On Blu-ray and downloading videos

I had planned to follow my Christmas tradition of buying myself a nice present during the after-Christmas sales, and finally break down and get a Blu-ray video player. Obviously, we're being pretty tight with our money now, so that idea is out the window for the time being.

I've always been an early adopter of video technology. I bought a laser-disc player back in the 1980s, when less than 2 percent of homes had one. The first digital video format was not a bad one, although the discs were expensive ($40-$50 each) and you had to flip them once or more during a typical length movie.

Then I bought a DVD player in 1999, just a few months after they came out, even though they were overpriced -- I think mine was $500.

But I resisted investing in the next generation of video until the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was resolved. I didn't want to be stuck with hundreds of dollars worth of obsolete discs. For example, just before moving to Indiana in 2005, I sold all my laserdiscs on Ebay, typically getting just a few pennies on the dollar for what I paid for them.

But even when HD DVD suddenly folded nearly a year ago, I've hesitated to jump on Blu-ray. Part was the expense, with even discounted players going for $300 and up, and discs typically priced at about a 50 percent markup from regular DVDs. But I kept reading (and as a reporter, writing) about how the industry people think that the next big jump is going to be to downloading video.

I still don't buy that argument, for several reasons.

First of all, unless you're content to have a low-res version of the movie that only looks good on a two- or three-inch screen, it takes a honking long time to download a movie -- several hours, in most cases. Yes, it's cool to travel on a plane and watch a movie on your little MP3 player. But I think most serious videophiles feel that if they're going to own a movie permanently, they want to be able to watch it on the biggest screen and with the best sound possible. And the download speeds aren't a function of technology, but a limitation of the nationwide high-speed cable system. You would have to effectively rip the whole thing up and start over. So download times aren't going to decrease significantly any time soon.

Second, virtually everyone has experienced the tragedy of having a computer hard disk fried or dropping their iPhone into a toilet. If all your movies are stored digitially, there's a greater chance of them being lost permanently than with a physical object like a DVD. How would like to have bought a bunch of movies from the iTunes store for $12-$15 each, and then a lightning strike renders them null and void?

Third, most folks just like having the physical object -- they can display it on a bookshelf, admire the cover art, and take them with them wherever they go. "Hey, it's movie night at Bernie's. What are we watching?" "I dunno, just grab a bunch of DVDs and we'll choose." There's more of a psychological sense of ownership with something you can touch.

Fourth, storage space on even huge disk drives can be filled up quickly with digital copies of movies. Even the low-res flicks I've rented from iTunes take up about one gigabyte each. A high-def version is more like seven or eight gigs. I have about 250 DVDs in my collection; how much do you think a two terabyte drive would cost me -- about the size of a typical academic research library?

I believe that Blu-ray will eventually become the new video standard once the price on players and discs drops a bit more. Especially since regular DVDs will play on them, so there's no need to replace your current collection.

The power of pink

Since we got married in April, things have been very smooth between Jean and I. People think we're joking when we say that in three-plus years together, we've never had a real argument. But we do have "discussions" in which we express our differences, which any two people who enter nuptials for the first time in their late thirties are bound to have. Probably the most frequent topic has been vacuum cleaners.

I inherited from the gal I bought my house from a Kirby 2000, which is supposed to be a very high-end vacuum that costs over $1,000 new. Even old used ones on Ebay go for a few hundred bucks. It's a self-propelling vacuum, with a motorized assist for going both forward and backward. I love it, but Jean complains that it smells. That's probably because I don't empty the bag often enough, but my wife's sense of smell approaches near-Superman levels, so stinkiness is high on her list of beefs. So anything that gets hit with the "it smells" tag is likely branded for life.

She also didn't like my old Dirt Devil because it falls over unless you've got a hand on it. A pretty big design flaw, I'll grant you, but to me the solution seemed obvious: don't let go of it.

Our problems were solved on Christmas morning by a gift of one of those fancy Dyson vacuums you see in TV commercials starring the designer, who's a nice British guy but seems to be a bit of a wanker.

The thing is amazing. Its no-suction-loss feature is as good as advertised. After vacuuming one bedroom, it was filled with an astonishing amount of pet hair and crud. And we just steam-cleaned the carpets a few weeks ago.

And the thing rivals Apple for the sleek, ergonomically-friendly design. I love how it empties -- you pull on a hook, and the bottom opens up, dumping everything out.

There's only one drawback -- it's pink.

Yes, I am now the co-owner of a hot pink vacuum cleaner. It apparently was a special Breast Cancer Awareness edition -- although what breast cancer and vacuum cleaners have to do with each other is beyond me. Anyway, no one wanted to own a pink vacuum cleaner, which is why it was discounted heavily enough that our kind benefactor was able to buy one as a gift.

