: Documentary
Director: Stephen Soucy
Cast: James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Jenny Beavan, John Bright, Richard Robbins, Vanessa Redgrave, Simon Callow, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Waterston, Margot Robbie, Chadwick...
Title: Foe
Tagline: Some people are made for each other.
Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Drama
Director: Garth Davis
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Aaron Pierre, Jordan Chodziesner, William Freeman, Jalen Ong, Patrick Williams, David Woods, Yesse Spence, Shamita...
I watched this when it came out back in 2020, but it didn't quite sink in. I guess it wasn't the right time for me to appreciate it. Then I revisited it last year, and it completely knocked me out.
It's a wonderful and unusual bit of storytelling. Not conventional at all, and it requires...
I've been kind of itching to replace the 14ish year old receiver in my bedroom system, and had my eye on the Marantz Cinema 60. It's gross overkill for that system, but what would this silly hobby be without indulging in some gross overkill?
So today I looked (again) at the official factory...
I'm a HUGE fan of Danish Director Nicolas Winding Refn, but I've never seen this limited series. Judging by the trailer, it looks to be textbook Refn. Bizarre, and probably almost incomprehensible, not to mention kind of messed up... and extremely violent.
Even as relatively obscure as Refn...
This must be a closeout as Marantz releases their new line of receivers, but the SR7015 is available from several honest retailers for half the $3,000 MSRP. This is a killer receiver, and Marantz is always rock solid. I linked it at Listen Up, who is a very reputable seller with a decades long...
Emotiva has just announced the impressive BasX A11 Eleven channel power amp at the price of $1,299. I believe this is a much needed component, in the world of Atmos/DTS:X. The specs are truly surprising, and Emotiva has always been quite conservative with their power ratings. IOW, their amps...
I'm kind of itching to finally go OLED in my HT. I have a 65" Vizio P Series now, which is quite good, especially for the $900 it cost, but I had always planned to go OLED, and I'm thinking now might be the time.
I want to stay with 65", and currently the 65" LG C3 is $2,100 and the G3 is...
I've been in this hobby for so long, I rarely even look much at the manual of a new product. The problem is, as some components get more complicated, it's necessary to consult them from time to time. Except that it seems they have even less useful information than they used to with simpler...
Title: Liebestraum
Tagline: A story of lust, murder and dreams.
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Romance
Director: Mike Figgis
Cast: Kevin Anderson, Pamela Gidley, Bill Pullman, Kim Novak, Graham Beckel, Zach Grenier, Thomas Kopache, Anne Lange, Jack Wallace, Max Perlich, Catherine Hicks...
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but I've realized you have to be very careful when ordering USB-C cables. Especially USB-C to Type A ones. A lot of them appear to be built mainly for power, but not data. It just never occurred to me until I started diving into why certain...
I now have three M1/M2 Macs, and have found a few interesting things.
1) If you're doing more than mostly reading mail and web browsing, despite the marketing, I strongly recommend not getting an 8GB model. I mean, yeah, you can do more if needed, but expect a lot of spinning wheels, even...
For the last several years I've been playing back the HD music I bought from HDTracks using an SSD and an Oppo BDP103, connected to an external DAC, but it's never worked quite as well as I'd like, plus who knows when the Oppo app will tank.
So a while back (far too long ago, actually) I...
It's been obvious for several years that the single lens reflex (SLR) is on its way out as a logical camera design in a digital world. I'd considered trying a low end Sony years ago, but never made the jump. At that time, technology just hadn't gotten to where it needed to be. Last year I...
OK, the list is HERE.
There are countless singers outside the fairly obvious more-or-less "Pop"ish area these singers are chosen from. Name one person, and only one, who you would add.
So, I'll stay within their apparent limitations, and choose...
Greg Lake.
I'm hoping some others here have gotten an IR conversion, or are interested in discussing them and sharing photos.
I've been planning to have a camera converted, probably by LifePixel to Super Color (590nm). At first I was going to convert a Nikon D5500 I have but never use, but as I...
Title: Causeway
Tagline: Begin again.
Genre: Drama
Director: Lila Neugebauer
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Harvard, Sean Carvajal, Frederick Weller, Will Pullen, Neal Huff, Danny Wolohan, Han Soto...
Title: TÁR (2022)
Genre: Drama, Music
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Mark Strong, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Sophie Kauer, Sylvia Flote, Vincent Riotta, Sam Douglas, Lucie Pohl, Vivian Full, Lee Sellars, Ed White, Christoph Tomanek, Frank Röth...
The #1 priority for the system in my main HT has always been music reproduction. It was put together for disc based music, but since then I've added the ability to play high resolution music. The problem is, that part of the system is rather out of date. I'm playing HD files that are stored...
Title: A Monster Calls
Tagline: Stories are wild creatures.
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Director: J. A. Bayona
Cast: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Toby Kebbell, Liam Neeson, Ben Moor, Frida Palsson, Wanda Opalinska, James Melville, Oliver Steer, Dominic Boyle...
Title: Deep Water
Tagline: The love story is never the whole story.
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Lil Rel Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Rachel Blanchard, Michael Braun, Jade...
Recently I've been astounded at the remarkably bad "customer service" I've received on multiple, high dollar purchases. I just need to get it off my chest a bit, and maybe let others commiserate. I'm not talking about "The box with some $20 item from Amazon was damaged" kind of stuff. There's...
It seems like movie discussion has gotten into a bit of a rut around here lately. So, I thought it might be fun for some of us to confess to our guilty pleasures in film.
I've made no secret of one of my major guilty pleasure categories during the couple episodes of the HTU podcast I've...
Back when Oppo announced they were getting out of the disc player business, their Media App soon bricked on the iOS platform. It has continued to not function through several major iOS updates. If you tried to launch it, it would promptly crash.
I used it to play back HD files on an SSD...