BLOGGER ON THE DELL
Got the new Dell on Friday. It's the first brand-name machine I've used at home since my first Pentium, a lowly 60 mHz AST (which stood for "Aggravating Slow Turd," if I'm not mistaken). The last two machines I've had have been my own creatures, built from parts by my own hands. You can save money that way, but the tech support is only as deep as you are, which in my case was often a mile wide but an inch thick. With the new Dell, I'll have tech support for the machine's first year, when it's unlikely to break down, but if it does I'll be calling the techies back in Austin, you betcha. Migrating the old hardware--a CD-RW and a hard drive--was completely painless, which was a first. For once, Plug n Play actually meant something. The new machine also sports better graphics than the Voodoo 3 that the old system ran, which has awakened the sleeping gamer in me. I can already see that that particular habit is going to get expensive.Anyway, I mentioned earlier that I've seen The Two Towers, and loved it. I saw it at The Senator, a historic theater in Baltimore. It's an art deco, mid-30s vintage single screen (no multiplex) venue. It's screen is enormous, I think the largest in the realm (of Maryland, that is). It's still run like a theatre from the ancient times, with a knowledgeable staff that's actually courteous. Old though it is, The Senator sports one of the best sound systems around. It was the place to see Towers.
About Towers, I could rave all night how great it is, but being the contrarian I sometimes am I have a nit to pick. I don't like the score. Not the quiet, touchy-feely stuff that rises whenever we get a Hobbit close-up--that stuff's fine. But, and this may be the producer in me who's spent countless hours listening to production music to see what'll work in a given project talking, the big, sweeping score of Towers has a generic feel to me. It lacks a signature. Say what you will about the newest Star Wars flicks, they carry the old signature theme grandly, and it's a great theme. You can sing it. You can hum it. From the first trumpet flare, you know it when you hear it. Ditto a few others, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, and several epics of similar grandiosity. But LOTR's score lacks that signature. It never gets in the way, which is good, but it never really contributes much either. But it's a small nit. Just about everything else about it--except the fish that Gollum chases down the river, which I thought looked composited--is great. The scene in which Gollum debates with himself is masterfully done, and reminded me of an old short done by Pixar years ago called "Jerry's Game." It's on one of the Toy Story videos if I'm not mistaken. The shots in Towers match Jerry's Game very well.
But that's enough from me. The gamer is calling.