Hi all.

Once again, I will be attending the Cleveland International Film Festival.  This year I will be seeing 5 films over 3 days.

They are:
All Around Us (Gururi no Koto) – Japan
Surveillance – USA
Chaser (Chugyeoja) – Korea
Sparrow (Man Jeuk) – Hong Kong
White on Rice – USA

I will be twittering from Cleveland this weekend, but will probably not be able to see any replies until I return or get access to a computer.  You can expect reviews of the above movies when I’m back!

Playstation 3 (for bluray and region 1/free DVDs) – HDMI
Platstation 2 (for region 3 or other DVDs) – Component/Optical
Yamaha RX-V663
Infinity Primus 6.1 – 1x center, 2×6.5″ fronts, 3×5.25″ surrounds, 12″ sub
Panasonic 42″ 720p plasma

If anyone is interested in my thoughts of the picture/audio quality of specific blurays, please feel free to ask.  Otherwise, I will just mention when it makes a noticeable difference.  I mention the format reviewed at the start of each write-up.  So far, I am impressed with the “high-fidelity” sound of the lossless audio formats.  But it may just be the increased loudness and me trying to justify the new purchase =)

I’ve also made a number of purchases & pre-orders on DVD and bluray, so you may expect most of the following reviews over the next couple months:
Slumdog Millionaire (film)
Equinox Flower (DVD)
Sukiyaki Western Django (bluray)
Chungking Express (bluray)
The Machine Girl (DVD)
Meatball Machine (DVD)
Tokyo Gore Police (DVD)
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (bluray)
Death Trance (bluray)

There are three main reasons why I watch TV.  For normal broadcast shows, for movies on IFC and the sundance channel, and for sports.  I could probably get by just fine without the broadcast shows, since I would be able to pick them up via antenna, still in HDTV.  I would have to give up a few things, but all-in-all I wouldn’t be too hard off there.  The money savings from not having cable would negate the loss of good asian film on the sundance channel, since I could buy the DVDs instead (and have much better sound/picture quality anyways).  Sports would be the biggest hit.  Because I love to watch things like college football on Saturdays on ESPN, late at night.  And when Maria Sharapova is playing in a Grand Slam, it is usually on ESPN2 HD.  That said… I wouldn’t be surprised if I could get some kind of subscription to watch them via the internet.

So where does this put me?  Well.. I don’t really know if getting rid of TV would give me that much more time to do other things.  I don’t spend too much time on TV as it is.  I suppose just not wasting time by lounging around the house and surfing the net all day would yield more to doing the things that I really want to do to improve my life.  Also, saving that $15 or so per month by combining internet and TV would be lost… and the internet is something that I can not give up for many reasons.

Movies:
So I saw Funny Games last weekend, and it turned out to be a bit different than I expected.  Well, ok.. a lot different.  But it wasn’t really bad in any way.  Just that there are boring parts and I got sick of the “polite-ness” that the evil doers gave off in their characters.  But this really isn’t a standard movie in any sense.  In fact, you aren’t really supposed to be “into” the movie, and the characters are really “characters.”  It is more like a meta-film.  It had some violence, but not really.  You don’t actually see it on screen.  It’s one of those movies that is better when you look back on the movie, rather than the enjoyment you get while watching it.  Rating 3 /5.

I plan on seeing Doomsday sometime this week after it got some good reviews from my favorites sites (but not many positive reviews elsewhere on the web!).  I’ve also netflix’d Sunshine on bluray, and should watch that in the next week.  I got my 5 free blurays from the holiday rebate, but those won’t have much priority for now.

Games:
I’m continuing to play through Final Fantasy III on DS, Fire Emblem on Wii, and multi-player Rock Band.  On PC, it’s all about the Orange Box: both my favorite Team Fortress 2, and Half Life 2:Episode 2.  Man, is it nice to start up a good looking FPS (even if it’s not the #1 technically looking game), and run it at max everything with upwards of 80 to 100 frames/sec.  I’m sure I will forget what having a bad PC is like soon.  Anyways, HL2:Ep2 was pretty hard on the hard difficulty, so I moved it down to medium or normal and it’s about right there.  Fire Emblem is pretty hard, too, but I think I have that on a harder difficulty as well.

In other news, I have signed up for monthly carbon offsets, and am now carbon neutral. Well actually, I’m buying more than I consume, so I guess that makes me carbon negative. If you wish to do the same, here is the site. It’s pretty cheap.