I lift my remote beside the golden door!
Dec. 3rd, 2006 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberSome of you noticed that I haven't updated in a month... Me, I generally don't notice for a couple months, and then I think, "Hm, I wonder where X has gotten to?" and I think about them about once a month after. So if you didn't notice, no worries. :)
What have I been up to? Well, I decided not to be a cop, and I soaked up a hell of a lot of good media. For point one, there were of course many reasons to be a cop and many not to, but as I approached the end of the process the unwelcome aspects of it loomed larger. For example, in pretty much every interaction you have as a cop, you're causing someone to have a bad day. Bah!
For media: The shining, glorious stand out has to be the BBC miniseries adaption of John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, and a bunch of excellent British character actors as other major characters. The atmosphere of not knowing and the focus on character are demonstrated by the ballsy way that out of six episodes, the first just begins to set things up, and only towards the end of the second does the plot starts rolling. That kind of understated determination is also seen in the characters... Really, it's the best miniseries I've ever seen, better than the BBC Pride and Prejudice, very, very good.
I'll probably talk about all the rest of the stuff I watched/read later, but for the nonce, does anyone local have a PocketPC or a Palm or a hackable PSP? Apparently all I need to make my DVD player region-free is to enter a code with a remote, but the code includes things no normal remote has buttons for, so I need something that produces IR that can pretend to be a remote.
Then I can see what the British version of Tinker, Tailor looks like... I hear it's cut differently from the American version, so there are seven episodes instead of six. ;) Bearer-of-the-ersatz-remote can watch with, and we can drink along with the characters on screen. :D
What have I been up to? Well, I decided not to be a cop, and I soaked up a hell of a lot of good media. For point one, there were of course many reasons to be a cop and many not to, but as I approached the end of the process the unwelcome aspects of it loomed larger. For example, in pretty much every interaction you have as a cop, you're causing someone to have a bad day. Bah!
For media: The shining, glorious stand out has to be the BBC miniseries adaption of John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, and a bunch of excellent British character actors as other major characters. The atmosphere of not knowing and the focus on character are demonstrated by the ballsy way that out of six episodes, the first just begins to set things up, and only towards the end of the second does the plot starts rolling. That kind of understated determination is also seen in the characters... Really, it's the best miniseries I've ever seen, better than the BBC Pride and Prejudice, very, very good.
I'll probably talk about all the rest of the stuff I watched/read later, but for the nonce, does anyone local have a PocketPC or a Palm or a hackable PSP? Apparently all I need to make my DVD player region-free is to enter a code with a remote, but the code includes things no normal remote has buttons for, so I need something that produces IR that can pretend to be a remote.
Then I can see what the British version of Tinker, Tailor looks like... I hear it's cut differently from the American version, so there are seven episodes instead of six. ;) Bearer-of-the-ersatz-remote can watch with, and we can drink along with the characters on screen. :D
no subject
Date: 2006-12-03 05:23 pm (UTC)One caveat: I have heard that there are a (very) few DVDs that check to make sure they are playing on a Region encoded player. I've not played around with region free players, so I have no personal experience on the matter.