PJMixer: January 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Movie reviews - January 2012

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Great prequel premise and story line, but I couldn't really get past the CG apes - their expressions weren't convincing to me.  However, pretty entertaining and rather scary at times.

The Tree of Life (2011)

Very unusual film - full on art film with very sparse story and dialog.  Very difficult to get into, but once I began absorbing the mood and visuals, I was glued.  Superb acting, especially from the youngsters and beautiful cinematography.  Definitely not for everyone but was pretty special in my book.

The Dilemma (2011)

Hard to categorize this one, serious plot and emotions, but lots of Vaughn driven humour.  Perfect casting: Vaughn prime; James showing some depth; Queen Latifah rock solid and Ryder the evil villain.  Lots of awkward moments through a cleverly crafted plot, but Vaughn banter was irresistible.

The Green Hornet (2011)

Very silly, but Rogen's humour was contagious and the car and effects were awesome.  Christoph Waltz was superb (again) and added a full star to my rating.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Photo organization and editing on OSX

In response to a friend's Facebook question - can anyone share experiences with Picasa, iPhoto, Aperture, or Other on OSX ? I jotted down the following notes and thought I'd post it hear for those that may be interested.

I have over 50K photo files (JPGs and raw - I shoot in both and try to keep one or the other, but often keep original and edited versions) to manage, so I've tried a few different photo software products on different platforms.

I started off many years ago with Picasa on my PC. I still think it's a very good product and I recommend it to many people for organization and basic editing needs. I use it on occasion to post to my Google web albums and it seems to run fine on my Mac computers (Macbook and iMac). I only use iPhoto occasionally to get albums onto my iPhone.

But I've been using Photoshop Elements now for quite a few years. Loved it (v6) running on my PC until my library got too big and the PC too slow. So I moved to an iMac just last year with Photoshop Elements (v9). But the experience has been less than perfect and has exposed some bugs and different functionality on OSX. I'm sticking with it and have noticed that one really stupid bug (date changing) has been fixed. Note that I use PS for my raw processing/edits too.

As I wasn't 100% happy with Elements, I tried Aperture and Lightroom. Lightroom had all the organizing features I was looking for, but you still needed PS Elements or PS CS for edits so the price would be too high. I played around with Aperture for a little while - it seemed to have everything to needed but all the editing functions were completely different to what I've been learning in PS for many years. So I dropped it.

Good news is that you can try all these products out with full featured eval versions. I'm sticking with PS Elements on my iMac, my workflow works well for me and it's not having any consistent problems with my 50k+ library, and the thing I like the most is that PS is still the my common product in the market so you see lots of tips in the mags (although sometimes the features mentioned are only in PS CS).

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Coincidence - Nagra pops in in Alcaltraz

Watching the Golden Globes on Sunday night, my wife confuses Slumdog's Freida Pinto with the actress from Bend it like Beckham, Parminder Nagra. Unlike, Pinto who I'd seen recently in Rise of the the Planet of the Apes, I hadn't heard nor seen Nagra in a long time.

I decided to give the new Alcatraz series a try last night (very good I might add) and who is one of the stars - Ms. Nagra. I had thought there was a second coincidence, but I was mixing up Sam Neill with Derek Jacobi who I'd seen in The Gathering Storm on Sunday. Almost a double.

Also posted in my Only Coincidence ? blog.