if you like __________, you might enjoy ___________.

[jfb]

robots ... Dannybot
Blake's 7 ... Blake's Junction 7
Broken Social Scene ... The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess

That last is a surreal, ironic portrait (think To Die For) of the sex-charged, fame-crazed society we know as Canada. BSS wrote the score, and there's also a fantasy sequence set to Josh Rouse's "Love Vibration." The other two are comedic shorts--you can watch one of them online, and a trailer for the other.

Comments

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've wanted to see that Blake's Junction 7 for a while now. Mark Heap!

Comic Shorts

[artname.livejournal.com]

I take it those were from the comic shorts. Generally worthwhile, or were those the two that were best, or perhaps just the two that were available?

Oh, I've missed my last chance to see it anyway .. Dang.

Re: Comic Shorts

[jfb.livejournal.com]

They weren't the best, they were the one that would appeal to robot fans and the one that would appeal to Blake's 7 fans. The latter was manifestly unfunny to me and most of the audience.

On the other hand I thought most of the comic shorts were good to great. But you missed it.

Re: Comic Shorts

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

Well, I love Mark Heap and anything the guy is in regardless of how manifest your lack of humor is.

Re: Comic Shorts

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Cool. I didn't mean that as an insult, by the way, although I know it came out that way. I mean, the short was clearly very funny... but only if you get the joke, which I didn't.

Re: Comic Shorts

[(Anonymous)]

I love Mark Heap too, passionately.

Re: Comic Shorts

[artname.livejournal.com]

Generally, that's how I can tell something is good -- I missed it.

Glad to know the rule is holding up.

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I miss Blake's 7.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Me, too. We thought of it last week and said "surely it is on DVD by now." Turns out that the BBC has done the first two seasons, but only in region 2, and the season 1 dvd set seems to have lots of problems (like stopping randomly) and the people who are going to do the region 1 version are going to do it on the cheap (no extras, no new transfers) and goodness only knows when. It's aaallllmost enough to make me try to get a player for region 2. Almost.

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I think I'll add that to my accumulation of straws I keep on the back of my camel.

Perhaps someday I'll get an all-region player.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to get one that isn't buying one that someone else did a warranty-voided modification to? I don't know much about it but that seemed to be what most of the ones a cursory google search brought up were.

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that you could actually buy them (probably imported from overseas) that were manufactured to be able to handle all regions. I have this vague recollection that US players are the only ones they actually bother to set the region for.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Then you start to run into issues with TV compatibility, no?

I read a couple of days ago that there are some region 1 DVDs that will only play their extras on a region 1 player; that it specifically looks for the tag that says 1 vs. a tag that says any or none. So annoying.

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

Oh. that does sound annoying. Grr.

[(Anonymous)]

I use one of my computers' DVD drives as my region 2 player. I'd never needed to watch US DVDs on it anyway, since I've got an actual DVD player for that. At the moment, I'm limited to watching them at the computer, but I could always drag the machine out to the living room and hook it up to the tv, since my video card's got rca & svideo outputs. Pretty cheap option when you've got the computer anyway, since most machines come with a DVD drive these days, with player software bundled. Just put in a region 2 disc early on, and it will allow you to lock to region 2 (most software players seem to let you switch regions a limited number of times before crapping out on you).

--Woj

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Perhaps after we replace my laptop we'll relegate the old laptop to region 2. that would work pretty well. Thanks for the tip!

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

Guys, guys, guys, stop living in the stone age (circa 1997).

There are EASY ways to do this now that don't involve hacking firmware on a DVD-R nor cracking open component DVD players to do so.

I got the Philips DVP642 over the summer and I generally love it. It was $80 (you can find them online for as cheap as $60), plays MP3, VideoCD, and PhotoCDs like most players do these days PLUS it plays DiVX- and XViD-encoded AVIs burned to regular CD-Rs and DVD-Rs PLUS it has an easy, non-invasive region-free "hack." I say "hack" cuz, really, the designers of the machine built it into the player (Philips is as dominant in Europe where there's a huge demand for Region 1 discs as Sony is in the US).

Buy the DVD Player, then do this:

1. Turn on the player.
2. Open the tray.
3. Press the following sequence on the remote: 7 8 9 OK 0
4. The number 0 will appear on the lower left side of your screen.

Now it's a "region 0" player. You can also go in and force it to translate PAL to NTSC, but mine did it automatically out of the box. Voila, you can make the player whatever region you want it to be. You can turn it into Region 1 or 2 or 0 or whatever at your whim, an unlimited number of times.

It's not been a perfect player -- if playing DiVXs for over three hours or so consecutively, I think it overheats or something and just freezes. It also doesn't have unlimited decoding possibilities, sometimes if the audio's not encoded in a way it understands you'll just get video. But the region-free hack works great... I've got all the League of Gentlemen DVDs I wanted which will never be available in the US and they all work great. And even if the thing breaks tomorrow, it's only $80!

One more thing, emma, email me your mailing address, I want to send you some DiVXes. :-)

--sean

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Yay thanks.

Until we bought my current laptop (not quite 3 years ago) we had zero dvd capability in the house. And I just got a cell phone last month. We're moving into the 21st century kicking and screaming it seems. :-)