Recently in Cinema Category

I'm curious.

Do people own bluray players yet?

Or are you all still waiting for something....

Please vote on the poll

I've got a few Zohan tshirts to give away over on Film Reviews

All you have to do is answer a simple question!

(Tshirts courtesy of WayToBlue, who do the studio's pr)

Hotshots is silly, but it's a wonderfully enjoyable film all the same.

Since my blu ray player is a US import I have to be very very careful about which discs I buy.

I either choose US region or multi-region discs, since there is no easy way to make a blu ray player recognise all discs (yet!)

Unfortunately Amazon haven't updated their website to take into account the Blu Ray regions.

Any film released on blu ray will end up with a DVD region listed beside it, which is, of course, incorrect. The silly thing is that Amazon's site has all the information on regions for blu rays - it's just the item display that is showing the wrong data.

It's a shame, but at least Amazon actually show the disc region, whereas a lot of the other sites don't even do that much!

Since I post to more than one blog it may appear at times that my activity here is pretty low key.

Over on FilmReviews.ie I've posted a couple of reviews of films I've seen recently including:
Wanted
Hancock
Alatriste
Incredible Hulk

While over on my domain news blog I've posted a few short posts about updates and some more in depth ones like the one the IEDR annual report

The company blog hasn't been that active recently, but I am trying to post to it a couple of times a week. We've been rather busy with the new rollout chez Blacknight, so my energies have been focussed elsewhere (fixing websites to read in English without boring people to death takes time!)

I've also got a few more project ideas in the pipelines, though whether I'll get the time to do anything about them is a totally different matter. (Pipelines is anywhere between vague idea and fully functional website and covers everything in between)

I've been to the cinema twice in the last couple of days.
On Friday night I went to see Hancock in Kilkenny, while last night I went to see Wanted in Carlow.

Both evenings people came into the cinema several minutes after the film had started. I'm not talking about the adverts or trailers, but the actual film itself.

They wander in then spend several minutes standing around trying to find somewhere to sit and talking as well.

End result being that your film viewing is disrupted.

Grr!

As most people have probably gathered at this stage I'm ever so slightly passionate about films and home cinema.

Over the last while I've been enjoying the glorious high definition of blu ray and HD DVD, however since the cinema studios like the idea of maintaining their monopolies a lot of blu ray releases are region encoded. Since my current blu ray player is a US import that limits me a bit.

There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel.

Since HD DVD is now more or less defunct (you can still pick up plenty of titles at bargain prices) the hardware manufacturers have started focusing on blu ray. While the players are still a lot more expensive than DVD players, you can now find a couple of options below 250 euro. What this means is that a standalone blu ray player is now cheaper than a PS3, which is a good thing (I really don't want a gaming console!)

Sigmatek's SBR 1000 weighs in at just over 230 euro, while Samsung's BD P1400 cost just over 240 euro. Neither model is particularly high end, but I am seriously considering picking up one of them, as I'd like to be able to take advantage of some of the EU vendors' disc offers.

On a sidenote I also spotted today that Amazon is listing Iron Man is being available for pre-order. What struck me as a bit odd was that they neglected to provide a release date!

EDIT: Home Cinema Choice has a review of the Samsung BD P1400

This year is turning out to be a bumper year for James Bond fans.

The Ian Fleming centenary has acted as a wonderful catalyst for the likes of Penguin, who are releasing a series of new covers, which are simply gorgeous.

Here's the one from Casino Royale:
It maybe new, but it's got that wonderful 60s retro feel.

The full set of books will be available at the end of May, though they haven't announced if they will be making a box set available yet.

Of course there's also the new Bond film which is set to be released on October 31st.

Earlier this year Royal Mail released a set of stamps to commemorate the centenary, while the Imperial War Museum is holding a really nice exhibition.

Of course the main thing behind Bond was the books, so you could do worse than spend some time acquiring some of the first editions. While you can get some of the first editions for as little as 30 or 40 euro there are some going under the auction hammer next Friday for prices ranging from 500 euro to ten thousand euro. More information is available on the Bloomsbury Auctions' site (you can bid via eBay)

Top Gun is not a "chef d'oeuvre', but it's great fun.
It has dated a bit since its initial release over 20 years ago, but it's still enjoyable (Yes I do have the special edition DVD and the HD DVD release.)

So how about Top Gun tshirts?