I guess it's not a big deal, since what guests are going to see your vacuum? Still, since vacuuming is on my list of household duties, I'll be the main user of the Pink Wonder.

Also, if anyone's interested in a good deal on a used Kirby 2000...

Top 10 Films of 2008

Here's my list. For now, it's only a list; you'll have to check my published links later this week to see all the whys and wherefores.

One caveat: the only major picture I didn't see was "Frost/Nixon," which for whatever reason the studios declined to screen for the Indianapolis critics (all three of us).

1. Wall·E
   
2. Slumdog Millionaire
   
3. The Reader
   
4. Traitor
   
5. Marley & Me
6. Iron Man
   
7. Frozen River
   
8. Defiance
9. Changeling
10. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    

Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

I was watching "Barcelona" last night and wondering about the fate of writer/director Whit Stillman. He made three literate, urbane films during the 1990s (the other two were "Metropolitan" and "The Last Days of Disco") and then just disappeared.

Some filmmakers can crank out a film a year without any problems (or more if you're Clint Eastwood), while others like Stillman need more time for their creative juices to marinate. But it's been 10 years since his last film.

Stillman's movies were never blockbusters, but then never were Woody Allen's, and he keeps up a frantic pace.

One of the most frequent criticisms I level against films is that the dialogue "sounds written." Some people thought this about Stillman, but I would contend that he wasn't writing stiff dialogue; he was writing dialogue for stiff characters. Stillman's movies were populated by blue-blood types who used big words and complex sentence structures in their speech. The artiface was part of their identity -- they wanted to come across as witty and smart.

There's reports that Stillman is working on an adaptation of Christopher Buckley's novel "Little Green Men." Let's hope Stillman ends his long hiatus.

Three new reviews

Check the list of links to the left for reviews of "Doubt," "The Reader" and "I'ved Loved You So Long."

Fried chicken and Florida thoughts

I consider myself a Southerner, even though I have virtually no accent and was born and raised in Orlando, which is the Fake South. You can always tell a Southern writer because they insist that the "S" be capitalized.

It's interesting to grow up in a place where you are one of the very few people who spent your whole life there. Orlando is the ultimate transient town, a place where nobody is from but everybody visits. It's a big city, but not a huge one. There's a decent amount of cultural stuff to do and sports, and it certainly has big-city traffic. Floridians hate to pay taxes to build new roads, which is why when a new highway is built, it is invariably a toll road.

We used to laugh at the tourists who showed up with their fresh-bought shorts and 500-watt white legs. Growing up in O'do makes you good at not standing out in a strange place, since to us that is the worst sort of embarrassment.

Today I made fried chicken for the first time ever. People from up north never understand what the big deal is about fried chicken. (See, a Southerner would never capitalize the north. There are no Northerners ... just "Yankees.") The thing is that it's the most universally beloved food there. White people, black people, poor and rich -- everybody loves fried chicken.

Mine turned out OK. It tasted great, although it didn't look quite as pretty as the stuff you get at a chicken place. And I think I'll be wiping up oil splatters for the next week and a half.

But at least I can call myself a bonafide Southerner who makes his own fried chicken -- even if it was only once.

"Pride of the Yankees"

Catching up on an old classic I'd missed, I watched "Pride of the Yankees" yesterday, with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig.

It was good, though very dated. The acting style is very 1942, with lots of rapid-patter dialogue and what today would be considered stilted delivery. You always expect some character to say, "Oh, a wise guy, see?"

Cooper was better than I expected, playing a character who was depicted as a straitlaced "boob," to use the parlance of the cynical younger reporter. I was surprised by the depiction of Gehrig's friendship with an older sportswriter played by Walter Brennan. The hack pals around with the baseball player, and happily demurs from writing about his personal life when Gehrig asks him to. Can you imagine that sort of relationship between a journalist and a pro athlete today?

I rather liked Teresa Wright as Mrs. Gehrig. She's a real firecracker, to again use the terminology of the time. Although once they get hitched, she immediately becomes less interesting. I think that's the way America, and certainly Hollywood, saw women back then: once they get married, they give up their own life to be a wife and mother.

One of my favorite games to play is to spot character actors in roles in different movies. When I saw the tiny little man playing Gehrig's father with a thick European (German?) accent, I immediately pegged him as the husband half of the couple in "Casablanca" who practice their newfound English on Humphrey Bogart in preparation for moving to America: "What watch?" "10 watch." "Such watch!"

Turns out I was right, and the actor's name is Ludwig Stossel. I thought that Elsa Janssen, the woman playing the mother, was also the same actress who played Stossel's wife in "Casablanca," but it's not.