The Curious Case of a Truly Awful Film

Last night the Kiwi and I watched 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', the latest film to involve Brad Pitt and apparently also-ran for last year's Academy Awards.

What a terrible, terrible film. It's like a 166 minute slap in the face, a prolonged insult or a particularly bad case of constipation. From the overall concept to the appalling acting and stomach-churning attempts to tackle 'deep' subjects in ways that the Dawson's Creek kids would find mawkish, it almost motivated me to call up David Fincher and ask for that 166 minutes back. There is literally nothing of merit here, not even Cate Blanchett's initially hilarious 'old southern woman' accent (which fast matches being poked continually in the chest as a number one annoyance).

I rarely post about films, but I really had to get this one off my chest. What an absolute shocker.

Question for you all

Although I'll not be actually doing this until I start earning, I have time to think about it now and so I could do with some help from all you internet people. I currently don't have a satisfactory way of playing audio and video media in our house. Right now, I play music by plugging either my laptop or my iPod into the speakers I sometimes use to amplify the TV. Video I play by connecting the laptop to the TV using a VGA cable - the audio goes through the same speakers.

Problems:

- it's not instantaneous - there's plugging in of things to be done before it goes
- I prefer using my laptop to play music from, as I can use my iPod Touch to remotely control iTunes, but
- I can't use my laptop on the sofa whilst this is going on as it needs to be within VGA cable reach of the TV
- the external speakers don't have a remote (although we will be getting a Viera home cinema system at some point which should solve this to an extent)

So, basically, whilst sitting on our sofa (3.5m from the TV screen), I want to be able to browse a library of audio & video files, and control playback, with the audio and video playback going through the TV (album art would be nice alongside audio). I'll want to be able to add to my libraries through this interface, so a browser at least, and a few toys like Spotify and Last.FM will be needed. At some point in the near future, I'll want to use something like Boxee to access online content as well. The TV is full-HD, and it would be good to make use of that if possible. Note that the home cinema addition will take up one of the two HDMI ports.

I also want nothing to do with Apple hardware (other than the iPod), as it's ruinously expensive over here.

The next step will be setting up speakers in another part of the house, and playing the same audio library through there - I suspect that an Apple AirPort or similar might do the trick here, but that bridge we can cross when we come to it. Got all that?

At the moment it's sounding very much like a small PC tower with a ton of storage space, running Windows (preferably XP or maybe 7), and using the TV as the (primary or secondary) monitor with an HDMI connection. Problems there are that iTunes is rubbish at video playback, and although the DivX player has been working well for me of late, there's no iTouch remote for it. Secondly I'd have to get a wireless (bluetooth, probably) mouse & keyboard for it too, not much of a hassle but still more crap to have lying around the living room.

Years ago, I remember conversations around the critical points of convergence being mobile/media player/online-enabled device, and office/living room. The former we can now see in multiple guises - until I have a satisfactory, cost-effective way to fulfil the above requirements, I don't think we can quite say we've got there just yet.

Answers, suggestions in the comments, or email me directly. This should be fun...

Singin' In The Rain @ Somerset House

Quite how good this was can't be expressed in bloggage - watching Singin' In The Rain in the open air at Somerset House. Perfect summer evening, lying on a picnic blanket with the Kiwi, watching one of the most heartwarming films around. It's right up there with It's A Wonderful Life, in my opinion.

This, as you might be able to make out, was the scene - you can make out the south block of Somerset House in the background, onto which the film was projected.

One of the things that made the evening was the fact that his widow and daughter attended. It got me wondering what goes through a widow's mind to see her husband on the big screen, looking his absolute best, and with hundreds of adoring fans still hanging on every tap, jump and twirl. Fascinating stuff.

I know it's a cliche, but they really don't make 'em like that any more.