Shmee.Me

April 18, 2013November 20, 2013

TV Need a Boost Try the Samsung HW-F355

I was trying to get away without a messy looking sound system until I could save up for a good one, but my TV sound was just to lame, so I decided to give it a little help. I kept looking all over the internet until I found a simple setup with an optical input that didn’t have a ton wires to hide. What I found was the Samsung HW-F355.

The Samsung HW-F355 has a few inputs: a regular audio input, an optical input, USB, and Bluetooth so you can play music from your phone. It also has the nice feature that it will turn on when it feels the optical input activate, so it saves you some button presses.

The sound is good, and much better then my TV used to have, but it is not as good as a full fledged 7.1 sound system, but you do get a good bang for your buck.

I am quite happy with my new sound bar system, and it will tide me over until I can buy all the equipment I need for a nice In-Wall system.

April 17, 2013April 17, 2013

Star Trek Looks for The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country came out in 1991, and is that last film featuring the complete original crew. The sixth film was going to be a reboot of the franchise, but fans and the original cast wouldn’t let them. Though as we know they would reboot the series with the 11th film.

The movie starts off with the crew of the USS Excelsior led by Captain Sulu being caught in an energy wave caused by the Klingon moon Praxis exploding. This moon was the Klingon’s number one energy source. With this information the crew of the soon to be decommissioned USS Enterprise are called into a top secret meeting and are told by Spock that the Klingons can no longer afford the cold war they have been having with the Federation, and need to create a lasting peace, so the Enterprise is sent out to guide a Klingon ship to Earth for peace hearings, and as you can guess things don’t go as planned.

After the disaster that was Star Trek V, this movie was an excellent way to send off the original cast. It has a very Star Trek story about the galaxy becoming a better place through peace, and they get to show the audience something new: like the Klingon Home World, and a prison mining camp, and Kirk gets to be Kirk by fighting aliens and making out with alien ladies, so kudos to Leonard Nimoy for coming up with this story.

They had all sorts of fun with the casting by working Worf (Michael Dorn) and Christian Slater in to the movie, and one of the greatest Star Trek villains of all time Christopher Plumber as General Chang. He like Khan loves to quote Shakespeare and blow stuff up. It is wonderful. I can only hope that they have Benedict Cumberbatch quoting Shakespeare in the new movie because that is what good Star Trek villains do.

For some reason I thought William Shatner directed this movie, but he did not. Thankfully the director was Nicholas Meyer who also directed Wrath of Khan, and helped write The Voyage Home, so if you are thinking he was involved in all the good early Star Trek movies, you would be right, and it is a shame they didn’t just get him to do them all.

This is one of the few truly good Star Trek movies that is also just a good movie period. If you want to watch a good movie with the original cast, watch this movie or Wrath of Khan, and I am sure you will have a good time.

April 16, 2013

No Post

I didn’t watch anything, and I am still reading a book and playing a video game, so nothing to share with you today, except that I am not sharing anything with you, so I am kind of share something, but not anything worth reading, so I am sorry if you have read this really long and pointless sentence.

April 15, 2013September 9, 2013

Did Argo Deserve Best Picture?

Argo is a Ben Affleck directed film from 2012 based on the Iran hostage crises in the late 70’s and early 80’s, but not about the hostages at the embassy, but the six that escaped. The film won best picture in 2012, but did it deserve it? Probably.

The film starts off explaining the political situation in Iran (crappy), and then moves to the Iranian militants invading the US embassy. During the turmoil six people escape and hold up at the Canadian ambassador’s house. Soon US officials learn of the escaped six and start to come up with plans to get them out of the country, but the best bad plan they can come up with is to create a fake movie, and scout Iran as possible location and use the six embassy workers as the scouting crew.

The way Affleck blends the movie with old stock footage makes this movie seem like real life, and since it is based of true events it kind of is. There have been outcries from Canada, and the escapees themselves because the movie minimizes Canada’s role in the rescue, and the last pulse pounding scenes of the movie are exaggerated to say the least.

The acting in this movie is excellent, with the best parts going to John Goodman and Alan Alkin as the Hollywood producers as of this fake film. I am sure that since they have been in the industry so long it was fun for them to play old industry insiders playing Hollywood for suckers by planning a film that was never going to happen, and they add a sense of fun to an otherwise tense picture.

This movie was exciting to watch, and I think everyone involved did a great job. I would love to see an actual documentary of what really happened with these six people stuck in a hostile land.

April 14, 2013

Is Jurassic Park Still Good After 20 Years?

Jurassic Park was a landmark film in 1993. It showed how far special effects had come, and brought people in to a world where dinosaurs once again roamed the Earth, but after 20 years and countless special effects laden films does the movie still hold its own? Yes it does.

The plot is fairly basic, a group of people are getting a preview of a new theme park that contains cloned dinosaurs. When a man turns off the power to steel dinosaur embryos and sell them to a rival company, and then of coarse everything falls apart endangering everyone at the park. However, when your movie is about recreating and showing dinosaurs a simple plot is for the best, and it works wonderfully.

It is amazing how well the special effects still hold up, and I think the reason for that is that they blended animatronics with computer generated imagery (CGI) to make these amazing creatures come to life. Now all movies use is the CGI making everything loose the weight and solid feel of the creatures they make, but have something real makes it all the more believable.

Another reason this movie holds up so well is that lesser directors and story tellers would have just made this a monster movie, and there is nothing wrong with a good monster movie, but instead Steven Spielberg makes this more like a safari gone wrong, and treats the dinosaurs just like animals that are doing what animals would do. This allows the T-Rex to be a hero and a villain all at the same time, and it makes the world he creates believable, and despite the danger someplace I still want to visit.

I never got to see this movie in theaters because I was not 13 yet and Mom wouldn’t let me, and after seeing it in theaters now I have to say that this is the format this movie was made to be seen in. This movie is big and demands to be seen on a screen equally as big, from the amazing sounds to the incredible sites. The one major drawback is the new inflated price, it is $17 a person to see it in IMAX 3D, and the 3D does not add a whole lot to the film, but it is better then most post produced 3D treatments, and the new high resolution looks great.

If you have the money, or you are like me and have never seen this movie in theaters, then do yourself a favor and re-watch this classic film by one of our greatest filmmakers.