WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

2/29/2008

I spent god knows how long yesterday trying to get video to reliably play on my PS3/360 from my PC. Come to find out it was my own fault for trying to rely on WMP11 as a media server. An MS product and video! Duh! Of course it wasn't working. I finally downloaded TVersity, a free DLNA server and voila! It's about f$&*ing time too, I've been messing with this for HOURS!
0 comments

2/18/2008

I saw Cloverfield finally. My biggest complement to it is also my biggest complaint. It did a pretty good job of making it seem "real". The whole movie was from the perspective of a camcorder in the hands of a normal if somewhat bumbling man. This has been done before in the Blair Witch Project, if you want to think "Blair Witch Project in Manhattan with huge monster" your pretty much on the right track. The "characters" are established during a party scene after which the previews make clear that something bad happens.

The whole camcorder thing basically does what it's supposed to. These characters feel very normal. The scenes of drama that manage to get captured by this non-filmmaker are sometimes quite powerful because of it. There are even bits of previously recorded footage that pop up when the tape has advanced without being recorded on, that add (a very little) to the story. I think that the "reality" angle ultimately brings the movie down unfortunately.

Because of the non-filmmaker feeling to the movie, it sometimes feels contrived when trying to do normal filmmaking things like, I don't know, show stuff. This guy either has to have the dedication of a documentary filmmaker or has to be filming the floor most of the time because he's running away. It can't be both ways. As it is, we get a fair amount of shots of things we need to, with the obligatory bunch of wall when appropriate. Unfortunately it fails to retain the suspension of disbelief and we feel like we're watching a low budget (albeit big budget) "movie" made on a camcorder.

The movie is basically a love story, but by throwing all the conventions out the window, we really don't begin to care about these characters enough for that to hold the movie, at best it's a drifting point of emotion that seeks closure, which it receives and then leaves us wondering why we are still watching the movie. It's almost like the final moments of the movie are strictly exposition to get us to the point at the beginning of the movie that declares "blah, blah, dehumanizing military sounding code crap, camcorder we found in central park, go".

I liked this better than the Host, it at least tried to be a monster movie a little bit, but like that other film, tried too hard to break the mold and be something different, to the point where it was not really good at what it was trying to do. Worth watching for the sense of panic and immediacy, and the bits of drama and monster movie-ness that get through. Worth the praise it's getting or the money it's made, definitely not. And no amount of clever hidden messages or meanings* elevate it to anything beyond passable, these sort of gimmicks are not suitable replacements for a good story.

(*I refer of course to the scene at the end of the movie where you can see a satellite filled with the audiences expectations plunge into the ocean never to be salvaged and the rumored "radio transmission" which, when played backward, is actually the script writer saying "Fuck it! You write the damn thing!")
1 comments

2/15/2008


fucking adorable

In honor of Valentine's day yesterday I have a picture of Sawai Miyuu. Yay! I just found out she is a Scorpio which is totally hot.

I just woke up an am rocking out to Yello again, ohhhhh yeah.

My car broke down yesterday. :( It looks like it's going to be fairly simple to fix and I have a car I can use in the mean time so I'm not too upset about it. The worst thing was it made me waste a lot of time.

If you like Dead Rising you should check out the t-shirts I made on cafe press. I'm trying to decide what to do with them, or really how to promote them. I think there has to be a way I can sell some, but I need to do some brainstorming. I'm considering coming up with some other designs based on different games and promoting them via a website with a URL that will help me come up in keyword searches, but I'd really like to break away from that keyword/seo based mentality. Maybe I'll try some internet advertising.

I've started to realize that if you want to be successful with a business venture of any type there is some risk involved. You have to be willing to spend some money and risk losing it to be successful. It's just a matter of scale, how much you risk and how risky it is.
3 comments

2/10/2008

This is pretty much what my life has been like recently. :P I'm starting to get sick of clearing snow off my car, off other people's cars, off decks, off my shoes, out of my hair, etc... But I guess that's what the middle of February is all about. Our current snow depth is in the 25-30 inch range.

My page is still in transition, in fact much of it is broken, but I think it will be worth it when I get it all done. I'm just taking my time with it, I don't need to rush, there's no hurry.

Some very good news on WtPC. I was given another wip build of the game with over half of the script blocks inserted. Unfortunately the game seems to freeze around day 8. Hopefully that won't be a major setback.

I was thinking about my favorite movies recently and I discovered something I did not know. Apparently I really like vengeance movies. Many of my top favorites, Sin City, V for Vendetta (duh!), Robocop, even Akira, they are all basically about one thing, vengeance, esp. against the power establishment or ruling system. I don't think of myself as a particularly vengeful person, but apparently these fantasies are very compelling for me (and obviously many others as well). I just found it interesting. Maybe deep down I secretly desire to get back at a system that I feel failed me (and others), hmm...

On the subject, I was also thinking about character's personal motivations and I realized that the reason I like Sasuke better than Naruto in said series is that Sasuke is pursuing his own justice, vengeance in fact (there it is again). For some reason I'm drawn to Sasuke's struggle much more than Naruto's.
7 comments

2/04/2008

I'm sure it's obvious but I've redesigned my site. I've been wanting to do this for a little while but I haven't felt like I had the time nor motivation until now. Things are still a little messy (ha), the style sheet change has effected the sub pages, and not all navigation is working, but it's looking right and behaving properly which is the important part for now. I may be adjusting the content a little or adding features in the near future. I'd like to expand my repertoire of xhtml/css techniques a bit.

FYI: IE7 has some trouble with the margins/padding because it's stupid. I'll fix it soon, but in the meantime, if your having trouble please download Firefox. (No, I can't believe I'm saying it either)

I started listening to a band called New Skin (more info). I ran across a remix song on a compilation a friend of mine has and decided to investigate them further. They have since become my first mp3 album purchase from Amazon.com. You can check them out on YouTube here.
8 comments

Site Archives:

June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010

homepage

Valid CSS!